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rging hunger he felt, and that was the danger of it.
He tossed the sheet to the floor. “I’ll do the morning chores while you cook breakfast.”
Madelyn nodded. As he went out the door she called, “Wait! Do you like pancakes?”
He paused and looked back. “Yes, and a lot of them.”
She remembered from her earlier visit that he liked his coffee strong. She yawned as she went downstairs to the kitchen; then she stood in the middle of the room and looked around. It was difficult to know where to begin when you didn’t know where anything was.
Coffee first. At least his coffeemaker was an automatic drip. She found the filters and dipped in enough coffee to make the brew twice as strong as she would have made it for herself.
She had to guess at the amount of bacon and sausage to fry. As hard as he worked, he would need an enormous amount of food to eat, since he would normally burn off four or five thousand calories a day. As the combined smells of brewing coffee and frying breakfast meats began to fill the kitchen, she realized for the first time what an ongoing chore just the cooking would be. She would have to become very familiar with some cookbooks, because her skills tended toward the most basic.
Thank God he had pancake mix. She stirred up the batter, searched out the syrup, then set the table. How long should she give him before she poured the pancakes on the griddle?
A heaping platter of bacon and sausage was browned and on the table before he came back from the barn, carrying a pail of fresh milk. As soon as the door opened, Madelyn poured four circles of batter on the griddle. He put the milk on the countertop and turned on the tap to wash his hands. “How much longer will it be until breakfast is ready?”
“Two minutes. Pancakes don’t take long.” She flipped them over. “The coffee’s ready.”
He poured himself a cup and leaned against the cabinet beside her, watching her stand guard over the pancakes. It was only a couple of minutes before she stacked them on a plate and handed it to him. “The butter’s on the table. Start on these while I cook some more.”
He carried the plate to the table and began eating. He was finished with the first round of pancakes by the time the second was ready. Madelyn poured four more circles on the griddle. This made an even dozen. How many would he eat?
He only ate ten. She got the remaining two from the last batch and slid onto a chair beside him. “What are you doing today?”
“I have to check fences in the west quarter so I can move the herd there for grazing.”
“Will you be back for lunch, or should I pack some sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches.”
And that, she thought half an hour later when he’d saddled a horse and ridden out, was that. So much for conversation over breakfast. He hadn’t even kissed her this morning. She knew he had a lot of work to do, but a pat on the head wouldn’t have taken too much of his time.
Their first full day of marriage didn’t appear to be starting out too well.
Then she wondered just what she had expected. She knew how Reese felt, knew he didn’t want her to get too close to him. It would take time to break down those barriers. The best thing she could do was learn how to be a rancher’s wife. She didn’t have time to fret because he hadn’t kissed her good morning.
She cleaned the kitchen, which became an entire morning’s work. She mopped the floor, scrubbed the oven, cleaned out the big double refrigerator, and rearranged the pantry so she’d know where everything was. She inventoried the pantry and started a list of things she’d need. She did the laundry and remade the bed with fresh linens. She vacuumed and dusted both upstairs and down, cleaned the three bathrooms, sewed buttons on his shirts and repaired a myriad of small rips in his shirts and jeans. All in all, she felt very domestic.
Marriage was work, after all. It wasn’t an endless round of parties and romantic picnics by a river.
Marriage was also night after night in bed with the same man, opening her arms and thighs to him, easing his passion within her. He’d said it would be better, and she sensed that it would, that she had just been too tired and tense the night before for it to have been pleasurable no matter what he’d done. The whole process had been a bit shocking. No matter how much she had technically known about sex, nothing had prepared her for the reality of penetration, of actually feeling his hardness inside her. Her heartbeat picked up speed as she thought of the coming night.
She started unpacking some of the boxes she had shipped, reassembling the stereo equipment and putting some of her books out. She was so busy that when she noted the time, it was almost dark. Reese would be coming in soon, and she hadn’t even started dinner. She stopped what she was doing and raced to the kitchen. She hadn’t even planned what they would have, but at least she knew what was in the pantry.
A quick check of the freezer produced some thick steaks and one pack of pork chops and very little else. She made mental additions to the grocery list as she unwrapped the chops and put them in the microwave to defrost. If he hadn’t had a microwave she would have been in big trouble. She was peeling a small mountain of potatoes when the back door opened. She heard him scrape his boots, then sigh tiredly as he took them off.
He came into the kitchen and stopped, looking around at the bare table and stove. “Why isn’t dinner ready?” he asked in a very quiet, ominous tone.
“I was busy and didn’t notice the time—”
“It’s your job to notice the time. I’m dead tired and hungry. I’ve worked twelve hours straight, the least you could do is take the time to cook.”
His words stung, but she didn’t pause in what she was doing. “I’m doing it as fast as I can. Go take a shower and relax for a few minutes.”
He stomped up the stairs. She bit her lip as she cut up the potatoes and put them in a pan of hot water to stew. If he hadn’t looked so exhausted she might have told him a few things, but he’d been slumping with weariness and filthy from head to foot. His day hadn’t been an easy one.
She opened a big can of green beans and dumped it into a pan, then added seasonings. The chops were already baking. Bread. She needed bread. There were no canned biscuits in the refrigerator. She couldn’t dredge the recipe for biscuits from her memory, no matter how many times she’d watched Grandma Lily make them. She found the cookbooks and began checking the indexes for biscuits.
