“You never said anything.”
“I guess I didn’t want them to make fun of you. It don’t matter. Ah, hell, I don’t even know why I mentioned it now. We just don’t see things the same, don’t think we ever did.”
Pierce gazed at his younger brother, his lanky frame filled out by the hours of his labor, the ease with which he wore a gun, and Pierce found himself regretting the lost years. “I guess you’re right. We’ve chosen different paths, and you’ve a right to yours. My way will leave me haunted by those men’s deaths.”
“You did what you thought was right at the time,” Matt said, reluctantly admitting that his brother had another kind of courage to say this to him.
“Maybe. I can’t go back and undo what’s done. But believe this, if nothing else. Eden McQuade has been good for you. He taught you it’s right to stand by your own convictions. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you, Matt. Tell him about Clay. It’s the closest I can come right now to making my own peace with him and Dara.”
“You hurt her taking up for Clay.”
“I know that. It’s another regret to live with.”
“She finally saw Clay for what he was. I don’t think he could’ve made her happy, not like Eden. So don’t be so hard on yourself, Pierce.”
“Then make sure that McQuade stays alive for her.”
Matt nodded, but when he turned away, Pierce stopped him.
“Be careful, little brother,” he said with a grin. “I’d like to think we’ll have a chance to get to know each other. And if you need me, Matt, I’ll try and be there for you this time.”
“Go see Dara, Pierce.” Their handclasp was firm, their eyes vulnerable for a moment with remembered flashes of the past, but when Matt left him, it was with a silent promise that he could count on his brother. If his step had a swagger and his voice was sharp giving orders to double the guards, Matt didn’t notice, but Pierce did with pride for the man his brother had become.
Matt left the mining site after he was assured that he had done all he could to make it secure. Eden could not afford a work stoppage for any reason if he was to meet the quota his contract with the London agent called for. He wanted Eden on site, but he hesitated before taking the road to town. Eden could have gone looking for Lucio at any one of his claims. Some instinct guided him toward Rainly.
He was furious to learn from Early that Eden had ridden out with Jake hours ago to search for Anne.
“Leave my horse saddled,” Matt ordered. “I’ll stop home and see if Dara knows where they went. You see either one of them, Early, you tell them to watch out for Clay.”
“Sure thing, Matt. Don’t reckon I’d ’ve figured him to take things this far. Can’t rightly understand it. But you’d best warn Jesse’s boy, too.”
Matt took his advice, cursing with every passing minute until he located Lyle Halput mooning over the new milliner in her shop next to the Gilded Lily. Lyle was quick to leave off his courting, and Matt left him after Lyle promised to keep a sharp watch. Filled with indecision, Matt stood before the shop, tilting his hat back, when he heard Satin call him.
“It’s been a while since you’ve been by, Matt. Nellie was asking for you. Why don’t you come inside and have a drink with us?”
“I ain’t got time. I need to find Eden,” he answered curtly.
“Something happen out at his claim?” she asked with sweet concern.
“Not if I can help it.”
Satin measured him with a shrewd look. “Why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you, Matt? Maybe I can help.”
He gazed at her, then away. He had Eden’s warning not to trust her after he had confessed his gambling debt to him. A raise in pay helped him keep a smooth fit to his jeans, and Dara had been repaid. But he was worried that he had been away from the claim site too long. If anything happened while he was gone after Eden especially left him in charge, he wouldn’t forgive himself. Satin coaxed him again. He knew Eden stopped there occasionally. He had to gamble on every chance he could.
“Maybe you can help,” he said, and then proceeded to tell her what he had learned from Pierce. “Just warn Eden,” he finished, leaving her to cross back over to the livery.
Satin watched him go. Lucio would pay dearly for this information, and she had a score of her own to settle with Eden. No man refused her pleasure after a bargain was struck. She gazed up at the gilded facade of the building. A catlike smile creased her lips. Lucio had been draining the profits from her labors. It was time to put an end to it. Innocent Matt Owens had just handed her the stakes she needed.
As Matt rode west out of town, Eden and Jake were returning from the opposite end. They were dust-laden and discouraged, having stopped at every nearby outlying farm to ask if Anne had been there. Eden slowed and then drew rein in front of Dara’s store. He couldn’t explain his sudden need to see her, he just felt it.
Dismounting, he wrapped the reins over the hitching post. “Check if Anne’s home. I’ll just be a few minutes, and then we can ride out again. You might ask Early who else was in town. She could have ridden out to the Clares’ or even to the Kinnels’.”
“I’ll see if Sophy’s back from church. Early’ll give us fresh mounts. So I’ll meet you here.”
There was no need for him to add that he wanted Eden to hurry. Every deepened crease in his face, the bleak look in his eyes, the slump of his shoulders, all conveyed Jake’s desperation to find his wife. It was the first time Eden fully understood it.
The front of the store was empty, and he followed the sound of Dara’s humming back toward the storeroom. He paused in the doorway, much the way he had the first time he had seen her. She was sweeping the floor with her back toward him. The sunlight added a glint of red to her dark hair and reflected off the glasses perched there. He drank in the sight of her, speculation no longer in his gaze, for he knew that beneath all the prim clothes was a woman who equaled his passion. Yet it wasn’t desire alone that stirred him. The gentle to and fro sway of her body, the soft, lilting tone of her voice, the sense of completeness made him realize that she was all the woman he wanted.
Eden knew he had never given any woman a hold over him. Yet need pierced him to have a hold on her.
“Dara.’’ He called her name in a whisper, holding his breath for a frozen moment before she turned.
Joy lit her dark eyes. She dropped the broom and ran into his arms, murmuring his name over and over.
“I’ve missed you, love.”
Dara gave him no chance to say more, her kiss as hungry as his. The weeks they had been apart, the very way they had parted, were forgotten in the minutes when passion ruled their senses.
He gathered her tight to his body, wanting to take her inside himself. She was all sweet surrender, her hands greedy to hold, to touch him, just as his were for her.
She knocked his hat off, tunneling her fingers into his hair. Fevered need spread inside her and she didn’t notice her glasses falling to the floor. Dara didn’t think she could get close enough to the hard press of his body, desperate for the reassurance that he was here kissing her. Their lips parted and came back quickly together, whispers begun were lost in the urgency of desire.
Eden craved everything she had to give him, his mouth ruthless in possessing the tantalizing sweetness of hers. Every one of her murmurs he heard, and those of missing him, needing, and lastly, of loving him, sank deep, deep inside him. Love. The force of what he felt for her assaulted his senses like a blow.
Dara felt the sudden tensing of his body. She clung shamelessly to him, tears misting her eyes, feeling complete as only Eden could make her. The deep hungry strokes of his tongue ceased abruptly. His kiss eased to brief touches. Her vow not to ask him for more than he was willing to give came back to haunt her. She accepted his tender kiss in place of the words she longed to hear. When his mouth left hers, trailing feather touches across her cheek, she was afraid that he would see her need in her eyes, but h
e drew her head against his chest, cradling her close.
“I can’t stay long, Dara,” he said, filling himself with the feminine scent of her. He caressed her back, his lips resting on her hair. “I promised to ride out again with Jake. We didn’t find Anne.”
“I didn’t know you were with him,” she whispered, listening to the pounding of his heart. Rubbing her cheek against the soft cotton of his shirt, she added, “Jake was here before … oh, Lord!” She wrenched herself free. “Eden, Lucio was—”
He hauled her against him, his grip painful on her arms, and the words died on her lips. Dara paled to see the fury on his features. She obeyed her instinct to wait until he had controlled it, not daring to breathe.
“Tell me,” he grated from between clenched teeth. Her whimper made him ease his grip on her.
She searched the feral glitter of his eyes, afraid of what he would do, unable to speak, unable to stop the tremors of her body.
Her fear cut through his fury as nothing else could. “Just tell me what he said, Dara,” he ordered softly with considerable effort.
“He tried to get me to believe that you killed a woman,” she said, eyes intent on his. “I didn’t believe him, Eden. I knew you couldn’t do such a thing.”
He released her so suddenly that she stumbled, and not understanding, stared at him. He turned his back on her. She called his name, raising her hand, hesitating before she touched the rigid set of his shoulder. “Eden? Please, don’t shut me out. I already knew. Anne tried to tell me this weeks ago at the box lunch social. I knew them for the lies they were about you. But if Lucio came here, he may have gone to Anne and told her more than she knew. I was afraid at the time that she would tell her brother. Anne thinks she hates you. She would believe anything Lucio told her.”
“And you don’t?” he snarled, spinning around.
Dara snatched her hand back. She had to force herself not to back away from the rage in him. It took several minutes of tense silence before she realized that it was not a rage directed at her.
She had to swallow before she answered him. “No, I don’t.”
“But Anne hates me,” he ground out.
“She blames you unfairly for influencing Jake against Clay. She believes that you got the town to agree to hire Lyle to prove that Jake couldn’t do his job. Please,” she pleaded, “Anne’s not well. No one can hold her accountable for what she believes. I’ll ta k to her. I’ll tell her the truth.”
“The truth?” he asked with a deadly derisive tone. “And what makes you think you know what it is? You don’t know me. You weren’t there in Hamilton or any of the other hellholes I’ve lived in to know what happened. So what the hell gives you the right to stand there and proclaim your unshakable faith in my less-than-lily-white past?”
His voice was flat, emotionless. Dara stared at him balanced before her on his powerful legs, all hard, lean masculinity, his eyes coolly assessing her with a wary, almost guarded look. She had to close her eyes against it, sensing deep inside herself that he needed to shock her, but she didn’t understand why. Willing herself to be strong, she offered a brief prayer and chose the only way open to her. Once again her gaze targeted his, wide dark eyes that were direct. She stepped close enough to lift his hand, feeling the ridge of calluses on his palm, and raised it first to her lips, then placed his hand against the heart she wore.
“This is what gives me the right. I’ve worn it since the night you gave it to me, Eden. And I’m sorry that you never stayed to hear how much I regretted my refusal. The fault is mine that you were driven to such anger. But I believed this to be a promise from the man I love. Don’t,” she begged, “dare to tell me that it’s a lie. Don’t tell me that the man who gave me this heart doesn’t deserve my faith and love.”
Dara trembled in the moments that he stood there, wondering if he heard her or believed her. His eyes were such a hard slate gray, his finely molded lips that had taught her passion and laughter thinned with fury. She merely waited. Once before she had risked everything she believed in for this man. Now she felt as if she had gambled her very life on his accepting what she offered him.
Chapter Nineteen
Releasing a shuddering breath, Eden ran his finger through his hair. “You don’t have a single doubt in your mind, do you?”
“Of my own feelings, no.”
He brought his hand back to the outline of the heart, tracing it with his fingertip. Her face was lifted to his, that proud rounded chin set firmly, her lips slightly parted, her breaths tiny catches of sound, and those eyes filled with love. He spread his hand until he could feel the increased pounding of her heart beneath it.
The complete promise of herself that she made to him almost made him whisper the words he had never given to another woman. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t say them to her now, but he did know he had to tell her the truth. Once again he outlined the heart she wore.
“This wasn’t a lie, Dara. Nothing between us ever was.”
Slowly, almost afraid to demand intimacy from him, she lowered her head to his chest. “Will you hold me?” she asked softly, closing her eyes as his arms drew her tight to his body. “I’m not a lie. I love you, Eden.” And then she told him everything that Lucio had said.
He was silent for a few minutes afterward, drawing her with him as he leaned against the back wall, stroking die tension from her.
“You make me feel humble with your faith, love,” he said, and heard his own underlying vulnerability he had never before revealed to a woman. “But Lucio didn’t tell you all lies. We were partners in a silver mine. I had worked for him years before in Mexico. When I struck a large vein of silver in a mine that Jake and I won near Hamilton, Lucio was there, offering us the additional money we needed. I believed I could keep control on Lucio’s greed, but I worked out at the mining claim most of the time and wasn’t watching what he was doing in town. Jake knew, but he had met Linda by then, and he was in love with her. When he came back to the site during the week, he never mentioned the rumors that were circulating about Lucio extending credit to anyone who asked.
“I never told Jake about the times Linda came up to the site knowing he was in town looking for her. And when playing up to me didn’t get her what she wanted, she went after Lucio.”
“Didn’t you try to tell Jake about her?”
“Did you believe Lucio about me?”
“Well, no,” she snapped, pulling back.
“Stay where you are. I missed holding you. Anyway, the same held true for Jake. He wouldn’t have believed me. But she was a greedy little bitch who used him. Nothing he gave her was ever enough, and Jake began gambling. He never told me that he lost his third share in our mine to Lucio. When I found out, I didn’t handle it well. Jake and I had a fight, and I took off to do some independent mine surveys.”
When he didn’t continue, Dara prodded him. “No secrets. Isn’t that what you told me, Eden? I want to hear it all, but only so that I can understand why you were furious that he told me.”
“Lucio somehow got hold of the reports that I signed for a group of eastern investors that said their mines were worthless. He forged my signature to other reports that he drew up, claiming these mines had rich deposits of silver and then he salted them—”
“Salted?”
“That’s what we call it when someone takes silver from one mine and places it in another. When an investor wanted to inspect the claim to verify these reports before he paid for it, there was always silver to be found. That’s why Lucio wears those nuggets. They were the first ones he took from our claim and used more times than I knew to bilk men of their money.”
“But you have one of them. He said you took it from Linda.”
“I did,” he admitted, tension once more apparent in his voice. “She knew what Lucio was doing. Being what she was, Linda wanted her share, or she swore she would tell Jake and me what he was doing. Lucio refused to be blackmailed. Jake wa
s furious that she had lost the diamond ring he won, which Lucio has now, and so she came to me.”
Dara hugged him tight, sensing he didn’t want to tell her the rest. “Lucio killed her, didn’t he?” When he didn’t confirm it, she tilted her head to look up at him. “Eden?”
“Linda came with me the night I went to Lucio’s office to rob his safe. I wanted those reports, the list of men he had swindled, and the nuggets. Linda had other ideas. When I found what I needed, she pulled a gun on me.” His voice went flat. “We struggled and the gun went off just as Lucio walked in. I didn’t kill her, but she had a bullet graze on her side. Linda was backing away from me, saw Lucio, and tried to tell him that she was stopping me. He shot her. Lucio accused Jake of murdering her. Jake wasn’t a fool—he ran. Lucio had enough power in that town to have him hanged.”
“And you? What happened to you?”
“I took off after Jake and left the evidence behind. When I couldn’t find him, I went back to town, and Lucio was waiting for me. A federal marshall was coming to investigate the complaints of mining fraud. My name was on the reports, the surveys, and some phony assay letters. He gave me a choice: leave town after I signed the mine over to him, and he would destroy the papers—or face the marshall. I thought about killing him but I still had the marshall and his charges to deal with. I cut my losses and Lucio got it all.”
The last was said on such a bitter note that Dara had to lean back against his arms to look up at him. “Did you think that I could love you less for telling me?” she demanded. Her hand cradled his cheek. “Look at me, Eden McQuade. Right or wrong, you and Jake made choices. Was there a chance that Lucio could have turned on you and blamed you for Linda’s murder?”
“My ever practical Dara, that was a distinct possibility.”
“I’m glad you decided not to stay,” she murmured in an effort to lighten both their moods. But there was no answering glint of humor in his eyes, no wicked grin on his lips. “Why do you still look as if the past were something to be ashamed of?”
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