CHAPTER8
The two men were quiet as they walked toward their home. An owl hooted and the skies were filled with stars and the shining moon. Lee wasn’t certain, but he thought that something had happened tonight when they kissed Daisy.
As they strolled, the tension in the air was almost palpable.
“Did you notice that she didn’t say anything about marrying two men,” Ellis asked.
“Yes,” Lee said. “And yet she kissed both of us.”
“Maybe I was a little too forward with my kiss,” Ellis said. “We were both very involved with the kiss and then suddenly she seemed to freeze and she immediately pulled away.”
They continued walking.
Coyotes were singing their lonely song off in the distance. The sound always made Lee think of his family, and how they use to listen to them in the evenings.
With a sigh, he asked the question that had been bothering him all evening. “Do you think she doesn’t like us?”
Ellis shook his head. “No, but something seemed to spook her while she was kissing me.”
“Maybe it was the fact she was thinking about the both of us having sex with her. She just learned tonight that she would be marrying two men, not one.”
“Maybe,” Ellis said.
The woman was gorgeous, and for some reason, he didn’t think the way she acted was a result of something they had done or said. It seemed like more.
“You’re the smart one. You’re the one who can always figure people out; what happened?”
Lee trusted Ellis’s judgment of people and respected his opinion.
“I don’t know,” Ellis said. “You’re just as smart as me. In fact, normally the women are the ones who flock to you, not me. But something about the way I kissed her seem to make her skittish as a newborn colt. Thank goodness she came back and had dinner with us. But I could see fear in her eyes.”
Lee had also recognized that emotion in her look. He’d seen too many people in the war who had that same expression. One that they either overcame or they ran. Tonight, it seemed that Daisy had run.
“Is she still the one we want to marry?” Lee asked.
“Don’t know. Let’s see if she’d like to go on a picnic tomorrow. We could take her to the falls and show her around town. I’d like to kiss her again to see if she has the same reaction.”
Lee thought about them being alone with her at the falls. Oh, hell, that would be so hard not to lay her down and raise her skirts and…
What if some man had taken advantage of her?
“We’re going to have to be on our best behavior if we go to the falls. We can’t push her or even press her. We need to take it very slow and cautious.”
Ellis turned and glanced at him. “We need to talk to her about our way of life and explain to her that we will not have sex with her until we’re married. We’ll be tempted as hell, but it’s a definite no until we say I do.”
“Agreed,” Lee said. They walked along for a few moments. “We also need to let her know that if she’s lied to us, we will pull her over our knee and spank her naked ass. Something about her family didn’t seem real. I think there’s more to that story than she’s letting on.”
When they reached the steps of the house, Ellis opened the door. “She’s not telling us everything. But I’m hoping that in time, she’ll give us the answers we’re looking for. And who can blame her? I wouldn’t tell her everything about myself just yet.”
Until they got to know her, there were things they would keep hidden. Things like Lee’s father dying not long after his sister was born. Or things like his mother dying at such a young age and now his sister had to live alone.
“Yes,” Lee said as he walked through the door. He stopped and stared around the front room, mouth gaping. The cabinet doors were hanging off their hinges, the horsehair couch had been ripped to shreds, and all the flour and sugar were strewn about the floor.
Rage filled him as he glanced about the house they had prepared for when Daisy did marry them.
Ellis stepped inside. “Son of a bitch. I’m going to kill Henry.”
“This afternoon he’d been so inebriated, I would’ve thought he’d been asleep by dark.”
Lee stared at the destruction the man had done. The drunk had done everything he could to make their home a disaster area.
With a sigh, Ellis grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the mess on the floor. Together they worked for the next two hours cleaning up the kitchen, so they could at least cook breakfast in the morning.
At midnight, they turned and headed up the stairs. “Goodnight,” Ellis said as he went into his bedroom.
“Goodnight,” Lee said and then he suddenly had a thought. “Wait.”
Going into his room, he yanked back the sheets only to discover that the old man had slit the mattress and put brambles all over the area.
Loud cursing came from Ellis’s room. “Son of a bitch, he put a snake in my bed.”
They both came out of their bedrooms.
Thank goodness it was only a garter snake, but it was enough that Ellis was spitting mad. “I’m going to kick his ass. I hate snakes.”
“Wait for me,” Lee said, grabbing his hat and gun. Sometimes things couldn’t wait until morning.
When they got to the man’s home, they barged in the door.