by Siara Brandt
No surprise about his back being worse, Law thought. He had landed on his back in that wash.
Sidra picked up the bottle of antiseptic and some gauze and began to carefully cleanse the wounds. Some of them weren’t too bad, but some were deep, jagged holes where the flesh was ripped wide open. Some of the wounds were still oozing blood. Others, most of them, were showing signs of dark bruising around the swollen edges. They had already turned a livid purple. But he didn’t even flinch when she worked on them.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked trying to distract herself from the disruption that being near him was causing. “Offering to take me to Lacombe.”
“It’s a short trip. It’s not that big a deal.”
After she had finished with his back, and she had moved around to the front, he surprised her by asking, “I need to know something. Should I be expecting someone to be looking for you?”
He felt her hand pause and thought he’d hit a nerve. “Why would you ask that?”
He wanted to say because she was the kind of woman a man would want to hold onto. If there was a man. Of course he didn’t say that right out.
“Just a hunch. Whoever it is you’re running from, he might want you back.”
Running from? While she wondered how he had come to that conclusion, the very same thought that Webb would come looking for her had already occurred to her. More than once. Webb Courtland was not a man to give up easily. Not when his absolute control and his possessions were at stake.
“Even if he does try to find me,” she answered him bluntly. “I have no intention of going back.”
It made Law wonder, but again it was her business.
“I’m sorry I hit you with that branch,” Law heard her murmur as she pressed the gauze gingerly against a nasty-looking wound on his muscled forearm. “Last night, I mean. But you looked- ”
“Looked what?”
“Menacing.”
He laughed out loud at that. “No one’s ever called me that before.”
“Not to your face, I’m sure,” she said daring to glance directly into his eyes. From this close, she saw that they were blue eyes, but they were dark as indigo.
“Well, it wasn’t my intention to menace you.”
Sidra finally declared, “I’m done. But we’ll have to keep an eye on these to make sure there’s no infection.”
She gave him a last, sweeping, careful perusal, and realized that she’d missed one of the puncture marks. When she leaned forward, Law felt her hair brush his shoulder. It was a feather-light touch, but the sensation had an immediate impact upon him. A completely unexpected impact.
His voice definitely had a deeper, more husky quality to it when he asked, “Does that mean you’ve decided to accept my offer?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Probably not.”
She didn’t know how to take that exactly. The piece of gauze hovered over his skin for a moment. She suddenly felt distracted by the sight of so much male flesh so close to her. She didn’t have a lot of experience with men and being this close to a half-naked one was having a strange effect on her. Her gaze slid almost helplessly over the wide, powerful-looking shoulders, the heavily-muscled arms, the strong chest and the flat, washboard belly. There was also the almost-intoxicating male scent that seemed to draw her in . . .
What was she thinking? Apparently she was losing her mind. Because now was definitely not the time to be ogling any man’s body. Even if he looked like he’d just stepped out of a men’s fitness magazine. Even if he was close to male perfection. None of that mattered. Not anymore.
What had he just said? She had to force herself to focus. He was saying something about groups.
“Were you part of a group?” she asked because she didn’t know what else to say. “Or have you been surviving on your own?” He certainly looked like a man that could survive very well on his own.
“Group,” he replied shortly. “We held the Essex Bridge, and part of the town, for a while. Till it was overrun.”
“Is that what I heard earlier? A fight over it? Was it- Mulada soldiers?”
He nodded.
“And people died trying to defend it?” she asked.
“People died.”
She processed that information in silence. If he had died, too, she might not even be here. If she had tried to cross the bridge last night-
“And you were able to escape,” she murmured, half to herself. “Were you the only one?”
He nodded. “I was on my way back when I heard the shooting. I got there too late.” He said this like it was a burden that he carried. “But I gave them something to think about.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that meant.
“If we could find some antibiotics, I’d feel a lot better,” she said as she stepped away from him.
“Already took some. And you should take some, too. If you’re not allergic.”
He really was prepared for anything.
“You carry them with you?”
“Always. You never know when you might need them.”
After a while, he said as he held her gaze, “We’re going to have to learn to work together as a team, you know.” He was back to using his no-nonsense, soldier’s voice. “I’ll have your back, but I’ll expect you to have my back, too. That means if I have a plan, you go along with that plan, no questions asked. Which means a certain amount of trust. You think you can do that?”
She didn’t salute him, but she wanted to as she replied half sarcastically, “I’ll try my best.”
She was wondering if trust was even possible in this world.
He started to pull his shirt back on. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t know if you should trust me. Or if you even can get to that point. But you trusted me enough to follow me here last night and you’re still in one piece. We’ll only be together a few days. So a certain amount of temporary trust should be do-able.”
“You think this nightmare is ever going to end?” she asked with a weighty sigh.
“It’ll end,” he said grimly with a shrug of one powerful shoulder as he worked at the buttons on his shirt. “All nightmares have to end. We just don’t know how yet.”
He looked up when she said, “Except for the monsters.”
She was staring at the window and the dark shadow that had just crossed it. “When we wake up and open our eyes, we still see the monsters.”
Chapter 7
For a long time after Logan had left her, Letha sat quietly on the back porch of the old farmhouse. The last person she had expected to show up was Logan. She had assumed that he was dead. He should be dead. No one should have been able to survive the swarm that had surrounded him. But Logan had.
She had mixed feelings about his return. Things were complicated now. Logan didn’t know about her and Galton. Logan had assumed that things would be the same when he walked back into her life. But he’d been gone for over a month. A month was a long time in this world. It could be a lifetime. With life so uncertain now, it didn’t make sense to hold onto the past. She certainly didn’t want to hold onto it.
She stared out into the yard for a while and then turned back to the porch and carefully went through the motions of rinsing out her laundry and hanging it up on the line that Galton had strung up for her. Next she washed her hair and took her time brushing it out while it was still wet. When she had finished with that and she had assured herself that there was no one else around to see her, she went back into the kitchen. She paused for a moment to look at herself in the mirror as she passed by it. Smoothing back her dark hair, she raised her chin slightly and stared at her reflection, tilting her head from one side to the other. She was still confident in her looks. She always had been. They had opened a lot of doors for her in the past. They were still opening doors. There was no reason she shouldn’t use that to her advantage.
The rain had let up a little so she went outside. As she crossed the yard, she told herself ag
ain that what had happened wasn’t her fault. And what she was doing now could not be judged. The rules had changed and they were still changing. How could anyone know exactly what they were anymore? How could anyone condemn her in light of that?
But she was not thinking about rules now. Logan was not hovering around her at the moment, and so she set out with a purpose in mind. To find Galton.
He was working off his nervous energy, ripping nails out of old boards with a frenzy that held her gaze. He always did strenuous activity when he was tense. Obviously, he was tense right now. Was it because of Logan? she wondered. But then, it seemed like he had been in this agitated state a lot lately.
When he became aware of her standing there in the barn door, he stopped his arm mid-pull and turned to face her. She couldn’t keep her gaze from straying for a moment. Downward. Maybe to see if she still affected him as she had always affected him with her mere presence. What she saw reassured her. She had to bite her lips to keep the smile from showing, to hide the glint of triumph in her eyes.
She pulled her damp hair forward over one shoulder and looked straight at him from beneath her lashes. “You’ve been staying away from the house lately. Are you all right?” she asked.
Dripping with sweat and still breathing hard from the exertion, Galton just looked at her. He made no reply.
Infinitely patient, she tried again. “Have you been avoiding me?”
He tossed the hammer down onto the workbench beside him and shoved his sweat-dampened hair back from his face with both hands. A deep sigh was his only reply. Then he looked at her. Really looked at her.
In that moment, watching her, he saw it all, everything he had always wanted to achieve. Acceptance. Success. The cheerleader in high school that everyone coveted. Everything that Logan had been able to attain without any effort at all, while he still stood on the outside looking in through a very narrow window. He had never felt like he was quite good enough. Or worthy enough. Not for a woman like Letha.
With Logan gone, he had finally had his shot at those things. He had become the rescuer, the hero he could never quite be in life. Everything had changed overnight and he had risen to the top of this new world because he had the strength to take what he wanted. And Letha had encouraged him. In so many ways. She had been grateful, eager even.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she urged, as if what he said mattered to her. He already knew she would hang on every word.
“That Logan’s a fool for even thinking about leaving you again,” he said in a low, husky voice. The same voice that could send shivers right through her.
“I wouldn’t expect him to do anything different,” she said with a negligent shrug of one thin shoulder, even though she was secretly watching him very closely.
Right after Logan had returned, he had made the decision to go back and look for his missing children.
“You told him where to look?” Galton asked.
She frowned, perhaps thinking how best to choose her words. “Not specifically. I told him they had disappeared one night and we weren’t sure exactly where they had gone.”
Galton nodded slowly. “He believed you?”
“There’s no reason for him not to believe me.”
“So he could spend a lot of time out there looking for them,” Galton said half to himself.
“I have no doubt that’s just what he’ll do. Finding them is all that matters to him.”
Logan’s children had always come first. Before her. Her resentment, which had grown steadily over the years, had turned into a kind of deep-seated, seething hatred a long time ago.
“Has anyone given him reason to- ” He hesitated, weighing his words carefully. “Be suspicious?”
“If someone was going to say something to him,” Letha assured him. “They would have said it by now. Don’t forget. We weren’t the only ones involved in that decision,” she reminded him. “No one has any reason to tell him a different story. What would that benefit anyone?”
He thought that over. He looked up as something new occurred to him. “Let’s hope he doesn’t run into Thayer while he’s out there.”
Letha sighed. Thayer. Sanctimonious, self-righteous Thayer had always been a problem.
“We don’t know where Thayer is, or what might have happened to him.” What else was there for her to say? What they were both thinking? That Thayer might already be dead?
But she didn’t want to think about Thayer anymore. Or Logan’s precious brats.
Galton looked down at the hand that she had just placed on his arm. He knew the touch was calculated to embolden him. To remind him that they were in this together. Or perhaps it was to remind him of what they had shared and how close they had become. How close they still were. He suddenly wasn’t thinking. He was reacting. To her touch. To the hungry look in her eyes. Or maybe he was only imagining it because that’s what he wanted to see there. He had never completely forgotten that in the past she had chosen Logan over him. With Logan’s return, his uncertainties were also back.
But when she was like this, none of that mattered. In a moment, all his doubts vanished like a sun-struck fog. The human, hopeful cells remaining in his brain were telling him that she wanted him. Still. In spite of Logan’s ill-timed return.
Letha closed her hand tighter around Galton’s bare forearm. She could feel the tightness in the swell of muscles there. She realized that he was trembling. Either with lust or with emotion, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was a combination of both. Whatever it was, she knew that it was centered on her. She felt her own surge of need. Why wouldn’t she respond, knowing that she could affect him so quickly, so deeply? It was always like this between them. It always had been. Even when they had tried to run from it. It was spontaneous and explosive. It was where her own addiction lay.
This was what she had come for. She didn’t acknowledge that completely, not consciously, but she knew it somewhere deep inside. Sex with him in this state would be incredible, she knew. She couldn’t act on that right now, of course. Not here. Not in the light of day when Logan could return at any moment. But she would take just a little more from him.
“When Logan came back,” she began breathlessly. “I didn’t know how things would be between us. I didn’t know if I was going to have to try and forget you.” She said it like it was a battle she wasn’t sure of winning. She let her own passion show for a brief moment, both in her voice and in her eyes, struggling still, and letting him be aware of that struggle.
“I never even thought about forgetting you,” he said roughly with his head lowered and his eyes fixed on her face. “I still want you.”
She drew her hand back from his arm and looked aside, as if this was all his doing. “If Logan finds out- ”
She tangled him up even more inside. She looked back at him with something he could swear was almost predatory gleaming behind her eyes now. He finished her thought silently. If Logan found out, there would be hell to pay.
“Logan be damned,” he growled, reaching for her.
She took a few steps backwards, evading his touch. She even held her hands out as if she could stop him that way. But at the same time she drew a deep breath and gave him a sultry, hungry look. “I keep thinking about how- it was between us.” Her voice trailed off as she tried to look like she was fighting it. But she looked up at him again and whispered, “I can’t help but think about it. Do you think about that, too?”
His jaw was tightly clenched and the lines about his mouth grew taut with suppressed emotion. His chest rose as he struggled, but she saw the first signs of surrender in his eyes.
“You know I do,” he said in a raspy voice that was more growl than anything else.
He saw a flash of something else in her dark eyes before she quickly veiled it. He knew that underneath it all, she was a lot like he was. In spite of the prim and proper manner she presented to the world, there was a wildness in her. It was something deep down at her core.
She closed
her eyes and whispered his name. It was a move intended to drive him over the edge.
“Galton,” she repeated, the end of his name trailing off into a ragged whisper, the same way she would do when he was driving into her and she was near the edge.
He knew at that moment that he couldn’t give her up. By rights, he had claimed the title of alpha dog here now. He had fought for the position. And Logan? By walking away, he was choosing a lesser place in the pack. He was giving up even Letha.
“You know this isn’t right,” she tilted her head back, exposing her throat, giving him one last glimpse of the battle she was waging. Right before she turned and fled from the barn.
Galton was fighting his own battle as he watched her hurry away. He wanted to drag her back, throw her down in the hay and convince her that he was the better man, the man she should be with. But right now that wasn’t going to happen. Even though he suspected that, deep down, it was what she really wanted. Letha had a ruthless streak. In spite of her protests, she knew what she wanted. She always had. She wanted it all. Especially those things that she was not supposed to want.
Prey to a lot more frustration than he had been dealing with before, he picked up a two by four and slammed it hard against the wall. The board broke in two with a vicious snap. He reached for another board and snagged his bare arm on a nail. He swore at his carelessness, but was able to turn it around and blame Logan for even that.
He had cut himself. Deeply. He stared down at his arm and the long, jagged gash where the blood was welling freely. He frowned at the blood dripping from his fingertips. He hadn’t felt a thing. Nothing at all.
Thayer’s gaze shifted and he looked at the Boston ferns still hanging under the skylight above him. Untended and un-watered, they were brown and completely dead now. A mound of dried-up, fallen leaves littered the floor beneath them. His gaze roved around the room. A smeared, dripping splotch of dried blood stained the papered wall in the front hallway. There was also a trail of dried, darkened blood leading out the back door. And bloody handprints on the doorframes. There were no people here, dead or alive, to tell the story so there was no knowing what had happened here. It had been violent, whatever it was. Tragic. The tale was not only told in the bloodstains. There was also the overturned furniture and the broken vase and the picture frames hanging crookedly on the walls. It was a big old house, finely decorated, but it was in disarray now. Someone’s dreams had begun and ended here. Like countless other dreams that were now dead.
