Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (29 page)

Rusty opened the door and paused on the front porch to hand over a gift-wrapped box. “It won’t make up for all the birthdays I’ve missed, but it’s just a little something to welcome the little nipper home.”

Wyatt swallowed over the sudden obstruction in his throat then quickly cleared it. “You didn’t have to, Rusty.”

“I know that. I wanted to. Let me know if he likes it.”

“I’ll let him tell you himself when he’s awake and you come back out for a visit.”

“At a more Godly hour.” Rusty laughed. “So, he does speak English?”

“Fluently, and Kiowa, too.”

“Wow, fancy that.”

Wyatt smiled at Rusty’s reaction, chest filled to bursting with pride as he remembered all the many interactions between Dakota and Little Wyatt and Lily and Little Wyatt and how smart and intuitive the boy was. He seemed to know what each of them needed and wanted at any given time, be it a hug or a laugh or asking one of his parents to read to him by lamplight before he went to sleep even though he could read perfectly well to himself.

He seemed to gravitate to Wyatt during the day, asking him questions and helping his father work in the fields. In the afternoons, he helped Lily with her chores like the laundry and cooking. By nightfall when he was all tuckered out from spending time with the adults and playing with his toys, he readily hopped into bed, still fighting sleep.

Wyatt didn’t know how he had gotten so lucky being blessed with such a good kid as Little Wyatt. It hadn’t been all smiles and good times, but it could have been worse if not for Dakota. Wyatt reckoned without Dakota, Little Wyatt would have been a lot less happy and pleasant a nipper than he was.

“Well, I guess I’ll be shoving off now.” Rusty hesitated as if he really didn’t want to go.

Did
he want an invitation, or was something else on his mind?

Wyatt didn’t want to throw up the sponge, but after Brand and some of the other townspeople’s reactions to his son’s arrival, he was just plumb stumped about what to do. He had come to the conclusion that he didn’t really know all of his friends as well as he thought he did.

He must have frowned because Rusty stepped in again.

“Don’t worry too much about Brand. He’ll come around, I expect. He’s just got his own difficulties to worry about presently.”

“What kind of difficulties?”

“Don’t rightly know for sure. He’s just been acting a mite peculiar lately.”

Wyatt reckoned everyone had their crosses to bear and maybe this was why Brand had been so prickly when he’d visited. Maybe seeing Wyatt with his own little boy reminded him too much of the relationship he
didn’t
share with his own father, or maybe seeing Wyatt all settled down with a family was making Brand envious and antsy to settle down himself.

Brand claimed to love cowboying and being out on the range, footloose and fancy-free, but Wyatt remembered past conversations when he’d admitted he wouldn’t mind settling down with a filly—
“Only if she’s like your Lilybelle, though.”

Wyatt had laughed it off at the time, but now…

Rusty’s slap on the back returned him to the present.

“I’ll be seeing you around, Wy. And don’t be such a stranger, you ol’ sodbuster. Come by for a visit sometime. My mama and sisters miss looking at your ugly kisser.”

Wyatt laughed. “I’ll remember that.” As soon as he saw Rusty out, Wyatt stepped back into the house and locked the door.

His gut bothered him something terrible and it was a feeling he didn’t rightly cotton to.

No sooner had he turned from the door then someone started pounding on it. A moment later, Lily came running down the stairs, glaring at Wyatt.

“Why on earth is the door locked?”

Wyatt just stared at her as if she was plumb loco for asking.

She sighed, puffing a lock of stray hair out of her eye. “You’re right. It’s just that I finally got him down to sleep and I didn’t want anything waking him up.”

Wyatt softened his stance, feeling bad that he’d been so harsh with her. He knew it was an adjustment for all of them having Little Wyatt here now and she hadn’t been getting much sleep constantly worrying about whether their nipper was doing okay or not.

It struck him then that he and his wife had some unfinished business to discuss, but before he could bring up the attack again and begin beating a dead horse as Lily put it, she hurried by him to unlock and open the door.

Dakota stood on the porch looking from her to Wyatt and back again. “Am I interrupting something?”

Yes.

Wyatt wanted to say it but didn’t want Dakota to think he was not welcomed. This was his home, too, after all, even if he was in total denial.

“The door has never been locked. Is all well?” Dakota asked.

“I guess I just reckoned we should start exercising a little caution around the house, especially now with Little Wyatt here.”

Dakota nodded as he came into the house and paused to take in Lily and Wyatt.

Lily closed and locked the door behind him then came to stand between him and Dakota.

“Is Little Wyatt sleep?” Dakota asked.

“Just fell off a few minutes ago,” Lily said. “Did you have something on your mind?”

Wyatt heard the hunger in his wife’s voice. He heard her plea for a distraction and wanted nothing more than to oblige.

Dakota had the identical idea and closed the space between himself and Lily at the same instant as Wyatt.

Wyatt took Lily by her shoulders and bent his head to kiss her. Her lips eagerly parted beneath his mouth and Wyatt swallowed her gasp at the same time he swallowed his need to know the truth…for the time being.

Lily placed both hands against his chest, spreading her fingers wide before fisting his shirt and drawing him closer.

Wyatt felt the desperation in her actions, as if she was trying to climb inside of him, as if she was trying to escape something. He knew the feeling. He had been trying to escape the guilt since she’d been taken from him, and once she had returned he had been trying even harder to earn absolution. He had yet to succeed, but he would not stop trying.

He drew his arms around her, pressing his hands against her back as he held her snug. He moved his mouth over hers, sliding his tongue into her mouth to taste her bittersweet need.

Lily pulled away long enough to catch her breath and say, “Not here. I don’t want Little Wyatt to…Let’s go upstairs.”

The words did something to Wyatt, simultaneously flooding him with waves of desire, denial, and frustration.

Eventually, his need for the full story overrode all others.

“Wyatt, what is it?”

He stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up at Lily standing a few steps above him trying to lead him up.

Wyatt glanced up at her, searching her face as she searched his.

He’d always known she hadn’t been totally forthcoming or honest about what had happened to her the day she disappeared.

Wyatt had allowed her secrets, told himself she needed time to heal, to adjust, to come to terms with everything that had been done to her. Except now he couldn’t hide from the truth anymore and neither could she.

The same way he knew Dakota had an idea about who shot him, Wyatt knew that Lily’s attacker wasn’t just any old “savage.” Lily knew the person who’d hurt her. He just needed to hear her say it.

“Who did it, Lily?”

She dropped his hand and put her hand to her chest as if to control her beating heart. “Who did what?”

“Who attacked you and took you from our home?” He watched her shrink away with every word that left his mouth. He wasn’t going to let her get away, not this time. Wyatt climbed the steps to close the space between them. “Who?”

“Wyatt, she cannot,” Dakota said.

“What? Tell me the truth?”

“It is not as simple as a lie or the truth.”

“Like your keeping Little Wyatt from us wasn’t simple?”

“Please…” Lily put her hand on his arm and squeezed. “Don’t attack Dakota. He was only trying to protect our child.”

“That was my job, to protect you and Little Wyatt. I failed it once. I don’t want to fail again. Tell me.”

“I…I can’t.”

Wyatt caught her by the arms. “Who hurt you, Lilybelle? Who?”

“Wyatt.”

He felt Dakota behind him on the staircase but ignored him. He would get at the truth if it killed him, and the terrified look on Lily’s face told him that it very well might.

Wyatt shook her lightly. “Lily…”

She choked back a sob and the beseeching, tortured expression covering her features almost made him back off—almost. He couldn’t quit now. He would never get at the truth if he stopped now, and he deserved it. They all did.

“Lily, please.”

“Westyn…”

Wyatt dropped his hands and gaped at her rasp. “What?”

Lily wouldn’t say any more, just stood with her hand covering her mouth as she shook her head and stared back at him. Each tear that spilled from her eyes, however, was like another nail of condemnation driven into his former friend’s coffin.

“I’ll kill him!”

“Dakota, don’t let him go! Stop him, please!”

Lily’s screams echoed through his head as Dakota crashed through the house and outside in pursuit of Wyatt.

He did not need Lily’s urgent shouts to spur him on. He knew how important it was to stop Wyatt. He understood exactly what was at stake.

Dakota caught sight of Wyatt approaching the barn and hurried his pace, racing across the grass and cutting a path around his friend to block the barn doors.

Wyatt came up short and scowled. “Get out of my way, Dakota.”

“I cannot let you leave.”

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“Anything that concerns you and Lily concerns me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, so you’d do well to move.”

Dakota folded his arms across his chest and took a deep breath preparing for his friend’s strike. He noticed the tic in Wyatt’s eyes, saw him tighten his fists at his sides. He braced his feet apart and bent at the knees a second before Wyatt put down his head and charged forward like an enraged bull.

Dakota caught him around the shoulders as he crashed back into the locked barn doors with a
whoomph
of air releasing from his lungs.

Dust flew up around them as they crashed to the ground in a heap.

Lily came running from the house. “Wyatt, stop! Don’t do this!”

Dakota put up an arm to block a blow to the head and used the slight distraction that Lily provided to flip Wyatt off of him and onto the ground beneath him. He straddled Wyatt’s hips, grabbed his flailing fists, and used his momentum to pin down the other man.

“Goddamnit, Dakota! Let me go!”

“I cannot do that, Wyatt.”

Wyatt bucked like a wild bronco, almost throwing Dakota off of him, but Dakota held on through sheer force of will and desperation. He knew he would not be able to contain his friend for much longer. Wyatt was a big, able-bodied man and he was running on a powerful mixture of indignation, fury, and hatred.

“Wyatt, please listen to reason.”

At Lily’s words, Wyatt’s struggles intensified. It was as if someone had waved a red flag in front of his face.

Lily’s presence was only serving to make Wyatt angrier and not helping matters at all.

“Lily, go back into the house.”

She looked at Dakota for a long moment then backed away, nodding as she turned and ran back to the house.

“Wyatt, please think about what you are doing. Think about your wife and son.”

Wyatt stopped tussling and hissed in a breath. “You son of a bitch.”

“I will be that if it will stop you from going on this fool’s errand.”

“Get off me.”

“You will not try to leave without listening to me?”

“I’ll listen. Now
get off
!”

Dakota eyed him warily for a moment before finally moving off of Wyatt.

Rather than get up, Wyatt dusted off his pants and sat back against the barn door.

Dakota followed suit and sat next to him in the dirt. He stared off into the distance, listening to the sounds of the fast-approaching evening—the crickets in the grass, the owls in the trees—and watching as the setting sun enclosed the nearby land in a canopy of radiant gloom.

“I can’t just let him get away with it.”

Dakota turned to watch Wyatt’s profile, saw the muscles flex in his jaw as he gritted his teeth in the quickly growing shadows.

“What do you hope to accomplish by going after him?”

“He hurt our Lilybelle.”

“And nothing you do now will change that.”

“So I just shouldn’t do anything?”

It was a simple question and Dakota did not have an answer for Wyatt, simple or otherwise. He wished that he did. Instead he quoted Confucius, one of his favorite philosophers. “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

“What in tarnation is that supposed to mean?”

“You are a smart man, Wyatt, and I believe you know exactly what it means.” Dakota stared at his outline, waiting for Wyatt to face him. Once he had the other man’s full attention, he said, “It means you need to think about your son. Do you want him to grow up without a father?”

“I don’t intend on getting killed.”

“What you intend on doing and what may actually occur are two different things.”

Wyatt held his gaze. “Where are your parents, Dakota?”

“I am sure you have already figured that out.”

“Because I’m a smart man, yep. But humor me anyway.”

Dakota swallowed over the sudden lump in his throat, leaned back against the barn door, and stared straight ahead into the darkness.

“My father was a white man and my mother was Kiowa. There were some men in the town where we lived who did not appreciate an Indian woman being married to a white man. One day, these men decided to make their opinions known. My mother was raped and murdered in our home…” Dakota heard Wyatt’s hitch of breath beside him, but hurried on before Wyatt could express any sympathy and he lost his nerve. “My father knew who was responsible. Everyone in town knew, but the guilty parties were white men, more valuable than an Indian woman. When my father brought his suspicions to the sheriff, he was brushed aside like…like he was worthless, as worthless as those men and the sheriff had considered my mother.