by Marla Monroe
Men of the Border Lands 10
Happy in Their Love
Abe Waverly isn’t looking for company when first Russell then Celina show up. They know about loss just like he does, but can he trust them with more than just his home? Celina Berry fears becoming attached to either man, but what will become of her and her unborn baby if she doesn’t?
Russell Coggins wakes up after a bear attack in Abe’s home. Russell isn’t sure if he is welcome there or not, but he has time to decide while he is recovering. Then they find Celina who has just lost her husband and has been traveling alone. She’s pregnant and scared, unsure who she can trust.
Together the three of them become a family as they fight Mother Nature to survive in the deepest parts of The Border Lands. Learning to trust each other is more than just a need. It becomes necessity in order to survive.
Genre: Futuristic, Western/Cowboys, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 50,505 words
HAPPY IN THEIR LOVE
Men of the Border Lands 10
Marla Monroe
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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HAPPY IN THEIR LOVE
Copyright © 2013 by Marla Monroe
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-938-7
First E-book Publication: May 2013
Cover design by Les Byerley
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HAPPY IN THEIR LOVE
Men of the Border Lands 10
MARLA MONROE
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
Abraham Waverly cursed as he climbed back up the bank of the river. The fishing equipment alone was enough to unbalance him as he crawled over rocks and maneuvered around stumps without the added weight of the fish he had caught. He’d be damned if he lost any of it or took a header into the river. It had taken entirely too long to catch the damn things.
Finally the ground leveled out enough he could stop and rest a minute. He still had a good twenty-minute hike to make it back to the lodge, and it was getting to be late morning already. Normally, it didn’t take as long to catch a few fish if he got there early enough, but for some reason, they’d been harder to catch than normal.
“Probably getting late enough in the year to have them seeking deeper channels,” he muttered to himself.
Abe knew it was somewhere around the middle of August from the shorter days and temperature changes. He’d been living there for about the last seven years and had long since stopped trying to keep up with the days of the week and the months in the year. All that mattered was following the signs to know when to plant the garden or bring the cows closer to the lodge. He tracked the seasons by the weather and the time of day by the sun or moon.
“Fucking winter will be here before you know it.”
It had been a long time since he’d had any reason to keep up with time and the passage of time. Not since Kathy. When she was gone, nothing else mattered, not the day of the week or the month of the year. It was all useless now.
He, his wife, and their two children had lived in Timber Lake, South Dakota, a small town of less than six hundred people. He’d gone to work in the Saskatchewan territory of Canada for three weeks to a logging camp and come home to chaos and death a month later. Abe worked with a local logging company that had won a contract to harvest some prime timber not far over the border into Canada. He was only supposed to be gone twenty days, but when the disasters struck, getting back home had taken nearly an additional week.
At first, they hadn’t really realized anything was wrong, but after riding out a couple of earthquakes and then not being able to get anyone on the radios or satellite phones, they decided the best thing was to head to Moose Jaw and find out what was going on. What they found had been almost surreal. In less than two weeks, the small city had fallen to marshal law with looting, raiding, and widespread panic. Already disease had gotten a foothold in some areas.
They headed back to the States with one thing on their mind, getting home to their families. The journey had taken longer with the continued quakes and flooded roads. Forest fires had broken out in some areas and one detour led to another until making it back home seemed almost impossible. Then once they drove into town, there wasn’t much left of the place to call home.
Major floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and diseases had wiped out most of the world’s population. Disease tore through the country, targeting women, children, and the elderly. Abe pretty much ran the final miles to his place only to find the bodies of his wife and two children among the rubble that had once been their dream house.
Abe adjusted the fishing gear as he got a better grip on the basket holding his catch. The hike back to the lodge seemed to take twice as long today for some reason. It probably seemed that way because he couldn’t stop remembering. Sometimes the memories would haunt him for days and sometimes he’d have to struggle to rem
ember her face, the scent of her skin just after they’d made love.
He shook his head and trudged on. The garden wouldn’t harvest itself, and the animals needed feeding. He didn’t have time to waste thinking about what was gone. It was set in stone and would be there the next time he let his guard down and allowed the past to creep up on him.
When he stepped out of the tree line where he could see the structures that made up his home there in the Border Lands, Abe felt some of the tension of the last few minutes fall away. This was where he lived now, somewhere in the northwest part of what used to be Montana, near Yellowstone. His house was the lodge of what he had finally determined had once been a militia stronghold.
Besides all of the propaganda he found in the lodge and six cabins nestled in the forest around him, he’d also found hidden caches of guns, ammunition, and supplies all over the area. The place hadn’t been totally abandoned, though. Abe had to bury several bodies before he could claim the place as his.
He checked his trip wires to be sure no one had been there before stepping inside the large building. Stowing the fishing gear, the next thing on his list was to finish cleaning the fish and cooking them up. An early lunch would be welcome after the morning he’d had. Then it was back outside to work in the garden and feed the animals.
Looking out the window toward the barn, the emptiness that filled him seemed greater for some reason. Maybe it would continue to grow until it ate him alive, leaving nothing behind but a shell. Then maybe he could lie down and not get back up.
* * * *
Russell Coggins walked right into the damn thing. He’d been so wrapped up in self-pity that he’d completely missed hearing a massive grizzly bear rooting around ahead of him. When he almost bounced off the bastard, it stood on its hind legs and roared at him. It had to be nearly eight feet tall with claws like razor blades.
“Aw, hell! Son of a bitch!”
Russell struggled to keep his balance while tearing away from the hold the bear had on his shoulder and backpack. He could feel the slightly curved claws tearing into him. If he fell, he would be dead for sure. As it was, he’d be lucky to get away without losing his fucking arm.
“Let go, you fucking bastard.” He managed to free his knife and jab the grizzly in the gut.
The animal’s deafening roar left his ears ringing, but he was free to scramble for safety. There was no way he could climb a tree with his injured shoulder. He veered away from them and aimed for the rocks ahead. If he could make it to them, he would have a chance of maneuvering through them, where the much bigger bear wouldn’t be able to follow.
The blood dripping from his shoulder and arm made negotiating the massive stones difficult. Added to that, one of the straps on the backpack was torn apart so that he had to carry it. He managed to climb up a short ways then slip between the rock outcropping where the angry predator couldn’t reach him. Now all he had to do was manage to stop the bleeding and dress the wounds. Hopefully they wouldn’t need stitches. Russell wasn’t counting on his luck holding out for that, though.
Most of his wounds were on the back part of his shoulder, so he couldn’t reach them or even see them to figure out how bad they were. He pulled out a folded shirt and shifted it between him and the rock he was leaning against, pressing back to apply pressure to the area while he tended to the areas he could reach.
Pain began to beat out the endorphins that had briefly masked it, making concentrating arduous. Slowly he worked through the pain until dizziness proved focusing to be impossible. Though he could no longer see the grizzly, he could still hear him on the other side of the rocks. It didn’t seem to have anywhere pressing to go at the moment, which left him in dire straits. Without medical attention soon, he’d either bleed to death or end up with a massive infection that he had no way of treating. Not to mention that he didn’t have enough food or water for more than one day. Even if he managed to hold the rifle up, he wouldn’t be able to aim it and would only piss the grizzly off more if he somehow managed to hit it.
“Hell, even if I could get out of here, I’m in no shape to hunt or get water.” He was dead.
He held out no hope that anyone would come to his rescue. There had been no sign of anyone in the last three days he’d been walking and before that, he hadn’t seen anyone in nearly a week.
“Face it, Russ. This is it for you. If you’re lucky, the good Lord will have mercy and take you in to be with Jill and the girls.” He chuckled weakly.
He didn’t hold out much hope of that. Why hadn’t he died back with Jill during the raid instead of months later, out here all alone? It didn’t make sense. At least his son was safe. He’d been smart not to come with him. Moving in with Peggy and her husband to form a ménage had been a good idea after all. Russell hadn’t liked the idea at first, but after losing Jill to the damn black-market traders, he could see the wisdom in it now. Two or even three men could protect a woman much better than just one.
“I miss you so damn much, Jill. I’m sorry I was too possessive and jealous to allow another man to help me keep you safe. I was a fool.” He sighed.
He was so tired that he couldn’t hold back the silent tears that leaked from his eyes. She had been his high-school sweetheart. They’d married right after graduation. He went to work on the barges that ran up and down the rivers, making good money while she worked part-time at a department store in town and took care of the house and eventually their three children.
He could almost see her waiting on him when he would get off the boat after working thirty days in a row. He’d have the next two weeks off to make it up to her. They’d had a good life, with the normal ups and downs. Then hell opened up and all but swallowed the world in one gulp.
He would never forget the earthquakes and how they’d screwed up the currents in the river. They’d lost two men off the barge and couldn’t find them. Then the rain had trapped them for nearly a week because of all the debris in the river. The morning the captain hadn’t been able to raise anyone on the radio he’d had a bad feeling, but they continued on. The cell phones didn’t work either, making the men edgy and short tempered.
When they had finally made it back to port, it was to find chaos everywhere. Storms that had dumped massive amounts of rain on the already earthquake-torn earth had also spawned killer tornadoes. Russell managed to make it back to the neighborhood where he and his family lived outside of St. Louis, Missouri, but once there, he’d had to walk and search for his home. The devastation was immense, mind-boggling in its magnitude.
Fragmented memories of finding Jill and his son living in a tent near the ruin of their home plagued him as he tried to ignore how his teeth were chattering. He knew it was the beginnings of shock.
She and their son had buried their two daughters while he’d been gone. He could still hear her anguish as she told him about their deaths. The three of them had mourned over their graves together then he had picked up what was left of his family and joined others to find shelter and food.
After nearly two years of barely surviving the continued devastation and diseases, the city grew too dangerous with gangs and black-market traders. They gathered everything they could scrounge and joined a caravan of survivors heading for the Border Lands, where it was rumored living off the land was safer. It took them over a week to locate a small community of people who had settled in houses that had been abandoned or where the occupants had died.
For the next five years, they led a relatively happy existence. It hadn’t been easy by any means, but until the black-market traders had shown up, life had been livable. But nothing lasts forever. He’d learned that lesson. Despite being urged by others to bring in another man to help keep his wife safe, Russell had balked at sharing his wife. It wasn’t right. Besides, he could keep her safe. He didn’t need help taking care of his woman.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered to himself.
It was getting to be midafternoon now, and his shoulder was mostly numb. He hoped
he would go to sleep soon and the cold would finish him as he rested.
“Coward. Jill would call you a coward for giving up, Russ.”
She had been hanging out clothes in the unseasonably warm spring air when the men had attacked. Their son wasn’t there. He’d been talking to another family about moving in with them to be their third. He and his son had argued over that frequently, but now he was glad his son hadn’t been there, or he might have died, too.
He heard her scream from the barn and grabbed his rifle as he took off toward the house. The clothes basket was upturned and the basket of clips emptied on the ground beneath the clothesline. He remembered storming into the house to find his sweet Jillian fighting the two men attempting to tie her up. A red haze had covered his eyes, and he lifted his rifle to shoot one of the men. Only there had been three of them, not two. The third man had been searching the upstairs and managed to get off a shot as he raced down the staircase. The sting of the bullet hitting his shoulder hadn’t really registered at first, but it had thrown his aim off and he only winged one of the men holding Jill.
The distraction gave her the opportunity to slip through them and run. She headed for the front door and managed to get outside. He managed to shoot the man on the stairs before he got off another shot but had to chase after the other two traders as they followed his wife. Russell was scared to shoot for fear of hitting Jill.
Just as they reached the barn, a shot whizzed past his head, missing the two men in front of him and struck Jill in the chest. Seeing her fall to the ground had broken something inside of him. He roared out in denial before turning and shooting the bastard behind him in the head. Then he killed the other two men after cornering them in the barn. Afterwards he’d wished he hadn’t killed them so quickly. They hadn’t deserved such a quick end.
