by Grace Walton
“Of course, welcome to the Black Knife. We’re glad you can stay with us.” Her words were pleasant but her trademark expressive eyes showed her confusion. “Gage?” she asked him softly.
“Oh thank you, my dear.” Fiona cast a dismissive look at the tall striking young woman dressed in casual jeans, boots, and a tee shirt that clung to her willowy frame. “But could you fetch your mistress? I want to meet the lady of the house.”
“This is my wife, Caroline. She is the lady of the house,” Gage corrected.
“Caroline? The famous model Caroline?” stuttered Harlow once he got a good look at Carrie.
Fiona sniffed. “Don’t be a silly twit, this…this woman is not famous. She can’t possibly be more than a country type. Really Harlow, take a minute and just look at what she’s wearing. She can’t be that Caroline,” the prissy woman said as she smoothed the bodice of her designer dress.
“Yes, she can,” growled Gage. Nobody spoke to his beloved like that. Nobody. He’d changed his mind about these interlopers staying.
Fiona didn’t even flinch. She just raised her haughty face and spoke with condescension, “Well, who would have thought she was anything more than the hired help? I mean really, no one answers their own door. Especially dressed like that. Don’t you rustics know anything?”
With those awful comments she sailed through the door Carrie held open.
“Can someone fetch tea?” the British lady whined. “I do hope you have something other than that ghastly coffee everyone here seems to live upon.”
Carrie shot up a quick silent prayer for patience. “Let me just go back to the kitchen and see what we have. In the meantime, Gage could you please show our guests to a couple of rooms in the west wing of the house?”
The big man was obviously furious. “No,” he said. There was a world of meaning in that one hard-bitten word.
Carrie frowned. “We have no choice,” she soothed. “They are Hollister’s guests and he is our friend. Both of us owe him too much.” She stopped and looked up at her handsome husband.
“They’re not staying,” Gage answered looking over her head at the two who, even now, settled themselves in the lavish great room of the ranch house.
“Fine,” Carrie said as she blew at a lock of red hair that tumbled from its braid and fell over her lovely face. “We’ll give them tea,” she said with a look of disgust. “At least, we will if I can find some. And we’ll entertain them till Hollister gets back. He won’t be gone that long.”
Her husband’s mouth settled into a thin belligerent line. Gage Ferguson was a very good-looking man. He was tall and dark-haired. His Native American ancestry made him striking. Smiles from the rancher were few and far between. He was a serious, dangerous man. And his present expression showed just how lethal he could be.
“Hollister is stringing wire for fences, Carrie. He won’t be back until the light is so bad he can’t see. That could be late tonight.”
The woman huffed out her dismay in a great gust of breath. “Can you send one of the hands to get him?”
Gage nodded, “Yeah, I can. But I’d hoped to catch him before he left. I wanted to send him after Maggie. Now it looks like he’ll need to stay here on the Black Knife and entertain his fiancée.”
Carrie looked shocked. “Fiancée?”
“Yeah, that’s what she claims. Though I have my doubts. Hollister’s down to earth and plain spoken. He’d never ask a woman like that to marry him.”
“So it’s all a lie?” Carrie’s nose wrinkled in distaste.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “But the thing I don’t understand is why she’s lying. She’s so high society. Why would she want a man like Hollister?”
“You’re obviously not a woman,” Carrie teased.
“Should I be jealous?” His eyes became slits.
The tall woman laughed. It was a low, musical sound that never failed to make his heart hitch in his chest. He loved her so much it hurt. And he’d almost lost her to a madman. For that reason, and a few others, he’d become obsessively protective. It was most likely something he needed to repent from and pray over.
“No,” she said as she leaned up on her toes to graze a soft kiss over his hard mouth. “There’s nobody for me but you. But that doesn’t make me blind, Gage. Hollister is a very attractive man. Almost as attractive as you,” she teased.
A genuine grin broke over his carved face. “Almost?”
“Yeah, almost,” she said as he looped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer.
“Are you two going to continue whispering in the doorway, or are you going to see to our refreshments?” Lady Fiona demanded.
“We’ll be right there,” Carrie called out. Then she looked up at her husband. “I don’t think I can take them for very long. What are we going to do?”
“I’ll go see if I can find Hollister.”
“Coward,” she said under her breath.
Gage leaned down and kissed her again. “I’m sorry. But the sooner I find him and drag him back here, the sooner we can turn our guests over to him.”
Carrie sighed. “Be back before dark,” she instructed. She took a deep breath and turned to face the awful couple sitting in the great room. “And when you get back, I’ll tell you where your sister is.” Gage’s hand caught her arm and stopped her in her tracks.
“You know where Maggie is?” His words were harsh.
The guilt that was eating her alive showed on her downcast face. She nodded. “I do,” she admitted.
“You lied to me?” he asked astonished.
Carrie hurriedly shook her head. Tears showed in her eyes. “No, I never would.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“I’m sorry, you didn’t ask me.” She blushed with shame. “And I promised Maggie.”
“Is she all right?”
Carrie nodded and bit her lip. “She’s on a mission trip. Pastor Gentry set it up. She said she needs to do this, Gage.”
“And you believe her?” he asked.
“I do,” she answered as she nodded. “There’s more going on with Maggie than we thought.”
He cursed under his breath. “This is about Chase Brown, isn’t it?”
He was not pleased with his wife. But he knew how much she valued a promise. And he also knew how close she had become, over the years, to his sister.
“I truly don’t know. I think it might be. But she also needs to find her own place in the world.”
There was more to Maggie’s sudden fleeing. She was sure of it. But some things were better left unsaid. And Carrie’s suspicions about Maggie’s feelings for Hollister were among those things.
“Where she’s going… is it safe?” he asked bleakly.
It was obvious he loved his sister. She was more of a daughter than a sister to him. He’d helped raise her.
Carrie nodded. “I think so. She’ll be working as an administrator for the children’s programs at the church’s mission in London.”
Gage seemed pensive. He knew London, like he knew much of the rest of the globe, very well. His years working for various government agencies had taken him all over the world. And his time as a mercenary had shown him too much of the big city’s underbelly.
“Where, in London, is the mission?” he asked.
“It’s in a very blighted area,” she admitted. “Pastor Gentry just always says London when he’s telling about the strides that are being made at the mission. I don’t think he knows exactly how risky the place can be. You know how he is, he doesn’t want to admit there’s anything he doesn’t know everything about.”
Now Gage scowled. London was huge. And like every other metropolis, it had its safe areas and its dangerous ones. He’d been pretty sure the congregation would not set up a mission in a wealthy neighborhood. There would be little need for the services provided by the church in an area of rich homes. So that left all the dodgy bits, as they said in England. He didn’t like the sound of Maggie living and working
in such a place.
“I’ll go find Hollister. Together, we’ll come up with some way to get rid of them,” he said and jerked his head towards the great room. “And then we’ll decide how to make sure Maggie stays safe.”
Carrie nodded again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I should have,” she whispered. If there was one thing in this world that she knew to be true, it was that she loved Gage Ferguson with all her heart. And she’d do nothing to cause him pain.
He gave her a reassuring squeeze as she lay cuddled in his arms. “You don’t need to apologize. You were just protecting a friend and keeping a promise.”
“You’re sure?” she asked, her words full of guilt.
“Baby, I’m sure. It’s ok,” he kissed the lush hair on the top of her head. He gave her a playful shove out of his arms. “Go in there and play hostess while I find Hollister.”
“I love you,” she said smiling up into his eyes.
“I love you more, go,” he said as he pushed her further into the house.
As soon as the door shut, his flirtatious grin became a hard, cold mask of determination. He stomped down the steps, the heels of his worn boots making a staccato rhythm that sounded like a series of rifle shots. He loped over to a nearby ranch truck and had it cranked and in gear before the cowhand coming out of the barn could shout his greeting. In a cloud of swirling gray dust, Gage was down the road in search of his foreman.
He found him about thirty minutes later. Hollister was stripped to the waist wrangling the roll of barbed wire. He wore a pair of weathered leather work gloves and his disreputable ancient Stetson. Gage was glad his wife was not here to see the stark lines of his friend’s torso. Hollister’s stay in the Middle East had provided the man with new, raw scars and an absolute absence of body fat. He’d always been a very fit man. But now he looked like a body builder. In the past, most women had found Hollister dangerously appealing. Gage had a sinking feeling now he’d be lethal to any female within spitting distance.
“Hey,” the man in question said as he took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his head with a raised foreman. “What are you doing out here?”
Hollister’s slow western drawl was not an affectation. Over the years, and even though he was a master of languages, the foreman had adopted the laconic form of speech as his own. Gage knew this. Just like he knew his partner in Montana Miracles wasn’t from anywhere near Montana. He’d never had the guts to outright ask Hollister about his past. He just knew the mysterious man wasn’t a native. For all Gage knew, his foreman could have been from South Africa, or Russia. That’s how good Hollister was at hiding his true identity.
“We’ve got a problem,” Gage said tersely as he got out of the truck.
“Is it the action we’ve planned for my former hosts?” Hollister asked with an eager gleam in his eye that was almost bloodthirsty.
Ferguson shook his head. “No, this one is all on you.”
“On me?” the other man looked across at his friend.
“Yeah, I left Carrie pouring tea for your fiancée.”
Hollister gritted out one short word. One unfit for polite company.
“Can I assume you are not engaged?” Ferguson’s low baritone rumbled.
“I am not engaged,” Hollister said. “And Lady Fiona Cooper is a pathological liar. Her father is worse.”
“You know these people?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
Hollister took a second. He turned his face up to the sun. He watched a thin cloud blow over the nearby, snow-capped mountain range. He inched the work gloves off his calloused hand, finger by finger.
“It’s complicated,” he finally admitted.
“What in your life isn’t,” Gage shot back.
“Fine, you’re due your anger,” Hollister allowed.
“Dang right I am. Who is that woman, and why has she shown up here?”
“I knew her, a long time ago.”
“You knew her?” asked Gage not believing his friend’s nonchalance. “A woman like that doesn’t just show up out of nowhere over a casual acquaintance.”
“It’s none of your business,” Hollister answered.
“It is when my wife’s sitting in my house trying to do the Christian thing and be hospitable to that… that snake and her sidekick Harlow.” Gage’s voice was becoming heated.
Hollister put up his hands in self-defense. “For that, I’m truly sorry. Let me get my shirt on and I’ll go handle it.”
“Her.”
“What?”
“That woman is definitely female. She’s not an it,” Gage said.
“Oh, so now we’re talking semantics?” Hollister mocked. “Forgive me, her. I’ll go handle her. She’ll be off your place within the hour. And then maybe I can get back out here and do the day’s work you pay me for.”
“That’s not our only issue,” Ferguson said.
“Don’t tell me you consider that milksop Harlow a problem?” Hollister derided.
“Milksop? Is that a word?”
Hollister spit on the ground. His jaw tightened. More and more of his British ancestry was showing. It was annoying. He’d suppressed that side of himself for years. Why was it suddenly bleeding out now? A shaft of sunlight caught the raven-wing color of his hair and danced down its length to his nape.
“You’re a doctor of anthropology. You tell me, Bossman.”
He’d come perilously near to revealing more than he wanted to reveal. He’d need to be more cunning. Gage Ferguson was a legendary, ruthless warrior. And he also possessed a brilliant mind.
“I’m telling you we’ve got a much bigger problem than just shooing your old girlfriend on down the road.”
“If you’d quit talking in riddles and just answer a man, maybe we’d already have the issue resolved.”
Ferguson looked at his friend. He’d never told the man anything about what had happened to Maggie. It was Maggie’s story to tell. But he knew all about the gossip that seemed to follow his baby sister wherever she went. She couldn’t even escape the talk and speculation about her at church. So he felt he had to ask the question.
“What have you heard about Maggie, Hollister?”
The other man’s face hardened. “Nothing worth repeating,” he said succinctly.
Gage nodded. So he had heard the ugly rumors. “There was an… an incident.”
A tight muscle jumped the length of Hollister’s clenched jaw. But he remained silent.
Gage looked away. It was impossible to say what needed saying while he watched his friend’s reaction. The rancher cleared his throat. “There was a kid…” Ferguson wasn’t exactly sure what to say next.
“Did you kill him?” the other man’s tone was almost conversational. “I asked her. She didn’t say much. But knowing you, it could be done in a way that left no evidence.”
“You talked to Maggie about this?” Gage was surprised.
He knew Maggie had tagged after Hollister like a pup since she’d been a slip of a girl. But, with his sister being so shut down about, well, everything, he’d not thought she’d freely share any of what had happened to her.
“I tried to, but she was evasive,” the other man answered. “So, is he dead?”
Gage shook his head. “No, but he is in prison.”
“What happened,” Hollister bit out.
“I don’t think I should tell you.”
“Really?”
“Really, it’s not pretty, Hollister.”
“I didn’t think it would be. But I want to know.”
Gage shook his head. “It might change the way you look at her. And she’s so fragile, I don’t know if she could survive another blow like losing your friendship.”
“Nothing that happened to her could ever change what I feel for your sister.”
Gage considered the low words. He heard something there he’d never thought to hear. It was more than affection. And it was more than friendship. It was love, bone deep,
excruciating, and committed love.
“I still believe Maggie should be the one to tell you. And I hope and pray she does. She needs to confide in somebody if she’s ever going to heal. Because Hollister, not even I know all that happened that night.”
“I’ll get it out of her tonight,” the scowling man promised.
“That’ll be hard,” mentioned Gage.
“No, it won’t,” Hollister said as he rubbed his dirty hands down the legs of his worn-out jeans. “And once I know exactly what that kid did to her, I’m going to make him pay, even if he is in prison. Won’t be the first time I’ve gone undercover in a jail.” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “And it won’t be the first time an inmate succumbs to a horrible, unavoidable accident.”
“You can’t kill him.”
“Watch me,” Hollister snarled low and mean. “I don’t care if you’re one of those peace on earth, goodwill to men Christians now, Gage. I’m not. He needs to pay.”
“I agree. And he will, he is. But until Maggie tells someone everything about that night, the boy only committed assault.”
Hollister’s hands balled into lethal fists. “He hit her?”
Gage gulped hard. Hollister was the most dangerous man he’d ever met. And he was in a killing rage. “I thought you knew.”
The other man shook his head slowly. His eyes glittered with murderous intent. “I only know what I overheard from a couple of cowhands. I’ll get her to tell me everything tonight. Then, I’ll go hunting.”
“You can’t.”
“You think you can stop me?”
“No,” Gage shook his head. “No, I know I can’t stop you. But you won’t be able to talk to Maggie tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because Hollister, she’s not here. She’s run away.”
Chapter Four
The tall dark man looked more murderous than ever at that bald statement.
“Run away?” he snarled.
Hollister’s mind was playing out the chess game of what could happen to Maggie, alone and at the mercy of the hard evil in the world. She was still innocent. He had to believe that. No matter what a couple of rough-neck cowhands said. No matter what anyone claimed about her. He knew Magnolia Ferguson. And he knew, without any doubt, that she was good and pure and lovely. She was the only clean thing in his life. She had to remain that way. Otherwise how was he to endure?