Love Inspired Historical June 2014 Bundle: Lone Star HeiressThe Lawman's Oklahoma SweetheartThe Gentleman's Bride SearchFamily on the Range

by Griggs, Winnie; Pleiter, Allie; Hale, Deborah; Nelson, Jessica

  Katrine watched the other folk from Brave Rock—and even Clint’s brothers—go about life as if they couldn’t see what she saw. Was she truly the only one who could see the weight he bore on his shoulders? Could no one else recognize how he exiled himself to endure it alone? She seemed to see the force of it all pressing down on him harder with every day that passed, but she could not think of any way to ease his path. He would not tell her any more than the merest of details, and often shied away from conversations she would attempt to start.

  And so it was that when Clint pulled the wagon up and insisted she come with him to the cabin site Saturday morning, Katrine didn’t know what to think. Something had changed. Some part of his plans had clicked into place; she could see the certainty in his eyes. There was insistency in his eyes, too, and that set off a jolt of an alarm in her stomach. Whatever had happened, she couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, only that it was important.

  “Is everything all right?” she whispered as she allowed Clint to hand her up into the wagon.

  “I was hoping you’d tell me after you see for yourself.” Banter? From the serious Sheriff Thornton? Katrine met his offered smile with eyes narrowed in curiosity. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright,” he said as he turned the wagon out of town.

  “It is not your fault. It’s just when you rode up… I keep having an awful dream,” she admitted. “You come to me and tell me Lars is really dead. You tell me McGraw found him and shot him. I wake up in tears.”

  “Now, when a woman says a man comes to her in her dreams, tears are not the outcome he’s looking for. A man yearns to be appreciated.” He flushed suddenly, and looked out over the horizon, as if he’d not meant the words to come out quite the way they had. In truth, she could hardly believe such talk out of the man. He’d no doubt engaged in such teasing with his brothers, with Lars, even, but with her? The notion baffled her.

  “I’d hate to think all I do is make you cry,” he continued. “Lars would have my hide.”

  His loneliness was so plain to her. Maybe even more to her than to himself, she guessed. In these parts sheriff was in large part a thankless job. “All bad news and hard fear” Lars had called it once when he declined Clint’s request to serve as deputy.

  “I appreciate you,” she blurted out. She did. She was not ready to think about the prospect of her feelings venturing far beyond appreciation, but when all this was over, she might have to do so. “And you do not make me cry.”

  There again was the sad look of loss, almost hidden behind an applied smile. “I don’t know that I make you smile, neither, but I’m hoping today will change that.”

  His tone had definitely changed. Less gruff, less forced, but still with the reluctance she could not ignore. As if he was working hard to keep from saying certain things.

  She could see that, mostly because she was trying not to say certain things herself. He did, in fact, make her smile. They were both swimming upstream against a river current neither one would admit was even there. And yet, as it did in the corners of his eyes just now, that current would rise up occasionally and take them a little distance. A little bit toward each other.

  “What are you up to, Sheriff?” She chose not to hide her smile this time.

  “Clint,” he corrected, smiling back with a glint so surprising it nearly made her gasp. On any other man she might call such a look mischievous, but she could not imagine applying that word to Clint Thornton. “And you’ll see soon enough.”

  It struck her not two seconds later: he was proud. Not a boastful, arrogant pride, but a pride of accomplishment. He’d done something he set out to do, something he now wanted to show her. Something for her. Maybe even just for her. Even though she had no idea what that something was, its power was already sprouting a glow of warmth inside her.

  Of course, he already had done a great many things for her. “Look,” she said, pointing to the hem of her skirt, wanting him to know he did not have to strive any further to win her gratitude. “A new skirt long enough and all my own.” That had been his doing. Did he understand the power of that gesture? “Thank you.”

  “Just keeping the peace, ma’am.” He actually grinned, and Katrine though maybe he really did grasp how much the new frocks had improved her outlook. “I can’t have the men of Brave Rock leering after those fetching ankles or there’d be more chaos than there already is.”

  Fetching? While such words from Samuel McGraw would grow a knot in her stomach, Clint’s words only made that earlier glow bloom farther up her chest to redden her cheeks. Such talk between them startled her. On the one hand, she welcomed the lightness and life of it. On the other hand, it felt like something that could become dangerous and uncontrollable. She knew that gentle river currents could swell out of control and sweep whole towns away—this felt just like such a current. Katrine told herself all this would disappear once Lars returned.

  Still, it was enticing to let the river current carry her away for a short distance.

  Preoccupied with her thoughts and fears, Katrine kept silent for the rest of the ride. She turned Lars’s watch over and over in her hands, worrying it like a charm to keep the whirlwind of feelings Clint produced in her under some kind of control. When had it become both wonderful and awful to be with him?

  “There.” Clint touched her elbow and pointed to the nearly built cabin standing just to the west of where the old one had burned.

  Katrine looked up to see sets of solid log walls—up to her chin all the way around, looking more and more like a home every day. It was even larger than the cabin that had burned.

  But it was not the walls that made her breath catch.

  It was the windows. Not one, but two lovely square windows, set perfectly within the eastern and western walls. Two windows. Escape for two souls. Which meant a home built to always house two. Without knowing he had done so, Clint had built her a house that promised she would never be alone. “Oh,” she gasped, any suitable English word escaping her grasp. “Oh my.” Somehow, the sight of those two windows became the perfect antidote to the fear that Lars would one day no longer be there. It put to rest the constant twist of anxiety that had plagued her since the fire. Clint had restored her home before he’d even finished building her cabin. Katrine clasped her hands together over her pounding heart and began to cry.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Clint flustered, digging in his pocket for a bandana as she only cried harder. “I just got done saying…”

  Katrine could not hope to stop herself from throwing her arms around his neck and hugging the dear man tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered, “Tak. Tak. Thank you.”

  There was a wondrous moment where he hugged her back, and in that instant Katrine felt that powerful current sweep them far downriver. She felt something give way in the set of his shoulders, something melt off the stiffness of his fingers. For a brief second she imagined he inclined his head to rest on hers and thought she caught something powerful in the way he exhaled.

  But just as quickly, she felt Clint’s body pull back up into its stiffer countenance. When he pried her hands off his shoulders, she felt the loss like a hollow in her chest.

  He shifted back on the bench. “So…so you like the windows,” he said, his voice thick and gruff.

  “They are wonderful.” They were so much more than that.

  “I set them askew a bit.” He tugged at his vest and swung down off the wagon, as if stuffing facts into the moment would hide what had just happened. “I thought… I figured it might help to keep the wind from whipping in there once the cold comes.”

  “Yes,” she said, not knowing how to respond. She should not have held him so, she knew that, but the moment was too much and she found she could not bring herself to regret it.

  He walked over to the cabin, pointing to a pair of rectangular wood boxes that sat on the ground. “Window boxes,” he said, lifting one up to show her where it would fit below the window once the cabin was finished. “First in Brave Rock,
I reckon. One for each.”

  “Two windows.” She walked toward the half-built cabin, dabbing at the running tears with Clint’s bandana. The simple pair of square openings felt like an extravagance of riches, a gesture so deep and perfect it would never be matched in all her days. She wanted him to know. To realize what he’d done, even if he’d not done it intentionally. She waited until he stopped fiddling with the boxes and looked up at her. She let herself hold his eyes, not hiding what she felt even though it made her nearly shake to do so.

  “For you,” he said softly. Then, as she watched him pull away from her without taking a step, as she watched him hide what was in his eyes without closing them, he straightened and said, “For you and Lars.”

  He said it with such an air of pronouncement, such a tone of finality, that Katrine wondered how she could have ever thought he was going to say “For you and me.”

  It was as clear as the view through the widows that such a thought was now never to be, if it ever was at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Katrine had spent all day and evening of Sunday writing today’s letter to Lars. Between church and meals, it had taken four tries and many hours to find enough privacy to get it right, even in her native Danish. Still, the conversations she had with Winona had made it clear to her that Lars was struggling with matters of the heart as much as she, and she always did her best thinking on paper. Sitting next to Clint at Sunday service, it had become clear to Katrine that if Lars was beginning to think of a life out here with a family of his own, she owed it to him to let him know she had begun to do the same.

  She could no longer deny it: when she’d spied those two windows, it wasn’t she and Lars she saw sharing that house. It was she and Clint. Even if things never warmed between them—and right now she couldn’t see how they ever would—the trip to the cabin had shown Katrine that the time had come to think about her life separate from Lars.

  It wasn’t as if they’d always expected to live together as brother and sister. They’d talked about raising families side by side, surrounded by bands of noisy cousins and big Sunday suppers. For all his denial, Clint was right about one thing—Lars worried a great deal about her, and she did not want to be the worry that stood between her brother and his future happiness.

  So she had written to him. Hinted, in careful words that did not reveal who it was, that God may have shown her the man who would share her life. Nothing too detailed—mostly visions of their two families someday and how much she looked forward to such a life starting when he returned. She kept telling herself it was only to put Lars’s mind at ease, but there was more. It was a declaration of independence of sorts. An opening to new possibilities. The storyteller in her sensed that by putting such tender notions down on paper, by telling them to the one other person who knew her best, she could settle her soul. Right now Katrine’s soul felt far too jumbled to listen well to where God led next.

  All of that had made great sense as she left the infirmary minutes ago. Now it seemed the most foolish idea in all of Oklahoma. She would be sending this letter with Clint, after all, since he would be the next to see Lars. At first she thought to wait and send it with Winona, but that was silly; Clint could not read Danish, and thereby not possibly know the contents of the message he carried. Still, she felt a wave of trepidation as she left the letter on top of Clint’s desk in the sheriff’s office Monday morning. Katrine was just turning the corner away from his office when she heard his voice.

  “This is serious, young man, and I want you to pay attention.” Clint’s voice came dark and ominous from the side porch of Fairhaven’s Mercantile across the street.

  “Yes, sir, Sheriff Thornton.” From where she stood, Katrine could see Martin Walters being walked across the street between Reverend Thornton and Clint. She ducked around the corner as the two men brought Martin toward the sheriff’s office. The poor boy looked as though his fear would rise up and swallow him whole any second.

  “The reverend tells me you saw young Luther Oswald take licorice from Fairhaven’s on Saturday.”

  “I didn’t mean to see,” Martin said in a panicked voice. Katrine could feel for the lad. Clint’s eyes could be a fearsome thing when the law was at stake. Half the boys in Brave Rock wanted to be Sheriff Thornton, the other half were sore afraid of the man. Clearly one to spout words when afraid, Martin launched into his side of the story. He packed the tale with so many details as they walked into the office that Reverend Thornton had to step in and cut them short.

  “Why didn’t you say something when you saw it?” the clergyman asked as Katrine edged back to the front of the building to peer cautiously into the window. Neither man saw her, focused on the boy as they were.

  “Luther’s big. I figured he’d clobber me for telling.”

  “That’s likely true. Luther is big,” Clint conceded, his commiseration with the boy bringing an amused smile to Katrine’s face. While he would probably never admit it, Clint was very good with children. Walt had even told her he was his favorite of the boy’s new uncles. Clint continued, “But he’s also wrong for taking Felix Fairhaven’s sweets without paying. You know that’s stealing, I know you do. And while I know such things are hard to come by out here, that’s no excuse for breaking the law like both of you did.”

  Katrine flinched at the word both at the same moment Martin did.

  “Me?” Martin nearly squeaked. “I didn’t take nothin’!”

  “I know that to be true,” Clint replied, looking as though he’d given this hours of consideration. “But you saw the crime and said nothing. Now, I know your mama and your papa to be fine folks. I’m sure they taught you right from wrong. So, Martin, I want you to look me square in the eye—man-to-man—and tell me if you knew telling would have been the right thing to do.”

  Telling would have been the right thing to do. Suddenly she was fourteen years old again, hearing her conscience shout the same thing to her night after night for months after she’d seen the murder. How many times had she walked past a police office back east, halting her steps in consideration, only to have the sinister look of the killer’s eyes force her to run away?

  Martin backed up against the reverend, but the clergyman’s hand did not allow him to move. The boy looked duly terrified. His fist came up to his mouth, as if to hold in the words that would condemn him.

  “I am the sheriff, Martin. Lying to me would be as bad as lying to Reverend Thornton. Maybe worse.”

  “Mama says that.”

  At that comment, Katrine watched Elijah and Clint exchange knowing glances. “And how’s that?” Clint asked.

  “She says I need to be extra good because she and pa are friendly with both of you. Being the sheriff and the preacher man, she says you both know everything about right and wrong and how little boys get punished.”

  “She’s right,” Clint offered. “But I expect she also told you that her friendship with Reverend Thornton and me would not get you any special ease should you break the laws. Neither God’s nor Oklahoma’s.”

  “Yes, she did. I remember,” Martin said, the words coming faster and faster. “I sure do remember that.”

  “Which is why I am so vexed that you did what you did.”

  Martin scrunched up his face at the unfamiliar word.

  “Why I am not at all pleased that you failed to come forward. In these parts, hiding a crime is nearly the same as committing one. In fact, it’s my personal opinion that there is no difference between the man who did the crime and the man who failed to stop it.”

  There is no difference between the man who did the crime and the man who failed to stop it. Katrine pulled away from the window, her hand on her chest to stop the pounding heart underneath. She could not help the feeling she was hearing Clint lecture her fourteen-year-old self. No matter how she tried to argue, she could not take it as coincidence that she’d been party to this conversation. She could not ignore that not seconds after she’d braved the placement of her letter on
his desk, she’d been witness to a lecture where Clint managed to give voice to every doubt that had plagued her over the years. Some horrible man was walking around free while someone’s dear daughter lay unavenged in the ground, and all because she would not step forward.

  You were a child. Only she wasn’t. Not really. She and Lars had been on their own long enough that she could not claim innocence. And truly, could a woman who’d spent time as a barmaid—even if it was to keep her belly full—ever claim innocence?

  You were threatened. Yes, she was, but so was Martin. For that matter, so was Lars, and look at all he was risking to ensure that justice was being served!

  Surely he is being so strict to set an example. Perhaps, but no man would speak so harshly to a young boy unless he deeply believed what he said. She inched closer to the window with her back to the wall, straining to hear but afraid to show her face.

  “What if in ten years Luther thinks that all he needs to do whatever he wants is to hold up a fist to a small fry like you? A man has to think about his future, his honor, when faced with a choice like yours.”

  Had that horrible man killed others, threatened other witnesses into silence as he had done with her? She’d never allowed herself to think about that, even when that one pale, lifeless face lying in the alley pushed its way into her nightmares. Now she kept her eyes wide open for fear a crowd of pale faces would shout accusations at her if she shut them. She was fourteen all over again, and no amount of logic would push back the rush of panic that seemed to pin her to the wall. Why was Lars not here? Faced with this panic, she might have been able to convince herself to finally tell him after all these years. Lars would know what to do. He might understand.