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Tomorrow night at Jensens’ dance he would look his fill.
Chapter Twenty
Zane drove the buggy out to the Jensen place on Saturday evening. The balmy evening air smelled of some kind of spicy roses and Winifred looked so enticing in the low-necked pale blue gown it made his heart hurt.
His body was strong enough for anything tonight; the question that nagged him was whether he was strong enough to let her go back to St. Louis afterward.
He’d been careful not to ask about her leaving, not to press her on the matter for fear he would hear something he wasn’t ready to hear. But he couldn’t stand not knowing much longer. He had to have an answer soon.
Tin can lanterns lit the path to the barn door. Inside it was a jumble of noise and potluck supper aromas and the raucous sound of the musicians—two fiddles, a guitar and a banjo, and the familiar washtub bass plucked by a shiny-faced Whitey Poletti. Children raced around the perimeter of the polished plank floor and young mothers sat on the sidelines nursing babies and gossiping.
A very pregnant Nellie Bruhn, Ike’s wife, clung to the plaster cast protecting her husband’s broken arm. Zane said a silent prayer that she would not go into labor tonight. He had other things to do besides help a new life into the world.
“Cider, Doc?” Rooney Cloudman stood behind the plank bar.
“Sure.”
“Hard or soft?”
Zane glanced across the room where Winifred stood surrounded by Leah MacAllister, Sarah Cloudman and Ellie Johnson. Winifred outshone every woman in the room.
“Hard, Rooney. Make it a double.” Suddenly he remembered that first Christmas dance, when he’d first begun to realize he had feelings for Winifred. Feelings, hell. He’d wanted her so much his groin had ached.
As it did now.
Rooney’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, but he poured four fingers of dark amber liquor into a glass and handed it over. Zane sipped and circled the room. Sooner or later Winifred would look at him, and then he’d pull her away from her circle of admirers and hold her in his arms.
Sheriff Jericho Silver sat on the sidelines with his wife and their handsome twin boys. Zane saluted her with his glass. Lucky man, Jericho. Or Johnny, as the townspeople called him. Running for judge in next summer’s election. Life moved on.
By next summer Sam and Yan Li would have a new baby and...
And what? Where would Winifred be? Here, with him? Or back East at the conservatory with a dozen piano students and a concert series?
He found himself gravitating toward her, and all at once she looked up and saw him. She’d done her hair differently tonight, longer, with more waves at her neck. He wanted to lace his fingers through it.
He cut through the gaggle of people around her and drew her away. “Come with me.” Halfway across the room he swung her into his arms.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I was drowning.” She reached for the glass of cider he still held in one hand, tipped it up and drained it. Tears came to her eyes.
Zane chuckled.
“I always do that,” she gasped. “I forget it isn’t lemonade.”
“I can get some lemonade for you if you like.”
“No. I would rather dance with you.”
His breath stopped. “Thank God,” he murmured near her ear.
Suddenly the air between them was charged. And just as suddenly Zane found himself terrified that this—tonight—would not go as he hoped.
He lifted the cider glass out of her hand, set it on a bench at the edge of the dance floor and folded Winifred into his arms. Doubtless she could feel his heart thumping under his white linen shirt, but she said nothing, just glanced up at him with a mysterious smile in her eyes.
He wanted to stop right there and kiss her senseless. And then take her straight home to his bed.
She must have heard his groan because she halted abruptly and looked up again. “Zane? What is wrong?”
Everything was wrong. He loved her. Wanted her. And he knew that as soon as he could dance a whole evening of reels and waltzes, as soon as he was strong enough after getting smacked in the head by a log twice the thickness of any man in this room, as soon as he was fully recovered, she would get on the train back to St. Louis. When she thought he didn’t need her any longer, she would leave him.
“What is it?” she repeated.
He couldn’t answer. “Nothing is wrong,” he lied. “Just dance with me.”
She lifted her arms. He caught both her hands and pressed them to his chest, curling the fingers of one hand over them to hold them against his thudding heart. He curved his left arm around her back and breathed in the scent of her hair. Lilacs and something sweet, honeysuckle? He moved his hand to press her face into his neck, then slid his fingers up her spine.
