by Various
And the one woman he’d always dreamed of making a family with?
The story Willa had relayed of her journey to Salvation Falls had left an impression and a niggling pressure against his conscience, which was only emphasized by Bertram’s claims Morgan shouldn’t have left Willa alone for as long as he had. That it had been his actions that had led her to marry someone else. Was he right? Maybe his own role in the events that had shaped their lives deserved closer scrutiny. The thought of sharing the blame didn’t sit well, but neither did losing any chance to put things right between them.
Perhaps it was time he sat down with her to see if they couldn’t come to some kind of understanding. “Guess I should head over to the church.”
“Guess I’ll be following along behind ya,” Fritz mimicked.
Morgan glared at the giant. “I don’t require an escort.”
“Don’t care what you think you require. I ain’t gonna be the one ta explain ta the little lady why she found you facedown in the snow, frozen ta death.”
Bertram chuckled. “You might want to listen to Fritz, here, son. I need to meet with a client. You and I will talk later, hmm?”
“Yes, sir,” Morgan answered, though the thought of arriving at the church with a chaperone was as appealing as stripping down and running the length of Main Street in the altogether.
He glanced up at Fritz once more. “Be ready by half past the hour.”
Chapter Four
Spotting Lettie Potter in a group of women was not a difficult task. No matter how many flounces the other ladies’ dresses had, Lettie’s would always have more. The fripperies of bows and such would always be more extravagant, the colors or patterns more flamboyant. Everything about Willa’s older sister shouted that she was someone not to be ignored.
None of which was news to Morgan. He’d witnessed Lettie’s constant need for male attention from the first day he’d been hired at Stanford Timber. Not that she had ever done anything improper, but the regular barrage of flirtatious behavior quickly grew exhausting and soon Morgan grew tired of pretending he was impressed by anything she said, did, wore or knew. Because, truth be told, Lettie never said anything of interest, never did anything of consequence, never wore anything that enticed him and didn’t know anything of import. She reminded him of a window dressing.
Willa, on the other hand...well, Willa was the view beyond the window. She was the lush green grass and the wildflowers. She was cloudless skies and fresh air. It had amazed him she hadn’t had a line of suitors, but for reasons he could never fathom, most men of his acquaintance gravitated toward Lettie. That suited him just fine, because he’d never been sure he deserved someone as wonderful as Willa and had there been more competition, maybe she would have realized that a lot sooner than she had.
Morgan stood just inside the church and surveyed the front of the room where the women were busy planning. Well, most of the women. It appeared Lettie was more interested in sitting in a pew fanning herself despite the fact the cavernous room was anything but warm. His gaze skimmed over her to find Willa. Wearing a navy dress, her hair somewhat subdued in a loose knot and a warm rose coloring the apples of her cheeks, she was about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. For a moment, he simply stood there, drinking her in. He still couldn’t believe she was here. A part of him was convinced he’d discover she was nothing more than a mirage conjured up by wishful thinking.
“Do my eyes deceive me, or is that Morgan Trent? Willa said you’d arrived in town but I thought for sure she was pulling my leg.”
Morgan’s left eye twitched and he forced a smile. Lettie had always reminded him of a viper poised to strike; you just never knew when she was coming. “Mrs. Potter. How are you?”
She glided toward him, her hips swaying to and fro beneath ample layers of petticoats, puffed out to enhance her tiny waist. “Well, I suppose I’m a far sight better than you. I heard you were laid out flat in the dining hall during the ruckus those rowdies kicked up.”
Deep breath. Unclench teeth. Speak. “You heard about that, huh?” Was there anyone in town who hadn’t?
“Hmm.” Lettie gifted him with a smile that reminded him of the proverbial cat who had cornered the canary, then circled around him. The narrow space caused her skirts to brush against his legs. Once she arrived back in front of him, she tapped him on the chest with her closed fan. “I would say traveling agrees with you, Mr. Trent. Do you plan on continuing on from here anytime soon?”
“No offense, Mrs. Potter, but I came here to speak to your sister, so if you don’t mind—”
“I think you’ll discover I mind a fair bit.” Lettie gifted him with a sharp smile and her gaze hardened. “What exactly are your intentions with respect to my sister?”
Morgan’s gaze narrowed. When had Lettie designated herself Willa’s protector? The Lettie he knew barely gave her younger sister the time of day, and when she did, it was usually veiled with some criticism or complaint.
“Said he needed to talk to ’er,” Fritz offered from where he sat in the back pew.
Lettie’s blonde eyebrows lifted. “Is that right?”
“Yes.” Morgan gritted his teeth. Was it necessary for his every move to be dissected by everyone with an opinion?
“I’m afraid my sister is a bit busy right now what with the Christmas Festival just around the corner. I doubt she has the time to—”
“It’s fine, Lettie,” Willa said, making her way down the aisle. Morgan’s heart pounded louder as he watched her approach. The way she carried herself, that newfound confidence, proved a strong aphrodisiac he was powerless against. “I can spare Mr. Trent a few minutes.”
A few minutes. He’d take what he could get.
Lettie let out a put-upon sigh. “Suit yourself, then. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Trent. I must get back to the women. It’s as if none of them have ever planned a large event before. Quite frankly, they should be happy I’ve arrived to keep this festival from becoming mired in mediocrity.”
Ah, there was the Lettie he knew. He waited for her to head over to the rest of the women before turning his attention to Willa.
“Is there somewhere we can speak in private?” He didn’t care for an audience of onlookers.
“There really isn’t any place we—”
“There’s the little room jus’ off the way,” Fritz said. Morgan glanced over his shoulder at the cook who was pointing to his right. He hadn’t expected assistance from that quarter but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Willa shook her head. “It’s rather small. More of a coatroom than anything. I don’t—”
“That’ll work fine,” Morgan said before she could talk her way out of it.
Her lips pursed, drawing his attention with a jolt of desire. “Fine. But only for a few minutes.”
“That’s all I need.”
Fritz waved them off. “I’ll wait right here for ya, Trent.”
Willa led the way and Morgan worked furiously to not focus on the sway of her hips as he followed behind. He failed miserably—but what was a man to do?
“Where is Fritz from exactly?” Morgan asked as they stepped into the room. Willa had been right. It was small, containing four chairs that appeared to have been shoved into the room as an afterthought.
“It’s hard to say,” Willa said as Morgan pushed two chairs away to make room for them to sit. “His story changes every time I ask. Like a lot of the people here, I suspect maybe Fritz comes from all over. Then they reach Salvation Falls with nowhere else to go and realize this is the place they’d been looking for all along.”
When had she become so wise? Had she always been this way and he simply hadn’t looked deep enough to notice? And if so, what else had he missed?
He motioned Willa toward one of the chairs. “I see your sister has
n’t changed much.”
She smiled at him, the first unguarded smile he’d seen since he’d arrived. It transported him back to a time when he’d received such gifts on a regular basis and hadn’t appreciated them nearly enough.
“She puts on a good show, but I think Ernest leaving her as he did has had more of an impact than she lets on. It’s the first time she’s had to look at the world from a different perspective and she’s still finding her way. Don’t judge her too harshly.”
He nodded and looked down at his boots. He had to. The closer he looked at Red, the more things rushed through him that he didn’t yet have the ability to deal with. Regrets and needs and wishes and disappointments. He shook them off. He needed to concentrate. To pick his words carefully.
“You’ve really made a place for yourself here, haven’t you? Makes me think maybe nobody gave you enough credit early on, myself included. We all treated you like you were made of glass.” He glanced back at her, the truth of what he was about to say muddled in confusion. “Turns out you were forged of iron.”
Something crossed her expression, but it happened so swiftly he didn’t have time to make head nor tail of it. “I did what I had to. It wasn’t anything more than that.”
“That’s more than most of us managed.” Seeing her, what she’d been through, what she’d lost, what she’d built in its place...well, it made him feel ashamed that he hadn’t done the same. Instead, he’d let the loss of her and the life he’d dreamed of buckle him. He cleared his throat. “So what is this Christmas Festival you’re preparing for?”
“Oh, just a small celebration we started a couple of years ago. Meredith Donovan—” She moved her hand in an arc over her belly, indicating the pretty blonde lady with a pronounced bump that suggested a baby would be coming in the near future. “She’s the sheriff’s wife and chief organizer of the event this year. She’s managing the festivities for the dance. The lady with her, Rachel Beckett—you met her husband, Caleb, yesterday. They own the Circle S Ranch. She thought we should make a day out of it, so she is planning the outdoor events. Sledding and snowshoe races and the like.”
Morgan listened as Willa described the other ladies helping out, giving a little detail as to who they were and something deep inside tugged and pulled until a deep ache opened up in his chest. She had overcome whatever life had thrown at her and built a life in Salvation Falls that was good and solid. Would his being here ruin that for her?
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Red, Bertram’s the only family I’ve got. I plan on staying in Salvation Falls. Putting down some roots.”
Willa stilled and her fingers knotted together in her lap. “I figured.”
He waited for her to expand on that, but she fell silent. “Do you have any objections?”
She didn’t say anything for the longest time and it wasn’t until his lungs began to burn that Morgan realized he’d been holding his breath, waiting for her answer.
“It’s your prerogative to settle wherever you wish. My feelings on the matter are of no importance.”
“They are to me.”
“You do what you need to do and I’ll adjust accordingly.” Willa’s jaw tightened and her shoulders set back a little. “Isn’t that what I’ve always done where you were concerned?”
Her words, though spoken softly, hit him hard in the chest as if Fritz had planted one of his meaty fists in his sternum, knocking the wind out of him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Willa’s eyes widened and she looked him straight in the eye. Her genuine surprise at his question threw him off-kilter. What was he missing?
“Tell me, Morgan, when you decided to leave me to build your law practice and make yourself a success, how long did you expect that to take?”
Morgan shrugged. “Six months, give or take.” He wasn’t sure he liked the direction this conversation was heading. He’d planned on focusing on the positives of their past relationship and steering clear of the negatives.
“Six months.” A bitter smile twitched at the corners of Willa’s mouth. Oh, how he wanted to kiss that mouth. It seemed a far better option than digging up the remnants of a broken and battered past. “Well, I waited six months. And then even after your letters stopped coming, like a fool, I waited six more.”
There was that guilt again jabbing at his conscience. He shoved it away and grasped at the reasoning he’d clung to since the day he’d learned she was marrying someone else. “I didn’t have time to write, Red. I was busy trying to make a life for us!” Morgan took a deep breath to curb his emotions. “I was doing it for us.”
She nodded and settled her features into an unreadable mask. “I’m curious how long you expected me to keep waiting with no word on when—or if—you were coming back? Another six months? Another year? Two? How long, Morgan, was I to suffer the pitying looks of everyone around me who already knew you had no intention of returning? How long was I to fight off Father’s insistence that I marry Clancy?”
He blinked and looked away. The last gasp of sunlight burst through the window behind them and spilled across the polished wooden floors. He didn’t know how to answer her. Or rather, he didn’t have a good answer to give. That she would be ridiculed or pitied by others had never crossed his mind. That Lyle would make demands Morgan had conveniently neglected to ruminate upon. In fact, if he were being truthful, he’d been too busy thinking about what he was going through to ponder much on how she was doing.
It was a shameful admission for a man to make.
“I guess I didn’t consider it, Red.”
“No. That much is clear.” She shifted her gaze down to where her hands rested on her lap. Just as well. The dawning realization of what a self-centered idiot he’d been was not something he wanted her to see. “Well, I did think about it. Especially after your letters stopped coming. I made excuses at first, but they wore thin as the months went on.”
Her eyes shone with a gleam of tears but she blinked them away and kept talking. “Finally, Father had had enough. He demanded I marry Clancy. I refused at first, but...” She shrugged.
“But Clancy Barstow, Red? What were you thinking?” She had never liked the man—why would she agree to marry him?
She looked up and her eyes flashed with anger but her voice remained calm. Controlled. The muscle near her jaw quivered slightly, indicating the strength that took. “I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t feeling. I wasn’t anything but an empty husk. The man I had loved and built my future hopes on had abandoned me and the hurt cut so deep I could barely breathe. I didn’t marry Clancy because I cared about him. I married Clancy because Father threatened to throw me out into the streets with nothing if I didn’t.”
The pain and accusation in her eyes cut through him like a thousand jagged blades. His head hurt and his heart ached and his conscience raged, letting loose all the things he’d tried to deny and avoid since the day he’d returned, too late, to convince her not to marry Clancy.
For years, he’d tried to outrun the truth, outrun his own culpability. He’d laid it all at her door. But no matter how far he rode, the truth continued to dog him, nipping at his heels until he’d found himself standing at her doorstep where it had finally caught up with him. Now the truth stared at him through those soft hazel eyes he’d fallen in love with so many years ago.
Losing her had been his fault.
He opened his mouth to say he was sorry. So horribly, incredibly sorry, but the words locked in his throat. It was far too little and once again, he was far too late.
“Red...”
She shook her head and stood, her hands unclasping to press against her skirts. A briskness filled her voice, pushing him away. “Anyway, it’s all in the past. You have your life now and I have mine. Surely this town is big enough that we can both live our lives without tripping over each oth
er on a daily basis. I’m certain your uncle will be happy to have family around. Bertram’s a good man and I would never take that away from him.”
“What if I don’t want that?”
Her hands stilled. “Excuse me?”
He took a deep breath and wished he’d had more time to formulate what he wanted to say, the best words to use. “What if I don’t want to leave us in the past? What if I think there’s still something between us worth saving?”
“I...I—” She shook her head, but other than those stammered sounds, she said nothing. She hadn’t refused him. It was as good a sign as any.
He stepped forward and reached for one of her hands. It was so small in comparison to his and the need to protect her, and the anger at not having done so all those years when she’d toiled alone, surged through him. He wouldn’t let that happen again.
“Just hear me out, Red.” He lifted her hand to rest against his chest, wishing he could rid himself of the sheepskin coat that created a barrier between them. “We had something special once, didn’t we?”
She wouldn’t meet his gaze, but she didn’t deny it, so he forged on.
“Don’t you think it’s crazy that we’d both end up here? Crazier still, not to take advantage of this second chance? I know I did a lot of things wrong the first time around. I see that now. I should have replied to your letters. I shouldn’t have just assumed you’d wait however long it took. And I sure should have come back for you the minute I received your letter saying you were marrying Clancy.”
He let go of her hand and slipped his arms around the curve of her waist. A small tear slipped down over her cheekbone and it cut him to the quick. He hadn’t convinced her yet. He could feel it. And he was running out of words. And time.
Morgan lifted her chin up to meet his gaze and in hers saw the reflection of the hope he carried in his heart. He leaned down and kissed the single tear she’d allowed to fall, tasting its saltiness on his lips.