Cowboy Come Home

by Janette Kenny

  “I’m going away for a few days,” he said, his mind made up.

  “Where to?”

  Some place where folks were few and far between. Some place where he wouldn’t be bothered. Some place where he could take that good, hard look at himself and see if there was a chance he could become the man she needed him to be.

  “Think I’ll head back to the JDB and hole up in the adobe,” he said.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t give any sign that she cared one way or the other.

  “Will you come back?” she asked at last, and the worry in her voice sank into his soul and stirred that odd feeling again.

  “You can bet on it.”

  No matter what he decided, he’d come back here, if only to tell her he was riding on. That she’d be better off with him being a memory than being her man.

  “What should I tell Dade and Reid if they arrive before you get back?”

  “Tell them I went off to think,” he said. “They’ll understand.” Or at least Dade would.

  He climbed off the fence and resisted the urge to help her down, to slip his hands around her little waist once more. To pull her to him and kiss her like there was no tomorrow. For there very well might not be one for them.

  She didn’t move from where she clung to the fence. She just stared out at the pasture in silence.

  Maybe that was best, for he didn’t want to see any tears as he rode off. Didn’t want her sadness tormenting his mind.

  Yet an empty feeling settled in his gut as he strode to the corral. It was something he’d never felt before, at least not this intensely.

  Too much on his mind, he reasoned. Too much that could go right or wrong.

  He opened the gate to find Hollis carefully pouring a bucket of water into a small trough set in the shade of the barn. “I’ll be leaving for a spell. Watch over Daisy while I’m gone.”

  “You need supplies?” Hollis asked.

  “Yep. Enough to last a couple of days.” He kicked a clod of rock-hard ground. “Daisy knows where I’ll be, but if something happens and you need me, I’ll be at the JDB. Keep that under your hat.”

  Hollis nodded. “I’ll get your supplies ready.

  By the time he saddled the calico gelding, Hollis had filled his saddlebags with enough provisions to last a week. Maybe the man knew him better than he thought.

  He turned the horse south without looking back at Daisy, without taking one last look at the Circle 46 that felt like home with her here. His gaze fixed on the lonely plains yawning ahead like an endless, dun sea.

  He knew lonely. Had lived with it all his life even when he was with his foster brothers.

  Would it always be that way, or was he finally ready to open himself up? That’s what he had to find out, and he wouldn’t come back until he had an answer.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day since Trey left, Dade and his bride rode onto the Circle 46 in a buckboard that had a mound of valises and bandboxes tied down on the shelf behind the seat. Daisy wasn’t surprised that her brother was the first of her guests to arrive. Nor was she shocked that it appeared their stay would be lengthy.

  “This is my wife, Maggie,” he said, his voice rich with affection. “She was on the orphan train with you.”

  Daisy smiled at the beautiful woman with the sparkling blue eyes and wealth of honey-colored hair and extended her hands to her. “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me,” she said, their hands clasping in an age-old bond of sisterhood. “I’ve thought of you every day of my life.”

  Daisy wished she could say the same, but her memories of the tall girl on the orphan train were sketchy and troubling. And then her gaze fixed on the broach at Maggie’s throat. A cameo broach of a mother and a child.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Where’d you get that broach?”

  Maggie’s fingers lifted to the piece, carefully unhooking it. She pressed it into Daisy’s hands.

  “You lost it the day they took us off the orphan train and a man took you in,” Maggie said.

  Flashes of that horrid scene tormented her, but none clearly enough to remember. Yet she knew this was hers.

  “I remember this.” She looked to Dade who was deathly quiet. “It was Mama’s.”

  He nodded. “When Pa left us at the door of the orphanage, he pinned that on your dress.”

  Daisy closed her eyes as silent tears slipped down her cheeks. Finally a memory of her real family. Blood kin standing beside her. And a family heirloom to cherish.

  “For years I thought I’d made you up in my mind,” she told Maggie.

  “You poor dear,” Maggie said. “When we found out you’d lost your memory, we were worried sick what had become of you.”

  Daisy looked from Maggie to Dade, whose cheeks had taken on a ruddy hue. “When did you find this out? Where?”

  “In Kansas. Didn’t Dade tell you about our adventure?”

  She looked up at her brother standing so tall and solemn with just the tinge of red on his cheekbones. “No, he just said it was a long story and let it go at that. I gather it was an interesting one as well.”

  He shifted from foot to foot, looking mighty uncomfortable discussing his private life. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Daisy hooked her arm in Maggie’s. “Do come in. I’m most curious about this adventure you took to find me.”

  “Believe I’ll have a talk with Trey while you two are hashing over old times,” Dade said.

  Daisy stopped to face her brother. “He’s not here. He went off to think things through and said you’d understand.”

  Dade swore and kicked at the ground. “Was afraid he’d take off.”

  “He’ll be back.”

  But Dade’s expression didn’t reassure her at all. “I’ll see to the buckboard and be in later. You two go on and catch up on old times.”

  Maggie stopped to get a parting kiss from her husband before joining Daisy inside. Daisy bit her lip, kicking herself for not kissing Trey before he left, for just standing on the fence staring at the horses through watery eyes.

  My God, what if Trey didn’t return? What if her insistence on holding out for love coupled with his fear over meeting the mother he’d thought had abandoned him were just too much to deal with?

  Don’t think that way. He had given his word. Only thing that would stop him from keeping it would be if he ran into trouble.

  Like Egan Jarvis?

  “You’re worried,” Maggie said when they were seated in the parlor.

  She nodded, seeing no reason to deny it. “It’s a troubling time for Trey, and there’s nothing I can do to make it easier for him to bear,” she said. “Now please, I am most interested to learn how you and my brother met.”

  Maggie laughed. “It all started with me running for my life and using your name. Your brother didn’t take my deception well at all.”

  For the next hour, Daisy listened with rapt fascination as Maggie told her about the rich family who’d taken her into their home. Of the wild journey she and Dade embarked on to find Daisy, rife with danger and passion. How Maggie slowly fell in love with Dade but feared she’d never be able to have a normal life with him because of the man tracking her down.

  “We were so sure we were closer to finding you once I recognized the place where the train stopped and you were taken away,” Maggie said.

  A hazy image of being herded from the train like cattle flashed in her mind’s eye. “I remember the cold and the wind. The matron grabbed my hand and pulled me from you.”

  “Yes! It was horrible,” Maggie said. “We were both crying, and you fought so.”

  She nodded, seeing that much. “I broke free and ran from her. But I fell.” She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything after that.”

  “You fell off the platform and knocked yourself out. That man who arranged to have the train stopped there picked you up, put you in his buggy, and drove off.” Maggie smiled. “Before we were put back on the train, I found your broach o
n the ground.”

  “I’m glad you kept it. Tell me, was Mama with Daddy?” she asked, hungry to know more about the woman who’d wanted a child so.

  “No. He was alone, Daisy. And he wasn’t the same man who raised you.”

  That surprised her, yet she’d had a flicker of memory of an austere man who’d scared her. “Do you know how I ended up being Jared Barton’s daughter?”

  Maggie looked away and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know the particulars,” she said. “But shortly after you reached Dodge City, Barton took you in. From there the trail led us back to Colorado. That’s where it ended, and we had no idea where to look next.”

  “Hollis told me Daddy and Mama came back from Colorado with me. I thought he’d taken me off the train there.”

  She laid a hand on Maggie’s. “Was he a good man?”

  Daisy smiled. “Yes, he was a wonderful father and doted on me. All the boys were afraid to court me. Except Trey.”

  “He worked for Barton?”

  She nodded. “For nearly a year. I was spoken for at the time, but all I could think about was Trey.”

  “Sounds like love.”

  “It is.” One-sided. Doomed perhaps.

  She rubbed her brow, then launched into the sad story of Trey disappearing by the foreman’s hand. Of her finding out she was with child. Of losing the baby and then losing her daddy soon after.

  “Damn him!” Dade said, his sudden appearance in the parlor startling them both. “I won’t hold with him dallying with my sister. He’ll marry you.”

  “No, he won’t,” Daisy said. “If he doesn’t find he loves me, there won’t be a marriage.”

  Dade opened his mouth to argue.

  Maggie spoke up first. “You’ve butted heads with Trey over this already.”

  “Yes. He asked for my hand, but he couldn’t give me his heart in return.”

  “He’ll come to care for you deeply in time,” Dade said, the heat gone from his voice now.

  In fact her brother looked a bit white around the mouth, like the subject was one he tried hard to avoid as well. Maggie’s knowing smile said she understood Daisy’s stand all too well. Understood and agreed with her.

  “Let it rest, Dade,” Maggie said.

  He huffed out a breath and pulled a face that was as close to a masculine pout as Daisy had ever seen. “That’s why he went off to think.”

  “Partly, but he’s also concerned that Mrs. Charlton could be his mother,” Daisy said.

  Dade nodded, looking grim. “This could go either way, Daisy. I say we take the decision out of his hands. He’ll understand and thank us in time.”

  Daisy got to her feet. “He’s always talking about how you were the levelheaded one. How you stuck by him. I suggest you do that, because I don’t want this brought up now. And I surely don’t want this mentioned around the Charltons.”

  “Fine. We’ll all pretend nothing happened between you and Trey,” Dade said. “But know this. I won’t stand by and let him hurt you.”

  She nodded woodenly, fearing the worst hurt was yet to come if Trey convinced himself he was incapable of loving her.

  The Charltons arrived the next day, and Daisy took an immediate liking to the small woman with raven black hair and deep eyes that seemed haunted. Like Trey’s.

  She welcomed them into her home while Dade volunteered to see to their bags. But there was only a small valise, and Charlton insisted on handling it himself.

  “We hadn’t intended to stay the night,” he said.

  Then they surely wouldn’t take the news she had to share well. “Would you like a refreshment? I have coffee and tea.”

  “Coffee would be most welcome,” Charlton said as he escorted his wife to an armless chair. “But my wife prefers tea.”

  “I’ll see to it.” Maggie slipped into the kitchen, leaving Daisy stuck with playing hostess.

  “Where is he?” Mrs. Charlton asked her.

  Daisy hated to tell her, for while Trey’s mother might understand, she was certain Mr. Charlton would take a dim view of his decision. “He needed time to think, so he went off for a few days.”

  “I see,” the lady said, disappointment etching deeper lines around her eyes and mouth. “We did arrive a day earlier than planned, so we can’t complain.”

  Her husband snorted, living up to Daisy’s image of him being disagreeable. “When did he leave?”

  She hesitated, for this news wouldn’t sit well with the gentleman. But there was no use in lying either, for the truth would surely come out.

  “Five days ago,” she said.

  To her surprise, Dade spoke up in Trey’s defense. “He tends to go off like this when something troubles him. He’ll be back as soon as he gets it straight in his mind.”

  This time Daisy wasn’t convinced that he would. Trey surely had more than this reunion with his mother to worry over.

  Daisy had given him an ultimatum, and while she still wouldn’t settle for less than his love, she realized now that she should have held off with such demands until he’d come to grips with his mother.

  “And you are?” Mr. Charlton asked Dade.

  “My brother,” Daisy said and was rewarded with a wide smile from Dade.

  “Dade Logan,” he said and stuck out his hand. “I understand you bought the Crown Seven.”

  Charlton accepted the handshake. “Indeed I did. So you’re the third foster brother. Reid told us about you.”

  Dade gave a short laugh. “I’m sure that didn’t take long.”

  The man didn’t so much as crack a smile. “He failed to tell us that Miss Barton was your sister.”

  “He wouldn’t have known,” Dade said. “I’ve been searching for Daisy for years, but Trey was the one who found her.”

  Charlton slid her a questioning look but didn’t say more. The man was certainly more guarded than when he’d visited her and Trey before.

  “Reckon I’ll see to your horse and buggy,” Dade said, and left her alone with the couple.

  “How wonderful that Trey was responsible for reuniting lost siblings,” Mrs. Charlton said.

  “So we sit and wait for him to grace us with his presence ?” Mr. Charlton asked.

  “That’s enough, Shelby,” Mrs. Charlton said. “After waiting this long to find my son, a day or two wait is nothing.”

  “I’m not objecting to that,” he said. “The boy could have had the decency to wait for you to arrive. One look at this birthmark would’ve confirmed if he is or isn’t your son.”

  And that was the whole issue, Daisy thought. The uncertainty. The chance that he would be faced with an emotional mother who was a stranger to him.

  “Please, tell me about Trey,” Mrs. Charlton said, the longing in her voice so powerful that it brought tears to Daisy’s eyes.

  How to begin? “He’s trustworthy. A hard worker and very knowledgeable about cattle and horses.”

  The lady smiled. “His father had a fondness for horses.”

  “Now Phoebe, you are setting yourself up for heartache should this man prove not to be your son,” her husband said, and for the first time Daisy saw that his gruff exterior was simply his means of protecting his wife from hurt.

  Charlton had told them before that they’d searched for years to find Trey. How many young men had Phoebe met, certain each was the one, only to discover the birthmark she remembered her son having was either different or absent?

  “My husband told me you’ve seen Trey’s birthmark,” she said. “Describe it, please.”

  Daisy caught the warning look from Mr. Charlton, and for once agreed with the man. It’d be too easy for his wife to misinterpret Daisy’s description.

  “I think it would be best if you described it to me,” Daisy said, and was rewarded with a barely discernable nod from the gentleman.

  Yes, he was protecting his wife. She understood that and felt it was her duty to protect Trey as well. This way she could save them both grief if the mark didn’t match the one s
he knew so well.

  Mrs. Charlton frowned, and Daisy didn’t know whether she was put out to have the tables turned on her, or if she was trying to find words to describe the birthmark. It shouldn’t be that difficult, for the mark on Trey’s nape was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  “It was reddish brown and in the shape of a teardrop,” Mrs. Charlton began, her voice small in the quiet room. “Below the point there was one raised red mark.”

  Daisy sat back, trembling inside from the description of the mark Trey bore. “That’s unusual.”

  “His father had one as well, but his was a bit lower. More on his shoulder.” She tugged her handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. “I only got that one quick look at it before they took my son away.”

  Daisy held back the questions bombarding her, though it wasn’t easy. There was surely more to tell here than the lady had divulged so far.

  Charlton’s gaze lifted to Daisy’s. “Well, Miss Barton, does Trey March have such a mark?”

  She couldn’t lie, for she’d give anything if her own child had lived. If she could have any memory of that life taken far too soon.

  “Yes. It’s just as you described.”

  The woman broke down then in uncontrollable sobs. Daisy hovered closer, unsure if she should offer comfort or give the woman privacy.

  Mr. Charlton decided it for her. “Come, Phoebe. You need to lie down and rest. This has been too taxing for you.”

  “Please. Take my room,” Daisy said, facing a new worry. If the woman’s health was that fragile, then seeing Trey could do her in.

  She hoped Mrs. Charlton was simply overcome with emotion. She’d found her lost son. She was anxious to hold him in her arms, never mind that he was over six foot of strapping male.

  To Mrs. Charlton, Trey March would always be the baby boy taken from her. She deserved her time alone with him, and he surely needed the same from his mother.

  But how could Daisy possibly get her away from her overbearing husband?

  Chapter 24

  Trey had never spent a more miserable six days of his life. He’d sat for hours on end trying to dredge up those tender emotions that Daisy demanded. But he wasn’t sure if he was closer to his goal or right back where he started.