Outlaw for Christmas (9781101573020) (3 page)

What if Noah
did
show up? What would she say? What would she do?

She had known Noah Walker for a matter of days and waited for him ten years. She was a fool!

Her love was that of a child for the first person who had paid her any mind.
Understandable.
What wasn't understandable was to continue to hope for the impossible, to continue to dream of a man who had never truly existed except in the eyes of a little girl.

“But he was always such a beautiful dream,” she murmured.

Ruth peered around the station one last time. She wouldn't come here again—on Christmas Eve, at any rate. For a moment, the line between what had once been and what was now blurred, and she saw the milling throng of orphans and parents, saw Noah striding away, disappearing forever, saw herself searching for him, always searching.

Snow filtered down. Huge, lacy flakes drifted across her cheek and caught in her eyelashes. Ruth blinked, then laughed.

It
was
snowing. How odd. The sky had been clear only a moment ago. Christmas miracles happened in the tiniest of ways.

She started toward the station, planning to go through the building and exit onto the street, where her wagon waited. But a shuffle, like a footstep on a plank, made her freeze, then turn.

She was still alone on the platform, though she no longer felt that way. Her gaze wandered. No train coming down the tracks, no riders on the horizon, not even the shadow of a rabbit racing through the night. Only the snow cascading down in wider and wider swirls of white.

She should get home. Instead, Ruth turned her face up to the silent night and stuck out her tongue. She caught a few drops of snow, then closed her eyes and let the pinpoints of ice cool her hot face and burning eyelids.

Giving up this night would be like losing him all over again.

Strengthening her resolve, Ruth clenched her hands, lowered her head, and opened her eyes. The station windows had gone dark.

She'd stayed much longer than she'd intended, and Mr. Woodcock had gone home. Muttering to herself, Ruth descended the platform steps and made her way through the alley between the train station and the hostelry to the south.

The moon had vanished beneath the snow clouds, and the alley was darker than dark. Her skirt swirled between her ankles, nearly tripping her as she hurried along. She had that odd sense of being watched again and at one point could have sworn she heard someone breathing heavily in the shadows.

Ruth burst from the alley and onto the street. Kelly Creek was deserted, everyone at home with their families, as she should be. Her horse snorted a welcome and pawed impatiently.

“Sorry, Annabelle.” Ruth patted the mare's soft nose. “You're a good girl to wait for silly old me.”

“Ruth.”

Her name whispered out of the alley. Annabelle nickered and shied. Ruth wanted to do the same.

She
couldn't
have heard her name rasp from that gaping darkness. She'd just walked out of there, and if someone was in there. . . . She shook off that thought and hurried to her wagon.

The odd shuffling noise came again. Louder and nearer this time. She spun about as a large, man-shaped figure lurched out of the alley.

Ruth drew in a breath to scream, and the moon chose that moment to drift from behind the clouds, casting silver rays across the street, across her, across him. The scream died unvoiced.

“Noah,” she whispered.

He stumbled, and she caught him, but he was larger than before, and she wasn't much bigger. His weight drove her to her knees, and he landed on the ground unconscious.

Ruth stared at her hands. The bright, shiny light of the moon turned the blood to black.

***

Pain and fever did strange things to Noah's mind. In the midst of dying, he found again the only thing worth living for.

Maybe he was already dead. Because alive he'd never see Ruth, never hear her voice call his name, never feel her small, gentle hands flit over his face. So dead he must be.

He'd never figured dead could hurt so damned much.

“You have to get up, Noah. Get in the wagon and I'll take you to the doctor.”

That brought him awake in a hurry. “No!” He lurched upward and nearly passed out again from the pain. When the black dots stopped singing and his gut stopped dancing, he opened his eyes, then shut them tight once more.

Idiot!
He
had
come to Ruth. He must have been more feverish, more delirious, than he'd thought.

“Noah.” Her voice wavered and broke.

Noah cursed himself some more. She wasn't used to having half-dead men paw her in the street. He'd frightened her, and he hated himself for it.

“You're hurt,” she continued, and her voice was stronger. “I can get the doctor, but it'll take twice as long.”

“No doctor,” he ground out. “Just give me a minute and I'll be on my way.”

“No!”

The word was so loud, Noah's eyes snapped open, and he glanced furtively around. But the town was as dead as he soon would be if he didn't get this bullet out of his belly.

“Y-you just got here. You can't leave. Especially not like this.”

He hadn't just gotten here. He'd been here quite a while, hiding in the alley, waiting for the night. Then, when he'd heard her footsteps, he'd crept forward. He hadn't been able to help himself.

He'd watched her and the sheriff. Though he hadn't been able to hear
what
they said, he could see that they were fond of each other. Although the chaste peck on the cheek the man had given Ruth told Noah fond was all they were. The happiness that had gone through him at that realization was out of proportion to the reason he was here—to make certain Ruth was all right before he crept off to die.

But instead of seeing her and leaving, he'd gone into the welcoming darkness, then awakened in her arms.

He was in Kelly Creek because he needed to see the only good thing in his life one last time. And he'd ruined that, too.

“Into the wagon.” She tried to help him up, but he was too big. That hadn't changed, either.

Noah took her hands. They were wet. He looked down and saw his blood all over her. “I'm sorry.” He tried to rub it off, on his pants, his coat. The thought of Ruth being touched by his bad blood made Noah half-crazy.

She caught his wrists, stilled his movements. “Stop that! You can't help it that you're bleeding.”

Little did she know.

“I don't mind blood. I'm not a ninny. Now come along.”

“No doctor, Ruth.” The world swam sickeningly, and he fought the murky swirl that threatened to pull him under once more. “I-I mean it. This is a . . . gunshot wound. There'll be too many questions. Understand?”

He could tell by her frown that she didn't. “Someone shot you? Who?”

“Never mind. You're right. I can't go on tonight. I need a place where I'll be alone.”

“Your horse?”

“Tied him in front of the hostelry. Figured they'd take him in when I died.”

She
tsked
at him like a schoolteacher. “You're not going to die. I won't let you. I have a place you can go. A place where you'll be all alone.”

This time when she tugged he helped her, and together they tumbled into the wagon. As he hit the seat, a spike of pain grated in his belly, and the oily blackness descended again.

It seemed like only a moment when he heard her calling. “Noah? We're there. You'll have to help me.”

He fought the darkness and forced himself to focus on Ruth. Her smile was his reward. She still had the same pixie face, the same Irish green eyes, the same red hair, though it had been tamed into an elaborate concoction of curls. He liked it better wild.

“Ruth O'Leary,” he murmured.

“Ruth Kelly. I was adopted. Can you make it inside?”

“I will.” He took a shallow breath, trying not to jar his injury, and got out of the wagon.

His horse, tied to the back, snorted and pawed. Dog did not like to follow anyone or anything. Dog liked to lead.

Silly to have a horse named Dog. No one knew he called the animal that but him—and Dog, of course.

He'd always wanted a dog, but his hand-to-mouth, here-today, gone-tomorrow lifestyle did not permit such frivolities. So Noah had named his horse Dog, and when no one was around to hear, he talked to him like one.

An abandoned farmhouse loomed out of the night. Painstakingly, Noah and Ruth made their way across the hard ground, littered with snow.

“Yours?” he asked.

“My father's. No one lives here anymore. You can be alone as you like.”

He wanted to be alone to die, but he wasn't going to tell Ruth that.

She took a lot of his weight. She'd always been stronger than she looked. Up the steps, across the porch, then into the house they went.

“Sit here.”

She lowered him into a kitchen chair and bustled about, lighting several lamps. The golden glow illuminated a roughly furnished but clean abode.

“The farm came to my father on a foreclosure. He liked the land, so he built my mother a house on the other side of the creek.” She waved vaguely toward the rear of the house. “He let the original farmhouse stand; kept it up for visitors. No one's expected until next week. You can stay. Although I'd rather you came to the house with me.”

He would have laughed if it hadn't hurt so much. He'd love to see what her adopted father thought of Ruth's bringing home a man with a gunshot gut.

“My horse—”

“Will be fine with Annabelle. There's food and bedding in the barn. I'll take care of him as soon as I take care of you.”

“I'd rather you took care of him first.”

“I don't give a pig's eye what you'd rather. Your horse will stand. You, however, are bleeding more than I'd like.”

“More than
I'd
like, too,” he muttered.

Ruth crossed her arms over her amazingly ample breasts. Why on earth was he noticing such things, and why now? “I take it you don't want to tell me who shot you?”

“I have no idea.”

Her frown returned. “Fine. Be difficult. Come and lie down in here.”

Because he figured he'd slide from the chair to the floor, he allowed her to help him into a small bedroom off the kitchen, usually reserved for a hired man or the in-laws, depending on the family. He collapsed on the bed while she brought in more light.

“How do you expect to get the bullet out if you won't let me get the doctor?”

“I hadn't planned on getting it out.”

“But you could die!”

“
That's
what I was planning on.”

Horror filled her eyes, quickly followed by anger. “You were just going to give up? Let that bullet take you?”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yes. Get it out. Or don't you know how?”

“I know how. I just don't think I'll be able to dig for it and stay conscious, too. That's a talent I haven't quite mastered yet.”

She stared at him bemused. “I don't understand you.”

“And you shouldn't. Go home, Ruth. It's Christmas Eve.”

“As if I didn't know that.” She put her hands on her hips. “How do you get a bullet out?”

Since he was feeling faint again, Noah closed his eyes and discovered that the room didn't spin quite so fast that way. “Need something long and thin. A knitting needle or a stick, if that's all you've got.”

His voice seemed to be coming from far away, but he kept talking. “Something that pinches; scissors, maybe. Heard it helps to pour whiskey on everything. Can't hurt. Dig the bullet out. Sew up the hole. Pray for my soul.” He laughed—as if that would work.

On a wave of pain, his chuckles turned to coughs. Funny, he could smell whiskey and hear the clink of metal on glass. His chest was cold, as if he weren't wearing a shirt. Ruth's skirts swished by his cheek.

“
I
can do that,” she whispered.

“Pray?” Noah struggled to open his eyes, but he couldn't.

“And everything else.”

A sudden and blinding pain sent him into the blackness for good this time.

Chapter Two

After Noah's mumbled instructions, Ruth gathered what she needed quickly, then removed his shirt, bunching the ruined garment at his side to catch some of the blood.

Her first sight of his broad chest left Ruth staring. Noah had been a big boy; he had become a very large man. His belly was flat and tight, and when he moaned and struggled against the pain, his muscles rippled, then released. Dark hair dusted his chest, continuing in a sinuous line into his black trousers. Though Ruth had never seen a man's chest before, she instinctively knew she was seeing an exceptional one now.

His would be perfect if not for the jagged hole that pulsed blood whenever he moved. Ruth had nursed her adopted mother through her final illness, but nothing could have prepared her to deal with the obscenity of a bullet that had blasted through warm, supple skin, turning the bronzed, muscular beauty into something ugly.

Wasting no more time, she did as he'd instructed with the whiskey and a knitting needle. Using such a common instrument for this uncommon operation made her dizzy and ill. Her hands shook.

But Noah needed her, so she gritted her teeth, had a stern little talk with her fingers, and went on even when he passed out completely from the pain. Hurting him made her whimper deep in her throat, but she did what had to be done as fast as she could.

To Ruth the procedure seemed to take hours, but in what was more likely less than five minutes, her probe clanked against the bullet, and she used a small sewing scissors to pull the offending bit of metal free. Such a small thing to make such an atrocious hole.

Quickly, before he woke up, she doused a needle and thread with whiskey and pulled the gaping skin together, stitching and knotting over and over until the jagged wound was closed.

Only when the worst was done did she sit back and let the panic wash over her. Now her hands shook uncontrollably, and her eyes burned as if she'd forgotten to open the damper on the stove and gotten a face full of wood smoke. She had to get herself under control before Noah woke up. If he woke up.

That thought brought her to her knees so she could look at him more closely. His skin had gone sickly pale, his breath shallow and rapid. She reached out to touch his forehead and as quickly pulled back. Her hand was covered in blood.

She started a fire in the stove. The farmhouse was far enough from the main house that the smoke would not be seen unless someone happened in this direction. That was not likely to occur over the next few days, as most folks would remain home for the holidays.

Next, she cracked the ice atop the water pail at the back door, filled a pan, and put the water on to heat. While it did, Ruth washed her hands in icy water, no need to waste the warm water on herself. After searching for and finding timeworn cloths in one of the kitchen cupboards, Ruth stood in the doorway of the bedroom and contemplated Noah.

How she remembered him then and how he appeared now were two far different things. He still had the same tangled dark brown hair and the same startling blue eyes amid a sun-kissed face sharp with angles and planes. But his countenance had matured from that of a boy on the verge of manhood to a man on the verge of . . . she wasn't sure what.

When she'd been with him on the train, she'd felt safe because he was big and strong and a little bit dangerous. Now she felt anything but safe. Noah had never hurt her physically, yet she felt threatened. Which made no sense at all when he lay unconscious and bleeding on the bed.

“Quit staring and start cleaning,” Ruth admonished herself. “You don't want to be washing his chest when he wakes up.”

The thought of running a warm cloth over that taut torso while his bright blue eyes watched her made Ruth hot all over. She crossed the room and put her hands back in the bucket, letting the icy wetness lap at her wrists until she no longer felt flushed.

Only then did Ruth take the pan of warmed water and clean cloths into the bedroom. Determined to be a nurse and not a ninny, she tugged a chair closer, then got to work.

The amount of blood turned her cold, but the heat of his skin beneath her hands disturbed her even more. By the time she'd replenished the water in the bowl for the third time and it still came away pink, worry nearly overcame any attempts to remain calm.

She would have thought he'd awaken by now. She had to get home or risk the danger of someone looking for her. Not that she couldn't explain what had happened. Not that her father would deny a sick man a place to stay. But Noah's insistence on being alone, the fact that he'd been shot and wouldn't tell her why or by whom, made her wary.

What if someone, for whatever reason, wanted to hurt him? What if they were still out there waiting to do so? Ruth shivered. She was out of her element with “what ifs” like that.

She'd promised Noah a place to be alone. She had not kept her first promise to him for years, only to break her second within hours.

So she covered him with blankets and tucked him in tight. Banked the fire, put on her coat, and wished for her gloves, then stood in the doorway and fought the urge to stay with him all through the night.

She might want hers to be the first face Noah saw when he awoke, but to keep him safe, she must leave him alone.

And pray that when she returned he would still be alive.

***

“Where have you been?”

Ruth hadn't even closed the front door before her father walked out of the parlor. As if to emphasize the lateness of the hour, the hall clock struck ten.

“I'm sorry, Father. I stayed at the train station thinking awhile.”

His frown of disapproval was nothing new. No matter how she tried, Ruth could not be his little lost Susan. Susan was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel-baby who had died far too young to make any mistakes. Ruth was a red-haired, green-eyed stranger who couldn't seem to get through a day without doing something wrong.

“I sent Tildy to bed. She's exhausted from all the Christmas preparations.”

Although Christmas would involve only Ruth and her father, their housekeeper, Tildy, refused to give up any of the traditions that had begun with Ruth's mother. Even now a tree stood in the corner, candles ready to be lit after breakfast on Christmas morn. The house smelled of ginger cookies, and tomorrow there would be taffy to pull.

Though most folks would hang long red stockings near the chimney to be filled in the dark of night with dried fruit and store-bought candy, the Kelly household had never done anything so common, even when Susan was alive. By the age of ten, Ruth had been divested of any belief in St. Nick, so presents were placed beneath the tree.

When Susan was little, her mother would read the poem “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” which most folks had taken to calling “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” each night before Christmas.

She'd read the poem once to Ruth before becoming too ill. The next year, Ruth had read it to her. The poem was the one thing they'd shared before she died.

The year following her mother's death, Ruth had begun to read the poem to her father. He'd thrown the volume of poetry into the flames, forbidding her to say those words ever again. Since then, Christmas had always been kept, though never very merrily.

“I hardly thought it fair to make someone of Tildy's age wait up to serve your dinner,” her father continued. “You missed a lovely beef roast, rare as you like it.”

The thought of rare roast after what she'd just done turned Ruth's stomach. “I'm not hungry.”

He looked her over from the tip of her head to the toe of her boot, as he'd done many times since the first time at the train station. The perusal did not take any longer now than it had then. “You'll waste away one day, Ruth, and then where will I be?”

Commenting on Ruth's frail, petite frame was as close to concern or affection that her father ever came. Another thing Susan had been was pleasantly plump. Of course, that hadn't stopped
her
from wasting away.

Ruth's eyes widened. What a horrible thing to think! What was the matter with her? She turned about to hang up her coat and give herself time to get the odd sense of annoyance and restlessness under control.

“Come into the parlor and have some tea. It
is
Christmas Eve even if you choose to traipse into town and sit there alone instead of spending the holiday at the only home you've ever known with the only family you have left.”

Despite her father's complaint, Ruth did not possess a rebellious nature. If she had, life would not have gone smoothly for her in the Kelly household or in Kelly Creek. Because Robert Kelly's word was law in the town he'd given his name to and in the house he called his home.

The misfortune of war had made Robert Kelly, son of Irish immigrants, his first fortune. Kelly had devoted his youth to working his way out of poverty. By the time he was twenty, he'd had an ice-cutting business of his own. But it was the war that made him rich before he was thirty.

Receiving beef from the West and selling it to a ravenous Union Army had given Kelly enough money to move from Chicago to Kansas when the fighting was through.

He'd bought the land around Kelly Creek, having been promised that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad would come through there, and it had. The town boomed, and so did Robert Kelly's pockets. But wealth could not cheat death, and Kansas had taken all that he loved.

So Robert loved nothing anymore, or so it seemed to Ruth. His desire was to be obeyed, and Ruth did that fairly well. Luckily, he had not forbidden her to go to the station on Christmas Eve. He hadn't liked it, but he'd never forbid her. Ruth wasn't sure what she would have done if he had.

She joined him in the parlor. Her first glance was for Susan, as was his. Forever plump and pretty, forever ten years old, Susan Kelly smiled in dimpled wonder from the painting that dominated the room.

Ruth poured her father's tea from the cart Tildy had no doubt prepared before dragging her poor old bones to bed. Dinner for recalcitrant adopted daughters was one thing, tea for the master was obviously another.

They sat back in their chairs. Her father stared at Ruth over the rim of his cup. “What were you thinking about half the night? If I didn't know better, I'd believe you'd met a new man.”

Ruth bobbled her cup, sloshing tea onto her gown. The spreading brown liquid mixed with a dried drop of blood on her skirt. She squinted against the flickering firelight. There were quite a few spots of blood all over her skirt.

The cup clattered when her hand jerked. Robert Kelly gave an exasperated sigh. “I don't understand how a dainty, little thing like you can be so clumsy. Susan, even at her age, never spilled a thing.”

Somehow Ruth doubted that. But her father seemed to need Saint Susan much more than he needed skinny, clumsy Ruth.

Carefully, she placed the cup and saucer back on the tea cart, then twitched her skirt and folded her hands over the blood and tea stains. In this light, her father wouldn't see the spots, but she'd have to burn this dress or Tildy would. The woman might be as old as dirt, but age had not dimmed eyes that were as sharp as a bird of prey.

Ruth's father still stared at her as if he expected something. At her blank stare he gave another sigh, this one more exasperated. “You said you were thinking the night away. What could be so important?”

Leon!
She'd forgotten all about him—his posse, his latest proposal, her newest answer. She'd forgotten everything but Noah the moment he'd fallen into her arms.

“Leon asked me to marry him again.”

“Excellent. Of course, this time you accepted.”

“I . . .” She frowned. “Why of course?”

He raised an eyebrow, and she fought not to bow her head at his silent rebuke of her questioning him. “We've discussed this. I'm not getting any younger, Ruth. I'd like to see you settled. You need a man who can protect my holdings.”

Settled, not loved. Protected, not cherished. Holdings, not her. She shouldn't be surprised. So why was she?

“I said I'd think on it.”

“Think? What's to think about?”

“I've told you before. I don't love him, Father.”

“Forget about love. It'll destroy you.”

Shadows flitted over his face. From the fire or the past? Ruth couldn't tell.

“Choose a husband based on the future and not your feelings. That's the sensible way to go about these things. You've always been sensible, Ruth. I like that about you.”

He
liked
that about her. Ruth stifled an exasperated sigh of her own. She
was
sensible. At least whenever her father could see. When he wasn't watching, she did all sorts of unsensible things.

Like walking barefoot in the spring grass, hiding her corset in the closet all summer, taking off her bonnet in the brightest sunshine, and dancing all alone in her room when the winter moon shone. She couldn't help herself. Inside, sometimes, there was a whole different Ruth screaming to be free.

Standing, he moved to the doorway and paused. “Think on it if you must. But Leon is a sensible choice. He's the perfect man for the job.”

Job? Marrying her was a job? Ruth couldn't speak, she was so shocked. Taking her silence as acquiescence to his wishes, since it always had been in the past, her father went to bed. Ruth continued to stare into the fire.

If things had turned out differently tonight, she might have agreed with her father and married Leon. She could wait until she was as old as Tildy and never fall in love. Because no man, however gentle and kind, could ever be Noah.

Ruth hurried upstairs, gathered a few things, then put on her coat and let herself out of the house. She need not worry that anyone would hear her. The groom was as deaf as an ax handle, and once asleep, neither her father nor Tildy would awaken until the rooster crowed. By then Ruth would be snug in her bed with no one the wiser.