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  Sighing and smiling, pleased with herself and anticipating Josh’s forthcoming apology, she went back to the house.

  Chapter Six

  When Josh and the children rode up the path toward the house, all of them on the same horse, they halted and stared in disbelief. At first Josh thought he’d made a wrong turn, so he reined the horse away and started back down the path. But there was that big clump of aspens that he knew was at the corner of the woods and there was the old fence post so he knew he was in the right area. Turning the horse, he started back toward the house and halted in front of it.

  Moonlight shone down on the little building, but the wreck of a house he’d left this morning was gone. In its place was a house with a porch on the front of it. This house was whitewashed instead of being covered with dingy gray boards, and roses grew in front of it; there was sparkling clean glass in the windows.

  “Did the Good Fairy come?” Dallas asked, rubbing her eyes, thinking she was asleep and dreaming.

  “Something of that nature,” Josh said through clenched teeth. “A good fairy with lots of money. Her father’s money.”

  Josh urged the horse forward, helped the children down, and opened the front door of the house—a door that now moved easily on oiled hinges.

  Inside the house, light reflected from several candles and lanterns set about the room, and against one wall set a new cookstove, enameled in bright blue and looking very cheerful. The walls, no longer bare but covered in pretty, rose-printed wallpaper, gleamed. There were rugs on the floors, furniture in the room, the table laid with a cloth and pretty porcelain dishes.

  “It’s a fairy castle,” Dallas said and Josh winced. The child was too young to remember a time when she’d lived in anything but a hovel, and she didn’t remember anything but poorly cooked food and bare floors and an unhappy father. She didn’t remember a time when it was her father rather than an outsider who gave her what she needed.

  When Josh looked at his son, he saw that Tem, too, was impressed by his new surroundings, and Josh felt angry because he had not been the one to give his children simple, basic things such as good food and a pretty house. Instead, some rich, empty-headed do-gooder from the East Coast had come into their lives and decided to bestow her charity on the poor little family in the mountains. It must have given her great satisfaction to act the Good Fairy, as Dallas called her, Josh thought. When Carrie left, she could tell herself that she had done well, that for a whole week she had given happiness to the dreary little family. She would be able to leave with her conscience clean and free of guilt knowing that she had done so much for the poor dears. But it was going to be Josh who’d have to hold the children when they cried.

  Looking at the closed bedroom door, his mouth set, he went to it and turned the handle. But when he opened the door, he almost forgot his anger, because Little Miss Charity was sitting up to her neck in a bathtub full of suds. Her face was pink from the hot water, her hair was loosely piled on top of her head in a jumble of fat curls, and her breasts were just breaking the surface of the water. Josh stood gaping in dumbfounded stupefaction.

  “Good evening,” Carrie said, smiling, brushing a lock of damp hair off her brow. That look of desire was on his face again, and it felt so very good to have wiped that smug, patronizing look off his face. “Did all of you have a good day?” she asked as if they were in a drawing room, but as she spoke, she noted Josh’s torn and dirty work clothes and thought that they suited him much less well than his suit had. Some men look good in canvas pants and cotton shirt, but Josh looked out of place, as though he were pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

  As Josh struggled to get himself under control, he realized that his life was very different from what it used to be. No longer did women often greet him in their bathtubs, and no longer was he free to do what he wished with them. Now he was a sensible, serious, responsible person—a father—and he had to think of serious matters. And serious matters did not include what he most wanted to do in the world right now, which was to close the door to the bedroom and climb in the tub with this delicious, delectable, luscious young woman.

  He straightened. “I’d like to speak to you,” he said as sternly as he could manage, but then a curl fell over her eye, and she tried to brush it away with a soapy hand. She was going to get soap in her eye, he thought, and someone ought to help her.

  Dallas pushed in front of her father and stood for a moment staring in wonder at the bedroom. There was wallpaper on the walls in this room too and a new brass bed and fluffy covers on the feather mattress. “It’s beautiful,” Dallas said.

  Carrie smiled. “I’m so glad you like it, but I don’t think your father does.”

  Dallas looked up at her father in disbelief. “But it’s beautiful.” The child sounded as though she were going to cry. “Can we keep it?”

  Picking up his daughter, Josh hugged her. “Of course we can keep it. There isn’t any way to return wallpaper.” He looked over Dallas’s shoulder to frown at Carrie, but she just smiled at him.

  Carrie looked at Dallas, in her father’s arms, and at Tem, peering from behind his father and said, “If you children would excuse us, I think your father would like to talk to me in private.”

  Josh did have some things he wanted to say to Carrie, actually rather a great many things, but he wasn’t going to be alone with her while she was sitting in a bathtub. From what little he knew of her, he wouldn’t put it past her to stand up in the tub and ask him to hand her a towel. If she were to stand up, he knew he’d be lost. “What I have to say can wait,” Josh said as gruffly as he could manage and put Dallas down.

  Moving to the tub, Dallas picked up a handful of suds, looking at them in question.

  “They are foaming bath salts,” Carrie said, “and they’re from—”

  “Let me guess,” Josh said sarcastically. “France. One of your dear brothers brought them back to you.”

  “As a matter of fact he did, along with six new dresses,” she said sweetly. She was not going to defend her brothers to this man.

  “How charming for you to have been born wealthy. The rest of us slaves of the world have to work for our bread and…” He looked about the room. “We have to work for the rugs and the wallpaper and the dresses.”

  Carrie smiled at him. “Then it seems that it’s the duty of the rich people to share their wealth, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps, but charity doesn’t sit well with all of us.”

  Carrie refused to allow him to make her angry. She wanted to remind him that they were now married and that what was hers was his, too, and that she had purchased these items for her own family. As for his pride, which seemed to be hurt, she had not bought a house in town, even though there was a rather nice one for sale, but had merely decorated his house.

  Carrie bit down on her feelings of injustice and, instead, offered to share her tub with Dallas. The little girl looked at her father for permission, then hurriedly undressed herself, and her father lifted her into the tub. As the child settled into the tub, Carrie was very pleased to see Josh frowning fiercely before he turned away and left the room.

  Once he was out of the bedroom, Josh felt that he could breathe again, but that didn’t last for long, for now the parlor was so very, very different from the way it had been. The whole room seemed to reek of Carrie. Everywhere he looked he could see her touch, and when he glanced at Tem and saw that the boy was looking into the big pot that set bubbling on the stove, he knew that his son felt it too. Tem jumped guiltily when his father glanced at him, as though he knew he shouldn’t be enjoying what Carrie had done for them.

  Turning away, Josh went to the fireplace. Since the fire was no longer sending clouds of smoke billowing into the room, he was sure that Carrie had had the chimney cleaned. In spite of himself, Josh took a seat in one of the two rocking chairs set in front of the fire, leaned back against the pretty cushions tied to the back and seat of the chair, and enjoyed the sights and sounds around him. When