“Lana, it’s just a balm.” His look only made her feel angrier about her reaction. “It’s not even medicine.”
“How could you just go ahead and use something like that when you know how I feel about it?” Lana washed her hands twice, but the oily nature of the balm wouldn’t leave her skin, nor would the infernal tingling. “It won’t stop stinging. It won’t come off.” The pain fed a panic she didn’t want.
“Don’t be silly. You know Teena. She’d never harm you.” He tried to grab her hand but Lana spun from his grasp.
“Don’t call me silly. Is that what you think I am? Is it silly to want to know whatever’s in that concoction you used on me?”
Mack’s frustration lowered his tone. “I have no idea what’s in it. But I’ve used it for years and it works. I know you distrust Tlingit medicine, but this is just a balm. A harmless lotion. You’ve got no reason to act like this.”
So he felt she was some kind of fool for mistrusting Tlingit medicine. And as her husband, he was going to set her straight by simply overriding any opinions he didn’t share? Suddenly this became about much more than a simple burn on her thumb.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Mack let out an exasperated breath. “Lana, this is foolishness. The Tlingit are good people. I’ve used salves like that for years. I’d never give you anything that would hurt you.”
He’d stopped just short of saying “trust me,” and she knew why. How many times had they toed up to this argument over trust, dancing around the corners of it, never really coming out and accusing each other of mistrust? Why now, when he’d just taken what she knew to be a huge step of trust toward her, did this roar up between them? He might never deliberately hurt her, but it was clear now he’d not learned to respect her opinion. Or to trust the value of her thoughts if they differed from his. He’d decided what to do about “Mr. Brown” and Nicky Peacock. Leo had stolen from her, but it was Mack who decided to ship him upriver to some horrible fate in a Skaguay jail. All the faults in their relationship suddenly lay wide open before her. The warmth that had filled the room moments ago was gone, replaced with the icy silence of the answer she didn’t give Mack.
He felt it, too. “Fine,” he barked out, flinging his hands into the air. “Be unreasonable.” His words had sharp edges—the ruined moment had stung him as deeply as it did her. Why were they so skilled at hurting each other? Why did their every attempt to grow closer end in frustrated pain? Father God, Lana prayed, as she twisted the dishtowel between her stinging fingers, this can’t be what You wanted for us.
As if in reply, a churning rumble of thunder came from the bay. The storm that had threatened all afternoon was finally showing its face. Perfect timing, she thought bitterly. “You’re going out?” Lana raising her eyebrows in surprise when Mack pulled his hat and coat off the pegs by the door.
“It’s a bit cool in here for me.”
How had they let a tiny disappointment escalate into this? “Mack…”
“I was planning to go dig up that gold tonight anyhow.” He pulled the coat on, and the set of his shoulders told her he’d planned to do it under her blessing, not like this.
“But the storm…” It wasn’t what she really meant to say.
“It will only help matters. Darker and all.” Raindrops began their splatter as a flash of distant lightning lit up the water streaks on the windowpanes.
Lana regretted everything and yet knew nothing had really changed. They were hopeless with each other. She wanted to yank the evening back to the glowing moment when Mack took her hands and she began to believe they might stop hurting each other. She wanted to tell him not to go but couldn’t find the words.
His eyes told her there was no stopping him anyhow. Whether or not it was wise for both of them to cool off apart, he was going. He settled his hat on his head with such resolute firmness that any final plea died in her throat. “Be careful,” she managed, but the words sounded choked and hollow. “I’m always careful,” he replied after he turned toward the door. He stopped with his hand on the latch but didn’t look up. “I thought you knew that.”
The words echoed in the room long after the door’s harsh slam.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mack turned his head down into the wind and kept walking. Who was that woman I saw tonight? He’d seen sides of Lana he’d never seen before—both good and bad. And glory, what had possessed him to kiss her? Even if he thought of her like that—and it surprised him how much he had begun to think of Lana like that—it was a fool thing to do. When did he become such an impulsive dunce? Still, when she raised her eyes under those thick lashes and looked at him, her hands all soft and warm in his, he felt like twelve kinds of fool. Ready to grasp the impossible notion that they might actually have that kind of marriage. After all that stood between them, how could he ever think that possible?
And yet he had thought it, had felt it, which made her next reaction so hard to swallow. Lana? Afraid of the Tlingit? Sure there were lots of folks who weren’t quick to trust the natives, but he’d never counted Lana among them. It had been a split-second’s impulse to heal her wound. How had it turned into an argument about forcing his opinion on her? I’ve married a stranger, he admitted to himself—and maybe even to God—as he turned his collar up against the strengthening storm. Someone I don’t know. Or never knew.
But someone he’d promised to protect. To honor and cherish, even if she confused the daylights out of him at the moment. It seemed wrong to go back on that plan now, even though he couldn’t really say why. He just knew trudging up the muddy trail seemed somehow a less foolhardy path than going back to that confounded woman right now. Muttering to himself, Mack pressed on through the weather with his pack and shovel slung over one shoulder until he found himself in the spot off the trail where he’d hidden his gold.
It felt good to dig, even if he was soaked as he worked. The exertion of unearthing the gold seemed to burn through his frustration, give him a safe place to put the anger he’d nursed all the way up the mountainside. It must have taken the better part of an hour, but it only felt like minutes before he heard the clink of his shovel against the tin box. “Ha!” he said, raising his face to the storm in defiance of no one in particular. Mack squatted down, cleared the mud from around the four corners of the box, and had begun to lift it when something came out of the dark and knocked him back hard, sending him headlong into the hole he’d just dug and wrenching his shoulder.
He scrambled out of the hole, yelling, when the form came at him again, this time wielding the shovel Mack had just used. “Who the…umph!” Mack nearly toppled back into the hole as he blocked the shovel’s arc toward his head. Whoever it was meant for him to fall into that hole and not get out.
“Here?” a voice with a southern twang called out as he brought the shovel around again. “In the middle of the trail? You’re more idiot that I thought, Tanner.”
That makes two of us, Mack thought, scrambling back out of the hole and reaching for the gun at his belt. He’d been so lost in his anger at Lana he’d never once looked up to see if anyone was following him. He was just pulling his gun from its holster when he heard the click of the other man’s gun. A flash of lightning revealed Nicky Peacock behind a silver pistol aimed at Mack’s head. What were his last words to Lana? “I’m always careful”? Mack said a quick prayer that those really wouldn’t be his last words to Lana and slowly lowered his gun to the ground. “Easy, Peacock. Let’s nobody get hurt out here.”
“Won’t nobody get hurt long as you do what I say, Mr. Mayor.” The young man aimed the shiny new gun between Mack’s eyes. “Now, you just hoist that hefty box outta its hiding place nice and slow.”
He didn’t have a choice. As slowly as he dared, his mind scrambling for options that wouldn’t come, Mack began pulling the heavy box from its muddy surroundings. Rain and sweat drenched him as he lugged the box onto the grass, the wind whipping wet hair into his eyes and the rain sluicing nearly horizontally throug
h the trees. Peacock, slight as he was, was having enough trouble staying balanced in the fierce, wet wind, and Mack found himself wondering how soaked Nicky’s pistol could get before it would cease to fire. That could work in his favor, but the large and equally new knife that hung from the man’s belt could do damage no matter how wet it got. Mack’s own knife was out of reach, tucked in the pack now slumped at the base of a nearby tree. “You followed me.” Mack couldn’t think of anything else to say as he wiped his muddy hands on the grass.
Nicky cocked his head to one side. “Been in town for days. The way you been buyin’ pretty things for Lana, I figured you’d need to get more gold sooner or later. We all know you don’t do business with Jameson—or any other bank—don’t we?”
He’d snuck back into town without Mack knowing? He’d been watching Lana? A new chill—one that had nothing to do with rain—ran down Mack’s spine. “Don’t trust bankers—and your pal Jameson least of all.” The longer he kept Peacock talking, the more time it bought him to think his way out of this.
“Do you trust your pretty little wife, Mr. Treasure Creek?” Even in the darkness, Nicky’s toothy grin gleamed in a way that made Mack’s skin crawl.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Mack disliked the question. Intensely.
Peacock brandished his gun. “More than you’d think. Ever stop to consider it ain’t your charm that won the little lady, but what you got hidden up here? Ladies like your wife like to be well kept, don’t they?”
“Don’t even mention my wife!” Mack didn’t bother to keep the snarl from his voice.
“You just open that there box and leave the missus to me.” He cocked the pistol hammer again for emphasis. “She gets half, she’ll be fine.”
Stunned, Mack surged forward at the insinuation, but the man leveled the gun straight at his forehead. Mack flexed his fingers, with only the barrel of the gun keeping his simmering rage in check. Had he been anywhere but two feet below the arrogant cad, with his own boots stuck in mud, Mack would have attacked by now. Peacock would be lucky if Mack left him alive to be jailed for attempted robbery. As it was, he could only pretend to fiddle with the box lock as he tried to find a way onto level ground. “You lie. Lana doesn’t even know you.”
“Am I lying?” Smirking, the man dug into his coat pocket and produced a handkerchief. Mack recognized it instantly as Lana’s, the purple embroidery edging had been one she’d chosen during their wedding shopping trip in Skaguay. “We go back a long ways, Lana and I.”
She’d said she recognized him down on the docks that day, Mack recalled. Had that first “attack” been a ruse? A setup for now? No. He wouldn’t let himself believe such a thing.
Mack hurled the box into Peacock’s knees with enough force to knock him over. He kicked the man’s gun out of his hand and the pair of them rolled along the wet ground, each going for the large knife at Peacock’s belt. Peacock got to it first, slicing a sizable gash in Mack’s forehead that blurred his vision with blood and rainwater. They grappled for what seemed forever, splashes and grunts filling the soaked night as they banged into trees and rocks, wounding each other. Just when Mack thought he had the upper hand, Peacock picked up Mack’s gun that had lain on the ground. With a victorious grin, he pulled back the hammer with one hand while moving the knife he no longer needed down back toward its sheath. Desperate, Mack lunged one last time, hoping to get the gun before it went off. As he tackled Peacock by the waist, pushing the arm with the knife away, they backed up over the box of gold and went down together. The gun fired at his side, and for a moment Mack was unsure if the burning he felt was just the heat of the barrel or the bullet’s path through his gut.
Mack fell in a heap on top of Peacock, a sharp pain searing his other side as well. For a moment Mack thought he’d been both shot and stabbed, until underneath him Nicky jerked violently and let out a grotesque gurgle. Mack pulled himself off the convulsing body to see the bloody tip of Peacock’s knife coming through the back of the man’s coat. Nicky Peacock had fallen on his own blade, and it had gone straight through his chest to nick Mack in the ribs. The gun, still warm and smoking, lay a few inches away. Grasping his stomach, Mack exhaled to find only a small stream of blood from the knife and a powder burn on his shirt. The gun had fired beside him, not into him. He sank back on his haunches, shocked and grateful to be alive.
He stared in disbelief at the handkerchief now lying soaked and smeared in the mud beside them. It was Lana’s. Peacock had one of Lana’s handkerchiefs, one purchased by the very gold he sought to steal. Could Lana really have been in league with Nicky Peacock? It seemed impossible, but Lana never left her handkerchiefs anywhere. She was especially careful with them. Stolen? No, Peacock would have stolen something valuable like jewelry, not handkerchiefs. If they were partners, and Mack gasped at the thought, it did explain something that had bothered him for weeks. Why she was nowhere near as unsettled at that first “attack” down on the docks as a lady of her nature ought to be.
Had he been foolish to think a lady of Lana’s nature would ever really want to make a home in a place like Treasure Creek? Mack wiped his hands down his face, only to realize he was still bleeding. He pressed the guilty white handkerchief to his forehead, smelling her soap in the linen, even as he tasted blood. Every man eyed Lana. Every man eyed his gold. Was it such a far cry to think she’d eyed his gold, too? Yes. No. Possibly. Lana knew how to partner up with folks to gain an outcome. She always craved attention. Mack sat down on a rock and pondered if his own wife had conspired to rob him. Maybe hurting him hadn’t been in the plan. Still, if she’d somehow worked out how to follow him to where he hid the gold—and she was smart enough that she might have—it would be easy as pie to convince some greedy fool to seize his chance.
Peacock lay still on the ground, his face half in a puddle that was blooming a stain of red, as blood trickled from the his mouth. Blood but no breath. Nicky Peacock was dead.
Mack staggered a bit, the weight of what had just happened settling on him like lead. Everything he’d feared, everything he’d worked so hard to prevent, had just exploded into reality in front of him. He tried to tell himself he knew better, but his suspicious nature could not be tamped down.
Fear and anger fed each other quickly, and any attempts to shore up his temper were lost within minutes. He’d been a fool to trust anyone. God gave him a clever mind to protect Treasure Creek, and he’d let Lana’s mesmerizing eyes lead him into foolishness. “Wise as serpents?” He’d been anything but. Growling from anger as much from the effort, Mack pulled Peacock’s body off the trail. He’d have to deal with Peacock’s body later. He’d made arrangements in Skaguay that couldn’t wait. The gold was out of its hiding place and there was no telling who Nicky Peacock had bragged to or conspired with. It was tonight or not at all.
Mack didn’t even bother to undo the lock, but smashed it open with the butt of his gun. He piled the gold into the knapsack he’d brought for just that purpose, groaning under its weight. The many pokes of gold dust and lumpy nuggets made for an awkward, painful load, digging into his back and shoulders, even as the rain still stung his face. None of that compared to the cavern in his chest where he felt the sting of Lana’s betrayal. It nearly crushed what breath he had left. He’d stop back at the cabin to let her know she hadn’t succeeded in fleecing him, then he’d go to Skaguay and buy the land where he would move. Settle on the farthest corner of the land and watch Treasure Creek scheme and connive itself into the doom he tried so hard to prevent.
It had been hours. Lana was certain something was wrong. Mack had been angry when he left, but even his temper wouldn’t lead him to do something foolish on a brutal night like this. Nor would he leave Georgie and her alone all night—even in his worst moods—without telling her. Dear Lord, she prayed, something is wrong. Something has happened to him. I can feel it. Help me!
The fragile bit of security she’d allowed herself to feel shattered at the possibility that she and
Georgie could be alone again. She had fooled herself into thinking God had any loving plans for her…the future held nothing but endless pain and heartbreak. Not only for her, but for Georgie. It was as if she watched her life dissolve as uselessly as the garden dirt melted into Alaska’s ever-present mud.
Even if Mack was all right, their marriage was far from fine. Had he never really seen her as worthy of his confidence? Had she only imagined the closeness growing between them? It hurt to consider that his feelings for her weren’t anything more than dry obligation. Just another facet of his role as Ideal Family Man and Mr. Treasure Creek.
Family. She had thought they’d built the first beginnings of a new family. She looked at her beloved son, his eyelids drooping as he slumped in Mack’s stuffed chair by the fire, blissfully unaware of the storm going on outside—and inside—their home. The unfairness of everything—the unending avalanche of disappointment—drowned her in more pain than she thought any soul could survive.
Just as she thought every tear was shed, as she tucked a blanket around Georgie who—worst of all—had sighed, “where’s Ugle Ack?” as his head hit the pillow, Lana heard the cabin door latch click open.
Lana hurled into the main room. “Where have you been?”
“You know exactly where I’ve been.”
That was the very heart of it, wasn’t it? She didn’t know exactly. “No, Mack, I don’t know where you’ve been, because you would never tell me.” He’d lied about going after the gold, anyway, for he had nothing with him—no gold, no pack, no shovel—nothing but the rain-soaked clothes he left in and the coat he refused to even take off.
ALASKAN BRIDES 01: Yukon Wedding Page 17
