Texas Heroes: Volume 1 (33 page)

Home.

No. Not home. He didn’t need a home. Didn’t want one. He’d merely come back to be sure Cy’s cabin—his cabin—was all right for winter. He could leave tomorrow and get a job at the snap of his fingers. Maybe he should. Let her have the place if she wanted.

But the boy needed him right now. And so did she—like it or not, wise or not. It wasn’t in Jenny Gallagher’s son to leave them stranded, even a woman as heartless as this one.

Mitch finished dishing up Davey’s oatmeal and his own. As he sat down, he couldn’t help looking back through time to another table, another dark-haired man and blonde woman and boy. All that was missing was the dark-haired older son who had once belonged at a table like this.

Who had once been part of a family.

Until he’d destroyed it.

Perrie woke at the sound of a thump on the kitchen floor, followed by a deep rumble and animated whispers. Her impulse to leap up from the bed and be sure Davey was all right was automatic, but she waited. Mitch was with him. No matter what he thought of her, she could not fault his care of her child.

Well, except maybe the lack of bathing. But Davey was no doubt in little boy heaven.

The door opened a crack. A small blond head bobbed through the opening. When he saw that she was awake, he shoved through the door and bounced on the bed. “Mom—Mitch is making you a bath.” His little face wrinkled in disgust. “He says I gotta take one after you’re through.”

“Good for him. You need one. I wonder if all little boys hate baths.”

“They do,” the deep voice confirmed.

Perrie glanced up at Mitch. “All of them?”

“My mom practically had to hog-tie my brother and me when we were kids.” For a moment, he seemed younger, lighter of heart. The tawny eyes sparkled.

“You have a brother?” Davey asked. “Is he big like you?”

The sparkle vanished, replaced by a look of such deep sorrow that it hurt to watch.

Then the iron man recovered and resumed his careful mask. “I don’t know.” Mitch glanced at her, his expression neutral. “If you’d like to bathe, Cy had an old tub that should work.”

He didn’t know what his brother looked like? Perrie wanted to know more, but everything about him said
Back off
. The brief glimpse of a carefree boy was gone as if it had never existed. In its place was the forbidding stranger.

But forbidding or not, a bath sounded like heaven. Except that— “Where will you be?”

He snorted. “Davey and I will go outside.”

Perrie fought a blush. No one but Simon had ever seen her naked. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to be seen by a man again. But this man, so overpowering, so…male… He made her very conscious that she was female.

“I’m sorry. I sound ungracious. Thank you for going to so much trouble.”

He shrugged. “Not that much.”

She shook her head. “That’s not how I remember it. Everything takes more work up here.” Whatever the chasm between them, however badly he wanted her gone, she owed him this much, at least. More.

He had already turned to leave when she spoke up again. “Mitch…” He didn’t turn back, but he stopped. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. Taking care of me…” She felt her face flame again as it dawned on her that he must have seen her naked. Someone had changed her sweat-soaked clothing and put her in the clothes that had been in her backpack. It couldn’t have been Davey.

Resolutely, she pressed on. “You’ve taken care of Davey, and I don’t think—you don’t have children, do you?”

He turned halfway, and she thought she saw fleeting amusement as he shook his head. “Not hardly.”

“So much could have happened to him if I’d fallen ill and we’d been here alone…” Her throat tightened. Dire possibilities squeezed the breath out of her. Swallowing heavily, she shoved the terrifying prospects away, lifting her gaze to him once again. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

She swear that faint color stained his cheeks.

“Anyone would have done the same.”

“No—no, they wouldn’t have.” This stranger had been kinder to her in these few days than her husband had been in their entire marriage.

Mitch watched her with careful eyes for a long moment. His voice turned gruff. “The water’s going to get cold. Can you make it in there by yourself?”

Perrie wasn’t sure, but she nodded, anyway.

He glanced down at her son. “Well then, come on, Davey. Let’s go outside.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. Mitch will take care of us.” Her son followed him out with not even a glance back at her, already chattering away happily. “Can we watch for another eagle, Mitch?”

She’d never realized how hungry he was for a father.

Perrie watched them leave, the blond-haired owner of her heart and the dark giant who watched over them both.

He didn’t want them here—at least, not her. Yet he took better care of both of them than the man who’d said sacred vows with her, who had fathered her son.

There had to be some way out of this coil. She would find it, somehow. For now, her bath awaited.

Mitch stayed on the porch until he heard the water splash against the sides of the old washtub and could be sure she’d made it all the way from the bedroom.

She couldn’t drown—the tub wasn’t that big. But she could have passed out along the way. She was far from recovered.

They wouldn’t venture far, just in case. And he would try very hard not to think of ivory skin glistening with droplets of water. Of the slow track of moisture gliding down her slender spine toward gently-rounded hips. Or of soap bubbles clinging to other silken curves.

Mitch tried to reconcile the soft, tender creature who loved her child so much with the woman who would refuse all contact with her only other living kin. Cy hadn’t spoken of her much, but he’d told Mitch about Perrie’s mother, about all the lovers. That Perrie had no idea who her father was.

She had reason to be wary of him, sure. He’d seen the fear in her eyes. He was a stranger and as far from her Boston existence as anyone could be.

But she’d known Cy all her life, had spent big chunks of it here in this place. She had to know how much she meant to the old man, yet in his darkest hour, she’d turned her back on him as though he meant nothing to her.

It had looked like real grief in her eyes when she spoke of Cy. She’d seemed genuinely shocked that he was dead. Either she was the finest actress he’d ever seen, or something was very wrong.

“Mitch?” Davey ran back to him, breathless. “Come see! I found a squirrel.”

“If you’re this noisy, he’ll be long gone.” But Mitch rose to follow the child, enjoying his excitement. The fresh eyes Davey cast on the world never ceased to amaze him. He was too fearless by half, but no more so than Mitch himself had been as a child. Yet within the fearless boy was an old man, a child aged before his time.

Perrie was hiding something. Maybe this boy knew what it was, but Mitch wouldn’t stoop to that. Instead of daydreaming about glistening wet curves, Mitch should start asking the owner of those curves some hard questions.

Perrie jerked awake from the nightmare, heart beating a fandango. She rubbed a slow circle on her chest and breathed deeply, staring into the darkness, listening. When she heard Davey’s even breathing from the cot nearby, she relaxed a little, but she knew sleep would be elusive.

She wasn’t sure where Mitch was now; caught up in the bedtime ritual with Davey, she’d lost track of where she’d heard him last. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay in the darkness one second longer.

She tightened the belt of her robe and slipped through the door into the main room, headed for the firelight’s glow.

A few steps into the room, she stopped dead in her tracks. Stretched out on the floor in front of the dying fire, Mitch lay sound asleep.

Perrie approached with slow, careful steps. She’d never seen him like this, hard features softened in slumber.

He looked younger, less careworn. The fierce eagle eyes closed, his frame still conveyed power and strength, but the man before her seemed almost…vulnerable.

She’d never met anyone so alone. Her grandfather had spent much of his life in these mountains by himself, his solitude punctuated by stints as a hunting and fishing guide. Grandpa had been alone, but never lonely. Solitude was very much a part of who he was, intertwined almost at a cellular level with his sense of humor, his love of the wilderness, his blue eyes.

Something about Mitch was different. It was almost as if solitude were not a choice but a defense.

He didn’t know what his brother looked like. What was his story? Where was his family? Had he known gentleness in his life or only sorrow?

Sorrow. That was it. Beneath the power, beneath the fierce determination, the harsh strength, Perrie sensed a deep well of sorrow in this man. Why? What had happened? What had he suffered that made him so fiercely protective of his shell, so rigidly controlled?

But Davey breached those high walls. Something in the boy touched the man and mined the goodness his manner hid.

He wasn’t accustomed to children and his methods might not be found in any parenting book, but he had been good to a child thrust upon him by circumstance. Had taken care of a child not his own, had not punished the child for the mother’s believed sins.

He did not want her here, could not wait for her to leave. But he had still granted her more kindness in a few days than she had had from Simon in years.

Perrie’s mind whirled, trying to sort out the best path. This cabin had been her lodestone, her guiding star for so long that she’d never considered what to do next, where she might go.

Perhaps if she were another woman, more suited to passion, it might be possible for her to seduce him. He already cared for Davey; if he found passion with her, would he want them to stay?

But she wasn’t that woman, and she had sold herself once. Never again. Never mind that she hadn’t known she was selling her soul until it was too late—she would never erase the loathing she felt for a girl so confused and weak-minded that she had not seen Simon for who he was. Blinded by the fairytale she wanted her life to become, the little secretary wooed by the heir apparent had been caught up in a whirlwind of illusion.

She knew now that her allure for Simon had been that she was so malleable. So stupid and needy and eager to become the woman he wanted. She would never erase the shame of being that girl who never saw the trap coming until it was too late. Who kept believing it was her fault and things might change if only she could do everything right.

That girl was dead. The woman who replaced her had been forged in the fires of hate.

She would die before she let Simon take her child. He might have the deck stacked with his family’s connections and wealth, but somehow she would elude him. Somehow, she would win.

You can’t prove anything, Perrie. And who would believe you over me? Don’t even try—not unless you want to lose the boy forever
. With effort, she shoved Simon’s words away. She had to think, not panic.

She had little money left, and her strength was not yet returned. For a time longer, she had to tiptoe through the days and pray that Mitch would not make them leave. She did not know enough about him to tell him her story yet.