Mail Order Cowboy (Harlequin American Romance) (23 page)
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Authors: Pamela BAUER
BOOK: Mail Order Cowboy (Harlequin American Romance)
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“You’re cold.” He took off his jacket and tried to slip it around her shoulders, but she shrugged away from him.
“I don’t need your warmth.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” he reminded her.
And that, she acknowledged, was the problem. Last night she had fallen in love with Wood Harris, and this morning she had discovered that it was all based on a lie. “I want to pretend last night never happened.” She buried her face in her hands.
“Don’t say that.” He sat down beside her and gently pulled her hands away from her face. “Hannah, look at me.” When she lifted her chin and met his gaze he said, “Last night did happen, and we both wanted it to happen. I love you and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I was going to last night, but I never expected we’d spend the entire night making love.” He gave her a tiny smile that still had the power to ignite the flame of desire in her.
She quickly looked away and jumped to her feet. “It should have never happened. You’re a...a...” she trailed off at a loss for words.
“Go on tell me, Hannah. What am I?” He, too, got to his feet. When she didn’t answer he said, “A murderer? Is that what you wanted to say?”
She didn’t deny it. She couldn’t because at this point she honestly didn’t know who Wood Harris was. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” she asked shakily.
“Because you already thought I was crazy, and I could imagine your reaction had I said, ‘Oh, by the way, I traveled across time from 1876 where a group of vigilantes tried to hang me for two murders I didn’t commit.’”
She gasped and shrank back from him.
“I would be dead right now if the time travel hadn’t occurred.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out the newspaper clipping. “You might as well know the whole truth.”
Hannah read every word of the article. She didn’t want to believe any of it, yet she found herself asking, “Did you kill George and Mary Nelson?”
He looked as if she had punched him in the stomach. “If you need to ask me that question, then last night must have been a mistake.”
She clutched her arms to her waist. “What am I supposed to think? Since the day you arrived you’ve done nothing but lie to me.”
“Last night was no lie on my part.”
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to remember how good it had felt to be in his arms. “It only happened because we drank too much champagne.”
“Then I believe I’m not the only one who was lied to,” he said sadly, and started to walk away.
Hannah felt like one of the stalks of corn that had been mowed down by the combine. Only hours ago she had been on top of the world, ready to embrace a future filled with promise. Now she felt lied to and betrayed by a man she had thought she could trust. It made her angry, and the more she thought about it the angrier she became.
“Where are you going?” she called out to him as he climbed the steps of the house.
He paused and turned around. “Do you care?”
Hannah wanted to say yes. Every instinct inside her begged her to not let him walk out of her life, yet her pride stood in the way like a big old ugly weed, strangling her vocal chords.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said quietly, then disappeared inside.
WOOD WAS IN THE LOFT packing up his few belongings when Gabby appeared, twisting her handkerchief as she entered the room.
“You’re not leaving?”
He could hear the distress in her voice, and it tugged on him emotionally. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt the woman who had been so kind to him.
“I have to go, Gabby. Hannah doesn’t want me here.” As difficult as it was, Wood knew it had to be said.
“That’s not true, Wood. You know Hannah. She’s as stubborn as they come, and her pride’s hurt right now. But she’ll get over it. She just needs a little time,” Gabby assured him with her usual optimism.
Wood sighed. “I wish I could believe you, Gabby.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You don’t want to try to go back to 1876?”
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. If only I knew how to do it.” He sighed. “Just before the lightning struck, there was this old woman who tied a pouch around my waist and poured sand in my hands. At first I thought it was the sand that might have sent me forward in time, but now I’m wondering if it wasn’t something in that pouch. All I remember is that it had a terrible odor.”
Gabby snapped her fingers. “I have something you may find of interest. Come with me.”
She led Wood to her small library where bookshelves lined every wall. “By now you probably know this is where I spend most of my time.” She motioned for him to sit down on the love seat. Then she pulled down a section of board that turned one of the bookcases into a writing desk.
She held up a thin journal bound in cloth. “Ah! Here it is.”
She scooted in beside Wood, opening the pages of the book with extreme caution. “Remember when Jeremy was working on his family tree? Well, something I read back then came to mind today when you were talking about that pouch.”
As if she were handling broken glass, Gabby carefully turned the fragile pages until she found what she was looking for. “Look, the date is smudged, but I’m pretty sure it says September 1876.”
Wood examined the blurred handwriting and agreed.
“Shall I read it to you?” she asked.
“Please do.”
She cleared her voice, then began. “They call me vile because I am different. Yes, I’m different. I know how to mix my herbs to do things people don’t want to believe I can do, but today I was able to save a man from dying. I circled him with herbs.”
An eerie sensation crept over Wood. “You think she was the old crone who ministered to me at the hanging?”
“They say she had mystical powers,” Gabby said in a hushed tone, as if speaking too loudly might disturb the spirit of her deceased relative. “No one in the family talked about her very much. The story is that after her husband died, she was never the same up here.” She raised a finger to her forehead.
Wood was not one to discount the possibility that a Davis had saved his life more than once. “If only I had that pouch,” he said wistfully.
“But you don’t have it, do you?”
He shook his head. “No. It must have fallen off during the time travel, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t here in 1998. It could be in the Nelson forty.”
“And if you can’t find it?”
He shrugged. “Then I stay in 1998 until fate decides otherwise. I still have to leave the farm, Gabby.”
“Please don’t go, Wood,” she begged.
Wood pulled her frail body close to his and hugged her. “I’m going to miss you. Thank you for being such a sweet, caring lady.”
“Can’t you give Hannah a few days? I know she’ll come around,” Gabby asked, dabbing at the moisture in her eyes.
It was a tempting thought, but the harsh words that had been said that morning had him saying, “I’m sorry, Gabby, but Hannah’s better off without me.”
THAT AFTERNOON storm clouds rolled in, darkening an already gray sky. Hannah thought it was appropriate. Her life was as unsettled as the atmosphere. Ever since her confrontation with Wood, she had fought the urge to go find him and tell him she was wrong. She did care where he went.
When thunder rumbled in the distance, Jeremy came running inside. “I saw lightning.”
“Tell Gabby to make sure the windows are closed upstairs.”
Jeremy nodded and ran up the steps. It wasn’t long before he bounced back down. “Where’s Wood?”
Hannah shrugged. “You don’t need to worry about Wood. He’s an adult man who can take care of himself.”
“But he shouldn’t be out in a storm. What if he gets zapped back?”
Suddenly Hannah remembered Wood telling her that he suspected lightning had been the vehicle that had taken him through time. It was the reason he had refused to come in from the storm that day he had been zapped by the fence.
“If he had been hit by lightning, wouldn’t he be dead?” Hannah asked, an uneasy feeling starting to claw at her stomach.
Jeremy shrugged. “Wood says all he can remember is that he saw a bolt of lightning, then a bright light flashed in his eyes. It was so bright he thought he was dead—until he woke up in our cornfield.”
“That doesn’t mean it struck him.”
“But I found him by that old oak that was split in two?”
Hannah mulled over Jeremy’s words. Could Wood have been hit by lightning? It might explain why he had been knocked to the ground the day he touched the electric fence. Normally, contact with the fence resulted in a shock that had a person shuddering, yet with him, it had been much worse.
Just then Gabby came down the stairs.
“Do you know where Wood is?” Hannah asked, her uneasiness growing.
“He left. Told me he was going to the Nelson forty.”
Before Gabby could say another word, Hannah had grabbed her rain jacket and was out the back door. “Hannah, wait!” Gabby called out, but she paid no attention.
She hopped in the pickup and jammed her keys into the ignition. “He wouldn’t do such a crazy thing,” she told herself. But what frightened her most of all was that she knew he would.
She headed for the Nelson forty, the rain coming down in blinding sheets, creating rivers of muddy water on the dirt road, forcing Hannah to reduce her speed. As the windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the driving rain, she talked to herself.
“Come on, help me get there. I have to get to him before it’s too late.”
As a bolt of lightning streaked across the clouds, Hannah’s heart nearly stopped. “How could I have been so stupid!” she screamed aloud in frustration as the storm increased in intensity.
For Hannah knew she had been stupid. She loved Wood, and in her heart she knew he was not a man who could commit murder, yet she had accused him of just that. She had said so many things she wished she could now retract. Because she had been hurt. Hurt that he hadn’t had the faith in her to tell her the truth from the start. And hurt that he had confided in Gabby, yet she, his wife, was the last to know.
Again thunder roared and Hannah cried out, “Oh, please, don’t let him be gone! I can’t lose him, not now.”
By the time she reached the uncultivated field, she couldn’t tell whether it was teardrops or rain falling on her cheeks. “Wood!” she called out repeatedly, running frantically toward the splintered oak.
And then she saw him—standing beneath an elm tree. He wasn’t dead, and he was still here, on her farm. Relief sent the adrenaline rushing through her and she ran toward him. Within seconds a bright flash of lightning exploded before her. In an instant he had disappeared. “Wood, don’t leave me!” she screamed in frustration.
Just as quickly a sharp crack warned her of danger. She looked up as the wind snapped a limb from what remained of the dead tree. Before she could react, the branch flew against Hannah’s head. The last word she uttered as she was knocked to the ground was “Wood.”
“WOOD?” Hannah glanced down at her left hand. The gold band was still on her ring finger. It hadn’t been a dream. “Oh, Wood,” she whispered in longing.
“Do I hear sounds of life?”
A nurse with a stethoscope dangling around her neck and a blood pressure gauge in her hand entered the room.
“My head...” Hannah murmured, grimacing as she tried to move.
“Hurts pretty bad, eh?”
“I don’t think I can get up.”
“You’re not supposed to. You’ve got a pretty nasty cut as well as a concussion.”
“What happened?”
“I believe you got caught in the rain last night. Tree limb fell on your head. It doesn’t surprise me. That was one nasty storm. The power was out in most of Filmore County.” She set the blood pressure gauge down and reached for the medical chart at the foot of the bed. “Don’t you remember the accident?”
Just like a photograph, the memory flashed in her mind. She closed her eyes, wanting to blot out the sight of Wood standing beneath the tree while the lightning flashed around him. In one brief flash of light she had lost him forever.
Tears streamed down her cheeks at the realization that he was gone. Forever. And she hadn’t told him that she loved him, that she wanted him to be her husband. Forever. Only now that would never happen.
“There, now. It’s not so bad. In a few days you’ll be up and about again,” the nurse said consolingly, patting her hand. “I do believe your family’s in the waiting room. Been there all night is what I heard. They’re worried about you. Would you like me to get them for you?”
Hannah mumbled something the nurse understood as consent.
A few minutes later, in marched Gabby and Jeremy, their faces lined with worry.
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