The Law and Miss Penny (18 page)

When he looked into Mariah's eyes and saw the pain and despair shining through her tears, he did the next best thing he could think of. The only thing he could do. Cain lifted her up on her toes, fully capturing her lips and her body with his own, and showed her the way he felt.

The kiss he'd stolen the previous afternoon had been thrilling and exciting, passionate in its own way, but now that the moral restraints on indulging in such intimacies had been tossed aside, Cain's lust for Mariah knew no boundaries. He couldn't seem to stop kissing her, couldn't keep his hands from caressing her soft skin or plunging into her thick, dark tresses.

Mariah went wild in response, encouraging him past those previous limits, all but begging him for the experience of tasting everything he had to offer. She was ripe with a refreshingly candid desire, and so very, very... vulnerable.

If not for that final thought, and the reminder of how fragile her emotions were at this time, Cain was sure they'd have been lost to one another for the balance of the evening, victims of a passion that would not be denied. As it was, he managed to release her, and abruptly set her away from him.

His voice much deeper than normal, his throat tight, Cain said, "That ought to give you some idea how I feel about you."

Mariah was breathless. Her lips were on fire, and her entire body felt as if it were electrified. Strangest of all, her anguish had been muted somehow, and now she felt like laughing—no, giggling like a giddy little child. Containing the urge, she looked up at Cain with a shy smile as she said, "I appreciate your setting me straight about that. And by the way—you 'feel' pretty good."

Returning her grin, he admitted, "So do you." Then, worried that he might give in to the impulse to take her back into his arms, Cain dug into the pocket of his shirt. As he withdrew a blue satin ribbon, one he was certain she'd lost as she raced away from the hotel, he said, "I found this lying on the railroad tracks. Maybe you'd like to use it to tie up your hair."

She glanced at the ribbon, and then at Cain. "We're going back to the Strater now?"

"I think we'd better. We can't even begin to figure out what's going on between us until you get yourself straightened out with Oda and Zack. It wouldn't be fair to anybody otherwise. Especially you."

For a moment, Mariah was afraid that she might burst into tears again. Not because she perceived his suggestion as a rejection, but because he was right. No matter how badly she wanted to stay right here with Cain, she had to return to the hotel and get her life back to some kind of order. And to do that, she would have to sever or mend her ties to the couple who referred to themselves as her parents.

* * *

It wasn't easy, but Cain smuggled a hatless, slightly disheveled Mariah back into the hotel without anyone noticing her. Then he left her in the company of her parents and went off to his own room, giving the Pennys as much privacy as the situation warranted.

Mariah wished he hadn't been so noble. As she looked at Zack sitting stiff-backed on the edge of the bed, and at Oda, who appeared to be sulking at the desk, Mariah could have used a friend about now. She fidgeted in the Queen Anne chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs a dozen times over, nibbling at her fingernails, and fiddling with the velvet buttons on the bodice of her dress, but she couldn't seem to ask even one of the millions of questions she'd thought of while sitting by the river.

Zack finally broke the ice. He nodded toward Mariah as he said, "I expect you're all in a fret trying to figure out why your ma and I never owned up to the fact that I ain't your natural pa."

But you are my father—you are.
Mariah didn't say the words but nodded solemnly.

Zack glanced at his wife. "Your ma and I talked it over while Cain was out looking for you, and we think it'd be best if you and Oda work this out alone."

Mariah's gaze darted over to where her mother sat. Her head was bowed, and she stared at the floral pattern in the rug as if hypnotized. She looked especially tired, droopy, and even her mouth, devoid of the usual cigar, sagged slightly at the corner where her stogie normally fit.

Mariah looked back at her father and said, "Thank you."

With more difficulty than usual, he got to his feet and limped toward the door. "I'll be back a little later. You two take it good and slow. Listen to one another." Then he was gone.

The room remained silent even after both women knew Zack was out of earshot. Tiring of waiting for her mother to begin her explanation, Mariah forced the issue by saying, "Who is my real father?"

Oda's head jerked up at this question as if she'd been doused with cold water. Since she had little left to hide, she simply said, "Patrick O'Conner, but he went by the name Storm."

The fine hairs on Mariah's arms stood up, and a tremor racked her spine. To hear the name, to suddenly be told, "No, you're not a Penny, but an O'Conner," filled her with a sense of the unreal, as if she were struggling to awaken from a nightmare.

Oda, who recognized no such reaction in her daughter, went on to say, "Since I'm a Fitzgerald by birth, I guess that makes you about as Irish as a girl can get."

Mariah snapped out of her fugue enough to recognize that the tone her mother had taken was the one she always used when she figured she'd done about all the talking she had to. But she wasn't about to let her mother off the hook that easily. "Tell me about him. Were you two married? Is he dead? What happened?"

Oda's gaze fell back down to the rug, and she began twisting the hanky she held in her hands. "I, ah... ain't much good at this kind of talk."

"It doesn't matter to me how good you are at it, just do it, please."

Still unable to look her daughter in the eye, Oda let her mind wander back to the past. "Storm and Zachariah was good friends since the war, when Zachariah got his leg shot off and Storm saved his life. They pretty much did everything together after that, and both signed up as scouts for the wagon train my folks was with. We got as far as Stonewall Valley before the family went on without me."

Oda never spoke of her own parents, and in fact, was so adamantly opposed to questions about them, Mariah assumed they'd died horrible deaths while crossing the country as homesteaders. Risking her mother's wrath, she said, "Tell me about the Fitzgeralds before you go on."

Surprised by the question, Oda's gaze shot to her daughter. "Ain't much to tell. It was me, ma and pa, and my two little brothers, Mike and Jimmy."

"Did... did something happen to them on the trail? Are they dead?"

Oda shrugged. "They're only dead to me as far's I know."

"But—"

"I can't explain about them without talking about Storm first. Besides, isn't he the one you want to know about?"

"Yes," Mariah said in a bare whisper, promising herself not to interrupt her mother again until she'd run out of story.

Again averting her gaze, Oda went on. "I never saw a man as handsome as Storm before or since. He had thick black hair like yours, and the most gorgeous blue eyes I've ever seen on a man or a woman. I was sixteen during the crossing, didn't know nothing about men and their ways, and just kinda followed him around like I was a stray puppy looking for a handout." She paused, not sure how to proceed. "To this day, I think it's 'cause I was the only girl of age with the wagon train that weren't taken, but whatever the reason, both Zachariah and Storm were kind of sweet on me."

Her mother paused again, chuckling softly to herself, and Mariah prompted her to continue by saying, "You had your pick of the two, but chose Storm, is that it?"

Oda nodded. "I don't know if 'chose' is the right word, but once Storm put his hands on me, once he..." As Oda's words trailed off, she absently brushed her fingers across her lips.

Mariah's cheeks heated as she imagined the roguish Irishman touching her mother's hair, kissing her, and in that instant, she thought of Cain, of the electricity in his touch and the way he made her feel. Had Oda been drawn to this man she called Storm in the same way? Not sure whether she felt repulsed or sympathetic, Mariah quickly said, "And then what happened?"

"Then... well, next thing I knew, you were on the way, and I was shunned by my family."

Making a fairly easy guess, Mariah said, "You and Storm weren't married when I came along?"

"Not then or ever." Oda sighed heavily. "Soon as he found out about my troubles, he took off so fast, he raised a dust cloud that pretty near covered up the sun. Sure darkened my day, anyways. I thought many times afterwards, that might be how Patrick got that nickname, Storm."

Mariah thought of Cain riding off that way, of the day when his memory would return, and was again struck by the similarities between herself and her mother when it came to men. She wanted to laugh, cry, shout, and scream, all at the same time, but she did none of those things. Instead she grew cold inside, numb against the pain.

"Because of me, you lost the man you loved and your family. You must have hated the sight of me the day I was born."

Oda's head snapped back, looking as if she'd been slapped. "I never hated you. Not for one minute."

Mariah went on as if her mother had never spoken. "Tell me about the Fitzgeralds. Where are they now?"

Oda had dreaded this question. "The Fitzgeralds is a mighty stubborn bunch, I'll warn you about that right now in case you ever get it in your head to go find them. Once they disowned me the way they did, I knew they'd never let me back in. They ain't gonna want to let you in either."

"Of course not. Nobody wants to claim a bastard."

"That ain't true, young lady. Your father, Zachariah, God love him, was there to pick up the pieces of my busted heart, and offered to make a decent woman of me again. When he married me, he claimed you."

"And you, of course, were all too happy to marry him."

"Yes, I was." Oda raised her chin. "Ain't never had a day's regret about it, neither. Zachariah has always been a good husband to me, and a wonderful father to you. From the minute you was born, he thought of you as his own. It was him named you. He came up with Mariah because it rhymed with his name. I thought it was right clever, and fittin' too."

Clever maybe, but Mariah wasn't sure about the rest. She had yet to shake that deep sense of betrayal, but she did feel a certain empathy with Oda. As she asked the final question which continued to nag her, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer, her tone was less accusing, softer than it had been. "Why didn't you ever tell me any of this before now?"

This time Oda looked her daughter right in the eye. " 'Cause of Zachariah. I told you, he thought of you as his own from the day you arrived. Later, when it looked like we weren't going to be blessed with a child of our own, I think he forgot you weren't his. I couldn't take that away from him."

If the door hadn't opened at that moment, Mariah might have burst into tears.

"Everything all right in here, ladies?" Zack said, sticking his head into the room.

Oda looked to her daughter, clearly giving her the floor.

Mariah slowly rose from the chair, swallowing her tears before she could say, "Things are fine, Zack. Come on in."

As he limped into the room, Mariah met him halfway and threw her arms around his shoulders. "I have to leave now," she whispered in his ear. Then she stepped away from him.

Turning to his wife, he asked, "Everything okay, woman?"

Oda, a little wobbly in the voice, said, "She needs to go to her room and be by herself for a while."

Zack stopped Mariah before she left, and said, "Don't think too small of me or Oda, baby. She had a hard time of it a while back."

Mariah took his hand for a moment and squeezed. "She had you the minute things got rough. How bad could it have been?"

His face coloring all the way to his hairline, he said, "I've always figured she got the short end of the stick, with me being a one-legged fellah and all, but I do believe that there's someone for everyone, Mariah. Oda and I are about a perfect match. Can't think of another woman who'd want me, or a man that'd put up with her. I know the good side of that woman, and so do you. See if you can't find it in yourself to forgive her, if there's even anything to forgive."

"I'll have to think about it some more, Dad." The familial term had rolled off her tongue automatically, and Mariah realized with sudden clarity that Zachariah Penny would always be her father. And that she would always love him, no matter how many lies he'd told, or whom her mother had been with at the moment of her conception. She put her arms around his neck and soundly kissed his cheek. "I love you, Dad. I always will."

His throat tight, he whispered, "And I love you, baby. Good night."

Mariah continued down the hall to her room, but the minute she heard the latch click into place on her father's door, she reversed her direction and tiptoed to room 226. With no hesitation, she tapped lightly on the door.

A few moments later, Cain opened it. "Mariah. Is everything all right?"

Anxious not to be seen by Zack, Oda, or any other hotel guest as she entered his room, Mariah ignored the question and swept by Cain, pushing the door shut behind them. Only the small lamp on his bed table was lit, giving off a soft, beckoning glow. The bedspread and blankets were pulled back, the
Durango Herald
was strewn across the exposed flannel sheets, and the pillows were mussed.