Tough Prospect

by Laura Strickland

  Darkness, then hazy light. Deep blackness before sudden brightness burst upon her. She saw a vast field of it, pure white, and it beckoned. It would be so easy to go there and end all her distress and terror.

  No! her heart cried. Mitch isn’t there. She said it over to herself, and to the light, in determined refusal. No. I need a chance to tell him I love him. I need—

  “Tessa!”

  Ah, and now she thought she heard his voice. She must be hallucinating, fearfully close to death. Because she almost thought she could feel him also, the way she could when they lay together in the dark. Her heart leapt, and her head cleared on a shot of pure energy.

  Here I am, Mitch. Here!

  But the hallucination continued. For even though he couldn’t possibly hear her through the sodden gag that covered her lips, she imagined him touching her, hands lifting and cradling, his voice giving a very unlikely whoop as he caught her high in his arms. The grain that covered her fell away in a terrible shower, and the hard contact with Mitch’s chest was the best thing she’d ever felt.

  Real. It must be real. But she still couldn’t breathe.

  His cheek pressed against hers. “Tessa, Tessa.”

  From somewhere behind him came an order. “Mr. Carter? Please get out of there at once.”

  The command sounded urgent, yet Mitch disregarded it. Instead his fingers fumbled with the gag, soaked with spittle and sweat, and coated with grain; he pulled it away.

  She gasped, and so did he. “You’re alive… Alive! Oh, thank God.”

  She wanted to tell him she still couldn’t breathe. The air all around them danced with chaff and felt too thick to enter her lungs.

  “Mr. Carter?” The voice came again.

  Mitch turned and, with Tessa held high in his arms, pelted out into the light.

  ****

  Tessa came to herself in the hands of the doctor and had a brief, if meaningful, conversation with him. When next she awoke, some indeterminate time later, she heard only silence. Her throat felt raw and her lungs seemed to be on fire, but the breath came more easily—one of the sweetest sensations she’d ever known. Her body hurt all over as if she’d been pummeled, and her eyes, when she struggled to open them, seemed to be full of grit.

  She opened them anyway in an effort to determine her location.

  She recognized the room—her own, back at the house on Prospect Avenue. A single lamp burned on the table beside the bed where she lay. Was she alone? No. Somebody’s hand clasped hers tightly, and she could feel Mitch’s presence in every part of her body.

  He lay beside her, half collapsed onto the bed, where he’d fallen asleep. Tessa examined him the way a woman in a dream might, slowly and with rising delight. Black hair, no longer neat but mussed all over his head and still containing flecks of yellow grain. Hazel eyes closed, lashes fanned out—a frown creasing his brow even in sleep.

  Her husband, her man. The one who, against all likelihood, she’d come to love on a level so deep that just being here with him now felt profound.

  How had that happened?

  Did it matter how?

  Perhaps he didn’t sleep after all, for when she drew a deep breath his eyes opened and his fingers clenched on hers so tightly it hurt.

  “Tessa? My God, Tessa. How are you?”

  She gazed into his eyes. “Better. Better, now.”

  He smiled at her. Oh, to be the recipient of a smile from Mitch Carter! Not one of his tight, calculating smiles—the sort he gave others—but one like this that lit his face.

  And illumined her world.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he told her, “You passed out in my arms, and I feared the worst. Thought I’d been too late.” Agony filled his eyes, a look such as she’d never seen there before. “Marty broke every law getting you to the quack on Fillmore. Doctor says—he says you’ll recover, given some time. Your body will heal. I only hope your spirit will, too.”

  “I’ll heal,” she assured him. She’d discovered a wealth of strength inside herself since becoming Mitch Carter’s wife, a veritable bedrock of stubbornness, tenacity, and compassion she’d never suspected existed. Here, in the intimacy created by the circle of light and Mitch’s fingers on hers, she believed she could overcome anything. But she had to tell him what lay in her heart.

  Abruptly her eyes filled with tears. “You came for me.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “You saved me. Even though I said—I said…”

  “Hush, it doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, though. It does. Because, Mitch, I lied. The whole time I lay in that awful place waiting to die, I just wanted to tell you one thing. I wanted the chance—”

  “To tell me what?”

  “I love you. I do, Mitch. I don’t know how or when it happened, but—”

  Pure astonishment shone at her from his eyes. “Eh? What did you say?”

  She leaned up and caught his face between hands that hurt, and drew him to her. “I—love—” the phrase ended in a kiss that, she hoped, said all she couldn’t in words. Soft and gentle, it was both a question and a pledge. It ended with her tears.

  “Can you ever forgive me, Mitch, for saying such a terrible thing?”

  “Here! Here, don’t cry. Please don’t.”

  He kissed her tears away, gathering them with his lips in a gesture so tender it made her gasp. When his mouth returned to hers, she felt the deep well of his loneliness, his very heart open to her, an offering.

  Her heart wanted nothing more than to fill that emptiness. But how? How to convince this man, who had lived on so little for so long and whose love she’d thrown back in his face, of just how desperately she needed him?

  Constancy.

  Devotion.

  Giving herself to him again and again, forevermore.

  “Mitch,” she whispered when the kiss ended with a lingering sweetness of lips on lips. “I don’t suppose you can believe me yet. But I’ll prove it to you. You’ll see—I want to be yours and yours only. I promise you, you’ll never be alone again.”

  He buried his face in her bosom. Did he weep?

  She lay there, swamped by tenderness and the desire to help him heal, at least as much as love could—this hard man, this starved boy, this tough prospect.

  “Mitch?”

  He raised his face, dazzlingly bright. “Tessa, I no longer want to be the King of Prospect—though I still want you to be my queen. I told you before, I’ll become the man that you want, whatever you need me to be.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Oh, yes, my darling girl, my beautiful wife.”

  “Do you know what I truly want you to be, Mitch Carter?”

  He shook his head.

  “The man you are—strong and brave and determined. The boy you were, loyal and courageous, who never stopped reaching for a future he couldn’t even see. That’s who I love.”

  Tears came to his eyes then. “I never dreamed you were my future. Else I’d have reached harder.”

  “I’m your present, your future, and your always. Let’s try and forget the past. Let’s go on from that moment I felt sure I was dead and then your arms lifted me.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  She tipped her head on the pillow. “You still mean to buy Carter’s?”

  “I do. More than ever, now.”

  “Good. We’ll run it together—the way it should be run. And we’ll rescue that boy from the closet and make sure he gets the opportunities he deserves. See if we can’t find the others loving homes, maybe with people like Lily and Rey Michaels. Meanwhile, we’ll turn Carter’s into a place where the children feel safe. And then there are the other orphanages. We can take a look at those, too. After that, we’ll sit down together and go over the rents on the properties you own, to see if we can’t build a little mercy into your margin for success.”

  “Mercy, eh? Am I to suppose, Mrs. Carter, that you mean to take up a position as my conscience?
”

  “No.” She laid her hand on his chest, just over his heart and gazed into his eyes. “But if you let me, from time to time I’ll remind you about the conscience you already have.”

  His gaze kindled. “I’ll let you do whatever you please.”

  “One more thing. If we mean to adopt, this house is going to be terribly full.” She bit her lip. “I never had a chance to tell you, with all that’s happened, but I’m carrying your child.”

  His eyes widened with pure astonishment. “A child? By everything that’s holy, Tessa! Are you sure?”

  “The doctor just confirmed it, when I saw him a little while ago.”

  “But—is the baby all right? After all you went through…we’d better call the doctor back again.”

  “The child’s fine and so am I. I’ve discovered I’m a lot tougher than I thought, Mitch Carter—tough enough to be your wife.”

  Their third kiss heated rapidly, only to be interrupted by scrabbling at the side of the bed. Valerie stood there, her front paws on the coverlet.

  Without hesitation, Mitch reached down and lifted the little mechanical dog onto the bed.

  “There you go, darling. I think she missed you.”

  “You kept her wound up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though I wasn’t here?”

  “It seemed the thing to do. Couldn’t let her run down and—and die, could I?”

  Tessa stroked Valerie’s smooth head. The little dog cuddled in tight.

  “I thought, Mr. Carter, you didn’t have much patience with mechanicals?”

  “Ah, but Mrs. Carter, my thinking on that score has undergone a rather profound change.”

  “Would that be due to a certain hybrid automaton by name of Patrick Kelly?”

  “He’s a good man, Tessa. A very good man.”

  “Not half as good as my husband,” Tessa said just before their lips met again. “Because, Mitch Carter, you might think you’re the King of Prospect. Truth is you’re the king of my heart.”

  “That’s all I ever wanted,” Mitch whispered. And all he ever would.

  A word about the author…

  Born in Buffalo and raised on the Niagara Frontier, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. To her the spunky, tenacious, undefeatable ethnic mix that is Buffalo spells the perfect setting for a little Steampunk, so she created her own Victorian world there.

  She knows the people of Buffalo are stronger, tougher and smarter than those who haven’t survived the muggy summers and blizzard blasts found on the shores of the mighty Niagara. Tough enough to survive a squad of automatons? Well, just maybe.

  Thank you for purchasing

  this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  If you enjoyed the story, we would appreciate your letting others know by leaving a review.

  For other wonderful stories,

  please visit our on-line bookstore.

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc. and other major retailers

  Last Orders: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

  by Laura Strickland

  Buffalo Police Sergeant Brendan Fagan, investigating a series of grisly murders spurred by clashes between humans and automatons, only wants to save his city. The last thing he needs in his life is a rule-bending, steam-cannon-toting, unpredictable female like Ginny Landry, a woman who could possibly bring down his career and the one woman he quite likely can't resist.

  Ginny means to settle the estate of her mother, an infamous madam, quickly and get out of town. She has no intention of becoming involved with any part of her inheritance or falling for Brendan. In fact, she makes it a point never to date handsome men. But when her rash behavior brings them together, the attraction can’t be denied.

  And when the city erupts in chaos, forcing her to choose a moral side, can she deny what’s in her heart?

  Also Available

  Cloaked

  by Taylor Hobbs

  As the Cloaked Shadow, Fawkes has made his career breaking into prisons for any contract with a large enough purse. He takes advantage of the kingdom's impending revolution by playing both sides of the conflict. Each rescue contract he fulfills turns a tidy profit until he angers the wrong duke.

  Charlotte is a criminal-in-training who yearns to crack her mentor’s guarded façade, but is unprepared to confront the depths of his dark past. As her sense of right and wrong blurs, Charlotte discovers just how far she will go for the Cloaked Shadow and the sacrifices he requires.

  Now hunted throughout the land, Fawkes must face long-buried secrets in order to survive, but they could destroy him. Charlotte risks everything, including her heart, to set Fawkes on the path to redemption.

  Will Charlotte have the strength to pull Fawkes into the light, or will she follow him into the shadows?