Liz Ireland (2 page)

Emma looked at the nearly empty brandy bottle again. No, really, she’d had quite enough already.

Since the day after their father had died, Emma had been pestered by her sister’s requests that she move to Galveston. As far as she could tell, her sister hoped to secure a combination nanny-cook-slave for herself, something Emma had no intention of turning herself into. She had informed Rose Ellen of this twice already—but her sister had an uncanny knack for ignoring what was inconvenient.

As if this weren’t the very plan Emma had rejected several times already! One had to marvel at her sister’s persistence. Rose Ellen would spare no effort to spare herself effort.

Emma folded the letter, shifted in her chair and reached for that brandy bottle. Of course she wouldn’t consider going to Galveston to become Rose Ellen’s indentured servant. That wasn’t what disturbed her. No, it was her sister’s choice of words—
older single woman
. Older than what? Methuselah?

In Midday there are no men who want to marry you, or it would have happened years ago…
.

Emma immediately thought of the handsome sheriff, Barton Sealy, and blushed. Whenever she dreamed of the future, his was the face that most often appeared in these fantasies. Of course, if word got out that she, plain Emma Colby, was sweet on Barton Sealy—a man far too handsome for his own good—she would never live down the humiliation of it. That’s why her feelings for Barton, which had germinated even while he’d been courting Rose Ellen, had been her most tightly guarded secret.

She stood and paced across the kitchen. Before her father’s death, no one had ever paid much attention to her—
not Rose Ellen and certainly not the people of Midday. But now that she was alone, and doing as she pleased, it seemed everyone in the world considered it their sacred duty to tell her what her future should be.

Of course, Joe Spears and Rose Ellen were right about one thing. She
had
been lonely after her father died. She’d rattled around the empty old house, haunted by its emptiness and her restless heart. After years of following her father on his rounds, and then caring for him in his sickness, she felt useless. She’d even begun to wonder if she wouldn’t be better off in Galveston after all, sacrificing her freedom on the altar of Rose Ellen’s headaches. Then one day Lorna had knocked on her door, needing her help and a place to stay, and Emma had immediately felt useful again.

And though the people of Midday might look with disdain upon her taking in Lorna, Emma began to understand how she might fill a need. Lorna needed somewhere to go to have her baby—why not here? Big cities had hospitals, so why shouldn’t their rural community have somewhere to care for the needy, too? The only doctor now was Dr. Granby, but he lived in the next county. Wouldn’t he be glad not to have to travel miles and miles to visit the sick in their far-flung houses when he could have them in one place?

The only problem was money. She had some that her father had left her, but that sum wouldn’t last forever. She couldn’t ask people who had even less to pay her; it would be like sucking blood from a turnip, anyway. What she needed was some means of making money…but how? She couldn’t do any of the things that other women did to earn a living, like bake or sew or do laundry. At least, she couldn’t do them particularly well. She was particularly
bad at cooking. Poor Doc had uncomplainingly downed more half-baked, overcooked, or just plain burned meals than a body should be forced to eat in one lifetime.

Yet if she was going to go forward with this idea of a hospital, she had better learn to do something well enough that people would pay her for it. But what? What could possibly earn enough money for her to keep up a large house filled with sick people?

A loud
thunk
sounded, sending Emma shooting about three feet out of her chair.

“Heavens to Betsy!” She winced, and added a muttered, “Now I’m talking to myself.” In a few weeks the good folks down in Midday could probably add
crazy
in front of the words
spinster lady
when they spoke of her. “Crazy spinster lady Emma Colby,” they would whisper in hushed tones in the Midday Mercantile.

Emma laughed in spite of herself, stood and strode to the front door. Most likely a limb from the old oak out front had fallen on the porch, accounting for the clumping sound she’d heard. If it was a big branch she would wait until the morning to move it, but curiosity demanded that she check to see what kind of damage had been done.

She cracked the door, holding it firm against the pressure of the wind, and felt a cool rush of air burst past her. The storm was wilder than she had imagined, but so far it wasn’t raining. She opened the door farther and poked her head out, savoring the feel of the bracing breeze on her cheeks. This blast was a welcome harbinger of spring, and the freshness of it brought a smile to her face as she surveyed her porch.

In a moment, the smile vanished in a gasp of surprise.

On the top step leading to the covered veranda lay a man, unconscious, on his side. His sprawled position, with
his arm twisted awkwardly against a rail and his nose squashed into the pine floorboard, wasn’t a comfortable way to have landed. Something must be very wrong with him.

She rushed forward and knelt by him, her hand darting out instinctively to capture his left wrist and check for a pulse. It was faint. She frowned, her years of working with her father rushing through her mind. What was the matter with him? She leaned closer to him, trying to get a closer look at his unshaven face, when the man she had assumed was unconscious suddenly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her toward him.

Emma let out another gasp as he drew her close and she found herself staring unblinkingly into two dark, piercing eyes. She couldn’t speak—couldn’t breathe.

“Angel,” the man whispered, his voice a bare, throaty rasp. His hand reached up to her neck, and with firm pressure he pressed his lips against hers.

For one who appeared so close to death, his lips were surprisingly warm, and Emma was too stunned to pull away. All her life she’d dreamed of her first kiss. She’d always expected it would take place outdoors, on a moonlit night, maybe after a dance, with a man she’d admired for a long time. Perhaps the man would even be Barton Sealy. But now her first kiss was actually happening—and everything was all wrong!

A small frisson of heat shivered through her, making her thoughts spin in confusion, but before she could react, the moment was over. The man let out a groan and his head turned away. Emma recoiled slightly, and realized that the expected words of protest—and, in this instance, considering the man was a complete stranger, outrage—wouldn’t be necessary. Her surprise swain was out cold.

She unwound his hand from her neck, and, taking hold of his far shoulder and hip, pushed with all her might to turn the man onto his back. He was so heavy, it took three tries to budge him. When she finally did have him laid out in front of her, she shrank back in shock.

She’d seen gunshot wounds before. Gruesome ones. Mortal wounds, even. But somehow nothing had ever looked so terrible as the sight of the dark stain radiating out across the entire front of this man’s shirt. What little skin was visible on his bearded face was chalky white in the dim night—he had a dull waxen pallor. Emma’s stomach turned, but she took a deep breath to fight against the nausea. This man needed help, and there was no one but herself to offer it to him.

First, she had to get him inside. Emma jumped to her feet and ran upstairs to her bedroom. She grabbed a woolen blanket from her chest and dashed straight down again, leaving the front door wide open. Working quickly, squinting against the wind, she spread the blanket and rolled the wounded man until he was fully on top of it. She was surprised again at how heavy he was. She stood at the top of the steps, gathered the two nearest corners of the blanket and put every bit of effort she had in her into pulling him up. After thirty seconds of huffing and puffing, she had budged him perhaps a foot. Wiping perspiration off her brow, she studied him, searching for anything that might lighten her load. Her gaze caught the gleam of a revolver on his hip. Bending, she unfastened his gun belt and tossed it aside, sending cold steel and slick leather clattering across the wooden floor into the shadows.

A silhouette darkened the front door and she heard a muffled yelp. Lorna stood there, equally transfixed by the wounded man and the gun Emma had just tossed aside.

“Maybe you can help me,” Emma said, knowing activity might take Lorna’s mind off more disturbing thoughts. “If you could lift his feet a little…”

As best she could in her condition, and with shaking hands, Lorna did as she was instructed. Together, inch by arduous inch, they tugged the man inside and lifted him onto the settee in the living room, which would have to serve as an operating table this night.

Lorna’s blue eyes left the unconscious swarthy man for an instant and blinked up at Emma. “What do you think…?”

In spite of the long night ahead, Emma felt a grim lopsided smile tug at her lips. “I think I should have asked a few more questions about that outlaw Joe mentioned.”

L
ang Tupper wasn’t certain whether he was awake or dreaming. He knew he was lost, but he’d ridden for so long he didn’t know where he’d ended up. He’d passed out someplace—that was all he could be sure of. And now he seemed to be hovering on the brink between life and death, between burning, restless, feverish pain and nothing. If he’d had a choice in the matter, he would have chosen the nothing. He could even hear a soft voice, an angel’s voice beckoning him toward the sweet hereafter.

The pain in his chest seemed to be getting worse. Was that his wound, or his brother’s betrayal festering in his heart? Amos’s face appeared before him. Laughing, as he had so often as a boy. Then the laugh turned to a sneer. Amos as an adult. Lang’s breath hitched. Sweat poured off him. He had to be alive to be sweating, right? Sweating was part of being on the run, a wanted man. He’d been sweating bricks for a solid day.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, and the angel’s voice called to him again. What was she saying? That he’d had enough, that it was time to let go?

Letting go was hard. Which was peculiar, since to help
Amos he hadn’t blinked an eye at letting go of the life he’d spent five painstaking years building for himself. The moment he’d stepped foot off the Wilkerson property to join the Gonzales gang, he’d known that no decent businessman would ever hire him, a farmhand turned outlaw, as foreman again. Without that kind of a job, most likely he would never again be able to earn enough to set himself up and start his own spread. But for his little brother’s sake, the sacrifice had seemed worth it. Family looks after family, and since Amos was twelve, Lang had been all the family his brother had. He’d rescued him from schoolyard scrapes and barroom brawls, and he’d been prepared to rescue him again when he’d heard he’d gotten mixed up with a gang of outlaws.

Too late he realized that Amos might have gone beyond the rescuing stage. He just hadn’t been able to accept it until, after the failed bank robbery, his own brother rode away, leaving Lang to die. But he hadn’t died. He’d walked, and when he couldn’t walk, he’d crawled.

It had taken two shots, two men, to bring him down. That’s what he remembered most clearly. And one of them just might have come from his brother’s gun.

The angel was hovering, and for a second the vision of Lucy came to him. Pretty, spoiled Lucy, in her robin’s-egg-blue dress, laughing at him. That laughter had been as deadly in its own way as Amos’s gun had been. Maybe his inability to judge people was his fatal flaw.

Another flash of white-hot pain shot through him. Lang felt his limbs thrash, heard his own voice cry out, and then the world went black again, except for the voice of that angel beckoning him to heaven…or was she telling him, in spite of everything, to live?

“Emma?”

Emma awakened with a jolt, half expecting a gun to be pointed in her face. Instead, Lorna knelt beside her, holding out a cup of steaming coffee.

“It’s morning,” Lorna whispered. She nodded anxiously toward the man covered by a pink woolen blanket, in case Emma had forgotten him. Small chance of that! The pale countenance of the desperado had haunted her fitful sleep. In her dream, she’d relived that brief, shocking pressure of his lips against hers again and again. Even now, her cheeks heated at the memory.

Their mysterious patient was exactly as Emma had left him just before dawn—asleep, helpless, his big body sprawled awkwardly on the parlor’s dainty settee. She noted with some relief that there seemed to be a little more color in his skin than when last she’d checked. She expected a fever; that would at least mean he was strong enough that his body was beginning to fight back. She had been half prepared to discover he’d died during the night. She’d rarely seen a man lose so much blood and live, but this man apparently had strength to spare. And from the iron set of his jaw and the size of his wounds, she imagined he had plenty of fight in him, too.

Her gaze was riveted on him. He was so wild looking—more unkempt than any man she’d laid eyes on. His dark hair fell in long hanks, and his beard was scraggly and rough, as if he hadn’t felt comfortable going into town to visit a barber for a while. His clothes, naturally, had been filthy with mud and blood; heaven only knew how long he had been crawling in the dirt before he’d come upon her house. With wounds in his side and one leg, it must have taken mammoth determination.

When she had stripped off his shirt, she’d been amazed that anyone so sick and helpless could appear so formidable. His muscles were lean but strong, like a cat’s, and his skin had a dusting of the same dark hair that covered his head. Over the years she had seen many men naked, but until last night the male form itself had never given her much pause. The outlaw was as magnificent as the anatomy drawings in her father’s medical books.

She blushed with shame to be thinking such things. Nurses shouldn’t ogle—not even nurses who had been kissed by their patients! If she was going to let herself feel anything for the man, it should be fear. He was most likely an outlaw, and he’d already shown that, even sick, he could take her unawares.

Yet how could she fear someone after sharing such an ordeal with him? During what seemed like an endless night, she had opened up the stranger, pulled a bullet out of his side, cauterized his wounds and packed them—just as she had seen her father do. Only it had taken her own fingers, unaccustomed to being the ones performing the delicate tasks, much longer. And her father had never trembled as she had, or prayed aloud that his patient wouldn’t die. She had, and still was. And she called on the stranger for help, too.

Live
, she urged him silently as she had so often during the night.
Don’t let yourself die. Don’t disappoint me
.

“Do you
really
think he’s the outlaw?” Lorna asked, as transfixed by the man’s countenance as Emma was.

That was a question she hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of pondering up to this moment, but now, as she stared at him openly in the bright light of morning, Emma wondered what she had done. Saved a criminal? “I’m afraid so.”

She almost cracked a smile at the rightness of it. It just figured that the first man who would find her irresistibly kissable would be a broken-down outlaw!

“But he might not be,” Lorna pointed out. “I mean…we don’t know for sure that he is.”

Emma frowned skeptically. “You mean despite the fact that there’s an escaped outlaw in the area, this man might just happen to be a gunshot victim who has the appearance of a desperado?”

Lorna’s cheeks reddened, and she sank her bulk down carefully on a nearby chair. “I guess it does sound farfetched.”

Emma shook her head. “As soon as I get him a little better, I’ll have to turn him over to the sheriff.”

To Barton Sealy. That prospect had its own appeal.

She allowed herself to imagine that shining moment when she would saddle up her father’s horse and ride into town in a blaze of glory with the outlaw’s body strapped over the back of her horse like a sack of potatoes.

“Here’s your man,” she would announce proudly to the stunned populace, all of them no doubt thinking,
Who would have thought the old spinster lady capable of such derring-do?

The mob, of course, would be headed up by the handsome sheriff. In her mind Barton Sealy’s twinkling blue eyes looked her over from head to toe with boundless admiration, as they never had in real life. “You’re quite a woman, Miss Emma,” he would say with a grin, flirting with her despite the rapt attention of the townspeople, not to mention the bound and gagged desperado just behind her. “I guess I never really appreciated how much of a woman until just this moment….”

“Emma?”

Lorna’s voice intruded on her daydream, and Emma, flustered, snapped back to the present before the sheriff could fully express his newfound appreciation. “Yes?”

“I said maybe this man was just a
victim
of the escaped outlaw…. Maybe that’s why he was shot.” Lorna glanced up at her hopefully.

Emma collapsed against the back of her chair and considered that unlikely explanation. Their man didn’t have the appearance of a victim. “He’s not from around here,” she pointed out. “If he were a local, I would have seen him before.” Practically every single man of marriageable age within fifty miles had been drawn to the Colby house like helpless moths to a blazing campfire to call on her little sister.

Nor was the man like any black sheep, long-lost cousin, or prodigal son she’d ever heard described. Having made the rounds with her father since she was a little girl, she had listened to all the stories of those who had gone west, or run off to sea, or even those who had escaped to big cities like New Orleans or St. Louis. She would have remembered tales of a gun-wielding panther of a man who had a face that appeared chiseled out of granite.

“I just thought…”

Emma smiled. Poor Lorna. She never wanted to think badly of anyone—not of the man who had abandoned her to the town’s scorn, and not even of a stranger who was possibly a violent criminal. “I know, you thought he might need somebody to stand by him. Who knows? Maybe he does.”

“Hello!”

At the sound of someone shouting outside, Lorna jumped, and her eyes widened fearfully. After having been kicked out of her own house and shunned by the entire
community, she was skittish about visitors. “Who do you think could be coming by this time of morning?”

“Miss Emma?”

As suddenly as she recognized the visitor’s voice, Emma froze. “Barton Sealy!”

Lorna looked even more startled. “William’s brother!”

As if fired to life by a cannon, Emma catapulted to the window. At first she couldn’t believe that she had heard correctly. But when she peeked through the thick brocade parlor curtains, she knew without a doubt that Barton Sealy, at long last, had decided to pay her a visit.

Quaking with surprise, she jumped back from the window. “Nebuchadnezzar! I look terrible!” she exclaimed to a flustered Lorna. After all, she’d had only a few hours’ sleep in a chair, and after she’d finished sewing up the wounded man, she’d barely taken time to do the most perfunctory cleanup. Thank heavens she’d changed dresses! Oh, but her hair…

“What if he’s come on account of William?” Lorna’s fretful gaze was owl wide. “Barton’s so intimidating! I don’t want to talk to him.”

“You won’t have to,” Emma promised, also feeling trepidation—but not because of William and Lorna’s predicament. Her dream man had arrived on her doorstep—and she probably looked like an unmade bed! “Just stay here. I’ll handle everything.”

Emma skidded past the settee and again caught sight of the outlaw, who—Lorna’s anxiety and her own fluttery heart to the contrary—was no doubt the real reason for the sheriff’s unexpected visit. Thank goodness Barton had come! Her legs shook as she sprinted to the front door. Until just this moment, she hadn’t realized how fearful she had been with the dangerous stranger under her roof.

She sprinted outside before the sheriff had made it to the top step of the porch, the one where she’d found the outlaw. Where he’d kissed her. The thought caused heat to rise in her cheeks. She definitely needed to drive that little incident out of her head.

“Miss Emma!”

Emma caught her breath, sure from Barton’s surprised gaze that she looked as wild and flustered as she felt inside. The sheriff himself did nothing to steady the flutter of her heartbeat. To call Barton Sealy handsome was an indecent understatement. His blond hair and blue eyes, his broad shoulders and lean, muscular physique caused feminine pulses all over the county to leap out of control. He had the added dash, acknowledged in his confident grin, of being perfectly aware that he was irresistible, which made him insufferable at times, as well.

But to Emma, everything about him, right down to his masculine conceit, was absolutely wonderful. If only he could get that brother of his to straighten up! Maybe this was her chance to convince him to. She was bound to have some sort of influence with the sheriff once she showed him what she had hidden in her parlor.

“What brings you here, Sheriff?” As if she had to ask! She wasn’t under the delusion that after all these years he had come to
see
her. Only one thing—only one
man
—had drawn him here. The outlaw.

He took off his hat and looked at her almost shyly. “I came to check up on you.”

His reply stunned her into silence.

Her?
She could hardly believe her ears! She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of men who had made the trip out to the Colby house just on her account.

The sheriff, still grinning, explained, “That was a mighty fierce storm last night.”

Emma had a hard time breathing. He’d been worried about her?
Her?

“Oh, y-yes…I know,” she stammered, seeing her opening. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through!” Her tone lacked the bravado she’d imagined. Now she knew why Rose Ellen had always acted like a goose when anything in pants trudged up on the porch. It was that giddy, fluttery feeling that just the right pair of blue eyes could set off inside.

“Long night?” One of his eyes blinked at her so fast she wasn’t sure it actually was a wink.

“You have no idea….”

“Oh?” His smile broadened, causing her stomach to do a gravity-defying somersault. How could she know whether or not he was flirting with her? She’d had so little of that activity aimed at her. But he certainly seemed to be. Incredible!

“Yes….” Emma said numbly.

“Rose Ellen always said you were skittish during a storm.”

Hearing her sister’s name out of the blue was like having ice water thrown in her face. And those lithe tummy somersaults suddenly tumbled into awkward heavy flops. “Rose Ellen?” Inside Emma’s heart, slim hope evaporated like a dewdrop in July.

“Joe Spears told me you’d received a letter from your sister yesterday,” Barton said, nudging a floor plank shyly with his boot tip. “Well, he said letters had been comin’ from her real regular. And I was just wondering…”