The Loner (28 page)

He shoved his fingers through his hair, then started to pace. "I think I've come to know you pretty good in the past week or so. In some ways you are quite unconventional, but when it comes to home and family, I reckon you're about as traditional as they come."

He halted, faced her. Sincerity rang in his voice as he said, "I can't be a traditional husband, Caro. I can't get up and go to work in the morning, come home for supper and play ball with the boy until it's time for bed. I admit I see some appeal in a life like that, but it is simply not in the cards for me."

Her knees wanted to tremble, but she refused to allow it. "Because you don't want it to be. You want travel and adventure and.. .and.. .other women."

"No, that's not true." He punctuated his words by jabbing his finger in the air, his green eyes flashing. "That's absolutely not true! It doesn't matter what I want, because when I take a chance and reach for it, the people I care about end up paying."

The vehemence in his tone caused her to realize that he'd said something of import. It took a moment for his words to sink in, but once they did, her eyes rounded with alarm. "Oh, for crying out loud. What are you saying, Logan? Are you telling me that Will and I are not your only family? Do you have another wife and child stashed away somewhere?"

"Not anymore," he shot back. Immediately, regret flashed in his eyes, and Caroline knew he'd said more than he'd intended.

Shocked, she studied him, hurting for the both of them. She saw guilt in his expression plain as day and her stomach sank to her toes. "We're back to the 'I don't understand' part."

He drew in a deep breath, then let it out in a heavy sigh. "It's a long, ugly story, Caroline. You don't need to hear it."

"I think I do. I think that might be the only way I can understand what is in your head when it comes to our family."

"We don't have a family!" he shouted. "We can't have one."

She leaned back against a tree, folded her hands and met his stare. "Then tell me why. This much you do owe. You're married to me and, like it or not, we have a child. The least you can do is explain why we can't be together."

"Dammit, Caroline." When she didn't relent, his mouth flattened into a grim line and his eyes took on a stoic light. He hissed out a defeated breath. "You know I grew up in an orphanage. My family all died in a flash flood."

"That's how you got your nickname. People called you Lucky."

"Yeah, well, Nellie Jennings and I had different opinions on what was and wasn't lucky. I spent about a decade at Piney Woods Children's Home, and I left because I wanted to see the world. I was in the process of doing that when I met up with your father in that saloon." He shot her a sharp look and made his point. "Look at what getting tangled up with me did to you."

"I have Will," she responded in a quiet, even tone. "I consider him the luckiest thing that ever happened to me."

"Yeah, well, I suspect the rest of the world might think differently considering the way you had to scratch and scramble to provide for him," he said with a self-directed sneer. "But you weren't the last person whose luck went bad after I entered her life.

Her
life. The pronoun didn't escape Caroline. She closed her eyes. She knew what was coming now. He was fixing to tell her about another woman with whom he'd been involved.

"It was a year or so after our meeting in Artesia. Remember, Caroline, I didn't think we were married."

Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Just what every woman wanted to hear—stories about her husband's other lovers. "In all honesty, I think I'd just as soon skip this part of your story."

"It
is
the story. Look, I'm more than happy not to tell it if you're willing to let this whole discussion lie."

"No." Movement above caught her attention and she watched a blue jay flitter from tree to tree. "I want to understand."

"It'll probably make better sense if I start at the beginning." Logan bent and scooped a handful of gravel from the ground. As he told his story, he threw one rock after another at random targets. "After leaving Artesia, I had wandered down south. I had a vague intention to go all the way to Mexico City. I drifted along, taking odd jobs when I needed cash. I entered a shooting contest in Laredo and won twenty dollars. A couple of men watched me shoot and offered me a job. They said they were range detectives working for ranchers in the area. Jack and Stoney Wilson. That's how I got started doing what I do."

"I've wondered about that," she said.

"I liked the life. It suited me. I did a few things that shame me now when I look back on them, but at the time...I was playing cowboys and outlaws, Caroline. Just like I had when I was a kid. Sometimes I wore a white hat, but sometimes the damned thing was black as midnight. I didn't much care."

"You were young."

"Young and green and I didn't cotton on to the more serious crimes this pair were running. Took me a year to figure that one out—a year and a couple of ugly deeds." He shut his eyes and dropped his head back. His voice dipped. "Ugly deeds."

Caroline waited, her heart softening as she watched the inner struggle evident in his features. He would speak when he was ready—whether she wanted him to or not.

"The Wilsons sent me to Saltillo to bring in a man who had rustled some cattle from them. I rousted him from a bar and dumped his drunken butt in a wagon to take him back to Texas when his partner showed up and took a shot at me." He looked at her then, and the pain in his gaze shook her to the core. "I shot back and killed my first man—only, he wasn't a man. He was just a kid. Younger than Will is now. His face haunts me to this day."

"Oh, Logan."

His voice flattened. "But I didn't quit. Didn't leave. Told myself that it was self-defense and he deserved it. Nevertheless, he was still a boy and I didn't feel good about what I'd done. Couldn't justify taking a youngster's life on account of a handful of cows."

He threw the last, the biggest, of the stones he'd collected and it pinged off a boulder some twenty feet away. "It was still eating at me a couple months later when I overheard a conversation between the Wilson brothers and figured out that they had lied to me. The man I went looking for in Mexico wasn't a rustler. He was a father who was searching for his daughter, who had gone missing. The boy I killed was his son."

Caroline didn't know what to say to him, so she walked over next to him and attempted to take his hand. He pulled away, rejecting her comfort, and she tried not to let it hurt.

"I attempted to find out more about the family, but doing it without tipping my hand was hard. It took a couple of months before I discovered what scheme the Wilson brothers played, but when I did...Jesus."

This time he gave the loose rocks at his feet a good hard kick. "They kidnapped women, Caroline, and sold them into Mexico as whores."

Her mouth gaped. She recalled Ben warning her about such events maybe eight or ten years ago when two young women disappeared without a trace from a town not far from Artesia. "Oh, no. What did you do, Logan?"

His eyes went ice-cold and granite hard. "I played along with them. Told them I wanted in on their game. Next time they took a string of fillies—that's what they called them, fillies, the bastards—I went with them. I wanted to kill them outright, but they were part of a much bigger organization. I realized early on that I wouldn't stop the practice, that I'd just slow it down if I took them out without learning who all the players were. I went to the Rangers and told them everything. They formulated a plan to bring down the entire group and I went along on the next sale."

Caroline made a quick mental review of the newspaper stories about Logan that she had read. She didn't recall any about him helping the Rangers bring human traffickers to justice.

"That time they brought eight women," Logan continued. "Eight women and..." he paused, visibly braced himself "...and one beautiful little girl. She was six years old with dark brown curls and big brown eyes. Her name was Elena."

Caroline bit her lip. She didn't know what he was going to say next, but she could tell from the pain in his expression that it wasn't going to be a pretty story.

"Her mother was a young widow who had worked as a housekeeper for a Hill Country rancher. Maria was fierce like you trying to protect Elena. Once when she was at her most desperate, she said she'd kill her baby and herself before she'd let her daughter meet the fate that we had planned for her. I couldn't stand it, Caroline."

"You helped them escape, didn't you?"

"Yeah. In the end, I didn't trust the Rangers to get them out safe. The night before the Rangers were scheduled to arrive, I took 'em and ran. I thought we got away clean. I kept my eyes on the newspapers and saw that the raid was successful. We thought the trouble was all behind us."

The agony that dimmed his green eyes told her that wasn't the case.

"I wanted away from South Texas, so I took us to Oklahoma. I bought a farm. We settled down." He grimaced. "I married Maria, Caroline. I didn't know that you and I..."

"I get that." She had trouble speaking past the lump in her throat. The pain in her heart made her want to lie down and cry. "You loved her?"

He hesitated over his words. "It's complicated. I adored Elena. She was cute as a button and so full of life. When Elena smiled, the rest of the world grinned with her. She was an innocent, an angel, and I loved her like I had never loved anyone before. Maria was... well...she tried, but she still mourned Elena's father. Too much had happened too soon for her to really take it all in. I think in time, we might have been fine. Time was something we didn't have."

"What happened to them, Logan?"

"The Wilsons happened, that's what. They escaped the Ranger's trap—which was my fault, I should add. I tipped them off by stealing Maria and Elena away. I heard they swore revenge on me, but I honestly thought we were somewhere safe." He gazed off into space, then shook his head. "Damn their souls to everlasting hell."

Caroline couldn't stay away from him now. She put her hand on his shoulder, offering the little bit of comfort she thought he would accept. When he didn't shake her off, she said, "You were a long way from South Texas."

"We used different names, too. For all the good it did. If it had just been me, they might not have looked so hard. They needed Maria. The bastards ordinarily took any woman as long as she was young and healthy. Maria was different. Her beauty sucked a man's breath away. A wealthy Mexican don had seen her in the marketplace in San Antonio, but she rebuffed his advances. He wasn't willing to accept that, so he placed an order for her."

"What an evil man!"

"I won't argue that. The Wilsons took a lot of money for Maria, so after she escaped, not only were the Rangers after them, the don's men were, too." He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. "I never thought they'd live long enough to find us."

A long moment passed in silence. Logan turned his head away. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. "I'd gone into town to buy a gift for Elena's birthday. I came home to..."

He closed his eyes. His muscles betrayed a slight tremble. She wanted to stop him, to tell him that she understood, that he'd said enough. But she remembered how Suzanne always used to say that a lanced sore needs to drain for healing to begin, so she clenched her teeth and remained silent.

"It was obvious that the Wilsons had tried to take her again, and that Maria wasn't having any of it. I don't know what they did to her, what they said to her, but I think she must have gone a little crazy."

Again, a pause. Then he cleared his throat and said in a low, flat tone, "She got a pistol and shot Elena, then turned it on herself. I arrived home no more than five minutes too late to save them."

Caroline sat in stunned horror. That poor mother. What an insane choice she had faced. To kill her own child or let her be sold into sexual slavery? Caroline couldn't imagine.

And Logan. To have to walk in on the aftermath. Just a heartbreak too late. No wonder he didn't believe in family. And that little girl...

The tears that had welled in Caroline's eyes spilled at the horror of the picture he had painted. She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. At first he held himself stiff and aloof, but he didn't push her away. Caroline took that as a positive sign.

He needs me. He doesn't know it, but he needs me.

"You killed the Wilsons, I hope?"

"Oh, yeah. Emptied my gun into their cold black hearts. Too damned late, though." His voice broke. "Too damned late."

"Logan, I—"

Apparently he'd reached the limits of his willingness to accept comfort because he pulled away from her, whirled on her. "I learned my lesson, Caroline. Lucky Logan Grey? That's a crock. Twice now I've had my family taken from me. Third time is no charm for me. So now do you understand, Caroline?"

Oh, Logan.
He needed her. She needed him. She needed to show him that there was another chance for him, another family. People who would love him and heal him. But how to tell him? How to show him? How to make him see?

Before she could find the solution, he braced his hands on his hips and declared, "I can't be the husband you want. I
won't
be the husband you want. Hell, I can't even be the father Will deserves."

"Logan, don't say that."

"I am saying it and you damned well better hear it. I'll give you my money, Caroline. I'll give you my care and concern. I'll gladly give your body pleasure any time you'd like. But, by God, don't ask for more from me. I don't have it to give, and even if I did, I wouldn't visit my bad luck on you. I care about you too much."

She understood, all right. Even brave, courageous men could had a fear they could not conquer. Logan was terrified of the past—he'd lost his family twice. He was fearful of what the future might bring—he couldn't bear another devastating loss. For over a decade now he had lived only in the present, sinking no roots, protecting his heart. Living alone.

This poor, sad man.

Bravely, she approached the wounded animal to whom she was married. She took his face in her hands and stared up into his eyes. "I care about you, too, and now I understand. I do. That doesn't mean that I agree with you, however."