She sighed, hesitant to leave. Suddenly nothing was clear; everything was confusing, not the least her feelings for this man. She loved him. Oh, yes, she loved him. But could she trust him? She wanted to.
No. She would be a fool. It had taken every bit of mental and physical strength she possessed to build the security, wobbly though it was, they had here. She couldn’t risk Hunter’s children. Not even for Hunter. Tears stung her eyes. Why was life so complicated? Why was she continually faced with more and more difficult decisions? Wouldn’t things ever get easier? She was so tired she wasn’t sure she could make it down the hill. She wanted to throw herself in Trevor’s arms, to feel the comfort and security of his embrace. Which was pure foolishness.
Comfort maybe, but not security. That was one thing Trevor never pretended to offer. One thing she had never known she needed.
Until now. If the last five years had taught her anything, it was that security was the one essential element in a person’s life. She had struggled for it, fought for it, and was still doing so. For the children.
If not for the children, she might…
How wonderful it would be to go home. With Trevor. She looked back at him. He stared out over the town.
“You won’t give up?” she questioned softly.
“Never.” His eyes found hers. She saw his determination, and beneath it his vulnerability. His feelings for her were as clear as the last time she lay in his arms, tempting him to break his promise to Hunter. But Trevor Fallon didn’t break promises. When he said never, he meant it.
But never wasn’t a time; it was a state. Never as long as he lived? Never as long as he was free? Would he never save Hunter? Had he never slept with Ana Bowdrie? Never killed her? Tears brimmed. She turned away, fighting them.
“Ask Drummond why Guest is living at the ranch,” he said.
She didn’t dare face him again, yet was unable to leave. “You’ll be careful?”
She heard him expel a breath of frustration.
“Selman won’t stop hunting you,” she said.
“Go, Jace.”
Still, she couldn’t leave. “Where will you stay?”
“Go.” It was the harshest tone he had ever used with her. Her tears spilled over from the force of it. Suddenly all she wanted was to be with him. To keep him free. To protect him.
Protect Trevor Fallon?
On that outrageous thought, she turned and walked down the hill.
Trevor stared at the fading stars until Jacy was well down the hillside, resisting the urge to watch her walk away.
Away from him. He wasn’t sure his heart wouldn’t shatter at the sight. Knowing it was hard enough.
Damned if she wasn’t still as stubborn as a corral full of jackasses. For the last half hour he had fought the urge to grab her and hold her and force her to see reason. But an army of arms couldn’t force that woman to see reason.
Her question was a good one. Where could he go to stay out of the way of Selman? How far could he get before sunup?
A few hours later he learned the answer to the last question—as far as the Ysleta mission. Sunrise found him standing beneath the willow tree closest to the church, watching the first brilliant rays fire the whitewashed adobe walls.
The next question wasn’t as easily answered. Would he recognize Mari? One by one he studied the black-clad women who climbed the steep steps to the nave of the church that sat a good three feet above the ground, protection against overflows from the Río Grande, he realized.
Standing here with day dawning around him, he had time to realize a lot of things. By the time the last communicant entered the church and the bells stopped tolling the start of the first Mass of the day, he had not seen Mari.
He hoped for better luck when the women exited the church. At least their faces would be visible. With a sinking feeling, he realized that he didn’t know which Mass she attended.
It had been a spur of the moment decision, coming here today to seek Mari. The idea had hit him after Jacy vanished down the hill and his emotions steadied.
Then he realized that the one true word spoken between them, the only significant word was never. He would never give up trying to save Hunter. That said, he knew he had better start getting the job done.
Seeing Mari seemed the only solution, so he stood now during the service, waiting for her to come out of the church. If she were inside at all.
An hour later the sun was fully up and shining brightly when the church doors opened and worshipers appeared. A number of them were nuns. The others were clad similarly to the nuns, in black dresses with black mantillas or rebozos for head coverings, replacing the veil.
Trevor searched each face, hesitant, dreading to see the toll five years of virtual widowhood and poverty had taken on Mari. Would she be weathered and wrinkled, old before her time? He figured she would not be smiling, and suddenly couldn’t remember her without bright eyes and a smile.
No one looked familiar, and he soon realized he would never recognize her without venturing closer. So he moved to the side of the sweeping steps, only to draw the attention of someone else.
“May I help you, my son?”
Trevor glanced anxiously into the inquiring face of the brown-robed padre. Elderly and wise. What the hell, he was here.
“I’m looking for Señora Kimble. Marielena Kimble.”
The padre’s black eyes narrowed on Trevor, sweeping him from head to foot. Trevor was suddenly grateful for what had seemed a foolish decision earlier. He had left his pistol and cartridge belt at Hardin’s apartment, intending to return there before setting out for Arizona.
“May I say who is inquiring, señor?” the padre asked at length, when Trevor gave no sign of turning away.
“Uh…” Would the padre recognize his name? With all that had transpired in the last few days, that seemed a likely guess. Yet…Trevor scanned the crowd, wondering what kind of mess he had gotten himself into, when he was knocked off balance by someone who grabbed him around the waist.
“Mari?” He captured her face, partially to steady his hands. His heart jumped to his throat. Worry lines etched her lovely face like a farmer’s newly furrowed field. Her black eyes swam in tears.
“You know this man, Marielena?” the padre asked.
Mari smiled. It did wonders for her face, gave her back years. That smile took Trevor back, too.
“Sí, Padre,” she said in the same sweet voice. “I know this man.”
Trevor waited, wondering again what he had gotten himself into. Hopefully not the El Paso jail, last stop before Yuma Prison. But if she mentioned his name…
“He is my brother,” Mari was saying.
Brother? Well, that beat all.
“I don’t recall—” the padre began.
“He has been away,” she said. “Now he’s home and—”
“Your brother?” the padre repeated, obviously not as convinced as Mari intended. Not that Trevor was surprised. If Mari attended Mass as regularly as Jacy insinuated, she would also attend confession, and the padre would have heard all about Hunter…and Trevor.
“His name is Tom,” she said hurriedly. “I’m sorry. Tomás Saucedo, Padre Cardillo.” She smiled broadly while Tom offered his hand to the skeptical priest.
“We haven’t seen each other in years.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the church. “Is there a place…I’ll take him inside. We won’t be a bother.”
The padre’s handshake was as firm as his skepticism. Trevor experienced the uncomfortable sensation that the priest intended to hold onto him until the law arrived.
“Of course, my child.” Padre Cardillo motioned toward the open church door. “It is an hour until the next Mass. You will have privacy and…” Releasing Trevor’s hand at last, he scanned Trevor again from head to foot. “The church is open to everyone, my son. We consider it an infirmary where sick and wounded souls can be restored to health.”
Sick and wounded souls? Certainly his soul would be cla
ssified as both. Could it ever be restored to health? And did it matter, if he saved Hunter?
Seeing Mari’s hope, feeling it, he knew he would sell his soul in a minute to bring her husband back.
“Come.” She dragged him up the steps and into the vaulted interior of the nave. Everything was cool. Trevor was still stunned.
“You lied, Mari.”
She grinned.
“You’ve just come from Mass and you lied for me.”
“It wasn’t a lie.” She led him to the end of a pew where they sat in the shadow of an adobe buttress. Even this far back, lingering scents of incense and cedar mingled with the ever-present dust in this dry land. Tiny yellow flames flickered from candles on the distant altar. Clear morning sunlight streamed in from windows near the ceiling.
“If that wasn’t a lie, I don’t know one,” he said, returning her infectious grin.
“Well, it wasn’t. It was protection. God would expect me to protect you.”
Trevor wasn’t sure about that. And lying to a padre…
“Tell me everything.” She wriggled beside him on the pew, as animated as a child. “Tell me about yourself. You look well, but…”
Mari was the sweetest person Trevor had ever known. He had often kidded Hunter that with an acid-tongued sister like Jacy, he had earned a wife as sweet as Mari.
The home they built gave Trevor a whole new perspective on homes. Before spending time with them, Trevor’s only experience with a home was of drab, temporary places where babies were born dead or dying and where his mother doggedly continued to pack and travel, following her husband in sickness and in health.
Only thing, there had been little in the way of health. Trevor’s mother died when he was sixteen, old and worn out at thirty-five, two weeks after delivering a stillborn baby boy in the back of a wagon with Trevor as her only nurse.
His father had gone on ahead to set up camp near a cool spring, he said, where the color was good.
Jack Fallon failed to heed Trevor’s pleas that it was his mother’s color that wasn’t good. His mother’s cough and excessive bleeding killed her, and Trevor left after shoveling the last spadeful of dirt on her grave.
He left, because he knew if he hadn’t, he would have killed his father.
“Lillian followed me because she wanted to,” Jack Fallon pleaded in a voice gruff with emotion. “She loved me, damnit. And I loved her.”
But love hadn’t saved Lillian Fallon. And his father’s emotion came too late. Trevor vowed to be different. He would never do to a woman what his father did, not in the name of love or hate or passion.
The year he spent in Mari and Hunter’s home failed to change that vow. Mari and Hunter found happiness, but they were one in a million. The odds were far too great to think it could happen to him, too.
“I need your help, Mari,” he said now, after they had talked awhile.
“Whatever I can do, I will, you know that.”
“Persuade Jacy to go to Arizona with me.”
Marielena studied him with doleful eyes. “Will it help save Hunter and clear you?”
He shrugged. “It’s the only way I know to try. Jacy can get into places, talk to people, learn things that I can’t. I’ll take care of her, Mari.”
She smiled. “I know that.”
The way she said know, so sweet and certain, sent a tremor of doubt through Trevor, like he was expected to take care of Jacy or something. He shook off the doubts. Damn, he was edgy.
“I’ll try to persuade her,” Mari agreed. “But you know Jacy.”
Did he ever. “Thing is…” He hesitated, unwilling to offend Mari. “Jacy thinks…Well, she thinks you and the kids and Drummond…”
“I know what Jacy thinks, Trevor. That we can’t take care of ourselves.” She smiled, wan. “She isn’t right. Oh, I don’t mean we could have gotten along without her these last five years. Not at all. She has so much spirit, so much energy. She has dedicated her every breath to freeing Hunter and…” Mari hesitated, discomfited.
Trevor chuckled softly. “Don’t worry, Mari. I know what she wanted for me, too. Still wants, truth known. If she could see me hang from Yuma gallows it would make her the happiest woman in the country.”
“No.” Mari’s response was quick and sharp. “No, it wouldn’t. She wants to believe in you. She’s just afraid…” When her words drifted off, Trevor finished the sentence.
“That I set up Hunter and slept with her father’s mistress,” he said gruffly, surprising himself.
“That’s why she has to go with you,” Mari said, confusing Trevor further. They had gotten off the track. Before he could bring them back to the problem at hand, Mari continued. “You have to prove to her she’s wrong. Jacy’s like that—”
“No, Mari. All I have to do is save Hunter. That’s all. Don’t look for more.” When she dropped her gaze, he chucked her chin with a loose fist, lifting her face. “Isn’t that enough? To have Hunter home and safe and cleared?”
He watched her squinch her eyes tight against an emotion he knew was as strong as the rays of sunlight streaming through the church windows. When she opened them, he saw concern.
“For me, of course, it is,” she acknowledged. “But not for you. And not for Jacy.”
Her words kindled an unwanted glow inside him. He struggled to extinguish it before it took flame. Hope had no place in his heart or in his life. “Go ahead and believe in fairy tales, Mari. You and Hunter were made for a happy ending. But leave Jace and me out of it. She will never be anything but Papa’s little pride and joy. And me, I’m not one-tenth the man Hunter Kimble is. That’s why we have to get a move on.”
Mari surprised him by reaching a hand to stroke his cheek and smooth back a lock of hair. Her fingers lingered on the scar, like Jacy’s had in his dream, but there the comparison stopped. This was not a sensual gesture, rather a motherly one. Like she would use to soothe an unhappy child.
“I’ll fetch her, Trevor. Wait here.”
He glanced around. She laughed.
“Padre Cardillo won’t let the law in.”
“Think he knows who I am?”
She shrugged. “He may have guessed. He has heard a lot about you from me. He understands.”
Trevor scoffed.
“Padre Cardillo dedicated his life to serving a man who was wrongly convicted of a crime, Trevor,” she said with conviction. “You have nothing to fear in this house.”
Trevor shook his head, charmed by this woman as he had always been. “I’ll get him home safe, Mari.” Or die trying.
“Is there anything special I should say to Jacy?” she wanted to know.
He considered a moment, then said, “Be sure she asks Drummond about Tom Guest.”
“They were arguing about Tom when I left the house,” Mari explained, obviously confused. Trevor chose not to give her anything else to worry about.
“Good,” he said.
She laughed, then sobered quickly. Capturing his face in her hands, like he had done with her earlier, she bent and placed a kiss on his forehead.
“Don’t be hard on Jacy, Trevor. She loves you so very much.”
Seven
“Have you completely lost your mind, Mari?” Having heard her father’s chilling confession for the first time in all these years, Jacy was in no mood to entertain foolishness. She still ached inside for the withered old man who had given up so much for the love of his son.
She had begun by demanding that he tell her why he was so certain Hunter would never hang. She hadn’t been prepared for the truth.
“We can never return home?” she asked, dumbfounded. “None of us?”
“Arizona isn’t home anymore, Sis. You’d better start getting that through your head.”
Rising from the scarred table where they had eaten breakfast, Jacy refilled Drummond’s coffee cup. For the second time this week, she allowed the children to walk themselves to school, knowing full well that Todd would likely not go at all. But after he
r encounter with Trevor, she had to confront her father, once and for all.
“You agreed never to return to Arizona in exchange for the court’s promise that Hunter would never hang?”
Drummond nodded, brusque, stoic, unyielding to the last.
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” She returned the heavy coffee pot to the pot-bellied stove. “I would have understood.”
“I didn’t want your tears,” he barked. “Still don’t. I made my own bed.”
“I fail to see how. You gave up everything—home, livelihood, career—to save Hunter’s life.”
“That’s the only way they would agree, Sis. No Kimble is ever to cross the Arizona line again.”
No Kimble. A sharp pang tore at her heart. “I’m working with Wes Hardin, Papa. He’s doing everything he can to straighten things out. He’ll get Hunter released. You’ll see. When he is, we can go anywhere we damned well please.”
“Hardin’ll never do it.”
Jacy watched him sip coffee through flaccid lips. “If Hunter is innocent, it can be proved,” she argued, quoting the mantra that had become her marching chant.
“Hunter is innocent enough,” Drummond agreed. “Fallon’s the killer. And don’t you forget that the next time you’re tempted to crawl in bed with him.”
She let it pass. “If he killed Ana, we will prove it, somehow.” And if he didn’t, would she ever know? But that wasn’t what she needed to know from Drummond. “Wes Hardin has been in touch with Tom Guest,” she said as a prelude. “Tom isn’t sure what can be done, but…”
“No one can do anything, Sis.” He shoved his cup aside and reached for his walking stick. “How many times do I have to tell you that? Listen and believe.”
“Shhh, Papa. Sit down. I just…well, what do you know about Tom living at the Diamond K?”
Drummond slumped back to the chair. His shaggy white head jerked up. “Tom Guest?” His eyes found hers, then darted away. “So that’s how it all came out?”
“What, Papa?”
“Nothing.” Drummond had started shaking, as though he were cold. Jacy took a rebozo from a wall peg and draped it around his shoulders.
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