He’d wanted to protect her, but maybe he should’ve protected her better by refusing to accompany her. Why should she be tainted by a friendship with him?
Dawn’s first rays began sliding over the horizon, lighting the landscape. The fog began to dissipate. Ben had assigned Nathan near the horses, grouped together for protection against predators.
And in the early light Nathan saw something that didn’t belong. At first he thought it was a dog, but the silver fur and long, pointed snout disabused that notion quickly.
A wolf. Sitting quietly among the horses.
And they tolerated him.
Was this the animal that had been serenading them all night? What did he want?
Years of being a trapper and experience in the wild gave him the knowledge that this wasn’t hunting behavior. If the wolf was hunting, it would be slinking around the periphery of the horses, not sitting right in the middle, plain as day. The horses weren’t reacting to the predator. Did they sense that it wasn’t a danger to them?
Wolves, at least those that he’d come across before, usually hunted in packs. Why was this one alone? It didn’t have any of the hallmarks of a rabid animal.
Did he not have a pack? Had he been abandoned or left of his own accord?
As if it sensed his perusal, the animal took a long slow look at Nathan.
His questions about the wolf swirled back around to Nathan himself.
He didn’t belong here, either, in this wagon train. Last night’s altercation proved it. In the beginning, he’d been looking for a way to earn the funds to get to Oregon, to find a fresh start that he desperately needed.
A way to leave his guilt over Beth and the past behind.
He had to remember why he was doing this. The money. If he forgot that, then the lack of trust, of community, could hurt.
If he didn’t care about them, about being a part of their community, their rejection couldn’t hurt him.
But that left Emma. Who both liked and trusted him. She believed they could have a friendship.
And maybe they could, if there were only the two of them in the world. He cared about her too much to let her be hurt by an association with him.
He was like this wolf. A loner.
Maybe it was meant to be that way.
His entire being quaked thinking of turning Emma away. She was the one good thing in his life. Seeing her and being in her presence were the best moments of his day.
He had to. If he didn’t start distancing himself now, it would only be harder to bear when they arrived in Oregon and went their separate ways.
His mind was made up
“What is that?”
Emma’s soft voice startled him out of his thoughts. She appeared out of the near-darkness, and her movements startled the wolf, as well. It disappeared through the horses. None of the animals even noticed.
“It was a wolf.” Nathan stood, his muscles stiff from disuse.
Her presence raised the hair on his arms and sent prickles of awareness down his back, caused a roaring in his ears like rushing rapids. His chest cinched tight.
“Here,” she said quietly. She extended him a mug with steam curling out of the top and he smelled the coffee hot in the cool morning air.
It wasn’t fair for her to appear, looking like an apparition and bearing coffee.
He thought of refusing it, but couldn’t quite make himself do it. He accepted it without a word.
“I wanted to apologize for…last night.” Her words were spoken so softly they almost seemed to scatter on the light breeze.
He shrugged, not quite looking at her. “It wasn’t your fault.” It was his, just like Stillwell said. He was a magnet for trouble, and he deserved whatever found him. She didn’t.
“Ben said we’ll reach Fort Hall later today. Rachel and I wanted to know if you would accompany us to the fort.”
He heard the slight undertone of vulnerability in her voice, even though he kept his eyes on the horses.
“No.”
His forced the word out through his teeth with his entire core tight. There would be a lot of people in the fort, not just from their caravan. Other caravans. People who lived at the fort. Soldiers, who would likely look at him the same suspicious way Stillwell did. The acquaintances back at Fort Laramie who might’ve upheld his honor—might’ve—were far behind. Emma would be better off in her brother’s company than his.
“But—”
“I said no,” he barked. He pressed the coffee cup back into her hands. He hadn’t even taken a sip, but couldn’t stomach it now.
He threaded one hand into his hair as he turned his back on her, but he sensed that she hadn’t gone away. What could he tell her that would show her that he wasn’t the heroic man she’d conjured up in her imagination? To get her to stay away?
And then he knew.
He whirled, before he could lose his nerve. “I let down the one person I should have protected,” he said, making his voice as hard as he could. “My sister, Beth. She died, and it was my fault.”
He saw her face crumple in recognition and emotion. But she stayed where she was.
He feared now that he had opened the door, she would press him for information, details he couldn’t bear to share.
“I as good as killed her, do you understand? That’s why you should stay away from me.”
She still wasn’t leaving, so he marched off, the sight of the compassion filling her eyes and how pale her face had gone branding itself into his mind.
But it was for the best, wasn’t it?
* * *
The afternoon waned as Nathan unloaded goods from the Morrisons’ order from the low adobe building—Fort Hall—in the distance. The store had delivered the goods out to the Morrisons’ wagon and he’d found Clara trying to unload. Not only should she not be lifting the fifty-pound bags of flour in her condition, but the store had sent a boy of twelve to drive the delivery cart out to the wagon. Which left Nathan to unload for her, since the boy was too small to do it.
Nathan had a bag of sugar—a treat that Clara must’ve saved for—over his shoulder when he caught sight of Emma’s honey-colored hair several hundred feet away, moving toward the wagon train. She was walking with Rachel and they were flanked by two men in uniform.
He turned his back and hefted the goods into Clara’s wagon, but as he returned to the delivery cart, couldn’t help noticing how Emma’s face was turned up at the soldier beside her. She said something to him and he smiled down on her.
And something ugly broke loose inside Nathan. Hot emotion poured through him.
He wanted to hit something, but made himself reach for a short, stodgy barrel marked…pickles?
He forced himself to keep his head down as he unloaded more items, leaving the heavy flour sack for last. The delivery cart shifted as the horse hitched to it decided he’d had enough of standing still and moved.
The boy at the horse’s head steadied it, but seemed to be distracted by a young lady several wagons over. Nathan kept working. The sooner he unloaded the last of Clara’s goods, the sooner he could escape seeing Emma with the soldier.
Nathan didn’t have any right to Emma. He wasn’t her beau. He probably wasn’t even her friend after how he’d treated her this morning. She could walk and talk with, and smile at any man she wanted.
And he needed to remember she had a man waiting on her in Oregon, the one her brothers were pushing her to marry.
But none of that stopped his stomach from rioting inside his midsection or his hot, sticky throat.
He couldn’t be…he wasn’t…jealous?
He didn’t have any right to Emma, but it didn’t stop him from wanting her.
And hadn’t he told himself all along that wanting was dangerous?
&n
bsp; Their voices grew louder as the small group neared. He worked at keeping his head down, at not being noticed, but of course it didn’t work.
“Hello, Nathan.”
He couldn’t keep his head from tipping up at Emma’s soft greeting, though heat speared through his cheeks and he wanted to disappear into the ground.
He nodded because he wasn’t real sure he could force words through his suddenly dry lips.
“We’ve delivered ya. Guess we’d better head back,” one of the soldiers said.
“Thank you for the escort,” Rachel said.
She and Emma passed, stopping to talk to Clara, though Nathan couldn’t help noticing how Emma distanced herself from her friend. Probably fearful of giving something away.
He reached for the last parcel, the heavy flour sack, just as a high-pitched voice from his hip exclaimed, “Hi, Mr. Nathan!”
Everything seemed to happen at once.
Nathan glimpsed Georgie at his elbow. Scamp appeared from nowhere and barked in delirious happiness at seeing the boy.
The horse startled from the unexpected noise, rearing, which pushed the cart back.
Georgie was right in its path.
The teenaged delivery boy couldn’t stop the horse.
Nathan let the flour fall back into the cart in time to bend and push Georgie out of the way of the cart’s wheel, but his shoulder bore the brunt of the conveyance’s weight.
He bit back a cry as he stumbled forward and went to his knees.
“Are you all right?”
“What happened?”
Emma and Rachel rushed in, Rachel kneeling to check on the boy sprawled out in the dirt.
Nathan saw the delivery boy had calmed the horse and the wagon was stationary, for now.
Emma reached out for him, but Nathan shied away from her touch, clamping his right hand over the injured left shoulder. He couldn’t bear her kindness, not with the emotions boiling through him.
His joint hadn’t come out of socket, but the pain radiating down his back meant there would likely be a nasty bruise forming.
“That was a close one, Mr. Nathan,” Georgie said, still laid flat out in the dirt.
The boy had almost been hurt. If Nathan hadn’t moved in time, the wagon wheel could have crushed a leg or if he’d fallen, crushed the boy himself.
The fear of what could have happened coiled inside him like a snake ready to strike—
And he did.
“I told you to stay out of my way,” he snapped at Georgie.
The boy’s face scrunched up as if he was getting ready to cry.
He brushed off Emma’s quiet, “Nathan,” and the hand she reached out toward him and whirled away, stalking off from the campsite, out into the wilderness, where he knew she wouldn’t follow.
She was scared out here, after all.
And maybe now she was scared of him, too.
* * *
Emma waited near the Binghams’ wagon all evening for Nathan to return. Huddled on the ground, leaning back against the wagon wheel, with Scamp snuggled into her side, keeping her company, she waited.
Long into the night. The moon had set hours ago, leaving only the blanket of the night sky filled with stars. Campfires had dimmed and voices slowly died out until only the noises of crickets chirping and the light breeze blowing surrounded her.
If she’d realized his temper—which she knew really hid his fear over what had almost happened to young Georgie—would have taken so long to cool off, she wouldn’t have skipped her supper to wait here for him.
Or maybe she would’ve.
She cared about him.
And knowing what he’d been through with his sister, she could easily guess that he blamed himself for the almost accident.
And she wanted to give him comfort, even if he couldn’t forgive her for her behavior when she’d let Stillwell say those awful things about him.
His refusal to accept her apology had hurt.
If she could ease Nathan’s mind, just a small bit, she would be happy. Mostly.
But first he had to come back.
It was well after dark and she was starting to worry. Had it really taken him that long to calm down?
Had he abandoned the wagon train, had he been that upset by what had transpired?
Had something happened to him?
The more her worries swirled around her, the more she began to shake.
And then Scamp gave a soft whine and Nathan finally emerged from the darkness, the small amount of firelight from within the circled wagons illuminating his stony face as he approached.
She saw the moment he realized she was there, saw the surprise in his expression before his face shuttered.
She pushed Scamp off her lap and stood up, brushing loose grasses from her skirt before she could look at him.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
“Waiting for you.”
“Why would you do such a fool thing?” he burst out. He spun away, one hand going up, his fingers spearing into his hair. Even in the dim starlight, she could see the play of muscles in his back beneath his shirt.
All right, so his temper was still simmering.
That was fine because she’d gotten a little riled herself, waiting up half the night for him.
She stomped around him because she didn’t want him to hide from her. Until she could see right up into his face, his head backlit by the few remaining campfires that burned. She pointed her finger at him.
“What took you so long to come back?”
“Are you my keeper?” he asked with a sort of sneer.
“Maybe I should be,” she fired back. “Maybe you need someone to watch over you.”
“I don’t need anyone,” he gritted out.
And that just made her madder. She took a step forward, until they were almost face-to-face, and poked her finger into his massive chest. “Everyone needs someone to make sure they’re all right. That’s what I came here to do, to check up on you.”
“I’m all right,” he said with a stubborn lilt to his chin. “Now leave me alone.”
The words cut straight to the quick, but she lifted her chin to keep him from knowing it. “Fine.”
“Fine,” he repeated.
She turned away, emotions rioting, worries unassuaged.
And then thought better of it.
She turned back to him, hiccuping a little sob. “No, it’s not fine—”
And the raw emotion on his face, emotion he’d hidden until she’d turned away, drew her toward him. She couldn’t not reach for him.
And he reached for her, too.
One of his arms came around her waist as both of hers went around his neck. She drew up on her tiptoes and he bent his head and captured her lips.
He kissed her with what she imagined was all his pent-up fury and hurt and hope—wild and passionate until she was dizzy and gasping.
His head came up, only enough that the starlight illuminated his dark, glittering eyes.
Her lips parted of their own accord and he groaned low in his chest, bending his head to kiss her again.
One of her hands went into the fine, soft hair at his nape and she felt a tremble go through him.
His right arm tightened at her waist and then he moved his left arm—
And gasped, breaking their kiss.
* * *
Nathan struggled to breathe through the blinding pain radiating through his shoulder.
And because he’d just been kissing Emma.
What had he done?
“What’s the matter?” she whispered, panting.
“Shoulder,” he bit out.
She didn’t move from their embrace. She remai
ned tucked against his chest, with his good arm around her waist. “How badly does it hurt?”
“Only when I move it,” he answered hoarsely.
He should let her go.
He was going to let her go.
But his arm wouldn’t loosen from around her.
If this was the only moment he had with her, like this, he wanted to make it last as long as possible.
“We shouldn’t have done that—I shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered.
She remained silent, but didn’t move away from him. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple.
“It wasn’t right,” he went on stubbornly, even as his arm remained tight around her. “You’re supposed to marry what’s-his-name in the Oregon Territory.”
“I’m supposed to meet Tristan McCullough in the Oregon Territory,” she corrected.
Tristan McCullough. He hated the name. Hated the man he’d never met in that moment.
Her breath was hot against his chest, through his shirt.
“We haven’t exchanged any promises.”
But that didn’t mean someone like this McCullough wouldn’t be infinitely better for her than Nathan was.
“I was jealous of the soldier—the kiss never should have happened.”
But he still couldn’t let her go.
“The soldier? Oh. They were just being kind and escorting us back.”
No, they weren’t. They’d found the prettiest girls in the party and walked with them.
“I know you were worried about Georgie,” she whispered. “He’s fine. He wasn’t even shook-up.”
A tremor passed through him at the remembrance of how close the boy had come to being crushed beneath the wagon wheel.
If he’d reacted a second later, the boy could’ve been injured or even died.
He couldn’t risk being around Georgie. He’d already failed Beth.
He couldn’t be responsible for failing a little boy, too.
Emma’s arms tightened around his neck, and it was that moment of comfort that finally gave him the impetus to gently disengage their embrace.
“You should go back to your family’s tent.”
“And tomorrow?” she asked.
Wagon Train Sweetheart (Journey West 2) Page 13
