Trail of Kisses (18 page)

“
It’s all right,” he murmured at
length, voice hoarse and laced with emotion. “It’s
gone.”

She answered him with the barest of nods. Inch
by inch, details of the world around her began to come into focus.
It was raining. Her clothes were soaked around the edges, her hair
damp and sticking to her forehead. Cade’s breath was hot against
her neck. The hand that she clutched was curled through her
fingers, squeezing her just as tightly as she held him. His weight
was as oppressive as it was comforting. She couldn’t breathe
freely.

“
Let me,” she panted, working to
gather her thoughts. “Let me go.”

He tensed above her for a moment before
relaxing. “Are you sure?” he asked even as he swayed to the side.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

Her back ached, her throat was raw and
constricted, and her world was ripped ragged, but she answered,
“I’m fine.”

Cade lifted himself to the side and slid off
of her. The rain hit her with full force, running rivulets down her
face as she pushed herself to sit. She hoped Cade would see the
rain and not the tears. She didn’t think she could bear it if he
saw her tears. He would know why they were there. He would know,
and she would be humiliated.

“
I’m perfectly fine,” she repeated
and forced herself to stand. It took more effort than she wanted it
to. Her back was bruised from her fall and her limbs weren’t sure
if they wanted to move. It was only when she was most of the way to
her feet that she realized Cade had jumped up and helped her to
stand. His hands were large and steady, one on her arm, one around
her waist. It would be so easy to let him continue to support her,
to admit it felt good, but if she gave in to someone else’s
strength, it was an admission that she had none.

“
Take it easy,” he warned her,
even as she tugged to get away from him. “You don’t have to charge
off to do anything yet.”

She frowned, confused at first. Then the scene
around them came into slow focus.

Their wagon train was a mess. The tornado may
not have hit them directly, but it had scattered people and wagons
and animals in all directions. Several wagons had been tipped over
or damaged or smashed entirely to pieces. Only one or two remained
standing, untouched. People were beginning to stand from where they
had taken cover, whether it was behind the few trees or by the
river or in ditches or hollows in the ground. As far as Lynne could
see was nothing but destruction and disruption, wide eyes and
wringing hands. They had been hit as surely as if one of the
Briscoe Boys had appealed to Mother Nature to carry out his
villainous mission.

Somehow, she spotted her wagon in the carnage.
It had been tipped over, the canvas cover ripped, and boxes of her
things lay open and scattered in a wide arch. Ben and the oxen were
gone. She started forward, only to have Cade grab her arm to stop
her.

“
Move slowly,” he cautioned her.
“It’s not going anywhere, and I don’t want you to strain yourself
if you’re injured.”

“
I’m not injured,” she said
without thinking about it. She pulled away from him and stumbled
across the wind-whipped ground to the mess that was hers. Her
things, her life, her fortunes. Seeing it all scattered and broken
sent a chill down her spine. This was her life.

“
Where’s Clover?” she asked, her
voice as high and thin as when she was a girl moving to a strange,
new town.

Cade strode to stand close to her, closer than
he should. He searched the stormy horizon with her. The rain was
letting up.

“
She’s over there.” He pointed off
toward the river. Clover, saddle still in place, was standing with
her head low, sniffing at the grass.

Lynne took a breath and marched toward her.
With each step, she forced herself to gather her courage. She was
her Papa’s brave girl. She was her Papa’s brave girl. She had
always been brave, when they’d moved, when her mother died, when
Graham and Robert went off to war. She was brave, and she could get
through this on her own.

Halfway to Clover, she stumbled over a
white-swathed object in the grass. It startled her enough to pause
to see what it was. Her heart caught in her throat and she bent to
snatch it up. It was her doll, the doll her Papa had insisted she
take with her. A huge chunk of porcelain had been knocked out of
the back of her head, even though her painted face still smiled
blankly up at the softening rain. Even still, she was
ruined.

Lynne sank to her knees and snatched the doll
up to her chest. It didn’t ease the pain. Before she could stop
herself, tears burst from her, from the depth of her soul. She
sobbed again, the way she had sobbed when the tornado hid the
sound. Her doll was ruined, her childhood gone. All she could do
was sit there and weep.

“
Lynne?” Cade was there, although
she hadn’t heard him approach. He sat beside her, resting a hand on
her shoulder.

That gentle, comforting hand only caused her
tears to flow more freely.

“
This is not my war,” she moaned,
hugging her doll as if she could put her back together with love.
“I never asked for any of this.”

“
I know you didn’t,
sweetheart.”

“
Please don’t call me that,” she
said, too upset to hold back or remember her manners. “I won’t be
called charming pet names or made to feel like I’m of no use to
anyone without help.”

“
I won’t call you sweetheart,” he
said.

“
I never asked to come out here in
the middle of nowhere,” she went on, venting emotions that had
taken a whirlwind to let free. “I’d never heard of the Briscoe Boys
until they showed up in Papa’s courtroom. I didn’t know who they
were and I don’t want to know who they are. Why would they want
anything to do with me?”

Cade let out a breath, lowering his head and
shaking it. His hand slipped from her shoulder to her waist and he
drew her closer.

“
Who knows why bad people do the
things they do, swee— Lynne? If the world was full of nothing but
good people, it’d be a wonderful place, I’ll admit. But it isn’t.
We’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got.”

Even as his words soothed her, they stirred a
deeper anger. “And that’s what you think? That it’s simply too bad
that there are bad people in this world?”

“
That’s not—”

“
Bad people like you?”

He blinked and gawked at her. “Now hold on a
second. How did I end up on your bad list?”

Guilt gnawed a hole in her gut at the hurt in
his expression. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, it was just
that….

“
I never asked to feel anything
for you,” she sobbed, wiping at her tears with the back of her
hand. “I was supposed to fall in love with a gallant man from a
good family that my family approved of. We were supposed to have a
peaceful life without war or conflict or… or….” Fear. She couldn’t
bring herself to say it.

Cade took his time replying. The strain around
his eyes and mouth belied a level of self-control that Lynne knew
she didn’t have. At last he took a deep breath and said, “There’s
nothing wrong with my family. They’re as good as any.”

Her guilt stabbed harder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean to imply—”

“
I know you didn’t,” he said. “I
don’t think you mean half the things you say or do.”

“
That’s not true, I—”

Before she could defend herself, he pulled her
into his lap and kissed her. The last of her protest died in a moan
against his mouth. He was gentle yet firm, both arms around her
back to keep her pressed against him as his mouth slanted over
hers. There was passion in his kiss, but it was more tender, more
gentle than his other kisses. She relaxed in his arms, letting the
warmth of his body and the heady taste of his tongue as it slid
along hers bring her comfort. The rain was nothing more than a
sprinkle now as he cradled her and kissed her, but the sun might as
well have been shining and light breezes blowing across the prairie
for how safe she felt.

Cade’s arms were the only things that felt
safe anymore. They were the only place that felt like
home.

“
No, I can’t,” she whispered,
pushing away.

To her surprise, Cade let her go, though he
was plainly aggravated when he asked, “Why? Why can’t you just let
yourself go for one minute?”

Because it would be admitting defeat. Because
it would mean she was what she had always feared becoming: a
coward, subject to the whims of others.

“
It’s not right,” she said aloud,
struggling to stand in her sodden clothes, her hair in disarray.
Her doll was still in her arms, as broken as ever. “It’s not right
and you know it. What we did, what I want to do. There are rules to
society for a reason.”

Cade stood with her. “Rules are meant to be
broken when times call for it.”

His excuse wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t help her
when she needed to pull herself together.

“
I’m sorry, Cade,” she said,
backing away from him. “There are things that need to be done.
Everything is scattered, and we need to find it and put it back
together.”

She almost didn’t hear him when he mumbled,
“You can say that again.”

For a heartbeat, she thought about asking him
what he meant, about challenging him the way she would have a few
weeks ago when they had first set out. Instead, she shook her head
and turned away, hugging her doll close. Her life was fractured
enough already. Now she had to put it back together.

Chapter
Ten

Everything was a mess. What the tornado
destroyed in less than an hour took the wagon train more than a day
to clean up. Lynne helped as much as she could with those who had
lost more than her, but she had her own possessions to find and
repack. Her wagon had turned over with enough force to spill her
things across the grass, and while the tornado had left some of it
alone, a few of her belongings, like her doll, had been blown so
far away that it was a wonder they were found at all.

Callie was luckier. Her wagon and John’s had
hardly been touched. Lynne was with her when several people
remarked on it, but Callie just shrugged and said that tornadoes
were like that and roamed across the open grass helping others find
their lost things. For the rest of that day, Lynne found herself
wishing that she could be as strong as her friend.

There were a few bright moments after the
storm, when the sun came out again. People who thought they had
lost precious belongings for good found them again, like a man who
stumbled across his wife’s favorite bonnet while scouring the
debris in the field, or a girl who was reunited with her favorite
doll. Lynne was happy for her, even as she wrapped her own precious
doll’s head in gauze like a bandage and laid her carefully on top
of torn and soiled linens and her Papa’s ruined portrait in her
hope chest.

“
With care like that, you’ll make
a fine mother someday,” Cade commented over her shoulder as she
closed the lid on her doll.

The comment, said with such tenderness and
obviously meant to soothe, sat uncomfortably on Lynne’s raw nerves.
She stood from where she’d been kneeling in the grass beside the
wagon and turned to face him.

The words she wanted to say—that she wouldn’t
have any children, that she would be a terrible mother… even a
simple ‘thank you’—wouldn’t come.

“
I’ll need you and Ben to lift my
hope chest back into the wagon,” was all she could
manage.

Cade shifted on his spot, running a hand
through his hair. His hat was long gone. She waited for whatever
bittersweet thing he would say next.

“
Sure. We’ll take care of
that.”

That was it. He walked off without another
word, circling around the wagon to where Ben brushed the frightened
oxen to calm them. Cade spoke to Ben in a voice too low for her to
hear, then the two of them returned to lift her hope chest, all
without further conversation.

Lynne wilted at the silence. A moment later,
anger rushed in to fill the ache in her heart. How could she stand
there feeling sorry for herself because Cade Lawson didn’t speak to
her, didn’t give her a chance to argue with him? She didn’t want to
be angry, but at the same time she did. It made no sense any way
she looked at it, which only made her restless and
frustrated.

Mr. Evans didn’t order them to start moving
again until two days later. There were wagons that needed repairs
and horses and oxen that had wandered far from their ramshackle
camp that needed to be found before they were in any shape to
continue the journey. A few people had been killed as well, and
several more injured. Emma had been hurt when her family’s wagon
was blown over, her leg crushed under falling boxes. She insisted
she would be fine, but her mother and Dr. Meyers were far more
worried.

They did move on, but with heavy hearts and
the anxiety of everything they’d been through hanging over them.
Lynne was glad that Clover hadn’t been hurt and that she could
ride, keeping her thoughts to herself. Cade was never far from her,
but he didn’t say much, for a change. She didn’t like the troubled
expression he wore. It made her want to comfort him and let him
know everything would be all right. If only she was sure that
everything would be all right.