Justin's Bride

by Susan Mallery

  He touched his finger to her chin and tilted her face toward him. “You believe me?”

  “Of course.”

  His mouth straightened. “Every time I think I understand you, you surprise me.”

  He took her hands in his and pulled them away from his chest. When she would have protested, he glanced significantly to the freshly washed windows at the front of the office. She nodded her understanding. Anyone coming by could have seen them. A wave of embarrassment swept over her as she thought about how they’d been standing so closely together. Then she forced her head higher and squared her shoulders. She’d done nothing wrong, she had nothing to hide. Colleen’s never-ending threats had done the reverse of what her sister had intended. Instead of being cowed by her harsh words, Megan felt stronger.

  “I recognize that stubborn tilt to your head, Miss Bartlett,” Justin said, holding out the chair for her. “What are you planning now?”

  She picked up her reticule and shawl and set them on the corner of his desk, then took the seat he offered. He went around to his chair and sat down.

  “I was thinking brave thoughts,” she admitted. “You know, defying Colleen, that sort of thing.”

  “Good for you. Tell me what else happened at this meeting of hers?”

  “They want you fired, and one of them is going to have her lawyer look at the contract.”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t you care?” she asked. “I thought this job was important to you. You said you came back because you have something to prove. If you lose your position, they’ll have won.”

  He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. “They can’t win, Megan. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. I’ve made peace with some of the townspeople, I’ve faced my ghosts. Leaving wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  It would be to me, she thought, and realized she didn’t want him to go. A dangerous line of thinking, she told herself. Things were different between them. They couldn’t go back to where they’d been before. But she still didn’t want him to go. Not yet. He might have made his peace with some people in the town but not with her. She and Justin still had something between them. They needed time to settle it.

  “Let me take Bonnie,” she said impulsively. “If you don’t have her with you, they won’t have anything to complain about.”

  “No,” he said sharply. “You’ve always cared too much about what other people think. Since Mrs. Dobson smoothed the way, I find your willingness to take Bonnie now a little too convenient.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said, springing to her feet. “I was willing to take her, but you didn’t give me a chance to say so. I might be concerned about what others think, but you’ve always been very quick to judge me. I didn’t instantly say yes. Is that so awful?” She curled her fingers into her palm. “I’m a businesswoman. I spend most of my day at the store. My concern was for the child, not myself. I see now that she enjoys being in the store and visiting with people. But I didn’t know that before. Mrs. Dobson is teaching her her numbers. I’ve started her with her letters. I was worried about her. Of course, you won’t believe that, will you?” she asked bitterly. She glared at him. “You still think I’m the girl you left seven years ago. You still think I’m a fool and afraid, but you’re wrong.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “A very nice speech. If only it were true. You’ve always been ruled by what other people think.”

  Not five minutes ago she’d been thinking about how much she cared for him. Now she wanted to scream in frustration. “You’re not listening to me. I want to take Bonnie. I don’t care what Mrs. Greeley, my sister or the entire town has to say about it. She’s just a little girl. She needs a home and food and caring. I can provide those things for her.”

  “She already has them.”

  His quiet words doused her temper. Megan moved next to the desk and stared down at him. She thought about Mrs. Greeley’s ugly accusations and her own sister’s uncharitable attitude. No one understood why Justin had taken in the child. Megan had thought it had something to do with his and Bonnie’s both being fatherless and growing up in a town that didn’t want them. Perhaps that’s how it had started, but it wasn’t that way anymore.

  “You care about her,” she said with surprise.

  “What did you think?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I thought it was an obligation, or that you were doing it because it annoyed people.”

  “I’m flattered by your high opinion of me.”

  She waved her hand at him. “Don’t be that way. You know what I meant. But it’s more than that. You really love her.”

  He shifted on his chair, but didn’t deny her statement. “Bonnie’s easy to love,” he said. “She doesn’t care about who my parents are or aren’t. When she does find out, it will just bring us closer. She doesn’t care about the town, or what it thinks. She gives with her whole heart. There’s no holding back. No lies.”

  Megan raised her hand to her cheek as if she could feel the physical imprint of his verbal slap. Bonnie was easy to love for all the reasons she, Megan, had left him. Bonnie was honest, Bonnie didn’t care about the town, Bonnie didn’t lie. Bonnie gave without question.

  Megan walked to the window and stared out onto the street. She recognized most of the people walking by or riding in wagons. She knew the sounds of Landing, the seasons, the changes. Justin was right. She’d loved her position, her reputation and good name more than she’d ever loved him.

  Loving him had been the most wonderful thing she’d ever done, and the hardest. No matter how much she’d cared, there’d been no sense of rightness or freedom. In the deepest part of her heart, she’d known it wasn’t meant to be. She didn’t have the courage to walk away from everything. She didn’t trust him enough. The fear had been bigger and stronger than both of them.

  Those idyllic months, that perfect summer, was a lifetime ago. The girl who’d promised, then broken her word was gone. Only the fear remained. She clutched at the windowsill, feeling the wood and the cool panes of glass. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

  What would happen if she let go of the fear? What would happen if she gave in and did exactly what she wanted to do? She closed her eyes and thought about what had happened to her mother. She could hear her father’s voice telling Colleen and herself that their mother was dead. She’d known it was a lie, but she’d been too afraid to say anything.

  Afraid. There was that word again. Would she ever escape?

  She thought about explaining why. Justin would listen, he might even understand. She opened her eyes and drew in a deep breath. The explanations didn’t matter. Not anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know the words don’t mean much, but I want you to know what happened that day has never left me. I was wrong to react that way. I was wrong to say those things.”

  I was wrong not to go with you.

  But she didn’t say that. It was too late for those regrets. Telling him that truth would only make her feel better.

  “I know you’re sorry,” Justin said. He stared at Megan standing in front of the window, at the stiffness in her back and shoulders, at the way she clutched at the window frame, as if it were all that held her upright. “That doesn’t change the past, or the fact that I left here alone.”

  He’d waited seven years to hear her apologize and mean it. He would have thought he would feel more when she said those words. There was a time he would have sold his soul to hear them from her. Now they left him empty. It was nice of her to apologize, but it didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t erase her betrayal.

  “I know it doesn’t change those facts,” she said without turning around. “I wish... I suppose my wishes aren’t important.” She sighed. “Where did you go when you left here? I always wondered what became of you. The next morning you were just gone. The sheriff talked about rounding up a posse, then Laurie woke up and said you weren’t the man who had attacked her.”

/>   Megan wore a blue calico dress, similar in style and print to the green one she’d worn the night he’d stayed for supper at her house. The night they’d kissed and he’d touched her breasts. The night he’d discovered that no matter how he hated her, the passion between them flared as bright and hot as it ever had. That evening her hair had been down in a loose braid. Today she wore it up. She looked respectable. No blond curls defied her tightly twisted bun. She should have looked severe.

  She was merely beautiful. The afternoon sun filtered through the window and illuminated the side of her neck. He’d touched that sweet skin, had tasted it and kissed it. She’d arched against him in pleasure.

  He could have walked away from that. He could have bedded her or not, and let her go. It wasn’t the passion that kept him wound up like a too-tight watch spring. It was the fact that she’d wondered about him after he’d gone. That she’d thought of him, perhaps even mourned him. He was supposed to be tough and unflappable. Around Megan he was as stupid as a day-old calf.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she murmured, still not looking at him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I left here determined to prove the entire town right about me. If they thought I was a criminal, then I was damn well going to be one.”

  That got her attention. She turned slowly until she faced him. The sunlight danced around her, outlining her shape, creating a pale halo from hair.

  “You never broke the law.”

  “Folks around here didn’t seem to notice that. If there was trouble, I was usually in the middle of it.” He tilted his chair back and raised his feet until his heels rested on the corner of the desk. He crossed his ankles and smiled in remembrance. “I was going to rob banks. I figured it was the quickest way to make a name for myself.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  He shrugged. “I rode north for days while I made my plans. I came to a small town. I wasn’t even sure where I was. Wyoming, maybe. Anyway, there was a bank there. I decided that was the one. I went into the local saloon. I needed a drink for courage.”

  The memories quickly came back to him. The sawdust on the floor, the scarred old bar and the gray-haired man serving drinks. There had been something kind about the barkeep’s eyes, something that had made him confess his secrets.

  “After a couple of whiskeys I started shooting my mouth off, bragging about what I was going to do. I even showed the barkeep my gun. He was real impressed.”

  Megan moved closer, then sank onto the chair on the other side of his desk. As she tilted her head, the light brushed against her cheek, turning her pale skin to cream and darkening her eyes to the color of a moonlit sky. Hazel to gray, fear to curiosity, curiosity to caring. He didn’t want to know she cared. It wasn’t enough.

  “Did he help you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but not the way you’d think. He kept asking me questions about how I was going to rob the bank, then pointing out problems I hadn’t thought of. After a few minutes, I realized I wasn’t prepared to pull off the job.” He grinned. “I felt awful then. I wasn’t even a good criminal. When I admitted that to the old man, he smiled at me and told me it was for the best. Then he pulled out his badge and tossed it on the table. In addition to owning the saloon, he was the town sheriff.”

  Instinctively, Justin reached up for the badge on his chest. It was a different shape, a circle surrounded the star, but the meaning was the same.

  “You must have been shocked.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. I just about sh—” He glanced up at her and cleared his throat. “I about embarrassed myself something awful. But Williams was a fair man. He said I hadn’t committed a crime and someone’s just thinking about committing one wasn’t enough to get a body arrested. Then he did the damnedest thing. He asked me if I needed a job, then offered to hire me as a deputy.”

  It was as if that had happened yesterday. Justin could still feel the intense jolt of pleasure, followed by anger as he’d assumed the old man was taunting him. Bullying him the way the children at school had until he’d gotten big enough to make them stop. But Williams had been serious. His kindly eyes had squarely held Justin’s gaze as he’d explained the duties involved with being a deputy in the tiny town. Last of all Williams had pointed out that Justin would have to stop his plans for a life of crime.

  “He believed in you,” Megan said slowly. She leaned forward in her seat. “He was the first one. No one here believed. Not even me.”

  He didn’t think she would figure it out so quickly. “I owe him a lot. I paid back some of my debt to him when we had trouble a while back, but it’s not enough. He’s the reason I came back here. He told me I had to make peace with this town before I could go on with what I wanted to do.”

  He’d been staring at the toes of his worn boots, but from the corner of his eye he saw Megan stiffen. “You didn’t know I was going to be here, did you?” she asked.

  You didn’t come back for me. She didn’t have to say it. He heard the words echoing in the silence of the small office.

  “I thought you were married and gone,” he admitted.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  The tightness around her perfect mouth could have been hurt. Except hurting would mean she still cared. And she couldn’t. Not about him. He was still the town bastard, and she was the respectable Megan Bartlett. They’d never had a chance.

  “What happens when you’ve made your peace?” she asked.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “You and Bonnie?”

  “If I can’t find a relative of hers, I’m going to adopt her.”

  “Because of what Williams did for you?”

  He nodded. “And because I don’t want to lose her.”

  “I wish I had known more back then.” Megan stared at her lap. “I wish I could go back and change what happened between us.”

  “Why?” He lowered his feet to the ground with a thump. “Nothing would be different. You still wouldn’t have left with me.”

  “I might have,” she said softly.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I know. You think it’s all about what other people think, and that I should just dismiss their feelings. It’s not that easy. I was raised differently than you. I never learned how not to care about the opinions of others, especially people who matter to me. My father would have disowned me. I was only seventeen, Justin. I was wrong, but I wish you could understand how hard it was for me. How hard it still is.”

  “No, I don’t understand.” He waved his hand toward the window. “What is so frightening about Landing? Who has this hold on you?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  He watched her as she reached across the desk and picked up the pocketknife that had been resting there. It was the same one she’d returned to him the night he’d been at her house. He still didn’t know why she’d kept it all these years.

  She turned the knife over in her hands and traced the initials with her fingertips. There was something familiar about the gesture, as if she’d done it a thousand times before. As if the knife had meant something to her. A dangerous line of thought, he told himself. One best left alone.

  “Colleen doesn’t like me working in the store,” she said. “She thinks it’s shameful that a single woman, a spinster, really, is engaging in commerce.” She smiled slightly. “I think she’s been reading too many society pages. It’s not as if we have a social standing.”

  “You do in Landing.”

  She shrugged. “That doesn’t count. But she keeps telling me that my working is wrong. That I should hire a man to manage the store for me and spend my time doing...” Her voice trailed off. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Looking for a husband,” he offered.

  “Yes, that, of course. Charity work, but only for those people whom she has deemed worthy.”

  He made a noise low in his throat. Megan glanced up at him. T
he gray had faded from her eyes leaving them hazel again, and sad. “You think this is funny. It’s not to me. Colleen is the only family I have left. After what happened today, I’m not sure we’ll ever speak again.”

  He tried to find it in his heart to be sorry, but he couldn’t. Not being around Colleen might be best for Megan, if she could get over the guilt. He thought about her store, about how well she was doing. If the wide variety of items for sale and the steady stream of customers were any indication, she was doing better than her father had done. He couldn’t imagine Megan sitting home knitting socks for needy orphans. Nor could he imagine her married to someone else.

  “There were no proposals after mine?” he asked.

  She placed the knife back on his desk and folded her hands on her lap, looking as prim as a schoolgirl. “I was engaged for a short time, but when my father passed away, my fianc;aae didn’t agree with my desire to postpone the wedding until after the year of mourning. He broke off the engagement and married someone else.”

  “You must not have wanted to get married all that badly if you were willing to wait a year.”

  She straightened in her chair and glared at him. “You have no business—” She paused, then grinned. “You’re right. I didn’t love him. I couldn’t. Not after—” she cleared her throat “—that is, not after everything that had happened to me.”

  Not after you. Is that what she’d been about to say? God, he didn’t want to know that. It would change too much. He’d accepted the fact that Megan was still in Landing and that there was still something very strong between them. But he was going to do his damnedest to make sure nothing came of it. He’d been weak once before and she’d almost destroyed him. He wouldn’t survive a second time. But even if he could, he wouldn’t risk Bonnie’s heart. He’d already explained to the child they would be leaving in a year. He knew she didn’t understand the reference to time, but she was willing to be with him. She trusted him.

  Yet, the past flickered through Megan’s eyes and taunted him. He wanted to reach across the desk and pull her close to him. He wanted to kiss her and forget his good intentions. He wanted to touch her and take her right here on his desk, the rest of the world be damned.