“Storm’s coming,” he called out then.
“I see it,” she answered. She watched the dark clouds billowing toward them from the western horizon. So far they had been blessed with beautiful weather, but men at the fort had warned them how fast a storm could sweep over the plains, and now she realized they were right. She had never seen clouds move so fast.
“Get under the canvas!” Jake shouted. He headed the oxen into a gully just ahead, where the wagon and animals could drop down just enough to at least be more sheltered from the suddenly cold wind that began whipping at them. Rain joined the wind as Jake hurriedly climbed into the wagon from the front seat. “Close the back flap and I’ll get this one,” he told Miranda, uncurling the front flap and letting it down. He secured it with rawhide strips at the corners, and wind and rain began pelting the canvas from the outside. “Damn good thing we had this canvas put on back at that fort,” he told her, taking a cheroot from his shirt pocket.
“Yes,” Miranda answered, moving near him to take her shawl from where it lay on top of her trunk. She wrapped it around her shoulders and shivered, noticing then that his shirt was wet. “You should get out of that wet shirt and put something dry on.”
He lit the cheroot and took a drag. “I’m fine.” He removed his leather hat and set it on the trunk, then leaned back against a pile of blankets. “Actually, I don’t mind an excuse to stop for a while. Hell, it will be dark in another hour anyway. Maybe we’ll just camp right here.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and Miranda watched him, realizing this was the first time he had had cause to get into the wagon with her when it was closed. At night she had slept inside with the canvas down, while he slept outside under the wagon. She dressed and undressed inside, he outside. The wagon had been like her own little dwelling, the outdoors had been his. It disturbed her in ways that it shouldn’t to have him in the small enclosure with her. His virility seemed to fill the wagon, making her suddenly feel almost uncomfortably aware that he was a man and she was a woman, more aware of how she had not minded being thought of as his wife. For three years now she had buried old needs and desires.
She found it hard to stop looking at him. Because he was sitting there with his eyes closed, she could study him freely. She liked watching him, liked the square jaw and high cheekbones, the full lips and the shadow of a beard. She liked his thick, dark hair, the way it lay in gentle waves and softly graced the collar of his shirt.
Jake suddenly opened his eyes, and she quickly looked away, feeling her cheeks going hot at being caught staring. Thunder suddenly exploded, and the wagon jerked a little as the restless oxen balked at the storm. “Might be safer if I unhitched them,” Jake told her. “If I leave them yoked together, they can’t go so far that I couldn’t find them again.”
“Jake, it’s pouring out there!”
“I don’t like the thought that they could start dragging this wagon around.” He put his cheroot into a tin cup and untied one corner of the canvas, quickly moving outside, glad himself for an excuse to get out of the wagon for a moment. Did she know what it did to him, being confined so close to her, catching her staring at him? She had never mentioned what she had told him that first day he rescued her. Had she forgotten, or was she just afraid to say it again?
Thank God she had let it go. He didn’t want to have to tell her she was crazy to love him. He didn’t even want to know if it was true. It would hurt too much, because he couldn’t possibly return that love. That would mean bringing her into his life, and there was no future there, only danger.
He worked quickly to unhitch the team, then climbed back inside, where Miranda waited with a towel. “Get your shirt off,” she told him. “I won’t take no for an answer this time. It was blistering hot all day and now it’s suddenly almost cold. You’ll get sick.”
He took the towel and rubbed his wet hair with it. “Damn, what a downpour,” he said, trying to position himself so that his boots did not soil anything inside. “Sorry to get your things wet.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t go and get sick on me.”
“Hell, I’ve been a lot wetter than this. I’ve kept right on traveling on Outlaw in worse weather. Speaking of Outlaw, take a look out back there and make sure the horses are still tied to the wagon.”
Miranda looked to see the animals standing in the pouring rain. “They’re still there, poor things.”
“They’ll be all right. A spring rain won’t hurt them.”