by Carole Howey
Missy fell back into her seat as if a lance had pinned her there right through her heart. This was worse than she thought. Far worse. She remembered the lovely Antoinette Deauville in Louisville, and remembered the woman Joshua had told her about: Madeleine.
Flynn's lover?
"Is it a woman?" She forced the question.
Flynn wanted to be sick. He clenched his hands and his teeth and made himself stare at Missy, who looked as if he'd just run her through. He knew, looking at her, what she wanted to hear from him. He found that he wanted to tell her, but he knew he never could. For Seamus's sake. "Yes," he said dully. He thought he'd choke on the lie.
Missy's lustrous gray eyes misted, but she pinched her mouth into a poker-straight line.
"You're lying, Flynn," she said softly. "Why?"
Flynn's chin fell to his chest, and he could no longer keep his eyes open. How did she know? Had he become that awful at spinning falsehoods? Was lying a skill that deteriorated with use? he wondered wearily. Or had he simply allowed Missy Cannon so far inside his defenses that he was no longer capable of deceiving her? Or himself?
He let out a small, bitter laugh.
"Christ, Missy Cannon, you're going to be the death of me," he muttered. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"The truth," she ventured in a small voice. "Would it be so very hard?"
"Harder than you know," he said, half to himself.
"Half your life," she mused in a voice so tender that it ripped through his breast like a jagged blade. "It's a long time to live with a lie. I'm surprised you're no more bitter than you are."
Did she mean to kill him with kindness now? Did she know how easy it would be?
"Don't do this to me, Missy," he breathed, turning away from her. "I'd rather have your outrage than your pity. I know how to deal with that. I don't deserve your sympathy, and I don't deserve your" He could not summon the strength to utter the word he found suddenly on his tongue.
"My love?" Her question was a whisper.
Love. That was it. You remember love, Flynn? his conscience taunted him. It's what you thought you felt for Madeleine. It's what keeps you protecting Seamus. And it's what's breaking your heart right now. He stared at Missy Cannon, who looked back at him with steady, sorrowful gray eyes.
"I do love you, you know," she said in a voice that was more air than sound.
My God, what had it cost her to say it? he wondered, shamed by her strength and sincerity, and by his own cowardice. He could only guess, and he knew his guess would fall far short of the reality.
He stiffened his spine and squared his shoulders. He could not afford such a sentiment. Neither of them could.
"Don't say it," he advised her coldly, turning toward the wall. "Don't even think it. I'm a part of something so ugly you'd hate me for it if you knew the truth. I could stand that, but it wouldn't be fair to you. I've already made you suffer enough for something you don't deserve. I wish to hell I could just walk away from here today as if that damned paper didn't exist. But the fact is right now that title is the only thing that's giving me a chance to claw my way out of a hole that I've been buried in for over twelve years, a hole I spent six years before that digging.
"I could love you, Missy," he confessed to her. "Easily. I wouldn't have thought so in February, or even a month ago, but I know it now. Oh, too well. But it would be wrong for both of us. Dead wrong."
"Why?"
He started. How had she moved directly behind him without his knowing it? This was not good. He was losing his mind or his good sense, and either would spell disaster for him and Seamus, and for Missy as well. He tried to move away, but the smell of her fresh air and apples and cinnamon held him fast.
"You don't understand," he managed to whisper. "And I pray you never do. You're so trusting and straightforward. I'm sorry as hell I had to be the one to show you artifice and deceit. That's as big a sin on my soul as all of the others combined. The only bigger one is that I can't let you go until I get my pound of flesh to satisfy"
God, he'd almost told her.
"Who?" she urged him.
But he had control of himself again. That was close. Too close. Fixing a cold, blank look on his face, he forced himself to turn around, to look at her. The expression of tender concern on her face nearly made him look away again.
"I have a proposition for you," he said in a clinical tone, staring through her instead of at her. "Give me five thousand dollars today as the first payment of a buyout of my half of the deed. As long as we operate in the black, you can give me five thousand every other month until next May. That's seven payments of five thousand dollars each; thirty-five thousand dollars total. If we keep making a profit, that is. By that time, I'll have bought myself an extra year to figure out what I'm going to do for money in the future, and you'll have your ranch back, free and clear. What do you say?"
"If I say no?" She laid a finger alongside her cheek.
He hoped his look was as uncompromising.
"I need that five thousand now," he told her. "If you don't give it to me, I'll have to get it some other way."
Missy considered him. His blue eyes were cold as a December sky and his features utterly blank. His words were such a revelation to her as to make Gideon's earlier remarks seem absurd and unimportant. Flynn loved her, as certainly as she loved him. But was it really love, if he could not trust her with his secret?
There, she sensed, was where it ended. He could not tell her his truth, whatever it was, and she could not live with his lie. He might as well not have loved her after all. And she would never stop loving him, no matter where the future led her.
Along with an agreement worded the way Flynn had suggested, Missy wrote out a bank draft for five thousand dollars, not because she felt constrained to do so, but because she feared what Flynn would do for the money if she did not. Besides, it meant that in a year she would be free again. She was no longer certain, though, of what she was freeing herself from. Or if she wanted to be free of it.
"Gideon said you'd offered to help teach him to read," she said when she handed him the draft.
Flynn accepted the check with a grim look.
"I told him I'd help, if he minded his manners and did as he was told," he answered in a wooden voice. "That boy needs a strong hand. Missy."
She looked up. "What?"
"Can we at least be friends?" he asked, his voice hoarse, his eyes hooded. "I'd like that."
Missy nodded. She even managed to smile, although she would rather have put her face in her hands and cried in despair.
PART THREE
PRESERVANTIA WINCIT
Chapter Fifteen
July, 1892
"Is Missy to home?"
Bill Boland stood there on the front porch in a summer suit with his hand on his white Stetson.
Damn it all to hell and back, Flynn thought, looking the aging rancher up and down. Was it Sunday afternoon again? Where had the week gone?
Bill Boland had taken to calling on Missy every Sunday afternoon since May with unfailing regularity, and Flynn had no choice but to put the best face on it. After all, he'd as much as told Missy that spring day that anything beyond friendship was out of the question for him. He'd felt a small relief at the time, getting it out in the open, but he'd found himself regretting it every day since, as he'd been obliged to watch Bill Boland, that smug, secure, self-righteous son of a bitch, come by
every Sunday and make inroads into Missy's tender affections.
Damn it.
"Come in, Bill." Missy was right behind him, and her warm invitation was issued as if he, Flynn, were not even present. Boland brushed by him with no more regard than he might have tendered a coat rack.
"Gideon and I are going fishing." Flynn addressed his statement to Missy but he had a glare to spare for Bill's back.
Missy's look of disappointment was gratifying. That is, until she spoke.
"Oh, I was hoping he'd want to come along on a drive wi
th us," she fretted, sending the rancher an apologetic glance. "Bill's driving his new surrey this afternoon, and he wanted to show if off to me. He had it at church this morning, too. Did you see it outside, Flynn?"
New surrey. Flynn scowled.
"Nope," he replied airily. "You can ask Gid, if you want." The invitation was a taunt and a challenge. Gideon loved fishing, and he was only allowed to do it if he'd successfully completed a week's worth of lessons. This past week, he'd proudly finished the third-grade primer and had written out the Lord's Prayer in a better hand than Flynn himself. Besides, Flynn knew that Gideon's role on the drive would be one of chaperon, and that Missy wouldn't go with Bill without one. If he, Flynn, could ruin the rancher's courting plans on a fine afternoon, he considered it a mark in the credit column.
Flynn tried whenever possible to be out of the house when the courting widower came to call of a Sunday afternoon. Seeing Boland took away his appetite for Lucy's fine Sunday suppers.
"I expect he's all ready to go fishing," Missy mourned, shooting Flynn a surreptitious, grateful look.
''Of course, you could go by yourself with Bill," Flynn suggested, purposely ignoring the look. "After all, it's not as if you two haven't known each other since the flood."
The flood was Bill's favorite metaphor, and Missy had confided to Flynn only that morning before church that despite their long courtship, she did not feel ready to be alone with Bill Boland yet. Flynn felt a moment of triumph goading both of them with one remark, but only a moment. For if Missy went out driving alone with Bill Boland, that would be a clear signal to the widower that Missy's favors were available. If Boland kissed her, Flynn would have to kill him.
Damn it twice.
Missy's gray eyes were wide as saucers; for a moment Flynn feared he'd spoken his curse aloud. Served her right, Flynn thought, grinning at her even as he felt like strangling her. Maybe it was about time she learned what was in store for her if she married Bill Boland.
Well, you're sure as hell not going to ask her to marry you, his conscience taunted him. Who in the hell are you to stand in the way of someone who wants to make her happy?
Missy had come to trust him in small ways in the past two months as they'd worked together with the ranch, and with Gideon. The results were that the ranch was thriving even more than it had under Missy's supervision, which was no mean accomplishment, and Gideon was coming along just fine in his manners and his lessons, losing the cautious look in his lively eyes and taming the wilder side of his nature. Flynn found that he genuinely liked the boy, even if he was a sight smarter than he needed to be.
Flynn had also shared many an intimate, if brief, conversation of an evening with Missy, and she had revealed a little of herself to him. He'd liked what he'd seen. Admired it, even. And found himself, against his will and better judgment, growing to love the woman more and more for her frank, gentle nature uncluttered by artifice and ulterior motives. So unlike most women in his experience. So unlike Madeleine and her ilk.
Missy's alarmed expression blended to one of reproach that Flynn was certain Boland could not see, and he remembered her immediate predicament. He pretended to ignore the look, though, as he pushed by the rancher in the foyer.
"I'll take a look upstairs and see if Gideon's ready for our fishing trip," he muttered to no one in particular. As he climbed the first step he heard Missy's pleasant, if desperate, soprano invite Bill into the parlor for some refreshment.
Flynn wasn't sure precisely when he decided that that is, that Gideon had to save Missy from being alone with Bill on that surrey ride, but if he was pinned to it, he'd say it was right around the fourth or fifth step.
"I swear, Gideon, if you go driving with them, I'll take you fishing twice this week before Sunday." Flynn was out of breath.
Gideon looked up from lacing his boots, one eyebrow arched, one eye squinted. "You run all the way upstairs?"
He had, but he wasn't about to admit that to Gideon. Gideon was even sharper than Missy about some things, and far less charitable in his candid observations.
"What do you say?" He decided that ignoring the question was the best tack to take.
"Missy says I can't go fishin' until all my lessons are done." Gideon bent his head to his boot lacings.
"I'll make it all right with Missy," Flynn said swiftly, still panting. "Just get on down there right now and tell her you'll go. But don't make it look like you're doing her a favor, or she'll get suspicious." Gideon glanced sideways at him, pausing.
"The favor's for you, isn't it?" he asked.
"Hurry up!" Christ, couldn't the boy move any quicker?
"Must be pretty important," Gideon commented, taking his time with his boots.
"Damn it, Gid!"
"Missy'd sure hang you out to dry if she heard you swearin' around me. You know how she is about that."
"Yeah, I know," Flynn growled. "Just get down there. Fast."
"Wait a minute. I didn't say I was gonna do it," Gideon reminded him with a cool look. "I was all set to go fishin', like you promised. I finished that dumb old primer, and"
"Twice this week. Cross my heart." Flynn looked out the window anxiously. The surrey was still there in the drive, unattended. He thought it a garish affair, with a sissy fringe dancing about its canopy, but he guessed women and very old men went in for that sort of thing. So far Missy and Boland were nowhere in evidence. They must still be in the parlor. He allowed himself a quick breath of relief.
"I don't know." Gideon's youthful voice was heavy with doubt.
Flynn spun on him. "What do you mean, you don't kn"
The look on Gideon's face cut him short. He realized at once that the boy was playing him, and that Gideon knew exactly how high the stakes were. He grimaced.
"All right, three times," he muttered, grudgingly admiring the boy's scheming intellect. "But we won't tell Missy a thing, all right? Just"
Gideon shook his head slowly, not smiling, not taking his somber gaze from Flynn's. Flynn would have sworn
the kid was the son of an undertaker, or a preacher, as serious as he looked.
"I don't know," he intoned again. "I don't like the notion of not tellin' Missy. You know what a store she sets by honesty. If she was to learn that I'd deceived her . . ." He trailed off, making a great show of looking troubled.
"Why, you little faker! You didn't have any trouble looking her in the eye last night when she asked where that last dish of slump went!"
Gideon looked offended.
"That was different."
"Like hell it was." Flynn peered through the gap in the curtains to check outside.
Damn it, Boland must have talked her into it after all! There they were, standing by the surrey. Missy seemed skittish as a colt. Boland had a look on his lined face that was smooth as whipped butter. Flynn clenched his hands, aching to whip something else.
"Three times, Gideon, and you can have my dessert for a whole week," he said through his teeth. "Now get down there quick! They're getting in!"
"My Sunday clothes are all put away just the way Missy likes, though, and I already got on my reg'lar clothes," Gideon fretted. Missy had been at him for days to put them in the laundry for Lucy to wash, Flynn knew, but the boy seemed to like the fact that they smelled like Glory.
Strongly.
Flynn grinned.
"All the better," he said swiftly. "Try to sit between them if you can. If you can't, sit right in the middle in the back, and be sure to sit forward if you think they're getting too cozy."
"I got a powerful lot of chores to do this week." Damn it, the boy was worse than a wheeler-dealer politician.
"If you think I'm going to"
Flynn's declaration was interrupted by the sound of a buggy whip cracking.
"I'll do them," he muttered swiftly. "Go, you little scoundrel! And if you don't catch up with them, all bets are off!"
But Gideon was gone before Flynn's codicil had left his lips. By the time Flynn got to the window
to see what happened, Gideon was already yelling for the pair to stop. With no small sense of relief, Flynn watched the boy climb into the rear seat of the surrey behind the courting pair. He wished he could see Boland's look of disappointment, but the rancher's face was obscured by the broad brim of his hat.
"Thank you, Flynn."
It was dusk. The Black Hills glowed amber and rose with the setting sun behind them. The heat of the afternoon had relented to a comfortable warmth, enough to make the evening breeze pleasant on the front porch. Flynn did not look at Missy as she emerged from the house. He sank further into his seat, slid his booted feet up the porch pillar, and drew on the stub of a cigar clenched in his teeth.