Whirlwind Baby. Debra Cowan

peeking out from under her nightdress.

      He cleared his throat. “What are you doing up? Is everything okay?”

      “Oh, yes. I’m making onion tea.” She eagerly latched on to the question. “The baby’s been fussy and I think she has a stomachache. My mother used to make onion tea for that.”

      At the mention of her mother, unexpected tears burned Emma’s throat and she swallowed hard.

      Something unreadable and raw flared in Jake’s dark eyes and she was swept with the sudden ridiculous urge to go to him.

      He seemed to sense her upset or perhaps he could see it on her face. “You’re gonna give a baby tea made from an onion?”

      The look of distaste on his face had her smiling. “I’ll add sugar. She’ll think it tastes good.”

      “Will it really settle her stomach?”

      She nodded. “Sometimes it’s also used to help babies with their sleeping schedule so they aren’t awake while everyone else is trying to sleep.”

      “Sounds like you know your stuff.” He backed up a step. “No one’s out there so you don’t need to worry. But, if you need to use the privy in the middle of the night, you should take the rifle. It’s—”

      “Behind the door, I know.” She smiled in an effort to reassure him, to get him to leave.

      But he didn’t. Instead, his gaze dropped to her mouth and lingered. “Yeah, behind the door,” he repeated in a raspy voice.

      Something passed between them, something Emma had never felt for a man and it scared her. Hands shaking, she turned away and reached above the counter for a cup sitting on the shelf.

      “Good night, then.”

      “Good night.” She felt him leave, listened hard for the near-silent pad of his feet across the floor of the front room, then the slight creak of the stairs as he went up.

      A breath shuddered out of her. She told herself she was shaking because someone had been outside. Someone who might’ve come for her, but Emma knew that wasn’t it at all.

      It was because of Jake Ross. Oh, lands.

      Stubbornly, she focused on adding a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the onion liquid. She was being fanciful. He’d startled her, first with his presence then by saying someone had been outside.

      That was what it was. That was all it was. Still, she decided it would probably be wise to keep out of his way.

      The next morning, Emma managed to stay clear of Jake Ross before and during breakfast, and finally he left with the other men for the day. On the back porch, Molly played with a doll Emma had fashioned from a piece of old linen. Emma gathered yesterday’s laundry from the clothesline a few feet away. It was strung between the porch and the henhouse. A roller wringer that squeezed water from clothes sat at the corner of the porch.

      Georgia sat in a rocking chair, also keeping an eye on the baby as she shelled peas with one hand. Emma was amazed how much the other woman could do with just one hand and how well she did it. The climate was arid here, just like back in Kansas, although hotter. The breeze came too infrequently, but she wasn’t nearly as hot today as she had been yesterday while doing the wash.

      Pushing her spectacles up for the tenth time, she gathered clothes, folding them and putting them into the basket Bram had fetched for her yesterday. Emma’s thoughts seemed stuck on Jake Ross. Just because she hadn’t spoken to him this morning didn’t mean she was unaware of him.

      After seeing him half-dressed last night, Emma didn’t think she would ever be unaware of him. Just the memory of his hard, bare chest was enough to make her stomach dip. She hadn’t been able to look at him while serving breakfast and, thankfully, he hadn’t seemed inclined to look at her, although she felt a carefulness in his manner that made her think he remembered last night, too.

      The look he’d given her, almost reluctantly it seemed, had been heated and hungry. Her skin had gone tight. No man had ever affected her that way. Emma might not have much experience with men or flirting, but she knew what happened between men and women. Her mother had told her during those weeks her stepfather had pressed her to marry Albert Crocker.

      Albert had tried to kiss her once and she had pulled away. He’d been angry enough to raise his hand to her, though he hadn’t hit her. She’d refused the railroad baron’s son, not because she feared sharing his bed, but because Albert seemed to be as cruel as her stepfather. And her refusal had earned the burn scars on her back, one of the few times her mother had been unable to shield her from Orson Douglas’s wrath.

      Jake Ross was a big man, with big hands, like her stepfather. Maybe it was those things that made her nervous rather than some annoying awareness of him. Emma reached the end of the clothesline and pulled down the last sheet. After giving it a snap, she folded it.

      As she bent down to place the linen on top of the other laundry, she got the sense she had missed something. She hadn’t been paying strict attention to her task so she wasn’t sure. She knelt and dug through the pile of clothes that would need to be ironed. She couldn’t find her corset. Even though she knew she’d taken everything from the clothesline, she looked over her shoulder.

      It wasn’t there. She was positive she’d washed it and hung it out to dry because she didn’t have it on beneath her gray work dress. And it was the only one she’d brought. Four days of hard riding to Baxter Springs to catch the train through Indian Territory into Texas had required that she and Molly travel light.

      Getting a funny feeling in her stomach, Emma looked through the basket again, but didn’t find it. She stood, walking the length of the clothesline. Maybe it had blown away? But, if so, why hadn’t anything else? There were several things lighter than her stays and they had all managed to remain on the line.

      “Emma, I’m taking in these peas,” Georgia called as she rose from the rocking chair. “Would you like me to get you anything?”

      “No, thank you.” She thought about asking Georgia if she’d taken the corset, but why on earth would the other woman take it? Why would anyone? Besides, she and the other woman were nowhere close in size.

      Emma was the one who’d been out here with the wash, yesterday and today. She was the one who should know whether or not she had everything. Last night, her employer had heard a noise. Could it have been a thief? A thief who’d stolen a corset? That was ridiculous. Emma couldn’t even fathom it.

      A quick glance showed that Molly was still playing happily on her blanket, so Emma turned and walked the length of the clothesline again. She went into the henhouse, thinking that perhaps the undergarment had fallen and one of the birds had taken it. To use for a nest maybe? But, aside from straw, feathers and the eye-watering smell of ammonia, she found nothing.

      Growing more perplexed and a little irritated, she came out, latching the door behind her. Keeping the baby in sight, Emma searched the side of the house, under the porch, shaded her eyes to look out over the knee-high golden-green prairie grass. She saw nothing. She had to find it. It was the only one she had. She couldn’t go around without a corset. It was improper, immodest. Brazen.

      Reaching the porch, she grabbed the basket and set it in the rocking chair to dig through the pile of laundry again. Her search yielded nothing. Maybe a wild animal had taken off with it. Knowing that she might not find it made her suddenly, uncomfortably aware of her skin against the soft cotton of her chemise, the unbound freedom of her breasts. And that brought back the reminder of how Jake Ross had seen her in nothing but her nightclothes. How he’d looked at her. Oh, goodness. She had to find her corset.

      She stepped off the porch, intent on searching every inch of ground. She circled the henhouse, made a wide sweep through the prairie grass behind it, but found nothing.

      Muttering under her breath, she spun toward the house and came to a complete stop. Jake Ross stood at the corner of the porch with his head tilted and a quizzical look on his face. His