A Place Called Home

by Elizabeth Grayson

  He stared down at their linked hands, quiescent, still.

  "I didn't have a chance to tell you before," Livi went on, "how grateful I am that you would offer yourself for the sake of my child. I didn't have a chance to tell you how afraid I was that I would lose you, too."

  Reid's breathing came heavy in the silence.

  "I love you, Reid. There was a time in my life when I wouldn't have believed that was possible. But you've proved in a hundred ways how good and honorable a man you are. You've given me so much—"

  Reid jerked his hand away. "Stop it, Livi!"

  She felt the loss of his warmth up the length of her arm. "What is it you want me to stop?"

  "Stop deluding yourself that you're in love with me," he told her. "Stop pretending that the two of us can make some sort of a life together."

  "And why should I do that?"

  "Because we can't. Because you belong in Lynchburg, where it's safe."

  "I don't want to go back to Lynchburg!"

  "I'll pay you for David's land," he offered. "I'll take you back myself and help you find a house. I'll—"

  "Damn it, Reid, I've proved myself. We broke new ground on those fields. We plowed them and we planted them. We weeded and watered and harvested our crops. I've kept my family safe—"

  "Safe!" Reid thundered. "By God, Livi! How can anyone keep a family safe when you've got Indians raiding every few weeks? How can anyone keep a family safe when sickness and wild animals and accidents could take your family's lives? You've got to go back. It's the only way I can be sure-—"

  "I don't have any intention of going back!" She was bone-deep weary of arguing with him about the farm. "If you refuse to let us stay at the cabin, then we'll move on. We'll go and live at the station while I look for another piece of land."

  Until Livi spoke the words, she hadn't realized how much Kentucky had come to mean to her, how determined she was to stay. "Ben Logan will help me find—"

  Reid surged to his feet, cursing, shaking, angrier than she'd ever seen him.

  "God damn it, Livi! I don't want Ben Logan helping you find another cabin somewhere out here. You won't be safe there, either. I need to be sure you're safe."

  He snatched up his gun and spun away.

  "I'm not leaving!" Livi shouted after him as he hightailed it into the woods. "You may as well get used to that!"

  Reid kept on moving. He didn't come back until almost dawn.

  The rains washed in a few minutes after Reid's return, dousing the last embers of their argument, forcing an uneasy cooperation on both of them as they prepared for the trail.

  It took everything they had to keep moving the next two days. Downpours came and went. Streams swirled muddy and treacherous to the lip of their banks. The trails churned to quagmires underfoot. They sheltered both nights in caves with little to eat but their dwindling supply of parched corn and jerky. Livi scrounged in the wet for wood and built up the fire. Reid sat staring out at the rain and refused to speak.

  Trapped with Reid by the weather, Livi felt battered by his energy. It seemed distilled to its essence here, the currents running thick and relentless, confined by the rough-stone walls. It was as if she could feel him squirming inside his skin, trying to escape both her company and himself.

  She sensed a high-pitched panic in him that he could barely control. She didn't think he ever slept, kept awake not so much by the need to stand guard over her and her child as by whatever was boiling inside him.

  The third day the sun broke through the clouds and the land became rolling and familiar. They traveled more swiftly here, reaching their valley in the early afternoon.

  From the top of the ridge to the south, they could see across the fields to the cabin. Everything was as it should be. The animals grazed in the stubbled fields. Tad and Cissy sat on the steps of the cabin in the sun, busy with their books and slates. Eustace worked turning the ground in the kitchen garden. It seemed so calm, so perfect, that Livi was reluctant to turn away. When she did, she saw that Reid had resolved whatever he'd been struggling with.

  "Livi," he said once he'd dismounted, "I'm going away."

  With those simple words, he dashed the hopes she'd been harboring for their future.

  "And there are some things we need to discuss."

  "Can't they wait until we get back to the cabin? Can't we talk there?"

  Reid shook his head. "It will be easier for everyone if I just go."

  Livi knew he was right. The children wouldn't understand why he was leaving any more than she did. With a nod of compliance, she handed Little David down to him and climbed from her horse.

  "I've decided to deed the land to you," Reid told her once he'd given the baby back. "I don't want you looking around for another place. This land is as good as any you'll find, and the cabin's already built. It should have been yours anyway. David signed those papers to protect you, not to deprive you of what's rightfully yours. While I'm at Logan's Station getting supplies, I'll see to drafting a deed and have Ben bring it by when he has a chance."

  "But why are you going away," Livi whispered, "when we were so happy here last winter? If you stay we can clear more land, raise more crops. We can have a family that's yours and mine."

  He drew in a ragged breath.

  "That sounds wonderful, Livi," he offered gently, "but it wouldn't work. I've always been a wanderer. In time I'd get a hankering for the woods. I'd want to stay, but I wouldn't be able to help myself."

  "I would let you go."

  Reid shook his head. "You'd need me here when there were fields to plow and crops to harvest. You'd expect me to be with you when your children were born, and I couldn't even promise you that." He gathered up his horse's reins. "And I could never be the kind of husband to you that David was."

  The last words came so softly she barely caught their tone, disillusioned and resigned.

  "Well," she declared with a lift of her chin, "I could never be the kind of wife to you that I was to David."

  Reid paused and turned to stare at her.

  "In case you haven't noticed," Livi went on, "I'm not the woman David married. I'm not the wife he had when he left Virginia. I've changed since David died. I've had to change. That change is what makes me want to stay, what makes me able to love you. It's what makes me believe we could build a life together."

  "God damn it, Livi, I can't do this." Reid's words were so filled with longing they tore at her heart.

  "I won't expect you to be David," she promised.

  She saw the sag of his shoulders, the weary lines around his mouth. She saw the loneliness he never showed to anyone. "It's not just that."

  "What is it, then?"

  As Reid fumbled for an answer the silence swelled between them. But when he raised that clear blue gaze to her, she knew he intended to tell her the truth.

  "I love you, Livi," he said, his voice gone low. "I love the children and this place and the life we had last winter. More than anything, I want to ride down this hill and go back to that. But I can't."

  "Why?"

  "Because I can't protect you here. Because I can't keep you safe." His voice began to fray. "Because I couldn't bear losing any one of you."

  Livi saw the stark terror in his eyes and wondered how a man with Reid's courage could feel such fear. She wondered what she could do to assuage it. Reid wasn't a child to be soothed and cosseted. He needed the truth.

  "Then you mustn't be afraid of losing us."

  He stared at her for a moment then gave a ragged laugh. "Why shouldn't I be afraid? I lost Soaring Eagle. I lost David. I came so close to losing you and Little David back at the Indian camp that I—" He looked away, breathing hard. "You and Tad and Cissy and Little David are all I have and I won't—"

  "Stay and live in fear?" Livi finished for him.

  "I'm doing what I have to do."

  "You're running away."

  "Well, maybe I am," he acknowledged, raising his gaze to hers again. "God, Livi, how do
you bear it? How do you bear seeing how fragile those children are and knowing how little you can do to protect them? How did you bear standing helpless, watching David die?"

  Livi wondered if she had the words to explain to him.

  "I'll mourn David for the rest of my days," she admitted. "Just as I mourn the children I've lost. Just as I'd mourn Tad or Cissy or Little David. I'll guard those children with my life. But if I fail, I'll never for a moment mourn the time we had, the love we shared."

  Livi sought the tempest in his eyes. "You live life or you fear it. You make a stand or you run away. Oh, Reid, are you really so afraid of losing us that you're willing to deny yourself the joy of sharing our lives?"

  The silence thickened between them.

  He couldn't seem to frame an answer.

  She had nothing more to say.

  With a sigh, Livi adjusted the baby on her hip. She gathered up the reins of her buttermilk mare and laid her hand against Reid's sleeve. For an instant she pressed her cheek to his.

  "Good-bye," she whispered and turned toward home.

  Livi could feel Reid's gaze bore into her as she led her horse down toward the cabin. She sensed Reid's longing to stay and his anguish at needing to go. She recognized his fear for what it was—a brave man's terrible weakness—and she loved him all the more for it. She loved Reid Campbell for his darkness and his fears, just as she loved him for his honor and his tenderness and his strength.

  What she hoped was the woods would give him no peace, that the hills would offer no sanctuary. She hoped he'd be back. But if Reid never returned, she would make her life without him.

  She could do that now. This year with its tragedies and its loss, with its struggles and its victories, had given her a belief in herself. In her strength. In her ability to accomplish what she must.

  For now she was going home. Back to her children. Back to her cabin and her fields. Back to a future that held hopes and aspirations.

  She would grieve for Reid. She wanted the life they could have had together. She yearned for the love he had to give. Tears burned against her cheeks. But as Livi wept, she wept less for the dreams she had lost than for the man who refused to dream at all.

  * * *

  Reid watched her go, down toward the cabin he and David had built, down to claim the children who might as well have been his, down into the valley that had been his only real home. Livi went with her head held high, her shoulders squared, her baby riding gently on the curve of her hip. She moved along the path at the edge of the trees, leading her mare behind her.

  She carried his heart away with her as she went. She carried the sunshine in a baby's smile, the unwavering trust of a fair-haired girl, and the confidences of a boy half grown to manhood. She carried the only laughter and delight and tenderness Reid had ever been able to claim for himself.

  Reid had never been more proud of her. David had given Livi a place to belong, a foundation to build a life on, a way to start believing in herself. When David died, Livi had taken David's gift in her own two hands and made it something beautiful. She was forging and forming it still—with her determination to hold this land, with her resolve to keep her family together, with the conviction that life must be lived to make dreams come true.

  With his friendship and his loyalty, David had given Reid the very same gift. The freedom to seek lands yet unexplored, rivers flowing to the sea, mountains that reached the sky. But once he'd exorcised his restlessness, Reid had always come home—home to David. Home to shelter and acceptance and security.

  If he turned away from this valley today, he'd forfeit any right he might have to that part of David's legacy.

  Down below at the base of the hill, Livi came out of the trees. When the children caught sight of her Cissy leaped from the cabin steps and raced out to welcome her mother. Tad followed his sister down the rise. Livi waved an extravagant greeting and lengthened her strides.

  Reid watched as they came together in the field nearest the bridge. Livi bent, catching up her daughter and holding her close. He knew how it felt to have Cissy's arms wrapped around his neck, to hold the fragile span of her ribs between his hands, to feel her soft, fresh cheek pressed close to his.

  Then Livi rose and went to her son. Reid saw her brush back the wheat-gold strands of Tad's shaggy hair, run her hand the length of his bandaged arm. Once she had satisfied herself that he was healing, she drew the boy close against her side. Even from this distance Reid could see how alive David was in Tad. He was his father's image, with the same stance and build and coloring. He had the same solidity, the same inner strength.

  He would grow to be as fine a man as his father had been.

  Reid wished he could be here to see that. He wished he could watch Little David grow. He wished he could see the children these children would have. He wished he could hold and laugh with and dwell with Livi all her days.

  Below him, Livi and the children stood together in the midst of the field. This precious, insular family. The people Reid loved.

  Then, as one, they turned to look toward the crest of the hill where he stood watching. Reid's heart tore in two when they turned away.

  He was losing them. Not to Indians or snakebite or fever. Not to any of the calamities he could so vividly imagine might befall them. He was losing them because he was afraid. What difference did it make if some nameless threat stole away the people he loved or if he deprived himself?

  Reid's head reeled with the implications of what he longed to do. Of all he would risk. Of all he could lose. Yet somewhere inside he must have the courage to share his life. To claim Livi and the children, and damn the cost.

  "In the vision you have already leaped," Blue Feather had told him. "There is nothing left but to let yourself fall, or to choose to soar as eagles do."

  He was falling now, hurtling toward oblivion.

  Desperate to save himself, Reid grabbed for the whelk-shell amulet that hung at the base of his throat. He closed his hand around it, feeling its edges bite into his palm, feeling the flare of the charm's heat and power. He drew strength from the grandmother he'd never known and from the wisdom in Blue Feather's prophesy. He drew courage from some reserve deep inside himself.

  He was trembling as he raised one hand and cupped it to his mouth. "Livi!" he shouted.

  Her name caught and echoed in the wind. On the field below him, Livi turned.

  "Livi! Livi, wait up!"

  Dizzy and breathless, he scrambled down the path with his horse in tow. His heart was knocking against his ribs, and his knees turned watery beneath him. He felt shaky and scared and exhilarated, as if he were falling free.

  But Livi was there to catch him. She came running across the field with her skirts flapping and her shorn hair flying wild. She came with welcome shining in her eyes and tears spilling down her cheeks.

  She surged into his arms, and he gathered her up in the breadth of his hands. He wrapped her into himself. He needed this woman more than breath, more than sustenance. More than life. He loved her to the very depths of his soul.

  "I couldn't leave," he whispered into her hair.

  "Because this is where you belong."

  He took her mouth. It was sweet with joy and solace, lush with endless promises.

  He was still afraid. He might never stop being afraid. But he had now. He had this. He had Livi and the children and this valley and this life. He had the joy of today and the dream of tomorrow.

  With their arms around each other, Reid and Livi turned back toward the children, toward the cabin. Toward home.

  The End

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  PAINTED BY THE SUN

  The Women's West Series

  Book Four

  Excerpt from

  Painted by the Sun

  The Women's West Series

  Book Four

  by

  Elizabeth Grayson

  Award-winning Author

  PAINTED BY THE SUN

  Reviews & Accolades

  Finalist, Willa Cather Literary Award presented by Women Writing the West.

  Top 1001 Historical Romances, RT Book Club Reader

  Barclay Gold—Top Ten Favorite—Lake County Romance Writers

  Write Touch Readers Award, Wisconsin Romance Writers

  "Grayson has the master's touch... in this seamless, wondrous Western tale."

  ~Book Page

  "You'll cherish the sheer wonder of a story that will make you cry and sigh with happiness."

  ~Kathe Robin, Romantic Times

  "Elizabeth Grayson is a marvel! Excellent book!"

  ~The Huntress Book Reviews

  Breckenridge, Colorado

  Fall 1875

  Cameron Gallimore hated hangings. He hated the gallows standing stark against the sky, the men who gathered beneath it and the anticipation in their faces. He especially hated hangings when he'd been the judge to condemn a man to die.

  Nor had he earned the right to do that by setting such a fine example. He'd only done his job. He'd done his job so well in the last four years, he'd sentenced eleven men to the rope. They'd hang the twelfth this afternoon.

  Drawing a sharp breath in resignation, Cam stepped into the vacant lot where the gallows stood. As he did, he caught sight of something he'd never seen at a hanging before—a photographer setting up a camera.

  Dear God! He thought as he shouldered his way toward the photographer. What kind of a man takes pictures of a hanging?