Pieces of Sky (48 page)

Of course she’d noticed. She’d also noticed the blood spot blossoming on his shirtfront—exactly where he had been cut, exactly where she had poked him. Guilt and horror warred within her, but she managed to quell both. He deserved it. Besides, it wasn’t spreading all that quickly. “So. Rebuild.”

“Look at me.”

She jerked her gaze from his chest. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s okay.”

“I should check.”

“It’s okay.” His look forbade her to fuss.

Fine, then
. The dolt could bleed to death for all she cared.

“It would take years to rebuild,” he went on in a taut voice. “Decades. I don’t know if I have the fortitude to survive a future like that. But I damn sure know it would kill you.”

“Rubbish. I’m English. We invented fortitude.” She realized she was twisting her hands and forced herself to stop.
Please, God, don’t let him do this. Don’t let me lose him now.
“I’m stronger than I look.”

He had the audacity to smile. “I know.”

“Then stop being such a twit.”

“Jessica . . .” His smile faded. He sighed and raked a hand through his hair in that familiar gesture of weary frustration. It almost broke her heart.

Reaching out, he captured both her hands in his and pulled her to stand between his gaped knees. “You know I want you. I’ll never stop wanting you. But . . .”

She stared down at him, dread swelling in her chest. There was a terrible grimness to his drawn face that made him seem older than he was. Where was the ardent, teasing man who had loved her so gently last night? Who was this weary stranger staring back at her through bleak and defeated eyes?

“It’s not you that’s lacking, Jessica. It’s me.” Reaching up, he touched her face, trailing his fingertips across her jaw, her cheek, her brow. She watched his eyes track every movement as if imprinting her face in his mind. “I won’t come to you empty-handed, Jessica. You and Ben deserve better.” His hand slid beneath the braid at her nape.

She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could, he pulled her face toward his.

It was a gentle, tender kiss, without the heat and hungry demand she’d grown to expect from him, but so achingly sweet it made her tremble. A good-bye kiss.

“I love you, Jessica,” he whispered against her lips. “I always will.” He pulled back. His hands dropped to his thighs. “But you can’t stay. There’s nothing here for you.”

An unseen fist seemed to grip her heart. “There’s you.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It is for me. We can leave. Go somewhere else.”

He didn’t speak or look away. Yet with every heartbeat she felt the distance between them grow. It panicked her, sent words tumbling out in a rush. “We could go with Elena to San Francisco. Start over. We don’t have to live here.”

“Jessica, don’t.”

She didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted the salt of her own tears. Angrily she swiped them away. “Don’t what? Cry? Argue with you?” It felt like something was ripping apart inside. “You told me to fight for us. Now you say give up. I can’t do that, Brady. I won’t.”

Those aqua eyes moved over her face, her hair. “I love you, Jessica. Never forget that.”

She wanted to strike him, shake him, scream at him until he listened. “Then believe in me, Brady. I can do this. We can do this. I know we can.” She clutched at his arms as if she could hold him fast to her side and keep him from drifting away. “Together we can do anything. We can work this out.”

The look Brady gave her opened up a hole in her heart. “I wish we could, Jessica. I wish that more than anything I’ve ever wished in my life. But winter is three months away and I have over two dozen people to feed and shelter. How can I do that and worry about you and Ben, too?”

The irony of it all was too much. It was macabre. Absurd. A twist of fate she had never expected. Laughter bubbled in her chest, but before it burst from her throat, it had changed to tears.

God had tricked her again.

Twenty-four

ADRIAN COOED ON A BLANKET IN THE SHADE OF A JUNIPER behind Buck and Iantha’s cabin while Jessica toiled over a washtub, up to her elbows in sooty water. She was exhausted. For two days she had worked dawn to dusk. For two nights she had battled tears and heartache as she lay in sleepless misery in the tiny room she shared with Elena and Adrian.

She didn’t know how she could go on. She didn’t know how she couldn’t.

She didn’t know why loving someone should hurt so much.

Adrian’s coos escalated into a babble, and she turned to see Brady standing over her son. Joy thundered through her.

Except for distant glimpses, she hadn’t seen him since their argument the morning after the fire. He looked worse than she felt. Sooty, haggard, so drawn with weariness and worry he seemed to have aged ten years. She wondered what he ate, where he slept, if he thought of her at all.

She doubted he had the time.

It was a monumental undertaking, the task before him. Although it was late August and they had three months before winter came full force, when one begins the task of constructing housing for several families and almost two dozen ranch hands with scarcely a stick of wood or a nail in hand, three months wasn’t a long time. And Brady would never shirk his duty to greedy RosaRoja. It was only people he was able to set aside.

Even so, she would give anything for a touch or a smile.

Weakened by longing, she studied him, committing to memory the sight of him smiling down at her son. How could she live beyond his touch? Beyond that heart-wrenching smile?

He must have sensed her watching him. He gave her a quick look, then hunkered beside Adrian. “He’s growing fast,” he said, offering a finger to her son.

With a look of fierce concentration, Adrian tugged it toward his mouth.

Jessica cleared her throat. “They do that.” She wiped her damp palms on her work apron and forced herself to walk slowly toward them, when what she wanted to do was to run, throw herself into his arms, and never let him go.

“Strong, too.” Smiling, Brady engaged in a gentle tug-of-war until Adrian conceded with a howl. “Still has your temper, I see.”

“And yet, inexplicably, it’s only apparent in your presence.”

He might have smiled at her quip, but with his head down, she wasn’t sure.

Rising as she approached, he pulled a yellow envelope from his back pocket and held it out. “This came a couple of days ago. The telegraph office was waiting for someone from the ranch to come into town.”

A sense of dread gripped her as she took the envelope from his hand. The last time she had received a missive was the day Victoria died. She remembered that odd prescient feeling she had felt when the sheriff handed her Annie’s letter. She felt it again now. With trembling fingers, she tore open the envelope.

“It’s from Annie.” Quickly, she skimmed the abbreviated message. “Oh, my God . . .” For a moment she couldn’t speak, couldn’t draw air into her lungs. “He’s dead. John Crawford is dead.” An odd sound escaped her throat. It sounded like laughter. She couldn’t seem to stifle it. “He was killed. In Boston, of all places. A tavern brawl.”

Her mind couldn’t seem to grasp it. Dead. Gone forever.

She gave the letter to Brady. “Creditors are after the Hall. Annie wants me to come home.”

Brady read it, then handed it back. “How could creditors be after the Hall? You didn’t mortgage it, did you?”

“Crawford must have forged my name to secure loans.” Shaking her head, she folded the paper and slipped it into her apron pocket. “Poor Annie. Widowed with two children, and now this.” She looked up at him. “What should I do?”

“What you have to, I guess.”

His air of indifference infuriated her. Didn’t he understand what this meant? “You mean leave? Go back to England?” She couldn’t leave now, not with things so unsettled between her and Brady. Or didn’t that matter to him anymore?

“If that’s what you need to do,” he said noncommittally.

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“What I want doesn’t matter anymore, Jessica. I told you that two days ago.” And without a backward glance, he turned and walked away.

 

 

THAT NIGHT, AFTER IANTHA AND BUCK WENT TO BED AND Adrian finished his night feeding, Jessica told Elena about her feelings for Brady.

Elena didn’t seem surprised. Laughing in delight, she gave Jessica a hug, telling her how happy she was to have a sister.

“Before you get too carried away, read this.” She gave her Annie’s letter.

Elena’s smile faded as she read it.

“I don’t want to leave,” Jessica blurted out. “I can’t.” The thought of walking away from that tiny grave up on the hill, from Brady and all these people she had grown to love, was intolerable. She simply couldn’t do it.

Elena pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from the drawer of the night table and pressed it into Jessica’s hand. “Then stay.”

Jessica blotted her tears. “But it’s my sister.” She waved the hanky in agitation. “If she loses the Hall, what will become of her and the children?”

“
Pobrecita.
Such terrible choices.” Tears of sympathy glistened in her dark eyes as Elena patted Jessica’s hand. “You and Brady are so alike. He also feels the pull of duty. He will understand.”

Jessica rose and went to the window. Even after two days, tendrils of smoke coiled above the pile of charred timbers that had once been the house. “I don’t want him to understand, Elena. I just want him to love me.” It sounded infantile and pitiful, but she couldn’t help it. She felt like a child who’d been given a treasured gift only to have it snatched away before it was fully within her grasp.

“He does love you. It is there for all to see.”

Was it? But did he love her enough? For just this one time in her life, Jessica wanted to be first, to be loved more than money, or land, or duty. Was that too much to wish for?

God.
She was beyond pathetic.

Turning, she walked back to the bed. “If I asked him to leave with me, do you think he would?” she asked, grasping at anything to keep her hopes alive.

“Perhaps. But is that truly what you want?” At Jessica’s questioning look, Elena explained. “A woman defines herself by the people she loves. She calls herself wife, mother, sister, daughter. But a man defines himself by what he does. Brady is a
ranchero.
He knows nothing else. If he goes with you to England, what is he to become then?”

“A proper gentleman?” She sighed and sank down beside Elena. “I know it sounds selfish and prideful, but I just want him to choose me.”

“And deny the greater part of himself? He would not be the man you love then, would he?” She brushed a curl from Jessica’s shoulder.

“Go. Do what you must for your sister, then come back to him. By then he will have restored his home and his pride.”

Jessica almost snorted. “His pride? What does his pride have to do with this?”

“
Es todo
. Today he is a rancher with no ranch house, a
ganadero
whose herds are scattered to the wind. No matter how much he loved you, his pride would never allow him to come to you with so little to offer.”

Jessica let her expression reveal how ridiculous she thought that was.

“
Sí. Es loco
.” Elena spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “But he is only a man, yes?”

New tears filled Jessica’s eyes. “How shall I manage without you, dear friend?” Reaching out, she wrapped Elena in a fierce hug. “You have become the sister of my heart.”

“
Sí
,” Elena whispered, hugging her back. “
Hermana de mi corazón
.”

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING BRADY WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND, SO Jessica explained to Jack that she had to leave and asked him to make arrangements to get her and Adrian to the Overland Stagecoach Office in Val Rosa.

Jack seemed genuinely distressed, which touched her. It was also the first in a series of difficult and heartbreaking good-byes. Not even leaving England had been so hard. By evening she was packed.

And still no Brady.

Weary but too distraught to sleep, she pulled on her robe. Leaving Elena and Adrian sleeping, she walked to where the house had once stood.

Only the porch was recognizable, the sturdy pine posts and beams rising defiantly from the ashes. Seeing the two blackened rockers in the rubble brought up the pain she had fought so hard to keep inside. How could she leave this place? This man? Her daughter?

Coils of smoke and ash danced in the gentle breeze. The scorched posts wept slow amber tears. But no answers came.

 

 

AS BRADY RODE FROM THE CREEK AFTER HIS WASH, HIS MIND was so preoccupied with the thought of Jessica and Ben leaving the next day, he didn’t realize she was there until the horse lifted its head and snorted. He reined in and watched her.