by Edie Harris
“God, Moira, is that what this has been about?”
“I… I…”
So much anger in his face, his stance. His broad shoulders tensed, capable hands fisted at his sides, and hot color flagged his cheeks before disappearing beneath the ebony scruff of his beard. His voice, when it came, sounded as though stones scraped and rattled in the confines of his throat. “We’ve hardly talked about babies.”
Pressure, invisible and cruel, compressed her from all sides, and she caved in on herself. But only on the inside, where he couldn’t witness her crumbling. “I know.”
He huffed out a breath as he very obviously worked to calm himself. “But babies are why you’re upset.” It was a question, though not phrased as such.
“I feel like I’m failing you.” Her voice quavered. “There are s-so many things I have now, because of you, and I... I…” Oh, damn. Her eyes stung with tears, nose and throat thick with them, as she purged feelings she didn’t even know she carried within her. “I want to deserve you, Delaney.”
“Moira—”
“No.” She lifted a shaking hand to silence him. “I didn’t have your childhood. I was hungry all the time and barely educated, and when I grew too old to keep in the house, I had only three options—the docks, the mills, or the Church. You know which I chose.”
He said nothing, merely waited for her to continue, his broad chest lifting with agitated breath.
“And you know how it ended, too. You knew all of that, and you still wanted me.” The photograph in her pocket felt like an iron weight. “The day we married was the day I felt as though my life was finally what I had always wanted it to be—happy and safe and warm and full of love—but I kept remembering things, from before…before us. I couldn’t just start over with you. I still had all of that…that life that came before us.”
Even now, the memories pushed at the barriers in her mind, the walls she’d erected to keep the new and vastly improved Moira—Moira Crawford, wife of Sheriff Delaney Crawford, respected schoolteacher, and model citizen of Red Creek—protected from the taint of her past. “If you consider where I come from, and who I was, and what I was, and compare it with where and what and who I am now…there are gaps. Blank places where I’ve tried so hard to erase the ugliness from myself, and I…I was using you to scrub myself clean. You and our marriage, and I thought—” Her throat closed, caught fast in the fist of emotion. “I thought a baby would make it better. One more good thing to cancel out the bad…to prove I was worthy of this beautiful life we were making together.”
“Were?”
The quiet that fell between them following his question was thick and tense, and it seemed almost as though they were strangers once more, as they had been that September morning in the clearing. Only it was worse, because where the innate knowledge of him had lived inside her was now a charred husk of fear and doubt.
“I met a man today whose wife died, leaving him to raise their daughter alone, and I wondered what sort of man I’d be if I had to wear his boots.” He shook his head, as if barely able to comprehend. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could go on without you, Moira, not even for a kid. I just…don’t know.” Planting his hands on his hips, he studied the scuffed toes of his boots. “And I reckon that means I’m not daddy material. Not right now, anyway.”
“Not right now,” she repeated slowly. Emotion had shuddered in his every word, clawing at her heart as he unwittingly forced her to face the stark truth.
She had assumed. She had assumed this was what he wanted simply because it was what she wanted, and their desires were so often aligned.
Memories of the past couple of months, of how she’d held herself apart from him in some stupid, stoic effort to conquer the challenge her body had set before her, flooded her mind.
She had nearly broken them. For no reason at all. “Del. Oh, my God, Del.” Her hands lifted to cover her mouth as a single sob broke free.
He met her gaze, his own shadowed with regret, and took a step toward her before suddenly halting. “Do you hear that?”
Hoofbeats sounded in the distance, coming from the direction of town and moving quickly toward them. She followed Del through the kitchen and into the sun, just starting to dip toward the horizon. Shielding her eyes with the flat of her hand, she waited for the rider to come into focus.
Del didn’t wait. “That’ll be John.”
“With news from Denver?” If John and Marshal Hood had succeeded in convincing Lucia Matthews to sell her shares, there was a chance that Red Creek could survive the fires, regardless of whether the mine site burned to the ground.
“We can only hope.” Without warning, he lifted her onto the seat, unwrapping the reins from the brake to hand them to her. “I need you to take the wagon and head for town while I talk to John, honey. I’ll find you, I promise. And then”—he pinned her with an intense green gaze—“you and I are gonna finish this talk.”
The promise in his eyes stole her breath.
FOUR
By the time she’d parked the wagon behind the jailhouse and unhitched the horses, dusk had fallen, streaking the summer sky with soft grays and plums. The sun had dipped behind the mountains to the west, but to the east, cloud cover crept in to block any glimpse of early starlight.
Or maybe it was smoke. Moira halted on the boardwalk and stared down the road out of town. For all she knew, their house could be burning right this second.
Where was Delaney?
“Mrs. Crawford.”
She managed a smile before she turned, recognizing the deep baritone that carried echoes of the East. “What did I tell you the last time you visited, Alonzo?”
U.S. Marshal Alonzo Hood ducked his head with a grin, canyon-spanning shoulders lifting in a self-deprecating shrug. “Your husband doesn’t like the way I say your name. Moira.”
A pang wracked her chest even as she laughed at his teasing. “Well, my husband isn’t here right now, so do your worst. Though I warn you,” she said in her best schoolteacher voice, “I feel obliged to report all flirtation to your wife.”
Hood’s grin widened at the mention of his new wife as he straightened to his full six-foot-four-inch height. “That’s downright mean-spirited of you, Moira. And here I thought we were friends.” He crossed his massive arms over his equally massive chest, his expression turning somber. “She bid me to tell you that, if you can’t stay here in Red Creek, both you and Crawford are welcome at our home for as long as you need it.”
Throat tight, Moira nodded. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “It…the fires could miss our place entirely. We don’t know.” She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the house. A chilling glow lit up the quickly darkening sky above the tree line.
Where was her husband?
Hood cleared his throat, perhaps sensing that he’d lost her to worry. “I rode back with the deputy but wanted to talk to Crawford myself. Lucia Matthews sold.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed as she faced him again, relieved beyond measure. “To whom?”
“A man by the name of Townsend.” He dropped his arms, and Moira noted that he lacked his usual coat, wearing only a vest over his white shirt, and that his collar had been loosened. It was rare to see the ever-so-proper marshal in attire that was less than perfect. “He’s the hotelier who owns the Black Rose in Denver.”
The Black Rose was an astonishingly lovely hotel by any standards, and it was a showpiece in a wild mountain town like Denver City. Moira had been there only once, when she’d first met Hood, but the memory of the beautiful piece of architecture had stuck with her in the months since. “What does a hotelier want with a majority share in a small-town ore mine?”
Hood shook his head, but his eyes were trained on the road behind her. The road from which Delaney would—must—appear any second now. “I didn’t ask, and neither should you. Just be grateful he wanted what the widow was offering.”
“Did she…does he know there’s a good chance i
t’ll all burn?”
“I made sure she didn’t lie to him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Yes, that had been what Moira wanted to know. Desperation could make people do crazy things—she should know—and so could greed. The latter trait seemed to run strong in the Matthews family, and Moira was glad to learn that no one, not even a rich hotelier who was not from these parts, had gotten swindled in the process. “John rode up to the house as I was leaving. Del will know by now what happened.”
“Wonder what’s keeping him, then.”
Moira wanted to know the same thing. “Maybe…maybe he’s trying to put out some flames?” But that was crazy.
A fact Hood seemed to recognize. Irises so deep a brown as to be almost black stared back at her sympathetically. “You can’t fight something like this.”
Del had said he would find her—no, he’d promised he would, and he was a man who held himself accountable for his words and actions. He wouldn’t forgive her if she put herself in harm’s way trying to ascertain whether he really would keep his promise.
But she had left him more than an hour ago, and she hadn’t seen him ride down the main street into town, safe, sound, and unscathed from the wildfire that no doubt was currently knocking on their front door. She gazed worriedly down the road. “I-I have to go.”
“Moira, no.” Gone was the friendly man who enjoyed flirting with her and tormenting her husband. In his place stood a veritable mountain, giant and stony-faced, ready to do what he did best: protect people from themselves. “He’d want you to wait here.”
Her intentions must be plainly written on her face. “I owe him, Alonzo. He needs to know I’ll fight for him. For us.” Before he could argue, she darted toward the horse that was obviously his—a behemoth white-footed beast—and untethered it before swinging neatly up into the saddle, just as Del had taught her. Ignoring the marshal’s angry, worried shouts behind her, she spurred the horse down the road toward home, moving fast.
As she rode, she thought of the window boxes, the yellow front door, Del’s footsteps on the back porch. She thought of mornings in their bed, curled together beneath the quilt, luxuriating in the sunlight filtering through the window. Of how he would slide one rough palm from behind her knee up over the curve and dip of her hip and waist, and how chill bumps would form in the wake of his hand.
Of those pale green eyes, so bitingly cold the first time she had gazed into their stunning depths, yet so warm as they stared down at her with the side of her face pressed into the pillow.
His eyes had been so warm. So happy.
Long minutes later, minutes in which no rider had passed to halt and deter her from this mission, she reined the horse to a sharp stop at the rise in the road, one hundred yards or so from the house.
Or what had been the house.
It roared. That was her dazed thought as she slid from the saddle on shaky legs. She hadn’t expected the fire to be loud, but it was. Loud and angry and hungry.
She shivered as sweat beaded at her temples. The roof was a wash of blistering orange. Flames leapt through the rooms, devouring everything with dreadful abandon. Almost artfully framed in the open front door and shattered windows, the fire danced, as if taunting her.
Look, it said gleefully. Look how easy this was.
In the space of minutes, nature had taken something precious from her. And Delaney, wonderful, gruff, tender Delaney— A sob escaped her, the sound broken, empty.
If he’d been in the house when the fire took it, he wasn’t there now.
Nothing was there now.
Hood had been right—you couldn’t fight something like this, something beyond the power of man. Tears fell, strangely cool against cheeks that burned from the fire’s intense heat.
There was no stopping this monster, not unless the winds changed.
She hadn’t prayed in over a year, not since before Delaney, before coming to Colorado on the mad hope the West could heal her. She hadn’t prayed since before the night of her rape, when she’d still believed in God and his compassionate, omnipotent power. But, facing the flames bent on destroying all she had left to her—Red Creek—what other option did she have?
Slowly, feeling the weight of the past pressing down on her shoulders, Moira kneeled in the middle of the dirt road.
“God,” and for the first time in a long time, it was a plea and not a curse. Her hands folded in front of her, but her gaze never left the blaze. “I don’t feel right, asking you for something.” She watched a sneaky trail of flame begin to creep through the front door, as if it were alive, a snake in the grass. A shiver went down her spine. “I gave up on you around the time I thought you gave up on me. And honestly, I’m not ready to have you in my life again. I might be, someday, but that day is not today.”
She swallowed against a parched throat, barely able to hear herself over the violence in front of her. “I’m not praying for me. My house, my husband—” Her knuckles whitened, fingers clasped so tight they felt bruised. I don’t know if I could go on without you. “I’m not praying for what’s gone, only what remains. Just…let the winds change. Let them change, Lord.”
Her body began to shake, and she collapsed onto her heels, hands falling into her lap. But old habits died hard, and she crossed herself quickly, murmuring a hasty “amen” before letting the sobs take her.
Odd that she’d never thought to pray for a child. Never even considered doing so, and it put her earlier desperation in shameful perspective as nothing else had done. In this moment, she could see what truly mattered: the now, not the maybe. Her selfishness tore at her, until she hunched over with a pain that promised never to leave her.
Stillness settled around her, foreign and unnerving, and then….
The breeze shifted and grew, transforming into a steady wind that, when she lifted her head to stare at the wreckage of her life, whipped at the serpentine bit of fire creeping out the door and drove it back.
Away from her. Away from Red Creek.
A hand gripped her shoulder, heavy and strong, and she laid hers atop it. Her fingertips mapped the rough bumps of his knuckles as her head bent in silent relief. Tears, both joyous and devastated, coursed down her face. She didn’t need to turn to see him.
She simply knew he was with her. Alive, and with her. “Del.”
“Told you I’d find you, didn’t I?”
***
He’d made a mistake when he chose to check on the refugees in the clearing outside of town before going to Moira, but his head hadn’t been straight after learning what had held her apart from him the past few months.
A baby. She thought she needed to give him a baby in order for them to be happy.
Proud, idiotic, amazing woman.
She was all of those things and more, and when he had ridden up to the jailhouse and seen Marshal Hood tossing a saddle from God knows where onto the back of one of the horses he’d hitched to their wagon at the house, he’d known.
He rode hell-for-leather out of town, arriving just in time to see her sink to the ground. But as he had jumped from his horse to run to her, gather her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right, he had noticed her lips moving.
Praying. Moira had been praying.
Del knew his wife. Even with the problems of the past weeks, he understood her, inside and out, and for her to speak to a God he knew she didn’t believe in was frightening.
Turning to God meant she was on her last hope. He didn’t want to see her so desperately in need ever again. When he’d placed his hand on her shoulder, he had felt the shudder of relief that wracked her, and he had understood: She thought he had been trapped in the blaze.
She’d believed herself utterly alone.
After helping her to her feet, Del had boosted her up onto his own horse and settled into place behind her, grabbing the reins of her mount in one hand. They’d ridden back to Red Creek in silence, the warm press of her body curving into his soothing some of the terr
or that had gripped him when he realized she’d returned to their burning house.
Hood had taken one look at their faces and held out his hand. “I’ll take care of the horses.”
Del hadn’t questioned it.
Now he stood facing Moira inside the jail, the doors bolted, the windows shuttered for the night. The lamp on his desk lit the room with a soft glow, casting shadows through the bars of the empty cells. “You’ve got a bad habit of running into danger,” he cut into the silence, unsure of what else to say because all he wanted to do was tell her he loved her, again and again. But he knew that wasn’t the answer. Not yet.
Fatigue etched new lines in her sweet face. “I’m working to break myself of it.” Wide blue eyes, red-rimmed from either the smoke or tears or both, lifted to his. “Del?” Her husky, lilting voice broke as she whispered his name.
He reached out and took her hand, leading her to a cot in one of the cells. Together, they sat, and he laced his fingers through her delicate ones. “You got me all tangled up here, Moira. I didn’t know you wanted children so fast. I didn’t know you were worried there wouldn’t be any children.” The idea of actually having babies with her was so much more complicated than the idea of making them, and it would take more than a minute in a jail cell to sort through the strands that knotted around his heart at the concept of fatherhood.
Though he’d grown up in comfort, the only child of a doting mother, his relationship with his own father had been strained at best. They hadn’t even been on speaking terms when he passed, and news of his death had hit Del hard. He cleared his throat, voice made gruff by emotion. “We don’t talk about the past much, do we?”
She leaned into him, ever so slightly, her arm warm against his. “No.” But he heard her unspoken, Perhaps it’s better that way. Her past had driven her to pull away from him in recent months, and his past…well, she knew him. He’d been a killer-for-hire when they had met, hunting down rogue bands of violent Cheyenne dog soldiers and struggling to ignore the rumors of Confederate treason nipping at his heels.
