Alma's Mail Order Husband (Texas Brides Book 1) (10 page)

Jude kept his mouth closed and didn’t argue
with her.

Alma nodded over her shoulder. “Come over and
sit under the tree with me for a while. This could be one of the
only chances we have to be alone. Let’s sit and talk for a while
until they come back.”

She kicked off her stirrups and jumped down
from her saddle. She tied up her horse with the others and sat in
the shade. Jude hesitated, frowning down at the cattle on the
plain. Then he dismounted and joined Alma under the tree.

“Your sister, Allegra, seems like a tough nut
to crack,” Jude observed.

Alma grinned. “You sure know how to wind each
other up.”

“What’s the matter with her, anyway?” Jude
asked. “Why does she think she has to be a man?”

“She doesn’t,” Alma countered. “As far as I
know, she doesn’t think she’s a man, and she’s not trying to be a
man. She’s a woman, just like Amelia and me.”

“Then why does she act like that?” Jude
asked.

“Like what?” Alma asked.

“You know what I mean,” Jude growled back.
“She looks like a man and she does everything possible to act like
one. She’s over there in the gulley right now, practicing her
target shooting.”

“So is Amelia,” Alma pointed out. “We all
wear range clothes. Is it her hair you mean that makes her look
like a man?”

“It’s much more than her hair,” Jude told
her. “At least you and Amelia wear your hair long. Anyone could
tell you were women a mile away. No, there’s something hard and
stiff about Allegra that you and Amelia don’t have. You must know
what it is.”

Alma gazed across the landscape into the
distant horizon. “She’s had a hard time. Maybe she’s never had a
chance at life, not the way the rest of us have had.”

Jude wasn’t listening. “I pity the man who
tries to marry her.”

“I don’t think Allegra will ever get
married,” Alma murmured. “She’s said so many times, and I wouldn’t
blame her if she spends the rest of her life alone. There’s no
reason for her to get married.”

“What do you mean?” Jude asked.

Alma fell silent for a long moment. “Never
mind. Let’s talk about something else. Whether you agree or
disagree with the way we’ve run this ranch, just try to keep your
opinions to yourself for now. Later on, after we’ve gotten to know
you a little better, you can introduce whatever new ideas and I’ll
support you. If you try to do it now, you’ll just make everyone mad
and they’ll never listen to you.”

Jude picked up a stick from the ground and
snapped it between his fingers. “You’re just being all-mighty
stubborn, is all. You won’t listen to reason. You won’t see a
better way of doin’ things when it’s shoved in your faces.”

Alma sighed. She stretched out her hand and
laid it on his arm. “Maybe it’s because you’re shoving it in our
faces that we don’t want to listen. I’m telling you, if you’ll just
wait a little while longer, they’ll listen to you better and I’ll
back you up. It’s just too soon. It’s your very first day. 
You don’t want to rub them the wrong way from the very start. Just
let them do it their way until they’re ready to listen to a
different idea.”

Jude threw the stick away. “Women running
cattle ranches! Whoever heard of such a thing! It’s the ruination
of the whole Western way a’ life!”

Alma clenched her teeth to stop herself from
laughing in his face. He looked so comic when he said that, with
his cheeks puffed out and his eyebrows jumping around. “Listen. I’m
your wife, and I’ve been running a cattle ranch for years. I
haven’t ruined the Western way of life, and I don’t seem to have
ruined my chance to be the wife of a man, either. It can’t be as
bad as all that.”

“I don’t mean you,” Jude replied. “You’re
different. I meant more your sister, Allegra. If that’s what this
country is coming to, then we’re all in big, big trouble.”

“How am I different?” Alma asked. “I can ride
and shoot and brand ‘em as well as she can. I just have long hair,
that’s all.”

“Maybe it’s the fact that you wanted a man,
and you took steps to get yourself married to one. That’s what
makes you different.” Jude turned toward her. “It’s not the long
hair. It’s nothing to do with your appearance at all. It’s
something underneath the surface, something very soft and feminine.
You could be wearing a suit of plate mail, and it would still show
through. You would still be pure female.”

“Hmm.” Alma followed the specks of cows
wandering over the range on the valley floor below. “I thought the
same thing about you last night. I haven’t spent much time around
men in my life. In fact, I haven’t spent
any
time with men.
But last night, I sensed something about you that seemed like pure
male. I didn’t know what it was, but it was male—pure male.”

Jude stared hard into her eyes as she said
this. When she finished, he slid his hips across the ground so he
sat right up against her. His presence surprised her, and she
looked up into his eyes.

“Did you enjoy last night?” he asked.

Alma blushed. “Yes.”

Jude glanced over his shoulder. “How long are
they likely to stay down in the gulley shooting? We could sneak off
right now.”

Alma’s eyes flew open. “What? Now? You can’t
be serious!”

“Why not?” Jude asked. “We’re all alone.
We’re a lot more alone now than we were last night.”

“We weren’t alone at all last night,” Alma
replied.

“At least they were all asleep,” Jude
remarked. “At least they didn’t hear us.”

“You hope they didn’t,” Alma corrected.

“We didn’t make any noise. Out here,” Jude
swept his hand across the plain. “There’s no one to hear us. You
could yell your head off and no one would know.”

“If I yelled,” Alma told him. “They would
come running. That’s our signal to get back here pronto.”

Jude slid his arm around her waist and pulled
her against him. “Come on. Let’s sneak off behind those bushes over
there. We’ll be there and back before they know we’re gone.”

Alma laughed, but her body softened
instinctively against him. She fell under the heady sway of his
presence. He breathed through his nostrils against the skin of her
cheek, and she thought she would lose consciousness altogether. Her
head lolled back against the fleshy part of his shoulder, her
eyelids drooped, and her lips hung open in hunger for him.

A buzzing in her ears blocked out the sounds
around them, and Alma felt the same vibration spread through her
whole body, dissolving her into tiny flashing lights like fireflies
dancing here and there before dissipating into the fragile air.

Jude’s mouth drifted closer to hers and his
breath fanned her skin. Could this happen here, on this ridge
overlooking their cattle herd? She’d sat on this spot day in and
day out for years, watching these cows and shooting any predators
that came near. She never suspected she could experience anything
so extraordinary here as the presence of Jude McCann.

His presence initiated her into the mysteries
of woman more effectively on this spot than they had the night
before in her own bed. His touch meant more here, and she wanted
him more passionately here than in bed.

From a great distance, the popping of gunfire
reminded her where she was. With an enormous effort, the knowledge
that her sisters could come back at any time forced its way into
her mind. Alma pulled away ever so slightly.

Jude sensed her hesitation. Like a candle
blown out with a single breath, the fire burning between them died
to a cold black cinder.

Alma opened her eyes and found Jude studying
her. “We’ll have to go off somewhere by ourselves. That’s the only
way we’re ever going to have any privacy.”

“Where would you like to go?” she asked.

Jude gazed off into the distance. “I don’t
know. You’ll have to decide. I’m sure you know all the good hiding
places around here.”

“We could go for a walk after supper
tonight,” she suggested. “Papa and the girls will be in the house.
We’ll be alone.”

Jude stretched. “No. Tonight, I sleep. I’m
worn out from last night. Maybe tomorrow we can go.”

Alma smiled at him, but he didn’t see.
“Alright.”

So this is how it would be from now on. Sleep
meant more than anything else. They were married for certain
now.

“So what did you think of your first day?”
Amelia asked Jude. “Was it what you expected it to be?”

“All in all,” Jude replied. “I think it was
pretty close to what I expected. I can see this ranch has some
unique characteristics that I’m going to have to get used to. But
it’s only my first day. I have the rest of my life to deal with the
ranch.”

“The next thing you know, you’ll be making
supper,” Allegra teased him.

Jude grimaced. “Not likely.”

He slid the barn door closed, and he and the
three sisters strolled back to the house. When the two younger
sisters went inside, Alma held Jude back with her hand on his arm.
“Amelia’s cooking tonight,” she told him. “And Allegra is cleaning
up. We have a few minutes before supper’s ready. Would you like to
go for a walk now?”

Jude shook his head. “I’m beat. After staying
up all night, all I want to do is sit down for a while, eat
something, and then go to bed. I’m sure I’ll be more interested
after I’ve had a decent night’s sleep. How often do you get the
night off?”

“Every three days,” Alma told him. “We can
plan on spending some time alone, away from everyone, the next time
they’re both working. What do you think of that?”

Jude leaned down and kissed her lightly on
the lips. “It’s a date.” He stooped under the door frame into the
dark of the house.

In the one big room, Clarence Goodkind
already sat in his chair by the fire, staring into the coals. He
paid no attention to Amelia squatting in front of him, stirring up
the embers to make their meal.

Jude threw his lanky frame into the nearest
chair and sighed. He took off his hat, slapped the dust from it
against the side of his leg, and hung it on his knee. Alma stared
at him for a moment, trying to decide what to do with herself.

She could sit down next to Jude until Amelia
served supper, but she never sat idle in the evenings before. She
did some mending or sharpening tools or some other chores in this
precious free time. She wasn’t about to start sitting around now.
Anyway, Jude just said he didn’t want to spend any time together.
He wanted to eat and go to sleep. He wouldn’t appreciate her
imposing herself on him now. In all likelihood, he valued the time
to sit and rest as much as she did.

Alma sat down on the edge of her bed and
kicked off her boots. She hung her hat on the bedpost along with
her gun belt. Then, she had a sudden idea. She crossed the room to
Allegra’s bed.

Allegra sat in the same position on the edge
of her bed, the way they all did when they weren’t sitting at the
table for meals. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Alma took hold of one of the leather handles
on the side of the trunk and dragged it away from the wall. She
opened it and rifled through its contents. “I saw some of Mama’s
old dresses in here. I thought I’d get them out and take a look at
them.”

“What for?” Allegra asked.

Alma shrugged. “I might want to wear them
someday.”

“What would you want to wear them for?”
Allegra asked. “They’re no good for riding or range work.”

“I might not want to do range work for the
rest of my life,” Alma replied. “I might like to do something else.
Then I’ll need different clothes.”

Allegra stared at her. “What would you do
that you’d need a dress for?”

“What do you think?” Alma shot back. “I’ll be
a wife and mother at home, just like Mama. I’ll be at the house,
cooking and cleaning and doing laundry and taking care of my
children.”

Allegra’s mouth fell open, and a gasp came
out. “You can’t be serious!”

“Why not?” Alma asked. “What do you think is
going to happen? I’m married, and I have a husband in my bed. It’s
only a matter of time before I wind up pregnant, and then I won’t
be able to work on the range anymore. These pants won’t fit me
anymore. I’ll need something else to wear.”

Allegra stared at her. The concept didn’t
make sense to her.

Alma smiled at her blank face and went back
into the trunk. She pulled out two plain cotton dresses with
ruffled sleeves. She held one of them up to her body to measure the
length from her waist to the hem. She caught a glimpse of Allegra’s
face and burst out laughing. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like the
way it looks?”

Allegra shook herself out of her trance. “It
just doesn’t fit. I just can’t imagine you as a Mexican housewife
in that dress.”

“You didn’t mind me in Mama’s wedding dress,”
Alma reminded her. “What’s so different about this?”

“That was different,” Allegra told her. “I
could understand you wanting to wear a wedding dress to get
married. But then you changed back into your regular work clothes.
This is different. This….” Her eyes scanned Alma down and back up.
“This
means
something different. It means you’re a different
person.”

“Who am I?” Alma asked.

Allegra gulped. Was that the glistening of
moisture in the corner of her eyes. “This dress means you’re not
the Alma I know anymore. You’re not the cattle puncher I know.
You’re someone I’ve never met before.”

Alma considered her words. “You’re right. I’m
not the cattle puncher you know. I changed, and it wasn’t the
wedding dress that did it or even this dress here. It wasn’t any
clothes that did it. I got married. I’m not the Alma you know
anymore, because I’m not Alma Goodkind anymore. I’m Alma McCann,
like you said yourself, and I’m happy to change into something
other than a cattle puncher. I want to be a wife and a mother, and
I want my place to be in the home at the fireside, not out in the
saddle in all kinds of weather.”