Mary Connealy (101 page)

Wade and Abby rode out of town with Wade on top of the world. “Let’s not go directly home, Abby. I want to spend some time away from Pa and his bad temper.”

Abby gave a harsh half-laugh. “I feel no excitement to return to your father’s side.”

“There’s a house I want you to see out here. You think my pa’s place is foolish—this is even worse. But it is beautiful.”

“More beautiful than the trees they cut down to build it?”

Wade laughed. “Maybe not. And definitely not now that it’s abandoned. We use it as a line shack. I think it will be safe. No one can waylay us because they can’t know we’d ride that direction.”

When they came to the fork in the road that led toward the old Griffin place, Wade guided his horse down the faint trail. “So are you happy to have found a brother, Abby?”

Abby looked sideways at Wade, barely touching her reins, so comfortable was she on her barebacked horse. “I remember Tom just a bit. I have felt so separated from memories of my white family here in Montana, remembering back to living in the East is even more confusing. I have this image of rushing wagons and people and noise. I need to ask Tom more about our home back there, but I can tell…he’s…angry that I can’t remember.”

“Hurt, I think, not angry. But Tom is a Western man now. He’s going to cover his hurt with gruff words.”

“My Flathead father was like that. Once, my little brother fell into the water and had to be pulled out. He wasn’t breathing, and for a few minutes we thought he was dead. Once it was over, my father was furious. But he was scared, I know. He just saw those feelings as weak, so he covered them with stronger emotions.”

“I spent a lot of my life doing that.” Wade felt the warm breeze and knew that summer had come to Montana. It came late up this high and left early, but for now it was here and he enjoyed it. The season of growth gave Wade the nerve to say more about his life before he’d become a man of faith. “My father punished me every time I showed fear or cried. Pa saw that as weakness. So I became rude and insulting and arrogant to cover my fear. I managed to pick a few fights with your brother along the way, too.”

Abby sat up straight. “Really? You punched Tom?”

“Well, not so much punched him. Insulted him, threatened him, but I always had M Bar S riders with me. I thought I was being brave, but I always knew they’d step in if I got into trouble I couldn’t handle.”

They rounded a curve that followed a rockslide at the base of a mountain. Wade could see the clump of pines that surrounded Cassie’s old house. Wade had come visiting many times before Cassie’s first husband had died. There was a twisting trail up into the rocks they’d just skirted. He would lie in wait. When Griff would leave, as he did nearly every Saturday to ride to Divide to waste more of Cassie’s money, Wade would go see Cassie. “This curve in the trail marks the end of your brother’s property and the beginning of the Sawyer holding.”

“My brother lives near here?” Abby looked around as if she expected to see a house.

“No, this is the far north edge of his ranch. His cabin is a couple of hours away, but he holds a lot of rangeland. The house is right behind those trees. It’s only a few yards from a spring that never dries up, which makes it as valuable as gold. Cassie Dawson lived here with her first husband. When he died, Pa and your brother had a dustup deciding who would own it, and Pa paid a big price to win.”

“Tom is so much younger than your father. I’m surprised he’d enter into a fight like that.”

“He’s one tough hombre, your brother. He’s a respected man in these parts. Age doesn’t have that much to do with earning respect.”

“And you, Wade, are you a tough hombre?”

“No.” Wade laughed to even think of such a thing. “Far from it.”

Wade’s eyes narrowed as the chimney came into view above the trees. Smoke curled up into the sky.

H
old up, Abby.” Wade pulled his horse to a stop. “Why would we staff a line shack this time of year? The cattle are all moved close to home for the roundup.”

Abby stopped beside him. Wade saw her suspicion and her unwillingness to approach the house. He decided then and there she was about the smartest, trail-savviest little thing he’d ever seen. One tough hombre for sure. Tougher than him by a long shot.

“I know an overlook where we can study the place before we ride in.” Wade turned his horse and went easily to the barely existent trail. There’d been a time when he’d worn quite a path.

That old obsession and his weakness of character haunted him to this day. He knew he was forgiven. And that forgiveness helped him keep his heart open to his father. The man’s cruelty had driven Wade to believe Cassie needed saving from her first husband and Red. Wade could understand and explain away the shame. But there remained a ghost of wonder that a man could be so confused and steeped in sin and still find God. That wonder urged him on after his father’s soul. Pa had done nothing worse in his life than Wade. If Wade could find God and change, then so could he.

With Wade leading, they moved to a high, well-concealed spot with a clear view of the house. Abby rode up beside him, gasped, and pulled her horse to a stop.

Wade smiled as they looked at the ridiculous, crumbling monstrosity.

White clapboard, three full stories high, stained glass windows shining from gables in each side of the roof. A second-floor balcony above a whitewashed porch, both wrapping around the whole building.

Abby turned to Wade. “Who would built such a…a …”

“Castle?” Wade suggested. “Mansion?”

She looked back at the house. Wade saw a missing board on the porch and broken windows that made him think of a gap-toothed old crone. The paint was peeling and weathered.

“A real fool of a man built this house about…five years ago.” Wade swung down from his horse, ground-hitched it, and leaned on the massive stone that had a lower spot just perfect for spying.

“It’s only five years old? Why is it …” Again words seemed to fail her. She dismounted and came to his side. “Who would build such a thing then just let it die?”

“A man who had no sense. Simple as that.” Wade didn’t want to talk about Cassie’s first husband and how he’d wasted her money and left her destitute and pregnant at the mercy of the Rockies…a mountain range that had no mercy.

“It’s a shame, though.” Wade hated to see the waste, but he wasn’t going to pay the money to keep up this monument to a man’s foolish pride. “It’s a beautiful thing. The owner hired some guy to come all the way here from Denver to build it. Shipped the building material in, too.”

“Where is this foolish man?” Abby asked.

“Where most foolish men end up…especially in the West.” Wade settled his hat lower. “Dead.”

The smoke had thinned then vanished from the chimney. No movement in or outside the house was visible. Wade studied the place then asked Abby, “What do you think?”

“No horses around. No movement or noise from the house. And if the fire has burned out already, it was most likely left from the morning meal. I’d say whoever was in there is gone.”

“Can you smell them?” Wade turned and grinned at Abby.

She lowered her brows to a straight line and reminded him so much of Tom Linscott that he smiled bigger. “The only white man I smell is you.”

He smelled her, too, but she made it sound like a bad thing, whereas Wade had no objection at all. “Abby, I want to ask you something important.” He barely whispered the words, afraid he’d scare her away like a half-wild mountain creature. “We haven’t known each other long enough, but I want this thought to be in your head.”

“What is this thought?”

“Me. The thought is me. I want to be in your head and in your heart, Abby. Because you are in mine. Could you consider letting me court you? Might the day come when you could see yourself agreeing to spend your life with me?”

“Marry a white? Never!” Her words were cutting, but she didn’t back away. No, in fact, his wildflower stepped a bit closer, studying him as if there was a speck of dirt in his eye and she was considering doctoring him.

And maybe she noticed a smudge on his lips, too, because her eyes went there as well.

Wade leaned down and touched his lips to hers.

Abby jumped back, reminding Wade of a startled horse. A beautiful, golden-maned…He shook his head. The woman was nothing like a horse.

She kept her eyes locked on his, and the little jump was only her straightening away from him. In the silence, Wade saw her fascination and fear. He decided to ignore the fear and take ruthless advantage of the fascination. He captured her lips again, and this time she wrapped her arms around his neck with the strength of a warrior.

The kiss deepened as Wade’s future unfolded before him with perfect clarity. Abby, the ranch, six sons and three daughters. Maybe they’d live here. He could restore the old Griffin place. He kind of liked the idea of all the children’s names starting with the same letter. Having a name that came at the end of the alphabet, Wade was partial to A. Like Abby. Maybe Adam, Andrew, Alan—

Abby slammed the heel of her hand into Wade’s stomach.

Staggering back, Wade gasped for breath that wouldn’t come.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Keep your hands off me, white man.” She flashed that wicked blade right under his nose.

Okay, so maybe a little early to be actively naming their children. Finally, he dragged in some air on a high whistle, and his lungs decided they’d let him live.
“My
hands?”

By way of an answer, she waved her knife close enough to draw blood if Wade made one wrong move.

Backing off would have been the sensible thing to do. Wade never had much sense. How many times had his father told him that? “You had your arms wrapped around me like a thousand feet of vine, Ab. Don’t pretend like you didn’t like that kiss. You may hate that you liked it. You may be surprised that you liked it. You may even want to stab me because you liked it. But you liked it just fine.”

He actually heard the air whoosh past the blade as she swung the knife. For no reason on earth, her fierce resistance to something neither of them could deny made him smile. Raising his hands like a man surrendering, Wade backed away—not too far on the narrow, rocky slope, but enough to get her to lower the weapon. He still wasn’t perfectly safe. The sharp, angry, downward slash of her white-blond brows could have cut him.

“Okay, no kissing. You’re right anyway. You’re right for the wrong reason, but I shouldn’t have taken such liberties, especially without your permission. I apologize.” He noticed he still had his hands up like he was surrendering and lowered them, since he wasn’t giving up at all.

She sheathed her knife. When had she found time to add a hidden sheath to this dress? Did she stay up late at night planning to stab people? “Your words mean nothing when your actions presume so much. I do not want your hands on me.”

Wade suspected she did, but he didn’t mention that. “Abby?” He stood silently until she quit attending to her knife and faced him.

“What?” She nearly shouted her impatience.

It was with a bit of pain he gave up his dream of a perfect, gentle, Cassie Dawson–like wife. But his feelings were stronger than the dream. “I want your permission to court you.”

“No.” She crossed her arms that had been warm and fluid around his neck only moments ago. Now they were a flesh-and-blood fortress wall between them.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“I will never tie myself to you.” Her head shook with absolute denial. “To no man.”

“What are you planning to do, then?” The woman had to use her brain if she intended to get on with her life. “Stop being angry and think for a minute. You’ve got no home with your Flathead people now. You’re the one who told me that.”

Abby lifted her chin defiantly. She’d left her hair down for church, and the sunlight of it curled and danced and swayed around her shoulders and all the way to her waist, alive and beautiful in the gentle mountain breeze. “I will strike out on my own. I will hunt for deer, skin them, and build a tepee.”

“I’ll help you. We can live in your tepee together.”

“You will
not.”
With a silent stomp of her moccasined foot and a derisive snort, she went on. “I’ll make a buckskin dress instead of this foolish thing I’m wearing now.”

Her dress was the color of the Montana sky behind her. It brought out the blazing blue of her eyes. Or maybe the only blazing was caused by her temper.

“You can wear a buckskin dress if you wish. You had one when I found you. You brought it along to my house. Wear it. Or make another if you want. I’ll find you beads if you want to add them. Sturdy clothes make sense on a ranch. I’m not trying to change you, Abby. I think you’re wonderful. I wish I had half your strength.”

Her arms dropped to her sides. Her jaw went slack, too. “You do? No man should look to his woman for strength.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s weak.”

“Jesus said, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ”

Abby narrowed her eyes. “What is this? How can strength come from weakness?”

“It’s a Bible verse. One of my favorites. You’re strong and independent, but that’s never been true of me.” Wade sighed and looked at the ground. It was hard to confess weakness to anyone, even himself. But almost impossible to do it now, to this woman. He was sure he would only deepen her contempt for him if he admitted just how weak he was.

Then he remembered her graceful arms enfolding him. That wasn’t him stealing an unwanted kiss. That was the two of them stealing a kiss that shouldn’t have been, not between two people who weren’t committed to each other and intending to marry. Wade had made that commitment. Obviously Abby wasn’t ready to admit that she had feelings for him.

“I was a bad man. I shamed myself. I failed God.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his pants to keep from reaching for her again then raised his head to meet her gaze. “My strongest sense of failure, not that long ago, was that I’d never had the guts to kill a man.”