Lynna Banning by Plum Creek Bride Page A

eyes. With a start she realized she valued that look more than any word or gesture of welcome from Tithonia Brumbaugh, or even the mayor! She longed to see that warmth, that approval, in Dr. Callender’s gaze. In fact, she thought as a guilty wave of heat washed over her, each time his eyes met hers, whether over a vegetable dish passed at dinner or a basin of plaster mix in the surgery, a voice seemed to speak to her from far off, and she stopped breathing to listen.
    Perhaps Mrs. Brumbaugh was right—not about the Indian boy, but about being alone in a house with a man who had lost his wife, a man who made her heart jump whenever he looked at her.
    Erika sat bolt upright in bed. She must not allow this! If she was.what was the word, compromised? If she was compromised, she would have to leave.
    And if she left, it would mean she would no longer have Marian Elizabeth to love and care for, could not play beautiful music on the harp downstairs in the front parlor, would not sleep in privacy in her very own bedchamber.
    “Well, so be it,” she breathed into the hot, still night. I will not let my heart spin this way and that when the doctor speaks or glances at me. She would be—she searched her brain—impervious.
    At the soft chiming of the clock at the foot of thestaircase, Erika settled back and purposefully closed her eyelids. Just one thing, Lord, she prayed. Please, please do not let him send the baby away to Scotland. I will do anything to stay by her side. Anything.
    In the morning Jonathan returned to the barn and found it empty. The boy was gone, and the big roan as well. He swore out loud.
    Damn fool kid. How far could he get with a fractured thigh? He’d half a mind to saddle Scout and go after him.
    On the other hand, he reasoned, considering how town sentiment ran these days, an injured Indian boy was probably safer on his own ground. At least he’d be protected among his own people.
    Jonathan wondered who had run him down. A buggy, Samuel had said. Ever since Tithonia Brumbaugh had badgered her husband into purchasing a runabout when he was elected mayor, every businessman in town drove some kind of buggy.
    Anger boiled hot inside him. When he found who it had been, he’d give him a good thrashing.
    He shut the barn door with a decisive thunk and stomped up the back stairs, through the already stifling screened laundry porch and into the kitchen. Erika looked up from the stove where she stood heating a nursery bottle of milk in a saucepan of water.
    “He’s gone,” he announced.
    “I know. I hear the horse before sun rises.”
    “You heard him?” Jonathan exploded. “Why the hell didn’t you stop him? Great Scott, that boy can’t ride with his leg in plaster!”
    Erika slid the pan onto the warming shelf. “I call out from window upstairs, but another man, an Indian, is with him. He makes a sign like so—” she slashed her hand in the air “—and I am quiet.”
    Jonathan expelled a swift breath. “That’s Micah, Sam’s older brother. He hates the white man. He’ll rip that cast off Sam’s leg and cripple him for life.” He paced around the kitchen table as Erika watched.
    “I’ll have to go after him,” he muttered. “Talk to Micah.”
    Frustration twisted his stomach. “Nothing, nothing has gone right!” he burst out. “Not since—” His voice broke off.
    “Is not true,” Erika remarked, keeping her back to him. “You have health. Life. You have beautiful baby daughter. A home. Many people have not so much.”
    Jonathan stared at her slim, straight back, the floppy bow of the white apron tied about her waist. What an exasperating young woman! She was right, of course. But the knowledge only fueled his fury.
    “I no longer care about my life.” He barely restrained himself from shouting the words. “Or my health. Or even my daughter!”
    Very slowly Erika turned to face him. “Then you are very foolish man. Selfish man.”
    “So I am,” Jonathan acknowledged, his