by Jodi Thomas
Just as her icy toes thawed, thanks to the hot bricks, the back door rattled. The sound was muffled by a towel she'd placed to keep out the draft, but she thought she heard the creak of the door handle.
Lacy hesitated, weighing fear against being cold. The Colt rested on the dresser not three feet away, but the journey would cost her the little body heat she'd managed to trap beneath the covers.
She told herself no one would try to break in tonight. It was too cold. In the years she'd lived alone above the shop, no one had ever tried to break in. Once a drunk fell into the front windows downstairs, but he hadn't intended to enter. This was a quiet little town most of the time where folks felt safe. Crime rarely paid a call.
But what better time than tonight, with the wind blowing and no one brave enough to investigate a scream?
At the third rattle of the door, Lacy jumped from the bed and ran for the Colt. As her hand touched the handle of the gun, a cold wind barreled through her apartment. The back door swung wide open, clamoring against the wall.
Lacy held the weapon in both hands and faced the wind. She might freeze, but she'd protect to the death what was hers.
A tall figure in a dark wool coat stood before her wearing a hat low, blocking his face from view. He filled the opening. The short cape of his coat flapped in the wind like a flag.
She raised the gun and tightened her finger around the trigger.
The stranger stomped into her kitchen as if he had a right to be there. Swearing at the storm, he raised a gloved hand to shove the door closed. The dove-colored gauntlet shone pale in the moonlight.
Leveling the gun to his chest, she stepped forward. Only the yellow braiding of his hat cords kept her from firing.
"Cavalry," she whispered, remembering that only army cavalry wore yellow on their uniforms. "Infantry wear blue, artillery wear scarlet," she repeated her facts as if writing an article and not facing an intruder.
The trespasser glanced up. Icy blue eyes stared from beneath the shade of his wide-brimmed hat.
"Walker!" She almost didn't recognize him. His chin was covered by a short, black beard, but even in the shadow of his hat, she would never forget those eyes. Cold, heartless eyes, that asked nothing and gave even less.
He jerked his hat off and tossed it on the kitchen table. "Shoot me, Lacy, if that's what you plan to do, or put that old cannon away. I'm in no mood to waste time being threatened by my own wife."
Lacy blinked as if he might disappear.
Walker unbuttoned his coat and hung it on a peg behind the door as though he knew it would be there waiting for him.
He was slightly thicker, she thought. Ten pounds, maybe twenty. His hair was longer, curling over the stiff collar of his uniform jacket. But he was no less handsome, no less frightening.
"What are you doing here?" she asked without lowering the gun.
He glanced at the Colt, then faced her directly. "Let's get something straight right now, dear wife. I have no desire to be in this town. In fact, if I had my way, I'd never step foot within a hundred miles of Cedar Point."
He pulled off his gloves and tossed them atop his hat. "But it seems Sheriff Riley knows someone who is acquainted with my superior officer. He sent a letter two weeks ago demanding I come home to protect my wife from a man she has apparently confessed to killing once."
Lacy wasn't sure if she were more upset that he came home unwillingly to protect her, or that Sheriff Riley had interfered. At this point, if she had only one bullet, it would be a toss-up which one to shoot. "I didn't ask him to have you come. I can take care of myself."
Walker looked at the gun. "I can see that."
She lowered the Colt. "You've no need to stay. You can return to your post, wherever that is. I'll be fine."
The deep frown didn't lift. "Would that I could," he answered as if arguing with her. "But it seems I've been given thirty days' leave and was forced to take it."
"Thirty days," Lacy echoed. Thirty days with Walker would be an eternity. The few minutes she'd spent with him two years ago had taken her months to recover from. He hurt her. He humiliated her. And worst of all, he'd done exactly what she'd asked of him. He'd made her his wife in more than name.
"Don't look so terrified. I spent three days getting here, and it will take me the same amount of hard riding to return, so you've only twenty-four days of the hell of my company."
"You can't stay here!" Lacy looked around her little apartment crowded with her things. With her life.
"I can't stay anywhere else." His gaze followed hers. He didn't look any happier to be here than she was to have him. "What kind of guard would be posted outside the perimeter? Plus, if I remember this town, within hours everyone will know I've arrived, and it would look strange for a husband to stay at the boardinghouse when his wife sleeps alone."
The little warmth in her body turned to ice. "You're not sleeping with me!"
For the first time, his frown spread into a smile. "I don't remember your being of such a mind the last time we were together. If memory serves, you were the one who insisted on sharing my quarters."
"The only time we were together," Lacy corrected. 'The only time we will ever be together. You don't want a wife, remember?"
"I remember." He watched her carefully.
"Maybe we are divorced," she added. "Maybe I've told everyone you died."
"You haven't," he answered too matter-of-factly to be guessing. "And stop shivering with fright. I'm not here to attack you, Lacy. I'm here to protect you."
CHAPTER 2
Lacy wrapped a quilt around her as Walker brought in his supplies. The midnight wind blew through the open doorway, the chill no more welcome than him.
Other than the saddle and two leather bags that took up half her kitchen floor, he brought two Winchesters, a gun belt, two Colts, and several boxes of shells. Shoving aside the glass birds Lacy kept on the windowsill, Walker stacked extra rounds for the guns on the ledge. He fully loaded each rifle and positioned one near the back door and the other a few feet from the opening in the living area that led down to the shop below.
"These rooms were used for storage when I was a kid." Walker talked as he worked. "My brother and I used to play up here. If I remember right, no one can get up the front stairs from the shop without boards creaking. It's the back that will need guarding."
Lacy really didn't care what the captain figured, but it surprised her to learn Walker had a brother. The boy must have died in childhood, for her father-in-law had never mentioned him.
Watching Walker closely, she tried to stay as far away from him as the tiny rooms allowed. She didn't need her usually invisible husband to play the part of protector. If Zeb Whitaker was dumb enough to show his face in town, the locks on both doors would keep him out, the old weapon the sheriff had given her would be accurate enough to shoot the huge buffalo hunter.
Her little kitchen took on the look of a fortress. The weapons should have calmed her, made her feel safer, but panic climbed across Lacy's spine. Walker was a man she hardly knew, a man she had to fight to keep from hating. Yet suddenly he seemed to think he belonged in her quiet world.
She wanted to remind him there was no room for him in her apartment, but he didn't look as if he planned to leave. In fact, he moved about, rearranging things, shoving her quilting frames into corners, clearing papers off tables, checking the locks on windows. Despite both their names on a marriage license and the few minutes they'd once spent together, he could be anyone. He could even be worse than Zeb Whitaker for all she knew.
Pulling the blanket tighter around her as if the material could somehow protect her, Lacy thought she knew all she needed to know about Captain Larson.
She knew she wanted him gone.
Two years ago when they'd met, she'd been an eighteen- year-old, frightened and alone. Now, at twenty, she was a businesswoman used to making her own way, used to protecting herself.
The only thing she didn't know was how to make him leave.
Fear of Zeb Whitaker seemed preferable to having Captain Walker living with her. The old buffalo hunter who had been released from jail and was believed to be heading in her direction seemed only an old nightmare she could thrust into a corner of her thoughts. But the captain, all six feet of him, was here, rearranging her life.
He grabbed a pile of papers containing all the articles she'd written over the past three months and dropped them near the kitchen stove as though he planned to use them to light the fire.
"Don't move those." She circled behind him, correcting the damage. "I'm saving those."
Walker glanced around. "Appears you save pretty much everything, wife. This place wouldn't seem so small if it were cleared out."
Lacy slammed the papers back in their original place. She wanted to tell him to go away. That he was one thing in her life she would love to clear out. "Don't touch my things," was all that anger would allow past her lips.
He glanced at her, his cold, blue eyes narrowing slightly as he studied her. "Don't worry, Lacy. If you're lucky, Whitaker will kill me and make you a widow."
"I don't want..." she whispered. She couldn't finish; he'd almost read her thoughts.
His laughter didn't ring true. "Don't wish me dead then, dear wife?"
"No, it's not that." She met his stare. "I wouldn't mind being a widow, but I don't like the thought of Zeb Whitaker getting close enough to me to have to step over you."
"Thanks for the consideration, but I'm not that easy to kill." Walker reached around the door and retrieved the last of his gear from the landing. The small bag looked like the old leather pouches Lacy had seen pony express riders carry years ago. The case might hold a few books, but it was too small to replace a saddlebag. One advantage of the heavy leather though might be that it looked waterproof.
She couldn't help but wonder what this last bag might hold.
When he finally closed the door, he dropped it beside the saddle and faced her. He looked more tired than angry.
"Have you got anything to eat? I know it's late, but I haven't had food since I broke camp before dawn."
"You want me to cook for you at this hour?" Lacy answered before she thought about how ridiculous her question sounded. Of course he'd want food and, after all, she was his wife, and that is what wives did for their husbands. They cooked ... among other things.
Lacy closed her eyes. She had already done the "among other things" two years ago when she demanded he bed her before she would leave his office. But once for "among other things" was enough. Never again.
She opened one eye. Her not-so-loving husband was still there and waiting for food. If he knew her cooking skills, he might decide to go to bed hungry. She thought of telling him she was probably the worst copk in the county, but he'd find out soon enough.
Walker looked like he might yell at her to step lively, as if she were one of his troops. He might be cold and tired, maybe a little worried, but he was not an easy man to feel sorry for. There didn't appear to be an ounce of softness in him. She wished he'd disappear as quickly as he'd walked into her life.
Without waiting for an answer, he knelt over one of his saddlebags and pulled out a bag of coffee. He moved to the sink and tried to pump water.
Lacy took pity on him. "The pipes may already be frozen, but there's water in the coffeepot." She'd learned the first winter that if she wanted coffee at dawn, she'd better make sure she had water drawn before sundown. The thought crossed her mind to help, but there didn't seem enough room in the kitchen for two. She slipped into the only chair at the table, her chair, and watched him.
Walker banged around in the space until he had the fire built up and coffee on, then he pulled out her supply of food from the small cool box: four eggs and a half loaf of bread. Glancing at her, he raised an eyebrow silently, asking if she minded.
Lacy shook her head, then watched as he cooked the eggs with far more skill than she could have. He drank her half jar of milk while he worked, and when he set the plate of food on the table, he silently offered her a cup of coffee.
She took the cup, careful not to touch his fingers.
He lifted the other chair from the wall and sat across the table from her.
Lacy had taken the chair down a hundred times when people visited or during the months her father-in-law stayed with her. But she still remembered the day she'd hammered nails in the wall and told her friend, Bailee, that someday her husband would come home and take the chair down; until then, she'd eat alone. She'd been fifteen when she married him by proxy. Young enough to believe in dreams of love.
The silence closed in around her. "I didn't know you had a brother. I can't remember your father ever talking of him."
"More likely, he never talked about me," Walker said between bites. "My brother was the one Dad thought would take over the business. I heard he died in a gunfight in Abilene years ago." Walker spoke without emotion, as though he barely remembered him.
When he said no more, Lacy couldn't think of anything to add. She knew little of this man and wanted to know even less than she did.
Lacy curled her feet into the chair and hugged the blanket around her as she studied Walker Larson and tried to figure out this husband of hers who acted as if he belonged in her world.
Hard, she decided. A man molded of stone. His body looked all muscle and bone, his eyes colder than the north wind. She tried to think of the boy his father had told her about before the old man died, but the stories had dulled with time. And many, she recalled the old man's words, were simply about "my boy," so they could have been about Walker's brother.
It bothered her that the pieces of Walker's childhood she thought she knew might be about another. For she had so few real memories of this man she'd been married to for almost five years. And now she guessed even some of them were not true.
All she could remember was the way he'd spread atop her and entered her body without one word of kindness or love. The memory of his cold belt buckle scraping against her stomach as her cheeks burned with fear and embarrassment. The anger in his words when he'd ordered her to dress and be on the stage as soon as possible.
"Stop looking at me like that, Lacy." His voice snapped in the air like a whip.
She caught herself before she shrank away and disappeared into the quilt. She would not be afraid of him. She feared too many things in her life already. "Like what?" Lacy spoke her thoughts. "Like a woman looking at a man who raped her?"
Walker stood suddenly and tossed his empty plate into the sink. "I didn't rape you."
"It couldn't be called making love, Captain." She'd called him Captain in her mind since the day they'd been together. Somehow that made what they'd done less personal. He no longer had a name.
Walker spread his arms out, gripping the counter. He lowered his head for a moment. His strong shoulders looked as if they bore a heavy weight.
Lacy wondered if she'd stepped too far. She didn't know him well enough to push, but he might as well learn now that she was not the dreamer she'd been the only time they'd met.
When he faced her, he was once more in complete control. Only his blue eyes reflected the sparks of anger her words had caused. "All right, Lacy, if that's how it's going to be, let's get it out in the open tonight. I hoped you'd wait till morning, but bad news never ages well."
He hadn't bothered to tell her how tired he was; she could see it in his gaze. He probably thought she wouldn't care any more about that than she did about him being hungry, and he'd be right. Except his last words caught her off guard. His father used to say the same thing about bad news.
She looked for a hint of the old man in the captain but could see none. The kindness of the father hadn't been inherited.
Lacy stood, tripping on the corners of her blanket. "You're right. We can wait till morning." She would just as soon wait forever. She wasn't sure she could tell him how humiliated she'd been that day he'd taken her so coldly in the back room of his office. If she told him, she'd have to relive someth
ing she'd spent two years trying to forget.
Quickly, she moved to the tiny main room. "You can sleep in here." She pointed to the small couch by the room's only window. "Or the rug is comfortable. I slept there when your father was too ill to live at the boardinghouse and moved in with me."
He followed her. "You should have written me about my father."
When she faced him once more, he lowered his voice and added, "I didn't know how he died. Sheriff Riley sent word about how you took care of him those last months, nursing him and running the paper. I thank you for that."
"There is no need." She backed toward her bedroom door. "I loved him. He was like a real father to me."
Walker probably couldn't understand how close she'd felt to the old man who'd paid her way out of jail and adopted her as his daughter-in-law. He'd treated her like a jewel, and she'd loved him for always being so kind. Staring at the son he'd always talked about, she wondered how the old man could have been so wrong about his child. He'd said his son would cherish her.
Walker took a step toward her room but stopped when she raised her hand as though to block any advance.
He growled for a second. "I only planned to make sure the window was locked," he snapped.
"I can do it." She turned away.
"Lacy?"
She looked back at him, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the door to her bedroom.
"We will talk about what happened between us in the morning."
Disappearing into her bedroom, she stood against the door for a moment as if preparing to brace for an attack. She wasn't sure if his words were a promise or a threat.
Slowly, she made her fingers relax from the fists they'd curled into. If the captain wanted to come into her bedroom, there would be no way to stop him, but from the sounds beyond the door, he appeared more interested in sleep.
She smiled suddenly as she drew the heavy curtains over the window and checked the lock on a window she never opened. Any intruder who could jump the fifteen feet to the window might prove to be more than even Captain Larson could handle.