Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

He took a step to look closer and all of a sudden a sick feeling ran through Chris's stomach. If he took one more step—

His hand shot out and grabbed Jamie's wrist. The boy froze, and then real slow, turned. "What's wrong?"

"Stop there," Chris said. He tried to keep his voice even and calm, even as his heart was thumping at a thousand miles an hour. "No further."

"I know," he answered, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Or you'd fall through, right?"

Chris let out a breath. "Yeah. Just be careful, alright?"

What was it about this kid that had him so on-edge? He should have seen that the boy wasn't moving any further. But that hadn't stopped him panicking. And there was nothing that he could do to explain why he'd done it.

Nineteen

Marie rubbed her eyes and poured herself another cup of coffee. She was a tea drinker, usually. Coffee left her feeling on-edge, and she usually didn't like it.

That said, if she was going to be up another late night, then certain sacrifices had to be made, and her preference for tea over coffee was the first to go. She looked out the window and fought the desire to lay her head down.

If she went through the night, then it would be easier than if she let herself think that she might be able to get a good night's sleep, and then couldn't. It was going to be hard, but she needed to be there when Jamie's nightmares started.

Besides that, she'd brought with her a veritable treasure trove of books when she came out from New Orleans, and she had barely touched them since she got into town. So much had been going on, and she'd nearly forgotten about them.

She opened the book to the ribbon bookmark. None of it seemed the least bit familiar. Naturally; she hadn't read the book in almost four months. With a gentle feeling of resignation, she turned back to the front of the book and started again. If she was lucky, she might be able to make a few chapters' headway before Jamie's nightmares overtook him.

The sound of the clock in the front hall finally pulled Marie out of the trance of reading. It tolled out twelve times, in total, and then went silent. She looked down at the page. She'd passed where the marker had started some time ago, though she couldn't say if it had been minutes or an hour. Time had slipped completely from her mind.

She turned around and stood up. Fatigue hit her suddenly and swiftly, as if she'd been avoiding it successfully up to that point by keeping busy. She dared to risk opening the door, and peering inside.

The light from her lamp, no doubt running low on oil after the hours of reading she'd done, spilled into the room, just enough to see inside. Jamie lay there, as still as a stone. Her heart started to pound hard in her chest. Was something wrong? Was he still breathing?

She stilled herself as much as possible, watching and waiting for some sign that would tell her. The more she remained still, the better she could see, the better she could make out the minute movements of a person in sleep.

Curled softly around a pillow, she could see his back rise gently, just enough to allow the tiniest amount of air in, it seemed. Then, slowly and rhythmically, he let it out again. No sound penetrated the room, but he was fine.

Her heart, though—it thumped in the teacher's ears, so deafeningly loud that if she hadn't known better, she would have thought it might wake the boy up from his slumber, like the story by Poe. The idea itself was nonsense. If anything, the thing to wake him would be the light from the candle.

Marie took her time in closing the door. It would be a waste to wake him, now that he rested so soundly, at the last moment.

She let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding until just then. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears even still, pulsing in her fingertips. He was alright, and he would continue to be alright. That, at least, was some comfort.

Convinced, finally, that she might be able to sleep the rest of the way through the night, and with her eyes feeling increasingly bleary, Marie stripped off her jacket and skirt. Maybe it was improper to be running around in her underwear with a boy Jamie's age around, but then, she wasn't going to be sleeping in her clothes, either.

She laid down on the couch. She was a small woman, she reasoned, which usually came only with problems. She couldn't reach anything above the lowest shelf in the cabinet without having to lift herself up onto the counter top, which was sufficiently un-ladylike that she simply didn't do it at all.

And then there was the fact that her body was anything but over-strong.

Yet, in laying on beds, she had found something else that it served well, as her feet propped comfortably onto the opposite arm, without hanging too far off or having to rearrange her body to fit properly. That was the first thing she had found she liked her size. The first thing that she would admit to, at least.

The other time had been in this room, too, and it was not remotely a thought she was prepared to entertain. The size difference between a man and a woman was a simple matter of fact. There was no reason to take pleasure in it, and particularly no reason to think about it after the fact when the man in question was Chris Broadmoor.

She used her arm as a sort-of pillow and dug into corner where the seat met the back of the sofa. It was soft, there. Warm and comforting, like the couch was wrapping its arms around her. She caught herself when she felt her mind wandering in a direction it shouldn't have.

What, she wondered idly as her mind wandered—so long as it avoided the gutter, she found it always wandered before she let herself sleep—what had made the difference tonight?

Was Jamie too tired for dreaming? It couldn't have been enough time that he'd simply begun to get over it. She wasn't even willing to entertain the notion, because it was laughably wrong from the beginning.

The children, maybe. Being around the children, who'd been in high spirits after so many days of being away from school. Now they got to have time away from their families, away from chores, away from their everyday lives, and maybe that played some part in it.

Then again, she thought, maybe there was something else. When she'd gone outside, wondering where Jamie had run off to, she couldn't help noticing where he'd finally found himself. Sitting on the edge of the roof with Mr. Broadmoor.