Perfecting Amanda, page 12
“Babies come when they will.” Marilyn shrugged. “You’ll be happy when he or she gets here. It’s impossible not to love a baby.”
“Mm.” Amanda forced a smile, but inside her already jumpy stomach felt ready to vomit. There was every chance this child was Travis’s, two weeks ago had been the first time they’d made love and they’d done it often since, but there was the possibility it belonged to Spencer Teague.
There was no way to be sure. The guilt Amanda had felt at hiding her mistaken affair was magnified tenfold with the knowledge that she could be carrying another man’s baby and passing it off as Travis’s. But there was absolutely no way she could tell him. It was far too late now. She must keep the secret buried deep inside no matter how it gnawed at her.
Marilyn patted her back and peered up into her face. “It’ll be all right.
Really.”
“I know. Of course it will.” Amanda widened her smile by sheer willpower. “Thanks for talking with me about this, but please don’t say anything in front of Travis yet. I’m not going to tell him until I’m absolutely sure.”
“Naturally.”
The two women walked on through the headstones then back out of the cemetery gate. A fall breeze cut through the fabric of Amanda’s dress and sent a shiver up her spine. She could feel winter coming despite the day’s sunshine and wondered how her life would change by next spring.
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She would have a baby, a new life to love and care for, a little piece of the future.
But what if the child was not Travis’s? What if Spencer Teague’s fox-sharp features were stamped on its little face? What if her shame was there for all to see?
Swallowing the bile in her throat, she forced her heaving stomach to relax and put on her biggest smile as she greeted one after the other of her new Reederville neighbors. No one, not even Marilyn would ever know the anxiety that haunted her heart.
Travis sat on a bale of hay in the barn, supposedly repairing a bit of worn harness, but actually staring off into space, thinking. He wondered what he was doing wrong. Amanda had seemed to be warming to him.
After the initial two weeks of abstinence had come their glorious wedding night and then everything grew bright. Travis was absolutely content with his new wife and new life.
They’d fallen into a comfortable daily routine. Every morning he woke nestled next to Amanda’s warm body. Often he lay there watching her shoulder rise and fall as she breathed. He would move aside her hair and kiss the back of her neck until she moaned and murmured in her sleep.
Usually he’d press his needy cock against her rear and kiss her until she awoke and responded. Then they made slow, easy love in their warm bed before starting their day.
But everything had changed abruptly. Travis could almost pinpoint the day. It was the first Sunday they’d gone to church and Amanda had met the community of Reederville. Maybe something had happened while she was socializing with the ladies, maybe something had been said to change her opinion of him or to make her feel like an outsider here.
Women could be catty like that. All he knew was that she was very quiet on the ride home and her mood didn’t improve over the next couple of weeks.
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Now in the mornings he kissed her once or twice then let her sleep while he got up and tended to the animals. The poor woman seemed so tired. Her face was pale and her eyes shadowed. She came from a much easier lifestyle. Perhaps the unending farm work was too much for her.
Travis wished he’d prepared her for how hard it would be. In his letters he hadn’t thought to mention the fact that there were no gas lights or heated water or a water closet in the house. Amanda had been used to those things back home. The conditions out here must seem so primitive to her.
Or maybe she was ill. Fear clenched his heart at the thought. The idea of losing her to some disease was unthinkable, but Travis was too used to loss in his life to believe the ones he loved were untouchable. He knew all too well that death could snatch a person away right in front of your eyes.
He cursed at the worn leather strap as it snapped in two in his hands. He stood from the hay bale and hung the broken harness back on the wall before walking from the barn. Whatever was wrong with Amanda, it was time he found out the cause. If it was something he’d done, he would apologize. If it was something he hadn’t done, he would do it. If she was tired, he’d make sure she got more rest, or hire a girl from town to help with the work. If Amanda was sick, he’d take her to the doctor. And what if she’s just unhappy with the choice she made and wants to go home? An insidious voice whispered to him that he was a disappointing lover, a poor husband, an inadequate man.
Travis walked into the house and listened for Amanda. At first he heard no sounds coming from the kitchen or upstairs then the faint sound of crying hit him like a punch to the gut. He went to the kitchen and pushed open the door.
Amanda sat at the kitchen table, head bowed into her folded arms, her shoulders shaking with her quiet, heartbroken sobs.
For a moment he almost backed out of the kitchen and left her to her privacy. He didn’t know if she would want him to see her like this. But then his earlier resolve to fix whatever had gone wrong between them
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strengthened his nerve. He walked into the room, taking care to step hard enough to get her attention so he wouldn’t startle her. “Amanda?” Her head went up and turned toward him. Her eyes were pink and her tear-streaked face swollen.
“What’s wrong? Please tell me,” he begged, going to her, dropping to his knees beside her chair and laying a hand on her back. “Please. If there’s something I’ve done, I’m sorry. I can change—”
“No.” She cut him off. “No. It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s me. It’s just me.”
Travis tried to decipher her meaning. He thought of the first meal she’d cooked, what a disaster it was and how that had driven her to tears. Maybe she was disappointed in herself and thought she wasn’t a good enough wife. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing wrong with you. I love you. I’ve never been so happy in my life as I have been since you came here. It’s making me miserable that you aren’t happy too. What can I do?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and gazed at him steadily. “I guess I have to tell you sometime.” She drew a deep, shaky breath, held it and let it out. “Travis, I think I’m going to have a baby. I have all the symptoms. Marilyn agrees.” Travis sucked in a breath and forgot to let it out again. Marilyn knew and he didn’t? “A baby.” The word was a choked whisper. “But that’s wonderful! Did you think I’d be upset?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… We’ve had so little time alone together and now there’s going to be a huge change. I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.” Her gaze scanned his as though trying to read his thoughts. A worried frown knit her eyebrows and her mouth was tense.
“I’m happy! We’re starting a family.” He gathered Amanda in his arms, half pulling her off the chair.
She threw her arms around his neck and clung tight, her face buried in his neck, her tears wetting his skin. Travis remembered listening to married men talking about how emotional their wives sometimes got during a pregnancy. Suddenly everything made sense; Amanda’s tears,
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her pale skin and shadowed eyes were all because of the new life growing inside her. That meant it wasn’t his fault. It meant her mood would pass.
He was so relieved his heart rose and lodged in his throat. Tears stung his own eyes and he hugged his wife even tighter.
The stayed in a close embrace for several long moments before Amanda pulled away. She looked at him, still with the worried frown puckering her forehead. “Will it be all right? Can we afford it?” He reached his hand to her face and smoothed the lines away. “Don’t worry. It was an excellent wheat crop and the corn looks to be a winner, too. We can afford a couple of babies if you’ve a mind to have them.” He smiled.
Amanda offered a trembling smile in return. “It will be all right,” she murmured almost as if convincing herself. “Everything will be perfect.” Spence pushed the broom across the sticky bar floor, driving a litter of butts, sawdust and dried mud before it. All the chairs were turned seat-down on the tables to give him better access to the floor beneath, but even so it was a pain circling around the room, trying to make it clean. When he was done with the sweeping, there was the pleasure of mopping awaiting him. He grimaced at the thought. Manual labor had never been his forte.
“Hey, cutie, when do you think you’ll be finished?” Lucinda came out from the back room with her coat on, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her red lips.
“Not soon enough.” Spence paused and leaned on the broom.
“I could stick around a while…if you wanted to walk me home?” The barmaid perched on the edge of one of the stools and took a drag of her cigarette, puffing out a plume of blue smoke. “Got nothing better to do.” Spence considered. Lucinda was a looker with dark hair, olive skin and exotic almond eyes. She’d told him her mother was a flamenco dancer and her father a rich landowner back in Spain, but through a
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series of unfortunate circumstances Lucinda had been reduced to waiting tables at the Wayside Tavern in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Spence appreciated the embellished details in her story. He was a master at crafting a false history himself.
If he walked Lucinda home tonight, he’d have a softer bed to sleep in than the cot in the store room of the bar, but he’d be forced to perform sexually. Since he seemed incapable of maintaining an erection these days, he didn’t want to be put to the test. Sweet as Lucinda was, he knew she couldn’t stand to keep the news of his impotency to herself. It was humiliating enough suffering a flaccid penis without everyone at his place of employment knowing about it.
“Aw, darlin’, not tonight, but thanks for the offer.” Spence pushed his broom over to the bar, leaned it against the counter and hitched himself up onto a stool next to her. “Buy you a drink though.” She laughed. The bartender, Arliss, had already left for the night.
They were the only two in the building so she leaned over the top of the bar and snagged a bottle of whiskey from beneath it. Spence set out a pair of shot glasses and poured. They both tossed back the fiery liquid and set their glasses back on the bar with a thump.
“Spencer Teague.” She gazed at him with her luminous dark eyes.
“What is your story? Why is someone as smart as you drudging for Mr.
Beacon? You must have better prospects than this.”
“Not at the moment,” he said, twirling his shot glass around with one finger. “Had a run of bad luck at poker and now I’ve got no stake to get back in the game.” It was enough of the truth for Lucinda. He reached for the bottle and poured them another shot each.
She sighed. “I know what you mean about bad luck. I’m only here temporarily. Soon I plan to be onstage, a dancer like my mother.”
“I’m sure you will.” Spence was kind. He didn’t picture the girl rising any higher than a burlesque review. He waved his hand at the empty bar around them. “This is just short term.”
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“Right,” she agreed, drinking her whiskey with no more reaction than if it was water. “You’ve been all over, haven’t you? Where do you think you’ll travel next, when you’re back in the money?”
“I’ve been thinking of taking a trip down to Memphis…or I might go out to Kansas City.”
“Kansas City.” She smiled. “It’s such a modern place. So busy. I’d love to go there. I bet I could get a job in the theater in a heartbeat.”
“It is a bustling city,” he agreed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever had…a dream you kept having over and over?” She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I used to have this one where I was chased by a bear with no head.” She paused and stared at the row of bottles behind the bar. “Except sometimes it did have a head, but the face on it was my Uncle Pete’s.”
So much for Spanish relatives, he thought. “Have you ever had a dream when you were awake? A sort of vision or hallucination that wouldn’t leave you alone?”
She cocked her head and gazed at him. “Not really. Why?” The whiskey glowed like warm coals in Spence’s stomach and loosened his tongue. “I did something once…to someone. It was kind of a bad thing I guess and now I keep having this dream, at least I think it’s a dream, of a little girl telling me to go back and… Hell, I don’t even know what she wants me to do! I can’t undo what I did. How am I supposed to fix it?”
“An angel,” Lucinda said. “It sounds like an angel.”
“You believe in that stuff?” He’d grown up with religion, but laid it aside long ago.
“Yes. Absolutely! You have to do what the angel says or you’ll never be able to rest. My mama told me a story like this once.” She laid her hand on Spencer’s arm on top of the bar. “You have to go back to Kansas City.” She paused a moment. “I could go with you.”
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Spence twirled his shot glass again, lost control of it and sent it rolling to the floor. “Maybe. When I get some money together, maybe I’ll go.”
“And maybe you’ll take me?”
He smiled at her. It never hurt to give a woman hope. “Sure.” She slid off her barstool and moved close to him, standing between his thighs and leaning in to kiss him. “That would be wonderful.” Spence felt no stirring at all between his legs. He was getting worse.
The only time he could get and keep a hard-on now was when he daydreamed about Amanda McCormick, but when he tried to imagine her while he was with another woman, it never worked. He still couldn’t keep a damn erection. Grasping Lucinda’s shoulders, he moved her gently away. “But right now I’d better get to work and you’d better get home.”
Her face registered disappointment. “I could wait for you, if you wanted to come over,” she offered again.
“Not tonight.” Spence stood and gave her a quick kiss then escorted her to the door and waved goodbye. He stood for a moment in the silent tavern then resumed his broom-pushing. As he worked, he thought about his developing plan, examining it from every angle looking for possible flaws.
He’d taken the janitorial job at the Wayside so he could observe the handling of the daily receipts. The bartender emptied the cash drawer at the end of the night and put the deposit bag in the safe in back until morning when the owner, Mr. Beacon took it to the bank. Saturday nights were the busiest time of the week and the deposit didn’t go to the bank until Monday morning.
Spence had thought long and hard about the best way to intercept that money. He was no robber, had rarely fired a gun in his life, but he was no safecracker either. There must be another way to steal the money and disappear from town before the theft was noticed. His forte was in winning people’s confidence with his warm, friendly manner and open smile that made even strangers trust him. It was a gift.
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He had to make the bartender, Arliss Franklyn, trust him as a pal, become accustomed to his presence in the bar and forget to be careful around him. Maybe Spence could even help with tending bar, giving him access to the till. With charm and persistence, it was only a matter of time before he got the combination to the safe.
When he had money in his hands again, he’d head down to Memphis…or maybe Kansas City.
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Chapter Ten
The second harvest season began in late October. The farmers worked from dawn to dusk harvesting their corn crops. Amanda had learned that feed corn must be picked at the peak of dryness in order to store well over winter. Too much moisture content would ensure fermented, spoiled animal feed in the dead of winter.
Witnessing the long hours of intensive labor made Amanda glad she’d arrived after the wheat harvest in July. Marilyn had told her that threshing season was an even busier time. A new-fangled machine called a binder cut the wheat so the men no longer had to use a scythe. The resulting bundles were stacked in windrows to dry before the threshing machine separated wheat kernels from straw stalks. The huge, steam-driven thresher was a modern marvel. Threshing teams moved from farm to farm all over the state. Marilyn said the women never stopped cooking, washing dishes and cooking again for the crew from the moment they arrived until they moved on again. Every member of a farm family was part of the big event with even the littlest boys and girls running back and forth with water and snacks for the field workers.
The corn harvest was a more local endeavor with the men from nearby farms helping each other out when they could. Farmers walked down the rows hand-picking ears from the stalks. Travis demonstrated the process to Amanda, showing her the special glove he wore with a peg in the palm. “See, you twist the ear from the stalk, shuck it with the peg then toss the corn against the beat board in the wagon.” The big draft horse, Gideon, plodded patiently along the rows following Travis as he stripped the corn from the stalks. When the wagon was full, he drove it to the corncrib and shoveled in the ears. Air-flow
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through the wooden slats allowed the corn to dry. Later, it would be shelled with a hand-turned machine much like a butter churn.
Amanda was amazed by the extreme effort the process required. Even though Ted and a few other neighbors helped, Travis was so exhausted most days that he ate supper then went straight to bed. One night he fell asleep at the supper table. Between one bite and the next, his chin dropped to his chest and his fork from his fingers. The first few days of the harvest his hand was so cramped from the repetitive motion that he could hardly grip anything by the end of a day. Despite the heavy work gloves he wore, his hands were callused and rough. When they touched her naked flesh, they were rough as sandpaper.
