Can't Stop Believing (HARMONY) (29 page)

C
ORD
CLEANED
UP
AT
THE
SHERIFF
’
S
OFFICE
BEFORE
GOING
over to the hospital. He looked terrible, but he didn’t care. His wife was going to be all right. Bryce was locked away, and this time there were plenty of witnesses who could back Cord up on exactly what happened. Thanks to Cameron, the sheriff found the rifles Bryce had used in the abandoned house behind the mall. No amount of family money would buy him out of this mess.

When Cord called to check on Nevada, the nurse on duty told him to come quick, she was throwing a fit wanting to get out.

He wasn’t surprised. On a good day she didn’t react well to stress. He had to get to her quick. Galem was waiting to drive him over, and then the cook said he needed to get back to the ranch. Cord knew he’d be back if needed, but it was a husband’s place next to his wife now.

Five minutes later, she looked up from the forms she was filling out, Cord smiled down at her. “Hi, Babe.”

“How are my horses?” she asked. “If one of them is hurt, I’ll—”

“The horses are fine. Aren’t you worried about me?”

“Why? You seem in one piece, except it looks like you’ve ruined another shirt.”

“Sorry about that,” he shrugged. “When are you getting out of that bed and coming home to sleep with me?”

Nevada frowned. “Are you crazy? What’s not burned on you looks dirty.”

“Well, if you’d stayed put in the house like I told you, I’d only be dirty and not burned.”

The nurse darted from the room as if she thought a fight might break out any minute.

Cord and Nevada both laughed, and then Nevada cried in pain. He comforted her with his easy touch on the part of her arm not covered by a cast.

“She’s out there telling everyone how mean we are to each other,” Nevada said.

“I don’t care.”

“Me either. If I want to storm at my husband, I will.”

He leaned so close she could feel his words against her cheek. “I love you, storms and all.”

“I love you too,” she answered. “Maybe even more than I love my horses, but don’t you dare tell them that.”

He grinned, knowing just how great a love that must be.

Epilogue

O
CTOBER
27

C
ORD
WORKED
UNTIL
SUNSET
WORRYING
ABOUT
WINTER
coming on. They’d made a good profit on the cattle, but he’d kept quite a few head to increase the herd. The winter crops should have already been planted, so he’d have men working all weekend.

Any day the first frost would hit. For months he’d kept thinking that the work would slow down, but it never did. His list of things that needed to be done grew longer every day. He’d finished the rebuilding of the barn for Nevada’s horses, but there were still things that needed doing and never enough hours in the day.

His mind was full of everyday problems when he stepped into his old farmhouse after dark. Nevada said she wanted to meet him there. He knew she’d been talking about remodeling the place, but Cord didn’t have time to listen to all the details.

The doctor said it would give her something to do while she recovered. The arm healed quickly, but the leg had to have therapy. He’d slept beside her for more than a month before she’d begged him to touch her. Making love to her the day she got her cast off was like making love to her for the first time. He was afraid he’d hurt her and she was afraid he wouldn’t be attracted to her, but in truth Cord didn’t even see the scars. They didn’t matter.

When he reached for the light switch just inside the kitchen door of his old place, he noticed candles on the table. For a moment, he just stood staring, thinking maybe he’d walked into the wrong house. The place looked nothing like it had. Like everything she did, Nevada must have rushed into decorating full steam ahead.

Nevada, wearing one of the cotton dresses he loved, stepped from the shadows with only a slight limp.

“Hi, Babe,” he said. “What’s this all about?”

“Our bargain is up. The weatherman says it’ll come a hard freeze tonight.” She held up the paper. “We made it all through the season.”

He hadn’t even had time to think about the bargain. Between work and getting her well, his days had been too full to count.

“I want you to move back to your place, so I fixed it up. Ora Mae and I even moved your clothes over this morning.”

Cord couldn’t seem to force air into his lungs. She couldn’t be serious. They hadn’t talked about the contract they’d signed the day they married since she’d been hurt. She’d told him she loved him a hundred times. Whispered it in his ear when others were near and screamed it out loud when they made love. He’d thought they’d go on forever.

She moved into the soft candlelight. “I don’t have to sleep where you sleep anymore.”

He nodded once. If he said a word, he was afraid he’d never stop. Maybe he hadn’t made it plain how much he loved her, but it never crossed his mind that he would just be the next husband on her list to leave.

“So, since I’m free of that part of the bargain, I can sleep wherever I want.” She took one more step, careful not to limp. “And from now on I’m sleeping with my husband in this house. In his house.”

Kissing him softly, she whispered, “Because I love him dearly.”

He pulled her against him as his tender kisses welcomed her and his heart started beating again. She was making it plain she wanted no bargain between them; only love would hold them together now.

Finally, he pulled back and smiled down at her. “I’m nothing but mean, you know. You might want to reconsider. I work too hard and I don’t talk things over enough.”

“There is nothing to reconsider. I found you, Cord, and I’m not letting you go. Not ever.”

“You sure you won’t get mad one day and storm off down the road to your place?”

She smiled. “I gave the ranch house to Galem and Ora Mae today. If you don’t keep me, I’ll have to go live in Martha Q’s inn.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. McDowell. I’m keeping you.” He picked her up. “How about you show me the house, starting with our room.”

“Don’t you want to eat dinner first?”

He moved up the stairs. “Later. I want to see the stars through those skylights over our bed first, Babe.”

She grinned. “I didn’t think you were listening. I love you, Cord.”

“And I love you.”

Read on for a preview of the next historical romance in Jodi Thomas’s Whispering Mountain series

P
ROMISE
M
E
T
EXAS

Coming soon from Berkley!

J
ANUARY
1879
N
ORTH
T
EXAS

T
HE
MIDNIGHT
TRAIN
RATTLED
THROUGH
WINTER
’
S
DARKNESS
ignoring the howling January wind. Sliding low on the dusty last passenger bench, Beth McMurray tried to control her breathing. Anger and fear blended in her blood, freezing any movement. Evil traveled with her tonight, an evil she’d been about to marry.

“One hare-brained scheme too many,” she almost said her old housekeeper’s warning aloud. “One too many and you’ll be trapped, Bethie, and there will be no one to get you out of trouble you go running toward.”

Only now wasn’t the time for regrets, she had to think. She had to plan. But first, she needed to make herself as invisible as possible. Her future depended on it. In her black slouch hat and weathered rain duster, she hoped to pass for a man sleeping his way to Dallas. If no one came too near, or looked too closely, she might get away with it.

Doubt crept in, polluting her thoughts like icy rain. She hadn’t fooled the conductor when she’d boarded before sunset. He’d known she was a woman when she’d handed him her ticket. He even agreed to go along with her plan to surprise her bridegroom she said was on the train.

Four hours ago she expected to be planning her wedding tonight, but not now. As she stared at the tall man drinking at the other end of the car, Beth wondered why she’d ever thought of him as handsome. From a distance, he looked striking in his tailored black suit and gray wool coat. She could almost see him coffin boxed and her wearing black instead of the white dress she’d planned for a simple ceremony tomorrow.

Lamont LaCroix, the man she’d fallen in love with when she was seventeen and wide-eyed, was holding court in the middle of a half dozen young army officers also traveling north. Since sunset, she’d learned more than she ever wanted to know about her fiancé. More than he’d told her in the twenty letters he’d written over the past seven years. She’d learned that he was worse than the carpetbaggers who’d invaded Texas after the war. The northern accent she’d barely noticed when they’d met now grated on her nerves.

At first his letters had been friendly, as though keeping his young acquaintance up on Washington politics. As the years passed he talked of his dreams of power and she encouraged him. Two years ago he spoke of needing her, of wanting her by his side, and she hadn’t bothered with all he didn’t say. He’d fooled her completely, reeling her in.

No,
she corrected. She’d fallen for his lies because she wanted them to be true. She’d wanted to be the important wife of a senator, to live in Washington, D.C., and go to parties. Now, listening to him brag, Beth knew that she was an idiot. No man in Texas had ever measured up to this congressman and his letters. She’d wanted him to be real so desperately that she hadn’t even heeded her father’s warning. She’d jumped when she should have hesitated.

The rattle of the train couldn’t block out Lamont’s voice as he bragged that ‘the McMurray woman,’ as he called her, would fatten his bank account and warm his bed. She heard him tell the men around him that it was all he could do to keep from bedding her when he met her all those years ago in Washington. She was ripe and ready, he’d laughed. It would have been easy enough, he’d claimed, but he realized she was a gold mine. If he handled her correctly, he’d not only control her body, but her mind as well as her wealth.

When one of the young men drinking with him suggested the senator keep her pregnant to insure control, Lamont had bragged that he’d allow her one child, maybe two, and then see that there were no other pregnancies. “I want her by my side, not home raising brats. Wait till you see her. She may be dumb as a stump, but she’s built tall and beautiful with ginger-colored hair that hangs in curls past her waist. The perfect woman to stand at my side all the way to the White House.”

Beth bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood. If she hadn’t caught an earlier train to meet her groom-to-be, she never would have seen him like this until it was too late. Now she saw the truth and mourned her dream. Lamont had lost his re-election, but with a McMurray on his arm, he thought he’d take the seat from Texas without any trouble.

“I’ve got two years to meet all the right people,” he said, “then once I’m elected, I’ll never have to return to the state.”

She slowly raised her head just enough to see him. His words were starting to slur and he’d opened his coat, revealing extra pounds around his middle that hadn’t been there years ago. His brown hair and eyes made him handsome, but she saw flaws a seventeen-year-old wouldn’t have seen. Frown lines now marked his forehead and silver at his temples showed the signs of aging. She knew he was more than fifteen years older than her. It hadn’t mattered before tonight, but now she saw middle age weighting his shoulders. He wasn’t a young man and, by the time she bore and raised his children, she’d be nursing an old man.

Rain tapped on the windows and one of the lanterns blinked out, throwing the back of the car in shadow. Beth didn’t care. At the next stop, she’d rush off this train and vanish. No one would look for her. No one knew she was here except the conductor who punched her ticket. From the sound of the storm brewing outside he’d have more to worry about than one passenger riding away on the horse she’d loaded onboard.

Part of her wished she were brave enough to confront Lamont. He’d lied to her. He’d stolen years of her life as she’d waited for him. Part of her wanted to run to the front of the car and knock his bloated head off. Then instead of being almost a bride, she’d be almost a widow, which sounded far better to her right now.

The rain pounded harder and lightning flashed, pulling Beth from her anger and making her think. It would not be wise to confront Lamont here. The train would arrive before dawn in Dallas. No one would be there to meet her. She’d be alone with Lamont.

The men up front were now telling stories of her family and how spoiled they’d heard the youngest daughter of Teagan McMurray was. Everyone commented that any man lucky enough to meet her bragged of her beauty and her wealth, but none said anything about her character. Spoiled, temperamental, headstrong were words tossed around about her.

“Great beauty does that to a woman,” Lamont shouted above the storm. “She’ll need a strong hand to keep her in line. With her in Washington, D.C., and all her family in Texas, I’ll have no problem. Women are like children, they need the hand of discipline lowered frequently.”

The others laughed, but their laughter didn’t ring true. Beth wondered if they weren’t simply playing along with Lamont. If so, they were far more dangerous to him than her. She studied them closely and noticed the way they glanced at one another when Lamont wasn’t looking. The army officers weren’t Lamont’s friends, and the drunk didn’t even know it.

Beth waited for her chance to escape. Even if the next stop was for water or wood, she’d climb off and ride in the car with her horse before she’d spend another moment with the senator and the men who were baiting him.

They talked of the tricks they’d played on people and the women they’d slept with. Two of the men even got in a playful fight when they both claimed to have slept with the same socialite in the capital. None of the soldiers drank as much as Lamont did, and all fell silent when he shared something he’d gotten away with in Washington. They were digging his political grave and Lamont was handing them the shovels.

Finally, the train began to slow. She saw the single lantern swinging beside the water tank. Salvation awaited.

With her head low, Beth slipped from the car and melted into the rain on the dark side of the train. She had to feel her way back to the first freight car. Her horse was the only animal inside the one filled with damp hay. Much as she wanted to pull Brandy Blue off the train and ride open land, it was too dangerous in the mud and storm. In a few hours they’d be at a proper platform in Dallas and she’d have a road to follow at daylight.

Rain soaked all the way to her skin by the time she slipped into Brandy Blue’s makeshift stall. She stood beside him, patting his neck, whispering to keep him calm. He was restless, but she couldn’t help telling him how much better company he was than she’d left behind. She’d grown up around horses at Whispering Mountain Ranch. She couldn’t remember not being able to ride. The McMurray horses were the best in the state and like family to all the clan.

Beth checked her saddlebags, thinking of slipping into something dry. She’d packed her best traveling clothes and a raincoat, thinking she’d change before she surprised Lamont. Now, the dress wouldn’t be practical for the long ride ahead of her, and at least dressed in trousers, if anyone did see her ride away at the platform, they’d think she was a man.

She’d be out of Dallas and heading home by full light.

Pulling a small towel from her bag, she wiped her face thinking of all the names Lamont had called her over the hours. Headstrong, beautiful, spoiled, simple. She grinned. He’d left out one. Determined.

Nothing would keep her in the same town with him. She’d wait until Lamont and the army officers left the station, then she’d saddle up and ride. As long as she headed south, she knew she’d be going home. She wanted no one seeing her in the same town with her almost-husband. In fact, she never planned to see him again for as long as she lived. As soon as she got home, she’d burn his letters and marry the first man who asked her before the ashes were cold. Any man, anywhere would be better than the braggart she’d seen in the passenger car.

Beth set her mind. If no one asked her again, she’d never marry. Being alone had to be better than being with the wrong person. Her papa had made sure she had her own money, so she didn’t need Lamont.

She patted Brandy Blue. “Let’s go home, boy. I need to ride the hills of Whispering Mountain and forget what a fool I’ve been.” Smiling, she wondered if her wish and the horse’s weren’t the same, for he didn’t like the train, or the night, or the storm.

Between the drafty slats, she saw men climbing onto the back of the train as it pulled away from the circle of lantern light. Not passengers, she thought, invaders. They moved like rats in the dark, slipping in between the cars and crawling up ladders to the roof.

One broad-shouldered man in a long, black leather coat tried to pull another off the step, but the first jerked away and climbed aboard. They seemed to be arguing about something, but she couldn’t hear their words. A moment later the man in black reluctantly followed. The flash of a red bandanna tied around his throat seemed somehow out of place in the night.

Holding her breath, Beth realized that they had to be robbers. They’d probably stop the train miles from anywhere and rob, or maybe kill, everyone. She’d seen an army guard loading something in the mail car that looked like a strongbox. It must be a huge payroll, or gold, to be worth the risk of a midnight robbery. The officers with Lamont could be part of the guard, but they’d been drinking, thinking themselves safe tonight.

Beth pulled her senses about her like a cloak. Her survival depended on her being totally aware of everything and everyone around her. She’d grown up on a ranch when Texas was wild. She had to be ready to run or to fight. Without taking her eyes off the entrance to the car, she checked the gun belt around her waist.

She had to warn the others on the train.

But, how? Even if she could cross between the cars to the mail car, they wouldn’t let her in. The door was bolted solid. Behind her, only cattle cars followed. No one would hear a shot in the storm and she didn’t know if she was strong enough to hang on if she tried to cross over the top of the mail car.

In the last flash of light from the water tower’s lantern, she saw the broad-shouldered man in black take a few steps up to the roof of the mail car. He and his friend had made it over the freight car’s roof without her even hearing them. He was pulled on the arm of what seemed the younger of the two robbers as if trying to pull him down, but was ignored. He tried once more to draw the other man back against a course already set. The younger one shook his head and jerked away, vanishing into the night.

She thought she heard the one left behind yell, “Ryan, no,” but his cry was lost in the wind.

The one called Ryan would be moving to the engine, she reasoned. He’d stop the train at gunpoint, then the others would move from car to car robbing and killing anyone who tried to stop them.

As the train picked up speed, Beth noticed several horses being held by a shadow rider fifty yards from the track. They looked half-wild and in poor condition, except for a Pinto with front stockings, who almost bolted from the others, giving the handler fits. The horses finally galloped in the same direction as the train. They wouldn’t be able to keep up for long, but all they had to do was follow the tracks to find where the robbers had stopped the train.

Holding Brandy Blue’s neck, Beth tried to think of what to do. She closed her eyes, remembering who she’d seen on the train when she’d walked through looking for Lamont. Three passenger coaches. The first had four or five salesmen with their wares and a couple of gamblers passing the time with card tricks.

The second coach held families. One couple with a tiny baby. Another with two boys small enough to use a bench as a bed. She thought there was a third couple, but she couldn’t remember how many children. Sprawled near the doors, cowhands slept, probably heading to Dallas to work the trains going east.

The third one housed Lamont and the army officers.

Assuming all the men were armed, the passengers outnumbered the robbers, but the bandits had surprise on their side.

They might never make it to her. Surely even the drunk soldiers around Lamont would fight. But, if robbers made it to the mail car and broke in, one of the gang was bound to notice her position. Any light would show her outline next to the horse.

The old conductor had complained that this run wasn’t making any money hauling folks or stock, so they had to be after whatever was in the strongbox.