A fist squeezed tight in his chest.
At seventeen, Honey Prentice had been open and joyous. Her easy love of life and quick smile had been an inexorable lure. Her unbridled heart and generous passion had bewitched him.
Though the last hour proved that her passions were fiercer than they had ever been, he’d sensed the wall between them. She didn’t trust him.
Wariness flowed from her dark gaze. She claimed it was because of him, but it had been her choice to marry Freeman while he’d been attending his father’s deathbed.
It made no sense.
And there was something else troubling him as he dressed quietly. The memories of that summer had not been exaggerated in his imagination. Whatever power had drawn them to each other then was still present, as strong and consuming as ever.
How was that possible after all this time and everything that had happened? He wanted to lay their past out on an exam table and dissect every little piece of it to find out what had gone wrong, why she hadn’t waited for his return.
But he feared it would do no good. The past was done. This was now.
And right now, he needed to check on his patient.
It was hard to turn his back on Honey lying in that bed, but he did. He entered Luke’s room two doors down to find the injured man awake and struggling to rise. Honey’s brother looked up at Warren’s entrance and his expression turned hostile.
“What in goddamned hell are you doing here?” he muttered with a menacing snarl.
Warren crossed his arms over his chest and returned the younger man’s glower with a calm stare. “I am your doctor. I am here to see that you don’t die from that gunshot wound in your leg. Toward that purpose, I suggest you lie back down so I can be sure you didn’t tear open the stitches.”
Luke grimaced in pain as he propped himself on one elbow.
“I don’t want anything to do with your doctoring, Reed. Get yourself out of here before Honey sees you.”
“She already has.”
Luke lifted a brow at that. “And you’re still alive.”
“For the time being,” Warren replied as he stepped forward. “She, at least, understands that my services are needed to keep your reckless hide alive.”
“Well, shit,” Luke muttered, “it’s not like I planned to get shot. Damn cowards shot at me as I rode away.”
Warren reached the bedside and gestured for Luke to roll to the side so he could loosen the bandage and get a look at the wound.
“I suppose you thought they’d be grateful to you for robbing them.”
“Course not, but there’s a code out here that says you don’t shoot a man in the back.”
“You were shot in the leg.”
“From behind.”
“As you made off with their valuables. I doubt the code of honor you describe applies to outlaws.”
Luke snorted at that, then cringed as Warren probed around the stitches to find that they all held well and there had been no fresh bleeding. Fortunately, there were no warning signs of infection just yet.
Warren rewrapped the bandage and wordlessly helped Luke to a more comfortable position in the bed. He would have given the wounded man something to help him sleep, but Luke shook his head.
“I can’t take any of that mind-dulling stuff,” he said with a grimace toward the small green bottle of laudanum. “I gotta stay alert.”
Warren debated arguing with him and decided to point out the obvious. “Even if you are alert, you won’t be able to go anywhere.”
“I’ve still got a working gun hand,” Luke replied.
Warren replaced the laudanum in his bag. “Try to get some rest on your own then. If the pain gets to be too much, give a yell.”
“Where is she?” Luke asked with tension bracketing his mouth.
Warren hesitated only a moment. “Sleeping.”
“Here?”
“Yes,” Warren answered, tipped his head in curiosity. “Does she usually sleep elsewhere?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m not telling you that if she didn’t. But I’ll tell you this.” The outlaw’s expression shifted, showing a hardness the young man had not possessed seven years ago. It made him look dangerous and unpredictable. “Before she wakes up, I want you gone from here. Head back to your Eastern city and never come back this way again. You’re not gonna get another chance to break her heart, you understand me, Reed?”
Warren didn’t understand. In fact, his confusion was only increasing. But Luke wasn’t the one to ask for clarification. He turned and walked away, shutting the door behind him.
Honey was still asleep.
Warren stood at the side of the bed and tried to make sense of what Luke had just said and the way Honey had reacted to seeing him again.
Something was off.
“Honey, wake up.”
He didn’t expect her to stir so easily, but her eyes came open before he even finished speaking. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, then sat up with an incoherent mutter of annoyance as she grabbed at the bedsheets to cover herself. The grumpy little frown she turned on Warren might have made him smile if not for his determination to get to the bottom of what was bothering him.
His emotions coalesced into a rock, sitting heavy in his gut as he finally asked her the question that had been burning in his brain for years.
“Why did you marry John Freeman so soon after I left?”
“What?” The shock and incredulity in her face might have been residue from her sudden awakening.
Warren didn’t think so.
“Why did you marry him, Honey? I thought you hated the man. Did he hold something over you? Did he threaten you?”
Warren had witnessed Freeman’s bullying techniques when his uncle had refused to sell his small ranch to the man. The wealthy land baron had been willing to go to extremes to get what he wanted.
Honey angrily pushed her tangled hair back from her face as she turned to swing her feet down to the floor on the opposite side of the bed, giving him an excellent view of her slim, naked back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Warren. Has your mind gone soft?” She stood, letting the sheet fall to the bed as she reached for her chemise and drew it over her head, then pulled her dress on over it. “I never married that pig. I never married anyone.”
Warren’s heart stopped. His brain lit up with a thousand questions.
“But you said your husband was dead,” he said in a flat tone as a horrid suspicion began to form.
She made quick work of pulling her stockings and boots back on and was buttoning her dress as she replied. “I just got used to saying that whenever…” She stopped, then shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. But where did you ever get the idea I went and married Freeman?”
“From the letter I received from you the day of my father’s funeral. It said you didn’t want me to come back. That you had married Freeman and were starting a new life.”
She spun around, breath held and eyes wide. “I never sent any letter, Warren. Not a one.”
The mayhem erupting inside him at her words nearly felled him.
They had been manipulated.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, shock set in her features. “Did you send me a letter saying you were marrying a girl out East? That I was nothing but a good time to fill your summer?”
Warren’s hands curled into fists so tight, his knuckles ached. “No. I did not.”
“Freeman! That good-for-nothing sonofabitch! I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna ride up to Montana and put a bullet in that man’s gut.”
She turned and left the room in long furious strides.
Warren caught her by the arm just before she reached the front door, apparently intending to head out into the snowstorm as she was.
“Honey. Stop.” H
e held tight. She still strained to get away, but twisted her head to look at him with all her pain and fury showing plain in her face.
“Don’t you see what he did?”
Warren nodded. A furious tornado of heartache and rage spun wildly inside him.
“He deserves to die,” she growled.
“And he will someday, but not by your hand or mine.”
She stared at him, disbelief written all across her face. “How can you be so calm about this? He tricked us to try to get what he wanted.”
“I know.” He forced the words through a tight throat. He knew the loss and anger she was feeling. He felt it too, down to his very bone marrow, but he knew something else as well. “But he didn’t get what he wanted, did he? He’s hundreds of miles away. We are here now.”
His low murmured words seemed to have some effect on her as she stopped straining against his hold and turned toward him instead.
Was there hope in her eyes, mixed in with all that sadness?
“It’s way too late,” she whispered.
He frowned and lifted one hand to sweep some of her hair back from her face, letting his thumb brush gently over her cheekbone, where the golden freckles spread in a delightful pattern. “How do you know that?”
“Too much has happened, Warren.”
He would have argued that it didn’t matter, but something moving in the periphery of his vision caught his attention. A small girl-child shuffled in from the hallway. She was dressed in a long flannel nightgown, and the woolen socks on her feet slouched down around her ankles. She was rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she made her way into the kitchen.
Warren froze at the sight of her. An odd prickling sensation claimed every nerve.
His hand tightened involuntarily on Honey’s arm, alerting her to the newcomer. Noticing the girl, she stiffened like a board. The panic on her face told Warren nearly as much as the fact that the girl was right around six years old and had thick black hair tied into a messy braid that fell over her shoulder.
He got a feeling like his chest was caving in. He couldn’t breathe.
Finally, the girl lowered her small fists from her eyes. Shock hit Warren like a train going full speed as he looked into the same silver-blue eyes he saw every morning when he shaved in front of his mirror.
A sleepy scowl hovered over the little girl’s innocent eyes. “Why are you shouting, Mama? What’s wrong?”
“Holy shit.”
The curse was uttered by the outlaw named Jackson, who had just entered the front room.
“What?” Eli followed behind him, rubbing at his full beard. “What?” he asked again as he came to a stop and took in the scene.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Jackson muttered beneath his breath.
Honey slipped from Warren’s slack grasp and rushed toward the girl. “Nothing’s wrong, baby. You should still be sleeping.”
“But it’s morning and I’m not tired anymore.”
Warren glanced at the window over the kitchen counter. She was right. A muted white-gray light was expanding beyond the window. Snow covered everything.
“Let’s get you dressed and we’ll go home,” Honey said as she began to shoo the girl back down the hall.
“Honey.” Warren finally found his voice, but once again he was stopped short, this time by the appearance of Luke stepping from the hall between him and the two females. His shoulder was propped firmly against the wall to keep himself upright, and his expression was fierce with pain and determination. One hand grasped a handful of the blanket he’d wrapped around his hips for the sake of modesty, while his other hand held a gun pointed at Warren.
“You’ll stay right there, Reed, if you know what’s good for you.”
Warren would have charged past that gun regardless of Luke’s threat if two more weapons weren’t instantly drawn on him by Jackson and Eli.
Apparently, they weren’t going to give him a choice in the matter.
Six
Honey rushed Stella back to the little bedroom where she’d put her down to sleep when she realized she would be spending the night, tending to Luke.
Her brother’s darkly muttered warning would keep Warren from following.
It was the only bit of security she had at that moment in a world that had flipped and spun out of control.
“Who was that man, Mama? Why were you yelling at him like that? Was he naughty?”
“I wasn’t yelling at him exactly,” she evaded, “and it’s nothing you need to worry about anyway. It’s time to head home.”
“Is Uncle Luke gonna be okay?”
“I think so, baby. Your uncle is far too stubborn to let anything lay him low for too long.”
Honey hustled her daughter through the motions of dressing her in her flannel underclothes, her dress, boots, and then her coat. A glance out the window suggested the snowfall had slowed to a few random flakes drifting here and there. She hoped they hadn’t gotten so much through the night that they wouldn’t be able to make the short trek home.
Once she had Stella bundled up, Honey grabbed the quilt from the bed to throw around her shoulders, not wanting to go back out to the front room to fetch her coat.
She needed time to think. Time would help her figure out this mess of thoughts and feelings flying through her. Time and distance from Warren’s penetrating gaze, which looked straight into her heart without showing her a glimmer of his own. She needed to get home to her cozy little cabin. There she could be reminded of the safe and comfortable life she had created for herself and her daughter, with their handful of chickens and the garden they planted every spring.
She’d thought she hated John Freeman for how he had essentially run her out of the town she’d grown up in, but knowing the way he had tried to manipulate her into accepting his courtship made her angrier than she had ever been in her life.
“Why are you so mad, Mama? Did that man do something bad?”
Honey swallowed back the threat of tears at her daughter’s innocent question.
“No, baby. He didn’t.”
Acknowledging that fact sent a crushing wave of regret through her.
Stepping through the back door at the end of the hall, just past Luke’s room, she hustled them both through the freshly fallen snowdrifts, some of which reached nearly to Honey’s thighs. A few times, she had to lift her daughter clear in order to get through.
Stella would have preferred to tromp through the snow on her own, pouncing and leaping over the drifts, her bright laughter echoing through their secret valley. But Honey rushed her along, glancing nervously over her shoulder every couple of minutes in fear that Warren would somehow get free of her brother to come after them.
Once they reached their cabin, Honey released a heavy sigh and set about starting a fire and settling in. She desperately needed a bath and a change of clothes. The dress she wore was probably ruined, but she had to at least try to wash the blood out. Ready-made dresses were nearly impossible to come by, and it took Honey an awful long time to sew her own, having never developed a talent for it like her mother’s.
Staying busy was all she had to keep her sane, especially when Stella started in again with questions about Warren. Had the girl noticed the resemblance between them?
Honey couldn’t think on that just yet.
She finally managed to get her daughter occupied with making some bread. Stella loved anything that could get her messy and provide a nice treat for later. Which left Honey to sift through the many and varied thoughts running through her head.
Her past was a lie. Warren’s betrayal, completely false. Her hatred, unfounded.
And perhaps the worst thing—the whole time, he had felt betrayed by her.
Her chest tightened up so much, she had to stop in the middle of scrubbing her dress to force some deep breaths into her aching lungs.
She had cried a lake full of tears seven years ago, so much that by the time her mother died, she’d only had a few tears left to give. After that, she’d sworn she was done with grief. That was the day she decided to leave Montana and raise her child away from the judging eyes of the town where she’d spent her life and the constant demanding presence of John Freeman.
She would always be grateful that Luke insisted on coming with her. She may have found a way to survive without her brother’s support, but it would have been infinitely more difficult.
And she would find a way to survive this new twist on her past.
She had no idea what Warren might be thinking of all this. The temptation to hope was like a pounding drum in her chest. But the heartbreaking sadness had been with her for so long and had cut so deep. A renewal of their shared passion may have triggered that long-buried yearning once again, but it held no promises.
She had to think of Stella.
She needed time to reconcile what she had believed and what she now knew was the truth.
Luke would make sure Warren was taken back to town. Christmas was not far off, and Honey still had a lot to do in preparation. It was good to keep busy. It was necessary.
* * *
Warren was numb.
No, that wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t a total lack of feeling. This was the exact opposite.
The discovery of his daughter had blasted through him with such intensity that all he had left was scattered debris. His thoughts were obliterated, his past inconsequential, his self now completely unfamiliar.
He had a daughter. He and Honey, together.
No. Not together.
Anger filtered through his shock, but he didn’t want to waste time on thoughts of a past that couldn’t be altered. It was the future that concerned him now. And that thought was what finally motivated him to start pulling his shattered awareness back together.
By the time Warren realized Honey wouldn’t be returning, he already had a plan forming in his mind.
Christmas in a Cowboy's Arms Page 40