Safe Havens Bundle

by Sandy James

  “You’re full of shit,” Caleb said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  Ty’s reaction came as a surprise. “He’s right.”

  “Right? That Sara was his Princess?” Another snort slipped out. “You two been hittin’ the whiskey?”

  “Caleb...” Ty let out a heavy sigh. “There’s some things you should know ’bout Sara.”

  Caleb shook his head. “Anything Sara wants me to know, she’s already told me.”

  “You didn’t know she was Princess,” Drake said, a sarcastic inflection to his voice.

  All Caleb could think was that her old lover had given her that nickname and somehow this man had learned about it. That bastard Jean-Claude had used her and then dumped her like so much trash. It was easy to see a man like that calling her “Princess” as an exercise in irony. “Don’t rightly care what that French son-of-a-bitch called her.”

  Pulling his lips to a grim line, Ty shook his head. “It weren’t Jean-Claude called her that.” He doffed his hat and raked his fingers through his thick hair. “Caleb, Sara got put into a place called The Palace.”

  All of the joy over the birth of his son was fading fast as Caleb began to understand the things Sara had hinted at but never found the courage to tell him. The Palace. He somehow doubted that was the name of a theater or an opera house.

  “Go on,” he ground out between his gritted teeth. “Tell me all of it.” His hands ached from clenching them into tight fists.

  “Jean-Claude—” Ty spit over the railing as though the name was bitter in his mouth, “—sold Sara to a lady named Crazy Kate.”

  “Kate ain’t no lady,” Drake countered. “She’s a whore who runs The Palace.”

  Caleb took a threatening step toward Drake. “Are you calling my wife a whore?”

  “I am.”

  When he pulled his fist back, ready to bury it in Drake’s smug face, Caleb found his arm restrained by his brother-in-law. “You can’t hit him for tellin’ the truth, Caleb.”

  The truth?

  What exactly was the truth?

  Caleb didn’t know anymore.

  “She’s a whore, and she’s also a thief,” Drake added. He appeared calm, but the taunt and the threat were there in his eyes.

  This time, Ty couldn’t hold Caleb back any more than a lady’s fancy fan could’ve stopped a tornado. Since Ty held tight to Caleb’s right arm, Caleb swung with his left, a blow Drake barely sidestepped.

  Caleb jerked away from Ty and went after Drake again, fists swinging. He connected a right to Drake’s nose, taking satisfaction in hearing the crack of bone.

  Drake retaliated with a punch to the gut that forced the air from Caleb’s lungs and had him doubled over, gasping and gagging.

  “Enough!” Ty stepped between them, shoving Drake back with both hands and then facing Caleb. “He’s only speakin’ the truth. Sara had no choice. That bastard sold her like a damn slave to a bitch everyone calls Crazy Kate, who made her work as a whore. I found Sara not long after—a month, maybe—and tried to get her out. Didn’t have the money. I came back here to try to gather enough, and I told my sister to get the hell outta there just as soon as she could.”

  Drake had jerked a handkerchief from his pocket and held the wadded cloth against his bleeding nose. “She stole my money. My whole fucking payroll. I lost my job ’cause of her. I’m getting that money back so people don’t keep thinkin’ I stole it. Ain’t no one who’ll hire me. I was a foreman, damn it!”

  “She must’ve hightailed it right outta Denver,” Ty added. “She showed up here not long after I left her there.”

  “And you did, didn’t you?” Caleb glared at Ty. “Your own damn sister and you left her in a whorehouse!”

  “I tried, Caleb. I swear to God I did. Kate ain’t called Crazy for no reason. She’s a mean bitch, and she had me thrown out when she realized I didn’t have enough to buy Sara for the night, let alone enough to free her. Kate’s got a big brute of a man working there who lifted me like I weighed nothin’ and tossed me onto the street. All I could do was come back here and try to borrow the money from Adam Morgan.”

  “She stole it from me instead,” Drake insisted. Every word he uttered sounded like they were spoken by a man with a wicked head cold.

  Serves him right. Hope that nose hurts like hell.

  Setting his hands against his hips, Caleb waited until he could breathe properly again. His mind raced a million different directions. He loved Sara. Yet she’d lied to him. Repeatedly.

  When she claimed she loved him, was that a lie? The kind of lie a whore told to keep getting money?

  But they had a child. A son. She was his wife.

  “One more thing,” Drake said, although the hesitant tone was bewildering. “About that baby... Um... I was...with Princess...” He spit out some blood. “I slept with the woman the night she stole the payroll. That was about eight months ago.”

  Caleb closed his eyes against the pain, an agony that made Drake’s punch feel like the touch of a light breeze. This time his heart had been hit with the staggering blow.

  That baby boy, the one Caleb had breathed life into, might belong to another man.

  And at that moment, he hated her as he’d hated no other person on the face of the earth.

  In all the time he’d known her—had been married to her—Sara hadn’t bled. Not once. There was a slim chance her monthly had come on the trip from Denver to White Pines, but something told him it hadn’t. There would be no way to know whether the child was his or Drake’s.

  The baby’s hair had been coal black, a shade darker than Sara’s, resembling Caleb’s black hair more than Drake’s light brown. But that didn’t mean anything. Grace Morgan had light brown hair too, and her son’s was blond, often looking white when it lightened in the summer sun. Color was fickle to say the least...

  The boy’s eyes had been an odd shade of gray. Caleb had heard babies’ eyes changed color as they grew. He didn’t even know what color Drake’s eyes were, nor did he give a shit at that moment.

  All he knew was that his life was over, the life he’d thanked his Maker for, again and again.

  A lie.

  It’s all a goddamn lie!

  “Caleb...” Ty took a step closer.

  Caleb growled like an angry bear and shoved Ty. “You son of a bitch. You knew. You knew! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The fact Ty could stay so calm while Caleb’s world was crumbling around him only turned his anger into white hot rage. “You and Sara had already married before I even knew she’d made it to town,” Ty replied. “While you two were taking vows, I was tryin’ to talk to Adam about the money Crazy Kate wanted for Sara.”

  At least that explanation made sense and kept Ty from being a part of this mess, other than he was the reason Sara had stumbled into Caleb’s life in the first place. But Ty hadn’t set Caleb up to take this fall.

  Sara had.

  Cassie came to the doorway and cast a furtive glance at Ty. “I’m sorry to interrupt...”

  Ty’s whole demeanor changed as he tossed his wife a smile. “It’s okay, Cassie girl. What’cha want?”

  “Sara is asking for Caleb.”

  ***

  Something was very wrong.

  The moment Caleb stepped into their bedroom, Sara saw the change in him. His face was flushed, his hands held in tight fists. The softness and love in his eyes had vanished, and he breathed so hard his nostrils flared.

  “I–I thought you’d like to see our son,” she said. She’d waited until Grace and Cassie had helped clean everything up. Now she was washed, dressed in a clean nightgown, and sitting on a mound of pillows. She was sore, tired, and in desperate need of sleep, but she wanted to share this important moment with the man she loved.

  Caleb arched a dark eyebrow. “Is he?”

  “Is he what?”

  “Our son.”

  “Caleb, what on earth—?”

  “Our son.” A rueful, haunting laugh tumbled f
rom his lips. “Yours. That’s for damn sure. Since I caught him in my own hands, I can vouch for that. But mine?” Another chilling chuckle. “That might be a problem.”

  Her heart skipped a beat before it jumped to a furious cadence. “Caleb... I...” The words wouldn’t come. She wasn’t sure whether to confess or beg for his forgiveness, but one thing was crystal clear.

  Drake had spilled the news.

  She could hear him now, his voice echoing in her mind as he told Caleb that she’d serviced him like any good whore, plied him with strong whiskey, and then robbed him blind while he slept off his bender. Somehow Caleb had also put two and two together to arrive at the conclusion that Drake could have fathered the precious, impossibly tiny boy sleeping in her arms.

  Tears burned her eyes, but she tried to hold tight to her emotions. All the tears in the world wouldn’t fix this. The only thing she could do was tell Caleb the truth—not Drake’s version, which made her appear a sinner of epic proportions, but the honest tale of how Jean-Claude had turned her into something she simply wasn’t.

  I’m not a whore.

  I’m not.

  “Come and see your son.” She kissed the baby’s forehead. “He’s your son, Caleb Young.”

  “Another lie to add to the pile of lies that bastard just buried me in.”

  “You won’t even listen to me? You won’t let me explain?”

  “How can you explain working at The Palace?”

  “I was sold to The Palace. I had no choice!”

  “Another lie.”

  “I never lied to you! I tried to tell you,” she insisted. “You said the past didn’t matter.”

  “Bullshit.” He ran his hand over his face. “I married a lie.”

  “You married a woman. Me. I’m sorry I’m not what you expected.” She closed her eyes as she realized exactly what her husband wasn’t saying. “You think you know what I am. But you don’t.”

  “How could you lie to me? How could you keep lying to me? Over and over and over...”

  “Caleb, please. Give me chance.”

  “You should’ve told me you were a...a...” With a shake of his head he glanced away.

  “You can’t even say it, can you?” Sara stared at him, watching her future burning into nothing but a pile of ashes. “Say it, Caleb.” Her raised voice set her son to squirming.

  Caleb shook his head again.

  Had she seen tears—any sign that his feelings hadn’t died—she might have begged for forgiveness or tried harder to explain. But when his gaze found hers again, all she saw was white hot hatred.

  He would never listen to her. Ever. He’d already made up his mind.

  The truth had killed his love...assuming he’d ever really loved her at all.

  She simply didn’t know.

  It was her fault for putting Caleb Young on a pedestal, for thinking he was different than all the other men she’d known.

  But he wasn’t.

  He’d wanted her for the same reason Jean-Claude had. The same reason her customers had. She was a woman who offered them a warm body, a chance to rut like an animal. To fuck.

  And that was all she and Caleb had shared. Some nice fucks.

  “Say it,” she said again, her voice full of hurt and disappointment as their son began to wail.

  “Sara...”

  This time, she shouted the command. “Say it!”

  “You are a whore.”

  Not you were. You are.

  Sara refused to hang her head. “I am what the world made me, what Jean-Claude made me.”

  Caleb stomped over to door and practically ripped it off the hinges.

  Then he left, slamming the door behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The company wasn’t at all unexpected, even if it was uninvited.

  Caleb let out a sigh. Hanging up the last of the skins, he waited until the horse and rider drew close enough for him to see who’d come to scold him. Turned out his older brother had the honors. Hell, he was amazed Gideon had waited four full weeks to hunt him down.

  Gideon’s stern expression did little to ease the anger that still bubbled deep inside Caleb’s heart and soul. Funny, but that anger shifted, even on an hourly basis.

  Sometimes it was directed at Sara. His lawful wife.

  Or was she his lawful wife?

  Surely the marriage could be set aside on the grounds of her deception. Not only had she lied to him, she’d might have come to the marriage pregnant with another man’s child. She was a whore—and a thief as well. There had to be legal precedent aplenty for him to obtain an annulment. If not an annulment, then a divorce.

  What did he have to lose at this point? His pride? His standing in the community?

  Sara.

  He would lose Sara.

  Why did he still love her so damned much? And why did some of his anger at her often shift to himself?

  That rage was the hardest to handle. When Caleb could blame Sara for this mess, he didn’t have to acknowledge that he’d walked out on his wife and newborn son. They hadn’t even had a chance to baptize the boy or give him a name, and Caleb had waltzed right out the door without so much as a fare-thee-well.

  What kind of monster did something like that?

  “Brother.” Gideon inclined his head. “You’re looking fit as ever. I reckon I gave you long enough to lick your wounds, so I’m here to talk some sense into you.”

  “Say what you need to say, then get outta here. I’ve got work to do.”

  Gideon’s gaze went to the long line of animal furs. “So I see. What’cha gonna do with all those?”

  “What do you think, numb nuts? Sell ’em. A man’s gotta eat.”

  “Seems to me you should have plenty of meat.”

  The joke fell flat. “How’d you find me, Gideon?”

  “Weren’t difficult,” Gideon replied as he climbed out of the saddle. He took off his hat and hooked it over the saddle horn. “Where else you got to go? Knew the cabin would be the perfect place for you to pout.”

  “I ain’t pouting!”

  “‘Brood’ work any better for you? How about ‘mope’? They’re all mighty fitting.”

  “Gideon, I ain’t up to your lectures. Go on home.” Turning his back, Caleb stalked into the sparse cabin.

  The walls were closing in on him. For the last month, he’d lived in the one-room trapping cabin he and Gideon had built years ago when they found out how profitable fur sales were. Wolf pelts fetched the best prices, but hunting them was difficult and tedious. Good thing Caleb had so much time on his hands, even if each minute ticked by as though it were an hour.

  How was Sara? How was that tiny boy? Had she recovered from the ordeal of birth? Was she still on their farm, working to get her flower bed planted?

  Or had she left? Had she given up on their marriage and joined Drake to scurry back to Denver? He was, after all, her last customer. Didn’t she have to feel affection for a man to sleep with him? She’d certainly done a great job seducing Caleb into her bed, reacting as though she enjoyed his touch when it had probably been an act—nothing but a show. Had she performed as well for Drake? For all the other men she’d slept with?

  He shook his head to try to banish the images and strode to the table to grab the whiskey that was now in short supply. Although it was close to empty, he wrapped his fingers around the bottle and lifted it to his lips. Then he drank, letting the whiskey blaze a fiery path down his throat as he waited for the wonderful forgetting that came with each swallow.

  “Tryin’ to drink her away?” Gideon’s heavy footfalls echoed on the floorboards. “Ain’t gonna work, you know.”

  After finishing the last of the amber liquid, Caleb slammed the bottle on the table. “Go home. Go back to Drew, and stay the hell outta my life.”

  “She’s barely getting by.”

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “She’s trying to keep the farm running while she’s nursing your baby and—”<
br />
  “He ain’t mine!”

  “The hell he ain’t! You forget, little brother, I saw you not more than ten minutes after you came outta our mama’s womb. That baby is your spittin’ image. Your seed made him. He’s your son.”

  If only he could believe that...

  With a loud snort, Caleb headed right back outside. Gideon couldn’t know the torment he was living with every day, every hour, every minute. His love for his wife warred with his hate, and neither side was winning. Like most battles, the worst of the damage was to the battlefield, which was, in this case, his heart.

  He felt a hundred years old.

  “He’s Drake’s son,” Caleb said, not at all surprised his brother was trailing him like a shadow.

  “She’s gonna make herself sick, Caleb.”

  That got his attention. He glared at his brother. “Sick?”

  “She won’t eat. She won’t sleep. She’s running herself into the ground. Got it in her head she needs the farm to be exactly as it was when you left without a lick of help. Won’t touch the money I offer her. No way a woman on her own can handle all that, ’specially one with a newborn at her breast.”

  Although his heart was full of sympathy and worry, Caleb stood his ground. “Tell her to hire some help.”

  “With what? Told you she won’t take my money, and you didn’t leave her a plugged nickel.”

  Caleb scoffed. “She knows how to make money. Tell her to spread her thighs and—”

  He never saw the blow coming. And what a punch it was. Gideon’s fist connected with Caleb’s face, sending lights flashing behind his eyes.

  Dropping to his knees, Caleb gently tested his aching jaw. “What’cha go and do that for?”

  “To shut your fool mouth. Sara ain’t a whore. Didn’t you hear anything she told you? She ain’t a whore. She was a damn slave. Didn’t have a choice in it. She was just trying to survive.”

  If only he could accept that. If only he could banish the images of her sweet body wrapped around Drake and other faceless customers.

  How many? Dozens? Hundreds?

  He was a man tormented.

  As he dragged himself to his feet, Caleb realized a trip to town would have to come soon. He was running out of whiskey. But he’d skip going near his home. Only once in the month since he’d left the farm had he ventured close. From the top of the tallest hill, he’d waited in the trees, watching for a sign of Sara, any sign. After an hour, she’d come from the house, carrying the well-bundled baby against her shoulder.