by Stacey Kayne
She hates me. And he had no business wanting anything else from a woman he had nothing to offer but a past full of painful memories.
The grass cold against her bare feet, Lily tightened the belt of the long white wrapper Rachell had lent her and walked farther into the yard. Thin clouds darkened the face of the moon, shielding some of its light. Despite her exhaustion, she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d hardly slept the night before. Visions of bloodshed haunting her every time she closed her eyes, she’d wished for the warmth and comfort of Juniper’s touch.
Tired of spending another night staring up at a dark ceiling for hours, she’d come out here to sit on the porch swing and watch the stars for a while…but even the swing stirred troubling memories, images of a life she’d too-long forgotten.
Chilled by the light breeze, she continued across the yard and stepped into the darkness of the barn. She reached for the box of matches she knew was tucked above the eave just inside the doors. She lit a lamp and carried it toward the stall housing the horse she’d ridden from The Grove. “Hello, sweet girl,” she said, then glanced up at the lamp hook so high on the post, she wouldn’t come close to reaching it.
Using an upturned pail, she stepped up and hooked the lantern’s handle into place. The horse nudged her before she could step down.
“Lonely?” Lily asked. She stroked the horse’s dark mane. “I’ve been surrounded by company all day.”
As far as she could tell, Jed hadn’t told anyone about her venture the night before. His silence didn’t ease the emptiness she felt in Juniper’s absence. While she enjoyed visiting with his family, their kindness didn’t stop the flood of memories that often took her by surprise.
Jed had stayed home the entire day, doing chores around the house and constantly checking up on her, or creating an excuse to kiss his wife. They reminded her so much of her own parents, constantly doting on each other. Sitting in the kitchen with Rachell and her girls, talking and laughing as she helped them peel apples for pies, had brought back memories of sitting in her Missouri kitchen, helping Geneva and her mother with supper. Watching Rachell, full of energy and smiles as she buzzed around the kitchen, had also spawned a trickle of troubling images.
Lily was struck by a sharp contrast between Rachell and her mother. While her mother was always smiling, she lacked energy. Rose Palmer had been easily taxed. As far as Lily could remember, her mother could tolerate little activity, becoming winded by a walk not much farther than across the yard. While she’d enjoyed strolls through the meadows with her husband, she would often come back in his arms.
As a child, Lily had spent little time wondering about her mother’s frequent exhaustion, which now struck her as odd. Geneva had always been there to run the house, much like a grandmother, taking care of most of the chores and tending to Mother when she’d needed a rest. A woman of normal health didn’t nap several times in a day.
Your mother’s a delicate sort of flower.
Her father had said those words often enough. A simple explanation for a child. Lily had a notion her mother had been far more than simply delicate. There had been days when her mother had been too tired to get out of bed at all. Yet she couldn’t recall anyone ever saying outright that Mother was sick. Everyone had seemed to simply accept her frailty.
Why wouldn’t they have told her something was wrong?
“Lily?”
Startled by Juniper’s voice, she turned so quickly the bucket tipped. She shrieked and gripped the stall, spooking the mare.
Juniper was beside her in a flash, his hand steadying her as she found her footing. She reached out, her hands landing against Juniper’s bare chest.
“Oh!” she said, her gaze locking on the firm muscles and golden chest hair revealed through his open shirt.
He took a step back, his expression nothing short of befuddled as he looked from her to the tin pail then back to her. She was too happy to see him to care.
“Lily, what are you—”
“You’re back early,” she said, unable to fight her smile.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, half joking.
“I was worried.”
So was he…now. Didn’t she realize how incredibly enticing she looked, her pink lips smiling, her long hair swirled around her shoulders, her bare feet poking out from beneath her nightgown? His gaze slid back up, and he found that her toes weren’t the only thing peeking out of that all-too-thin veil of white.
Sweet mercy. Staring at the vision before him, he had to wonder if he’d fallen asleep in the bathhouse. Lily’s bright smile and appreciative gaze were something he’d only seen in his dreams. The heated stir of his body assured him he was fully awake, and well on his way to becoming fully aroused.
Aw, hell.
“What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
She folded her arms, covering the rosy-tipped evidence of her chill. “I couldn’t sleep. I trust the payroll delivery went well?”
“It did,” he said, reminding himself he barely had the energy to stand as he pulled his lust in check. Remembering the bedroll he’d dropped in the doorway when he’d seen her fall, he went back to get it. “The Bakers said they’d start passing out wages by late afternoon.”
Lily stood in front of the clean hay-filled stall he intended to sleep in. He carefully moved past her, released the ties and fanned the wide, striped blanket out over the pile of straw. “I imagine there’s some happy folks in The Grove tonight. By tomorrow most of your employees will be on their way to collecting their pay.”
“Do you intend to sleep out here?”
He collapsed back onto his makeshift bed, propped his arms over his raised knees as a polite gesture to hide the tent in his britches and stared up at Lily’s questioning gaze with a kind of wonder. She had no business standing there in her nightclothes, him being only half-dressed to boot!
“You’re supposed to be using my room and I didn’t want to wake the bunkhouse. Tired as I am, a bed of hay will be as comfy as any other. I sure didn’t expect to find you out here at this hour.”
She picked up her pail and took a step toward him. “I was going a little stir-crazy up in that room.” She leaned against the edge of the stall. “I thought coming out here might help me to relax.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d find the musty scents of a barn to be soothing.”
“That’s because you don’t really know me.”
“No more than you know me.”
She stared at him for a moment, then gave a slight nod. “Fair enough.”
The admission surprised him. But then, her outspoken honesty was something he was starting to expect in her. He decided it was one of the qualities he liked best about her. Good or bad, she told it the way she saw it. And while she sure didn’t like to be proven wrong, she used that sharp mind to reevaluate, strategize and find new ground.
Which kept him wary, a sense of caution that turned to outright dread as she took another small step forward and placed her bucket inside his temporary bedroom. She sat on the makeshift stool, crossed her arms over her knees and looked at him as though she had real business on her mind.
Sweet God, he needed sleep. A quick scrubbing in the bathhouse behind the bunks had given him just enough energy to grab his gear and walk to the barn.
“I trust my family has been hospitable?” he said conversationally, his mind searching for a way to politely ask her to leave so he could pull off his boots and pass out.
“Yes.” Soft pink lips quirked with a smile. “They’re wonderful.”
Her toes wriggled beneath the veil of white as she continued to sit there, not seeming in any hurry to leave. She looked about as soft and delicate as a Christmas angel. But there was far more to Lily than met the eye. She wasn’t sitting out here just to look pretty and fuel his fantasies.
Damnation. The unspoken questions darkening her green eyes couldn’t be worse than her toe-wiggling silence.
“What’s on your m
ind, darlin’?” he asked, unable to keep a hint of dread from his tone.
“Did you see him often? My father, I mean.”
Oh, God. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this. But he couldn’t deny her. “At least a dozen times during the year I spent with my uncle. I didn’t want to shoot him, Lily. I liked Red.”
She gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. “Did he frequent saloons?”
He saw the worry in her gaze, seeds of doubt he’d likely planted from the fragments of information he’d given. “Not in the way you might think. Red came in from time to time for a drink and a card game. He always kept his wits about him and I never saw him with any of the uh…ladies. I’d venture that he stopped by to see what loose-lipped drunk would leak information on an outlaw’s whereabouts. My uncle’s hangout was a magnet for such riffraff.”
“Why did he call you out?”
Part of him had known this was coming, that she’d want answers he couldn’t give. He couldn’t tell her more than what he’d seen.
“My uncle and his lies had the power to bring out the worst in men. He knew Red was fast and he wanted a gunfight. I don’t know what was going on with Red that night, but he seemed in a bad way. At the rate he was drinking and my uncle was talkin’, I could sense trouble and lit out of there straightaway.”
“What do you mean, ‘he was in a bad way’? Was he hurt?”
Juniper had never understood the change he’d seen in Red that night, but looking into Lily’s sullen green eyes, he had a hunch. “He seemed sad,” he said plainly. “I can’t tell you what was going on with him, Lily, because I don’t know.”
Lily tried to think back to that week, the days before he’d left for what he’d called a business trip. Had he said anything to her? She recalled that Mother had been sleeping a lot and he hadn’t wanted to go, to leave them again.
“Mother was sick.”
“With influenza?”
Lily looked up in surprise.
“Reginald told me she died of influenza a couple weeks after Red died.”
Old pain seeped into her chest. She’d always known that everything she’d been told about Mother’s death had been wrong. “I think Mother had been ill for a long while.”
“Had she been getting worse?”
“I think so. But she still smiled. After losing Daddy…” Tears burned at her eyes as she shook her head. “She just gave up.”
“I’m sorry, Lily.”
“He was a good father,” she said, trying to understand why the man she’d idolized her whole life would behave so irrationally.
“I can see that,” Juniper said, his rich tone moving through her like a caress. “He raised an exceptional daughter.”
“I don’t see why being sad over Mother would have driven him to do something so dangerous.”
“My uncle had a hand in that. He filled his head full of lies and his gut full of whiskey. When Red caught me he was drunk and fired-up mad. He made a mistake. Or maybe I made the mistake by reaching for my gun.”
Juniper wished he had the answers she wanted. Staring at the straw between his boots, he drove his fingers through his hair. Not wanting the see the pain in her eyes, he couldn’t look at her. “No matter how many times I relive it, I can’t find any answers worth keeping. And I can’t change the outcome.”
Gentle fingers brushed across his brow, pushing aside his damp hair.
Her touch shocked him, and sent a rippling sensation of sheer pleasure prickling across his skin. He lifted his head and was unsettled by the clear compassion shining in her eyes. He didn’t want her sympathy. He didn’t want the attraction that hit him harder each time he was in her presence. No good will come from it.
“You should go on to bed.”
Her fingers stroked his forearm as she stared up at him with a concentration that told him his suggestion to go inside hadn’t even registered in her mind. The woman wasn’t easily swayed unless she was good and ready to be swayed.
If she knew how deeply her touch was affecting him, she’d likely run for the house and bolt the door.
“What happened to your parents?”
That had been one of the last things he’d expected her to ask. His skin seemed to tighten over his entire body. He glanced back at the small hand gently caressing his arm. The slow slide of her fingertips damn near had him shaking from the strain of fighting an urge to return her pleasing touches.
“Lily, I think it’d be best if we talked more tomorrow.” He eased back, pulling away from her touch. He stretched his back and settled deeper into the hay—putting some distance between them. “It’s late and I’m beyond exhausted.”
The disappointment in her eyes was a blow to his gut. “You know so much about me and I don’t know anything about you.”
“It won’t change anything.”
Her frown deepened. Her somber expression made him ache in places he didn’t even know he had. He released a hard sigh and said, “I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was real young. My father worked for the stage line after the war.”
“He raised you?”
“Partially. He was gone mostly and left me in the mission until I was old enough to ride the stage with him.”
“He left you in an orphanage?”
“With no wife or family to look after me, there wasn’t much else he could do,” Juniper reasoned. “I was nine or so when he came and got me for good, said I was old enough to ride along and load luggage.”
“You worked on the stage? The stage lines are treacherous.”
“They are that,” he said, feeling a touch of old sorrow. “But I was young and found it exciting. A few years later I started riding shotgun. Better pay, better seat.” The image of him sitting up on the seat beside his pa brought the start of a smile to his lips.
“How old were you?”
“At the end, thirteen.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’ve always been taller than most kids, and folks assumed I was older than my true age. I didn’t mind the work, so long as I got to stay with my pa.”
“And you shot at men?”
“I protected our passengers and cargo,” he said. “Shooting came fairly naturally for me. From the time I was ten there wasn’t a competition I couldn’t win. I could discourage attackers from a long way off. But on that last run, there were just too many.”
“They shot your father?”
“I was taking down as many as I could,” he said. “I saw a rider coming up fast on the left. Before I could shift my aim, my pa took a bullet. That outlaw got his ticket to hell a second later, but I was too late. My pa held on. When I’d run out of rifle ammo, he put his pistol in my other hand.”
“You fought them off?”
“I shot down every last one of ’em. By the time we made it to town Pa was in bad shape. He died on the doctoring table. Next thing I knew I was being hailed as some kind of hero for saving the passengers. It was like folks didn’t notice my pa was dead,” he said, shaking his head. “A couple weeks later an uncle I’d never met appeared outta nowhere, ready to claim me. I was sent to live with him and got a good taste of hell.”
“Where is your uncle now?”
“He died in a gunfight.” June didn’t feel up to rehashing how Jed had shot down his uncle while protecting Rachell. “I came west with Jed and Rachell and they took me in.”
“You have a wonderful family.”
He gave a slight nod of agreement. “Meeting Rachell was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
“It’s quite apparent that they miss you. Why do you live so far away from them?”
“Because I care about them. Their love doesn’t change who I am or what I’ve done. Do you think you’re the first to come seeking retribution?”
Lily’s eyes flinched.
He figured that reminder should abate her curiosity and send her rushing off to bed. But she didn’t budge from her perch. Maybe if he got ready for bed, she’d take the hint. He
lifted a foot and tugged off his boot.
Lily shot that theory to hell by scooting off her tin pail and plopping onto the blanket right beside him.
“Is that why you became a lawman?” she asked, tilting her pretty face to look up at him.
Juniper laughed to keep from wincing. Hell. Clearly, this was his punishment. She was going to torture him.
“I fell into that sheriff job,” he said, tugging at his second boot. If he was going to endure her interrogation, suffer the sweet, floral scent driving him to distraction, he’d damn well get comfortable. “I started out at Pine Ridge just like all the others.”
“You were a lumberjack?”
“I worked on John Donnelly’s crew. Those mountain roads were plagued with bandits. Men had been killed. Some of the timbermen with families in The Grove got real skittish about going home close to payday. When John was expecting his third child to be born and had to get home with his pay, I offered to ride down with him.”
“You were robbed?”
He stared at her for a moment before saying, “Not quite.”
“You shot the highwaymen.”
“I protected my friends and landed a job as sheriff. I told McFarland I’d help with the bandits if he’d set up a new system for delivering pay to the men.”
“Mr. Grimshaw mentioned you were the one who set up The Grove office.”
Juniper shrugged. “It made sense. A man looking to spend his pay has got to find a township anyhow. By the time we worked out the new system, McFarland was too far in the hole and didn’t want to dip into his private coffers to save his own company. He could have, you know? Instead, he let his company slide into financial ruin, and took more than he put in.”
“When it comes to Pine Ridge, you are definitely the hero,” Lily said reflectively. “And I’m the outlaw.”
Instinctively, his arm moved around her. She trembled from his light touch and he realized his error. “We’re both just people, Lily, trying to do our jobs best we can. Sometimes the wrong choice seems like the best one at the time. I surely hadn’t meant to get you abducted and roughed up by sending you down the mountain. Then again, sometimes what’s right feels plain wrong. It wasn’t easy to arrest men who’d only been trying to feed their families.”