Wild Fire (Wild State)

by Edie Harris

  Contents

  Title Page

  What's Inside

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Author's Note

  Excerpt of SPARKED

  Excerpt of WILD CHASE

  Meet the Author

  Other TItles

  Wild Fire

  a Wild State novella

  Edie Harris

  The town is on fire…and so is their marriage.

  July 1866. The wildfires blazing across the Colorado landscape threaten the safety of Red Creek and its residents. Sheriff Delaney Crawford has his hands full trying to save the mining encampment from the encroaching flames and keep the peace between the town’s white settlers and the Cheyenne. But the man behind the badge doesn’t know how to fix the sadness he has noticed lurking in his wife’s beautiful blue eyes.

  Nearly a year into her marriage, schoolteacher Moira finds herself struggling to be the perfect wife. She and Del may have settled into their new house, but she can’t seem to settle into her new life of wifely duties. There are so many ways in which to fail those she loves, and, desperately loving Del, it’s him she fears she’ll fail the worst.

  Del is determined to keep Moira safe from the flames racing over the mountain, but the most dangerous fire of all burns between this fierce former nun and her growly former gunslinger. Can they rescue Red Creek and their romance? Or will the wildfire consume everything—and everyone—in its path?

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Edie Harris

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, expect in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ONE

  Colorado Territory

  July 1866

  It was an eerie thing, to see fire in daylight.

  Not just fire, but twenty-foot flames, scorching hot and crackling with power. Trees turned to blackened matchsticks, grasses to sooty ash, yet high above the smoke the clear blue sky remained so pristine as to pain the eyes.

  The smell of burning that he so hated invaded Sheriff Delaney Crawford’s nostrils as he stood on a hilltop overlooking what had once been a thriving farm. Only a couple of hours ago, a fence had marked the last acres of flat plains before the geography shifted into stark mountaintops. Now that fence was destroyed, and the landscape was black and gray with startling patches of green where the wildfire hadn’t managed to steal all of nature’s beauty.

  The heat from the flames and the exertion made Del’s homespun stick uncomfortably—clinging to his arms, along his ribs, below his sternum. He wanted nothing more than to dive into the small pond behind his house and bask in the cool relief it would offer.

  After devouring the landscape, the fire—painted in living shades of amber and scarlet that danced against the cerulean sky—had climbed up a brush-covered rise to the north of where he now stood. In the hours before the flames had claimed Tucker McCade’s farm, Del and a handful of men from the town of Red Creek nearly ten miles to the northwest had stripped McCade’s small cabin of its belongings, led the livestock behind a hill away from the fire’s trajectory, and emptied the barn of equipment that would be too dear to replace all in one go.

  The animals were safe, the tools of McCade’s trade intact, and all personal effects currently being hauled via wagon toward McCade’s brother’s homestead long miles to the south, halfway between Red Creek and Denver City. There was nothing else to be done here.

  Loosening the reins of his mount from where he’d tied them to a downed tree, Del wrapped the leather across his palm and glanced again at the destruction spread out before him. “Well, hell.”

  Beside him, atop his own horse, Del’s deputy sheriff lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug. “That is your interpretation.”

  John White Horse was a man of few words—and most of them sarcastic. Since making the Cheyenne native his deputy nearly a year ago, Del had found the young man to be intelligent, loyal, and a regular pain in the ass. More often than not, John acted the part of Del’s conscience, or at least reminded Del that he had one, tarnished though it may be.

  And when John wasn’t available to fill the role, Moira was. A regular angel on his shoulder—except when her Irish was up.

  He felt his lips twitch with the need to smile.

  That need quickly faded as he remembered how his wife had stiffened in his arms that very morning as he came up behind her in the kitchen, his lips brushing her ear, her throat, her nape. It happened more and more often of late, Moira holding herself apart from him. Sometimes physically, sometimes just deep inside.

  That distance was beginning to gouge at his heart.

  But he didn’t have time to think of his heart, not when he could still taste ash on his tongue. “It’ll hit the mining settlement by tomorrow morning, unless the winds change.” Removing his low-brimmed black hat, Del scrubbed a hand through sweat-damp hair in desperate need of a trim. He’d have to ask Moira to pull out the shears and snip the dark, tangled strands that kept falling into his eyes. “And the winds won’t change, will they?”

  John shook his head as he adjusted the pack strapped behind his saddle. “The fire will follow the tree line across the ridge. After the settlement comes the homesteads—yours included—then the town.”

  The thought of the house he’d built for Moira, with its pretty window boxes and cheerfully yellow front door, reduced to a charred husk—much like Tucker McCade’s cabin—made his jaw clench. “Evacuation, then?”

  “Starting with the miners.”

  The miners. Now there was a volatile subject. Ever since last September, when the mine’s majority shareholder had allowed his prejudice to turn violent and attempted to rout the local Cheyenne tribe—a rout that had proved deadly for the man in question—there was a void in the town’s power structure. The mine shares transferred into Lucia Matthews’s guardianship for her young son, Irwin, but moneyed men, mostly from the East, had been clamoring to buy her out in the months since her husband’s death.

  The widow had been resisting, though not for sentimental reasons. Rumor had it that she was demanding an impossible price for the shares, knowing none would meet it. And if that were the case, then her only intention could be to destroy the miners’ livelihoods, and the economy of Red Creek along with them.

  Unsurprising, considering the legacy of hatred and bitterness Jacob Matthews had left for her. And no wonder she’d packed up her life and her son and moved to Denver City. It was nothing more than a stopping place before Lucia and Irwin permanently relocated somewhere far, far away from the wild western frontier.

  Personally, Del couldn’t care less what happened to Widow Matthews and her obnoxious whelp, but Moira cared.

  Moira cared so much.

  In the days following Matthews’s death, she had left a basket of prepared meals on their doorstep. Then she’d tied soft twine around a stack of adventure novels for Irwin, titles from her personal collection, and delivered them, with a note of condolence. After that, she had knocked on the door of the whitewashed, two-story Matthews house and waited for Lucia to answer.

  Lucia never had, but Moira had stood on the stoop, shawl tight around her slender shoulders, for twenty minutes, waiting. Just waiting, because Moira needed to make amends with the widow.


  After all, Moira had been the one to kill Jacob Matthews.

  Covertly watching her stand there, the hopeful set to her shoulders rather tragic, when all was said and done, had done terrible things to Del’s chest—terrible, painful things. But marrying Moira shortly thereafter had done much to soothe that pain.

  Lucia never acknowledged Moira’s gifts, nor Moira herself, and soon the Matthews home was empty, its occupants escaped in their grief to the bustling nascence of Denver.

  Ever since, the fate of the mine had been in flux, and unrest among the miners had grown, especially with the widow’s recent decision to cut wages. A new majority shareholder was needed to step in and take control, but if Lucia Matthews had her way, she’d turn Red Creek into a ghost town with her refusal to sell, forcing the miners and their families to move elsewhere for work. Soon after, the businesses would follow, and nothing of Red Creek’s vitality would remain.

  Del couldn’t allow that to happen, and not only because he’d gotten rather attached to the small town and its diverse citizens. No, he needed to save this town for his wife, as Moira—his beloved, increasingly distant Moira—would never forgive herself for the inadvertent role she had played in the community’s demise.

  But first, he had to keep the damn town from burning down.

  Foot in the stirrup, Del swung atop his horse, nudging the mare in the direction of the large ore mine several miles to the north, marking the border between wilderness and Red Creek proper. “This ought to be fun.” Without waiting for John’s rejoinder, Del clicked his tongue and rode off, knowing his deputy would follow.

  ***

  Moira hated crying.

  She’d hardly shed a tear as Sister Verity, the nun who was raped in a dirty Boston alley. She hadn’t cried as Moira Tully, the schoolteacher whose ear had been partially shot off by a Confederate gunslinger. She certainly wasn’t going to cry as Moira Crawford, beloved wife of that former gunslinger, just because her bread dough refused to rise.

  Yet here Moira stood at the table in the kitchen Delaney had built for her, fists planted on either side of two flat rounds of sticky dough, struggling to swallow the tears clogging her throat.

  “Stupid bread.” The dough had risen just fine the first time, but once she’d kneaded it down again and shaped it into loaves, nothing had happened. The dough lay there, sad and pathetic and absolutely un-risen, and now she was going to cry.

  Swiping furiously at the wetness that had sneaked past her lashes, Moira glared down at the dough. She made bread all the time, delicious, soft, undemanding. The task of baking usually soothed her, the process of mixing the ingredients first thing in the morning allowing her mind to slowly come awake as the sun rose over the mountaintops. As she worked the dough into a ball and covered it with a cloth to let it rise, Delaney would come in from doing the chores—tending the cow, the horses, the chickens—and kiss the notch he’d put in her ear last autumn.

  It was how this very morning had started, as a matter of fact, but today, the bread made her chest hurt.

  The persistent ache in her chest and the wet tears causing her lashes to clump couldn’t be blamed on the bread. No, it was her fault she felt this way, and her fault she was failing her husband.

  Or, more accurately, her body was.

  Thinking of Delaney merely compounded her frustration, and she punched the recalcitrant dough with one flour-covered hand. He loved her, so deep and so hard that she felt that love wracking her chest every minute of every day, the essence of him embedded in her heartbeat. Her pulse thudded with him, a constant reminder that would never leave her be.

  She wanted it that way, wanted to live with him inside her, but it was killing her. His love was wrecking her.

  He didn’t know of her newest concern, of course. She had worked hard to keep her fears to herself, and he’d never once brought it up. Why would he? Men didn’t think about such things. Telling him she was unhappy would only hurt him, and she worried she’d already hurt her husband enough, even if he didn’t know it yet.

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the back porch, approaching the kitchen door she’d propped open to keep the hot summer air from growing stagnant. Where once she would have tensed at the approach of a man, now she felt safe, secure within her home, her pistol—as always—hanging loaded on a hook near the door. After more than a year in Red Creek, these people had become her people, trusted far more than before the…the incident with Jacob Matthews. She often found townspeople on her porch, either to see the sheriff or the schoolteacher, and sometimes just to see Del and Moira themselves.

  But she knew the cadence of these footfalls and looked up to see her husband—covered in sweat and grime—halted in the doorway. He removed his hat with a small, lopsided smile that made her heart stutter, beating away the ache nurtured by her failed baking. “Hey there, pretty lady.”

  There was flour on her cheeks, her hands, her apron. Strands of hair stuck damply to her neck and temples, and she knew her face was flushed, splotchy pink beneath the abundance of freckles. Not to mention the eyes red-rimmed from thwarted tears. Pretty was pushing it.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she answered with a smile of her own. The dirty man in her doorway reminded her of the gunslinger she’d first met, and she felt a blush creep up her throat and burn the tips of her ears as she remembered their week of intense courtship. “Except in my kitchen, looking like that.” Brushing her hands on her apron, she sauntered over to stand in front of him, taking in his appearance. “Did you roll in the ashes after you finished evacuating Tucker’s farm?” She plucked at his shirtsleeve and made a tsk-ing sound.

  “Are you saying I’m too dirty for you?”

  That rough-and-tumble Southern drawl had an immediate effect, sensual awareness shivering down her spine. “You should have stopped at the pond before coming inside.”

  One big hand snaked around to palm the small of her back. “I was hoping you’d take a dip with me.” Striking pale eyes the color of Chinese jade gleamed down at her as he pulled her body into his. “Oh, look. Now you’re all dirty, too,” he murmured without a trace of regret.

  She squirmed against him, unable to decide if she wanted to be closer to Del’s firm, muscled frame or if she ought to back away. Every time he flirted with her, every time they were intimate now, she was torn by conflicting needs—those of her heart and those of her mind.

  Her heart needed Delaney. His touch, his lips, his body. His gravelly voice in her ear. His arms around her as they fell asleep, and as they awoke each morning. She needed the boyish grins and the gray in his beard and the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t aware.

  Her mind needed the safety that only distance could provide.

  Eventually he was going to realize she wasn’t getting pregnant. He was going to wonder why, and she wouldn’t have an answer for him.

  Without meaning to, she stiffened when he bent to kiss her neck, but if he noticed, he didn’t show any sign of it. It was a bad habit she’d developed, holding a part of herself away from him, but until she knew why she wasn’t getting pregnant, she couldn’t seem to relax.

  They made love all the time. Del’s masculinity most certainly wasn’t in question. When she’d finally given in and asked Doc Browne to examine her—because what if there was something wrong with her body?—he had assured her that not only was she perfectly healthy, but it was perfectly normal for pregnancy not to take in the first year of marriage.

  After the visit to Red Creek’s physician, however, her most secret, niggling fear had managed to wiggle out of the chains she’d locked around it.

  What if this was her punishment? What if she was being punished for her past misdeeds?

  Ordering herself to soften in Del’s hold for now, she allowed him to lead her out of the kitchen, down the porch steps, and across the yard toward the trees, behind which lay their pond.

  Because it wasn’t his fault she was breaking inside. It was hers.

  TWO
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br />   The morning sunlight turned her hair to flame.

  Del’s chest grew tight as he watched her come awake next to him in the bed, tighter still when her lashes fluttered open and she smiled up at him, sleepy and warm. His.

  She was always softer in the mornings, happiness lambent in her veins as she slowly reached toward wakefulness. He liked her like this—there was none of the cold, none of the standoffishness that so often characterized their interactions nowadays.

  Sometime soon he was going to discover what plagued his wife. For now, though, he planned to take full advantage of the pleasure he knew he could give her, give them both. “Mornin’.”

  “Mmm.” She nuzzled into his shoulder, breath heating bare skin. Her fingers dug into his ribs as she wrapped her body around his in that way he loved—as though she couldn’t get enough of him, of his body, of his touch.

  He’d woken hard, but now he ached. “Moira.” His hand slid over her hip to grip her thigh, and he tugged her into straddling him.

  Rich auburn hair fell in a curtain around her sweet face, her fair skin flushed beneath the cinnamon freckles dusting her features. Her knees squeezed his naked hips as he fisted the hem of her nightgown and drew the linen shift over her head.

  Her hands found purchase on his chest, and she rocked against him. “Del.”

  Hearing his name in that husky, lilting voice did things to him—such things. His back bowed off the mattress as he grabbed her thighs, stroking his roughened palms over soft, trembling flesh until he held her hips. “You want me?”

  “Yes.” She breathed the word, and every nerve in his body blazed to sensual life.

  “You want me inside you?” His cock found her center, wet and ready, and when she tensed ever so slightly, he ignored it. “Because I do. I want to be inside you forever, honey. Take me in.” He groaned at the intimate feel of her riding his length. “God, Moira.”