"Hester!" the other two women in the room gasped.
She didn’t spare them a glance, but kept her gaze locked with Rachel’s. "I think you have to do what you feel is important. And if going to see Jackson’s relatives is what you need to do, then you should go."
"Honestly," Mavis sputtered.
"They’re both crazy," Sally said.
"But," Hester went on, "you should also be very careful, Rachel. Take time to rest. And come home soon."
Rachel smiled at her friend. Since marrying Charlie Miller, Hester had truly come into her own. Her self-confidence had grown until she was no longer the shy little thing hiding in a corner, but a thoughtful, soft-spoken, happy woman.
"Thank you for understanding, Hester."
"Yeah," Sally's tone dripped sarcasm. "Thanks."
Hester smiled at her. "Sally, you know you wouldn’t want any of us telling you what to do just because you’re expecting a baby."
"True," she said with a loving pat over her still flat tummy. She lifted her eyes to meet Rachel's. "But then the father of my baby didn’t run off and leave me to face a town alone."
Rachel stiffened slightly, then forced herself to relax again. Despite what she said in private, publicly, Sally had defended Rachel, standing up to the town of Stillwater alongside Hester and Mavis.
"I told you, Sally. Jackson had to leave."
"Yeah, you told us. But I still don't see what could have been more important than you… and his baby."
"Sally!" Mavis hissed at her.
"Fine, fine. I won't say another word." She shook her head and turned to help Mavis close the carpetbag.
Rachel couldn’t help wondering what they would say if they only knew that she wasn't going to visit Jackson's family but Jackson himself. She had done as Lesley had suggested. She had stayed away from The Black Hound, despite the cost. But now she had to go. Jackson had the right to know that he was going to be a father.
Rubbing her palm over the growing mound of her unborn child, Rachel smiled softly. It hadn’t been easy, those first few weeks after Jackson's disappearance. Loneliness had almost killed her, until she had discovered that through some miracle, she was carrying Jackson’s child.
Then the world had opened to her again. And despite the wagging tongues of the gossips in town, she carried herself proudly, refusing to be ashamed of the child she and Jackson had created. Thank heaven, though, for her friends. Without their support, she would have had to face Stillwater alone. But with Sally, Mavis, Hester, and their husbands defending her to anyone who dared speak their nasty little thoughts, the town had quietly settled into aggrieved acceptance.
Of course, the fact that she owned and operated the only general store in town might have had something to do with that. Though some people may have wanted to shun her, the fact that they needed to shop at her place of business kept them civil at least.
"Rachel?" Mavis asked as she stepped in close, "Are you all right?"
"Hmmm? Oh, yes. I'm fine." She smiled at each of the three women in turn. "I was just thinking how fortunate I am to have such good friends. Without you, I might have had to leave Stillwater."
Mavis teared up and reached for the hanky tucked up her sleeve.
"It wouldn’t have come to that, Rachel," Hester said.
"Oh, I don’t know," Sally grumbled, then sat down on the edge of Rachel's bed. "Most folks are always ready to believe the worst. Look at Sprague, the banker. Why when he started telling everyone that he wasn't a bit surprised to find you a 'fallen woman' because you had used your wiles on him to try to get a loan, people started talking."
"Sprague," Mavis sniffed .and stuffed her hanky back into place. "As if Rachel would use wiles on that puffedup old toad."
Sally laughed and winked at Rachel. "The best part was Tessa Horn. Who would have thought that gossipy hen would take a stand for you? I expected her to be the one carrying the tar and feathers."
Rachel smiled softly and reached up to hold the golden coin hanging from a delicate chain around her neck. "Tessa liked Jackson very much."
"We all did," Hester told her and gave her a quick hug.
"Yes we did," Mavis added. "Why, Sam is still hoping he'll come back and go into business with him…" her voice faded off and her eyes welled up with guilty tears as she looked at Rachel. "Oh, I'm so sorry, honey."
"It's all right, Mavis. If Jackson could come back, he would. I know it."
"Well," Sally said solemnly, "if he ever does, I've got a few things to say to him before I forgive him."
A long moment of silence dropped on the four friends before Rachel checked the mantle clock. "I have to go. The stage will be leaving shortly, and I can't miss it if I want to make my train in Seattle."
#
PINE RIDGE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY, THREE DAYS LATER
Jackson stomped through the center of the poker game and watched as cards and chips scattered to the floor in his wake.
The disgusted grumblings of the players as they reached to gather everything up again brought a tight smile to his face. At least he had finally figured out how to make himself felt in the real world. All it had taken was a surplus of anger, of emotion.
Clearly, being murdered hadn't made him nearly as angry as being snatched away from Rachel without so much as a chance to tell her one last time how much he loved her.
Rachel. He wondered about her. What was she doing that very minute? Was she hard at work in the store? Or maybe she was at the new house, touching the wood he had touched. Or lying in the bed where they had come together those two miraculous times.
Disgusted with himself and the persistent torturous visions of Rachel, Jackson took long strides to the bar. Whiskey, rye, Scotch, and bourbon lined the shelf beneath the wide bar mirror. His gaze moved over the bottles hungrily as he wished again that he might get drunk enough to find oblivion for a while.
But he wasn’t allowed even that much. Not only was oblivion denied him, but Jackson had discovered that he was once more trapped inside the saloon. Since making a mess of things with Rachel, he couldn’t even go outside any longer.
Once again, walls of ice stopped him whenever he attempted to leave The Black Hound. Hell, even Lesley hadn’t visited him in months. Apparently, he had fouled his last assignment up so badly that he wasn't going to be given another.
But it didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered now.
"Well," someone nearby muttered. "Will you look at that?"
"What in the hell is she doing?"
Jackson lifted his head and stared into the bar mirror. He felt his jaw drop. Reflected in the grimy, silvered surface, Rachel had entered The Black Hound and stopped dead in the doorway. Hungrily, his gaze moved over her. Silhouetted in the sunlight streaming in from behind her, her face lay in shadow, but he would have recognized her anywhere. Something inside him had leapt to attention the moment she had came inside.
Slowly, he turned around, afraid to move too quickly, lest she disappear as all his other dreams of her had.
He needn't have worried. Rachel stepped farther into the room, letting the batwing doors swish shut behind her. She shifted her gaze from side to side, glancing over the stunned faces of the people watching her. She was looking for him.
He started toward her at the same moment that she turned for a table in the darkened corner of the room. Jackson stopped in his tracks. With his gaze locked on her swollen belly, he watched her move slowly to a chair and sit down.
Pregnant. Rachel was pregnant.
New, indescribable, unendurable pain welled up within him. Had she gone ahead and married someone, still trying to save Jackson’s soul? Or had she fallen in love with another man? Immediately, images of Rachel in someone else's arms rose up in his mind, and he had to swallow back a howl of misery.
The bartender hurried to Rachel's table and after a brief, quiet conversation, scuttled back to the bar. Jackson forced himself to move toward her, skirting the poker tables. Before he reached her side
, the bartender had returned to set a glass of sarsaparilla in front of her. As the man went back to work, Jackson went down on one knee beside the woman he loved.
"Jackson?" she whispered, and the piano player neatly covered her voice. "Jackson, are you here?"
"Yes, Rachel," he said, even knowing that she wouldn’t hear him.
"I hope you can hear me, Jackson," she went on, her gaze drifting around the room. "I came to tell you something."
Oh, God. Why hadn’t she stayed away? Why did she think she had to come to him with the news of her pregnancy? Couldn't she see it would have been kinder to let him go on thinking that she still loved him?
Rachel's palm slid across her heavy middle with a lovingly slow caress. Jackson followed the motion with his eyes and felt his heart break.
"I wanted you to know that you’re going to be a father," she whispered.
Jackson jumped up and away from the table. His baby?
She carried his child? He looked down to where the baby lay nestled safely inside her. A part of him lived. A part of them — he and Rachel — lived. He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck and forced himself to listen as she went on.
"I know you’re here, Jackson. Lesley came to see me the day you… left."
Lesley? Why the hell would Lesley go to see Rachel?
"I tried to wish you alive again with the last coin," she went on, and Jackson dropped to his knees again. Sorrow crushed his chest, and he wondered why it was that such pain could still be felt so long after death.
"Ah, Rachel," he said and reached up to brush one hand across her cheek.
She inhaled sharply and smiled. "Was that you, Jackson?"
A rush of hope filled him. If she could feel him, maybe she could hear him too, if he spoke louder, and directly to her heart.
"I love you so, darlin'," he said. "I wish I could be with you. Care for you."
She blinked back a sheen of tears, but not before a solitary drop spilled from the corner of her eye and rolled down across her cheek.
"Who' s she talking to?" someone else whispered a bit too loudly.
"Don’t know," another voice piped up. "But you leave her be. Sometimes a woman who's carryin’ takes on strange notions."
Jackson frowned at the men and their curiosity.
Rachel smiled sadly. "Strange notions," she repeated quietly. "Like coming to a strange saloon to tell a ghost he's going to be a father." She inhaled deeply, then said, "I have to leave now, Jackson. I can't stay. It's not good for either of us… or the baby."
He knew that. Hell, he didn't want her in that damned saloon a moment longer himself. But Lord God, what he wouldn't do to leave with her. His gaze dropped to his child again. Would this baby grow up to be the female doctor Lesley had told him about? What would she look like? Please God, he thought, let her look like Rachel, not him.
"I love you, Jackson," she said softly. "I always will."
His chin hit his chest. How would he survive eternity, knowing that Rachel and his child were denied him? How much Hell was one man expected to endure?
He looked at her beloved face again and noted that her eyes were closed as if she were trying to feel his presence. Concentrating all his efforts on making himself known to her, Jackson leaned over and gently kissed the swell of her abdomen.
She gasped sharply and their child kicked as if recognizing its father's touch.
Smiling sadly, Rachel stood up, and Jackson rose to stand beside her.
"You’re a brave, strong woman, Rachel," he said, knowing that raising an illegitimate child would be harder than she knew. For Rachel and the baby. A new emptiness, darker than anything he had ever known before, yawned open inside him.
"I’ll tell the baby about you every day," Rachel said. "And she'll love you as much as I do. I promise."
He knew he should tell her not to waste her life on memories of him. But God forgive him, he couldn’t. Even if she could hear him, he didn't have the strength to tell her to forget him.
She turned for the door, and Jackson followed her, not ready yet to see her go. Her hurried steps carried her through the half doors and into the afternoon sunshine. He raced after her, rushing headlong into the icy barrier that kept him trapped from everything he held dear.
"Dammit," he yelled. "No!"
Helplessly, Jackson stared after her retreating figure until she was lost from sight. Then his head fell back on his neck, and an anguished groan, torn from the depths of his soul, rose up and settled down on the astonished patrons of The Black Hound.
#
STILLWATER, FIVE MONTHS LATER
Rachel smiled down at her daughter. Angela Tate. Named for the angels who had surely seen to her conception and safe delivery. Angela's little fists swiped the air, and her tiny legs kicked with a building anger. Chuckling, Rachel opened her shirtwaist. Pulling the edge of her chemise aside, she bared her breast and offered a distended nipple to her hungry baby.
As the infant's small mouth fastened tightly to her flesh, Rachel sighed and leaned back against the headboard of her bed. Moonlight filtered in through the lace curtains, which danced slightly in the soft breeze. Outside, Stillwater slept. The silence was broken only by Angela' s frantic nursing and the occasional call of a night bird.
This was Rachel's favorite time. This hour before dawn when she and her daughter seemed to be the only two people in the world. The solid feel of the infant at her breast brought a deep ripple of contentment that was marred only by the knowledge that Jackson would never share that contentment.
Smiling sadly, she lifted her head and looked down at the baby. Softly, Rachel stroked her fingertip across her daughter's silky cheek. "How he would love you," she whispered, and the baby slapped one small palm against her mother's chest.
Rachel grinned and lifted the gold coin on its chain from the valley between her breasts. Dangling it near the baby’s grasping hand, she watched her daughter snatch at it valiantly, all the while continuing to suckle.
"You’re such a good eater, you'll be able to grab daddy’s coin in no time at all," Rachel assured her. The baby grinned suddenly, a tiny, milky smile that tugged at her mother's heart. More than anything, Rachel wanted to shout, "Jackson! Come look at your daughter! See her smile at the mention of your name!"
But she would never be able to share these things with him. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she fought them back. If she couldn't share Angela with Jackson, then she would share Jackson with Angela. Once again, as she had every night since the baby’s birth, Rachel told Angela about her father.
Talking about him eased the pain of missing him and somehow, she thought, Angela understood everything she said.
The baby smiled again and smacked her lips against her mother's breast.
"You know," Rachel said, "my mother used to say that whenever a baby smiled, it was because the angels were talking to it."
Angela swung her little arm wide, opened her fist, and grabbed her father's coin in a tight grasp.
"What a big girl," Rachel congratulated her and covered the baby’s hand with her own. She looked down into green eyes so like Jackson's and said, "Angels talk to you, sweetheart. And maybe, because you’re still close to Heaven, maybe you could actually see your daddy if you really try."
Angela squirmed in her arms, and Rachel went on. "Try, baby girl. Try very hard." She closed her eyes before saying, "He's very tall and he has dark hair, like you. You have his eyes, and that hint of a dimple in your cheek is from him, too."
Beneath the baby’s fingers, the golden coin began to shimmer with warmth. A gentle heat, soothing to the touch and stirring to the soul. Angela gurgled, and Rachel smiled absently, lost in her memories. Another moment or two passed in silence, then the baby sneezed, breaking the spell.
"God bless you," a deep male voice spoke from the shadows.
Rachel's eyes flew open. She held perfectly still, almost afraid to breathe. If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.
"Rachel
?"
That voice. So familiar. So dear.
Slowly, she turned toward him and watched, breath held, as he stepped into a puddle of moonlight. Angela squirmed in her arms, assuring Rachel that she was indeed awake. But Jackson’s image was so blurry. So indistinct. Surely, this was just a dream.
Then she blinked, and the tears blurring her vision spilled over onto her cheeks. He was real and whole and there, with her. Speechless, she could only stare at him as he came closer, then dropped to one knee beside the bed.
He touched her face with hesitant fingers. She gasped at the warmth of his touch.
"Jackson?" she finally whispered brokenly, then smoothed one hand through his hair. Tears streaked down her face as he reached for her, and she leaned into his embrace. His arms closed around both her and their daughter, and Rachel knew peace for the first time in nearly a year.
"How?" she asked, her voice hushed reverently. "How did you get here?"
"I don’t know," he laughed shortly, kissed her cheek, then released her and stared down at his daughter. "One minute I was at The Black Hound… the next, I was here."
"For how long?" she demanded, fighting back new tears that threatened to choke her.
"I don’t know that either," he said and looked up, into her eyes, smiling wryly. "Nothing much has changed, Rachel. I still don't have the answers to your questions."
"It doesn't matter." She met his gaze squarely and told herself to remember every moment of this blessed time with him. "Nothing matters now that you’re here. With me. With us."
He reached for her again and in wonder, stroked her cheek with his fingertips. She turned her face into his touch and kissed his hand. Unmindful of the tears raining down her face, Rachel smiled and said, "I'd like you to meet your daughter."
"My daughter;" he repeated, his tone awed. Hesitantly, he touched her little hand, still clasped tightly around her mother's golden necklace. "She's so beautiful. Like her mama."
"And strong, too," Rachel told him, wanting him to know everything about his child before some cruel Fate snatched him away. "I wear your gold coin on this chain," she said. "And a moment ago, she grabbed it all by herself for the first time."
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