Jillian Hart (12 page)

Heartbroken, Sara savored the last bit of tea and gazed out at the pristine world, brand-new and shiny with moonlight She would leave before dawn, train or no, before she deceived Gabe one more day, before she came to love him and Mary a little bit more.

The tatted snowflakes, stiff with starch, fluttered on a string from sofa to wingchair in front of the cooling stove. She pushed back the chair and carried the tea things to the kitchen.

It was time to go while she still could. Time to leave Gabe and Mary to their lives. Missoula awaited, a job and independence such as she'd always wanted. She would have the letters Connie promised to write, telling her of Mary.

It ought to be enough, much more than she ever dared to wish for. And yet as the night faded, Sara knew it could never be enough.

The moment he opened his eyes, he knew. Sara was here. A happiness curled around him and it wasn't nearly so difficult throwing back the warm covers, climbing out of the comfortable bed, and facing the frigid morning.

He'd get the fires going, water boiling, maybe ask Sara what she wanted for breakfast. He liked the idea of cooking for her. Or better yet, cooking alongside her. Last night's kiss lingered in his memory, in the intimate touches she'd allowed. Sweet heavens, he didn't think he could get enough of a woman like that. Loving her could satisfy him the rest of his life.

He shivered into his clothes. The winds had stopped, the brief fury of the storm left a morning still and crisp. He peeked out the window and figured a good foot or more of snow had fallen last night. Enough to keep the train from running and Sara in Moose Creek through Christmas.

The parlor was silent. He crept on stockinged feet to the kitchen, where he opened the stove as quietly as he could, although the hinges squealed. He found the fire not too long banked, the embers glimmering hot.

Sara must have had trouble sleeping with the wind howling outside the door and made tea. He added kindling, then wood, feeding the fire, pleased she made herself right at home. It was his intention to make this a permanent arrangement.

"Pa? Where's Sara?" Mary stood in the shadows, rubbing her eyes.

"She's sleeping on the couch. Quiet, so we don't wake her."

"No, she isn't. And her sewing box is gone too."

"What?" Gabe swung around. In an instant he saw her cloak and muffler were both missing from the coat tree. "Maybe she's at Aunt Connie's house."

He didn't like the fact that she'd left without a word, but he knew a woman's reputation was important. And yet, she could have left a note—

"Pa?" Mary's voice sounded close to tears.

He found her in the parlor on her hands and knees before the tree. The first pink gleam of dawn brushed through the window and illuminated the tears sluicing down her face.

He knelt, his arms reaching out "What's wrong?"

"Sara's gone." Mary flew against him and buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder.

"There's no place for her to go, except back to Aunt Connie's." He didn't like this, how Sara had made Mary cry, but he wasn't sure if the woman realized how they cared for her, treasuring the rare happiness she'd brought to their lives.

"Then why did she leave presents?" Sobs shuddered through Mary's delicate body.

"Because today is Christmas Eve." Gabe held her all the tighter. "Why, look at that. Did you see all those lacy snowflakes she made for you? They're to hang on the tree."

"I w-want Sara to help me hang them."

Sara. She'd slipped out of their home without a word, without regard to how it would affect Mary. How could she do this to a child? To him?

One thing was for certain: He wanted answers. He would find out why Sara had run off without a word, one way or another.

Chapter Nine

"Sara's things aren't in her room." Connie descended the staircase still in her wrapper and nightgown. "There's not a place in town to stay. Where do you think she's gone? And in this weather."

"On to Missoula is my guess. Paul down at the livery rented her a horse and sled at dawn's light. Said he didn't want to, but she told him about her job, how her aunt expected her today. And even then, she had only half the funds. Gave him her aunt's name and promised to send the rest of what she owed him."

"Then she's truly left." Connie rubbed her brow, her face tight, her mouth pinched. "I at least wanted to say good-bye. I wanted to keep in touch with her. Jim's still asleep. Want me to put on some coffee?"

"I'd sure appreciate it, sis." Gabe unwound his muffler but left his coat on, for the house was cool. He'd rousted Connie from her bed, and the fires in both stoves were still banked. "Let me help."

"Goodness, would you look at this?" Surprise softened Connie's voice.

Gabe pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen and saw, even in the unlit room, the objects on the table: gifts wrapped for Christmas Day.

Glass chinked and a match flared as Connie lit a lamp. She turned up the wick and lemony light showed a hastily written note, a stack of small bills, and gifts for Connie and Jim.

"Oh, Sara." Connie brushed a tear from her eyes as she unfolded the paper and began to read. "She says she's afraid to lose her chance for this job and to forgive her, but she cannot stay. She wants to thank me for sharing my home and my family with her, for this brief but treasured time."

Gabe's throat filled. "Surely her aunt would hold the position if not even the train can get Sara there on time."

"That's my thought too. Maybe she's a stern woman, but surely she would have to be fair." Connie's fingers brushed the lace ribbon tied around a wrapped gift, handmade and as delicate as the woman who'd crocheted it. "Maybe there was another reason she chose to leave."

"Leave? She ran off like a woman with something to hide. A secret. Something she was ashamed of." He thought of how charmed Sara had been by Mary, how shy of him, swearing she was over grieving—that wasn't the reason she refused to love him.

You don't want me, Gabe. Believe me.
Her words had troubled him then, but even more now that she'd fled in subzero temperatures and ten-foot-high snowdrifts with no one to help her find her way.

He remembered the moment two evenings past in his kitchen when he had looked at his daughter and Sara side by side.

Kneeling before the range, Gabe added kindling to the embers and watched them burst into flame. "Connie, do you remember anything I might have told you about Mary's adoption?"

"No." Connie, her nose in the panty, pulled down the grinder, but her spine stiffened, her shoulders tensed. "I'm not the one who adopted Mary."

"No, but I just thought..." He reached for a stick of cedar, his pulse rushing in his ears. "Women talk, and I was led to believe the baby had been just a week old. Whoever gave up that baby had to live fairly close to Oak's Grove."

"Only stands to reason." Connie set the coffee grinder on the counter.

"You know how women talk, and you were active in several charities at the time. Surely you knew of a young woman who'd gotten in trouble"—he added more cedar and stepped back as the radiant heat scorched his face, making the skin feel tight—"or one who was forced to give up her baby."

"Because of a husband's death?"

Gabe closed the stove's small door, the hinges squeaking. A gust of wind shot down the pipe and the burners rattled, sending up tiny puffs of smoke.

His gaze landed on the wrapped gifts on the table. "Ann fell in love with Mary the first moment she was placed in her arms. I'll never forget that day. I became a father and Ann—why, she finally had her greatest dream. A baby to call her own, to love and raise."

"Ann loved Mary as her own, no doubt about it." Connie set the canister of coffee beans next to the grinder, her motions automatic, but her voice—how emotion deepened it—rang raw and tender. "But I image Mary's real mother—the one who held and loved and nursed that baby for her first week of life, then had to give her away—why, think of how much she must have loved little Mary."

"Yes." The knowledge clamped tight in his chest, balled in his throat. "Ann wanted to forget another woman had given birth to our baby, so we never asked. And I never knew."

"Well, now you do." Connie dumped a handful of beans in the mill.

Damn, he felt like a fool. He should have guessed, should have seen it. Hell, he had. He'd noticed it when Sara and Mary had stood side by side, the same unruly hair the exact dark shade of deep molasses and their eyes, both blue and gray, although Sara's were more gray, maybe because she carried with her a great sorrow, a great sadness of having given up her baby so many years ago.

Her baby. Gabe felt struck by lightning, off kilter, as if his entire world had shifted suddenly and nothing would ever be the same again. Sara might have innocently been on that train, innocently stranded like the other passengers, but had she used the situation to get close to Mary?

"Where are you going?" Connie sounded panicked as he headed toward the door.

He didn't answer. He didn't have time. "Watch Mary for me. I don't want her to know anything about this. Not one word, Connie."

He waited for his sister's nod, and then he was outside, wading through the high drifts to saddle his gelding. A few lazy flakes swirled in the air and he studied the clouds, scented snow on the low wind.

Another storm was brewing, but how bad, he couldn't tell.

"Whoa, boy." Sara eased back on the thick leather reins looped between her fingers, which were numb despite the two pairs of mittens she wore. "Easy, now."

The big black gelding tossed his head, just short of panic.

 This was the fifth time the little sled had fallen through a snowdrift, made unstable by the grass or pockets of air beneath it. It made for slow going.

The sun had already stretched beyond the zenith, and it was now rapidly disappearing behind diffuse clouds. The snow had changed too. First, light flakes had danced on the air, falling with a lazy ease; then they blew more seriously until the tracks behind her disappeared and the horizon ahead faded to a nebulous shroud.

Sara unloaded the simply built sleigh, then heaved and tugged until the vehicle was righted again. She checked the traces and leather buckles before harnessing up the skittish gelding. The big animal looked at her with worried eyes, for no doubt he could sense how the storm could worsen and trap them here on the desolate mountainside.

She'd had little choice in leaving, as difficult as this trek away from Moose Creek had been. She had wondered throughout the day how Mary was doing, how Gabe might feel when he discovered her missing. She'd hurt him, she knew. But it was far better hurting him this way, with an unexplained departure. She could not risk hurting Mary, who did not even seem to know she was adopted.

No, Sara was doing the right thing. She had no doubts. From the deepest part of her, she knew it. But that didn't mean it was easy. Unshed tears ached in her throat, a great ball of grief and loss that hurt with every breath she took.

The gelding gave a snort, sidestepping in his traces as he tossed his head. "It's okay, boy," she soothed, then glanced over her shoulder.

A dark spot stood out against the miles of pristine snow—a horse and rider. She'd met no one on the trail today—that is, if she was still on the trail. It was impossible to tell with the drifted snow, for it had erased all signs of a road.

"Come on, you darn sled." She pulled and tugged, her muscles straining, until the vehicle tipped off its side to rest back on its runners. Now she just had to get the sleigh out of the hole and back up onto solid ground.

As she patted down the uneven snow, she glanced over her shoulder. The rider was closer, more distinct as he crested a rise, then disappeared into a gully.

Being alone in the vast wilderness with a stranger riding close wasn't all that safe. Sara slapped the reins against the black's rear and the animal gave a little lunge, hauling the sled back up onto the hard packed snow.

"Whoa, boy." She pulled him to a stop, then fetched her satchels. Bitter wind burned her face and teared her eyes as she looked behind her, toward Moose Creek and the people she had left behind.

The rider had not crested the next small rise, and so she settled back onto the small sled's seat, tossed a wool blanket over her lap to cut some of the wind's bite, and sent the gelding into a quick walk.

The horse balked now and then, a little spooked from finding a few unstable spots in the snow, but she calmed him, talking low. She tried to keep the urgency out of her voice, but it stayed in her heart, thumping hard with each beat.

The tingling feeling at the back of her neck told her the rider had closed the distance between them. Gabe. She knew it was him before she twisted around to make out the square cut of his jaw or the broad dependable line of his shoulders. He rode fast, a hat protecting his face from the pelting snow, his clothes patched with icy-white flakes.

"Get up, boy!" She sent the black into a faster walk, but the animal neighed and the ground gave way beneath them. For an instant she felt airborne and then the sled hit bottom, bucking her from the seat and into the icy snow. Brief pain skidded up her side and burned in her arm.

"You've caught the edge of the slew." Rumbling and dark that voice, without a trace of his usual humor or kindness.

Sara swallowed the groan on her lips and sat up, dusting the bits of white from her skirts. "I didn't know there was a slew. I guess that explains why I keep going down. I'm riding on nothing but reeds and air."

"Let me help."

"I can do it myself." Sara stood, determined to hide the bite of pain in her ribs as she rescued her satchels, thrown clear of the sleigh. "Easy, boy."

The gelding reared, squealing in fear, plunging around in the uncovered reeds.

"Easy now." Sara reached for the fallen reins. "Let me get you unharnessed."

"You need help." She heard Gabe's saddle creak slightly as he dismounted.

Her heart plunged in her chest. "No, I'm doing well enough by myself."

"I know. You don't need me. You told me that before." His boots squeaked on the snow.