“Adam made it,” Cora said.
Duke nodded to Aster, Tansy, and Dahlia as he swung his legs over the plank and sat down. He bounced on the board. “Good choice of wood, son. Nice and solid. I chose pine slabs from my dad’s sawmill for my first tree stand.”
“What’s that?” the boy asked, looking confused as he sat on a barrel at the end of the table.
“It’s a little platform you put in a tree. You nail a few boards together and secure it in a tree so you can sit up there and watch for deer.” Duke accepted a bowl of soup from Iris. “Thank you,” he said, purposely keeping his eyes off Faith while placing the full bowl in front of him. “I was your age when I made my first tree stand,” he said to Adam. “It was dead winter, and I was sitting in that stand when I heard this cracking noise. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Just then I spotted a brown bear twenty feet away walking right toward me. I thought he was snapping twigs beneath the snow.”
Adam’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. “Did you shoot him?”
Duke shook his head and dipped his spoon into his soup. “That cracking noise was coming from the boards I was sitting on. They snapped in half and I fell. When I hit the ground, my rifle discharged and blew the stand right out of the tree.”
Adam laughed, and Duke congratulated himself for the small achievement. Faith’s aunts were smiling, but he still wouldn’t allow himself to look at Faith. He took a bite of his soup. It was tasty but meatless, and he was certain the lack of meat wasn’t from choice. Maybe this is why Iris had encouraged him to stay, so he could see how poorly they were living. Maybe he wasn’t the only one making judgments. Iris didn’t strike him as a woman who would seek sympathy or charity. Maybe she just wanted to see if he was the kind of man who could love a woman who had nothing but herself to offer.
“Did the bear get you?” Cora asked, her eyes bugging with fear.
“Naw,” he said. “The gunshot scared him away. But I remembered to use a good, thick piece of hardwood after that.”
“I saw a bear behind our house once,” Adam said. “He was trying to crawl in our window. When I asked what he was doing, he said he was looking for Cora.”
Duke felt his mouth quirk, but Adam took a spoonful of soup with a straight face.
“That’sme.” Cora tapped her spoon against her chest. “He was coming to see me.”
Adam backhanded his mouth, and Duke suspected the boy was wiping away a smile. “The bear said he wanted to take you for a ride, Cora, but I told him you would only ride ponies.”
Cora looked at Duke, her eyes wide and serious. “Would the bear bite me if I rode him?”
Thankfully he’d played these games with Rebecca and his nephews, so he answered with care. “A real bear probably would, so I wouldn’t be too friendly with one. But a storybook bear might give you a ride on his back.” He shrugged. “It’s probably safer to ride a pony”
“I’m going to ride my pony to church someday,” she said, her voice so wistful he wanted to go right to Radford and Evelyn’s livery and buy her that pony she longed for.
He looked at Faith and saw that same desire reflected in her face. She lowered her lashes and dipped her spoon in her soup bowl.
“Is a bear bigger than a pony?” Cora asked.
“I think it weighs more,” Adam answered, and the meal progressed with Cora asking questions and making them forget they were eating meatless soup and sitting on barrels and planks.
When they finished, Faith kissed the top of Cora’s head. “Sheriff Grayson and I are going to the greenhouse so I can put some balm on his shoulder. Help clear the table, and maybe Aunt Dahlia will read with you until I come back.”
Duke followed Faith outside, but stopped her near the door. “You don’t have to bother with my shoulder tonight. You must be exhausted.”
“It’s been a week since I’ve stretched your muscles.”
“I’ve been doing it myself.”
“Are you getting the same amount of stretch?”
“No.”
“Then we’d better do it tonight before we lose the progress we made last week.”
Even though he’d been stretching each night until he howled from pain, he could feel the muscles tightening up again. Faith’s treatment might have hurt like hell, but he’d started seeing some results before he’d left for Mayville.
They crossed the yard and entered the humid world of her greenhouse. When she reached for a stack of linens on the shelf, he caught her hand. “I’ll skip the bath tonight.” He couldn’t strip and soak in that tub without craving her in there with him, naked and willing to do all the things that had circled his mind all week.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” he said, then followed her back to the bathhouse. He sat on the table and removed his shirt, but his eyes shifted to the bath and he thought of Faith standing in the tub, dripping wet with her dark-nippled breasts peeping through the wet loose strands of her waist-length hair, and those deep gulping sobs wracking her body. He wanted to take her in his arms and protect her from everything that had ever hurt her.
