He didn’t have to finish the sentence.Ithadhurt.And she hated that unnamed woman who had made him so suspicious now.“And you think I might do the same?”
“I don’t know,” he said with stark honestly.“I stopped expecting anything a long time ago.”
“Is that why you’re giving up now?”
He glowered at her.
“Fight, Rafe,” she demanded.“Don’t give up.They can’t send you to prison, not after my father.…”
“They can do any damn thing they want, and I don’t want to trade my life for your father’s.”
“I thought that was exactly what you did want,” she retorted, suddenly angry beyond caution.
The anger seeped from his eyes.“Christ, what have we done to you?”
Her hand went up to his face.“You’ve given me a great deal, Rafe Taylor, and so … has my father in these past few days.He has to do … certain things now, and I need your help.I need you.”
He turned away from her.He’d never been able to help anyone who needed him.Never.He thought of that six-year-old boy, held by a Comanche, as his mother was raped, then killed.He had felt so damned helpless, as if there had to be something … anything …
And then the army, and it had happened again.He had been transferred, and the unit he’d trained had fallen under the command of an arrogant glory hunter, and he’d watched it decimated.He managed to save Clint and Ben, but so many others had died.And then those men guarding the payroll …
If only he’d acted sooner …
Now Shea Randall needed him, and he was so damned scared he would fail again.
“Rafe?…”
He turned.She was standing there in a green dress, slender and strong.Stronger, he thought instantly, than either he or Randall.She was willing to take chances.She always had been, from the first moment she came here, from the moment she’d left Boston to find an unknown father.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go with us, but let my father do what he needs to do.”
“I could still go to prison.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“I have damned few prospects.”
She moved toward him and leaned into his body.“You have friends.Very good friends.You have me.”She searched desperately for some hope to hold out to him, some prospect.“We can find a little piece of land someplace and … you’re so good with horses, we could raise them.You and Clint and Ben.”
The idea was more than a little appealing to Rafe.He knew hewasgood with horses, always had been.They could round up some wild stock, break and sell them.Perhaps find a little valley someplace.The image was so good, it scared him.It had been so long since he’d permitted himself to dream, to hope.… He put his arms around her and pulled her close.“I don’t know how long …”
She looked up at him.“I love you.I’ve never loved anyone before, and I know I’ll never love anyone as I love you.It’s worth the wait.”
He leaned down and kissed her.Slowly, yearningly, heartbreakingly.A good-bye.Yet a promise too.For the first time a promise, and Shea felt a quiet, bittersweet satisfaction.He’d had so many failed promises, so many hopes broken.What if she was guiding him toward yet another one?Yet she couldn’t believe justice would fail him again.Not if she had to go see the governor herself.
She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t.Her throat was choked with fear, her heart constricted with love.What if he did go back to prison?Could he stand it again?She meant what she’d said.She would wait.But could he be caged again and remain the man he was, the man she knew had just barely survived the past ten years?
Shea was almost ready to throw her words to the wind, to ask him to run away with her, to risk being hunted, but she didn’t have the chance.His jaw set and rigid, Rafe took her hand and guided her back to the cabin with firm, determined steps.
Jack Randall had wrapped McClary’s body in a blanket and placed him next to the gelding he had found not far away in the woods.He’d known McClary must have brought a horse with him, and he’d searched for it after finding Shea had left the cabin.He’d surmised she was with Tyler.
Disregarding the pain in his shoulder, he’d shunned the sling he’d been wearing and had awkwardly finished saddling his own horse when Tyler and Shea emerged from the woods, but he hadn’t been able to lift McClary.
His daughter was clutching Tyler’s hand as if it were a lifeline.Tyler’s own face was weary and drawn.
“I’m going with you,” Rafe Tyler said, turning toward Shea.“Perhaps you’d better get that valise.”He hesitated.“I want you to take Abner.”
