Chasing the Sun (52 page)

But he loved her still.

The sun sank, slipping coyly behind the mountaintops like an aging saloon dancer, trailing wispy clouds in her wake like tattered scarves of red and orange. Then too soon all that remained of the day were purple and gold bands that lingered in the fading sky like trailing puffs of smoke. Even after fifty years of RosaRoja sunsets, each one was a wonderment to him.

“Hank and Molly will stay the full week,” he said after a while when the sniffling stopped. “And they’ll bring enough children to fill the nursery
and
Jack’s wing.”

Even though they had never been blessed with offspring of their own, Hank and Molly always had a houseful of children—many straight off the Orphan Train—and others from the children’s hospital and foundling home they had built years ago in Santa Fe. “Hopefully Charlie can come with them.” As the resident doctor at the home, his duties to his patients always came first.

Brady didn’t mention the lost ones—Elena, who was continuing the late Father Damien’s work in Hawaii, and who was still healthy, thank God. And George, Jessica’s brother, who had set off for Alaska back in sixty-eight and had never been seen again. Nor did he mention Jack and Daisy. Daisy’s final concert tour through southern Europe wouldn’t end for another month. But they would be back for the Christmas gathering, and he knew Jessica was pleased about that. Their daughter, Kate, would be delighted to have them home for a while too. She was anxious to show off her new foals.

“Isn’t it odd about Kate,” Jessica said, as if she had read his thoughts, which she did with alarming frequency, “that the child with the strongest tie to RosaRoja is the daughter of the brother with the weakest. I had always hoped the twins—”

“The ranch was never their dream, Jessica. Nor Jack’s.”

“But it
is
his daughter’s dream. Don’t you find that ironic? Now Kate is the new heart of RosaRoja and is as devoted to the ranch as you ever were. Now it’s her vision that will protect it and hold it together for the generation to come.”

“Hell, I’m not dead yet,” he complained, then shot her a rakish grin. “Want me to prove it?”

Jessica laughed, seeing in her husband the same teasing rascal she had fallen in love with over thirty years ago. There might be more gray than black in his hair now and a bit of a hitch in his fluid, rolling gait, but he was still a strong, vital man. And her feelings for him were as lasting as the land he loved.

The land they both loved.

Turning her gaze to the hilltop cemetery, she watched the gentle breeze send the thin, drooping branches of the mesquite tree swaying like one of those grass skirts Jack had brought back from some island in the Pacific. A lonely sentinel, it still stood guard over the living and the dead. Like this land, it endured. Over the years, other markers had sprouted beneath it; Dougal and Consuelo—what must Saint Peter have thought when that pair showed up?—Buck and Iantha, and Carl Langley, as well as several other retired ranch workers. It was getting crowded up there in the little graveyard, but even in the fading light, Jessica unerringly found Victoria’s marker and the rosebush Brady had transplanted beside it.

The last red rose.

How far this family had come since those turbulent days, she thought, tipping back her head and closing her eyes. So many changes. And yet, as she rocked on the porch with her hand securely anchored to the man she loved, and memories of their life together floated through her mind like a gently remembered tune, she realized the important things remained the same.

“I love you, Brady.”

“I know.”

Opening her eyes, she turned her head and looked at him. “You
know
?” She tried to sound indignant, but he knew her too well.

And even after thirty years, that dimpled smile stole her breath away.

“You’d be a fool not to,” he said, his vibrant, sky blue eyes dancing with merriment. “And you’re not a fool.”

Finally the laughter broke through. “You’re such a dolt.”

“I know that too,” he said. And leaning over the armrest, he gave her a thorough, heart-stuttering kiss, reminding her again that the very best things in this life never changed at all.

TURN THE PAGE FOR
A PREVIEW OF KAKI WARNER’S NEXT BOOK ...

HEARTBREAK CREEK

The first in an exciting new series about four
unlikely brides who make their way west—and
find love where they least expect it.

COMING JULY 2011 FROM BERKLEY SENSATION!

“NOT AGAIN!”

Edwina Ladoux frowned at the tall stands of fir and spruce rolling slower and slower past the soot-streaked window at her shoulder. “We just stopped to put water in the tender. Why are we stopping again?”

She should have been glad, relieved to delay the meeting looming ahead of her. But she was so weary of traveling she could scarcely think.

Her sister, Prudence, leaned over to peer past her out the window. “Perhaps there’s been a rockslide. Or a tree has fallen across the tracks.” Sitting back, she smoothed the front of her traveling coat.

Ever neat, Pru was. Sometimes such excessive attention to detail drove the imp in Edwina to do or say something to mess up that perfect order. But not today. Today—if this dratted train kept going—they would reach their destination, and the thought of that filled Edwina with such apprehension her stomach felt like it was stuffed with hot nails. “Maybe it’s another herd of buffalo,” she suggested, just to be saying something rather than allowing her thoughts to dwell on the man waiting for her.

“I doubt it’s buffalo. They rarely range this far into the mountains. Perhaps a herd of bighorn sheep. They like mountainous terrain.”

Oh, who cares?
Biting back her irritation, Edwina stared stoically out the window. How like her sister to read up on the fauna and flora of the Rocky Mountains that they would soon call home, as if this journey was some grand adventure rather than an act of pure desperation.
God.

Then as suddenly as it had come, Edwina’s anger faded. None of this mess was Pru’s fault.
She
wasn’t the one who had answered the ad in the
Matrimonial News
.
She
hadn’t been the one who had decided to flee their home, their life, everything they’d ever known. In fact, Pru had tried several times to talk her out of it—was still trying. But Edwina had given her word and had signed her name. There was no going back now.

Besides, if they did, McCready would make good on his threats.

“Thank you for coming with me, Pru,” she said, still staring out the window so her sister wouldn’t see her tears. “I couldn’t have done

this without you.”

Pru’s hand closed over hers and gave a gentle squeeze. “And I couldn’t have stayed without
you
.”

Blinking hard, Edwina tipped her head against the cool glass and studied the small canyon below with its fast-moving stream and toppled boulders and deep, dark forests pushing right up to the edge of the churning water. Back home, the bayous and rivers were sluggish and warm and brown, shaded by sycamores, stately cypress, and moss-draped oaks. By now, the redbuds and dogwoods would be blooming and the magnolia buds would be fattening for their annual summer display of fragrant, showy blossoms.

A sudden, intense swell of homesickness almost choked her.

Gone. All of it. Forever.

The clackety-clack of the slowing train wheels gave way to the screech of brakes until, with a final shudder, the train came to a full stop. Passengers twisted in their seats, necks craning as vapor from the smokestack coiled around the windows like lost clouds.

A few moments later, the door at the front of the passenger coach swung open and the conductor stepped inside. Stopping in the aisle between the two long rows of bench seats, he hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets and rocked back on his heels, lips pursed beneath a bushy, gray mustache that looped around his red-veined cheeks to join equally bushy muttonchop sideburns. He didn’t look happy.

“There’s a problem, folks,” he began in a weary voice. “Five miles up the tracks, a washout took out the road and damaged the Damnation Creek trestle.”

The passengers moved restively. “What does that mean?” a voice called out.

“Means we’ll be stuck for a while.”

Edwina perked up. A while? How long was “a while”?

Raising his hands to quiet the angry muttering, the conductor explained. “They’re sending wagons to carry you around the washout to a nearby town. The railroad will put you up there until the trestle is repaired.”

“How long?” a man called out.

“A week. Maybe two.”

Immediately, more voices rose. The conductor had to shout to continue, but Edwina scarcely heard a word. With something akin to giddiness, she turned to Pru. “We’re saved, praise the Lord.”

Prudence sighed and shook her head. “A reprieve only. And since when do you praise the Lord?”

“Since He caused the skies to open and the rains to fall.”

Ignoring that, Pru leaned forward to attend the conductor’s words.

But Edwina was feeling too euphoric to heed more than a word or phrase here and there—“hotel ... Heartbreak Creek ... don’t drink the water.” To her ear, it all meant the same thing. A delay. A blessed reprieve. She wouldn’t be meeting her new husband in Heartbreak Creek today as expected.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Not that she wanted to put it off forever. Or could. The signed proxy papers were in her carpetbag, all nice and tidy and legal. And even though she had insisted on a two-month waiting period before actual consummation took place—Lord, how she dreaded going through that again
—
with every mile she had traveled from the ruins of her home in Louisiana, the more nervous she had become.

It was madness. Ridiculous. The very idea that Edwina Ladoux, once the reigning belle of Sycamore Parish, should be reduced to marrying a complete stranger—a man who was apparently so hard up he had to advertise for a wife in a newspaper—was ludicrous.

“
Honest, hardworking widower, age thirty-three, seeks sturdy, English-speaking woman to help with mountain ranch and four children. Drinkers, whores, and gamblers need not apply.”

Such a romantic.

And one with rather low standards, Edwina thought. Yet she qualified—except for the “sturdy” part, since she had lost so much worry weight over the last months, her once willowy figure now had all the appeal of a flagpole. Nonetheless, she had bravely applied. A month later, a letter had arrived, containing the groom’s terse assessment of his own self, a tiny tintype photograph of an unsmiling, dark-haired man, and a few complimentary words from a traveling circuit judge.

It was utterly absurd. The whole thing. Yet here she was.

“At least they’ll be covering the cost of our accommodations in Heartbreak Creek until the tracks are repaired,” Pru muttered, drawing Edwina’s attention again. “So I guess you’ll have your reprieve. Unless, of course, your husband decides to travel the extra distance around the washout to come get us.”

“Oh, Sister, pray he doesn’t.”

Pru’s elbow poked her ribs. “Really, Edwina,” she warned in a low voice. “You must stop referring to me as your sister.”

Edwina almost snorted. Prudence was more than her sister. She was her lifelong best friend, her confidant, the one who gave her courage when everything seemed so bleak. “You
are
my sister,” she argued, rubbing her bruised side.

“Half sister. And to call attention to that fact is unseemly and casts your father in a poor light.”

“
Our
father.”

Pru pressed her full lips in a tight line, a clear indication she was losing patience. “Must you be so obstinate? If you’re trying to make a new start, Edwina, why carry old baggage along?”

“Old baggage?” Edwina gave her a look of haughty disbelief. “Even though you’re twenty-seven and an
entire
year older than me,
Sister,
I’ve never considered you ‘baggage.’”

Waving that aside, Pru went on in the same low voice. “There is no need to bandy it about that your father—”

“
Our
father. Who adored
your
mother. As well he should.” Edwina was growing weary of this endless argument. Everyone at Rose Hill had loved Ester, who had taken on the role of Edwina’s mammy as soon as it had become apparent that Pricilla Ladoux was incapable of caring for her own child. If her father had been able, Charles Ladoux would have gladly married Pru’s mother; as it was, he was utterly devoted to her until the night the Yankees had swept through Sycamore Parish, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Inadvertently, Edwina’s gaze dropped to the fine, pale web of scars marring the brown skin that showed between the cuff and glove on Pru’s right wrist. Other scars, hidden by the long sleeve of her gray bombazine, stretched up her right arm and halfway across her chest and back. Burn scars, a gift from Edwina’s mother.