Cooper's Wife

by Jillian Hart

  Those lawmen would be searching harder today. And they might discover him. He had to make his move today. He would wait until the good sheriff and the marshals were tracking up in the high country. Then he would take Anna when she was alone. And unsuspecting.

  Anna was the only living witness who could identify him as the bank robber and murderer. She hadn’t spoken up yet, but she could. And he would silence her. His freedom—his very life—depended on it.

  “Katie, you aren’t dressed.” Anna set the fresh apple pie, in the best pie plate, on the kitchen table. “You can’t wear trousers to Mrs. Muldune’s house.”

  “But Davy and me were gonna go ridin’: We got more gold dust to hunt for.” Katie tugged on the end of her ribboned braid.

  “Then why don’t you ride Bob over with us?” Anna grabbed the small tin she was using as a sewing box. “I could use some help.”

  Katie obliged, carefully balancing the tin in both hands. “I’ll put this in the wagon for you.”

  “Under the seat, please.” Anna rushed upstairs to tend to the little girls.

  Excited by the prospect of another dress-up party hosted by Davy’s young sister, both Maisie and Mandy had raided the attic. One wore a too-large plumed hat, the other had donned a bonnet sporting two large pink ribbon lilies. Faux pearls in long ropes reached down to both their knees.

  “We’re ready, Mama,” Mandy announced, tripping.

  “My flower’s fallin’ off,” Maisie complained.

  Laughing, Anna set the girls to rights and hurried them down to the wagon. Katie, atop a saddled Bob, waited. Both the pie and the tin were beneath the seat, just as she’d asked.

  The ride was a short one. Clouds gathered against the mountains. The air smelled like rain. The wind was so blustery Mandy lost her hat and Katie and Bob had to chase it down Maple Street.

  The Muldune’s front yard bustled with activity. Little girls ran screaming around the front yard, for the tea party had been raided by whooping little boys. Davy galloped out on his pony, and Katie joined him.

  “Anna is here,” Leslie called from the front porch, hands out to take the dessert. “Oh, that pie looks wonderful. And look at you. Married life suits you.”

  “So far so good.” Anna set the brake and handed down the fragrant pie.

  “Anna. There you are.” Laura hurried down the porch to wrap her in a hug. “I’ve saved you a place on the sofa next to me. Oh, and I picked up the nicest thimble at Leslie’s store. I got one for you. You’ll have to come try it.”

  “As soon as I take care of the horse.” Laura really did feel like a sister. They were all becoming a family, day by day. Anna lifted down Maisie, then Mandy, and laughed as the girls hurried off to join in the fray, still wearing their outrageous hats.

  She unhitched the wagon, then unharnessed the patient appaloosa. She led the mare into the Muldune’s stable and into an empty stall. A barn cat came to beg a few pats.

  She could hear the distant shouts of the children, then the squeak of the back door opening. Katie and Davy had ridden their ponies this way. “Katie?”

  “No, Anna.” Straw crackled beneath a heavy boot.

  Chills skidded down her spine. Hair prickled on the back of her neck. He’d found her. Despite Meg’s lie and the considerable distance between Flint Creek and Ruby Bluff, he’d tracked her down.

  “Your sister was very helpful,” he spoke in her ear, his voice silken smooth and confident. “Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt her. She refused to cooperate so I had the postmistress watch her mail. A letter finally came. You had to go and tell her about the wedding, didn’t you?”

  Anna had hoped Meg could come. “I haven’t told anyone about you, Dalton, even though it would be the right thing to do. I have a child to raise.”

  “I have federal marshals tracking me, Anna. Somebody talked.” A cold revolver nosed her in the temple. “Not one word or you won’t be the only one to die this morning.”

  Fear shot through her. But anger, too. Her friends were in that house, her children in that yard. Anna bit her lip and refused to say another word.

  “Who’s that man with your new ma?” Davy reined in his pony on the crest of the hill.

  “It ain’t Papa.” Katie stood up in her stirrups, trying to figure out who it was. “Ain’t Tucker, either.”

  Something reflected the waning sunlight. Clouds were gathering overhead. Katie looked harder. When she squinted, she could make out the revolver held in the strange man’s hand.

  “They’re ridin’ outta town.” Davy sounded scared.

  She was scared, too. “Some man is takin’ my new mother.” She knew Anna would never leave. Anna said so. She’d made a promise right there in the church to love them, to stay with them forever.

  But her real mother had left. Her real mother had a man who came to the house sometimes. A stranger she didn’t know. Old fears jumbled around in her chest.

  But Anna was different. Anna truly loved her. Anna had answered her advertisement. Anna had answered her letters. Anna had come all the way to Flint Creek just because she’d asked her to.

  Anna wouldn’t leave.

  “C’mon, Davy.” Katie kicked Bob into a full gallop and headed straight into the wind.

  “We can’t go after that man, Katie,” Davy argued. “We don’t gotta gun.”

  “But my papa does. We just gotta find him.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Coop!” Tucker rode breakneck up the trail, despite the driving rain and the crack of lightning.

  Cooper spun his palomino around, shouting over the explosion of thunder. “You better tell me some good news. We’re having a bad day up here.”

  “Katie came barreling into the jailhouse. Said some man rode away with Anna.” Tucker drew his mount to a halt, the mare’s flanks heaving, white lather flecking her dark coat. “He had a gun on her.”

  “What man?” Cooper demanded. His chest turned to stone.

  “We don’t know. The kids saw them heading north, maybe toward the old Flint Creek trail. There were strange bootprints in the stable yard. Someone could have taken her from the Muldune’s barn.”

  Cooper swore. Cold rain sluiced down the back of his neck, driven by bone-chilling wind. “I took the guards off her and the girls. I thought with Corinthos dead and his gang in prison—”

  “This isn’t your fault, big brother. Someone waited until she was alone. Someone with dark hair, about the same height as the fugitive these marshals are looking for.”

  “Think it’s the same man?” Cooper kicked his stallion into a gallop. “With this weather, we’ll lose their tracks.”

  “I sent Barstow to cast for signs. He’s following them the best he can.”

  “Let’s ride, men,” he called.

  He led the deputies and marshals on a fast, hard trip. Maneuvering the steep mountainsides and crossing the rain drenched, dangerous ravines and unmarked paths took concentration. But Cooper couldn’t stop thinking of Anna. Of how she’d changed him. Of how she transformed their ordinary lives with her happiness, her sparkling love and first-star-of-the-night wishes.

  And yet, as the storm drew darkness across the lay of the rugged land, his hopes broke apart along with the sky. Lightning spiked. Thunder crashed. Rain turned to sleet, and then a fast-moving north wind drove the sleet to ice, then to snow.

  He had to find Anna alive. He just had to. And when he got his hands on the man who dared to take her at gunpoint, Cooper would make that outlaw sorry.

  “The fastest route to catch the old Flint Creek trail is to follow the river west from here.” Tucker sidled his mount closer. “No one’s used the trail I know of in a while, and with this weather we’ll have a hard time leading the men.”

  “We’ll do the best we can.” Cooper swiped at the white flakes weighing down his hat brim.

  Like fog, the clouds hugged the rise and fall of the mountain peaks. The wet snow made the steep trails dangerous and the riding uncomfortable. He shrugged on
a rain slicker he unrolled from his pack, but unlike the bighorn sheep huddling on a sheltered crag of the mountain, he shivered. Cold seeped its way through his clothes, to his skin and deeper.

  As they climbed down in elevation, the snow changed to rain.

  “I found tracks. Two horses, one with a light rider, newly shoed. Looks like Eric’s work down at the livery.” Baxter, their tracker, spun his mare around. “These are fresh. Maybe ten minutes old.”

  “Eric said the appaloosa was just shoed.” Cooper knew it in his guts. Anna. He had to save her. He had to reach her.

  Five armed men were waiting at the crest of the old trail. Anna recognized a few of them from her hometown, grown unkempt on their desperate run from the law.

  “We spotted riders down below. About a mile and closing,” Kurt Baines urged his mount toward Dalton.

  “The marshals?”

  “Maybe. I think it’s the local lawman, the one she’s married to. I saw a palomino. The sheriff rides one.”

  Cooper. Anna’s stomach twisted. He had no way of knowing six armed men would meet him on the trail. He’d ride straight into gunfire.

  “Set up an ambush,” Dalton barked out. “I don’t want one of those lawmen left alive. Baines, I need more bullets.”

  “Wait.” Anna caught Dalton’s sleeve and held tight until he had to spin around and face her.

  A cold flat gaze met hers. “I ought to shoot you first. You’re the cause of all this. I could be home, denying the charges and counting my money—”

  “I can make the law turn around and leave you alone.” She had no illusions. Dalton was going to kill her. But she would not let him kill Cooper.

  “Let me try, Dalton. The marshals know you’re on the run. If you kill lawmen who are after you, they won’t let you rest. You have to let me try.”

  “Up there.” Baxter drew to a halt.

  Cooper pushed the stallion into a hard gallop, even aware of the animal’s exhaustion. Through the gray curtain of sleet, he could see the appaloosa’s spotted rump and the slim set of her shoulders, squared and determined.

  “Anna!” He shouted. The driving wind stole his words. She didn’t turn. Yet the distance between them lessened as the stallion’s labored gallop ate up the length of road separating them. “Anna!”

  She twisted around on the saddle. Rain drenched her. She wore no slicker as protection from the elements. She dripped with rain. Her hair had fallen around her shoulders, loose, tangled and darkened to a browngold.

  Thank goodness he’d found her in time. Before something horrible happened. His guts twisted hard. Someone was watching them. It wasn’t right, Anna here alone in the rain. He expected an armed man. Maybe many armed men.

  “Turn the mare around and head home, Anna.” He kept his voice low, steady. “Where are they?”

  “I’m not going home. Cooper.” She met his gaze, spoke just as quietly.

  Anger and fear bunched up beneath his breastbone. “What do you mean you aren’t going home? I can handle the man, whoever he is.” He held two revolvers in hand, cocked and ready.

  “I mean, I’m leaving you.” Her chin lifted.

  He scanned the rain-drenched forest. “Katie saw you with an armed man.”

  Her eyes widened. Those eyes as blue as dreams, as true as the fairy tales she’d made him believe in. “That man is someone I used to know. He courted me.”

  “Turn around and ride home, Anna. I know what’s going on here.”

  Now what should she do? Cooper rode by her side like an ancient warrior, strong shouldered and fearless, determined to right all wrongs.

  But he didn’t understand. Dalton would kill him, kill anyone to keep himself safe. She had to protect the man she loved more than anything. She had to send him home before Dalton grew impatient and started killing.

  Using the knowledge she had, Anna took a breath. Found the courage to say the words that would hurt him more than anything. Words that would destroy what little faith he had in her.

  “Dalton Jennings came for me. I’m leaving to be with him.”

  “Dalton Jennings? He’s a wanted man.” Cooper’s jaw tightened, his shoulders tensed, ready for a battle.

  “We’re lovers. I didn’t think he wanted me, but he’s changed his mind.” The lie tasted sour on her tongue. “I’m leaving you, Cooper.”

  “Stop lying.” Deadly and low those words. Hot with denial.

  “It’s the truth.” Anna spun the mare around to face him. “I love Dalton in a way I could never love you. He’s asked me to go away with him, and I’ve accepted. So go back to town.”

  “Anna, I can’t believe—”

  “Believe it.” She sharpened her voice, belted out the words so the deputies bowing their heads out of embarrassment for their boss would have no doubt. They would all have no doubt. “I only married you for convenience, Cooper. The same way you married me. Now I have the man I want. I guess I’m not any different from Katie’s real mother.”

  The disbelief faded from his dark eyes and changed to a dark, muddy grief. “What about your daughter? I know you aren’t going to leave—”

  “She’s not Dalton’s child and he doesn’t want her. So now, neither do I.” Keep riding, she told herself. Keep moving away before Dalton changes his mind.

  “Anna!” Cooper’s voice. “I know you love your daughter.”

  Keep riding. Tears blurred her vision, burned in her throat. Don’t turn around. Don’t let him see the truth.

  “Anna! You wouldn’t leave Mandy. I know you wouldn’t. Anna! Don’t you leave me.” Raw hurt shivered in those words.

  She halted the mare and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out loud. But then a snap of a branch caught her gaze. There, hidden by a grove of old scrubby pines, she spied Dalton on horseback. His exposed gun was aimed at Cooper. His thumb drew the hammer back. Fear crawled around her heart. Was he getting ready to fire?

  She had no choice. Anna snapped the reins and galloped away from the only man she’d ever truly loved.

  As Dalton’s horse shadowed her, hidden from sight in the woods, she knew no first-star-of-the-night wishes could help her now. Or her fairy-tale prince who did not follow her, who would not wait for her return.

  Gathering her courage, Anna rode straight into the storm.

  “The deputies are turning back,” she overheard Jennings’ scout say.

  “Well, Anna, good job. The last thing I need is a dead sheriff to rile up those marshals any more than they already are.” Dalton’s slow grin twisted, not bothering to mask the cold brutality he once hid beneath dashing charm. “Braddock believed you. Looks like you saved his life. Unless he does something stupid and circles back.”

  Anna shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. She hoped Cooper kept on riding.

  Dalton’s sinister smile broadened. “Yes, well, I’m not avoiding a fight as much as saving time. Those damn marshals are after me. Falsely, of course.”

  “Of course.” She tried to keep the judgment from her voice. “I’m here. Alone. I met my part of the bargain. I want your word you will leave my family alone. Especially Cooper.”

  “I’ve kept my word so far.” Dalton reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a cigar. He lit a match, using both hands to shield the meager flame.

  He leaned close. His breath puffed along her ear. The sensation crawled across her skin like a dozen spiders. “I have missed you, Anna.”

  Like hell he did.

  “You left Ruby Bluff in a hurry. Didn’t even say goodbye. Imagine that. And we’ve been friends most of our lives.” He laid his black-gloved hand along the back of her neck and curled his fingers around her vertebrae. “Count the minutes, Anna, because that’s all the livin’ you have left.”

  She felt afraid, but not as much as the sorrow she felt in her heart. She was leaving her precious Mandy, and the two little girls she’d come to love just as much. And Cooper—

  She closed her eyes and hoped he would find some way to
forgive her one day. The thought of him hating her was more than she could bear.

  Cold ram dripped off his hat brim and ran down the back of his neck. He kept his stallion headed toward town. His chest felt as cold as the ram.

  “Coop.” Tucker rode up beside him and kept pace as they headed out, their goal clear. “Anna loves you. She wouldn’t have left you—”

  “No more,” he snapped. “I don’t want to think. I just want to work. It will be better that way.”

  “What do you mean? You love her. She’s your wife.”

  “Right now, she’s a civilian, nothing more. Baxter, I want you to scout for us. Even in this storm, they can’t get far. We’ll stop them.”

  He needed concentration to do the job ahead of him, not his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Anna heard the pop of gunfire and saw the old man riding ahead of her slip from his saddle. His body hit the snowy wet earth with a lifeless thud. The mare she rode sidestepped, spooked. The cheek strap slid out of Dalton’s grip.

  Free, Anna kicked her mount into a swift lope and didn’t look back. She ducked low, hearing the escalating sounds of a gunfight—horses’ whinnies, men’s shouts, the clatter of firing guns.

  She didn’t know who was fighting whom. It wasn’t Cooper, she knew, he wouldn’t come for her. Not after how she’d hurt him. But it might be those marshals, for the fight was a serious one. No one had even noticed her escape.

  Then she heard the drum of hooves behind her, gaining ground. She urged the mare faster, despite the wet snow making the trail dangerous. Blood pounding, she leaned forward, pressing the horse faster yet.

  “Anna.” Dalton’s voice. Dalton’s black-gloved fingers closing around her wrist.