High Mountain Drifter (24 page)

"Oh." Verbena stared down at the toes of her shoes peeking out from beneath her skirt ruffle. "Every other beau I'd ever had was like that. It was pleasant, it was amiable, even rather nice. But it wasn't as if my heart had been struck by lightning."

"Is it like that with Zane?" Rose asked.

"Yes." She heaved the word out on a sigh, deeply troubled. "It can't be a good sign that I feel so much for him, can it?"

"I don't know. It sounds pretty good to me." Rose said in her gentle, understanding way. "All I know is that there's the real thing, that rare, true love that happens maybe once in a lifetime. Maybe. I don't know if it's always destined to work out, though. Look at our family. Ma and Pa."

"Grandmother and Grandfather."

"Aumaleigh and the man she loved in her youth," Rose finished. "So that's why I'm going to keep seeing Wade. He's a good, decent man and he treats me well. I don't need all the bells and whistles. I don't need the once-in-a-lifetime true thing. I just want a comfortable, dependable kind of love. Something I can count on."

"That's sensible." If only she could make herself believe the same. But it was too late, Zane had touched her heart and there was no undoing it. No going back. Even if it wasn't fated to last. "I'm happy you've found someone so nice."

"Me, too." Rose smiled sweetly. "It's not easy being the middle sister. You are all so gorgeous--"

"You are too," Verbena cut in to argue.

"Well, I've been the only one of us who never had a beau. I'm twenty-five years old. That's spinster age." Rose pivoted a quarter-turn to expose her left side to the fire. "I don't feel desperate or anything, but it would be nice to have a husband who loves me. To have a couple babies and raise them up. Have my chance at that kind of a happy life."

"That's what you should have." Verbena squeezed Rose's hand, a show of support. "It sounds wonderful to me."

"Zane is going to ride away forever when he's found that Klemp guy, isn't he?" Rose's face scrunched up with concern. "Your Zane will be gone for good. He doesn't look like the settling type."

"That's right," Verbena agreed, heart aching. Just aching. "I don't think he's the marrying type either."

"I'm sorry." Rose's voice dipped, her face wreathed with sympathy. Her soft understanding meant everything. There was no need to say that she was half in love with the man. No need to say she wouldn't break her no man vow for any other--just him. Rose already knew.

Hoping he was safe out there, Verbena spun away from the fire and fetched their nightgowns. It was time to go to bed. She hoped she could sleep.

Zane closed his hotel door, pocketed his key and headed down the hall. The place was quiet this time of night, most folks were tucked into their rooms after a hot meal in the dining room. He'd taken his food to go, ate in his room going over maps of the area and grabbed an hour nap. Now it was hunting time.

"Uh, do you need anything, Mr. Reed?" the desk clerk asked, running a nervous hand across his mustache.

"No. Just going out for a bit." He pushed through the door and onto the icy boardwalk.

Not many folks out here either. Couldn’t blame them. It felt colder than the North Pole, the air so heavy, it hurt to breathe it, but that didn't stop him. His boots clomped on ice, crackling it as he thundered down the way. Stores and shops were closed up tight for the night, only a faint rise of noise and light came from the saloons one street over. Might be a place Klemp would retreat to, grab a cheap meal and some whiskey to soothe his nerves and help him sleep. Best to check each saloon first. He'd caught a lot of wanted men that way.

"Zane?" A man's voice boomed out of the dark, friendly and familiar. "Hey, it
is
you. I almost didn't recognize ya."

"Dom." He skidded to a stop at the end of the shadowed boardwalk. The faint light from a second-story window cast enough of a glow to recognize the dark-haired man. Same no-nonsense gait, same spare features, but there was something different about his old friend. Something calm and relaxed. "Is that a deputy's badge?"

"Hard to believe, I know." Dominic Santana shook his head in disbelief. "It surprises me, too. I'm on the right side of the law this time."

"How's that working for you?"

"Better than the five years of hard labor I served, I'll tell you that." Dom stepped into the street. "Been straight seven years now. Worked over in Oregon Territory for a bit after I was out. Worked as a hired gun for a rancher, impressed the sheriff with my gun skills and he offered me a job."

"Good to see you're doing well." They crossed the street, side by side. Zane felt the past cut deeper than the bitter wind. "How long have you been working here in Aspen Gulley?"

"Two years now." Dom gave a soft bark of laughter. "The wife had family here, so it seemed like a good place to settle down. Since we had a little one on the way."

"You're a father?" Zane missed a step. Talk about being surprised. "You? Thought you once said domestic life was like slowly being strangled by a noose."

"Yeah, well, opinions change." Dom didn't seem upset. Good natured, then again, he always was, he stopped in the middle of the street, looked up and down, clearly on foot patrol. Seeing nothing to interest him, he kept walking. "I was young and stupid when I said that. Trying to be a big man, maybe to make up for all I didn't get growing up, but that's changed now."

"The wife and baby." Zane took the step up onto the boardwalk, plunged his gloved hands into his coat pockets. Couldn't help the stab of envy. "You have a family. That sounds nice."

"Oh, it's more than nice. Best thing I ever did." Dom stopped, leaned against the corner of the building. The light was better here, giving glimpses of the hard jaw now softer, the happiness at the mouth that had always been tense with a young man's anger. "Dottie is toddling around, the spitting image of her mama. Pretty and sweet as could be."

"A girl?" Don't know why that surprised him, but it did. He relaxed against the railing, crossed his arms over his chest. "You have a daughter?"

"Yep, and she's irreplaceable." Dom went silent, maybe still too tough to say what he felt, but it was clear he felt it.

Zane bowed his head, staring down at the icy plank boards at his feet, thinking of the woman he'd left behind, of Verbena and the way she could undo him. Just grab hold of his heart, turn him upside down, inside out and leave him that way forever.

"Susannah, that's my wife, she made me happy from the first moment I met her," Dom said quietly. "I never knew what happiness was. How could I, growing up the way we did?"

"My pa's gang was no place for a couple of boys." Hard to think about those years, that past he'd buried. Pa and his men roaming the West, pillaging and pilfering, causing hurt and misery wherever they went. "Everything I learned there, every value, everything about being a man, I had to unlearn."

"It took prison for me to figure that out," Dom admitted. "You were always the smart one, getting out before we were caught."

"Pa couldn't run forever. The marshals kept getting closer and closer. Just a matter of time." Remembering the man he'd been, well, that could tear him down, bring his knees to the ground. Zane held his breath for a moment, trying to hold it all in. It hadn't been easy to turn his back on his father and friends, everything he had. "I was better off alone."

"Took me a while to figure that out, too." Dom shook his head. "Those were lost years. How many missions did you and I run together? Stealing food, stealing horses, equipment, whatever the men needed?"

"Robbing banks, holding up stages?" Zane continued, growing cold inside, feeling the warmth and light Verbena had put there, dead center in his heart, fading away, as if it had never been. "Scaring people, taking their money and leaving them stranded? We were wanted men, and we were just kids."

"This is a better life. No doubt about it. And look at you." Dom leaned against the building, shoulders square, hands relaxed at his sides, a nostalgic hook to his grin. "Big, bad bounty hunter. It's good to see what you've made of your life."

"You too." His throat ached from the emotion lodged there, the feelings he kept trying to shove down. "Course I don't have a family the way you do."

"You should get one. It's nice to have a home, a place that when you walk through the door, everyone's glad to see you. There's nothing better."

"Can't see myself settling down." The words sliced, the truth cut deep. "Can't see a woman wanting me."

Not the real him, anyway.

"You've got a point there," Dom joked lightly, kindly. "Although they say there's someone for everyone. Maybe you just haven't met her yet."

Or maybe I have, he thought, gazing northwest against his will where she was, miles upon miles away.

"So, you must be hunting a bounty if you're in my town," Dom said, ambling down the boardwalk again.

Zane started walking, boots ringing along the abandoned boardwalk. "I'm tracking someone. I intend to stop by the sheriff's office, as a courtesy, and check in."

"Word is you track the big bounties," Dom sounded concerned. "Does that mean we have a dangerous outlaw in this town?"

"Klemp is armed and wanted for aiding and abetting, and for kidnapping a woman with the intent to rape and murder." Zane spotted a light up ahead, a sign swinging over a door. "He's in his fifties and desperate, but he'd want to lie low and not make any trouble. He's already done time for horse theft."

"Good to know. I'll tell the guys." Dom halted in front of the lit door. "Want to come in and get some coffee? Warm up?"

"No thanks, I'm just starting my hunt. If I'm lucky, I'll need to borrow your jail."

"Not a problem. Stop by anyway, just to talk. Don't leave town without at least poking your head in to say goodbye."

"Will do." That was a promise. Zane tipped his hat, leaving Dom to retreat into the light and warmth of the sheriff's office.

As he strolled away, he felt more tangled up inside than he'd been since the night he'd cuffed and chained his own pa. The past was always right there behind you, always a shadow dogging you down the trail. The good and the bad, the friendships and the enemies, the mistakes and the victories. It all balled up together, reminding you of who you were.

And that was a man who was better off on the move, alone and drifting through mountains and plains, with only his horses and guns for company.

But his thoughts returned to Verbena McPhee and how darling, she'd felt in his arms, how treasured. He didn't dare let in the warmth she made him feel or any of the light. Stay dark, stay cold, he was destined to be alone.

Maybe it was easier just to stay that way.

"The bruises are gone, that ankle is better so you shouldn't need that cane anymore." Doc Hartwell had a kindly face with wrinkles worn into deep grooves. He snapped his medical bag shut and stood. "Those cuts are almost healed too. Just keep an eye on them. If they feel hot or look red, you give me a holler."

"Thanks, Doc." Verbena finished buttoning her shoe, glad to be rid of the bulky and uncomfortable ankle wraps. "I feel better. Nothing hurts."

"Good." The middle-aged medical man crossed the parlor, his steps muffled by the thick wool carpet. "I hear there's going to be a Christmas season wedding in your family."

"Yes. It was Hailie's suggestion." Verbena escorted him to the door, snagging her shawl off the coat tree. It was chilly here in the foyer. "Have you been by to see Beckett?"

"That's where I'm heading next. Hear he's on the mend." Hartwell opened the door, nodded a friendly goodbye to the McPhee sisters who were keeping a close eye on things, as they worried. The doctor shrugged into his coat and buttoned up. "He'll be as good as new come wedding time."

"We like hearing that," Magnolia called down the hallway, pleased. "We have plans for him."

"Of the matrimonial kind, since we're helping with the wedding." Rose bobbed into sight from the kitchen, wooden spoon laced with frosting in hand. "Dr. Hartwell, would you like some cake? I'll wrap it and you can take it with you."

"Oh, dear girl, it sounds wonderful, but I have to turn your offer down." He patted his mid-section. "I get offers like that all day, and if I said yes to every one, I'd be rolling across the lawn instead of walking."

"Yes, at your age you want to stay dashing for all the ladies," Verbena quipped, fetching his hat from its hook.

"Dashing, yep, that's exactly what I'm trying to be." He gave a little chuckle, as if he didn't believe he could accomplish that feat for even a single moment. "You young ladies have a nice day, and say hello to your aunt for me."

"We will." Verbena held the door for him, wincing against the biting cold. No more snow had fallen, but the gray skies and mean winds made you wish for snow.

"Hurry, close that door," Iris called from the kitchen. "I can feel it back here."

Verbena went to comply, when a horse and rider emerging from the depth of the forested land snagged her attention. For one brief instant--just a fraction of a second--she thought it was Zane. In her mind, she saw his wide shoulders, the shadowed strength in his face, the muscular line of his strong arms before her eyes took over, replacing the imagined image with what was really there. A young man, more boy than man, riding fast on a swayback horse.