Jodi Thomas (44 page)

Storm’s Edge’s body was forgotten. All the years of craving the sight of the Indian lying in his own blood were nothing as Chance ran toward Anna. She lay lifeless on the sand, his gun beside her.

Pulling her to him, Chance was unmindful of the others as his hands moved over her body. Thank God there were no wounds. “Anna!” he yelled as his hands touched her skull. A huge welt the size of his hand was swelling on her head.

Chance was aware of others around him, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. All that mattered in his world lay in his arms. She’d come to stand by his side and somehow she’d been the one to get hurt. Time had no meaning as he held her, not feeling the cold wind against his bare chest, nor the sun growing brighter.

“Son,” Tobin said as he knelt beside Chance, “she’s still breathing, but that was one ugly fall. Appears she saw Walter in the woods and fired your rifle to protect you. Walter’s gun had been fired; we found it beside his body so the first round we heard must have been aimed at you. Guess it’s your good fortune Anna was a better shot. The recoil from your gun must have knocked her off the cliff.”

Lifting her in his arms as he stood, Chance said, “We’ve got to get her home.”

Tobin nodded. “I’ll ride in and fetch the doctor. Maybe he’ll come. You take her home, son.”

Anna remembered little of the ride home. Her head felt as if it were on fire, and when she opened her eyes the world began to spin around her in waves of pain. She was only vaguely aware of Chance carrying her into the cabin and putting her into bed.

In what seemed like only minutes, she felt someone poking around on her head and opened her eyes to a blurry vision of the old doctor. He was saying something about bed rest for at least a week. Then she heard him talking to Tobin, saying the society leaders wouldn’t be coming out to check farms until after the New Year’s celebration.

Anna closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until dawn touched the sky once more. Chance was beside her, sitting on the bed with a cool towel in his hand.

He laid it over her forehead. “How are you feeling, my love?”

Anna tried to answer, but even a whisper brought pain as violent as a church bell ringing between her ears. Her brain felt like it was off center in her skull.

“Rest now,” Chance whispered. “Carl and Selma are here. With the snow, they’ve decided to just stay with us until you’re better.”

Closing her eyes once more, Anna slept and the day moved slowly past as if in a dream. She was dimly aware of Selma moving around her and of Maggie sitting on the corner of her bed holding her hand for a long while. By the end of the third day Anna awoke with a clear head. She felt weak but enjoyed all the attention everyone paid her as they took turns sitting by her bed. In this country, friends quickly became as close as family. Slowly, she was able to move about the cabin on her own.

When Chance finally got a moment beside her without someone else present, he grumbled about building a bigger house.

As hard as Chance tried the next few days, he couldn’t find a moment alone with Anna. He finally gave up hanging around the house and tramped through the snow to the barn with Carl or Tobin at his side.

January blew in with windy, cold days and Anna recovered. She loved having a house full of friends, but she missed the passion she’d shared with Chance when they’d had a room to themselves and no people within whispering distance. Tobin was just across the way, sleeping in the kitchen, Selma and Carl were in the loft, and both girls were on pallets beside Anna’s bed.

On the third day of the month, she was busy cooking breakfast when Tobin wandered in from the barn, shaking more snow on her floor than he’d left out on the steps.

Anna smiled, for she’d grown to love the older loner. “Is Chance coming in soon?”

Tobin shook his head. “He just did the craziest thing. He saddled Cyoty and packed his saddlebag. Told me he had a promise to keep that he’d made a year ago today.” Tobin didn’t seem to notice the blood drain from Anna’s face. “Then he looked at me real sad and said good-bye like he meant it to be forever.”

Anna dropped the skillet, spilling eggs across the floor. “No!” she shouted. “No!”

They hadn’t had time to talk, but she thought he’d known how much he meant to her. When she’d left her farm to warn him, she thought he’d understand that he was more important to her than anything. Didn’t he know that she’d just been waiting for the snow to melt and everyone to go home before telling him how there was no life in her without him?

“No!” she whispered again as she opened the door. She thought back over all the things he’d said to her. He was a man of his word. She’d made him promise to leave and now he’d gone. He’d left her without even saying good-bye.

Anna looked at Tobin as she felt pain climb her spine. “Do you know where he went?”

Tobin shrugged. “I don’t know; toward town, I guess. I heard him talking about joining up with Ben McCulloch to organize another ranger company to fight the Mexicans. Chance served with him once and said that even with Ben’s crippled arm he was the best fighter he’d ever known. Course, now that McCulloch is in the legislature, he might not be so interested in fighting Mexicans but Chance seemed to think it might be worth the time to head down . . .”

“Tobin!” Anna couldn’t stand by and calmly listen to him ramble when her entire life was falling apart. “Saddle my horse—fast! I’ve got to find Chance.”

Tobin started to argue, but her strong stubborn jaw made him decide to just shake his head instead. He slapped his hands against his legs and headed for the barn mumbling, “Hell of a mornin’. Everyone in the place must have eaten loco weed in their dreams.”

Grabbing her wool shawl, Anna ran through the patchy snow toward the barn. A moment later she was on Cinnamon’s back and headed down the path to town. The road took a bend after half a mile, then lay straight for a good distance more. If she could make the bend while Chance was on the road, she’d be able to stop him.

She took the bend at breakneck speed, her shawl forgotten as she rode with the wind blowing her hair and her dress. There, just past the bend, she saw Cyoty grazing by a cluster of live oak trees.

Panicking, Anna reined her mount and jumped down. She ran to Cyoty. What if Chance had fallen or been shot? Why hadn’t she told him how she felt? Why hadn’t she begged him to stay?

As she reached the oaks, Chance stepped from behind a wide, old trunk. “What kept you?” he asked with a wink.

Anna was gulping for breath. “I thought you’d left. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“We agreed one year ago today that I’d leave without a word of good-bye. I promised and I’m a man of my word.” He moved slowly to shorten the distance between them until they stood in the clearing only an inch apart.

“You can leave if you like. I don’t want to tie you down, but I’d have no objection if you stay.” Anna wanted to hold him forever, but she wanted it to be his choice.

Chance played with one strand of her hair. “You mean we could extend the agreement for another year or so. And during that year I’d lay no claim to you, just as before.”

“Whether you go or stay must be your choice. I’ll not beg you to stay when you want to go. But I’ll not tell you I want you to go when you know it would be a lie.”

“My precious Anna. Proud enough to risk all and fight for me, but too proud to beg. I told you once I’d never leave you if you said you loved me. So tell me, and not in German this time, that you love me.”

A smile touched Anna’s lips. “You knew what the words meant?”

“I had to ask Carl.” Chance circled her throat with his fingers. “Some ribbing I took about it too, thanks to my cruel wife.”

Anna laughed. “I love you and I love being your wife.”

Chance pulled her to him, brushing her face with light kisses. “If you only knew how long I’ve waited to hear you say that. I think I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you, but I only dreamed that you would ever love me.” His lips found hers, and he made her feel light-headed with the passion in his kiss. As he molded her closer, he whispered, “We’ll extend this contract between us, but I insist on a lifetime agreement.” His kiss made it plain there would be no forfeiture of his love.

After several minutes, Anna pulled away. “If you knew what the words meant, why did you leave this morning?”

He lifted her into his arms. “You’re a headstrong, stubborn woman. I knew you’d follow just like you did before and I’ve been dying to get you alone all week. I want to love my wife out of sight and sound of others. I have a promise to keep that I made the night before the fight with Storm’s Edge.”

Anna laughed as he carried her into the center of the grove of live oaks. There he built a fire and spread his bedroll. And there, amid the wilderness that was so much a part of him, her wild, tender Texan staked an eternal claim to her heart.

 

Keep reading for a special preview of
the next novel in Jodi Thomas’s
heartwarming HARMONY series

T
yler Wright maneuvered his new black Range Rover through the silent streets of Harmony, Texas. A light rain tapped on the windshield like a ticking clock. He knew he should still be trying to sleep, but with the dawn his life might be about to change forever, and he wanted to be ready to meet it wide awake.

He drove out of town and headed toward Amarillo’s airport, warning himself to calm down. The day held no guarantees. He’d had his hopes crushed a dozen times over the years he’d known Major Kate Cummings. Almost two years ago she’d stepped back into his life, and he had no idea why she’d returned or, for that matter, why she’d left. Maybe she wasn’t ready to start more than a casual relationship, maybe she never would be, but that didn’t stop him from hoping. He was in midlife. He was ready.

Only, last night when she’d called asking him to meet her plane, he’d heard something different in her voice. An excitement about seeing him. A longing to come home to Harmony. This was the first time she hadn’t rented a car and driven in on her own, almost as if she’d just decided to stop in town and had not come just to see him.

This time he’d pick her up and drive her to Harmony. Everyone would know she was there because of him.

Rolling down his window, Tyler smiled into the dawn. In the past two years since he and Kate had become good friends, she’d started talking about Harmony as if it were her home. It had taken him months of asking to get her to just come spend a weekend in his town. It might be 2010, but part of him knew people would talk if she stayed at his place, so Tyler always booked her a room at the Winter’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast. Surprisingly, his proper Kate and the crazy innkeeper, Martha Q Patterson, got along perfectly. Each looked at the other as a curiosity.

After that first visit, every month Tyler invited her back and every month she came. Once she was in town, they’d join friends for dinners, and go to concerts in the park or movies at the little theater where their feet always stuck to the floor. They would take walks in the cemetery where he’d tell her the stories of all the people of Harmony, and then they’d stop at the magnolia tree he had planted just because she’d told him once magnolias were her favorite tree. On each visit Tyler hoped she’d take root and stay as well.

As he drove across the flat plains of the Texas panhandle, now dressed in winter browns, he thought about how wonderful his Kate was. He might be in his midforties and more than a few pounds overweight. He might not be much of a conversationalist and he knew he was probably the world’s worst dancer, but he had a perfect woman in Kate.

To the world she was Major Katherine Cummings, an arson expert with the army. To him she would always be the hazel-eyed beauty he’d met one night at Quartz Mountain Lodge during a storm, with whom he’d talked half the rainy night away. Their friendship blossomed through e-mail. Months later a fire had rolled across the open land around his town, and Major Cummings had come to help. But afterward she broke off all contact.

Then one night he’d e-mailed her of a danger the folks she had met faced and she’d responded. Their friendship seemed patched together with spiderweb thread, but with each e-mail, each visit, Tyler felt they added one more thread—one more bond.