"He don't remember her."
"I see."
"Just like me and my pa, huh?"
She ran her fingers through his thick black hair, combing it away from his forehead. "Yes."
"Want to play checkers?"
"If you let me win." She groped under the bed and came up with the board.
She'd lost five times when a rap sounded on the door and it swung open. "Excuse me, Slade. I need a-oh."
Anton Neubauer appeared taller and broader than ever without a shirt. Golden hair matted his muscled chest, and his shoulders were wide and dark from hours in the sun. Long, corded forearms were dusted with more gold hair. She'd never seen a man as fair-haired and golden-skinned as Anton. Most men she'd seen had been dark, and Indians were smooth-skinned.
"Sorry. I thought you were still outside." Midnight-blue denims covered his strong legs, and polished leather boots sounded on the floorboards as he crossed the room. "I need a shirt and tie."
Definitely, a matter of opinion.
He shrugged into a stark white shirt and buttoned it beneath their transfixed stares. With crisp, precise movements, he rolled the cuffs over his forearms.
"Gosh!" Slade hiked himself up higher on the pillows. "You look fancy. Don't my mama look pretty?"
Anton plucked something from a hook on the inside of his closet door and turned slowly. Heat suffused her cheeks, and she wanted to fling aside the checkers she held and bolt from the room. Instead, she tilted her chin and met his ambiguous gaze.
A red string tie dangled from his tanned fingers, fingers she'd just studied with considerable interest in his daguerreotype. He gazed at her from head to foot, lingering on various places in between until her heart beat like a Sioux war drum in those same places. At last he cleared his throat.
"Your mama will have all the fellas begging for dances." His tone had not been sarcastic. She dropped her gaze.
"Really?" Slade bounced on the bed.
"Easy, Slade," she said to her son.
"Really." Anton stepped to the mirror above the wash-stand and slipped the tie over his head. Rain Shadow allowed herself the adventure of watching. Feet planted apart, he jutted out his chin and adjusted the ornamental stone at his throat. The purely masculine gesture struck a peculiar chord deep inside her, its resonant hum pumping liquid fire through her veins.
He opened a drawer, located a comb and tamed his straw-colored hair. She found herself wondering if his wife had watched him with this same fascination, if all women were charmed by the mystique of a handsome man performing his perfunctory grooming ritual.
Immediately, she grew pensive. She had never watched a man like this. The sight provoked, stimulated. The sight was...intimate. Did husbands and wives grow accustomed to such familiarity? She hadn't realized she craved such a companionable experience until that moment. She took in his broad shoulders and narrow waist, trailed her gaze over his compact buttocks and well-defined thighs, much as he'd looked at her moments before.
Slade let a stack of checkers shuffle through his fingers, and Rain Shadow dragged her admiring gaze to the mirror. In the glass, Anton watched her reflection with the same, intense expression she had seen in the portrait. Something almost painfully warm seared deep into her flesh, quickened her breath and delivered a lambent hum in her ears. She couldn't look away.
"You coming now?" he asked, his voice low.
She wiped her palms on her dress. He'd caught her studying him. Exactly what had he seen? What had just passed between them? "I don't know."
Anton turned.
"Go on, Ma," Slade piped up.
"We weren't finished with our game." She balked, more confused than ever at their silent exchange.
"You weren't trying. I'm getting tired, anyhow."
Out of excuses, she shrugged and simulated poise. "You win again."
Anton gestured toward the door, the first gentlemanly act she'd observed in days. She responded, as she did to everything about this man, with an immediate and unsettled feeling of deficiency. She'd go, but she would leave and return to her lodge early. The Neubauers and their neighbors belonged here, rooted to this land. They and their descendants would be here long after she was gone. She didn't belong. She was the autumn wind, a puff of smoke, a fleeting shadow.
* * *
Sissy Clanton's dress was a simple yellow calico. An ivory shawl draped her slender shoulders. Gathered from her oval face, her nutmeg tresses hung in gentle waves between her shoulder blades. The toes of shiny brown boots peeked from beneath her demure hemline.
Anton handed her a jar of lemonade, and she smiled in thanks, her unpainted lips parting to reveal small white teeth. She had a girlish sprinkling of freckles across her nose that reminded him of Emily. How his wife had hated those freckles. She had squeezed lemons, mixed the juice with glycerin and lactic acid and applied it morning and night to prevent them from appearing.
Sissy was nothing like Emily, though. She smiled often, spoke in a friendly manner and studied him with caramel-colored eyes. This was an accepting woman, he thought with certainty. A woman who already belonged in the community and would fit in with his family.
"Do you like it?"
"What?" Anton realized he'd been lost in thought.
"I said the lemonade is good."
He'd been thinking about the beer. "Yep."
They watched the musicians return to the corner of the barn where the floor had been raised. Jakob, always in demand at festivities, tucked a fiddle under his chin and led them in the Virginia reel.
Anton gestured toward the couples gathering a short distance away. "Want to dance?"
"I'd like that."
He took her empty jar and led her among the throng of dancers, her cold hand thin and pliant in his. They found their place in a quadrille and matched their steps to the caller's instructions. He bowed. She curtsied and blushed wildly.
He had to ask her tonight. He'd stalled and planned and stalled and considered. What else could he do? He had to make his decision. Nikolaus needed a mother and Sissy was the best choice he had available. She could cook and clean and sew and she was in her twenties-on the shelf in this community. Sure, he was older, but not enough to make much difference to either one of them.
His attention was arrested by the woman in the next quadrille, her elbow linked with that of Lydia's younger brother, Nathan Beker. It was obvious Nathan was enamored of Rain Shadow, and Anton would agree that she filled out that white beaded dress in a way that set a man's heart to pumping. Her figure was small, but curved and hollowed in all the right places. She was a graceful dancer, too.
And then she smiled at Nathan, an illuminating smile that would coax the sun up at midnight, and her amethyst eyes flashed with delight. Sissy's shy smile came to mind, and he struggled not to make a comparison. The woman in the deerskin dress was vibrant, alive and endowed with indomitable energy. Allowing himself to be drawn to her in any way would be a mistake. He wasn't about to let his resolve scatter in the wind because of his attraction to a woman who would be gone in a few weeks.
Her expression when he'd entered his room earlier had surprised him. He'd self-consciously thought of the scar on his shoulder, but she hadn't seemed to notice. When their gazes had locked in the mirror, a velvet blaze had smoldered within the depths of her violet eyes, measuring, branding, igniting sparks between them. He'd recognized the searing heat in his belly for what it was immediately.
He couldn't remember wanting a woman the way he wanted Rain Shadow.
He'd given himself a mental warning. She was alluringly beautiful, but so what? Beauty was skin deep. It shouldn't matter that the air became difficult to breathe when she looked at him like that, because he had no business looking back. The fact that she hadn't seemed put off by his partial nudity or the scar was of no importance. He'd allowed himself to become vulnerable once before, and his singular concern was to never let it happen again. He couldn't afford to have feelings-any kind of feelings-for a woman again. He'd be playing it safe from here on out.
Rain Shadow was enjoying herself immensely, and he didn't know why he should be bothered. He'd encouraged her to come. Sissy collided with his broad back, a half completed do-si-do nearly sending her sprawling. He caught her before she fell and righted her with a profuse apology.
"It's all right," she stammered. He could almost feel her attention focus on his hands at her waist. A crimson blush spread upward from her prim collar and suffused her cheeks.