Tyler smiled warmly. “Thank you, Mrs. Leigh. I’ll work out the details with Miss Redd and let the men know.”
She patted his arm. “See that you get one of the nicer rooms.”
Dallas secured her against his side and began walking toward the stairs. “I think working out the details with her is what he intended all along,” he said in a low voice near her ear.
Cordelia jerked her head back. “You think he has an interest in Susan?”
“Yep.”
Before she could turn around to observe that interest, Dallas was escorting her up the stairs. At the landing, she stepped into the hallway. “Which room?”
He scooped her into his arms and carried her up the next flight of stairs.
“Dallas, this floor isn’t ready.”
“You sure? Thought it was.”
“Only the bridal—” Her voice knotted around the tears forming in her throat.
In long strides, he walked to the end of the hallway, bent his knees, and inserted the key into the lock. “Seemed right that you should be the first to use your special room.” He gave a gentle push and the door swung open.
A fire was already burning lazily in the hearth, and she realized his real reason for coming into town was not to talk with the tanner as he’d told her that afternoon, but to bring her to this room.
“You deserved something better than what you got on our wedding night so this is a little late in coming.”
“What does it matter when you’ve given me so many special moments since then?”
“I plan to give you more … a lot more.”
Because she carried his son. What did the reasons behind his thoughtfulness and kindness matter? His generosity was directed toward her.
But the reasons did matter. In a shadowed corner of her heart, they did matter.
Contentment swept through Dallas as gently as dew greeting the dawn. He’d never before experienced this immense satisfaction, not only with himself, but with his life, because always before, no matter how much he had—something was always missing.
That something was now draped over half his body, her breathing slowly returning to normal, a glow to her warm skin that spoke of her enjoyment as eloquently as her gasps had only moments before.
He combed his fingers through the ebony hair fanned out over his chest. He loved the silken strands. He loved the brown of her eyes and the tilt of her nose. He loved the tips of her toes, even though they were growing cold.
She started rubbing them along his instep. He loved that as well.
He loved her.
And he didn’t know how to tell her. Sometimes, he would mention that he was happy, and she would smile at him, but something in her eyes made her look sad, as though she didn’t quite believe him.
He thought all his contentment might seep out like a hole in the bottom of a well if he told her what was in his heart and the silent disbelief filled her eyes.
He’d brought her here to tell her, to share his feelings in the special room she had envisioned for women to spend their wedding night, but she’d given him that look before he’d ever spoken the words, so he’d shoved them back and tried to show her his feelings instead.
He smiled with satisfaction. If her moaning and shuddering were any indication, he’d successfully shown her.
Still, he’d like for her to hear the words … Where her stomach was pressed against his belly, he felt the slight rolling of his son. His contentment increased. He slipped his hand beneath Dee’s curtain of hair and splayed his fingers over her small mound.
Dee wasn’t growing as round as Amelia was. He figured it was because Amelia was short, and her baby had nowhere to go but out. Dee was tall, giving their child a lengthier area in which to grow.
He enjoyed watching the changes to her body. The darkening of her nipples where his son would nurse, the slightest widening of her hips, the hint of an ungainly walk.
Sighing, she wriggled against him, opened an eye, and peered up at him. “Mmmm. I knew this room was a good idea. It’ll be hard to let people I don’t know sleep in here now.”
“Then don’t.”
Her other eye popped open, and she lifted her head. “That’s the purpose of a hotel.”
He trailed his thumb along the side of her face. “Nothing wrong with the owners having a private room that they can use at their convenience, anytime they want.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Is that why you told me I’d need two rooms—”
Leaning up, he began to nibble on her lips. She shoved him back down. “You planned to use this room all along, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, an even better one now that we’ve tried it out.”
Laughing, she snuggled into the crook of his shoulder, trailing her fingers over his chest, each stroke going a little higher, a little lower. “Maybe I’ll give you this room as a Christmas present.”
“Give me something I already own for Christmas? What kind of gift is that?”
She lifted her face. “You have everything.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What else could you possibly need?”
Your love. He swallowed hard. “Something that can only be given if it isn’t asked for.”
She stared at him. “What does that mean?”
“Hell if I know. Get me a new saddle.”
“Oh!” She rolled off him.
He came up on an elbow. “What?”
She looked over her shoulder as she began to gather her clothes off the floor. “I just thought of something.”
“Something to get me?”
She waved her hand dismissively through the air. “No, silly. I just thought of something I need to tell Carolyn.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, she wants to have a Christmas celebration here. I want her to go ahead and have Mr. Stewart at the newspaper office make up invitations and announcements that we can send out over the area.”
Dallas flopped back onto the pillow. “That can wait until the morning. Come to bed.”
She was hastily donning her clothes. When she got an idea she was like a dust devil kicked up by the wind.
“It’ll just take me a few minutes.” She hurried to the door. “Besides, I’ll no doubt get cold when I get downstairs, and you can warm me up all over again.”
“Count on it!” he called out to her as she slipped from the room.
Good Lord, she was more obsessed with empire building than he’d ever thought about being, or maybe she simply enjoyed it more.
He’d be content these days to do nothing more than sit on the veranda in their bench swing. That gift had pleased her so much that he’d had a smaller one made—one that he’d hung on the balcony outside their bedroom.
He shoved his hands beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. He’d tell her that he loved her when she got back, whisper the words in her ear just before he joined his body to hers. If she didn’t distract him with all those glorious sounds she made and the way her body moved in rhythm to his.
Smiling, he let his eyes drift closed and began to plan his seduction. Seducing her was so easy. Pleasuring her carried rewards he’d never known existed.
A scream shattered his thoughts. A scream of terror that he’d heard once before—on his wedding night.
He leapt from the bed and jerked on his trousers, buttoning them as he rushed down the stairs, his heart pounding, his blood throbbing through his temples.
On his way down, he met Susan Redd on her way up, her brown eyes frightened. “There’s been an accident.”
“Dear God.” He tore past her.
“She’s behind the restaurant!” Susan called after him.
He raced through the lobby, the restaurant, and out the kitchen. Wooden crates that had once been stacked outside now lay helter-skelter. Tyler Curtiss was lifting one off Dee’s sprawled body.
Oblivious to the cold winds hitting his bare chest and feet, Dalla
s knelt beside his wife and touched his trembling fingers to her pale cheek. The cold numbed his senses. He couldn’t feel her warmth or smell her sweet scent. “Dee?”
She looked like a rag doll a child had grown tired of playing with and thrown aside.
“She swore she heard a child cry,” Carolyn wailed, her voice catching. “I didn’t hear anything … but she came outside … I heard a crash, her scream … is she dead?”
“Go find the goddamn doctor!” Dallas roared and the people surrounding him ran off in all directions.
He needed to get her warm, needed to get her inside. Gently, he slipped one arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees.
It was then that he felt it, and fear unlike any he’d ever known surged through him. He’d carried too many dying men off battlefields not to recognize the slick feel of fresh blood.
He had brought her home, thinking he could somehow protect her better, keep her safe.
But as she lay beneath the blankets, bathed in sweat, her face as white as a cloud on a summer day, her hand trembling within his, he feared nothing he did, nothing anyone did, would keep her with him.
With a warm cloth, he wiped the glistening dew beading her brow. He didn’t want her to be cold.
If she died, she’d be cold forever. He couldn’t bear the thought, but it lurked in a distant corner of his mind like an unwanted nightmare, keeping company with the sound of her scream.
He would forever hear her scream.
She moaned and whimpered, a pitiful little sound, that tore his hear into shreds.
Where was the damn doctor when he needed him? He was going to find another doctor for Leighton, a doctor who knew how to keep his butt at home so he was there when he was needed, not a doctor who gallivanted around the countryside caring for people Dallas didn’t even know.
Dee released a tiny cry and tightened her hold on his hand. He’d never in his life felt so utterly useless.
He had money, land, and cattle. He’d bathed in the glory of success and what the hell good was it doing him now? He’d trade it all for a chance to turn the clock back, to keep her in that room with him.
“Dallas?” Amelia placed her hand on his shoulder. “Dallas, she’s losing the baby.”
“Oh, God.” Pain ripped through him so intensely, so deeply, that he thought he might keel over. He bowed his head and wrapped his fingers more firmly around Dee’s hand. He’d never known what it was to need, but he needed now, he needed Dee’s quiet strength.
“Just don’t let me lose her,” he rasped. “I’ll do what I can. If you want to leave—” “No. I won’t leave her.”
And he didn’t. He stayed by her side, wiping her brow when she released a tortured cry, holding her hand while her body twisted in agony.
Words failed him, became insignificant. He considered telling her that the loss didn’t matter, that they would have other children, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her, and he knew she’d know his words for the lie they were.
No other child, no matter how special, how precious, would replace this first child.
So he did all that he knew how to do. He remained stoic, held her, and wished to God that somehow the pain could be his and not hers.
And he watched as she wept silently when Amelia wrapped the tiny lifeless body in a blanket. Dallas forced himself to his feet. “I’ll take him.”
Amelia glanced up, despair sweeping over her face. “Dallas—”
“I’ll see after him while you finish taking care of Dee.”
He took the small bundle and left the room. It was the dead of night, but he did what needed to be done.
He built a small coffin and padded it with the delicate blankets Dee had bought to keep the child warm. Then he laid his tiny son inside the wooden box.
With the cold winter winds howling around him, he dug a grave near the windmill beside the house and laid his son to rest.
As gentle as an angel’s soft tears, snowflakes began to cascade from the heavens.
A shudder of despair racking his body, Dallas dropped to his knees, dug his fingers into the freshly turned soil, and wept.
Cordelia forced herself through the fog of exhaustion and pain. Every inch of her body protested, her heart protesting most of all for it remembered the loss and the grief on Dallas’s face as he’d taken his child from Amelia.
She bit back a cry as fingers poked and prodded. She opened her eyes. Hadn’t she suffered enough? Why was Dr. Freeman torturing her now?
He pulled down her gown and brought the blankets over her, seemingly unaware that she had awakened. Through half-closed eyes she watched him walk across the room to the window where Dallas stood gazing out through the paned glass.
“She gonna live?” Dallas asked.
“She should,” Dr. Freeman said, “but she’s going to need a lot of rest. Pamper her for a while.” Dr. Freeman put his hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “And find a way to tell her gently that she’s not going to be able to have any more children.”
Cordelia’s heart constricted, and she pressed her hand against her mouth, biting her knuckles to keep herself from crying out. Dallas jerked his head around and stared at the doctor.
“Are you sure she can’t have any more children?”
Dr. Freeman sighed heavily. “She’s lucky to be alive. She got hurt inside and out. Her injuries were extensive, and there’s going to be a lot of scarring. Based on my experience, I don’t see how she could possibly get pregnant.”
He walked quietly from the room. Dallas placed a balled fist on the window and bowed his head.
Cordelia’s heart shattered with the knowledge that he’d lost his dream.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Before she was fully awake, before she’d opened her eyes, she was aware of his warm fingers threaded through hers. Her eyelids fluttered, and she could see Dallas sitting in a chair beside the bed, his dark head bent, his face unshaven.
Tears clogged her throat and burned behind her eyes. He looked to be a man in mourning. She used what little strength she had to squeeze his fingers.
He snapped his head up and leaned forward. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. Gently he brushed wisps of hair from her face. “How are you feeling?” he asked in a voice that sounded as rough as sandpaper.
He became blurred as her tears surfaced. “Was our baby a boy?” she asked.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips against the back of her hand. Then he opened his eyes and held her gaze. She watched his throat work as he swallowed.
“Yeah, yeah he was. I, uh, I laid him to rest near the windmill. I … I always liked the way the blades clack when the wind comes through, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
She wished she had the strength to sit up and wrap her arms around him, to comfort him. The tears welled. “I overheard what Dr. Freeman said—that I won’t be able to have other children. Dallas, I’m so sorry—”
“Shh. You’re gonna be all right and that’s what matters. I thought I was gonna lose you, too.”
At that moment she didn’t think she could love him more—for the lie he had spoken with such sincerity. She knew the truth. If she had died as well, he could remarry—any of the women who had recently moved to Leighton—and have the son he so desperately wanted.
He eased up in the chair. “Dee, I want to know what happened.”
Sniffing, she furrowed her brow. “What happened?”
“You left the room. I heard you scream—”
She squeezed his hand, pieces of images racing through her mind. “Oh, Dallas. Rawley.”
“Rawley?”
“The little boy. I heard a child cry. I went behind the hotel, and I saw him pressed into a corner. Then someone shoved me and the boxes fell … Oh, Dallas, he could have gotten hurt, too. Did you see him?”
“I only saw you.”
“Dallas, we have to find him.” She tried to sit, and he placed his hands on her shoulders.
“You’ve got no business getting out of bed. I’ll send Austin to find him.”
“Have him bring Rawley back here so I can see that he’s all right.”
Rawley Cooper knew he was in a heap of trouble. Had known it for days and knew sooner or later his mistake would catch up with him.
He would have preferred later.
He sat staring at the red and orange flames as they danced and warmed the room. The man who had brought him to this big house sat with his feet propped on the desk, his spurs dangling over the edge.
The man had told him his name was Austin. Once Rawley had gone through a town named Austin. He figured this man was pretty important since he had a town named after him.
Important men scared Rawley. They could do anything they wanted and nobody would stop them.
Rawley nearly jumped out of his skin when Austin pulled open a drawer.
“Dallas has some lemon drops in here. You want one?”
He peered over at Austin, saw the bag he held in his hand, the yellow ball he was rolling between his fingers. He remembered the man had given him a sarsaparilla stick once and hadn’t hurt him when he’d taken it. But that was a long time back. He shook his head and turned his attention back to the fire.
He knew all he wanted to know about taking gifts. Sooner or later, they always came with a heavy price.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Austin said.
Rawley wondered if he ran into the fire if it would swallow him up. He thought about that sometimes. Finding a way to disappear so no one could touch him, no one could hurt him.
“Where’s your ma?” Austin asked.
“Dead I reckon.”
“Don’t you know?”
Rawley lifted a shoulder.
The door opened. Austin dropped his feet to the floor and stood. Rawley stood, too, his legs trembling. Better to face the man who wanted him.
“You found him,” the man said.
The man was big. Rawley had seen him with the pretty lady.
“Yep. His pa was passed out in the saloon. I told the barkeep to tell him the boy was here when he woke up.”
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