The Rancher (20 page)

Loud  male  voices  penetrated  herreverie and she sat up with a start.

Grabbing the blanket more tightly around

her she pulled herself to her feet and pushed away a grayish-brown curtain from the fogged box window.  It looked as if Cole’s brother had found them and he did not look pleased.

She pulled away from the glass and scanned the room in search of her dress.

It suddenly dawned on her that the greycurtain she had pushed aside wasn’t awindow covering at all, but her mother’sdirty and torn wedding dress. She reachedupward, her fingers gently caressing thetop layer of dingy sheer material andembroidered lace. As easily as she hadpicked up the fabric, she let it fall. Shewould not allow herself to sulk over the

ruined garment.

Spotting a green button down shirt and

folded denims in the far corner of the

lean-to, she drew the dress-made curtain back across the window and threw off the

blanket, replacing it with her now dried bloomers, chemise, and the male attire. She’d always been more comfortable in britches than anything else, but the feel of the clothing next to her skin, evoked a wicked giggle. The shirt felt like it had be made with two of her in mind and she had

to gather the waist of the trousers together in one hand to stop them from falling off.  She looked for a strand of rope or something she could use to hold them up, but to no avail.

Her boots. She tossed the blanketsabout and upturned one of the bedrollmattresses in attempt to find them.  At last,she saw them sticking out from behind thepotbellied stove.
 
Cole must’ve set them

there to dry.
 
For that she was grateful. She sat on the edge of the bed where she slept and pulled them over her bare feet. There was nothing she could do about the boot that had been damaged, but hoped it would serve her long enough to return home.

Tucking a stray lock of hair behind herear, her grip firm on the material at herwaist, she hoped they would not notice herfeet.  She reached for the door and caughtglimpse of her reflection in a brokenshaving mirror perched on the wall.

Black smudges lined her face andstreaked her hair. Her skin looked pale.  Dark circles encased her eyes. Shepinched her cheeks and with her chin heldhigh, she walked out into the open andtoward the arguing brothers.  Cole wore a

fresh   white   shirt,   untucked.   His suspenders dangling at his sides. Abby felt a pang of disappointment.  She wondered if he’d had the clothing with him in his saddle bags or if he’d found the shirt, like she had, somewhere in the lean-to.  She made a mental note to repay anything they’d taken.

Her mind changed focus when she heard Raine’s impertinent question.

“Why didn’t you put the animal down last night?” he demanded.

Cole looked up from the fire and with a cocked eyebrow and a devilish smirk watched her approach—Raine’s back still to her.

“Because
 
I
 
asked him not to,” she

answered for him.

She noted the muscles in Cole’s jaw

tighten as he turned back to the fire.

Raine whirled to face her and removed

his hat.   “Good morning, ma’am.”   He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but you do realize the animal is suffering somethin’ mighty?”

Abby glanced at the barn.

“The animal, as you put it, has a name,” she spat at Raine with force that even surprised her.   “How is
 
Bella
 
this morning?” she directed her question to Cole, but it was Raine who answered, apparently unaffected by her outburst.

“Laudanum can only go so far, Abby.”

She looked back at Cole who stood from his crouched position over the fire and pulled his frying pan back.  When he met her gaze, the realization she’d been trying to elude engulfed her.

She tightened her fist around thegathered material at the waist of her newbritches and ran for the barn. Bella laysilently in the stall Cole had prepared forher.  A quiet nicker called her closer.  Carefully, she smoothed her hand acrossthe horse’s side and back, wary to avoidthe bandages that had been skillfullywrapped around the mare’s wounds.

The horse lifted first her head, then hershoulders and Abby found herself filledwith a rush of hope and excitement.  “Come on, girl.  You can do it.”   Sheknew if Bella could just pull herself to astanding position, she would be okay.  Bella snorted with another attempt to rightherself, then collapsed heavily against thestraw.   Abby watched, stricken, as thewhite cloth, used to bandage Bella’s chest

steadily reddened with fresh blood.

“Good try, girl,” she patted her side.  The hopelessness of the situation drained her heart as quickly as her hope had filled it.  “We’ve had a good run, you and me.  Thank you for always protecting me,” her mind traced over the countless times over

the years the horse had sensed danger and had reacted bravely and in Abby’s interest.  Just like last night.

Abby had overcome a lot of touchy situations because of the loyalty and wisdom of her companion.  “Thank you.”  She leaned close to Bella’s nose and

placed her tear-lined lips against horse’s face in a tender kiss.  “I love you, Bella,

my dear friend.”   With one last caress over the mare she stood and walked to the

door of the barn where Raine and Cole

stood watching.  Waiting.

She would not let them see her tears.

“Do what you feel you must.”  Her words came out harsh and resentful.  She wanted to get away from them, needed a moment to prepare.

Cole grabbed a gentle hold of her arm and pulled her back around.  Removing a blade from his belt, he reached to a spool of twine hanging on the wall of the barn and cut off a long strand.

“Stay still,” he demanded.

With the same precision that had guided his hands the night before, Cole laced the twine through the gaps in the material where suspenders were normally fastened. He pulled the trousers tight about her waist and secured them with a knot. His

warm hands brushed her belly and seared

her skin through the light muslin of her undergarment.  She didn’t dare look up at him.  Didn’t dare meet the steel she felt in his gaze.

“Here put this on.”

Abby looked at the dark jacket Cole now held between them and shook her

head.

“Woman, you are going to catch your death if you keep running around in the rain and cold.”  It wasn’t the cold that

made her shiver.  She took his jacket from his hands.  With a fleeting glance up at her husband, she walked past both he and his brother, toward the lean-to.

She had barely made it back to the small building when a piercing shot echoed all around her.

Bella was dead.

With her heart pounding fiercely in herchest and a flood of tears stinging hereyes, she grabbed the tattered cloth thathad been her mother’s dress from the

window and began to run.

She needed to get away from this place, to be enveloped in the arms of her father who would tell her everything would be all right, where she would be safe.

Abby ran harder.  The feel of the wind in her hair and the morning sun on her face, renewed her as she fled.  She fell.  Jagged rocks and sticks ripped at her pants and tore into the flesh of her leg. The front   portion   of  her   boot   ripped completely away from the rest, exposing her toes to the harsh ground.  She didn’t

care.

She heaved herself up and pushed on,

the physical release blurring the pain she felt inside.   “Goodbye mother,” she whispered to the breeze at the regret of losing one of the only things she had left that had belonged to Clara McCallister. With Bella gone and the dress ruined, Abby only had one token left of her mother’s.  SilverHawk.

“Do you realize her father and half the town, including me, have been out all night looking for her? For you?”

Cole propped his hands up on his freshly used shovel, one knee bent, his booted heel digging into the dirt.  It sure took a long time to dig a hole big enough to bury a horse.

“And just what was I supposed to do

big brother?  Her blasted horse had been torn apart by a mountain lion and the scent of blood would have brought every scavenger for miles in our direction.”  The sweat from digging a hole, large enough for the horse, beaded down Cole’s face.  He wiped it away.

“And I’ll ask you again,
 
little
 
brother,” Raine spoke with forced calm, “why didn’t you put the animal down last night?  And don’t tell me it was because you took orders from a woman you’ve just met.  I know you all too well.”

“I have my reasons.” Cole dug the shovel into the remaining mound of dirt and tossed one last scoop of soil onto the

new grave.

Raine bent his head sideways and

clenched his jaw.  “That’s not enough this

time, Charcoal.”

“What do you want me to say, Raine? That I don’t know what’s come over me?  Well, I don’t, okay?” Cole threw his shovel to the ground and walked toward the barn.

Raine caught up to him and placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, walking alongside him.   “I know you, Cole.   You’ve always confided in me, why not now?”

Cole stopped.   He couldn’t meet his brother’s gaze.   It was true Raine had always been there for him.  He had stuck up for him when confronted with any type of trouble and had listened patiently the one time Cole opened up to him and lamented Alaric’s death.

Apparently resigned to the silence,

Raine dropped his hand to his side andspoke firmly.  “We have to get her back toher father.”

“And we will, now that her horse isburied.”

“Mama has always trusted me to keep you in line and to watch out for you my
 
dear, youngest brother
 
.” Raine took a step toward his mount. “She’ll want to know how I could let you marry some woman you’ve only known for a whole of ten minutes.”

Cole snorted.

“Don’t forget our purpose here, Cole.  This   is
 
your
 
land and you have a responsibility to those people down there.” He swung into the paint’s saddle.  “I guess I don’t know you as well as I thought,” he added, low and steady.

Cole somehow found his voice. “Shewas Alaric’s girl, Raine. I justified myactions as keeping a promise to my bestfriend to take care of a woman he’d

loved.” He took a step toward his retreating brother.

“Alaric told me she’d be waiting for him, but when we got to town, there she was, throwing herself to anyone who’d take her.   What kind of a person does that?” Cole pondered his own question and before Raine had a chance to respond, he continued.

“She looked so innocent standing there on the church steps. There must be a good reason for her to have done something as drastic as ask for a husband and then marry a stranger.” Cole remembered the way her blond hair had tousled around her

face and the way her eyes had called out to him.   Enticed him.   Captivated him, until he found himself wanting to embrace the things he’d vowed never to feel or do again. Hope. Care. Love.

“It’s true.  While I felt I owed it to Alaric, a small part of me believed if I married her I would be better positioned to get answers out of McCallister. But now, it’s something more. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s okay for you to like her.  She is your wife after all,” Raine chuckled.

“It isn’t fair to Abby or to Alaric.  What

if
 
she
 
is the McCallister written on that note?” Even as he said it, he couldn’t accept it and he dropped his head.

“You don’t believe that for a second, or we wouldn’t be here,” Raine said, pulling

up alongside Cole.

“I’m not capable of giving her the kind of love she deserves,” Cole said without looking up.

For the last year Cole had worked very hard to strip himself of all emotion, determined to never feel the kind of pain and guilt that had consumed him when Alaric died.