The heat raged between them like a forest fire fanned by a strong wind, spreading and building. Tanner pushed her to a point of white-hot agony that wept for completion, then carried her one step farther into spasms so strong even he felt them. Somewhere far away, she heard a woman cry out as if her soul had been brazed to another’s.
With a final hard thrust, Tanner answered. A deep, incoherent sound rose from his chest, and she felt the throbbing pulsations of his body join her own. He rested his head on her shoulder for a moment, then wrapped his arms around her and rolled them both to their sides, still entwined. They lay breathless and spent.
He reached up and brushed wild curls away from her face. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt?” he asked.
She smiled and took his hand to press a kiss into his palm. “I might have an ache or pain tomorrow, but I’m fine now.”
“It wasn’t how I’d pictured our reunion—if there was even going to be one. But we have all night. I’ll make it up to you. Will you stay?”
She closed her eyes briefly and took a breath. “Yes. I’m staying.”
He pulled her to her feet and took her into the bedroom. In the darkest part of the night, the two lovers rediscovered each other. With tenderness and fire, Tanner showed Susannah an ardor and passion she had never known with him. He had always been a thoughtful lover, but now, perhaps with the realization of what he might have missed had her heart beat in Riley’s favor, he flung them both into the center of a physical and emotional conflagration.
They pulled at each other’s clothes with no thought for where they fell.
When his lips sought her nipple and tugged, gooseflesh broke out over her skin. She closed her hand around his erection and gloried in the power she had over him as he lay back with one arm thrown over his eyes, his breath coming fast, his hips thrusting within her grip. When he could stand no more, he pulled her up and sheathed himself inside her moist warmth.
Susannah had never experienced this before. Now she was in control of not only his increasing need but her own as well. She pulled back, teasing him, then plunged forward, faster, again and again, until she felt herself tumbling into a climax that made her tremble with its intensity. She let out a sob and Tanner took his cue. He planted his hands on her waist and drove himself into her and the completion he sought. With a final thrust he joined his wife in the union of their spirits and bodies.
“I love you, Susannah,” he uttered, sweat-drenched and exhausted.
She lay down beside him and rested her head on his chest. “I love you, Tanner, ever and always.”
Snow, clean and soft, began falling as they drifted to sleep beneath a warm quilt, their hearts and souls comforted at last.
• • •
“Why the hell are we out here in the dark, freezing our asses off?” Bert Bauer carped, taking another pull from a bottle of Miss Dorothy’s home-mixed alcohol. “We can’t see a damned thing.”
Jobie Rush had taken up his position again in the overgrown privet and shrubbery. His rifle was loaded and he was ready. “While you were sleeping off your drunks, I been out here, watching these people come and go, Mr. Brains of the Operation. I got their routine figured out so I can get this done without any more trouble. I want to be finished with this, get paid, and quit this town.”
“In the dark?” Bauer sneered.
Rush gave him a look that was colder than the weather. “Have you noticed how the snow has lit up everything, you dumb ox? The sun will be up in a few minutes and it’ll be nearly as bright as a spring morning. That’s why we’re here. There’s a break in the snow. It’ll be tricky, making that shot on this uphill slant, but I’ll do it, and if you don’t shut your trap it won’t bother me none to blast your head off, too. You’ll be an easier target, and I’ll get all the money.”
Bauer might be a dumb ox, but he knew trouble when he saw it. Rush was nothing but trouble. Outmaneuvered, he dropped his empty medicine bottle, pulled up his baggy, stained pants, and shut his trap.
• • •
Tanner wrapped his arms around Susannah as they stood in front of the closed door. She had rescued her shawl from the floor and hung it near the stove to dry. “I don’t want you to go,” he said.
“I don’t want to go, either. We have to finally put this to rights,” she said against his shoulder. “But it will probably mean leaving here.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple and she felt the scratch of his morning beard against her skin. “Let me worry about that. It doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “As long as we’re together, and I know we have a future.” He rocked her in his arms for a few seconds, back and forth, back and forth.
She could have stood there all day. “I’d better run along for now. I’ve got to get breakfast started. Cole is already here.” She nodded at the fresh tire tracks in the snow near the stable. “Will you come to the house and eat?”
He slung an arm over her shoulders and put his other hand on the doorknob. “Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I wash and scrape a comb through my hair.” They moved through the open doorway to the porch. The air smelled crisp with the new snowfall and even though it was just after sunup, everything looked fresh and new.
Finally, he let his arm trail away from her and she smiled at him, letting her whole heart show in her eyes. For so long, she’d felt that she couldn’t do that. He was her husband, Tanner, and it was true and right.
Suddenly, a shot rang out, flushing some birds from the leafless limbs of a tree. Susannah jumped and saw Tanner fall facedown on the porch flooring as if he’d been slammed in the back by an unseen hand. Blood bloomed like a hideous red flower on the back of his shoulder, soaking his shirt.
“Tanner!” She screamed and dropped to his side, struggling to roll him over. But she couldn’t do it.
Another shot sounded, pinging off an iron wagon wheel that leaned against the porch railing. A smell of hot rust and metal wafted by.
Across the yard, Cole appeared instantly from the cover of the stable, gripping a rifle. “Susannah!” He made a furious motion at her to stay down and then pulled back.
With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she grabbed Tanner’s arm and pulled them both crabwise back into the bunkhouse, leaving a bloody trail behind them on the snowy porch. She was not going to lose him now that she’d just gotten him back. She refused to even entertain the possibility. Although her insides quivered like aspic, she had to keep her wits together if she was going to save him, this man who had united her heart and soul, and now owned them both.
Once inside, he flattened out, gasping for breath but still conscious. “Could…you tell where…where the shots came from?”
As winded as he was from fear and exertion, she shook her head. “Maybe from the east. I—I’m not sure.” She glanced out the door and saw a flash of Riley at the kitchen door with a rifle before he retreated. Riley? How strange that he’d be up at this hour. Feeling cut off out here with the wide expanse of open yard between them and the house, she forced herself to suppress the bubble of panic growing in her chest. She reached out and slammed the door.
“Who the hell is shooting at us?” Tanner panted. Sweat was already beading on his face and neck.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. But whoever it is was aiming at us on purpose—twice.” And they’d shot him in the back, one of the worst, most cowardly deeds a person could commit.
Stop the bleeding…stop the bleeding…Some random fragment of a conversation she’d once had with Jess came back to her now, when she needed it. She looked around the kitchen and saw a clean towel hanging on a hook. Staying low to the floor, she made her way over to the wall and grabbed it. “I hope Cole is telephoning Whit Gannon—we can’t stay trapped in here forever. We’ve got to get help for you.” She pressed the towel to his shoulder and grew even more alarmed by how quickly it soaked through. Thinking of all the kitchen accidents she’d had, she knew she needed to put
pressure on the wound. He gritted his teeth until a muscle jumped in the side of his face.
“I’m so sorry,” she moaned, “I know it hurts, but I have to slow this blood loss. I have to.”
Minutes crept by like hours and there was no other sound anywhere until the thunder of pounding footsteps grew close and the door flew open. Susannah shrieked and Tanner instinctively groped at his hip for his revolver, but he wasn’t wearing it.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Cole stood there with his rifle and she saw his gun belt under his sheepskin coat, then he dropped to a squat to look at Tanner. He peeked under the towel and winced. “Shit. We need to get you to Jessica.”
“Did you call the sheriff?” Susannah asked, her hands icy with fright.
“Yeah, lucky for us Birdeen was at the switchboard to put the call through and he’d just walked into his office. It’s kind of early but he was there to catch up on paperwork. I just want to get Tanner to Jess’s office. I’ll stop on the way and pick her up.” He took a quick glance out the window. “At least it only snowed about an inch. But I think more weather is coming. That wind hasn’t let up.”
“Who—who is that bastard out there sh-shooting at us?” Tanner sputtered again. The color was fading from his face.
“I don’t know yet, but Gannon will track them down. The gunfire came from down there, I think, but maybe from a couple of directions.” He gestured at the east edge of the property and then around to the side. It was closest to the road and had good cover. “Gannon has a suspicion about it.”
Susannah looked up at Cole. “How do we know they aren’t still out there, waiting to pick off more of us?”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I can’t leave Tanner here.”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No, you stay here with the boys.”
She straightened her back and gave him a direct glare. “I certainly will not. They’re coming with us.”
Cole took a deep breath and sighed, accepting her orders. He left them to get the truck.
Her hands shaking, Susannah jumped up and grabbed the quilt and a pillow from the bed. Outside, the sound of the truck’s engine rumbled in the cold dawn. Between Susannah and Cole, they were able to get Tanner to his feet and half drag him down the steps, where they laid him in the bed of the Ford. She climbed in after him and covered him. From the porch, Riley gave her a searching look as they passed him but she ignored it. The sick feeling that he was somehow connected to this had begun germinating in the back of her mind. He must have known she spent the night with Tanner. The timing was too perfect.
“Okay, everyone in?” Cole asked as he slid behind the wheel. They drove back to the house to pick up the boys. “Susannah, you stay down in that truck bed so your head isn’t sticking up over the sides.”
She scooted in close to Tanner beneath the quilt, trying to give her warmth—what little she had—to him.
Cole turned the truck and this time pulled up to the back porch at the house. “Josh, Wade, get out here right away!”
The boys appeared, sleepy and rumple-haired, but dressed.
“What’s going on?” Josh asked, his wide eyes focused on his uncle. “What’s the matter with Uncle Tanner?”
Wade stared too, but couldn’t utter a sound. There was enough blood to frighten an adult, much less a child.
“It only looks bad,” Susannah lied, making a supreme effort not to dissolve into panic herself. “We’ll try to explain on the way. Just get in here with us now and mind everything we tell you to do.”
“What about Uncle Riley?”
“Riley will stay here in case any news comes through or anything else happens. I think Shaw is still asleep.” She spoke as if the plan had already been discussed but really, it was an order to Riley as well.
The kids scrambled into the truck bed as well. “This isn’t a joyride,” Cole said. “Stay flat to that bed.”
He drove with his rifle on the floor beside him. They slipped and skidded their way down the road to Cole’s house. His cargo huddled together behind him like refugees from a war that had suddenly arrived in their yard. Susannah directed the boys to cling close to Tanner, who was now fading in and out of consciousness.
Through the wooden planks on the sides of the truck, she saw the sage-green-with-cream house that Cole had built for Jessica years before they married.
Again, Cole pulled right up to their front porch, driving across the lawn. “Everyone wait here and stay down,” he repeated. “I’ll get Jess and we’ll go to her office. She’ll want to work on this with all of her gear close by.”
They waited. Susannah looked at Tanner and her heart felt like a chunk of ice within her rib cage. “Josh, Wade, stay close to Uncle Tanner,” she repeated. “It’s cold and he’s hurt. He needs you to help him keep warm. But be very careful and don’t jostle him.”
“Aunt Susannah, why would someone want to hurt him?”
She looked at Wade and then at Tanner. Last night, he’d seemed invincible. Now he lay beside her, his lifeblood draining away because someone had pointed a gun at him. Tears burned her eyes. Yes, she wondered, why would someone want to hurt him? Who in the world would want to kill Tanner? It didn’t make any sense—he had no enemies, kept to himself, had a kind heart that she now realized also beat with a love for her more passionate and complete than she had ever guessed, and he was a good worker and substitute father to the boys. Who? Riley’s face rose in her mind again as she tucked the quilt around them all. He’d had a lot of problems and still struggled with a troubled mind—but he couldn’t have pulled the trigger. He just couldn’t have.
Josh asked in a trembling voice, “Aunt Susannah, is he going to d-die?”
“No, honey, he’s not going to die. We won’t let him.”
Jess came rushing out of the house, wearing her black wool hooded cape and with her hand tight on the bag’s grip. She reached over the side panel and pulled down the quilt to look at her patient. His sweaty, gray-white pallor made Susannah try to swallow the huge knot of fear that had formed in her throat. Tanner sighed an involuntary groan. Jess’s expression was grim. “No bubbles of blood around his mouth, at least.” She covered him again. “All right. We’ve got to go.” Cole handed her into the front seat and he slid behind the wheel.
The truck inched forward as Cole waited for the tires to grab the slick drive. Behind them, Susannah saw bright-red drops on the white snow between the tracks and realized Tanner’s blood was leaking through the floorboards of the truck bed. Tears blurred her vision but she blinked them back, doing her best to stay focused on the moment.
They were on the road again.
Never had five miles seemed so far. The snow wasn’t deep but it presented just enough trouble to keep Cole from driving faster. And it was bitterly cold. The east wind in the open back of the truck bit with the sharp teeth of a bear trap. None of them was really dressed for this weather, but the emergency had left no time to think about that. Tanner wasn’t even wearing a coat. Susannah chanced a glimpse now and then to see where they were. At last they were on Powell Springs Road, approaching the left turn to Jessica’s office on Main Street.
They pulled up to her door and with some effort on everyone’s part, even the boys’, they managed to carry Tanner into the back examination room and put him on the table.
“You kids get a fire going in the stove, then go sit in the waiting room in the front and watch for Granny Mae’s café to open,” Cole said. He took two dollars out of his shirt pocket and gave it to Josh. “When it does, go over there and get something to eat. Tell her I sent you and that we’re here.”
After she rolled up her sleeves, put on her apron, and washed her hands, Jessica made quick work of cutting off Tanner’s shirt. “Cole, can you roll him up on his side?”
When he did, both Jess and Susannah stared at the ugly red hole over his right shoulder blade. A big red blotch stained the sheet beneath him and blood still poured from the wound, but at
a slower rate. Susannah hoped that didn’t just mean he was running out.
“Goddamn it, this hurts like hell,” Tanner uttered in a slurred, impatient voice.
“I’ll take care of that right away,” Jess said. “He needs a dose of morphine before I start poking around. With any luck, the bullet missed the lung. Susannah, will you take his pulse?” She had helped Jess in the temporary hospital during the influenza epidemic and had learned a lot of on-the-fly nursing.
Jess administered the painkiller and Tanner sighed. Satisfied, she stuck a finger in the wound, earning another groan from Tanner, but a less audible one. “I can pull out the bullet and stitch this up. But I have to find it first.” She felt around a bit more and shook her head. “I’m not getting it. I’ll need a probe. Susannah, pulse?”
“One hundred twenty and kind of thin.”
Jess went to her glass-fronted cabinet and took out gauze, clean instruments, and a metal can. “I’ll need your help, Susannah, so get washed. Cole, after we administer the ether, I need you to hold him right where he is, but I’m warning you, if you faint we’ll just have to push you out of the way.”
The worry and tension on Cole’s face changed to indignation. “I’ve never fainted in my life! Not even that time I had to cut those twin foals out of a mare, and they’d been dead for three days.”
“Never mind—you sound like your father now. All I’m saying is that if you want to get Granny Mae to help—”
He gave her an exasperated look.
“All right, all right. Take off your coat and wash your hands. Susannah, the instrument tray and the ether…”
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