Levi immediately perked up when she set it on the table. “Is that apple?” he asked with a hopeful note to his voice.
“It is.” Rebecca grinned and handed him a knife to cut the pie.
He thoughtfully cut slices for each of the children and for her before cutting his own. Rebecca reached for the knife he’d set down, and he laid his hand on her arm.
“Thank you,” he said, giving her a happy smile as he squeezed her arm.
Rebecca wasn’t certain if it was the smile or the feel of his hand against the sleeve of her dress that made her go warm inside. “You’re welcome,” she said, hoping that she wasn’t blushing.
After they ate, Roger solemnly asked Levi if he could accompany him outside to help with the chores. Levi paused, and then nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. You can learn, and then you can help me teach your little brother.”
That made Roger stand a little taller, and Rebecca beamed with happiness for her son as he followed Levi out into the cold. Gwynnie and Sarah sat down with a basket of sewing, and Johnnie tried to teach Emmy a game.
Rebecca stood there for a moment, counting her blessings. She supposed she could have felt guilty for feeling anything more than companionship toward Levi. After all, John had been her husband for so long. She’d grieved his loss for months, and she figured that a part of her would feel that pain forever.
But something about Levi lit a spark of joy inside her that at one point, she never thought she’d feel again. If the tables were turned, she thought, and John had been the one to lose her, she wouldn’t begrudge him finding happiness again, not when there was so much life left to live. He would’ve wanted the same for her, she knew it in the core of her heart.
And perhaps Levi was the key to that happiness—if she could get him to continue to open up to her.
Chapter Six
ALEXANDER PRATHER WASin the ranch house. Levi knew it with every fiber of his being, even though he had yet to lay eyes on the man.
He lifted the binoculars again, searching for any sign of the man though the windows. The lady of the house, Mrs. Cooper, scurried quickly through the kitchen downstairs. She was a slight thing, somewhere near forty years old. Her husband, who owned the place, was the opposite in size and stature, with a long salt-and-pepper beard and a booming voice. Whether they allowed Prather to remain ensconced inside or were forced to, Levi hadn’t yet determined. Upstairs, the windows were vacant. Wherever Prather was, he knew enough to keep away from the glass.
The Coopers had no children, but a small cadre of ranch hands lived on the property. And men of all sorts of questionable character came and went. A couple of them walked out of the house now while Cooper stood at the doorway. They trudged through the snow without a glance backward and made for the stable, where they retrieved their horses and left. None of them saw Levi, who remained hidden in the trees that lined the creek nearby.
He dropped his binoculars when Cooper moved across the snow toward the barn. It was past time for Levi to be heading home. So far, Rebecca hadn’t questioned the frequency of hisrides across the property. And the less she knew about his other line of work, the better off she’d be.
He tucked the binoculars back into the saddle bag, rubbed his gloved hands together until the pins and needles subsided, and then directed his horse down toward the creek. He drug a large but narrow tree limb behind him to cover his tracks. The last thing he needed was Mrs. Cooper coming down to her springhouse and finding evidence that he’d been lingering so near their home.
His plan was simple enough. Wait for Prather to emerge from the house, and then make an arrest. It sounded easy enough, especially when he’d been given the job back in Denver last spring. But now . . . Levi shook his head. Clearly the man knew they were looking for him. Prather had spent what might have otherwise been a lucrative summer holed up in the Cooper house. His men had continued his work, striking trains and stagecoaches all over, with no real indication about where they’d surface next.
Prather was getting rich by doing nothing at all.
It galled Levi to his core, and with every telegram he received about another robbery, it only made him grow more determined to stop the man.
“Levi?”
Rebecca’s voice jarred his attention back to the present. With a start, he realized he’d traveled all the way back down the creek nearly to home. He dropped the tree limb and dismounted.
“What is that branch for?” Rebecca asked, looking at it curiously.
Levi pushed his hat back, trying to figure out what to say. He wouldn’t lie to her, and yet he couldn’t give her the entire truth. “To cover my tracks. I don’t think one can be too cautious.”
