Chasing Emily [Duoterra 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (8 page)

It was three weeks since Emily had run away. It had taken him this long to decide what to do—to give her up as a lost cause, or to chase after her.

The fact that he was on the road having packed enough stuff to take with him, had given leftover food to his sister and abandoned any jobs, clearly told anyone what his intentions were.

His initial worry though had been “Where the hell had she gone?” No one had seen her leave town, although there was only one road out of Frontier, but she could have decided to take refuge with various friends who had farms out of town. He thought the most likely place would be the Hollis farm. They had left town shortly after Emily had absconded. After deciding he wasn’t prepared to give her up, he had ridden out to their farm, but much to his annoyance, Emily was not with them.

“Where on Duo is the damn woman?” he had demanded.

“Robin, I—there was something Emily said—” Brianna was hesitant as she tried to tell him something about Emily. Robin jumped off his horse and ran over to her, grabbing hold of her arms.

“What? What did she say? Did she tell you where she’s gone?”

Adam, the eldest of Brianna’s husbands, moved forward and wrenched Robin’s hands off Brianna. “Don’t touch my wife again,” he snarled.

Backing away a few steps, Robin pleaded, “I need to know where she is. If you know anything, for the love of God, please tell me.”

“Well, we were talking before the dance,” Brianna explained. “You know I ran away from my home in Goldtown to come here, so Emily said if she had been me, she would have gone to Eden, it being easier to hide out there than other towns.”

“Eden!” That worried Robin. It was where the brothel was.

Curt, who was just coming out of the house behind Brianna, frowned and queried, “Are you sure that it was Eden, Bree?”

The last of the Hollis brothers, Eric, cried out, “Oh God, she hasn’t gone to the brothel there, has she!”

Robin suddenly felt his knees go week and had to bend forward to stop falling over. Adam grabbed him before he fell, their previous altercation forgotten. “Are you all right, man?”

Taking a few deep breaths, Robin stood upright pulling away from him. He felt color come back to his cheeks. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

With his head clearing, he moved away toward his horse.

“What are you going to do?” asked Curt.

“Go to Eden, where else?” was Robin’s weary response.

“At least stay the night. It’s going to be dark soon.”

He hadn’t wanted to delay any longer, but they persuaded him, and it gave him a chance to talk some more to Brianna about Emily and what her intentions might have been. He learned that she was unlikely to have taken refuge in the brothel. Her most likely option would be to find a job in a bar.

Arriving home the following evening, he had stumbled into bed exhausted—mostly from emotional weariness. The next day he had closed up his home and set off on his journey. That was yesterday, and he was a bit further than halfway there when he was forced to stop for the night. He would probably arrive in Eden late tomorrow if he left very early, or the following morning, as he calculated he had about another day and a half to go, it being about three to four days hard travel to get there. Most people took it easily, stopping off en route to see friends on farms along the way or spending a night or two in Riverside, which had been established as a mill town.

A sound alerted him. It was the noise of someone riding a horse along the road, riding fairly quickly from the sound of the horse’s canter.
Who on Duo is on the road this late?

His heart started to beat quicker as a worry came over him, and his fears were realized when Finn came into view.
Shit, it would be him!

As Robin stood up from his place by the fire, his body tense with resentment, Finn clearly saw him as he pulled the horse to a sudden halt. Directing the horse over to his nemesis, Finn then stopped in front of him and leaned forward over the horse’s neck, grinning at him in a less-than-friendly manner. “I gather you haven’t found
my wife
yet?”

Robin gritted his teeth. “She isn’t
your
wife—the ceremony wasn’t finished.”

Finn chuckled. “So you think if you find her, she will agree to be yours instead?”

“Maybe.”

The man on the horse laughed louder. “Oh, come off it. You’ve failed to get her to the altar this far. What makes you think you can do it now?”

Robin refused to answer Finn, so infuriated was he by the other’s remarks, partly because he knew the truth of them, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge them.

Finn got down from his horse. “Aren’t you going to invite me to join you for the night?”

Glaring at him, Robin simply said, “Nope.” He then went back to his fire where he had a pot of moss bark brewing and poured himself some into a mug but pointedly didn’t offer any to the other man. It was lukewarm, and he grimaced, turning his head trying to avoid showing Finn. It hadn’t been warming very long, but he needed to do something to show he was ignoring him.

“Well, that’s just fine then. I’ll camp on the other side of the road. Sweet dreams.”

* * * *

When Robin woke up the next day, he cursed. The sun was high, and Finn had gone. It had taken him hours to get to sleep. Every time he heard a noise he glanced over to see if Finn was still there. He was determined not to let his competitor get the edge on him and was certain he would hear him rise, but instead he had dropped off into a deep sleep where he had nightmares of marrying Emily but waking up with Finn in his bed instead.

It was just as he screamed at the sight of Finn leering at him that he jerked awake, his cry startling the birds in the forest, who suddenly flew off their perches, cawing angrily.

Ashamed at crying out like that, he had turned quickly toward where Finn had set up camp, and there was no one there.

Throwing his blanket off, he ran over to feel the ground where Finn had lain. It was stone-cold. And judging by how high the sun was, it was well into the morning. He cursed vividly as he stomped over to his camp.

Robin didn’t stop to cook some breakfast but instead hurriedly rolled up his blanket, jammed it into his saddlebag, and stamped on the remnants of last night’s fire to make sure it was well and truly out. No one could blame him for pounding it much more violently than necessary.

He pulled out some grain for his horse to eat and then climbed on and rode off swiftly. To begin with, he cantered quickly but soon slowed down. Not because he was worried about tiring the horse, but because he was unsure of the turning in the road. Deciding on one particular path which looked the most likely route, he rode for some way. However, the trail got narrower, and finally he stopped.

“Shit! This can’t be the way. Dammit, I’ll have to go back.”

As he had stopped he got down from his horse and moved off to some bushes to take a pee. He was badly in need as he hadn’t gone when he’d got up that morning and didn’t dare stop as he wanted to catch up to Finn.

Looking around him his gaze alighted on a strange animal, and his heart thumped through his chest in fear.
Christ! That’s a wolf-cat.
He didn’t know what to do—stand still or run. Although he’d never seen one before, he’d heard tales about these creatures ripping people apart. His heart beating so loudly, he was sure the wolf-cat could hear him, he eyed the trees around him looking for the best one to climb in a hurry.

Usually these animals ran away as soon as humans came anywhere near them, only attacking when they were cornered. For some reason this one seemed as arrested as he. Taking advantage of the moment, Robin studied the being curiously. It was covered in grayish fur, which was longer on its head, but unlike many four-footed animals, the wolf-cat stood upright. At least it did as it started to rise from where it was crouching on the ground.

Oh God, it’s going to pounce on me, now.

Just as he leaped for the tree, he heard a rustling and yelled in fright. Scrambling up into the branches quicker than he had ever done in his life, he looked behind him, fully expecting to see it hot on his heels snarling and snapping—and there was nothing there. Then he saw a flash, and holding in a panicked shriek, he nearly fell out of the tree, but then he saw it was charging at the horse instead.

Bloody stupid animal, run!
But it just stood there waiting to be devoured, merrily chomping on the leaves of a nearby bush.

The next thing that happened caused Robin to be gob smacked. The wolf-cat fled straight past the indolent horse and soon disappeared.

Robin choked back a sob of relief, lowering his head to the trunk of the tree, his trembling hands gripping the branches. He grimaced as he became aware that he had wet himself.

Shit.
If Emily had been here, she would have laughed heartily at him and called him a wimp. The thought of her doing just that made him tense and curl his hand into a fist. Not that he was the sort of person to hit a woman, but he recalled Finn had, in the last few weeks since Emily’s disappearance, threatened to tan her backside if she ever showed up again.

He had been rather shocked when he had overheard Finn saying that. He, himself, had never once considered doing that to her, but after this last episode, he could well be persuaded.

Lowering himself out of the tree, he retrieved some clean pants and rode off back the way he had come, making for the other turning he had previously rejected.

When the bridge over the river came into sight some time later, he breathed a sigh of relief. He knew once over this bridge he could join the road for Eden—and Emily. At least he hoped Brianna was right, and she was there. The question was whether Finn had found her first.

Glancing over his shoulder, Finn glimpsed his adversary coming around the corner and ducked behind a building.

He had arrived in Eden yesterday evening before Robin, being more familiar with the roads than the other man was. In fact, he wondered if Robin had even been to the colony’s main town, whereas Finn knew the ins and outs of the capital very well, including the location of all the bars, having a hunch that Emily would have taken refuge in one. He grimaced. It didn’t take a fool to guess that Robin would soon find her, too. He just had to be sure he found her before Robin.

Unsure of what to do when she had left, he found that people expected him to start running the bar as Emily’s nearly-next-of-kin when she didn’t reappear as everyone, including him, thought she would do.

Feeling that he had been dumped into a situation not of his choosing, he had been rather overwhelmed to begin with. His admiration for Emily’s skill in running the business rose, and he tried to do his best. However, it hadn’t been helped when Emily’s son, Derek, had muscled in, declaring that, as Finn hadn’t actually married Emily, the bar belonged to him instead. Taking the matter to the judge, it was decided that Derek had the law on his side, and so Finn begrudgingly gave in, even if Derek was making a hash of running it.

But, in truth, it had been a blessing, because it gave him a chance to think about what he could do next and, more importantly, what he
wanted
to do next. Returning to being a travelling entertainer was the most obvious, and easiest, course, and he started to think about where he would go next.

However, Emily started to enter his thoughts. In particular what married life might have been like with her, where she might have gone, what he would do if he found her?

He knew exactly what he would do in that instance—and that is to pull her over his lap and soundly spank her for making a fool out of him. He wasn’t sure what he found the most hurtful, being made to look a chump or being rejected? He suspected it was more the latter since he had started to miss her. Okay, so she was a terrific woman and lover, with a voluptuous body. But it was more than that. He liked her feistiness and her strength. And, he hated to admit it, her courage in absconding like that and starting a new life elsewhere.

Glimpsing around the corner from his hiding place, he saw Robin venture into a nearby bar where Finn had been earlier. He grinned. Emily was not there, so he was at least one step ahead, and moving away, he strode further into the depths of the town as he had already searched the bars in the area nearest the road that went north to Frontier and other places.

Eden wasn’t that big, but as it was the site of the landing of the colony, it had been the initial town to be built and also where the infrequent drone ships coming in from Earth landed. He was sure the intention had been to build a nice, neat town, but in actuality it had grown up in confusion. The center of town was the oldest part and the core with the government building and other official offices. Those had been laid out around a nice green park, officially named “Pickford Park,” after the colony’s first leader, but unofficially named “The Center.”

However, around that a jumble of houses, bars, shops, et cetera had been built as the inhabitants had need of these places, which had also served the first schoolhouse, courthouse, hospital, bank, industries, and so on. And it was there he was now headed, to the three bars he knew of. Despite the cluttered buildings, Eden was wealthier than the rural towns. He snorted—this was evident in the prices of goods on sale.