Dance Hall Road Read online

  “My Hoyt, what have you done?” she asked, her lips barely moving. He knew now this was one of those moments when she really wasn’t aware of having spoken her thoughts aloud. She did it often, and he thought it fun to catch her at it, answer her question or make a remark, letting her think he’d read her mind.

  Looking up at him like a child, her eyes full of wonder and delight, she enunciated very clearly, “Is it Christmas?” She fondled the boots, her fingers stroking the furry inside.

  “Ohooo, these are so beautiful, so soft.” Holding them up, she purred like a kitten and put the fur side of the cuff to her cheek. “Thank you,” she said very precisely, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

  The sight of those tears gave Buck a jolt that shot a gusher of blood straight up to his ears, then spiked the flow down a chute to his groin. His heart stopped, and he held his breath.

  With the boots hugged to her bosom and her gaze cast down to the cradle, she said on a sigh, “It’s beautiful.”

  Speaking to herself, her words above a whisper, she lamented, saying, “I left behind so many things…things for the baby. I’d knitted a layette, blankets, buntings, booties, everything. All blue, with appliqué sailboats—for my son, always for a son. Never once did I doubt I would have a son.”

  She touched the side of the cradle and it started to rock back and forth. “I can’t believe you did this,” she said, her head down. Then, lifting her gaze to meet his, she swallowed hard before telling him, “I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.” A sob escaped when she took a breath and her hand went to her trembling lips as the tears flowed down her cheeks.

  With shaking fingers, she started to undo the baby’s sling from her body, fumbling with the leather strap and cord. Before he thought about it, Buck untied the cord and gathered Gabriel in his arms.

  Hearing her gasp in protest, his gaze on the baby, Buck ignored her. He started to rock the baby, experimenting with the feel, the weight, the warmth, the smell of him. A cute little guy, chubby cheeked, he had a head covered in fine, pale hair, more of a fuzz like you’d find on a peach. Buck gently laid the slumbering baby down in his new bed. Lifting his gaze to Petra, straightening, Buck gave her a big grin as she came to her feet.

  Surprising him, she wrapped both of her arms around his middle. Her body close to his side, she rose up on her toes and planted a light, warm, sweet kiss on his hairy jowl. Her breath teased his ear when she giggled. She rubbed her nose, and he thought he might swoon away like a girl, and thanked God his whiskers hid his blush.

  “Your whiskers tickle, Mr. Hoyt.” Her gaze going to the cradle and her son, she said in a hushed voice, “Such a beautiful gift for my son. You do fine work. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”

  Taking a shuddering breath, Buck reached for the slate and chalk.

  A place for him, when you cook. He quickly erased, impatient with himself and his runaway emotions.

  Welcome here. Erase. I’m telling you, don’t have to ask.

  Erase, Want you to feel at home.

  He realized he meant it. He did want her to feel at home. Shaking in his boots Buck knew, he just knew, both of them would have hell to pay.

  While he fought for composure, Petra sat down and began to remove her socks, intent on replacing them with the boots. His gaze followed the movement of her long tapered fingers as they slid down her snowy white calves, over her shapely ankles, and over her feet to the ends of her gracefully shaped toes, slipping her socks off and tossing them aside.

  His resistance wearing thin, Buck closed his eyes, and cursed himself for not shaving.

  »»•««

  After a couple of sleepless nights, his body humming with desire, Buck rose well before dawn in a sour frame of mind. With nothing else to do, he started to work on the novella he had in mind, but he couldn’t think of anything but Petra upstairs, in bed, her skin warm, her hair down… Every thought that came to his mind sounded too salty to publish.

  Over the breakfast table, Petra brought him out of his dark musing to ask a favor. “Mr. Hoyt, I’m sorry to bother you, but…” she’d interrupted, using the formal way of addressing him that instantly irritated him, “if you would like, I would cook one of your smoked birds for our supper. I’m baking some squash. If you have enough eggs, I’d like to make a custard pie.”

  With her head tilted to the side, leaning away from him as if he might strike her for speaking, her request set his teeth on edge. It wasn’t the favor she asked, but how she went about making it, inserting an apology for bothering him. Her demeanor that of a cowering puppy, the very opposite of what he’d been daydreaming, fantasizing about.

  Snarling at her, impatient with himself, he agreed, “Fine, I’ll get a damn bird out of the smokehouse.” Shoving himself away from the table, snatching up his coat and hat, he left her sitting there staring after him, blinking, her chin tucked in, looking hurt and very frightened.

  Once outside, he figured he needed to keep as far away from her as possible to save his sanity. To hold his lascivious thoughts at bay, he gave himself a list of chores. After pitching feed to the animals, replacing some rails on the corral, chopping wood rounds into chunks to fit the stove, he still couldn’t get her out of his head.

  In the barn, with a lit lantern hanging on the stall post and all his shaving articles lined out on top of the upside-down bucket, Buck glared at his reflection in the old broken piece of mirror. With scissors in hand, poised, he stared hard into his reflection, his eyes daring him to make a move. The mirror, veined and milky, would hardly allow him to see himself. His razor fell off the ledge of the bucket; the sharp edge missing his booted foot by less than a quarter of an inch. He bent over to pick it up and bumped his head on the post, then nicked his thumb on the razor blade. Rubbing his head, sucking his bleeding thumb, he wondered if these incidents were signs, messages.

  Since Petra had taken over his house, he’d become suspicious of the everyday, random happenstance. Deliberating with himself, he couldn’t decide if the knock on the head meant he should get on with it, shave and make himself more appealing to the woman, or he should forget about prettying himself up, forget about shaving, stay mangy and stay away from the woman.

  Or, could it be simple clumsiness on his part? He bumped his head all the time, and cut himself shaving, poked himself with sharp objects constantly, sawed through many a fingernail, nearly chopped his leg off more than once, and cut his fingers slicing bread on a daily basis. Maybe there were no hidden messages. He was an idiot.

  Finding the question moot, he shook his head at his image. “Well, you shaggy old goat, let’s see what you’ve got under this nest of hair.”

  His fingers combed through the whiskers on his chin and jowls one last time. One clip of the scissors followed another and another, until he could see skin. With four long swipes, he honed his straight razor on the leather strop hanging from a nail on the post. He tested the edge of the blade with his thumbnail, then laid the razor down and took up the soap brush to lather up his face. A plop of cold lather floated on the top of the even colder water in the metal pan. He laid the razor’s edge against his jowl, hesitated, closed his eyes, then opened them and pulled the razor down at an angle, clearing away a swath of whiskers. The razor cut across his jowl, the sound of the whiskers falling beneath the blade making a crisp scraping noise in his ears. Jowls, chin, neck, then sideburns; it surprised him he remembered how to do it.

  Right before his eyes, a stranger began to emerge. Now he felt naked, exposed. With the enthusiasm of a man on his way to his own hanging, he trimmed his mustache, at last revealing first his lower lip, then just a hint of his upper lip.

  Studying his reflection, no, he didn’t know this man at all, Buck decided, moving his head from side to side for inspection. The fella looking back at him looked like some character on the front of one of those dime novels. His face, from his cheekbones to his strong jaw and square chin, appeared carved out of stone, all sharp angles. Hell,
he looked like a bank robber. He should be on a wanted poster. His eyes looked suspicious…kind of shifty, and his skin looked pale, having been shaded from the sun for so many years.

  He had a dimple in his chin—he didn’t remember that, and it posed a bit of a problem to shave. He uncovered a scar under his bottom lip. He did remember the scar. He’d gotten it when he’d fallen out of a tree at the age of ten. He remembered it because he’d bled like a stuck pig, and his mother had sewed him up while the ladies held him down.

  With his whiskers gone, his crooked nose looked too big. He’d had it broken more than once during a number of scuffles. He stood there in the cold barn wishing he hadn’t shaved. Now he’d have to go back to doing it every damn day. The end of November brought cold air, and he wished he’d waited until spring. Without the insulation of his beard, he’d probably catch his death of pneumonia and die. And for what, he asked himself, a woman? No, not any woman, one particular woman.

  “Look at you. The woman in there has you all tamed down, holding babies, shaving, and bathing—damn disgusting is what you are.”

  “You put on a new shirt this morning, new long johns, new socks, and new dungarees. You’re a damned fool. You look ridiculous, gussied up like a damned kid puttin’ on the dog for the first day of school.”

  Lowering his gaze, he put forth a defense. “Shoot, it’s only hair. And a man can put on a clean shirt; there’s no law against it. Besides, if things don’t work out, I can grow every whisker back in a week or two.” Giving himself a critical examination in the looking glass, he ran a hand along his clean-shaven jowl.

  Meeting his eyes in the mirror, he jerked back from his reflection. “What things? If what doesn’t work out? What are you expecting? The lady isn’t looking for a romance. She just had a kid, she’s deaf, and she’s on the run, scared out of her wits. What the blazes do you think you’re doing? All you’re gonna be is her next big mistake. At the most, you might be a distraction—like she needs a distraction, what with trying to take care of a kid. You’ve got nothing to offer a woman, you damn fool.”

  Getting up close to his reflection he responded, “Okay, you horny son-of-a-rutting-pig,” he growled, “Let’s put all our cards on the table and admit you’re ready to change your image. Not for the woman, but because it’s time. Not just your image, but your life.

  “You’ve been holed up out here in this God-forsaken stink-hole like a damn outlaw. You’re not on the run anymore. This place could be something. You’ve saved up. You could put up a hotel. Make this place into a…a resort with the hot spring.”

  He shook his head, looking away from his reflection and into the dark corner of the barn. “I need some time to think. Folks back east pay a lot of money to go to a hot spring…a mineral spa.”

  He swung his gaze back to meet his eyes in the glass. “I could do it…make some pools for bathing, hire a doctor, advertise, make a hotel, and have a restaurant. I could…I could.”

  He snorted and shook his head at his wide-eyed, day-dreamin’ idiot reflection before he sharpened his gaze to look himself squarely in the eye. “Like hell, you could. You wouldn’t put up with a bunch of snotty, hoity-toity city folks prowling all over the place, not for one day. You wouldn’t have a moment to yourself. You’d hate it.

  “All right, all right, I’ll turn this place into a ranch. Raise cattle, or sheep. I don’t mind animals.”

  This wasn’t the first time Buck had had this talk with himself over the past three or four winters; but this time he was serious. He didn’t know if he should blame Petra, or if he’d finally had his fill of sharing his home with a bunch of rowdy, grubby miners, sheepherders, and prostitutes. For whatever reason, a cattle ranch, a home, a real, year-around home, sounded pretty good to him this morning.

  Grabbing the mirror off the post and tossing the cold pan of water out into the barnyard, he swore, “Damn woman, she’s got me thinkin’—domesticated…settled down…respectable.”

  Living alone had given him no one but himself to talk to; it wasn’t right, not right at all.

  “Here you stand arguing with your reflection, like some kind of damned bedlamite. Livin’ out here all alone, if you don’t watch it, you’ll sour, shrivel up into a crazy, dried-up old geezer.”

  Well, maybe it’s what I want, he told himself.

  He’d worked hard to keep himself apart from the rest of good society. Would he really be a better man if he opened up his heart a crack to allow someone else inside, maybe two someones. Hell, maybe three, four, or six, maybe a dozen, someones? Oh, yeah, that made him laugh—he really was crazy, all right.

  Wiping the soap off the razor before he folded it and set it down on the shelf, he said to the face in the mirror, “Well, you’ve done it. Your whiskers are gone, and it’s time to see how Petra responds.”

  He started for the house, then remembered his excuse for coming out to the barn in the first place, and went back to the smokehouse to retrieve the goose Petra said she would roast for their supper.

  With the wind behind him, he entered the house, and a blast of snow followed him, nearly taking the door off its hinges. Petra stood at the stove, removing her custard pie from the oven.

  She’d put on some weight in the past couple of weeks. Her bottom looked mighty nice, round and shapely. He could see the cuff of the long johns he’d given her beneath her blanket skirt. She’d asked him if she could cut them to make a top and a bottom. The thought of her wearing his underwear gave him a funny feeling, but then everything about the woman made him randy as hell.

  Chapter Seven

  Mr. Hoyt slammed out of the house. Petra, trembling and feeling weak, blinking back tears sat frozen in her chair. It wasn’t Mr. Hoyt who barked his begrudging compliance to her request, she’d seen Kurt sitting across from her, snarling mad like a rabid dog; she heard Kurt’s voice in her head.

  Now, swamped in relief Mr. Hoyt had left without striking her, Petra couldn’t move. Instead, she stayed very quiet, giving herself time to come back to the present, to reason out her fears.

  Lips moving, she told herself in a voice she couldn’t hear, “I offered to cook a goose for supper, nothing wrong with that. His smokehouse is stuffed full of birds. He goes hunting nearly every day. Mr. Hoyt is not Kurt, he wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t.”

  Bracing herself, hands on the table, she rose, steadied herself with a deep breath, and then began to clear away their breakfast dishes. Deciding Mr. Hoyt had behaved abominably, her hands went to her hips and she turned to look out the window.

  “What’s he saving them for? I don’t think we’re expecting a crowd—I can’t believe we’ll run out of food anytime soon.”

  The wind blew the snow down from the roof, the crystals tickling the windowpanes.

  “Nobody ever comes out here—except the mail carrier. It’s winter, I suppose that makes a difference. Not many folks traveling in this weather.”

  Mr. Hoyt hadn’t been sleeping well, and she wondered if that could explain his prickly disposition. Kurt never slept. He paced and prowled the house all night long. Last night, after feeding Gabriel his in-the-middle-of-the-night meal, she’d noticed the stairwell held a beam of pale, gold light and she knew the source of the light came from Mr. Hoyt’s room. He stayed up sometimes writing. She knew he did, although he didn’t share his stories with her.

  As Petra worked in the kitchen, the morning passed, as did her unreasonable sense of foreboding. Soon she had the stuffing for the goose ready, but she needed the bird. The goose didn’t need to roast all that long, but she wanted the stuffing to be cooked inside the bird for flavor.

  Gabriel lay asleep in his cradle. For the last few days, he’d begun to stay awake longer, looking around with his smoky gray eyes, his hands finding his toes, even smiling at her when she spoke to him. Petra’s heart ached to hear him, to hear all of the funny little sounds he made.

  Which brought her mind back around to her condition. Yesterday and today, the sloshing noise in her
head had subsided to a high-pitched whistle. From time to time, she experienced complete quiet. The stillness, the lack of sound, any sound, unnerved her. She didn’t know if the lack of noise was a bad or a good sign—she hadn’t found any useful information in any of the medical books.

  The headaches, which for weeks had plagued her, did seem less intense. She found if she could rest when Gabriel slept, she could tolerate the pain in her neck and shoulders. But with Gabriel awake more and more, her opportunities to rest had become less frequent and of shorter duration. She spent a good portion of her day in Mr. Hoyt’s kitchen. She couldn’t complain about that; she enjoyed cooking, especially on Mr. Hoyt’s lovely stove, and she’d much rather eat her cooking than his.

  Jealousy had nearly been her undoing last evening. Mr. Hoyt had asked her permission to read to Gabriel while she cleaned the kitchen. They sat in the rocking chair together, she jealous of her own child, unable to hear a word. But out of the corner of her eye she watched as Mr. Hoyt read aloud. He’d displayed a good deal of animation, shaking his head for emphasis, sometimes making a scowling face, sometimes nodding approvingly, his bushy brows raised, eyes wide. The man laughed, throwing his head back when Gabriel responded with a kick or a wave of his arms. All jealousy aside, she had to admit they made quite a picture—Mr. Hoyt, big and burly, and little Gabriel, a small bundle in the big man’s arms.

  As she set the table, Petra wondered if Mr. Hoyt had a nice voice. She could imagine he had a deep voice, a rumbling voice like distant thunder, a voice to match the dark scowl on his face. She knew he’d read two of the Greek myths to her son. She’d read them herself and dearly wished she could have heard them told aloud by Mr. Hoyt…the animated, gentle Mr. Hoyt.

  After Gabriel had fallen asleep last night, she sat on Mr. Hoyt’s bed tacking a hem around the waist of some long johns for a drawstring. Mr. Hoyt continued to read to himself and for an hour or so she forgot to feel sorry for herself.