Page 28 of Brian and Cora (The Bachelors of Three Bend Lake #2)

B rian shifted in his chair, trying to find a position that didn't send spikes of pain through his leg.

He'd overdone it with the crutches yesterday, showing off like some fool peacock, and now he was paying the price.

Through the open door, he could see Cora on the back porch, bent over her lap desk, the morning sun glinting on her hair as she wrote.

In a patch of sunlight, Sassy Girl was curled up next to her.

The sight of her industriously writing stirred something in him—an itch he hadn't felt since he’d been shot.

During the posse’s adventures, he'd managed to jot down notes despite fatigue, rain, and then the pain and laudanum fog.

Now those notes called to him, begging to be transformed into a more coherent narrative.

Leaning over, he picked up his crutches from the floor and maneuvered himself to his feet.

He shifted the crutches into place, and hobbled to the door, carefully navigating around the furniture.

He’d been outside a few times to practice walking with crutches across the porch and had learned to manage with speed.

But, inside, the crowded room presented too many obstacles. He stopped just outside the doorway.

She looked up, holding her pen still, and watching him come through the door.

“Cora?” He hated how his voice came out begrudgingly when he needed a favor and strove for a more friendly tone. "Might I borrow your lap desk when you're finished?"

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "You can use it now.

I writing to my friend Ivy and I can do that at the table.

" She tilted her head, studying him with those perceptive gray eyes.

"Are you planning to write? Sketch?” She waved the letter to dry, wiped off the ink and capped off the pen, fitting them into place inside the desk, and closing the top.

“Write.”

“Do you want to sit out here while you do so?” She patted the arm of the rocker next to her. “The sunshine is lovely. I’m trying to savor every day.”

He cast a reluctant glance at the rocking chair. “Maybe in a few days if the weather is good. For now, the wing chair is more comfortable.”

She stood and walked around him to go inside and waited next to the wing chair.

He hobbled over, and then did the complicated shuffle that turned him about. After handing her the crutches, he sank into the chair, holding in a groan.

She gave him the lap desk. “Do you need stationery?”

After placing the boxy shape on his lap, Brian pointed to the bookshelf. “Could you please bring me that blue leather-covered book? The one on the right with no title? I’ll write in that. And also bring me that little brown notebook. The one you tucked away when you emptied my saddle bags.”

She searched the crowded shelves until she found the journal and the battered notebook and handed both to him.

“Thank you.” He held up the notebook, opening it to a random page to show the cramped, penciled writing.

"This looks worse for wear because I brought it along and took notes during the posse's expedition. Now, I intend to write out a more ordered account while my memory’s still fresh and I’m no longer muddleheaded. "

Her face lit up with interest. "How fascinating! I'd love to read it when you're finished." She lowered herself into the other wing chair.

"No." The refusal came out sharper than Brian intended. At her hurt expression, he forced himself to explain. "It's not just facts. There are... private thoughts. Feelings." The admission made him want to squirm worse than his aching leg.

“I understand,” she said stiffly.

"I plan to use some of the material for an adventure book,” he rushed out, trying to make amends. “You can read that when it's published."

"Oh." She glanced toward his bookshelf and wrinkled her nose. "Like those dime novels?"

Something in her tone—a subtle disdain that painfully reminded him of his father—made his jaw clench. He inhaled and exhaled, striving for patience. "Exactly like those 'lowly' books that entertain thousands of readers who can't afford or aren’t interested in leather-bound volumes of poetry."

Pink stained her cheeks. "I didn't say they were lowly."

"You didn't have to."

She pressed her lips together, apparently unable to disagree.

He gestured toward the shelf. "I challenge you to read one before you judge the genre. Start with The Robber and the Robber Baron. Or read any of them."

Her chin lifted in that stubborn way he was beginning to recognize. "Fine. I accept your challenge."

"Fine,” he ground out.

They glared at each other, before Cora stood abruptly and marched the few steps to the bookshelf. She pulled out the nearest one of his books and glanced at the cover. With a little gasp, she looked up and narrowed her eyes at him. “You wrote this?”

“And nine others,” he said coldly. “That one’s my best seller.”

She gave him a stilted nod. "I'll be in my room if you need anything."

"I won't."

The stiff-backed march continued into the bedroom. She closed the door behind her with a firm click that wasn't quite a slam.

Brian stared at the closed door, irritation and something that might have been disappointment warring in his chest. He'd hoped she’d be different from the literary snobs who looked down their noses at popular fiction or, at least, his brand of popular fiction. Apparently, he'd been wrong.

With effort, he forced himself to put the annoying woman out of his head. Instead, he opened the lap desk for ink and the pen, and then closed the top, positioning his journal for the most comfortable writing position.

He picked up the pen, thought back to the morning of the Harvest Festival, dipped the pen into the inkwell, and began to write. For the first time in months, the words flowed.

Hours later, Cora turned the final page of The Robber and the Robber Baron. She carefully closed the book, her mind reeling. She'd been wrong. Completely, utterly, embarrassingly wrong.

She'd started reading with the intention of skimming through quickly, just enough to satisfy Brian's challenge.

But from the first page, Jack Stone's adventure gripped her, pulling her into the story.

The vivid descriptions of the Montana landscape, the complex villain who wasn't entirely evil, the hero who wasn't entirely good, the relationship between Jack and his horse that brought tears to her eyes when the animal was injured, was nothing like what she'd expected.

Glancing at the window, she was shocked to see the sun low in the sky.

She'd been reading almost all day, only emerging to prepare meals and clean up after them.

Even then, she'd eaten mechanically, her mind still lost in Jack's world. Back in her room, lying on the bed, the waning sunlight hadn’t been enough to make her stop.

She should have lit her bedside lamp. Good way to ruin my vision.

Unexpected tears pricked her eyes, a complex roiling of multiple emotions.

How moved she was by the story. So much so, that she hadn’t wanted it to end.

How dismissive she’d been to Brian about his novels.

How ashamed she felt for criticizing his work and his dream, when she knew all too well how horrible it felt for people to do the same to hers.

On the other side of the door, Cora imagined she could hear the steady scratch of Brian's pen.

He'd been writing with the same focused intensity she'd shown while reading, referring frequently to the notebook. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other in the intervening time, preserving a cold silence.

I need to apologize. The thought made her stomach knot. He'd crow over her, no doubt. Make some cutting remark about literary snobs getting their comeuppance. She deserved his censure, but that didn't make the prospect of saying so any more pleasant.

Taking a deep breath, Cora rose from the bed and straightened her skirts.

Somewhere, along the way, she’d removed her boots.

Looking down at her stocking feet, she debated about donning them again.

Ladies didn’t go about in stocking feet, especially around gentlemen who weren’t their relatives.

But this lady can’t muster up the energy.

Holding the book to her chest, Cora opened her door and stepped into the main room.

Brian looked up from his writing, his expression guarded.

Sassy Girl rose and ambled over to sniff her skirt.

Without shifting her gaze from Brian, Cora bent her knees for a quick pat, before straightening.

"I owe you an apology," she said without preamble.

"I was wrong to judge your work without reading it.

Your book is..." She searched for words that wouldn't sound condescending.

"Wonderful. Truly. I couldn't put it down. "

His pen stopped moving. Something flickered across his face—vulnerability?—before his usual mask slipped back into place. "You don't have to say that."

"I'm not." She moved closer, still clutching the book, and perched on the edge of the other wing chair.

"Jack Stone feels real. His friendship with Samuel has depth.

The way you showed the railroad baron's corruption without making him a caricature.

That scene where Jack has to choose between revenge and justice.

.." She shook her head. "I expected mindless adventure. Lots of gore. No emotions except for the hero’s love of his dog or his horse.”

“Jack Stone loved his horse.”

“He also loved his sister and his niece and the preacher’s daughter, even if he thought he wasn’t good enough for her.”

Brian’s expression softened, but the look in his eyes remained wary.

“You wrote about loyalty and moral choices and what makes a man honorable. I didn’t want it to end."

Brian cleared his throat roughly. "Well. That's... Thank you."

"How did you come up with the idea?" Now that the worst was over, Cora relaxed and settled deeper into the chair, lowering the book to her lap.

"I read about railroad corruption in the newspapers.

Started thinking about what would happen if an ordinary man got caught up in it.

Someone who just wanted to do right but kept getting pulled deeper into the conflict.

" As he talked, his eyes lit up, the guarded expression falling away.

"Jack's based partly on a ranch hand I met here and partly on stories my grandfather told about honor and choices. "

"Your grandfather sounds like he was important to you."

The light in his eyes dimmed. "He was. A long time ago." Before she could probe that painful-sounding past, he gestured to the bookshelf. "The others are there if you're interested. No more Jack Stone, though. Each adventure is different."

"I'd love to read them.” Cora put her sincerity into her tone. She gestured at the journal. "Are you writing just about your own experience, or about everyone’s?”

“Well, I don’t quite know about everyone’s unless they talked about what happened. After missing the robbers in Morgan’s Crossing, we split off and headed different directions, trying to track where they went, before all meeting up at the Flanigans’ farmhouse.”

He hesitated, then seemed to make a decision. "Want to hear some of it?"

"I’d like nothing better."

For the next hour, Brian read from his journal, his voice bringing the events to vivid life. Cora found herself holding her breath as he described racing around the stockade's perimeter, gasping when he was shot, feeling the chaos and fear and determination of that terrible morning.

"How are you planning to use this for your next adventure?"

"Not sure yet. Obviously, I need to change the details to protect the innocent—and the guilty.

" He tapped the journal. "Can't have my hero racing to open a gate with a bullet in his leg. Wouldn’t be realistic. But he can’t collapse on the ground and let everyone else do what needs doing.

Readers expect him to be more heroic than that. "

"But that's exactly what makes it heroic," Cora protested. "You kept going despite the pain. You did what needed to be done."

He looked at her strangely. "You really think so?"

"I know so." She leaned forward, enthusiasm carrying her past their earlier awkwardness. "Brian, this could be your best book yet. The authenticity of it, the real danger."

"You understand," he said softly, wonder in his voice. "You actually understand what I'm trying to do."

"Of course I do. Now." She felt her cheeks heat. "I'm sorry I was such a snob earlier. My grandfather loved books—all books. He would have scolded me for judging without reading."

"Your grandfather sounds like a wise man."

"He was." The familiar ache of loss rose in her chest. "He died recently. That's part of why I came west with my great-aunt Rose."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

The simple sincerity in his voice brought tears to her eyes.

She blinked them back. “When he was so ill, Aunt Rose and I took turns reading to him. I wish I had known about your books then. I’ll bet one of your rousing adventure stories would have occupied his mind better than some of the boring scientific treatises he chose. ”

“I’m not sure that’s much of a compliment,” he drawled.

She laughed. “You know what I mean.”

They fell silent, the air between them seeming to thicken, charged with unspoken possibilities. Then Sassy Girl barked outside, breaking the spell, and they both looked away.

"I should start dinner," Cora said, standing quickly.

"I should rest this leg," Brian agreed.

But as she moved to the kitchen area, Cora couldn't help glancing back to find him watching her with an expression she couldn't quite decipher. Something had shifted between them in the last hour, something that had nothing to do with books and everything to do with a deepening understanding.

As she prepared their meal, she wondered about that look and, again, later as she lay in bed. Whatever was happening between them, Cora had a feeling it could become more complicated than any adventure Jack Stone had ever faced.