When Love's Gone Country (Sequel two of the Embracing Love Trilogy) (19 page)

“I don’t begrudge you any happiness and I’ll be the first one to fawn all over that baby of yours, you know that.”

“I do.”

“But there will be times, like now, when it’s just too much for my heart to take without breaking.”

Purity nodded, wishing she could take Meg’s pain away. “One of the hardest things is seeing someone you love hurting and not being able to do anything to help. I love you so much, Meg. Please promise me that during those times when you’re feeling so low, you’ll talk with someone. It doesn’t have to be me. It probably can’t even be me because that would be insanely difficult. But, call Court or Sheila or someone. Even one of the guys, who we all know would just look at you, wanting to fix everything.

You don’t have to simply endure this alone. It’s just like we told Jacob. We’re in this together and we’re stronger together. It’s true for all of us.”

“I promise. You have to make a promise, too.”

“What?”

“That you won’t diminish your pregnancy joy. That you’ll laugh and press you hand to your belly when the baby kicks. Even that you’ll call me immediately and tell me. You’ll want to stop yourself, but don’t. Don’t treat me like I’m some fragile egg that will shatter into a million pieces at any moment. I won’t. And I want to celebrate with you.” She put her hands on Pure’s belly. “That’s my little niece or nephew in there being built.”

Tears pricked Purity’s eyes anew as the two women hugged.

“You’re my best friend,” Meg said.

“And you’re mine.”

“Well, that was a real touchin’ moment there,” a tall man said as he stepped from behind an apple tree. “Almost makes me wish I didn’t have to ask you ladies to come with me.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Meg said, standing up.

Purity stood by Meg. “You might as well turn around and go back to where you came from, mister.”

“Why, that don’t sound very neighborly. Don’t you city folk have any manners?”

Two men appeared on either side of the first man. “We’s lookin’ for the healin’ well.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Save it. We know ya been there. All’s you got to do is show us the way, then we let you go. Simple.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know three men who were shoved into a well today, would you?” Purity asked.

“This ain’t a question and answer period. Tie ‘em up.”

Meg and Purity struggled, but the men were strong.

“We’s gonna give you one more chance to be straight with us.”

“Or what?” Meg asked.

The man removed a knife from its sheath. The blade was at least a foot long and wide as a horse’s hoof. “Ya ever heard of bleedin’? I’m not talkin’ about scrapin’ your knee. There’s a way to cut a person, just so.” He made a motion with the blade. “You slice ‘em just right, they bleed on the surface, not all the way deep down.

Ya see, there’s layers in the skin. We go layer by layer. You tell us what we wanna know, you don’t get bled. You play us, we go deeper.”

“If you kill us, you’ll never find the healing well,” Meg said.

The man laughed. “All I got to do is find your men and tell ‘em we got you. They’ll start singin’ like a pretty little yellow canary.”

“So go find ‘em,” Purity said. “Why are you wasting your time with us?”

“We start with the weak ones first.”

We’ll see who’s weak, Purity thought. She glanced at Meg. “Should we tell ‘em?”

“I think we’d better. I don’t want anything to happen to you or the baby.”

“Now this little lady is makin’ good sense. You should listen to her. Where’s the well?”

“I’ve only been there once, and it was dark. It’s where the river makes a double y. That’s how the ranch got its name.”

“I been to the river, there ain’t no well there.”

“It’s underground. It’s not exactly a well. It’s more like a spring. The water flows through a secret cave in the river up into a cavern. You have to swim down into it and then you swim up through the hole. It’s beautiful there.”

“Meg! Don’t tell him all this. You’re playing right into his hand?”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Keep your mouth shut!”

“Hey now, don’t you talk to her like that.”

“I’ll talk to her any damn way I want.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. You got a problem with that?”

The man standing closest to Purity grabbed her tied up hands and shoved her against the side of the gazebo.

Pure gasped with the sudden pain.

“You need to learn some manners.”

“Not from the likes of you!” Purity spun around, catching the man off guard. Her hands found the handle of his knife and she pulled it from its leather holder.

He was about to holler when she kicked him hard in the knee and he went down. She quickly headed toward Meg, turned around and cut the rope binding her hands. Meg took the knife from her and sliced through Pure’s bonds.

“Hooey! We got ourselves a couple a fire crackers,” the man said, then ran toward them.

“Go to the barn,” Pure yelled, shoving Meg forward.

She took off running. “I’ll be back with help!”

“Go after that one,” the man said. “This one’s all mine.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I hate to tell you, but you’re not man enough for me,” Pure said, stepping to the side as he tried to ram her through with the blade.

As he whizzed past her, she headed up the gazebo steps, then shimmied up the lattice until she was on the roof of the gazebo, lying flat.

The man had fallen to the ground. When he was upright again, he looked around. “Where are you? I know you’re here.”

Pure thought her furious heartbeat would give away her whereabouts.

The other man came running back. “Lost her.”

“Dammit, Jay, can’t you even keep track of one woman?”

“Where’s yours?”

“She’s right here somewhere.”

“Looks like you can’t keep track, either.”

“Shut up and start lookin’. We got to find ‘em quick. Red ain’t gonna be happy if he hears we failed, too. C’mon.”

Purity wasn’t sure she heard the man correctly. Had he said Red? She thought he was a trusted ranch hand. Why in the world would he be searching for the healing well? He should already know where it is. He’d worked the ranch long enough. Surely he’d have found it by now.

The sound of running feet caught Pure’s attention, along with lanterns swinging light into the darkness.

“Purity!” Alex yelled.

“Over here! I’m okay. On top of the gazebo.”

It seemed like half the people who had been in the barn were now in the orchard.

“Who was it?” Frank asked as Bobby and Alex helped Purity get down.

“I don’t know. Some tall guy and two other tall guys. I took one of them down with a kick to the knee.”

“What’d they want?” Bobby asked.

“To know where the healing well was.”

Frank rubbed his chin. “This is becoming quite a problem.”

“It gets worse. Frank, I need to talk with you alone,” Purity said.

“Let’s go back to the main house.”

Purity looked around for Red, but saw he was nowhere in the vicinity. Funny how he hadn’t come rushing to help. He’d been at the big, red barn for the hoedown all night.

When they were all settled in the living room of Frank and Emma’s sprawling ranch home, Purity told Frank about Red.

“Are you sure you didn’t hear him wrong?”

“I didn’t hear him wrong. He mentioned Red specifically. Doesn’t Red know where the hot springs are?”

Frank sighed, “Actually, no. We don’t really talk about it amongst our staff. If anyone ever brings it up, we deny its existence.”

“But people know about it,” Meg said.

“Some do. Some don’t.”

“Some don’t believe,” Emma said. “Red’s been around the ranch a long time, but he ain’t one to take any kind of gossip seriously. If he can’t see or feel it himself, he don’t believe it.”

“That’s a good thing, for the most part,” Frank said. “But sometimes he takes things a bit too far. Everything is black and white, right or wrong, good or bad.”

“And there’s a lot of gray in the world,” Meg said.

“Exactly.”

“If what you’re saying is accurate, then why would Red care if the healing well existed or not?” Bobby asked.

“Money is a powerful elixir. Red has seen a lot of hard times. He’s always wanted to have his own ranch, but he could never get the money together. Maybe he sees this as a way to finally get what he wanted,” Frank said.

“Couldn’t he have simply asked you?” Courtney said.

“I’ve always denied it. If he asked me, I’d deny it again. It wouldn’t do ‘em any good to ask me.”

“What about other ranch hands?” Alex asked.

“Red keeps to himself a lot. Well, except for Bart. Those two are like peas in a pod. You don’t think they’re in this together, do you?”

“Four eyes are better than two,” Court said.

“There’s one way to find out for sure,” Purity said. “Meg made up a story about an underground cave in the river. If we can somehow tell that same story to Red, he might go there. We could catch him looking for it.”

“Frank can’t just bring it up in conversation now after he’s denied it for so long,” Brad said. “It would need to be someone else, someone Red or Bart would never expect to have any information about the hot springs.”

They all looked around the room. One by one their eyes fell on Jeremy.

“Why ya’ll lookin’ at me?” Jeremy asked.

“How’d you like to be in on a secret mission?” Bobby asked.

“Sign me up!”

Everyone laughed.

“We have to make sure there’s no danger. I’m not letting Jeremy do anything that might put him in harm’s way,” Meg said.

“That’s a given,” Bobby said. “We can have Jeremy leak the information while we’re all in a public setting with lots of people around. He only has to give enough information for Red to be able to find the fake location.”

“We should have a trap waiting for him,” Jeremy said. “Like one of those nets that swoops you up into the air and hangs you upside down.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Brad said. “It’d be damn hard to explain you were just passin’ by if you got caught in a trap.”

“I think it’ll be enough to catch him searchin’ the property. It’ll be enough for me anyway,” Frank said.

“How do the ranch hands pick which one of us they’re going to work with?” Meg asked.