Maggie rubbed her hands together, trying to erase the lingering tingle. “I think we could both use a pot of tea.”
Colt brightened. “Do you want me to ask Daddy to make you some cowboy coffee?”
“Not right now, my love,” Maggie said, directing him away from the Arkansas Kid’s bloody corpse, thankful for Colt’s spunk and innocence.
Ella hurried around the corner of the cabin, cradling baby Vivien, and enveloped Colt in a hug. “How are you, sweetie?”
“I was only a little afraid.”
“Well, I was a lot afraid,” Ella said. But she was studying Maggie.
Maggie hugged the practical-minded woman, who didn’t blink an eye when Maggie had declared she was going to Boone’s aid. “I did exactly what you said.”
Ella looped her arm around Maggie’s back. “I wanted to kiss you when I saw you retrieve that derringer from under your skirt. I need to ask Ty to get me a sweet little gun.” She squeezed Maggie’s waist. “We Havens are tough as nails.”
Maggie had half a mind to whisk Colt back to the safety of St. Louis. But Ella, and countless women like her, were raising their families in the West, amid uncertainty and danger.
Would Colt thank her for taking him away from his family?
Staying meant she and Colt wouldn’t be alone in the world. They’d be surrounded by family who loved them. They’d be part of something larger by making a life among the Havens of Sweet Creek Ranch.
She glanced back at Boone, kneeling beside Jack. All rugged and untamed, he’d be as out of place in New York or San Francisco as uprooting and planting the Big Horn Mountains over the Mississippi River.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a neatly folded handkerchief, shook the square open, and wrapped the flower-trimmed hankie around Jack’s bleeding paw.
She halted.
Colt tugged on her hand. “What’s wrong, Mama?”
She’d been ecstatic over the frivolous thin slip of silk when she’d purchased it from W. Boyer Mercantile with money she had earned as a female bounty hunter. Had he carried it all this time as a memento of her? He was a man of few possessions, but he lavished care on what was his. Had he taken pains to keep her hankie neat and clean with the same focus he was administering on Jack and the same attention he gave to Lightning and his Peacemakers?
Brigetta’s pronouncement echoed with the strength of a cyclone. Your mother married a half dozen men and they all left her…Boone has been on the run his whole life. Your hesitation is only natural.
Boone wasn’t like the men her mother had married. No. He wouldn’t leave or desert her and Colt. Boone wasn’t the problem. Her fears were the culprit.
Colt tugged on her skirt. “Mama, are you hurt?”
“No, my love. But I do have something important to tell you. Do you like Wyoming?”
His face lit. “Wyoming is the funnest place in the whole world. Even funner than Tower Grove Park.”
“More fun,” she gently corrected, a welcome peace settling over her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Do you feel better for fussing over me?” Boone asked Maggie, wincing as she slid his shirt over the bandage swathing his injured arm.
A butterfly fluttered on the first warm current of spring behind her shoulder. She helped with the buttons and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. “If you don’t like it, Mr. Haven, don’t go getting yourself shot again.”
Boone smiled and pulled Maggie onto his lap with his good arm. “You can sass with the best, Mrs. Haven.”
Colt, Tucker, and Little Malcolm raced back and forth from the makeshift picnic table to a pretend rock and stick ranch. Jack and Millie were curled at Boone’s feet. The nick to Jack’s paw hadn’t required the bundling the women insisted on. But neither Jack nor he had refused the attention lavished on them. Ty, who had just arrived and announced Garrett was holding on, sat with Ella under the cottonwood, swaddling Viola and Vivien for sleep.
It was too late in the day to make the trip back to Sweet Creek Ranch. They’d agreed to make due at Garrett’s place tonight. Ty would escort the family home tomorrow. Seth, who was flirting openly with Brigetta while she steadfastly ignored his advances, was going to stay on at Garrett’s place and give Ox a hand with chores.
“Are you sure you don’t mind if I ride into Aurora tomorrow morning to check on Garrett and Wyatt and White Wolf?” Boone asked.
She relaxed against him. “I insist. Colt and Brigetta and I will get on fine.”
He saw many trips between Sweet Creek and Aurora in his near future. “I’m as bad as Jack, always needing to keep an eye on everyone.”
“That’s because you are a kind, caring man.”
Hope had been a stranger in his life for too many years to count. He longed to be a husband and father, to live a normal life, to have a wife believe the best about him. Happiness was within his grasp. He stroked her arm. “Just call me the Cowboy Sissy.”
Her lips curved with a smile. “You don’t have to worry. When you darken a room, even the furniture wants to run for safety.”
He would never forget the first time he’d laid eyes on her, stepping off the train in Laramie as though gracing the finest drawing rooms in New York and Paris, with her sleek, blond hair, aristocratic cheekbones, and tailored silks. He’d expected her to cringe when Jack had licked her face in greeting, but she had laughed in delight. And that quick he was smitten. “You never were afraid of me.”
“I was terrified of what I felt for you. And thrilled. I still am.” She gave him a smacking kiss. “When you are in Aurora you should see about renting a place for us and ask about taking that sheriff’s job.”
If he was Wyatt he’d be shouting “yeehaw!” “You’re not joshing? But what about your kindergarten teaching job?”
She stroked his nape. “I’ll write a letter of resignation. I’m not sure if that’s the proper term, but I will notify the school I am moving West to be with my husband. My acquaintances will think I’ve lost my mind, and not too long ago I would agree.” Her fingers twined in his hair. “But Brigetta talked sense into me.”
Boone had observed Ty and Ella sharing private interludes with envy. Boone hadn’t believed he’d ever know similar bliss, sharing the company of a wife who was both friend and confidante. “Remind me to give that woman a big kiss.”
“She’ll hate that.”
“That will be half the fun.”
Colt ran up to them, breathless. “Mama, Daddy, guess what?”
“What, Son?” Boone asked, ruffling his hair.
“Tucker wants to build a fort and he said Malcolm and I can be the soldiers and he’ll be the general of the cavalry.”
“Can I be a soldier?” Maggie asked.
Colt rolled his eyes. “You’re a girl.”
“Your mother can shoot a gun,” Boone said, wanting Colt to be as proud of his mother as he was. “And she is braver than many a man.”
Colt thought about it. “Okay. But you need a horse, Mama, if you’re going to be in the cavalry.”
Maggie saluted. “Yes, sir.” Then she tickled his belly. “Sir, can I have a hug, sir?”
Giggling, Colt hugged Maggie and Boone, then raced off, and he, and Tucker, and Little Malcolm galloped around the yard, riding imaginary horses.
Love glowed in Maggie’s beautiful eyes. “Colt and Tucker are suddenly best friends.”
“You know boys,” Boone said, fondly recalling the many nights of his youth spent roughhousing with his brothers. “Tucker and Little Malcolm think Colt is brave as General Custer on account of being held hostage at gunpoint.”
Maggie arched a brow. “Custer died.”
“Colt didn’t cry or cling to you afterward,” Boone explained. He could spend all day watching Colt. His son’s entrance into his life gave him new understanding of the love and hope, worries and burdens his Pa and Ma must have had for him and his brothers. And Boone had given them plenty of reasons to lose sleep. But they never stopped car
ing or withheld their love. Maggie had been both mother and father to Colt.
“He’s a fine boy. You are a wonderful mother. I’m going to work hard at being a good husband and father, but I can’t promise you I’ll be perfect.”
Maggie flapped a hand in a dismissive manner. “Perfect is overrated. I love him with all my heart and try to do the best I can. That’s all you can ask of yourself.”
“It doesn’t seem fair that I get to be the happiest man on Earth, while you had to do all the work.”
“Brigetta and Jack helped.”
“You’re too humble. And you probably don’t care that I can’t give you a big, fancy house or escort you to grand balls and banquets?”
“Frank Reed Jr. and Sr. cured me of seeking riches as a means of contentment.”
Was that jealousy making him want to shoot a hole in someone? “As long as I draw breath, you and Colt will never want for anything.”
“I do have one reservation.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Only one? I’d think you’d have a passel of doubts.”
She plucked at her calico bodice. “I’m not going to like dressing like a frontier woman.”
He relaxed. “Darling, you wear whatever makes you comfortable.”
She drew his hand to the holster hidden under her skirt. “The dress Ella made me does have one merit over my fashionable clothes. I was able to conceal the derringer Frank gave me under the yards of material.”
Her instincts for survival in the West would serve her well. He trailed his hand over her curved bottom, wishing they were alone, so he could peel off the simple frock. “I’m very fond of your snug city skirts. We’ll have to get you a more discreet gun holster.”
She cuffed his good shoulder. “Behave yourself, and I promise I will strap on the derringer the next time I join you in the hayloft.”
“Yeehaw,” Boone whispered in her ear, relishing the answering shiver he felt go through her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Later that night, the half-finished barn bathed in moonlight, Maggie scaled a ladder to a newly constructed hayloft smelling of pine boards. The Haven family would sleep better tonight thanks to White Wolf arriving an hour earlier with word Garrett was alive and Doc Craig was of the opinion he would live.
Maggie climbed another rung and smiled back at Boone. “This is crazy.”
“I promise no more haylofts after tonight,” he said, his calloused hand stroking her bare ankle. “You deserve feather mattresses and silk sheets. And I’m past the age to be sneaking off behind a haystack with a girl.”
She slipped her foot free, climbed to the wood platform, and laughed as he scrambled to catch up. A thrill spiraled through her at the prospect of the coming firestorm. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
He captured her and the stubble of his beard skimmed her neck. “You want a little danger in your life, don’t you?”
A delicious shiver tingled down her spine. “Every year on our anniversary we should spend the night in the hayloft at Sweet Creek Ranch, serenaded by horses nickering and chickens clucking, so we never forget how glorious the sweet-smelling hay feels on our naked bodies.”
His rumbling laugh was pure pleasure. “Wyatt got it right.”
Would her joy in this man find an end? “I like Wyatt.”
“That’s ‘cause you haven’t been around him long to know what a pain in the backside he can be,” Boone said with affection. “The notice Wyatt put in the Marriage Gazette said I was looking for an adventuresome bride. We are perfect for each other.”
She ran her hand over his black leather vest, recalled the magazine photograph—a dark menacing cowboy, standing over a longhorn, branding iron in hand—and the deep coil of attraction she’d felt. And the day she stepped off the train in Cheyenne and first laid eyes on him. Black eyed and black haired, with a dangerous mouth, and all rough edges. “You turned my world upside down, Boone Haven. In a good way. You gave me my precious Colt and the reward money paid for my education.”
His mouth curved with a chagrined smile. “You didn’t get to have your picture in the paper, saying how Lady Margaret Lily, Female Bounty Hunter, captured the Cowboy Assassin.”
She batted her lashes. “As I recall you were quite enraptured with Lady Lily.”
“Darling, you are asking for trouble, heating my blood this way.”
They’d met and married in a whirlwind. The attraction still burned bright as it had, but there was a difference. She brushed her lips over his. “I love you.”
His mouth moved gentle as a breeze over hers. “I promise to do all in my power to make you happy and to keep you and Colt safe.”
Marriage to an ex-gunslinger turned sheriff would always be accompanied by a measure of hazard. But living entailed risk. She could marry a safe, boring husband and he could die of illness or get run down in the street by a carriage.
Her eyes met his. “I know. I trust you. And I want us to have a life together for as long as we both live.”
“Maggie Haven, I love you so much it hurts.”
Joy flooding in, she tossed his Stetson off to the side of the bed of blankets and hugged him tight. He winced.
She bit her lip at the sight of the hole in his leather vest. “Your shoulder. Maybe we should wait until it heals to—”
“Wait? Are you crazy?
She wholeheartedly agreed. Life was too short to waste one moment on what ifs.
What if she had stayed in St. Louis?
What if she hadn’t come to Sweet Creek Ranch?
What if Colt never knew the good man that was his father?
But she’d taken a risk. She’d returned to the West. She’d reunited with Boone and rediscovered love.
Laughter bubbled up. “Show me what you’re made of, cowboy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Two months after packing up her apartment in St. Louis and renting a cozy house in Aurora, Maggie tied on her favorite velvet bonnet. The lace curtains danced lazily on the breeze wafting through the open windows. Jack barked with delight from the front porch. Collecting the wicker basket for her visit to Bailey’s Emporium to purchase fresh eggs, a bar of lavender soap, and a spool of black thread, she hurried outside in time to see Boone riding up on Lightning. Wyatt led Colt’s sturdy white pony by the halter.
Colt waved from his perch atop Snowball. “Daddy said I could ride all the way to Mr. Jenkins.”
Jack ran down the porch stairs and eagerly circled Lightning and Snowball.
Brigetta leaned forward in one of the high-backed rocking chairs. “Promise Nanny Bri you’ll only walk or trot your pony. No galloping for you and Snowball.”
Colt sighed, as though asked to sit still for a three-hour church sermon. “My cowboy hat fits good, Nanny. Galloping won’t make it fall off.”
Brigetta gave him a stern look. “I’m not worried about your hat, dumpling.”
“But, Nanny, you—”
“Don’t argue with Brigetta, Son,” Boone said, in his customary calm but firm tone. “We have to ride slow, so Jack can keep up.”
Colt brightened. “Do you want to go for a walk, Jack?”
Jack barked and wagged his tail.
Boone winked at Maggie. “Would you like to walk by the schoolhouse? Buck and Seth are putting in the windows.”
Always drawn by the brilliant havoc of a thunderstorm, a mere look from Boone filled her with a similar thrilling sensation. Sitting tall in the saddle, his black Stetson shadowing his sharp face, the sun flashing off his silver sheriff’s badge, he rivaled the wildest of deluges.
She smiled and, forsaking ladylike decorum, she hiked her slim skirt and rushed down the stairs. “Buck and Seth are miracle workers. They promised they’d finish with the school before the end of summer.” She patted Lightning’s nose. Jack brushed up against her. “I love you too, dog,” she said, ruffling his yellow fur.
Brigetta left the rocking chair behind and joined Maggie. “After we visit the school I’d like to
stop at the telegraph office.”
Maggie bit her lip. She and Boone kept reassuring Bri there was no need for her to move on, and Bri kept insisting she wouldn’t overstay her welcome and had been diligently searching the Marriage Gazette for a prospective husband. “You’re going to reply to the Nebraska storekeeper?”
Brigetta reached in her pocket and drew out a tattered slip of paper. “Ja, I will need your help translating my scribbling to—” her voice trailed off as Garrett hobbled toward them.
Bangs sliding across his forehead in rhythm to his halting gait, Garrett’s hollow cheeks and bruised eyes were proof of his harrowing struggle to survive the bullet blast. He tipped his hat in greeting. “Miss Brigetta, I was hoping you’d do me the honor of accompanying me on my first visit to the Rawhide.”
“You want me to go to a saloon?” Brigetta said, looking flustered and pretty. “You cowboys are all devils.”
“If you say so, ma’am.” Garrett shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to make do with Dolly and Ginger’s company.”
Crowned in all her princess warrior glory, Brigetta swooped in on Garrett and looped her arm around his elbow. “You need to exercise your leg. Not sit around drinking and carrying on with saloon hall girls.”
“I suppose we could go by Tyler’s Livery and check on my horse.”
Brigetta’s eyes softened. “That’s twice as far as you’ve gone. Will it be too much?”
Garrett flexed his leg. “I’ll manage,” he said, his voice strained.
Bri circled her arm around Garrett’s back. “Lean on me,”
An angel couldn’t beam more beatifically than Garrett. “If you insist.”
The pair hobbled off, Garrett’s teasing voice mingling with Brigetta’s spirited replies. The crinkled note to the Nebraska storekeeper went back into Brigetta’s pocket.
Maggie smiled. “Garrett is in for a challenge.”
“The Haven men aren’t easily discouraged,” Boone said, the leather saddle creaking under his weight as he dismounted.
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