A Western Tale of Love and Fate: A Historical Western Romance Book

by Cassidy Hanton

  Zoe’s excitement at the sight of the trinket was completely ignored. She tried to take it from him, but Quinn closed his fist around it. He wasn’t releasing the brooch until his questions were answered. Whatever it meant to Zoe, it was clearly significant. He needed to know why.

  “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  Confusion painted Zoe’s delicate features that were marred by the knowledge of her betrayal. He’d been fooled by her large hazel eyes and those pouty lips that smiled as they spoke deceit. She was a pretty picture of lies. He wasn’t going to be fooled by it again.

  Quinn listened as Zoe told him of the brooch’s origins. It was a gift from her mother? His heart tripped in his chest.

  Her mother? The identical brooch was given to me by my mother. This can’t be a coincidence? Can it?

  “I want you to tell me everything about this brooch,” he insisted.

  Zoe’s brow knitted. “Why do you want to know about my brooch? It won’t lead you to Victor, I assure you.”

  “Just answer my question,” Quinn persisted. He didn’t want her assurances. He wanted the truth. He wanted answers and he wasn’t going to stop until he got them.

  Zoe’s lips pursed. “When I left home for Shaniko, my mother gave this to me as a going away present. She said it would be something to remember her by. It was a gift to her from her mother and her mother’s mother before her. It’s been in the family for generations.” Zoe’s gaze lingered on the item in his hand. “There were two of them,” she continued.

  “Two?” Quinn asked, as his head began to throb slightly.

  “Yes,” Zoe confirmed. “The one you have in your hand and another.”

  “What happened to the other?” Quinn asked quickly. A thought was beginning to form in his mind, a thought that was both shocking and alarming.

  Her eyes rose to meet his. Quinn could see the questions in her eyes, but she was going to get nothing from him. He needed to make sense of this first. He wasn’t going to be fool enough to trust Zoe Ferguson again, not until he was sure what the truth was.

  Zoe shook her head. “I’m not answering anything else until you tell me what this is about,” she stated firmly. “This has nothing to do with your case, so why do you care?”

  Quinn’s jaw clenched as he considered what he should say. He needed to bait her if he wanted more information. Finally, he decided.

  “I’ve seen one identical to it,” he stated. It wasn’t a lie. Lies hardly ever worked, despite what people believe. Truth mixed with distortion worked better. You were more convincing that way because you believed at least part of what you were saying.

  “You did?” Zoe asked curiously. “Where?”

  “Somewhere. I can’t remember where. I wanted to know where you got yours from. It didn’t look like something you would find easily.”

  “It isn’t,” Zoe answered. “It was made specifically for my mother’s family. They were a gift from my great-great-great-great grandmother as a gift to her daughter on her wedding day. The peacocks were meant to remind her of the integrity of the family she came from, and the beauty she possessed, both inside and out. That’s what my mother told me, at least.”

  “So there’s no chance that this could have been bought somewhere?” he questioned, as the thought in his mind began to solidify.

  “None,” Zoe replied. “Which is why I find it curious that you saw the other? My mother told me that the other…”

  Zoe faltered.

  “The other what?” Quinn asked quickly. “What about the other?”

  He could see the bob of her throat and the shift in her eyes as she looked at him. “The other was no longer in her possession. Something happened before I was born, and the other was lost.”

  Quinn stepped closer as his heart thundered in his ears. “What happened?”

  Zoe shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s a pity you don’t remember where you saw it. It may have led to your answers.”

  The lump in his throat was threatening to choke him, as was the breath that ached in his lungs. He’d been holding his breath for her answer, but now he released it as his hand dropped limply to his side.

  It can’t be.

  His eyes returned to Zoe’s face.

  She can’t be. Can she?

  They were both from Boston. There was only a few years age difference between them, and Zoe did say that whatever happened to the brooch was before she was born. It could be. His mother left the twin brooch in his basket when she left him, when she gave him away. The note she left with it said it would lead him back to her one day.

  Quinn’s eyes stung as he looked at Zoe. It couldn’t be true. He didn’t want it to be.

  Is she my…sister?

  Quinn was silent as the group returned to their horses. He hadn’t found what he was looking for, but what he’d found, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Zoe was thankful as he placed the brooch in her hands. Quinn couldn’t share her excitement, despite the revelation that had been made. He always wanted to know about his real family. The hope of one day meeting his birth mother was something that he had allowed to linger in the back of his mind for years. The only reason he never acted on it was that he loved the mother he had. The woman who loved him his entire life, the woman who raised him. He knew it would only upset her for him to search for the woman who birthed him.

  Agatha Mortensen is your mother. Quinn reminded himself of that fact, but it wasn’t the only thought in his head. There was another woman out there, one who had brought him into the world, and for reasons he never knew, had given him away.

  His eyes looked over at Zoe as she rode beside him. Was she his sister? Had this journey to catch Victor Norton brought him to the mystery that had lingered around him his entire life?

  She must have caught his glance, for the next second, Quinn was met by Zoe’s wondering gaze. He looked at her for only a moment, but it was too much. He turned away as something inside him began to rip apart. If Zoe was his sister, what he felt for her was forbidden, something of Biblical condemnation. He could not be in love with his sister.

  Maybe we were always doomed.

  Quinn scoffed. This was the cruelest of jokes. Finally, in five years, he found someone who made his world stop. Someone who made him think of more than just hunting, tracking, and capturing. Only to find out she was his sister and every thought he ever had about her was now forbidden. His jaw clenched.

  Only unhappiness follows you, Victor, and you bring it to everyone you meet.

  Quinn’s hand clenched around the reins of his horse. His head felt swollen. He couldn’t get his mind around what he was contemplating. He didn’t want it to be true, and was trying to find ways to deny it.

  Maybe Zoe was mistaken? Maybe there were more than two made. Maybe the story her mother told her was just that, a story?

  He was trying his best to deny what he knew, but it was no use. The brooch was one-of-a-kind. People didn’t make pieces of such intricacy on a large scale. Things like that were specially ordered, gifts that were heirlooms, just as Zoe had indicated. There weren’t a thousand of them out there. There was just two…his and hers.

  His leg hurt worse than ever as the horse plodded along beneath him. He placed his hand above the wound and squeezed the flesh to see if the momentary restriction would ease some of the pain. It didn’t.

  Everyone around him looked downtrodden, but none more so than Quinn. The others had the weight of losing Victor on their mind, but he had the weight of the secrets of his entire life upon him. It felt as if the entire Picture Gorge was sitting on his shoulders and he wasn’t sure how to relieve himself of it.

  Again, his eyes sought Zoe.

  There was comfort, pain, and a thousand other emotions as he looked at her. She had no idea of any of it. She had no clue that the weeks they spent together, getting to know one another, caring for each other, becoming part of each other’s lives, may have all been altered by that one brooch.

&
nbsp; Why did I have to ask? Why did she have to wear it? We could’ve gone on as before. Now, nothing will ever be the same.

  She turned to him again, as they often did, with that strange connection there seemed to be between them. Quinn felt sick as he considered what that connection might really be.

  “What?” she asked softly. “You’re staring at me.”

  Quinn’s jaw tensed. “Nothing.”

  Her eyes lingered on him. “You’re lying,” she replied. “You’ve never lied to me before.”

  “You would know all about lies,” he retorted.

  Zoe was silent for a moment. “That wasn’t fair,” she replied, hurt.

  “I know,” he said despondently, as he shifted his eyes from her face.

  Zoe’s lies seemed like a distant memory now. There was something greater looming before them, so great that it could change both of their worlds forever, and change the course of their futures.

  He knew his words hurt her. He wasn’t sure he even meant to say them, but at that moment he wasn’t in control. He needed to let out his anger. Not anger at what she’d done, but anger at the truth she had no idea about.

  He loved Zoe, but now he couldn’t love her.

  Despite his anger and hurt at her betrayal, deep inside, Quinn knew he could forgive her eventually. What he felt for her was greater than that. It was enough to overcome anything…but not this. This wasn’t the sort of thing that the love he had for her could erase. Blood ties were eternal, and if they shared the same blood, then the ties that already bound them were broken by the ones they now faced.

  “Didn’t me bringing you here show you anything?” Zoe asked sadly.

  Her words interrupted the unhappy thoughts running through Quinn’s mind. He met her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Quinn. I don’t know how else I can prove to you just how sorry I am.”

  His lips quivered as he pressed them together. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. He might say something he would regret later, so he just stared at her.

  Zoe’s eyes lingered on him for several seconds more, but when she realized he wasn’t going to say anything, she finally turned from him. It was better that way. Distance between them was for the best right now.

  “I think we should check ‘round Bone Yard Canyon,” Sheriff Watts called. “You said you met him out there, right, Mortensen?”

  Quinn turned to the Sheriff. “Yes. We had an altercation there,” he confirmed. His words sounded foreign as if someone else was speaking out of his mouth.

  “Then there’s a chance he might have another hideout out that way.”

  Quinn nodded in agreement.

  “Bone Yard Canyon, men!” the Sheriff declared as he turned his horse in the direction of the canyon. Quinn let them go ahead. His leg was throbbing, his head was pounding, and his heart was aching.

  “You don’t look too good,” one of the men in the party commented as he brought his horse alongside him. “Maybe you should hang back and head straight on to Shaniko?”

  Quinn looked at him as he entertained the tempting thought. He needed to clear his head and re-examine what he’d learned. Maybe there was something he was missing. Maybe there was a chance that what he believed was wrong. Maybe Zoe wasn’t his sister.

  You know that’s not true.

  “I’ll be fine,” Quinn stated to shut up the voice in his head. He was a logical man, and logic dictated that what he thought was the truth.

  “If you say so,” the man answered, as he urged his horse ahead of Quinn. Again, Quinn’s attention turned to Zoe. He’d wanted the truth from her. Now he had it.

  Sometimes the truth doesn’t make it better. Sometimes it tears you apart.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Quinn was behaving strangely. Zoe didn’t understand why. His anger at losing Victor, she understood, but his strange interest in her brooch and his dozens of questions regarding it made no sense to her. Even if he had seen it before, why was that important? Surely a brooch couldn’t help him track down the man he was looking for. Did he think she stole it or something? She turned in his direction and met his eyes.

  How did this happen? It wasn’t that long ago that she was with Quinn in Richmond, taking care of his wounds and helping him recover. He trusted her then and now that trust was gone.

  I should’ve told him. I should’ve admitted what I knew about Victor. Maybe if I had things would be different now.

  Maybe they would be worse? If he had that information he would never have stayed in town. She would never have gotten to know him. He would have gone after Victor and probably gotten himself killed.

  Her thoughts warred in her mind. Zoe did what she thought was right at the time. There was no changing it now. She gave Victor her word, and she had kept it. She tried to protect Quinn and she had done so.

  You did the right thing. Whether he understands it or not. You did what was best for everyone.

  Every time Zoe looked up she found Quinn staring at her. He looked as if he was in pain and she wondered if his leg was worse than he acted. Was he really willing to endure such pain and anguish just to catch Victor? Was there no end to what he would do or suffer to catch one man? Zoe wasn’t sure it was an admirable trait or an insane one.

  At least he has tomorrow to change. She might have deceived him again, but she was sure that it saved his life and probably others, as well. If they were lucky, Victor was hundreds of miles away and he would never come back. She certainly hoped that was the case. Sometimes you had to lie to those you cared about in order to protect him. Quinn might not see that now, and he may never understand her motivations, but the fact that she could see him living and breathing, was enough for her.

  She turned to him. His eyes were downcast and concentration wrinkled his brow. Maybe one day you’ll forgive me.

  The turn to Bone Yard Canyon meant it would be several hours or even a day longer before they returned to Shaniko. Zoe would much rather have gone straight home, but she knew that her opinion was in the minority. The Sheriff wanted to catch Victor. Quinn wanted to catch Victor. The only one who didn’t, was herself.

  The mountain loomed before them, a massive sentinel against a slowly darkening sky. Since being kidnapped by Victor, Zoe saw more of the world than she ever imagined. Bone Yard Canyon was another colossus to her mind of small buildings and simple living. There was so much more to life, she was seeing that now.

  “Where did you find him last?” Sheriff Watts asked, as he turned back in the saddle to look at Quinn. Despite the strangeness between them, Zoe remained by his side. He lingered at the back of the group, off to the outskirts. He still looked troubled and Zoe continued to wonder what plagued him.

  “The west side,” Quinn stated as he looked up from his thoughts.

  “Head west, men,” Sheriff Watts called. Everyone followed his command. The band of unlikely heroes was continuing the search for the one man who continued to elude all who sought after him.

  Why don’t they just give up?

  The thought was no sooner in her mind than her eyes sought Quinn’s face. She studied him closely. His chin was shadowed in unshaven fuzz. Dark circles were under his eyes and pain etched lines in his brow. He looked awful, yet somehow, despite it all, he was still the most handsome man amongst the group they traveled with.

  My life was simple before you came to Shaniko. No one interested me. I didn’t need to care more than was necessary. I could be close and yet keep people at a distance, doing what they needed but never allowing them to know what was in my heart. Why did you come in and carve your way into my heart?

  Her eyes fell from him as she continued to think of everything that transpired between them. She thought of the furtive looks, the moments when his hand touched hers over the card table. The smiles he gave her when he said nothing but his eyes lingered on her for what seemed like a lifetime. The way her heart danced in her chest whenever he appeared at her door. The late nights talking and laughing. Getting to know someone and all
owing someone to really know her.

  Zoe resisted the tears that stung her eyes. Had she really lost all of that because she kept her word? Was there any way to get it back? Would Quinn allow her to make amends?

  Her mind was occupied, but the momentary glint from something in the distance dragged her attention away. Zoe raised her eyes in time to see the barrel of a gun positioned over the top of a rock. It was leveled right at them. “Gun!”

  The moment the word left her mouth, the sound of gunfire filled the air, sending everyone into a frenzy. Soon, one shot turned to dozens, and Zoe found herself unarmed and in the middle of it all.