Wood examined the blurred handwriting and agreed.
“Shall I read it to you?” she asked.
“Please do.”
She cleared her voice, then began. “They call me vile because I am different. Yes, I’m different. I know how to mix my herbs to do things people don’t want to believe I can do, but today I was able to save a man from dying. I circled him with herbs.”
An eerie sensation crept over Wood. “You think she was the old crone who ministered to me at the hanging?”
“They say she had mystical powers,” Gabby said in a hushed tone, as if speaking too loudly might disturb the spirit of her deceased relative. “No one in the family talked about her very much. The story is that after her husband died, she was never the same up here.” She raised a finger to her forehead.
Wood was not one to discount the possibility that a Davis had saved his life more than once. “If only I had that pouch,” he said wistfully.
“But you don’t have it, do you?”
He shook his head. “No. It must have fallen off during the time travel, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t here in 1998. It could be in the Nelson forty.”
“And if you can’t find it?”
He shrugged. “Then I stay in 1998 until fate decides otherwise. I still have to leave the farm, Gabby.”
“Please don’t go, Wood,” she begged.
Wood pulled her frail body close to his and hugged her. “I’m going to miss you. Thank you for being such a sweet, caring lady.”
“Can’t you give Hannah a few days? I know she’ll come around,” Gabby asked, dabbing at the moisture in her eyes.
It was a tempting thought, but the harsh words that had been said that morning had him saying, “I’m sorry, Gabby, but Hannah’s better off without me.”
THAT AFTERNOON storm clouds rolled in, darkening an already gray sky. Hannah thought it was appropriate. Her life was as unsettled as the atmosphere. Ever since her confrontation with Wood, she had fought the urge to go find him and tell him she was wrong. She did care where he went.
When thunder rumbled in the distance, Jeremy came running inside. “I saw lightning.”
“Tell Gabby to make sure the windows are closed upstairs.”
Jeremy nodded and ran up the steps. It wasn’t long before he bounced back down. “Where’s Wood?”
Hannah shrugged. “You don’t need to worry about Wood. He’s an adult man who can take care of himself.”
“But he shouldn’t be out in a storm. What if he gets zapped back?”
Suddenly Hannah remembered Wood telling her that he suspected lightning had been the vehicle that had taken him through time. It was the reason he had refused to come in from the storm that day he had been zapped by the fence.
“If he had been hit by lightning, wouldn’t he be dead?” Hannah asked, an uneasy feeling starting to claw at her stomach.
Jeremy shrugged. “Wood says all he can remember is that he saw a bolt of lightning, then a bright light flashed in his eyes. It was so bright he thought he was dead—until he woke up in our cornfield.”
“That doesn’t mean it struck him.”
“But I found him by that old oak that was split in two?”
Hannah mulled over Jeremy’s words. Could Wood have been hit by lightning? It might explain why he had been knocked to the ground the day he touched the electric fence. Normally, contact with the fence resulted in a shock that had a person shuddering, yet with him, it had been much worse.
Just then Gabby came down the stairs.
“Do you know where Wood is?” Hannah asked, her uneasiness growing.
“He left. Told me he was going to the Nelson forty.”
Before Gabby could say another word, Hannah had grabbed her rain jacket and was out the back door. “Hannah, wait!” Gabby called out, but she paid no attention.
She hopped in the pickup and jammed her keys into the ignition. “He wouldn’t do such a crazy thing,” she told herself. But what frightened her most of all was that she knew he would.
She headed for the Nelson forty, the rain coming down in blinding sheets, creating rivers of muddy water on the dirt road, forcing Hannah to reduce her speed. As the windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the driving rain, she talked to herself.
“Come on, help me get there. I have to get to him before it’s too late.”
As a bolt of lightning streaked across the clouds, Hannah’s heart nearly stopped. “How could I have been so stupid!” she screamed aloud in frustration as the storm increased in intensity.
For Hannah knew she had been stupid. She loved Wood, and in her heart she knew he was not a man who could commit murder, yet she had accused him of just that. She had said so many things she wished she could now retract. Because she had been hurt. Hurt that he hadn’t had the faith in her to tell her the truth from the start. And hurt that he had confided in Gabby, yet she, his wife, was the last to know.
Again thunder roared and Hannah cried out, “Oh, please, don’t let him be gone! I can’t lose him, not now.”
By the time she reached the uncultivated field, she couldn’t tell whether it was teardrops or rain falling on her cheeks. “Wood!” she called out repeatedly, running frantically toward the splintered oak.
And then she saw him—standing beneath an elm tree. He wasn’t dead, and he was still here, on her farm. Relief sent the adrenaline rushing through her and she ran toward him. Within seconds a bright flash of lightning exploded before her. In an instant he had disappeared. “Wood, don’t leave me!” she screamed in frustration.
Just as quickly a sharp crack warned her of danger. She looked up as the wind snapped a limb from what remained of the dead tree. Before she could react, the branch flew against Hannah’s head. The last word she uttered as she was knocked to the ground was “Wood.”
“WOOD?” Hannah glanced down at her left hand. The gold band was still on her ring finger. It hadn’t been a dream. “Oh, Wood,” she whispered in longing.
“Do I hear sounds of life?”
A nurse with a stethoscope dangling around her neck and a blood pressure gauge in her hand entered the room.
“My head...” Hannah murmured, grimacing as she tried to move.
“Hurts pretty bad, eh?”
“I don’t think I can get up.”
“You’re not supposed to. You’ve got a pretty nasty cut as well as a concussion.”
“What happened?”
“I believe you got caught in the rain last night. Tree limb fell on your head. It doesn’t surprise me. That was one nasty storm. The power was out in most of Filmore County.” She set the blood pressure gauge down and reached for the medical chart at the foot of the bed. “Don’t you remember the accident?”
Just like a photograph, the memory flashed in her mind. She closed her eyes, wanting to blot out the sight of Wood standing beneath the tree while the lightning flashed around him. In one brief flash of light she had lost him forever.
Tears streamed down her cheeks at the realization that he was gone. Forever. And she hadn’t told him that she loved him, that she wanted him to be her husband. Forever. Only now that would never happen.
“There, now. It’s not so bad. In a few days you’ll be up and about again,” the nurse said consolingly, patting her hand. “I do believe your family’s in the waiting room. Been there all night is what I heard. They’re worried about you. Would you like me to get them for you?”
Hannah mumbled something the nurse understood as consent.
A few minutes later, in marched Gabby and Jeremy, their faces lined with worry.
“Mom, are you all right?” Jeremy asked softly.
“You gave us quite a scare when you didn’t wake up right away,” Gabby added, her voice faltering. “You’ve been unconscious for almost a whole day.”
Hannah reached out to take each of their hands and give them a squeeze. “My head hurts something awful, but I’m okay.”
“You were lucky, Mom. You could have
got hurt really bad.”
“It was that tree I warned you about, Jeremy. I should have known better than to go near it.”
“You mean the one that got Wood?” he asked.
So it was true. He was really gone. Again Hannah began to cry, this time sobbing so hard that the nurse asked Jeremy and Gabby to leave, saying in a quiet voice, “She needs a sedative for the pain.”
HANNAH DIDN’T KNOW what pain medication she was given, but whatever it was, it produced the most wonderful dreams. Wood was at her bedside, holding her hand, kissing her knuckles and saying all sorts of sweet things. Like how she made his life complete. And how he would never ever leave her again.
“Time for dinner. We let you sleep through lunch, but you’re going to have to eat this.”
Hannah awoke to find a different nurse standing beside her, a tray of food in her hands.
“You must have been having a nice dream. You’ve been smiling ever since I entered the room,” she said to Hannah as she set her tray down.
“Hmm. It was nice,” Hannah said wistfully. “There was this man—” She stopped, afraid that she’d start to cry if she tried to talk about Wood.
“Did he have dark hair and brown eyes?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Good-looking?”
“Umm-hmm.”
The nurse chuckled. “That was no dream. He’s been here all day. I think he just went for a cup of coffee. Should I check?”
Hannah’s heartbeat raced and her mouth went dry. The nurse slipped out the door. The next time it opened, Wood came through. In his hands was a small bunch of flowers.
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so I could bring you these.” He walked over to the bed and sat down beside her.
“It wasn’t a dream. You were really here.” She reached out to touch his arm.
“Still am, if you want me.” He smiled and stared at her with those gorgeous brown eyes that had the power to scramble her insides.
“I do want you,” she said, a tear trickling down her cheek.
He wiped it away with his thumb. “Is that why you did something so foolish as to come looking for me in a lightning storm?”
“I had to stop you from getting killed,” she said, a tiny hiccup accenting the word killed. “I’ve seen what you do in storms.”
“I didn’t go out to the Nelson forty in hopes of getting struck by lightning and carried back to 1876.”
“But Gabby said...”
“That I had gone to the Nelson forty, and I had. To look for a pouch.” He explained about the old crone who had comforted him right before the hanging, and how he and Gabby suspected Gabrielle Davis may have saved his life with her herbs. “I suppose we’ll never know for sure if it was truly the herbs or the lightning. Actually it was Outlaw who found the pouch out at the Nelson forty, and I buried it. Then I cut down that monster of a tree that caused all of the problems.”
“You don’t want to go back to 1876?”
“Not when I have a beautiful wife who needs me.” He put a finger beneath her chin. “Or was that the pain medication talking?”
Gingerly she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “I do need you and that scares me. It’s part of the reason I said all those awful things to you. Plus I was being a bit stubborn,” she admitted with a wry grin.
“Just a bit.” He gave her another quick kiss. “You had a right to be hurt, Hannah. If I had been completely honest with you from the start, none of this would have happened.”
She placed a fingertip to his lips. “Let’s not talk about the past. I’d much rather discuss the future. Our future.”
The last thing she saw before he kissed her were those dark brown eyes looking at her with a promise of love.
Epilogue
“What are these?” Hannah asked when she stepped into the-kitchen and saw several brightly wrapped packages on the table.
“Your birthday presents,” Jeremy answered.
“That tree limb took you out of here before we had a chance to celebrate.” Wood led her over to the table.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t tell me these were waiting for me. Otherwise they never would have been able to keep me in that hospital as long as they did,” she teased.
Not only were there presents, but cake and ice cream, too. It wasn’t long before the doorbell rang. Hannah didn’t miss the looks that passed between Gabby, Wood and Jeremy.
“Now I wonder who that could be? Another surprise?” Hannah inquired with a twinkle in her eye.
“You’d better get it, Mom,” Jeremy advised, which only added to her suspicion that it was a floral delivery.
Only the man at the back door didn’t have any flowers in his hands. “Can I help you?” Hannah asked the middle-aged man wearing a light blue leisure suit.
“I’m looking for Hannah.”
Hannah smiled. “You found her. Come on in,” she said with a curious glance toward the people seated at the table.
“He doesn’t have any roses,” Gabby whispered to Wood who shrugged his shoulders.
“What can I do for you, Mr—?” Hannah asked.
“Dumler. I’m Alfred, your mail-order groom.”
There were four simultaneous gasps.
“You have a nice place here,” Mr. Dumler said to Hannah, unaware of the effect his presence had on the people in the kitchen.
“I appreciate that you have good taste, Mr. Dumler, but I might as well tell you, I didn’t place that ad in the magazine.” Hannah pointed to her aunt. “She did.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to marry me?” he asked, in a voice that was as dull as the shineless shoes he wore.
Hannah walked over to Wood and planted a kiss on his mouth, then she turned to Alfred Dumler and said, “You’re too late, Mr. Dumler. I’ve already found me a mail-order groom and I’m not sending him back.”
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6065-8
MAIL ORDER COWBOY
Copyright © 1998 by Pamela Muelhbauer.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the Imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Mail Order Cowboy (Harlequin American Romance) Page 23