“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Langdon said stiffly. His fingers clenched at his side, inching toward a pocket.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you. At this range, there’s no way I’d miss that pretty face of yours. I don’t think you’d like that.”
Langdon’s fingers wavered, then slowly moved into a more relaxed position.
“That’s a good smuggler,” Lou murmured. “Here’s the thing—you’ll be done following Mary. You’ll leave her alone and never set foot in Harney County again.”
“Or what?”
The silky arrogance of his voice set Lou’s teeth on edge. He just wanted to shoot this guy, get rid of him forever. He could feel the anger burning through his veins.
“You don’t want to find out. I expect you’ll be put away for a long, long time.”
Langdon’s face twisted suddenly. All the smoothness left it, the spoiled surety wiped away by a bitterness Lou hadn’t expected to see.
“You think you know everything.” Langdon spat on the floorboards. “Mary’s nothing to me, but I plan to ruin her just like her mother ruined my father.”
Well, this was new. Lou narrowed his eyes. “You’re out for revenge?”
“Justice, the kind the law doesn’t mete out. The kind God forgets to give. Mary thinks God is watching out for her, but she’s wrong. He looks out for no man. Her mother destroyed my father. Stole his money, broke his heart and left him a withered, whupped old man. He killed himself a year later. I was sixteen. Mary’s mother, Rose—” he said her name with vitriol, his face marred by angry lines “—will pay for what she did to me. God doesn’t hand out justice, but I do.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Lou asked in a deliberately bored tone.
“Because I want you to know that I will never, ever give up. Mary is my revenge, and it doesn’t hurt that she has a face a man doesn’t forget. This will never be over until Rose feels the torture my family experienced. You can put me away—” Langdon’s voice lowered to a hiss “—but you will never stop me.”
Lou’s finger itched to stroke the trigger. A bit of pressure. That was all it would take to make this mess go away.
And then he’d be no better than Langdon. Using his power to get what he wanted. Believing God had no place in his actions, that God didn’t care. Lou swallowed, his throat tight.
Right now, with the mustiness of the room in his nose, the impaired light that washed Langdon into shadows, Lou felt as if his soul was being tested. As if his decision at this moment would affect the rest of his life.
He looked at Langdon and saw himself. The anger over his past. Everything that had gone wrong, things he had no control over, things he’d believed God should control. He’d read enough of the Bible as a kid to know it said God gave each person a free will to make his or her own choices.
But Sarah and Abby hadn’t chosen to get sick. They hadn’t chosen death. It had chosen them.
His stomach clenched, but his aim didn’t waver. Langdon watched him carefully, his entire being poised in stillness. Whether they had chosen sickness or not, he didn’t want to be like Langdon, letting his bitterness over the past poison him until there was nothing left but evil. Maybe Langdon had been born this way; maybe there was something off with his mind that had nothing to do with his childhood.
Nevertheless, Lou felt as if he’d come to some kind of crossroads. A place to make a choice and to change the course of his life. He looked at Langdon and felt anger and pity. Setting his jaw, he repositioned his weapon and gave Langdon a hard stare.
He knew what he had to do.
* * *
“Got a telegram from Lou,” James announced, coming into the kitchen where Mary had laid out four pies, a cake and a platter of snickerdoodles.
Despite the delicious scents permeating her kitchen, Mary’s stomach roiled. Six weeks later and the mention of Lou’s name still unsettled her so badly she couldn’t eat. She covered her apple pie with a cloth, noticing how her fingers trembled.
“He’s left the Orient. Done with special agent stuff,” James added when Mary didn’t respond.
She didn’t know what to say. She could feel James’s gaze on her and ignored him in favor of covering the rest of her dishes. They’d have to hold them tight to keep them from being smashed in the wagon.
“You riding with me to the church picnic?” he asked.
She nodded and handed him her snickerdoodles. “Hold that very carefully.”
He balanced the cookies in one hand. “Your ma is staying home, ya know.”
While Mary and Rose had gone far in mending their relationship, her mother still felt uncomfortable in church-like settings. Mary hoped someday she’d feel good about joining them, but for now it was a blessing she’d stayed.
“Josie might feel badly that Mother isn’t going,” she said, stacking a pie gently into a Pyrex storage container.
“Nah.” James snickered. “That girl is running all over the place, and Gracie thinks it’s fun joining her. I’ve got the feeling Josie’ll be riding with Trevor and Gracie to the picnic. You and me will ride in the wagon. We’ve got to get a move on to make it in time. Alma don’t like it when I’m late.” A funny smile crossed his face, and Mary paused with her fiddling.
Was he in love?
He caught her glance, but the mooning look didn’t leave his face. “Sometimes it takes an old man time to figure out the important things in life.” He winked at her and left, carrying the snickerdoodles with him.
She continued filling her pie holder, but her emotions threatened to overflow. She blinked hard and picked up the carrier. The wagon was parked just outside the front door. Carefully she maneuvered through the kitchen door, traipsed down the hall and let herself out into the warm August weather.
The sun chose to shine today. It was neither hot nor chilly. Perfect for a picnic. She heard Josie’s squeals and watched her balance atop a horse, Trevor and Gracie on either side of the saddle.
Smiling, Mary loaded the food onto the wagon and then climbed in. James had thoughtfully left a hat for her on the seat. He must have snagged it from her living room. She arranged it on her head, trying to feel happy about the picnic.
After all, God had heard her prayers. He’d given her a family. Brought her mother back to her, given her a daughter to love. Even James felt like a father to her. With Trevor and Gracie staying at the ranch, she should have felt content with their big family dinners and the long walks they took together.
She didn’t, though. There was always this nagging awareness of something missing. When she went to town, her eyes caught on every blond man she saw. She paused at the sound of a man’s low tones. Everywhere she went, she thought she saw Lou. She hoped to feel his hand on her shoulder, to see the sparkle in his eyes or the way his lips turned at the corners when he smiled. His ready laugh followed her.
James heaved himself into the wagon beside her. The horses pranced, ready for their jaunt. Their manes wavered in front of Mary, blurring as an unwelcome stinging filled her eyes. She blinked again, harder this time.
“You okay, Mary girl?” James patted her shoulder, his palms an awkward pressure on her blouse.
“I’ll be fine.” She tried to quiet her sniffle, but it came out loud and unattractive.
“Anything you want to talk about?” His voice was gruff but kind.
He hated emotional outbursts. She knew that, but wanted nothing more than to cry and ask him why a man kissed a woman, listened to her pain, gave her advice and then left her for a job across the ocean. Why couldn’t a man say goodbye to a family he no longer had, to welcome a new family? He didn’t even have to say goodbye, she wouldn’t expect that. She just wanted him to be willing to be open to a new season in his life. To change.
But evidently that was too much for Lou. Frowning, she picked at a piece of linen stick
ing out from one of her pies. “Let’s just go, James. There’s nothing to change what is.”
“Now, now, you never know what’s around the corner. Miss Alma surely took me by surprise.” He let out a crackly laugh that tilted Mary’s lips a bit.
“I’m sure you must have seen her coming,” she pointed out. “Miss Alma is not a subtle person.”
“What I didn’t see coming were my own feelings. When I fixed that pipe at her house while you were making mischief in Portland, why, I stood up, caught a sniff of something baking in the oven and that fancy perfume she wears, and I just felt like I’d gone home. Like there was something missing out of my life and she held that missing piece, right there in her bathroom.”
Mary bit her bottom lip, torn between happiness for James and sadness for herself. “So that’s how she snagged you, food and perfume?”
“Nope. It was that home feeling.” He cracked the reins and the horses set off. Mary gripped her pies. “Not that you haven’t provided a home, my girl, but I always knew I was an employee.”
“Oh, no.” She turned to him. “You’ve been...like a father to me. In so many ways.”
His cheeks flushed. “Well, I’m right glad to hear that.” He cleared his throat. “Mark my words, Mary girl. If Lou don’t get himself home soon, if he don’t make right whatever’s wrong between you two, then he’s a bigger fool than I thought. You deserve better. My Alma told me she’s got a surprise for you at this picnic.”
Mary stifled her groan. “Don’t tell me it’s a man.”
“Well, now, I didn’t say that. I don’t want her thinking I ruined your surprise.”
“Here’s the thing, James.” She took a deep breath and suddenly found she believed it. “I miss Lou and hope he’ll come home, but I am blessed and filled by the family I have. I don’t need a man to make me whole or to give me purpose.”
“Nah. I know that.” He shot her a grin. “But love, not a man, surely makes a person’s life more full.”
She looked forward and exhaled her pent-up breath. That might very well be, but she wouldn’t put her life on hold, hadn’t, in fact, waiting for a love that might never come.
For a love that almost was.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lou came home to an empty ranch.
Dropping his luggage in the hallway, he meandered around the empty house before stepping back outside. It was a nice August day, perfect for an outing. Maybe that was where everyone had gone.
Fatigue pulled at his eyelids. He shook his head, ran fingers through hair that hadn’t been trimmed in a while. He circled the house and headed toward Mary’s home. Flowers bloomed outside her door.
He knocked, and Mary’s mother answered. She looked happier than he’d ever seen her, a smile playing on her lips and knitting needles in her hand.
“You are here for my daughter?”
He nodded.
Rose studied him carefully. He couldn’t read her dark eyes but somehow felt her disapproval. “They went to Horn’s,” she said finally. She touched the door, beginning to swing it closed, but he stopped her.
“I’ve got something to get off my chest,” he said. Taking a deep breath, he kept her gaze. “I treated you wrongly. Will you forgive me?”
This time she blinked and it seemed as though her features softened. Then her lips curved again. “Besa soobeda. This is a good thing,” she said quietly. “You are forgiven. Find my daughter and make things right.”
The door shut. Grinning, he pivoted and went to get a horse.
He supposed he could wait for them to get home, but he didn’t want to. Mary’s mother was right. He hadn’t traveled for so long to come home to emptiness.
He was back to do what he should have six weeks ago. No, what he should have done months ago. It had only taken seeing an old friend with his new family for him to realize that he’d made a huge mistake. Interspersed in all his traveling was some Bible reading and serious soul searching.
He readied a horse and within minutes was galloping toward the Horn place. It didn’t take long to find the huge picnic in progress. The scents reached him before he could even distinguish faces.
He patted the rump of his roan and tied her up next to the other horses. He spotted Trevor’s truck parked next to the few other vehicles some had dared to drive over the challenging roadways.
Sparse grasses flowed with the direction of the breeze. A bird twittered in the oak beside him. He took a steadying breath, surprised by the tightness of his gut. He’d faced down professional killers and never felt this nervous.
Wiping his hands against his jeans, he set off toward the picnic. Children shrieked with delight as a small dog ran in circles around them, yapping and wagging its tail. Other kids were climbing Horn’s maple. They’d have skinned shins, no doubt, by the end of the picnic.
He grinned, thinking of his own childhood and all its adventures.
“Mister Lou!” The high-pitched scream barely reached him before Josie smacked into his leg. He chuckled, reached under her arms and threw her into the air. Her squeal almost shattered his eardrums.
Laughing, he brought her close and hugged her.
“I missed you so much,” she said into his ear, her arms a vise around his neck.
His smile quivered, and he hugged her tighter. “I missed you, too.”
She pulled back and gave him a serious look. Her purple ribbon hung over one eye. “Are you leaving again? Because I don’t think Miss Mary will like that very much.”
“What about you?” he teased, tweaking her nose. “Don’t you want me to stay?”
Her eyes rounded and her whole body tensed. “Are you teasing me?”
He winked at her. “Let’s just say I plan on sticking around, if Miss Mary will have me.”
Her face lit up and she wiggled to get free. “Okay, I’m going to get her right now and tell her you have to stay.”
“Wait, wait,” he said, laughing and putting her down. “Let me surprise her.”
“Ooh, I like surprises!”
“Shh.” He rubbed her head and she leaned into his touch, beaming at him with such wide-eyed openness that his chest clenched with emotion. “I love you, little Josie. Do you know that?”
She nodded, a very solemn look crossing her face. “I know, Mister Lou. I love you, too, ya know.”
Smiling, he fixed her ribbon. “Come back in a bit and I’ll get you some chocolate cake.”
“Miss Mary said I had to eat my broccoli first. I hate broccoli!” She scampered off before he could respond, which was all well and good because at that moment he glimpsed the shine of black hair moving through the crowd of people.
He moved toward her, his heart racing, his stomach churning. He’d wondered how he’d feel when he saw her again, and the emotions roaring through him proved to be more powerful than he expected.
He stepped over a bush and followed Mary to the dessert table. Of course that was where she’d be. Checking out the goods, arranging them just so. She’d always be a homemaker.
She was quiet and deep, like a refreshing lake in the middle of a forest. Fresh and sweet to the taste, offering sustenance to all those who visited. He’d missed this stillness of hers, the ability she had of setting anyone at ease with her gentle smile.
Even her movements were soft and contained...and yet he remembered her in his arms. Full of passion and energy, giving all of herself to him in the way only a woman in love can do. His throat felt hot and tight as he watched her rearrange snickerdoodles on a plate. Her hair was up in some kind of doodad. Its glossiness beckoned to him. He wanted to pull it down, let the waves flow wild in the breeze, let them weave through his fingers with abandon.
He wanted her in his arms.
His hands ached to hold her, to feel the love she offered. But was he enough? Could he make her happy?
Swallowing hard, he stepped behind her. He saw the moment she felt his presence. Her back stiffened. There was the slightest intake of air, almost indiscernible beneath the noise of the picnic.
* * *
Mary swiveled around, her hand against her heart.
Lou grinned at her, his lips curving in that familiar way, smile lines fanning out from his eyes, and her breath caught so hard she choked.
Coughing, she put her hand against her mouth. He was immediately near her, rubbing her back, asking if she was okay.
She nodded, face hot. It wasn’t fair how he made her feel, these emotions he’d brought alive in her.
“You’re back,” she managed to croak. Not the most attractive speaking she’d ever done. Her neck felt on fire.
“I’m back.” His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “China wasn’t quite what I wanted.”
“Oh?” she breathed. Words were forsaking her and she did not appreciate their absence.
“It looks like you’ve been doing well without me.” His hand waved in the air. “You even talked James into attending a church picnic. Impressive.”
She swallowed, willing herself to breathe normally when every nerve ending tingled with unspoken anticipation. “That was Miss Alma’s doing.”
“Ah. Somehow I’m not surprised.” Lou’s eyes twinkled and he moved closer, edging into her space. “And you? Now that I’m not your employer, how have you been surviving?”
“My mother is with me. She sells her baskets.”
“No need to be defensive. I’m sorry about what happened with her, but if you can look past it, I can.” His finger came out to touch her cheek.
She shivered.
His gaze probed and she couldn’t look away from the intensity in the blueness of his eyes. “What I want to know is how you are doing,” he repeated in a low tone.
She wet her lips, unnerved and yet strangely alert to his attention. “I’m fine. Besides my selling herbs to him, Joseph at the general store likes me to bring in baked goods two or three times a week. The town ladies enjoy getting fresh, ready-made food. It is enough money for something I enjoy doing.”
Rocky Mountain Dreams & Family on the Range Page 47