Wagon Train Sweetheart. Lacy Williams

shout been too forward? She didn’t know how to relate to men properly. When other girls her age had been attending socials and picnics and learning to flirt, Emma had been at her father’s bedside.

      Maybe her naivety and inexperience with the opposite sex was also the reason she didn’t understand why Mr. Reed had snubbed her those several times.

      What would Tristan McCullough think of her?

      She hadn’t allowed herself to hope that the sheriff Grayson spoke so highly of in his letters would like her once they’d met.

      What if Mr. McCullough found her natural shyness irritating?

      Perhaps he wouldn’t even be interested in her once they met. Her cautious nature caused her to hesitate more than hope. She would wait and see how things turned out.

      A soft whine drew Emma’s attention to the long grass beneath the wagon, where a small brown dog crouched, panting. Watching her, almost asking a question with its eyes.

      “Hello, you,” she said, squatting. This was Mr. Reed’s dog. She’d seen the brown-and-black mottled mutt from a distance, witnessed the man sharing snatches of his supper with it, but had forgotten about the animal in the rushed moments of finding a place for Mr. Reed before the bugle had urged the travelers to move out.

      “Have you been following us all day?” She reached out and was astonished when the creature let her scratch beneath its chin. “Yes, your master is inside that wagon.”

      Pitiful begging eyes reminded her of the family cat, Buttons, that had been her childhood friend. “Hungry, are you?”

      She knew the animal couldn’t really understand what she was saying, but the dog’s tail whupped against the grasses as if it did.

      “I’ll share some beans with you, but only if you promise not to tell your master.”

      She was so tired of the trail fare. Cold beans and bacon for dinner. Every single day. Unless one counted the times they had fresh buffalo meat to break up the monotony.

      She wanted a real stove, not a camp stove and a fire. Real walls.

      “Unfortunately, we’ve got a ways to go,” she told the dog.

      “What’re you doing?”

      Emma jumped at the sound of the unexpected voice and thumped her head on a bucket hanging from the side of the wagon. She backed out from where she’d been crouching, rubbing the top of her head and grimacing at Clara.

      “If you must know, I was making a new friend,” she groused.

      Clara glanced behind her to where the dog still sat beneath the wagon’s bed.

      “I need one today,” Emma finished.

      Now Clara turned a raised eyebrow on her. “It’s going that well with your patient, then?”

      “Oh, Mr. Reed has been perfectly amiable, entertaining me with his lovely conversation and sweet nature.”

      “Ah.” Clara’s lips twitched. “So he hasn’t woken up?”

      Emma’s friend kept the straight face for several moments before a smile broke through. Emma couldn’t help sharing a chuckle with her. Between her father and two brothers, she well knew that men could be irritable when they were ill.

      “And how are you this morning, friend?”

      Just then, Amos and Grant Sinclair, brothers traveling the trail together, passed by.

      Clara stiffened and waited until the men had passed out of hearing distance. “Fine.”

      Up close, Clarence’s secret was no secret at all—­although her womanly figure was covered with men’s clothing, Emma could see straight through the ruse. She didn’t understand how everyone else saw only a man.

      Clara unobtrusively put her hand at her lower back. She nodded at the horizon, and Emma followed with her gaze. “Storm’s coming.”

      Clouds built on the western horizon, directly in their path. Even as Emma watched, the slate-gray mass twisted on itself, forming a thunderhead.

      And Emma had hated storms since she’d been caught out in one as a small child.

      * * *

      The ominous clouds had delivered on their promise. The caravan had been forced to end its day early because of driving rain.

      Now in the twilight dimness, Emma was secluded with the still-unconscious Mr. Reed, with no end in sight of the intense storm.

      Ben and Rachel were hunkered down in the family’s tent, probably soaking wet instead of the mere damp that Emma suffered.

      Rain pelted the wagon bonnet, rattling the canvas until Emma felt as if her teeth rattled with it.

      “I don’t suppose you’d like to wake up now,” she said to the comatose man. She worked in the dark, still attempting to cool his fever. She’d lit a candle twice but wind had gusted in through the flaps and blown out the light—and once knocked over the candle. She was too afraid of catching their wagon afire and losing all their goods to try again.

      Late in the afternoon, when they’d still had light, she’d watched the measles rash climb Mr. Reed’s chest and neck. She imagined it had crept into his cheeks by now, but his heavy, dark beard obscured her view.

      His continued unconsciousness worried her. None of the children had experienced a prolonged period like this. She guessed that measles could affect adults differently than children and that his body was likely attempting to fight off the burning fever.

      “Not that I object to nursing you in particular,” she went on. “It’s just…I had hoped to leave behind the need to use my nursing skills.”

      She’d been so beaten down by her time at her father’s bedside. The hours spent caring for him, praying for his recovery—only to be bitterly disappointed when he had died.

      She’d hoped to, planned to, help the children at the orphanage with her other skills. Sewing clothing. Cooking. Loving on the children. But it was not to be, not when her family had decided to pull up their roots and travel West. And now she was here with Mr. Reed.

      Static electricity crawled along her skin, making the fine hairs on her arms stand upright and raising gooseflesh in its wake.

      Bright lightning flashed, momentarily filling the interior of the wagon with brilliant white illumination. Thunder crashed so loudly that Emma instinctively raised her hands to press against her ears. The earth trembled, the entire wagon shaking with it.

      When the thunder receded, Emma’s eyesight retained large glowing spots, an aftereffect of the bright light that rendered her momentarily blind.

      She reached out and clutched the first thing she found, attempting to ground herself in her state of disorientation.

      The nearest thing turned out to be Mr. Reed’s shoulder.

      A muscle twitched beneath her palm, but he remained still and silence reigned inside the wagon, only the cadence of rain drumming all around them.

      Emma squeezed her eyes tightly closed, bent over and breathed through the fear, inhaling the scent of stale sweat and man. Not for the first time was she made aware that she was nursing a man and not one of the children. The firm muscle beneath her fingers also made it impossible to ignore that this was not her father in his frail condition those last months.

      Mr. Reed was a fine specimen of a man. Fit, tall, broad-shouldered. A bit unkempt for her tastes but everything else that usually made her tongue-tied.

      Except he was unconscious.

      “That was a close one,” she breathed.

      An echo of thunder rumbled from far away. Just how large was this storm? How long could it last?

      Her nervousness and fear made her ramble on, though she attempted to keep her thoughts