Read Online Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jannifer Chiaverini - Free Book Online Page B

the bathroom to wash their hands and faces and brush their teeth. A bath would have to wait until morning, she decided as she and Lupita took their turns at the sink. Miguel was down for the night and she had no intention of waking him. She had the girls change into their pajamas while Lars went back to the car for the rest of their belongings, and by the time he returned, she had tucked Marta and Ana in one bed and Lupita and Miguel in the other. Lars helped her shove the baskets and bags against the wall to leavea clear aisle from the beds to the bathroom, and then he took off his sodden hat, dug the room key from his pocket, and gave it to Rosa.
    “I’ll be right across the hall should you need me,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll come back first thing in the morning. Don’t open the door for anyone but me. I don’t care who it is—innkeeper, chief of police, your husband, the devil himself.”
    Rosa promised she would not, and thus satisfied, Lars departed. Rosa had almost closed the door behind him when she suddenly pulled it open again. “Lars—”
    He paused in the doorway of the room across the hall. “What is it?”
    “I never thanked you. For coming after us, for seeing us safely out of the canyon, for bringing us here and finding us a room for the night—thank you. I’m ashamed I didn’t say it sooner.”
    A brief smile flickered in the corners of his mouth. “It’s all right. You’re welcome.” He stood watching her for a moment. “You know very well I’m not closing my door until you close yours and I hear that bolt slide into place, so you might as well go on and do it.”
    “Of course.” She managed a smile. “Good night.”
    “Good night, Rosa.”
    She closed the door and locked it, and then, draining the last reserves of her strength, she changed into her nightgown and slipped into bed beside Lupita and Miguel. As she drew the covers over them, Lupita snuggled up to her little brother, thumb in her mouth. Rosa gently removed it, closed her eyes, and sank into sleep.
    • • •
    Rosa was sixteen the first time she woke to a soft rapping sound and discovered Lars standing outside her bedroom window, beckoning her to join him in the soft and misty night. Quietly she tiptoed past the rooms where her parents and brother slept and eased the front door open without a sound. Heart pounding from the fear of discovery, she let Lars take her by the hand and lead her away from the house, but they went only as far as the orange trees in the corner of the yard, where darkness offered scant concealment should her mother wake and peer out the window. Lars murmured her name as he tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her, his lips warm and soft and insistent upon hers. Her head was spinning when she finally broke from him, and pushed him away, and breathlessly told him that she couldn’t sneak out of the house in the middle of the night ever again. It was too dangerous. Her parents or a neighbor would spot them and it would all be over.
    “If we don’t meet like this, when will we ever see each other?” Lars asked, drawing her back to him. The arrival of summer recess had once meant that they would see each other rarely and only in passing until the new school year began, but not anymore. Lars had graduated the week before, and Rosa’s heart sank whenever she thought of returning to school in September without him. Autumn would find her studying at her desk at the back of the classroom with the oldest students, while Lars would be hard at work on his father’s ranch. He could not ride over to see her on a Sunday afternoon the way other young men visited their sweethearts, or have dinner with her family, or ask their permission to take her dancing at the Grand Union Hotel on a balmy Friday evening. It was unfair, and it was wrong, but as long as her mother’s heart remained relentlessly hardened against the Jorgensens, Rosa and Larswould have to meet secretly under the cover