Lone Star Lonely

by Maggie Shayne

  Adam swallowed his instinctive urge to tell her that she was wrong. She wouldn’t react well to being told she was wrong. She never had.

  “Look, it’s your life. Your decision.” He let go of the straps. “If you want me to help you make it to Mexico, I will.”

  “You will.” She repeated it flatly.

  “You know I will.” He met her eyes, held them for a brief moment, then looked away. “But I’d ask you to give my way a chance first. If it looks like it’s not gonna work, we’re outta here.”

  She sat still, just looking down at him. Then Mystic tossed her mane and danced impatiently, but Kirsten moved with the animal without even thinking about it. Never swayed. She’d always been great with horses.

  “So you have some kind of a plan, then,” she said, eyes narrow. “I should have known. You always have a plan.”

  “Yeah, well, you caught me on an off day this time, Kirsten. I don’t have a clue. Just a vague notion that we could probably hide out by day and do some snooping around by night. See if we can turn up some evidence as to who really did this and why they’re setting you up to take the fall.”

  “We won’t find anything.”

  “Not if we don’t try, we won’t.”

  Kirsten sighed. Adam watched the rise and fall of her chest. The play of light on her hair and its flash in her eyes. Something knotted in his gut. His hands clenched at his sides, maybe because it was the only way to keep them there. Okay, so he wasn’t over her after all. He’d pretty much shot the theory that he ever had been all to hell. And he knew he was headed for serious trouble here, which was why he had to know the whole story. Why she’d left him. Why she’d married a bastard like Cowan. The whole truth. He needed to know just where he stood with her. Before it was too late. Because he was in danger of getting his heart smashed to bits by Kirsten all over again, and he damned well wasn’t planning to let that happen.

  “We snoop tonight?” she asked him.

  “No. Tonight we lie low. They’ll be looking. Tomorrow night we’ll slip back into town. They’ll all think we’re long gone by then.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?”

  “Then we try again the next night,” he said, watching her face.

  “No, we don’t. We head to Mexico. Or one of us does, anyway. The other one goes home and says whatever he has to to keep his butt out of jail.”

  Adam sighed. “It’s going to be tough to make any progress in just one night, Kirsty.”

  “It’s that or nothing, Adam. I’ve got no reason to hang around waiting for someone to slap a life sentence on me. Or worse.”

  “I’m not going to let that happen. And you’ve got every reason to hang around.”

  “You can’t stop it from happening. And you’re wrong. I’d be long gone by now if not for….” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

  If not for you, that was what she’d been about to say. No reason to hang around, huh? Well, maybe those words would have been more convincing if she hadn’t still been here. Even now, getting down off her horse and removing its saddle and blanket.

  Adam nodded, satisfied she must have some reason to hang around or she would be riding hard due south right now. He let the horses locate the grass on their own, then gathered up some dry wood for a fire. He was pretty sure he was the reason. He probably shouldn’t be thinking that way. But he liked thinking that way, dammit. And after the way she’d responded to his kiss back there….

  He remembered, tasting those lips in his mind and wanting to do it all over again.

  “You think that’s a good idea?” she asked.

  “It’s probably a terrible idea,” he said. Then he saw her frowning at him and at the fire he was about to light. She was hunkered nearby, unpacking the saddlebags, taking inventory, but she’d paused to stare at him. “Oh, you mean the fire?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not dark yet. No one will spot the flames if we keep it small. And wood this seasoned isn’t gonna make much smoke. We’ll need to douse it before dark, though.”

  “Makes sense. You’re not bad at this stuff, for a city boy.”

  “I’ve never, ever been a city boy, hon.”

  “Not even when you were there?”

  “Nope.” He hunkered beside the fire he’d laid, struck a match to some tinder and watched it flare up. “To tell you the truth, I hated it.”

  “Then why did you stay?” She sat on a rolled-up blanket to watch the fire take hold.

  Adam looked at her. “I told the family it was a great career opportunity. That I loved the big money, the fast life.”

  One side of her mouth pulled into a small, brief smile. “They believe you?”

  “Nah. They said it was ‘cause I couldn’t stand to be in the same town with you and Cowan.” Adam caught her eyes with his and held them fast. “I never admitted it, but they were right.”

  She rose fast, paced away uneasily, didn’t look at him. He stayed where he was, poking the burgeoning fire with a stick, watching her, waiting for a reply.

  “I’m going to take the horses down to that watering hole for a drink,” she said, and she hurried away.

  Avoiding the subject. Well, hell, Adam thought, she couldn’t keep it up all night. Sooner or later she would talk to him. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  Not this time.

  Kirsten sat on the ground and watched the horses drink. Adam hadn’t followed. She’d half expected him to. He had a determined, stubborn look in his eyes tonight, and she didn’t like it. She knew that look. He could be so damned persistent when he made up his mind about something.

  She closed her eyes, sat and rehearsed in her mind the words she would say. The way she would tell him. The truth she had to speak. Had to. Because she’d figured something out back there at Sky Dancer Ranch when they’d “borrowed” the horses. When Adam had kissed her. She’d suspected it before, but now she was certain. He still cared. Maybe he’d never stopped. And while his love for her had never been the soul-shattering, gut-wrenching kind she’d felt for him, it had been real. And, fool that he was, he still felt it. He deserved the truth. He deserved to hate her for what she’d done. He deserved to be let off the hook.

  Oh, but what might have happened between them tonight if she didn’t have to confess?

  Tears burned. She blinked at them, but they pooled anyway. Damn Adam for being so beautiful, and so strong, and so…so Adam.

  “Kirsty?”

  Sniffling, she lifted her head, wiped her eyes. He stood behind her. She didn’t turn to face him.

  “You’ve been out here awhile. The horses came back without you.”

  Licking dry lips, she glanced at the water hole where the animals had been, then at the sun resting low on the horizon, halfway to setting already. “I was… thinking.”

  “Yeah. A lot on your mind, I imagine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think you can eat? You haven’t had a damned thing since breakfast.”

  A tight smile tugged at her lips. It was just like him to keep track of what she was eating, and how often. To worry. To care. “I could probably manage a few bites. What have you got? Hardtack and beans?” Another brush at her eyes with the heels of her hands. The tears didn’t show anymore. Did they?

  She looked at him. The smile pulled his lips tight, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her, hat cocked back on his head. Sun painting his face bronze and gleaming in his eyes.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Sure I am. I’m tougher than I look, you know.”

  “Yeah. Well….” He sounded doubtful but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he held out a hand. She took it and let Adam pull her to her feet. Then she went still, because he held on, his eyes probing hers. “There didn’t used to be so many secrets in those brown eyes of yours, Kirsten. They used to sparkle. Now they’re dull with worry and…I don’t know. Pain.”

  “Chalk it up to looking d
own the business end of a murder charge, Adam.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He pursed his lips. Said nothing.

  “I smell coffee.”

  With a sigh and a slight lowering of his chin, he let it go. All of it. His unspoken questions, his suspicions, his need to know. For now. He let it go for the moment, for her, as she’d known he would. Not for anything would he push too hard when he could see pain in her eyes. But she knew him too well to think he wouldn’t come back to it later. And keep coming back until he had the answers he wanted. And even if he didn’t, she would have to tell him…all of it. And soon.

  Adam turned, tucking her hand to his side and heading back toward the fire. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s been a while since I’ve brewed coffee in a tin pot over an open fire.”

  “Damn. And here I was hoping for cappuccino.”

  She chose a spot near the fire and sat down. Adam set a small cooler beside her, then used his shirtsleeve as a pot holder and poured coffee into two tin cups. Kirsten opened the cooler and peered inside. Cold fried chicken, a pair of large ice packs, assorted fruit and small covered dishes in varying shapes, sizes and colors were wedged into the thing.

  “Elliot tends to be of the belief that so long as there’s plenty to eat, all is right with the world,” Adam said.

  “I remember that about him. And the idea does have merit.” She hauled out a golden brown drumstick and bit into it. Flavor exploded in her mouth, and her stomach growled for more.

  “He stuffed bread and canned goods into the other pack,” Adam said. “Even remembered to include a can opener.”

  “If I ever see your kid brother again, remind me to thank him.”

  She took another bite, chewed, swallowed. Reached for the coffee cup and burned her fingers. When she drew her hand away fast, Adam was there, gripping her hand, turning it.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Let me see,” he insisted, when she would have pulled away. He examined her hand by the fading blaze of the orange sunset, ran his fingertips over hers. Electric contact. It burned more than the hot tin had.

  Kirsten closed her eyes. She wanted him. Damn, how she wanted him.

  Satisfied she was okay, he brought her fingers to his lips, kissed them softly.

  She drew her hand away so fast she hurt her wrist. “Why did you do that?”

  Adam shrugged, but there was fire in his eyes, a spark she knew well. “Old habits…you know.” He held her gaze for a long moment, then finally broke eye contact and sighed. He sat down beside her, reaching into the cooler for a piece of chicken. “Sorry. Kissing singed fingers doesn’t help much, I imagine. It was something my mother….” He cut himself off there, not finishing the sentence.

  Kirsten’s stomach turned over. Her appetite fled. “Something…your mother used to do?”

  He nodded without looking at her and bit into his chicken.

  “You never talked about her. Your mother,” she said, very slowly, not even sure why she wanted to torture herself this way. “Not even to me.”

  He didn’t reply. Not until he’d cleaned the meat to the bone and started on a second piece. Then he paused, saw she was still looking at him, awaiting a reply, and shrugged. “Some things…a man just doesn’t want to discuss.”

  “Not even with a woman he claimed to love?”

  Adam stilled. “I never claimed to love you, Kirsty. It was real, not alleged. Hell, never mind. How did we get on this subject, anyway?”

  “I asked you about your mother. How old were you, Adam, when your parents were killed? Sixteen?”

  His lips thinned, but he answered. “Fourteen.”

  “You must have been…crushed.”

  “That’d be one word for it.” He sipped his coffee, looked back toward town, in search, she thought, of another subject. A safer one. But there was an old pain in his eyes. One she had put there.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Adam got an odd, squinty look. “Nothing for you to apologize for, Kirsty. It wasn’t your fault”

  Oh, but it was. “Adam…” She drew a breath, squeezed her hands together. It was time. “Adam, I—”

  “I should be the one apologizing,” he said.

  Kirsten’s brows drew together. “What—”

  “For never talking about…about that. To you. I mean, it was the worst time of my life, and, hell, let’s face it. It changed me. You had a right to know about that. To understand why I was…the way I was.”

  She had understood. Or she’d thought she had. But he was right, they’d never discussed it. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to now. Why the hell had she started this?

  “The truth is, it damn near killed me, losing them.”

  She closed her eyes. Felt his pain. Heard it in his voice and sensed it emanating in waves from his soul.

  “I knew the second Garrett came to me that something terrible had happened. I’d never seen that big lug cry before. Never in my life. It scared the hell out of me. He…gathered all of us together in the parlor. Me, Ben, Elliot, Wes…even little Jessi, though she was so damned young she didn’t really know what was going on. Thank God for that.”

  Kirsten’s mind told her to look away, not into his eyes, into his pain-racked face as he remembered. Change the subject, shut him out.

  But her heart cried more loudly. Heal him. Hold him. Make his horrible pain go away. But how could she, when she was the one who’d put it there?

  “He made us all hold hands, and then he told us. Mama and Dad wouldn’t be coming home to the Texas Brand again. He said they’d gone to heaven, that they were safe with the angels now, and watching over us just the way they always had. But from above.”

  Her heart broke. It just shattered. He was opening up to her in a way he’d never done before.

  “The others cried. All of them. Even Jessi, when she saw her big brothers all reduced to tears like that. But not me. I didn’t shed a tear. I got mad,” he confessed, lowering his head, sweeping his hat off and holding it between his knees by the brim. “Furious. I kept asking myself how my parents could do something like that, how they could go off to live with the angels while the six of us stayed behind to fend for ourselves.”

  Kirsten touched his face. “It wasn’t really anger, Adam. It was pain. You just had to direct it somehow. You were a child.”

  “Oh, it was anger. I blamed them. Both of them, for abandoning us. Abandoning me. I vowed then and there that I’d never love anyone that much again. Never give anyone the chance to leave me that way again.”

  “It was,” she whispered, searching for words, “it was a natural reaction.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. If it was, it should have passed. I should have been able to work through it, do my mourning, make my peace. I didn’t, Kirsten. To tell you the truth, I’m still angry.” He lowered his head, shook it slowly. “But then you came along.”

  She nodded. “I know. And you wouldn’t let yourself fall all the way in love with me. Because you were half convinced I’d leave you the same way they did.”

  “I was fully convinced you’d leave me the way they did,” he said very slowly. “And totally determined not to fall all the way in love with you. I told myself I wouldn’t. I even convinced you of it, didn’t I?”

  Studying his face, she nodded.

  Adam looked into her eyes. Lifting one hand to cup her cheek, he let his gaze move from her forehead to her chin and back to her eyes again. “Fooled everybody, then. Because I did fall all the way. I did, Kirsty. And when you walked out on me, I didn’t think I’d survive. Wasn’t even sure I wanted to.”

  She closed her eyes. She’d wanted so badly to hear him speak to her this way, once. A long time ago. But not now. Sweet God, not now.

  “And I never really fell out again, either,” he went on.

  “Don’t, Adam—”

  “That’s my deep dark secret, Kirsty. The one I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to keep, eve
n from myself. That’s it. And I thought it was about time I told you.”

  Tears streaming down both cheeks now, she opened her eyes and stared through hazy pools at him. “Why, Adam? Why now?”

  “Because,” he said slowly, “it’s only fair. It’s your turn now, Kirsten. Tell me the dark secrets you’ve been keeping. Tell me the truth.”

  Sniffling, she shook her head. “I…I can’t….”

  “Yeah, you can,” he told her. “‘Cause neither one of us is leaving here until you do.”

  Sitting up straighter, Kirsten drew her knees to her chest, hugged them, stared into the flames. What was she waiting for? Why didn’t she just blurt it all out? Her throat hurt. Her head ached. The fire danced. She licked her lips. Where the hell was she supposed to begin? Her voice hoarse, she closed her eyes and forced words through the narrow space in her throat. “What do you want to know?”

  Adam sat very still beside her. “Did you ever love me?”

  She nodded without hesitation. “I’ve never loved anyone else.” And even to her own ears, her voice sounded desolate, hopeless.

  She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. She just listened. The night was slowly coming to life now. A distant bird called. A coyote cried the way her heart was doing—a mourning, warbling, broken sound that said better than words could what her life had become. The fire hissed and snapped.

  “Then you never loved Cowan.”

  “I never even liked him.”

  “He forced you to marry him,” Adam said softly. Leading her by the hand with his words, trying to make it easier for her to get to the truth. “He had something on you, something he held over your head. And you married him to keep him quiet.”

  Kirsten nodded.

  “What was it, Kirsten?”

  Silence. She tried to part her lips, to speak, but her jaws seemed to have locked up. He waited a long time. She tried to make herself say the words. I killed your parents. I orphaned your little sister and your brothers. I took away your life and changed it forever.

  “Tell me.”

  “Please, Adam, don’t make me do this.”

  “It’s time, Kirsten.”

  She shook her head hard. “I…I can’t!”