Reese

by Lori Handeland

  Mary glanced at Cash. “Jo’s going to keep watch?”

  “Need more help than Brown and his friends if we have to go away a while.”

  They were still considering going after EI Diablo, against Reese’s wishes. Mary couldn’t say she blamed them. If Reese died, she wouldn’t give a plug nickel for El Diablo’s chances.

  “We saw Miss McKendrick’s window was open,” Frank continued. “Rico said it should be closed, for sec-sec-security.” The twins exchanged glances. “We just wanted to make sure he wasn’t dead. Our pa said he was dead.”

  “Your pa’s the one who’s gonna be dead if he doesn’t shut his trap.”

  The boys blinked at Cash, eyes wide.

  “Go frighten someone your own size,” Mary told him.

  But Cash no longer glared at the twins; he stared at the bed. “What’s wrong with him?” His voice had gone as dead as his eyes, and a chill ran over Mary even before turned to Reese.

  His face unnaturally flushed, he trembled so hard the bed rattled, and his teeth chattered.

  “What did you little brats do to him?” Cash thundered.

  “N-nothin’!” Frank wailed. “We just talked to him a while. Told him how much we liked him. Said we wanted to ride with him, like you do. We never even touched him!”

  The twins fled. Mary lifted the corner of Reese’s bandage. The room spun. Cash’s hands came down on her shoulders, steadying her.

  “Get Nate,” she said. “This doesn’t look good.”

  Chapter 16

  The men filled the parlor doorway. Mary stood in a circle of light that fell from the bedroom. Nate hovered in between.

  “Infection and fever. It’s what I was afraid of.”

  “He gonna die?” Cash asked.

  Nate pulled out his flask, then, with a sigh, put it away again. “I don’t know.”

  Mary had hoped Nate would come in, baptize Reese with alcohol, pat him on the head, and pronounce him cured. Instead, he’d drained a foul-smelling liquid from the wound, muttering all the while.

  Reese thrashed and burned and mumbled like a madman. Mary was scared to death. She wanted to scream and rant and rave. She wanted to get her hands around the throat of the man who had done this. She wanted to curl up next to Reese on the bed and hold him close forever.

  “I’m through waitin’,” Cash announced. “I’m goin’ after that Comanche bastard. No offense, Sullivan.”

  Sullivan merely turned his usual stoic expression on Cash and said nothing.

  While Mary understood Cash’s sentiments, she also recalled that Reese had not wanted them to go after El Diablo in his own lair. “What good will it do to kill El Diablo and the rest now, even if you can?”

  “If?” Cash sneered. “I can kill anything that walks.”

  “Not something I’d be very proud of.”

  “Spoken like a woman.”

  They exchanged glares. Since Reese’s injury and their subsequent talk, they had reached a truce of sorts, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t pick at each other whenever the opportunity arose.

  “Children.” Nate raised his hands. “Bickering won’t help.”

  “What will?” Cash asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I’m not watchin’ him die when I can be out doing something. Who’s in?”

  No one bothered to answer. They all followed Cash through the door.

  *

  Reese was hot and cold by turns. He ached so deep in his bones he could hardly bear the pain. The only thing that helped was when Mary’s sweet voice penetrated the limbo where he lived and her fingers entwined with his.

  The warmth of her hand in his darkness was like the flicker of the lamp she left in her window, reminding him that she was there, steady and sure as the sun. Always.

  When he’d heard the other voices—the ones that had sent him over the edge before—weak from pain, wrung out from the fever, he did not have the strength to fight the worst pain of all.

  His memories.

  Reese sank into the gray mist of a past long buried. Down a long corridor lined with faces he flew, faster and faster, toward something he did not want to see but could not stop.

  The thunder of the cannon and the burst of the guns jerked his body, causing a shaft of agony that made him remember he was not really on a battlefield in Georgia, even though it seemed that he was.

  “Mr.—I mean, Captain.”

  Reese glanced at the soldier-child who stood at his elbow, a shock of brown hair tucked beneath his gray cap, wide blue eyes fixed on Reese with respectful adoration.

  Reese had known Robert Gow all his life. He’d known many of the boys in this company since the day they were born.

  As the head schoolmaster at Garrison’s Boys’ Academy, outside Atlanta—a man whose father had attended West Point, then taught his scholarly son everything he knew—Reese had been offered a commission when the war broke out. He had not expected his fourth-year students to follow him into battle, but they had. As a result, the company Reese led consisted of the young men he’d been teaching since they were in short pants.

  But he had taught them well—not only reading, writing, and the like but the importance of loyalty, honor, and devotion to friends, family, and country.

  Reese was a leader, and he led well. His enthusiasm for the cause—the protection of their homes against the invader, the right to live as they chose—had kept the spirits of his men high when the morale of so many other companies flagged. Reese was proud of what they had accomplished, proud the boys admired him, proud they would follow him into hell itself—or so they said.

  “Sir, shall we advance?”

  Reese squinted against the damp, swirling gray mist—smoke, rain, and fog all mixed together. Somewhere out there were the Yankees. They were always out there somewhere.

  Attack? Retreat? Wait? A choice he had to make every day. So far his choices had been good ones. Reese was confident he would continue to choose wisely. His company of soldier boys depended on him. Their families had entrusted them to him, and he would not let them down.

  The scouting report he’d received that morning had said two companies waited over the ridge, but they were bedraggled from a battle not many days before. If Reese and his men could break through their line, they could join with another company to the east, flank the Yankees, and drive them back where they came from. Though the federal force was superior in number, Reese believed his soldier boys would triumph.

  “Attack,” Reese decided. “While the fog lingers.”

  “Sir.” Gow saluted and moved through the mist to gather the men.

  Reese patted the letter in his pocket—the latest missive from the fiancée who awaited him in Atlanta. When the war was over, they would be married, and he would resume teaching young minds in the daytime, with the pleasurable bonus of enjoying his lovely wife each night.

  Reese joined his assembled company. Every time he saw them thus, lined up together, he was struck again by their youth. Not a man was over twenty, except for Gow and himself. But there was little Reese could do about that. The Confederacy needed every man it could find, even if some of them had spent too little time as boys.

  He nodded to Gow, who gave the silent order to advance. That was the last order Gow ever gave.

  The Yankees spilled over the ridge, more than two companies, more than an army it seemed from the sea of bluecoats that poured down the hill. Reinforcements must have arrived after Reese’s scout had returned.

  He should never have attacked. He should have done what his daddy always told him to do when faced with a superior force—dig in and defend.

  Reese didn’t have time to curse fate. Fate crawled all over them. Gow went down first without uttering sound, falling backward into Reese’s arms. His blue eyes looked surprised, and then he was gone, just like that.

  Several of the boys stared at their lieutenant in horror and shuffled about as if they might run, but Reese shouted, “Stand firm, men!” and the
panic did not erupt right away.

  Having no time to get to his horse, Reese dived in, using his sword this way, his gun that way. A bullet hit him in the thigh, and he went onto one knee. That was all it took for panic to engulf his soldier boys. A year of success in the field went the way of the west wind when they saw their lieutenant die and their captain fall.

  Reese struggled upright. “Hold the line!”

  But the swarm of gray rushing past him no longer heard anything but the buzz of terror in their own ears.

  Cursing, Reese tried to follow, hoping that if he got in front of them, if they saw he was all right, he would be able to turn the tide. But another wave of blue came over the crest.

  They were trapped.

  He took one step toward his men, and the minie ball hit him in the back. He fell to the ground with the horror-stricken faces of his soldier boys imprinted on his mind forever. Not even the darkness that swallowed him made those faces go away.

  Reese awoke to a darkness so complete, he thought he must be dead. But the dead did not feel pain.

  Worse than the pain was the silence. Reese turned his head and saw trees then the sky beyond. He was all alone in the woods.

  His feet were cold. Flexing his toes, he discovered his boots were gone, his socks too. When he dragged himself upright, the pain in his back and his thigh made the world spin in a sickening lurch. When it stopped, Reese found that his guns had disappeared, along with his bullets and his best horse.

  All that was left to him in the grove of trees set between two ridges in Georgia were the bodies of every one of his soldier boys.

  *

  Mary learned more about Reese while he was unconscious than he’d ever shared with her while awake.

  She spent the rest of that day and all through that long, dark, lonely night changing hot compresses on his shoulder and bathing the rest of his body with cool cloths. She dribbled water into his mouth every time he seemed semiconscious, though he babbled about boys and Georgia and a woman named Laura.

  Reese had sworn he had no wife. Should she believe a man who refused to share his name, though he’d shared her bed? Did it matter? Would she love him any less if he belonged to someone else?

  Mary rubbed at her grainy eyes. She’d slept in snatches between bouts of Reese’s ravings. When he was upset, she held his hand, which was the only thing that seemed to cal him.

  “Why don’t you let me sit with him a while?”

  Jo stood in the doorway. Mary flipped the sheet over Reese’s bare chest. “I’m fine.”

  “If fine is half-dead, you look dandy. Go lie down.”

  Mary hesitated, but a glance at Reese’s face made her realize the truth. “I can’t leave him.”

  “Figured that, but I thought I’d try.”

  “Who’s in the tower?”

  “Rose Sutton.” Mary’s eyebrows lifted, and Jo shrugged. “Since Reese saved her boys, she’s grown a spine. Told Baxter to shut up and get behind the counter, she was going to take her turn like any other citizen.”

  “Wish I could have seen that.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  They exchanged a smile. From the moment the two had met they shared a bond. Mary had never felt such an instant camaraderie with anyone but Jo Clancy.

  Unless she counted Reese.

  “How does you father feel about your toting a gun and spending nights in the tower?”

  “He doesn’t like it, but since he’s never liked much, I’m not surprised. I’ve given up trying to please him.” Jo tilted her head. “What’s this I hear about El Diablo thinking there’s gold in Rock Creek?”

  “Have you ever heard anything about it?”

  “The old guy who owns the hotel mumbled about gold sometimes, but no one ever believed him. And since he left, we can’t ask. This was once Comanche land though, so maybe El Diablo knows something we don’t.”

  “Comanche land?”

  Jo leaned against the doorway and nodded. “The original settlers built Rock Creek on Comanche land. That’s why there aren’t any founders left here. Comanches killed them all or drove them off.”

  “When was this?”

  “During the war all the soldiers went east. The Comanches went crazy. They thought they’d won, that the bluecoats had been driven off. So they took back whatever they could.”

  “And then?”

  “When the soldiers returned, they scuttled every Comanche they could find off to Indian Territory.”

  “Then folks came again to Rock Creek.”

  “For a while, anyway.”

  Mary glanced at Reese. He slept peacefully, and his shoulder seemed better. Perhaps he wouldn’t leave her by dying, after all.

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  Mary shifted her gaze to her friend. “I didn’t want to. I’ve managed everything since I was child, but I couldn’t manage this.”

  “You can’t manage how you feel; you can’t change who you love. What do you want, Mary?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Reese isn’t staying, and he never said he was.”

  “Men change.”

  “Name one.”

  “There must be one somewhere, sometime, who’s changed.”

  Mary laughed. Jo always knew what to say to raise her spirits.

  “You could go with him,” Jo said.

  Mary’s laughter died. “He wouldn’t ask.”

  “But if he did?”

  “I’d go. I’m discovering that I’d do just about anything for this man.”

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than I am.”

  Mary spun. Though sunken, Reese’s eyes were lucid and focused on her. Her cheeks burned at the realization that he’d heard her deepest secret.

  She reached for his forehead, but he caught her wrist and held her hand away from him. “Don’t fuss. What happened?”

  “Well, he seems fine now,” Jo said, “so I’ll just trot on back to the tower.”

  Neither Mary nor Reese said good-bye. They were too busy staring at each other. For her, one touch brought everything back. Mouths searching, tongues tasting, hands seeking. Him beside her, above her, within her. His body and hers, theirs, together, right here on this bed.

  She tugged on her wrist, and he let her go. Quickly, before he could stop her again, she placed her palm on his forehead. He scowled. She smiled. “Your fever’s broke.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Did you know you’ve been lying here for three days, scaring all of us half to death?”

  “Three days?”

  She shot him an “I told you so” look, and he snarled at her. He was going to live, all right. She wanted to skip and dance and sing. Instead, she sank down into the chair and laid her head next to his hip.

  “You scared me, Reese. You really, really scared me.”

  Then, to her horror, she burst into tears.

  *

  Mary hadn’t cried since 1862, but a few weeks in Reese’s company and he’d reduced her to tears.

  Excellent work.

  Because of him she’d nearly died. The story of his life. Everyone he’d ever cared about either died or wished they had never set eyes on him. He wondered which it would be for Mary in the end.

  He shouldn’t touch her. Since that rainy night in Georgia, he’d learned to smell a mistake a mile away. Touching Mary reeked of a very bad idea.

  So whose hand was stroking her hair? Couldn’t be his. Reese cursed and gave up, savoring the softness of the strands through his fingers and the warmth of her head next to his thigh. If he wasn’t half-dead, he might just enjoy this.

  “I’m not worth crying over, Mary. Don’t make me out to be some kind of hero.”

  “Why do you keep insisting you’re bad when anyone with eyes can see that you aren’t?”

  He could barely understand her for the weeping. His chest felt tight. She was going to make him start if she didn’t stop soon.

  “That’s enough. You’ll cry yourself sick.” />
  She raised her head. Damn. She was one of those women who looked good crying.

  “You saved my life, Reese. If that isn’t a hero, I don’t know what is.”

  “You wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”

  “And you wouldn’t be here with another bullet wound if I hadn’t come to Dallas. If you want to blame me for that, go ahead. I did what I had to do. But I’m going to believe what I want to believe. You’re a wonderful man.”

  “The last folks who believed that ended up dead.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  He couldn’t help it. He kissed her. She was so perfectly bullheaded. So brilliantly bossy. Who’d have ever thought he’d discover a woman just like him way out here in Texas?

  She stiffened with surprise then softened on a sigh. Kissing her in this bed made Reese remember everything else they had done here. And everything they hadn’t.

  The smell of her skin brought back its taste—at the curve of her hip, along the inside of her knee. Her moan of surrender recalled another of completion. The soft glide of her lips on his brought back the sensation of those lips in several other places.

  Reese pulled away. This was getting out of hand, and he really wasn’t up to it. But staring into Mary’s face, watching as she opened her eyes and smiled at him with her heart and her soul, for a moment he almost believed things could change, he could change, they could have a future, here, together.

  Then memories of a past she didn’t even know about reared their ugly heads. Once she learned who he had been, what he had done, how he had come to be what he was, she would never let him touch her again.

  He kissed her brow in his favorite spot, where the hair grew downy at the temple. He wanted to ask where the men were, but before he could, he fell asleep again.

  This time, there were no dreams; he slept the sleep of the exhausted, and when he awoke, he felt stronger. From the slant of the light through the window it was still daytime, and Mary slept in a chair next to the bed.

  “Mary?” Her head went up. “Guess I dozed off.”

  Her smile was soft, sleepy, and he fought the urge to yank her into the bed with him and kiss her dreamy mouth. “An entire day isn’t a doze.”