Will clapped him on the back again. “Go home. That’s the right thing for you now.”
Owen nodded slowly. “Thanks. I will. Thank you for everything.”
Even though Owen knew he and Will would remain friends and a part of each other’s lives, he also knew that he was closing the door on this part of his life. Saying goodbye to the badge for the final time. As many times as Will had approached him since he’d retired the first time, and as many times as Owen had said no, this time Owen knew Will wasn’t going to ask him again.
He walked back to the house, knowing that the things he had to share with Laura were things he owed her. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was what she’d asked him to do all along.
In the end, it would be her choice to love him or not, but he would give her all the information she needed to make that decision.
She and Lena were sitting on the sofa, shotguns in their laps, when he got back to the house.
“Expecting trouble?” He tried to keep his voice light, but the heaviness in his heart made it difficult.
“Should we be?” Laura asked.
“James is dead. Suicide.” He probably shouldn’t have blurted it like that, but of all the things they had to discuss, James was the least of them.
Laura nodded slowly like it didn’t surprise her. “I think he knew he couldn’t win this one. I always imagined him to be so strong, larger than life. In reality, he was only as strong as the people around him were weak. I’m not weak anymore.”
The power in Laura’s words reminded him of the way she’d spoken to him before he left earlier. She knew who she was, and what she wanted. And what she wanted was Owen.
But as he’d already determined, she needed all the facts first.
He looked at her and smiled. “No, you are not. You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met, and it’s an honor to know you.”
Lena made a noise. “Now are you going to kiss? If so, I’d like some help to my room because I do not need to witness that. And if not, I wash my hands of the both of you. Just don’t wake the girls. They’ve managed to sleep through everything else, but I’m not sure how much more ruckus they can take.”
Shaking his head slowly, Owen looked over at his sister. “I hope, that at some point in the future, I will be kissing Laura. But first, we need to talk. I need to tell her some things because she needs to know who she’s kissing.”
He took a deep breath, wondering how to say this next part. He and Lena didn’t talk much about their past or their family. But it was time.
“We agreed that certain events would never be spoken of again. But with your permission, I need to tell Laura, because rather than my deciding for her if I am the man for her or not, she needs to have all the information to make an educated decision.”
Surprise flashed across Lena’s face, but she nodded. “You’re telling her everything?”
“Everything.” This time, he looked at Laura, hoping she’d understand what a big step this was. She gave him an encouraging look.
“All right,” Lena said. “But then you’d better marry her and put us all out of our misery.”
“That’s up to her.” Owen held out his hand to Laura. “Since the girls are in here sleeping, and Lena could use some rest to improve her disposition, why don’t we go to the kitchen, where we can have some privacy?”
He shot Lena one of their usual “picking on each other” glances, hoping that her permission meant that things truly were all right with her, and she stuck her tongue out at him. Yes, it was time.
Laura took his hand, and they went into the kitchen. Even though their kiss had been hours ago, it seemed like a whole lifetime had passed since then.
“How about I make us some coffee?” Laura said, going over to the stove.
Though Owen hated letting go of her, he nodded, then sat in one of the chairs.
“I’m sorry for how I reacted to our kiss,” Owen said. “The truth is, it was the best kiss of my life, and it scared me. I thought I’d loved Sadie, but she never made me feel even close to that. Losing her nearly killed me, and I was afraid, that once the danger of the situation died down, you’d get bored and leave, too.”
“I would never—”
“I know.” Owen smiled at her, trying to find the words to explain. “As events unfolded this evening, I realized how unfair I was to you, comparing you to her, when we hadn’t talked about any of this at all.”
Owen sighed as he sat back in his chair. “I’ve told you bits and pieces about my family, and about Sadie. But you need to know the whole truth.”
His hand shook as he took the coffee from her. She’d had the courage to face her darkest fear tonight, and now it was time to face his.
* * *
Owen looked like a scared little boy, and Laura wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms and tell him it would be all right. But that would be more of a distraction than an aid, so Laura took a seat across the table from him.
“My uncle wasn’t really our uncle. We refer to his bride, when in reality, his bride was our mother. We just hated how she lied to him and used him. He married her in good faith, but she still had a husband.” Owen looked like he was ashamed of his words, so Laura reached across the table and took his hands.
“Lena and I don’t have the same father, as far as we were told. We don’t know who our fathers are, and we heard so many stories, we couldn’t know the truth even if one of them was true. In the early days, our mother was an actress, though once she had my sister, she became a wealthy man’s mistress. She bounced between lovers before and after I was born, and Lena and I were mostly raised by nannies. She kept us in a house she had for us but lived elsewhere. Sometimes she’d visit, but we never lived with her. We were never allowed to call her mother because she wasn’t supposed to be old enough to have children our age. So we called her Eliza. I couldn’t even tell you if that was her real name.”
He looked so lost. Laura squeezed his hands and smiled at him. No wonder he and Lena were so intent on being there for the twins. And why he’d been so heartbroken at Sadie’s leaving.
“Then she met Robert Dean. She never told her lovers about her children, but for some reason, she told him about us. He wasn’t able to have children, so he was excited that she had us. Uncle Bob, as we called him, invited us to move in with him on the ranch. He spared no expense making it everything she wanted. She’d only been there a few weeks when she got bored. One day she took off, leaving a note saying that she needed a more exciting life. She said nothing about us, but Uncle Bob told us we’d always have a home with him.”
Now Laura understood the fondness with which both Owen and Lena spoke of their uncle. He’d had no obligation to them, but he’d chosen to care for them as his own anyway.
“He raised us, and I loved the idea of following in his footsteps as a rancher. But Lena, she’d known Eliza better than I had, and she missed her. As soon as Lena was of age, she went in search of her.”
A dark look crossed Owen’s face, and Laura wished she could do more than just hold his hand. She wanted to hold him close to her and tell the little boy who’d lost so much that he never had to fear losing anyone he loved again. At least not in that way.
“When Lena found her, she was no longer the great beauty she once was and too old to attract the kind of men she once had. Lena told her that Uncle Bob would still welcome her, but Eliza didn’t want to give up the life she still thought she could have if only she met the right man. Lena stayed with her a few months, and then, one of the wealthy men Eliza had hoped to attract showed interest in Lena. So she made a deal. She’d give him Lena if he gave her good compensation.”
Owen looked like he was going to be sick. His cup was empty, so Laura poured him some more. “Drink. You look like you need it.”
He gulped the liquid like he hadn’t had a drop of anything in days
. But the pain in his eyes told Laura his thirst wasn’t anything that could be easily quenched.
When he set the empty cup down, he looked at Laura. “She sold her daughter to a man who used her in the cruelest way. I don’t know all the details because Lena will not speak of it, nor will she allow anyone to discuss it in her presence. But if you had seen her in those days, you would know that something horrible had happened to her indeed. I became a lawman to find justice for Lena.”
All the things Owen had said—and not said—about Lena now suddenly made sense. Laura’s heart broke for her dear friend who had suffered so much. “So why do you keep teasing her about finding suitors?”
Owen shrugged. “Lena is a good woman, and she deserves to be happy. Before she left, she was in love with one of Uncle Bob’s hands. Tony. He was a good man, and I believe he would have made her happy. But when she came back, she did everything she could to push him away because she didn’t believe she was good enough for him anymore. He finally gave up and went away. None of my contacts can find him.”
Then he looked in the direction of the parlor, where Lena and the twins slept. “I push her to find love in the same way she pushes me. We’ve both been burned, but I believe that, deep down, we both still want it for ourselves, and are afraid to try.”
He smiled at her, an expression that melted her heart. “You gave me a reason to believe again.”
“I feel the same way,” Laura said.
He nodded. “I’m glad. Anyway, I became a lawman, tracked down the monster who’d hurt Lena, and brought him to justice. He was killed in a prison fight not long after he got there. It didn’t feel satisfying, especially because, in my hunt for him, I realized how many more men out there were like him. I hated the thought of someone else’s sister being preyed upon. I became known for my ability to rescue women from bad situations.”
Laura couldn’t help but admire how Owen had turned such a horrible event into a way of helping others.
“When I met Sadie, I thought I was in love. That I’d finally found the one thing that had eluded my family—my mother, Uncle Bob, Lena and me. It felt good to protect her, and I was excited to finally have a family that would be whole. I don’t know what she thought it would be like being married to me, but she hated being pregnant, hated having a family and hated Lena. I talked to some other men I knew, and they said that a lot of women hated the pressure of being married to a lawman. But also, since she and I met under such strained circumstances, and her life had been chaos up until our marriage, she didn’t know how to handle normal.”
Owen looked at Laura again, like he was searching for answers in her face. “When I met you, I couldn’t help the feelings I felt for you. But I’d learned, over the years, especially after what had happened with Sadie, that a lot of women grow attached to the men who save them from a bad situation. They think they’re in love because the man is the first person to be kind to them in a long time. With you, I didn’t know if what you felt was love, or if it was something else.”
He almost sounded as if he was asking for forgiveness, but as Laura replayed some of their earlier conversations in her head, she understood. “You weren’t sure how to tell if what I felt for you was the real thing. But you felt something for me, and were afraid to show it, in case what I felt wasn’t love.”
As Laura spoke, he nodded. “I couldn’t let my heart get broken again. And I was afraid that if I tried to love you, and you decided you didn’t want to be with me after all, the girls...”
The weight of his words landed heavy on Laura’s shoulders. “You didn’t want them to be abandoned again, the way you were.”
“Lena and I promised they’d have a different childhood than we had. We couldn’t fix what happened to us, but we could make it right for them.”
And here he was, trusting her with the information to let her know how important all of this was to him. No, not just trusting her with information, but asking her to be a part of it.
“What happened to Eliza?”
Owen shook his head. “She died alone, in a flophouse, of a disease she’d gotten from one of the men she’d been sponging off. I tried to help her, but in the end, I had to accept that some people don’t want our help. Just like with Sadie. Even when I knew she’d run off to be an outlaw’s mistress, I still gave her the chance to come home.”
“Do you still think I would do that to you?” Laura asked. After all, that had been his fear all along. But surely by now, he’d come to see her character.
“No.” His eyes shone with the emotion that had been building inside him all this time. “But I don’t know if I will truly make you happy. I think deep down, that’s what Lena and I both fear. We’ve tried to create a semblance of normalcy, but I don’t know how to be a proper father or a proper husband. I’m doing the best I can, but even my own mother found something lacking in me.”
Laura squeezed her eyes shut to keep herself from crying for the lost boy who sat in front of her, who’d spent his whole life desperate for a mother to love him, and then to have the same situation repeat itself with his wife. How she knew that pain. Of trying to be the perfect daughter to meet the expectations of parents whose desperation for a family had only given them her. Of trying to be good enough for a husband who punished her in every way when she displeased him.
But tonight, as she saw the ways James had tried to control her, and how he’d failed, she’d realized that the person lacking was not her.
Could Owen see that? Could he realize that he was enough, not just for her, or for the girls, but for himself?
“Was there something wrong with the twins that caused their mother to leave?” Laura finally asked, knowing that the biggest key to Owen’s heart was those girls.
“Absolutely not,” he said, straightening.
Laura nodded. “And was there something lacking in me that made me a terrible wife to James and made me deserve what he did to me?”
“Why would you even still believe that? We all know he’s an animal.” Owen’s face reddened, and he clenched a fist like he wanted to do bodily harm to James.
“Then why do you think it of yourself?”
Owen looked stunned, like she’d slapped him so hard he couldn’t move.
Laura got up from her chair and came around to Owen. “The flaw was never in you, and until you believe that, you will never be able to understand how deeply I love you.”
When he kissed her, it was with the same abandon as earlier. Only this time, she could feel the love coming out of his heart, completely unchecked. Like he was finally able to give himself fully to her.
“I love you,” he whispered, ending the kiss.
Then Owen looked into her eyes and smiled. “But you need to know something else.”
Laura smiled back, giving him a quick kiss. “It won’t matter, as long as you love me.”
“Always.” He gave her another quick kiss; then the serious expression returned to his face.
“Toward the end, I thought I couldn’t be a lawman anymore because I’d lost my edge and couldn’t properly focus on the job. But tonight I realized that it wasn’t about that at all.”
The expression on his face softened, and Laura couldn’t help but think that this was probably the truest glimpse of Owen that she’d ever gotten.
“I became a lawman to avenge Lena. But before that, all I wanted was to be a rancher. Except I was good at being a lawman. Saving women seemed to be a skill I had. Once I became a father, my heart was less and less in it. I hated how I missed the girls when I was on a case. But every time I tried to quit, they needed me on a case only I could do. I kept getting pulled back in.”
Owen let out a long sigh. “I messed up on my last case. Nothing that got me in trouble, or left anyone dead, but I thought it meant I’d lost my edge. You probably know of it, since it involved your friend Nellie. I was supposed to be guardin
g her, and I let a woman I thought was in trouble distract me, and Nellie was nearly killed. It became my excuse for quitting. Now I realize, it was just that. An excuse. I haven’t wanted to be a lawman for a long time, but I let myself get sucked in because I thought I was needed. Tonight I realized that someone else will step in to fill my shoes if I let them.”
Laura squeezed Owen tight against her and pressed a soft kiss on his cheek. “Nellie did tell me about you, though I don’t recall her mentioning your name. For what it’s worth, she never blamed you. She thought you were a hero for going above and beyond, risking your own safety to protect her and the children.”
He hugged her back, giving her a kiss on top of her head. “That makes me feel better. But it doesn’t make me want to be a lawman again. I want to remain a rancher. That’s what I love.”
Being in Owen’s arms made Laura feel safe. And though he wasn’t going to be a lawman, that wasn’t what she needed to feel secure. “To be honest, I’d find it rather nerve-racking having to wonder if you’re all right and knowing that there are people with guns after you. I would be very relieved to be married to a rancher.”
Owen grinned. “Married, huh? I don’t believe I’ve asked you.”
Pulling away, Laura grinned back. “But you will. And, just so you aren’t surprised by how events work out, I’m going to warn you that I plan on saying yes.”
When Owen kissed her, Laura was able to delight in him once more. Because somehow, despite all the pain they’d both suffered, together they would find healing.
Epilogue
Laura cast one last look at the boardinghouse as they loaded up the wagon. It was strange to realize that the place that had brought her so much happiness and strength would be hers no more. She and Owen had been married earlier that day in a simple ceremony in the now-empty parlor.
After James died two months ago, she and Owen had decided to create the life they wanted and to do so as quickly as possible. Laura had wanted to marry immediately, but Owen had convinced her that they both needed time to catch their breath and figure out what they really wanted.
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