Strong and Stubborn (3 page)

“Between you and me,”—Evie's words dropped heavily, as though weighted with regret and resignation—“I think Cora's had enough.”

Naomi sighed. “Between you and me, it's a testament to how well you raised your sister that she's stayed by Braden's side this long. Her devotion and commitment are stronger than he deserves.”

“Heaven knows I didn't encourage her to withstand Braden's foul moods.” A note of regret crawled beneath Evie's strong words—true words. “I didn't want her subjected to that kind of heartache. But I underestimated how deeply she loves him, and now I know I should have encouraged her loyalty and bolstered her spirits.”

Naomi instantly understood Evie's change of heart. Now that Jake Granger came along and earned her love, Evie held a new appreciation for the bond between a woman and her chosen mate. Naomi could only pray that appreciation never became pain or bitterness.

“Your own loyalty made you protective,” Naomi soothed. “In fact, I think knowing you would support her decision if she left Braden helped Cora to keep fighting for him.” They came to a stop.

“Naomi,”—her friend shook her head—“you have a way of making something preposterous sound wise. I feel like if I turn it around enough times in my mind, I'll find the sense in what you say.”

“Think about it, Evie.” Naomi moved toward the benches lining the front of the mercantile and sat down. Despite niggling worries over Cora, she felt the other two of their foursome were safe enough together. Right now Evie needed some assurance.

Out of them all, Evie Thompson worked the hardest from sunup to sundown. She gave the most to make their fledgling town run and asked the least in return. Between cooking for two dozen lumbermen, falling in love with a man whose secret nearly destroyed them all, and trying to care for her sister, Evie handled more than her fair share of troubles. By all rights, she deserved a rest!

“Better yet, let me walk you through my reasoning so you can see the way I do.” Naomi paused a moment to collect her thoughts. The extraordinary events since the mine collapse left a lot of ground to cover. How best to address the treacherous without losing sight of the triumphs? She silently prayed for the words.

“You financially supported Cora when your father died.” Naomi began with the facts. “You emotionally supported her when she fell in love with Braden—or, rather, the man Braden used to be.”

Here she paused as they both remembered that man. Braden, the handsome cousin Naomi never met until her family cast her out. Braden, whose immediate pretense that Naomi
honored
the Lyman family by becoming his sister's companion almost convinced Naomi herself that she hadn't been exiled in disgrace. How she missed
that
Braden!

“Yes.” Evie broke into Naomi's recollections. “I stood by her side when she accepted Braden's proposal—but when I learned of his plans to start a mining interest, I should have told her to wait.”

“Ah, but the Hope Falls mine seemed a perfect investment. All the geographical surveys, the rich geological samples, the location near the railroad … Braden gathered plenty of investors who saw the value of this place.” Naomi looked around the now-empty town. “When he put up his inheritance and accepted your and Lacey's investments for a diner and mercantile, Braden had every reason to expect Hope Falls would be a success—and the perfect place to raise a family.”

Evie gave a mirthless laugh. “Yes, it seemed perfect. We should have known nothing is. We should have realized—”

“That the mine would collapse?” Naomi's voice sharpened as she interrupted. “None of us could have imagined such a thing! You knew Braden would bring Cora here, so you bought in. I knew Lacey would follow her brother—and any opportunity for adventure—so I made the same commitment. Where love leads, each of us chose to follow.”

“Of course you're right.” Evie jumped off the bench to pace before it. “At least the first time. Investing in Hope Falls, the mine made sense. But surely we should have learned from that first disaster? After hearing Braden died in the collapse, we vowed to have nothing more to do with this place. Instead we jumped back in and compounded our mistakes! How could we be so
foolish
, Naomi?”

Talking this out wasn't helping much. Naomi wondered what on earth she could say to reassure Evie now. Because the truth was …

“I have no idea.” Her own admission caught her by surprise. But she couldn't escape the fact that their mad scheme to save Hope Falls was foolish in the extreme. Except … “Except that when we learned Braden actually survived the mine collapse, nothing could have stopped Lacey and Cora from coming here. And neither of us could let them gallivant across the country without us. It wasn't safe.”

“No, it wasn't safe for the two of them. But joining them didn't give much protection from the real danger here,” Evie cried. “I followed Cora to her fiancé, only to watch my sister's heart break.”

“You're wrong.” Hearing voices inside the mercantile, Naomi realized that Lacey and Arla had left the supply room and might be within earshot. She rose to her feet.
The worst of it is that we brought most of the danger upon ourselves with that ludicrous ad!
But now wasn't the time to say so. There never would be a time to say so, now that the ad brought Jake Granger into Evie's life. And, unless Naomi was much mistaken, the same ad brought Lacey's match to Hope Falls. The sparks flying between her cousin and the town's new hunter had less to do with disagreements than a powerful attraction.

“How?” Evie's desperation held a hint of hope. “How am I wrong?”

“Let's head back to the café.” Naomi tilted her head toward the store, where Cora's voice joined Arla's and Lacey's. She saw recognition flutter across Evie's face as they moved away.

When they'd reached the halfway point, Evie resumed the conversation. “I sheltered Cora too much, but I hated to see her hurting. Braden's enmity—so soon after her grief at news of his death—is too harsh a blow for my sister's tender heart.”

“Cora's heart isn't broken. It may be badly bruised, but it's not broken.” Naomi stepped off the raised wooden platform surrounding the store. “If your sister's heart had broken, she wouldn't persist in visiting Braden and weathering his storms.”

Evie walked a few steps more before giving a grudging nod. “I still think I should have encouraged my sister not to give up. No matter how terrible Braden's become, he's still the man she loves.”

“And I still think the opposite. Consider this,” Naomi propositioned. “If Cora dragged you out of Charleston, uprooting both your lives and dragging you to the wilderness, how do you think she felt when Braden took away the reason you both traveled here?”

“Furious with his wretched, ungrateful hide. What else?”

“No, that's how
we
felt, Evie. Not how Cora sees things. Turn it around. What if it were
your
fiancé, and
you
'd asked Cora to give up everything so
you
could be with a man who no longer wanted you?”

“Guilty.” Evie's eyes widened with equal parts of understanding and horror. “Oh, Naomi! Cora shouldn't feel as though she's to blame for the challenges we've faced. Hope Falls was—and still is—beyond what any of us imagined. She couldn't have changed any of it.”

“To an extent, I think both she and Lacey do blame themselves.” It had been Lacey, after all, who convinced them to write that accursed ad. But now wasn't the time to dwell on
that
mistake.

“How awful. What can we do to show them otherwise?”

“You already have.” Naomi reached out to pat Evie's shoulder as they returned to her kitchen door. “That Hope Falls brought you a fiancé of your own goes a long way toward alleviating Cora's worry, I'm sure. But I think the fact that you never make your sister feel as though she had to stay with Braden helped. Cora knew she wasn't trapped by your expectations because she knew you cared more about her happiness than you cared whether you'd left Charleston for nothing.”

Evie gave her a long look as though weighing the words. Finally her dimple surfaced. “I knew you'd turn out to be right.”

“Of course!” Naomi opened the doctor's door. “Sometimes the best way to support someone is to let them make their own choices.”

I
t's the right choice
, Mike reminded himself with every mile he put between Luke and his grasping grandparents. There was no contest between losing a house and losing his son.

“Come back here.” Mike wrapped a hand around his son's wrist and tugged it away from the open window and safely back inside the train car. This made the first of a days-long journey, and he knew from experience that he had to lay down the law at the start if he had any hope of keeping his ten-year-old's high spirits in check.

“I like the wind.” Color rode high on the boy's cheeks as he beamed with excitement. “It makes it feel like we're going fast!”

“Fast is good.”
The faster the better
. Mike wouldn't rest easy until thousands of miles separated his son from his in-laws' grasp.

His hand crept to his coat pocket, where a slip of paper linked this madcap flight to the possibility of a future free of the Bainbridges' threats. Softened from much handling, the telegram's short message offered opportunity, if not promises.

H
OPE
F
ALLS,
C
OLORADO.
Stop
.

B
ETWEEN
D
URANGO AND
S
ILVERTON.
Stop
.

N
EW SAWMILL GOING UP.
Stop
.

M
IGHT HAVE USE FOR CARPENTER.
Stop
.

A
SK FOR ENGINEER
L
AWSON.
Stop
.

G
IVE MY NAME AS REFERENCE.
Stop
.

S
OUNDS LIKE A STRANGE PLACE.
Stop
.

G
OOD LUCK AND
G
ODSPEED.
End
.

Mike didn't bother to take it out of his pocket, just fingered the edges to make sure it remained in place. These days a man's word—especially a stranger's word—wasn't trusted. He needed the telegram itself as a makeshift letter of introduction and proof of reference.

For that matter, he needed the telegram for his own peace of mind. The way Mike saw it, even if this Lawson fellow didn't need a carpenter or joiner—or simply didn't need one yet, as engineers often lavished time upon blueprints and schematics before getting down to the real business of construction—he might find other work.

True, he'd only ever swung an ax to break up or square off logs already cut down. But from what Mike heard, a strong back and a way with wood were traits that served a lumberman well. So long as he could make arrangements for Luke to remain out of the way, Mike was more than willing to try his hand felling trees.

“It doesn't feel like we're going so fast now.” Luke flattened both palms against the lower half of the window, which didn't open, squinting as though trying to make things blur by more quickly.

“We're going just as fast as we were with your hand out the window,” Mike told him. “But this way a tree branch won't hit you.”

Luke frowned in concentration. “If we're going as fast as the wind outside, then why does it feel so different?”

“How does it feel different, aside from being warmer?” Mike stretched his legs out, glad no one occupied the seats ahead.

“I don't know, ‘xactly.” Small fingers tapped on the armrest. “But the wind feels like adventure, and the train feels like …”

Mike suppressed a smile as his son reached for an explanation.

“Sitting!” Frustration seeped into the proclamation. “Like we aren't really doing anything much different than taking tea at home. If it wasn't for the noise, I'd hardly know we'd left!”

“Except the chairs at home are more comfortable,” Mike teased. “And even if your hand isn't out the window, you can still see things whisk past. Before the trip is over, you'll see a lot of places and people you never would have if we were still home.”

And hopefully none of the people we left behind
, Mike prayed as Luke settled into watching the world go by, his nose now pressed against the glass. And when he wasn't sleeping, Luke's nose pressed against the windowpanes of several other trains as the days and miles rolled past. By the time they reached Dallas, Mike fancied that the tip of his son's nose looked flatter than before the trip.

“Why do I have to stay behind?” A note of fear quivered beneath the question. “I thought we were leaving so Grandma couldn't take me away. I thought you said we were staying together and going on an adventure!”

“We are.” Mike squatted back on his heels to be at eye level, searching for the words to explain his reasons for leaving. “But every adventure has different stages. For just a little while, until the next part of our lives begins, you need to stay with your aunt.”

“But our adventure is supposed to be for both of us.” Luke rubbed his eyes, though Mike couldn't tell whether he wanted to keep from crying or to work out grit from the train ride. “Together!”

He reached out to hold one of his son's achingly small hands. To tell the truth, those hands—and the rest of Luke—had grown by leaps and bounds lately. All too soon his son would leave childhood behind. But for now there was enough of the little boy about him to need his daddy—and Mike was glad of it.

“Yep. That's why we left Baltimore. This is all about making sure our adventures are always together. You know that.” He gave Luke's hand a comforting squeeze, pleased when Luke squeezed back a little harder. Mike topped that, and they engaged in a short battle before Luke couldn't summon any extra strength and conceded defeat by trying to pull away. So Mike held on tighter and didn't let him.