Jillian Hart

by Lissa's Cowboy

  "Pa!" Chad dashed across the room Lissa would not cross and wrapped his little arms tight around Jack's knees.

  Affection so bright warmed his chest, in the cold dark places a man didn't talk about, didn't want to feel. He knelt down and hugged the boy, his son, and felt the pure power in Chad's tight hug, felt the gentle sweetness of a heart that only knew love, not hatred. Jack knew he would protect this child all the days of his life.

  "Chad." Lissa's voice was soft as always, but different, somehow.

  The boy stepped away. Jack looked up at her, saw the shadows around her eyes. Lissa took Chad's hand in hers and headed toward the door. "I promised him we would get straight home to Puddles, as soon as the doctor finished treating you. He's worried about his puppy."

  "A boy should be concerned for his dog." Jack wanted to touch her, wanted to see for himself the bruises on her body, make sure nothing was broken, to kiss each hurt away. He held back, wary, sensing her uncertainty.

  "Puddles and me got all scared by the cows." Chad caught hold of Jack's trousers and hung on hard.

  "I got scared too, partner." Jack laid his hand on the boy's head, ruffled his straw blond hair, his heart tight. "How are you, Lissa?"

  "I've been better." Her voice was light, but her eyes looked dark. She reached for the door and he caught her hand, watched how his touch shocked her, saw the distrust ripple across her dear face.

  "You've been hurt." He saw the smudge of a bruise marking her chin, another across her left cheekbone. He would die before he saw her hurt.

  "It's not so bad." She tried to smile, failed.

  He laid his hand alongside her cheek, gently cupping the side of her face, wishing he could change what had happened, erase her pain and fear—mostly, her fear. "I need to know what is wrong."

  To his surprise, tears filled her eyes, tears so big and silvery he could see the pain in them. "You saved my life."

  She said the words with enough reverence to shock him, to make the ache in his chest draw tighter, but the shadows in her eyes remained, darker than ever.

  He would do everything, work as hard as he could to be a man she could trust with not just her life, but with her heart. He opened the door, then placed her cool hand in his, leading her out into the street, dreaming of home.

  "Murray!" The sheriff's voice was dark and low.

  Jack cringed. He had expected trouble. He just didn't want it to happen in front of Lissa and the boy. "Let me get my wife and son in the wagon and headed for home first. Then we'll talk."

  "Going to try to run, Murray?" Ike quirked one brow, the curve of his mouth a challenge. He took pleasure in pushing others around, in causing pain.

  "I have no reason to run, Palmer, and you know it. I shot only in self-defense. I did what I had to do." Jack guided Lissa away from the red-faced sheriff and the silent town.

  Nobody moved as they approached the livery. His chest tightened, and the same cold fire filled his blood as it had in the gunfight. Judging by the sheriff's venom, Jack knew without a doubt that he had a fight ahead.

  "It will be all right," he promised Lissa after paying the livery owner to hitch the wagon for her. "It will take Phillips a few minutes to do his job. Please take Chad to the store and get him some candy, anything to help make today a little better."

  A gaze as blue as heaven found his. "I think it's better if I speak with Ike. He listens to me. I—"

  His kiss silenced her, melted the distance between them, drew her hard against his chest and into his arms.

  "I'll come home to you." He stepped away. "On my word."

  "Is it true?" Susan Russell met Lissa at the front door of her mercantile, eyes wide, voice low. "Did your husband catch the rustlers?"

  "Yes." Lissa saw the relief on her friend's face, felt the same in her own heart. "Both Jack and Will brought them in."

  "Dead, I heard." Susan's hand rested on Lissa's arm. "Good for Jack. We've needed a man like him in these parts. He's saved most of the local ranchers from more serious losses."

  Pride washed through her chest, ebbing away some of her fear. Still, the image of Jack on the rise of that hill, charging armed outlaws, shooting them dead, chilled her. She knew Jack had been a deputy, and a deputy protected, and upheld the law, but she had seen him kill with the cold ruthlessness of an outlaw.

  "Peppermint, please." Chad tugged on her skirt, his smile trembly but visible. "And a piece for Puddles, too."

  Her son was alive today because of Jack Murray, because Jack had shown no fear when he rode straight into a stampede, because Jack had faced armed men and put an end to their lives.

  The two sides of him puzzled her—professional killer and tender protector—yet there was no denying what he'd done for her, what he'd come to mean to her.

  "And lemon sticks for me," she told Susan. "Oh, and Jack needs more coffee beans."

  "On the house. I insist." Susan held up her hand when Lissa tried to protest. "Our livelihood depends upon the ranchers. What he did today helped us, too."

  "Pa saved us." Chad sighed, proud of his father and pleased with his paper sack full of peppermint sticks.

  Susan turned from measuring out a pound of coffee beans. "The mail came in this morning with a letter for you. Go ahead and help yourself."

  "For me?" Who would write her? Lissa had no family. The only mail she had regularly received was Jack's letters.

  Curious, she circled around the edge of the counter and found the parchment envelope.

  "Need anything else?" Susan handed her the candy and coffee.

  "Not when you won't let me pay for it." Lissa thanked her friend for her generosity. "See you at next week's meeting?"

  "Count on it. Raising funds is very important." Susan's eyes sparkled with mischief. The fact that their ladies' club had been formed for the sole purpose of playing cards was a well-guarded secret, even from their husbands.

  The bell above the door tinkled as they left the store. Chad walked ahead slowly, too busy to run as he licked one end of a peppermint stick. Lissa turned the envelope over and studied the writing. Sunlight glinted across the paper and she stopped, turning to stand in her own shadow so she could read the return address.

  John Murray. Her heart stopped at the sight of his familiar handwriting. Maybe it was a letter lost in the mail and then found. Maybe—

  She tore at the envelope with nervous fingers, the pound of coffee tucked beneath one arm. She tugged out the folded parchment, smoothed it enough so she could read the words written there.

  Dear Lissa,

  As you must have surmised by now, I chose not to board the train as we agreed. I could not, in the end, take a wife. I am still grieving my beloved Jane. I wish you the best, Lissa, and I am truly sorry.

  Her knees buckled. Emotion sliced through her, knocking the air from her chest. She sat down on the steps to the boardwalk.

  "Mama." Chad bounded back to her, his fist still clutching the candy stick. "Want some?"

  She read the concern in his big blue eyes—Michael's eyes—and she couldn't breathe. The parchment rattled each time she trembled. She shoved the letter into her skirt pocket, every one of her hopes, of her dreams, dying with each beat of her heart.

  She hadn't married John Murray. She'd married a stranger, a man keeping promises not his own.

  "Looks like we have trouble, Murray." The sheriff dropped the letter he'd been reading on top of his desk. , He stood with a scrape of his chair and a hard, cold glitter in his eyes.

  "We had trouble." Jack closed the jailhouse door. "But I stopped it. You'll find the bodies of the men Will and I shot and killed at the undertaker's."

  "The men you murdered." Palmer clenched his beefy fists, drew broad his shoulders. "I told you to let me handle it, Murray. But you didn't listen."

  "I did what I had to do."

  "You took matters into your own hands. Without a badge on your chest, killing those men makes you a murderer."

  "How do you figure that, Sheriff?" Jack
wasn't fooled. It didn't take a genius to read the malevolence in the lawman's eyes or sense the danger ahead. Something told him he knew a lot about such men—too much. As if he'd been one of them.

  "I told you to leave the rustlers to me." Venom stung the sheriff's words.

  "You haven't lifted a finger to stop those outlaws. They nearly killed my wife and son today. You can't expect me to stand by idle while I could lose my family."

  A muscle jumped along Palmer's jaw. "Is Lissa all right?"

  "She will be." Jack strode forward, holding back as much anger as he could, but it rolled through him, unstoppable, a black-red wave of fury that tasted harsh in his mouth. He'd committed no crime. He'd protected his wife, son, and property.

  Concern changed the man, resonated in his voice. "What happened to her?"

  "She and Chad were caught in the middle of the stampede started by the men I killed." He'd had enough. Jack threw open the door and strode out into the sunlight. "Next time think of that."

  "Murray. I'm not through with you yet." The sheriff filled the threshold, a sheet of paper clutched in one hand. "I just got notice of an outlaw loose in this area. Been missing since the same day you rode into town. Or rather, the same day Lissa found you on the road where the old Indian trail leads straight to the territorial prison. Do you think that's a coincidence?"

  Anger punched in Jack's guts. "I'm no outlaw. You know it."

  "I know that you shot and killed men no one in this county has been able to take down. I don't know one lawman who can shoot like that. Only wanted men have that fine a skill."

  "We both know who I am, and why I'm here. Don't think you can scare me away from Lissa. It won't work."

  Palmer's mouth was a hard, tight line. "Not yet, Murray. But I can throw you in jail. Don't forget that."

  Jack clenched his fists. "Shooting a criminal in self-defense is not murder. We both know it."

  "Did you ever regain your memory?" The sheriff strolled down the boardwalk, not blinking, as unrelenting as a Montana blizzard.

  "None of your business, Palmer."

  "Then there ain't even a small chance you're this criminal who killed a U.S. Marshal in these parts? I'm glad for your sake." Palmer's smile turned bitter. "Because if you were Dillon Plummer, hiding out in my town, then you would be a dead man."

  Dillon Plummer. The name burned like a candle in the dark night of his mind, a faint whisper of memory, yet nothing more.

  "I'll be watching you, John Murray," the lawman promised. It was a threat, bitter and undisguised.

  Jack walked away, and he was not worried, was not afraid of a small town sheriff.

  While Chad napped safely in his bed with his puppy, Lissa did what she had to do. She couldn't feel sorry for herself, or for her situation.

  She was the one who'd found Jack unconscious and bleeding on the road. She had been the one who assumed he was Michael's cousin.

  Charlie dodged a gopher hole in the meadowland floor as he obeyed the pressure of her knees. He swung left, easy and smooth, cutting the few heifers from the milling herd and driving them back to the fenced pasture.

  "Lissa!" The wind carried the distant sound of her name. She looked hard at the dark spot on the road, saw the smudge of a bay horse and rider as they loped closer, still too far away to recognize clearly.

  Knots twisted in her stomach. She thought of the letter she'd left on the kitchen table—thought of the husband and father she and Chad stood to lose.

  "What are you doing?" he asked when he rode close enough for her to see the good-natured tilt to his mouth as he spoke to her.

  "What does it look like?"

  "Rounding up cattle is my job around here. Where are the men?"

  "I sent them into town to take soup to Will. He's going to be able to walk again." She knew her voice sounded strained, knew she was avoiding his gaze.

  "I'm glad to know that." Jack's beautifully shaped hand clasped over her wrist. "Let me take over."

  Her chin went up. "I can take care of my own cattle."

  "The animals are my job. That's our agreement, right?" He took the whip from her hand, but the look in her eyes, in her cool eyes, stopped him. "You have every right to be angry with me. I didn't keep my word. I didn't stop the rustlers before they put you and Chad in danger."

  Her face crumpled. She looked ready to cry. Then her jaw lifted, clenched tight. Tears stood in her eyes, but they did not fall. "You've done more than keep your word, Jack. I don't find fault with you for that."

  "Something is wrong." He coiled the whip, watching the snaking leather slide through his gloved hands. He felt her move away before he heard the plod of Charlie's big hooves on the ground, felt the distance as wide and deep as a canyon.

  "I shouldn't have killed those men in front of you. I wasn't thinking. I acted on pure emotion."

  "You are no mild mannered cowboy." Her gaze met his. Curls which had escaped from her braids whisped around her face, made her look vulnerable, fragile, but he was not deceived.

  Lissa was a woman of strength. She could drive cattle, use a whip, and face a stampeding herd to protect her son. "You are not the man I thought you were."

  His chest tightened. He thought of Sheriff Palmer's words, remembered the shocked expression on Lissa's face after he'd shot the rustlers. He'd charged the outlaws, known how to draw their fire, how to corner them, how to kill them. He'd reacted without blinking, without fear, without remorse.

  What kind of man had he been before he'd lost his memory? Before he sought out Lissa in faraway Montana? Jack didn't know what life he'd left behind in St. Louis, but he suspected he might not have been the best of men.

  "I did what I had to do." He lowered his voice, rode his gelding near her so he could lay his hand along her jaw, see the bruises on her face and the pain in her eyes.

  "I can't swear to the kind of man I've been before I met you, but I will promise you this—I will never show you violence. I will never hurt you."

  Tears remained, but still did not fall. He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, felt the wonder of her silken skin. How could he make things right? He was falling in love with her.

  No matter what, he would comfort her, do anything so she knew there was a better side to him. He had a heart, and he would show it to her. Make her know the best he had inside him.

  "The cattle can wait." He hung the coiled whip over his saddle horn. "You've been hurt."

  "Nothing serious." A smile trembled along her mouth, a tremble he wanted to kiss away until there was only passion and need and her. Only her. "Let me take care of you."

  "You are. You have been." She tipped back her head to gaze up at him, and curled tendrils breezed across her face, teasing him closer. "You saved Chad. You saved my ranch. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

  "You have it all wrong. I owe you for everything you've given me." He swept her up in his arms, lifting her from the saddle and onto his thighs.

  She melted against him, her silken hair catching on the stubble of his chin. She smelled like sunshine and sweet mountain air. She felt like heaven—warm, willing female in his arms. "Let me show you how much."

  Her hands became fists in the fabric of his shirt. "Jack, put me down."

  "That's the whole idea." Seeing her in danger today, feeling terror at the reality of losing her, still tore at him. He wanted to hold her close, snug in his arms, and love her until the fear and the shadows in his heart melted away. "Is Chad still taking his nap?"

  "Yes, but Jack—"

  "And the ranch hands are in town. We're all alone." He pressed a kiss to her temple, breathed in the cinnamon and sunshine fragrance of her hair. Desire beat in his blood, hot and thick, making him hard. Already he wanted her. "I want to make love to you, Lissa."

  "We need to talk." She looked so serious. He knew he had to make her forget seeing him kill those men.

  "We can talk later. Afterward." He brushed his lips across hers, felt the ready willingness, felt the tension in h
er jaw. "I'll tether the horses and be right in." He lifted her gently to the ground. "Wait for me."

  "Jack, I can't." Her spine straightened. With clenched fists and tight mouth, she looked ready to do battle, not make love.

  "Well, then we can have some apple cider and some of your angel food cake." Dessert didn't sound as satisfying, but he didn't care, as long as he was with her. "We can talk. Then we'll see about the lovemaking."

  That made her smile. Jack dismounted, snagging Charlie's reins, too, and tethering the horses to the small white fence, well out of reach of Lissa's flowers. Blues and yellows and whites danced in the breezes, reached up to catch the sun, green stems and fragrant petals brushing against Lissa's skirt as she gazed up at him. Shadows haunted her eyes. What had he done that could make her look at him this way?

  Jack's heart clenched. "Have I done something wrong?"

  "You haven't done anything wrong." She bit her lip, looking very lost. "You're not my husband."

  "I know you were still grieving Michael, but I had hoped—"

  "No. You don't understand." Her hand caught his wrist, tight as a steel band. "You aren't John Murray."

  "What are you talking about?" Ice clenched around his chest. The confrontation with Palmer, the gunfight with the rustlers, the need to round up enough of the herd to salvage their year's profits, all congealed in his throat, choking him.

  None of it mattered as much as this woman before him, the tears in her glimmering eyes, so full of pain. His knees buckled, but still he could not believe what she was saying.

  "John Murray wrote a letter apologizing for not coming to marry me as he promised to do." Her grip on his wrist tightened, but it was the fear he felt, solid and real.

  "You aren't him, Jack. I found you in the road and I just assumed, I just thought, you were him. You've seen how secluded we are. Who else would be using that road? And on the same day? If I'd had any inkling, I wouldn't have married you until you were certain of who you were. And now Chad—"

  She released her hold on his arm, covered her mouth with both hands. She sat down on the bottom porch step, all bunched up, looking as if she'd lost her world.