A Tender Moment Under the Stars: An Inspirational Historical Romance Book Page 7

  Unfortunately for her, Betty seemed oblivious to his affection for her.

  On one hand, Isabel could understand why. Freddie was an incredibly friendly man. She imagined he probably got along with everyone, adding a bit of humor to every situation while maintaining respect when humor wasn’t warranted.

  She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with him but that was the feeling she got.

  “I would love to see your drawings, Isabel!” Betty exclaimed.

  Isabel didn’t know what to think. She didn’t feel comfortable showing them to the woman, simply because she wasn’t getting a good feeling from her. She didn’t like the way Betty looked at Solomon. He wasn’t Isabel’s to claim, not yet. But she hadn’t traveled all this way to be tempted and have it ripped from her hands.

  She reached down, hiding her flushed face from them, and shuffled in her bag.

  “No, I think we’ll go ahead and go on home,” Solomon said, reaching over and stopping her from getting the notepad from her bag.

  “What?” Betty stared at Solomon. “You just got here. You haven’t gotten any food yet.”

  Solomon shook his head as Isabel sat up straight. She was confused by what he’d just done but she planned to follow his lead. Especially if it was to get away from Betty.

  “Yeah, you know I shouldn’t be giving her a first meal in Texas in here. I should be making one for her. I’m a good cook, I told you that, remember?” He directed the question to Isabel.

  She nodded, happiness welling up in her chest. His eyes flashed at her and he smiled.

  “Yeah. I’ll make you your first real meal here in Texas. And I’ve got some bread to heat up with some cheese and crackers to keep you from starving.” He jumped to his feet, taking her hand. His eyes went to Freddie and he held out his hand. “See you soon, Freddie?”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow, I reckon.”

  Solomon turned his eyes to a stunned Betty. “Betty.”

  With that, he pulled Isabel to her feet and away from the table.

  “It was nice meeting you, Freddie,” she said quickly as she was pulled past him.

  “You too, Izzy! I’m sure we’ll see you soon.”

  “Yes, we’ll see you soon, Izzy.” Betty’s voice was cold and condescending.

  Isabel had already turned away though. She didn’t want to reply to Betty or even think about her anymore. Solomon seemed to have put his foot down at that moment. It seemed he had been listening to her fake friendliness.

  Unless he’d just decided that he wanted to cook suddenly.

  “Is everything all right, Sol?” she asked when he let go of her hand outside the restaurant. When he turned his eyes to her, he didn’t look happy. She expected him to say something about Betty so his next words surprised her.

  “No, I didn’t do this right. Not from the beginning, I’ve just been making missteps. I barely got time to talk to you before I was introducing you to Freddie, who is just as much an attention hog as Betty. Not that he means to,” Solomon was quick to add. He lifted his hands up in front of his chest, his palms downward. “That’s just his way. And I wouldn’t want a different Freddie Hightower, ever. I pray he never changes. But I should have taken you straight home so you could see where you’d be living if you decide to and I should have already had a meal prepared for you. My own creation, not something here in the restaurant. Though they are really good, too.”

  Isabel liked the way he bounced from putting something down to lifting it up in the next sentence.

  “I’m sorry if this has been a bad start to living in Steven’s Gulch. It really is a nice little community to live in. I didn’t want you to get a bad impression of it and here I’m just—”

  “That’s enough, Sol,” Isabel said, a gentle laugh following her words. “You are just fine. There’s no book we can consult on how to behave in new situations is there?”

  Solomon shook his head, giving her a grateful look. “I’m real sorry about all this. Let’s get in the wagon and go on home.”

  “All right.” They turned and walked past the front windows of the restaurant. Isabel looked inside and saw Betty having an intense conversation with Freddie. He was shaking his head and gesturing for Betty to calm down. Betty was seemingly having nothing of it.

  Isabel turned her head and looked up at Solomon to see if he’d noticed. If he had he wasn’t showing any reaction.

  Isabel had never been a shrinking violet. When she wanted to know something, all through school, she asked. She sought answers.

  It was the first time in her life that she questioned herself first. Did she want to ask Solomon about Betty? What kind of answers would she get? Did she really want to hear them? Did she really need answers?

  They were at the wagon before she decided she did want more information about Betty. She waited until they were riding away from the restaurant before she broached the topic.

  “I know you said that you and Betty are over with,” she started, “but I wonder if she knows that.”

  Solomon was quiet for a moment. She wondered what he was thinking.

  “I don’t know what Betty is up to,” he said, sounding genuinely confused and turning Isabel’s thinking in a different direction. “She said she wasn’t coming back and didn’t want a life here in Steven’s Gulch. What changed about that?” He shook his head.

  When he glanced at her, she thought he looked very sincere about his uncertainty.

  “I don’t know what she’s doing back, either,” Isabel said. “There’s no way I could know. But from a woman’s perspective, she is still seeing you through the eyes of a sweetheart. Is that what you think of it?”

  Solomon was quiet again. This time, he didn’t answer for some time.

  “I don’t want her to come between us so soon, Izzy,” he said quietly, turning his head to her as he sat forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “We haven’t even had time to spend together. That’s what I was thinking back there in the restaurant. I was kind of mad at myself for not keeping you just for me for at least a little while. So we could get to know each other a little better. The way we met wasn’t ideal. I know that. I’d like to change things right now and forget about everything up to now.”

  She smiled at him, a warm feeling filling her chest. “I’m not sure I can forget Freddie,” she said with a short laugh.

  He did the same, shaking his head. “No, it’s impossible to forget about Freddie.”

  Isabel stopped herself before she asked if Solomon knew Freddie had feelings for Betty. She didn’t want to bring all that up again. She wanted to take his advice and forget about it for as long as they could. The issues would be there tomorrow still.

  For today, all she wanted to do was find out what her new home looked like, the vast opportunities she’d have to sketch the most beautiful landscapes she’d ever seen, and get to know the man she hoped to marry.

  Chapter 11

  Solomon tried to take her words to heart. He really hadn’t thought it through very well. If he’d been smart about it, he would have asked Freddie’s advice. Everything would have worked out perfectly. Although that’s how it was with his friend. Solomon’s luck wasn’t quite as good.

  He watched her face when they pulled up to the large house. She wore a pleasant expression as she ran her green eyes all around them. It looked like she wanted to take in everything.

  He stopped the wagon when they reached the steps that went up to the deck, which wrapped all around the house.

  “I’ll just leave the wagon here for now while I unload your luggage. Would you like to take a look around outside or inside, my dear?”

  “I’ll stay outside with you while you unload and put the horses inside. You don’t think they’re too hot, do you?”

  Solomon felt his heart warm over. She was concerned about the animals. That showed a trait that he adored in a woman.

  “They’ll be fine but yeah, I want to get them some fresh water and put on their feedbags. They’re probably
starving to death.”

  Isabel grinned at him. “My goodness, I hope not.”

  He could tell she hadn’t taken him seriously. “Stay right there, I’ll help you down.”

  This time when he went around the wagon, he held up both hands and took her about the waist. He lifted her in the air and moved her slowly to the ground, astounded by how light she was. When she looked up at him with her green eyes, he was amazed by her beauty.

  So far, he hadn’t seen anything in her he didn’t like. It may have only been a few hours, but he had come to realize that when people had ulterior motives that were bad, they generally showed it in their behavior at some point.

  His own first impression with Isabel hadn’t been good. He may have asked her to forget about it and they would start over but he knew that was easier said than done. It made it worse that she had seen Betty kiss him. It may as well have been full-blown on the lips at that point.

  “Do you want to help?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

  She smiled wide. “What can I do? I’m a strong woman. I’ve been carrying my mother around for five years.”

  “I’m sure you’re real strong then. But you don’t need muscles to take care of the horses. Do you know how to take off the harness and brush them down and hook them up?”

  “I sure do. It was something they taught us in school. A real necessity, especially if you grow up a girl without a father.”

  Solomon gave her a compassionate look. He moved around the wagon and untied the horses from it. “We’ll leave this here, then. You go ahead and take them inside and I’ll take the bags to the room I have set up for you.”

  “All right.”

  Solomon watched as she led the horses away, talking to them in a soft voice. She was such a small woman compared to him. But he was impressed with the strength she exuded. She was definitely strong if she’d carried her mother around for five years. He could only imagine the kind of chores Isabel had been doing for her.

  When she disappeared into the stables, he turned to the back of the wagon and pulled down the tailgate. He jumped up and picked up one of the trunks. After examining it carefully, he leaned down over the wagon and dropped it to the ground. It hit with a soft thud. He hadn’t thought it would break if he was careful enough.

  He did the same with the other three trunks, though he had to bend over less and less since he was stacking them on each other.

  He jumped down and put up the tailgate.

  Solomon picked up one of the trunks by the handle on the end. It came up easily and he suspected she had light clothing in the trunk. He picked up another by its handle and it was heavier, indicating knick-knacks.

  He carried them both up the steps and into the house. In the middle of the foyer was a long curving staircase that was shaped like a huge hourglass. It led up to the second floor. That was where he’d put her room, on the opposite side of his own. Both rooms were large and maintained. In the past, he’d had only Freddie stay in that room because other than his own, it was the nicest one. It had been his father’s before he’d passed.

  He went up the stairs to the second floor and turned to the right. He crossed a short landing and walked to the door of the room he was letting her use.

  After setting one of the trunks down, Solomon turned the handle and swung the door open. He was impressed immediately by the work that had been done on the room when the housekeeper cleaned it and prepared it for a woman. “Nice work, Gertie,” he murmured under his breath.

  He really liked the way the window had been left open just enough to let in a breeze that blew the light curtains into the room. And Gertie had put a flower vase on the nightstand with beautiful fresh marigolds in it.

  Solomon hoped Isabel was impressed with the room as he was. It had a gold and green motif, with the rug on the floor, the curtains, and rich fabric hanging from the four-poster bed in a deep forest green with gold trimmings.

  He turned and went back down the stairs quickly, hurrying out to retrieve the other two trunks. He cast a glance over to the stables but Isabel hadn’t come back out yet. He hadn’t expected her to do those tasks in such a short amount of time anyway.

  He grabbed the other two trunks and hauled them up the stairs. They were different sizes so he felt off-balance as he went up the stairs and into her room again. He set them down, gave the room another look through, and went back out to her.

  Solomon was surprised to see her coming out of the stables and walking toward him, a smile on her face.

  “Well, that was pretty fast, young lady,” he said, tipping his hat to her, flipping it once off his head so that his blond hair blew softly in the breeze. “You some kind of expert or something?”

  “I’ll have to tell you the story sometime,” Isabel said mysteriously.

  He tilted his head to the side with a grin. “Time is all we have right now. Why don’t you tell me about it while I cook up something good to eat?”

  “I like the sound of that. And if you have those crackers and some cheese, my goodness, I would like that very much.” She placed her hand on her flat stomach and rubbed it in a circle.

  “Coming right up!” Solomon gestured to her. “Let me show you where the kitchen is. After you’ve got something in your stomach, I’ll show you your room and around the rest of the house. I want you to feel comfortable to go wherever you want.” He continued as they both went up the steps side by side. “This is your home, too, if you want it to be. You aren’t a prisoner here and you can go into town and do whatever you want. I hope you’ll want to spend time with me, though.”

  Isabel nodded and said something that surprised him. “I do want to spend time with you and get to know you. I’d also like to work at your supply store for you. Anything you need me to do there. You just ask. I don’t mind.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t mind working?”

  “Not at all. Anything that benefits my family.”

  He was struck by her words and looked closely at her. Her lips twitched, showing her amusement.

  “My future family. Possibly. Maybe. We’ll see.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. “Yes, we’ll see.”

  Solomon had a good feeling about that future. He thought Isabel had to be an angel, a blessing from God. He was going to do his best not to mess it up. He needed to avoid embarrassing himself in front of her. He would stay calm and collected, make the best meals he could, and not let her see how nervous he was that she was there. He was a big man, after all, the big man of Steven’s Gulch. He didn’t want her to think bad of him for being slightly less aggressive than his stature suggested.

  She didn’t seem to be put off by it though. Nor did she seem bothered that he hadn’t immediately brought her home and already had a meal prepared for her. He still chided himself for that blunder. He should have known she would be hungry for something good.

  With that thought in mind, he led her directly to the kitchen and opened his cupboards, looking for the ingredients to make her a fantastic dinner. It would be a little late but it would be good. And while it cooked, they could sit on the veranda, drink wine and eat cheese and crackers.

  “I know exactly what to do,” he said excitedly. “Come with me.”

  He led her through the living room to the double glass doors that led to the veranda. A breeze swept into the room when he opened the doors. The veranda faced out over the setting sun. He couldn’t believe his good luck. Perhaps it was changing and this would end up being a fantastic night for Isabel, despite the unlucky beginning.