by Jodi Thomas
“I know,” she mumbled, wishing she’d shot him before they talked. His words scraped against her heart, causing more pain than the bullet lodged at her rib. When her parents had died three years ago, her big brother had done the only thing he could do. He’d taken her with him. She hadn’t slept in a bed, or bathed with soft soap, or had a man so much as hold her hand. She’d grown from a girl to a woman without anyone knowing.
He moved slowly, not toward the gun at his throat, but to brush his fingers along her jawline. “Is it Nichole?”
“Yes,” she answered. “But I’ve been called Nick for so long I probably wouldn’t answer to anything else. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, it was Nichole Casey Hayward. But now, it’s just Nick.”
She knew she should end this discussion. The proper thing to do would be to shoot him and be done with it. But his touch was so light, so caring. Without lowering the Colt, she turned her head slightly so that his fingers trailed along the length of her throat.
Nichole was starving, color-blind in a war that was never ending. They’d both been robbed of years of youth and discovery. And for one moment, one timeless moment, she stepped away from reality and responsibility. For just a blink in time she wanted someone to see her as a woman and not a fighting Shadow. She wanted there to be more in her life than running and hiding. She wanted there to be this man.
Moving his long fingers over her chin, Adam lifted her head slightly as though he’d read her mind.
She let the gun slip away as he lowered his lips to hers. A hunger sparked in her as his mouth gently covered hers. She felt his hand slide into her hair as she tasted the warmth of his lips.
The shattering of the door echoed through the room like a cannon shot. Adam instinctively tightened his grip around Nichole’s shoulder. She reached for her gun.
“Nick!” a bear of a man shouted. “Nick!”
To Adam’s surprise, she lowered her weapon as a huge, wild half animal of a man stormed forward. He stood well over six feet with coal-colored hair to his shoulders and a beard of curly hair that stood out in every direction.
“Wolf!” she answered. “Wolf, over here!”
The giant shoved the bloody table aside and knelt to one knee. “I sent the others on ahead. I figured if you were dead, I wanted to kill the doc with my own hands. If you were alive, I’d let you do it, then we’d be on our way.”
The huge man stared at them, as if he were seeing a two-headed cow. His gaze narrowed to Adam’s arm resting protectively across his sister’s shoulder and a Union jacket covering her legs.
“What’s going on, Nick?”
“Nothing.” She looked at Adam. “I was just kissing the Yank.”
The big man slowly stood, drawing in air as if he planned to use half the room’s supply in one breath. “You kissed him?”
“Actually, I was kissing her,” Adam answered, seeing no need to lie or hide behind her.
“Shut up!” Wolf growled. “You’re a talking dead man.”
Nichole leaned away from Adam. “You can’t kill him, big brother, I kissed him.”
Wolf rubbed his face with a beefy hand, as if he could rub away what his eyes were seeing. “You kissed a damn Yankee?”
“I kissed a very kind man who saved my life.”
Wolf sobered and looked straight at Adam. “I thank you for that, Doc, and I’ll see you’re buried proper for it.”
“You’re not killing him, Wolf. He saved my life. I’m the one who kissed him, and I’ll be the one who shoots him.”
Wolf seemed to relax slightly, as if concluding that his little sister had finally come to her senses. He turned and moved toward the remains of the door. “I’ll saddle your horse,” he mumbled as he shoved wood out of his way. “But don’t go around kissing no one else. I can’t be limiting the number of Yanks I shoot.”
As the door fell back in place, Nichole pushed away from Adam with a groan. “Go!” she whispered. “If you stand on the table, you should be able to jump to the loft. From there, go out the place where the roof has fallen in. I’ll give you to the count of thirty, then I’ll fire. You should be in the woods by the time Wolf opens the door and finds you gone.”
“But—”
“There’s no time.” She pushed him away.
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek as his fingers moved over the soft curls of her midnight hair.
“One,” she whispered. “Two.”
“God, you have beautiful eyes.”
“Three.”
“Thanks.” He jumped on the table and pulled himself into the loft.
“Four,” she forced the words out in a hurried breath. “When this war is over, I’ll find you, Adam McLain, and finish that kiss.”
“I’ll plan on it, Nichole Hayward,” he said, and smiled down at her a moment before turning toward the opening in the roof.
“Five,” she whispered as she shoved away a tear with her free hand. “Six.”
Adam was several yards into the blackness of the woods before he slowed. As he moved through the undergrowth at the creek’s edge, he heard a single shot shatter the cool dawn air. A bullet—meant to end his life. The solitary blast brought him back to the reality of hell.
Silently, he slipped into the cold water and began moving upstream. If the kid, called Rafe, had followed the stream up to find Adam’s camp, it made sense that if he followed the water’s guide, he’d eventually reach the Union hospital tents.
The stream widened, growing deeper and slippery, but he didn’t dare move ashore and leave a trail Wolf could follow. Nichole might not want him dead, but her brother had no such weakness. He’d track Adam down if he had the time.
The wool uniform was soaked to the shoulders, but still, Adam moved. Dawn light slid between the branches in slivers of silver, reflecting off the water in diamond brightness, but bringing no warmth. The smell of spring was thick in the air, but fear pulsed through Adam, muting all else.
Twice, he fell, losing ground to the rushing water, but he didn’t dare slow his pace. If Wolf was on horseback, it wouldn’t take the reb long to overtake him.
Rushing water drowned out most sounds, but Adam could hear the low thunder of a horse’s hooves coming toward him. When he tried to increase his speed, the stream fought him for progress.
Just as he leaned to dive beneath the water, he heard someone shout, “Adam!”
Suddenly, Captain Wes McLain, dressed in his cavalry uniform and riding a powerful roan, was splashing through the stream toward Adam.
Wes didn’t pull the reins when he offered his arm to his brother. As he’d done a hundred times in childhood, Adam locked his hand at his brother’s elbow and Wes did the same. With one mighty pull, Adam swung up behind Wes, and the roan turned to reverse his track.
They sliced the stream with wings of sparkling silver. The huge animal spanned the distance to the camp in thundering seconds. When Wes turned the horse toward land and headed for the hospital tents, he slowed enough to shout, “Trying to get yourself killed, little brother? I thought you had more sense!”
Adam ignored the teasing. “I was managing fine. How’d you find me?”
“It took me about a minute to figure out what had happened in your tent. Whoever kidnapped you left a trail even Daniel could follow. When the tracks hit the water, I knew they wouldn’t be heading north.”
He slowed at Adam’s tent and gave his brother a hand down. “I decided the rebs weren’t looking for soldiers to kill, so they must have needed a doctor. And if they crossed the line to get one, they were desperate and you probably wouldn’t be coming back.”
Adam moved into his tent with his brother following. “You guessed right.”
“And you helped them, of course.” Wes reached beneath the straw mattress and pulled out Adam’s total supply of liquor—a half bottle of whiskey. “Your war
’s with the angel of death, brother, and no one else. I was just hoping you had time to make them believe that before they shot you.”
After a long drink, Wes made a face. “This is terrible.”
Adam laughed as he pulled off his wet uniform. “It’s what you left here last month.” He tossed his shirt aside. “And you’re right, I did what I could for the injured Gray Shadow.”
Wes stopped in midgulp. “You saw Shadows? No one sees Shadows.”
“I did.” Nodding, Adam ordered, “You’d better get into dry clothes, too.”
Wes took another swig of whiskey. “Stop mothering me, Adam. I’ve lived in mud and rain for half this war. Could you find the Shadow camp again? I’d love to get my hands on a few of them.”
Adam shook his head. He thought of telling Wes about the black-haired, green-eyed woman, but somehow that seemed a betrayal. She’d saved his life, just as he’d saved hers, and they were bound by that even if they stood on different sides of a line. “They were riding out when I escaped. They’re too far south by now.”
Leaning back on his elbows, Wes ignored the mud on his boots as he relaxed on the cot. “For once, you may have an interesting story to tell, but I’ve no time. I’m just riding through toward a little place in Virginia called Appomattox. Word is Lee’s going to surrender. I saw the first of this war at Bull Run, and I figure to see the last.”
He finished the whiskey.
Wes’s words took a few minutes to register. “The war may be over?” Adam let out a long breath.
“It may.” Wes stood and looked at himself in the shaving mirror hanging by the bed. “Daniel is north already with a leg injury. May’s at his side. He’ll be home months before we can get there.” Wes touched a thin scar running across his left cheek, then turned away from his reflection. “But if this war ends, start home as soon as you can. I’ll catch up.”
Adam knew he’d be moving at a snail’s pace with the wounded. Wes would have no trouble finding him. Adam nodded as his brother stepped to the opening.
“Stay safe,” Wes mumbled. “Keep an angel on your shoulder.” He repeated the phrase their mother always told them.
Wes had said the same words since they’d been boys running half-wild. Then he added, as he always did, his own ending. “And your fist drawn until your brother is there to cover your back.”
The older brother disappeared into the maze of tents. For four years, he’d been the best fighter the Union had produced, but if the war was ending, Adam could only guess how Wes would survive. War pulsed through his veins as strongly as peace pumped through their younger brother, Daniel’s.
Adam would be going home to a fiancée, Daniel to a wife, but Wes . . .
“Bergette!” Adam slapped his forehead. How could he have forgotten about her? He’d kissed another woman without one thought of his fiancée waiting at home. Sweet little shy Bergette who’d promised him she’d wait.
He should be feeling guilty or calling himself every name of the fool he was. But Adam could still taste Nichole’s kiss on his lips. The warm feel of her body sleeping against his chest was still with him. Bergette was a faraway memory, no more than a tintype in his mind, but Nichole had been flesh and blood. He’d almost risk running into her brother if he thought he could find her again.
This war better end fast, Adam thought, or he’d go mad.
Perhaps he already was. He was daydreaming about a Shadow . . . in every sense. A woman who slipped back and forth across enemy lines. A woman who, if he ever found her again, would probably slip just as easily in and out of his life.
THREE
WES MCLAIN GUIDED his horse ahead as adam spotted the first sight of their farm near Corydon, Indiana. The morning air felt cool, but everything around them was green with the summer of July 1865. Their parents’ home looked like a painting framed in nature’s fullness. The small white two-story house, the old barn in need of repair, the few apple trees their mother always called the orchard, the garden out back big enough to enable them to lay up winter supplies, all spoke of a peace Adam hadn’t known in four years.
“We’re home!” Adam shouted as he started racing his brother down the road.
Suddenly they weren’t soldiers hardened in war, but boys again, racing to their mother’s porch at full gallop. Only a year in age separated Wes from Adam. The two men were within an inch of the same height and with the same coloring, no one doubted they were brothers. But there was a hardness about Wes and a thin white scar on his left cheek that made him seem ages older. He was born to soldiering and it showed in his carriage.
They rounded the corral at full speed and laughed when dust flew to roof high as they reined.
“I beat you as always,” Wes bragged.
“I got out of practice the past few years,” Adam defended as he swung down. “If Mom were alive, she’d be out of her kitchen yelling at us by now.”
Both men glanced at the kitchen door as if expecting her, even though she’d passed on the same winter as her husband. He’d been wounded when Morgan led a raid into Indiana in 1863. Though their father was up there in years, his Irish blood had demanded that he serve in the home guard. Corydon was one of the few towns hit hard by the Southerner’s raid. He’d turned his horses loose at dawn and rode to fight. By nightfall the rebs had taken his entire stock of supplies and left him dying with no one to care for him except their mother.
Adam missed her, but he often thought of the pain she must have felt losing her husband while her sons were far from home fighting.
“And Dad would be running from the barn yelling that we almost rode over Daniel again.” Wes’s words brought Adam back to the present. “Or that we woke Danny boy from a nap and now we’d have to watch him till supper. I don’t remember a day from the time the kid was born that they didn’t accuse us of trying to kill him.” Wes laughed.
“And you almost did!” a voice shouted from the house a moment before Daniel appeared.
Unlike his brothers, Daniel McLain was blond and still thin with youth. Even though he was twenty and had been married for two years, Adam thought of him as “the kid brother.” Not even the leg Dan nursed as he moved down the steps made him seem old enough to have fought in a war.
The McLain men became children once more, roughhousing and hugging one another. A bystander might have had trouble telling whether the brothers were greeting each other or fighting. They didn’t stop until May appeared on the porch. One look at Daniel’s petite wife’s new girth stopped Adam and Wes in midlaugh.
Daniel straightened with pride at their sudden shock. “I guess my letters didn’t reach you two. You’ll both be uncles before the month is out.”
Wes looked uncomfortable, mumbling his congratulations as he moved to the horses. But Adam couldn’t hold back his delight. He hurried up the steps and gave his sister-in-law a careful hug.
Waiting for her nod of approval, he spread his hand over the rounded ball at her middle. She was a tiny woman, not pretty at first sight, but her gentleness softened her imperfections better than any paint and powder could have. The McLain boys had always treated her like a treasure since the day she followed Daniel home from school.
“I’m so glad you made it home before time.” May covered Adam’s hand with her own. “Dan and I want you to deliver our baby.”
“But,” Adam was flattered, and a little frightened, “I haven’t delivered a baby since medical school.”
“Doc Wilson said he’d be near to act as second in case the new uncle faints.” Daniel joined them, slipping his arm lovingly around May’s shoulder. “But with the war over you’ll be birthing plenty of babies now. You might as well start by bringing a new McLain into the world.”
They moved into the kitchen with Wes mumbling about how he hoped he wasn’t going to be asked to do anything. Children had never liked him, he claimed. And now with the scar, mos
t were afraid of him. In fact, he went so far as to comment that babies were like cats—a man wasn’t meant to hold them, but he ought to avoid stepping on them.
Adam stopped just inside the kitchen, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Nothing had an aroma like his mother’s kitchen. The stove, the hint of soap, the years of baked cinnamon bread and apple pie.
“The smell of home,” Wes echoed Adam’s thoughts.
“Nowhere else in the world,” Adam added.
May moved to the stove to stir a pot of stew while Daniel poured his brothers coffee.
“We’ve been living here for about three months,” he said as he handed them each a cup. “I thought of getting my own place, but I had to wait for the leg to heal, and I didn’t like seeing this house empty. I’m preaching at a little church near Twin Rivers, but I’m here with May the rest of the time. We’ve planted a big garden and the orchard’s almost ripe. I’ve taken care of the horses Dad had left, but the few the rebs didn’t manage to round up have about gone wild from lack of riding.”
“I’ll help you break any horses you need to sell before winter,” Wes volunteered.
“Thanks, I’ve been waiting for you to make it back home.” Dan rubbed his leg. “There’s also—”
Dan would have added more to be done, but Wes interrupted. “I’ll help while I’m here, but as far as I’m concerned, this place is yours now, Daniel, not mine,” Wes said calmly as he gave away his inheritance. “Yours and May’s and your children to come.”
“But . . .” Daniel began shaking his head.
“Wes is right,” Adam added. “The farm should belong to you. You can’t raise a family on what a preacher makes on Sunday. I’ll need a house in town with my practice. I’d never make a farmer. And though I enjoy riding, I’ve never been good with animals like you are, Danny. I think Mom would like the idea of you and May filling that second floor with children.”
Wes looked up over the rim of his cup. “I’ve had offers in Texas. With my back pay, I can make a great deal of money moving cattle to market. A friend of mine said you can round up cattle, or pay a dollar a head for them in Texas, then move them north and sell them for twenty, maybe twenty-five in Kansas. I could never stay out of the saddle long enough to see roots grow.”