“Your life—”
“Meant nothing to nobody. Not even Pete cared. Not really.”
“How did you meet him?” she asked.
A corner of his mouth quirked up. “You remember that mortician I told you about?”
“The one you lived with for a while?” she asked.
“Yep, that’s the one. He was teaching me to prepare the bodies for burial.”
She shivered with the thought of being around corpses. She knew someone had to do the grisly task, but she’d certainly never contemplated taking it on.
“Well, they’d hanged Pete that morning—”
“They’d hanged him?” she blurted out.
The corner of his mouth rose a little higher. “Yep. They’d caught him stealing a horse. Steal money and you go to prison. Steal a horse and they hang you. No trial. No courtroom. Just the nearest tree and a long length of strong rope.
“Anyway, they’d dumped him on the table and told me to get him ready for his pine box. It was just him and me in that dimly lit room. He was the first dead person I’d ever spent much time around, and he made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.”
She could well imagine that he had. Just hearing about it had the fine hairs on the nape of her neck prickling.
“I went to button his collar. Didn’t think he ought to meet his maker with the rope burn showing, and he grabbed my arm.”
“I would have swooned,” she said. “After I’d hollered.”
His slight smile revealed his perfect teeth. “I was too startled to do much of anything but stare. Pete just grinned. Said he had nine lives, just like a cat. He asked me to help him escape. I figured he deserved to get away, fooling the Grim Reaper like he did. I hid him at the train depot and bought him a ticket. When he invited me to come along”—he shrugged—“I went. I’d never had anybody ask me to join them on an adventure.”
He shook his head. “Some adventure.”
He started picking at some loose threads in the quilt as though embarrassed that he’d revealed so much.
“Why didn’t you leave when you learned he was robbing banks?” she asked.
“He said those folks didn’t need the money. We did.”
“Whether or not they needed it wasn’t the point. They’d earned it and the right to keep it.”
He lifted his gaze then, a yearning for understanding reflected in his eyes. “I was twelve. I’d never had anyone tell me that I’d done a good job. I’d never had anybody need me. Pete needed me, and I was good at climbing up to the roof, where I could reach an open window on the second floor or slip down a chimney. I’d open the door for Pete. He taught me how to open a safe. He said I was a natural. His words made me feel good. Don’t know if I’d ever felt good about myself.”
Amelia had never before been so confused. She couldn’t condone what he’d done. She wasn’t even certain she could comprehend the reasons that he’d done it. What she did understand was that Jesse had grown up with no love and little praise.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he snapped. “I didn’t tell you that story so you’d pity me.”
“I don’t pity you,” she shot back.
Although her heart did go out to him. But if he was anything like her contrary brothers, he had an abundance of pride. “I think you were a fool to blindly follow Pete.”
“That’s the gosh-darned truth. I won’t fall for false praise again, I can promise you that.”
Amelia was beginning to realize that she’d had a very sheltered life. No one had broken her heart; no one had ever shattered her trust.
And yet here she was sitting on a quilt with a young man whose life had been the complete opposite of hers. She’d thought listening to his tale would satisfy her curiosity about him. All it had done was convince her that she wanted to know more.
“What will you do when you’ve finished serving your time?” she asked quietly.
Releasing a deep sigh, he sat up. “Haven’t thought that far ahead. Right now it’s all I can do to get through one day without bolting.”
“You mean you think about escaping?” she asked stunned.
“All the time.”
“But this isn’t a prison.”
“It doesn’t have walls or locked doors. But for me, Amelia, it’s still prison. No one trusts me enough to leave me a horse.”
She heard the disappointment reflected in his voice. But more, she saw the humiliation swimming within his eyes. Just as it had been when he’d stepped off the train at the depot and his shackles had clanged around him.
Just as it had been when she’d approached him in the corral, and he’d known that her need to uphold her end of the promise had brought her lips to his cheek instead of to his mouth.
She wanted him to help her capture the mustang, but so much more was involved. She couldn’t explain it—he haunted her thoughts, invaded her dreams. Images bombarded her—Jesse skirting the edge of a crowd or standing at the fringes of a group of men.
Loneliness. She suddenly realized what it was she was seeing when she looked at him. A shroud of loneliness.
Unexpectedly she felt mean-spirited and trivial for not being willing to offer to him what she would have offered to any other cowboy who had tamed Duchess for her.
Slowly she leaned toward him in the same manner that a moth was drawn to a flickering flame, hovering near, knowing even as it approached that it risked getting burned.
The lines in Jesse’s face ran deep, carved by hardship and sorrow.
Her heart tightened into a painful knot as she considered all he might have suffered.
She saw fear suddenly flare within his eyes.
“Don’t,” he rasped.
“I owe you a proper kiss for taming Duchess,” she whispered.
He shook his head slightly, but he didn’t move out of harm’s way, and she wondered if he was as powerless to prevent what was coming as she was.
Closing her eyes, she pressed her lips to his.
While he’d seemed hesitant, now that she’d committed them to a kiss, he wasn’t tentative at all.
He kissed her as though his life depended on it.
But for all his enthusiasm, she sensed that he was holding back much more. She knew he’d received no comfort in prison, and based upon what he’d revealed in the barn, she thought he might never have received any.
He cradled her cheek with one hand, the gentlest touch she’d ever felt. With his thumb, he slowly stroked her cheek and gentled the kiss. She wrapped her arm around his neck and ran her fingers up into his thick hair.
He drew back, and she saw confusion swimming in his blue eyes.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” he said in a voice that sounded like sandpaper rubbed against coarse wood.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you? Or you shouldn’t have kissed me back?”
“Both. Amelia, you don’t want to get tangled up with the likes of me.”
She eased back, furrowing her brow. “I don’t think you’re as bad as you think you are, Jesse Lawton.”
“Are we going to go look for that mustang?” he asked brusquely, as though he feared treading the path she was starting down.
She smiled softly. He intrigued her more than he should. But she knew he wasn’t nearly as tough on the inside as he was on the outside. “You get the horses while I put the picnic away.”
If anyone had ever told Jesse that he’d kiss a judge’s daughter—and be grateful that he had—he would have called the man a fool.
Instead he was calling himself a fool as he rode beside her.
Whenever he was around her, he’d begin to think that maybe, maybe after he’d served his time, he might have a chance at a normal life. She spoke to him as though she cared about what he had to say. No one had ever done that. Not even Pete.
He was beginning to understand why every cowboy had been willing to risk a broken bone to gain her favor by breaking Duchess. She had a way of looking at him and making him feel as though
no one else in the world was as important.
He told himself she was just doing it so she could convince him to help her capture that mustang she wanted.
Still, he couldn’t forget the softness of her cheek or the tenderness of her kiss.
His mind kept coming back to that kiss. She’d tasted so sweet. Once when the widow had been in a good mood, she’d allowed him to lick the spoon she’d used to whip up the icing she’d spread over a cake. Amelia was better than sugared icing.
She glanced over at him and smiled. It irritated him that he thought he might do just about anything to have that smile aimed his way. Yet at the same time, it pleased him to see it.
“Have you always had a way with animals?” she asked.
He couldn’t quite get used to her interest in him, couldn’t recall ever carrying on what he’d consider a real conversation. The most talking he’d ever done involved understanding exactly what he was supposed to do during the bank robberies.
He nodded. “Best as I can recollect.”
“They’re not as judgmental as people,” she said softly.
“That’s true.”
“How will you capture the mustang?”
He shook his head. “Didn’t say I would.”
“But if you were going to?”
“Slow and easy. He’s probably got a herd of mares somewhere,” he said. “Have you ever seen them?”
“No. I’ve seen him on that ridge in the distance.”
He squinted at the rising slope of ground. Trees and brush lined the ridge and dotted the land spreading out before them. There wasn’t anyplace for a man to hide.
“I’m not really interested in the mares,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.
“It would be easier to approach him, though, and get him to trust me if I could ease my way into the herd. If it’s just him and me, then it’ll be harder.”
“I’ll race you to the rise,” she suddenly announced.
Before he could respond, she’d nudged Duchess’s flanks and sent the mare into a gallop. He kicked his own horse, urging him to follow.
Without warning, her horse released a high-pitched neigh and reared up, its front legs churning in the air.
Amelia screamed.
The horse bucked wildly.
Amelia flew out of the saddle and landed hard on the ground.
Jesse galloped to where Amelia had fallen. Pulling back on the reins, he leaped off his horse before it came to a stop. He knelt beside Amelia.
She was as still as death.
His heart was thundering as loudly as the horse’s hooves had just moments before.
“Amelia?”
Leaning over her, he touched her cheek. He was afraid to move her, afraid to do anything that might hurt her more than she was already hurt. Looking closely, he could see a thin trail of blood along the back of her neck. She must have hit her head on a rock when she’d fallen.
Or had the horse kicked her? It had all happened so quickly that he wasn’t sure.
He heard a rumble in the distance. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a group of riders. A plume of dust billowed up behind them.
He recognized the two lead riders as they brought their horses to a halt: her brothers. Several other men were with them.
Thank goodness. They could help him get Amelia back to the house.
Robert and David quickly dismounted.
“She’s hurt,” Jesse said. “I don’t know—”
David grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him to his feet. Then he plowed his fist into Jesse’s stomach. The air whooshed out of him as he dropped to his knees. He wanted to explain what had happened, but without the ability to draw a breath—
“You son of a…” David growled as he punched Jesse in the jaw.
Stars flashed before Jesse’s eyes as he hit the ground. He looked toward Amelia. Dark shadows hovered at the edge of his vision. He could see Robert lifting her limp body.
Someone pulled him to his feet. Mitch. He hit Jesse harder than he’d ever been hit in his life.
Without the ability to draw in air, he couldn’t talk. But he quickly realized it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t believe anything he had to say anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Amelia’s head felt like a herd of wild mustangs was stampeding through it. Slowly she opened her eyes. She was lying in her bed in her dimly lit bedroom. How had she gotten here?
With concern etched on his face, her father sat on the edge of her bed. “How many fingers am I holding up?” he asked.
She smiled at his silly question. “Three.”
She started to lift her head, but pain throbbed at the base of her skull. Moaning, she placed her hand at the back of her head and became aware of the bandage.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You were attacked,” Robert said.
She shifted her gaze slightly and saw her brothers standing at the foot of her bed. Colleen was with them. She’d never seen them looking as worried as they appeared to be now.
“Attacked?” she repeated, trying to make sense of his words.
“We saw smoke coming from the area of the north line shack,” David said. “We couldn’t figure out why there would be any. We thought maybe the building or a section of grass had caught fire. We got to the shack and saw tracks, so we followed them. We caught up with Jesse before he was able to hurt you any more than he already had.”
She furrowed her brow. For heaven’s sake. What was her brother blabbering about?
“Hurt me? Jesse?”
“He had you on the ground, Amelia,” Robert said. “Unconscious. We saw him leaning over you.”
Everything started rushing through her mind like a storm encroaching on the land. Sitting up quickly, she grabbed her head to try to stifle the pain.
Her father gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Lie back down, sweetheart. You’re safe here. He’ll never bother you again.”
Her stomach tightened. Despite the anticipated pain, she shook her head. “No, Jesse didn’t attack me.”
“Amelia, we saw him,” David told her.
“I don’t know what you saw. We were riding, and Duchess suddenly reared up…a snake. She saw a rattler. I remember now. I lost my seating and tumbled off. Didn’t he tell you that?”
Robert shifted his stance, and David lowered his gaze to his boots, both suddenly looking extremely uncomfortable.
“I’m thinking they didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything,” Colleen said.
“You didn’t even ask him what happened?” Amelia asked.
David shook his head. “We had several men with us. They all thought the same thing we did.”
“What were we supposed to think? I know he made you cry the day we took him to Fort Worth for clothes,” Robert said.
“What’s this?” her father asked suspiciously. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”
“He didn’t make me cry,” she rushed to explain.
Why was everything getting blown so far out of proportion? She might have laughed if her head weren’t hurting so badly.
“Amelia, I saw the tears,” Robert insisted.
“I thought I’d been brazen when I purchased a dime novel—went against Papa’s wishes. You know that he doesn’t approve of my reading them. When I showed the book to Jesse, he laughed. He didn’t think I’d been bad at all.
“I let his laughter hurt my feelings, and like a ninny I got all weepy. That’s all. He didn’t do anything he shouldn’t have done that day. And he didn’t do anything wrong today.”
“We didn’t know that,” Robert said. “We just assumed…”
“You assumed what?” she demanded.
“The worst,” he said quietly.
Something was wrong; something was horribly wrong. She could tell by the way that David refused to look at her and continued to hang his head, as he’d done when he was a little boy and gotten into trouble.
Steal a horse and they hang you,
Jesse had said. Had they thought he’d stolen the horse he’d been riding?
“Where’s Jesse?” she asked, unable to keep the panic out of her voice.
“We locked him in the back room in the barn. Figured to take him back to the depot and on to Huntsville tomorrow,” Robert said.
“No!” Amelia flung back the covers and scrambled out of bed despite the racking pain in her head. “He didn’t do anything wrong. If anyone did, it was me. I took him a horse; I invited him to come with me.”
“Amelia, you shouldn’t get out of bed,” Colleen said.
“I’m fine. I want to see Jesse.” She turned to her father. “Papa, he didn’t want me to be with him. He didn’t want to break your rules. I was the one who disobeyed. Please let me see him.”
Her father narrowed his eyes and looked at her brothers. “I think I’d like to see him, too.”
As long as he kept his eyes closed, Jesse could pretend that he wasn’t locked in a tiny dark room. He could pretend he was outside on a moonless night. A night thick with clouds that stopped the stars from shining though. A still night with no breeze. Just stifling heat.
As long as he kept his jaw clamped shut, he couldn’t scream.
When he was a little boy and the widow had locked him in a closet beneath the stairs, he’d cried until he had no more tears and yelled until his throat was raw.
Neither action had helped him then. He didn’t think much was going to help him now.
He ached in more places than he knew he had. Mitch had delivered a second blow that had knocked him out. He’d awoken to find himself here, in the dark. He’d noticed a small empty room in the barn when he’d hauled feed to the horses. So he figured that was where he was. They’d probably used it for storage at some point. Now they were using it as his cell.
He was worried about Amelia, but he figured since they hadn’t hanged him yet she was still alive. He just wished she’d wake up and be all right.
He knew they’d send him back to prison. Caught on the prairie with a horse and the judge’s daughter…He’d seen the hatred and distrust in her brothers’ eyes.
He never should have accepted Judge Harper’s offer. He should have simply stayed in prison. Served out his time there. Going back was going to be much harder because now he possessed something he hadn’t before—the memory of Amelia.
Amelia and the Outlaw Page 10