"C"mere."
158.
For a moment Christie looked as though she was considering joining her. Then she sighed and shook her head. "Later, Zee. Those supplies are in the sun. They"ll spoil if we don"t get them inside."
"Aw, darlin"." But Christie was no longer there to see Zee"s pout.
She listened to the footsteps descending the stairs, flopped back against the pillows, and frowned at the ceiling.
The horses in the yard outside nickered a greeting, then came a grunt that must be Christie trying to unload something heavy on her own. "Of all the stubborn"
Zee was out of the bed, down the stairs, and out in the back yard in time to relieve the flushed Christie of a sack of meal.
"Thank you." Christie brushed hair out of her eyes and smiled down at her.
"All right, later," said Zee, slinging the sack over her shoulder. It was a concession and a promise.
GIF.
It took an hour and much toing and froing before they got all the supplies stowed to Christie"s satisfaction (she had very decided opinions about what should go where) and the two horses fed and watered and stabled in the barn with the buckboard. Then Christie cut them both some well-earned slices of bread and ham.
They reduced the late dinner to crumbs, and were drinking lemonade and bantering about whether "now" had become "later" (Zee was of the opinion that it had and was having some success in talking Christie round to her way of thinking), when there came a loud knock at the back door.
"Are we expecting anyone?" asked Christie.
"Not that I"m aware of." Zee made no move to answer the door.
Perhaps they would go away.
"Shall I see who"s there?" Christie stood up.
Zee shrugged and took another gulp of her drink.
Christie returned with a plump, kind-faced woman in a brown dress, carrying a pie. "It"s Mrs. Shaw. Our neighbor."
"Howdy, Ann," said Zee, smiling. There wasn"t a nicer couple in all of Benson than Ann and Curly Shaw. That they were to be neighbors had been another point in the Old Barn"s favor. "Take a seat."
She shoved a chair forward with her foot.
159.
"I"m not stopping, Zee. And please, Christie, call me Ann . . . I know the two of you must be very busyjust back from Phoenix, your first day in a new house and so on. And I thought you might not have time to cook. So I brought you this."
She thrust the pie at Christie who accepted it with a smile and placed it on the table.
"How considerate."
"It was no trouble . . . I"m sure you"d have done the same had our positions been reversed . . . My. What a nice kitchen." Ann was looking around. "I didn"t dare come in here when Cooper owned the place." She grimaced. "I was afraid I might catch something."
"It is nice, isn"t it?" agreed Christie. "Some . . . er, friends of ours organized it while we were away. Of course there"s still a lot of work needs doing on the rest of the house. And I want some more shelves put up here and here . . ."
While their attention was elsewhere, Zee pulled the pie dish toward her and sniffed it. Mm. She poked two fingers through the pastry crust and licked the juices off them. As she had thought.
Peach. She helped herself to more.
The buzz of conversation had stopped, she realized, and she looked up. Two pairs of outraged eyes, one green, one gray, were looking at her.
She stopped sucking her fingers. "What?"
Christie opened her mouth then closed it again. "I see you"ve started without me," she said dryly.
"But, darlin". It"s peach pie."
Christie"s lips twitched. She reached out and reordered a strand of Zee"s hair. "All right. Go on. As long as you don"t forget . . . half of it is mine."
At that, Ann began to laugh. In fact, when she left, five minutes later, to walk back to her own house, she was still smiling.
"Alone at last." Zee pulled Christie onto her lap for a quick kiss and cuddle, which escalated into something more. Was that a horse whinnying? she wondered hazily. And where were the voices and laughter coming from? Christie"s renewed a.s.sault on her mouth ban-ished every thought except taking her to bed. Still kissing, she grasped her and stood up. She was half way up the stairs Bang. Bang. Bang.
Zee broke the kiss. "d.a.m.n it!" Christie sighed and disentangled 160 herself from Zee"s embrace.
This time it was Zee who answered the door. ( Must get that latch fixed, she reminded herself.) "Surprise!" A beaming Angie Tucker was standing on the doorstep. Behind her were Clubfoot Liz, Rowdy Molly, and Lazy Alice. At any other time Zee would have been glad to see her friends, but right now . . .
"Who is it?" yelled Christie.
Zee noticed the champagne bottles clutched in each hand and that the women were all wearing their Sunday best. This wasn"t just a quick visit by the looks of things.
"The Welcome Wagon," she yelled back.
"What a thing to say!" Angie poked Zee in the ribs with her fan.
"Are you going to invite us in?"
A hand grabbed the back of Zee"s shirt and yanked her out of the way. "Yes she is." Christie beamed at Angie and her wh.o.r.es. "It"s lovely to see you. Come on in."
The giggling women stepped past Zee into the kitchen and a round of hugging and kissing and noisy chattering ensued. Zee sighed, threw an envious glance toward the quiet yard, then closed the door and went to join her guests.
GIF.
Zee stretched. "I like this bed," she announced. "It"s roomy. A person can spread out." She suited the action to the deed then curled herself back around Christie.
"It"s certainly an improvement on that cramped bed at the Palace."
Christie yawned. "What a day!"
Zee smiled, thinking of Rowdy Molly"s expression just before the lanky blonde pa.s.sed out from too much champagne and had to be carried to the wagon waiting to take them back to the brothel. "I thought they"d never leave."
"I could tell," came the response. "You had that glint in your eye all evening. The girls were ribbing me about it."
Zee frowned. "What glint?"
"You know. That "I can"t wait to take you to bed" one."
"Oh." She smiled and rubbed her thumb over the soft skin of Christie"s belly, eliciting a hum of pleasure. "That glint."
161.
She pressed her lips against fragrant-smelling hair and thought about the woman in her arms, the house that was now theirs, the life that lay ahead of them. Before, it had been a dream; now . . . the reality of it was a little overwhelming.
"Bed"s been well and truly christened," she said instead.
"Mmmm." Christie gave a sleepy sigh. "Well and truly." From the look of her, their recent traveling, plus the day"s excitement, followed by lovemaking had taken their toll on Christie. She was fighting hard to stay awake and keep Zee company, but losing the battle.
""S alright, darlin"," said Zee. "I"ll be here when you wake up.
Sleep now." Once more she pressed her lips to Christie"s hair. "Sweet dreams."
Christie snuggled back against her and captured her hand, pressing it against her belly. ""Morrow, love," she slurred. Then there was only the sound of her breathing.
Chapter 2.
If Christie could have whistled while she worked, she would have.
But since, even with Zee"s tutelage, she had still not quite got the hang of it, she contented herself with humming instead.
As she stoked the stove then put her loaf in to bake, she hummed a few bars of "Beautiful Dreamer." And as she washed and dried the breakfast dishes and cutlery and put them in their appointed places, she hummed some more.
Her thoughts were only half on her work, however. She was preoccupied with a certain deputy. After feeding Zee a large helping of ham and eggs and extracting a promise that she be home for dinner at noon, she had sent her off to work with a loving kiss that still made her lips tingle.
I"m happy, she realized. She laughed and resumed her humming.
It was odd keeping house again. Christie had kept house for her brother for years of course, but with Zee it was . . . "different" was the best description she could manage. And after the cramped and noisy confines of the brothel, this kitchen, the bedroom, that bed . . .
why, they were heavenly.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen, stretched out her arms, and spun round until she was giddy, then stopped and took herself to task.
There was work to be doneso much that she didn"t know quite where to start. So she had better get on with it.
She smoothed down her ap.r.o.n, tied back her hair in a scarf, and fetched a broom from the closet. Then she ventured into the front room Zee had ruefully shown her yesterday. It was to be the parlor, but at present it was a cobweb-festooned health hazard.
Whatever the previous occupant had believed, it wasn"t that clean-liness was next to G.o.dliness. Clouds of dust billowed up all around 163.
Christie and set her coughing. She laid aside the broom, ran upstairs, and helped herself to one of Zee"s red bandannas, then caught her reflection in the mirror. Her masked nose and mouth made her look rather rakish, she decided. "I"m h.e.l.lcat Hayes," she drawled, trying to arch her eyebrow the way Zee did. "The terror of Benson." She shook her head at herself, then ran downstairs laughing and resumed her sweeping.
When the worst of the dust had been brushed into the yard, she fetched a mop and a pail of their precious water (thank heavens the water wagon was coming tomorrow) and started washing down the walls. As she worked, she hummed and thought about the future.
It would be nice to have a proper parlor in which to receive guests.
The kitchen was all very well for informal occasions, but . . . She appraised the windows, which needed a clean. That bolt of sky blue calico Zee had bought would not only do for curtains but matching tablecloths too. Of course they"d need some tables first. The furniture in this room had been beyond saving, so they would have to start from scratch.
Maybe it would be cheaper for Zee to make the tables herself, she mused. Zee was good at carpentry and they had spent an awful lot of Zee"s savings on the house already. Though Zee said she"d have no difficulty providing Christie with the weekly allowance she"d asked for, they would still have to be careful. It was up to Christie to be fru-gal and make economies where she could.
She finished washing down the wall and stood back to admire the result, rubbing her itchy nose until she realized she was coating it with more dirt. What was one more blob, though, when she was already covered from head to foot in the stuff? She emptied the dirty water over the vegetable patch out front, then put away the pail and mop.
Sponging her face and hands clean and brushing her hair made her feel human again. She put on a fresh ap.r.o.n, poured herself a gla.s.s of lemonade, and sank into a kitchen chair.
She had been resting for ten minutes when a knock at the back door dragged her from a very pleasant daydream involving Zee and the huge bed upstairs. The unexpected visitor turned out to be their neighbor, Curly Shaw. The big man, whose real name was Cornelius, owed his nickname to his riot of curly black hair. He was bearing another of his wife"s peach pies.
164.
"Truth be told, I"m glad to get rid of it," he confessed, waving aside Christie"s thanks. "I"m mighty sick of peaches, but don"t tell my wife I said so."
He crushed his hat against his expanding belly (the result of too many peach pies?) and glanced at his surroundings. The kitchen seemed to meet with his approval.
Then he took a breath and exhaled, his words coming out in a rush. "Main reason I"m here, Miss Hayes, er, I mean, Christie, is . . .
Well, it"s this way." His face reddened and Christie wondered what on earth was coming next. "Seeing as how there"s no man about the place, and seeing as how there"s bound to be heavy work: chopping wood, fixing things that get broke and the like . . . Well, it occurred to Ann and me that you might, er . . . well, might be in need of some male a.s.sistance now and then."
Christie considered this rather garbled speech. "Oh, you"re offering to be our handyman if we need you?"
"That"s it exactly." He gave her a relieved glance. "It was Ann"s idea. She said, seeing as we"re your closest neighbors and all."
"Quite." Christie nodded. "And how very kind of you to offer. We really do appreciate it." She smiled. "But Zee is more than capable of taking care of all the things that need doing around the place. She"s strong and very good with her hands."
A memory of last night"s bed-christening activities surfaced and she tried not to blush. Fortunately, Curly didn"t seem to notice. He was nodding, clearly at ease once again.
"Thought that"s what you"d say. But I had to go through the motions. Once Ann"s got an idea in that head of hers" He gave her a conspiratorial grin. "She forgot that one of the two women in question is Zee, I reckon."
He crammed his hat on his head. "Well, I"ll be on my way then, Miss Hay . . . erm, Christie." He tipped the brim of his hat. "The offer still stands, should you two ever need it."
"Thank you. That"s very kind."
GIF.
Christie was sitting on the parlor floor, surrounded by lengths of sky blue cloth marked with tailor"s chalk, when an odd sound caught her attention. She stopped cutting and c.o.c.ked her head.
165.
Squeak . . . Creak.