"All right, Pa," Rand offered meekly. "I'm really sorry I worried you."
Shea nudged her pony closer just as Sam and Ty joined the group. Cam could tell by the expression in their faces that they were surprised to see her, but he didn't offer any explanations.
Instead he leveled his gaze on Sam Morran. "Are the boys all right?" Cam asked him. "Did you take good care of them?"
"They got up to where I was staying just before the storm blew in," Morran answered as if he didn't like being questioned. "We fed 'em, we watered 'em, and we gave 'em a place to sleep. I was bringing 'em back to Denver this morning."
Cam nodded, not quite satisfied. "Mrs. Waterston tells me you were at some sort of mining camp, is that right?"
Morran's eyes widened and his gaze flickered to Shea. "It's where she met the boy and me."
"And why did you go back there?" Cam asked.
When it looked like Morran didn't know what to answer, Ty spoke up. "Some of Pa's friends come and got him. You had business up there, didn't you, Pa? Something about the claims?"
Morran glanced at his son. "Yeah, something like that."
Cam wouldn't have minded questioning Sam Morran more closely, but gray clouds were beginning to crowd out the sun and the wind was picking up. Cam didn't want to take the chance of getting caught in another snowstorm.
"We'll talk, Morran, once we get back to Denver," he promised and turned toward home.
They all fell in behind him: Rand riding on his flank, Shea trailing after them, Ty and his father bringing up the rear. Cam should have been content to be bringing his son home safely. But his world had changed since he'd ridden out, and he didn't have any idea what to make of it.
* * *
It was just after dark when they turned up the lane to the farm. Shea was cold, saddle-sore, and tired all the way down to her bones. Yet for all her weariness, she was humming with tension, overwhelmed with remorse, afraid for the future in a way she hadn't been since Simon died. Fear sat like a weight on her chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to think beyond the terrible, life-altering mistake she'd made this morning.
Since the night she'd asked Cam about the man she'd shot, the two of them had shared a bond neither of them had expected to have with anyone. Shea saw things in him that no one else ever saw, and gradually he'd revealed the more closely held parts of himself to her.
In return for keeping his confidences, he'd opened his home to her, helped her establish her studio and start her business. He'd accepted her even when she'd told him about the child she'd given away, and held her close when everything she'd worked for had been reduced to chaos. The two of them had been good together as friends and confidantes.
She shivered, remembering just how good they'd been together as lovers in the smoky darkness of that mountain cabin. How each touch, each kiss had been imbued with overwhelming tenderness and deep communion. It was as if they'd joined on some level that was closer than skin to skin. As if their hearts had touched, as if their nerves had surged with the same impulses. As if they'd come together in some extraordinary way.
Then because she'd realized what being with Cam meant to her, she'd told him the last of her secrets.
Shea shivered again, this time with dread. How much had she lost by telling the truth? Certainly she'd lost Cam's trust, risked Lily's friendship, and maybe even forfeited contact with her child.
How could she make her way in the world if Cam refused to let her see her boy? How would she live without contact with her son, now that she'd finally found him?
As they rode up the drive toward the Gallimore farmhouse, its windows glowed with their usual warmth and welcome. Yet somehow Shea had never felt more alone, more separate from the people she'd come to care for and depend on here in Denver.
As Shea pulled up behind Dr. Farley's buggy, Emmet led Lily carefully out of the house.
She took one look at the weary riders and gave a shout of joy. "Rand!" she cried, running down the steps and into the lane. "Oh, Rand! You're safe!"
Rand jumped off Jasper's back and threw himself into Lily's arms. They came together with enough force to rattle their bones, but neither of them seemed to mind.
"Oh, Aunt Lily, I'm sorry!" Rand exclaimed, hugging her. "I'm so glad to be home!"
Lily ran her hands across his shoulders and down his back, as if she needed to confirm that he was solid and real and here with her. "Are you all right, child?"
"I didn't mean for you to worry—"
"Did you get caught in the blizzard?"
"—but when Ty said he was going up into the mountains—"
"It got so cold!"
"—I thought I'd better go with him."
"You were you dressed warmly enough, weren't you, Rand? You didn't get frostbite, did you? Can you wiggle your toes?"
"My toes are fine," he assured her. "Oh, Aunt Lily, I wish I hadn't worried you so much!"
Lily hugged him almost off his feet and burst into tears.
Watching the two of them together, Shea's own eyes teared and her heart broke all over again.
Just then, Cam nudged his horse up close to hers.
"She's his mother now," he whispered. "There's nothing to be gained by telling either of them what you told me this morning. It's here Rand belongs, here in the only home he's ever known."
The truth of his words tore into her, slicing so much deeper because what Cam said mattered to her. But neither the truth he'd spoken nor the pain he'd inflicted could keep Shea from longing for her son.
She wanted Rand and the life she'd missed and the family she'd never had. She yearned to be part of something as wondrous and enduring as what she saw between Rand and Lily, between Cam and her boy. She ached for that same closeness with her son. But what good would it do to claim her boy if he ended up hating her for depriving him of something so wonderful?
When Lily was finally done hugging her boy she tucked Rand tight beneath her arm and came to where Shea and the Morrans still sat their horses.
"I want to thank you for all you did to bring Rand home," she said. "I thank you Mr. Morran for seeing Rand was safe while he was with you. And Shea." Lily reached up and took Shea's hand. "What would I do without such a fine and faithful friend?"
Tears burned in Shea's throat and she dared not reply for fear she'd cry in front of Lily and Cam.
"Now," Lily began again, "won't all you folks come in and let me feed you supper? I've got good venison stew simmering, and it won't take me a minute to make some biscuits."
Morran spoke up first. "Much as we'd like to stay, Miss Gallimore, we need to get on back into Denver. Ty's got jobs he's been neglecting, and I got a few things of my own to take care of."
"I need to get back into town, as well," Shea murmured, knowing she couldn't help the Gallimores celebrate Rand's return. "I need to see how Owen's done without me."
As exhausted and as brittle as Shea felt, all she could think about was getting back to the studio, closing the door behind her, and crying until she'd spent the last of her tears. The life she'd always dreamed of was dissolving like sugar in tea, and there wasn't a thing in the world she could do to stop it.
Chapter 13
For more than a fortnight, Cam carried Shea's belief that Rand was her son around with him like a bag of lead shot. Some nights he found himself squinting across the supper table, wondering if he saw a hint of Shea in Rand's smile, and if the similarity in their coloring was heredity or happenstance. He'd even gone so far as to look up the laws on adoption and parents' rights, just to be sure Rand was his, all legal and proper.
Still, Shea's claim that the boy was her son chafed at him, spoiling his appetite, disrupting his sleep, and fouling his mood. He'd been unduly stern with Rand when he'd done poorly on a spelling test. He'd snapped at Lily when she'd asked if Owen's cough was better—and he hadn't been able to tell her, either.
He wasn't aware of anyone but Shea when he stopped at the studio to get Rand at the end of the day. He kep
t watching her, wondering if she'd spoken to his boy about being his mother. He wanted to make her promise she wouldn't do that, but Cam couldn't bring himself to ask her.
He considered forbidding his son to go visit at all, but that would require an explanation. And what could he say?
"I swear, Cammie!" Some of the exasperation in Lily's tone finally reached him, and he looked up from the dinner plate he'd been drying for what could have been either two or ten minutes. "I don't think you've heard a word I said."
Cam put the plate aside and picked up another. "I'm sorry, Lil. What did you want?"
"I was asking if you could take me into town tomorrow. Rand brought a note from Shea. It seems they've gotten behind with their hand-coloring again and need my help."
"She should be paying you," Cam murmured, faintly aggrieved on his sister's behalf.
"She is," Lily informed him with a raise of her eyebrows. "I'm thinking of using my earnings to buy a new hat. Mrs. Franklin has a lovely blue mohair bonnet in her window."
"Blue?" Cam echoed. Lily hadn't worn anything but black since their mother died.
"Of course we'll need to add a veil, but Mrs. Franklin said she thought she had one to match. She was going to tack it on this evening to see if I liked the effect."
"Blue," Cam repeated.
"I'm also having lunch with Emmet tomorrow. Is that all right?"
Cam blinked at her, feeling as if the world had shifted under his feet. "Why—why wouldn't it be all right? Where are you having lunch with him?"
"We're eating at Emmet's house between his morning office hours and afternoon calls. He stopped by and asked me when he heard I was going to be working at Shea's. He said it won't be anything fancy, but Mr. Wingate paid him in venison, and he needs someone to help him eat it up."
"Are Shea and Owen joining you for lunch?"
Lily lowered her gaze. "I'm not sure who Emmet invited."
Cam nodded, wondering if it was wise to let Shea and his sister spend time together. Now that Shea had told him about Rand, would she voice her claims to Lily? Was that why she'd asked his sister to come to the studio?
More than once he'd started to tell Lily what Shea claimed, and then he'd remember the odd mix of satisfaction and anguish in Shea's eyes as she'd watched Lily and Rand together when they'd come home from the mountains. Somehow he couldn't believe that anyone who so obviously cared for both of them would deliberately cause them pain.
But if Shea didn't intend to claim her son, why had she told him who she was? Or who she thought she was. What had made her think—
"Oh, Cammie, you're hopeless!" Lily interrupted, with a laugh. "Where on earth is your mind tonight?"
Cam glanced at her. "What did I miss?"
"I wanted to make sure what time we'd be leaving tomorrow."
He reached for a bouquet of silverware. "Seven-thirty," he answered, "just like always."
Once he'd seen Rand safely deposited at school and left Lily at Shea's studio the following morning, Cameron headed for the sheriff's office. Though he'd been distracted by tracking Rand and Ty into the mountains and by what Shea had claimed about his son, the discovery he'd made the night the studio was vandalized chafed at him.
When they'd been sweeping up, he'd managed to set that one particular shard of glass aside and smuggle it out of the studio. It lay now in the bottom drawer of his desk like an unexploded canister of grapeshot. Though the image on the plate was far from complete, he knew to the dregs of his soul that Wes Seaver had posed for that photograph.
Even when he'd pressed her, all Shea could tell him about the negatives was that the majority of the ones she'd lost had been exposed since she'd been in Colorado. Which meant Seaver had been holed up near Denver this summer. Cam was willing to bet he still was.
As Cam pushed his way into to the sheriff's office, Dan Cook looked up from his breakfast. "Well, good morning, Judge," Cook greeted him. "What brings you here so early? You want some coffee?"
Cam shook his head. "I was wondering if you'd let me look through your wanted posters."
"Sure," Cook agreed and pulled a two-inch-deep pile of papers out of the bottom drawer of his desk. "You thinking about taking up bounty hunting when your term as judge expires next summer?"
Cam braced a hip on the corner of Cook's desk and began leafing through the posters. "I've been thinking about giving up the law altogether."
It was the first time he'd actually spoken the words out loud.
The sheriff whistled in surprise. "To do what? Before you accepted the judgeship, you were one of the best trial attorneys this territory has ever seen."
"The law can wear on a man," Cam admitted on a sigh, thinking about the cases he'd heard, the judgments he'd made. And the hangings.
Cook rubbed his chin. "I know how that is."
"I just made an offer on the land adjoining ours," Cam went on, "and thought maybe I'd try my hand at farming."
"You got some good bottomland there where you are, and I hear they're experimenting up north with irrigation."
"You sound like a farmer, Dan."
"My pa farmed," the sheriff offered. "I suppose I could still plow a straight furrow if I set my mind to it."
Cam nodded absently and found what he was looking for halfway down the pile of posters.
"I haven't decided anything yet," he said, "and I certainly haven't said so much as a word to Lily. So keep my ambitions under your hat, will you, Dan?"
Sheriff Cook gave him a smile. "You can count on me."
"Thanks," he said, gesturing with the wanted poster. "You mind if I keep this?"
The sheriff shrugged. "Someone you know?"
Cam forced himself to laugh. "Maybe."
He tucked the poster in his pocket and headed for the door. Once he was outside, he clambered into the carriage and sat waiting for his knees to stop quivering. He pulled the poster out of his jacket and unfolded it carefully.
Though the drawing was crude, Cam didn't have any trouble recognizing the man. He remembered that long, spade jaw; the thick, fair hair; his carefully curled mustache. He didn't look as whipcord thin as he'd been eleven years ago, and new lines seemed to bracket his thin mouth. Cam supposed there were some who might consider this fellow handsome, but he'd always found something vaguely reptilian about his cold, unblinking stare.
The poster had been issued in Nebraska not quite a year ago and offered a five-thousand-dollar reward "for the arrest and conviction of Wes Seaver and the members of his outlaw gang." The small print at the bottom of the page detailed what Seaver was wanted for: three murders, eight bank robberies, two train holdups, and several instances of cattle rustling.
It was an impressive list. But then, Seaver had been given the best apprenticeship an outlaw could have, the same training as the James brothers and the Youngers. The kind Cam knew a good deal more about than he cared to admit, because they'd all ridden roughshod across Missouri and Kansas during the war with William Quantrill and "Bloody" Bill Anderson.
Heaving a sigh, Cameron tucked the poster away. He needed proof before he could go to Sheriff Cook with his suspicion that Wes Seaver and his gang had come to Colorado. He needed proof that they were behind the rash of lawlessness that had been sweeping across the territory since early summer. And in the next few days, he hoped he'd get it.
* * *
While Lily was off having her noon meal with Emmet Farley, Shea decided to run a few errands of her own.
"I'll be back in about an hour," she called through the door to the darkroom, then pulled on her coat and clattered down the stairs.
Shea wasn't used to being out of the studio in the middle of the day, and she was surprised to see how many buggies and drays clogged the streets. As she walked she saw fashionably dressed women scurrying from store to store. Several businessmen smiled at her as they brushed past. Cowboys sauntered along, their collars turned up around their ears. A monte dealer had picked a sunny spot at the corner and was attracting a crowd.
Since Shea's first order of business was to secure a bank draft, she set off for the Bank of Denver at the corner of Sixteenth and Holladay. It was an impressive stone building with an ornate corner entrance and three tall tiers of windows down each side. She climbed the steps and crossed the lobby to the tellers' grilles.
"I'd like a sixty-three-dollar bank draft made out to Anthony and Company," she told the clerk. She was finally money enough ahead to pay the last installment on her new portrait camera and order what she needed to repair her other equipment.
As she waited for the draft, she noticed Sam Morran step up to the teller's window just to her left. He looked better than he had in a very long time. His clothes and hair were clean. He was freshly shaved and, as near as Shea could tell, he was sober.
"I'd like change for this," he said and snapped a shiny, new double eagle down on the marble counter.
Now where on earth would Sam get a twenty-dollar gold piece? Shea found herself wondering. Where did a man whose son paid the rent get so much money?
As the teller counted out his coin, she noticed how Morran's gaze roved the interior of the bank, from the tastefully papered walls to the high, coved ceiling, and the mahogany depositors' tables. He seemed to take a particular interest in the row of brass-grilled tellers' cages, the cluster of desks behind them, and the vault at the rear of the bank.
Shea waited for Morran to take note of her so she could ask him to explain himself, but instead he scooped up his change and tipped his hat to the guard on his way out the door. By the time Shea finished up and got outside he was nowhere in sight.
She did notice that the sky was lowering, and it had gotten colder and windier while she'd been in the bank. The sun seemed muffled in layers of putty-colored clouds, and she figured they'd have snow before the day was over.
She turned up her collar around her ears and was just setting off toward Larimer Street when someone shouted her name.
Painted by the Sun Page 23
