“Why didn’t you tell me how bad it was last night?”
She shrugged. “I endured because I had to. We had to keep moving, no matter what.”
His lips twisted into a grimace. “Not if you end up hurt.”
“I am not hurt. I am sore and already feel somewhat better.” She got to her knees. “If I keep moving, I will be fine in no time.”
He glanced over at Blue, who grazed happily on the succulent tall grass. “He won’t be able to carry us all the way to the wagon train. It’s too much weight to ride over a hundred miles. I don’t know if your mutt will make it either.”
Her stomach dropped to her knees. They were so far behind her family already. A hundred miles on horseback seemed impossible and painful. Certainly too far to walk. She swallowed the lump in her throat at the possibility she might not ever see those she loved again.
She looked up at John, the man she thought she disliked, the man who had proven to her more than once he was the kind of person she wanted to be. Frankie had made some bad choices in her life, which had sent her careening off course. John had shown her what it meant to make the right choices, although sometimes he’d obviously made the wrong ones.
“I told you I will carry the dog.” She sighed, overcome with regret. “I apologize. All of this is my fault.” She stretched her legs out in front of her, easing the sore muscles. The discomfort felt good in a way, a just punishment for a woman who had caused harm to so many people.
“No, it’s not. That’s foolish talk.” John sounded angry. “You were a pawn in a game you weren’t prepared for. Oliver Peck is obviously a bastard through and through. If I was anywhere near New York I’d kill him so he couldn’t hurt anyone again.”
His vehement proclamation made her heart skip a beat. No one had ever taken a stand for her, and only Jo had ever taken the time to help Frankie. She had always been self-reliant and far too independent to accept or ask for assistance. Until she met John. Was she ready to have a champion defend her or was her pride going to get in the way?
She had to swallow twice to dislodge the lump in her throat. “Thank you for that. I do not think you will get the chance, but I do appreciate the sentiment.”
He raised one brow. “You’re thanking me for saying I’d kill someone?”
“I guess I am.”
He knelt down beside her and cupped her cheek in one big hand. “You are one of a kind, Frankie Chastain.”
Her cheeks warmed. “And you are one of a kind, John Malloy.”
His lips brushed hers, once, twice, three times. She leaned into him, eager for more, her body warm from the simple touch of his mouth. To her disappointment, he pulled away.
“Much as I’d like to take all those clothes off you and feel you beneath me, we’ve got to get moving.” He kissed her once more, hard and fast. “Later on, I plan on doing more than kissing you.”
Her body clenched at the heat in his gaze. Waiting until later would not be ideal. “I want more now.” Before she realized it, the words had tumbled out of her mouth.
This time a smile spread across his face, one of pure male lust. “You surely do know how to shock and tempt a man. What am I gonna do without you when I bring you back to your family?”
The reminder she was only with him temporarily was a bucket of cold water on her body’s needs. She didn’t want to think about later. She only wanted now and John Malloy. The future could wait when the here and now was what mattered.
“I’m sorry, darlin’, much as it tempts me, we gotta get going.” He got to his feet and she noted the rather prominent erection in his trousers. She almost reached for it before she checked her urge. Her hands clenched into fists, itching to touch him, to feel his warm skin against hers.
“What we need is another horse.” He peered into the horizon. “If I’m right, we’re about ten miles from the Gates ranch.”
“What is the Gates ranch?”
John frowned. “That’s where I worked three years ago.” He held out his hand. “Where I got accused of murder.”
She gaped at him. The man couldn’t mean what he said. “You want to go there? To procure a horse or to die?”
“You didn’t ask me about the murder charge, but I need to tell you about it.” He hauled her to her feet. “Let’s move.” The dog raced in a circle, sniffing the ground, then completed another circle. He seemed just as eager to get moving as John did.
Although she wanted to protest, to lie in the grass and make love to him for the afternoon, she knew that wasn’t possible or advisable. They needed to be on their way. The Gates ranch sounded dangerous, but John appeared to be ready to confront his past and she had to get back to the wagon train. Life was waiting for them. She couldn’t be late.
Chapter Eight
John’s gut tightened the closer they got to the Gates ranch. He’d worked there for over a year, a full season with their horses. It was a beautiful property, the inspiration for his own dream of owning a ranch. Yet it had ended badly and he had left like a thief in the night.
Or a murderer, if the posters were to be believed.
“I met Fuller Gates four years ago when I showed up at his ranch looking for work. I had a big damn chip on my shoulder, ready to take on the world and prove myself.” John laughed without humor. “I couldn’t keep a job, lost each one within a few months but it was never my fault. I couldn’t see what a jackass I was.”
“Young men are often full of themselves,” she said judiciously.
“Truer words were never spoken. Fuller is a good man, fair, but a hard man. He brooked no argument and he expected as much from others as he did from himself. I never worked so hard in my life.” The memory of the first month at the Gates ranch made his muscles ache. He was sore nearly every day, working until he collapsed each night, oftentimes too tired to eat.
“Why did you stay?”
How could he explain? Gates had given him the trust no one else had—to prove he had more worth than a dirt farmer’s son ever achieved. The rancher wasn’t affectionate, but his actions spoke louder than anything he could have said.
“Because he treated me fairly. He treated all of his ranch hands fairly no matter how long they’d been there. I grew up always missing the mark, never able to please my father. He expected perfection and if I didn’t deliver, I bore the brunt of his anger.” His relationship with his parents had never been what Frankie had with hers. The differences were like night and day. “Gates showed me I could work every day, make something of myself. I had worked hard all my life, from the time I toddled around my hands were in the dirt doing for my family. I never felt half as good and worked twice as hard to get it.”
Frankie was quiet for a minute and then she squeezed his arm. Damn dog also decided to lick it. “You found pride in what you did.”
“Yep.” Pride was a small word, but it encompassed a huge part of his life. She had put a name to the unknown feeling he had been chasing for three years. That which he’d lost when he left the Gates ranch. She understood, and for that, he was grateful.
“Why did you leave?”
Dark memories crowded his mind. His stomach turned. “I had to.”
“You can trust me to keep your confidence, John. I promise to never betray you or judge you.” Her softly spoken words caressed his ear, gave him the push he needed to confess something he’d never told another person.
“Gates has a daughter, Phoebe, who decided I was the man for her. I tried to discourage her, but she devised ways to be around me, trying to convince me to marry her.” He shook his head. “She was a young thing with a single-minded determination to make me her husband. She had trouble with right and wrong too. There was another ranch hand, a boy who barely had hair on his ba—chin, who was sweet on her. He thought I was stealing her away. All of it was stupid and ridiculous.”
“What happened?”
“The girl snuck into the bunkhouse one night, but I wasn’t there. I walked in and found her with the boy on my heels.
He thought I’d taken advantage of her and stabbed me in the back. She grabbed the knife and attacked the boy.” John had pulled the screaming girl off him, but not before she had stabbed him in the heart. “I sent her back to her father, grabbed my gear and rode out. Managed to find a horse doctor to stitch me up.”
“And the murder charge? Was that the boy, the ranch hand who stabbed you?” She pressed her cheek into his back, her body warmth keeping the chills from shadowy memories overtaking him.
“The first I heard of it was about a year ago. I was getting ready to leave Independence with Buck’s group. The sheriff there is a friend. He warned me about it, told me to keep clear of this part of Kansas for a few years.”
“But you went back. For me.” Her voice held wonder and a softness he had never heard from her.
“I would do anything for you, Frankie.” He meant every word of it, unable to explain why but just knowing it was true.
“What do you think will happen when you return?”
That was the question he didn’t know the answer to. He hoped Fuller would understand why he left, but it was unlikely. The girl had hidden her obsession from her father, and John had helped her by trying to ignore the ridiculous behavior. Phoebe’s behavior had gotten stranger as she grew older and that Fuller had to have seen. It was impossible Gates didn’t know what Phoebe had done, but John wasn’t about to give up the rest of his life, his dream and, hell, the woman currently holding him tight, for the girl’s infatuation.
“I hope Fuller listens to me. If he doesn’t, then I’ll arrange safe transportation for you back to your family and face the consequences of the charges. I’m tired of running from it all.” He had spent the last three years trying to forget the girl and the sight of the young man run through by her lunacy. “If I had told Fuller about what she was doing, the boy might still be alive.”
“It was not your fault. If she was as obsessed as you say she was, no one could have stopped her, not even her father.” She paused. “I am proud of you and your courage to do what is right. I wish I was half as brave.”
He scoffed at her self-deprecating attitude. “Woman, you endured being held prisoner and not only that, helped engineer your escape and your family’s new life. Courage is something you have in spades.”
“Do you think so?” She sounded unsure and small.
“Jesus, you don’t think much of yourself deep down, do you?” He could hardly believe it. She was such an amazing person.
“Do you?”
She turned the tables on him, throwing the question back into his face. He had to admit neither one of them had the confidence they should in their abilities. What a pair. It was obvious they didn’t see what others saw.
Time would only tell if they could get out of their own way and be happy with whom they were and what they had.
“What happened to your parents?” She changed the subject, which was a good thing in his opinion, but not a great subject to switch to.
“Dead. They died in a twister five years ago. I took what I could carry and left the farm. I haven’t been back since.” He wasn’t there when they died, but he didn’t tell her that. An argument with his dad had sent him into town to get stinking drunk. After he’d sobered up and found out they’d died, he didn’t know whether to be grateful he had been spared or guilty his own pride had driven him away to safety.
“I am sorry. Then you are alone in the world.” Her arms tightened around him a bit.
He patted her hand. “Not anymore, honey. I’ve got you.”
She didn’t answer right away. His heart galloped faster than Blue as he waited for her to say something, anything.
“And I have you.”
Satisfaction, and what he could only recognize as happiness, coursed through him. No matter what happened, he and Frankie were a team. This might be their last hour together, but they were indeed together. That was all that mattered.
When the first building came into view, the familiar double-story red barn, John wondered if he had just signed his own death warrant. A group of men spotted them, no doubt recognizing Blue, and within moments they were surrounded. The dog stood almost beneath horse’s legs, his tail still and his hackles raised.
Elias Banner, the fifty-year-old foreman who looked like a big, blond Viking, rode up on his huge palomino. Another hard man, this one wasn’t as fair as his boss, unfortunately. He eyed John with an ice-blue gaze, which then slid to the woman who rode pillion.
“You got a lot of balls riding back in here, Malloy. I could string you up right here and no one would question me.” Elias’ voice was rough from years of shouting at cowhands and smoking cigars.
“I need to talk to Fuller.” John held Elias’ gaze, not giving an inch to the bear of a man.
“About how you killed Timmy? You left enough blood behind to tell that tale already.”
John flinched at the reminder of the gruesome scene in the bunkhouse. “I didn’t kill him. He stabbed me, not the other way around.”
Elias snorted. “I knewed you’d come up with some cockamamie excuse. You left the boy dead on the floor and ran like a yellow-bellied coward. Now you come back years later and expect us all to believe you was attacked?”
John gripped the reins too tight and Blue shied a little. He relaxed his death grip and patted the mustang on the neck in apology. “I need to talk to Fuller.”
The men watched the play between John and Elias, but not one of them had a gun in their hands. That was a good sign. Maybe someone had seen or knew more than they let on about what happened the night Timmy Ogilvy died.
“Fine, but I’m gonna go get a rope ready just in case.” Elias nodded to the rest of the ranch hands and they moved aside.
It felt like an unfamiliar place, one he had never seen, surrounded by strangers. Even though some of the ranch hands were men he knew, they were unknown men looking at him as though he were a murderer. Damn. Someone had been telling tales, tall ones. Frankie’s warmth behind him combated the cold reception.
They rode toward the house, Blue picking his way across the yard. The mustang sensed his master’s uneasiness and the tension hanging in the air. Frankie inched closer to him until she had nearly climbed on his shoulders. The dog wiggled until Frankie let go of him and he walked guard beside the horse. The mutt was almost trampled several times by the horse’s hooves since it didn’t appear to want to move more than two inches from them.
The house waited, a huge monolithic structure built when Fuller and his late wife Mary expected a dozen children. Then, when Mary died after having Phoebe, the house sat nearly empty of life. Fuller devoted his life to the ranch, making it one of the most successful in his corner of the world. That left the vacant house and a lonely girl to try to find a way to get her father’s attention.
Fuller Gates stepped out on the porch. John would know him anywhere. The thick shock of black hair, the rangy walk, the long legs and the don’t-take-shit stance. John’s stomach clenched and his guilt over running hit him all over again.
He pulled Blue to a stop and dismounted, then helped Frankie down. She tucked her hand into his and squeezed. He walked toward the house, ready to face the man who was more a father to him than his own flesh and blood ever was. The dog stayed beside the mustang, their faithful animals backing them up. Of course, if he’d started to think of the dog as his, then he had gone a little crazy already. The flea-bitten mutt was mangy, but he was loyal as hell. John could learn something from the dog’s behavior.
When he left the Gates ranch, he was afraid he would destroy the man who had become like a father to him. Instead he ran from the only home he’d truly wanted to stay at. Now he had to face that decision, and the man. His gut was tighter than his jaw, but not by much.
“Malloy.” Fuller’s voice was icy cold. “Why are you here?”
“I needed to come back, to talk to you, to explain.” John swallowed the lump in his throat at the disappointment and anger in Fuller’s gaze.
“You killed Timmy and ran. What’s to explain?”
How to accuse a man’s daughter of killing a man, to tell him she was obsessed to the point of violence? How?
John opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of running boots preceded the front door slamming open. The dog whined. Phoebe, in all her beautiful mad glory, stood there. She was exquisite for a sixteen-year-old, even more than she’d been at thirteen, with lustrous black hair, porcelain skin and wide blue eyes, a perfect heart-shaped face and petite form.
How could he tell her father she killed a man when she was still so young?
“Dieu, she is only a child,” Frankie breathed.
“Johnny!” Phoebe clapped her hands together. “I knew you’d come back for me someday.” She started off the porch, but her father grabbed her arm, stopping her cold.
“You stay away from him, girl.”
“But Papa, he’s come back for me. Finally!” Phoebe’s eyes sparkled with a madness anyone could see. The sad fact was the girl was wrong in the head.
“No, he hasn’t. He’s got a lady with him, Phoebe. Can’t you see that?” Fuller turned his attention back to John. “And he’s leaving. Now.”
“I can’t leave until I talk to you.” John glanced at Phoebe. “Alone.”
“Them boys and Elias are liable to string you up if you stay put a minute longer.” Fuller gestured with his hand, which shook. “Get going.” He wanted John to leave. Badly. The question was, why? If John was guilty of murder, Fuller should want him brought to justice. Wouldn’t he?
Holy shit.
Guilt lingered behind his former boss’s eyes. Guilt because he had something to hide. Fuller Gates knew exactly who had killed Timmy Ogilvy. He didn’t want his child to take the blame for a murder, so he had let the world believe John was guilty. John wouldn’t judge his friend for what he’d done. If he had to lie to protect someone he loved, like Frankie, he would.
Yet John wouldn’t sacrifice his own life for a father’s lie. He had to make Fuller see that Phoebe needed more than untruths around her.
The Fortune Page 13
