by Warner, Kaki
“He won’t like that.”
“Then you’ll have to restrain him. Can you do that? If not, I’ll have to administer chloroform, which might be a risk in his weakened state.”
“I’ll hold him.”
Molly studied him, seeing the lines of fatigue, the terror in his ice blue eyes. He looked like he’d aged a decade in the last few days. But she couldn’t worry about that now.
Pushing sympathy aside, she rested her hand on his arm. “Don’t fail me, Brady.”
He met her gaze without flinching. “I won’t. My word.”
“Good. Let’s get started.”
Seven
HANK AWOKE TO BRIGHT SUNLIGHT AND THE AWARENESS that something had changed. The pain wasn’t so bad, and he no longer felt like he was fighting his way through swirling black fog. He could think again. And the first thing he thought of was his arm. Was it gone? Had she cut it off?
He didn’t want to know.
Not yet.
But he looked anyway.
Still there. Still whole.
Relief hit so hard, he shuddered. He still felt weak, but not sick and not trapped in that empty place that made him feel like he was drowning.
He was alive. He was going to make it.
Movement against his right side startled him, and he looked down to see a woman in a chair next to his bed. She was asleep, bent forward with her head resting on her crossed arms beside his hip. He recognized the sorrel hair. Molly. His wife.
When had he taken a wife?
He remembered confusing dreams broken by times of wakefulness when he rose out of the void to find her gently stroking his brow, or whispering words of reassurance in her soft Southern voice, or one time crying softly while she did something to his arm. He remembered watching her across a crowd of people sitting in benches on a train, then another time, seeing her asleep in the bed beside his. He remembered wanting to tell her he was sorry, although he wasn’t sure why or for what. He remembered his brother and Jessica. He remembered . . .
Sweet Jesus.
He remembered.
Heart pounding, he watched a kaleidoscope of images flash through in his mind. Jack laughing. Sam trying to teach the hound to dance. Brady watching Jessica cross the yard. His parents. Elena, Sancho’s sister and the daughter of the previous owner of the ranch. The way the sky turned brown when the ranch burned. The hillside rushing toward him when they dynamited Sancho’s cave.
Faster and faster the images came. The new house. The mines. Laying the first section of track on the spur line. Loading the part for the concentrator then boarding the passenger car in Sierra Blanca, then . . .
. . . nothing . . .
. . . until he woke up in El Paso at that doctor’s house.
It was all there. Everything but her.
How could that be? What happened during that train ride?
He looked down at the woman sleeping at his side. How could he forget some things and remember others? And how could he meet a woman, marry her, then lose all memory of her during the time it took to travel from Sierra Blanca to El Paso? It made no sense.
Lifting his right hand, he brushed a glossy curl from her cheek, wanting her to wake up and look at him, hoping when she did, it would free the memories trapped somewhere in his head.
He wanted to remember her.
The way she smelled, the way her breasts fit his hands, the look on her face when he moved inside her. He wanted to remember the sound of her laughter. He wanted to know if he loved her and why he had taken a wife when he’d come to accept that he would live his life alone. He wanted to know where all those memories had gone and how he could get them back.
He needed to remember her.
“Look at me,” he said.
With a jerk, she opened her eyes. She sat up, blinking groggily until her gaze focused on his. He watched emotions flit across her expressive face—joy, relief, then worry, and finally something that almost looked like dread.
“You remember,” she said.
He sensed her withdrawal, and it confused him. He didn’t know what to say to her, how to tell the woman with whom he’d exchanged vows and shared a bed that she was a stranger to him. Reaching out, he cupped her cheek, tracing the smooth arc of her cheekbone with his thumb. “I do,” he said. “Everything but you.”
“Oh.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected—tears, anger, disappointment—something more than “Oh.” Instead, she seemed to turn to stone. It concerned him the way she stared at him without blinking, without even breathing. Wanting to dispel that feeling of distance growing between them, he gave her a half-smile. “So I guess we’ll have to start over. Make new memories.”
She moved then, her mouth opening and closing twice before any words came out. “Is that what you want? To stay married?”
Surprised, he let his hand fall back to his side. “Why wouldn’t I want to stay married?”
She looked down and began fussing with her skirts. “Since you don’t remember me, I thought, well, perhaps you’d prefer to just forget the whole thing.”
“Forget we’re married?” Which was exactly what he’d done, although not in the way she meant it. Suddenly his defenses came up. “Why? Don’t you want to stay with me?” He’d heard that excuse before.
Her gaze flew to his, then quickly away. “It’s not that, it’s just that, well, if your feelings have changed . . .”
“Changed from what? Do you think because I don’t remember you, I can’t still care for you?” He had no memory of whether he had cared for her or not, but judging by the way he felt about her now, with her being almost a stranger to him, he must have cared for her a lot when she wasn’t. A stranger, that is. Before he forgot her.
Jesus. He was getting a headache with all this thinking and wondering and not remembering. He had to put an end to it before he was too confused to think at all. “Let’s just let it ride for now, okay? Get to know each other again if that would make you feel better. Maybe my memory will return, and we can go on as if nothing happened. If not, we’ll start over. Pretend we’re courting or something.”
It was starting to sound less fun by the minute. He didn’t like courting. He didn’t know how to act or what to say, and the one time he’d tried it—other than with Molly, apparently—he’d felt big and awkward and clumsy. So much easier if he could just say, “We’re married. Take off your clothes.” Neat and simple.
He glanced at her, wondering if he should give it a try.
Her expression said not.
Just as well. He wasn’t feeling that perky.
“Well, I suppose we could do that,” she finally said. “If you’re sure.”
He wasn’t sure of anything but nodded anyway. He was just relieved to have most of his memory back. And if he had to court a wife for the second time he didn’t remember from the first time, well . . . he’d do it . . . and hope they got to that taking-off-the-clothes part before he was so old he started losing his memory all over again.
With a weary sigh, he closed his eyes, wishing he had his strength back and was free of this stinking nightshirt. “When can I go home?” he asked, trying not to whine.
“A couple of days if you have no fever and you’re up to it.”
Real clothes. Real food. Thank you, Jesus. “I’ll be up to it.”
THEY LEFT BY CARRIAGE TWO DAYS LATER, BUNDLED IN THEIR warmest clothes and flanked by the outriders Brady insisted accompany his family whenever they were away from the ranch. Jessica, anxious to return to her children, had left the day before. Brady planned to follow later that day, after tending to mine issues his brother wasn’t up to yet—apparently Hank ran the mining business, while Brady oversaw the ranching and cattle interests. So it was just she and Hank and the children riding in the large, well-sprung closed carriage, which, judging by the garish décor, Brady must have borrowed from the madam at the local brothel—how did he explain that to his wife?
With so many people inside, the coach
stayed fairly warm despite the gusty November wind that rattled the small glass windows from time to time. It was no longer snowing, but the higher they rode into the mountains, the lower the temperature dropped until the muddy track gave way to frozen ruts.
Molly could see that the constant jarring bothered Hank. To distract him as well as introduce the children to the place where they would reside for the indeterminate future, she asked what the name “RosaRoja Rancho” meant.
“Red Rose Ranch,” he explained. “It was named that in ’39 when the previous owners planted a hundred rosebushes along the foundation of the house to commemorate the birth of Sancho, their son.”
“How lovely.”
“Not really,” he said dryly. “They were destroyed by that same son when he burned the ranch to the ground thirty years later. Jessica planted yellow roses when we rebuilt.”
“Then why isn’t it called Yellow Rose Ranch?”
This time he almost smiled. “We changed the name to Wilkins Cattle and Mining to make a new start. But everybody still calls it RosaRoja.”
“Why did he burn it?”
He shifted and resituated his injured arm. “It’s a long story.”
“You’d rather I recite poetry? Or sing?”
Even in their short acquaintance, Molly had learned Hank wasn’t much of a talker. In fact, he volunteered as little information as possible. But rather than attribute it to shyness, as Brady did, she had decided Hank was just naturally reticent. When he had something to say, he spoke. When he didn’t, he didn’t.
But she had no intention of traveling for several hours in silence, or worse, listening to children squabble over the least little thing to relieve their boredom. Either Hank would talk, or she would. And since she’d already heard everything she had to say, she preferred to listen to him.
“Tell us why he burned it,” she prodded.
“Yeah, tell us, Papa-Hank,” Penny seconded. She loved stories.
With reluctance, he did. “It was all part of a feud that started years ago,” he began, “over a tract of land granted a century earlier to the Ramirez family by Charles the Second of Spain. Not a big grant. Eighty-eight thousand six hundred and forty acres—or one hundred thirty-eight-and-a-half square miles, to be precise.”
And Molly had noted that Hank was markedly precise whenever numbers were involved. In fact, during his crisis, when his temperature had risen so high it had brought on feverish dreams, she had heard him mumble numbers several times. When she had asked Brady about it, he had told her his brother often did sums in his sleep—sort of Hank’s way of calming his mind whenever something preyed on him.
“He can do all kinds of calculations in his head,” Brady had expounded, then had gone on to add, “Besides being a looker with a talent for growing hair and a gift for numbers, he also has a magical touch when it came to fixing things or gentling horses or knocking a fractious mule to its knees with a single punch. Helluva thing.”
She had thought he was joking. He wasn’t. The man had the oddest sense of humor, which was definitely a family trait.
As was their love for their land. As Hank described his ranch to her and the children, his eyes sparkled and the words flew, proving her supposition that he could be quite talkative when the subject was important to him.
“It’s got good water and grass, which is a rarity for this country,” he continued. “Which makes RosaRoja more valuable than a lot of the larger grants, especially now that it has two silver mines and its own spur line to the transcontinental.”
Two mines and a spur line? No wonder Brady assumed she’d been after Hank’s money. “How long have you owned it?” she asked.
“More than twenty years.” He turned to look out the window.
“Our pa first saw the RosaRoja Valley back in ’48 when he joined up with the Missouri Volunteers and left Saint Joseph to fight in the Mexican War. It was all he talked about in his letters home . . . the high emerald valley where a man could be his own king.” His expression hardened. “We didn’t know at the time that he’d set his sights on more than just the land.”
He frowned at the distant mountains for a moment, as if lost in thought, then with a sigh, resumed his story. “After Mexico lost the war, the Hildalgo Treaty required the owners of all the old grants to refile their patents with the provisional government in Santa Fe and pay their taxes. But Pa figured the owner of the valley, Don Ramon Ramirez, wouldn’t do it. Too proud. The old man considered himself Spanish, not Mexican. He didn’t think he should be bound by any treaty between Mexico and the United States. But he was wrong. When the deadline passed and Don Ramon didn’t reregister, Pa filed a claim, paid the back taxes, and that was that. RosaRoja became Wilkins land, free and clear. And that was when all the trouble started.”
“Did he fight your papa?” Penny asked.
“Don Ramon? Not much.” Hank looked at the child for a moment, although Molly sensed he was focused not on her, but on his newly found memories. By his expression, she guessed they weren’t pleasant ones. “But his son, Sancho, did.”
Penny frowned and stuck a twist of hair into her mouth. “Was he mean?”
“He was. Crazy too.”
Charlie turned from the window and looked at Hank, but said nothing.
“Did he kick kitties?” Penny asked.
“Mostly he kicked his sister, Elena.” Hank must have seen Penny’s fear because he quickly added, “But she’s fine. In fact, we think she married our brother.”
Hoping to turn the conversation to more pleasant thoughts, Molly asked how many brothers there were in the family.
Hank seemed surprised by the question. “Four. Brady, then me, then Jack. Jack is the one who followed Elena when she went to California to have her hip operated on. Haven’t heard from them since. Sam was the youngest.” His tone suggested she should already know that, which if they had truly courted and married, she would have.
Molly met his gaze without wavering or offering explanations. She was through lying to this man. If asked, she would tell him the truth. If not . . . well, until he figured it out on his own, she would, as he suggested, let it ride.
“Is Sam at your ranch?” Penny asked.
“He is.” Hank turned back to the window. Molly watched his breath fog the thin glass, and wondered what memories plagued him now. “He’s buried there.”
They rode in silence for a time, then Penny said, “I almost had a kitty once.”
“Sugar.” Hank turned to smile at his stepdaughter. “With the pink nose.”
“He went dead.”
“I remember.”
“Did the bad man hurt Sam?” Penny was chewing her hair again.
“He did.”
Molly didn’t like where this conversation was going, but before she could steer it to a less upsetting subject, Charlie blurted out, “Did you hurt him back?”
She looked at him in surprise. Those were the first words he had uttered since the initial bickering with Penny when they had boarded. For the last two hours he had huddled against the door beside her, staring out the window, his face set in that perpetually worried scowl.
If Hank was surprised, he didn’t show it. “If I’d had the chance, I would have.”
The boy’s face paled. “He’s still out there?”
“No. He’s dead. Your Aunt Jessica killed him.”
Molly was appalled.
The hair slid out of Penny’s gaping mouth. “Aunt Jessica killed him?”
“I bet she shot him,” Charlie said savagely. “I bet she stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger and shot him dead. That would have killed him good.”
Molly was too shocked to speak. Why had Charlie said such a horrible thing? Didn’t he know that’s how his grandfather died? Anger blasted through her—anger at Charlie for being so unfeeling—anger at all those who so readily believed her father would take his own life—anger at Papa for leaving her.
“Molly?” Hank touched her arm. “Are you all
right?”
Anger faded so abruptly she felt shaky and disoriented. She saw faces staring at her and forced a smile. “I—I’m fine. A bit weary. The rocking motion—”
“I’ll have them stop.” He turned toward the small door above his seat that opened into the driver’s box.
“Don’t.” Leaning forward, she pressed her fingertips on his knee. “It’s not necessary. Let’s go a bit farther, then have the lunch Jessica had the hotel prepare.” Removing her hand, she sat back. She was flattered by his concern. But also a bit troubled. She didn’t want him to take his husbandly duties too seriously.
“Meanwhile,” she said brightly to her niece and nephew in an attempt to dispel the gloomy mood, “you two should try to nap. We’ve a long way to go, and if there is any daylight left when we arrive, I know you’ll want to play in the snow.” Glancing at Hank, she explained that, being from Atlanta, they didn’t often see snow. “Penny’s been talking about building a snowman since the first flake fell.”
“Maybe we can have a snowball fight,” Hank suggested.
Penny pressed against Molly’s side. “I don’t like fighting.” She stuck her thumb into her mouth. “It hurth.”
Hank regarded her for a moment. Then he leaned forward and said quietly, “I’ll watch out for you, Penny. I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.”
The child met his gaze solemnly, her cheeks working. “You promith?” she asked without taking the thumb from her mouth.
“I promise.”
“Okay.” Snuggling closer to Molly, she closed her eyes.
And as simply as that he won over a worried, fearful child. Molly wondered why it was so difficult for her to do the same. She loved these children. She was desperate to keep them safe. Why couldn’t they see that?
An hour later, when the sun was high overhead, reflecting off the snow in blinding sparkles, they stopped for the picnic. Molly encouraged the children to play in the snow to wear off excess energy, but the cold soon chased them back into the coach. A half-hour later, they resumed their journey. Lulled by the rocking coach and their full stomachs, the children finally slept, Penny tilted against her right side, Charlie sitting on her left as far away from her as he could get. Hank sat across from them, lost in thoughts as he watched the snowy landscape bounce past the window.