Outlaw’s Bride (7 page)

Ethan felt a painful tightening in his chest. He wasn’t sure whether it was gratitude for her blind faith in him or the awful knowledge that he had forfeited any chance of ever having a decent woman for his wife when he had fled so many years ago. Now he saw the folly of running instead of staying to seek out the truth.

He had been only fifteen when someone raped Merielle Trahern. He had found her after the fact, but when her brother, Dorne, discovered them together, he hadn’t waited for explanations. By the
time Jefferson Trahern arrived on the scene to find Ethan wounded in the leg by Dorne’s bullet, and Dorne accidentally shot dead, Ethan had known nobody was going to listen to his side of the story before they hung him.

So he had run, and kept on running for ten years, until one of Trahern’s private detectives finally caught him. The trial had been a farce, but at least he hadn’t been convicted of raping Merielle, for which he had his friend, Boyd, to thank.

Now,
seventeen years
later, he still wasn’t free of his nightmare. He had been out of prison only one month—four short weeks—and judging from the hired guns he had faced today, Jefferson Trahern was planning to pick up his quest for vengeance where he had left off when Ethan went to prison. It was quickly becoming apparent that, although the townspeople might be willing to tolerate his presence in Oakville, Jefferson Trahern was not.

In fact, the man seemed obsessed with seeing him dead. Ethan supposed if he had spent the past seventeen years watching a beautiful daughter become a woman, yet remain a child, he might be a little crazed and unforgiving, too.

Ethan closed his eyes so Patch wouldn’t see the regret he felt when he thought of what she wanted from him. The events of the past prevented any thought of marriage to her. Even so, his feelings about finding her here were confused, to say the least. On the one hand, he found her incredibly desirable as a woman. On the other hand, he couldn’t separate the woman from the spirited, yet vulnerable tomboy in raggedy clothes for whom
he felt a big-brotherly affection. It was the younger Patch he felt he had to protect. For her own good, he had to make her go home.

“You’re forgetting one other thing,” Ethan said in a grating voice.

“What is that?”

“I don’t love you.”

Patch felt her stomach shift sideways. She lowered her lashes to hide the sharp pain she felt at Ethan’s admission. Patch had believed when she left Montana that she had enough love for both of them. She hadn’t realized how it would feel to hear Ethan say those crushing words denying any feelings for her.

Patch didn’t know there were tears in her eyes until Ethan drew her into his arms and murmured, “Don’t cry, Patch. I can’t stand to see you cry.”

She buried her face in his shirt, clinging to him, to the dream that had brought her all the way to Texas from Montana, the dream of being loved by Ethan, of loving him in return. But he didn’t love her. He didn’t want to marry her. He—

Patch stiffened as a startling thought occurred to her. Ethan had said he didn’t love her in one breath, and in the next had pulled her into his arms and was, unless she was very much mistaken, kissing away her tears at this very moment.

Patch jerked herself from Ethan’s embrace. “Liar!” she accused.

“What?”

“You’re lying, Ethan Hawk, about not loving me. You
do
love me. That’s why you don’t want to
marry me. You want to protect me from the scandal of marrying an ex-convict, an accused rapist.”

“Patch, I—”

“I appreciate those feelings,” Patch said. “Really, I do. Which is why I’m going to stay here and help you find the
real
culprit.”

“Patch, I—”

“When your name is cleared, we can be married and live happily ever after.”

“Patch, I—”

“Yes, Ethan?”

Ethan took one look at her glowing eyes and forgot what he was going to say. She smiled at him and his body started thinking what it would be like nestled up close to hers. His hands had already reached for her when his brain started functioning again.

“No.” Then, because her smile remained firmly in place, he repeated, “No, Patch. It’s been seventeen years since Merielle Trahern was violated. It could have been anyone, even some cowhand passing through town. It could have been—” Ethan cut himself off because he had his own ideas about who had done it. He’d had seventeen long years to think about it.

Patch took advantage of Ethan’s hesitation. “You do have some idea who might have done it! I knew you would!”

“It’s water under the dam. Knowing—suspecting—who did it won’t change what’s happened. Merielle will still be a child forever,” he said, his eyes bleak. His voice was bitter as he
added, “And it won’t bring back all the years that were stolen from me.”

Patch reached out a tentative hand and placed it on Ethan’s forearm. She felt his muscles bunch under her touch. “If we find the man responsible, your name will be cleared.”

“And if we don’t? You’ll be stirring ashes that have been banked a long time.” There was liable to be a fire down there somewhere that would burn them both.

Ethan voiced another reason it would be foolhardy, not to mention dangerous, to go digging up the past. “Trahern hasn’t stopped hounding me, Patch. He wants me dead. He won’t care if you get caught in the crossfire.”

“But you do.” Patch took a step closer to Ethan. He did care. Probably more than he knew. She was sure of it when he folded her into his arms and held her tight. She would just give him a little hand clearing his name. Could she help it if, during the process, he fell deeply, hopelessly in love with her?

“We can find out the truth, Ethan. The two of us, together.”

“Patch, I—”

“We’ll be a team, hunting down clues to the mystery. Meanwhile, I’ll be here to help take care of your mother and sister. By the way, I told them you wrote me in Montana and asked me to come help with the housekeeping. Leah suspects I wasn’t telling the truth. You won’t give me away, will you?”

Ethan groaned.

“I love you, Ethan.”

His arms tightened around her. “All right, dammit,” he said in a guttural voice. “You can stay long enough for me to do some investigation. But if I don’t discover any new information about the rape, you’ll have to abide by my decision not to marry you and go home to Montana. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ethan,” Patch said meekly.

“And meanwhile, you’re not to say anything to anybody about this crazy idea you have that I promised to marry you. Understand?”

“Yes, Ethan. You forbid me to tell anyone why I’m really here in Oakville. Is that right?”

Ethan
hmmed
his assent.

“And I promise”—Patch crossed her heart—”that if you don’t find the real culprit, I’ll leave.”

If Ethan could have seen Patch’s face, he would have put her on the next stage back to Montana. Fortunately for Patch, her face was safely, happily, snuggled against Ethan’s chest.

“Ethan!” Leah shouted from the house. “Someone’s coming!”

Leah’s warning cry set Ethan in motion. He set Patch aside and grabbed the doorknob. The kitchen door wouldn’t budge.

“I don’t believe this!” The door was wedged tight in the frame. “Can you see who it is, Leah?” Ethan shouted through the kitchen window.

“Why don’t you just walk around the house and see for yourself?” Patch asked.

Ethan turned a scowling face toward Patch. “You might have noticed in town that the sight of
me tends to draw bullets. I’d just as soon know who’s out there before I show my face.”

“I’ll go see who it is.”

Before Ethan could stop her, Patch scooted around the side of the house through the weeds that had grown up in the yard and headed for the front porch.

“Damn, damn, damn!” Ethan exploded. “That woman is going to be the death of me yet!”

He slammed his palm against the door and it popped open. He shoved it wide and raced—long step, halting step, long step, halting step—for the front of the house.

Patch told herself she wasn’t in any danger. Even if the two men riding toward her in the deepening shadows of sundown meant some harm to Ethan, they wouldn’t bother her. That made it easier to wait on the front porch with a smile on her face for the arrival of the intruders. The forced curve became more natural when she recognized one of the riders as the handsome young man who had come looking for Merielle Trahern in the mercantile. Her stomach rolled when she remembered he was also Jefferson Trahern’s foreman.

“Hello, Mr. Meade,” she called out when the two men were within hailing distance. “What brings you here?”

Frank tipped his hat. “Miz Kendrick. Came looking for Ethan.”

“He’s not—”

“We know he’s here,” the other man said.

Patch’s attention was drawn to the man on Frank’s left. She considered Frank handsome. The stranger beside him could only be called striking. His features might have been appealing viewed
one at a time, but they were combined in a way that gave the man a fierce, unrelenting look, more intriguing than attractive. If she hadn’t been in love with Ethan, her heart might have taken a few quick beats.

He was wearing a Stetson shoved back off his brow, and a hank of dark hair hung down over his forehead. His eyes were mesmerizing, a tawny gold that reminded her of the cougar she had kept as a pet in Montana. She could almost feel the tension radiating from the man. She held her breath waiting for something—she wasn’t sure what—to happen.

He smiled.

He had dimples. One, actually, on the left side.

Patch couldn’t help smiling back. She had the strangest urge to laugh with relief. He hadn’t said a word, yet she was ready to like him.

He wasn’t done charming her. While she stood there grinning like an idiot, his mouth tilted up on one side, skewing his smile and giving him a rakish look. His eyes warmed as they focused on her. Even worse, she warmed as his eyes surveyed her from top to toe. She was left in no doubt that he liked what he was seeing.

It dawned on her that she was meeting these two cowmen still wearing the apron she had put on to clean house, with her hair tumbling down and her face smudged with dirt.

“Garn!” she muttered.

“What’s that you said, ma’am?” Frank asked.

“Nothing,” Patch replied. “What can I do to help you gentlemen?”

“We came to make sure Ethan’s all right,” Frank answered.

Patch’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Don’t you work for Jefferson Trahern?”

Frank ran the reins through his fingers nervously. “Yes, ma’am. I do.”

Her mouth twisted in disdain. “And you call yourself Ethan’s friend?”

“I’ll personally vouch for him,” the stranger said.

“And who are you?” Patch demanded.

The cowboy stepped down off his horse, tipped his hat, and said, “Boyd Stuckey, at your service, ma’am. I’m a friend of Ethan’s, too. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

Patch was flattered and flustered by his formal speech. It belonged in a drawing room back East. Then she remembered that she had spent more than a couple of years learning how to respond when addressed in such a manner. “I’m Patricia Kendrick. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Patch realized too late that she had extended her hand as though she were wearing elbow-length gloves and a satin ballgown. To her surprise, Boyd Stuckey knew exactly how to treat a lady. He marched up two of the three front porch steps, took her hand in his, and raised it to his lips.

When his mouth touched the back of her hand, she got goose bumps all the way up her arm. She snatched her hand back, bewildered by feelings she had previously been certain no man except Ethan could have incited.

“It’s a pure delight meeting you, Miss Kendrick,”
Boyd said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”

The sound of his voice, husky and low, sent an astonishing chill down her spine. Patch was confused and upset by what was happening to her. How could a perfect stranger make her feel like this, when she was already in love with another man!

She hurried into speech to cover her feelings. “Ethan worked with my father in Montana years ago. Since we’re such old friends, he asked me to come and help out around the house until Mrs. Hawk is feeling better.” She arched a brow, eyed both men, and said, “What’s your real reason for being here? I have it on good authority that Ethan doesn’t have any friends in town.”

Frank answered before Boyd could. “Me and Boyd and Ethan grew up together here in Oakville. We’ve been best friends since we were in short pants. Just ask Ethan. He’ll tell you. The three of us have always been tighter than ticks on a dog.”

Frank looked so honest and sounded so earnest that Patch was inclined to believe him. “In that case—”

The squeal of hinges as the front door opened interrupted her. Patch turned and saw that Ethan was joining them.

“I was just about to invite your friends to stay for supper,” she said.

“We wouldn’t want to put you out, ma’am,” Frank said.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Patch replied. “Please, won’t you both join us?”

“I have some things to talk over with Ethan that’ll sit better on a full stomach,” Boyd said.