Foxfire Bride (43 page)

"That is the daughter I should have had," a voice said behind her. "Not a day passes that I don't regret her loss."

Fox whirled, dropping the portrait and gripping her bag. Finally, she stood face-to-face with the man who had occupied her thoughts more than any other.

The years had not been kind to Hobbs Jennings. She knew for a certainty that he was twenty years younger than he appeared. Once his hair had been as thick and dark as Tanner's. Now the thinning strands were white. He no longer stood tall and elegant. His back hunched as if he were in pain, and he leaned heavily on a cane. What shocked most was the deep sadness in his dark eyes. Fox had never seen a man with sadder eyes.

She fumbled with the drawstring on her bag. "I've come here to"

"I know why you've come, I've been expecting you," he said quietly, sinking into his desk chair with a heavy sigh. "And I know who you are."

"Tanner told you." She had known he would. Standing across the desk from Jennings, she aimed the gun at his forehead.

"I would have known you in any case, dear Eugenia. You're the spit image of your mother, did you know?"

The comment was so unexpected that it swept the ground from under her, and brought an unexpected and embarrassing rush of tears to her eyes. There was no one else alive who remembered her mother, just this man.

Confused and angry, Fox adjusted her grip on the butt of the gun and finally lost an argument with herself. Unable to speak above a whisper, she couldn't resist asking, "I don't remember any more. What did she look like?"

"Your mother was lovely, as slender and elegant as a reed. Her eyes were blue gray, and her hair as red as yours." A ghost of a smile pleated the wrinkles scoring his cheeks. "She was graceful but strong, wise and courageous and loving." Shifting sideways in the chair, he fixed his sad gaze on the mountains. "I wasn't much of a match for her. She had wealth and position, I didn't. But Delphinia didn't care about those things."

"You betrayed her trust, you bastard!" The gun leveled at his head shook in her hand.

"Yes, I did." He turned back to her, his old man's voice steady. "Since the night Matthew told me that you would appear, I've tried to think what I would say to you. I could tell you that without Delphinia I didn't have the funds to keep my son in school, but that's only part of it. I wanted the life Delphinia had shown me." His knotted hands laced together. "Nothing I can say will explain that time in my life. There is no justification whatsoever. I betrayed Delphinia's trust, and I changed your life irrevocably." Hunching forward, he drew a hand across the pain in his gaze. "Matthew told me that you and your friend ate food out of garbage bins. There's nothing I can do or say to change that. I would give everything I own if there were."

Fox's eyes burned from staring, acid churned in her stomach. "You didn't just change my life, you bastard. You destroyed it!"

The Colt felt heavy in her hand. Was Jennings stalling? Hoping Mr. Piper would return with a dozen henchmen? No. He'd said he expected her. Claude Piper knew who she was, too.

"You won't believe this, but I ruined my life, too." Bending, he picked Fox's childhood portrait from the floor and held it in his hands. "I spent years searching for you. But by then Mrs. Wilson was dead and no one knew what had happened to you."

"Your life was ruined?" He was right. She didn't believe it.

"Once I thought of myself as a good decent man. But I learned that I wasn't. I'm not. That knowledge has permeated my life, soured everything I've touched, I haven't been the father I should have been. I pushed Matthew to achieve impossible heights to justify what I'd done, so I could tell myself my crime had been worth betraying your mother's trust. I've lived alone since" His voice trailed. "I've done some things with the money that I hope Delphinia would have approved of. But trying to use your mother's money well didn't change what I'd done to get it. It didn't change what I'd done to you."

"It was my money you stole!"

"That was the greatest crime of all. Abandoning a child."

Her heart pounded against her rib cage and the gun wobbled in her hand. Her mother had loved this weary tormented man. Tanner loved him.

"I'm going to kill you," she said, gritting her teeth. His remorse didn't touch her. It was too late.

"I know."

But he'd done nothing to protect himself. He'd known she would come but he had not instructed Mr. Piper to block her from his office. The sheriff wasn't waiting. He hadn't pulled a gun from his desk and shot her first.

Hobbs Jennings waited in calm resignation, gazing at her with eyes filled with anguish by the guilt that drove him to keep a portrait of a little girl on his desk. This man would not regret dying. Death would come as relief from living with a past that shamed and haunted him.

"I am the justice you've been waiting for," she whispered, hating him.

Hobbs Jennings placed her childhood portrait next to the portrait of Tanner as a boy, then he looked up at her. "I'm sorry, Eugenia, for the terrible wrong I inflicted on you and for betraying the trust of a woman I loved. Sorrier than you could ever imagine. You deserved so much better."

"You're damned right I did."

Fox leveled the gun and fired.

The door to the office burst open and Mr. Piper rushed forward, skidding on one of the rugs.

"It's all right, Mr. Piper." Hobbs Jennings opened his eyes and drew a breath. "Continue about your duties."

Claude Piper's eyes widened on the smoke curling from the gun in Fox's hand, then swung toward the shattered window behind Hobbs Jennings. Swallowing hard, Mr. Piper nodded and backed into the hallway.

Once he had gone, Fox's knees collapsed and she sank into the chair facing Jennings's desk. She dropped the Colt on the floor then covered her eyes.

"I hate you more than any person I have ever known," she said, her voice shaking. "I've hated you for so long that I can't remember a time when hating you wasn't part of me. I can't find words strong enough to express how much I regret not killing you. But I can't do it. I don't understand why but I can't."

Part of the reason had to do with the people she loved. Her mother, Peaches, and Tanner. Another powerful reason was knowing if she killed Hobbs Jennings, she would be doing the bastard a favor.

"So what happens now," she asked after the silence between them had grown heavy. "Will you call the sheriff?"

Jennings roused himself from gazing at the two portraits on his desk. "Actually, I was considering buzzing Mr. Piper and requesting tea. Do you drink tea?"

"Lord, no. I don't drink that stuff. Coffee's acceptable, but whiskey would be better. This has been a confusing, upsetting, whiskey damn drinking kind of day." She glared. "Thanks to you, I'm not a refined tea-drinking woman. Whiskey's my choice and I can drink most men under the table." Her chin jutted and her gaze challenged him to express disapproval.

"Then something good came out of this." Jennings managed a small tired smile. "I see why my son loves you."

His words sent a jolt to her heart. Tanner. There would be time to think about him later.

During the wait for Piper to fetch whiskey and glasses, which arrived in a crystal decanter and etched glasses, Fox stared at Hobbs Jennings. Never in a lifetime of trying could she have imagined that she would end by sharing a glass of whiskey with a man whose death she had dreamed a thousand times.

Jennings lifted his glass to her but Fox didn't return the salute. "Why?"

"I don't know," she answered after a long hesitation. "I guess I love your son more than I hate you."

Something odd was happening in her mind and chest, something cracked and broke free. She hoped Peaches was watching, wished she could tell him that he had been right. The past couldn't be changed. It was time to let go of old wrongs, old bitterness. Hobbs Jennings had punished himself more than a quick death ever would have. She wondered if Peaches had guessed that.

And there was another truth. If Fox had grown up in a grand mansion surrounded by servants and fine-mannered friends, she would have missed so much.

She would never have known the smell of morning coffee boiling over a campfire. Or the splash of cold river water on her face. She wouldn't have watched deer and elk in the wild, would never have traveled the country in the way she had. She wouldn't have experienced the satisfaction and, yes, the pleasure of labor and earning her own way. She wouldn't have been independent or self-reliant. Worst of all, she would never have known Peaches. If she had lived the life she might have had, she would not be who she was. She would be someone else entirely.

But sitting here now, drinking whiskey with the haunted old man she came to kill Fox understood that she liked herself fine, just as she was.

A hard knot fell away from her heart, crumbling as the anger drained out of her body. She had been so angry and so filled with hate for so long that for one panicky moment she tried to hang on to those feelings, then she exhaled slowly and feeling lighter by the minute, she let them go.

Tears glistened on her lashes and she swallowed hard.

"Did Tanner tell you how many times we picked up those gold coins?"

"He told me about the outlaws you two chased down."

"Did he tell you about getting shot by an Indian?"

"Lord, no." Asking her to relate the story, Jennings refilled their glasses.

Fox glanced at the ceiling, imagining she heard Peaches laughing his heavenly butt off. It would have tickled him to see her trading stories with Hobbs Jennings. "Well, we'd stopped at a Mormon fort. Might be the place that served buttermilk." She made a face and shuddered. "I don't recall. Anyway, we helped chase off a party of Utes, but a couple of them snuck into our camp to steal our horses, and"

It wasn't going to be easy. The deep need to kill Jennings receded more every time she looked into those sad eyes, but Fox doubted she could ever forgive him. If the familiar hatred should rise again, she would remind herself that whatever he was, Hobbs Jennings had raised the finest man she'd ever known. She would try to respect him for that one thing.

By the time she finished the tale and one or two more, the sun had sunk toward the peaks, and they sat in shadows.

"There's much we have to discuss," Hobbs Jennings said quietly. "I hope we'll talk again and you'll allow me to know you. But right now, there's someone waiting and pacing the floor. He's turned this town upside down searching for you."

"You aren't the only problem between us," she said, looking down at her empty glass. "I don't fit in his world."

Jennings regarded her with a thoughtful expression. "Whose opinion do you value? That of people you'll never meet and never know? Or Matthew's opinion? Matthew doesn't care what people might think of you. He's willing to accept you exactly as you are."

Oh Lord. The person whose opinion she cared least about agreed with Peaches, the person she'd cared the most about. Sudden tears stung the back of her eyes.

"Instead of worrying about you fitting into Matthew's world, or him fitting into yours," Jennings said gently, "perhaps you can create a world that's right for the two of you."

Damn all. It was something Peaches might have said. And Peaches would have made it sound just as possible.

"Tanner cares about your opinion" she whispered.

"Eugenia? Nothing would please me more than to see you both happy."

"Thank you." Fox blinked hard. "Not that I care whether you're pleased or not," she added hastily.

"I hope someday you will." Standing, he gazed at her with those heart-wrenching, dark eyes. "We've both waited a very long time for today. Welcome home."

Without a word, Fox spun and walked out of the room. She didn't want him to see her cry.

Someone had to know where she was. Or maybe she'd changed her mind about killing his father and headed back to Nevada. No, she wouldn't abandon a goal almost as old as she was. Tanner swore in frustration.

The only thing he'd done since returning to Denver was search for Fox and think about her. A redheaded woman who wasn't afraid of anything, a woman unlike any he'd known before. A woman he loved enough to do whatever it took to have her beside him forever.