But still, she’d wanted things to be different.
Her chin trembled, but she refused to cry in front of him. “Perhaps it’s for the best,” she said stiffly. She was ready to flee back to the house, but not until she said, “I’d hate for us to be saddled together if you’d later come to think of me as a burden.” And how could she think of herself as anything but?
She whirled and took a step toward the house.
He said something low under his breath; she couldn’t make it out.
“This isn’t about your arm,” he called after her.
She didn’t look fully back at him, just answered over her shoulder, softly, “I don’t see how it could be about anything else.”
Then his footsteps crunched in the gravel behind her, and he grabbed her shoulders, spinning her to face him.
“It isn’t about you,” he said, and he was livid. His entire face had flushed red and a muscle in his jaw jumped. His black eye made him look sinister, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wouldn’t hurt her. Even now, so upset, his hold on her shoulders was gentle. “It’s because of me.”
She was on the verge of tears, unable to do anything but shrug, raising his clamped hands along with her shoulders. What did he mean?
He heaved a great sigh and let her go. Another glance at the house. Again, she followed his gaze there but didn’t see anyone moving around.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said. “You bundled up enough?”
She’d put her coat on before she came outside. She nodded and put her hand in her pocket, following him out of the barnyard and across the field that would eventually lead down to the nearby creek.
He was silent for a long moment.
“Didn’t you hear those cowboys last night?” he demanded softly.
Everything had been a muddle. Ricky had been comforting her, tucking her into the wagon, and she’d been a mess, upset by what had happened inside the café.
“Part of it,” she said truthfully. “They knew you from playing cards?”
“Not...not really.”
He wasn’t looking at her, was looking down at the ground as he walked, as if he didn’t particularly want to talk about this at all.
“When you’re in the saloon, you don’t really know anybody,” he explained. “Not like I know my brothers, or how Beau and I have become friends.”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets. Her heart was in her throat as he spoke. He’d never really opened up to her like this before.
“So, no...I didn’t know those two, not really. But the old me—the person I was before, I was a lot like them.”
She remembered what the one had accused him of. “Did you... Did you kiss the cowboy’s sweetheart?”
He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. No mirth in it. “I don’t know. Some nights, I got so drunk, I couldn’t tell you who I kissed...but it was a lot of girls.”
His neck had gone red and the blush spread up his jaw and into his face. “I’m not proud of it.”
They’d wandered down the gentle slope and now they’d reached the privacy of the wooded creek. The earthy, wet smell of decaying leaves rose around them.
They stopped walking, but Ricky wouldn’t really look at her. He put his palm up against the trunk of a scrub oak and leaned into it, nudging the toe of his boot through the dirt at his feet.
“My past is why your pa doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.” He said the words quietly, matter-of-factly, but she sensed the deeper hurt beneath them.
Her heart was fluttering in her throat like a trapped hummingbird. He did want to court her. He wanted to be with her. “But—you haven’t done any of those things since I’ve known you.”
He put a hand to the back of his neck, a sign of stress she’d seen him make before. “That’s not all of it. It’s worse than that.”
*
Tell her.
Ricky kicked at the exposed tree root, pulse pounding in his ears. The bark of the oak bit into his hand.
He needed to tell Daisy about the part he’d played in the night of her accident.
He wasn’t even looking at her, but in his mind’s eye, he could still see the tears in her beautiful eyes from a moment ago. His heart pounded, and his mouth went dry.
He couldn’t see a way forward. If her pa refused to let him come courting—well, he wasn’t going to ask her to go against her family.
Not for the likes of him.
But she deserved the truth. So she could know, and he hoped, forgive. Find peace. She deserved it.
With or without him in her life.
But when he turned to her to find her shivering in the cold breeze howling through the scrub trees, her eyes luminous and hopeful, he couldn’t force the words out.
Instead he blurted, “I killed a lady. When I was young.”
She gasped softly. But she didn’t draw away as he expected. Instead, she closed the small space between them and reached out and touched his forearm.
He didn’t know what to do with her closeness, not when he was telling something that only one other person, his pa, knew about. He looked down at her hand because he didn’t seem to be able to look anywhere else.
“My ma had died and I’d been thrown out of the place we were living. The bordello. I had nowhere to go and ended up on the edge of town, close to this little creek. There was a cabin nearby. I knew, because I’d spied on it earlier. I was cold and hungry and could barely think through my grief. I started a fire, got warm, fell asleep. I woke up in the night and the fire had spread. I couldn’t stomp it out, it was too big.”
He could still smell the sulfur, could still feel his lungs burning with the intense smoke.
He stared at her hand, trying to remember he was here, in the present, but his memories still felt real even after all these years.
“I ran back toward the cabin, but I couldn’t outrun the fire. I don’t remember it being a particularly dry summer, but it must’ve been. Everything caught fire so fast—the grass, the underbrush, even the small trees.” Wildfire.
All because he’d been careless and left his fire untended when he’d fallen asleep.
“When I got to the cabin it was on fire. I shouted, but I couldn’t get through the front door. I went around, but the entire building was engulfed.”
He swallowed, closing his eyes against the painful memories.
“Then I heard her screaming.”
The eerie shrieks were scalded into his memory, just like the scar on the back of his wrist from when he’d tried to rescue Daisy.
They never went away.
He was jerked forcibly from his memories as she stepped closer, slid her arm around his neck and held him close.
Without his consent, his arms came around her back and he buried his face in her hair, holding on to the comfort she offered freely.
He’d never expected this. Never thought that Jonas would accept his past. And now Daisy.
He didn’t deserve their understanding, their forgiveness.
But he couldn’t turn away from it, either.
*
Ricky was shaking.
The tall, powerful cowboy was trembling violently in her embrace.
She pressed her face against his shoulder as she held him, as they held each other.
She couldn’t imagine what he must’ve gone through, losing his mother and then this tragedy.
“How old were you?” she whispered, her mouth pressing against his shoulder.
His voice was rough when he answered. “Old enough to know you don’t leave a fire untended.”
“How old?” she pushed.
“Nearly nine.”
So young. Too young to be carrying this burden around.
“I ran away.” His breath was hot against the crown of her head as he spoke, but it didn’t seem either could move away. “I should’ve gone back and faced what I did, but I was afraid... I met up with my brother Davy in Cheyenne. He was alone, too. We sort of banded together and went
on our own, up until my pa found us camping in the woods and took us in.”
“I’m glad he found you.”
“So was I, until I started thinking how all the other brothers were good and I wasn’t. None of them knew, not even Davy...and it just got to be too painful, pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”
“Oh, Ricky.” She just held on to him tighter.
“And then...” He swallowed audibly. Hesitated. “And then Beau told me the truth. We’re all ugly, all sinners unless we accept Jesus into our lives. Your pa and your uncle...they’re not sure I’ve left all that behind.”
He shook his head, and she felt strands of her hair hang up on the fine whiskers on his jaw.
She lifted her chin, met his gaze for a long second and then moved her hand to his nape and pulled his head down. She pressed her lips into his, uncaring that she didn’t know what she was doing, only knowing that she wanted to show him that she knew.
He kissed her back, his lips moving against hers, one of his hands flat against her upper back.
She broke away, afraid of going too fast, a little afraid of the passion sparking between them. Looking up at him, she told him what was in her heart.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks or says about you. I know the man you are now.”
Chapter Sixteen
I know the man you are now.
Daisy’s words from two days ago had stuck with Ricky and haunted him even now as he and Beau rode out in the predawn gray to check the sheep.
He’d barely seen her in the past forty-eight hours. She’d come out to check on Matilda’s pups once, and he’d loitered in the barn, breathing her in and just chatting. Half afraid to get too close.
That kiss...
The only other time he’d seen her, she’d been hanging clean laundry on the lines, on a blustery cold day. He’d quit chopping the wood he’d been working on—much less violently this time—to help her, and they’d laughed and shivered as the wind had tangled them in the wet fabric.
Every time he saw her, his gut panged. He should have told her about the night of the accident.
He’d tried. And failed, although he’d shared about the fire from his childhood. He didn’t know how they could go on with this huge thing between them. He wanted it cleared up, but he was also afraid.
Because he was falling in love with her.
He’d never felt this way before, about anybody.
Surprisingly, the sheep were all bunched up and easily accounted for. Ricky and Beau started back for the house, chins tucked into their slickers against the biting wind.
Until Beau sidled closer than they usually rode. “Can I ask ya somethin’?”
“’Course.” Ricky reined in his horse until they were riding at a talking pace.
“Do you— I need to know—” The other cowboy stammered, obviously agitated.
Once again, Ricky was reminded of his brother Maxwell, and his heart ached. He missed home. After Jonas had left, Ricky had told himself he would get things resolved with Daisy and go back, but now he was falling for her. But how could they have a future when she didn’t know the truth about why he’d come into her life?
“There’s a girl, someone I fancy. A lot.”
For a moment, Ricky’s gut tightened. All he could hear was the creak of the saddle beneath him. All he could feel was the shifting of the horse.
He was the one who had encouraged Beau to woo Daisy in the first place. He’d thought there were sparks between Belinda and the cowboy but now suffered a moment of stomach-curdling worry. What if Beau fancied Daisy, not Belinda?
“Belinda?” he was able to ask quietly, without revealing the jealousy eating him alive.
“Belinda,” the other cowboy confirmed morosely.
Relief raced through him. “What happened the other night?”
The other cowboy’s shoulders slumped. “I thought she wanted to go to the social with me, but then when we got there, she spent all her time with her friends and making eyes at this other fella.”
That was about what Ricky had thought had happened. He’d mostly been paying attention to Daisy but had noticed Beau hanging back from Belinda’s close-knit group of friends.
“Have you talked to her about it?” Ricky asked.
Beau shook his head. “After the dustup the other night, she and her sister ran in the house and I didn’t get a chance. I’ve been watching for her, but she’s barely come out of the house. And I... And I don’t got the guts to go knock on the back door and ask to talk to her.”
Poor guy. “I don’t know if I would either, after she’d treated me like that.”
“What should I do?”
Ricky looked over at his friend, the man who’d showed him the way to faith in God and helped him more than anyone else.
Ricky exhaled loudly. “What do you want to do? If you want to fight for her, you’ve got to show her why she should be with you. You’re a hard worker. You’ll support her if y’all two get to the point of being married. You’re steady and conscientious—”
“And boring,” Beau concluded.
Ricky laughed. He couldn’t help it as his friend shot him a dirty look. “I’m sorry. You’re not boring. You’re one of the smartest guys I know... You’re just a little shy talking to women.”
“I wish I knew if she genuinely liked me...” the other cowboy mumbled.
“It would make things a lot easier on men like us if they could just pin a note to their aprons or something, wouldn’t it?”
Beau shook his head. “You ain’t got a problem with that. It’s clear to everybody who’s got eyes that Daisy and you are a match.”
His spirits fell. “Yeah, well, her pa ain’t too keen on me. And I don’t wanna make trouble for her with her family.”
The other cowboy looked over at Ricky. “Hard to believe you’re gonna give up.”
Beau was right. Ricky hadn’t given up when it had been hard to get Daisy to open up. Not when he’d had to face his painful past.
He resolved to do the right thing. He’d tell Daisy about the night of the accident and then he’d do everything he could to prove his heart.
“But how do I get close to her?”
He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but Beau’s head turned in his direction and he explained, “Her pa don’t want her in my company.”
And Beau grinned. “He can’t fault you for going to church, can he?”
The idea caught hold of Ricky. Tomorrow was Sunday. Richards always gave the cowboys the option to go to town and attend worship. Up until now, Ricky had been laying low, trying to stay outta town.
But if Daisy was going—and after she’d faced her fears of going to town the other night, he had to imagine she would be—he could go, too.
*
Sunday morning, Daisy fidgeted in the pew next to Audra. Belinda had run off to sit with a friend the moment they’d entered the sanctuary with its rows of simple wooden pews. On Audra’s other side, the twins whispered together. She didn’t even want to know what they were up to. And on their other side, her father sat at the end of the family pew. The entire church was crowded, folks filling up almost every seat. But she couldn’t focus on the whispered voices, not as she would’ve the other night.
After Ricky’s confessions and their kiss down by the creek several days ago, Ricky still had shadows in his eyes. She didn’t know if they were because of his past, or something else, or because her father still didn’t approve of him.
She’d gone to her father several hours after her poignant conversation with Ricky. Papa had been unusually taciturn and hadn’t given her a straight answer about why he wouldn’t allow Ricky to come courting. But he hadn’t outright forbid her from talking to the cowboy.
She missed Ricky. Missed the closeness they’d shared while they’d had to tend to her family over Christmas. Missed how he’d taken care of her the night of the social.
She just missed him.
And she’d held out hope tha
t he was coming to worship this morning. She ignored the swirling self-consciousness as she looked around the room once again. No Ricky.
She’d forgotten the smell of wood polish, soap that mamas had scrubbed their children with, too much rose water and powder from some of the older women. The overlapping smells gave her an inappropriate urge to giggle. She stifled it and nodded to Ethel, across the way, who sat with her baby and husband. Her friend looked surprised and happy to see her, and Daisy hoped there were no hard feelings about what had happened with the baby. Little Ruth looked fine from here.
The rear door opened once more with a rush of cold air, and then there he was. Ricky met her eyes and gave a solemn nod. He was hatless, hair mussed slightly but slicked down for church. His white shirt wasn’t new but was clean and pressed.
Her heart rose in her throat as he walked down the aisle, then she realized that there wasn’t room for the cowboy in the family pew—and anyway, she was stuck in the middle next to Audra’s aunt Pearl, who lived in town.
Ricky took a seat on a near-empty row two back and across the aisle. She looked back at him again, and again their eyes connected. He lifted his chin, a slow, intentional acknowledgment of her.
“Daisy!” Audra hissed from next to her.
Looking forward, she saw the preacher approaching the pulpit.
Someone whispered behind her, and she couldn’t make out the words but felt hot all over, same as she had the other night at the social.
But...
He’d made the effort to come this morning. To face censure from the people in town—maybe even from her father.
It meant something. To him, to her.
And she wasn’t going to let him sit alone. Even if it meant embarrassing herself to get over there.
She stood up, over Audra’s whispered protest, and scooted past her new stepmother, past the boys. She thought her father would stop her or forbid her from going, but he only watched with narrowed eyes as she stepped over his boots and out into the aisle.
She didn’t see the crowd around her or the eyes watching her as she took that second step across. She did register Ricky’s surprise and delight from the upward tip of his lips and the way his eyes warmed.
He quickly made room for her, and she settled in beside him. And she only felt a little twinge that her injured arm faced the aisle, out there for everyone to see.
A Cowboy for Christmas (Mills & Boon Love Inspired Historical) (Wyoming Legacy - Book 5) Page 18