Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) (7 page)

A
aron would have made up an excuse to ride out to Kylie’s claim if he’d needed to, but lucky for him—or unlucky, depending on how a man looked at it—a reason presented itself that made the visit necessary.

He leaned lower on his horse and urged it to a gallop. There were stretches of the trail to Kylie’s that were fairly worn and safe, and other parts with branches sagging low over the trail and stones studding the ground.

He needed to beat Coulter there and warn Kylie of what was coming, though she seemed like a bright little thing, so she probably already suspected.

And maybe he was a fool to hurry. Maybe Kylie would grab up a proposal from a wealthy, powerful man and never look back.

Of course, Kylie wanted to go back East. And Coulter wasn’t about to offer her that.

He came to the clearing by Kylie’s house and saw a scruffy blue-roan farm horse tied to Kylie’s hitching post.
Then his eyes went past the horse to a wiry gray-haired man, who was dragging Kylie up the porch steps, his grip tight on her arm.

“No! No, I won’t do it!” She yanked against the viselike hand, but the man was relentless.

“Let her go!” Aaron shouted.

At the sound of his approaching horse, the man turned. Kylie slipped from his grasp and fell, landing on her backside on the top step. Aaron didn’t let up his horse’s speed as he closed the distance, racing toward the man assaulting Kylie.

Aaron halted only steps from the ugly old-timer and leapt to the ground, placing himself in front of Kylie, who scrambled to her feet.

“You’re under arrest.” Aaron had his gun drawn before he’d made a conscious decision to reach for it.

“Don’t shoot!” Kylie clamped a hand on Aaron’s gun arm.

“Why not?” Aaron looked at her, surprised. Aaron had heard of women who let men abuse them. Was she going to take the side of this low-down skunk?

Kylie frowned. Even with a sad expression she was still so pretty. She had a bonnet hanging down her back. She wore a faded blue gingham housedress, covered by a white apron, and Aaron noticed a small trowel on the ground near some flowers. It looked like she’d been busy replanting her rock garden.

She turned to glare at the old man. “Because he’s my pa.”

“He’s your what?” Aaron said.

The man nodded. “I do what I like with my own child, and no man will tell me different. Now, you ride out of
here and don’t look back.” He spun around toward Kylie. “And you get inside and change back into your britches.”

“Pa, this is Aaron Masterson.” Kylie sounded weary, like maybe she was used to her father dragging her around and not even all that upset about it. “He knows about the homestead exemption. He found out I enrolled as a man, and he’s refused to let it stand. In fact, I suspect he’s out here right now with the revised form, looking for me to sign it. Did you change my papers?”

Aaron’s heart still hammered, and he was having a hard time letting go of the pleasure of arresting the man who’d been treating Kylie roughly. It might matter a bit that a pa grabbing hold of his daughter’s arm wasn’t exactly against the law.

And it mattered some that Aaron wasn’t allowed to arrest anyone. Finding out someone wasn’t obeying the rules of homesteading and disallowing his claim wasn’t exactly the same as being a sworn-in sheriff. Still, father or not, this was no way to treat a lady.

Shoving that to the back of his mind, he focused on Kylie’s question. He hadn’t yet made the changes to her papers. “Kylie, I have to. Coulter was in town, snooping through every scrap of paper. If he’d seen that you’d originally filed as a man, he’d have been out here accusing you of fraud within hours.”

“So now I’ve got to spend five years earning this blasted hunk of rock-infested wasteland?” Kylie kicked at one of her rocks, not a big enough one to break her toe, thank heavens. She reached for the rock she’d kicked, lifted it, and hurled it into her lake. It hit with a plop, with ripples spreading out in a circle.

“I told you to pick a different piece of land.” Kylie’s pa took a threatening step toward her. “You’re never gonna grow nothing out here. And I told you to leave your britches on and keep your hair short.”

The man stopped before Aaron had to stop him. Kylie didn’t flinch or act particularly afraid. Aaron hoped that meant her pa was all bluster. But there was no denying the old codger was right about the land. This spot was beautiful, but it was no place a homesteader would normally pick. Of course the woman showed no sign of farming or running a herd or even hunting. Near as he could tell, her only livestock was a horse and she hadn’t planted so much as a garden. How did she live?

“It’s too late.” Kylie’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Stop yammering at me, because all it does is make my ears hurt.”

She stalked past both of them toward her cabin, climbed her porch, and went to sit on her rocking chair, shoulders slumped, the very image of defeat.

With a deep sigh, she said, “I can’t do it, Pa. I can’t make it out here five years. I told you I’d give you three and that’s almost too long. But five, no.”

“You’re not quitting on me.” Her father charged toward the porch, radiating fury. Aaron kept up. Ready to step between Kylie and her pa if need be. “Not after all the work we’ve done to build this cabin and take care of you.”

We? Aaron could only guess that meant Kylie’s brothers and her pa were keeping her here, providing her with food, doing whatever it took to keep this homestead active. And if you added this water source to the land he’d seen claimed by the three Wilde men, it did make a nice stretch of land, very nice.

“Pa, I’ll be twenty-five. A spinster. I’ll never find a husband if I wait until I’m that ancient. I’ll be almost too old to have children.”

Since Aaron was twenty-nine, he thought that was a bit unkind. Harsh, even.

“Your ma was twenty-five when you were born. A woman’s got a lot of years to have a family.”

“Ma died when I was only ten. That’s proof she was too old.” Kylie looked at her lap. He’d seen her angry. He’d seen her scared. He’d seen her soaking wet and exhausted and crying her eyes out. But he’d never seen her like this, so spiritless. Her pa was draining all the fire out of her.

“We need this piece of land to honor Jimmy. Are you going to betray him, along with your family? If you loved him, you’d want to build a big spread that would be a fitting memorial to him.”

Jimmy, her brother killed in the war.

Kylie looked up and studied her father for a moment. He’d come to stand in front of her, between her and the pretty view she loved.

Aaron got the notion that her pa had stood between Kylie and the things she loved most of her life. Yet she didn’t seem scared of him, not like she would if he’d struck her. But emotionally he packed a wicked punch.

Kylie’s eyes shifted from her pa to Aaron, who stood off to the side. “Aaron Masterson, may I introduce you to my father, Cudgel Wilde.”

Aaron had a second to wonder if Cudgel was really the old man’s name, or was it a nickname he’d justly earned?

“Pa,” Kylie went on, “Aaron is the land agent in Aspen
Ridge. He saw through my disguise. He’s rewritten my homestead claim to reflect that I’m a woman.”

He hadn’t yet, but Coulter had left Aaron no choice.

Her pa looked at Aaron, then at Kylie. “Which means you lose your years of service, to be taken off the five years needed to earn out your claim. Which means, because you’re more interested in yourself than your family, you’re quitting. Do I have that about right, little girl?” Cudgel’s eyes seemed to burn through all of Kylie’s resistance.

The old man shifted back to Aaron. “It ain’t right, you know. My girl fought in that war. She gave two solid years to it. She deserves that exemption, and what’s more, I think you know it. You may stand there all proud of yourself for following the letter of the law, but you’re ignoring right and wrong. My girl didn’t lie about herself when she enlisted. She even wrote her name down right.”

Aaron remembered he’d gone to add the
i
to Kyle’s name, but it was always Kylie. She’d written it down right. She’d only said her brother’s name was Kyle to confuse him that first rainy night.

“She told the truth when she enlisted and when she filed her homestead claim. Now you’ll make her work out the whole five years. How is that right? Why shouldn’t she claim her years of service like any man who fought?”

Aaron felt Cudgel using all his skill at guilt and manipulation on him, and Aaron had to admit the man was talented.

“You might be able to convince me to look the other way, Wilde. It doesn’t seem right that she fought but gets no credit for it. But I’m not your only problem. Gage Coulter wants her gone. In fact, I talked to him. He wants
you all gone. And there are a couple dozen other settlers on land he sees as his. He isn’t going to give up quietly. He’ll jump on any reason to run Kylie off this land. And finding out she’s been passing herself off as male would be reason enough for him.”

Cudgel’s face turned red, and his fists clenched. “Rich tyrant. Thinks he can tell honest folks how to live.”

“Not all that honest, Mr. Wilde,” Aaron said wryly.

With his teeth bared, Cudgel went back to badgering his daughter. “Is that how it’s gonna be, Kylie? You’d betray your family and your brother’s memory ’cuz a rich man, who thinks he’s a king, tells you to go? Is a few more years of living on this land too much to ask of you? Where’s your loyalty to family? Where’s your heart for your brother? You want to go find a man who will marry you, but you betray the only men you say you love, Jimmy and me. What man’s gonna love a woman with the heart of a betrayer?”

Kylie’s eyes were locked with her pa’s. They brimmed with tears. “I don’t mean to betray you, Pa. And I love Jimmy.”

“Then prove it to me, girl. Stay here and help our family build something big and strong. It’ll be all ours, and you can help with that or you can stab us all in the back.”

“That’s enough.” Aaron couldn’t hold back the words. He could barely hold back his fists. “Kylie isn’t betraying you by—”

“No, Aaron. Stop.” Kylie surged out of her chair and stepped as if to block Aaron from swinging.

The old man was half Aaron’s weight and a good ten inches shorter. Aaron hadn’t really planned on throwing a fist, but Kylie’s stricken expression stopped him from
saying any more. Most likely a girl didn’t like seeing her pa take a beating, no matter how much it was deserved.

“This is between me and Pa. Right now you said I have some papers to sign.”

Aaron almost regretted that. He might have been doing her a favor by just declaring her claim a fraud and kicking her off her land. If he had, she’d have no choice but to leave. But she clearly didn’t feel she could just abandon this land; she’d said as much. She wanted the title so she could sell it, and she’d planned to have that in exchange for three years of her life.

But five was too much.

“So you’ll sign?” Pa came up close to Kylie and rested one hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, and he smiled. Aaron thought the smile might crack the old codger’s face, like it hadn’t bent into a smile in years.

He saw the tension ease out of Kylie’s shoulders. Aaron had seen enough of Cudgel’s manipulation to be sure that going along with him would be far easier than fighting him. Even if going along got Kylie nothing she wanted.

“I’ll sign,” she said, with a note of grief in her voice.

Cudgel patted her on the shoulder. “Good girl. Get on with it, then. I’ve got to get back to my place.”

Cudgel turned and strode down the porch steps. He swung up on his roan horse and rode away.

“He left me.” Kylie could barely breathe for the pain in her chest as she watched her father ride out of her clearing.

“Didn’t you want him to skedaddle?” Aaron asked.

Kylie whirled to face him. “That’s not the point. My
own pa just rode off and left me here, miles from anywhere, alone with a man he doesn’t know. No father does that to a daughter he loves.”

Turning back to look at the empty trail, Kylie felt her eyes burn with tears, because it hit her, something she’d denied all her life. Her father didn’t love her. Had never loved her. Which left her with a question that haunted her: Would he ever love her?

If she worked hard enough, did as Pa asked, upheld Jimmy’s memory, then would he finally love her? The ache in her for her father’s love was like a hunger she could never fill, a wound that would never heal.

Aaron rested a hand on her shoulder, close to where Pa had touched. The similarity hit so hard, Kylie had to fight not to whirl back toward Aaron and throw herself in his arms. The hunger was there to grab ahold of any man who showed interest, to prove to herself she wasn’t unlovable.

And if she grabbed Aaron, and if he was honorable, which he seemed to be, she could probably bring him along to marry her and, by doing that, trap herself out here forever. With a humorless laugh she wondered if Pa would approve. Aaron had no land, but he seemed like the type to do well. With Aaron around, they might grow faster than with just the Wilde brood.

Of course, if one of his girls married, they would be in the keeping of a husband, which would take a lot of Pa’s power away. Kylie suspected Pa would want all his children to answer only to him for life.