After the Ashes

by Howe, Cheryl

  They both stood until Lorelei wandered out of earshot. Corey sat down first. “I think she wants to get rid of you.”

  Braddock sank into the chair’s rawhide seat. He hoped the kid didn’t notice how the idea jolted him. “Why would she?”

  The way Corey cocked his head said he’d noticed how he rattled Braddock. but that the kid wasn’t nearly satisfied. “Why wouldn’t she? You’re no good for her.”

  A muscle worked in Braddock’s jaw. He didn’t like hearing his own thoughts out of Corey’s mouth. “Let’s talk about Mulcahy.”

  “All right. He’s going to kill you. How’s that?”

  The topic of his death at Mulcahy’s hands was preferable to a discussion of his treatment of Lorelei. “That’s my problem.”

  Corey glared. “No, that’s mine. Who in the hell do you think you are, using my sister like you have? She’s not some whore just hanging around for your convenience. How do you think she’s going to feel when you leave? You owe her, you son of a bitch.”

  Braddock could do little more than stare at Corey, hating the fact that the boy was right. The argument that Corey had sent her to him in the first place was played out. Braddock had to take responsibility for what he’d done after that. “I’m not good enough for her.”

  “You got that right. But you’re going to ask her to marry you just the same. It’s her choice if she turns you down.”

  “Since when do you want me in the family?”

  Corey stood up, knocking back his chair. “You’re not going to ride out of here making my sister feel like she’s not good enough for you.”

  Braddock stood too. He grabbed fistfuls of Corey’s leather vest and jerked him hard.

  The boy didn’t flinch. “Go ahead, big man. Take a swing. You’d just better make it a good one, ’cause I’m not going to back down. I’m not going to let you break my sister’s heart.” Braddock shoved Corey away from him. The boy quickly righted himself, his stance ready, his fists clenched.

  Braddock ran his fingers through his tangled hair. “Sit down. I’m not going to fight you. Believe it or not, I do care about your sister.”

  Corey righted his chair and sat in it, arms folded over his chest. “Yeah. That’s why you’re going to ride out of here, leaving her to fend for herself with your baby in her belly.”

  Braddock gripped the back of his chair. “She’s not,” is all he could get past the rock wedged in his throat.

  “Yet. You might think we’re some white trash Southerners, no better than we ought to be—”

  “I don’t think that.” Braddock released his hold of the chair’s thin wooden slat before he snapped it in two. “I’d kill anyone who said that about Lorelei.”

  “Yeah, but you’d leave her to explain when her stomach starts to swell.”

  Braddock shook his head, refusing to look at the kid. I’m supposed to be doing the questioning, he told himself—but his thought rang hollow.

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t doing what you shouldn’t with my sister. I see she didn’t get much sleep last night. And that grin on her face. What the hell did you promise her?”

  Braddock glared at Corey. “Nothing. I didn’t promise her anything.”

  The boy glared back with righteous anger that made Braddock want to hang his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. But don’t think you’re anything special. Lorelei would love a three-legged dog. She’s just like that. She’s got a big heart.”

  Braddock stared at the dust covering his boots. “Yeah,” was the only retort he could come up with.

  “Yeah. And Lorelei gets hurt. Again. I’m sick of it.”

  Braddock raised his head. Corey’s face was red. His eyes looked damp. How dare he look so damned wronged?

  “I’m sick of it, too. So why don’t you stop acting like a spoiled brat and let your sister live her life?”

  Corey stuck out his chin. “I plan to. But I’m going to get you, Braddock. You can’t treat Lorelei like you have and get away with it.” The soft fuzz that covered his jaw in sparse dark patches didn’t diminish his threat.

  “Let me tell you something. If it weren’t for Lorelei you’d be swinging from a noose right about now. I’m taking care of her the best way I know how.”

  Corey stared through him, calling him a liar without saying a word.

  Braddock paced as he’d seen Lucky do in the corral beside the barn. They both wanted to run. Facing Corey was harder than he’d ever imagined. What had he been thinking last night? He couldn’t leave Lorelei to handle the consequences of his lust alone or expect some other man to take responsibility for a family Braddock had created. He thought he had left honor at West Point. But that was the kind of honor men made up. This was flesh-and-blood real. How in the hell did he think he could walk away from a child or a pregnant woman?

  His thoughts pounded in his head. He had to grit his teeth to think about something else. “Where’s Mulcahy?”

  “Specter Canyon,” Corey answered. He didn’t blink an eye.

  Braddock was forced to sit down. He knew the canyon. It was in the middle of Apache country, narrow and impassable. Outlaws had hid there before, but were rumored never to come out.

  Corey must have read his expression because he grinned. “Know it?”

  “How do you get there?”

  Corey shrugged. “Never been there myself, but if you got a map, I can show you.”

  “Then how do you know of it?”

  Corey looked him straight in the eye. “They showed me. It’s where we were all supposed to meet up.”

  Braddock studied him. Corey was either telling the truth or was an excellent liar. Braddock already knew the latter to be true.

  Corey picked at a callus on his palm. “You won’t get out alive. If the Apache don’t get you, the rattlers will. There’s only one path through the canyon. You have to dismount and lead your horse through blindfolded. Horses know better than to go through something so steep and narrow.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Corey nodded and smiled. “Yeah.”

  Braddock stood. “I’ll get a map.”

  He wrenched open the side door, eager to escape Lorelei’s brother, if only for a few seconds. He rubbed his forehead as he strode through the Hartman kitchen and into the living area. Guilt gave him a headache. A tingling on the back of his neck stopped him cold. He turned slowly, his hand poised to grab the Smith & Wesson strapped to his hip.

  Beth sat in a rocking chair beside the front window, a sleeping Rachel draped over her lap while she sewed a torn patch on the sleeve of one of Jay’s work shirts. Her gaze knifed him.

  “I’m getting a map,” he said.

  “I know. Voices carry out here.” Her gaze dropped to her mending. The way she stabbed the blue cambric with the needle let him know she was still thinking of him.

  Braddock watched her, willing her features to soften. He’d never seen sweet Beth look so vicious. Even the soft swelling of her belly and the sleeping child in her lap could not alter the chilling effect of her judgment. If she had a gun, he was sure she’d shoot him.

  He held out his hand, took a breath to explain, then let it out. Instead he escaped into the boys’ bedroom to get a map from his saddlebag. Anything he tried to say to Beth would sound like an excuse. His reasons for leaving Lorelei had already begun to stack up short in his own mind.

  He never should have made love to Lorelei under Beth’s roof. If he didn’t get out of here today, she’d be bending Jay’s ear until he was forced to marry Lorelei at gunpoint. Braddock sat back on his heels, map in hand, and felt a rush of relief wash over him like a waterfall. That was what he wanted. Why fight it?

  He strode back into the living room and stopped in front of Beth. She didn’t glance up, but her pinched lips let him know she wasn’t unaware of his presence. He opened his mouth to tell her he’d do the honorable thing. He’d marry Lorelei. But his voice seized in his lungs. Dark, cold fear gripped him. Jay’s old wheelchair loomed in the com
er of the room, just past Beth’s shoulder. A half-finished quilt was draped over the back, and a pile of mending filled the seat, but the big ugly wheels were in plain view. Why hadn’t he seen the hated chair before?

  All too clearly he remembered the first time Jay had been in that chair. They’d forced him to leave his bed and plopped him in it against his will. He hadn’t met Braddock’s gaze at the hospital when Braddock came to prepare him for his wife’s visit. Jay had even cussed when Beth and the kids had come. But he’d been dying a little every day, and Braddock had known it was all his fault. He’d had to bring them.

  To escape the sobering reminder of Jay’s wheelchair, Braddock stumbled through the kitchen. He had to leave here and never see Lorelei again. It was the only way. He couldn’t go through what he’d gone through with Jay. What he’d gone through hundreds of times during the war. Bad things happened when he was around. Lorelei would have hurt feelings when he left, but at least she would be in one piece. And if there were to be a child between them, any man would gladly take it with Lorelei. Jay would make sure he was a good man. A better man than Braddock.

  With his hands braced on the door frame, Braddock paused to steel himself against facing Corey. He forced himself to remember who he was. What he was. During the war he had gone off alone each night to let himself be overwhelmed by his grief and horror, then hardened himself again for the next day. He could do that again. Eventually there would be nothing left to fight against. He would be numb.

  Willing himself to feel nothing, he strode out the kitchen door. His efforts might have worked if the first thing he saw wasn’t Lorelei.

  She gazed up at him and a well placed hammer came down to shatter his glass resistance. But he didn’t return her smile. What was there to smile about?

  He thrust the map at Corey. “Show me.” He made a special point not to look at Lorelei again.

  Archie sat in the chair Braddock had vacated. Lorelei must have found the spring, because the man had washed his face and hair. Sober, he appeared younger. He was probably around Braddock’s age. Coherence sharpened his clear blue eyes. And in those eyes was pain, a frozen pain that had just started to wake after a long hibernation.

  Braddock didn’t wonder what had happened to Archie. He could guess a hundred different scenarios. He turned away before he recognized too much, but not before he noticed Lorelei rest her hand on Archie’s shoulder.

  Braddock looked at her. She didn’t even glance his way. Her dark eyelashes fanned her cheeks while she watched Archie clench the wool trousers covering his thighs. She knew what had happened to Archie. They had shared something at the spring. She’d found a new three-legged dog to rescue.

  Archie wasn’t good enough for her either. She didn’t need to take on his ghosts.

  Corey pointed to the map he had unfolded and smoothed across his lap. “Here.”

  Archie abruptly stood. He clutched the loose shirt covering his stomach and swayed. “Excuse me.”

  Lorelei worried her bottom lip as she watched him stagger behind the barn. She finally turned her gaze to Braddock. “He was in the war.”

  “Weren’t we all.” Braddock knelt beside Corey’s chair so he could get a better look at the map. Finding Mulcahy’s location was what he’d been wanting for years. Unfortunately, having the map right in front of his face didn’t help him focus. The image of Lorelei spending her days tending a drunk blurred the map’s faded script and worn lines.

  Corey used his finger to trace a path. “You come in here. Follow this creek bed. If it floods, you’re dead.”

  “Is there any other access?”

  “Nope.”

  Lorelei sat in the chair across from them. She leaned forward to touch Braddock’s arm. “Why do you have to go alone?”

  Corey answered when all Braddock could do was stare at the map and try to make sense of it. “Not that I think he’s going to make it, but the more people you bring the less likely you’ll be able to get in unnoticed.”

  He had to recommit to his mission. Mulcahy deserved to be brought down, and Braddock knew he was the man to do it. Violence was all he was good for. Braddock shifted to his other knee, knocking away Lorelei’s grip as casually as possible.

  “What good will it do if he gets killed?”

  “I won’t get killed.” He would survive. That was the one certainty. The sky could fall, the seas could rise, and the sun could burst, but he wouldn’t get killed. For some reason his destiny was to survive.

  Corey folded the map and handed it back to Braddock. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Where are the guards?”

  “The canyon narrows until you’re sure you won’t get through. You will, and it widens after that. The first set of guards is stationed on top of the narrowest part.”

  “How many men do they have?”

  “Hard to say. Some died in the robbery, probably a few more from their wounds. But Mulcahy isn’t the only outlaw who uses the hideout. There are others who are just as bad. There could be fifteen to fifty.”

  “Against one?” Lorelei pleaded.

  Braddock finally glanced at her, and he was once again her favorite stray. The sheen coating her dark blue eyes made them look even brighter in the sunlight.

  “The more there are, the better it will work to my advantage. They’ll have their guard down, thinking they’re safe. But men like Mulcahy breed chaos. The more there are, the more chaos—the easier it will be for me to slip in unnoticed.”

  “Are we through?” Corey stood.

  “Sure.” Braddock kept his gaze on Lorelei. She stared into the folds of her faded gray dress. The glow she had started the day with had been blotted out by a dark cloud. As usual, he was responsible.

  Corey glanced at his sister, then glared at Braddock before he turned and walked away.

  Braddock eased into Corey’s vacated chair. He thought of all the things Corey had said, of Beth’s stabbing stare, and knew he had to think of something to give Lorelei. And it wasn’t just because he was desperate to see her smile again. He owed her more than just a goodbye.

  He waited for her to look up at him. She didn’t.

  Finally he lightly squeezed her knee. “I’m going to be all right.”

  “You’re not indestructible, Christopher.”

  He wished. How much easier his life would be if that were true. “This won’t be the death of me, but breaking your heart might.”

  Her chest rose and fell with her uneven breathing. “Then don’t.”

  Braddock rested his forearms on his thighs and hung his head. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Yes, it is,” she pleaded. “Give us a chance.”

  “Lorelei,” he said, not knowing what went after that. Finally he glanced at her. “What would I have to do?”

  She blinked, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. His question took her as much by surprise as it did him. “I don’t know exactly. Come back for starters.”

  He clasped his hands together. “I’m not a farmer.”

  Her face lightened with her growing hope. “I never asked you to be.”

  Braddock stared past the barn, trying to glimpse the white crosses in the graveyard. But the sun beamed in his eyes and the lone shade tree ruffled its leaves, refracting light like a thousand tiny mirrors. What was he doing? All he knew was that he couldn’t let her go. But he shouldn’t give her false hope.

  “Is your brother being straight with me?”

  “I think…” She paused, apparently startled by the change of subject. “Yes, he’d better be. He knows I’ll never speak to him again if he wasn’t.”

  He took her hands in his before he came to his senses. “Give me a month.”

  “For what?”

  Some part of him was commanding the rest of him. His rational mind screamed for him to stop, to shut up, but he couldn’t. “Wait for me a month.”

  “After that?”

  “Hopefully you’ll smarten up and won’t even care after that.
”

  “Does this mean you’re coming back?” She scooted to the edge of her seat.

  He rubbed his brow. “I can’t leave things like this.” He dropped his hand and told her the only thing he could decipher in all his warring thoughts. “I can’t leave you. I want to take care of you, but I’m afraid.”

  She laughed. “I can take care of myself.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t think I was either, until I met you.” She grabbed both his hands. “I’ll wait for you as long as it takes.”'

  “No.” He pulled his hands away. “This is all new to me. I don’t want a forever kind of promise. Just give me a month.”

  Her smile widened. “A month is what you have.”

  He stood, not knowing what to do now, not even sure what he had promised. But his headache faded with the knowledge that he had a little more time to think of Lorelei as his.

  She faced him, grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly she leaped toward him, throwing her arms around his neck. “I love you.”

  He eased his arms around her waist and took the biggest risk in his very dangerous life. “I love you, too.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lorelei stepped off the empty porch and into the arms of the starless night. Christopher hadn’t said goodbye. He’d left a little before dark while she was occupied preparing dinner with Beth. Lorelei understood. Not even Beth’s sympathetic gaze when Jay delivered the news of Christopher’s departure could spoil her optimism. Christopher loved her, had said he was coming back in a month. His promise was more than she had dared to even hope for.

  Corey on the other hand, instead of being thrilled by news of Christopher’s departure, seemed to have sunk into a funk. He barely ate his dinner, and even Alice’s glowing admiration couldn’t bring a smile to his face. After he excused himself with a mumble, he’d disappeared. Everyone had gone to bed and he hadn’t even returned to say goodnight.

  Lorelei navigated the path to the barn in the pitch black night, expecting to find Corey fussing over Sugarfoot. Whenever he was upset, he turned to a horse. No matter how many times she told herself she wasn’t the cause of his troubles, she still felt guilty for being so happy because of them. If Corey hadn’t garnered a warrant for his arrest, she never would have met Christopher.