Tempted (19 page)

“Steven—”

“No, let me finish—you might not get another speech like this from me. I would be honored to marry you. And I will be lost without you. I understand that you don’t need me. But I need you. I need you and I love you.”

She blinked up at him. “That’s a very fine speech,” she whispered.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Tomorrow?”

“What about Cole and Melody?”

“The passes are closed, Anne. We won’t be able to get to them for months.”

“I don’t want to wait months.”

He grinned. “Me neither.”

“Tomorrow it is,” she said with a definitive nod. “What shall we do tonight?”

“Supper in bed?” he asked.

“And then?” Her eyes twinkled.

He shook his head. “How am I this lucky?” he asked.

“We both are.” She wrapped her arms around him, carefully stepping up to his chest, giving him time to prepare himself for the weight of her against him. “And I don’t know that it’s luck, Steven. I think it’s courage. Courage to ask for what we want and courage to accept it.”

He liked that idea, felt somehow empowered by it. “I meant what I said about medical school, if you want it.”

He watched her consider it, her clever mind turning the idea over in her head. “It would mean going back east.”

“Then we will go back east. Philadelphia, or New York.”

“But Melody and Cole—”

“The railroad will change everything, Anne. Once it’s finished, Denver will only be a train ride away.”

“But cities. You don’t—”

“Anne,” he breathed, leaning down to kiss her lips. “Don’t look for reasons to say no. We are courageous, remember?”

She kissed him back, slowly. Still thinking.

“Medical school,” she said. “You really think I can do it?”

“I think you can do anything.” He grabbed the plate with their supper. “Now, let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you what I can do.”

That made her giggle—his serious, smart, independent woman, and he fell even more in love with her. Even more entranced.

“I love you, Anne,” he said with every inch of his battered and damaged soul.

“I love you, Steven.”

August 1870

Anne came to stand beside her husband at the bar. Sunlight fell across the wooden floor in great slices, and the breeze that blew in through the door just managed to keep away the worst of the heat.

But only just.

“This is a very merry going-away party,” Anne said, kissing her husband's arm because no one was looking and it was a fine, fine arm.

“Parties held in whore houses usually are,” Steven said.

“Have you been to so many, then?”

“This is my very first,” he replied.

Stella and Janey and Rose were all here. Delilah, too. Looking quite fine in a red traveling dress, though she wasn’t the one traveling. Dr. Madison had sent a note wishing them well, and they had plans to meet in New York for the fourth of July.

“A toast,” Cole said, lifting his glass of punch into the air. Melody beside him, pregnant with their first child, lifted her glass of lemonade. Finding out that Melody was pregnant had nearly made Anne cancel their plans, but Melody had insisted.

“Go,” she’d said as they slept together for the very last time in Anne’s bed, curled up, their knees touching. “But hurry back.”

It had been a fine night, gossiping about their husbands and sex. Laughing into their pillows, two scandalized and delighted married ladies.

Anne’s wedding night had not gone as planned—they’d grown complacent about his aversion. Thinking, in their love and excitement, that he was cured. But the ghosts of the war were stubborn and unpredictable.

But two days after her wedding, they’d made up for it in fine style. He was better in the daylight. Freer.

There were still nights that Steven was plagued by nightmares, and she would find him downstairs, building the porch on the back of the house—searching for industry to clear his mind.

“To the happy couple,” Cole said to the room full of friends. “May their love guide them in all things.”

“Love is going to guide me back to our bed,” Steven whispered into her ear.

She smacked his arm.

“But most of all, may it guide them back here. The West needs them!” Kyle said. Kyle and Steven had grown close over the last year. Meeting Sundays after church to talk. Sometimes about the war and prison. Sometimes about the railroad and the future of Denver.

There was a chorus of cheers, and Anne drank down her punch. It was spiked with something and very sweet. Stella had made it. There were lemon cakes and pies. Cheddar coins that Steven apparently couldn’t get enough of. The O’Neill sisters had baked plenty of soda bread for the occasion, and had given them a basketful for the train.

She’d thought Steven might cry at the gesture.

“Anne.” it was Elizabeth at her elbow, baby Emily in her arms. “I just want to thank you.”

“You have thanked me plenty,” Anne said. Emily reached for Anne’s glasses, as she always did, and Anne grabbed her little fist, blowing a raspberry against it to distract her.

“But the boarding house—it’s too much.”

“It’s a business, not a gift,” said Anne, patting the woman on the shoulder. “And you’ll do fine. You really will. You’re smart and you have good instincts about people. Trust them.”

“This town is going to miss you,” Elizabeth said. “It won’t be the same.”

From the moment she and Steven had announced they were going back to Philadelphia so Anne could attend school, the outpouring of affection and grief and well-wishes had been quite overwhelming. Anne often didn’t know what to say.

Stella came by, a fine dusting of lemon cake crumbs across the front of her dress.

She’s sad
, Anne thought.

“I’ve never had a friend like you,” Stella said.

“I’ve never had one like you,” Anne agreed.

“You’ll come back?”

Anne nodded and hugged her again.

“Mrs. Baywood,” Steven said, taking her arm. “We need to get going if we are to catch that train.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling through sudden tears.

“Oh, my girl,” he breathed. “Is this so hard?”

“It is. I can’t believe it is, but… I had no idea I had so many friends. But come… the train waits for no one. Not even you.”

“This is true,” Steven said.

The railroad had made him even wealthier, and he was going back east to discuss investments in other railroads. Other businesses.

There were more hugs. More tears. Melody walked with her, arm in arm, toward the station.

“Can you believe what has become of us?” Melody asked.

“Mother certainly wouldn’t.”

“I’m proud of you,” Melody whispered.

“I’m proud of you,” Anne whispered back, and they both glanced over at their husbands—two brothers saying their own goodbyes.

“Write often,” Anne said. “Tell me everything.”

“I will if you will.”

The train whistle blew, and Anne clutched at her sister one last time and then took Steven’s hand when he came to her, grabbing it with both of hers.

The world was moving so fast right now, and she needed something solid to hold onto.

And Steven was always solid.

They said their final goodbyes, tears and hugs from everyone.

“Are you all right?” Steven asked once they were settled in their Pullman sleeper car, Denver retreating behind them.

“I am,” she said. He put his arm over her shoulder and she leaned into him, resting her head against his wide chest. “It’s quite bittersweet. I’m sad to be leaving, but so very excited about the future. It’s quite an adventure isn’t it?” She ran a hand down the lapel of his fine new suit.

“With you,” he said. “Always.”

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for picking up Tempted: Into The Wild Book 2. I hope you enjoyed Steven and Anne’s journey back to love and life. Dr. Madison will find his match in Redeemed which will be released next winter!

A historical note the Inter-Ocean Hotel did not exist until 1873 but owner, Barney Ford was Colorado’s most prominent black businessman and had numerous businesses in Denver after the war. I chose to fudge the dates on the Inter-Ocean because I loved the descriptions of the hotel so much.

I love to hear from readers. You can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases and receive my The Author Is…interview series at
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If you have a moment, please review this book. Reviews help readers find books and I appreciate all of them, negative or positive.

May 15, 1867

One hundred miles southwest of Denver

M
elody Hurst stared unblinking at the cabin and wondered if she'd left her home in Georgia only to die here in this cold, foreign clearing.

“Go on now,” said her husband, Jimmy, from the trees behind her.

“There's no one here.” She pitched her voice low, though she didn't know why. There was no smoke from the chimney, no sounds from inside. The cabin, the almond-shaped clearing, the barn and the rocky outcropping it was built into—everything was still.

“Best be sure.” She glanced at him, hiding in the brush to her right, and he lowered his rifle toward her and pointed at the door. His eyes cold and hot all together. “Go.”

There was no choice, really.

She cast one fleeting, desperate look over her shoulder toward her sister, Annie, who was hiding with their horses in the trees near the barn at the other end of the hundred-yard field. Melody couldn't see her, and it was a blade to her heart to know she was out there.

I'm sorry I got you into this.

Marrying Jimmy after the war was supposed to give them security. Peace of mind. Protection. Because before the war, that was what the men she knew did. They cared for their women, their land, their horses. The war had changed everything, though, and if there were still men with the capacity for kindness, she did not know them anymore.

Her heart pounding in her throat, Melody stepped out from the tree line through the high grasses and flowers. It was a cloudy, gray afternoon, and the blooms in the clearing were closed up tight.

The simple log cabin was graced with an extensive covered porch complete with a railing and a chair—it was ludicrous, that porch on such a plain building. A bonnet on a donkey. But she imagined the owner of this cabin could sit, put his feet up, and look at the clearing, the flowers, the barn opposite and the snow-capped mountains in the western distance. His entire kingdom.

What a pleasure that must be for him
.

A pleasure Jimmy and his Remington fully intended to rob him of.

Her whole life she’d been called too clever for her own good; she had manipulated more than her share of outcomes, but she could not conceive of anything that would get her and Annie out of this horror.

The porch was made from the trunks of saplings strapped together, and she nearly tripped walking across the uneven surface.

“Hello?” she called, her voice shaking.

Please don't be home. Please. Please don't be home
.

They'd tracked Mr. Baywood across the West, missing him by a day in Denver. A fortuitous accident for Mr. Baywood, but Jimmy had been furious. Her arm still ached where he'd grabbed it in their hotel room, hard enough to leave purple-black smudges on her skin.

There was a chance that this might not be Mr. Baywood's claim. But having grown used to cruel fate and bad fortune in the years since The War of Northern Aggression started, she knew when those two evil specters were present. And they were here in this clearing.

She knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

Thank God.

Not that it would change anything for Steven Baywood. Jimmy meant to kill him. But at least she wouldn't be standing in the way when Jimmy gunned him down.

“He's not here,” she said, in relief more than anything.

A sudden crack of rifle fire in the forest to the west scared a flock of birds from the trees and nearly sent her to her knees.

Jimmy ran from the forest and jumped onto the porch.

“He's hunting,” he said, his entire body alight with malicious victory as he stepped past her to the door. He pulled the knotted string that released the bar inside to open the door and went into the cabin. “He's close. Get in here.”

His glee set off a terrible anxiety in her chest. Panic roared through her and she was lightheaded with fear. Her hands went numb, her knees loose.