by Jodi Thomas
Then he heard a noise behind him and he swung around, his pistol in his hand. A man in a mask stood at the back, near the same window the deputy marshals had used. Blood stained his trousers. It must have been his horse that went down.
The man grabbed Elizabeth and held his pistol close to her head.
He wasn’t wearing a uniform but Seth recognized Delaney from his build, the arrogant way he moved, even with a bullet hole in his thigh.
“You did this,” he said to Seth.
Seth stood still, waiting. Watching for an opening. His heart pounded as anger and despair swept through him.
“Miss McGuire will see me safely away,” Delaney said, reaching out and taking her arm.
She stood calmly, staring at Seth. With trust.
Fear dried his mouth as he watched Delaney threatening Elizabeth, the gun at her temple. He had to think. He swallowed down everything but resolve.
“You’re right, Delaney. I did do this. All myself. You are not nearly as smart as you thought you were. Arrogant men are foolish men.” He shifted subtly, balancing himself to move fast if need be. “There are a number of deputy marshals out there as well as one of your own army friends. They know a lot, and they will know more when they capture your men.”
“You are also a coward,” Michael McGuire said suddenly from behind him. “A yellow coward. Hiding behind a woman. A snake isn’t any lower.”
Delaney’s eyes flickered from one man to the other, then dismissed McGuire and focused on Sinclair.
“Put your gun down, Sinclair, or I’ll shoot her. Now.”
There was something insane in his voice that made Seth believe him. The marshals should be back soon. Very slowly he leaned down and put his pistol on the floor.
Delaney watched him so intently, he seemed to forget McGuire, or perhaps he didn’t consider the older man a threat. Once Seth’s gun was lowered, Delaney swung his pistol toward him, his finger on the trigger.
Two shots rang out simultaneously.
Fire lanced through Seth’s side as he fell to his knees, reaching for his gun. He knew where the other shot had come from. Delaney would turn on McGuire now.
He saw Delaney swing his gun toward McGuire, saw Elizabeth hit his arm to spoil his aim.
Seth swept up his gun from the floor and started firing.
Delaney went down.
Elizabeth staggered away from him, her eyes wide and stunned.
Ignoring the pain in his side, Seth strode over to Delaney. He leaned down and checked the pulse in his neck, then pulled the mask from him.
He was dead.
He took Elizabeth in his arms, cradling her. She was safe. That was all he needed at the moment.
And the man he thought he hated had saved his life, and he had saved McGuire’s.
TWO hours later, Evans appeared. He saw the body on the floor and raised one eyebrow.
Seth stood with him in the main room, bandaged and shirtless. It was amazing, he thought, how Elizabeth’s doctoring could soothe the pain.
She had offered him some laudanum, which he had refused, and then taken her father to his room. She had not emerged yet.
“He apparently was shot in the first few minutes of the ambush,” Seth explained. “He tried to take Elizabeth hostage.”
“I imagine the army won’t be too upset,” Evans said. “Better than a messy court-martial.”
“I want my brother cleared.”
“I doubt that will be too difficult, especially if you swear to be . . . discreet about what happened here.”
“Some people are owed their land back. And cattle.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve been wanting that bastard for a long time,” Evans said. “You ever need a job . . .”
“I might take you up on that,” Seth said. He still didn’t have anything. No money, no land, no cattle.
“Anytime. All right to leave the cattle here and let people come pick up what’s theirs?”
“I don’t think the McGuires will object.”
“Then good night, or is it good morning to you? Don’t forget that job.”
Seth nodded and Evans left.
Weary, he sat down in a chair. When Elizabeth was finished with her father, he would say good night. He would return to the valley and tell Dillon what had happened. He and his friends would have to remain hidden for a bit longer, then . . .
Elizabeth suddenly emerged from her father’s room. She looked oddly uncertain and held something in her hand. She offered it to him.
He took it and glanced at the text. “The deed to the ranch,” he said, a lump lodging in the base of his throat.
“Papa and I want you to have it. It’s yours.”
“And you and your father?”
“We will find a place.”
He had learned in the past few days how much this land meant to McGuire as well as to Elizabeth.
He reached out and touched her cheek. “I thought I wanted it more than anything. I was wrong.”
She watched him with those wide hazel eyes. Waiting.
“I want you more than anything. Perhaps we can . . . share.”
She still waited, eyes questioning.
“A partnership,” he struggled. “Oh hell, what I mean is, well, I want you to marry me.”
She looked stunned. He realized then how much she had been willing to give up for him. Her home, her livelihood. She had never expected . . .
But then neither had he.
Where had he heard that once you saved a life, you were responsible for it forever?
He smiled. The devil had a very strange sense of humor.
Or was it the angels?
“Will you?” he asked her, realizing that he hadn’t quite managed the question very well.
She reached up and touched his mouth with her hand as if still disbelieving the words, then stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.
It was all the answer he needed.
Epilogue
TWO YEARS LATER
“HE’S COMING! HOWIE just rode in and said he saw dust in the distance.”
Marilee barely paused for breath as she skidded in front of Elizabeth. Marilee had been haunting the front porch for the last two weeks, at times worrying herself to tears.
Elizabeth dropped the cloth she was using to dry the supper dishes. Her heart jounced with joy and anticipation.
Six months. Her husband had left six months earlier on a cattle drive to Kansas City. She had wanted to go, but she had just discovered she was carrying a child.
She had not told him. She had not wanted him to feel as if he had to stay. This drive was too important to him. To her. To the community. He had been the one person who could bring together all the ranchers—Texans and newcomers alike—to combine the herds. It meant top price—and survival—for many of them.
What would he think when she told him the news—that he had a newborn son?
Would he feel the same joy she did? Or would he be angry she had kept that secret from him? She glanced down at the cradle. Her wee gift was two weeks old and waiting for a name.
She wished she had time to brush her hair. She had none. She ran from the kitchen out to the porch where Marilee waited while jumping on one foot, then another in anticipation. Howie had one foot on the corral fence, looking out toward the setting sun, a hand shading his eyes as he watched for Seth.
Marilee had come to love her brother with all her heart. He had been patient, and heartbreakingly tender and, bit by bit, had won his sister’s adoration. She was nearly wild with anticipation of showing the baby to her brother.
Out of the dust individuals emerged, and her heart pounded. Elizabeth saw Seth first and he filled her eyes. Then Dillon, who had been cleared of all charges and now worked the ranch with his brother.
Thank God they had returned safely. She knew how treacherous the drive could be: indians, rustlers, drought, stampedes.
His clothes were as dirty
and dusty as he had been that first day she had seen him but now he raced his horse toward her and tumbled off to fold her in his arms. He had obviously shaved in the morning, but bristle tickled her face as he leaned down and kissed her. A very long, a very heartfelt, a very needy kiss.
She cherished every second of it.
Then he straightened as if aware of the eyes on him. “Tonight,” he whispered, then he leaned down and hugged Marilee. “Hello, sweetpea. Have you been taking care of my girl?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I helped birth—”
“She was a great help,” Elizabeth broke in. This was something she wanted to tell on her own.
He looked at her curiously and took her hand.
“It was everything you hoped?” she asked.
“We were one of the first herds there,” he said. “We got good prices. Enough to buy a bull and build a new barn.”
She led him inside, pulling him toward the kitchen where the baby lay in the cradle.
He stood still, stunned, as his gaze went to the cradle, and then to the infant lying in it.
His eyes were full of questions as he raised his head to meet her gaze.
“Your son,” she said, presenting him.
He looked disbelieving for a moment, then he leaned down and picked up the sleeping child and cradled him. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t sure until just before you left. I didn’t want to keep you from going.”
“You didn’t want me to go,” he reminded her. “Why didn’t you—”
“I never want you to be gone that long,” she interrupted, her fingers touching his lips. “I never want you to be gone at all. But I knew how important it was to you. To us.”
“You think it was more important than my child?” His voice had a dangerous edge.
“There was nothing you could do for me, love. Howie and Marilee were wonderful. So were the neighbors.”
“I could have been here for you.”
“You were here. In my heart,” she said softly.
She watched as he tenderly whispered something to their child.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I told him you were a stubborn, independent woman,” he said but he had a twinkle in his eyes. “It’s a good thing I like stubborn, independent women.”
She relaxed. “He needs a name.”
Their eyes met. “I think it should be Michael,” he said immediately.
Emotion flooded her. Seth and her father had grown close in the first year of their marriage, perhaps because they both cared for her. He had mourned with her when her father died.
“I was thinking perhaps Garrett for your father.”
“Then Michael Garrett Sinclair?”
Tears burned behind her eyes. She still missed her father. His stories. His capacity to love. She nodded.
Reluctantly, Seth handed young Michael to Dillon, who had followed them inside and was watching with great interest. He looked startled at first, as if he were being handed a box of dynamite, but then a wide smile creased his hard face.
Seth took her in his arms again and showered her face with tender kisses. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for my son.”
Her heart trembled as her gaze went from his face to her son’s. Her cowboy. Her two cowboys.
“Welcome home,” she murmured just before his lips sealed hers and the enchantment began all over again.
Tombstone Tess
EMILY CARMICHAEL
Chapter One
TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA
1889
TESS ANN MCCABE brushed the trail dust from her jeans and slapped her weather-beaten hat against the hitching post before stepping into the Bird Cage Saloon. The warm, dusky interior washed over her with comforting familiarity, but the scowl on her face didn’t ease. She had to do what she had to do, Tess told herself. But dadgummit, she didn’t have to like it. Life could sometimes be downright unreasonable.
Heads turned when the clunk of her boots on the plank floor announced her presence, but the men enjoying their liquor, cards, and the attentions of the saloon girls didn’t pay her much mind. The newcomer was just Tess from the Diamond T. Nothing to get stirred up about.
But when she brought down her fist upon the polished top of the long bar, eyes turned her way.
“I need a man!” Tess announced. A shameful confession, but there it was. “Now. Today. I need a goddamned man.”
All activity in the bar ceased. Silence as heavy as the pall of cigar smoke answered her. She stood rigid and proudly upright under the curious regard, refusing to lower her eyes, refusing to give in to cowardice and run from the saloon.
Then a throaty feminine chuckle broke the silence. “Honey girl, don’t we all! Join the line.”
Tension broke in a wave of laughter. Tess didn’t smile.
“Hey, Tessie,” came a hoarse shout from Joe Daniel, who sat at a poker table near the back of the room. “I’m your man, sweetie! I could use me a nice little ranch down on the river and a sweet little gal to go with it.”
Laughter greeted his offer.
“Gettin’ mighty brave, Joe,” a man at the bar said.
Another shouted. “You take some sweet little gal onto Tessie’s ranch and Tess’ll likely hog-tie her, brand her, and sell her to the Injuns like a side of beef. Ain’t it so, Tess?”
Tess felt her face heat. True, she had threatened her brother, Sean, with such a fate once, but that had been in fun. Besides, he had deserved it. Her father had never tired of jawing and guffawing about the incident to anyone who would listen. And of course nobody believed that she, Colin McCabe’s “wild” daughter, might be the one Joe meant by “a sweet little gal.”
Glory Gilda, one of the Bird Cage’s most popular whores, strolled up to stand by Tess’s side. “You jackasses shut your yaps. Ain’t a one of you in here such a catch that you can make fun of Tess. Besides, she could whup every one of you in a brawl.”
“That ain’t exactly true,” Tess admitted to Glory. “But I could outlast any one of them in the saddle.”
“Course you could.” Glory guided her toward an empty table. “Given half a chance, a woman can outlast a man at just about anything you can think of. Whiskey?”
“You know I don’t hold with strong drink.”
“You look like you could use a strong drink, though. The stronger, the better.” The woman plunked herself down at the table with a sigh. “So you’re finally up against it, are you?”
“Between a rock and you know what.” Tess heaved a disconsolate sigh and pulled up a chair to straddle.
Everyone in the bar knew her problem. Hell, everyone in Tombstone knew that Colin McCabe had reached up from the grave to twist his daughter’s tail. Many a man laughed out loud to think that Tess Ann McCabe, one of Arizona’s most ineligible females, had to find a husband or lose her ranch to her runty little brother, as worthless a piece of flesh and bone that ever God allowed to breathe the world’s air.
Okay, maybe Sean wasn’t totally worthless. He was her brother, after all, and he probably did have good qualities somewhere, if a person looked hard enough.
Gilda commiserated. “That was a bum thing your daddy did to you, Tess, honey. Have you talked to a lawyer?”
“Hell yes. But the only lawyer in town is Harvey Bartlett, the skunk who wrote up Daddy’s will. Fat lot of help he is. Maybe I will have a whiskey. What’s it taste like?”
“Damned good, most times.”
When Tess took her first sip of the amber liquid Glory set in front of her, she disagreed with a grimace. “Uck!”
“It grows on you,” Glory assured her.
It would have to, Tess mused. The whiskey burned all the way down her gullet into her stomach. Fine comfort that was! But she took another sip, just to be sure that she hadn’t missed something.
“So how long has it been since the old man bit the dirt?” Glory asked.
“Five months, two weeks.”
“And he gave you
six months to find yourself a husband?”
“Six months,” Tess confirmed. “The rat. All my life I was my daddy’s right-hand man. Hell, when I was five years old he had me driving cattle and riding half-broke horses. I’m the best damned cowboy on the Diamond T, probably the best damned cowboy in all of Arizona, but that crazy old man kept expecting me to bring home a husband along with the cows.”
Glory nodded sympathetically.
“A husband is harder to rope than an ornery bull,” Tess said with a morose sigh.
“That’s a fact. But, honey, it’s not like you ain’t got nothing to offer a man. The Diamond T is a nice little ranch, with plenty of water and a good crew.”
Tess took another sip of whiskey, which began to send warm streamers into her veins. “That’s the rub, Glory. No husband is going to move in on my territory, boss my crew, or run my ranch. Hell, he might even expect me to cook and mend and all that nonsense.” She brought a fist down on the table with force enough to make her shot glass jump. “What I need is a lazy, worthless sonuvabitch who’ll run out on me after a few days’ time. Me and Miguel and Rosie have it all figured out.”
Glory laughed her throaty laugh. “Well, honey, the world is crawling with worthless men. It’s the good ones that are hard to come by. I might even be able to help you out.”
A twinkle of mischief lit Glory’s eye as the amiable whore surveyed the room. “How about old Jack Campbell? He hasn’t done a lick of work in the last two years as far as anybody can tell. Feed him a meal or two and he’d most likely do anything you say.”
“Too old. Yellow teeth. Smells bad.”
“You said you wanted someone worthless.”
“Yeah, but if I’ve gotta actually marry the fella, he’d better be at least a couple of steps above a goat, or no one’s going to believe it.”
Glory screwed up her face in concentration, creasing her thick makeup. Then she smiled. “I have it!”
“You have it?”
“I have it!”
Hope rose in Tess’s chest. Or was that the liquor?