Crossings (29 page)

After hearing from the Libertyville sheriff that she was gone, there had been that split second when he'd thought about joining her. But the idea passed so briefly before his eyes, it was never really there at all.

Until last night in his unconscious. In the shadow of his mind where dreams were fatal. He should know they were nothing but pure imagination. Had he not imagined making love to Helena before he actually did? Giving way to a drunk had put too much stress upon a dream that he would never act out.

Obsi growled, rising to his paws and stealthily going toward the door. Carrigan groped for his Colt, but wasn't wearing his gun belt. In a sloppy search, he brushed his fingers across the butt beneath his pillow. That the revolver had been so close to his head had him breaking out in a cold sweat.

Training the Walker on the door as it moved in with a creak, Carrigan clicked the hammer back. Helena came into view, and Obsi ceased his low rumbling. Wagging his tail, he nuzzled her hand with his nose.
Carrigan fell back a step, his balance not worth a flying eagle cent. Neither was his accuracy, so he was rather relieved it was Helena come to call instead of Hanrahan or some other bastard come to put a slug in him.

Helena's cheeks were the color of strawberries poured with cream . . . a delectable blush of sweetness. Though the look in her eyes was anything but. Sour. The blue was as sour as an unripe fruit on the vine. And dusted with dark smudges beneath as if she hadn't slept. Wearing a cloak and the same dress she had on when she'd first come to his mountain, she put her hands on her hips. She had nice hips. He liked them pressed flush against his. And he loved her scent. Like sage honey. So desirable and feminine . . . he could barely stand to be in the same room with her without his body inside her and staying there forever.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Carrigan asked in a wry tone, grabbing the bottle by its neck after depositing his Colt on the banded trunk's lid.

“What are you doing here?”

“Now, that's an asinine question.” He raised the Snakehead whiskey in a toast to her. Her gaze narrowed. “I'm enjoying the spectacle of an outraged woman.”

She closed the door, making no comment. With a fluid motion, she unfastened the closure at her throat and took off her cloak. She hung it next to the door.

“Why is it so hot in here?” she asked.

“I'm preparing for hell.”

She flashed him an icy stare. “It looks to me like you're wallowing in a suffering of your own making. Though whatever for, I don't know.”

“I can wallow in whatever I want.”

Her back turned on him as she went about tinkering in his kitchen stuff. Carrigan slumped onto the bed and kicked his feet out in front of him. Why had she come? He didn't like being in her company when he was feeling nasty. It wasn't her fault he'd gotten
drunk, but he was in a mood to take it out on whoever was nearest him.

Soon the aroma of strong coffee wafted through the damp air.

Carrigan took a slight drink of whiskey, but the taste didn't settle his stomach as it should have. “What are you doing?”

“I'm going to offer you a drink.”

“You got whiskey hidden on you?”

“No. Coffee.”

“I'd rather not.”

“But you will because I insist.” She turned toward him, a steaming cup in hand, and brought it to the bed. “I'll take that so you can hold on to the cup without spilling on yourself.”

With an arch of his brow, he relinquished the whiskey and took a sip of the hot coffee. Then another. And another. Admittedly, the dark brown liquid was effective in tamping the throb at his temples.

Helena pulled out the chair at the table and sat, her hands clasped in her lap. “You didn't come home last night.”

“I know that.”

“I was worried.”

“Don't worry about me.”

“I couldn't help myself. I stayed up nearly all night watching for you. I feared you'd been shot again.”

“Nobody's going to shoot me again.”

“Why didn't you come home?”

“I am home.”

She appraised him with a slighting gaze. “You know what I meant.” Her punctuated sigh filled the room. “I was very worried,” she repeated. “All night, my mind went around and around what could have happened to you. I almost thought that Bayard Kimball had taken you into custody and—”

The name inspired a recollection. “Bayard Kimball, the judge?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he take me into custody?”

Helena grew visibly distraught, her teeth catching her lower lip. “It doesn't matter now.”

“It does when you bring something up, then don't finish what it is you were going to say.”

She was clearly torn between silence and revealing the rest of her thought. When she looked at him, reluctance marked her gaze. “The morning Eliazer told us the horses had been let out, Judge Kimball came to me and said he saw you herding the mustangs from the stockade the night before.”

A streak of anger lit through Carrigan. “That's a crock.”

“I didn't believe him.”

“You sure as hell did.”

“Perhaps a little.” Her eyes were guilt-ridden. “But I realized you couldn't possibly have done such a thing to me.”

“Damn right.” Carrigan let the coffee sober him. “So why is this judge pursuing the matter? What's he want to do—charge me with horse thievery?”

Nodding, Helena slowly said, “I don't think it's you he really wants to hurt. It's me.”

“Why would he want to hurt you?”

“Because I married you instead of him.”

Carrigan took a swallow of coffee, the heat melting his throat. He didn't like what he was hearing. “Is this judge in love with you?”

“I don't know.” Helena's gaze fell to her lap. “But he did ask me to marry him. Twice.”

The green-eyed monster took a satisfying mouthful of him, just when he thought he was immune to it. No wonder Kimball had glared at him with deadly intent. “Why didn't you?”

She met his eyes. “Because I couldn't. It wouldn't have been fair of me to do so. You know why.”

“Then you have feelings for him?”

“Yes . . . no.” Her cheeks flushed a rosy color. “I . . . That's not the point.”

“Either you have feelings for him or you don't.”

“I did . . . do think of him as a trusted confidant. He was our closest family friend when my father was living. I know that's he upset with me, so  . . .” She shook her head. “It just doesn't justify what he said. Right now it's not important what my relationship is with him because I'm not sure myself.” She leaned closer, lowering her tone to a lacy-soft whisper. “I need to know, could Bayard find out about the men you . . . killed, and do something to you because of it? Did you serve jail time? Or could he impose another sentence on you?”

“No one can sentence me for something I haven't done.”

“But those men  . . .”

Carrigan's brain was sloshed with a mixture of coffee and liquor, but he did know that he was beginning to see her meaning. “If anyone wants to find the men I killed, they'll be looking for an unmarked graveyard.”

“I don't understand.”

“First of all, the men can't be traced back to me. Secondly, at the time of their deaths, they were shooting at our side, as much as we were theirs. I fought in the Mexican War and was attached to E Company, First infantry, for ten months. I was seventeen. It was my duty and obligation to my country to take up firearms against the Mexicans. I couldn't give you an exact body tally, but there were too many to count.”

“Why didn't you explain this to me before? Why did you let me believe—”

“Your stock tender is of Mexican descent, and once your father told me Eliazer was a soldier in the war. Do you think Eliazer would like knowing the enemy was living on the very property he was?”

“But that was twelve years ago.”

“Men never forget the battles that take their brothers.” Carrigan finished the coffee and handed the empty cup to Helena for more. “You saw how quick Eliazer was to accuse me of letting your horses go. I'm an outsider to him. He may be tolerant of me, and even see the benefits of having me help with the horses, but there's no trust there. Trust is earned, and in his mind, I haven't proved myself yet. I was right in keeping my military background from you. From him. Disclosing it would have served no purpose.”

“But I believed that you killed men, though I told myself there had to be good reason.”

“And there was. So that's all that needs to be said on the subject.”

Helena came back with a refill and resumed the chair. “Is there anything else you haven't told me about yourself? Anything you've implied, but isn't necessarily accurate?”

“Is this the hour of confessions?” His headache came back in a full swell of beating drums. It was hardly worth him discussing his past if he couldn't reconcile it in his own mind. “Have you others yourself that you need to enlighten me on?”

Now there was more anger on her face than concern. “I have nothing else. Unless you want to count the flaws of human nature. I'm not perfect, nor do I profess to be.”

“My character is far from impeccable. But that was one of the reasons you married me. You wanted a disreputable man.”

Helena studied him, reflections of light in her eyes. There was defiance in her expression, as well as subtle challenge. She'd laid her cards on the table when they'd been at the lake. Now it was his turn to call. But like Helena, he'd never spoken a word of what happened in his past to a soul either. How could he tell her he was a failure? A man who couldn't avenge his dead wife, so he'd boxed himself away from everyone
and everything, ashamed and disgusted by his inability to attain justice.

The black silence lingered between them, Carrigan uncertain how to pull the story from his hardware of rusty keepsakes.

“I'm leaving.” Helena gathered her skirt to rise. “You obviously have no faith in me. In us. Sham that we are. No convictions—”

“I had convictions.” His loud and emotion-filled voice stopped her. “Only they were forged in a bonfire of confused romanticism. I thought . . . I thought love was forever. But it's not.” With a jittery hand, he combed the hair from his eyes, then took another swig of coffee to sharpen his vision. “There are many things about me you don't know. Things that I wish even I didn't have to live with. But I do. And so I have. Until you came into my life. Then everything looked different. Felt different. I became different.”

Helena quietly gazed at him, her face half in sunlight. The murky rawhide film that covered the window only bestowed a muted brightness to the room. “Why did you run away from me yesterday?”

“It wasn't you. It was the fire. The smell of it, the feel of it, on me and in me. I couldn't stand to be in my skin and had to get out.”

“Tell me,” she gently asked. “Please.”

Carrigan drew a deep breath inside, feeling the heat of the room bearing down on him. “I have to start from the beginning.”

Helena poured herself a cup of coffee and waited for him to speak what he'd never spoken before. “You know that I thought I was in love with a woman named Kate Hisom.”

She nodded.

“But that was not love,” Carrigan disputed. “It was my obligation to find a wife. Much like yourself, the same things were expected of me. My mother, Malissa, was a convert to the Free Methodist way of thinking. My father used to say, ‘Free to do almost
nothing. No smoking, drinking, dancing, or singing.' A hard message to live by when my father had abandoned religion, being a mean and ornery drunk. I didn't know what they valued in each other to make them take their wedding vows, until I was older and could calculate for myself that I was conceived before they were married. I have to give the old man some credit for making an honest woman out of her. She brought a wealthy dowry with her into the marriage. Saddle horses, blankets, and skins. She was part Choctaw.” He waited for Helena's reaction, some skitter of shock or loathing to betray her thoughts about his ancestry. But none came. “You have no comment?”

“What would you have me say? That I find it appalling your mother was an Indian? You'll not get that response from me. I know you for who you are, not what you are. It makes no difference to me, and I'm insulted you would think otherwise.”

She'd put him in his place faster than a gallop. “I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it,” was all he could offer in his defense, then wisely continued before she could make him feel like a bigger jackass. “After I graduated from school, I traveled and followed the wheat harvests to earn some money for the family. I read everything I could get my hands on and put up with a lot of ribbing because of it. Being the son of a onetime cattleman, I wasn't supposed to like books. But I did. English literature mostly.”

Helena's gaze landed on the case of novels that lined the lower half of the wall. “I like to read, too. But it seems like I never have the opportunity.”

“You should make the time. Reading enriches the spirit. And it makes a man forget about his own life.” Carrigan nursed the coffee in his cup, now cooled to the temperature of the warm room. “Two years later, I returned home for the burial of my younger brother, who had been fifteen at the time of his death. He died of a disease the doctor hadn't been able to diagnose.
Once back at home, I saw that things between my parents hadn't improved, but rather, deteriorated. I wasn't there long before the bickering made me move on once again. I left my sister and other brother behind for the gold fields of northern Idaho. The inhumane conditions of the mining camps were enough to make me enlist in the army to fight in the Mexican War. That is an entire story of blood and gore, one that altered my outlook on life, and one that I will not discuss with you. I was discharged in July.