As the first hint of dawn eased through the windows, Rawley awoke, aching and sore, on the sofa. After stretching to work out the stiffness, he got to his feet and wandered over to the bedroom. Faith was still there, curled on her side, sleeping soundly. She was going to feel awful when she awoke, but he figured that wouldn’t be for a few more hours yet.
He needed to let her parents know where she was before they discovered her missing and sent out a posse to hunt for her. He knew their routines, knew they were already stirring. Not bothering to take the time to wash up, he simply saddled his horse and headed over to the house.
Just as he’d expected, Dallas and Ma were sitting on the back veranda, where they always greeted the day. He pulled his horse to a halt, dismounted, and wrapped the reins around the railing before marching up the steps. They both rose, his mother approaching and giving him a kiss on his cheek as was her way.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Morning.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a fine day,” Dallas said.
Not for Faith. “I came over to let you know Faith is in my bed aslee—”
The punch to his jaw came quick and unexpected, sent him reeling back, stumbling down the steps until he landed in the dirt on his backside.
“Dallas!” Ma yelled, shoving the shoulder of the man who was now standing over him, fury darkening his features as he stood his ground, immobile against his wife’s push.
“After all we’ve done for you, you take advantage of our daughter... Get up.”
Rawley knew another punch was waiting at the end of those balled fists, closed so tightly the knuckles had gone white. He shook his head. “Nothing happened. She came to see me, was drunk, got sick, and I put her to bed. I didn’t touch her.” A bit of a lie, but if he confessed to kissing her, he’d be dead.
Breathing harshly, Dallas stared at him. A myriad of emotions—anger, betrayal, disappointment, regret, remorse—shifted over his features as his hands slowly unclenched. His resounding curse echoed around them as he bowed his head. This time when Ma shoved on him, he backed away three steps. She knelt beside Rawley. His hand shot up. “I’m all right.”
He didn’t want to be touched, not at the moment.
“I’m sorry, son,” Dallas said, his voice coarsened by true repentance and shame.
“I’m not your son,” Rawley said, pushing himself to his feet. “Your son is buried out by the windmill, and we all know that’s because of me.”
Because one winter night when he was a boy and a man had been rough with him in the alley outside the Grand Hotel, Rawley had cried out, and Cordelia Leigh, swelling with child, had heard him and come to his aid. The man, in a panic, had knocked a stack of crates onto her and injured her badly. She’d lost the baby she’d been carrying. If only Rawley had possessed the courage not to scream, not to draw attention to the horror he’d been facing.
“Rawley—”
“No. I know why you reacted like you did. I don’t blame you. If I had a daughter and a man with my background touched her, I’d kill him.”
“You weren’t responsible for what happened to you.”
“Still it happened.” And it made him feel dirty and ashamed. All the baths in the world couldn’t wash the memories away, couldn’t make him feel clean.
“Let your ma tend to your lip.”
Touching his tongue to the corner of his mouth, tasting the blood, he shook his head. “I have to leave.”
The rightness of the words brought a calm. It was the only way he could make sure that what Dallas feared would happen between him and Faith never happened. “I have to leave here, make my own way, become my own man. I’ll never be able to repay what you’ve done for me.” But leaving was a start.
With a great gust of a sigh, Dallas dropped his head back and gazed at the pinkish-purplish haze of dawn. “I struck you in fear, fear that my daughter might have gotten hurt and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
“I’d never hurt her.”
“I know that.”
“We can talk this out,” his mother said tenderly. “There’s no reason for you to go.”
But there was. “I’ve been thinking of moving on for some time. To figure out what I want and what my place in this world is.”
Dallas nodded toward the horizon. “When I’m gone, half of this ranch is yours.”
The words struck him hard on so many levels. The price he would pay to have the land was the loss of Dallas, and in spite of their present misunderstanding, he still loved the man with everything in him. The fact that it was coming to him by default. “If not for me, you’d be leaving it to your son.”
