Wild Fire (Wild State) (3 page)

Certain responsibilities came along with being the sheriff’s wife. As the town’s citizens looked to Delaney for safety, its people had begun to turn to her for guidance. She was welcome in every house, no longer an outcast who lived in a one-room cabin at the end of the main road. The privileges afforded her as the town’s schoolteacher—a position she would continue to hold only until an unmarried teacher was brought in—had tripled the moment she married the law.
 

One of those so-called privileges was leading the charge when Red Creek faced a challenge. Which was why she was in a saloon and whorehouse less than an hour after Delaney had left to officially clear the mining settlement.

Finished with the cots, Moira went in search of more work. A sizable parlor situated in the middle of the upper level housed a pair of divans, upholstered in worn green velvet, as well as a mismatched collection of chairs. Books were stacked haphazardly on the many small tables scattered around the room, and a writing desk with a painted glass lamp stood in one corner, a sheaf of cream-colored stationery stacked neatly on its lacquered surface.
 

All the clean linens in the building—and some donated by the townspeople—were piled in the center of the parlor atop a faded Oriental rug. She had just gathered an armful of unfolded toweling when she sensed she was no longer alone in the room.
 

“Mrs. Crawford.”
 

The voice was low and sensual, matching the woman who stood behind Moira. “Miss Pike.” She smiled politely as she faced the prostitute who, along with her fellow working girls, owned the Ruby Saloon in consortium. “Thank you so much for letting us run roughshod over you.”
 

The lushly curved brunette waved away Moira’s thanks. “It’s our town, too. And you really ought to call me Juno like everybody else.”

“Juno.” With a hesitation so minute she hoped the other woman hadn’t noticed, Moira nodded, relaxing her smile. “You must call me Moira, then.”

Juno’s lovely gray eyes were sympathetic, her expression wry. “I’m not good people like you, Mrs. Crawford. I can’t presume to use your Christian name.”

The word
Christian
jarred Moira from her unwitting and unexpected descent into prejudice. Who was she to judge another? Her social status within Red Creek had nothing to do with who she was as person, as a
human
, but everything to do with the job she held and the job of the man she’d married. She was no better than the woman in front of her.

Hell, she had killed a man. She had lifted her pistol, taken aim, and put a bullet in the center of Jacob Matthews’s back to save Del’s life and the life of one of her Cheyenne students. The incident may have been deemed “self-defense,” but it felt a lot like cold-blooded murder to her. The bad dreams that had followed in the wake of that horrible day had faded over the intervening months, but that didn’t mean Matthews’s death didn’t haunt her, some days more than others.
 

Juno Pike’s sinning paled in comparison to Moira’s.
 

Moira sank to the floor, the bath towels falling in a heap across her lap. “I’m not good people either, Juno. Come help me fold these and call me Moira.”
 

A brilliant, genuine smile greeted the invitation. “Thank you.” Juno settled next to her on the rug, adjusting her simple gray skirt to pool around her legs. The top three buttons on her bodice were undone, likely in deference to the summer heat, and Moira caught a glimpse of royal blue satin encasing full breasts. It was an indecent amount of exposure for polite company, but Moira didn’t feel as though she qualified as such. Not if a woman like Juno didn’t.
 

After arranging her dress to her liking, Juno started in on the large pile of unfolded linens on the rug. “I know it’s terrible, the wildfire,” she said, her tone careful even if her smile wasn’t, “but I’m kind of glad to spend time doing something as mundane as folding linens and talking with another woman about nothing in particular.”

While Moira’s life was often filled with what one could term the mundane, she warmed to the idea of female company that was a tad outside the bounds of strict propriety. “I don’t mind it, either.”

“Do you have many friends in this town? Women friends?”

“No.” There were days when she missed the camaraderie she’d found with the nuns in Boston, living and working alongside her sisters of the cloth at Our Lady of the Bleeding Heart. “Do you?”

“I’ve got the girls here at the Ruby.” The brunette folded a hand towel. “Not many respectable women, of course.”

Juno wanted a friend, too, Moira realized. Perhaps she needed one—as Moira suspected she herself did. “It’s not common knowledge,” she murmured, “but did you know that I was a nun before I came to Red Creek?”

Gray eyes widened in surprise. “I…did not know that.”

Moira could almost hear Juno’s inner dialogue, see the racing mind behind that studiously bland expression, and she found herself laughing. “Don’t worry, I was a terrible nun, always questioning my faith and finally giving up on it.”

“Why did you give up your faith?” Noticing Moira’s hesitation, Juno shot her an assessing glance. “I’ll keep your confidences, Moira. I promise.”

“It’s not….” She shook her head. “Anyway, I learned of the teaching position here and wanted a fresh start as a woman, not a nun, so I travelled west.”

Juno didn’t push for more and adopted a teasing tone. “Then you met and fell in love with the sheriff.”

Moira couldn’t help her blush. “That I did.”

“And?”

“And it’s wonderful.” Except when it wasn’t, but the when-it-wasn’t was her fault. Without pausing to consider the wisdom of her words, she blurted, “But things aren’t happening.”

“Things?”

Moira’s face burned. “You know—things. Children.”

A soft chuckle escaped the woman seated beside her on the floor. “I know a few folks who’d be all right with that outcome.”

“I’ve discovered I’m not one of them.” The discovery that she, rather desperately, wanted children of her own had surprised her.
 

It had hit her a couple of months ago. School dismissed for the summer in mid-May, except for those students requiring tutoring. Teaching for Moira was a year-round occupation, but there were a couple of short weeks between the end of lessons and the start of tutoring sessions when the schoolhouse sat empty.
 

The afternoon she had bid her students good-bye for the summer, she had stood on the schoolhouse steps and watched the children’s retreating backs, waving to those who turned to wish her well. The thought had struck her that, someday soon maybe, another teacher would be standing on that stoop waving good-bye, and
Moira
would be waiting at home to greet her smiling son or daughter and hear all about what happened on the last day of school.

Warmth had spread through her chest as she considered the possibilities before her. She could start a family with Del, a family she would never be forced to leave when she grew too old, a family to replace the one the war had decimated for her husband. If they had a child, it would mean their pasts were truly
past
.

No shadows hanging over their heads, no darkness smudging their souls.

Between the two of them, it sometimes felt as though there were an awful lot of darkness.

“What if there’s something wrong with me?”

“Wrong?”

“I mean, what if something has…has happened, and that means I can’t get pregnant?”
 

Juno shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. I’m more in the business of preventing pregnancy than urging it on.”

“When…when I lost my faith, it was—” She swallowed, her voice breaking. “I was raped.”

This shabby parlor had just become her confessional and a whore her confessor, and somehow, that seemed about right. “I learned later that he had…had hurt other women.” She paused, keeping her gaze on the linens in her lap. “Women like you, mostly.”

Moira felt more than saw Juno’s sage nod. “And women like me don’t go to the law with those sorts of concerns.”

“I was asked to give testimony, and the man was hanged.” Her shrug was jerky, though due less to the memory and more to the awkwardness of speaking about such a private matter. Yet if anyone was going to understand, Moira felt it would be Juno. “I worry that what happened to me…broke me. Inside.”

“I see.”

“I
feel
broken, because I can’t—” She shook her head and attacked the linen with more vigor. “I visited Doc Browne last week. He told me there was no reason to think that incident has had any lasting effect on my…my reproductive capabilities,” she muttered, remembering the concern in the physician’s gaze as he attempted to reassure her with medical facts, murmuring that conception often took time.
 

Obviously, the man had no idea exactly how much
time
Del and Moira had already devoted to the process. Remembered pleasure made her blush. “But I don’t know what else it could be.”
 

“Doc’s right, it doesn’t work that way. Rape,” Juno stated, “isn’t just a physical trauma, but your body eventually heals, inside and out.” She spoke as if she knew. “This was more than a year ago, correct?”

Sorrow for the woman who so obviously had experience in this sort of thing swelling in her chest, Moira simply nodded.
 

“You’ve healed. We all heal, even if we’re sometimes left with physical scars.” She paused. “No one talks about the emotional ones.”

“Scars on the psyche,” Moira whispered.

“Every woman has scars.” A strong, work-roughened hand covered Moira’s own and squeezed. “This entire town has seen how that man looks at you. Your scars won’t make him love you any less.”

Juno’s kindness nearly undid her. Fighting tears, she lifted her chin. “When this is over, you should come for supper.”
If we still have a house
.
If I still have a home.
 

A sharp laugh burst from the brunette, but she sobered immediately as she took in Moira’s earnest expression. “Oh, that is kind of you, but you can’t do that.”

“Yes, I c—”

Juno shook her head. “No, you can’t. The people here need to know there’s a separation between their kind and mine. There’s a safety in that, you see, and I respect their need for it. If you invited me into your home, they’d wonder at your foolishness…or your perversion.”

Moira’s hands fisted in the towel she was folding. For all that she loved Red Creek, this town had the power to disappoint her to her bones, as proven last autumn when Jacob Matthews went on his rampage against the Cheyenne. Even on days when its townspeople had banded together to save their neighbors. “Let them wonder.” Her lips curled. “Only I know the depths of my…perversion.”

“And what about your foolishness?”

Arching an eyebrow, Moira took in Juno’s appearance. Smooth skin, satiny hair, a natural rosy flush in her lips and cheeks. Striking curves that put Moira’s to shame. A completely feminine specimen, as though crafted from mankind’s feverish fantasies—yet there were the calluses on Juno’s palms and a weary worldliness in her eyes. “What foolishness? It’s like you said—I know how my husband looks at me.”

Delaney would never stray—not because he feared reprisal, but because he loved her to distraction. From the moment he’d declared himself that late September morning in the jailhouse, Moira had never doubted his love for her. But she’d never tested it, either.
 

She didn’t want to test the bounds of that love, especially with something that, more and more, appeared to be out of her control. There was no way to will herself pregnant, and when he found out she couldn’t...that she might not….
 

It would matter to him, her inability to bear children. In the rare moments when he spoke of his parents, the memories were fond—wry, but fond—and she thought he might silently wonder what sort of father he would be, when the time came.
 

Except the time might never come. Not for them. And Delaney Crawford was a man who deserved to find out what sort of father he would be.
 

Shaking her head, Moira set the last folded towel onto the neat stack that had formed next to her. “If you won’t accept an invitation, would you at least share a meal with me at the boardinghouse?” As Juno opened her mouth, likely to protest, Moira smiled and said, “I
insist
.”

Juno threw up her hands in mock exasperation, her own pile of linens just as neat as Moira’s. “Fine. I’ll help you set tongues wagging, if you
insist
.”
 

Moira chuckled. “I quite like you, Miss Pike.”

“And I you, Mrs. Crawford.”

And, for the first time in a long time, Moira felt less alone.

THREE

T
he wagons started appearing at noon.

The displaced miners had settled into Mrs. Yates’s boardinghouse and the Ruby Saloon by midmorning. These wagons were carrying families from the land and farms far outside of town.
 

Wagon after wagon rolled to a stop on the main street, cattle and goats on tethers off the back, crates of squawking chickens stacked high behind the driver’s bench. Dogs sniffed at the heels of their owners. On the seat of the lead wagon, a little girl, no more than three or four years old, clung to a fat orange cat.
 

As Del stepped closer, he could see traces of soot on the girl’s face and evidence of dried tears tracking through it.
 

He turned his attention to the man on the seat next to her. “You folks all right?”

The man tipped his wide-brimmed hat back on his forehead, revealing a scruffy face bearing far more than dirt and ash—blood crusted at a wound on his temple. “Barely made it out alive.” The stranger’s voice carried a drawl that marked his roots as south of the Mason-Dixon Line, much like Del’s own. “Michael Rafferty.” He extended a hand.

Del shook it. “Del Crawford. I’m the sheriff here in Red Creek.” Then, doffing his hat, he gave the girl a gentle smile. “And what’s your name, little miss?”