Free Sierra's Homecoming by Linda Lael Miller Page B

of bed, come to the threshold of his room.
    Thanking heaven she was still fully dressed, she turned to face him.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked gently. “Did you have another bad dream?”
    Tobias shook his head. His gaze slipped past Hannah to Doss’s door, then back to her face, solemn and worried. “I wish I had a pa,” he said.
    Hannah’s heart seized. She approached, pulled the boy close, and he allowed it. During the day, he would have balked. “So do I,” she replied, bending to kiss the top of his head. “I wish your pa was here. Wish it so much it hurts.”
    Tobias pulled back, looked up at her. “But Pa’s dead,” he said. “Maybe you and Doss could get hitched. Then he wouldn’t be my uncle any more, would he? He’d be my pa.”
    â€œTobias,” Hannah said very softly, praying Doss hadn’t overheard somehow. “That wouldn’t be right.”
    â€œWhy not?” Tobias asked.
    She crouched, looked up into her son’s face. One day, he’d be handsome and square-jawed, like the rest of the McKettrick men. For now he was still a little boy, his features childishly innocent. “I was your pa’s wife. I’ll love him for the rest of my days.”
    â€œThat might be a long time,” Tobias said, with a measure of dubiousness, as well as hope. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want Doss to marry somebody else, Ma,” he said. “All the women in Indian Rock are sweet on him, and one of these days he might take a notion to get himself a wife.”
    â€œTobias,” Hannah reasoned, “you must put this foolishness out of your head. If Doss chooses to take a bride, that’s certainly his right. But it won’t be me he marries. It’s too hard to explain right now, but Doss was your pa’s brother. I couldn’t—”
    â€œYou’d marry some man in Montana, though, wouldn’t you?” Tobias demanded, suddenly angry, and this time, he made no effort to keep his voice down. “Some stranger who wears a suit to work!”
    â€œTobias!”
    â€œI won’t go to Montana, do you hear me? I won’t leave the Triple M unless Doss goes, too!”
    Hannah reddened with embarrassment and anger—Doss had surely heard—and rose to her full height. “Tobias McKettrick,” she said sternly, “you go to bed this instant, and don’t you ever talk to me like that again!”
    Tobias’s chin jutted out, in the McKettrick way, and his eyes flashed. “You go anyplace you want to,” he told her, turning on one bare heel to flee into his room, “but I’m not going with you!” With that, he slammed the door in her face.
    Hannah took a step toward it, even reached for the knob.
    But in the end she couldn’t face her son.
    â€œHannah.”
    Doss.
    She stiffened but didn’t turn. Doss would see too much if she did. Guess too much.
    He caught hold of her arm, brought her gently around.
    She whispered his name, despondent.
    He took her hand, led her to the opposite end of the hall, opened the last door on the right, the one where she kept her sewing machine.
    â€œWhat are you—?”
    Doss stepped over the threshold first, turned, and drew her in behind him. Reached around her to shut the door.
    She leaned against the panel. It was hard at her back.
    â€œDoss,” she said.
    He cupped her face in his hands, bent his head, and kissed her, full on the mouth.
    A sweet shock went through her. She knew she ought to break away, knew he wouldn’t force himself on her if she uttered the slightest protest, but she couldn’t say a word. Her body came alive as he pressed himself against her. His weight was hard and warm and blessedly real.
    Doss reached behind her head, pulled the pins from her hair, let it fall around her shoulders, to her waist. He groaned, buried his face in it, burrowed through to