Alice stared at her, wide-eyed. “That’s kind of you. I knew you were a real lady, Miss Conway, and I’m obliged. I’d better be heading back.”
“If you’d like to visit again, I’d be happy to see you,” Sarah told her as she walked her out.
“No, ma’am, that wouldn’t be proper. Thank you for the tea, Miss Conway.”
Sarah thought a great deal about Alice’s visit. That night, as she read her father’s journal by lamplight, she tried to imagine what it had been like. To be sold, she thought with an inward shudder. By her own father, like a horse or a steer. It was true that she, too, had spent years of her life without a real family, but she had always known her father loved her. What he had done, he had done with her best interests at heart. Once she would have condemned Alice’s choice out of hand. But now she thought she understood. It was all the girl knew. The cycle had begun with her father’s callousness, and the girl was caught in it, helplessly moving in the same circle, selling herself time after time because she knew nothing else.
Had it been the same for Jake? Had the cruelty he’d lived through as a child forced him into a life of restlessness and violence? The scars he carried must run deep. And the hate. Sarah looked into the soft glow of the lamp. As Lucius had said, the hate ran cold.
She should have hated him. She wanted to, she wished the strong, destructive emotion would come, filling all the cracks in her feelings, blocking out everything else. With hate, a coolheaded, sharply honed hate, she would have felt in control again. She needed badly to feel in control again. But she didn’t hate him.
She couldn’t.
Even though she knew he had spent the night with another woman, kissing another woman’s lips, touching another woman’s skin, she couldn’t hate him. But she could grieve for her loss, for the death of a beauty that had never had a chance to bloom fully.
She had come to understand what they might have had together. She had almost come to accept that they belonged together, whatever their differences, whatever the risks. He would always live by his gun and by his own set of rules, but with her, briefly, perhaps reluctantly, he had shown such kindness, such tenderness. There was a place for her in his heart. Sarah knew it. Beneath the rough-hewn exterior was a man who believed in justice, who was capable of small, endearing kindnesses. He’d allowed her to see that part of him, a part she knew he’d shared with few others.
Then why, the moment she had begun to soften toward him, to accept him for what and who he was, had he turned to another woman? A woman whose love could be bought with a handful of coins?
What did it matter? With a sigh, she closed her father’s journal and prepared for bed. She had only fooled herself into believing he could care for her. Whatever kindness Jake had shown her would always war with his lawless nature and his restless heart. She wanted a home, a man by her side and children at her feet. As long as she loved Jake, she would go on wanting and never having.
Somehow, no matter how hard it was, no matter how painful, she would stop loving him.
Jake hated himself for doing it, but he rode toward Sarah’s place, a dozen excuses forming in his head. He wanted to talk to Lucius and check on the progress in the mine. He wanted to make sure she hadn’t been bitten by a snake. He’d wanted a ride, and her place was as good as any.
They were all lies.
He just wanted to see her. He just wanted to look at her, hear her talk, smell her hair. He’d stayed away from her for two weeks, hadn’t he? He had a right… He had no rights, he told himself as he rode into the yard. He had no rights, and no business thinking about her the way he was thinking about her, wanting her the way he wanted her.
She deserved a man who could make her promises and keep them, who could give her the kind of life she’d been born to live.
He wasn’t going to touch her again. That was a promise he’d made himself when he’d ridden away from her the last time. If he touched her, he wouldn’t pull back. That would only cause them both more misery. He’d hurt her. He had seen that plain enough when he’d left her. But that was nothing compared to what he would have done if he’d stayed.
It was quiet. Jake pulled up his mount and took a long, cautious look around, his hand hovering over the butt of his gun. The dog wasn’t yapping, nor was there any smoke rising from the chimney. The saddle creaked as he dismounted.
He didn’t knock, but pushed open the door and listened. There wasn’t a sound from inside. He could see, as his eyes scanned from one corner to the next, that the cabin was empty and as tidy as a church. The curtains she’d sewed had already begun to fade, but they moved prettily in the hot wind. His shoulders relaxed.
She’d done something here. That was something else he had to admire about her. She’d taken less than nothing and made it a home. There were pictures on the walls. One was a watercolor of wildflowers in soft, dreamy hues. It looked like her, he thought as he took a closer study. All dewy and fresh and delicate. Flowers like that would wither fast if they weren’t tended. He moved to the next, his brows drawing together as he scanned it. It was a pencil drawing-a sketch, he figured she’d call it. He recognized the scene, the high, arrogant buttes, the sun-bleached rock. If you looked west from the stream you’d see it. It wasn’t an empty place. The Apache knew the spirits that lived there. But oddly, as he studied the lines and shadows, he thought Sarah might know them, too. He would never have imagined her taking the time to draw something so stark and strong, much less hang it on the wall so that she would see it every time she turned around.
Somehow-he couldn’t quite figure out the why of it-it suited her every bit as much as the wildflowers.
Annoyed with himself, he turned away. She knew something about magic, he figured. Didn’t the cabin smell of her, so that his stomach kept tying itself in knots? He’d be better off out in the ah--fifty miles away.
A book caught his eye as he started out. Without giving a thought to her privacy, he opened it. Apparently she’d started a diary. Unable to resist, he scanned the first page.
She’d described her arrival in Lone Bluff. He had to grin as he read over her recounting of the Apache raid and his timely arrival. She’d made him sound pretty impressive, even if she’d noted what she called his “infuriating and unchristian behavior.”
There was a long passage about her father, and her feelings about him. He passed it by. Grief was to be respected, unless it needed to be shared. He chuckled out loud as she described her first night, the cold can of beans and the sounds that had kept her awake and trembling until morning. There were bits and pieces he found entertaining enough about the townspeople and her impressions of life in the West. Then he caught his name again.
“Jake Redman is an enigma.” He puzzled over the word, sure he’d never heard it before. It sounded a little too fancy to be applied to him.
I don’t know if one might call him a diamond in the rough, though rough he certainly is. Honesty forces me to admit that he has been of some help to me and shown glimmers of kindness. I can’t resolve my true feelings about him, and I wonder why I find it necessary to try. He is a law unto himself and a man wholly lacking in manners and courtesy. His reputation is distressing, to say the least. He is what is referred to as a gunslinger, and he wears his weapons as smoothly as a gentleman wears a watch fob. Yet I believe if one dug deeply enough one might discover a great deal of goodness there. Fortunately, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do the digging. Despite his manner and his style of living there is a certain, even a strong, attractiveness about him. He has fine eyes of clear gray, a mouth that some women might call poetic, particularly when he smiles, and truly beautiful hands.