Chapter 16

It was suppertime when they heard a yell and went outside to see AJ riding down into the bowl, leading a horse behind him. All three ran to meet him. Bella felt a sudden desire to be naked, doing things with him that she knew would make her feel unbearably happy. His wide grin made her heart seize in her chest and she found her hands at her breasts, of their own accord.

"Where'd you get that?" gasped Frank Jr., looking at the gray dun.

"A proper cowboy has to have a proper horse," said AJ. "Think you can handle him?"

"Oh wow!" yipped Frank Jr. He said it again maybe five or six times.

"Don't ride him too hard right now," said AJ, handing him the reins. "I switched horses every half hour to get back as soon as possible and both of them have been running all day."

Frank fairly leapt into the saddle. His feet didn't quite reach the stirrups, but he didn't wait for them to be adjusted. He pulled the horse around and, holding tight to the saddle horn with one hand, trotted up the hill toward the wheat field.

"You shouldn't have done that," said Bella. Her heart wasn't seized any longer. It was beating like mad in her chest now, and there were tears in her eyes.

"A proper cowboy has to have a proper horse," he said again. He climbed down and opened a saddle bag. "Got something for the ladies too," he said.

He pulled out two flat packages, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He had to tear the paper to find out which one to hand to Bella.

"Yours is red," he said. He handed the other one to Becky. "And yours is blue."

They were simple dresses, in a gingham checked pattern. Neither was fancy, but both were new.

"I owed you a dress," he said to Bella. He looked at Becky. "And you just deserved a new outfit."

Seconds later Bella was almost climbing on him. Becky, knowing what was about to happen, went into the house to change into her new dress.

Eight or ten kisses later, with AJ's hands squeezing her breasts, Bella pushed him away.

"I want you so bad I might let you do it right here in the open," she panted. "You got back just in time for supper."

"I'd sure like to see you in that dress," he said, his eyes glittering.

"Later," she said. "If I take this one off right now the children will see me chasing you all over this place like a harlot."

"Can't chase a man who won't run," said AJ, grinning.

Her face changed, and a smoky look came into her eyes. "Later," she said softly. "I'll catch you later."

"Yes Ma'am," he sighed. "Let's eat. I'm starved, and I need to build up some energy for later." He grinned again.

They waited for Frank for a while. Becky's new dress fit pretty well, though it was loose in a few places. Bella opined that it could be taken in where needed. Talking about it made her anxious to try on her own dress and she suddenly changed her mind. She sent AJ out to see if he could see Frank Jr. anywhere and wave him in while she changed.

They were already eating when Frank Jr. finally rode back in and dismounted. Then he stayed outside, taking care of his horse. He remembered seeing a curry comb in the pile of tools they'd found and got it. The horse whickered as it was tended, and reached around to nuzzle the young man's shoulder.

When he went inside, and his eyes adjusted to the light, he almost gave himself away staring at his sister. He'd seen her in dresses before, even a new one now and then, but he hadn't felt back then like he did now. He did, in fact, blurt out "You're so pretty!" before he realized he'd done it.

"Why thank you, darling," said his mother, assuming he was talking about her. "Becky looks right smart in her new dress too, don't you think?"

"Sure!" Frank Jr. gulped. He got a brilliant smile from his sister, who knew exactly who he'd been talking about.

After supper AJ brought out the other things he'd purchased at the general store. He spread packets of seeds on the rough table top in the house. The help he'd gotten from the store keeper's wife had extended beyond the dresses. She'd known what things grew in this environment, and when they had to be planted. She asked a few questions about where he planned to settle, and then piled him high, so to speak, with what he needed. She'd written with pencil on the outside of the packets.

"See here?" he said, pushing some packets to one side. "There's things that can be planted right now, and harvested before the snows come. And then there's things to plant just before the snows, and in the spring too. It's a whole year's worth of eating, according to the woman in the store."

Bella's reaction to the seeds, if anything, was even more emotional than when she had held up the new dress. Her feelings were so strong that it sobered her.

"Let's take a walk," she suggested to AJ.

The last rays of the sun were staining the western sky vermilion as they strolled, with no particular destination in mind. They paralleled the shore of the pond, wading through foot high grass. It was quite some time before Bella's thoughts had congealed to the point that she could express them.

"This is a good place," she said.

"Yes."

"We could make it here."

"I s'pect so," he agreed.

"What I mean by that is that... we ... could make it here. I'm not confident about doing that with only Becky and Frank Jr. to share the work." She looked over at him. "What I'm saying is that if we stay here ... I hope you'll stay too."

AJ stopped suddenly. His mind had difficulty forming the pictures that needed to be formed to process this situation. For weeks the ever present thought in his mind was about how to stay alive and free from the law while they moved. His only thoughts about the future had been limited to the future that was made up of the next day, or two.

The concept of "them" and "him" was firmly in place, though there was some crossover. What was good for them had fit in with what was good for him, so far. It had been a tumultuous relationship, to be sure, and that upheaval in all their lives had claimed most of their conscious thoughts.

Until now.

To be sure, the evolution of his relationship with Bella had been positive ... delightful, in fact. He'd already doubled his sexual experience, but somehow that wasn't the most important thing that had happened. More important was the fact that he had someone to care about other than himself and his horse, which was something so new that it still made him a little nervous. And the way she cared for him was something new too ... something he'd never felt coming from another person before. More than once he'd thought to himself "I could get used to this."

That all this had changed him, somehow, was something he knew in his heart, but couldn't describe, except for one thing. When he started the ride to Wichita, his only intent was to find the town. Then he'd thought about what he would do once he'd found it. What popped into his mind was that he should just keep moving. It's what he did, after all. He was a cowboy, and cowboys were nomads, who went from place to place, having no permanent home. That thought had taken all of sixty seconds of his thinking time, and had then faded as he knew he would go back. It was only then that he began thinking about what he should take back with him when he returned to the sod house, and the family that had taken him in, in his time of need.

At that point, his only intent was to find Wichita and return, to repay Bella for saving his life. He hadn't really thought much about the future beyond that. He was still thinking of "the future" in terms of days ... maybe a week ... rather than months and years.

Now, walking with this woman, her comment had clearly identified the future as those months and ... perhaps ... years. It was something that almost caused his brain to overload as it tried to imagine what those months and years might be like.

The overload paralyzed him. Bella recognized a man whose mind was moving a hundred miles an hour, and she let him think, though it was one of the hardest things she could remember ever doing.

AJ's mind wasn't whirling quite as fast as Bella thought, though. His thought process was still pragmatic. If he stayed, there would be warm shelter during the winter, with plenty to eat. If he stayed, there would be a woman who was both warm and willing ... a woman he liked in ways that he still didn't understand yet, but which went far beyond what she let him do with her. And, he liked her kids too. There would be time during the winter to bring Frank Jr.'s education up to par, concerning frontier life.

And, of course, if the law was looking for him back in Texas ... they wouldn't find him there.

Bella's patience finally broke and she couldn't resist reaching out to touch his arm.

That touch pulled his attention away from the now rapidly moving images in his mind of what life might be like, snowed in, warm, full of stew, with Bella waiting for him under a blanket, naked. He couldn't put into words what he was feeling. He picked the lowest common denominator and spoke.

"I do need a place to winter," he said.

Bella felt her heart sink. She was plenty old enough to have recognized that what she felt for this young man, almost young enough to be her son in fact, was a crush, much like a school girl might have. It was similar to what she remembered feeling for Frank, in fact, before she had been with him long enough to find out what kind of man he really was. It was based on hope in the fantasy that she would be happy.

But she'd been through things with AJ that she thought had already established what kind of man he was, and she was pretty sure that, as it would have been hard to find a worse man than Frank, it would be pretty hard to find a better man than AJ. It had taken her all the courage she had to issue her invitation, and his lukewarm reception to it hurt.

"I see," she said.

The pain in her voice jerked him out of the maelstrom of his thoughts, and he looked to see pain on her face too. He had to think about what had just happened before he put it all together.

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Support the author's future writing by purchasing this book from Bookapy

The Bad Bet

Lubrican

$5.50