by P. Creeden
He met eyes with his mother. “I’m going to go saddle up Ginger. I need to get the marshal out here.”
“You’re hurt!” Clara cried out, rushing to his side. “You’re bleeding too much to make it on your own.”
“I’ll go,” Samantha said with a firm nod as she picked up the pistols from all three of the reprobates lying on the ground. She handed them to their mother. “I can ride just as fast as you can.” Then she turned toward Boyd. Keep an eye on them. If they wake up, don’t let them move.”
Boyd nodded, keeping his rifle trained on the men. Tom couldn’t help but smile at the eight-year-old boy who’d never learned to hunt or use a rifle before a few days ago but had taken down two bushwhackers all on his own. Clara took hold of Tom’s arm and then tried to usher him inside. But Tom pulled from her grip. “I’m fine. I need to stay out here and help keep an eye on these men until the law man comes.”
Clara frowned and set her hands on her hips. “You are not fine, Tom Crowley. Sit down here then and don’t move. Keep that arm up. I’ll be back with the sewing kit.”
Tom blinked. He didn’t realize that the woman had that kind of fire in her. He kind of liked it. Smiling, he did what she said and sat down.
When she returned, she washed the wound with water from a basin and then poured iodine tincture all over it. He hissed as it burned. She blew on it like a mother would for a child. The feeling of her breath blowing against his skin made his heart flutter.
She met eyes with him momentarily. “The stinging from the tincture will help numb the skin so I can sew it. I think this is going to need at least eight stitches, maybe ten, so don’t move even if it starts hurting again. All right?”
He nodded and she began.
Her eyes concentrated on the task in the minimal light from the lantern she’d brought with her out onto the porch. Some of the long hairs that she had on her forehead fell into her face and she blew at them, but both her hands were occupied. Tom gently pushed them behind her ear with his other hand, his fingertips lightly brushing her temple. Her maple brown eyes momentarily met his with a smile of thanks and then she went back to finishing her task. Ten stitches, just like she’d said, and by the time she reached the last two, the numbness from the tincture had worn off and he chewed his lip to keep still through the pain.
Once she finished, she bit off the last bit of thread with her teeth and sat back from him. He felt a bit of cold from the sudden loss of her body heat and the intimacy they’d shared moments before. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t you say that you were a nurse?”
“I am,” she said with a wide smile. “I hope to find work here in town if possible.”
He pushed back down his sleeve, even though it was torn. “I think it should be more than possible. You do good work.”
She smiled again, saying her thanks through her gestures rather than her words. Tom liked that about her, too. She was expressive enough that anyone could understand her, even when she’d said nothing. He was so very wrong about her before when he thought her dull and boring. The light from the lantern shined in her eyes, and Tom felt as though he could get lost in them. Then he heard a groan from the ground off the porch.
Danny Miller attempted to sit up, but there was Boyd and his rifle pointed directly at the man. “You better hold still.”
Danny’s brows furrowed as he huffed a laugh. “You better point that thing somewhere else, half-breed.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Tom’s mom said sharply, her own rifle trained on the man, too. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners? I suppose not since you came up to someone’s house uninvited and then attempted to burn it down. Now, you better just do what the young man said and hold still.”
Even from this short distance away, Tom could see a smile playing on Boyd’s lips at his mother’s defense of him. Tom remained still for a long breath and then he saw four horses come trotting up the road to the house. Two of them hitched to a wagon driven by soldiers who had accompanied the marshal. When the marshal dismounted, he shook his head at the scene. “Someone want to explain to me what’s going on?”
Tom huffed a laugh. “It’s a bit of a long story. You have a minute?”
Chapter 15
Snow crunched beneath Tom’s boots as he led both Clara and Boyd up the hill toward the evergreens. The three of them had spent more time together over the last two and a half weeks, and Tom was beginning to feel as if they had both truly become part of his family. His breath clouded around his face as he looked back at them. Clara held Boyd’s hand as the child helped her step over a small creek that forged its way through the snow. Tom smiled as he watched the interaction between the two of them. “It’s not too much further.”
“Why did we have to come?” Boyd asked in a slightly high-pitched whine. “Couldn’t you have done this yourself?”
“Pshaw. No. The whole point in picking out a Christmas tree is to do it together, as a family,” Tom said with a grin.
Boyd’s brow furrowed at the same time as Clara’s brows rose toward her hairline.
Tom nodded at their unspoken questions. “Usually I do this with Mom and Sam, but this year is different. This year, I’m here with my new family. My new son, if he’s willing to stay with me and let me call him mine, and my new wife, if she’ll be willing to marry me.”
A small cry escaped Boyd’s lips as his face contorted, holding back a sob. Boyd rushed forward the last three steps until he’d slammed into Tom’s midsection, hugging him tightly around the waist. He said something incoherent as he smothered against Tom’s fur and leather jacket.
“I didn’t catch that. What did you say?” Tom asked.
Boyd lifted his chin, tears still streaming down his face as he looked up at Tom. “I’d be happy and honored to call you Father.”
Then Boyd buried his face in Tom’s midsection again, squeezing him tightly. Tom smiled down at Clara, whose own smile hid her feelings for once. For a split second, Tom felt nervous. What if she denied him? What if she didn’t feel the same way as he did?
Finally, she shook her head, and his heart sunk as he realized that maybe he’d read her feelings wrong.
“It’s about time you asked,” she said and laughed, jumping forward and hugging both Tom and Boyd together tightly. Tom’s heart soared in his chest as he squeezed them both against him and kissed the top of Clara’s head. Tears stung the backs of his eyes. His mother had been right all along. He’d needed a family and a home that he couldn’t wait to come back to. He looked up at the clear sky and caught sight of the evening star and its orphan.
And he thanked God in heaven for providing him with the two things he needed most, even though he didn’t know he needed them.
the end.
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About the Author
P. Creeden is the sweet romance and mystery pen name for USA Today Bestselling Author, Pauline Creeden. Her stories feature down-to-earth characters who often feel like they are undeserving of love for one reason or another and are surprised when love finds them.
Animals are the supporting characters of many of her stories, because they occupy her daily life on the farm, too. From dogs, cats, and goldfish to horses, chickens, and geckos -- she believes life around pets is so much better, even if they are fictional. P. Creeden married her college sweetheart, who she also met at a horse farm. Together they raise a menagerie of animals and their one son, an avid reader, himself.
If you enjoyed this story, look forward to more books by P. Creeden.
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More Books by P. Creeden
A Marshal for Christmas
A lonely and abused woman without a home. A Marshal who is given the sudden responsibility of two children. A mail-order bride situation that has fallen to ruin. Can Lottie find a home and a family by Christmas?
December 1880
When Lottie Reiner lost her father in the war, her mother fell to pieces. At the young age of eleven, Lottie began caring for her catatonic mother. But when both her mother and grandfather pass away months apart, Lottie becomes nothing but a burden to her family. Her grandmother pushes Lottie to get married before it’s too late. But Lottie is a twenty-seven-year-old spinster with no experience raising children. Isn’t it already too late?
Deputy US Marshal Archer King comes from a family of law keepers. His father was a US Marshal, and his mother worked as a Pinkerton Agent with Kate Warne. When his only sister passed on in childbirth, his brother-in-law swore he could care for the children on his own. And Archer was to check in on them, but in almost two years, he’s neglected that duty to his sister. When the father, Sam Hodge, goes missing, he finds out exactly what kind of dire situation the children have been subject to.
After being turned out of her home, Lottie heads to Durant, Oklahoma, where Sam Hodge and his two children live, in the hopes of becoming a new wife and mother. Only the mail-order situation does not turn out the way Lottie had hoped, and many of the things that Sam had told her in his letters turn out to be lies. The only thing true is the children, and Lottie is fast becoming attached to them. But what will happen when Sam is found? Will she have the opportunity to get a home and a family before Christmas?
An Agent for Josie
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Marriage has always been the furthest thing from Josie Roth’s mind. After all, the majority of men cannot suffer for a woman to vote, much less tolerate one who is smarter than him. For want of a son to take over his practice, her father raised his only child, Josie, to do the job. Even though she graduated summa cum laude at the New England Women’s College of Medicine, many in New England still looked down on her, believing that women should be either nurses or midwives. So, her father decided to take to the rails and travel out West, to Wyoming, and start a practice where there was a shortage of good doctors, hoping she’d be less frowned upon, being a woman.
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The two of them meet under the unfortunate circumstance of Josie’s father’s death. But she’s too sick to take care of arrangements, so Billy does them for her. When she finally comes to herself and mourns her father, she discovers that the town in Wyoming isn’t free of the prejudices that she’d been dealing with in the East, and she turns to the Pinkerton agency for employment. What happens when these two find out that the only way to work their next case together is by getting married first?
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Opal Cahill was raised as the only girl in a family full of rough and tumble men. They taught her to fight and survive and taught her to push aside fantasies, because reality is as harsh as the rough side of a cat’s tongue. But she could never let go of reading about adventures of life in the west and dreaming that she might one day become a Pinkerton agent, like her hero, Kate Warne. But when her father passes, she’s stuck living in Atlantic City with her cousin who sometimes has them living in rundown shacks and sometimes, high end hotels. Until one day, that odd lifestyle catches up with them both. When Opal must choose a place to go out west, she heads to the Pinkerton office in Denver in the hopes that they might still interview her though it’s months after they originally advertised they were accepting applicants.
Caleb Wade has just come back from going deep undercover. He returns to the Pinkerton office and runs into one of the most stubborn, frustrating, and interesting women he’s ever met. When he finds out that she’s not only his new partner but his new wife, he digs in his heels before he decides to treat it as another undercover act. Together the two travel to Ohio to help Archie’s good friend and owner of the Turner Theater deal with an arsonist who has already succeeded in burning down the theater once and threatens to do it again. Both Caleb and Opal must learn to get past their stubborn ways and work together in order to capture the person who threatens not only the building but the lead actress as well.
A Bride for James
A boxer who’s tired of fighting. A persecuted woman with an unwanted suitor. A marriage neither of them want, but both desperately need.
James Fisher is Champion of the Kansas City Pugilist Society, but it's a title he doesn't wear proudly. When the man he won the last match with dies overnight from his injuries, James doesn't want to see good people hurt for sport. The only problem is that his contract with the Pugilist Society remains in effect until death or marriage.
But who wants to marry a bruised and broken boxer?
When Abigail Lee's house is foreclosed on, she's left desolate but not alone. Her best friend, a former slave, is willing to allow her to live with them. But the people in town don't like her living situation, and an unwanted suitor comes knocking on the door, making threats. Abby doesn't want anyone to be hurt on her account but feels stuck between the frying pan and the fire until Cecilia comes up with a plan.
A Bride for Henry
A spinster raised to run a ranch. An injured man with a broken heart. A wedding neither of them want, but both need more than they will ever admit.
October 1867, North Texas
Brienne Walsh has resigned to life as a spinster and the lone heir to the Walsh Ranch upon her grandfather's death. She's always been too tall, too strong, and too unprepossessing to be appealing to any man. Yet when the bank calls on her grandfather's loan, telling her to either pay the full amount due by the end of the month, or marry, she is thrown into an arrangement she can't abide but must endure.
Love has been unkind to Henry Miller. His first love promised to wait for him to return from fighting for the Union in the War, but when he returned, he found her married to his best friend. The betrayal cut him deeper than the bullet from a Confederate Springfield. He lost his fiancé and his best friend in one fell swoop two years ago, and now he finds himself losing his father and his home in another. With nowhere else to turn, he chooses to follow his father's wishes and sign a document he never thought he'd consider again--a marriage certificate.
