A red haze descended over her vision. “Your horse! Your horse! Are you telling me—? Cordell Lawson, you get out of my kitchen!”
“Sage…”
“Now,” she ordered. “This minute!” She spun away from him and grabbed the broom off its hook. Her hands, her entire body, shook like wind-fluttered leaves, but she managed to hoist the implement and swat at his knees. The only other time she’d been this angry was when…
Oh, no. Oh God, no. She’d gone and lost her heart to this man. This footloose rolling stone of a bounty hunter, who loved his horse so much he wasn’t even thinking about her.
Cord’s hand clamped over the wooden broom handle and wrested it out of her fingers. His steely voice cut through the crimson fog in her head. “Shut up and listen to me, Sage.”
“I’ve been listening to you! From the minute we met I’ve been listening to you, and look what happened.”
He gripped her shoulders with fingers of iron and shook her, hard. “Yeah? What did happen? Nine days ago you were a dried-up spinster with no clue what being a woman meant.”
“Oh.” The air whooshed out of her tight chest. “And now?” She could barely keep her voice steady.
“Now,” he snapped, “you’re alive. Whether you noticed it or not, I’ve loved you back to life.”
“Oh, I noticed, all right. I think I was happier before. Because…” Despite her resolve, her voice broke. “Because being alive hurts!”
Cord’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And as for where it’s gotten me…” His fingers tightened on her shoulders.
Her heart stopped. She had never considered what it might have cost Cord.
“Sage. Sage.” He shook her once more, but gently this time. “Listen to me. I’m not sorry. I know you are hurting, but I’m not sorry it happened. That’s what I wanted to tell you. We’ve changed each other in some way.”
“What way?” She spit out the words to stem the tears that threatened.
“I don’t exactly know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“But you’re still going after Suarez.”
“Yeah.”
She gripped his shirtfront in her two fists. “Well, go then! Say goodbye and get it over with.”
“Damn it, Sage…”
“Just go, will you?” She leaned her forehead against his chest.
He tipped her chin up and kissed her until she thought her knees would turn to apple butter, his mouth hungry and possessive.
“I’d give anything to look beautiful at this moment,” she whispered against his lips. “So you’d remember me. I wish I had on my peach muslin.”
“Glad you don’t,” he murmured into her hair. “I can hardly stand walking away from you in a flannel shirt and those…” he dropped his gaze to her riding skirt “…newfangled duds.”
He looked into her eyes, his mouth twisting oddly. Then he kissed her again, hard, and when he lifted his head she heard his breath catch. When she could think again, he was gone.
The slap of the screen door resonated in her ears. She stood in the middle of her sweltering kitchen, fists clenched, her knees trembling, and stared at the apple pie on the counter. She hadn’t even offered him a slice to take with him. She had given him nothing, she realized. Nothing.
And he had given her everything.
She walked to the counter, picked up a spoon and dug a piece out of the very center of the pie. She ate it slowly, savoring the tart-sweet flavor of cinnamon and apple, feeling the texture against her tongue, while tears swelled into the corners of her eyes and dripped down her chin.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning, after a halfhearted breakfast of stale toast and Aunt Cissy’s blackberry jelly, topped off by the last piece of Mrs. Benbow’s apple pie, Sage scrubbed out the pie tin and stepped across the street to the widow’s trim, white-painted house to return it. Her neighbor’s front door was propped open behind the screen to catch whatever breeze there might be on the hot, still air; Sage had bathed just an hour ago, but already her skin felt sticky. Today would be a scorcher.
She smoothed out a fold in her dark blue skirt and wished like anything she’d worn jeans and a plaid shirt instead of two petticoats and a starched, high-necked blouse. Being a woman in the summertime was a suffocating enterprise!
She tapped at the doorframe. In an instant, Mrs. Benbow’s plump form came into view through the wire mesh.
“Sage, child. My, you’re up early. Too hot to sleep last night, wasn’t it?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Benbow.”
The screen door squawked open, and Mrs. Benbow planted herself in the doorway. “Your eyes look swollen,” she said, accusation in her voice. “Exhaustion, I’d guess.”
“Actually, I slept quite soundly,” Sage lied. “Thank you for the pie.” She handed over the tin plate.
“Humph.” The older woman snorted. “I know tired when I see it. Traipsing about the countryside for days on end…”
Sage jerked. Mrs. Benbow knew about her trip into the wilderness? Worse, she must know about Cord. No doubt she had seen them leave town together. In her hurry to get to her waiting patient, Sage hadn’t stopped to think about how much her neighbor relished gossip.
But, she acknowledged, it would have made no difference. When a physician was needed, nothing else mattered. Still, she wished the woman wasn’t so nosy.
Sage decided to try another tactic.
“You are quite right, Mrs. Benbow. I am tired. I haven’t been on a picnic at all. I have just returned from a medical call in the mountains to treat a gunshot wound.”
“Oh?” The woman’s bright blue eyes surveyed her like an expectant robin eyeing a worm. “And?” she prompted.
Sage drew in a long breath. “The patient…” Her throat tightened. “It was too late. My patient died.”
Mrs. Benbow blinked. “Oh, my dear, how dreadful. No wonder you look so heartbroken.”
“To be honest…” Sage began. But she couldn’t go on.
“Yes, child? You can tell me all about it.”
Oh, no I can’t. Not with Mrs. Benbow’s gift for embroidering the truth. But oh, how Sage longed to spill it all out to someone who would just listen and understand.
“To be honest, it was a very difficult journey. I…I learned a great deal about what it means to be a physician.”
And a woman.
She steadied her voice. “I am afraid I’m still affected by all that has occurred. Please forgive me, Mrs. Benbow, but I feel like taking a long walk this morning instead of chatting.”
Mrs. Benbow laid her dimpled hand on Sage’s arm. “Why, of course you do, dear. You just run along now and pull yourself together.”
Her vision blurring, Sage stumbled down the wide porch steps and marched along Cottage Road toward Thad Naylor’s apple orchard. At the corner, where Cottage met the town road, she glanced back to see if Mrs. Benbow was watching.
With relief she saw the older woman scurrying off in the opposite direction, toward town, the ruffled hem of her black sateen kicking up puffs of dust.
Without quite knowing how, Sage found herself at the gray two-story house where she had grown up. Her father sat on the front porch, rocking back and forth in one of the bent willow chairs he’d made after her baby brother’s death.
“Hello, Pa.”
“’Pa,’ is it?” The gray-haired man chuckled. “A week ago it was ‘Papa.’ I see you’ve growed up some on your travels.” He kept rocking, but his sharp blue eyes never left her face.
Sage plopped her aching body into the other chair and pushed off. The weathered willow creaked rhythmically as they rocked in unison.
“How’dja like the Bear Wilderness?” her father asked.
Sage swallowed. “As a doctor or as a traveler?”
“Either,” Billy West replied. “Both.”
Sage eyed the man who had raised her, and a comforting warmth flowed into her chest, like soothing dollops of heated honey flowing across her ribs. “I
can always tell when you’re worried, Papa. Pa.”
Billy’s cornflower-blue eyes widened in fake innocence. “Howzzat?”
She couldn’t help but smile. “You come out on the porch and rock in your chair. You never do that unless there’s something on your mind.”
“Well, maybe I had somethin’ on my mind, honey. Guess I was beginnin’ to wonder where you were. You’re my own little girl, Sage. Even if you are all growed up with a doctor’s certificate ‘n all, I don’t like thinkin’ about you gettin’ yer elbows bumped or skinnin’ yer knees.”
“Oh, Pa, I don’t feel grown up at all. I seem to be doing it all backward. One day I’m a capable, responsible adult, and the next, well, I feel like a scared little girl trying to climb back on a horse that bucked me off.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now I don’t even know if I’m a real doctor.”
“Uh-huh. Lost yer patient, didja?” Billy said in an even voice.
Sage nodded. Unable to stop her tears, she lowered her head so her father wouldn’t see them. Grown-up doctors didn’t cry over their patients. At least not in front of their fathers.
Billy patted her hand with his warm, gnarled fingers. “What else happened, honey-girl?” His gentle voice was full of concern.
Sage gulped. “Is Mama inside?”
“Nope. Gone to her sister’s for the day. Somethin’ about a dress for the church social.”
“Good,” Sage breathed. “About what else… well, I am afraid I have done something very foolish.”
“T’aint like you to be foolish, Sage. Mistaken, maybe. Misguided. But not flighty nor foolhardy, neither.”
Sage swallowed. “Something happened in the wilderness.”
Billy kept rocking. “That so?” he said quietly.
“Yes. At first it made me happy. Very happy. Extremely happy. But now that it’s over…”
“Lost yer heart, didja, honey-girl?”
“Oh, Pa. Yes, I guess I did. And it feels just awful.”
Billy chuckled. “Well now, I’ve been there myself, with my heart jumpin’ out of my pocket. And you’re right, it does feel awful. For a while. After that, you figger you’re either gonna live or die one way or t’other, so you just pray a lot and do what you can to make it come right.”
He looked off to the purple hills in the distance, his eyes misting. “Sometimes a man gets lucky, like I did with yer mama.”
“Pa?”
He didn’t answer for a long minute. “Yes, honey? You got more to say about Cordell Lawson?”
“I—I think I made a big mistake.”
“About lovin’ him?”
“No. About running him off in a temper the way I did. He’s not coming back.”
“Well, now, I know about Mr. Lawson. Seems your uncle had some dealin’s with him awhile back.”
“Yes, Cord told me.”
“What’s plain as the comb on a rooster is that Cord Lawson’s never been run off by anybody. If he wants to come back, he will.”
Sage’s heart stuttered into an irregular rhythm.
“And if he doesn’t…well, then, he won’t.”
Her heartbeat stopped altogether. “Oh, Pa, what shall I do?”
Billy halted the rocker with a boot planted on the porch planks. “Do? Why, hell’s silver bells, Sage, nuthin’ you can do but go on ‘bout yer daily business. Do yer doctorin’, and wait and see.”
“Wait and see,” she echoed. “That’s harder for me than medical college!”
“And…” Billy resumed rocking “…you might want to talk to your aunt Constance. Not yer mama—Aunt Constance. Yer ma would have a conniption fit if she knew what you’ve been up to, and the next thing’d be a posse out after the man. You don’t want him hog-tied, honey.”
“No. I just want him to care for me. And, well, I want him to…to want to be here, in Russell’s Landing. With me.”
“That’s askin’ a lot of a wanderin’ man, wantin’ him to give up his old life.”
“That’s what hurts the most, Pa. He does care for me, at least I think he does. But not enough.”
“Then there’s somethin’ you have to decide, honey-girl. You might have to give up a little something to have what you want.”
Give up something? She’d worked too hard, fought too long against the entrenched male opposition she’d encountered as a female at medical college to give up even one hour of practicing her profession. Anyway, she needn’t agonize over the matter; Cord wanted to catch Antonio Suarez more than he wanted her. She needn’t tear herself into ribbons over a man who’d already ridden out of her life.
She would visit Aunt Constance tomorrow, when Mama wouldn’t be there. Sage would pour out her heart to her mother’s sister and then she would drink the sweetened chamomile tea her aunt would offer, lick her wounds and take up the reins of her life. Her chosen life.
She almost smiled. Then she would go back to her quiet house on Maple Falls Road, and she’d scour that man out of her heart and soul if it was the last thing she ever did.
On Sunday afternoon, she found Aunt Constance, whom Sage and her mother called Cissy, out in her garden, pruning shears in one hand and an oversize egg basket in the other. A floppy sun hat drooped over her face and neck; never in Sage’s twenty-five years had she seen Aunt Cissy without a frayed, sun-bleached bonnet of some sort. With her gored skirt rucked up and stuffed into her waistband, her collar unbuttoned, wide muslin sleeves flapping, her aunt looked like a flower herself as she gathered the huge golden sunflowers that covered the front field.
“Good morning, Aunt Cissy.”
The sun hat fluttered as the slim woman spun about and came toward her. “Sage! My stars, I’m so glad to see you—you’re just in time!”
Sage wrapped her arms around her aunt’s slight form. “In time for what?”
“Your mother and I laid out my dress pattern yesterday afternoon, the one for the social? Now I can’t bring myself to cut into the fabric. I meant to save it for a shirt for John and another for Matt.”
“Mama’s usually right about dress patterns,” Sage offered. “I’ll help you cut it out, if…if you’ll give me some advice.”
Constance clunked the shears into the flower basket. “Advice! From me? Sage, not since you were four years old has anyone—not even your father—been able to offer you advice!” She narrowed her hazel-green eyes. “What’s wrong? Is someone sick? Your mother?”
“No, Aunt. No one is sick.”
A thoughtful expression crossed her aunt’s face. “It’s that bounty hunter, Mr. Lawson, isn’t it? I had a feeling about him when John told me.”
Sage lifted the cutting shears out of the basket and snipped off a nodding sunflower. “What kind of feeling?”
“Oh, just a ‘noticing’kind of feeling.” Constance held out the basket for the yellow bloom.
Sage stretched up to cut another. “Aunt Cissy, what do you do when you love someone?”
“Do? You mean as in kiss or not kiss?” her aunt said with a smile.
“I mean, how was it with you and Uncle John?”
“Oh, I see. As in marry or not marry.” Her smile widened. “Well, you deserve to know some things, I suppose.”
“Aunt Cissy, can I talk to you? I mean, really talk to you? About…things?”
Her aunt hugged her. “We can talk woman to woman. You’ve earned the right.” She held Sage at arm’s length, her eyes alight. “Dear Sage, after all your years of hard work and study, you are at last beginning to bloom.”
“I don’t want to bloom. I don’t want to change at all. I feel unsure of myself, and that’s not like me.”
Her aunt nodded, pressing her lips together.
“And I feel jittery and I fly off the handle. I never did that when I was young.”
“You were never young, Sage. You were well-behaved and sensible before you were twelve. I used to worry about it.”
“You did? I thought young ladies were supposed to be well-behaved an
d sensible?”
“Up to a point, dear.”
“Now I feel all wrong and upside down and giddy and not sensible in the least. I feel like one of Mama’s baby chicks before they get feathers—all helpless and exposed and not quite right, somehow.”
Her aunt Constance laughed and opened her arms. “I think the new Sage is just right. Now, my dear one, let’s put these flowers in a bucket of water and have some tea. And then I will tell you what I know about men.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cord kept his eyes on the mud-splattered gray gelding on the other side of the grove of palo verde trees. The saddle sat slightly askew on the animal, as if the rider had bolted before tightening the cinch.
It was early yet. He would wait.
He twisted to study his cover. Suarez could hide in the tamarisk and ambush him, but he’d have to get past the trees to do it. Cord took off his hat, hung it on a cottonwood spur a few yards away.
By noon, noise from the cicadas pounded in his ears like cannon fire. He had to find Suarez. If he didn’t, there would always be the chance the Mexican would head north to Oregon again. To Sage. Even if Suarez manages to kill me, he’ll still go after Sage. She’d be the only one who could testify against him.
Cord thought about that broom she’d swatted him with, and had to smile. Tired as she’d been, sweaty with the heat and the strain of fishing for a bullet in an outlaw’s shoulder, she still had the gumption to get mad at him.
His grin broadened. He was glad in a funny way. A woman in love was as quick to kindle as a dry haystack struck by lightning. The thought made a place inside him ache.
And then he heard the footstep behind him.
Constance set the brimming cup of tea on the table. “You see, Sage, I knew I would love your uncle John all my life, whether we married or not. So that was simply that.” She pushed the plate of walnut cookies closer to her niece.
Sage had always loved the sunny yellow kitchen with its flowered curtains and polished wood floor. She sipped her sweetened chamomile tea and thought how to phrase the question uppermost in her mind.
“What was what? You mean you didn’t care if he went away?”
High Country Hero Page 13