Baby On The Oregon Trail

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“As long as I don’t have to—”

His snort of laughter told her he’d read the thought she had squelched. Still chuckling, he strode off toward the stream, his canvas shaving kit dangling from his hand.

“All right, girls,” Jenna said when he was out of sight. “Let’s find us a private spot and do the same.”

* * *

Lee hung his shaving mirror over a huckleberry branch and lathered up his chin with the bar of soap he’d extricated from his kit. He finished stropping his razor and had just bent to peer into the mirror when a pair of blue eyes showed in the reflection.

“Ruthie! What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to watch.”

“Does Jenna know you’re here?”

“Nope. She’s takin’ a bath.”

His blade jerked. “Really?”

“Yes. Tess an’ Mary Grace are finished already. Jenna’s real slow.”

Jupiter! A picture rose in his imagination of Jenna emerging from the stream wearing nothing but her... Wearing nothing. He tried to keep his mind on shaving and his hand steady as he scraped away at his whiskers. Ruthie watched in total absorption, and for that he was grateful. It forced him to pay attention and keep his mind off other things. Like Jenna, all wet and...

He nicked his chin.

When Ruthie scampered off to play with her new doll, Lee tucked his shirt into his jeans, packed up his shaving things and headed back to camp. He was three yards from the creek when he heard a soft splash and a female voice humming a tune. “Polly Wolly Doodle.” A damn Yankee song if there ever was one, but it drew him like a magnet.

He walked eight steps past the huckleberry bush and there she was, thigh-deep in the water, with her back to him. Her dark hair tumbled around her shoulders in wild disarray, and water glistened on her skin. His groin tightened. She was too damn beautiful.

And then she turned, and he saw the slight curve of her belly where the baby swelled under her heart.

His fists clenched. She was carrying a child, he reminded himself. Another man’s child. He could want her, even ache for her, but he could never have her. She belonged to that unborn child. Not to her husband, the man he had killed, but to a being she could not even see yet. From the moment of conception until she reached Oregon and was finally delivered of her burden, she would belong only to that child.

Jenna Borland needed him only to yoke up her oxen and drive her wagon across the Great Plains and the Rockies to a new life. He didn’t belong here, with her. Once again he was the outsider. He and Jenna Borland were in two different worlds, heading toward two completely different lives.

With a groan he acknowledged he was headed straight for another wrenching loss at the end of another long, hard campaign. He wished he’d never laid eyes on her, especially as she was now, naked and singing to herself as she dried the moisture from her hair and that silky-looking body and pulled on her clothes.

When he strode back into camp, Sam Lincoln was waiting for him. The man nodded a greeting, then took a closer look at him.

“Anything wrong, Lee? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Lee shook his head and waited for the wagon master to continue.

“Ted Zaberskie and the Gumpert boy brought down a deer this afternoon. Thought you might like a share of the meat.”

“Sure, Sam. Thanks.”

Sam made no move to leave. Instead he kept his gaze on Ruthie and Mary Grace, playing with their dolls in the shade of the wagon. After a long moment the wagon master stepped closer and spoke in an undertone.