Kit Gardner (5 page)

Her gaze locked with his, then skittered away. Color bloomed through her face and spilled down the slender length of her neck. Still she tugged upon his arm. “To the house, Mr. Stark. I’m afraid I can’t drag you there again.”

“I helped,” Christian chirped, dancing about in the dust. “Didn’t I, Mama?”

“You helped like a big boy,” Frank Wynne’s wife murmured. She took a step, and Rance resisted, trapping her hand between his forearm and his biceps. “Mr. Stark—”

“I can walk, dammit,” he growled.

She stared at him, full pink lips compressing. “I’d rather you didn’t speak like that, sir.”

“Quit calling me sir. And let go of my arm.”

“I won’t. You’ll topple like a felled oak, Mr. Stark.”

“Logan.” He forced the word through his teeth, though he couldn’t fathom why this was suddenly important to him. “Call me Logan.”

“See there, you’re swaying and I’m still holding onto you. Really, sir, is your pride worth so much to you that you would risk your life?”

What could this woman know of a man’s pride?

He closed his eyes. “I’m just dizzy, and someone is pounding a very large drum inside my head. Annoying, but hardly a threat to my life.”

“Your pride could be, sir. As you wish. There. I’ve let go. How do you feel?”

Damned stupid. Swaying and dizzy and remarkably stupid for allowing himself to be shot by Frank Wynne’s wife and for coming here in the first place.

He took a step, what he thought was a well-done step directly to the front. But the wind blew again, filling his shirt, and the ground rose up and angled crazily beneath him. This time, he reached for her, his fingers gripping the fragile length of her upper arm.

“Christian, get the door. That’s it, Mr. Stark. Lean on me. One step at a time.”

He complied, though it ate like hell at him. And he let her take him back into the house and into her room, again, despite his protests.

“Where do you sleep?” he asked the hovering Christian.

“Upstairs,” the boy replied. “But you can’t sleep in my bed. Mama says a made bed can’t be messed up till nighttime.”

“Hush, Christian.”

“I prefer the floor,” Rance muttered, falling rather solidly to that hooked carpet on which he’d earlier bled. He stretched his legs and closed his eyes. What could only be described as a groan of relief spilled from his lungs before he could snatch it back. Frank Wynne’s wife adjusted the pillow beneath his head, and he opened his eyes to find her leaning over him, peering closely at his shoulder. She blurred, and one golden, lemon-scented curl plopped upon his nose, then skimmed like silk over his chest, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.

Her voice seemed to swirl about him, and he closed his eyes again and immersed himself in it. Oddly comforting, it was, that and the calming warmth of her breath upon his grimy face. Hell, only a fool would find comfort in these circumstances. On this day, he knew of no bigger fool.

“Sleep, Mr. Stark. I’ll tend to the bandage. Allow me. I’m...” Gentle fingers touched his skin, and those fires threatened to consume him. “I’m so very sorry, sir. You saved my life. And Christian’s. I’ll be forever grateful. Yes, just sleep.”

* * *

The kitchen door slammed, accompanied by the scrape of boot heels upon scrubbed floorboards. Yanked from sleep, Rance opened his eyes and stared at a ceiling in dire need of paint. He blinked. The ceiling remained in focus.

“Jessica!” A man’s voice ricocheted through the house. “God help me, Jessica, where are you?”

Jessica.
The name left Rance’s lips in a hoarse whisper. Her name was Jessica.

“Jessica, my dear, are you there?”

The kitchen door slammed again, and Christian’s agitated voice retorted, “I told you she’s in there.”

“But I can’t go in there, in her... I mean, that’s your mother’s private...
private.
”

Bare feet plunked purposefully upon the kitchen floorboards. “He’s in there.”

“
Who’s
in there?”

“The outlaw.”

“The what?”

“He robs trains and stagecoaches. He has a knife.”

Rance shoved himself to a sitting position and instinctively reached for the weapon he kept in his waistband. Only none was to be found. He’d left his gun in his saddlebag with his misplaced horse, and his knife stuck in that rattler. Unarmed and wounded, he felt grossly incomplete and too damned vulnerable, particularly because this man’s voice rang with the sort of puffed-up indignation that typically preceded a brawl. Or a gunfight. And then heavy footfalls echoed through the short hall, just moments before a dark head peeped around the door jamb.

“Good God in heaven,” the man said, his voice choked, his narrow face paling.

Rance watched the man’s Adam’s apple work frantically in his throat and wondered why he felt so damned compelled to apologize. For being in this room? For killing Jessica Wynne’s husband? For taking a rifle shot through the shoulder? Or perhaps for the sudden surge of protectiveness stealing through him?

Christian scooted into the room. At his side dangled a waterlogged white cloth that left a puddled trail in his wake. “Oh, you’re awake. Here. This is for your head. Where’s Mama?”

“Get away, Christian,” the man bellowed from the doorway with all the self-righteous pomp Rance could have imagined. Christian didn’t move from Rance’s side. In three staccato strides, the man stood tall and angular, trembling and red-faced, not two feet from Rance’s boots. He was no younger than Rance, perhaps only an inch or two shorter, and boasted the long, slender limbs common to men of leisure. He was narrow of shoulder, cleanly shaven and shorn, with round wire-rimmed glasses perched regally upon his beaked nose. A gentleman, garbed in a gentleman’s collar and coat and smelling like mothballs, of all things.

“Do you want to get up, Mr. Stark?” Christian whispered for all to hear. “Are you gonna fight Reverend Halsey?”

“I demand an explanation of you, sir,” Halsey bellowed. “You there are in my fiancée’s private...private. You are aware of this?”

Rance grunted and managed to get to his feet, only once gripping the four-poster, which seemed to provoke the good reverend beyond measure.

“Avram! Good heavens, Avram!” She materialized, Jessica, breathless, flushed and flustered Jessica, her hair a wild golden halo about her face. She twisted her hands in her blood-smeared skirts and donned a smile that Rance couldn’t take his eyes from. Halsey barely favored her with a glance. His jaw, however, sagged open and he shoved an accusing finger at Rance.

“Good God, Jessica, you’ve a half-naked intruder in your private...private...and you stand here and smile at me?” Halsey ran a shaking hand over his protuberant brow. “My dearest, surely some sort of explanation is in order here.”

Jessica blinked and raised her brows. Her eyes darted to Rance, all over him, actually, and this shot a heaping dose of pleasure through him. Yes, more of that and he would be a well man in no time. Hell, his shoulder felt better already.

She held a hand toward him. “Why, Avram, of course I’ve an explanation.”

“You’ve a black beast of an animal eating what remains of your front yard, Jessica. You’re aware of this?”

Again, Jessica blinked. “Why, no.”

“My horse,” Rance said.

“Your shirt, if you would.” Halsey sniffed at Rance with decided repugnance. “Jessica, perhaps you shouldn’t look, my dear. It’s highly offensive that a man should bare himself before a woman who is not his wife in the Lord’s eyes. Particularly when a man is fashioned in the form of the very devil himself.”

Jessica’s smile quivered on her lips. “Why, yes, he’s... Well, he cannot help that, Avram. Besides, he’s wounded.”

“Wounded?”

“Yes, well, a minor catastrophe. All my fault. But later, Avram. Not to worry, though. Mr....I mean, Lo—Mr. Stark, that is, has very good reason for being here.”

“He killed a snake with his knife,” Christian offered.

Halsey ignored that. “He’s in the room where you sleep, Jessica.”

“Is he? Why, yes, yes, he is, isn’t he? And well he should be, Avram. The ceiling, yes, the ceiling needs paint and the floor requires stripping and a new coat of beeswax and—”

“Indeed it does, my dear, and that’s the very least of your worries. I say all the more reason why you should come to your senses
before
our wedding and agree to rid yourself of this nasty, flea-bitten farm.”

“It is not!” Christian yelled.

“Christian, don’t argue with Reverend Halsey.”

“But, Mama—”

“Avram—”

“Now, Jessica, my dear, this man here. Direct your scattered thoughts to him, if you will. Who is he?”

Her eyes met with Rance’s. His narrowed. And then she turned to Halsey and thrust out her cleft chin. “His name is Logan Stark. He’s my new farmhand, Avram. Say hullo, would you, and do be polite. Mr. Stark shall be with us for some time.”

S
ilence hung like a palpable thing, broken only by the ticking of a clock somewhere in the small house. Avram Halsey let loose with a disbelieving snort and squinted toward the bedroom window, perhaps seeking logic in the billowing of the white curtains. Or was it Frank Wynne’s picture on the dressing table that he stared at? Rance grew certain as he watched Halsey’s face flush scarlet clear to his receding hairline that the man had never stepped one foot near Jessica Wynne’s “private private,” a room she had shared with the man framed upon that dressing table. Perhaps that was the source of Halsey’s sudden unease, and the distasteful curl of his lip. Perhaps that was why he swung his gaze from the window to fix with renewed vehemence upon Rance. Yes, something more than unease lurked there, a supreme agitation, as if the man itched to take himself from the room. Little wonder he wanted Jessica to sell the farm, with all its lingering memories...of another man, another lifetime. Halsey had ample reason to deny Jessica any farmhand’s help.

She turned toward Rance. A wavering smile parted her lips. Naked desperation flickered deep in her eyes and was gone in the next instant, swiftly veiled behind that mantle of strength she seemed to force onto her narrow shoulders. Yet he still sensed it. That desperation. She needed him. A virtual stranger. A man who didn’t deserve her trust.

“Jessica, dearest, be reasonable. We know nothing of this...this...” Halsey waved a hand toward Rance, then stared hard at Jessica. “A man you met and shot this very afternoon, and yet you would take him under your roof, and for what? I can hear the place rotting as we speak. It has been since before your husband died. Indeed, I believe even
he
was beginning to see the wisdom in selling it, given the price those Easterners were offering. Oh—” Halsey patted her arm consolingly and lowered his voice as Rance imagined a goodly reverend might upon entering his church. “Forgive me for speaking of the departed, but you’ve left me with little alternative. Jessica, a wounded man will be of scant use to you. Pray, with what do you intend to pay him? Strawberries?”

Halsey’s scoffing drew Jessica’s spine up tight. Rance felt his fingertips curl into his palms when her chin jutted forward. Her son stood below and beside her, the same chin poking at Halsey.

“Avram, you forget yourself,” Jessica said with deceptive softness. “My father hauled the stone to build this house and died out in that field, securing his rights to this land. I cannot easily forsake that.”

“Your father, my dear, were he still alive, would undoubtedly see the futility in your quest, regardless of all your noble intent. I doubt very much he would see the wisdom in taking a complete unknown into your fold. He wished you a fate far above his own, Jessica, and that fate certainly did not include dying in some barren field behind a runaway double-shovel plow. He arranged for you to marry Frank Wynne, did he not?”

“My father knew he was dying, Avram. He wanted me to be well taken care of. Unfortunately, he believed Frank capable of that,
on this farm,
with his cattle business. At the time, so did I.”

“Ah, but your father also dedicated himself to his church and parishioners,” Halsey replied stiffly. “I believe
you
forget that. Would you have
me
sacrifice the tiny congregation he established here in Twilight, one I have lovingly nurtured and can now proudly call my own, solely for the sake of a moldering old farm that is beyond redemption?”

“I would never ask you to sacrifice anything for me, Avram,” she said slowly.

“Oh, but you are. What of my reputation? And what of yours? Once word spreads that you’ve a...” Again, Halsey scowled at Rance.

Rance couldn’t help but scowl back.

“He’s an outlaw,” Christian offered.

“No, he’s not, Christian,” Jessica murmured. Her eyes flickered over Rance. “He’s—”

“I worked for a cattle rancher,” Rance offered, the words springing forth unchecked. Something swelled in his chest when Jessica’s pink lips parted into a soft, satisfied curve. Hell, he could imagine men selling their souls for a smile like that.

She gave Halsey a smug look.

Halsey blinked at her. “Don’t tell me you believe him worthy of sainthood, Jessica, simply because he claims he can manage a few stray head of cattle?”

“He has an honest face, Avram.”

Halsey’s jaw sagged then snapped shut. “An honest—? My dear, he looks every inch the sort who robs stagecoaches and trains and leaves innocent people for dead.”

Christian’s big blue eyes swung up to Rance. “Yep. And he has a knife. He’s gonna teach me to throw it.”

“Christian, shush.”

“Jessica, you
did
shoot the man. For very good reason, I presume, you deemed it prudent to disregard my orders to keep your hands from that firearm. Were you possessed of some sort of aim, I’d warrant you’d have killed him. Am I mistaken?”

Again her chin inched upward. “I would kill anyone who would think to harm my son.”

Halsey all but smacked his lips with satisfaction. “Aha! And there you have it. Take a moment, if you would, and listen to yourself. You’re finally making some sense.”

“Of course I am, Avram. I have been all along. I make it a point to always make sense. Mr. Stark means us no harm.” Her eyes flickered over Rance, lingered on his bandaged shoulder, then scooted away. “Indeed, I believe I owe him some sort of recompense.”

“Recompense?”
Halsey sputtered. “Simply for being the unfortunate recipient of your bad shot?”

Rance barely heard Halsey when again her gaze lifted to his. A peculiar warmth having nothing to do with his wound seeped through Rance’s chest.
An honest face.
No one had ever said that about him. Hell, when a man was paid for his shot, his integrity mattered very little.

“Avram, the fact remains, I shot the man.”

“Then feed him, if you feel you must, and send him on his way. As for this ridiculous notion of hiring him on, the townsfolk shan’t see the logic in that, Jessica. You know as well as I that your reputation cannot withstand—”

“Avram, I care far more about righting my injustices and salvaging this farm than I do about vicious gossip.”

“So you say. But I ask you, what of me?”

“You? Why, Avram, busy as you are with the church, you need not bother yourself with the farm any longer. Odd, but I would think
you
most of all would understand my need for a hand and encourage it, knowing me as you say you do. After all, did you not advise Mabel Brown to hire on a farmhand when her husband passed on? I don’t recall overhearing even one dire bit of warning when Melvin Hodges filled that post.”

“Melvin Hodges is a toothless, bandy-legged old man, Jessica. He’s lived in Twilight longer than anyone. He’s harmless. Better still,
we know him.
He’s not some misbegotten devil of the prairie. And old Widow Brown is all but confined to her bed with rheumatism.”

“She’s a lovely woman, Avram. What are you saying, precisely?”

Halsey pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, as if to assuage some deep ache. “All I know at this moment is that you are making no sense whatsoever. And I shan’t stand here in your private...room and discuss the matter another moment.” Halsey glowered at Rance. “What the devil are
you
looking at, Stark?”

Rance gave the good reverend a bland look.

Jessica faced Rance, with that one slight shift of her shoulders entirely dismissing Halsey. And then Rance saw it all emblazoned in her eyes, too clearly, far too guilelessly, and that warmth in his chest burgeoned into a deep, gut-wrenching ache of realization. Rance had taken much more from her in Wichita than a husband, a father, a protector and provider.
His
had been the hand that thrust this house and farm into disrepair.
He
had brought her all this heartache and turmoil.
He
had put that uncloaked desperation in her eyes. And he knew, beyond a doubt, that without help, she would lose it all. Halsey would see to that, no matter how stubbornly she fought him, or the inevitable crumbling of the farm around her and the wilting of all her pitiful strawberry plants. A woman this self-righteous would stand stalwart for something that just might not be worth the fight.

Hell, he’d never met a woman who would choose back-breaking toil, even the humiliation of failure, over the relatively comfortable life Halsey was offering her. More than a few of the saloon girls he’d known in his lifetime had been widowed at young ages, with children and farms left to their care. They’d abandoned the harsh realities of farm life, the drudgery, the inevitability of failure, and opted for the life of a whore. The lesser of two evils, they’d told him, their faces ravaged by far more than the effects of unrelenting sun and wind as they bemoaned their lack of alternatives. Not Jessica Wynne. He couldn’t imagine a desperate Jessica bemoaning anything. She had scoffed at the doubters and was eager to pin her every hope upon a man she’d just met, out of some spurious sense of noble justice. The man who just happened to be responsible for it all.

Simply because she thought he had an honest face. Yet some part of him suddenly wanted to prove to her that he was deserving of all that misplaced faith. He wanted to give her back all he was responsible for taking from her and Christian. Perhaps then he could vanquish some small part of this damned guilt squirming in his gut. Then he would ride away from Frank Wynne’s widow and child, knowing he’d done all he could to right the wrong he’d done.

There was the risk of being caught by any number of bounty hunters certain to be after him. And then there was the matter of deceiving this woman.

Yet as his gaze clashed with Halsey’s over her blond head, he knew he couldn’t simply mount his horse and leave. Not yet, at least. If he did, she would lose it all. And he would sacrifice his chance at redemption, his opportunity to ease some of that confusion and pain he knew lay buried deep inside Christian’s narrow chest.

Rance had long ago numbed himself to that kind of pain. When a man—but he’d been just a child himself then, all of fifteen—when a child was left orphaned, he learned to live within himself, to create a secret place in his soul into which he could burrow if need be. The numbness... Hell, killing as many Johnny Rebs as he could in the war had tempered some of the anger, had even earned him honors, decorations only the most heroic deserved. But he knew better. When a man lived that long inside himself, he cared very little about death and dying, and even less about heroics.

Numb. Yes, he’d long ago grown entirely numb to anything but the most basic of human needs. Hunger. Thirst. The need for sleep. The need for sex. But Christian didn’t deserve such a fate. Christian deserved the second chance Rance had never been given. Perhaps this was, after all, the reason he’d come.

At the moment, he’d like to think the reason was founded on some noble aspiration and not just a fool’s blundering instinct.

“How is your shoulder, Mr. Stark?”

He found himself wishing she would say his name...Rance...in the same haunting tone. But he’d taken enough of a risk in telling her his name was Logan. “It should be well enough in a day or two, ma’am.” He flexed his right arm and balled his fist. “I can still manage a hammer.”

“No.” Halsey ground out the word. “I shan’t allow it. This will not happen, I tell you.”

“Be quiet, Avram. Mr. Stark, I can offer you food, and lodging in the barn. Your horse can bed down there at night and graze in the small field during the day...though the fence needs some work. I hope that will suffice until winter.”

“It will not,”
Halsey said with a huff. “Winter is six months from now. Do you realize what you’re saying, Jessica?”

“Of course I do, Avram. Now calm down before you give yourself indigestion.”

“
Indigestion?
I shall thank the good Lord if I don’t succumb to apoplexy this very night.”

“Then you must remind me to give you two doses of your elixir before you leave, Avram. Is the arrangement suitable, Mr. Stark?”

Rance didn’t spare Halsey the merest glance. Nor did Jessica. “Fine, ma’am.”

“Good heavens, Jessica. Do you realize you’re all but conducting business with a perfect stranger in your private—?”

“I’ll start supper, then,” she said crisply, brushing past Avram, with Christian clinging at her heels.

“Jessica!” Halsey bellowed down the hall, his face mottled with rage. His color only deepened when Rance ducked through the doorway. Halsey shifted his shoulders, purposely blocking Rance’s path. “And where the devil are
you
going, Stark?”

Rance slanted the shorter man a hooded look. “To the barn, Halsey. Or would you rather I remain here in Jessica’s bedroom? The floor is remarkably comfortable.”

Halsey shook so with his rage, a well-oiled lock of hair spilled over his forehead. “Jessica!” he yelled in Rance’s wake. “I shan’t stand for it! You shall be my wife in a scant few months. And goodly wives
must
obey their husbands. It’s the Lord’s word. Do you hear me, Jessica? This outlaw shall not sleep one night in my barn. Jessica? Do you hear me?”

She was staring from the kitchen window, a large potato clenched in one fist, her other hand gently stroking her son’s head. Rance could almost feel the tender loving emanating from her fingertips, the silent emotion flowing between mother and son. Rance grew acutely aware that he wished he could remember the same gentle mother’s touch upon his brow, making the world right for him.

Only when Rance bumped into the table on his way out the door did Jessica glance at him. He had to pause then, his hand clasped about the loose doorknob, when the hint of a curve softened her mouth just as the afternoon sunlight spilled over mother and child like warm honey.

He shoved the door wide. Hot sun slapped his forehead. Heat and dust wrapped around him, and he strode to the barn with a foreign sense of determination blossoming in his gut.

* * *

The back door slammed. “He’s gone,” Christian said, and poked one finger into a bowl of blackberries.

Jessica froze between table and stove and clutched a damp rag to her belly. She stared at her son’s chubby finger sifting through the freshly washed fruit and listened to the heightened thumping of her pulse. “Who’s gone?” she asked slowly.