Liz Ireland (9 page)

He stood, brushed off his jacket, and with his cane led the way to the door. Emma followed him outside. They’d barely reached the bottom porch step when Johann took her arm and leaned against her. Up to that moment she’d almost forgotten that he was not a healthy man.

“Oh, my heavens!” she exclaimed, secure in the knowledge that they were out of hearing range. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, but his lips were compressed to a thin line, and the color had drained out of his cheeks. They both sank down to the porch steps.

“You shouldn’t have come downstairs tonight,” she scolded him. “I told you not to.”

He sent her a wry smile. “I wanted to meet your sister.”

Emma tilted her head and regarded him closely. “Be careful about tangling with Rose Ellen. She might look delicate and feminine, but as a strategist she can be as ruthless as General Sherman.”

He laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Why
did
you come down to the dinner table?”

When he looked at her, the intense warmth in his eyes was almost heartbreaking. They were sitting practically in the same place where she had discovered his body three nights ago, but the difference couldn’t have been greater. Then she’d been frightened, and had wondered if he could possibly live through the night. Now she still felt a hitch in her chest that was like fright…and yet was something far more complicated.

“I wanted to start repaying my debt to you,” he said.

She shook her head. “There is no debt.”

“Yes, there is—and there always will be,” he said, his voice husky and low. “You saved my life, Emma.”

Johann had come downstairs for the sole purpose of defending her to her sister. And he hadn’t fallen prey to Rose Ellen, as she’d feared. Emma could hardly contain her joy.

“Did you really mean what you said back there…about turning this land into a farm?”

He chuckled. “I was just saying what I thought might annoy your sister most.”

Emma nodded. She’d assumed as much. “But if I did latch on to the idea of farming, would you know how to go about it?”

He gazed at her curiously. Then he nodded. “Yes, I would. I’m not a gambler, Emma.”

She laughed. “Oh, I figured that!”

His answering smile was rueful. “In my former life, I was a foreman.”

Her pulse leapt. She felt like shouting
Eureka!
and throwing her arms around the man. Her savior—the outlaw—a farmer! “I’ll do it!”

His brown eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

“I want to become a farmer, just as you suggested.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty….”

“But you were absolutely right. We need to hurry if we’re going to put in a spring crop.”

“Oh, well now…”

“Maybe some corn.” She watched him closely for his reaction. “Or what about wheat?”

He didn’t look sold on the idea. “Listen, if you want to pretend to go through with this till your sister leaves…”

“Oh, no, I’m very sincere, Johann. You see, I’ve wanted to start a hospital, and this will allow me to go forward with that project. The hospital will need money—especially in the beginning—and the land can provide it.”

His lips screwed into a frown. “But Emma, you’re forgetting one thing….”

For a moment she was so feverishly intent on her proposal that she didn’t seem to hear him. Then, as the silence stretched, she became aware of him staring at her, and his words sank in. “What?”

“I’m not…well, for one thing, I’m not exactly able-bodied.”

She frowned. He didn’t have to remind her of another reason he wasn’t at liberty to help her with her project. He wasn’t able-bodied, and he wasn’t free. He was here only because he was in hiding.

She sighed, and looked away toward the moonlit land in question. Suddenly her fingers itched to get to work. “There has to be a way.”

“There is.”

She looked up at him expectantly.

“But I’m not the man to help you,” he said. “You know I’ll have to leave soon. You’ll need to find someone else.”

In all her life, she’d never felt she had an ally besides her father. Now, in Johann she had one. She didn’t want
to give him up, even if she had to blackmail him into staying.

“I won’t allow it.” She made the declaration as easily as if she were a queen.

Lang eyed her cautiously. “Won’t allow what?”

“You. To leave. You’re going to stay right here and work for me.”

He let out a disbelieving chuckle. “You think you’ll be able to force me to stay?”

“I know I will.”

He squinted. “How?”

She took a deep breath. “Because I know who you are, Lang Tupper.”

M
aybe she expected him to be surprised. He wasn’t. “I know.”

Emma looked shocked. “You do?”

“The posters you left upstairs were a pretty pointed hint.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at him with wide green eyes. “Gracious grannies! I forgot all about those!”

“Are you crazy, Emma?” he asked. “Don’t you know what it would mean if someone saw you tearing those down?”

“No one saw me. You don’t have to worry.”

He
didn’t have to worry? Lang shook his head. “I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about
you
.”

She stiffened. “I’m really not doing anything wrong,
if
you’re an innocent man. Are you trying to tell me you aren’t?” Her chin lifted in challenge.

Never in his life had he been in a position of having to clear his name. He didn’t like the feeling—even if Emma were the most receptive audience a supplicant could ask for. “I didn’t do the things they’re accusing me of.”

“I knew it,” she said confidently.

“How did you know?”

She didn’t bat an eyelash. “Because you don’t look like a murderer to me.”

And as she gazed at him, he could tell that for Emma Colby, the matter was just that simple. By looking into his eyes, she believed she could gauge his innocence, just as probably by a few words from Lorna she had decided that she’d been wrongly treated. Emma would be the type to go by her gut feeling, but Lang knew from experience that instinct could occasionally lead you astray. “You can’t always judge a person with just one look.”

She raised a brow. “Are you trying to tell me I made a mistake taking you in?”

“No.”

“So tell me the facts,” she said, “and I’ll decide for myself.”

He hesitated. “Well, for one thing, I guess I should tell you about my brother, Amos. He’s my kid brother. Five years younger than me. I tried to take care of him after our parents died….”

Understanding dawned in Emma’s eyes. “He’s the one in the picture!”

Lang nodded miserably. Implicating his brother didn’t sit well with him. Brothers were supposed to stand up for each other, to help each other. That’s what he’d always tried to do for Amos. But in the end, Amos had betrayed him. His mind still had a difficult time wrapping itself around that fact.

“Amos was always a rough kind of kid, but never bad. Not really bad. You know. Drinking. Gambling. Fist-fights.”

Emma nodded understandingly.

“When he was old enough, Amos left, saying he was going to be a cowboy, and I think he did drive a herd north
one year. Then last year I heard that Amos was mixed up with a vicious gang along the border, and had been involved in several thefts. I couldn’t believe my kid brother would be involved in something like that, so I left my job as a farm foreman to find him. Sure enough, he was thick with a fellow named Gonzales, who had a string of thefts to his credit. I thought if I stayed with him for a while, I could convince him to leave.”

“So you joined the gang.”

He nodded. “After a while, I think Amos decided that I was a nuisance. Gonzales had planned a bank robbery, which I had secretly planned to sabotage. I figured maybe a close brush with the law would scare my brother out of the outlaw life. But before I could act, the robbery went wrong. Someone shot the bank clerk. And then I was shot, too. Now I know by whom.”

Emma gasped. “You can’t believe your own brother…”

Bitterness coursed through him. “He was right behind me, and that’s where the shot came from. And I had hinted to him that maybe after the bank robbery we could go home, and I think he didn’t want that. And anyway, he never looked back to see if I made it out of that bank.”

Emma took all this in, her eyes dark with understanding. “But how did you get away? And why did you try?”

That’s what he’d been asking himself for days now. “I ran out of pure instinct, following my brother—but of course he was long gone. It was amazing I wasn’t caught, but it was almost dark, and on foot I ran through the brush until I came to a farmer’s house. I wondered whether I should knock on the door, but I was filthy and had blood on me. And I figured word about the botched robbery would have spread already, and a farmer might shoot first and ask questions later. So I went to the barn and I took a horse.”

Emma nodded, and though what he had done was wrong, her expression was understanding. “If you hadn’t, you might have died.”

“The farmer heard me as I was leaving and shot me in the leg as I was riding away. After that, I don’t remember much. I don’t know how I got to your house.”

“Sheer willpower, it seems to me.”

He shook his head. “Sheer folly, maybe. That’s what the whole episode was. I should never have gone after Amos, I can see that now.”

“But of course you had to try. He’s your brother.”

“I sometimes wonder—he seems so little like the boy I knew growing up. You see, while I was with that gang I saw a side of my brother that I’d never witnessed before. I’m beginning to realize that maybe people aren’t all good or all bad, but a mix of the two. In some, with a little encouragement, the bad can take over. I guess that’s what happened with Amos.”

She frowned in thought as she continued to gaze at him. Then she reached out, touching his arm. The touch was like a balm that reached right down into his soul. “You tried your best for him, Lang. You can’t blame yourself.”

How did she know?
How could she tell how he’d agonized over the way Amos had turned out, almost as if he
were
personally responsible for pulling the trigger in that bank? “Sometimes I think I didn’t do enough—you know, when he was younger. That if he’d had more money, or more schooling, or more churchgoing, he would have had the good side of himself encouraged instead of the bad.”

She nodded. “It’s hard to shake regret.”

Lang couldn’t imagine that Emma had done anything to regret in her sheltered life here in this comfortable Colby house, but he did believe that she sympathized with him.
Her green eyes spoke volumes on the subject of understanding.

“That’s why I want to start my hospital here in Midday. I don’t want to look back one day and realize that I saw a need and did nothing. There are people here, like Davy, who need a place to go when they’re sick.” She looked at him entreatingly. “You’re needed here, too, Lang.”

“But what use can I be to you if I’m in hiding? Every minute I stay here I’m putting you in danger.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about me.”

“All right, then what about my own sorry hide? If Rose Ellen starts sniffing around, she might begin to suspect something.”

Emma nodded. “I’ve thought of that. We’ll just have to make sure no one else sees you.”

“That will be difficult.”

“I’m not letting you leave here, Lang.”

He laughed. “You mean you’re holding me hostage?”

She crossed her arms resolutely. “If you try to leave before I give you permission, I will march right up to the sheriff’s office and tell him everything—even that
I
knew who you were and willingly hid you from him.”

“But that’s crazy!” he cried. “Besides which, it’s blackmail.”

She grinned in triumph. “
That’s
how matters stand.”

His mind reeled at what she was doing for him. “I can’t let you risk so much for so little.”

“So little?” Her eyes brimmed, which made him shift uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to women’s tears. “I don’t call what you just did tonight in that dining room little. No one has stood up for me in front of Rose Ellen.”

The emotion in her voice was nearly his undoing. Instinctively, he reached out and turned her chin up to him. He shouldn’t have, because now the very air seemed to
pulse between them. And now he realized that for days the thought of touching her had been in his mind, tempting him to follow up on the attraction he’d felt for her from the minute he’d laid eyes on her. If he’d been a free man instead of a hunted one, he would have tucked her slender body up next to his and kissed her.

It was wrong, feeling like this. But as her eyes looked up at him, and she bit her lip tentatively, desire surged in him.

He cleared his throat, then awkwardly dropped his hand. He immediately missed the contact between them, but it was easier talking without it. “Your father stood up for you. He left you this land because he knew you would find something useful to do with it.”

Her lips parted. “How did you know he left it to me?”

He shoved his free hand into his pocket. “I…just happened to read that letter Rose Ellen sent you.”

She tilted her head, but didn’t look offended. “Yes, I can’t forget that Doc would have wanted me to make good use of his legacy.”

“I’ve only known you for a few days, Emma, but from what I’ve seen, you’ve got it in you to rustle up a whole army of support, when and if you issue a call to arms.”

She grinned and crossed her arms a little saucily. “All right, you can be my first recruit. Help me plan out this farm you were talking about.”

He responded to her request with a light laugh and a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am. Just remember, I’m a conscript, not a volunteer. I’m being blackmailed into duty.”

As blackmail went, though, Emma drove a pretty fair bargain.

Barton Sealy leaned on the door outside the jail, his stance belying the choppy sea of worries swelling inside
him. Beneath his exterior his whole body was so tense that even his teeth hurt. Lack of money ate at him like a festering wound—and money wasn’t something a Sealy should have to worry about.

Or at least, they wouldn’t have in the old days. But in frighteningly quick time, the Sealys had gone from being the most prominent family in town to being flat broke—and he was the brokest of them all. Where had it all gone? In one generation—his—all the Sealy land, holdings, even the house, had slipped away from his control.

Now he’d even lost his last month’s wages in San Antonio, gambling. But these days it wasn’t as if he
wanted
to gamble, or enjoyed it. He’d just been trying to make some money to pay off debt. Wasn’t that a kick in the head!

Now he was living off the hospitality of families and widow women who thought it was only neighborly to feed the sheriff. He’d been careful to keep his financial woes private, but he suspected that even the most civic-minded citizens were beginning to wonder why he was showing up so frequently at the dinner tables.

But what could he do? The Sealy farmhouse had burned years ago, and now he rented the old Sealy land, which he had to do to pay off debt. He supposed that he could make as much money off the land if he farmed it, maybe more, but that would take know-how he didn’t possess. Meanwhile, he continued his slide into financial ruin. Combine his money problems with William’s moping over that McCrae woman, and he was beginning to think that the Sealy name would sink to a pit of infamy from which it would never recover.

Lorna McCrae! What the hell was wrong with that brother of his? If the idiot had to go shooting off his seed, why couldn’t he at least have aimed for someone a little
richer? Not that there were any millionairesses wandering around Midday—far from it. The drought last summer had seen to it that everyone was about as poor as they could be without actually starving. Which didn’t make men any more forgiving about gambling debts, more’s the pity. And in the midst of all this hardship, William
would
have to go and spark some girl who wouldn’t even come with a cow if he married her. They could have sold the cow, at least. Lorna McCrae just meant two more mouths to feed, a fact that Barton had made plenty clear to that fool brother of his. They were barely making do with their city-paid jobs as sheriff and deputy. They couldn’t handle more trouble.

As he leaned against the door in tooth-grinding worry, it took him a moment to register a sprightly step heading toward him. He turned and noticed Rose Ellen Colby Douglas, looking as beautiful as ever, coming at him like a vision of what could have been. Seven years ago he might have married her—then he wouldn’t have all these troubles! Doc had had plenty of money, he bet, and that house was sitting on rich farmland. Unfortunately, Rose Ellen had been snatched out from under his nose by Edward Douglas, a man who had plenty of money and didn’t even need Rose Ellen. Barton’s loss still ate at him.

And the really sad thing was that just days before, he’d ridden out to the Colby house with the pathetic, ultimately vain hope that Rose Ellen was having marital troubles and might be free again. Joe had mentioned her writing all those letters to her sister, and everybody figured the Colby girls would get money from selling their house and land. Barton had figured checking up on his old sweetheart would be worth a shot.

Even now his hopes made a traitorous leap at the sight of her, still pretty, with that flirtatious way about her.
Maybe turning on the old charm would convince Mrs. Douglas she didn’t even need her rich boring husband….

He doffed his hat and grinned big at her. “Why, Rose Ellen! Pretty as ever!”

She held her hands out to Barton and sent him a cheek-dimpling smile. “Why, Barton Sealy! Handsome as ever!”

He came forward and took her hands in his big rough ones. “I bet you’re the best view in the whole state of Texas!”

From the way her cheeks colored so prettily, he could tell that, as always, no amount of flattery would be too much for Rose Ellen. Maybe that husband of hers wasn’t doing his job right. She soaked up Barton’s words the way a rash soaks up balm.

“Would you like to come inside and sit a spell?” he asked, extending his arm courteously. He was eager to get a few moments alone with her, maybe rekindle some of the old magic between them. “I realize it’s a jailhouse, but we’re completely without inmates today.”

She tilted her head and batted her lashes at him. “If they ever criminalized charm, Barton Sealy, you’d have to lock yourself up in that jail!”

He tossed his head and laughed, a deep husky laugh that gave away nothing of the desperation inside him. He’d become good at hiding that.