The Outlaw Bride (17 page)

Later, back in the house, Callahan took one look at the kitchen and came to the realization that Josie Miller was not cut out for day duty as a wife. But hell, any man married to her could hire a cook and housekeeper to take care of the days, so long as Josie was in his bed at night.

Marriage? Wife? That was the last thing he needed to think about. But it was the only thing on his mind. By the time he went out to saddle the horses, he knew he had to decide between what he should do and what he wanted—there were no in-betweens. It was dusk when they were ready to head out. He figured it would take an hour to get to Sharpsburg, and by then it would be dark enough to hide their approach.

Josie gathered up their things and turned for one last look at the house—this might be the last time she’d ever see it. Fantasy time was over. She tried to substitute logic for the self-doubt that plagued her. Josie the woman had to change back into Josie the lawyer. She straightened her back and headed for the barn. Callahan stood, silhouetted by the light coming from the open door at the other end of the building. She stopped for a minute to memorize a picture of the man.

“Callahan, I don’t know what will happen when we get to Sharpsburg, but there are two things I want from you before we leave.”

“What?” He tightened the strap on the saddle and turned as she walked up behind him. They were so close that they were almost touching.

“I know you have a mission that takes precedence over anything you might want. I can understand because I had—
have
one, too. I never planned on you, so I didn’t allow for the possibility that my life goals could be altered. I don’t expect you to change anything, but you need to know that I love you.”

He hadn’t expected this, but her approach was pure Josie. Honest, straight to the point, no playing around. For her own good, he’d have to make her understand. “Listen to me, Josie. We just made love and it was spectacular. That doesn’t happen often for a woman or a man. But,” he lied, “it doesn’t mean we’re in love. It just means our bodies are good together.”

She’d known when he went out the ranch house door that he hadn’t intended to touch her again. Everything about the way he held himself said he was rebuilding walls, getting ready to close out their time together. The tightness had returned to his face.

Josie thought of her childhood and all the men she’d seen going in and out of her real mother’s bed. Back then she didn’t understand the difference, but now she knew. She thought of Dr. Annie’s fierce determination when she’d decided to come out west and be a doctor. She hadn’t let anything stop her, and neither would Josie. She reached out to touch him, but he was as rigid as a statue. Hesitantly, she slid her arms around his neck. “Kiss me, Callahan. Please?”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground, Josie.”

She knew she was, but she couldn’t stop herself. The ground she’d walked on for most of her life had been unsteady, and this afternoon she’d discovered that the only thing that made her feel safe was Callahan’s arms. She whispered, “Please love me again, Callahan.”

Slowly, Callahan kissed her.

This time it wasn’t a savage kiss of desire; it was sweet and gentle and sad. And she knew that he was saying good-bye with every touch. Finally, he pulled back, let her go, and drew in a ragged breath.

“There will be no more kisses, Josie. We’ll go back to Sharpsburg, and you’ll forget this ever happened. And so will I. It has to be that way.”

He waited as she mounted her horse, then dragged himself into the saddle, refusing to look at her for fear she’d know that he’d lied.

“You can stop kissing me, Sims Callahan, but you can’t stop me from wanting you to,” she said softly. “And I’ll never forget it happened.”

12
 

In his dream, he was riding hard across a rocky ledge, his heart pounding in time with the horses hooves. “Go! Ride fast!” a voice yelled. “I’ll decoy them.”

And he’d ridden, the horse flying through the piles of rocks. He heard a shot, and that’s when he woke, his breath hard and frantic. Where was he? Then, as he forced himself to take even breaths and still his flinching muscles, he remembered.

Rachel. He was married.

As he lay, dawn came out of the east, casting a softness across the range grass and a pink glow on the mountains in the distance. The cattle and the oxen moved noisily inside the corral formed by the circled wagons, grazing lazily on the lush summer grass. Jacob had spent the night on the ground beneath Rachel’s wagon. This morning everything seemed peaceful.

For the last few days, Jacob had grown physically
stronger, and with the help of the orange-haired boy, whose name was Eli, he’d learned to milk the cow. His next chore would be learning to yoke and drive the oxen. Big stubborn beasts they were, but at least they were sturdier than the cattle he’d seen die in his dreams.

He shook off the memory of watching them bellow in pain and fall, just one of many pieces that teased him and vanished into the vast nothingness of his mind. It would be easier, he decided, as he crawled out from under the wagon, if yoking the oxen didn’t start at six o’clock in the morning. And it would be easier on his stomach if Rachel hitched the team and he did the cooking. That was one thing he was comfortable doing.

He heard Rachel moving about the wagon, singing to herself as she did every morning. He tried to imagine how she’d start her day, pulling on her work dress and balling up her hair under the black hat she wore. Climbing down from the back of the wagon, quietly, as if she were tiptoeing. She’d start her fire. Then she’d fry salt pork and mix flour to make the lumpy biscuits that were the staple of their meals.

This morning, if he worked quickly, he’d have everything ready for her by the time she left the wagon. From the pile of dried grass and twigs, he built up the fire. From the supply box he retrieved the coffee, added it to the pot, and slid it onto the flames. Next came the flour and the lard.

“What are you doing, Jacob?”

“I’m making your breakfast,” he answered, turning to face her.

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re making breakfast? When you said you could make biscuits I didn’t think you were serious.”

“Making biscuits is a serious business.”

“Who—who did you make them for?” Rachel asked.

“For Callahan,” he answered, automatically, then stopped.

“Who’s Callahan?”

“I don’t know.”

A three-quarter moon hung low in the sky as if it had no energy and was holding on only because of the clouds it was riding. Its brightness made the trail look like a faded ribbon strung across the prairie. Callahan set a steady pace, too fast for the rider who didn’t know the area. Solomon protested, but, like the moon, allowed himself to be pulled along through the darkness.

Callahan seemed deep in thought. “Don’t you think we ought to talk about what we’re going to do?” Josie finally asked.

“You’re not going to do anything.”

She didn’t argue. He was a man, and getting his strength back translated into looking after himself. She’d have to teach him that working together was better, but that would come a few kisses later. After all, she’d had two good examples of how a man and woman worked together—her adoptive mother and father. “All right, but I believe I have a right to ask what your plans are.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “The first thing I want is to have a look at the loan papers Perryman’s holding.”

“You can’t just walk into the bank, Callahan. If Will is still in town, he’ll be waiting for you.”

“I suppose you have a better idea.”

“Let’s wait until morning and I’ll go to see the banker. After all, I’m your attorney. For me to ask to see the papers is appropriate.”

“And I suppose Will isn’t going to wonder where you’ve been?”

That aspect of the situation was worrying her, too. “I’m hoping Ellie will have taken care of that, which is why we have to see her before we make any move.”

“Well, this should be very interesting,” he said with sarcasm in his voice. “Just think about it, Josie. First Ellie turns up in Sharpsburg with a very flimsy excuse. Then Will finds out I’ve broken out of jail and I’ve kidnapped you. I just don’t think he’s going to believe it.”

Josie nodded her head. “You’re right. I think we ought to take our chances and tell him the truth.”

“Taking our chances will send me straight to jail, Josie.”

“You may just have to go back to jail for awhile, Callahan, at least until Will and I get to the bottom of this.”

Callahan was beginning to feel jealous and irrational at the mention of Will and Josie working together. “You and Will? What are you going to do when he asks you if you’re defending me because I’m innocent or because you’ve let me make love to you?”

Josie winced. “Because you’re innocent, of course. I wouldn’t have made love with you if I didn’t believe that. But that’s between us, Callahan. I don’t intend to tell him that we—it has nothing to do with the situation.”

“And you don’t think he’ll know? We’ve been alone together for a night and a day. You want them to believe you’re a loose woman, Josie Miller? Under any other circumstances I probably would have to marry you.”

“I don’t much care what people think,” she said in a low, tight voice. “And I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. If you feel differently—well, so be it.”

Josie had thought Callahan was softening, that she’d made a dent in the wall he’d built around himself. She’d been wrong. He said he’d
have
to marry her, not
want
to marry her. Something in his life had left a hard cold core, a darkness she still hadn’t penetrated. “I … I don’t know what to say. But I don’t believe you. Dr. Annie and Dan have never cared what the world thought about them, and they’ve brought me up to believe that I can be anything I want to be. If I want to—care about you, they won’t turn their backs on me.”

“You aren’t in love with me, Josie. And I’m not in love with you.”

There, he said it, what they’d both been avoiding. “You’re a sensual woman who’s never met a man who made you feel like one. Those feelings just made you get caught up in what happened. I was wounded and you were there for me to lean on. But I’m strong now and I don’t need you anymore. I’ll do what I have to do to clear my name and find Ben.”

“If you’re trying to protect me, I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You didn’t steal the money. You’re not a criminal. And nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Josie. I’m not what you think.”

Josie desperately wanted Callahan to stop what he was saying. “We need to talk about our plan,” she said in an attempt to change the subject. “Right now, we should forget about Ben. We know he crossed paths with a wagon train, that they picked him up. By now, Bear Claw may even know where the train is. The army will catch up to them and bring Ben back. So, now we need to find out who stole the money before both Callahan brothers end up in jail.”

Callahan looked at her for a long minute, his eyes narrowed. She was right.

“Perryman,” he said. “He has to be behind this. There’s no other answer. He holds the mortgage on all the ranches in this area. Without cattle to sell, none of us would be able to pay off our loans. He could foreclose on our ranches, which would make him the owner of all the land up to the territory line. With the railroad carrying cattle to market and bringing new settlers, he could easily sell the land all over again. Since we weren’t the first owners, he may have done this before.”

“And if he paid off your loan, it would look like you had a lot of newfound money to spend,” Josie deducted. “That makes you and Ben the most obvious suspects for the holdup. That way he gets it all—the money and the land. Perryman may be a rich banker, but if the ranchers don’t have money to put in his bank, then eventually he won’t either.”

Callahan chimed in, “He needs cash. And if we don’t get a look at those papers fast, he’s going to spend that five thousand dollars—and get away with it.”

At least this time, he said
we.
They’d figured out Perryman’s plot together, and now they had to stop him.

The horses settled down into a slow lope. The shadows of the Laramie Mountains loomed to the east and north, casting dark shadows of purple and inky black with each cloud that swept across the moonlit sky.

In spite of his air of disinterest, Callahan loved Wyoming, with its ever-constant landscape at war with nature’s determination to change it. It wasn’t soft and slow like the south, but wild and strong. A man’s country. At least that’s what Ben had called it that first fall when
they’d ridden in, before winter left two homeless men discouraged and hungering for roots.

Callahan and Josie reached the outskirts of town, almost too soon. Unless there were cowboys in town, taking a few hours off from a cattle drive, they’d likely be the only strangers. Sharpsburg was little more than a crossroads between the stagecoach from Cheyenne and the cattle ranches to the south. With only a hotel, a livery stable, a general store, and the bank, Callahan had to wonder why Perryman had ever come here in the first place. If Will Spencer was waiting, he’d have to use the hotel as the jail because there wasn’t one.