Lloyd led her over to the bed. “You’re talking a mile a minute. Calm down.” He made her sit down on the bed. “Pa is better. Sit down here while I take off my boots and clothes and clean up. Is Stevie sleeping?”
“Yes.” Katie sat down and put her head in her hands. “You must think I’m such a baby. You didn’t expect that out of your wife.”
Lloyd pulled off his boots and shirt, then his bloodstained pants. “You are everything I expected. I did not expect you to take what happened today as though it was nothing. But you have to trust that Pa and I know what we’re doing, Katie.”
He walked over to pour water from a pitcher into a washbasin, then washed the blood from his chest and hands. “The only reason things went wrong this morning is because Little Jake wandered into it,” he continued. “Pa would have been fine otherwise. Believe me, Pa can handle himself, and so can I. I’m just upset that he didn’t come and get me, though. I told him Sunday not to do anything without coming to get me first. He figured he shouldn’t bother us, but as it turns out, he did bother us.”
Katie smiled through tears. “He didn’t know it would turn out like that.” She took a handkerchief from under her pillow. “Oh, Lloyd, I’m so sorry. I just thought maybe I’d be alone here all night. That’s the only reason I was scared. And I’ve just… I have to get used to things like this, I suppose, considering your job.”
Lloyd finished washing and turned down the lamp to near darkness. “Come on. Get into bed and let me hold you.” Still wearing knee-length long johns, he crawled under the covers and held them open for her. Katie moved into bed beside him and he pulled her close.
“How’s your mother?” she asked.
“She’s shook up, but not about the gunfight. She’s grown kind of hardened to that. It was the way my pa bled that scared her to death. It scared all of us.”
“Are you sure she’s all right?”
Lloyd moved one leg over hers. He kissed her lightly. “Randy Harkner is just as tough as my father, believe me, but Pa has never been hurt in a way that rendered him unconscious and helpless like this. It’s just hard to see that in a man like him.” He pulled her closer. “I’m not ready to lose him yet, Katie. I realized that full force when I saw him down in the street.” He kissed her again. “Soon as he’s for sure okay, we’ll do something together—go on a picnic or something. We’ll take Stevie fishing again. I have to spend more time with that poor kid the next few days.”
“Stephen is a Harkner through and through. He understood why you had to be with your father. We said a prayer together for his grandpa. He’s such a good boy, Lloyd. He kept asking me if I was okay.”
Lloyd stroked her hair. “That makes me proud, and it’s sweet of you to think to pray with him.” He sighed. “Pa would say that praying for him is useless, because the good Lord isn’t too concerned about a man like him. I wish I could make him see that’s not true, but Jake is Jake, and he’s never been able to dig himself out of his past. I don’t know where he’d be without my mother.”
They kissed again. “You’re a good woman, Katie.”
“And I want to be a good wife. I hope you like what I’ve done with the house. You probably didn’t even notice, coming back so late and all.”
Lloyd toyed with the curls in her hair. “I’ll like anything you do. Heaven knows this place needed a woman’s touch. We’ll stay home all day tomorrow and just be together, and in a couple of days we’ll go shopping for whatever you need to fix the place up—material for new curtains, rugs, furniture, whatever you think it needs. It’s your house now—our house. All I have to do the rest of this week is meet the prison wagon when it comes in, and go see my father and make sure he’s improving. Sometime this week we’ll go out to your folks’ too, and get the rest of your personal things.” He kissed her eyes. “That sound all right to you?”
“Having you here all week sounds wonderful.”
He kissed her gently. “Turn over.”
“What?”
“You’re stiff as a board with tension. I’ll rub your back.”
“I should be rubbing your back. You’re the one who’s had a terrible day.”
“I’ve been through worse, Katie, and this is all new to you. You need some attention, and I’m going to give it to you.”
Katie turned over. Lloyd studied her lovingly in the dim lamplight, her thick, lustrous hair, the fine line of her build. Even from the back she was beautiful. He began massaging her back and neck, moving his fingers round to lightly massage under her chin, then back to her neck, her shoulders, on down her spine.