“Sure, Miss Zoe. Yah know I’ll take care of everythin’ for yah,” he said with a smile.
“I know,” Zoe assured.
She didn’t think to remove her apron. Zoe walked up to her room and shut the door just as she was. She pressed her back against the door as her mind heard Pope’s words over and over. Tears were rolling down her cheeks seconds later and there was no stopping them.
She let Quinn in. She did what she never did before, and now she was feeling what she never had before—heartbreak. Zoe had protected herself so carefully from this feeling. She’d kept people at bay. She’d kept to herself and hid her true heart from those around her.
“Damn you, Quinn,” she cried. “What did you do to me? Why did you make me feel this way for you? I could’ve been fine if it weren’t for you. My life was good before you came,” she wept. “I didn’t cry.”
You didn’t feel, either.
Zoe slumped to the floor as the ache in her heart threatened to overwhelm her. She’d fallen in love. She’d never loved anyone, and now she did, and all she could see was sorrow at the end of it all. He was going to leave Shaniko. He had the big bounty Pope spoke of, and Victor was dead. The itch for more would come soon enough and then he’d leave, and she’d be alone again.
She brought her head back against the door. Why did she let this happen? Why wasn’t she more careful? Why did she let his smile drag her in?
Why did you let yourself love him? You know love can lead to lies, and the lies to pain. Didn’t you learn anything from the past? Why did you open your heart?
Zoe knew the answer, though she didn’t want to admit it to herself. She was lonely. Despite all she had, she was empty inside, and Quinn was the first person to fill that gaping hole in her chest. He was the only person she wanted to fill the hole in her heart. Now that it was, she couldn’t bear to think of losing it, of losing him.
“What’re you going to do?” she asked herself, as more tears dampened the front of her dress. Quinn said he wanted to start over, but she wasn’t sure what that meant, or if it was truly possible. “Zoe, what are you going to do?” she asked herself again. She had no answer.
Zoe closed her eyes and cried. She cried for what was, and what could’ve been. She cried for what she wanted to be and what she knew would never happen. Quinn wasn’t going to stay. She wasn’t going to have some miraculous happy ending. She was going to be unwanted yet again. Just like Victor.
She knew what she was saying when she spoke about Victor. She knew what it was to be the one no one wanted. Unlike Victor, she found that love elsewhere, but it didn’t remove the thought from her mind that she wasn’t wanted. That she wasn’t good enough. She’d done everything in her power to make herself good enough, and the success of her business was proof of it. Still, the thought always lingered with her.
Chapter Twenty-One
“How is business?” Quinn asked when Zoe entered the room. She had a tray with his lunch, which she set by his bedside.
“The usual,” she answered.
“Nothing special happen?” he asked.
“No.”
Quinn frowned. Why was she acting so strange? What was the meaning of the short answers? Usually, Zoe loved to talk, but today, as the day before, she barely said a word. Something was different. Quinn could feel it, he just didn’t know what the cause was. He told Zoe he wanted to start over. She’d been enthusiastic about it at the time, but in the days since, that enthusiasm seemed to have waned.
Why?
Had something happened that he didn’t know about? Had she changed her mind, or perhaps there was something else amiss? Didn’t she want things to go back to the way they were?
Or maybe she knows that it can’t. Maybe she knows the truth?
Could it be possible that Zoe knew what he suspected? Was it possible that she knew their true connection and was severing it because she knew it was pointless? Quinn’s jaw clenched as he watched her move around his room, once again tidying up behind him. He had to know.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as he turned himself in the bed. The pain in his leg had lessened some, but it still gave him great discomfort, regardless.
“Why would you ask that?”
“You tell me?” Quinn questioned keenly. “There’s something wrong. I can feel it. What aren’t you telling me?”
Zoe met his eyes and the sadness he found there surprised and alarmed him. What had happened?
“I met a friend of yours,” she stated.
Quinn’s brow wrinkled. “A friend? I don’t have friends.”
His answer seemed to only make her mood worsen.
“A man named Jim Pope came here a couple of days ago,” she stated. “He’s in a room down the hall.”
Quinn leaned forward. Pope was there? In Shaniko? “How long is he here for?” he questioned.
“Five more nights,” Zoe stated.
The greatest bounty hunter he’d heard of in a long time was under the same roof as him once again. Perhaps this was fate? He could seek the older man’s expertise in handling this precarious matter with Zoe. He needed a way to find out what he wanted without alerting or alarming her.
“Tell him to come and see me,” Quinn said quickly.
“Why?” Zoe asked in surprise.
“I have a matter I wish to discuss with him,” Quinn explained, though he wouldn’t elaborate. He wasn’t about to say that he was seeking the man’s advice on how to handle her.
Zoe stared at him, that same sad expression on her face. “Very well. I’ll tell him.”
“Thank you,” Quinn answered.
He knew it was probably better to leave her alone and let whatever was bothering her run its course, but he couldn’t. Quinn couldn’t watch her like this. It wasn’t the Zoe he knew. Even when he resisted her, was angry at her, and didn’t trust her, she continued to be the bold, vivacious woman he met. What had changed?
“Something’s wrong, Zoe Ferguson, and I want you to tell me what it is,” Quinn stated flatly. “You aren’t acting like yourself, and I know you well enough to know when something’s not right. What is it?”
“Do you know me?”
Her question took him back. “I believe I do,” he answered. “Why? Is there something you haven’t told me?”
Her eyes lingered on his face, the beautiful hazel threatening to pierce through him. “No,” she answered.
“Then what is it?” he insisted. “Let me help.”
“There’s nothing for you to help with,” she answered. “I’ll get Pope for you,” she continued, before she rushed from the room. Quinn looked at the door in confusion. What was going on?
Several minutes later the stilted gait of Jim Pope met Quinn’s ear. It was followed by three loud knocks upon his door.
“Come in,” Quinn called. A moment later Pope was standing before him. He smirked at him.
“We need to stop meetin’ like this,” Pope commented, as he hobbled further into the room. “Though, if I had as pretty a nurse as you do, I might just pretend to be hurt.”
A smile broke across Quinn’s face at Pope’s comment. “She is pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Pope answered. “Too bad she’s gonna be hurt.”
Quinn sat up. “What’re you talking about?”
“You,” Pope said calmly as he leaned against the dresser and pointed at him. “A man like you, and a woman like her, it only ends badly.”
Quinn’s heart thundered in his ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Pope stated matter-of-factly. “Your man’s dead. Nothing left for you but to find another one to hunt down.” He met Quinn’s eyes. “Have you felt the itch yet, or is that leg of yours holdin’ you back for a spell?”
Quinn looked at his leg as he listened. It wasn’t his leg that was holding him back. It was Zoe. He looked back at Pope. “Look, I’ve got something to discuss with you.”
“Good, because I only came because I
had something to talk to you about, too, and since I’ve got considerably more years on you, I’ll go first.” Pope smiled at him.
“All right,” Quinn agreed. “What d’you have to say?”
“Get out,” Pope said with the same candor he’d exhibited in Richmond.
“Get out?” Quinn questioned.
“Get out of this life before you have no life,” Pope continued. “I can see where you’re headed, kid, and take it from me, it isn’t the place you want to be.”
Quinn stared at Pope in disbelief. Was he actually trying to dissuade him from bounty hunting? Quinn couldn’t believe that.
“You’ve got yourself another fine hole in you,” Pope continued. “How many is that? You reached five yet?”
“Not quite,” Quinn answered, with steel in his voice.
Pope scoffed. “And all from one man? Wait until the next one,” he continued.
“There won’t be a next one,” Quinn stated. What? Did he think Quinn was some novice? Victor was an especially vicious man. It wasn’t that easy to get the drop on him.
“There will be,” Pope stated, as if what Quinn said meant nothing. “There will always be another, and as much as you think you won’t get hurt, you will. Over, and over, and over again.”
“Like you?” Quinn retorted sharply. He’d summoned the man for advice, not a lecture.
“Yes, just like me.”
Pope’s words were so calm and cool that it unnerved him. What was this man saying?
“You’re just like me. I can see it. I saw it the day the Doc brought you in. I could smell the trade all over you. When we spoke, it was all confirmed.”
“What do you think you know about me?” Quinn demanded.
“I know what’s waitin’ for you,” Pope said sternly. “I know all about those solitary nights on the road. The days that go by so fast you lose track of time. I know what it is to have only one thought in mind…catch him.”
Quinn swallowed the lump that rose in his throat as he listened to the older bounty hunter.
“Now I’m gonna tell you, what I wished someone had told me. This ain’t a life to commit to. It’s one you do for a time and then you get the hell out. If you don’t, it becomes all you are. You don’t have nothin’ or no one but your horse and your gun. Then as your life gets closer to its end, if you make it that long, you realize that there’s no one to remember you. The people you brought to justice are gone, their families don’t remember you, and no one actually knows you. They know your name, but they don’t have a clue who you are.”
“So what is this? A warning?”
“Yes. It’s a warning. It’s a caution to you, not to take good things for granted, and really think if this is the life you want.” Pope took a deep breath. “That lady, Miss Zoe, she’s real pretty. I’m sure she’d make a good wife for some fella someday,” he stated.
“Leave Zoe out of this,” Quinn warned. Pope met his eye, a glint of mischief in his eyes.
“I thought so,” the man stated.
“Thought what?” Quinn retorted.
“That you care for her,” Pope answered. “When a man is near death, the first person he wants to see is the one closest to him. I was there when you made them send for her, and in no time at all there she was, right by your side, to take you away and care for you herself.”
“Is something wrong with having someone who cares about you?” Quinn questioned.
“No, but it won’t last.”
Quinn’s heart sank in his chest. “What d’you mean?”
“Eventually, she’ll get tired of seeing you hurt. She’ll get tired of the months and months, and even years, of separation.” Pope met his gaze. “She’ll stick it out for a while, maybe even until she’s too old for other men to look at her, and then she’ll realize you’re never gonna stop. It won’t stop. The hunt has you. The thrill of catching your man will always be more important than her. When that day comes, she’ll regret the years she spent waitin’ on you. Then, she’ll hate you and it’ll be over.”
“You sound like a man who knows,” Quinn stated.
“I do,” Pope answered. “She stuck with me for twenty years before she’d had enough. Twenty years, sixteen gunshots, and countless bounties weren’t enough for me to stop.” He patted his leg. “Not until this. When I went to write to her, as I always did when I got hurt, I remembered that she was gone. There was no one coming to look after me anymore.”
“That isn’t Zoe…”
“Maybe not now, but it will be eventually. After you break her heart a few times.”
“I wouldn’t,” Quinn replied.
“Yes, you will. You won’t mean to, but you will,” Pope assured. “I never meant to, but that didn’t stop it from happening. You’ll miss her birthday and your anniversary or Christmas, and she’ll forgive you the first time, then the second, third and fourth, until she stops reminding you all together.”
A sickening feeling was rumbling in his stomach as he met Pope’s eyes. Would that happen to Zoe? Would they be like Pope and his lady?
No.
“She won’t be the only thing you lose,” Pope continued unexpectedly.
“What else is there?” Quinn questioned.
“Soon, with no one around, and all you have are the men you hunt, you start to lose a bit of yourself. You start to become as empty as the men you track. Eventually, you won’t much care what the truth is, only about the chase and the bounty. All the good intentions you had for justice will disappear, and it will be all about the thrill of the chase and the profit. You’ll become empty, and one day you’ll realize that you don’t know what’s important anymore.”
Quinn attempted to speak but Pope stopped him before he could utter a word.
“Don’t tell me that it won’t happen to you. Look at yourself—you spent five years after one man. Does your life now look like what it once was? Do you have any thought to your future? Or was the man you were chasing the only future you had, and now that he’s gone you’re wondering, what next?”
Pope’s words were terrifyingly accurate, and Quinn wasn’t afraid to admit to himself that he was unsettled by the grim picture the other man painted before him.
“Grab hold of the good in life. Let go of the bad. There’s far too much of it in this world, and in this line, you only see the worst of it,” Pope continued, as he pushed up from where he was reclining and settled himself on his crutch. “Today you lost a bit of flesh from your leg. Tomorrow it might be a bit of your heart. Maybe one day, your soul.”
Silence fell between the two men. Quinn looked at Pope, his questions for a plan to get information from Zoe gone. All he could think of was the sad look on her face and what Pope said about breaking her heart.
Have I? He wondered. Have I broken her heart and I didn’t even know it?
Pope nodded. “I know you said you had something to discuss, but I think I’ve given you enough to think about for a while. I’ll see myself out,” he stated. “Maybe I’ll pass through in a day or two and see if you still have those questions.”
Quinn remained silent as Pope left the room. He didn’t know what tomorrow held. There was no tomorrow for Victor, and though he wondered about the truth between him and Zoe, Quinn hadn’t thought much about what happened after that. What did he want? Was this the life he dreamed of? Was chasing men for years on end and having no one but himself what he truly wanted for his life? Was it fair to ask someone to bind themselves to someone who lived such a life?
Quinn raked his fingers through his hair as his thoughts flew at him rapidly. What d’you want, Quinn? Do you want to continue this life or do you want something more?
He wanted to hear the sound of Zoe’s footsteps approaching so he wouldn’t have to think. He could just look at her and for a while forget what Pope said, but there was only silence.
You already rely on her to erase the things you don’t want to think about.
Quinn held his head in his hands as he thought about w
hat he had to offer. Nothing. He had nothing. He had no home, no family close by, no friends, and apart from the bounty money, he had nothing else but his horse and his guns.
You’re more like Pope than you knew. The question is, do you want to stay that way or do you want more?
Quinn stared at the threads in his blanket as if somehow they would weave themselves into an answer for him. Then he thought of Zoe, and a smile tugged at his lips. She was the best part of his day, and his life. He didn’t have anyone else he could turn to. He didn’t have anyone else he wanted to turn to.
A Western Tale of Love and Fate: A Historical Western Romance Book Page 18