High Mountain Drifter

by Jillian Hart

  "Me, too." He'd seen enough of men like Craddock and Klemp, and it wore on a man's soul. He swept off his hat and hung it on the nearby coat tree. "Glad the ordeal is over for your family."

  "Things are looking up. And I hired a new worker today, so I am free to come have supper with the girls." She lit up, looking real happy about that. "Louisa seemed capable and eager to work, so I thought she may as well jump right into things and see if we're a good fit for her. Which works well, since I get to spend time with my nieces."

  Must be nice, he thought, reading the love in her eyes. Nice to have family, nice to belong. It had been his only wish as a kid. Then it came true in the worst way, and he'd been done with people after that. Just accepted that the better things in life, like love and family, weren't meant for him. He set the crate down on a spindly table and unbuttoned his coat.

  "Zane. You came." Verbena whirled into sight with welcome in her sapphire blue eyes. Very glad to see him.

  That felt pretty nice. His chest filled, expanded. Not that he was going to allow himself to feel anything--not one thing--but it was good to be here. To be with her again. He shrugged out of his coat. "You were worried I'd break my word?"

  "No." She smiled right back at him. "I was afraid you'd feel outnumbered with all of us here. Especially when Aumaleigh came by and we asked her to stay."

  "Six to one. I've been outnumbered worse than that before." He hung up his coat and retrieved the crate from the table. "I was tracking this gang over near Great Falls. Ten outlaws, every one of them wanted men."

  "Yes, and we're not armed and dangerous." Her soft, Cupid's bow mouth curved upward.

  He could not forget what kissing her had been like or how it made him whole. The part of him that had always been empty inside and lost had come to life.

  "I don't know about that," he hedged, almost laughing. He tugged at his collar again, which was beginning to feel a little bit like a noose. "You're more dangerous than you think. Look at me, I'm sweating."

  "Then you need to come in and relax. What did you bring us?"

  "Sarsaparilla." He tracked movement at the end of the hall. A few of the sisters had come to check on him and perhaps witness his lame attempts at being a civilized man. It would likely amuse anyone. "I didn't know if you ladies drank wine, so I didn't want to pick up a bottle. And it's winter so there are no flowers to bring. It seemed a good choice at the time."

  "I love sarsaparilla." Verbena touched his forearm, and her touch soothed. Comforted. "Magnolia's had it too. It's wonderful and very thoughtful of you. Thank you. And look, you brought more than enough for everyone."

  "Wanted it to last a while." He felt less awkward, but there was no getting around the fact that he towered over everyone by a good foot. He had little experience with domestic scenes. "Want this in the kitchen?"

  "Yes, come with me." Verbena held on to his sleeve, her sweet presence reassuring, her touch undoing his defenses, unraveling his heart.

  "Welcome," one of the sisters said.

  "So glad you came," said one of the blond ones.

  "We hear you like chocolate," the other blond one chimed in. "So we made chocolate cake for dessert."

  "You can set that right down here." The strawberry-blond one no longer looked at him with a hint of fear as she patted the edge of the counter. "It will be such a treat with supper. Thank you."

  "It was nice of you to have me." He eased down the crate, careful not to rattle the bottles. "It smells delicious in here."

  "That's the idea." Verbena went up on tiptoe to grab a handful of bottles from the crate. "I'll just put these on the table."

  "Where are you off to tomorrow?" the dark-haired sister asked politely, turning from the stove with a pan of steaming hot mashed potatoes and melting butter in hand.

  "South. I'll be tracking two outlaws who robbed a stagecoach and murdered everyone in it." He winced, realizing the women around him had gasped or had gone pale. He grimaced. "Sorry, perhaps I should have left that last bit out."

  "It's strengthening to know men like that won't be on the loose for long." Aumaleigh tapped past him to search through the cabinets. "Where would we be without men like you, Zane?"

  "Exactly." The blond bouncy sister grabbed the mashed potato bowl as soon as it was full and walked away with it. "Poor Burton and the guys would still be out there freezing in this weather. They must be happy you saved them from having to hang with us."

  "Yeah, we're pretty boring," the other blond sister quipped, transferring delicious looking biscuits from a baking sheet into a cloth lined basket.

  "I'm not boring," the blond one joked from the adjoining room.

  "Well, compared to roaming the West, tracking down wanted men and bringing them to justice, we are boring." Rose plopped the last biscuit into the bowl (they looked delicious) and covered it neatly with a cloth. "Zane, how did you get to be a bounty hunter?"

  "Yes, did you used to be a lawman?" Aumaleigh asked, sweeping up a bowl of green beans from the counter. "Rumor says you used to work with Milo."

  "I was a deputy for a bit," he hedged. The defenses went up, the old ones around his chest. Nothing hurt like the past. He squared his shoulders, hauling out a few bottles from the crate. "Down in Wyoming."

  "Oh, we went through Wyoming Territory on the stagecoach." Verbena poked her head in, glancing around to see if there was anything she could do. "It was beautiful country."

  "It was," he confirmed, muscles bunching along his rigid, set jaw. "Course it was less settled back then."

  "It doesn't seem very well settled now." Iris smiled, grabbing a platter heaped with perfectly crisp fried chicken pieces.

  "Montana Territory doesn't seem very well settled to us," Magnolia commented. "Then again, we're used to Chicago."

  "I met Milo in Pine Bluff, Wyoming." He stalked into the dining room, set the bottles on the corner of the table. The luxurious room didn't surprise him any.

  "That had to be quite a while ago." Aumaleigh sounded curious as she eased into the chair at the foot of the table. "You had to be more than just colleagues."

  "Yes, Milo seems to think so highly of you," Verbena commented, realizing she didn't know how close Zane and the sheriff used to be.

  "That's how I think of him. We were deputies together and friends." He stood there, shrinking the room, dominating it and unaware he was doing so. His hair was drawn back with a leather band into a tail, nearly black in the lamplight. He'd shaven, emphasizing the smooth, rocky planes of his face, the strength of his jaw, the small cleft in the hard line of his chin. "That was when his wife was alive."

  "What was she like?" Iris asked, pulling out her chair. "What? You don't all need to look at me like that."

  "It's no secret you don't like the sheriff." Magnolia dropped into her chair.

  "Yeah, you're still holding a grudge," Rose agreed, taking her seat.

  "Well, maybe I'm curious what kind of woman would marry a man like that." Iris seemed a tad irritated--Iris, who was always so calm and gentle. She frowned as if they'd insulted her. "I was just curious. No need to answer, Mr. Reed."

  "I don't mind." He twisted off the metal cap on the bottle with his bare hand, as if it were no difficulty at all and handed it to Magnolia to pass down the table. "Milo's wife was the outgoing type."

  "Interesting." Aumaleigh leaned forward, interested, clearly amused. "He's such a quiet type. I would have guessed his wife would have been the same. They must have made a nice couple."

  "And a happy marriage." A look passed over Zane's face, perhaps wistfulness, before it vanished and he manhandled the cap off another bottle. "She was the take charge, get in everyone's business, eager to help everyone type. You had to like her. She was full of life."

  "What a terrible loss for him." Verbena slid into the vacant spot nearest to Zane--clearly her sisters had engineered that one--her heart going out to the sheriff. Milo really was a nice man and his daughters were adorable. She'd seen them around town, of course. His y
oungest was best friends with Beckett's Hailie. "It's good to know that he was happy once."

  "Maybe he'll find happiness again." Aumaleigh's voice caught, sounded sad. "I've known Milo since he came to town with those two girls. I heard his wife died a year after the youngest was born. Some kind of fever was going around, and it settled in her lungs."

  "It was a devastating loss for him." Zane handed over another bottle, sounding a little sad too. "I wasn't there when he lost her."

  "Because you decided to become a bounty hunter?" Magnolia asked, eager for the details.

  "I went back to bounty hunting." Zane kept the last bottle for himself and took his seat. "It was a good fit. I didn't have to deal with people. I don't have any bosses, I work for myself."

  "It must be a lot of travel, though." Aumaleigh sounded thoughtful as she reached for the basket of biscuits.

  "True. I'm always on the road." Shadows turned his gray eyes dark, like the clouds before a storm. "I grew up in the mountains, so I don't mind being out in the elements. It suits me."

  "Were you a mountain man?" Magnolia asked even more eagerly.

  "Not the way you mean." Cords stood out in his neck, visible above his collar. Tension filled him.

  Others might not notice, Verbena thought, but she did. She plucked a chicken leg off the platter and passed it on to Zane. While it was interesting to hear about his past, he gave more away on his face.

  And that's another thing she appreciated about him. There was no guile. No mask. No pretense. You saw the whole man.

  "But I did grow up in the mountains, learning how to hunt and fish." He chose a piece of chicken, plopped it on his plate and passed on the platter. "My best memory was the summer I turned eleven. Another kid and I were out checking our fish traps and we came across this enormous cluster of blackberries. We're talking huge. Dom and I were picking and eating as fast as we could go. Those berries were plump and juicy. A real treat. My fingers were stained, and I think my mouth and face were too."

  "I can just picture it," Verbena said, slipping her cloth napkin onto her lap. Zane, as a little boy, must have been adorable. Those dimples, that thick fall of hair, big gray eyes full of mischief. "This must have been after the orphanage?"

  "Yes." A muscle bunched along his jaw, the only outward sign of emotion. It passed and he continued with his story. "We were working our way around the gigantic cluster of bushes, I mean it was maybe ten, twelve feet high and as big around as a small barn. We take a step and suddenly there's a grizzly right next to us. She's a mama with her cub, and she is doing the same thing we are, picking and eating her way around the bush in the opposite direction. We met in the middle."

  "Were you scared?" Rose wanted to know.

  "Terrified. I shouted, Dom hollered, we looked at each other like a couple of clowns. The bear gave a growl of surprise too. We were no fools, we took off running." He laughed, the chiseled lines of his face softening. "I swore I could hear her thundering behind us ready to tackle us, but it was only my imagination. Good thing. When we finally ran out of breath and turned around, there she was, picking and eating berries. Lucky for us, she preferred the berries or we might have been her dinner that night."

  "I bet you scouted out both sides of the next berry bush you came across." Verbena felt a nudge on her arm--Magnolia was poking her with the mashed potato bowl.

  "Yep, I got smarter after that," he confessed, wide smile, sparkling eyes. "But for years, every time Dom or I told the story, the bear got bigger and bigger."

  "Remember when Pa got all those strawberries that one summer?" Daisy asked, taking a sip of sarsaparilla. "I can't remember why he got them."

  "He helped to fix someone's roof," Iris remembered, taking a piece of chicken from the platter. "He got paid in food from their garden."

  "There were buckets of strawberries." Rose smiled fondly. "I remember sitting on the back steps with Ma washing and plucking off the tops, you know, the stem part."

  "We all remember." Magnolia rolled her eyes. "There were strawberries everywhere. In those buckets, in pans on the porch, in the kitchen, on the stove. The whole house was brimming full of them. When I closed my eyes, I saw--"

  "Strawberries," Verbena finished. "When I went to sleep at night, the same thing. They were burned into the backs of my eyelids, I saw so many of them."

  "Into everyone's," Iris recalled wistfully. "I remember being at the stove making preserves with Ma. We were sweltering, but we had to hurry while they were still fresh. All those berries. It was hard to believe we had any left for preserves since Verbena and Magnolia ate so many of them."

  "I wish I could deny it, but that would be a lie," Magnolia admitted.

  "We did. We ate them when we were supposed to be washing them," Verbena confessed, feeling Zane's gaze on her, curious, interested. Her pulse flat lined, the memories of last night and those kisses rushed in. Her toes curled at the thought.

  "But we couldn’t help ourselves," Magnolia confessed. "We'd wash a berry, eat a berry. Wash a berry, eat a berry."

  "Don't think Ma didn't know what you two were up to." Daisy laughed, buttering a fluffy buttermilk biscuit. "I can see her standing in the kitchen like it was yesterday. Her blond hair in one long, thick braid hanging down her back, she hated having it pinned up on her head in the heat, wearing that light pink calico dress."

  "And that old apron." Iris said with a loving sigh. "It was light yellow with little pink rose buds sprigged over it. It would get a rip or a tear and she'd patch it."

  "If it got a stain, she'd spend hours scrubbing it out." Rose sighed too.

  "She said she had been sewing on it when she found out she was expecting me." Magnolia grew dreamy too.

  "That's right," Aumaleigh broke in, tears standing in her eyes, love rich in her voice. "Laura was feeling poorly with that pregnancy, so I would bring my sewing over to her house. She did best sitting still in the cooler shade, sipping ginger tea. I was crocheting lace doilies then. I still have them. That was a sweet time, in the summer's warmth and brightness, sitting together, watching you three older girls play in the yard."

  "I remember." Daisy set down her butter knife. "There was a little creek not far from the house. The water was cool on a hot day. I would wade out in the middle, it wasn't deep that time of year, and watch the gentle current trickling around my ankles."

  "We would wade until our fingers and toes were wrinkly." Iris plunged her fork tines into the hill of mashed potatoes on her plate, staring at it but surely seeing the memory of that treasured time when her parents were loving and happy. "It was my job to watch you, since I was oldest, and when you went too far up or downstream, I'd tell you to come back and you'd say, 'Iris Louise, stop it. You are not my ma.' Used to drive me crazy."

  "I know," Daisy teased. "That was the point, Iris."

  "I don't remember this." Rose frowned. "Did I play in the creek too?"

  "You had to stay along the edge," Iris answered. "You were more interested in finding pebbles than wading."

  "You liked rocks," Daisy agreed.

  "That's how we knew something was wrong with you, even then." Iris laughed. "You and Seth Daniels--"

  "From the livery?" Zane asked.

  "Yes." Verbena picked up her chicken leg. "His ma worked for our grandmother. Now Josslyn works for Aumaleigh."

  "Apparently Seth and I were best buds back then," Rose shrugged, stabbed a couple green beans with her fork. "Of course, we were toddlers."

  "Adorable toddlers," Aumaleigh added, setting down her fork, radiant as she gazed upon her niece with love. "You had these ringlet blond curls and those enormous blue-green eyes. You'd run up to me with a new pebble clutched in your little chubby fist and you'd say, 'Look, Aumy, look.' And you'd bring me every little rock you found. I'd take you on my lap and give you a hug while we admired it."

  "Aw, you were so cute, Rose." Magnolia grabbed the nearby bowl of mashed potatoes and added another spoonful to her plate. "I wish I'd known you back then, Aum
aleigh."

  "Me, too." Those tears gleamed in her eyes, not falling, just staying there, full of emotion. "It was a dark day when my brother took you all away. But we're together now."

  "Together to stay," Verbena chimed in, shaking her chicken leg in emphasis.

  So this is what a real family is like. Zane reached for his bottle and slugged back a healthy guzzle of sarsaparilla. He set the bottle down on the fine linen table cloth, chest tight and achy. And this is what Craddock and Klemp had tried to destroy, they would have torn apart these loving bonds. He was glad he'd been the one to stop them. It made the stain of the past less dark, made that past feel farther away. As if one day it could be forgotten.

  But he knew today wasn't going to be that day.

  He turned his gaze to Verbena, savoring the look of her sitting there in the lamplight, animated in laughter, her cheeks flushed pink with happiness. Her russet-brown hair framed her face in soft curls, and her jewel-blue eyes met his. Her life was worth a thousand of his. He loved her. That was the emotion, the truth, he kept fighting to ignore.

  Here in the lamplight, in the circle of her family, he could see how home life would be. Suppers like this, comfortable and together. Evenings reading by the fire. Nights cozy in a house, mornings met with the smiling faces of those you loved most.

  If only, he thought. But she deserved a much better man than he could ever be.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The meal was over, the dessert served and properly demolished so not even a crumb remained, and Verbena hated it because any minute Zane was going to excuse himself from the table, get his coat and leave. Just walk out of her life forever when she wanted to keep him, right here, forever.

  "Well, I'm on my way out." Daisy pushed out of her chair. "I want to check on Beckett and Hailie. Clean up the dishes for them, get everything ready for morning."

  "Beckett's a lucky man." Zane nodded once, pure sincerity. It would be easy to pretend the small hitch in the corner of his mouth meant something more, like a change of heart. Like maybe he was thinking how nice domestic life could be.