Love Inspired Historical June 2014 Bundle: Lone Star Heiress\The Lawman's Oklahoma Sweetheart\The Gentleman's Bride Search\Family on the Range (31 page)

Clint found a roll of bandages suddenly worthy of his inspection. “I'd expect you to know that best of all.”

“Only I cannot see him now and you can. If it is how a man acts, as you say, what do you see?”

Clint looked like she'd asked him to reveal some great secret. “Don't he write to you about it?”

Truth was, while Lars had never come out and spoken directly of his feelings for Winona, she had already noticed the actions Clint mentioned and had read between the lines of his recent letters. Still, the curiosity—and amusement—of hearing Clint's version proved irresistible. “He writes to me of many things.”

“Well...” Clint looked up at the ceiling, as if the right words could be found in the rafters. “He does seem to be mighty glad for her company. He was even before all this, don't you think?”

She nodded but didn't offer any words.

“And he spends a lot of time up on the reservation. And I think Dakota's taken quite a shine to him, as well. And him to the boy.”

“My brother has a big heart.”

“Only, they're different. That counts for something.”

“Not for all things, but yes, for some.”

Clint put the roll of bandages back in the basket on Alice's table. “I expect he's wondering just how much it counts, and has a lot of time to ponder it up there in those rocks. Seems to me he might come back down knowing the answer.”

She had come to nearly the same conclusion. “You know Lars well. You are his best friend.” When that pronouncement raised Clint's eyes to meet hers, she ventured, “What do you think of them...as a pair?”

Clint shook his head. “Don't really matter much what I think, does it? He sure has never asked my opinion.”

He really was evading her questions. “But
I
am asking.” For an amusing second, Katrine wondered if she might need to stand between him and the door in order to pull the answer from the sheriff. She cocked her head as if to say “I can wait all day,” and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Well. She makes eyes at him, that's plain enough to see. And I've seen him staring after her, that's for certain. I think it might be...hard...parts of it, but they both seem the kind to stand up to whatever comes. Out here, folks could be welcoming if they should...take a fancy to each other.” That seemed to cross some sort of line for him, for he looked relieved. “So, yes, I suppose I'd be glad to see him happy if Winona is what makes him so.”

Katrine let her smile broaden. “That is how I feel, as well.” Just because Clint looked so uncomfortable having broached the subject, she added, “But we will not yet share our opinion,
ja?
It is for them to work out. And we have too many other worries for now.”

Clint looked at her with a curious expression—half smile, half frown. “Yes, ma'am, too many.”

Chapter Eight

K
atrine was surprised to feel herself anticipating Monday's visit to the site where the cabin had burned. It was sad to pick through the remains of her home, but every little piece of her life that she uncovered from the ashes offered a particular solace. She spent her time wandering through the black remains, sorting her findings into little piles that made no sense to anyone but her. Out here, she did not have to apply a mask of grief. Out here, she could say the words
Lars is
instead of choking on every
Lars was.
If Clint had not insisted he be with her every time she set foot on this property, Katrine would be here every day.

Clint, however, treated the site in an entirely different way. As he worked to clear the charred timbers and cut new ones, something huge and powerful drove him. He swung the ax like an angry man. She'd seen Lars do it—take his fury out on logs by chopping wood—but it looked so different on Clint Thornton. Lars just seemed to be burning energy that had nowhere else to go. Clint—and oh, how odd it felt to call him Clint, even in the quiet of her mind—seemed bent on conquering the wood. She could see the strain in how his neck corded as he brought the ax down. His purpose tightened his grip on the ax and cast dark shadows over his eyes. She'd always thought of him as strong by virtue of being sheriff, but watching him out here showed his strength as a man.
If I were a criminal, I would fear him
.

It struck her, as surely as if he'd brought the ax down on her thought, that she
should
fear him. After all, Clint saw the law in pristine, sharp edges of right and wrong. She had come down on the wrong side of that edge more than once in her difficult years. Would he be so fierce in his protection if she told him all she had done?

No, she would not waste these precious hours of mourn-free afternoon thinking such things. She leaned up against the tree that once sat in her and Lars's front yard, soaking in the pampering sensations of the splendid breeze across the speckled shade.
Lars will come home here. We will live safe lives here
. Katrine watched Clint split a log, feeling something warmer than admiration for the power in his broad back and his muscled forearms.
Clint has saved me. Clint is strong enough to keep me safe
.

And she did feel safe—out here. Katrine hadn't realized how tense she'd grown surrounded by the mourning folk of Brave Rock. It required so much energy to keep up appearances, to fight the knot in her stomach that formed anytime McGraw or one of his men were around. After making a list of all the small pieces and trinkets she'd found, she'd switched from her writing papers to her private diary. She wanted to write Lars a long letter, and such a task was nearly impossible at Reverend Thornton's house. Dipping her pen, she started a letter in Danish, knowing it ensured that only Lars read her words.

Dearest Lars—

I worry so much for your safety. Are you well? Are you lonely? Do you count the days until you can come back as much as I? I know Sheriff Thornton will keep me safe.

Lars had said it over and over in the short message he'd sent back through Winona, and she wanted to believe the words. She wanted Lars not to worry about her safety, did not want to add to his burden out there wherever he was. Lars faced dangers with so much courage, something she had never been able to do since—

Katrine laid down the pen, consciously deciding whether to open up that black box of memories in her mind. She'd never spoken of that night to anyone—not even Lars—and for good reason. The Dark Man, as she'd come to call him, had made terrible threats if she ever told anyone. She had been fourteen, and old enough to know that the alley behind the saloon was no place for a young girl to be at that time of night. Still, working at the ale house had taught her the back alley was filled with food scraps at the end of the evening, filled with great stores of food if a smart but hungry girl knew where to look.

She had been looking, but had not found anything to eat. No, instead she had found a woman, facedown in a pool of red, her neck purple and slit from one side to the other. Death was ugly enough to make her wretch despite the empty stomach, and the sound startled the Dark Man from his place in the shadows. How horrible his face was, coming out of nowhere like that. The only bright thing about him was how the tip of his knife glinted in the moonlight. She could hear his words even after seven long years, sharp with threats and close, as if he still lurked around every corner.

Of course, he'd never come for her yet, but that was because she'd kept her word and never told a soul what she'd seen that night. Not even Lars. Never. Still, despite her kept promise, some lingering part of her always waited for the day the Dark Man would find her and harm her despite her silence. It was a fool notion, as Clint would put it, to think some criminal from seven years ago could find and hurt her all the way out here. Her head knew that for the fact it was. The pit of her stomach refused to let go of the deep-seated old fear.

Katrine left the letter to Lars, turning to a fresh page to write her own thoughts. “Samuel McGraw feels like the D.M.” she wrote, still unwilling to put the Dark Man's name to paper after all these years. “Clint would hate the D.M. as much as I do, would know he was evil.”

Clint hated wrongdoers. He used harsh words whenever he spoke of Private McGraw and his gang. She disliked them, too, and had avoided them whenever possible even before the night of the fire. Still, even Lars could cite a few benefits these men had brought the community. Clint, on the other hand, gave them no quarter whatsoever. His world divided up into those who upheld the law and those who broke it.

I broke the law.
The admission trailed out of her pencil before she could smudge it away. She knew, by the way Lars described Clint's crusade against the Black Four, that the sheriff despised all who had seen the Black Four's crimes but had not come forward. He'd talked over and over about the only way men like the Black Four succeeded was by terrorizing witnesses into silence. He'd quoted sayings about the crimes of good men doing nothing in the face of injustice.

She'd done nothing but keep silent at the crime she'd seen. Not when she was young enough to be afraid, and not when she was old enough to show courage. Not in seven years. She prayed for the soul of that young woman slain by the Dark Man's knife whenever that horrible memory surfaced. “The D.M. has gone free because I would not come forward,” she wrote. “Did my house burn in payment for that crime beside Lars's courage to come forward?”

“New stories?”

Clint's voice startled her out of her memories, and she snapped the book shut with fearful speed. She hadn't even noticed him walk over to the shade. He was breathing hard, his forehead shining with sweat under the wandering locks of his thick dark hair. She must have been staring, for he produced a bandana from his pocket and mopped his brow as he reached for the jug of cider.

“No.” She was sure her cheeks were pink, her bonnet lying beside her on the cool shady grass. She tucked the book under her skirts, feeling the guilty words glaring out from under the leather covers. She rubbed her leg to hide the action, feigning the soreness that had finally left her injured feet and legs.

“Still hurt?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“I'm still mighty proud of your bare feet for kicking out those logs. They're big logs, and more than a bit stubborn.” He turned and pointed at the two corners of the cabin walls that were closest to her. Their black smudges set them apart from the other fresh timbers he had fitted along the foundation. She winced.

Clint hunched down in front of her, dragging a shirtsleeve over his chin. “I've no mind to force them on you. If it really bothers you, I'll pull them out of the wall right now. This is your home, not mine.”

Katrine stared over his shoulders to the two charred logs. They had been her escape, monuments of her fight to live. She wanted to have the brave new life this territory promised, and perhaps she needed to choose it rather than wait for Lars to bring it to her. “No, keep them there.”

He nodded, a gentleness in his eyes she hadn't seen before.

“But I wish to paint them.”

Sitting down fully, Clint took a healthy swig from the jug of cider he'd brought with them. It was as hot a day as June offered up on the prairie. “Don't rightly know if that'll work. Burned wood might not take to whitewashing or such. I never had much need for frills like that. Alice or Evelyn might know, though, so we can ask.”

“If I can't paint them, then I shall plant rosebushes in front of them.”

He chuckled. “You do that. I always did wonder how you managed to get those to grow out here. Never seen things quite like those before you put them in, and I was sorry they...burned.”

He did that—hesitate whenever words associated with that night snuck their way into conversations. It told Katrine that the memories sat as uncomfortably on his spirit as they did on hers. “You've not yet told me your news. You said you had more news of Lars.”

“Lars is fine and safe. I took you out here just to keep you away from McGraw.”

She could not help but feel disappointed. As eager as she was to get away, he did not need to lure her with hopes of word from Lars. Clint need only ask and she would always agree to come out here with him. “Oh.”

Clint's gaze fell to his hands, running his right thumb along the gash still healing on his left hand. Every time she looked at the sheriff's hands, her mind shot back to the feeling of grabbing those hands—and of them clasping onto her wrists—and how they had pulled her to safety. Perhaps Winona was right and they were bound to each other now, whether they liked it or not. It was an uncomfortable realization, and yet she could not ignore that his presence did, in fact, make her feel safe. Safe enough to ask, “Why did he do it?”

When Clint looked at her, she went on, “I think I know why McGraw tried to...” she made herself say it “...burn down our house. But you never truly told me why.”

“He didn't
try
to, he did it.” Clint thunked the jug down on the grass and shook his head. “I didn't mean that so harsh. What I meant to say is that he thinks he can do whatever he wants. Mostly because folks are afraid enough of him to let it happen. Those three others? They don't follow McGraw out of honor, they follow out of fear.”

Katrine tucked her feet farther under her skirts. “I do fear him. He makes—how does Alice say it?—he makes my skin crawl.” She ventured to say more. “I am old enough to know what he...wants from me when he looks at me like that, but—”

Clint cut her off. “He should
never
look at you like that.”

Katrine felt her cheeks redden. “I know I am no great beauty, still I—”

He leaned in, agitated. “But you are. You are a fine woman, Katrine.” Realizing the potency of his admission, he sat back again, more flustered than she'd ever seen him. “You'll make some good man a fine wife, raise yourself a fine family and give Lars a passel of nephews to tease. Don't you dare let the likes of McGraw make you think differently.” He ran one hand across his forehead. “It's the land he wants. You and Lars are just standing in the way.”

“But he has land, does he not?”

“Men like McGraw always want more, better, bigger. He gets to thinking your stake is better than his, or your stake might fetch a pretty price if he could sell it, and suddenly you're not some fine family in search of a good future, you're an obstacle to defeat. So he arranges for your fence to fail so you lose your livestock. Or harm comes to your wagon, or things go missing. Whatever he thinks might press you into selling or even outright walking away.”

Katrine thought of all the accidents that had happened in and around Brave Rock. Not all of them had been put down to the Black Four, but what if life out here
was
harder than it needed to be because McGraw made sure it turned out that way? “I have not seen him buying land.”

“That's because McGraw is the worst kind of criminal—a smart one. He's found a middleman, near as I can figure. Someone who's quietly buying up the land he scares up, then paying him a percentage of the profits. That way he can sit there looking like a fine upstanding gentleman while he robs half of Brave Rock blind.” The sheriff's voice held a terrible contempt, a hatred for such crimes Katrine could almost feel in the air around him. She did not see how a criminal could not be as fearful of Clint Thornton's passion for justice as they were of Samuel McGraw's thirst for power.

“And Lars, he saw this middleman?”

“Lars saw enough to connect McGraw to the Black Four. And that's all you'll hear from me, Katrine. The less you know about all this, the better. I've let you sweet talk me into telling you far more'n you ought to know as it is.”

Katrine sat back against the tree trunk and crossed her arms over her chest. “I do not believe anyone can...” she fumbled on his word, finding it too intimate “...sweet talk the mighty Sheriff Thornton into anything.” She regretted the words instantly, for they felt too much indeed like “sweet talk.” “But I am grateful for your protection,” she added quietly, not wanting to leave the conversation at that awkward point. She gestured toward the homestead. “And for your help. You are a good friend to Lars.” She hesitated for a moment before adding, “To both of us.”

He caught her eyes. Even though she wanted to look away, she couldn't. The breeze tossed his hair across his forehead, and for just a moment he lost the hard edge she always saw in him. He smiled so rarely, he did not seem to carry the joy Elijah knew or the warmth Gideon possessed. He was somehow separate from his brothers, although she could not quite say why or how.

She only knew that the intensity of his eyes made her breath hitch.