LITMIR.BIZ

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taking stock of the pantry and planning her meals for the day. Don’t notice he’s moving closer.

      “How has your morning sickness been?” His big hand lightened on her shoulder and she jumped.

      “F-fine.” Think about the curtains. With pretty little ruffles around the edge. She braced her body, every muscle drawing tight. Yes, those curtains would look so nice in the front room. Cheerful.

      “Willa?” His voice rumbled through her thoughts, like a lasso drawing her back. His iron-strong form lay a few inches from hers, so close she could feel his body heat on hers. Terror struck, making it hard to breathe.

      She blotted out what she knew was to come. The roughness, the pain, the humiliation, his weight holding her down until he collapsed on top of her. Her first wedding night rolled back to her like a nightmare. The innocent girl expecting love and romance died that night, too wounded to even cry out. At least this time she knew what was coming. She knew what marriage was about.

      “Willa?” His voice gentled. “Darlin’, you’re shaking the entire bed.”

      She was? “I’m s-sorry.”

      “I don’t think it’s good for you or the baby to be this upset.” His hand left her shoulder to brush a strand of hair out of her face. A tone she’d never heard before rang low in his words. It was soft and warm and it made her turn to face him. “I take it your first husband wasn’t a gentle man?”

      “No. Jed drank far too much for gentleness.” She laid her ear on the pillow, making out Austin’s face in the darkness—the tumble of his hair, the line of his jaw and the curve of his chiseled mouth. His eyes were black pools with depths she could not read.

      “What was your first day married to him like?”

      “He was a stranger, too.” The words rushed off her tongue, impossible to stop. Maybe it was easier to talk in the night, where she felt hidden. “I answered his advertisement in the territorial newspaper.”

      “This isn’t your first time as a mail-order bride.”

      “No.” She swallowed hard, thinking of the girl who’d kept staring at her left hand, a new bride wishing for a wedding ring. Maybe one day, that girl had thought hopefully, still seeing only blue skies ahead. “I had such dreams of a happily-ever-after. Jed had written a charming letter and I was immediately smitten. He seemed so funny and confident, he made me laugh and I thought, what a nice way to go through life alongside a man with a good sense of humor. But his humor lasted as long as it took to reach his farm.”

      “What happened then?”

      “He ordered me down from the wagon, gave me the reins, told me to put up the horses and fix him supper.” She could still remember standing in shock in the scrubby grass by the leaning ten-by-ten shanty, with the reins dangling in her hands. “He took a bottle of whiskey from the wagon bed and shut himself in the shanty. He drank his way to the bottom of the bottle by the time I had supper on the table.”

      “I see.” He reached out again to touch her cheek and rub away the remains of her single tear. “He was a drunk.”

      “He was a mean drunk.” She remembered setting down fried salt pork and potatoes on the rickety table in the light of a single battered lantern. It was dark, the ride from the stage stop where the church was had taken much of the day and she’d been still desperately clinging to her illusions.

      Maybe he doesn’t drink like this very often, she’d thought, filling two tin cups with water. Maybe once he slept off the whiskey he would be back to his charming self.

      I don’t want no water, woman. He’d knocked the cup away from his plate and stood up to slap her cheek. Hard. Get yer lazy ass out the door and fetch me another bottle or I’ll teach ya who’s boss.

      “He was abusive to you.” Austin’s voice cut into her thoughts, leading her out of the past and the remembered sting against her face.

      “After a while I became numb to it.” Her throat knotted up, refusing to feel all that it had cost her to learn to cope with Jed’s cruelty. “I learned to be grateful for the good days when he was more himself.”

      “I see.” The darkness polished him like sculpted stone, accentuating his handsome looks in a powerful and masculine way. Silence settled between them and he loomed beside her, big and strong. He was brawnier and larger than Jed had been; there was no way she could stand up against Austin’s physical strength. She’d also learned the hard way fighting only made the inevitable worse.

      Why hadn’t he moved toward her? Fear and dread knotted together in her chest, making her shiver harder. The bed ropes creaked with tiny squeaks in rhythm to her quakes. She could not stop them. She gritted her teeth, willed her muscles to relax while nausea swam in her stomach. The waiting was killing her.

      “Do you know how long I’ve been reading women’s advertisements for husbands?” Instead of grabbing for her, his mellow baritone broke the stillness. Instead of wrenching up her nightgown, he levered himself up on one elbow. “A year and a half. I started regularly perusing them, wondering about the ladies who were looking for marriage. Several caught my eye, but I never acted on any of them. Not a one.”

      She wanted to ask why but the words wouldn’t come. Cold beads of sweat broke out on her forehead and rolled down her face. She needed all her strength to stay in that bed with him and not bolt to her feet and start running. Memories pulled her backward into the past, where she’d been a naive bride turning on her side to go to sleep. No one had told her what a husband would demand in the dark of night so she’d been unprepared when Jed had risen over her in bed and grabbed her roughly by the shoulder, reeking of whiskey and anger.

      Don’t you dare close yer eyes on me, woman. Yer my property now. He knocked her onto her back and ripped her knees apart. You’ll do as I say.

      “Why did you write to me?” She shook away the past and focused on the question, hating how small her voice sounded in the night, how lost in the dark. She felt small next to him. He seemed to shrink the walls of the room and take up every available inch on the bed. The memories of Jed haunted her as she watched Austin’s face move in the darkness. He furrowed his brow, and the corners of his mouth went down.

      “There was just something about your written words that caught me.” Honesty rang in his voice. “Something about you stuck with me long after I’d put the newspaper down.”

      “I seemed desperate.” No, there was no doubt about it. “I was desperate.”

      “No, that’s not what stayed with me.” Low and soothing, that baritone, mesmerizing enough to ease some of her fear away.

      Did she dare hope that when he reached out for her and pressed her to the mattress with his body weight, that he wouldn’t be as rough as Jed had been? She blocked out that ghostly memory haunting her, of that old terror and helpless and tearing pain that left her sobbing. She died that night and every night he’d forced himself on her. A wife’s duty, she knew, but she dared to hope now that maybe Austin wouldn’t hurt her as much.

      “I’d be cleaning stalls at the livery or pounding a horse shoe at my forge and I’d think about you, alone and pregnant.” His confession came closer as he eased a few inches nearer. “You didn’t go on like a lot of women about your virtues or your beauty. You didn’t make promises. You didn’t try to seem too good to be true. Your honesty touched me.”

      “It did?” That seemed an odd reason to her. “You could have had a more beautiful wife.”

      “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You are plenty beautiful enough for me. If I’d known you were homeless and living out of a barn, I’d have answered faster.”

      “I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me and the—” She hesitated, her burdens weighing heavily on her. “And the baby.”

      The baby. What kind of mother would she make with her heart gone and worn away? “What

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