by Marie Piper
HAVEN’S FLAME
Fires of Cricket Bend, Book One
BY MARIE PIPER
HAVEN’S FLAME
Copyright © 2015 by Marie Piper.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: October 2015
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-318-2
ISBN-10: 1-68058-318-2
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For Aleisha—Haven’s first fangirl.
And for Eric and Wesley—who let it happen.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE
Eastern Texas, 1886.
Matthew
“That was a mighty fine dinner,” Matthew Frank said to the young woman who stood beside him on the porch. “I swear you make the best chicken and dumplings I’ve ever tasted.”
“Thank you.”
Matthew could have kicked himself. After a lifetime of loving Haven Anderson, the moment was finally right to ask her to be his wife, and all he could talk about was dumplings.
The last trace of a marmalade colored sunset lingered over the horizon and the hum of crickets filled the air. Matthew snuck a sideways look at the beauty next to him. She’d never looked prettier than she did right then, in her deep purple dress with her abundant dark curls pinned up and away from her face. Haven looked out over the fields with a faraway look in her eyes. Matthew could have looked at her forever.
In the pocket of his brown vest, he clutched a ring. It seemed to burn as he turned it over and over again. The ring was the only thing Matthew owned that was worth a damn. Silver with a garnet stone, it was his last tie to his mother. He remembered Matilda Frank, a scrawny woman with tired eyes. She had wasted away in the months after his father left, never to return. Like everyone else in the small Texas town of Cricket Bend, Matthew presumed Philip Frank long dead. Whether he’d drunk himself to death somewhere out on the plains and been eaten by coyotes, or had started a fight he couldn’t win, it hardly mattered. Good riddance, Matthew figured. His father had been a man of great passions, namely liquor and violence, and Matthew and his mother had borne the brunt of those flare-ups until the day Philip Frank up and vanished.
Matthew vowed he’d be a better husband. He’d be a better father. Hell, he could hardly do worse. And there was no one else in the world besides Haven he’d ever consider marrying. There’d never been another woman who’d been able to make his throat go dry and his heart beat faster just by glancing his way. When he was near her, he fought the urge to take her in his arms and kiss her. When he was away from her, he cursed himself for not giving in to those same urges.
On a chilly winter morning six years before, they’d taken a long walk to a tallgrass valley they’d explored countless times as kids. Matthew had been sixteen and, in his mind, still too skinny and awkward. Just fourteen, Haven had barely crossed the line out of girlhood. In the valley, where the grass was tall enough to brush Haven’s shoulders, he’d bent down and kissed her. Neither one of them had ever kissed anyone before. Matthew remembered feeling her lips on his and the first stirrings of young desire, and he’d gotten caught up in the way his blood boiled. He'd kissed her a bit too forcefully, clutched her a bit too tightly, and she’d pulled away with wide eyes.
The moment burned in his mind, like he’d stared at the sun too long.
He’d scared her with his kiss the same way his father had scared him and his mother with his belt.
Haven was a grown woman now, twenty years old and every bit the lady her mother had wanted her to be. Matthew swore to himself he would treat her properly; he would restrain himself from giving in to the passion that threatened to boil over each time he spoke to her. He wouldn’t go too fast and scare her all over again. He would do better. Again, he could hardly do worse.
Matthew managed the words, “You know I’m real fond of you.”
“I’m fond of you too,” Haven replied as she turned her face to him.
Now or never, he thought. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. From his pocket he pulled out the ring, holding it up for her to see. In return, she gave him a smile that he recognized. Haven understood what was happening. Of course she did. Relieved, Matthew’s hand only shook a bit as he readied to recite the poem he’d stayed up the whole previous night memorizing. It was Shakespeare, his favorite, and he was proud of himself for finding the perfect words to express how he felt.
He took a deep breath. And then he dropped the ring. The poem flew from his mind as the ring bounced onto the porch, getting lost in the darkness.
Matthew and Haven both fell to their knees to look for it. Matthew blushed at his clumsiness but quickly located the ring beneath the old rocking chair. He brushed it off against his shirt and held it back up to her.
Haven’s smile hadn’t changed. She knelt as he did, and their faces were close together.
“Matthew,” she started to speak.
He shook his head and took her hand, in a rush to say the words he’d prepared before he lost all his guts. The poem was gone, scattered words in a memory, but he could salvage the proposal. “I want to do this right. I have cared for you my whole life long, and if you’d do me the honor of marrying me I will give you a good and happy life. I will always provide for you, and I will always be true to you, to my dying day, I swear.”
Haven’s smile never faltered.
The silence between them stopped his breathing. Matthew would have eaten his boot to know what she was thinking.
Her fingers closed around his. “Of course I’ll marry you, Matthew. I’d be proud to.”
Matthew brought her hand to his lips and slipped the ring on her finger. All the while, he grinned like a fool. Seeing his grin made her grin and they sat grinning at each other in the last lingering light. For a long moment he held her hand in his. Then he leaned in and touched his lips to her forehead. “Reverend Evans can marry us on April fourteenth, if that’s all right with you. That’s five weeks from tonight.”
“That’ll be fine. Where will we live?”
He stood up and helped her to her feet, never letting go of h
er hands and never wanting to again. “I bought the Kilpatrick place.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “That’s a beautiful place.”
“It needs some work,” he apologized.
Haven shook her head. “It’s a beautiful place. Mama always said she wished we’d lived up in the hills.” Her voice caught, and he saw her pretty eyes watering. At the mention of Lucy Anderson, his own eyes threatened to well up. It had been Lucy’s warm comfort that had saved Matthew and his mother. He remembered Lucy, with her hair always pinned up real pretty and always smelling sweet as perfume despite her daily declarations that she was just a simple farm wife. Even if his mother’s salvation hadn’t lasted long, Lucy’s warmth had.
Only seven when his mother died, Matthew had been taken in by Lucy and Luke Anderson and went to live in their house. He’d shared Haven’s room until the day Luke noticed the children were growing up. Matthew’s cot was moved to a corner of the main room near the fireplace, and Lucy fashioned a curtain to give him the privacy she declared a young man needed. Haven had been his sister, his best friend, his confidante—the closest person in his life. He appreciated that she never cared for dolls or dresses or sewing, unlike the silly girls they'd gone to school with.
As stubborn as her father, Haven butted heads with her mother practically every day over the things a young lady should and shouldn’t do, fighting as hard as her young years and small size allowed. Lucy Anderson may have been a delicate woman, but she was firm in her beliefs. Haven would grow into a lady if it killed the whole family.
As they’d grown older, Matthew had watched as Haven was forced out of clothes made for climbing and riding and into skirts and crinolines, buttoned up like a wild horse being broken. He’d seen her submit to her mother’s expectations and lock away a bit of herself. He’d seen the light in her dark eyes go a little dimmer.
Matthew listened to crickets singing in the grass as he saw her mind working. Her delicate brow furrowed as it often did when she was thinking hard about something. He knew all Haven’s expressions by heart, but the look on her face at that moment was new. Something unfamiliar was behind the eyes he admired so much.
“Are you happy?”
She gave his hand a little squeeze. “I couldn’t be any happier, Matthew.”
Once she was his, once they were married, he would bring back the light in her eyes.
There was no doubt in his mind.
***
Haven
Haven thought maybe Matthew would kiss her in the wake of accepting his proposal. The way his blue eyes gazed at her, she thought it sure seemed as if he wanted to. She studied his handsome face and hoped he would kiss her, finally. Just in case he wanted to, she tilted her head up to him. Though she’d never been proposed to before, she’d read enough books to have formed the opinion that these things often included grand kisses that lasted the whole night through and gushing declarations of love.
She studied her fiancé. With his yellow hair and his beaming smile, he looked like sunshine. Haven looked down at their joined hands and the beautiful ring that she now wore on her finger. It had finally happened. They were engaged. Matthew would become her husband, like she’d wanted for what seemed like forever. If she was any happier, she’d burst into a million pieces that would scatter all the way to Virginia.
Even as her heart swelled with love, her head warned her to be cautious. Matthew hadn’t kissed her, much as she’d wanted him to. Though his proposal had been lovely, it had included no statements of love. He’d never even spoken the word. All he’d said was that he cared for her. Though she didn’t doubt that to be true, and knew he would be a good husband and father, she figured he’d forgotten all about when he’d kissed her six years earlier.
Haven hadn’t forgotten.
Being only twenty, six years seemed a lifetime ago to her.
If nothing else, she was a pragmatic kind of young woman. Being engaged brought all sorts of practical matters to mind. The Kilpatrick place was a cozy cottage with a fenced-in garden, set a little way up in the greener hills east of town. It would be a fine place to live a good life full of hard work. Haven had spent every day of her life working hard and doing chores, and she would happily cook Matthew’s meals, keep his house, and raise his children, just to be near him.
If she worked hard enough, perhaps one day he might look at her again like he had all those years ago—with a longing so strong it had scared and awakened her at the same time. Whenever she was near him, she recalled the kiss in the tallgrass. Back then, she’d been just a silly girl. How much she loved him was something she hadn't known yet. The years he’d spent away in Colorado, working for a big ranch, had made her realize that she loved him more than she’d likely love anyone ever again. She’d missed him every second he was gone. She'd held onto her memories and his letters, and one day he rode back to Cricket Bend, to her.
“I suppose we should go inside and tell Luke.”
“He’ll probably jump out of his pants.”
Matthew chuckled and gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Upon hearing the news, Sheriff Luke Anderson let a loud whistle and jumped from his chair to embrace his daughter and then Matthew. The joy that spread across Luke’s face made him seem more like a man of twenty than of fifty, and Haven knew accepting the proposal had been the right thing to do.
“I’ve been hoping for this.” Luke held Haven close to him and put a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “You had me nervous, son.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Matthew answered shyly, looking at his boots. “I figured she’d either say yes or slap me, and I was praying for the first outcome.”
Luke’s laugh filled the room, a warm rumbling sound. He looked at the two of them for a moment, and then his eyes went wide. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared for a moment into his bedroom.
Matthew looked questioningly at Haven. She shrugged.
Luke carried a plain white box when he returned and set it on the table to push it toward Haven. “This is yours now.” His eyes, which were the same brown as hers, shone.
Haven lifted the lid of the box and tears leapt to her eyes as she beheld the neatly packed white fabric and lace. Even before she unfolded it, she knew what it was. When she’d been a girl, her mother had let her wear the wedding dress a few times. Haven had danced around the bedroom, tripping on the hem while singing and play-acting like she was a fancy lady. After her mother’s death, most of her clothes and things had been packed up or given away, and Haven had sadly presumed the dress had been among the items to go. She reached for the satin and lightly rubbed it between her fingers. The stitching was impeccable and the dress was in near-perfect condition, even though more than twenty years had passed. “Papa, I thought you got rid of it.”
“No.” Luke’s tanned face flushed with joy. “She made me promise to give it to you for your wedding day. She’d be so happy if she was here, for both of you.”
Haven saw Matthew looking back at her with eyes so clear and sure. Even if he had forgotten about their kiss, she felt sure he’d once felt powerful feelings for her.
Once they were married, once he was hers, she could bring back that passion.
There was no doubt in her mind.
CHAPTER TWO
“Sweet Father Christmas, that hurt!” Hank Porter hollered as Haven yanked the shard of broken glass out of his forearm, leaving a jagged cut that started to bleed generously. Hank’s fingers gripped the side of the wooden table, his handsome face twisted with agony.
Three men leaned on the bar of the saloon and watched the scene unfold as their faces became pained in sympathy. Haven had expected an audience. Whenever there was blood, people watched. They’d stop whatever they were doing and go out of their way to take in the show. Besides, Hill Hilton, Ed Dean, and Rip Peters were always bellied up to the bar in Porter’s Saloon, and Haven knew a little blood wouldn’t scare them away. They’d fought in the war, after all.
They’d seen much worse than Hank’s wound.
“I told you it would hurt. Good Lord, men are babies about pain.” It was the thing Haven marveled at most frequently as she went about her work. Women birthed babies and went back about their chores in a few days, but give a man a paper cut, and he’d wail louder than a cat in heat. She placed a folded clean cloth on the wound and pressed it hard to stop the bleeding. “Next time maybe you’ll steer clear of drunken cowboys fighting with broken bottles.”
The heel of her boot crunched some pieces of glass still on the floor from the earlier fight, and she kicked them away. The fading sunlight of the early evening leaked in the door and made the pieces sparkle, much like the well-cared-for saloon she sat in the middle of.
“Maybe next time those cowboys won’t be trying to burn down my saloon, and I won’t have to jump in the middle of a brawl.” Hank saw the scorched card table being hauled out the door by the bartender and groaned. “I bought that table new. Special ordered it from Denver. Now it’ll be lucky to be firewood. Those damn hooligans. Pardon my language, my dear.”
“You’re pardoned. Keep that cloth on there. Hold it strong.”
Haven got to her feet and went around the table to dig through the brown leather bag of supplies she always carried. Some women carried handbags. Haven preferred to tote her things in a beat-up old leather doctor’s bag. In a town like Cricket Bend, which was full of farmers, ranchers, and folks with kids, as well as home to a lively saloon, people were always getting cuts, burns, and splinters. As the assistant to Doctor Cornelius Gray, having bandages and other supplies on hand saved her more than one trip back to the clinic on a typical day.
Not that there ever was such a thing. Haven had spent that morning pulling a fish hook out of the hand of a young boy and trying to convince the bathhouse owner’s nervous wife that just because she’d caught a cold, it didn’t mean she’d come down with tuberculosis. Haven had been readying to ride out of town to deal with her chores at home when she’d caught word of a rumble at the saloon and a wounded man. Doc had been out on a call, so she’d run to help.
