The Bartered Bride (The Brides Book 3) (36 page)

Gabe cocked the hammer with his thumb. His hands shook so badly he thought he might drop the weapon, but he held on. He was aware of Jem standing there, offering his silent support, his own gun trained on the major.

“You’re not th-that far away.” Gabe gritted his teeth, angered by his stutter. “Even I couldn’t miss.”

The major licked his lips, evidently realizing that was true. He was in some very real danger of dying if the gun went off.

“You’d never shoot me. Your own father.” He glanced at Jem briefly, as if gauging how likely he was to shoot.

“You’re not my father,” Gabe said. “Not anymore.”

The major’s face flushed with rage. “What did you say?”

“Y-you’re not my father.”

“So that’s how it is.” The major straightened to his full height. “If I leave now, I don’t ever want to see your face again,” he said, his voice cutting. He so obviously wanted to hurt Gabe. To annihilate him. “Don’t ever come back. Or you’ll regret you ever lived.”

“Who says I w-want to come back?” Gabe lifted his chin.

“W-want,” the major mocked, disgust written in every line of his face.

Why did he always—
always
—have to belittle him? Why? He was so full of hate. He’d never loved Gabe. When all Gabe had ever wanted was a real father. Like his brothers had. But that was never going to happen. His father didn’t have it in him. And Gabe was tired. He was so very tired.

“J-just go,” he said, gesturing with the heavy weight of the six-shooter. “I don’t ever want to see your face again.” The words came to him wholly formed. His father’s own words.

“I don’t know why I even bothered.” The major shook his head and headed for the door.

He’s leaving. He’s going to leave.

Gabe squeezed his eyes shut, just for one second, then started to lower the weapon, his muscles trembling from the effort of holding his arms up.

Then all he saw was a blur of motion, his father coming at him.

And the gun fired.

FORTY-SEVEN

G
abe’s legs gave way, and he sank to the edge of his bed.             

He’d shot his own father.

“You
shot
me.” The major grasped his shoulder, his face as white as bone. A dark stain seeped slowly through his leather coat.

“I didn’t m-mean to.” There was a small spattering of red on the backs of Gabe’s hands. Proof it really happened. There was likely more on the floor. He didn’t look.

“I swear, Gabe. You’re going to regret this—”             

“Leave him be,” Jem interrupted, still holding his own gun. He briefly checked the major’s wound. “Looks like the bullet’s lodged in there. I’ll get my bag.”

The major brushed him aside. “Don’t
touch
me.”

Jem backed away and glanced at Gabe. “Someone’s bound to have heard that blast. The halls will be filling with guests any moment. Keep that gun on him. I’ll get someone to fetch the police.”

“No.” Gabe stopped him with that one word.

Jem stared at him.

His father stared at him too. “What?”

“Promise you won’t come after me.” The gun was warm in Gabe’s hands. He angled the barrel away from his leg so he didn’t burn himself.

“I—”

“Or we get the police.” Gabe met his father’s eyes just long enough to show him he was serious.

The major’s fingers tightened over his wound. If possible, his face bleached even whiter. Without another word, he walked stiffly to the door, lifted the latch, and then he was gone. Gabe heard him turning the corner, then his boots thumped down the narrow stairwell just outside his room.

How long had it been since the shot was fired? Seconds? A minute? Gabe couldn’t say. He pictured hotel guests waking at the noise, frozen in bed, waiting for another shot. Wondering if they’d really heard it or dreamed it. Coming out when all was quiet. Meanwhile, the major slipped away unseen.

“Why did you let him go?” Jem asked.

Gabe felt as Jem gently removed the six-shooter from his grasp—heard the release of the hammer. And a metallic thud against wood as Jem set the gun carefully on the bedside table. The acrid scent of gun smoke tainted the air.

It happened. It really happened.
He’d pulled the trigger.

There were voices in the hallway outside, hotel guests coming out of their rooms. An older woman’s voice murmuring, “Was that a gun?” Another voice, a man’s, “Sounded like it.” Hushed concern.

It seemed so terribly far away.

“Why, Gabe?” Jem prodded. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him—I’d never want something like that on your conscience—but why let him go? The police—”

“The police would’ve come and then what? They might arrest him...” Gabe stared at the wall. There was no blood there after all. A relief. But he needed to wash his hands. He looked down at them, his palms resting lightly against his thighs. “But it would ruin my mother. I couldn’t do that to her. He’d never hurt her, ever. I know that. It was only me.”

He felt Jem’s frustration in his silence. It wasn’t that Gabe couldn’t see him. He was right there, standing in his line of sight. But in a way, all Gabe could see was an image frozen in time: his father framed in the doorway, light slanting around him, casting him in shadows.

A nightmare he’d have again and again.

“I could have killed him,” Gabe said softly, realizing how very possible it would have been. “He was right there. The gun was in my hands. But—I just couldn’t. I didn’t mean to shoot him.”

“Let me get you some water,” Jem offered. “Might help with the shock.”

“No. I don’t want it.” Gabe shook his head. The room tilted around him. He lowered himself onto his side, then rolled to his stomach, needing the support of the mattress under him. “But thanks,” he added automatically, not wishing to sound ungrateful.

“Just close your eyes,” Jem said, his voice laced with weariness. “Sleep can’t cure what you’re feeling—but it can’t hurt either. Annie?” he called through the connecting door. “You can come in.”

She appeared in the doorway and hovered there one moment, holding Mae on her hip. She looked wide-eyed from Jem to Gabe. Her eyes falling on Gabe’s blood-stained hands. On the guns side by side on the bedside table. She drew closer.

“Daddy, it was loud.” Mae pouted at Jem.

“I know, lamb,” he said. “It’s all right now.”

Mae rested her head against Annie’s shoulder and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

“Creed’s gone,” Jem told Annie in a soothing voice, likely for Mae’s benefit. He wrapped an arm around Annie’s back, encompassing Mae too. “He’s got a bullet in him. An
accident
.” He glanced at Gabe. “His shoulder. He won’t be back tonight. Not with that injury.”

A knock on their door. “Hello in there?” A man’s voice called in to them. “Everything all right?”

Jem released Annie. “Take Mae back to bed? Try to get her to sleep.”

Annie cuddled Mae closer and nodded. She looked once more to Gabe, giving him a soft smile of sympathy before she returned to the other room.

Gabe allowed his eyelids to drift shut. He’d never sleep now, but it felt good to close his eyes. Soon he heard the sound of Jem stepping into the hall. Rustling noises filtered through Gabe’s door. The sound of people gathered in the hallway. Jem was talking with the other hotel guests, saying he was sorry for the disturbance. His younger brother thought he saw a rat.

“A rat?” The older woman said, a gasp in her voice. For some reason, Gabe pictured a wealthy matron in a long velvet dressing robe, clutching the lapels to her neck.

That likely caused a stir. Gabe imagined people exchanging nervous glances. Their dismay.
A rat. In the hotel.

“I’m sure it’s all an unfortunate mistake,” Jem was reassuring the guests.

If they only knew who the rat really was. A man. A man Gabe hoped never to see again, even in his dreams. A man he vowed to never—ever again—think of as his father.

A man who was
gone
.                           

And Gabe had sent him away.

He released a breath and sank deeper into the mattress.

Pain radiated up his back. He felt so weak, he couldn’t have lifted a spoon. Little trembles still echoed up his arms, left over from the recoil of the gun firing. And yet, at the same time, the most incredible inner strength flowed through him. Like he’d just climbed a mountain and was looking over the other side.

FORTY-EIGHT

A
fter all the excitement of the previous night, Jem didn’t wake up until about noon. The hotel room had grown cold. He’d have to stoke the fire in the coal stove. Annie lay curled on her side next to him, her pillow pulled around her ears as if she’d heard the sound of the gunshot in her dreams. Even Mae was still asleep.

He swung his legs off the mattress and sat on the edge of the bed, moving quietly so as not to disturb them. Annie had insisted on staying up with him to help Gabe wash his hands. And to clean the floor in his room. There hadn’t been much mess, surprisingly, but it had taken time nonetheless. She needed her rest. After Jem had disposed of the soaked towels in the hotel laundry, he’d gone back to bed too, exhausted, but he hadn’t gotten much sleep.

Again and again, Jem recalled seeing Creed standing there in Gabe’s room, gun in hand. He’d worried about Gabe and what the incident must have cost him, emotionally and physically. Jem couldn’t stop thinking about what Creed had done to the boy. And how Gabe had just
let him go
. It gave Jem a bad feeling. It seemed the man was getting off without due justice. And the feeling didn’t sit right, not at all.

But what
was
justice for Creed? And how could they get it?

He’d broken into the hotel room last night, armed. Except, they only had their word about that. Creed had mistreated Gabe for years—verbal and physical abuse no child should have to suffer. He’d
branded
his own son—in a heat of rage. No man should be allowed to get away with what he’d done. At least Gabe was out of his father’s grasp now. Or very nearly.

Annie let out a soft murmur of distress in her sleep.

Jem glanced at her, saw her wrinkled brow, and wondered if she was having a bad dream.

He wouldn’t be surprised if she were.

Creed had been a bad dream since they’d met him.

There was no way to know what he’d intended to do with Annie the day he’d “bought” her. Surely if he were a procurer for a brothel, he would have abducted her, not paid for her. Which led Jem to believe Creed had likely planned to use her for his own personal “sport”—possibly rape, abuse, or even murder. All sickening possibilities.

Jem had begun to draw other conclusions about Creed. That odor Jem had smelled on him that first day, for instance. It was the same odor he’d smelled when Creed fired a shot on Castle Ranch. The same odor he’d smelled in Gabe’s room after the gun went off. The acrid scent that Jem had initially mistaken for burnt paper. He’d known at the time that wasn’t quite right, and now he knew why.

The day Creed had bought Annie, he’d shot something. Or some
one
. He’d fired his gun recently, and the scent had lingered on his clothes. A slim connection, perhaps. But Adam Booker had revealed a “small fortune” had been transferred to Creed’s account, and he’d intimated Creed had dealings outside the law. Could he be a hired gunman? The role easily fit him: a retired major, known for violence and stepping outside the lines of battle. It might be no more than Jem’s wild suppositions, but he couldn’t erase the memory of Gabe confiding that his father
enjoyed
killing. That he was the kind of man who bragged about his atrocities.

All it would take was for the law to come to those same conclusions. Do a little digging around... There had to be a way to exact justice. For Gabe. For Annie.

Sitting there with the cold wood floor under his feet, Jem felt a familiar undercurrent of loneliness whisper through him. Lonely when he was in a room with Annie and Mae, with Gabe next door. It just seemed to be his natural state of being. Like he was stuck. He’d felt lonely since Lorelei died. Early on, it had felt right and good to be alone and lonely—like he’d
needed
it. Needed to grieve. But forever? To live alone and lonely?

He wanted
life
.

He wanted people in that life. Pure and simple.

He wanted Mae to have a real father.

He wanted to be a real husband for Annie.

And—he was struck suddenly—he missed Becky and Isaac and the children. He missed Pop. They might not be family by blood, but they were his family. Why had he pushed them away, run off with Mae? At the time, it had almost been painful to have them around, disturbing his solitude. In his pain, he’d forgotten to consider what
they
might need or want. He’d been so focused on himself.

If he wanted that to change, then
he
needed to change.

Jem leaned the heels of his hands against his legs and dug them into muscles just above that place where his thigh met his knee, needing to ground himself in a way that was more emotional than physical.

He rose and stared out the hotel window at the streets of Denver, gray and cold. Already teeming with movement. A real city. A haze hung over its rooftops, so thick he could barely make out the mountains in the distance. He felt far away from home. From Seattle.

Would the Jessups want him back now? Him and Mae. And Annie?

There was no question, not a single moment of hesitation. Of course they would. They’d open their arms right up. And they’d open their hearts to Annie too. Becky would love her. It would take all of an instant for her to declare Annie a friend and sister. Annie just might need that.

He turned and saw Annie sitting up in the bed, watching him. She had her feet tucked up under her.

“I want to go back to Seattle.” Jem returned to his seat on the side of the bed. “I want Mae there with me. I want you there too. But”—he took a breath and angled more fully toward her—“I know you didn’t sign up for this—for this marriage. To me. Maybe—maybe you want something else? If you do, you need to let me know. I’ll figure out a way.”

He had to ask. Honor demanded it. No person should be bought or sold. No woman forced into marriage with a man she didn’t know. Annie deserved a choice. He hoped she’d choose him. More than half expected her to say so.

She just blinked at him and signed, “What?”

“Would you move to Seattle with me?” Jem asked, signing along with his words, if only for practice. “I don’t have a job, or a house. Yet. But I do have money.”

Annie rose up closer to him and pressed one finger to his lips, then to her heart.
Yes, love.
It wasn’t a sign they’d learned, but he understood it clearly enough.

He hadn’t expected her to say no, but the way she said yes... The ease with which she revealed her heart humbled him. How did she do it? After so much hurt and rejection in her life, she just laid out her heart. To be crushed or not crushed. It seemed so incredibly brave to Jem. Braver than he’d been in a good long while.

And he wanted to say so much to her, but the words jammed in his throat.

He swallowed. “What about Gabe? I was thinking. What if he came with us? I could ask him. He could be a part of our family...”

Annie looked over at the open connecting door, where only the upper half of Gabe’s body was visible. He was sleeping peacefully—a miracle after the events of last night. She smiled and nodded.

* * *

Not half an hour later, Annie bustled around the hotel room, getting herself and Mae ready for the day. She ate her late breakfast as quickly as she could, unable to make eye contact with Jem. She was relieved that Creed was gone, at least for the moment. And she was happy about the idea of Gabe joining them. That wasn’t the problem. It was the other question that still hung in the air between her and Jem.

Did she want to go with them to Seattle? Or did she want “something else”?

Something else.

What? What else could she possibly want? They were
married
. She loved him. She loved Mae.

She couldn’t believe he’d asked her that.

Every time she thought about it she felt a fresh slice of hurt. Had he wanted her to leave? Had he wanted her to say
yes
, she wanted something else?

And when she’d told him she wanted to be with him, practically gave him her heart, he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even kissed her. He could have at least kissed her. Said
something
.

Lately, Annie had started to hope he had feelings for her, but maybe he didn’t feel for her what she felt for him. Maybe he was the one who wanted something else. Maybe he was the one who regretted making her his wife.

She bent to her task of unsnarling Mae’s hair with a comb.

“Ow!” Mae protested. She looked up at Annie with shocked reproach, her eyes saying more than her words.
You
hurt
me. Why would you hurt me?

Annie patted Mae’s head gently, apologizing. She felt terrible for pulling too hard on her knotted curls. She stopped, took a breath, then bent to kiss Mae on the forehead. “I’m sorry,” she signed.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No. No, Mae. I’m not mad at you,” Annie signed, or tried to with the comb in hand. She got it so tangled up in her fingers she dropped it.

Mae giggled—evidently deciding to forgive her—and sat back in the chair, waiting for her to finish. Annie did her best to leave her thoughts about Jem behind. At least until she got the last knot out of Mae’s hair and gave her a handful of hotel spoons they’d collected for her to play with. While Mae was stacking those, Annie went more thoughtfully about her own hair, braiding it as she often had alongside her face and pulling it forward over one shoulder. She almost instantly felt better, doing something so familiar.

It gave her time to think again about what Jem had asked and, more importantly,
how
he’d asked it.

He hadn’t wanted her to refuse to go with him to Seattle. He’d been relieved when she said yes. When she’d pointed to her heart, expressing her love, he’d been taken aback, but something warm and welcoming had flickered in his eyes. She could have sworn it. She also could’ve sworn he’d wanted to say something.

Was he truly so incapable of expressing a tender emotion?

She watched him through the connecting door as he tended to Gabe in the other room. How good he was with him, so patient and gentle. He was so thorough in his preparations, so professional and yet kind. He may have stated very clearly that he was just a horse doctor, but it was obvious he’d also studied human biology and medicine at university.

Of course I’m coming with you to Seattle
, she wanted to yell across the room at him.
Where else would I want to be except with you?

She couldn’t yell of course, and even if she could’ve she knew she never would have dared. Or would she? The thought made her lips twitch.

* * *

Jem could barely wait to ask Gabe his question.

It was funny, not so long ago all he’d wanted was to be alone. Now it seemed all he wanted was to add more people to his family. He’d changed. He wasn’t exactly sure when it had happened, but he was different.

After replacing Gabe’s compress, Jem helped the boy conduct his more personal morning needs in the privacy of his room. When Gabe was settled comfortably, sitting on the side of his bed, Jem reopened the connecting door to let a bit of heat in from the coal fire burning in the other room. He saw Mae seated in the middle of the big four-poster bed, alternately playing with spoons and complaining about missing Sugar. He waved at her, and she smiled absently, making a nodding motion with her head as if she were counting. She could only count up to four, so he wondered what was going on in that sweet head of hers.

Annie came in and left a cup of water on the bedside table. Then evidently realizing she’d forgotten something, she went back to the other room. Jem could see her searching on their bedside table for something.

Gabe sat with his long legs dangling to the floor. He seemed surprisingly well after his incident with his father in the middle of the night. If anything, he seemed...stronger. Jem could relate to that in some small way. Gabe indicated to Jem that he wanted his shirt on, nodding with some embarrassment to the open connecting door. So now he was getting shy with Annie around. He’d been too sick earlier to worry about such a thing. Jem took that to be a good sign and he helped Gabe ease his arms into the shirt.