Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (24 page)

She watched as Dakota turned from his vigil at the window where he had been staring out at the star-filled night since they had all arrived back home a few minutes before.

The look Dakota had on his face told Lily he did not want to travel down the road Wyatt was leading him, but if Wyatt pushed, Lily saw no alternative. Next to Wyatt, Dakota was one of the most honest men she knew. He might delay saying something to Wyatt because she’d asked him to, but she did not think he would lie in the face of an outright question like Wyatt’s.

Not to mention she knew how determined her husband could be when he wanted to get to the heart of a matter. He could be relentless. They were married sooner than she’d planned because of that discipline and resolve. Her husband would not take no for an answer.

Just for a moment, Lily thought that maybe it would be better to get all the secrets out into the open—her secrets, Dakota’s secrets—but then she thought about the potential fallout and she knew that keeping the entire truth from Wyatt was the best thing for all of them.

Lily sidled behind Wyatt, gliding her hands up his back to massage his shoulders. “It’s been a long night. We’re all tired…” She nuzzled his neck, trying to distract him. It nearly worked, too. Lily felt Wyatt relent just a little, leaning back against her before he turned, took both of her hands in his, and held them. “I want to know what you two are keeping from me. I need to know.” His blue eyes were heated, unwavering as he watched her.

Lily’s breath hitched in her chest. She tried not to look in Dakota’s direction for a cue or assistance. Wyatt would recognize the desperation and silent plea in her gaze and pounce.

Wyatt sighed, holding her hands between them as if to keep her from escaping his interrogation. “I’d thought we’d all gotten past this.”

Stall. Stall for time.
“Past what, Wyatt?”

“We’re a unit now, a family. At least I’d reckoned. I don’t see Dakota as a romantic rival anymore, at least not in the customary sense.” He smiled as if to soften the blow of his next words. “I know you love me, Lilybelle, and that your heart is big enough to include Dakota and love him without detracting any of your feelings from me.”

“That’s right, Wyatt,” Lily eagerly agreed. “And I only want what’s best for you…what’s best for both of you.”

“What’s best for me is for you both to stop lying to me.”

“Wyatt…”

He gently squeezed her hands and lifted them to his lips before kissing her knuckles. “I can’t go on like this anymore. None of us can without getting everything out in the open.”

“Wyatt, you don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking of you, my wife…” He turned to direct his words at Dakota. “And a man I think of as my brother. I’m asking you both for the truth.”

How could she not give him that?

Lily opened her mouth to speak, but that protective instinct that had guided her actions since the attack and rescue kicked in at the last second to stop her.

She would do anything she needed to shield Wyatt, even from himself.

She had more than one secret to tell him, after all. There was nothing forcing her to tell him everything, at least not all at once.

The thought of omitting the truth—as bad as lying in her book— left a bad taste in Lily’s mouth. She had never been so underhanded and manipulative in her mindset, but necessity was the mother of invention and she had been doing a lot of things since her return that she never would have considered before. Lying to Wyatt was just a necessary evil.

She grabbed his hand and led him over to the sofa where they both sat down.

Dakota sat on the edge of the chair adjacent, silent and watchful. She could only imagine his anxiety and confusion at that moment because there was no way he knew which secret she was going to reveal.

Before she opened her mouth, Lily wasn’t sure herself what words would come out until finally…“Wyatt, Dakota and I…we met each other before the shooting.”

Wyatt’s lush eyebrows came together as he frowned. “Met?” He squeezed both of Lily’s hands again as if for strength and glanced at Dakota as if for confirmation.

“Dakota is the man who found me in the woods, buried alive. He rescued me.”

Wyatt silently looked from Lily to Dakota and back again. His eyes searched hers for several long moments before he leapt from the sofa and began pacing in front of it.

Lily watched him as he raked a hand through his hair and took several deep breaths before he stopped in the middle of the floor.

Wyatt pierced Dakota with his look. “If you’re the one who hurt Lily, I swear…”

Lily quickly stood and grabbed his cocked fist. “Wyatt, it wasn’t Dakota. He
saved
me. If it wasn’t for him I would have died. He took me to his tribe and they nursed me back to health.”

“Okay, but there’s more you’re not telling me.”

It shocked and encouraged Lily that he’d taken her news so well thus far. She had no illusions about how well he would take the rest. She knew he would be devastated. She had lived through it, and the horror, the loss, haunted and ravaged her every day.

“There is more.”

“Tell me.” Wyatt glared at her.

“I—”

Dakota stood, insinuating his body between them. “No, Lily. Let me.”

“But you can’t—”

“Wyatt, Lily is about to reveal something to you when she does not have all the facts.”

Lily’s heart thudded at his words. She’d been about to say that Dakota couldn’t tell Wyatt what he didn’t know, but remembered his earlier words at the party.
“There is something that I need to tell you. It’s about yours and Wyatt’s son.”

Wyatt folded his arms across his chest and turned his stare on Dakota. “So you’re hiding things from each other as well as me? I reckon this oughta be good.”

“First you need to know, Wyatt, that Lily…she was very badly injured when I found her. Her eyes were swollen shut. She never actually saw me. She only recently recognized me as the man who rescued her. That is what we were discussing while we danced earlier.”

Wyatt’s stance visibly softened as he dropped his hands to his sides.

Lily could see that he desperately wanted to believe Dakota’s words. Like her, he was ready to cling to anything that would not shatter the illusion he had of his innocent wife.

“Go on,” Wyatt said.

“I left Lily with my people to heal and…to have her baby.”

Wyatt’s mouth dropped open. “Baby?”

“Your son,” Lily whispered.

He turned to her then and the look of hope made Lily sick to her stomach.

How could she tell him now? How could she cause him that kind of pain?

Dakota took each of their hands in his, standing between them like a minister about to oversee their exchanging of vows.

He held her gaze a long time, his blue eyes pleading as if he was asking for absolution before he turned back to Wyatt.

“We have a son?”

Dakota nodded, but Lily shook her head and closed her eyes, waiting for all hell to break loose when Wyatt heard the truth.

“Where is he and why didn’t you tell me about him, Lily?”

The tears came down fast, scalding her cheeks.

“I was going to tell Lily about…your son at the party, but you came to dance with her and we agreed to talk about it later.”

“What could you possibly tell her about our son that she didn’t already know?”

Lily opened her eyes in time to see Dakota turn and face her full. He released Wyatt’s hand to cup her face.

“Forgive me,” Dakota said.

“Forgive you for what?” Wyatt asked. “What’s going on?”

Dakota turned back to him. “Lily is unaware of what I am about to tell you. She thought that…she thought that your son was killed during the raid on the village.”

“Killed? No…”

Lily shook her head at the agony in Wyatt’s voice. The pain of that day rushed over her in great, sudden waves. She saw herself returning from the lake after a swim to find the charred ruins of the village. Blood-soaked bodies lay strewn everywhere.

She hadn’t yet been able to erase the vision of her son’s favorite doll—a gift from his adopted grandfather, Dyami, and something he had never been without since his birth—shattered and crushed among the human and animal carcasses as if under a soldier’s merciless boot.

Until now, Lily had always thought her boy had not survived the massacre. How could he? How could anyone? There had never been any proof that he had, though she had never found his body. Like the rest of the missing she had not been able to locate, he had been lost to her.

She realized then that there was a lot more about Dakota that she didn’t know. Not just that he had been her rescuer, but evidently much more. Even after he had shared that he was half-Kiowa, it had never occurred to her that he had stayed at the reservation, watching over her as she healed, and later, once she’d had her baby, somehow keeping himself hidden from her the entire while. How else would he know about her son, about…?

“You know where he is.”

Dakota nodded. “I have known for a long time.”

“But you didn’t tell me? You didn’t tell us?”

“I…I could not.”

“You bastard!” She wasn’t aware of lashing out until her palm solidly connected with Dakota’s face. The ensuing
thwack
hung in the air between them all like a crack of thunder.

He stood without even touching his injured cheek, a stoic look on his face as if he knew he deserved her assault or any other invective she could conceive and was ready to take it.

The dignity with which he held himself under attack meant nothing to her.

He’d lied to her! He’d lied to them, no telling how long.

The way I lied to Wyatt?

That was different. She was protecting Wyatt from a man who could literally crush him! Who was Dakota protecting? What reason could he have had for keeping her son away from her?

Lily sank onto the sofa, spent. “Why?” she rasped.

“I had to be sure.”

“Be sure of what?” Wyatt asked.

“That Little Wyatt would be safe here with you. I had to be sure that you wanted him, that you’d care for and love him.”

“That we’d want and love our own son?” Wyatt seized Dakota’s shirtfront with one hand and hauled back the other.

Lily bounded to her feet and grabbed his fist. “No, Wyatt, don’t!”

“Who the hell are you to keep our son from us? What gives you the right?”

Lily looked at Dakota as if seeing him for the first time, no longer glimpsing the noble, gentle, but strong warrior she knew and loved. She saw a young half-breed boy caught between the white man’s world and the Indian world, belonging to neither. She saw a boy who had been rejected by many and accepted by few.

It suddenly occurred to her who Dakota was protecting. He was protecting Little Wyatt.

The idea seemed preposterous that he’d need to protect a boy from his own parents, but Lily could see his reasoning. He wasn’t just protecting their son from her and Wyatt. He was protecting him from everything they stood for, from the white man’s world that they lived in. True, their son wasn’t an Indian, but he had been raised among the Kiowa all of his life. Like her, he would be perceived as contaminated. To Dakota’s mind, their son might never be fully accepted into their world without his mother’s disgrace following him everywhere.

“He is
our
son, isn’t he?”

Lily turned at Wyatt’s uncertain tone, and saw his look of dawning horror.

“He’s not…you didn’t get pregnant by…”

“Oh God, no, Wyatt.” She caressed his face, trying to calm him as much as she tried to calm herself. Her body and mind were all in a jumble from the events of the day, so much so she felt like she was balancing on a razor edge of sanity. “I was pregnant before…before any of that ever happened. I was going to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, but I couldn’t find the right time, and then I was attacked and…” How many times had she played the scene in her mind, her giving Wyatt the news about his impending fatherhood over a candlelight dinner, all his favorite dishes, and Wyatt whooping with joy? “Little Wyatt is your son, Wyatt, all yours.”

Wyatt took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and put his hand over hers on his cheek as if he needed to reassure himself of her reality, reassure himself of the truth.

Lily glanced at Dakota and saw the tortured look on his face as he watched them. “What made you want to tell me about our son tonight?” she asked him.

“I could not continue staying here any longer, being with you, loving you both, with the knowledge of your son’s whereabouts a secret between us.”

“You’ll take us to see him,” Wyatt said. “As soon as the sun is up, we’re going with you to get our boy.”

“Yes, of course.” Dakota nodded.

Wyatt nodded, too, then struck out so suddenly neither Lily nor Dakota had a chance to stop his fist landing a blow.

Lily gasped and covered her mouth as she watched Dakota fly back and crash against the floor. The one thought in her mind at that moment was what a pounding Dakota was taking from the both of them tonight. She would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so serious.

Wyatt stood astride Dakota’s supine form, flexing his fists at his sides as he glared down at Dakota.

Dakota lay rubbing his jaw, holding Wyatt’s gaze but making no move to retaliate.

Lily forced herself not to move. She sensed that they needed to get past the next few minutes in their own way and with no interference from her.

Finally, when it seemed like the overpowering silence would suffocate her, she watched Wyatt reach a hand down toward Dakota.

“That was for keeping our son from us.”

Dakota looked at Wyatt’s hand warily before he took it and let Wyatt help him to his feet.

Before Lily knew what was happening, Wyatt pulled Dakota into his arms and hugged him tight to his chest before Dakota finally wrapped his arms around him to reciprocate.

Wyatt pulled away a long moment later to stare at Dakota, and Lily saw Wyatt’s blue eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “That was for bringing him back to us.”