Renegade (16 page)

Tucker shook his head. “Funny you should ask me that now.” Avoiding a response, he said simply, “The answer is simple—maybe too simple.”

Matt considered the voids in Tucker’s reply and finally responded, “I think you should tell her you intend to turn yourself in.”

“Why?”

“Because she would do the same for you.”

“No, she wouldn’t. Not now.”

Matt was suddenly angry. “Why? Did you say something else that hurt her when she came to see me, Tucker? If you did—”

“I told her to leave. I didn’t trust myself if she stayed any longer.”

“You didn’t trust yourself?”

Tucker asked belligerently, “Can you say you honestly trust yourself with your Pinkerton woman?”

Matt’s expression tightened before he replied, “That’s my problem, but I do know Jenny’s going to suffer if you don’t explain what you’re going to do. She needs that confidence. That’s the only way she can come to terms with what happened.”

“Better she should suffer now than—”

“Jenny doesn’t deserve to suffer at all!”

Unable to dispute that comment, Tucker shook his head as Matt added, “You spent your life running away from things. Are you going to add this to the list?”

“This is different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Tucker opened his mouth to respond, but nothing emerged. Momentarily immobile, he studied his brother’s sober expression—the face so similar to his own reflecting a truth he struggled to deny. Taking the time only to snatch up his hat, he ended their conversation abruptly by saying, “It’s getting
dark. I’m going back to my—or rather, to your—cabin to sleep.”

“We haven’t settled anything.”

Tucker left without replying.

The sun rose in a clear morning sky as Tucker waited concealed in a wooded copse outside the Circle O. He had slept poorly the previous night after his volatile conversation with his brother. He had awakened knowing Matt was right. He needed to speak to Jenny.

The Circle O wranglers had eaten the breakfast Jenny had cooked and had finally mounted and turned their horses to ride out for the day’s work. He waited until the sound of retreating hoofbeats faded. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he knew how being unable to forgive himself felt. It was an ache deep inside that he could not dismiss, and a sense of failing not only himself, but also the one person who could share his future. He could not bear the thought that Jenny would live with that feeling, too.

Tucker nudged his mount into the cleared yard as soon as it was silent again. Jenny was standing soberly at the door when he dismounted. He said as he approached, “I have to talk to you, Jenny.”

Jenny did not budge from the spot. “Am I mistaken, or did you insist that I leave the Double S yesterday?”

“I did—for your sake as well as for mine—but I thought things over when my mind was clearer and there are things I need to say.”

“All right.” Jenny stepped back. She closed the door behind them, but didn’t invite Tucker to sit down. “Say what you want to say.”

Tucker turned to face her. “I’m sorry, Jenny.”

“You said that.”

“But I didn’t explain why.”

“I think you did. You couldn’t help yourself. I expect that would be true of most men if a woman offered herself as openly as I did.”

“You didn’t offer yourself to me, Jenny. You offered yourself to Matt.”

“I didn’t offer myself to Matt,” she corrected with hard-edged honesty. “I offered myself to you.”

Tucker’s semismile was sad. “It’s the same difference.”

“No, it isn’t. The full truth is that I knew something was different about you from the beginning. I had never felt about Matt the way I felt about you. You looked the same on the outside, but I could sense something different on the inside.” She laughed self-derisively. “I was correct there, but I tried to tell myself that you and I both had discovered a part of ourselves that we hadn’t realized existed before. I deceived myself purposely, but you didn’t deceive yourself. You only deceived me.”

“I did deceive you, Jenny.” The admission was
difficult. “But I want you to realize that it wasn’t your fault, so you can forgive yourself.”

“Self-forgiveness is overrated.”

“No, it isn’t. I know that now. I might have believed that was true if I was still the person I once was, but I know now how important it is. The real truth is that the satisfaction I received when I thought I was being smarter than most honest people faded quickly. I was already dissatisfied with my life when I learned Matt existed. That’s probably why I got so angry.”

Jenny was about to interrupt, but Tucker continued purposefully. “I want you to forgive yourself because everything that happened is my fault. I came to Texas expecting revenge on my brother to restore that satisfaction, but it didn’t work out that way. Then I met you.”

Tucker paused, his face reddening before he added with considerable difficulty, “I love you, Jenny—and this is me, Tucker, saying those words. I asked you to leave me yesterday. I chased you away because I could feel control slipping away. I wanted everything to be right between us even though I knew it couldn’t be. I wanted you to forgive me even though I knew you shouldn’t. I wanted to believe we could go on and make a future together—even though I knew that could never be.”

Aware that Jenny’s face was whitening, Tucker took a step toward her and then said softly, “The
truth is that I’m not good enough for you now, and I know it.”

“Tucker…”

Tucker started to shake as the cold in Jenny’s gaze slowly changed. He continued. “I can’t forget the hardship I caused—especially now that I can truly appreciate all the hard work that went into the meager savings that I stole. And I can’t offer you a future while the law is on my trail.”

“Tucker, are you telling me the truth?”

“I am now when it’s too late.”

“But it isn’t too late! Don’t you see? You’re a different person than you were before.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t change what I did.”

Jenny whispered, “What could prison hope to accomplish that you haven’t accomplished already?”

“Punishment.”

“Punishment doesn’t really change anything, either.”

“I can’t make retribution for what I did at this point except through punishment for my crimes.”

“Tucker, what do you want me to tell you?” Jenny’s eyes filled as she took a conciliatory step toward him. “Do you want me to tell you that you’re bad and you can never truly change? I know that isn’t true. However you feel about me, your actions in coming here prove you’re sincere and you’re concerned about how someone else feels for the first time in your life.”

“That’s only because I love you.”

“Don’t say that again. You don’t love me.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel, Jenny. You’ve made me care about the hardship I caused, and you’ve made me wish I could wipe it all away.”

“Your past made you the person you are.”

“My past made me a person who isn’t good enough for you.”

“That’s foolishness.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’re Matt’s brother.”

“Matt, again.”

Jenny could not restrain a smile. “That’s what Matt said about you.”

“Did he?”

Jenny paused. She finally responded, “He said that when I told him I love you.”

Tucker went still. His full lips twitched and he swallowed tightly. He took a breath and then said softly, “You felt that way when you thought I was Matt.”

“I never really thought you were Matt.”

“Jenny, please. I only came here so you could realize that I did what I did because I wasn’t strong enough to turn you away.”

“I wasn’t strong enough, either.”

“Don’t say what you don’t mean, Jenny.”

“Unfortunately—fortunately—I’m uncertain which, I mean those words sincerely.”

“You’re sure?” Tucker took a tenuous step.

“That’s one thing I’ve never been surer of.”

“Jenny—”

Closing the final distance between them, Tucker pulled Jenny tightly into his arms. His mouth covered hers and her lips separated under his kiss. He was still holding her close when he raised his mouth from hers to see light shining in Jenny’s eyes again—and he realized that it did shine only for him.

He kissed Jenny’s eyes closed then and felt her eyelids flutter under his lips. His kiss warmed as it covered the planes of her face with true hunger, as he tasted the shell of her ears, and claimed her mouth again at last.

A sudden fear dawning, Tucker raised his head. Had he understood only what he wanted to hear? Did Jenny truly want him—Tucker, the man he had always been, as well as the man he was now?

Tucker stared down at Jenny, but saw only the light of love shining brightly in her brown eyes.

Tucker clutched her closer. His Jenny—she was his alone.

Mason Light turned toward the smaller man who had entered the abandoned cabin where they had stopped. They were exhausted and in unknown country. It was the middle of nowhere as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t like it. Of medium height, with small, tightly set features and several days’ growth of beard on his pointed chin, he was wearing clothing that was liberally spotted from past days’
indulgences. He said gruffly to his companion in a voice that reflected his frustration, “What did you learn?”

“Tucker rode this way, all right. He’s been robbing small banks in this area pretending to be his twin brother and confounding the law, but he didn’t do nothing as big as we did together. He probably wasn’t getting much.” The smaller man removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his prematurely balding head with a dirty hand before saying, “I don’t understand it. We was doing fine. We didn’t have no problems with the law, and all of a sudden he disappeared.”

Mason sneered. “I figure he’s up to something big now that he knows he has a twin to cover for him, and I want to be part of it. I figure I deserve it, being’s I was with him before he found out he had a twin in the first place.”

“You mean
we
deserve it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.” Mason looked at his cohort unappreciatively. He didn’t like being corrected by a man of inferior intelligence, especially when he was uncertain why he had gotten mixed up with the fellow in the first place.

Mason continued. “Tucker’s not the kind to share, though.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I’ll just have to make sure he tells us—or else.”

Reggie Larks’s round face glowed. “That’s what I like to hear, that Tucker ain’t going to mess with us.”

Mason looked at the smaller man scornfully. “Maybe he’d mess with you, but he won’t mess with me.”

“We’re partners, ain’t we?”

Mason smiled abruptly. Reggie made him feel smart. Reggie wasn’t like Tucker, who always made him feel stupid. But Tucker had needed them in order to rob the bigger banks where there were bigger paydays. That had made up for it all—until now, when he couldn’t understand what Tucker really had in mind when he disappeared.

Mason sneered at that thought. Reggie and he were the only ones who knew Tucker had learned belatedly that he had a twin brother, and Tucker had been livid when he found out. Tucker had absentmindedly mentioned using his twin to confuse the law, which he apparently had done. That was a good idea that could have been great if he had made them a part of the action. But he hadn’t, and he wasn’t going to get away with it.

“Tucker is in the area. That’s for sure, even if he didn’t tell us the name of his pa’s ranch so we could catch up with him.”

“It don’t matter anyway,” Reggie added. “It ain’t hard to follow Tucker’s trail with him robbing banks all the way here and putting the blame on his brother.”

“Yeah, and blaming it on his brother,” Mason repeated with a laugh. “And that’s how I’ll find him.”

“You mean
we’ll
find him.”

Mason darted Reggie a dirty look at his insistent correction. “That’s what I said.”

Mason added silently,
But when I do find him…

The trail to the Double S Ranch was now familiar to Samantha, but she rode it without confidence as morning dawned. Matt and she had made love the previous day. The encounter had been spontaneous. In the afterglow, she had been reassured all was well between them, yet her euphoria had subsided when she had ridden back to town and realized that nothing had been settled. She still hadn’t told Matt about Sean or Toby—secrets that weighed heavily on her mind. Matt was in danger. Sean was a diligent Pinkerton bound to figure out the truth, and Toby was always looking out for her safety. He could decide at any moment that the secret of Matt’s twin was too dangerous to keep.

She needed to warn Matt. Matt’s hired men would return in a few days and privacy would be difficult from then on. It was now or never.

That thought in mind, Samantha rode out into the ranch yard just as the house door opened and Matt emerged. His broad shoulders were erect and his muscular frame tight. His Stetson was pulled down low on his forehead. He looked at her strangely, with an unexpectedly sober attitude. She supposed her heart would always jump a beat at the sight of him, but the question if he would always feel the same about her was never clearer.

That question was prominent in her mind when Samantha said cautiously, “I need to talk to you, Matt. We didn’t do too much talking the last time we were together, and there are some things I need to clear up.”

His expression inscrutable, Matt made no comment other than to say, “I wasn’t expecting you this morning. I need to work in the north pasture, but we can talk first.”

She dismounted to see his light-colored eyes burning into hers as he asked, “What did you want to say?”

Samantha had not intended their conversation to take place on the porch of his ranch house in the light of early morning, and with Matt eager to get moving. She said hesitantly, “You obviously have something else on your mind. We can talk later.”

“Now is as good a time as any.”

No, it wasn’t, but Samantha proceeded. “I have some things to tell you that I didn’t mention before.”

She paused, waiting for Matt’s reaction. When there was none, she continued. “There’s a new fella in town—Sean McGill. I suppose you’ve heard about him.”