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“No, I don’t,” she said quietly. “I think that is an excuse for something else, something you are not telling me.”
Leah recorked the bottle of liniment with slow, deliberate motions and spent a long minute composing her thoughts. “There are many things about you I do not understand, Thad.”
He made a sound in his throat, but when he said nothing, she went on. “You are building a barrier between us. And often you still ignore Teddy, who needs you very much.”
He did not speak, just looked at her. The pain in his eyes made her tighten her resolve. It was time to get some things out in the open. With every single visit to town, she grew further from acceptance in Smoke River. She was beginning to understand why. Verena Forester.
Heaven help her, Leah had come to love this man. If he could not love her back, she would wither up inside and die. She eyed the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the night table.
“Leah, stop.”
“Stop what?” Surely she had not spoken aloud?
“Stop rubbing my back,” he said in a low growl. “And stop talking. I can’t take any more.”
Hot tears of fury rose in her eyes. “I cannot take any more, either.” She snapped the sheet up over his body.
“What are you talking about?”
Leah took a deep breath and kept her focus on the whiskey bottle. “Things are not right between us, Thad.”
He closed his hands into fists. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“Is it Verena?” The words just slipped out, but when she heard them hanging in the silence she wasn’t sorry.
“Huh? What’s Verena got to do with it?”
“I thought…” Leah worked to control the trembling in her voice. “I think perhaps it was Verena you wanted. Not me.”
He rolled over and tried to sit up. “Are you crazy?” Inexplicably he gave a harsh laugh. “It’s you I married, Leah. It’s you I want. And it’s you who’s driving me crazy.”
“I do not believe you.”
Thad stared at her, the astounded expression in his blue eyes slowly shifting into anger. “Well, gosh darn it.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled back.
He closed his eyes. “This’d be funny if it wasn’t so damn…so damn gut-wrenching.”
“I will not mention it again, Thad. But I am not sorry I spoke to you about it.”
Without a word he rolled off the bed and stalked to the bedroom door. Then, remembering he hadn’t a stitch on, he backtracked, threw on jeans and a shirt, pulled on his boots, and tramped out. Leah heard his steps pound across the porch and then fade into the yard.
Numb, she curled up into the warm spot his body had left, stuffed her fist against her mouth and choked down her sobs.
In the morning she went through the motions of cooking breakfast, sweeping the house and feeding the chickens, but her mind was on Thad. What could she do if he did not care for her as she cared for him?
That afternoon she could not face the Ladies’ Knitting Circle. Instead, she rambled listlessly about the ranch, letting her feet carry her across meadows and pastures that were brown and parched from the relentless sun. She ended up at the fence bordering Thad’s precious wheat field.
The spindly stalks looked half-dead already. The top growth was stunted, and the drooping wheat heads were beginning to dry up. Dear God, his wheat venture is going to fail! Her eyes stung.
If he would only let her be close to him, she might ease his anguish. But their conversation last night had resulted in a cool stiffness at breakfast that had never been there before. In a way she wished she could take all her words back.
But if she did, the barrier between them would never be resolved.
She mopped her eyes with the hem of her apron and tried to face things as they were. Thad’s battered body had healed, but he was still preoccupied, and now she knew why. Verena Forester.
Thad was withdrawing from her more each day and Leah knew that at some point it could cease to matter. She gave a strangled laugh. Her mother would say she had married a pigheaded man.
A pigheaded man who wanted someone else.
That night she made Thad’s favorite chicken and dumplings. After supper he passed her in the kitchen on his way toward the back door and patted her shoulder. She turned toward him, but he stepped away. He gave her a long look, then cleared his throat.
“I’ll sleep in the barn tonight.”
“The barn!” He was burying his head in the sand, and her heart along with it.
She went to bed alone and wept until her pillow was soggy. She could not stand being set aside much longer.
The week dragged by. Each day the merciless sun beat down, scorching her roses and the struggling vegetables in her kitchen garden. The freshly washed shirts and jeans and drawers she laundered were dry as soon as she clipped them on the clothesline.
