Megan Chance (21 page)

For a moment Conor let himself imagine it. Milking cows, feeding livestock, stringing fence, and breaking his back to break the tangled sod. Hard, honest work that ended when the sun went down, when a man walked into a kitchen filled with the scent of ham and beans and sugar pie. He imagined Sari standing at the stove, her face flushed, her hair falling into her face. But when she turned, there was a smile on her lips and welcome in her eyes.

God, it actually sounded good.

He was getting too involved. The thought of leaving her, of hurting her again, made him weak. She had become more important than just a means to an end.

He wasn't sure when it had happened. Until tonight he would have sworn he had it in control. It was frightening to realize just how much he'd been lying to himself. Her serenity soothed him, her presence was a balm to his battered spirit. Since he'd been on the farm, even revenge for his father's death had faded in importance.

That was what frightened him the most. He was afraid the anger would die, that he would step back and allow Michael Doyle and the others simply to walk away, unharmed, to live with only their consciences to punish them. The fear was only exacerbated by the words that nagged at him when he was tired and aching, the harsh memory of Sean Roarke's last breath:
"Don't go after them."

Don't go after them
. Conor closed his eyes, tightening his hold on Sari. The memory was there, and instead of fighting it, he let it come, let himself remember the horror and the fear of holding his broken father in his arms, feeling the man's frail body shudder in his grasp. Once again he heard the gurgling whisper:
"Don't go after them. Leave it to—"

—God
. Conor finished the sentence in his mind. He knew his father's sermons well. Retribution was not the duty of man; punishment was for God only. Doyle and the others would find their hell on Judgment Day.

His father had believed that. His father would tell him to stay in bed, to enjoy Sari and forget about vengeance. His father would tell him that the risk of losing her—of losing his own soul—was too great. If he went after her brother, Sari would never forgive him, even as she insisted that Michael was dead to her. If he killed Michael to avenge Sean Roarke's death, Conor knew he would have made the decision to leave Sari forever, to bear her hatred.

For the first time he wondered if he wanted to make that decision.

Sari moved in her sleep, snuggling closer to him, moving her head so that her hair caught on his shoulder, the silky strands trailing over his skin. Conor stared up at the ceiling, letting the pure pleasure course through him. She felt so soft and warm, so forgiving and loving. Her giving aroused feelings of tenderness and need inside of him that he hadn't felt in a long time, not since Tamaqua.

He didn't want to admit that he was starting to rethink his reasons for pursuing revenge, and he especially didn't want to admit that it was due to Sari. He wondered if his father was right. Was there a God who would sentence Michael Doyle and the others far more effectively than Conor could?

Maybe he'd been wrong all this time. Maybe he could just walk away. Or was it even possible anymore to live without scheming and lying, without violence and constant betrayal. Could he live a normal life, raising a family on the plains, loving a woman?

It had never sounded good before, but now suddenly the idea took hold. There was the promise of a future in a farmer's life. Family, children, love, and warmth where before there'd only been emptiness. This was what he needed, this warm, unconditional understanding, this hope.

Conor buried his face in Sari's hair, smelling the warm, sweet scent of her, and suddenly he wanted that kind of life more than he'd ever wanted anything. It went against everything he'd ever known about himself, but for the first time he began to believe it was possible to find those things. He would court her and learn to love her. He would learn this land as well as Charles had learned it. He would do it all. He
could
do it all.

He buried the nagging thought that maybe he couldn't.

"D
amn!" Conor jumped back from the stove, dodging the spattering grease. He jerked around as a scorching droplet landed on his skin. "Christ, that's hot!"

Sari looked up wryly from the book she was reading. "I find it difficult to believe you grew up in a rectory."

He shot her a dry glance. "So did my father." He wiped at his arm with a towel, then once again picked up the heavy metal fork. "Unfortunately I never outgrew swearing. Though I did learn to temper it somewhat."

"Which meant you didn't do it in front of your father."

He smiled. "Precisely." He stepped back, wincing as he turned the slabs of scrapple in the skillet and they spat back at him. "I do remember sending a certain Sister Ursula running from the room, however. Something to do with 'rejecting proper discipline,' I believe she called it."

"My goodness, it sounds fatal."

"I wasn't too fond of being smacked on the knuckles with a ruler." He grinned at the memory. "By then I was no longer afraid they'd kick me out if I disagreed with them."

Sari's lips twitched with laughter. "What did you do, smack her back?"

"Nothing so drastic." He shook his head. "I grabbed the ruler and broke it over my knee. And then I called her every foul name I could think of. Which, at that time, was a formidable list."

"I imagine," Sari murmured. "And then what happened?"

She had never seen Conor Roarke look sheepish before, and Sari stared in surprise as his eyes lowered and his mouth twisted strangely. Something tugged at her heart.

"Within half an hour I was in my father's office," he remembered. "He had this way about him—this funny hesitation. Sometimes he'd stop in the middle of a sentence while he tried to figure out exactly how to say something. I thought he was too angry with me to speak. It wasn't until months later that I realized it was just the way he was." He poked at the scrapple with the fork, idly moving it around the skillet. "I remember how harried he looked. His hair was standing on end, and he kept running his hands through it as though it helped him think."

"Had he much experience with little boys before then?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I guess he'd dealt with the parish children on occasion. But it wasn't until I'd been there nearly a year that he set up a small orphanage in the rectory."

His mouth twitched with a smile. "Before that I don't think he'd ever dealt with anyone quite like me. I'd been on my own for a long time. It was difficult for me to follow rules."

"Impossible, maybe?"

Conor chuckled. "Yeah. The first week I was there, after I was stronger, I tried to sneak out in the middle of the night with the rosaries." His blue eyes twinkled as he caught her look of disbelief. "I thought I could sell them."

"But they caught you?"

"Sister Ursula again." He nodded. "God, she was a horror. She was about the biggest woman I'd ever seen. I wasn't worried so much that she could chase me down, it's just that I couldn't get around her—"

"Conor!"

He laughed, and Sari was amazed at how much it changed his face. His cheeks were cut with deep dimples; wrinkles nearly hid his eyes. And it was so infectious. His laughter made her want to join in, made it impossible not to join in.

"Well, it's true," he protested. "But the sister and I worked out a sort of grudging respect for each other in the end." He paused. "She was transferred to New York the year before I left Pennsylvania. I got a letter from her a few months ago saying how sorry she was. She said she'd pray for my soul, since my father didn't need praying for."

"Thank God someone's seeing to your soul." Sari struggled to interject a lighter tone.

He flashed her a grin. "And if I know Sister Ursula, she's praying damn hard." He lifted a plate from the shelf above the stove and piled the thick, fragrant slices of the spicy pork-and-commeal loaf onto it. Taking a basket of freshly baked biscuits from the sideboard, he set them both on the table before he stepped behind her. His arms went around her, pulling her close as he bent and buried his face in her hair.

Sari closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of his lips through the hair she'd worn loose especially for him. She caught her breath as he nuzzled her throat.

"Put the book away, love," he whispered. "Breakfast is ready."

He left her then, too suddenly, and took the seat across the table. Sari folded her book and pushed it aside, reaching for a plate.

"I didn't realize you were such a cook," she teased, forking a piece of scrapple and dishing canned pears onto her plate.

"How do you imagine I survived for so long on my own?"

"On your own?" She lifted a dark, well-shaped brow. "I didn't realize you had to do your own cooking—at least not in Pennsylvania. Seems to me the rent at Lawler's covered room and board."

He spread molasses on a biscuit. "Apparently you never ate at Lawler's."

"No," she admitted. "I never did. Evan used to say there was no need to pay for food when I could cook it at home."

"If I had been Evan," he said softly, "I would have taken you everywhere. I would have made damn sure that everyone knew you belonged to me. And I would have killed anyone who touched you."

Her heart skipped a beat, but Sari forced herself to reply teasingly. "If Evan had been that possessive, you'd be dead."

"I should be," he replied soberly. He paused, his jaw tightened as he looked down at his plate. "Did you ever get a chance to talk to Evan after they arrested him?"

She frowned. The memory of Michael came sneaking back, along with that guilty regret. With effort she pushed it away. "No. They wouldn't let me in."

"You were his wife."

She shrugged. "Perhaps if Evan had wanted to see me, it would have been different." She tried to keep her tone light, but she knew by the way Conor paused that she hadn't fooled him.

"Evan refused to see you?"

"He ... I..." Sari took a deep breath. "He never did forgive me."

"Forgive you? For what?"

"What wasn't there to forgive?" she asked. "For betraying him. For ... for you. He didn't find out that you and I had been ... that we had a relationship ... until the trial. I don't think he'd come to terms with it yet."

He was quiet for a moment. Then Conor cleared his throat. "He'd come to terms with it," he said brusquely.

Sari frowned. "How do you—"

"I went to see him just after they took him into custody. By then most of the gang suspected I was the spy, but they didn't know for sure. Pinkerton thought it best if I paid one last visit to Evan, just to see if I could get a few more answers." He looked up at her, his eyes expressionless. "The reason the case went on so long, Sari, was because we wanted to get them for something big. We'd had them on the little things for months, but we just couldn't pull together enough evidence to accuse them of conspiring to murder. We hoped that Evan would be the key."

"I—I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"I spent about an hour with him." Conor looked at his plate. "Evan was nothing if not clever. He wouldn't tell me a damn thing about the Mollies, but I could tell he was excited about something. He was nearly on the edge of his seat waiting to spring it on me."

"Evan had a lot of secrets," Sari said tightly. Her stomach clenched.

"Yes." His eyes met hers. "Evan knew about us. That was what he wanted to tell me. He knew we were lovers. He'd known for months."

"But—but that's not possible!" Sari stared at him in disbelief. "He would have killed you! He wouldn't have tolerated it—he would have killed us both."

"It amused him," Conor said. "He was trying to figure out how to use it against you. It was a game to him. I just... I want you to know.... Don't torment yourself thinking about how you—how we— betrayed him, Sari. He'd broken his vows to you already."

She turned away abruptly, catching her breath. It was just one more thing to add to Evan's list of transgressions. He'd been expert at taunts, at the special kind of verbal torment only a husband could supply. Her only consolation was that he undoubtedly regretted it later, when he realized Conor was the traitor. It must have tortured him, wondering if his "game" had cost him his life, wondering if she'd given Conor the information that led to Evan's hanging.

Sari took a deep breath and looked up at Conor. "Evan's dead," she said slowly, toying with her fork. "And what was between my husband and me was over long before I met you. I don't want to talk about Evan anymore."

His icy eyes were penetrating in the moments before his lips curved upward in a gentle smile. "I'm sorry I mentioned him."

"Let's pretend you didn't."

"All right. Let's pretend."

T
he storm was increasing outside, the sound of the wind and the snow so constant, Sari had ceased to hear it. The tiny, icy particles whistled through the cracks and crevices of the house, blowing across the floor like sand and melting near the stove. The snow had piled up high enough to cover the window. When she looked outside, all she saw was a wall of snow. That morning she had taken a warm flatiron to the glass in an attempt to melt the ice, to see the daylight.

But in spite of that she never wanted it to end.

She looked toward Conor. He was sitting in the rocker, flipping through the pages of a book. His dark hair fell over his forehead, his finely shaped lips were pursed in concentration. Once again Sari smiled in contentment. How easy it was, being here with him, locked into habits that felt familiar and comfortable even though they were less than two days old. She felt as though she'd stolen something infinitely precious and now was just savoring the moments until it was taken away again. As long as the storm raged on, they were safe. Protected and secure in a world containing just the two of them.

The turning pages rustled in the relative silence, and Sari hugged herself tightly.
I love him
. The words made her giddy. She formed her tongue around the phrase, trying it out silently, mouthing the words.
I love him. I love him. I love you
.