Lorraine Heath (32 page)

Brown eyes met brown.

“You’ve been wrapping barbed wire around your land without giving any thought as to how the land feels. Well, now, you’re going to find out.”

He brought his fist up into Jake’s ribs knocking the wind out of him. While Jake struggled to breathe, Ethan pressed the tip of a barb into Jake’s flesh to secure it and began wrapping the remaining length of wire around him. Jake clenched his jaw against the tiny shards of pain, alone not much to bother a man, but increasing in number until the sharp bite of one barb became indistinguishable from the other.

“Maybe I ought to brand you. Wonder if you’d yell as much as that red-haired kid did.” Ethan laughed. “No, I reckon you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even holler when Father took the strap to you. Get me some more wire!” he yelled back to one of his men.

“Come on, Ethan, you’ve done enough.”

Ethan spun around. “Get me some more wire.” The man had never seen so much hate in his life, and he wondered if Ethan were sane. “You can release him.”

As soon as the men released him, Jake gathered what little strength he had left and threw himself against Ethan. With his arms pinned to his sides, his movements were hampered and he could do little more than knock Ethan down. Ethan scrambled out from beneath him and delivered a series of blows to Jake’s already battered body, driving the barbs deeper into his flesh.

Then Ethan snapped the barbed wire that was handed to him and bent down, wrapping it securely around Jake, taking pleasure in watching him break out in a sweat as he clenched his jaws tighter. When he was finished, he stood up, placing a foot on Jake’s chest and pressing him back to the ground, standing over him.

“You’re going to die, Jake Burnett. Not by my hand, but by the hand of God. You’re a child of sin, and when Satan has welcomed you into Hell, I’ll claim this land as mine. I’ll tear down your fences and make it open range.” He increased the pressure of his boot bearing down on Jake’s chest until he was satisfied with the grunt Jake emitted.

“Throw him down the ravine,” he ordered his men. Not one man moved.

“Bastards!” he yelled as he hauled Jake to his feet and threw him so he rolled down the steep incline.

Jake had no way to halt his progress down the slope, stopping only when it leveled off. He was unable to move as the pain intensified. The sun beat down on his back. The blood trickled over and down his flesh. The insects came to inspect the open wounds. His mouth dried like sawdust. Closing his eyes, he saw every smile that Rebecca had ever directed his way and knew a pang of regret. He would have liked to have held her in his arms one last time before he died.

H
E
WAS
IN
Hell, just as Ethan had promised. And the fiery flames licked at his body unmercifully. He opened his eyes, not expecting to find Hell such a dark place, with only one solitary light illuminating the region. Why didn’t the fires of Hell brighten the place up?

He felt a cool hand, small palm, slender fingers touch his cheek. A woman’s hand? His mother’s hand? She had touched his cheek when he had smallpox. Had his mother come for him? She had always managed to take away the pain when he was a child. He hoped she could take it away now, because the more aware he became of her soothing palm on his cheek, the more aware he became of the pain spreading through his body, the flames consuming him.

He heard a soft voice calling him and turned towards it, trying to focus the vision before him. It wasn’t his mother. If he weren’t so tired, he would have smiled. He hadn’t expected to find an angel in Hell.

The angel, her image blurred, a whiteness surrounding her, would understand. The angel would know.

“Why couldn’t she love me?” he asked. The angel’s answer was garbled. He strained to understand the words, but all his senses failed him as he slipped back into the abyss on the edge of Hell.

And the angel knelt down beside the bed and wept.

Jake struggled to open his eyes, to wade through the thickness surrounding his mind. Maura was sitting in a chair beside the bed, his bed, in his home. So he wasn’t in
Hell after all. Wouldn’t Ethan be disappointed? Maura looked so pretty sitting there, her face filled with love and concern. Her hair was braided, the braid draped over her shoulder. He had never seen her wear a braid before. She didn’t look like herself.

“Maura, you look like Reb when you wear your hair like that,” he croaked.

“It is Reb, darling,” the sweet voice said.

He lifted his head, studying the woman before him, before dropping back down to the pillow. “Just take what you need. Don’t wait on me to get well.” He now knew there were two kinds of hell. He could deal with the physical burning, but not the other one. Gratefully, he allowed the black abyss to engulf him.

Leaning forward, wiping the sweat from his brow, Rebecca whispered, “I need you, Jake. Please don’t leave me now.” She brushed a kiss on his cheek, then laid her cool cheek next to his fevered one, wishing she could do more to break his fever, to ensure his survival.

Brett had returned home that rainy afternoon to find her sitting on the sofa, Jacob in her arms, her packed bag at her feet.

“What the hell is going on here, Rebecca?” he had asked.

“I’m going back to Jake.” “The hell you are!”

Rebecca had moved her head slowly from side to side. “Whatever I felt for you long ago is like the dwindling flame on a candle. It’s been flickering since that night, attracting me, diverting my heart. I had to come to Montana, I had to touch the flame, but when I did it sputtered and died. And I hurt a good man doing it.”

“When I got back to Kentucky,” he had said, “when I learned you had gotten married, I ranted and raved at myself for having ever left you in the first place. I had planned to come back here and begin again. But I couldn’t. I had to see you, even if only from a distance. When I finally found you and saw how you were living, I knew I had to at least try to get you back. You deserve all I have to offer you. You deserve to be married to a gentleman.”

“I was married to a gentle man.”

“You were married to a cowhand, and not a very charming or handsome one at that.”

“Is that what you see when you look at Jake?”

“That and the fact that he doesn’t deserve you.”

“He doesn’t deserve me only because I’m unworthy of him. Let me tell you, charming, handsome man, what I see when I look at Jake. I see a man who suffered smallpox as a child and survived, a man who took the love his mother gave him and held on to it like a lifeline when he was thrown into a sea of hatred, a man who would give his coat to another if he thought that man needed it half as much as he did, a man who married me knowing I carried another’s child and never once condemned me for it, who brought my child into this world and called him son. He didn’t give me a big house, but he gave me a home. He didn’t give me gifts wrapped perfectly in beautiful paper and ribbons … but, oh, he did give me beautiful gifts, and I carry them all in my heart.”

“I won’t let you take my son.”

She’d had no intention of leaving Jacob, but neither had she wanted to spend any more time arguing over her decision. Calling his bluff, praying he wouldn’t call hers, Rebecca had deposited the child in Brett’s arms and had begun emptying her bag.

“What the hell are you doing?” he had bellowed.

She had faced him with innocence. “You’ll need Jacob’s things.”

“You love my son so little?”

“I love Jake so much.”

“Dammit, woman! You know I’m bluffing.”

Her gaze had become intense, blue eyes delving deeply into blue. “I’m not,” she had said calmly.

And so she had returned to Texas, with her son and her heart. As soon as she had arrived in Pleasure, she had stopped off at Doyle Thomas’s office. Overjoyed to see her, he’d hitched up his buggy and driven her out to the ranch.

They had arrived just as Frank and Lee were hauling Jake off a horse. Rebecca had felt her stomach lurch at the sight of his swollen, bloodied body. No one had acted surprised
to see her, no one had questioned the orders she had barked out. She had handed her son over to Arlene. She had sent every man out riding the fences with orders to bring any fence-cutters to her. She would have ridden out herself, but she didn’t want to spend time in prison after just coming back to Jake. And she knew she would go to prison, because if she so much as caught sight of Ethan Truscott she would kill the man. She’d prefer a slow death for him, but she’d make it a quick one if he wouldn’t oblige her.

Since her return, she had been battling Jake’s fever, the worst moments coming when his fever was the highest. He had rolled to his side, curling up into a ball, holding his stomach, saying how bad it hurt. He said things in his fever that tore at Rebecca’s heart. The pain causing his anguish was not the result of the barbs that had been embedded in his flesh, but the wounds she had inflicted carelessly to his heart. For the first time since leaving Montana, she realized there was a good chance he would just as soon see her in Hell as see her in his house again.

The sweat poured profusely from Jake’s fevered skin, the chills traveling throughout his body as Rebecca alternately bathed him and wrapped him in warm blankets, hoping his fever would break by morning. Her back ached from the bent-over position she had maintained for much of her vigil, her hands were raw from trying to soothe his fevered flesh, from dipping constantly into cool water that quickly turned warm.

She touched his cheek and felt the absence of heat. Finally, the heat was gone. She sponged him down and changed the bedding.

Sitting in a hard chair beside the bed, she rested her cheek on his upturned palm. For the first time since she’d arrived, she felt if she slept, when she woke up, he wouldn’t be gone.

The slight movement of fingers beneath her cheek caused her to wake up. She opened her eyes to find deep brown hesitantly searching hers.

“Thought I was dreaming,” he croaked, each word an
effort so sapped was his strength.

“Wish it had been a dream, but it was a nightmare. You’ve been very sick. It’s been five days since Frank and Lee found you. Frank thinks you were out there for at least two days.”

“Frank shouldn’t have sent for you.”

“He didn’t. I came back on my own. Decided Montana wasn’t where I belonged.”

She touched his cheek, and he flinched as though he had been burned. “We’ll talk about it when you’re stronger. Right now, you need to rest. You have a lot of healing to do.”

Rebecca longed to crawl into bed beside him, to feel his arms around her, to know he still loved her, but she had seen the look in his eyes when she’d touched him. His heart needed healing as much as his body, and she was no longer certain she knew how to care for his heart.

Gazing out the open window, feeling the warm breeze caress his skin, Jake wondered why Rebecca had returned. She had been sitting by his side every time he had awakened. He remembered her voice crooning to him, her touch on his fevered brow.

He had ignored her, feigned sleep and fatigue to avoid discussing why she had returned, mostly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but more because he couldn’t let her stay if she didn’t love him. To lose her again would kill him.

Carrying in a plate heaped with food, she gave him a hesitant smile.

“Are you feeling up to eating some breakfast?” she asked.

He nodded and she brought him the plate, plumped up his pillows, and sat down in the chair beside the bed. “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked. “Sore.”

“I imagine that’s an understatement.”

She stared out the window while he ate, wondering where to begin, how to tell him what she felt, wondering if now was the time to broach the subject of her return. She
glanced over at him. As though reading her thoughts, Jake held out the plate. “I’m tired right now.”

She took the plate, and he rolled over presenting her with his back.

“I’ll leave you be, then,” she said softly as she quietly got up and left the house.

Rebecca returned to Frank’s house after leaving orders with Lee to take a plate in to Jake at lunch and dinner. She had been ignoring her son since they had returned, although he failed to notice now that he had his friend Sean to make him laugh. She took a hot bath and washed her hair. She was too tired to deal with Jake. What she needed was a good night’s sleep. And what he needed was some time without her.

She spent the night stretched out in Frank’s loft with Jacob curled up in a ball nestled beside her. She had been foolish to think she could come back and have Jake welcome her with open arms. She could see so clearly now the last time they had sat together on the hill. Why had she thought he’d said “When the man who loves you has come for you.” And when did she realize he’d said “the man you love.” Had she given so little to him? Yes, she had to admit to herself that she had.

The following morning, Jacob clambered into his wagon and Rebecca pulled him in front of Frank’s house. Sean soon replaced her, and she sat watching the smile stretching across her son’s face. And she began to wonder where she would go if she didn’t stay here.

As afternoon approached, she knew she could stay away from Jake no longer. She needed to talk with him, even if the conversation was only one-sided. She walked into the house and stopped. Jake was tucking his shirt into his pants.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Gotta take a look at the ranch.” Before she had stepped through the door, his plan had been to go search for her and make certain she was all right. But now that he saw her, he didn’t want her to know he was concerned about her. Instead, he wanted her to think it was his ranch that concerned him. Picking up his hat, he moved past her.

She grabbed his arm and he winced. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back. “I don’t think you should be going out.”

“I have a ranch to run.”

“Jake, sometime we need to talk. Maybe it’ll be easier for you if you know that while I was with Brett, I never … he and I never made love. I honored the vows I made with you. I remained faithful.”