The Littlest Cowboy (29 page)

“That bullet hit him like a hammer, Chelsea,” Jessi said softly. “He probably has a concussion, but–”

“But nothing. I want him in a hospital! I want him x-rayed and CAT scanned and–”

“Garrett, he will be fine,” Doc said. “His head is harder than the brick.”

“You’re hurt, Chelsea,” Jessi coaxed. “Let Doc have a look at you.”

That was, Jessi, all right. Always…. Wait a minute. Hurt? Chelsea was hurt?

Garrett’s eyes opened wide, and he found it wasn’t quite the struggle it had been before. He fought to bring the room into focus. Not his room. The living room. He was at home at the ranch, sprawled on the couch like a sack of feed.

Wetness coated his palm, and he shifted his focus to see ol’ Blue licking his hand. The dog looked back at him and whined.

“Garrett?” Chelsea dropped to her knees right in front of him. He was relieved. Shifting his eyes around looking for her was making him dizzy. “Garrett, you’re awake.”

Tear tracks marred her beautiful face, and her hair was even wilder than usual. Her swollen, puffy eyes searched his face, and she lifted one hand to his cheek. Her other arm hung oddly. She sort of clutched it against her side. And her shoulder looked funny.

“You….” He licked his lips, swallowed hard and tried again. “You hurt?”

“No. I wrenched my arm a little, but it’s fine. No big deal.”

He didn’t think he believed her. But he had to know everything. “Bubba?” he asked when his painful scan of the room didn’t produce any signs of the child.

“Marisella just arrived with him, Garrett. He’s upstairs napping. She’s watching over him. He’s fine. Just fine.”

“De Lorean?” Garrett asked, angry that it took so much work to make his lips move.

“In jail where he belongs,” Wes said. “And you can have all the time you want with your girlfriend here, big brother, but not until Doc takes a look at that shoulder of hers. And that’s an order.”

Garrett frowned at her, gave her a nod, or tried to. “Go.” Reluctantly, Chelsea took her hand away from Garrett’s face and rose. Doc led her away, and Garrett tried to focus on Wes again, but found it difficult. Things were blurry and tough to look at for long. “Thought I heard the boys. Adam and Ben….”

“That’s because we’re here,” Adam said, and took Chelsea’s former position beside the couch. “You didn’t really think Jessi and Elliot would follow orders, did you?”

“And lucky for you they didn’t, you big lug,” Ben added, leaning over the couch from behind so that his shaggy blond hair hung forward. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know there were snipers lining that ridge.”

Garrett smiled, but it felt as if only one side of his mouth was working. “Wondered…why they didn’t…pick me off.”

“‘Cause we picked them off first,” Ben told him. “And don’t think baby sis didn’t get in on the act. She made at least one guy sorry he messed with this family.”

“Yeah,” Jessi said from somewhere beyond Garrett’s range of vision. “Might say I Branded him.”

Laughter surrounded him. Garrett relaxed a little because that sound, his sister and his brothers laughing in this living room, told him more than anything else ever could that everything was really all right. Finally all right.

“That’s it, Garrett,” Ben said, his voice softening. “You go on back to sleep. Just don’t expect me to carry you up to your room. A hernia, I don’t need.”

Another round of laughter, punctuated by a happy whine from Blue and the sound of Ethan’s gurgles as Marisella brought him down the stairs. He heard Chelsea speaking softly with Doc in the background. The kitchen, maybe. She sounded just fine. And he fell into a contented sleep.

“G
ood,” she said. “You’re awake.”

He blinked, noting first that Chelsea wore a sling on her arm, and then that she was freshly showered and dressed, and that her hair was tamed down a bit. He slanted his gaze toward the window. Late morning at the earliest. Gosh, how long had he slept?

“Chelsea….” He stopped himself, noticing as he sat up that there was a suitcase on the floor beside her chair. His heart hurt worse than his head. And that was saying something.

“I wanted to talk to you before I left. I’ve been waiting for hours.”

She’d been crying. Not violently or hysterically like yesterday. But the signs were there. Her eyes started swimming again, even as he watched her.

“That’s good, because I want to talk to you, too. I want to tell you–”

“Wait.” She held up her good hand, and he fell silent. She bit her lip, looked at the ceiling, took a deep breath. “Just let me get this out, okay?”

“Okay.” He leaned back on his pillows.

“I need….” She cleared her throat and met his eyes again. “I need to thank you, Garrett.”

“I’m the sheriff, Chelsea. It’s my job to rescue–”

“No, not for that.”

He frowned, but waited.

“Garrett, before I met you I thought every man I ever met would turn out to be just like my father. You showed me…how wrong I was about that.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I was angry at first that all that…that courting you did was only an act. Just a ploy to keep me and Ethan here where we were safe. But even so–”

“Now hold on a minute!”

“Please, will you just let me finish?”

He stared at her, jaw gaping, and decided it could wait. Maybe. At least until she’d let him get a word in edge-wise. He lifted his hand, palm up, to tell her to go on.

She sighed, pushing her good hand through her hair. She rose from her chair and paced the room. “There’s more. I also never thought I could trust a man enough to…enough to be with him…the way we were the other night. But you showed me that I could.”

Silence wouldn’t cut it anymore. “Chelsea, you tried to make me believe it didn’t mean anything. But I was your first, wasn’t I?”

She nodded. “I lied. It meant something. But you really have to be quiet, Garrett, or I’m never going to get to the point here.”

“I’m trying.” He smiled at her, and she closed her eyes as if in pain. “Is it your arm?” he asked, suddenly concerned.

“No. The arm is fine, just a dislocated shoulder. Doc gave me something for the pain.”

“Then why do you look like you’re still hurting?”

She opened her eyes. “Quiet.”

“I’m quiet. Go on.”

She cleared her throat, then turned her back to him, pretending to look out the window. “I didn’t think I could ever love a man,” she said softly.

“Dammit, Chelsea, it doesn’t matter.” He flung back the covers and swung his feet to the floor and, gripping the arm of the couch, stood up. “It’s selfish of me to ask you to. I don’t care, Chelsea Brennan.” He went up behind her, gripped her good shoulder and bent his head low, speaking soft and close to her ear. “I don’t care if you can’t love me the way I love you. I’ll take whatever you can give and count myself lucky to have it, honey. If only you’ll stay.”

Chelsea went still. It was as if she’d frozen in place. “I thought,” she whispered, still not turning to face him, “that I asked you to keep quiet and let me finish.” Her voice wavered, and Garrett figured it was damned near time to give up hope. She was gonna shoot him down here and now.

“Sorry,” he told her, giving her shoulder one last squeeze. “I had to get it said.”

“I was trying to tell you, Garrett, that I never thought I could love a man.” She turned very slowly, and when she looked up into his eyes, hers were brimming with tears. A shaky smile toyed with her lips. “But you proved me wrong once again. Because I do. I love you, Garrett Ethan Brand.”

The grin that split his face must have been a mile wide. Sure as hell felt like it was.

“Hot damn! You do?”

She nodded.

“Then where the heck are you going?”

“To bury my sister.”

“But you’re coming back.”

“If you…want me to.”

“If I–hell, woman, I want you to wait for me to come along with you. I don’t you want you away from me ever again. I want….” Garrett kissed her like he’d never stop. But he did stop. Because he wasn’t finished talking yet. There was one more thing that needed to be said. He lifted his head, clasped her hand in his and lowered himself down on one knee. “You belong here, Chelsea. Do you know that yet? You’re good for this family, and I think the Brands are good for you, too. I want…I want you to marry me, Chelsea. I want you to stay right here on the Texas Brand as my wife, and I want Bubba to be my boy. I’ll love the two of you like nobody else ever could. I’ll make you happy. I promise you that.”

She smiled down at him as her tears spilled over. “I’m gonna hold you to that promise, Garrett. Forever.”

“Forever,” he echoed, and then he pulled her into his arms.

L
ittle Lash Monroe sat in the hard wooden pew in the front row and listened to his foster father, the Reverend Ezekiel Stanton, pontificate in a loud, booming voice about the wages of sin and the wrath of the Almighty. Hellfire and damnation tended to be at the heart of most of the preacher’s sermons. And Lash, being only nine, supposed one day he’d understand why the bumper sticker on the back of the Reverend Mr. Stanton’s battered pickup truck read God Is Love when he talked about God as if He were a fire-breathing dragon from a horrific fairy tale. His words sent chills down Lash’s spine.

And the light in the preacher’s eyes gleamed like...like that new gray-blue cat’s-eye marble Lash had won this morning from Gulliver Scuttle. Lash smiled and tucked his hand into his pocket to feel the cool, smooth marble he’d been gunning for all these weeks. His at last. Then the smile leaped from his face when the preacher struck his fist hard on the podium in front of him to punctuate the word
Vengeance
in the quote Lash figured must be his favorite, “Vengeance is mine, say-eth the Lord.”

Lash met the preacher’s piercing gaze, and forced himself to stop thinking about the marble, and the shooting match this morning, and to pay attention. After all, the preacher wasn’t so bad. Strict, yes, but not mean. It wasn’t his fault Lash was miserable living with him and Missus Olive, who would have blown away in a strong wind or fainted at the sound of a cuss word. Yeah, they were wearing on him some. Especially her, being so helpless and delicate and requiring a houseful of men and boys just to take care of her every little need. Lash had never known a whinier, more dependent woman in his life. But still and all, she was better than his own mom, who’d been drunk most of the time, and even more helpless. So helpless she’d said she couldn’t take care of two boys all alone, and dumped Lash and Jimmy off at a shelter one night.

Jimmy had been sent to live with a family in Texas. And Lash had been brought here, to the preacher, who wanted plenty of sons, and his wife, who was unable to give him any. And really, despite their shortcomings, they’d treated him just swell.

It was the boys he couldn’t stand. They were the ones who made his life pure misery in every way they could think of. All older than him, all bigger, and every one of them way meaner. Especially Zane, the oldest, biggest, meanest, of them all. Zane was twelve, Jack eleven, and Peter—who claimed his name was really Pedro and that he had a rich uncle in Mexico who would come for him one day—was ten. Peter made them all call him Pedro when the Stantons weren’t within earshot. And if they forgot, they were liable to get clubbed for it. Lash tended to call him Petey, despite the repercussions, just because it bugged the other boy so much. Rich relatives, indeed. The king of beef, Peter said they called his uncle. Sure. The kid was full of blue mud.