The Lover
Page 25
Resolutely, she reached into her reticule, took out her pencil and paper, and began to list her debts. She would turn her thoughts to home, to returning to and keeping the only home she’d ever known, and she would banish all thoughts of Eagle Jack.
Hadn’t she spent her whole lifetime perfecting the art of banishing unwanted thoughts? She made out her list and totaled it, added in her mortgage, subtracted the sum from the amount on Mr. Patterson’s bank draft. What was left of her Molly winnings after she’d paid Eagle Jack back for the stake he’d loaned her, his advancing the men their salaries, and his own salary as trail boss had dented it, but she still had money left to live on.
Heaving a great sigh of relief, she put the paper aside and ate her breakfast. She would’ve predicted that she couldn’t eat a bite because the terrible emptiness in her called, not for food, but for Eagle Jack. Just the sight of him.
Or the scent of him. Or the sound or the touch of him.
She did eat, though, because she had spent a lifetime perfecting the art of pushing worries aside so she could eat and sleep to keep up her strength. Well, she intended to keep it up this time, too. She would survive.
At least now she knew what it was like to love someone.
At least now she had many, many good memories to warm her heart through the winter to come.
Once she’d finished eating, she paid for the meal and walked briskly to the bank. She was a business woman, she was a rancher and a cattle-woman, and she intended to build up her ranch.
She kept that her focus as she took care of all her business and walked down the wooden sidewalk, across the dusty street, and underneath the portico of the train station. Just beyond it, on the south side of Texas Street, two cowboys caught her eye. They looked familiar and her mind crazily jumped toward Eagle Jack, even while she knew he wasn’t one of them. It was Nat and Marvin, sitting their horses, idly talking as if they were waiting for someone or for something to happen.
She turned away, hoping they hadn’t noticed her. She simply didn’t have the heart to talk to anyone. She didn’t have the heart even to look at them because they made her think so sensually of the weeks just past. The weeks of riding by Eagle Jack’s side, laughing at his jokes, smiling at him, and soaking in the sunshine of his smiles that warmed her so.
Susanna sat down on an outside bench facing the tracks and tried to think about going home. About what it would be like when she drove up to Brushy Creek in a rented buggy.
But, instead, she thought about Eagle Jack. He had started on his adventurous, lone trip back to Texas. He was gone. He and Molly would be running races with every fast horse they came across. And Susanna wouldn’t be there.
Eagle Jack was gone.
She sat on the bench in a heap of misery until she heard the faraway whistle of her train. A cold thought hit her: she hadn’t yet bought a ticket. She could sit around here right at the depot and miss her train. So she forced herself to her feet, went inside for the ticket, collected her other bag, and walked back out to stand beside the tracks.
She wouldn’t sit down again. What if she sat down again and couldn’t get up? She felt as weak as a newborn kitten that suddenly found itself in a cold new world.
The train pulled in, blowing its whistle and puffing steam. It slowed and slowed some more, and the brakes squealed against the tracks. The car with the conductor on the steps stopped right in front of her.
He must have seen her distress in her face, or she must have been very pale and looking ill, because he insisted on helping her up the steps before the departing passengers could come down them. He came down to the ground and took her arm as if she were a very sick and frail woman, and then, with his loud, mellifluous voice filled with concern, asked everyone to please wait for the lady to board.
The passengers leaving this car were three men—from the East, judging by their dress—probably cattle buyers or agents, and they also must have thought she was ill. All of them looked at her sympathetically and one of them insisted on taking her bags and helping her down the aisle to an empty seat only halfway back in the car.
And then they were gone and her bags were stowed in the rack above her and the seat beside her was empty. She was sitting alone, looking out the window. Looking out at Abilene.
Abilene. The town that had been her goal for months and months, ever since she’d decided to make a trail drive.
Abilene. Where she’d just spent the hardest night she’d ever seen.
Finally, after what seemed an age, the conductor came aboard again and the train began to huff and puff, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Susanna’s heart began to beat in the same rhythm.
I will survive. I will survive.
Silently, she chanted the words that had been her litany since childhood. She had survived so many hard blows, she would survive the loss of Eagle Jack.
What was she talking about? She was loco. He’d never been hers to begin with.
A person couldn’t lose what she’d never had.
The tears she’d been holding back all night and all day rushed her then, spilling from her eyes in a flood. She dropped her face into her hands, fighting them and losing the battle.
A rustle of excitement swept through the car.
“Somebody’s trying to catch the train!”
“Conductor! Tell the engineer.”
“Yeah, tell him to slow it down. Give the man a chance!”
“Ooooh,” a woman screamed, “look at him go!”
Susanna lifted her head and looked out. The sight she saw stopped her tears that instant.
Eagle Jack, riding Molly, was racing alongside the train.
People began to open windows all over the car so they could yell encouragement.
“Go, go, you’re gaining ground!”
“You can do it, why that little horse can fly!”
He truly was gaining on the train.
Joy and fear warred in her heart. It was racketing out of her chest and she didn’t know what to do.
There was nothing she could do.
Eagle Jack was coming to her, but he could yet get killed, right before her eyes.
He passed her window and reached a spot even with the front of the car, then he stood up in the saddle.
Molly kept running. Susanna quit breathing.
She longed, she ached, to join in the chorus of voices calling for the train to slow but she’d lost her power of speech.
She leaned forward for a better view out the window ahead of her seat.
Molly held her speed, pacing the train, and the handle for climbing the steps was right at Eagle Jack’s hand. He grabbed it but he made no attempt to come in at the door.
Somehow, in the next instant, his big body was hurtling into the car through the window of the first seat. Its occupant, a quite small man, immediately leaped up and into the aisle to get out of his way.
Everybody in the car was screaming or exclaiming, yelling or shouting, except for Susanna. She sat with her hands still clasped to her tear-soaked face, too astounded to make a single sound.
Her heart was in her throat, pounding ninety miles a minute.
In an instant, Eagle Jack was on his feet in the aisle, brushing himself off. He looked up and met Susanna’s eyes.
He was grinning, the rascal was grinning at her as if he’d done nothing at all, much less something so dangerous he could have plunged to his death.
That grin filled her with such joy that her heart couldn’t contain it.
He started toward her with his light, swaggering walk unchanged by the rocking of the train, which was rapidly picking up speed. A minute more, and Molly could never have caught it.
When he reached Susanna’s seat, he sat down beside her as carelessly as if he’d been away for only a moment. He took off his hat, dusted it with one hand, and placed it in his lap.
Then he spoke as if they’d just been interrupted in the middle of a conversation.
“What I was wondering, Su
sanna,” he drawled, “was if I come to live at your place, would you make pie every day and even let me have a slice for breakfast?”
She melted.
“And what would you be doing at my place every morning?”
“Bein’ your husband,” he said. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot.”
“But, Eagle Jack, that’s commonly known as settling down. I thought you were afraid of that.”
“I am,” he said, with his very most charming grin, “but you’d be there all the time to keep me from bein’ too scared, wouldn’t you?”
Her heart swelled with love.
He reached over and pushed her hair back from her face and used his thumb to trace the trail of the tears rapidly drying on her cheek.
“I don’t care if we’re at Brushy Creek or where we are,” she said, through trembling lips, “all I want is for us to be together, Eagle Jack.”
He bent his head and she lifted her mouth to his. The other passengers cheered and cheered while they kissed. They kissed for a long, long time.
Susanna put one of her hands on the back of his neck and held him to her. She was never going to let him go.
They might just kiss all the way to Texas.
About the Author
GENELL DELLIN lives with her husband in Oklahoma. Since their son has grown up and gone away to be a Quarter Horse trainer, they share their place with only four-footed family members. The bossy cat named Smokey keeps Genell company while she writes and sometimes offers her advice.
Cherokee Warriors is Genell’s second Cherokee series for Avon Books inspired by family stories about her great-grandmother, who was born on the way to Indian Territory from Georgia.
The Captive is the third book of this new series, following The Loner and The Lover.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHEROKEE WARRIORS: THE LOVER. Copyright © 2002 by Genell Dellin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition March 2007 ISBN 9780061740718
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Other AVON ROMANCES
Copyright
About the Publisher