Chas watched the marshal move around the improvised campsite as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The kiss they’d shared didn’t seem to affect her at all.
He wished he could forget it as easily. How she’d felt in his arms, her scent… His head pounded, but not with pain.
He shook those traitorous thoughts away as she sat down, near enough to touch.
She tipped her head back and glanced at the sky. He watched, entranced, as snowflakes fell on her face and into her dark hair that she seemed to have forgotten hung loose past her shoulders.
“Snow’s coming down faster.” Her voice was hushed, awed. “It’s a good thing we didn’t try to go back. If we couldn’t find our way, we might freeze to death. Your head all right?”
“Fine.” He didn’t know what to say to her. He was completely off-balance from that kiss.
She tucked her knees up toward her chest, wrapping her arms around them and loosely clasping her hands toward the fire. “It’s my fault.” This was said so softly that Chas barely heard the words over the popping of the fire. “We should’ve turned back earlier. But I wanted to race the snowstorm.”
“Do you think the bank robbers holed up somewhere? Why would they come up into the mountains like this?”
“I don’t know. There are lots of caves in these mountains, even some old trappers’ shacks where they could’ve taken shelter.”
She was silent for a long time. Chas watched the fire until he finally felt compelled to say, “It’s not your fault we got stuck here. The weather…”
She shook her head. “Fred would never have gotten in a pickle like this.”
“You compare yourself to him too much.”
Her eyes flashed up to his and he saw the surprise in their depths. “I do?”
“Mmm. All the time. You make coffee like Fred used to make it. Patrol the town at the hours he used to patrol. What’s wrong with making the job your own?”
A flush ran up her jaw and into her cheeks. He hoped he hadn’t offended her with his words.
“I don’t know,” she said, unclasping her hands to hold them toward the fire. It made him realize the air was biting cold on his exposed skin, mostly his face, and he shifted closer to the fire’s warmth.
“Fred was a good marshal. He’d been doing it for years. A good teacher.”
The affection in her tone when she spoke of her husband wasn’t surprising, but his reaction was. He felt jealous. He tried to ignore it. “You’re not the same person he was. No reason you have to be marshal the exact same way he did. The town council appointed you for a reason.”
“Why did they?”
Her abrupt question seemed to surprise her as much as it did him. She went on a rush. “You asked me about my appointment before, and once I started thinking, it really didn’t make sense. Why me, instead of any of the other men Fred used as deputies? Why not hire someone from another town?”
“Maybe they asked those others and none of them wanted to be marshal.”
Her brows wrinkled in skepticism. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“Perhaps…perhaps they simply considered all the candidates and decided you were the best.”
Something changed in her eyes, some softer emotion that he didn’t recognize. Didn’t want to recognize. “I’m still sorry you’re caught in this snowstorm with me.”
He shrugged. “I guess there could be worse things than being stuck in the wilderness with a beautiful woman.”
She turned her face away, but not before he saw the flare of hurt in her expression. “I’ll thank you not to mock me, even though we shared—even though you stole that kiss earlier.”
What? She thought he was jesting?
The cold, and his still-roiling emotions from earlier, made him scoot across the damp ground, reach out for her, pull her flush against his chest. All the while bracing for an elbow or a fist he was sure would be coming his way. “I wasn’t mocking you,” he said quietly.
“What are you—”
“It’ll be warmer this way,” he interrupted her before she could finish her protest. He settled his arms loosely around her and rested his cheek against her brow. The softness of the hair at her temple made him close his eyes. He forced them open, forced away thoughts better left alone. “Who’d have thought this city boy would be camping with a pretty marshal in a snowstorm?”
She was silent for so long he thought she wasn’t going to respond.
“I’m not…pretty.” Her whisper was nearly inaudible.
He looked down at her. Was she blushing? Yes. Warm color lit the side of her cheek. How could she doubt herself?
“Yes, you are. Why, at least half the men wanted to dance with you the other night at that rancher’s shin-dig.”
She didn’t speak, but somehow he knew she didn’t believe him.
“Didn’t your husband ever tell you how pretty you are?”
He nearly bit his tongue as the words escaped him. He didn’t want to talk about her dead husband.
“Fred told me that I was a good shot. That I could outride him most days, and that I had a good memory for details. He told me the truth.”
“Well, he didn’t tell you everything. Your eyes and your smile are…incredibly lovely.” His voice stuck on the word, so caught up was he in making her believe him. He went on, voice lower. “And your hair…like silk…”
He didn’t dare touch her hair, not the way he wanted to, although a few strands tickled his chin and neck.
One of the horses blew and Danna turned her head, her temple grazing Chas’s jaw. They both remained quiet for a long while, Chas simply enjoying the opportunity to be close to her and the marvel of the falling snow. He was warmer now, with the small fire blazing and Danna near.
The woods were silent until she burst out, “If they wanted to dance with me, why didn’t they ask?”
For a moment, Danna felt Chas’s breath catch in his chest and she thought he was going to laugh at her.
“Maybe they’re a little afraid of you,” he suggested. “Or it could have something to do with that weapon you carry and the badge you wear.”
“Or because I don’t dress like the other women?” she asked, knowing her curiosity betrayed that she wasn’t entirely indifferent to how the people in town treated her.
Most days she ached to belong. To walk into one of the stores and be welcomed like the other wives and daughters, not with the grim, condescending smiles she always received.
“Maybe,” he responded. “Although I can’t really picture you jumping into a brawl at the saloon in a skirt.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder to gauge if he was mocking her now, but he wasn’t smiling, he was staring out into the night. Why was it that being close to her deputy like this made her want to open up to him? He wasn’t even holding her tightly; his arms loosely covered hers. His head rested against hers in an almost brotherly way.
But the thrills coursing through her veins didn’t feel sisterly at all.
He blew out a breath. “If you want to blame anyone, it’s really my fault we’re stuck out here.”
Her brows scrunched as she followed his change of topic. “What do you mean?”
“Outside the bank. I was there sooner, but…I froze.”
“I wondered how you came to be there.”
“I was patrolling. I’ve been…anxious since that blond man has been around town.”
Something about the way he finished his sentence was off. She sensed that he’d started to say something else.
“I saw a light in the window. And I thought I saw you…on the roof?”
She nodded. “I was there. I was out looking for Katy—Katy!” How could she have forgotten the girl? Yes, Danna had been extremely busy with the robbery and its aftermath, but—
“What about her?” Chas asked.
“She’d disappeared. That’s how I stumbled on the bank robbery. I was out looking for her. I’d tucked her in and left, and when I came back she was go
ne. I haven’t even thought about her….” Guilt pressed heavy. Danna should have remembered the girl, should have told someone before she left town.
“She’ll be all right. She’d survived until we found her.”
“I hope so,” Danna said. It was true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you earlier. You were telling me why you thought the robbery was your fault?”
He shrugged, eyes on the fire. “I heard your shot, heard scuffling, but before I could make myself go inside, I just…couldn’t move.”
Again, she sensed he hadn’t said what he wanted to say. She waited for a moment to see if he would.
“Even if you’d come into the building right away, we were outnumbered,” she said finally. “And since I didn’t know you were there, I might’ve shot you.” She was just glad she hadn’t known about the hostage— Silverton—that the robbers had left behind.
“How do you do it? Walk into dangerous situations like that alone? You could’ve been killed.”
“I wasn’t alone. God was with me.”
He snorted his disbelief and she drew away from him; he let her go easily.
“It’s true. He is with me every day, every moment. You don’t have to believe for it to be true. It just is.”
He didn’t reply.
“When He calls me home, I’ll go. But I’m not going to stop living life—that includes doing my job—until then.”
He flipped a twig into the fire; the moisture in the twig sizzled for a moment before it was engulfed in flames. “I used to…be religious.”
She stifled the urge to tell him that her relationship with God was more than “religion,” but something held her silent.
“Then someone I loved—someone I was close to—died.”
A wife? She couldn’t bear the thought. “God didn’t make her die.”
He was silent for a long time. “No. No, he didn’t.”
He didn’t say more, and with the closeness between them broken, she shifted over to reach the saddle and opened one of the saddlebags. There was hardtack and jerky inside a wrapped pouch. Fred had always insisted on traveling with a little food in case of emergency. It wouldn’t be much to eat, but if she needed to hunt up a rabbit for supper, she could. At least it gave her a distraction right now. She handed a portion of the dried meat to Chas, who took it and ate silently.
Where was the canteen? She reached back into the saddlebag, but this time her fingers brushed against soft leather and she pulled out Fred’s journal. She’d forgotten sliding it into her bag this morning.
She flipped open the journal and ran her fingers over the writing. How many nights had Fred sat at his small desk in their room above the jail, writing in this book?
She blinked away her memories and returned the journal to her saddlebag, where it would be safe from the snow still falling.
“You ever read that, or just like touching it?”
Danna looked up with surprise to find Chas’s eyes on her.
“I’ve seen you handle that book several times, but never read it.”
It was already a night for sharing confidences. What would it hurt to reveal this, too? “I can’t read,” she answered quietly, a little ashamed by the admission. “It’s one of the many things I don’t know how to do. Cooking, sewing, keeping house. It was good my husband was a bachelor for years before we married, or we’d likely have starved.”
Chas felt the tension crackling in the air between them. It mattered to Danna how he reacted to her revelation that she couldn’t read.
He noted the distance she’d put between them when he’d rebuffed her mention of God, saw how she stared into the fire with her arms crossed protectively over her middle, a shiver coursing through her.
She thought he would think less of her because she couldn’t read? Or cook?
“Not knowing those things hasn’t stopped you being marshal, hasn’t stopped you doing a good job of it either.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes.” He was surprised to find out it was true. He did think she did a good job. Her loyalty to the people of Calvin couldn’t be questioned—she’d ridden out into a blizzard trying to chase down those thieves!
Now that he took the time to think about it, he should have recognized the clues right in front of him. The way she’d squinted at his letter of introduction from the detective agency, that she’d pushed the Wanted poster for Jed Hester to him to read.
“Come back over here. It’s cold,” he said when a second shiver shook her shoulders. She shifted into place at his side and he couldn’t ignore the brush of their shoulders. She spread one of the horse blankets over both their legs. Chas knew it was just to keep them warm, but the intimacy of the action had him scrambling for a distraction.
He choked out the words, “Now that I know you a little, I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”
Sitting so close, he had only a profile view of her face, but still he saw the wry smile. “Can’t picture me as a seamstress or cook?”
“Perhaps a ranch foreman…or running your own spread.”
Her lips quirked, but didn’t quite form a smile this time. When she spoke, her words held a wistful quality. “When I was a child, I often dreamed of having my own homestead. Raising cattle.”
“What changed?”
She was quiet for a long time. “I got married.”
He remembered her previous statement that her brother had sent her away, not to finishing school but to get married, and desperately wanted to ask what had caused the rift between them. She seemed to know.
“When I was fifteen,” she started, “I took a horse from my brother’s barn to chase down a heifer that was due to calf any day. I ended up in the mountains alone and my horse threw me. I was…injured.”
“Is that why the mountains bother you?”
She looked him full in the face, her eyes asking him how he knew that.
“You’ve been jumpy all afternoon. Reacting to little noises, shadows.”
A flush crept up her cheeks and she rested her head lightly on his shoulder. So he couldn’t read her expression?
“Maybe I am a bit anxious. Anyway, because of my injuries I couldn’t get home. It took my brother nearly a day and a half to find me.” She inhaled deeply, her shoulder moving against his chest. “I’d never seen him so angry before.”
“And that’s why he sent you away? Because he was angry?” The question was out before he considered that she might not answer.
She hummed. “I think…I think also he didn’t know what to do with a sister. If I’d been born a boy—or maybe if he’d had more time with my parents—he might have known how to handle me.”
She yawned, and for the first time Chas realized how tired she was, how tired they both were. After being up all night dealing with the robbery and its aftermath, neither one of them had had any sleep, then they’d ridden all day. No wonder she was exhausted.
“Should we rest awhile?” he asked. “The blizzard doesn’t seem to have slowed any.”
Her head came off his shoulder. “One of us should probably keep watch. We don’t know if the bank robbers are near or made it farther away—once night falls, which won’t be much longer, our fire will be a beacon in the darkness.”
She sounded bone-tired.
“I can stay awake for a bit,” Chas said, shifting his arm around to support her shoulders a bit more. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t speak again; her head lolled against his shoulder and her breathing evened out. That quickly, she’d fallen asleep. It told him just how much she trusted him. It was a sobering thought.
Mind whirling, he watched the flames flicker, shadows dance against the trees.
He was getting too entangled with the marshal. Everything she’d shared tonight had served to open his heart toward her. Before, he’d thought her crude, out of place as she fought to be marshal, but that impression had been completely wrong.
He couldn’t imagine her brother sending Danna away. She was so strong, unbelievably beautiful, independent. She’d taken the circumstances life had given her, like the loss of her parents, and gone on. Not just existing, but living. She’d made a place for herself, provided for herself…
She was amazing.
How could someone who claimed to love her abandon her?
His thoughts went to his sister in Boston. Hadn’t he done the same thing and left her to the devices of their overbearing father and matchmaking mother? What if she needed him?
Not for the first time, he thought of sending for her. He could make a home for his sister in St. Louis or another western town, if need be. The question was, did she hate him the way his parents surely did?
The chance that she hated him was too great. There was no resolution for the situation between himself and his family.
He thrust thoughts of Boston, of home, away, focusing instead on the problem of his growing feelings for the marshal.
But there was no resolution to be found for that either.
Chapter Eleven
Dawn arrived with a lightening of the steel-gray sky and the absence of snow falling.
Chas woke to a hand on his shoulder—much pleasanter than a kick to his boot—to find himself wrapped in one of the horse blankets and the fire already extinguished.
“You all right?” Danna asked, crouching near. “Is your head paining you? You were mumbling in your sleep.”
The nightmare. Just before Danna’d woken him, he’d watched Julia fall away from him, lifeless….
Chas scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll be all right in a minute.” It was a lie. He’d never be all right again, not without Julia.
He squinted up at the sky, then back at Danna who had moved back to the horses, one of which was already saddled up. She must be ready to leave.
He remembered waking her several hours into the night, when he could no longer keep his eyes open. She’d gone after more firewood, and he’d wrapped himself in the blanket to lie down and wait for her—and that’s the last thing he remembered. Had he slept the rest of the night through? And only had the nightmare there at the very end?
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