by Jodi Thomas
Only right now his world seemed a very crowded place.
CHAPTER 7
BY NOON BETH’S BACK ACHED, BUT THERE WAS NO ONE to complain to. She loved riding and could easily stay in the saddle all day, but she’d never liked traveling in a wagon. She’d learned to drive one when she made trips back and forth to town with her older sisters. One of them usually drove, just as one of them usually carried the list of supplies they needed to pick up as well as the rifle for protection. Baby Bethie had been a grown woman before she’d ever driven alone to town, and then half the ranch seemed to worry until she was back safe and sound.
She was the little one, the pretty one, the one everybody spoiled. Maybe that was why no man was ever good enough for her. Finally, Senator Lamont LaCroix seemed to fit the bill. He was rich, powerful, and able to give her everything.
Tears blurred Beth’s vision as she stared straight ahead at the road. She hated who she was . . . what she was. A woman so shallow she’d been taken in by a man like Lamont. Her mother was a strong woman. Strong enough to travel with three tiny girls to join Teagan McMurray in Texas. Her sisters were strong. Even both of her aunts stood equal with their husbands. Only Bethie, the baby of the clan, seemed to always need someone else to plan for her, someone to entertain her, someone to save her. Even her three little brothers thought they should take their turn watching over her.
“You crying, lady?” Levi asked as he stepped around a sleeping Andrew and climbed onto the bench seat. He thought it his duty every hour to make sure Colby wasn’t dead.
“No,” Beth lied. “How’s our young cowboy in the back?”
“Breathing.” Levi shrugged. “He’s mumbling in his sleep, so I guess that’s progress.”
“It is,” Beth guessed. “Madie, would you take him some water?”
“All right.” She bumped into everyone on the bench turning around and moving back.
Levi took her place beside Beth. “I brought you a roll if you want it. Madie put butter in them for us. I hope you don’t mind me telling her we were leaving. She says her man is in Fort Worth and she needs to find him.” He passed her the roll and she handed him the reins.
“How’d you know we’d be heading to Fort Worth?” she said between bites.
He shrugged, and she knew he must have heard her talking to the man she’d bought the wagon from. He’d said that if she was going much farther than Fort Worth she might want to replace a wheel, but she didn’t want to take the time. “Do you follow me everywhere, Levi?”
“Pretty much,” he answered. “You mind?”
Even the little boy was trying to take care of her, Beth thought. “No. But if we’re going the same direction you might as well walk with me.”
“You wouldn’t care?”
She grinned. “I’d be honored to have such an escort.”
She looked back at the girl. “Thank you,” Beth said.
“No problem. The guy asked me if I was an angel. When I told him no, he looked at me as if he didn’t believe me and then went back to sleep.”
“He’s getting better.” Beth winked at Madie. “Keep giving him water every hour, would you?”
“Sure.”
Beth settled into silence, trying to plan for whatever lay around the corner. The boys had come to her with their request to ride along while she was buying supplies. They’d even offered to pay. When she’d said it was unnecessary but they were welcome to travel along, the boys must have darted over to the café and told Madie.
The girl looked too young to have a fellow, but sometimes people married young. Maybe if he was a few years older than she was, he’d help her get settled in Fort Worth. Madie seemed to believe all her Micah told her. Beth decided she’d see for herself the cut of the man before she let Madie go with him.
She’d also check out the boys’ father. Not all men were meant to raise kids, and this one had a few things against him already. He’d left his children with only a promise to return. “Levi, what are you and your little brother going to do if you don’t find your father?”
“Well, miss,” Levi explained, “we all figure we’re no worse off in the next town than this one. If he’s not there, I can get work sweeping up, and Leonard is almost old enough to pay his way. We tend to find things lying around, but I knew we were about to run out of luck with the sheriff back in Dallas. Everything that went missing seemed to be our fault.”
“If you come with me,” Beth held her face stern, “there will be no stealing.”
Levi nodded. “I kind of figured that.”
“Swear.” She looked at Leonard and pointed at him. “You too. Swear.”
“We swear, miss, but my brother don’t talk. I told him you’re a good woman. We’d rather take our chances with you than stay in Dallas. We’ll help you take care of your man, and if he dies we’ll bury him. Same goes for the other guy you picked up at the hospital.”
How could Beth say no to that offer?
“You got kin somewhere?” Levi asked as he ate a roll.
“Yes,” Beth answered, wishing she were back at the ranch with all the family around. “I’ve got lots of kin. I even have a brother not much older than you. All three of my brothers are away at school.”
“I’ll bet they are missing you.” Levi took another bite.
“Probably, but my family all believes I’m visiting friends right about now, so they don’t expect me back.”
She thought of all the dreams she’d had riding over to meet Lamont. Now, they seemed almost childish. She’d grown and changed thanks to one midnight ride in the back of a train car. She swore she’d never be that taken in by a man again as long as she lived. Andrew might not have been exactly what she’d expected, but surprisingly, he was far more honest than Lamont.
After noon, Madie offered to take the reins, and Beth talked the boys into riding shotgun on the bench while she climbed into the bed of the wagon next to Andrew. He hadn’t said more than a few words. He was cramped, sitting sideways, with his knees bent, but he made room for her without saying a word.
To the slow clip-clop of the horses, she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. As she drifted off, she felt his arm circle her and pull her against him. It never occurred to her to protest. His warmth felt too good.
At dusk, they made camp in a clearing. Levi built a fire and Madie helped cook beans and bacon. The boys were almost too tired to eat. They curled up inside their bedrolls without a word. Colby was awake long enough to put on his clothes, and then he spread out close to the fire and was sound asleep before supper was ready.
Madie sat down next to him and studied his face. “He’s got more color to him tonight.” She combed through his blond curls with her fingers.
“He’s better.” Beth hoped her words were true. “Let him sleep.”
The girl went back to tending the fire, but Beth didn’t miss that she left Colby’s plate beside his bedroll.
Andrew sat on the tailgate of the wagon writing in a book by firelight as the evening stilled. The bandage on his head had fallen off before dark and he hadn’t asked to have it wrapped again. With the stitches healing, the air might be good for the wound.
Beth poured the last of the coffee and sat beside him. He was good-looking with his broad shoulders and intelligent eyes. He was polite in a shy kind of way, but he wasn’t the kind of man she wanted. Not that she knew who that might be, but Beth hoped when she saw him, she’d know him on sight.
“You about to turn in?” she asked, more for something to say than out of interest.
“I slept most of the day. I think I’ll stay up and write a few things down while I have the fire’s light.”
“What are you writing?”
He smiled. “My thoughts. I’ve done it since I was a kid. I collect what’s happened in my life and what folks tell me. I write what I find interesting about the people I meet, sometimes just stories that I make up. At the end of the day I kind of empty my mind, getting ready for what comes tomorrow
.”
“Really. How interesting.” She tried to sound sincere, but in truth it seemed a waste of time. “Would you read some of it to me?”
“No,” he said simply, and went back to work.
Beth frowned. In her family everyone loved reading. Even when her papa and his brothers were growing up alone, they valued books. They often took turns reading by the firelight, and when her papa had children he continued the practice. Beth was the only one in the family who didn’t love books. She could never sit still long enough to read one all the way through. Which, among the McMurrays, made her appear dumb.
After a few minutes Andrew looked up at her. “You’re used to being entertained, aren’t you, Beth?”
“No,” she lied. “But I like good stories. My papa and uncles sometimes sit out on the porch after supper and tell the best stories.”
“Like what?”
She finally had his full attention. “Well, when they were kids their father died at Goliad fighting for Texas, and they had to take over the ranch. Outlaws came to take it away from them, but the boys fought them off while they were taking care of their sister, who was newborn. The story is often told that they carried Sage the way the Apache carry their children so they could stay in the saddle all day.”
Now that they were finally talking, she told story after story, including every detail of how the boys burned the bridge, the only easy way onto their land, and didn’t rebuild it until they were grown. She even told of her uncle Tobin being shot in an ambush when he was six years old. He hid beside his horse as men kept shooting at him. After that day Tobin believed that his blood had mixed with the horse’s and that he understood animals better than anyone alive.
Andrew seemed lost in her stories. The night aged and the fire had grown low when she finally stopped. “We’d better get some sleep,” she said, hiding a yawn.
“Thank you, Beth,” he said, sounding as if he really meant it. “You’ve given me a great gift.”
“I enjoyed sharing the stories. Don’t you have family stories?”
“Not that anyone would want to hear, but your stories aren’t just of family, they’re of Texas. Of what it was really like. Of how the people really survived. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to settle in such a wild land. It never occurred to me that they’d love it so.”
“I’m glad you liked them. I have a hundred more.” She jumped off the end of the wagon. “I think I’ll bed down by the fire. Will you be all right in the wagon?”
“I’m fine.” He slid off the wagon and helped her collect her bedroll. “Feeling my strength coming back little by little.”
On impulse she leaned into him and kissed him lightly. He wasn’t the man for her—no man who never carried a gun would ever be—but she liked the feel of him. Andrew would probably not be flattered to learn that he was like her favorite wool blanket. Comforting.
He studied her a moment and said in a low voice, “Don’t do that, Beth, unless you want a real kiss. I’m a man who can only play at being married for so long.”
She didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or hurt. No man had ever told her not to come closer. By the time she was fifteen every man she met had delighted in getting to hold her hand or be rewarded with a light kiss. Andrew wanted none of that.
“I wasn’t playing. I simply wanted to kiss you good night. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a kiss.”
“Then kiss me like a woman kisses a man.” His words weren’t sharp and he didn’t seem open for compromise on the point.
She took two steps toward the fire before she changed her mind and whirled. He didn’t raise his arms to welcome her. He stood perfectly still as she touched the side of his jaw and raised her mouth to his once more. If he wanted a real kiss or nothing at all, she’d give him the real thing.
This kiss was no light peck. After a few seconds he responded, pulling her against him as he opened her mouth for a taste. She felt a fire go all the way to her toes. She’d never felt such raw need, and she melted against him, hoping for more.
He dug his fingers into her loose hair and held her head still as he took his time claiming her mouth. She gave willingly, loving the wild excitement of the moment, and he took like a man starving.
When she moaned against his lips she thought he’d continue, but he pulled away. His hands shook slightly as he set her a foot away from him. For a long moment they stared at each other in the firelight’s last glow.
“Thanks for the good-night kiss,” he said as he moved back into the wagon. “I think it may have been the best I’ve ever had.”
“You think?” She didn’t see how it could have been better, unless maybe it hadn’t ended so soon.
“Yeah, we’ll have to do it again sometime for me to be sure.” He rolled into his bed on the wagon. “Good night, Beth,” he said as he picked up his journal once more.
She walked away confused and frustrated. She was always the one who put an end to the kissing, and she didn’t like it one bit that he’d stopped before she’d been ready to pull away.
With an unladylike snort she realized that for a woman who always got her own way, she was having nothing in her life right now the way she wanted it.
In the firelight she watched Andrew trying to see the pages of his book. What she wouldn’t give to know what he was jotting down at this moment.
CHAPTER 8
LONG AFTER BETH CURLED UP IN HER BEDROLL, ANDREW watched the night sky and thought of the stories she’d told him when he was finally able to get the taste of her lips out of his thoughts. The stories were the reason he came to Texas. He’d wanted to know what drove people to come to this wild land. What made them stay and love it so?
In a strange way, the stories of others made him feel alive. He was like a sixteenth-century vampire wanting to suck the blood out of the living. Nothing had mattered to him for so long that Andrew wasn’t sure he still had a pulse. He rarely stayed more than a year at any one place. Growing up, there was always a new stepfather, new school, new town. All his life, in school after school, he’d always been a stranger, cared for, but never loved. Some years, when he came home for the holidays he’d find his mother gone with her husband-of-the-month. She’d always leave a note naming some housekeeper or “trusted friend” he didn’t know to watch over him.
When he found Hannah, he thought he’d lucked out and discovered the one person who might love him. He was twenty-three and she nineteen. He met her at the bank where they both worked. He’d noticed her before but didn’t speak until he saw she was reading the same book he was. The poems of Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. He’d been so cocky that first conversation, telling her that the title was a play on words, with grass being a publishing term for “minor value” and leaves another name for “pages.” Hannah had thought him brilliant.
Since neither had family, they were married a few weeks later by a judge at the courthouse, and she moved in with him that night. They were so happy they didn’t even know they were poor. He’d had fourteen months of heaven before she died, but the pain of her loss still haunted him. Even now, his kind Hannah with her soft voice and gentle ways always seemed near, but just beyond his reach.
He’d taken her body from Boston to Washington, D.C., to be buried next to his mother in a family plot that had MCLAUGHLIN over the gate. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being buried among strangers.
As he stood over Hannah’s grave, he noticed a small leather pouch placed in the V of his mother’s headstone. It was from a lawyer asking that if Andrew McLaughlin ever returned to this spot, he should contact someone at the firm of Smith and Adams. The letter added that all other efforts to contact him had been exhausted. Andrew hadn’t thought of leaving a forwarding address. He knew no one would care.
He almost left the note there. He wanted nothing to do with his last stepfather and had no use for his mother’s things. A week later, when he finally did step into the office of Smith and Adams, he found that his mother had left
him a small account from money she must have skimmed for emergencies between husbands. It wasn’t much, but over the years, when he’d needed money, he’d always been able to wire the lawyers.
The past few years he’d needed little, thanks to selling a few stories about his travels to magazines and articles to papers across the country. The lawyers said they’d invested the leftover money for him. Someday he’d buy a house on a cliff in Maine or on one of the little islands along Florida’s inland coast. There, he’d live alone with only the memories of his travels and a kiss he’d shared with a beautiful Texas lady.
Andrew stared at the dying campfire. Beth was quickly becoming one of his favorite memories, even though she hadn’t left yet. It had been a few years since he’d kissed a woman. He couldn’t even remember the name of the widow who’d let him spend the night with her for a few dollars one cold night in New Orleans. She’d smelled of spices and her hair had been black. She was liquid passion in his arms, but he felt like it was a practiced recipe. At dawn he’d paid his money and left, never once looking back.
As he crawled into his bedroll in the buckboard, Andrew realized that when he left Beth McMurray in a few days, no matter what did or didn’t happen between them, he’d look back for one last memory of her.
The next day, he wrote her stories in his journal as they moved along the road between Dallas and Fort Worth. The air was cold, but not bitter, and the rain had left the road more a stream at some points.
Now and then they’d pass other travelers, and Andrew was impressed with how friendly strangers were in this part of the country. Beth often stopped to talk, asking about the road up ahead and wishing them well on their journey. Once, to a family who looked down on their luck, she asked if they needed any peaches and gave away half of the fruit she’d packed for the trip. She claimed her group wouldn’t eat them and they’d be doing her a favor.
It had taken him an hour last night to record everything he’d wanted to remember about the day.