California Caress

God, but he hated to wait!

Spinning on his heel, Drake pushed away from the rail and again began pacing the spray-slickened deck. His agitated strides earned him a grunt of aggravation from his friend. His tight denims, thick, bleached chambray shirt, bright red bandanna, and low-riding hat earned him looks of perplexity from the other strolling passengers. The black leather gunbelt strapped to a muscular thigh earned him looks of respect bordering on fear.

He barely glanced up when he heard his name mentioned, with not a little disdain, by an elderly couple strolling by. He was too lost in his thoughts to much care about their shocked reaction, although at another time he would probably have found their suddenly white faces comical.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he would see Hope again. His heart sang with the thought and his calloused palms began to sweat. Now that Charles and Angelique had been taken care of, he was finally free to do something about setting his life in order.

Funny, but in his wildest dreams, he would never have imagined that this was the way he would go about it. Nor had he ever planned on centering his life, and his future, around a single, stubborn woman.

Things change, Drake thought as his gaze wandered back to the horizon. The rain-heavy clouds there reminded him of a pair of stormy, dark-brown eyes. Hope’s eyes, lids thick with slaked passion.

Tomorrow seemed like a lifetime away.

Chapter 22

Hope knelt beside the perfectly groomed grave. Her trembling fingers absently traced her mother’s name, and she noticed how weathered the delicate carving had become against the chipped, white marble tombstone.

A light breeze rustled sap-scented air, disturbing the chestnut hair that waved down her back to the cinched waist of her new, mint-green dress. She barely noticed. Her thoughts were busy drifting over the time spent lazily in Virginia.

One week had slipped past, easing its way into two. What a coward she was! Her days were spent fishing in the early morning hours with Luke, her afternoons spent cooking meals and keeping house. The early evening hours were reserved for long walks with her father amongst their vast Virginia fields. Hand in hand she and Bart would stroll, in tune with the sun as it stroked a fiery palette of color over the horizon, the vibrant shadows reflecting on the lush, promising fields that stretched at their feet.

At times, he talked about Emma, her mother, and Hope came slowly to realize how deeply her father’s feelings ran when it came to the fires that had nearly destroyed their lives. It was a side that Bart Bennett had never before revealed.

He had loved and lost, just as his daughter had. And though both took special care never to mention Drake Frazier’s name, both knew they now had a common, if unspoken, bond.

Bentley had left the week before to keep her promise to her great-nephew and talk to his fiancée. “Don’t know what good it’ll do, but I’ve gotta try, I suppose,” she’d huffed, hoisting her tired body into the carriage with a promise to return for Hope soon. After a callous remark to Bart, she’d left.

Although Hope wished her friend luck and was sorry to see her go, she was glad to feel the tension in the Bennett household ease. Bart returned to his jovial, albeit tight-lipped self, and even their prized cow started giving milk again. Her father swore Old Nellie sensed that the “old prune’s finally gone.”

Hope sighed. She dropped her hand, pillowing it on top of her lap. The paper tucked snugly in the side pocket crinkled. Her heartbeat quickened and her palms grew moist when she thought of the newly arrived letter.

Her time was up. Bentley had written to tell her that she’d spoken with her great-nephew’s fiancée and, amazingly enough, had managed to work things out. Hope couldn’t say she was surprised. Bentley did have a way of convincing people of things they might not normally have believed. She could attest to that first hand. What did surprise her was that the great-nephew’s fiancée would be returning with them to Boston on a ship that was due to leave for the north on Friday. They were waiting for Hope at a hotel in Norfolk.

Friday! So soon!

Dry leaves crackled in the rhythmic pace of footsteps. Cupping a hand over her eyes to shield out the sun, she turned. A half-smile played on her lips when she saw Luke shuffling his feet as he waited for his sister to notice him.

“Pa said you’d be here,” he murmured, dropping himself to the ground by her side. His thick fingers plucked at the dead stalks of grass. “He ain’t happy you’re leaving.”

She sighed, raking her fingers through the bristly stalks. “I know. He lectured me for two hours last night, and half an hour this morning. Look, I know you don’t understand, no one does, but I have to go. I have to do this or I won’t be able to live with myself. The not knowing would kill me.”

“It’s Frazier again, isn’t it?”

She nodded, averting her gaze to the fields stretching lazily beneath the bluff. From this vantage point, she could see the house in mid-construction, and the fragile sprouts waving in the fields, even the path leading up the side of the hill. The water of a large lake to her right looked like a sheet of glass as it mirrored flickering rays of sunlight.

“Pa said it weren’t none a my business, that I should keep my big mouth shut,” he grinned childishly, and Hope’s heart swelled as she saw a bit of the Luke he had once been, “but I never did before and I ain’t—I’m not gonna start now.” His dark eyes grew serious as he took her cool hand into his much bigger, much warmer one. “Do you love him, Hope? Do you really love him?”

“More than anything,” she whispered hoarsely. She sighed, as though she’d just confessed to committing a hideous crime.

Luke nodded as he released her fingers and clasped his big hands in his lap. “Yeah, I thought so, since Pa won’t talk about it. Back in Thirsty, he kept saying the guy was bad news but that we needed him, so humor him, whatever that meant. He said that some morning we’d wake up and Frazier’d be gone. I don’t know, guess I always thought he was okay. And Old Joe was leery, but I think deep down he liked the gunslinger. He said Frazier ain’t the kind of man Pa says he is, that life dealt him a dirty hand and that’s why he’s so hard. Is it? Is that why he acts the way he does, Hope, because he’s had it so hard?”

“I wish I knew,” she replied with a sarcastic chuckle. “A person only knows as much about Drake Frazier as Drake Frazier wants them to know. He’s not open the way you and I are with each other. He keeps things to himself a lot.”

“But you spent an awful lot of time alone with him, you should know him pretty good by now.”

She shrugged, pushing the hair from her brow. “As good as anyone, I guess, but still not good. Not as good as I’d like to, anyway.”

“But you still love him?”