Smoke River Bride

Smoke River Bride by Lynna Banning Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Smoke River Bride by Lynna Banning Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lynna Banning
Tags: Western
is much for me to learn about life in America. But that is not what I meant.”
    “Miz Johnson doesn’t teach that stuff, ’cuz we already know it,” Teddy snapped.
    “Teddy,” Thad said in a warning voice.
    “I wish to meet your teacher, Teddy.”
    “Leah,” Thad warned, “the schoolhouse is a three-mile walk.”
    “An’ if it snows, Pa takes me on his horse. I bet you can’t even ride a horse.”
    “No, I cannot. But I am used to walking. My father’s school was two miles from our house, and I walked there every day, even in the snow.”
    “That was dumb,” Teddy muttered.
    Thad made a move toward his son, but Leah laid her hand on his arm.
    “My father did not own a horse,” she said. To avoid explaining, she cleared the table, poured Thad’s coffee into the slop bucket and washed the dishes in water she’d left heating on the stove. Her anxiety mounted with every plate she dried. She knew he had not wanted to marry her; what would he expect of her? Would he want to sleep with her? And…perhaps more?
    Thad seemed to be a reasonable, sensible man. And he’d had a wife before, so he knew…what to do in bed. But she most certainly did not.
    A cup slipped from her shaking fingers and shattered against the floor. Before she could reach for the broom to sweep it up, Thad’s hand closed over her shoulder.
    “You’re wondering about tonight,” he observed in a low voice. He turned to snag thebroom. “I’m wondering, too. We’re husband and wife now.”
    “Yes,” Leah murmured. “We are.”
    Thad cleared his throat. “But I don’t really feel married, so maybe I should still sleep in the loft.”
    Leah met his steady gaze and her stomach flipped. He had offered marriage to give her a respectable way of escaping what was inevitable in San Francisco. He could never know how desperately she needed the safe haven he offered. If she had stayed in the city, Madam Tang would have quickly auctioned off her virginity to the highest bidder.
    This was Thad’s house. Thad’s bedroom. She could not usurp it.
    “I think perhaps we could share your bedroom.”
    He said nothing, just swept up the pieces of china and dumped them into the trash box next to the stove. Then he straightened to face her, and swallowed hard.
    “You go on to bed, Leah. I’ll be along in a while, after I have a talk with my son.”
    She lifted the broom out of his grasp. “Please do not. Have a talk, I mean. It will make him feel even more resentful. I will handle Teddy in my own way.”
    At that, Thad propped both hands on his hips and stared at her. “I keep being surprised by you, Leah. You’re turning out to be some woman!”
    “What does that mean, ‘some woman’?”
    To her astonishment, Thad’s cheeks turned pink. “It means you are unusual. Not like other women.”
    She hesitated. “Is it…is it because I am Chinese?”
    “Oh, hell no, Leah. That doesn’t much matter to me.” He reached out and gently squeezed her narrow shoulders while she stood before him, the broom still clutched in her fingers. Moisture burned at the back of her eyes.
    “It will be all right, I swear.” He lifted the broom out of her hands, turned her toward the bedroom and gave her a little nudge. “Go along to bed now.”
    She moved away quickly so he would not see her tears.
    For more than an hour she lay in the big double bed and, despite the flutter in her stomach, her eyelids kept drifting closed. Thad did not come. The moon rose, sending a cold silvery light through the single bedroom window, and still Thad did not come.
    Had he changed his mind and climbed up into the loft to sleep with his son? Or perhaps he was sleeping in the barn? Why did he not come to his own bed? Was it because
she
was there?
    At last she heard the front door open, then close, and suddenly there he was at the foot of the bed. Bathed in moonlight, he looked to be coated in shiny armor. Like Ivanhoe, as she had imagined him when she was growing up. It had been

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