It was the easy grin of a man who knows his love is returned, who knows that whatever doubts existed in the past no longer exist.
“Did you always believe we would end up together?” she asked suddenly.
“Life with you is never a certain thing, Cebellina. That is why I am so looking forward to it.”
“Stop your horse,” she said.
He pulled his
bayo
to a halt.
Sloan grasped his neck with her hand and pulled his head down so she could kiss him on the mouth. His lips were hard at first, then gradually softened as the kiss deepened. The feeling she was being watched eventually caused Sloan to break the kiss. She opened her eyes to discover four grinning faces surrounding her and Cruz.
“Can’t we get a little privacy here?” she asked.
“Sure, Sloan,” Creed said, kneeing his mount past her.
“You bet,” Long Quiet answered.
“Far be it from me to interrupt the course of true love,” Luke said.
“Pardon me, madam,” Beaufort LeFevre said, tipping his hat as he rode past.
When they were alone again, Cruz said, “May I ask what inspired you to kiss me here in the middle of the trail?”
“Do I need a reason to show you how much I love you?”
“Do you love me? The forever, enduring kind of love?”
“I think so,” she said, her expression troubled. “That’s what I thought about on my ride—whether love is forever, and enduring. I think that no matter what tried to tear us apart now, my love for you would endure. But I can’t see the future.”
This time it was Cruz’s mouth that captured Sloan’s. It was a kiss of possession, a kiss that said,
I will love you forever—no matter what
.
“Nothing can tear us apart,” he said, his voice hoarse with feeling, “so long as we are determined to be together.”
“Y
OU CRACKBRAIN JOBBERNOLL!
W
HAT WERE
you thinking to ride out in the middle of the night like that. You had us all worried sick,” Cricket greeted her eldest sister.
“Oh, my,” Bay said, hugging Sloan, a gesture becoming less awkward for them as they grew older. “You’re a mess. What happened to you?”
Sloan suddenly realized how she must look—bruised, disheveled, and wearing the shirt Cruz had given her off his back to replace the one Alejandro had torn away. “Despite the way I look, I’m fine,” Sloan said. “Really.”
Her protestations didn’t save her from her sisters. Cricket ordered up a tub, and Bay raced to see what she could find to doctor Sloan’s bruised face. Sloan was reminded of the homecoming she and Cricket had given Bay when she had returned from her life among the Comanches.
Sloan’s absence from Three Oaks hadn’t been nearly so long as Bay’s, but she had still found her family’s welcome cup of love full to overflowing.
It was pleasant to be coddled, to have her sisters worry over her and pamper her. In the past, she had been the one to worry. She had been the one to coddle—although she hadn’t been much for coddling.
As with everything else, that was changing too. She no longer needed to be mother to her sisters. They were mothers in their own right. They had grown up and changed. As she had changed.
Allowing herself to love Cisco and Cruz had meant unfolding the softer side of her nature. It had taken her by surprise, like fluffy cotton bursting from a sharp, prickly boll. It had left her able to accept her sisters’ pampering and coddling and to enjoy it wholeheartedly.
“Have you seen Rip?” Sloan asked Cricket as she dried herself off with a towel.
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“He’s been sleeping most of the time since I arrived. The way he sounds . . . it
hurts
to listen to him breathe. When he coughs, you can see how much pain he’s in. It’s awful.”
Despite Cricket’s warning, Sloan was unprepared for the sight of her father fighting pneumonia. Even in sleep, he struggled to breathe. She couldn’t stand to watch his pain.
She quickly left the room to go in search of Luke. She found him downstairs in Rip’s office, working on the books for Three Oaks. He looked comfortable sitting behind Rip’s desk.
If she was destined never to have Three Oaks herself, she begrudged it least to Luke. But that issue hadn’t yet been decided, and she hoped it wouldn’t be for years to come. Rip wasn’t about to let a little thing like pneumonia put him down.
“Are you ready to talk to Tomasita now?” she asked.
Luke wiped his hands nervously on his trousers and then stood. “Are you sure she loves me?”
Instead of reassuring him, she grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him upstairs after her. He pulled free at the door to Tomasita’s room.
“I can handle this alone,” he said.
“Of course you can,” Sloan agreed. “But I’m not sure Tomasita can. Come on, let’s go inside.”
Sloan could tell that Bay had been here to visit. The curtains were drawn wide to let in the sunshine, a vase of spring flowers sat on the table beside the bed, and Tomasita was sitting up in bed with at least a half dozen pillows fluffed up behind her.
“Hello, Tomasita,” Sloan said.
Tomasita turned from gazing out the window at the fields. The smile that had been on her face faded when she saw Luke standing beside Sloan.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her eyes flashing angrily. “I told you I did not want to see you again.”
“Luke has something he wants to tell you,” Sloan said, sensing that Luke was going to bolt rather than take the chance of being rejected again.
Luke looked desperately at Sloan, then back at Tomasita. “I love you,” he blurted.
“What did you say?”
Luke crossed to the bed and stood facing Tomasita. Determined to see this through, he cleared his throat and repeated, “I love you.”
Sloan slipped out the door. She had done her part. They could handle the rest themselves.
“May I sit beside you?” Luke asked.
Tomasita eyed him warily. “All right.” She inched over a little in the four-poster to give him room to sit.
Luke gently laid a hand on Tomasita’s belly. “Don’t pull away,” he said, to stop her from doing just that. “I want to feel our baby inside you. I want a chance to prove how good we’d be together, a chance to be a father to this baby. I want you to marry me.”
“You do not have to marry me to be a father, Luke. Babies come whether marriage vows have been said or not.”
“I want you for my wife. I want to spend my life with you,” Luke said, his hazel eyes earnest.
Tomasita closed her eyes and then opened them again. This wasn’t a dream. Luke was really here, saying he loved her, saying he wanted to marry her.
Luke was starting to doubt Sloan’s word. So far, Tomasita hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance to marry him. Fear forced him to confront her. “Sloan said you loved me. Was she right?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?”
“Yes.”
“And we’ll live happily ever after?”
Tomasita was silent for a moment and Luke held his breath.
“Oh yes,” she answered. “Most definitely yes.”
“Come here, little mustang girl,” Luke murmured as he reached over and lifted her into his lap. “Come here and give me a kiss.”
Sloan hesitated with her hand on the doorknob to Rip’s room. The past few days had been hell. Rip’s condition had worsened, then gotten better, then worsened again. She had barely had the chance to say a few words to him since Cruz had rescued her from Alejandro’s clutches.
She had just returned from riding the boundaries of Three Oaks, only to discover that her father’s illness had reached the critical stage. The family had gathered at his bedside. Either he would live through the day . . . or he would not.
Rip had already conquered one life-threatening bout with illness in the past year. She closed her eyes against that memory—slurred voice, sagging flesh, grayish skin, lumplike hands of clay. She tried telling herself pneumonia was different. It only made it hard to breathe; it would not take the life from his skin and bone.
But deep down, she knew she was only deceiving herself. Pneumonia was just as capable of killing Rip as the stroke he had conquered a year ago. She dreaded watching her father have to fight for his life again.
Surely she could find the courage to endure this tragic moment, as she had endured all the other challenges in a lifetime filled with adversity. Her personality had been molded by Rip long ago—by example, by instruction, by force, when necessary.
She had become indomitable, a fighter, the strong, brave heir to Three Oaks. She had never once given up or given in. She had to believe that Rip would follow his own teachings and that if it was humanly possible, he would overcome this second ravaging of his body by the forces of nature.
Sloan felt Cruz’s comforting hand on her shoulder and turned her head to meet his concerned gaze.
“Are you all right, Cebellina?”
She smiled at him. “I’m fine. More than fine.”
Her shoulders straightened; her heart lightened. This time, things were different. She did not have to face this calamity alone. She turned the knob and entered Rip’s bedroom with her husband by her side.
Sloan had only rarely come into Rip’s room. It was a spartan place. A giant four-poster bed, a tall cedar chest bearing a framed miniature painting of her mother on a stand, a copper-topped dry sink with a flowered pitcher and bowl for water sitting on top, and a worn rawhide chair comprised all the furniture and decoration in the room. It was good there wasn’t more or all those who had come to observe the bedside vigil wouldn’t have fit.
A very pregnant Cricket sat in a chair beside Rip’s bed while Bay perched on the edge of the mattress holding his hand. Their husbands, Creed and Long Quiet, stood on the opposite side of the room while Luke leaned against the bedpost at the foot of the bed. Only Tomasita was missing from the family that surrounded Rip, and Sloan knew that was only because she was still recuperating from her fall.
“How is he?” Sloan whispered to Cricket.
“I’m not dead yet,” Rip replied irritably. “Speak up so I can hear you.”
The strength of Rip’s voice startled Sloan, yet she could see it was a struggle for him to talk.
“You don’t have to talk,” she said. “I can see for myself you’re still ornery enough to complain.”
“Come closer, girl. Bay, get out of her way so she can sit down.”
Sloan and Bay exchanged brief, chagrined smiles of understanding for Rip’s brusque dismissal of his middle daughter.
Sloan reached out a hand and brushed a stray lock of gray hair from Rip’s forehead. It was a gesture of love he would not have tolerated had he been standing on two feet.
“I’m glad to see that husband of yours has managed to keep you safe here at home since your latest escapade.”
“I’m safe, all right, but—” Sloan stopped, unwilling to bring up the antagonism over Three Oaks.
“But what?” Rip prodded.
“I don’t want to argue—”
“Then speak up, girl.”
Exasperated, Sloan said, “I was going to say that this isn’t my home anymore. You saw to that.”
Rip grunted as he exhaled. It was plain he intended to have his say and the pain be damned. “Hell, girl, what did you expect me to do when that Spaniard came hunting for his wife? Let you sit at Three Oaks and wallow in regret for the rest of your life?”
“What?”
“You heard me. I had to find some way to make you sit up and take another look at that hombre, didn’t I?”
“Don’t you dare say you disinherited me for my own good,” Sloan bit out.
“That was the gist of it.”
“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t want a living, breathing
son
to carry on at Three Oaks!”
Sloan held her breath as Rip grimaced in pain.
“Oh glory, girl, what I wouldn’t have given to have three sons!”
There was utter silence in the room as Rip’s three daughters absorbed that devastating statement.
Sloan watched a lone tear slip down the side of her father’s face and felt her stomach knot. She couldn’t help being born female, and she wasn’t about to apologize at this point for being a daughter instead of a son. “I wish—”
Rip cut her off with a bitter epithet, then began coughing. His face was a deathly gray by the time he managed to stop.
“Stop talking, you old fool!” Sloan cried. “Can’t you see it’s killing you?”
“If I don’t talk, I may never get a chance to say this,” he rasped. “I didn’t get the sons I wanted, but Lord knows I did the best I knew how with you three girls. Nothing turned out like I had it planned. Not for Cricket. Not for Bay. And not for you, Sloan, my eldest, my heir.”
“I am not your heir. Not anymore.”
“Oh yes. My heir.”
Sloan frowned in confusion, thinking maybe the fever from his illness had caused him to forget what he had done. “You disinherited me. You gave everything to Luke.”
Rip glared at her and said, “I’m not saying I didn’t think about it, but—”
“
Think about it?
I heard you myself! You offered Three Oaks to Luke.”
“Only so you’d have a chance to find out whether you wanted to stay with the Spaniard.”
Sloan stared at him in disbelief. “You’re not joking, are you? How could you—”
“Shut up a minute, girl, and listen to me!” It took him a moment to catch his breath and to come up with the energy to talk, but talk he did. “You always were hard to rein when you got the bit in your teeth. I’m telling you I never for a minute planned to take Three Oaks away from you. I wanted Luke to stay around, and I figured if he thought—”
“You lied to him, too? You never intended to give him anything—your own son?”
Rip snorted in disgust, which started another coughing fit that left Sloan so frightened she was furious with him for speaking at all. And yet what if he was right? What if he never got another chance to say the things he needed to say?
“Dear Lord, girl,” Rip said when he had recovered. “If you could hear yourself talk. Are you ranting at me because you thought I gave Three Oaks away or because I didn’t do what I threatened?”
“I’m riled because you manipulated my life. Because you didn’t respect me enough to speak plainly about what you were thinking. And because I love you, you stubborn old man, and it was tearing me apart to hate you for what you had done.”