High-Riding Heroes (28 page)
She found her voice. “You knew my father? Then you and Uncle Henry knew each other in Virginia?”
Buck looked from one of them to the other and took a deep breath. “I am your Uncle Henry.”
Victoria’s brain fogged. Words buzzed around in her head as she fought to comprehend what was being said.
“What’s this Uncle Henry stuff?” Wes asked, half expecting this and more to be fabricated.
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“I faked a will and notified Victoria that her uncle had died and left his half of this town to her. I told you I had let a silent partner buy in and then was surprised when he showed up to participate. I figured you two wouldn’t bother discussing mundane matters like that.”
Victoria swayed and Wes caught her from behind and let her lean back against him.
He was her Uncle Henry. Her father’s brother. Stunned, nearly speechless, she murmured, “Did you and my father look much alike?”
Buck smiled, touched. “Yes. Quite a bit, being only one year between us.”
“Then he would look like you now. God. Had he lived, this is what he would look like. Why? Why did you send for me?”
“A friend of mine back there kept me current on you. I couldn’t do much about the life your mother forced you to live while you were young, but after your divorce, after I heard that she was trying to marry you off to some other rich dandy…well, I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Why,” her voice faltered as she moved a few steps toward him, “didn’t you let me know I had an uncle?”
Pain darkened Buck’s face. He looked her squarely in the eye. “God only knows why, but your father loved that bitch. She was a cunning, conniving…I was never good enough. I was a rowdy. A drunkard. A devil-may-care idiot I think were her exact words. I was ashamed.”
Victoria cocked her head and tried to comprehend what she was hearing.
“Sam and I used to sneak out once in a while, after you two were asleep. She never knew. She had her own room and only cut tracks to his when she felt like it. Anyway, we went to a bar and drank too much. I was drunk. I was driving.
There was an accident. Sam died. I didn’t.”
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The torrents of emotion pushed tears to the backs of her eyes. She blinked them away.
Buck continued, hurriedly. It was getting harder and harder for him to say the words that hurt this girl, the grown-up woman of the little girl he loved so much.
“She shrieked, she screamed; she pounded on my chest. Murderer. Killer.
She said I was jealous of all Sam had, so I took him out, got him drunk, and drove him into that tree.” He hated that he felt the heat of tears at the corners of his eyes.
Shifting from one foot to the other, he continued. “I loved Sam. I never would have hurt him. You and me…and him. We spent a lot of time together.
She said I could never come near you again. That I was bad for you. She convinced me. I left the state after a while. After I tried to see you and she would grab you up and run away. She made you cry. You see, you loved me, too.”
Nothing. She remembered none of this but a feeling was rising to the surface, like a sunken ship blown full of air and floating, creaking and groaning to the top.
She nodded her head, and as if in a dream, she heard her own words. “Yes.
Yes, I did.”
Moving away from Wes, she walked closer. To look closer. To try to see her father there, in his eyes.
Buck let go of the horse’s reins. “I called the whole town together. Told them I had a niece out East that didn’t know about me. How I was getting you out here. How I was hoping you could be happy out here. I planned on not making it too easy and counted on the stubbornness you displayed as a little squirt. And Wes. I knew he would be good for you. I was hoping you two would get together. He deserved better than life handed him, too.”
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Victoria took another step and was only twelve inches from him. She reached out and touched his cheek, felt the tear roll from the corner of his eye, across her fingers. This man was her uncle. Her father’s brother. Her family. She reached up with both arms and wrapped them around his neck. Tucking her face, she pressed against his chest. She felt it heave as the man fought his own release of emotion, felt the warm, wonderful protectiveness of his embrace. They cried.
Wes swallowed a lump in his throat. Why, that cagey, old codger. By God, he would enjoy having him for an almost father-in-law. And he would be grandfather to Katie and the rest of the kids. The tough, no-shit cowboy had a hard time keeping his own eyes dry.
Buck pulled back and looked at Victoria. “You forgive me then?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Uncle Henry. I only wish you had just called me and told me.”
“So do I. But it just didn’t seem the way and I was afraid you would tell me to keep riding west. This way, if it didn’t work out, well, at least you’d never know.”
She hugged him once more. Growing just a little embarrassed by now, Buck returned the hug and then swung back into the saddle. “You kids get all this straightened out between you. And don’t take long. This town needs your attention.”
With that, he whirled the horse and thundered away, over and down the hill.
Wes walked up and turned Victoria to face him. She cast one more look in the direction Buck had disappeared and then turned back to Wes.
He leaned forward slowly and rested his mouth against hers. Her arms automatically moved to encircle his waist and pull him closer. She deepened the kiss. Now that the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders, she felt invincible.
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When they parted, she laughed. Then at his perplexed look, she laughed even harder. “This is unbelievable. The entire thing.”
He swept her up in his arms and twirled her around and around. Tripping, he ended up slamming them both to the wet ground.
As kids will do, they lay there, arms outstretched, watching the sky clear and holding hands. Victoria listened to the drumming of her heart. Her very happy heart.
Wes rolled the words over and over in his mind before he spoke them, all the while wondering why it’s so hard for a man to say them sometimes. It must be because if it didn’t turn out right…if she didn’t give the right answer…Hell. “I want you to marry me, Victoria.”
The thrill of his words jolted through her. Yes, her mind screamed. Yes.
Suddenly she felt light. A breeze could carry her away. She felt like laughing and crying some more. Before she could answer, he pulled her to lie in the crook of his arm.
“Old towns like Glory Town always had one thing in common. Do you know what that is?”
She thought a minute, as much as her reeling mind would let her. “No.
What?”
“Think. What one thing do you see as a constant in every Western movie you’ve seen?”
He answered for her, because it had been in his mind for so long. “A huge two-story blindingly white house with a big, long wraparound porch towering right at the edge of Main Street.
Sort of higher up and out a ways. Can you picture it?”
She could. “Green shutters at every window and a gabled roof with lots of gingerbread trim everywhere. In the winter, when the streets are covered in 222
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snow and all of Glory Town is muffled, smoke would spiral, lazily and heavily scented with kitchen smells that it’s pulling up the chimney. In the summer, you can hear the creak of the porch swing as the couple sits and watches the goings-on.”
It was his picture, too. “It’s our house, Victoria. Big and spacious and room for lots of kids. Katie needs brothers to pick on her and stand by her, dunk her in the mud, and watch over her when her boyfriend brings her home from her first date. And I need you to come home to. To sit with, to look at, to talk to. To love.”
Victoria drifted on the dream. “The rich people. The owners of the bank or the thousands of acres of land lived there.”
“You love me. Being married and having Katie and lots of other kids qualifies us as rich, doesn’t it?”
Her heart soared. “Yes, it does.”
“I want to build that house for you, Victoria. I want us to be that family. Of course, now we have to add a rocker to the porch for Grandpa. I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
She sighed, all the broken chips of her life falling into place. “You should have convinced me. We could have saved a lot of heartache.”
“I didn’t know how. And I wanted to be sure that you loved me. You and I have both made some mistakes in the past. We needed the time it took so we were both sure.” He slipped a long stem of lush green grass between his lips.
She rolled and propped herself on his chest. “And now that we are, I feel I should warn you. I’m not an easy person to live with.
I won’t make your life all rose gardens and cherry pie. I won’t stop being independent and active with this town. There’ll be times when you come home that you’ll have to fix dinner for yourself and the kids.”
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He rested his hand on her shoulder while he twirled the blade of grass with his tongue. He didn’t want it any other way. “I can cook.”
She punched him and snuggled against his shirt. “I should have known.”
“Is that a ‘Yes, I’ll marry you’?” Tossing the grass aside, his mouth played with hers.
“Can you do laundry?” she asked, enjoying drawing this out as long as possible. Let him squirm a little.
“Sort darks from whites. Hot for towels and cold water for cottons. Bleach and fabric softener.” He nipped her chin. “Never bleach colors and always put…” he kissed her soundly, “my jeans in for the long cycle.”
“Sweep the floor?” she goaded.
“With a broom,” he confirmed.
Harassing him, she went on. “Clean closets?”
“Salvation Army donations.”
“Change the sheets on the bed?”
“In my sleep. In your sleep.” He fitted his warm mouth to hers.
“You’ll do,” she mouthed against his lips.
“I sure will.”
They stood beneath the morning sun in front of the small chapel at the end of the road in Glory Town. The sun glinted off the little steeple and bathed everyone in soft, warm sunlight.
Flowers, mountains of them, lined the sidewalk. Ribbons fluttered in the wind. Tables laden with food waited off to the side for the reception. A fiddle band waited to begin the festivities.
The construction workers erecting the big white house on the edge of town set down their saws and hammers long enough to watch.
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Wes’s parents stood near the buckboard that was decorated with crepe paper, flowers, and ribbons. His father put his arms around his mother and pulled her to him for a kiss.
Wes, dressed in his black suit and go-to-hell hat, stood beside Victoria. She was the vision of any man’s dreams. Her dress, yards of long, long white silk, white lace, and tiny pink rose buttons, flowed down her body and onto the dusty walk. The veil framed her face and invited an ethereal aura. She and Katie, who stood between the two of them, clutched bouquets of wildflowers. Buck stood next to Victoria, chest poked out and dressed in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
“Dearly beloved. We are all gathered here in the presence of man and God, and Buck,” he grinned, “to join together…”
As the preacher, dressed in 1870s garb, began the ceremony, a horse nickered at the wind. A restless child pulled the trigger on his cap gun and broke off the sidewalk chasing his squealing sister. The sign on the general store creaked as the breeze brought a tumbleweed to bounce down Main Street. A door slammed.
A car honked its horn from the distant road. Changed yet unchanged, Glory Town witnessed the joining of two of its permanent residents. It was only the wind, but it could have been a sigh.
Over the scratchy intercom came the sweet strains of “Finest Kind of Lady,”
the song Wes had written for Victoria. Katie had insisted. It was her contribution to the wedding ceremony. She twisted and squinted up at her daddy and waited as he bent to plant a kiss on her cheek.
Sally blew her nose into a floral handkerchief.
Victoria looked at Wes. It all seemed so picture perfect. Past him she could see the huge, looming frame of their new home. It stood right at the end of the
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road as Wes had promised. It would be a cheerful, warm house with the sounds of lots of kids and Katie. Katie could ride her tricycle down the hill…
“Well, do you?”
Wes’s words brought her back from her daydreams.
“What?”
Laughter rose over the crowd and drifted on the wind.
“Marry my daddy?” Katie piped in, impatient to get to that big white cake that was waiting on the table.
“That I do, Katie, my girl. I do.”
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About the Author
Joey Light is an award winning, internationally published author. Her first computer was a laptop; yes, a college lined notebook and a pen on her lap after her four young sons were fast asleep. Entertained by TV westerns, Ms. Light found she wanted to see more of a female aspect as the good guys chased the bad guys. So she created beautiful, feisty heroines and threw them smack in the middle of the stampede or a jail break. It was all just for fun. Now she writes about contemporary men and women, real only in her mind until she observes someone reading it on the subway. Ms. Light says receiving the first copy of her debut novel was like seeing her child for the first time. She couldn’t stop looking at it, holding it, feeling it, and loving it. Let Joey Light take you away for a while to a place where anything can happen…and does.
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