Dreaming Of A Western Christmas. Carol Arens

she rinsed off the bubbles. Then she unwound her braid and washed her hair. She soused the red plaid shirt up and down in the creek, tossed it over a bush, and waved her arms in the air to dry her skin.

      A delicious, stomach-rumbling smell drifted from the camp. Meat! Thank heavens, supper would be not jerky but rabbit. She moved her arms faster.

      * * *

      Working slowly with only one hand, Brand spitted the cut-up rabbit pieces, arranged them over the coals and stood up. A flash of something pale caught his attention and he narrowed his eyes. Jehoshaphat, it was Suzannah. Naked. Her arms outstretched, her face tipped up toward the disappearing sun. Her back was to him.

      His mouth went dry. She was so beautiful it made his throat ache. She was one hundred percent female perfection from the flare of her hips to her knobby spine to her slim shoulders. All perfection. Her hair was loose and maybe damp the way it clung to her neck and upper back in little straggly curls.

       Turn away, Wyler. Turn around.

      He closed his eyes. He couldn’t turn around.

      When he opened them she was buttoning up a green shirt and shaking the wet hair out of her eyes. He groaned out loud. Five days to go. Five days of trying not to look at her, smell her. Touch her. Four days of riding side by side during the day and sleeping next to her all night.

      And he was plumb out of whiskey.

      When she returned to camp he made a decision. “Watch the rabbit, will you? I’m goin’ for a swim.”

      “It’s too shallow to swim,” she said at his back.

      He didn’t answer, just walked straight into the cold water and lay down in the creek. Even the icy water didn’t cool him off.

      He stood up, took off his clothes and lay back down.

      “Do you want my bar of soap?” she called.

      “No.”

      “It’s scented with lavender.”

      “Keep it. And stay away from the creek.”

      When he finally dragged himself back to camp, his boots were squishy and the wet garments he’d wrestled back on dripped water wherever he stood. With a silent curse he dug out a clean shirt and headed back to the creek, washed out his dirty shirt and socks and his drawers, and tossed them over the bush next to Suzannah’s red shirt. By the time he returned to camp his nerves were steadier.

      Suzannah gave the spitted rabbit another quarter turn and set the coffeepot close to the fire. She’d watched Brand make coffee, and now she knew how to finish off the brew by dumping in a cup of cold water before pouring it. For some reason knowing how to do this buoyed her spirits. Every army wife must know such things, she supposed. Now she was one step closer to being just that, an army wife.

      Brand tramped back into camp, his dark hair looking damp and unruly and his jeans soaking wet.

      “Did you bathe?”

      “Not exactly,” he said dryly.

      She gazed up at him. “Well, what, exactly?”

      That made him laugh. The sound sent a shiver up the back of her neck. She liked this man. Even if he lacked the manners to ask permission before kissing her, she liked him.

      John had asked permission, but, well, it wasn’t the same. Oh, bother! Properly raised women were not supposed to enjoy such intimacies.

       But you enjoyed it with Brand, Suzannah. Admit it. You enjoyed it so much it frightened you. You even wanted more.

      Hush up! She could not allow herself to think such wayward thoughts. Instead she busied herself rummaging in his saddlebag for the tin plates and the spoon they shared for supper.

      Brand squatted next to her at the fire pit and poked a finger at the rabbit. “It’s done. You hungry?”

      He needn’t have asked. She wolfed down two nicely browned pieces and when she looked longingly at a third, he chuckled. “For someone as slim as, um, slim as you are, you sure have a good appetite.”

      “Riding all day makes me hungry, I guess.”

      “Got berries for dessert,” he remarked.

      Her eyebrows went up. “Berries?”

      “Wild blackberries. Picked ’em while you were...picked ’em earlier.” He’d picked them to occupy his mind and keep his hands busy while she was splashing in the creek. Females didn’t realize what the sound of a woman taking a bath did to a man.

       Chapter Eleven

      Brand popped a handful of fat, juicy berries into his mouth and grinned at Suzannah. “You ever pick blackberries when you were a kid?”

      “No, I never have. We, um, had servants who gathered our food for us.”

      “You ever wonder whether you might have missed a lot, growing up so protected?”

      “No, I never wondered that before,” she said, her tone thoughtful. “Now I am wondering why I didn’t.”

      “Ever sneak cookies? Climb trees? Run away from home?”

      Suzannah wished he wouldn’t look at her that way, his gray eyes wide and unbelieving. “No, I never did any of those things. Did you?”

      He crammed another palm full of blackberries into his mouth. She ate hers carefully, one by one, and licked her fingers. In a way she envied his gusto.

      “Yeah, I did all that, and more. Guess you might say I didn’t have your fancy upbringing.”

      “Where did you grow up, Brand?”

      “Before I lit out from home or after?”

      She blinked. “Before. Where were you born?”

      “Philadelphia. Wrong side of town, though. When I left I ended up in Ohio, and then I joined the Union Army.”

      “Did you...did you ever fight in South Carolina?”

      “Nope. But I fought everywhere else—Vicksburg, Bull Run, Chancellorsville. War is a bloody, awful business. Glad it’s over.”

      She studied his face but saw no bitterness, only resignation. “Yes, the war was truly terrible. After it was over it was worse for the South, so many of our boys killed or wounded. Over half the men of Roseboro never came home.”

      “And one night your father just up and invited a Yankee officer to a ball at your plantation?”

      “Well, yes, he did. Papa said the fighting was over and now we should all try to get along with each other. It wasn’t a ball like we had before the war, though, with an orchestra and everything. After the war we tried to keep our spirits up, and we could still dance a Virginia reel.”

      “Bet he regretted it when you left home to follow your Yankee officer out west.”

      “Papa never knew. He died in a riding accident only a month after meeting John. Mama pitched a fit, though. It was hard to leave her so soon after Papa’s death, but John was so insistent, I...did what he said.”

      Brand chased the last blackberry around and around on his plate. “I came out west to fight Indians.”

      “You must have been successful since you were promoted to major.”

      “Not so much. Like I said, war is pretty awful. After it was over, I scouted for Colonel Clarke for a while.”

      “And then?”

      “Then I got to like some of the Indians better than my own men, so I mustered out. Doesn’t pay to see your enemies as human beings sometimes.”

      “On the contrary, I think it always