“I should have trusted you sooner. I should have welcomed you back with open arms when you first returned.” She sniffled, trying to blink back the tears, but her eyes were two endless watering pots. “I held myself back from you, and all because I was afraid of getting hurt. But when you left and I was here alone, I realized?—”
“I never should have left. I was wrong for putting my hotel before you and the girls. But I’m just so scared to lose it, especially with my shoulder. I can’t even keep you safe without hurting it.”
She pressed a hand to it, and he hissed out a breath. “Did my attacker hurt it?”
“Everything hurts it. Don’t you see? I’m confined to desk work for the rest of my life. I can barely manage to keep you safe when your life is at risk, and even now, I can’t get that criminal into a cell without help.” He shook his head, his gaze dropping down to his feet.
“No, Thomas, I told you. Your shoulder is like the scars on Christ’s hands.”
“Except Christ could still use his hands, but my shoulder…”
“I love you anyway. I don’t need you to haul crates or chip away at mine rock, Thomas. If you can love me with all myflaws, then I can love you with yours. And what I see right now, standing before me, is a husband who kept me safe even though doing so caused you great pain.”
“You don’t…” He brought his gaze up to hers, then dropped it once more. “You don’t see me as less of a man because of my shoulder?”
“Oh, Thomas.” She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him so tight he hissed again. “Never. You just saved my life. And when you left for Deadwood two days ago, I saw a man who wanted to provide for his family the best way he could. I should’ve respected your desire to provide for us more, should have respected that all along. I wish I’d never told you I wouldn’t go to South Dakota with you, not even when you first came back. I should have up and left for Deadwood that day and trusted God would work everything out.”
He rubbed his hand up and down her back in long, soothing motions. “There was a snowstorm. You couldn’t have left even if you wanted to.”
She sniffled and grinned up at him. “You understand what I mean.”
“I’m just glad you’re safe.” He stopped stroking her and crushed her against his chest.
She breathed in the scent of him, crisp winter air and man. “I love you, Thomas, even with your flaws. And I’m so very sorry for losing sight of that.”
“I love you too. Now let’s go find Isaac and get this brute dragged into a cell where he belongs.”
“O’Byrne,” Elijah called across the snowy street.
The man didn’t acknowledge him as he climbed the steps to the mercantile.
“O’Bryne,” he tried again, then bent his head against the pelting snow and hastened toward the mercantile. What had started out as a mild winter was quickly turning into a beast. They’d had sun for two days since Christmas, and every other day had pummeled them with snow.
Virgil O’Byrne pulled open the door to the mercantile, not bothering to hold it open behind him.
Elijah shouldered through a moment later and stomped his snowy boots on the rug. “O’Byrne. Can I have a word with you?”
The man muttered something and disappeared down the dry goods aisle.
“It won’t take long.” Elijah followed him to where he stood in front of the flour, the snow from his boots creating a small puddle on the floor.
“If this is about Frank, I already told the sheriff. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout him trying to kill that woman. And I don’t know nothin’ ’bout whatever papers he did or didn’t have in his pocket neither.”
Elijah held up his hands. “This isn’t about Frank Ebberhard. I wanted to ask about your children.”
It was the wrong thing to say. The man’s posture grew stiffer, and he muttered something under his breath before speaking. “I keep telling everyone, they’re my young’uns. Not no one else’s. Don’t know why everyone’s suddenly got their dander up about a man being a pa to his young’uns.”
Elijah held up his hands again, the least threatening gesture he could think of. “I don’t have any problem with a man being a pa to his children. Heaven knows I’m grateful for how good of a pa I had growing up.”
The muscles at the side of O’Byrne’s mouth twitched.
“Thing of it was, my ma was always around to help him. He was a fisherman, and if he’d had to put in a full day’s work on top of caring for us young’uns, well, let’s just say I don’t think I’d have as fond of memories of my pa as I do.”
The words hung in the air between them, and Elijah ran his eyes over O’Byrne. He’d been praying about what to do ever since he and Victoria had taken the children to their father. He couldn’t go on not seeing them when they lived in the same town. Couldn’t go on getting sparse reports from his brother about how the children were faring and sneaking out to the cabin when their father was gone.
He took his hat off his head and twisted it in his hands. “So I was wondering if Victoria and I might help with that a bit. Must be hard, not having Jenny around anymore, and before that, the children had their mother, didn’t they?”
O’Byrne gave him a brisk nod.
