Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) (18 page)

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Can we sit here awhile?”

Kylie shrugged, and he took that as a yes and set her on the boulder. It was hip-high to him, waist-high to her. Her feet dangled so they didn’t reach the grass should a snake be hiding there.

Together they listened to the shushing of the wind and the quiet cropping of the grazing horses. An eagle shrieked overhead, drawing his eyes upward. The noble bird with its shining white head played on the drafts of air, rising and swooping until, a few moments later, it soared out of sight.

Aaron turned to the pretty woman beside him. She’d
been watching the eagle, too. The tension that had gripped her since she’d jumped in his arms back at the cabin had finally eased some. Her color was better, her shoulders less rigid.

“What do you want to do, Kylie?”

Turning away from the vivid blue sky, she looked at Aaron. Her hair, usually coiled neatly at the nape of her neck, had come loose during her desperate fight with the snake. He slid his fingers into its lustrous strands shot through with a hundred shades of blond and light brown, and his eyes moved to her lips. He knew what he wanted to do, what he had to do. There was no longer much choice.

“I can’t go back there,” she said.

The dead certainty of her words only made it more definite. He was done fighting what had been obvious since the first moment he saw her, when she’d fallen off that roof and he caught her.

He put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him, resting her head on his chest. Aaron didn’t trust himself to speak. He had to claim Kylie Wilde, make her his in every way possible. He knew this might not be the life she wanted, but maybe it was time to do what was best for her. What was best for the two of them, together.

He suspected her family had been handling her like that, ignoring her wishes, for the better part of her life, and she was used to it at the same time she hated it.

“I have an idea, Kylie.” He had no idea what to say at a time like this, but no man did. No man made a habit of proposing. If he did it right, he did it once in a lifetime. So how could he expect to get any practice?

She managed a smile for him. Her lips trembled a bit, but the smile held. “I’m listening.”

Before Aaron said anything, he leaned down slowly, holding her gaze. He saw such vulnerability in her eyes that he couldn’t resist. He touched his lips to hers and then eased her closer to him. Her hands slid up his chest. At one point she hesitated, and he thought she’d push him away, but then she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight.

A minute later, he was holding her on his lap, just like she’d been the night they first met. He should have recognized his fate and just hauled her to town and married her then and there.

When their next kiss turned fiery, Aaron ended it while he still could. Moving his hands to her shoulders, he gently pushed her away from him. She straightened, cleared her throat. He thought maybe her terror had finally subsided. The worst of it, anyway. With a slight shake of her head she focused her eyes, and it looked like she was back to her old self again.

“I can’t go back, Aaron,” she repeated. “I just can’t. I’ve been trying while we ride to work up some backbone. I thought I could live out here for three years. I probably could survive on a homestead if no one was trying to shoot arrows at me or bully me into leaving. I’m worthless at frontier skills, but I’d do it for my family so long as my sisters kept the food coming and did my repairs. And if I had Sunrise there to do all the things I can’t. But now, after the snakes . . .” She shuddered.

“I hate that you had to go through that, Kylie. How did you ever survive the war?”

Kylie’s chin came up. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes flashed with renewed spirit. “That’s the right thing to say to me. When the going gets tough, I remember the war. I survived when many didn’t.” She sat up straighter. “I let the snakes get past my defenses, and only now when you asked about the war do I remember how I learned to be tough.”

“You said you were at the siege at Vicksburg. Where else did you fight?”

“I was only in a few battles, but they were so wretched. They struck such terror in me that I could barely function. I never ran, though. Deserting . . .” Shaking her head, Kylie went on, “Maybe running took more courage than I had. I froze more often than I fought. I . . .” She stopped again, swallowed hard.

Aaron saw the fear in her eyes. For a whole year after the war, he’d seen that same fear every time he looked in a mirror.

“I killed a man,” she said. “I shot into a crowd of charging men. I don’t even remember pulling the trigger. But a man got too close, and he had his bayonet fixed and was screaming as he charged straight for me. There was such hate, such rage in his eyes. I knew I’d die if I didn’t fight back. My gun roared, and I saw the pain in his face. He didn’t go down right away. He kept coming, and somehow I dodged that bayonet. Then he collapsed on top of me and died. I might have been unconscious for a while, I don’t know. Maybe I was just scared out of my head. I just lay there, drenched in his blood. I was so shocked by it all, I didn’t move. I spent the whole rest of that battle pinned under a dead man as cannons pounded around me and more men fell and died.”

With a humorless laugh, Kylie added, “Yet I don’t get to count my years of service when I homestead.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s fair. I was poor at soldiering. Maybe I didn’t earn that exemption.”

“I don’t know how to fix that. And I’m sorry you saw such ugliness.” Aaron took one of her clenched fists and eased it open, threading his fingers through hers. “I’m sorry I saw it. I’m sorry anyone had to see it.”

“We won that day, which was a good thing.” She went back to her story. “If the Confederacy had won, I’d have been found and taken prisoner. Instead, the Union controlled those few yards of bloody grass, and they dragged me out from under that man and took me to the infirmary. I was so soaked in the man’s blood, they assumed I was wounded. In all the chaos it took them a while to realize nothing was wrong, not physically. I was in such shock they didn’t know what else to do with me, so they left me in a badly needed bed as long as they could.”

Aaron lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed each one.

“I had nightmares of that man running his bayonet through me. I’d close my eyes and see him coming and hear him screaming. I finally pulled myself together and got out of the infirmary, but I was so afraid to go back. Everyone was, but I was determined never to go through that again. I marched into my commanding officer’s tent prepared to admit I was a woman and demand I be sent home. Pa would’ve been so ashamed of me. I was already practicing my lie, how I’d lead Pa to believe I’d been found out in the infirmary and sent home, that it wasn’t my fault.

“I got there just as a general was saying his right-hand man had been killed. I saw my chance and jumped at it.
I told the general I could read and write. I made sure he knew I’d come from the infirmary and let him assume I’d been wounded. I was always too good at leading people to believe a lie without saying a dishonest word. I’m finally old enough to be ashamed of that. But back then I considered it a handy skill. I played on his concern for such a young boy facing the horrors of war. They needed someone’s help that very minute, and I got the job.”

“You were manipulating people even then.” Aaron couldn’t help smiling.

“We all have our talents.” With a sad smile that showed most of her spirit had returned, she said, “I always handled Pa better than my big sisters. I learned how to turn his attention, distract him, offer him food and a comfortable home, and with a great deal of subtlety let him know I’d have a hard time providing those comforts if I was running around wearing britches, plowing fields. No one can really handle Pa completely, but I did better than most. I used those same skills in the war. As the general’s aide, I was kept behind the battle lines. Mostly.”

“And you were a spy, too?”

“I was good at it for a reason none of my commanding officers ever realized. I’d leave camp as a sneaky young boy, change into women’s clothes, and do my spying as a woman. Army men had a weakness for just the sight of a woman, and also a disrespect for their intelligence. So they’d talk in front of me while I brought them food or cleaned whatever house they lived in. They really should have been more careful. Then I could vanish completely by turning myself back into a boy. Using this trick, I ran back and forth between enemy lines many times.”

Aaron sat beside her in companionable silence in the beautiful mountain meadow. He didn’t know if she realized she was still on his lap, but it seemed like a good thing that she was so comfortable being there. It made it a bit easier to say what he wanted to, knowing he was asking for trouble.

“I think I have the solution to your troubles with your homestead,” he said.

But that was the wrong way to speak of what he had in mind. He dug deeper and thought of a better way.

He drew her close and kissed her.

K
ylie liked kissing Aaron a lot more than she liked remembering the war or the snakes or burning arrows or even flapping shingles. In fact, she liked it more than anything else in the whole world.

Yet she knew it was a mistake. He was headed for the mountains and would no doubt soon be as wild a man as Matt Tucker. She was headed for the East, though admittedly she wasn’t heading there with any great speed.

And her kissing him, and most certainly sitting in his lap, not to mention wrapping her arms around his neck and hanging on as if her life depended on it, wasn’t sending him the right message at all. Still, for something she knew with all her common sense to be absolutely wrong, she’d never felt anything so perfectly right and she couldn’t stand to let go.

Finally, he straightened away from her. “Kylie, I want you to marry me.”

“M-marry you?” Her voice squeaked in a way she’d never quite heard before. “I don’t think—”

He cut off her answer by kissing her again. After far too long he spoke again, close this time, so that his lips moved on hers. “We have to get married.”

“We do?” He sounded so sure that Kylie thought he might know better than she did.

“Yes, because I want to hold you for the rest of my life. I want us to be together. We’ll find a life that makes us both happy.”

But where? Was she to live the rest of her life in this hardscrabble country? Almost hysterically she had a vision of herself wearing buckskin and beaded fringe. She imagined Aaron with a wild full beard, his blond hair reaching halfway down his back. It was nothing she wanted.

Except she wanted Aaron’s arms around her. She wanted him to stay with her and not leave her alone in the wild ever again.

She even wanted Gage Coulter to take that stupid pond back and leave her alone. If Coulter wasn’t trying to scare her off, someone sure was. Once they knew they’d succeeded in making her run, they’d quit with the arrows and snakes and whatever other dangerous mischief they could devise.

“But what about—?”

His lips landed on hers again, longer this time, deeper. Every speck of sense in her muddled brain lost track of itself by the time he raised his head. “Say you’ll marry me, Kylie. That’s what a man and woman do who enjoy each other as much as we do. We can be together all day and . . .”

She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

“. . . all night.” He kissed her again, soft and gentle, a kiss that woke up places inside her she hadn’t known were asleep. Places she hadn’t known existed.

He hadn’t said they’d move east, but he said they’d find a life that would make them both happy. Kylie suspected happiness was too much to ask. Except right now was the happiest moment of her life. Could she be happy just to be held in Aaron’s arms? Yes, she could, but happy enough? Was it selfish of her to want more?

A sad twist to her heart reminded her that he hadn’t spoken words of love, most likely because he didn’t love her. She suspected no men said such things. Her pa certainly never had. Love was something sweet but impractical, fit for fairy tales but not for real life. Kylie was a practical woman, and if it left an empty ache in her heart that Aaron couldn’t speak of love, well, still he had to be a big improvement on Pa.

He was right. In fact, she suspected she had little choice. It felt like she was tearing apart inside, half wanting to stay beside him always, half wanting none of the life he offered . . . outside of his arms.

Married, she’d be safe. It may be wrong to marry for such selfish reasons, but she couldn’t go back to that cabin. His hand slid down her back, and it was as if he claimed her, owned her. She couldn’t long for a man’s touch like this and not accept his proposal.

She opened her mouth to say yes.

Unshed tears closed her throat. To say yes was to give up all her dreams. To say no was to lose his protection and strength and being held in his arms.

She made up her mind. Fighting to steady her voice, she said, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Before the words were even spoken, she wanted to call them back, but he was kissing her again. More passionately than ever. And before he let her go, she had accepted what was to come. A fine man to protect but not love her.

Kisses that made her understand that to be a woman was a wonderful thing, even without foolishness like bonnets and tea parties and civilization.

A life she wanted almost as much as she already dreaded it.

“Snakes?” Coulter shoved back the hat he wore and scowled. “And you think I did that? A man who accuses me of turning snakes loose on a woman had better be prepared to draw.”

“This has to do with you, and you know it.” Aaron tucked Kylie behind his back.

“I’m not hiding from Coulter.” With a shove, she stepped out of grabbing range, darted around her fiancé, and stuck herself right between these two bull elks. She dodged Aaron’s outstretched hands. “And we’re not accusing you of doing this.”

She crossed her arms, daring Coulter to take his temper out on her. Of course, he’d never do it. She could tell Gage had that code so many western men went by that wouldn’t let him hurt a woman—a code that whoever was attacking her apparently set no store by. But Gage had it, and she was in a better position to badger him than Aaron. There was no code about hurting other men.

Despite her dodging, Aaron got ahold of her and clamped both hands on her shoulders, but he didn’t shove her behind him again.

Although he might have if Coulter hadn’t waved his hand. “Leave her be. I want to punch someone, only it ain’t gonna be either of you.” Coulter jerked his buckskin gloves off and tucked them behind his belt, then removed his hat with a frustrated tug. He ran one big hand through his overly long dark hair.

“Listen, Gage, whoever’s doing this knows you want that pond.” Kylie was trying to be friendly and at the same time make some progress on this mess. “They’re not doing it on your orders, but they might be doing it to gain your approval or maybe your attention. You say you’re sure of your men, then who else could it be?”

His eyes flashed with temper as they shifted between Kylie and Aaron. “There’s a good way to find out who’s behind this, but I’m not putting up with it.”

“What’s that?”

“You move out and we see who claims your homestead. It appears someone wants it real bad.” Coulter’s jaw tightened, until Kylie worried he might break his teeth. “But if we do that, I lose the water again. I ain’t letting that happen.”

“We’d arrest whoever stepped forward.” Aaron’s hands tightened on her. “We wouldn’t have to let them stake their claim.”

“How could you stop them?” Coulter’s cold eyes seemed to turn silver when he was angry. He looked from Aaron to Kylie, to the strong hands on her shoulders.

Kylie knew he was reading things about right.

“You’d have no proof they’d attacked Kylie. The first person who comes in to file that claim might not even be the one behind all this. You’d have about a minute to get
to the bottom of it while they filled out that paper work. You can’t stop them without any proof, and if you couldn’t stop them, I’d lose that water hole.”

Coulter’s ice-bitten eyes turned on Kylie, and she felt the chill all the way to the bone. Aaron was right there, though, holding her up. She found his strength so alluring it was all she could do not to lean back against him and let him bear all her burdens.

“I want you,” Coulter said, jabbing a finger at Kylie, “to move out.”

Kylie wanted to move out, too.

“I’ll be right there at the land office with you. You rescind your claim, and I buy up those acres.”

Kylie took an angry step forward, knowing it was Aaron who gave her the courage to be bold, despite any unwritten code about women. “So you get what you want, and whoever attacked me goes free. All I get out of the deal is losing my property.”

Aaron leaned over to her ear from behind her. “You’re a lot braver around Coulter than you are around snakes.” Which might be his teasing her. She wasn’t exactly sure.

“If you and Masterson get married,” Coulter said, his eyes lighting up, “you’re gonna lose your claim anyway, Miss Wilde. As I understand homesteading laws, married women have to turn their property over to their husbands, and the husband then takes over proving up.” With a smirk, Coulter looked at Aaron, standing so strong and tall, despite Kylie being in front of him. “So, judging by the way you’ve got your hand on this little missy here, I’d say my business is with you.”

Something warmed deep inside Kylie to have Coulter
talk of her and Aaron together as a couple. She knew she should be offended by the way Coulter brushed her off as unimportant, but the notion that all her problems were soon to be handed off to Aaron was so appealing she could hardly stand it. Was this how things worked with men and women? Because this was what she really wanted—to be treated as a woman ought. To tend a home and let her husband see to making the living.

At the same time that she relished it, Kylie knew she’d been living by very different rules for a long time. She wasn’t a tough westerner, and certainly not a man by any stretch. But neither was she going to be a properly demure little wife.

Coulter’s dismissal of her was insulting, even if it did lift a crushing weight off her back. Was this how it was for men, always bearing this weight? Would she be able to just step back into her role as a quiet, submissive wife after so many years of living as independently as she had?

Honestly, she wanted all the good parts of both, leaving the bad parts for Aaron. That probably wasn’t exactly fair, and Aaron most likely had his own ideas of how a marriage worked. If she didn’t knuckle under to his ideas, would their lives be an endless battle? She’d been to war, and she never wanted to endure even a domestic version of it again.

Then Aaron flexed his strong hands on her shoulders, and she was reminded again that she had little choice in the matter. Whatever their future brought, she wanted more than anything to share it with him.

“Miss Wilde and I are going to be married. When that happens, her homestead is transferred into my name. But I have plans to move on and homestead elsewhere. As pretty
as that stretch of land is that Kylie claimed, there isn’t enough grazing on it to run a herd or the kind of land that would grow a crop, so it’s not a practical place for us to get a start.”

His hands tightened again as if apologizing for not liking her homestead, although he wasn’t saying a thing she didn’t already know. She’d picked the land mostly to annoy Pa, anyway. The water was good, but by itself, with no decent meadowland and the rocky soil, there was no way to make a living off of it. Pa had goaded her about that and tried to force her to take a different claim. She’d made it clear to him and her sisters that she’d claim the land and live on it for her required years, then sell out to them and leave. It would give her enough money to live in a city while she made other plans. It was the pond that gave Kylie’s claim value, making it a good enough investment. But without that, the place was beautiful but worthless.

Her tormenting Pa had made signing up for that parcel of land even more attractive.

Coulter flashed a smile of satisfaction that goaded Kylie. “Let’s ride to Aspen Ridge then and get this taken care of. And then if you’ve a mind to get married, I can stand as witness.”

The thought of marrying Aaron without telling her sisters, and with this tyrannical land baron standing smugly by to take her land, was more than galling to Kylie. Yet she didn’t dare tell Bailey and Shannon the news. Well, maybe Shannon would understand, but Bailey would put so much pressure on her to change her mind, she just might buckle.

Aaron might be pushing her to marry him, but at least he was pushing nicely. Coulter was pushing for that land, but at least he was straightforward about it.

But sisters knew all the right things to say. And Pa didn’t bear thinking about. Which left Kylie with only one choice really. Do it quickly, before her family found out.

For one wistful moment, Kylie remembered weddings she’d gone to before the war. Not elaborate affairs, because all their neighbors were hardscrabble farmers just like the Wilde family. But the weddings had all been in a church. There were wildflowers wrapped into bouquets, and almost always the bride’s pa walked her down the aisle to her waiting groom.

She’d always known she couldn’t have that. Her pa was too cantankerous to do much but ruin a wedding. But she’d imagined it, even dreamed of it at times. Another dream died, and she knew her fondest dream—living in a city with lots of people and fine things—would die soon, too.

All she’d be left with was a foolish longing that everyone she knew considered frivolous and selfish. But was it? Was it so bad to want to be around people, around other women, who loved being who they were?

She’d never quite been able to figure out why her wants were so bad.

Aaron stepped up beside her, his arm strong on her back. That strength guided her to do exactly as others wanted . . . at the price of her own happiness.