Page 33 of Love’s Silver Bullet

“Can I, Jake, please, please?” Wes said again, disregarding Pee-wee’s apology and the others altogether.

Jake turned and squatted before the little boy with a sad smile. “Sorry, Wes, but I can’t give rides to boys who don’t mind their parents. You see, parents are a blessing from above, son, and something these other boys don’t have, so I’m not inclined to give rides to somebody who doesn’t appreciate and respect their own.” He paused to clasp the boy’s frail shoulder. “Do you understand?”

Wes blinked and then nodded with a glaze of moisture in his eyes.

“Good.” Jake patted his shoulder. “Because you see, when I’m done here, I’ll be coming over to your house for lemonade with your sister, and I sure would be glad to see a boy who obeys his parents so I can give him a ride the next time I come over.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy. Now, you head on home and apologize to your mother, you hear? And tell your sister I’ll be over in about twenty minutes or so, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Wes said.

Head bowed, Wes nodded and trudged back to his own yard, hands buried deep in the pockets of his knickers while Jake watched, remembering all the times his own mother had tried to discipline him to no avail. A sharp twinge cramped in his chest. And his step-pa too, when he wasn’t busy keeping law and order as the sheriff of Hellgate, Montana.

Jake battled a sudden sting of moisture that threatened at the back of his lids, throat as thick as the regret in his gut. A man who had tried to save him—discipline him—but couldn’t.

Keeping instruction is the path to life; but he that forsaketh reproof goeth astray.

Dear Lord, what Jake wouldn’t give to have them all back again—kin, parents, and a blood family to love.

But he couldn’t. Because they were all gone.

Along with any desire to ever go astray again.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Well, this was an enjoyable day, don’t you think?” Stifling a yawn, Maggie shut the door to the bedroom that she and Blaze had shared since they wed on Valentine’s day, hardly able to believe they’d been married almost six months. A contented sigh drifted from her lips as she studied her husband, obviously fresh from his bath with a towel cinched around his hips and hair damp. With his back to her, he rifled through his bureau drawer for fresh long johns, giving her ample opportunity to drink in the raw masculinity that had drawn every women in Virginia City since the day Maggie arrived.

Including me.

Sun-streaked hair unruly with wet curls was a perfect match for thick biceps, broad shoulders, and a hard-sculpted back that narrowed into slim hips. Nibbling the edge of her smile, she exhaled again as she leaned back against their door, hands still clutched behind her on the knob, quite sure her husband was the most handsome man in all of Nevada. “A most enjoyable day, indeed. Don’t you think, Blaze?”

No answer.

“Blaze?” Maggie watched him slip into his long johns, never turning around as he proceeded to button them up, his silence all but deafening from the best friend usually prone to sharing his day with her every night in bed.

Among other things.

Without a word, he strode toward their bed and slashed the covers back on his side before dropping down on his back, eyes closed and a scowl on his face while he lay with hands folded on his stomach.

Maggie blinked. “Blaze?” Moving toward the bed, she paused before squatting to skim a palm down his bristled jaw. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Apparently not, Maggie,” he said in the closest thing to a growl she’d heard in six months of marriage. He abruptly turned on his side to shut her out, that broad, muscled back suddenly not as appealing as before. “Go to bed, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

She stood, jaw dangling as she strove to contain her temper. Fortifying with a calming breath, she quietly marched to her side of the bed and sat down to take off her shoes with her back to him. “Be ye angry, and sin not,” she said in a soft tone, determined to get to the bottom of her husband’s surly mood, “and let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Ephesians 4:26.”

Rising, she promptly carried her shoes to the closet and retrieved her nightgown hanging on the inside of the door. “Neither give place to the devil. Ephesians 4:27.”

A smile squirmed on her lips as she returned to the bed, his eyes pinched as tightly closed as his mouth while she faced him to unbutton her blouse. “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption, but let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. Ephesians 4:30-31.”

She bit back a grin when she noted the mulish clamp of his jaw, well aware that Brendan Zachery Donovan could be as stubborn as he was handsome. Removing her blouse, she tossed it on the bed, taking careful aim to slide it down his face. “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,” she continued as she removed her skirt, unable to keep the tease from her tone as she lobbed the skirt onto his head. “for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.”

“This is not funny, Maggie!” he hissed as he hurled her clothing right back at her, brows digging low while he jolted up.

“No?” Maggie methodically began to untie the laces of her corset. “Well, to be honest, Blaze, I wouldn’t know if it’s funny or not since you refuse to talk to me.”

He slammed a fist on the bed. “You know blasted well what this is about, Maggie, so don’t stand there and pretend that you don’t.”