Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jannifer Chiaverini Read Free Book Online

basket. Swiftly kneeling, she groped blindly through the folded fabrics and spools of thread until her hand closed around her scissors. Grasping the finger loops like the hilt of a knife, she stole toward the cave entrance, heart thudding, eyes fixed on the dim, bobbing light that could only have been cast by a kerosene lantern carried by someone striding purposefully toward them. She heard more footfalls, and suddenly she glimpsed a dark figure through the rain, a grotesque silhouette against thesheets of water tumbling over the mouth of the cave, looming larger as he approached, and just as she raised her hand to strike him down, a man stepped through the falling water into the cave and raised the lantern, blinding her. Shielding her eyes with her free hand, she stumbled backward and nearly fell—and in that moment she knew from his height and light hair and thin build that the man was not John, not John at all but Lars.
    “Rosa, thank God,” he said when he saw her, the tense lines of his thin, weathered face easing. With a sob, she dropped the scissors and ran to him.

 
     
     
     
     
     
Chapter Two
     
     
     
     
    L ars barely had time to set down the lantern before Rosa threw herself into his embrace. “Thank God you’re alive,” she murmured, burying her face in the warm, damp wool of his sweater. After the barest hesitation he wrapped his arms around her as if he were afraid she would vanish like a mirage within his embrace, but a moment later his arms tightened and he held her as if no power on earth could take her from him ever again.
    “Thank God
you’re
alive,” he replied, his breath warm against her ear. “I thought this time maybe he’d killed you. The children—”
    “They’re here. They’re safe.” They were safe now. They were safe
for
now. “John went after you—”
    “I wasn’t home,” Lars said grimly. He pressed his cheek against her forehead, and she thought she felt the faint touch of his lips upon her hair. “I’d taken a wagonload of apricots over the grade to Camarillo. I got back to the ranch to find all hell breaking loose.” He cleared his throat, released her, and glanced back into the darkness of the cave as if he had just rememberedthe children and was reluctant to say more within their hearing. Rosa followed his gaze over her shoulder. Just within the fading edge of the lantern’s light, Marta and Ana sat huddled beneath the quilts, studying Lars solemnly but without fear.
    “Hi, Mr. Jorgensen,” said Ana in a small voice.
    “Hello, Ana. Hi, Marta,” said Lars gently. They smiled wanly, and as Rosa smiled back she felt Lars’s hand on her chin. “Good God in heaven, Rosa,” he said as he turned her face toward his. “What did he do to you?”
    “Nothing he hasn’t done before.”
    “You need to see a doctor.” He stepped back to examine her, his hands still on her shoulders. “Why are you holding your side?”
    She pulled away. “I’m all right.”
    “Rosa—”
    She flashed him a look of warning, silently begging him not to make a fuss in front of the girls. They must not think of her as broken down, beaten, even if she were. Especially if she were.
    “He’ll never lay a hand on you again,” said Lars. His voice was calm, but his mouth tightened and his eyes smoldered with silent fury. “You can’t go back to him, not after this.”
    “I’ve already decided that I won’t,” said Rosa, shame and fatigue giving a sharp edge to her voice. “Is he searching for me? Is he coming after us?”
    “That’s the least of our concerns at the moment,” said Lars, his gaze falling upon the girls again. “We can’t stay here, not in this storm. The creek’s rising past its banks. If we don’t make the climb out now, we could be trapped here for days. My car’s on the mesa. We can make it to Oxnard before midnight. I know a place we can stay for a while. They won’t ask questions.”
    Marta threw off the quilts and bounded to her feet, but