Loving Against the Grain (Into the West #2)

Chapter 21

“Hang on to your women tonight, gents!”

Noah, along with three other lumberjacks manually trying to pull a stump out of the ground, looked up at the speaker, sweat dripping from their brows even in the spring’s cool, morning air. The distant yells of fallers high up in the neighboring trees punctuated the otherwise quiet forest surroundings, along with the clip-clop of double-bit axes whittling away at the woodland giants’ bodies.

The men’s puzzled faces looked comical; women were the farthest subject from the loggers’ minds at the moment, except for the occasional “The bitch won’t budge!” reference to the reluctant bell of the felled tree. This was one of those moments when sometimes brute strength worked faster than calling a team over to remove the base and roots. Bent over, breathing heavy, with hands resting on denim-clad knees while staring at the fecund ground, Noah shook his head ever-so-slightly to clear it before meeting Chester’s sparklingly amused expression.

The wrangler liked the blood, sweat, and tears of the hard work; required it at this current time. With baby Rebecca now two weeks old, his wife professing her love for him, and he so in love with her, Noah craved the manual labor to assuage the growing physical desire he longed to consummate with Emmaline. He wanted to be a true husband to Emmie, in every sense of the word, and the wait for that occurrence loomed interminable to a husband living in constant arousal for nine months and counting. And he didn’t need this senseless interruption right at this moment, not when at long last bone-weary fatigue was finally taking over his body.

“I don’t have a woman to hang onto, Chester!” One of the men said. “But if I did, I know right where I’d be hangin’ on!”

“We all know, Joshua, and so do the women. That’s why you don’t have one!”

The deep guffaws and hyena laughs drew an answering grin from the horse wrangler, though he wisely stayed out of the good-natured mud-slinging. Noah swiped at his forehead again, at last standing upright, smiling at the unmarried loggers’ banter and thankful he no longer counted himself amongst their numbers. He had a woman, one that loved him; but that immediate thought brought an instant memory of the morning, where he’d left said woman suckling their baby in their shadowed, cozy bed, and he realized the arousal he’d beaten down with hard labor hadn’t actually ever died. The wrangler inwardly sighed, finally paying attention to the other men’s conversation in a last ditch effort to avoid an afternoon-long erection. He could only hope there would be more tree stumps to dislodge.

“I mean it, boys. That fancy-pants sea captain is back in St. Helens.” Like a dog with a favorite bone, Chester veered unerringly back to the subject he’d first broached. In the process of stripping his gloves off his hands, Noah’s head shot up at Chester’s description. There was only one dandified sea captain that he knew of, he thought with a sinking sensation. Lancelot Fairchild. The seed donator of Emmie’s and Noah’s baby. The man Emmaline Townsend Lawson had once believed she’d loved. If he was back, would her love for him also return? Noah’s stomach churned at just the thought. After all, though they’d played in the marriage bed, performing many lovemaking acts true husbands and wives participate in regularly, Noah and Emmie still hadn’t actually consummated their marriage. They hadn’t physically become one.

That fact scared Noah, added to the knowledge that his wife’s first lover was now back in town. Emmie professed to love Noah; clung to him; sighed for him. But she’d yet to give herself bodily to him. Physical limitations of new motherhood still precluded that act. And it rankled that she had done so with Fairchild. Calm, patient Noah Lawson, tolerant of his wife’s singular predicament up to now, suddenly found himself jealous of Emmie’s previous involvement with the dandified sea captain. Resentful and fearful.