Promises Decide

by Sarah McCarty

  Tony and Kevin nodded. Not one to be left out, Melinda Sue joined in. “Are we going to leave him here?”

  “No.” She wasn’t going to leave him in the dirt. She just wasn’t sure what the alternative was. Until the mare nickered. Then she got an idea. They might not have the muscle to move him, but the horse did.

  “If he up and dies, it’d be a lot easier if he started stinking out here,” Kevin offered with infallible logic.

  “Kevin,” Tony growled.

  Kevin had the grace to look ashamed, but he didn’t back down. “Well, it would.”

  Tony bristled and balled up his fists. Standing and stepping free of the rope, Mimi interrupted before a fight could break out.

  “This man risked his life to save me.” Holding her arm, she caught Kevin’s gaze. “In this family, we don’t pay people back by leaving them to die.”

  Kevin looked away. She could see his mouth work, before he muttered, “I don’t know enough to keep him alive.”

  Her heart broke. She sometimes forgot how young they were. “Oh, honey, I don’t, either, and it’s a shame, but we’re not just going to hand him over to death.”

  “What are we going to do, then?” Tony asked.

  That, she had an answer for. “We’re going to fight.”

  “How?”

  One step at a time. She looked at the rope still tied around him. “First, Kevin’s going to fetch that horse, and then we’ll see what we can do about using her to get him into the house.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Getting Jackson onto the porch wasn’t nearly as difficult as treating his wounds. They’d managed to get the man up onto the porch by strapping him to the side of the saddle, where he’d hung like a sack of grain, feet dragging and head lolling. The mare had balked at the steps, but with a bit of tempting in the form of some honey-dipped greens, she’d lunged up onto the porch, dragging the man with her. If it hadn’t been for Kevin’s quickness it would have been all over, but he’d jumped up the steps and waved his arms. The mare had lunged to the side. Mimi barely managed to keep him from being crushed by waving the greens in the mare’s face. Hard to believe the thought of food could calm all that panic, but one whiff of the honey and she’d stomped her hoof, snatched the greens out of Mimi’s hand, and then proceeded to chew. Mimi hadn’t wasted a second sawing through the ropes. She felt she took her first breath in ages when Jackson plopped down onto the worn wood. After that it was only a matter of rolling him onto a blanket and dragging him into the house, where he now rested, smack-dab in the middle of the living room. A living, breathing challenge of an expectation for her to meet, overcome. Or fail. She smoothed her tattered skirts. She was done with failing.

  “What do we do now?” Tony asked, his words laced with the effort it’d taken to get the man into the house.

  She didn’t know. She wasn’t a doctor, and Rivers Bend, the nearest town, didn’t have one. She’d have to go all the way to Cattle Crossing to find a doctor, and that was a three-hour ride, assuming she didn’t fall off Jackson’s fancy horse and break her neck. By then, it could be too late. She sighed and looked at Jackson again. His shiny blond hair was matted to his head, the waves as flat as his color. His thick lashes were almost invisible against the dirt caking his tanned skin. His clothes smelled of mold dust and an underlying something that wasn’t unpleasant. She might have called him pretty except for the square set of his jaw and the fact that, even unconscious, he radiated this energy that demanded attention. There was something just so . . . touchable about the man. She bet the ladies loved him.

  “Too bad you’re stuck with me, pretty man.”

  And stuck he was. She was nineteen, a woman grown, but she didn’t have a clue as to how to treat the sick or wounded. Rolling up her right sleeve, she studied Jackson’s long, lean form, the way his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. He could be dying from the snakebite, the head wound, or something in the mess of dirt caking his body. Or he could just be sleeping. It all looked the same to her.

  “What do we do?” Tony asked again.

  She awkwardly rolled up her left sleeve, tugging at the edge when it caught on the button, biting her lip against the pain. “We boil some water.” No matter what happened, his wounds needed to be cleaned.

  “I can do that.”

  “I know.” The button gave, and with the release went some of her nervousness. If she did nothing, he’d die. If she did something, he still might die, but she would have tried.

  “What do I do?” Kevin asked as Tony dashed across the small room to the slightly rusted potbellied stove and grabbed the cold coffeepot off the top.

  Replacing the pot with his hand, Tony announced, “Fire’s out.”

  Darn it.

  “Start a new one.”

  “We don’t have any wood.”

  Why did bad days only have to get worse? Her “Of course not” was a resigned sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin whispered. “I meant to get the wood, but . . .”

  He’d gotten distracted. Because he was a child. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that. It was just my frustration talking.”

  His shoulders hunched. “But it was my job.”

  “Which you can do now.”

  Melinda Sue stomped her foot. “I want a job, too.”

  “You can help Kevin fetch wood for the fire.”

  Kevin pouted and jerked his chin toward the makeshift pallet. “I want to help with him.”

  He was clearly taken with the man. “I need hot water to clean his wounds. If we don’t, infection will get him. Getting that wood could save his life.”

  Kevin straightened. “How much?”

  Quick to mimic, Melinda Sue pulled straight right along with him. “How much?”

  “As much as you can find without wandering too far away.”

  “Don’t get too many big pieces of wood. And make sure it’s not green,” Tony warned. “We need it to catch fast.”

  “And hurry.” The two children shot out of the room. Mimi retrieved her scissors.

  They had laid him on the bed on the floor on his stomach so she could have access to the wound on his back. The sharp scissors snipped through the soft cotton as if it were butter. The material slid to the side with every snip, revealing tanned skin stretched tightly over smooth muscles and interposed with old puckered scars. A warrior’s body. A warrior who’d sacrificed for her. She hesitated. She was so over her head.

  Tony glanced at her face, frowned, and bit his lip before offering, “I can go look for a doctor.”

  “There isn’t one. And that butcher they call a doctor in town would just kill him.”

  “Does it matter, if he’s going to die anyway?”

  “He’s not going to die.”

  “Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.”

  She started cutting again. “I said I was going to get you out of Mac’s place, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  The scissors snagged at the shoulder seam. This would be easier if she could use two hands. “You doubted me there.”

  “I did.”

  Re-angling the scissors, she muttered, “You were wrong.”

  “I don’t think I’m wrong here.”

  He had to be wrong. Putting more pressure on the scissors, she sawed at the seam. It finally parted. Her arm ached. Her heart ached. When were things going to get easier? “He’s going to live, Tony.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Instinct.”

  Instinct had become her new war cry. Every time she set out to do something she didn’t think she could do she latched on to that faint little hope that maybe it was possible, labeled it instinct, and plunged forward. As a philosophy, it’d worked up until now.

  Pushing the shirt aside, a little of her belief faltered. The s
nakebite was looking ugly. All dark and swollen and putrid. As if maybe Jackson was already dead and the bite was just waiting for the rest of his body to catch up.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Tony said.

  No, it didn’t. “I’m going to put hot cloths on it. See if I can draw more of the poison out.” It was what her mother had done with infection. Maybe it would work for poison. Who knew?

  As if he heard her doubt, Tony asked, “Is it going to work?”

  “How the heck am I supposed to know that?”

  Tony’s head snapped up and his face went white. Every muscle in his body tensed. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. He depended on her to keep him safe from Mac. They all did. If she grew angry and abandoned them, they would likely starve. Or end up back in another whorehouse, this time as prostitutes rather than children of prostitutes. She pushed her hair off her face with her good hand. She was their mother now. It was her job to give them confidence. She couldn’t afford these moments of panic. “I’m sorry.”

  Tony didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he, too, apologized. It came out gruff and awkward. Like her, he didn’t know what to believe. The glue that held them together was their fear of Mac finding them. Mac stole from everyone with impunity. No one stole from him. That she had was something he would never let go.

  She placed her hand over Tony’s briefly. “We’re going to have to make this work, Tony. And to do that we’re going to have to keep this man Jackson alive.”

  “Why? Why is it so important he lives?”

  She looked at the arsenal of weapons they’d removed from Jackson’s horse and person stacked by the fireplace. The collection dwarfed the too-small mantel above the huge fireplace. “Because I think he might just be the one who could get Mac out of our lives permanently.”

  Tony looked down at the man, then back at her. His concerns were clear in his expression. “Mac is a big man.”

  She had to agree that Jackson didn’t look that tough in his current condition, splatted on the floor, bruised and bleeding, but at the brothel she’d seen many a smaller man win a fight despite a size disadvantage. “But this one’s tough.”

  “Mac is mean.”

  Mimi touched her cheek, remembering his first lesson on meanness. “I know.”

  The memory of the explosion of pain when Mac had slapped her hadn’t diminished much in the last two years. Neither had the sense of betrayal. She’d been a fool to see the power of a bully as the power of a man, but she wasn’t one now. Now she was a woman with responsibilities. A leader. “I can handle this, Tony, so why don’t you go check on Kevin and Mellie? You know how easily they get distracted.”

  “You might need me,” he said, despite his clenched fists and that haunted look that he always got when the specter of Mac loomed too large. He was such a good boy who’d been hurt too much.

  “I’ll call if I do.”

  “But . . .”

  “Without that wood,” she pointed out inexorably, “Jackson will die.”

  Tony got to his feet and hesitated. “Do you really think he can help us?”

  She smiled as she spread the lie. “I really do.”

  Mimi kept that smile until the door closed softly behind Tony. Only then did she let out a slow, deliberate breath. Being the adult was hard. Being responsible was hard. Moving forward when all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and give up was harder still. She hadn’t been raised with high expectations. Truth be told, she’d been raised to fail.

  “But I’m not failing you,” she told Jackson.

  There was no sign he heard. Shifting around until she was comfortable, Mimi placed her hand on Jackson’s shoulder above the wound. The heat emanating from his skin was as alarming as the strength beneath her palm was soothing. He was a man in his prime. Stubborn. Leaning forward, she brushed her lips against his ear. “You’re going to live, Jackson Montgomery. No choice about it. You’re going to live. Because if you don’t, I’m coming down to hell to fetch you back.”

  Four

  Jackson knew three things before he even opened his eyes. He hurt like a bear, he was as cold as hell, and he was being watched. He lay perfectly still, controlling his breathing while he gathered as many facts as he could. A twitch of his fingers revealed the coarse fabric of what was probably a blanket, and beneath that, something harder still. It wasn’t much of a jump to assume he was lying on the floor, and from the sensation of leaning while lying flat, he had to be in Bentley’s half-assed house, which left only the question of who was watching him.

  Tensing his back sent pain ripping down his spine. That fast, he remembered everything that had happened: the dank scent of the well, the softness of a kiss, and the piercing horror of fangs sinking into his flesh. Just as fast he pushed that last memory away, controlling his breathing while his heart raced. Fuck, he hated snakes.

  Lying there, he pulled up the second memory. It was much sweeter to focus on a blue-eyed angel with siren tendencies. The woman was a fighter. In many ways she reminded him of his mother. Inherent grace and calm were traits his mother had had. In others, Mimi was uniquely herself. Sassy. Strong. Composed. She was a very intriguing mix. Pain throbbed outward from his spine. He bit back a moan and cracked his eye open. He needed a distraction. There wasn’t a siren in sight, but there was a blond-haired cherub. Melinda Sue was sitting cross-legged by his right knee. The drape of her petticoat revealed a tear at the knee in her woven hose. From the darker dangling threads, it was clear it wasn’t the first time they’d suffered a tear. Sitting there with a plate in her lap, she looked far too innocent to be involved in anything that would snag a stocking, but he knew better. The girl had more zest than was healthy. As did her sister, Mimi. Melinda Sue grabbed up her knife and fork and sawed at the hunk of potato on her plate. It was a sad state of affairs that his mouth started watering at the sight of that potato. The potato rolled off the plate. She caught it in her skirt with a curse no cherub should utter.

  He cleared his throat. Melinda Sue dropped the potato back on the plate and gave him a big smile. “You’re awake.”

  It took everything he had to hold back a groan as he nodded and slid his arm behind his head. “I am, and your sister is going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

  She frowned at him, clearly not happy with his statement. Stabbing the potato with her fork, she muttered, “Mimi says you’re not supposed to move.”

  “Mimi’s not lying on the hard floor.” He winced at the harsh rasp of his voice.

  “We couldn’t get you to the bed.” Waving the chunk of potato, she went on as if she was making sense. “The horse didn’t like the room and you’re too heavy.”

  That was as clear as mud. “You brought my horse into the house?”

  She nodded, pigtails bouncing. “There was no other way to get you up the porch. You’re too heavy,” she repeated again, as if his size was a crime.

  “I see.” The images that filled his mind might explain a few of his bruises. One thing was for sure: they certainly had been inventive. “Where’s my horse now?”

  “Kevin tied her to the tree out front. I picked her grass.”

  Lady was going to need more food than the grass a child could pick. “Thank you.”

  The potato waved again. He got the feeling she liked the emphasis it gave her. For sure, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. As if on cue, his stomach rumbled.

  “Mimi says you almost deaded.”

  He rubbed a tender spot on the back of his head. When had he hit it? Coming out of the well or when they’d hauled him in with the horse? “It sure feels like it.”

  “Does your head hurt?”

  He squinted at her. “A little.”

  “Does your back hurt?”

  He shifted and groaned. Like the very devil. “Only when I move.”

  She took a bite of the potato. “Mimi said you weren’t
supposed to move.”

  Apparently Mimi’s word was next to God’s. “So you said.”

  He watched her chew. His stomach gnawed at his backbone with the same rhythm. How long had he been out?

  “Are you hungry?”

  He nodded. She looked at the potato and then at him. “This is our last potato.”

  She took a slightly more aggressive bite, eating it like an apple on a stick. Apparently, she wasn’t sharing.

  “Aren’t you supposed to use the knife, too?”

  Melinda wrinkled her nose. “That’s hard.”

  “You’re not going to get better if you don’t practice.”

  She sighed. “I’m not supposed to waste food.”

  Maybe he was still fuzzy headed, but he couldn’t make sense of that. “How is practicing wasting?”

  The look she gave him was pure pity. “It keeps rolling off the plate and you’re not allowed to eat dirty food.”

  Another Mimi edict, he was sure.

  Melinda Sue cocked her head to the side and eyed her potato. “Tony does, though. He says he’s not starving for a bit of dirt.”

  He had a recollection of dark hair, thin arms, and too-old eyes. “Tony’s your older brother?”

  She nodded.

  “He sounds like a sensible person.”

  She nodded again. The potato wobbled. He caught his breath.

  “Mimi says he’s the most sensible person she’s ever met. Kevin says he’s sensible, too, but I don’t think he is.”

  “You don’t?”

  She scooted forward, revealing a hole in the sole of her ankle-high shoe as she slid up onto her knees. Leaning forward, she offered him a bite. “He gets mad too fast.”

  A better man wouldn’t have taken a bite. He’d never strived to be better. And damn, a potato had never tasted so good. He savored the treat. He couldn’t be that close to death if he was hungry. “Thank you. Kevin’s the one with the hair always falling in his eyes?”