A Knight In Cowboy Boots

by Quint, Suzie

  Maddie looked at the child in her arms. One hand brushed his shiny red hair.

  “You don’t play fair,” she accused softly.

  “Yeah,” Sol agreed. “And that’s why we’ll win.”

  Zach had to let her know Sol’s offer came from all of them. “We’re offering you the chance for Jesse to grow up like a normal kid. For God’s sake, take it, Maddie.”

  He’d hoped she’d agree. He hadn’t expected her to burst into tears.

  Ignoring his older brother’s raised eyebrow, Zach crossed to the bed in two steps and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s okay, sweet Maddie. We’ll take care of everything.”

  Only when they started arranging to get everyone to the ranch did Maddie tell them about the car waiting at the rodeo grounds, and Zach learned how close he’d come to actually losing her. He knew he should be grateful he hadn’t; what he felt instead was anger. He bit down on it and tried not to let it show.

  Knowing Jake would fill Sol in on how things were between him and Maddie, Zach wasted no time getting her and Jesse into the Lincoln and heading for the ranch. Angry as he was, he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight until she was firmly ensconced under his mother’s watchful eye. His brothers would caravan the rest of the vehicles home a couple hours behind them.

  Zach didn’t think they could manage the drive in silence, but everything he could think to say was either bitter or downright hostile. Maddie stared in silence out the passenger window for nearly an hour. Zach wondered if she regretted letting them sway her.

  Without looking away from the passing scenery, Maddie finally broke the silence. “Jake said your mother wouldn’t approve of me.”

  It was about the last thing he expected. “When did he say that?”

  Maddie’s hands lifted in a helpless gesture as evocative as a shrug.

  “I don’t know why he would say that.”

  “He said she wouldn’t approve of us.”

  “She wouldn’t like knowing we’ve been … intimate,” Zach said. “I don’t have any plans to share that with her though.”

  “I don’t know if I can get through this without you … distracting me.”

  “Is that what I’ve been doing?” Zach couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Distracting you?”

  “Yes … No …” She was silent for several moments while Zach stewed in his anger. “I thought I was building a new life for Jesse and me. You made me feel almost normal again.”

  “And yet you were going to run. You were going to leave everything behind.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was flat and emotionless.

  “You think maybe you still oughta.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She turned toward him. “I’m scared, Zach. More scared than I’ve ever been. When he killed Laurel and Vince, I wasn’t scared. It was over before I knew I needed to be. This time I know it’s coming.”

  Zach felt like a selfish jerk for being mad at her, but he wasn’t ready to let his anger go. “Why me? Why’d you go with me that first night?”

  Maddie looked out the window again. “The way you talk. You sound like Vince.”

  Her words knifed through him. She couldn’t have said anything more hurtful if she’d tried. Here he was, falling in love with her, and she was pretending he was someone else. It didn’t help that Vince had been a good guy.

  “That’s what brought you to Galveston. To Rachel’s hotel, ain’t it?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t ready to let go of him yet. I needed to be someplace where he’d been. Someplace he knew. He told me once that he stayed at the Gull whenever he was … ” She drew a sharp breath. “It was because of Rachel. Because she works there.” The eyes she turned toward him were wide with the realization. “That’s why he stayed there, wasn’t it? She’d comp him a room, just like she does for you.”

  Zach felt his mouth stretch into a hard thin line.

  “I guess you’re gonna be in hog heaven in Jefferson coz everyone at home talks the way Vince did.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I went with you that first night because I was drinking and you reminded me of Vince.” Sorrow tinged her voice, but its edge was muted. It didn’t come close to the misery that had curled itself up in Zach’s soul. “That’s not why I let you get close to me. It’s not why I ended up in bed with you. You did that all on your own, even though by then I was trying to keep you at arm’s length.”

  “Yeah, you let me take you to bed because I’m so damned irresistible.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes and her tone sharpened. “If you weren’t driving right now, I’d slap the hell out of you!”

  He was tempted to pull over and let her try.

  “If you’re gonna tell me I swept you off your feet, you’d best not. Not when you called me Vince the first time we had sex.”

  Maddie drew a sharp breath.

  “Forgot about that, did you?”

  She was silent for nearly a minute. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you surely did.”

  Maddie let the silence descend again. Zach thought the conversation was over but after a couple of minutes, she said, “For a while you and Vince were all tangled up in my mind. It’s not that way anymore, Zach. I wish there was a way to prove that to you.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s just as well there’s not.”

  Zach felt his heart shrivel in his chest. If she wasn’t willing to fight it through, he might as well have let her run because he’d already lost her.

  *

  The ranch house sat a quarter of a mile off the county road. As they pulled into the ranch yard, Zach saw everything with fresh eyes, the way it must appear to Maddie. The big old white clapboard house that was due to be painted sitting opposite the two-story barn with the corrals beside it. Between the corrals and the barn, the ranch trucks were parked in a row in the open shed, the tractor parked next to the bay that housed the welder and Gideon’s farrier and blacksmithing equipment. He could just see the corner of the vegetable garden behind the house. Everything but mamma’s patch of flowers, thick with bearded irises, was built for function rather than aesthetics.

  As Zach stopped the car around the back of the house, the youngest McKnights, two boys and two girls, ranging from eleven to thirteen, ran across the ranch yard in some chasing game, the dogs at their heels. He wished Sol and Jake were closer behind them so his mamma would have something to distract her from him bringing a girl home. For a bleak moment, he agreed with Maddie that it was just as well they couldn’t recapture what they’d had before; he’d never be able to touch her here the way he wanted to.

  His mother opened the back screen door to see who’d arrived in the unfamiliar car. Zach released a deep breath, steeling himself to face her. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this, but you’re about to meet the rest of my family.”

  “Are they like Rachel?”

  “No, but they can be a bit overwhelming.”

  Zach’s mother came out to greet them. He hugged her then introduced Maddie and Jesse.

  Zach’s mother took her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Maddie. Madeline?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s a good strong name.” His mother liked strong names; Maddie would forever be Madeline to her. “Call me Ruth. Come on into the kitchen. I was just making pies for supper.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” Zach asked.

  “He’s out in the barn, fussing with a colicky calf. Did you see Sol and the others at the rodeo?”

  “Yeah, they’ll be along in a couple of hours. I’m gonna go see Daddy.” Zach felt guilty, abandoning Maddie, but he couldn’t face his mother, knowing she would be sizing them up as a couple. He didn’t think he could maintain that illusion, and his mother would box his ears if she heard any disrespect toward Maddie in his tone. When Sol got there, Zach would let him break the news that Maddie was Vince’s girl and that she needed their protection.

  *

  Not knowing how much the boys
had told their parents, Maddie was cautious with Zach’s mother. She was pretty sure Ruth was speculating madly about what relationship might exist between Maddie and her son, but she didn’t force any prying questions on Maddie. Instead, while Maddie fed Jesse, Ruth talked about the weather—not a trivial subject, Maddie knew, for any rural family.

  At intervals, one or two of the children returned to the house to run through the kitchen, snagging a bit of food: a box of raisins or, with an approving nod from their mother, a cookie from the jar on the counter.

  After one foray, Maddie was surprised to find one of the girls had chosen to remain in the house. Just like her siblings, she’d been in jeans and T-shirt just minutes before, but she had changed into a blue dress with a white pinafore Maddie guessed Ruth had made for her.

  Though she looked nothing like Laurel, something about her reminded Maddie of her sister when she’d been that age. She came and sat on the table near Maddie and started tying ribbons into the hair of the doll she’d brought with her, sneaking not too subtle glances at Maddie. Finally, the girl asked, “What’s your names?”

  “My name’s Maddie and this is Jesse. What’s yours?”

  “Hannah,” she said, meeting Maddie’s gaze.

  “And how old are you, Hannah?”

  “I’m ten.” The demands of politeness, at least in the form of eye contact, seemed to have been met in the girl’s mind. Her gaze dropped to Jesse and stayed there. “Where do you live?”

  “Hannah, stop being so nosy,” Ruth said as she started weaving a lattice crust over a cherry pie.

  “It’s okay,” Maddie said. “I don’t mind.” She turned back to the girl. “I’ve been living in Galveston.”

  “I have a sister in Galveston.”

  “I know. I work at the same hotel.”

  “What do you do there?”

  Maddie cast a glance at Ruth. She wondered if a woman who gave her children old testament names would approve of alcohol. “I bartend.” She couldn’t tell if Ruth approved or not.

  “What do you do with your baby when you’re bartending?”

  “I have a college girl who sits for me.”

  “Do you like bartending?” Hannah asked. “More than you like taking care of your baby?”

  “Hannah!”

  “It’s okay,” Maddie assured Ruth. “I’d prefer to be home with Jesse, but it’s just me and him, so I have to work, so I can feed him and buy him clothes.”

  “I’d never leave my baby if I had one.”

  “Hannah!” Ruth’s tone was harsher.

  “Well, I wouldn’t,” Hannah said to her mother. She turned to Maddie, explaining, “I want to be a mamma and have a dozen babies.”

  Undoubtedly, that explained her difficulty letting go of the doll, a toy years too young for her. Laurel would have said exactly the same thing at Hannah’s age.

  “Not all at once, I hope,” Ruth said, finishing the lattice crust of the first pie.

  “I think it would neat,” Hannah said.

  “You’re not a sow, Hannah. You oughta never have more babies than you have teats to feed them.”

  “Marianne’s mother has triplets.”

  “Bless her heart, so she does. And if she’s smart, she’ll make sure her medical insurance is all paid up. Even if those babies are only half the trouble you and your brother are, they’re going to have to put her away before they’re grown.”

  “Hannah’s a twin?” Maddie asked.

  Ruth nodded. “Her and Aaron. Eighteen minutes apart. She came breach. Never thought anything could hurt half as bad as delivering them two.” With her fingertips, she scooped up some flour from the board where she’d rolled out the pie crusts and flicked it at her daughter.

  Instinctively, Hannah jerked her head away. Flour droplets fell on her skirt. When she saw them, she tried to brush them off, her mouth pursed in disapproval. Maddie knew then why Hannah reminded her of her sister; she was a girl who naturally gravitated toward feminine things just as Laurel had.

  The flour only momentarily distracted Hannah though. Her eyes locked on Jesse again, her doll lay forgotten on the table. “If you lived near us, I could babysit for you while you work. I’m a good babysitter.”

  Maddie had to fight to keep her smile from twisting into something else. “I’m sure you are.” Hannah was so much like Laurel it hurt.

  The pies were in the oven when Sol and the others caravanned into the ranch yard. Everyone went out to greet them and to hear about the bull Jake had bought with Zach’s approval. In rural tradition, supper was unfashionably early.

  Ruth still had her children’s highchair which she had Jeb dig out of the shed. Maddie was seated at the corner of the table where she could attend Jesse in the chair. Zach sat beside her, but it was plain that his normal seat was closer to the middle of the table. Beyond requests to pass the biscuits or the gravy, they said next to nothing to each other. More than once, Maddie caught Ruth pressing her lips together in disapproval.

  Sol had obviously warned his father that they needed to have some kind of family conference. After supper, Daisy volunteered to babysit, with Hannah’s help of course, while the older members of the family disbanded to the living room.

  “So Zach ain’t told you why Maddie’s here,” Sol said, casting a disgruntled look at his brother. Zach shrugged, obviously unwilling to let Sol put him on the spot, “but her being here affects all of us,” Sol continued. “She was Vince’s girl in Wyoming.”

  Maddie tried to ignore the weight of all their eyes on her. Even so, she didn’t miss the questioning flash Zach’s mother shot his way. His expression gave back no emotion.

  Sol continued before any of them could express their sympathy. “Zach met her in Galveston when he came off the oil rig, but he didn’t know who she was until today.”

  The speculative look Ruth McKnight turned on her son lasted longer. Had Zach told his mother about her? Why the possibility made her heart skip a beat she couldn’t understand. He was never going to forgive her for loving Vince first.

  Sol went on to explain what had brought Maddie to Texas and the danger she now faced. No one offered to debate whether they should involve themselves in Maddie’s troubles. Jeb thought maybe they should call the sheriff, but when Maddie pointed out that, since the charges against Derek had been dropped for lack of evidence, the authorities couldn’t hold him on anything. The risk, however, that they’d take Jesse because she’d fled Wyoming without permanent custody scared the hell out of her. In the end, they accepted Sol’s scheme to have Rachel find a way to point the way to Maddie, so they could lay a trap for Derek. “The question,” Sol said, “is what do we do once the son of a bitch gets here?”

  Zach’s father, Jeb, took up the lead. “Do you have custody of Jesse, Maddie, or is his daddy gonna come after us with lawyers?”

  “I got temporary custody when Derek was charged with murder. As far as I know, it’s never been revoked. I didn’t ask what they might do if I left the state with Jesse. I didn’t want to tip my hand and give them cause to watch me. I don’t think Derek would do that anyway. It would take too long, and he wouldn’t get any satisfaction from it.”

  “What will he do?”

  Maddie had spared some thought for this on the long, silent drive. “I don’t think he’ll come out here openly, especially once he knows how many McKnights are here.” Maddie paused, hating that she was bringing danger to Zach’s family. “If he gets a shot at one of your younger children, I don’t have any trouble imagining him trying to set up a trade.”

  Zach’s father turned toward Ruth. “Mamma Bear, I think you need to take the girls and young ‘uns to see your sister in Louisiana ‘til this is over.”

  Zach’s mother nodded.

  Jeb’s easy acceptance of her concern gave Maddie a little more confidence that they were taking the danger seriously. “Derek’s no fool. He won’t come out here and face all of you. He’ll try to catch me and Jesse alone or with just one or two of you.”


  “If this is gonna come down when and where we choose,” Jeb said, “we gotta give him an opportunity he won’t be able to resist.”

  “And if it’s a choice between kill or be killed?” Maddie asked, her heart beating so hard it seemed to knock the breath from her lungs.

  “There ain’t no if about it,” Sol said before his father could respond. “That rabid dog ain’t gonna hurt anyone ever again.” All eyes turned toward Sol. His face was hard and as set as if it had been carved out of granite. Vince had been his best friend, Maddie reminded herself.

  She looked around to see how the others were taking Sol’s declaration. The men’s eyes all turned hard, the creases in their faces making them look grim and menacing. Maddie had a surreal moment; these dour-faced men looked more dangerous than she would have ever imagined.

  “Sol, honey,” his mother said. “I don’t think—”

  “No, mamma. If we don’t stop it here, Maddie’ll have to look over her shoulder the rest of her life. She won’t be able to relax even a little coz all he’s gotta do is get lucky once.”

  Ruth’s lips tightened and her brow furrowed, but she didn’t object again.

  “What are we gonna do, Daddy?” Jake asked.

  “We could try to lure him with the kinda situation Maddie’s talking about. Show him what he wants with little or no protection, but I don’t cotton much to that idea. If he gets a whiff of a trap, and he might if we’re trying to make her look vulnerable without actually leaving her unprotected, we could lose the advantage of him thinking we ain’t expecting him. If I was him, the next best thing would be to get near Maddie and the baby in a crowd.” He met and held his wife’s eyes. “I say it’s time we held an old fashioned barn dance.”

  “We ain’t had one for a long time, Papa Bear,” Zach’s mother said.

  Jeb nodded. “We need an occasion then. Something that’ll cause a lotta talk he won’t be able to miss when he gets to town, and just to make sure he knows Maddie and Jesse’ll be around for it, we’ll have it in honor of Zach and Maddie getting promised to each other.”

  Maddie and Zach eyed each other dubiously as Zach’s daddy continued examining the idea for flaws. “Nobody’ll think twice about us celebrating that. That’ll draw a lotta folks out here. He’ll think he can hide in the crowd.”