Love's Sweet Revenge (22 page)

Lloyd kept his eyes on Jake. He frowned. “You…look terrible.”

Jake grinned and pulled the blankets higher over Lloyd's shoulders. “I
should
look terrible. You've kept me awake for almost three days straight. Your mother and Evie, too. And Brian and Katie aren't in much better shape.”

Lloyd looked around, bending up his other knee.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus!” Evie whispered. “Daddy, he's moving both legs!”

“What…happened?” Lloyd tried to sit up but cried out from pain.

Jake gently pressed his shoulders. “Take it easy, Lloyd. You were shot. We weren't sure you'd even live. You're still in a lot of danger, so you have to lie still. We can't be positive infection won't set in.” He leaned closer, kissing his forehead.

“Jesus, Pa…what the hell…was that for?”

“Because I love you.”

“Well, if somebody is going to…kiss me…I'd just as soon…it was Katie. Where is she? Where's…my Katie? Is she…okay?”

“She's fine.”

Evie wiped at tears and leaned down to give her brother a kiss on the cheek.

“That's more like it.” He suddenly scowled. “Wait! Evie! You…that man! I…remember now.” He reached for Evie and tried to sit up again.

Jake held him down. “It's okay, Lloyd. Evie is all right.”

“I'll go get Katie,” Evie told him.

She started to rise, but Lloyd grasped her hand. “You really…okay?”

Evie smiled for him. “I really am. And Katie will want to know you're awake. Just lie still, big brother, and I'll go get her.” Evie glanced at her father. “You stay calm, Daddy. God is with us. As soon as Katie gets in here, you go see Mother.” She started to leave.

“Wait.” Jake walked around the bed and pulled her into his arms, his embrace saying everything.

“It's okay, Daddy.”

Jake took a deep breath, keeping her close. “You have a way of taking the gun out of my hand. I'm so sorry…for the things you've been through.”

Evie felt his whole body shiver as he hugged her tighter.

“Don't you be sorry for one thing, Daddy. Not one thing. Just promise me you'll get out of here and get some rest and be with Mother. She needs you so much.”

“I promise.” Jake kissed her hair and let go of her, wiping at tears with his shirtsleeve. “You do the same thing. Get some rest. Your husband is already mad enough at me. I don't want him blaming me for you losing that baby.”

“I'll be just fine.” Evie leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I'll go get Brian and Katie.” She left, and Lloyd groaned the word “Pa” again.

“I'm right here, Lloyd.” Jake hurried back over to his side.

“I remember something. Evie…looked so scared.” He closed his eyes. “Jesus, now I remember. Evie! Pa, I tried to stop him…”

“It's over, Son. Mike Holt is dead.”

Lloyd met his eyes. “You?”

“Me.”

“You in…trouble again?”

“Probably.”

Lloyd closed his eyes. “Shit.” He grimaced. “Pa, I can't…keep getting you…out of trouble.”

“I'll handle it. Your job is to just get better.”

“Everything hurts, Pa.”

Jake leaned over and fluffed his pillow as best he could. “It will get better. And I'll be here to help Katie. So will Brian. And we've had the best doctor in Denver taking care of you. He took the bullet out. You have no idea how good it is to see you moving your legs and arms. We weren't sure you'd be able to move at all. The bullet ended up pretty close to your spine.”

“Katie,” Lloyd whispered. “Tell me she's okay, too.”

“So far.”

“The baby—”

“She's hanging on to it.” Jake leaned closer again, grasping the brass rail at the head of the bed with one hand and taking Lloyd's hand with the other. “I love you, Son. I'm sorry as hell that sonofabitch got to you before I did. I would have shot sooner, but Evie was in the way, and then
you
were in the way. When Holt fired that gun and I saw you go down…” His voice broke, and he took a deep breath. “I went down with you.”

Lloyd grasped his wrist. “I'm sorry I…got mad at you…after that thing with Clem.”

“You had every right to be mad. I am well aware that I can be a real sonofabitch sometimes. You're a hell of a man, Lloyd. You'll get through this, and someday you'll be the biggest landowner in Colorado, and you'll carry the Harkner name with a lot more respect than I ever could.”

Lloyd clung to his wrist. “I'll never be…
Jake
Harkner, Pa,” Lloyd answered weakly. “There's a damn lot of pride in that…too. You…remember that.”

The words tore at Jake's heart. “You're as bad as Evie when it comes to making me out to be more than I am.”

“No. Evie…sees you through special glasses that…filter out the bad. I…see
all
of you…but I…love you anyway.”

Jake grinned through tears. “I guess that's one way to put it.”

Lloyd grasped at the sleeve of Jake's shirt. “Why are you…wearing…my favorite shirt?”

“Because I haven't left this room since you were shot, and I had to change out of that fancy suit I wore to the ball.” Jake straightened. “It had a little blood on it.”

Lloyd looked him over. “Were you…hurt?”

“I'm all right. I had a little scuffle with Holt before I took him down, and his gun went off. The bullet skimmed across my left shoulder. Not all the blood on that good shirt I was wearing was mine, though. Things get a little messy when you shoot someone point-blank.”

“Pa? Oh…God!” He grasped Jake's arm tighter. “You
are
in trouble…aren't you? I…know you. You…went crazy…didn't you?”

“A little.”

“A
little
?”

“That man shot my son! My
unarmed
son!”

“You weren't…supposed to have a gun…”

“I'm Jake Harkner. I
always
have a gun.”

Lloyd covered his eyes. “Jesus, Pa.”

Brian came into the room then with Evie and Katie.

“Lloyd!” Katie hurried to his side and sat down on the bed to lean over and kiss his lips.

“Hey, Katie-girl. I'm in…no condition for this,” he joked.

Brian turned to Jake. “I told Randy to give Katie some time with Lloyd before she comes in here,” Brian told him. “Go see your wife, Jake. She's been staying with Katie and Evie, but I told her to go to your room and wait there. You've been with her in here for most of these three days, but you haven't
really
been with her.”

Jake ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah.” He glanced at Lloyd again. Both his sister and his wife were fussing over him.

“Too many…women,” Lloyd teased.

Jake grinned. “Son, I assure you, you can never be surrounded by too many women.” He walked around and touched Katie's shoulder. “Katie, don't do anything but be here for him. You let me and the doctors do the hard work, understand? And don't let him move around too much. He still has a long way to go.”

Katie stroked Lloyd's hair. “He's already falling asleep again. I can stay here by him, can't I, Brian?”

“Sure you can.”

“Thank God he came around,” she wept. “What would I do without him?”

The words reminded Jake of things Randy had said to him too many times over the years.
Randy. My God, Randy, I've left you out again.
He picked up his six-gun and headed out, looking into the hallway first to make sure no one was out there waiting for him. He hurried into his and Randy's room to find Randy standing there in a robe and looking anxious.

“Jake, is it true?” she asked, looking ready to pass out. “He woke up? He moved his legs?”

“It's true.”

She searched his eyes. “And how are you?
Who
are you? Do I have my husband back?”

He turned and locked the door. “Not completely. I'm trying, Randy.”

“I've been living with an outlaw the last three days, Jake.”

He looked down at the gun in his hand, then met her gaze. “Last I remember, it's the
outlaw
you fell in love with.”

She shook her head. “I fell in love with the man underneath all that. And right now I need him in the worst way. Don't shut me out, Jake. I can't do this by myself, and neither can you. When Jake the outlaw rode out of my life once after we first met, I just wanted to die.”

He saw the love in her eyes, thought about all she'd been through, being the wife of Jake Harkner. He set the gun aside and walked up to her, pulling her into his arms.

“Well, he's here for now.”

Randy rested her head against his chest and wept. “I didn't even take the medicine Brian brought over to help me sleep. I hoped you'd come here and just hold me, and I wanted to be awake for it.”

Jake kissed her hair. “I'm sorry I've left you out. I just…” He squeezed her tighter. “God, Randy, I thought I'd lost him! I feel like I failed him, Randy. All those years we rode together back in Oklahoma I never once failed him. When I saw him go down…” He began to stumble. “It should have been me! It should have been me!” He rambled between Spanish and English.

“Jake, I can't hold you up.”

They literally helped each other to a bed. Jake felt himself nearly collapsing. He pulled her onto the bed and crushed her close. “I shouldn't have left you alone in this.” He ran a hand into her hair and kissed the top of her head. “
Que Dios te acompane, mi amor. Yo te amo.
”

“And I love you, Jake. It's going to be all right now. I know it is. Tell me that when this is all over we'll go back to that line shack, Jake, just you and me.”

“We'll go back.” He clung to her then…and wept.

“He'll be all right,” Randy soothed. “He's in God's hands.”

“
¡Mi hijo! ¡Le falle
!
”

Randy recognized the words
my son
and
fail
. “You did not fail him, Jake. No one knew. No one knew. You did what you could.”

“
¡Mi hijo, favor perdóname
!
”

“There is nothing to forgive. Lloyd will never blame you for this.” Randy held him tightly as his tears soaked her neck and the pillow beneath her. He needed this. The Jake who'd refused all feelings could not deny that they were there. All she could think of was the horror it must have been for him as a tortured little boy with no one to hold him. Her own tears mingled with his as they both wept until they fell into an exhausted sleep.

Randy finished pinning up her hair. “Button me up,” she asked Jake.

Jake walked up behind her, wearing his own clothes now, a white shirt and denim pants. He'd just pulled on his boots after his daily ritual of shaving and scrubbing his teeth with baking soda—things he'd neglected while sitting at Lloyd's bedside for nearly four days.

Randy watched him in the mirror. “I see some remnants of an outlaw, Jake, and I feel it in the way you are jerking at those buttons.”

He frowned. “They're going to try to arrest me, Randy. You understand that, don't you?”

She closed her eyes. “Maybe they won't.”

“They will. And I'm still not leaving here—not until Lloyd is standing and walking. And there is one other thing we haven't talked about.”

“I don't want to think about it.”

“We
have
to. Brad Buckley is still out there somewhere, so if I get hauled away—”

“Don't say that!” She stood up and turned to wrap her arms around his middle. “Jake, I just want to go home to the J&L.”

“Believe me, there is nothing I want more.”

Someone tapped on the door then. “Jake? Mrs. Harkner? It's me—Pepper. Cole is with me.”

Randy pulled away, wiping at her eyes. “Just a minute!” she called out. She turned around so Jake could finish buttoning her dress.

“Jake, I told them they should get the grandsons and Ben when they go home, and bring them back here.”

Jake finished her buttons and walked over to pick up his gun belt. “I don't want my grandsons involved in this.” He buckled the gun belt.

Randy hurriedly straightened the still-unmade bed. “Stephen has a right to see Lloyd, Jake, and having him here might help Lloyd heal faster. And Ben will be worried sick once he finds out what's happened. He gets so scared when he thinks he might lose you. He and Little Jake will both want to see you're okay. I want them here, whether you like it or not.”

Jake scowled. “Well, those precious little granddaughters should be left at the ranch.”

“I agree.”

“Anybody out there in the hallway?” Jake called to Pepper as he approached the door.

“No. Just us.”

Jake opened the door and quickly let in the two men while Randy opened a carpetbag and retrieved the papers they needed. The men glanced around the room nervously, feeling uncomfortable in Jake's private room. Pepper looked Jake over as though fearing he might pull a gun on him.

“Relax,” Jake told them. “I only blow the heads off my enemies, not my friends.”

“Well then, I reckon we're glad you consider us friends,” Cole joked, trying to lighten the moment.

“We're damn sorry about Lloyd, Jake,” Pepper told him. “It's a goddamn shame. I ain't never had a kid—none that I know of anyway—but anybody can see how close you two are. And Lloyd is a damn fine man.”

Jake nodded. “Thank you.” He took a cigarette from a tin on a nearby dresser and lit it.

Pepper and Cole removed their hats and nodded to Randy. “Ma'am, this must be awful hard on you and Jake both,” Cole told her.

“We are all praying for him,” Randy answered, “and you know God will certainly listen to Evie's prayers, if no one else's.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Pepper told her. “No doubt about it.”

“Lloyd woke up and moved his legs last night,” Jake told them, “so we're hopeful.”

“Good! That's damn good,” Cole told him.

“And right now you need to run a few errands,” Jake added, taking a drag on the cigarette. “Randy already told you what you need to do. She has a note to give you for the bank. After you pick up supplies, I want you to go to that garden supply place over on Eighteenth Street and buy as many yellow rosebushes as they have. Take them home and have Rodriguez plant them all around the veranda of the main house. A few red ones are okay, but mostly yellow. I want them there for Randy when we get home.”

“Yes, sir.”

Randy felt like crying over the fact that in the midst of all that was happening, Jake remembered her roses.

Pepper watched Jake tie his holsters to his thighs. “You okay, Jake?”

“I will be when Lloyd is up and walking. He spoke last night and moved around quite a bit.”

Cole nodded. “You've got everybody scared to death after what you did to Mike Holt,” he told Jake. “Not even Denver's finest police want to come up here and try to arrest you.”

“Good.” Jake took a drag on the cigarette as Randy handed Cole the papers.

“Lloyd has a long way to go,” Jake told them, “and I still might be facing an arrest, so I don't know what's going to happen or how soon we'll make it back to the J&L. Make sure the men there are taking proper care of everything, and give my baby girls hugs for me.”

“You trust us no-goods to be huggin' those little angels?” Pepper asked.

“Of course I do. And I don't want them to know that anything bad has happened. Make up whatever story you want to tell them, and make sure Stephen and Ben and Little Jake understand they're not to tell those girls anything that would make them scared or make them cry.”

Cole nodded. “We'll tell them.”

Pepper shook his head. “I never knew a man who could blow—” He hesitated. “Who could do what you did and then worry about somebody givin' hugs to two little girls.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I'm two different men, and my poor wife has to live with
both
of them. I try to be the good Jake, but the bad one just can't help some of the things he does.”

“They surely won't send you to jail, Jake,” Cole assured him. “For God's sake, the man shot your unarmed son. Lord knows if Lloyd had had his own gun with him, that never would have happened. He's as good with a gun as you are.”

“I just wish I'd realized what was happening sooner. That sonofabitch should never have been allowed into that dance. I'll see to it that the woman who let him in goes to jail herself for aiding in an attempted murder.”

Pepper nodded to Jake then. “Well, in the meantime, we'll get those roses and other supplies to the ranch and come back here with the grandsons. I'm sure by now the rest of the men will be glad to give Little Jake over to us for a while.”

That got a grin out of Jake. “I don't doubt that one bit.” Jake took another drag on the cigarette. “You don't need to be in a big hurry. After a couple of days of excitement at seeing a city, those boys will get bored real fast, and we know Lloyd has a good two weeks of recovery ahead of him, maybe a lot longer. Nothing is going to happen anytime soon.”

Pepper nodded and put his hat back on. He started to leave, then hesitated. “Oh, by the way, there are a couple of men downstairs askin' about you, Jake. One's a fancy-lookin' dude—like a big city lawyer or somethin', and I heard the other one say he was a reporter from Chicago. Wears round wire glasses and looks more like a kid than a man.”

Randy gasped. “Jake! It must be Jeff!” She looked at Pepper. “Jeff Trubridge is the reporter from Chicago who spent time with Jake and Lloyd back in Guthrie and wrote the book about Jake. He came to visit once the first year we settled here, before you and Cole even worked for us.”

“Well, him and the other man was askin' your room number, but the clerk downstairs said he wasn't allowed to give it out,” Pepper told her.

“Go ahead and tell them where we are,” Jake told them. “The man with Jeff—” He shared a look with Randy, strong memories of another man who'd loved her hitting home. “He's probably a lawyer friend we also knew back in Guthrie. His name is Peter Brown.”

“We'll take care of it,” Pepper told him on his way out.

Both men left, and Jake locked the door and leaned against the wall beside it. “I'll be damned. We haven't seen Jeff in a couple of years, and we've never seen Peter Brown since—”

Since he left for Chicago because he loved me too much to stay in Guthrie
, Randy thought. She saw the same thought in Jake's eyes. “Jake, he must be here to try to help us. Hear him out. Personally, I'll be relieved to see both of them. It gives me a little more hope.”

Jake looked her over with a strong hint of “you belong to me” in his eyes. “Maybe he's just here for
you
. If things go bad, you'll need someone to turn to. I'm sure Peter would gladly help out.”

“Jake, don't start. Jeff told us in that letter a year ago that Peter's married now.”

“That doesn't change how he'll always feel about you.” He walked over to a dressing table and snuffed out his cigarette. “Don't worry. I'll be good.”

“He did so much for us.”

“I am well aware of what he did, and I'm also aware he did it all for you.”

“And if he's here to help you, it only shows what a good friend he is to us—
both
of us. He does care about you, Jake. That was obvious when he worked so hard on that petition to get your sentence shortened.”

Jake raked her over with his gaze as she walked closer. “I love you,” he told her.

Randy saw the flash of past regrets in his eyes. “And I love you, way more than you can ever imagine.”

Someone tapped on the door. “Jake? It's Jeff Trubridge. I have Peter Brown with me.”

Jake kept the cigarette between his lips. “Anybody else?”

“Just us.”

“This had better not be a trick. There are a few people out there who'd like to see me hang.”

“Jake, for God's sake, how well do I know you?” Peter spoke up. “You'd still like to shoot me, and I have no doubt you are wearing guns right now. Do you think I'd add to your wrath by bringing someone up here to try to cart you away?”

“Well, I don't know, Peter.” Jake winked at Randy. “If they hang me, that leaves Randy a widow. Pretty convenient for you, wouldn't you say?”

“It would be if I wasn't already married to someone else.”

Randy smiled.

“Jake, stop joking around and let us in,” Jeff spoke up. “I have coffee with me, and it's still nice and hot.”

“Well, since Peter is married now, I guess it's okay.” With his back still to the wall, Jake opened the door and peered into the hallway, seeing no one else. “Come on in.”

The men walked inside, and Jake closed and locked the door. He fought old jealousies and reminded himself Evie was praying for miracles. If Peter Brown was here to try to keep him out of prison, maybe Peter was just another answer to those prayers. Keeping him out of prison this time
would
take a miracle.