Authors: Penny Richards
“I'd miss him very much.”
“It's church, isn't it? You said you could never marry a man who didn't love God.”
“Yes, I did tell you that.”
“But Pa came this morning!” Cilla cried. “Don't you think that means he's going to try to change for you?”
“I don't want him to change for me,” Allison said. “I want him to change for himself. That's the only way he'll ever find true happiness and peace, Cilla. People can
go
to services all their lives and not be a true Christian. We serve God because we want to, not because we have to, or just to make someone else happy.”
Cilla stared into her water glass and thought about that while Allison's heart ached for them both.
“What if he does change? Really change? Would you marry him then?”
“Oh, Cilla!” Allison breathed, on a little chuckle. She reached out and smoothed a palm over the child's gleaming brown hair. “It isn't just about me and what I would do. In an ideal world, people marry because they love each other. And in our case there's you and Brady to consider.”
“But we like you and we told him we wanted you for our ma, so that's all taken care of. The question is, do you love Pa?”
Again, Allison was amazed by the child's forthrightness. “I...care for him very much,” she admitted.
“That means yes,” Cilla said shrewdly. “I haven't heard him say it, but I know he loves you, too. He's been like a dog with a sore paw ever since you turned him down.”
“I'm afraid that's just wishful thinking on your part.”
“No, it's true!” Cilla set her glass on a small table sitting between the two chairs and leaped to her feet. She plunged her hand into her skirt pocket and pulled a folded piece of paper out. With a triumphant grin, she held it out to Allison.
“What's this?”
“Open it. You'll see.”
Frowning, Allison reached out a cautious hand and took the page from Cilla. She couldn't imagine what it could be.
Cilla stood there, a wide smile on her face, her hands clasped together in anticipation. Allison unfolded the page that had been torn from a tablet. The heading leaped out at her.
PROSPECTIVE BRIDES
* * *
Elton was here, no doubt about it. Both his and Joseph Jones's horses were tied near the front of the small tumbledown house.
A woodpecker hammered away at a nearby tree, and a squirrel chattered high above. When they'd arrived, Colt and his deputies had hunkered down behind a rotted, fallen tree in the midst of a thicket of young persimmon sprouts that provided good cover and made a respectable observation place.
Even in the shadows of the woods, the heat was oppressive. An occasional rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, threatening rain. That had happened a lot since the brief but torrential storm that canceled the ice-cream social the previous week, but so far the warnings hadn't produced a single drop of moisture.
They'd been here since before noon, and it was about half past three. He was getting thirsty, and waiting for something to happen was growing wearisome. With some silent hand signals to his friends, Colt eased through the trees toward the horses that were tied farther back in the woods, intending to fetch the canteens.
About an hour ago, they'd heard one of Elton and Meg Thomerson's babies crying and a lot of yelling back and forth between her and Elton. Ace had tensed and Colt could see the muscles in his jaw knot in fury. All had been quiet since.
After retrieving the canteens, Colt slipped back through the woods, handing one to each of his friends. He unscrewed the cap and started to take a swallow when Dan jerked his head toward the cabin and whispered, “Look there.”
Elton had come out onto the porch, shoving Meg in front of him, using her as a shield. She was terrified.
Colt put the cap back and lowered the metal container to the ground by the strap, while he reached for his rifle with his free hand, peering through gaps in the drooping leaves of the scrub trees. Kneeling, Dan rested his weapon on the stump of the dead tree. Ace stood slowly, his rifle at the ready.
Meg's hair had come loose from its pins, and Elton's hand was twisted through it to hold her in place. His other hand gripped the revolver he had pressed against her side. She was cradling her left elbow against her body with her right hand. Sounds of her soft sobbing mingled with the moaning of the wind and the sounds of the woods.
Ace muttered something in either Cherokee or Celtic. Whichever it was, Colt didn't understand a word of it, but he got the gist nevertheless. A muscle knotted in Ace's lean jaw.
“Hiding behind a woman's skirts?” Ace taunted so that Elton would have no trouble hearing.
“Keep your mouth shut, breed,” Elton screamed back.
He was drunk and probably still drinking. After all, he'd been deprived of his favorite pastime while he was behind bars. Elton, a country boy with more than his fair share of “blarney,” as Ace might say, was once considered one of the best-looking men in the county.
Always one to have his way with the women, he'd set his sights on Meg, a pretty little thing who came from a poor family. He'd charmed her and wooed her and bought her pretty things, and when she'd come up pregnant, he'd done the right thing according to society's standards and married her. It might have been the right thing to do in the eyes of the world, but her marriage had been pure hell for Meg.
“Are the kids okay?” Colt called.
“Don't you worry about my kids,” Elton said. “I'd never hurt a hair of their heads.”
“Then let them come out, and Dan can take them back to town.”
With the children gone, it would be two less people Colt had to worry about getting hurt in the standoff he knew was to come.
“They're fine right where they are,” Elton insisted.
“You know this isn't going to end well for you, Thomerson, so why don't you give yourself up?” Dan called.
Elton laughed, an ugly sound with no kinship to joy. “Your deputy deaf, Sheriff? I ain't changed my mind in the last couple minutes.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“Well,” the outlaw drawled, “I just want you all to take a good gander at my pretty wife. She ain't hurt too bad right now, but that's easy changed if y'all don't hightail it back to town and let me leave here in peace.”
To prove his point, he gave a hard yank on Meg's hair. She gave a sharp cry of pain. “I can hurt her real bad, and you know I'll do it if I have to.”
“You know I can't just let you ride away from here, Elton,” Colt called. “My job is to bring you in. I'd prefer to take you in alive, and it would be a lot easier for everyone if you just let her go and you and Joseph give yourselves up.”
“I don't think so, Sheriff. Prison life don't agree with me. If you'da just let well enough alone, my good friend Joe woulda had time to move the loot. Then when we broke out, we'd have been long gone, and none of this would be happenin'.”
Colt forced a bitter laugh. “The problem with that is you lied and sent
my
friend to the pen when he didn't belong there. The law is all about justice, Elton.”
“Justice be hanged! Hey, Injun! You see this here hurt arm of my wife's?” He reached out and took Meg's injured arm in a cruel grip that sent her to her knees and elicited a piercing scream. “It's your fault.”
Gripping his rifle until his knuckles grew white, Colt fought the growing urge to shoot Elton himself. When Ace took a step forward, Colt reached out and stopped him with a warning shake of his head. “He's got the gun aimed right at her head.”
Ace nodded, challenging Elton instead. “How do you figure that?”
“She says you been bringin' her food and such.”
“She and the children need to eat.”
“I reckon that's true, but I been wonderin' how she's paying you.” His insinuation was obvious.
Ace shot Colt a dark look that said without words he'd reached the end of his patience, which Colt knew was not inconsiderable. He heard his friend push a low hissing breath through his teeth, and in one smooth motion, he lifted his rifle to his shoulder and fired a single shot into the porch boards near Thomerson's feet. There was no doubt he could have hit him if he'd wanted.
Jumping back and letting loose a string of curses worthy of the saltiest sailor, Elton grabbed Meg by her good arm, hauled her to her feet and pulled her back inside. Just before he slammed the door shut, he screamed, “You'll pay for that, Injun.”
After Colt shot Ace a disgruntled look, they settled down to wait.
Every half hour or so, they repeated their calls for Elton and Joe to come out. Colt knew they were playing a waiting game. There was a chance that one of them would pass by a window, making a target of themselves. The only thing wrong with that was that Meg and the kids, an eight-month-old baby girl and a three-year-old boy, were somewhere inside. Colt had no way of knowing where, and there was a chance they could be hit by the bullet.
Fury radiated off Ace. Colt halfway expected him to rush into the house to try to save Meg and the kids, and get killed in the process. Having been the recipient of several beatings in prison, his friend didn't much like the notion of a man abusing women and children.
To distract Ace from his anger, Colt told both men he figured that Elton was biding his time for the sun to go down so he and Joseph could make a run for it. He couldn't leave now because his horses were in plain sight, and if he or Joseph came to fetch them, they'd have a bull's-eye on their backs.
Darkness was still a while away, but Colt figured they needed to have a plan and be in place long before then so that they could keep an eye on all the exits. He told Ace to circle through the woods on one side of the house and Dan to do the same on the other. Both men slipped through the trees. It always amazed Colt that as big as Dan was, he could move like a ghost when he needed to. With both his helpers on their way to new positions, Colt settled down for another wait.
Even though he knew he needed to stay sharp and focused, his sleepless night plus the heat and boredom of waiting lulled him into a state of lethargy, and he found his mind wandering back to his kids and Allison. There hadn't been time to ask her to look after Brady and Cilla while he was gone, but there was no doubt in his mind that she would do just that.
He wondered if she'd noticed that he'd gone to church and if she'd slept the night before or lain awake and thought about the things they'd said. Did she regret her answer as much as he did? He knew she might regret it, but he doubted that she'd change her mind.
God was important to her, a huge reason she was the incredible woman she was. He wouldn't have her any other way. The question was, would she have him if she believed he truly wanted to be that man?
Could
he be that man?
Please, God...
He wasn't even aware that a prayer was taking shape in his mind. He wanted her in his life. Wanted her as a mother for his children, both the ones he had and the ones he wanted to have with her. He wanted to come in at night and find her doing things around the house. Wanted to play croquet with her and maybe even start reading with her in the cold winter evenings. He wanted to cuddle with her as they fell asleep in each other's arms and wake up next to her warmth every morning.
That thought brought him around to the still-unanswered question of why she refused to believe that he loved her. A memory of the day they'd had breakfast at Ellie's flitted through his mind. That was the day he'd discovered her hidden insecurities. Was it possible that she'd convinced herself he couldn't love her for the same reasons he'd used to try to convince himself that she was not his type? Thank goodness he'd figured out that nothing was further from the truth! It might have taken him a couple of weeks to realize it, but she was exactly what he'd been looking for. Exactly what he needed.
Colt waved away a couple of mosquitoes. In fact, he thought, she was downright adorable. He loved her fiery hair and her freckles. And, when she didn't wear all the flounces and gathers and ruffles, she didn't look the least bit plump. The word to describe her, he'd long realized, was
curvy.
If there was anything that might put men off, it was her intelligence, her shyness and the wall she'd put up between herself and the male populace to protect her heart: the persona adopted by the strict no-nonsense Miss Grainger. A bit haughty. Composed. Unflappable. All the things he knew she had to be to be a good teacher. More than that, she was good and kind and...
He jerked aside and smacked his neck, hoping to foil a couple of bloodsucking mosquitoes that had decided it was supper time and he was the main course. At the same time he bobbed to the side, several things happened. He seemed to register them in slow motion.
There was an earsplitting
crack
quickly followed by another. A sharp cry. The sensation of something whizzing by his head. Wood chips spewing over him. A crashing sound. He realized in a split second that someone had taken a shot at him and dived onto his belly in an instinctive gesture.
As he lay there panting for breath, he heard another two shots from the other side of the house. The thought of what had happened slammed into him. Someone had tried to kill him. Thomerson or Jones? It didn't matter. What mattered was that Dan and Ace were battling it out with the two outlaws and needed his help.
Thanking God for mosquitoes, he rose to his knees and pivoted slowly, resting his Winchester on top of the log and scanning the area in front of him. All was silent. The shot that had almost ended his life had come from his right. So had the crash. Had Ace wounded the shooter? A couple of rounds had been fired in Dan's vicinity, too. Had he gotten his man?
Without warning, Colt felt a hand on his shoulder. He whipped his head to the right and saw Ace squatting behind him. How did he do that? Colt wondered as relief washed through him.