Charity (Brides of the Rio Grande Book 4)

by Peggy McKenzie

  Miles shook his head. “No. He didn’t. It might have been better for all of us if he had, but he didn’t go after them. Instead, he buried my ma and sister and then he drank himself to death.”

  “He did what” Charity couldn’t believe her ears.

  “He packed me up and sent me to live with his sister, my Aunt Eugenia, and her family in New Orleans. He put me on that train to Louisiana and I never saw him again.”

  “If you never saw him again, then how do you know that he…”

  “Drank himself to death? I heard my aunt and uncle talking plenty of times when they didn’t know I was listening. My pa quit the Texas Rangers, holed up in a shack he built on our burned out property next to my ma and sister’s graves, and he drank himself to death. I still haven’t been to see his grave.”

  “Oh, Miles. I’m so sorry.” Charity was devastated for the man she loved and for the boy that he had been when tragedy struck, but she was still in the dark about why he wouldn’t love her.

  She sat up and looked down at him. “I truly am sorry that such a horrible thing happened to you and your family. I know what it’s like to be a kid without a family, but I don’t know what it’s like to lose that family. I was too young to remember who my family was so I didn’t get to miss them like you you did. Like you do.”

  He wouldn’t look at her so she grabbed his chin and pulled his face toward her. “But Miles, what does your family’s tragedy have to do with me? I still don’t understand why you can’t love me.” She persisted because she had to know.

  “Charity, I just explained it all to you.” He jumped up off the bed and paced the floor beside it. “Don’t you get it? I can’t love you because something bad could happen to you. To our family. Don’t you see? I’m a lawman and I won’t put my family at risk like my father did. Period.”

  Charity stood and went nose-to-nose with him. “So, are you telling me, that you don’t love me because you think I’m gonna get hurt?” She yelled at him.

  “I’m telling you that I can’t love you because you might get hurt.” He yelled back.

  Charity’s mind was a storm of confusion and contradictions as she tried to wrap her brain around what Miles was telling her. “You can’t love me…because I might get hurt? So, if you did love me, you wouldn’t?”

  “That’s right. I can admit that I do have feelings for you, Charity, but I can’t give in to them. Don’t you understand?” He yelled.

  “No, I don’t understand. You say you can’t love me because you are worried about me getting hurt, but what about your feelings for Selina?” she screamed back at him. “I saw her coming out of your room in her nightgown last night. Aren’t you worried about her getting hurt?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve never slept with Selina. Hell, I was out all night hunting for Willie. I wasn’t even home last night. I didn’t get back to the Hanovers until this morning after you left.” He hollered back. “And besides, I’ve told Selina many times I’m not interested in marrying her.”

  “Then, what the hell was she doing there?”

  “How the hell do I know?”

  “Then if you don’t love Selina, and you say you have feelings for me, why in the hell can’t you just love me?”

  She watched him rake his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I just told you, Charity. I can’t love you because my job makes it too dangerous to have a family.”

  She suddenly understood the man’s reasons and they were just plain stupid. She was having none of it. “You are a coward, Miles Grayson, and a fool, if you think I’m going to allow you to cheat me out of the life I want because you are afraid. Do you hear me?” She screamed at him.

  “Charity, you don’t understand what you are asking me to do?”

  “The hell I don’t. I know exactly what I’m asking you to do. I’m asking you to love me, you idiot.” she gritted her teeth and pushed him backwards toward the bed.

  “But I can’t protect you, don’t you get it?” He gritted back at her.

  “No, you don’t get it. I don’t want your protection. I want your love.” She pushed him again and the back of his knees bumped against the bed. He fell backwards across the bed. She crawled on top of him and straddled his body, pinning him to the mattress. “And I want you to do it now.”

  Miles stared up at the green-eyed siren with the billowing waves of red hair hovering above him. “I want to, Charity. I swear to God I want to, but I can’t take that risk. Don’t you understand what you are asking me to do?”

  “Damn straight I do. I’m asking you to love me, Miles. I’m not a regular woman, don’t you know that by now?. I’m hard as nails and I’m tough as leather, and I can shoot the eye out of a toad at a hundred paces. I can ride better than most men, shoot better than most men, and I even look pretty damn good in a dress if I do say so myself. I’m the whole box of crackers. A one-of-a-kind. But what I can’t do is make it through the rest of my life without you by my side. If I knew that I had your love, if I had one night in your arms, I wouldn’t give a damn if I died tomorrow. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to live my life if I have to live without you.”

  Miles stared at the woman sitting on top of him and really looked at her. “Charity, are you sure you know what you’re saying?” He was so tempted to give in, but was he being fair to her by putting her at risk? Should he be strong enough for the both of them and say no?

  “I know exactly what I’m saying. I can take care of myself. I’m not Selina Watson.” She leaned down and kissed him. He froze beneath her lips for a half second to give himself time to talk himself out of this. But his heart told his brain to shut the hell up.

  “Just kiss me, you big dumb handsome cowboy.” She shoved her tongue between his lips and plundered the inside of his mouth. The voice inside his head said turn away, but his heart begged him to stay and fight for this extraordinary woman who loved him without conditions. He knew that kind of love didn’t come along but once in a lifetime, but did he have the courage to claim her? He wanted to. With all his heart and soul, he wanted to.

  “Stop thinking, Miles.” She sucked on his tongue and he let out a groan and surrendered to his red-headed she-devil with the bewitching green eyes.

  He leaned into her kiss and kissed her back and then he rolled her over gently to keep from hurting her injured shoulder and let his hands roam unchecked.

  She pulled his shirt out of his britches and threw it on the floor. Her hands roamed freely over his chest. His back. His stomach. His breath hitched when her fingers pulled on his waist band.

  “Well, well, well, what have we here? Did I get here just in time to enjoy a little threesome?” Miles whipped around to see Selina Watson standing at the bedroom door pointing a gun at them.

  “Or a foursome?” Willie stepped up behind Selina and grinned. Miles jumped off the bed, grabbed his shirt off the floor, and threw the bedcovers over Charity’s almost naked body. “What the hell?” He stood trying to shove his arms into his shirt sleeve and make sense of what was happening.

  Willie Faulkner clapped Selina on the shoulder. “Good work, sis. You got the drop on them.”

  Miles stood frozen his arm halfway in his shirt sleeve. “Did you say, Sis?”

  24

  Charity pulled the blanket over her semi-nude body until she could get her shirt pulled back on. She needed some time to figure out what the hell was going on and what to do about it. Selina and the man she knew as Ben Carter were sister and brother? How the hell had that happened?

  Selina stepped into the room and pointed the gun at Miles. “You can just step away from those guns of yours, sheriff.” She motioned for him to move away from the bed and the guns lying on top of the table next to the bed.

  Miles did as she asked, his hand up in front of him. “What is happening here?”

  She laughed. “What is happening here is that you and your little dolly aren’t supposed to be here.” Then Selena turned the gun on Charity. “Especially
you. I thought you were long gone, but it looks like our sheriff here caught up with you after all.”

  She turned back to Miles,” You should have stayed in town like I told you too. You missed all the excitement.”

  “What excitement?” Miles cut a look to her and motioned for her to stay put.

  “I set fire to the Hanover mansion this morning after Miles left to chase after you,” Selina’s mirthless grin wasn’t near as troubling as her words.

  Charity sat upright and winced at the pain in her shoulder. “You set fire to the Aggie and Hiram’s house? Why the hell would you do that?” Anger and fear flooded Charity’s gut as she thought about Aggie and Hiram being burned inside their own home.

  “To get rid of the rest of the witnesses, of course. Josh was upstairs and the old couple downstairs. If you had just stayed put, I’d have taken care of everything, but no. You had to disobey Miles’ orders of house arrest. You are a trouble maker, Charity, and a thorn in my side.”

  “Yeah, well you are a thorn in mine too so that makes us even, doesn’t it?” Charity fired back.

  Miles turned and gave her a ‘will you please shut up’ look. She rolled her eyes and looked away.

  Selina laughed. “Go ahead, talk big for all the good it will do you.”

  Miles spoke up. “Charity said she saw you coming out of my bedroom late last night. What were you doing in there? You went to get those wanted posters you thought might be in there, didn’t you. The ones that could identify your brothers.”

  “Yeah, but only Carl’s poster was in there. I figured you didn’t have the other one, so I wasn’t worried. But then you told me this morning when you went after her that you knew who Willie was and then I knew it was just a matter of time before you found out about me too. Now, what kind of big sister would I be if I let my little brothers hang?”

  Charity’s mind was spinning with disbelief. “You and your brother were guests of Aggie and Hiram. They were kind to you. They offered their hospitality and they opened their home up to both of you. They welcomed you to stay in their home when you were attacked and Miles put you under house arrest with the rest of us because Carl somehow had gotten word to Willie that you and Miles were…wait a minute. “You weren’t attacked were you?”

  Selina just grinned at her. “You are a lot smarter than I gave you credit for, Red. “No, I was not attacked. I knew when I heard that Miles was moving in to the Hanover mansion just down the hall from your bedroom, I had to think of something quick to keep an eye on you two. You see, I’ve seen the way he looks at you since you come back to town and I knew if I didn’t do something to keep you two apart, I’d lose my chance at respectability, so I cut myself with my own bread knife. I know it was a desperate move, but it was something I felt I had to do.”

  “Respectability? You already had respectability. I don’t understand how this is all connected,” Miles growled.

  “It’s simple. I came to live with my father’s sister, Auntie Watson last year, but you know that much, don’t you Miles? Maybe what you don’t know is that my Papa had to raise us three kids on his own. Momma died when Carl was just a baby and Willie was five and I was ten. It was hard and there was never enough money from farmin’ so one day in desperation, Papa was sittin’ on a train when it was robbed. Took his last dollar that robber did, but it made Papa realize that there was another way to make a lot of money. And fast. Robbin’ trains. And so he gave up farmin’ and started robbin’ folks and it paid off for all of us Faulkners. Taught us a trade.”

  “A trade? Robbin’ innocent, hard-working people is not a trade.” Miles dropped his hand and Selina raised her gun. He put them back up so she could see them. “Does your aunt know about this? She doesn’t seem the kind of woman who would—”

  “Condone this sort of behavior? No, she doesn’t know a thing. She thinks our papa is dead and Willie and Carl are out west somewhere making a fortune in gold mining. Hell, Willie came in to the bakery two or three times and talked to me. Auntie Watson thought he was a nice young man by the name of Ben Carter. Even suggested we might court if things didn’t work out between me and you. Can you imagine that? Courting my own brother? Ridiculous.”

  Selina turned back to her and grinned. “But now you and my brother, that was something to see. And the way you played Willie to make our sheriff here jealous was a smart move, I have to give you that one. I under estimated you, Red. Everyone in town said you were touched in the head. Maybe even a little bit crazy. And my mistake was to believe them. But you aren’t any of those things, are you? That fancy lady school you went to was worth your money I’d say. And as hard as I tried to keep you two apart, it is plain to see you and Miles have finally connected.

  Willie grinned at Charity through the doorway. “Hey, Sis. I’d like to take a ride on that dolly myself if you think I’d have time before we leave here.”

  Charity shot a look to Willie and he sent her a lascivious grin that made her skin crawl.

  “Just try it, Amigo and I’ll make you wish you had never met me.” Charity assured him.

  “That’s big talk from a woman,” he taunted her. “I don’t know what you think you can do to stop me.”

  “Oh shut up, Willie. We ain’t got time for that nonsense. Do your spoonin’ on your own time. Right now, we gotta get ready to ride. Oh, by the way, sheriff, I let Carl out of his jail cell to stretch his legs a bit. He said he was getting’ a bit cramped”

  Charity could see Miles body tense. “What happened to my deputy?”

  “I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re askin’. Nah, I didn’t have to. It seems Eli is a sucker for fresh baked bread. He let me in and I hit him over the head with my wooden cutting board. He’s probably awake by now and has sounded the alarm. I figure the posse will be on our trail before long. That’s why we gotta ride. Carl’s out in the barn switching our horses for yours and our unlucky compadres over there. We need fresh ones to outrun the law.

  “Now, the question is what am I gonna do with you two?” Selina swung the gun she was holding on them back and forth between the two of them. Charity’s heart kicked up as adrenaline poured through her body.”

  “Come on, Selina. Let me have a go at her. I won’t ask for anything else all year. At least, not until Christmas. I promise. Hell, it ain’t like she’s gonna protest. She’s already kissed me once on the street in broad daylight,” Willie begged his sister for permission. “It won’t take long, I promise.”

  Selina cut a look at her and then back to Miles. “Might be just desserts for her stealin’ my man, huh sheriff?”

  “I never was your man, Selina. You know that. I told you more than once that I’m not the marryin’ kind.”

  “I ain’t convinced of that. If I had had more time, I woulda convinced you that marryin’ me was the smartest thing you coulda done. But it’s too late now.”

  She waved her gun at Miles. “You are gonna be our hostage. I’m gonna leave a note here that explains how this is goin’ down. If we see hide or hair of one in star following us, we are gonna shoot you and leave your body for the buzzards.”

  Miles cut a look to Charity. She shook her head at him. “Don’t worry about me, Miles. I can take care of myself.”

  “Sure you can, little dolly. Sure you can.” Selina smirked. “Get going Miles. Daylight’s a burnin’ and the posse won’t be far behind.”

  “What about her?” Miles nodded toward her. “She’s injured and she can’t ride. No sense in taking an innocent life just because you can.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first life I’ve taken that was without reason. Probably won’t be the last one. Now, you get movin’ and quit worryin’ about her. It’s startin’ to piss me off.”

  “I’m not going to let you hurt her, Selina. I’ll die before I let you kill her in cold blood.”

  “I always said she’d be the death of you. Guess I was right.” Selina cocked the hammer back on her pistol. “Now, I’m done talkin’ about this. Get movin’ or I�
�ll plug her right here in front of you.”

  Miles sent Charity a look that said ‘I told you so’ but Charity knew she had an ace in the hole Miles had forgotten about.

  “Go on, Miles. I’ll be alright. I promise.” She tried to send him a look that would tell him what she planned to do, but she could tell he didn’t get her message. He was too worried about her to think straight. “Just take care of yourself, baby. Stay alive. For me.” She begged.

  Selina stood back and waved Miles out of the bedroom with her gun, “I think I’m gonna be sick. Now get movin’ before I change my mind about takin’ you with me.” Miles stepped out of the bedroom past where Willie stood and watched. “Willie, do it quick. You’ve got five minutes and then me and Carl are ridin’ outta here. Got it?” Selena’s voice carried through the doorway.

  “I won’t even need that long.” Willie said to his sister.

  “And when you’ve had your fun, put a bullet in her brain.”

  “I’ll be happy to.” Willie walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He still looked like the man she knew as Ben Carter, but he had the soul of the devil. “Don’t worry, Charity, I’ll be quick. You’ll never feel a thing.”

  Charity watched him take off his gun belt and unbutton his pants. “Yeah, I heard that from the girls over at The Holy Moses. They said they never felt a thing either.” She goaded him.

  His face contorted in rage at her ridicule of his masculinity. “You bitch. I’ll make you wish I put a bullet in your brain before I screwed them out of your head.” He yanked off his shirt and pulled his pants down around his ankles. He grabbed himself and flipped it at her. “Yeah, ain’t so cocky now are you? You’re gonna feel somethin’ alright. Now get ready and don’t fight me. I ain’t got the time for foreplay.” He shuffled his pant-bound legs toward the bed.