by Sara Orwig
She gazed into his stormy eyes and felt her heard thud. “Don’t kill me where Michael will know,” she whispered.
He frowned, his scowl like a lash. “I don’t intend to kill you.”
“What are your plans? I know you won’t let him go with me.”
“No,” he answered, studying her. She became aware of his hard length pressed against her. Only inches separated her face from his.
“What are you going to do?” she insisted.
“You’re going to tell Michael the truth. He has to know that Marilee was his mother and I’m his father. You can stay with us while he gets accustomed to the truth, but at some point you’ll have to go.” He paused, and his grip eased slightly. “But I don’t intend to kill you. If I were going to do that, I would have long before now.”
“It would be easier out here,” she whispered, barely able to talk. She looked away, suddenly not caring because she hurt so badly. When he forced her to tell Michael the truth, she might lose Michael’s love. Whether she lost it or not, Fortune O’Brien would take Michael from her and she couldn’t stop him.
Colonel O’Brien abruptly released her and moved away. Picking up his revolver, he strode back to the fire. As he knelt to poke it, she saw his pants pull tightly over his muscular legs, remembering the power in his body as he had grabbed and held her.
Feeling helpless, she returned to sit on her bedroll. After a moment he stood up and moved around the fire to stand over her. “Finish what you were telling me about Marilee. You found her in the barn.”
“She had a baby, and she said she had to get home,” Claire said, seeing his jaw tighten. “I told her I would get a doctor, and she tried to stop me. She said to take care of Michael. She told me his name was Michael O’Brien. She didn’t want me to leave her.”
“Was she hurt?”
“She was ill. She was coughing, her voice was raspy.” The scene came back more clearly as she remembered. “She shook with cold, but she was burning to touch.” Colonel O’Brien ran his hand across his eyes, and groaned. “I ran to get Papa, and when we returned to the barn, he said she was dead. He gave me Michael and we went to the house while he sent a servant to fetch Dr. Aikens.”
She paused, staring at the fire and remembering that eventful night, with all the house servants up and Dr. Aikens and Papa and her brother, Roarke, talking about the baby while she made him a bed in her room and sat rocking him all night, holding him in her arms.
“Papa posted flyers about Marilee in the city, and they called Mr. Hopkins with the newspaper and he ran an article about her, but no one showed up. Papa buried her in the cemetery where my mother is buried. He and Dr. Aikens felt she might be from a well-fixed family because of her clothes.” Claire’s gaze shifted to him.
“I wanted to keep Michael and argued with Papa. He had an older friend, a widower, Franklin Hosford, who wanted to marry me. I didn’t want to marry Mr. Hosford,” she said in a tight voice, remembering that time in her life. “He had had five sons by his first wife before she died. Papa insisted he wouldn’t want a stranger’s baby. Papa didn’t want the baby and wouldn’t listen. He took Michael from me and placed him in the orphanage.”
She met Fortune’s steady gaze, but his features were impassive, and she couldn’t guess what he was thinking. “I didn’t want to marry Mr. Hosford, and Papa was on the verge of announcing our betrothal. I couldn’t bear to think of Michael in that orphanage. It came to me to run away. I knew Papa kept gold in his office in the bottom drawer of his desk. I packed a bag, got things for a baby. One night when Papa had gone to play faro, I took part of the gold and went to the orphanage. I told them we had found the parents and Papa had sent me to fetch the babe.”
“They didn’t question you?”
“Why would they? They had too many children to feed as it was. Papa was an upstanding member of the community. There was no reason to doubt what I said.” Claire’s voice was vibrant now. “I had all night to get a head start on Papa. I went south to Columbia, and then I turned and left the main roads. I had taken one of Papa’s buggies. I made it to Wilmington on the coast and caught a boat headed for New Orleans.”
“It didn’t matter to you that your father would have been sick with worry?”
Annoyed, she looked at Fortune. He had no right to pry into her business like this. Yet she wanted to talk about her father, wanted someone to know how she had felt. “If I had stayed, I would have had to marry Mr. Hosford. Besides my father and I were not that close. I have an older brother, and he always favored my brother.”
“Evidently he’s had a change of heart, because Pinkerton’s was hired by your father to find you. I hired Eisner to find Michael.”
“Mr. Eisner told me my father hired him.”
“No, he didn’t. There was another Pinkerton’s agent hired to find you.”
“Well, in any case, I didn’t believe him. I can’t imagine, after all this time, my father trying to find me. I’m sure Mr. Hosford married years ago.”
“I talked to Eisner in St. Louis, and he told me your father is in ill health and wants to find you to make amends.”
She drew a deep breath, looking into the dark night. How many times as a child had she wanted her father’s love and he had brushed her off? She turned her head. “What about the grandfather who wants Michael?”
“He’s a powerful, wealthy man. He was cold and harsh with Marilee, determined to destroy our marriage. He wants Michael badly, but he isn’t taking my child from me. And I have an old score to settle with him.”
His features were harsh, his voice quiet and deadly. She felt a cold spasm of fear for Michael, who would be caught between these two men.
“How did you manage to marry if he was so opposed to it?”
“She had gone to Baltimore to visit his sister, Mary Louise, her widowed aunt. That’s where we met, and I had Mary Louise’s approval. She thought her brother was cold and uncaring where Marilee was concerned. And like your father, Trevor Wenger intended Marilee to marry someone he had selected, a wealthy older man.”
Fortune seemed to be looking through her, as if gazing into his past. “Marilee and I were both so young. We were seventeen,” he said, his voice becoming mellow with a tone she had heard him use with Michael. “We loved each other very much,” he added.
“You were fortunate,” she said, looking at the dying fire, embers glowing orange. “I’ve never known that kind of love and never will.”
“Never will? You don’t know.”
“I’m a spinster now. I’m twenty-three, too old for marriage.” She face him again.
“I’m twenty-five,” he stated, and she paused to stare at him. He acted and looked so much older, yet she supposed the war made many men seem older.
“Besides,” she continued, “I’ve been dependent only on myself for all these years now. I don’t ever want to be dependent on a man as I was with my father. He ruled my life completely.”
“What had you planned to do?” Colonel O’Brien asked, anger returning to his voice. “Were you going to keep shuttling Michael around all his life?”
“No. I’ve been saving money in a northern bank. With just a little more, another year’s savings, I planned to take the money and go back to a city in the northeast, Philadelphia, New York, Boston. I intended to open a bonnet shop and take a new identity.”
“Why did you keep Michael’s name? You could have easily given him another.”
She met Fortune’s gaze. “I liked your wife. She seemed brave and so alone.”
He looked away, his chest expanding, and she stopped talking, knowing she had said enough for him to realize why she had kept Michael’s name.
“His name is Michael Hanlan O’Brien. My father was Hanlan O’Brien.”
“That’s a nice name. Michael Hanlan,” she said, glancing at the sleeping child, knowing she would always think of him as her own son.
As the fire burned down to gray ash and smoldering embers, Fortune studied her,
mulling over what to do with her. He couldn’t get rid of her yet because Michael wasn’t accustomed to him. What’s more, his opinion of her had changed. She was brave and intelligent, and she had kept Michael from Trevor Wenger and out of an orphanage all these years. He had to admit to a grudging respect. If Trevor Wenger had traced Marilee’s trail and brought her body home to bury in the family cemetery, he would have found out that Michael was in the orphanage.
Even knowing all Claire Dryden had done for Michael, Fortune couldn’t shake the rage at her taking his son all these years. Had he been with Wenger, Fortune would have discovered it that first year and he would have gotten Michael back when he was a baby.
Feeling torn between the anger she stirred and the knowledge that she had been good for Michael, he stared at her. She met his gaze, her dark brown eyes wary. She expected him to kill her, and he could understand why she would think he might.
“I’ll give you the amount you would have made in a year,” he said finally. “That way when we part, you can take the money and go east and open your bonnet shop.”
She came to her feet, her eyes flashing. She advanced on him and stopped, her fists clenched and her feet apart. “You keep your money! I don’t need to go east and open a shop if I’m not trying to hide Michael. You mean to take him from me when he has been my whole life for all these years. I’ve been with him every single day. Now you’re going to make him hate me and send me away. I don’t want one cent of your money!”
She turned away, striding into the darkness. He let her go, knowing she would be back. He hadn’t meant to offend her. She had fought like an angry cat to keep her wagon, so he knew money was important to her.
When she returned, her eyes and nose were red. She sank down on her bedroll and finally glanced at him. “How long do I have?”
“A while yet,” he said, knowing it was no real answer.
Fortune watched her as she smoothed out her bedroll. Her brown hair was down, tied behind her head. She had led a strange, lonely life if it was true what she said and what Eisner had reported. Fortune found it difficult to believe she had sung in saloons and hadn’t taken any men to bed. Every saloon singer he had ever known was willing and eager to spread her legs. Yet he knew Pinkerton’s did a thorough job, and they had said there were no men. His gaze wandered down the length of her, remembering her lush breasts, her tiny waist.
She turned and sat down, facing him again. “How can you sleep? Harwood could slip up on us in the night.”
“I’m not going to sleep for a while yet, and as I told you, I don’t think he has picked up our trail yet.”
“Why are you going back to Atlanta if the grandfather is there?”
“I have things to settle with him. And he’ll keep hunting Michael. He’ll find out through Pinkerton’s and Harwood what happened. He won’t give up searching for Michael.”
“No, he won’t. How do you intend to fight Wenger if he’s as powerful as you say?”
“I want to ruin him, to run him out of business, because that’s the most important thing of all to him. Sooner or later we’ll face each other across pistols. I could have challenged him already, but that seems too easy for him after all he’s done.”
She rubbed her arms, frightened at this sort of talk. She reached behind her head to untie her hair, letting it swing free across her shoulders. He felt his breath catch. It was a rich brown, tumbling over her shoulders and back in a silken cascade that framed her face. Claire Dryden was a beautiful woman, and he found it impossible to think she had led the solitary life she claimed.
Feeling exhaustion overtake him, his muscles aching from long days in the saddle, he stood up and unfastened his neckerchief as he crossed to Claire Dryden. She looked up, instantly wary and coming to her feet. He caught her wrist, so slender that her bones seemed fragile.
“Lie down,” he ordered quietly. “I’m tying you up so I can sleep. You’re the most likely one to slit my throat. Lord knows, you look as if you’d like to.”
She glared at him, staring up, her dark eyes filled with anger. “Michael will see.”
“You’ll think of some explanation. Or you can tell him the truth now and get it over and done,” he said harshly.
Suddenly she grabbed his shirtfront and yanked him close. “Why do you have to take him from me?” she asked, her luminous eyes brimming with tears that caught on her long lashes. “Let me be a nanny or something. Let me stay close to him.”
“No,” Fortune answered flatly. “You took him from me. I would have had him back long ago if it hadn’t been for you. Do you know how much I’ve missed getting to do with him? I’ve missed watching him grow all those early years.”
“Whether you like it or not, he loves me and you’re going to hurt him.”
“You’re going to hurt him when you tell him the truth.” He wound his hand in her hair and jerked her face up closer to his. “But you’ll tell him the truth. He’s my son and he’s going to know it.” Fortune released her head abruptly. “Now lie down.”
Looking as if she might spring at him again she eyed him a moment before she released his shirt. When he dropped her wrist, she stretched out on the blanket. He came down to lash her arm to the tree, knotting the handkerchief quickly, too aware of her full breasts so close he could easily brush them with his palm.
Turning away, he yanked off his shirt and wiped his brow with it. When he turned back, he found her looking at his bare chest, and her gaze flew up guiltily to meet his. Her cheeks became pink, and he wondered what she had been thinking.
He sank down on his bedroll and stretched out, his revolver in his hand. “You can sleep. When I get tired, I’ll wake you and you can watch.”
“Suppose I won’t? Suppose I make a deal with him?”
“He’s a cold-blooded killer. Don’t forget that.”
She watched him settle and in minutes she stretched out, sleep coming quickly.
When she stirred, it was the first gray light of day and Fortune was stripped to the waist, standing by a tree with a mirror propped on a branch while he shaved. Her gaze roamed over him, and she felt a flush of heat at being so bold.
Crossing to her with lather still on his jaw, Fortune knelt down and untied her. He smelled clean and soapy; his chest was inches above as he leaned over her. She looked at his thick chest curls and felt heat rise in her.
“Get dressed,” he ordered, straightening up. “I’ll cook something, and we’ll get Michael up and go. If you hear any strange noises, let me know at once.”
“We’d be safer if I could carry a gun.”
He gave her a cynical look and turned away, leaving her alone while he finished shaving.
A half hour later, strips of beef fried in a pan. She shook Michael and he came awake, rubbing his eyes. He stood up, his denim pants rumpled, his chest and feet bare. He turned to walk into the woods away from their camp. “Mama, I need to—”
Just then Claire saw the snake coiled in front of her child.
Chapter 8
“Mama!” Michael’s cry was high and shrill.
Without hesitation Claire ran between Michael and the snake. As she looked wildly for a stick, the snake lashed out, striking her skirt swirling in front of her legs.
The blast from a gun sent birds flapping from the trees. She looked at Fortune, who had his revolver poised as the snake fell limply, shot through the head.
She spun around to hug Michael, who threw his arms around her waist. Trembling, he clung to her tightly, his head buried against her.
“Are you all right?” Fortune asked her.
“Yes,” she answered, feeling breathless, her knees quaking with fright.
“It was a rattler,” Fortune said, crossing to kick the snake into the brush. He stood looking at her hugging Michael while he placed his revolver back in his holster. She had been willing to risk her life to protect Michael. She had acted without thought, on pure instinct, and Fortune realized the strong bond between them that might hurt
Michael irreparably if damaged.
“As soon as he calms down, we need to eat and go. The sounds of that gunshot will carry a long way.”
She met his gaze solemnly and nodded her head. “Michael,” she said, gently extricating herself from him. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We should hurry and leave here.”
Within a quarter of an hour, they were mounted and moving through the trees, still headed south. At noon they stopped near a river to water the horses and eat. Michael helped the colonel unsaddle the animals and see to their feed, following his father around the campsite. O’Brien was patient with him, teaching him calmly, talking to him as he would another adult. Claire felt a pang as she watched them together; Fortune O’Brien was good for Michael.
As they sat down to eat, she asked, “When are we turning east?”
“I want to go to New Orleans,” he said quietly, but she could hear the firmness in his voice.
“New Orleans will take days!”
“Yes, but I want Harwood off my trail for a while. In New Orleans I’ll book passage for us on a boat heading west to Galveston. I want Harwood to think we’ve gone out West. I’ll also book passage on a boat to Mobile or Apalachicola, and we’ll head back toward Atlanta.”
“My wagon is waiting. If we don’t go back the way we came, I can’t get it.”
“I’ll write him to sell it, and I’ll buy you another damned wagon.”
“Fine,” she said, frustrated. She couldn’t work. While they traveled, she couldn’t get a job and earn money. Yet at the same time, she suspected that as long as they were traveling, the colonel would allow her to stay with them. And earning more money for savings suddenly seemed so empty without Michael as part of her plans.
“What’s wrong?”
His question startled her, for she didn’t realize she had given any indication of her feelings. “I was thinking about my savings. It doesn’t seem important any longer.”