He had liked it that way. Yes, by damn, he had.
Until now.
"Well, what the devil are you going to do about it, MacQuade?" he bit out aloud, giving the drawing board a shove. "What in God's holy hell are you going to do abouther?"
What the blazes could he do?
He scowled. He could hardly desert the lot of them in the middle of the prairie, and what explanation could he give if he were to cut and run when they reached the next town?
Hell, no, Ashleen, I'm not going to guide you the rest of the way to Texas because I was fool enough to fall in love with you.
Yet wouldn't that be the best for all of them? If he were to exit their lives as quickly, as cleanly as possible, excising himself as thoroughly as Kennisaw had once done with the lance a Kiowa had buried in Garret's shoulder?
He was no man for a woman the like of Ashleen O'Shea—a woman who wanted roots so damn desperately for herself and those four children that she had made a journey most men would flinch from.
He hadn't stayed in one place for more than two weeks since he'd left his father's farm. But even if he had never moved from the cabin on the cliff’s edge, it wouldn't have mattered.
Truth of it was, he was a bastard to live with—had a helluva temper on the best of days, and when he was buried in his work, and someone interrupted him—
Garret grimaced, remembering how he'd almost leveled Kennisaw with his fist the day the older man had charged up to him and frightened away a clump of deer Garret had been drawing.
It hadn't mattered that a dozen Apaches had been scouting nearby, or that their faces had been smeared with war paint. And if the cause of the interruption had been anything so trivial as a lost doll, or a butterfly caught in tiny hands, Garret didn't know how badly he might have reacted.
No. Ashleen needed a man like his father had been—wed to the land as certainly as he had been to his woman.
Stoic, patient, strong and tough as oak, and just as dependable. She needed a father for those children, and Garret had never even thought he would manage to be a decent one for a child of his own blood, let alone those of another man.
Garret raked his fingers through the longish dark strands of his hair, feeling that old familiar ache at the niggling wish that he could be the man his father had been. That he could be that man for her.
But he couldn't be. Couldn't ever be. And it would be cruel to himself, and crueler still to her, to pretend that he could.
Yes. He would take them all to the next town, then ride off. Say good-bye to Ashleen O'Shea forever. Bu he knew that if he rode to the other side of the world, he would never be able to forget her.
Leaving was the only thing he could do. As soon as blasted well possible.
Yet at that very moment all his resolve vanished, borne away on the last mists of dawn as a figure garbed in pink-sprigged calico came out of the brush, a bucket in her hand, her face turned up to the newborn day.
A sunbonnet as blue as her eyes hung by its strings down her back, letting the first fingers of sunlight thread through the golden tresses. And the sight of it made Garret burn with the memory of how those silken strands had felt, clinging to his fingers.
She was probably singing. Blast it, she always did, in that sweet Irish brogue that made him think of angels. And soon she would be laughing, tugging playfully at Shevonne's braids when the girl acted too dignified, or skimming her finger down Liam's freckled nose, or looking at Meggie with that sad, solemn hopefulness that never ceased to wrench his heart.
Longing raged inside him, making him aware of an emptiness too great to be borne—a barrenness as wide as any desert he had ever traveled, and thrice as bleak.
Would it be such a crime to drink in just a little of the life Ashleen O'Shea offered with those gentle, innocent hands? Would it be so terrible to bury himself in her smiles, her laughter, even her tears?
His own throat tightened as he remembered the way she had wept in his arms and the desperate need he had felt to soothe away her pain.
In her way, she had needed him as much as he had needed her last night. She had needed the reassurance that what she had done was right. Had needed to speak of burdens she had carried alone for too long.
Garret's lashes drifted shut as he heard Kennisaw's voice echo in his memory.
Everyone needs someone, boy. To talk at, t' cry with, even t' holler at when the spirit moves 'em. Cain't keep your hurts buried inside ye forever—festers there, like a cancer eating away at all what is good, till it poisons everythin' ye do.
It was too late to rid himself of his own ghosts, Garret knew, but would it be so awful if he helped Ashleen bury her hauntings and gathered up snippets of her joy in life in return, like honey to pack away for the dismal days ahead without her?
Days that would be spent on the vengeance trail, tracking the men who had murdered his family, murdered Kennisaw. His mouth set, grim, as he pictured the Garveys as they had been that day at Stormy Ridge—Cain sneering, satanically evil; Eli a hulking giant with dull eyes, laughing at the MacQuade family's struggles with the benign cruelty of a boy watching a moth stuck on a pin, beating its wings to shreds as it struggled to live.
Garret's fist clenched, eyes narrowed. Yes. There would be time enough to kill them both once he had gotten Ashleen and the children as far as the town of Three Forks, twenty miles from Stormy Ridge. There would be time to be eaten alive again with hate. To feel the memories so agonizing they still haunted his dreams.
