Galveston 1900: Swept Away by Linda Crist

Author:Linda Crist [Crist, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781927282175
Publisher: Affinity EBook Press NZ LTD
Published: 2013-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

†

The room seemed empty, and much too quiet, as Rachel entered it and switched on the bedside lamp. She very much understood how Mattie felt when she went home to her empty house. When she left Fort Worth, she had relished being alone. It was a novelty after spending her childhood in the company of all her siblings. Now, she longed to have Mattie in her arms.

After a quick trip down the hall to the water closet, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth, she returned to the room and stripped down to her bloomers and undershirt. She carefully hung up her trousers and smiled as she caught a whiff of Mattie’s toilet water on her shirt. She held it up to her face and inhaled with pleasure, before she reluctantly placed the shirt on its hanger. She closed the armoire door and turned, spying the wrapped up bundle on the bed, the crisp paper catching the lamp light.

She had seen some of Mattie’s drawings of her, but apparently not all of them, judging from the thickness of the bundle. Curious, she sat down and untied the thick twine that bound the papers, and carefully unrolled the drawings to avoid smudging or wrinkling them. The first few she had seen—a drawing from their first meeting, the one of her bared back from earlier on, and some from one of their picnics on the beach. There were many more she hadn’t seen. Ones Mattie had obviously drawn from memory when Rachel wasn’t around to pose. She smiled at a few, in which Mattie had drawn herself into the scene. In most of the drawings of them together, they were either holding hands or else Rachel had her arm around Mattie’s waist. All of them were beach scenes, with the ocean crashing in the background, or the sand dunes rising behind them.

Rachel’s felt a pleasant flutter in her stomach when she came to the drawings from their time on the boat. She had seen the longing in Mattie’s eyes. What she wasn’t prepared for was how well Mattie had captured the fire burning in her own eyes. Had she truly been looking upon Mattie with such open desire? She had certainly felt it. And how often had she looked at Mattie in that way prior to their time together on the boat? She appeared almost as a starved thing, her eyes at once desirous and begging. Mattie had managed to capture that. It was a wonder Mattie hadn’t melted into a puddle under such an intense gaze.

She moved her attention from her face to the rest of her body, studying it with a critical eye. Mattie’s drawing was flattering, and she found herself wondering if she truly looked like that. She moved in front of the mirror and slowly removed her undershirt and raised her arms so that they were extended as they were in one of the drawings. Yep, she mused silently. Those were the same muscles.

It was indeed the same body, but Mattie had captured her through the eyes of a lover, she realized.

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