Page 43 of The Gunslinger’s Bride (Montana Mavericks: Historicals #1)

“If they don’t want you back,” she declared.

“It’s never been that way between us. I’ve always wanted you just as much. More.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Desire. You desire me. It’s different.”

“You desire me, too. Right?” She could confuse him easily this way.

“It’s different,” she argued. “I wanted you!” Her voice broke. “Wanted you to stay, wanted you to love me, wanted you to make a family with me.” She moved away and wrapped both hands over the back of a chair.

He studied the lustrous braid that hung down her back, the delicate curve of her bruised cheek, the coil of fine hair at her neck. Just looking at her, he could smell the delicate lilac scent of her skin, though the smell had to be imprinted in his memory because he was standing too far away.

She was a woman of strong passions: love, hate, resentment, desire. A woman of strength and fortitude, a prickly woman when defensive. But like a porcupine, she had a vulnerable underbelly.

He understood now. Since her passion for him had been so strong, her loss had been agony as well. He regretted ever hurting her, ever making her lose her trust, cursed himself for crushing her girlish fancies.

“I’m asking you to forgive me for being a fool,” he said. “I didn’t know what I wanted back then. I wouldn’t have made a good husband. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you, because I knew you were in love with me. I knew I wasn’t capable of being what you wanted, and that scared me.

“I’ve admitted I was a coward. I’ve done everything but stand on my head and spit nickels to change your mind about me. I’m just damned sorry, Abby. What more is there?”

She turned halfway back, glanced at him and away. “It’s over,” she said. “It’s past and behind us. Let’s forget it.”

“And you’ve forgiven me?” he asked.

“Why do you have to make me say the words? Can’t you just let it go?”

He didn’t know what to make of that question. He couldn’t make her forgive him. Perhaps asking forgiveness was for his own selfish peace of mind. Maybe he didn’t deserve absolution. What he’d really been asking was if there was hope, and she wasn’t giving him any encouragement. “All right.”

He ambled to the hooks near the door and got his hat and coat.

“Brock?” she said.

He turned back.

“Um, thank you for supper.”

“You’re welcome.” Shrugging into his coat, he left.

Abby bolted the door, leaning against it for a moment.

Finally, she turned down the wall lamp and carried another lamp to her room.

She had only a few shreds of self-defense left, and she couldn’t afford to let him rip them away.

Depending on how long he actually stayed in Whitehorn, she might have plenty of opportunities to resist him, and she couldn’t do that if things were all neatly tied up between them.

All she had left was this last meager shred of defense. And she wasn’t letting go to forgive him.

At the bottom of the stairs, Brock turned left and entered the alley, as he always did when he left Abby’s. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he removed his glove and opened the front of his coat. Drawing one .45, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

At the back corner of the building next door, the orange glow of a cigar caught his attention at the same time he smelled the aroma of tobacco. His wariness eased somewhat, because obviously the person in the darkness wasn’t trying to hide.

“Evenin’,” Brock called.

“Warm one,” came the reply. He’d heard the voice before, but couldn’t place it.

This alley was an odd place for a man to stand and enjoy a smoke, so Brock left his hand on the revolver. Matthews was still in jail, but this was below Abby’s home. “Got business here?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

Brock came to a stop six feet from the indistinguishable man. The moon was up, but the figure was shadowed by the looming hardware store. “What might that be?”

The man took a few steps forward and Brock made out the hat and coat, the lean face and the dark mustache. “Manley?”

“Spade?”

Brock’s instincts took over, his mind and body functioning as one, deadly calm, alert, focused. “Name’s Kincaid,” he replied.

This wasn’t the way a flashy gunfighter like Linc Manley called a man out. There was no crowd, no one to witness the heroics he thought he possessed, no one to carry the story to the papers. He hadn’t come here tonight for a showdown, but he had come for a reason. Brock was sure on both counts.

“There seems to be a lot of speculation over which one of us is Jack Spade,” Manley said. “Amusing, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Oh, come now. Surely you can see the irony in the fact that you’re trying to lose a reputation and I’m looking to gain one.”

“It’s the looking that will get you killed,” Brock warned him.

“Such concern for my welfare is heartwarming. Who would have thought that a famous fast draw like you would be concerned for a stranger?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Jack Spade. The man who fights for law and order, the man who strikes fear into the hearts of the dangerous men he hunts down. The man who seeks justice with a pair of deadly blazing .45s.”

Brock actually chuckled. “You’ve been reading too many dime novels.”

“Writing them, actually.”

That brought Brock up short. “You’ve written stories about Jack Spade?”

“Jack Spade, Wyatt Earp, the Rock Canyon Kid—all of them. I’ve traveled the West in search of stories, and told them to thousands of readers.”

“Half that stuff isn’t true,” Brock pointed out.

“That’s why it’s fiction.” The tip of his cigar glowed as he drew on it.

In the back of his mind Brock was thinking that Manley might be trying to trick him into saying something he could use against him. “So you’re famous yourself.”

“I write under the name L. M. Hayes, but nobody remembers my name. They only remember Jack Spade’s.”

“What do you want from me?”

“The name.”

“What name?”

“Jack Spade. You’re done with it. You’re starting over here.”

This could still be a trick to draw him out in the open.

“I covered your back with the last one,” Manley added.

“What do you mean?”

“The shooter outside the restaurant. Followed him and took care of the situation.”

The information didn’t sit well. More than one person had already tracked him here. This man and the shooter.

“Figure I’ve already started earning the name,” Manley said.

Without acknowledging the man’s admission, or the fact that he believed him, Brock shook his head.

“Guess you don’t need my permission to call yourself anything you want to.

” Brock took a few steps past the man and stopped.

“But you’d be inviting trouble if you chose to use that name.

Men and boys will track you down to try to get the drop on you.

Someone will always want to be better. Faster. More famous.”

Manley touched the brim of his hat. “Warning taken.”

Brock strode through the alley, the exchange troubling him.

Reaching the livery, he saddled his horse and headed for the ranch.

Had Manley set out to find Jack Spade or had his arrival in Whitehorn merely been a coincidence?

If one man had looked for the gunslinger here, it meant others could, too.

Others who wanted more than just a chat.

Had it been foolish of Brock to come here?

Was he placing his son and the woman he loved in danger?

Just when things had turned for the better. Just when it had begun to look as though there might be a future for him here, just when he and his son had formed a tenuous bond… A terrible heaviness weighed his heart.

As much as the thought tore him apart, he gave it consideration: maybe leaving again would be his only choice.

The second thaw came a week later, the snow melting and rushing down from the mountains in a torrent, overflowing creeks and riverbeds.

The ranchers and hands from the higher country went to help others in danger of losing cattle, as well as aiding the business owners in Whitehorn, who sandbagged their buildings against disaster.

In the midst of the confusion, the circuit judge arrived and held court. Abby testified against Everett, and the judge gave him thirty days in jail.

For the most part, the population was sympathetic toward Abby, and several of the women voiced their support. Those who had bought into the rumors and snubbed her she recognized as never having been friends.

Sheriff Kincaid came to tell her one evening that Everett was planning to head East after he’d served his sentence. He’d been strongly encouraged to do so by the Kincaid family.

The river had risen to a dangerous swell and then, as if a dam had burst somewhere downstream, it gradually lowered.

Abby breathed a sigh of relief. Standing on her dock beside Laine, who wore a man’s Hudson Bay coat, she shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun and listened to the report of the cowboy who rode down the muddy street calling the news.

The town was a flurry of activity, accommodating the added business of having emergency help on hand.

Up and down the street, the buildings were surrounded by piles of strategically stacked sandbags, customers climbing over them to enter stores and businesses.

“The river is down,” Laine breathed.

“Thank God,” Abby replied.

Across the street, Sam and Brock wearily perched on kegs on the boardwalk.

Linc Manley, dressed in his long black coat and wearing a red satin bandanna, smoked a cigar and carried on a running conversation with them.

Sam and Brock had been hauling bags of grain and seed up a ladder to the Dillards’ loft all morning.

Suddenly, gunshots echoed from another street.

“Someone is celebrating the flood missing us,” Laine suggested.

“Seems they could clap or sing or something, wouldn’t you think?” Abby asked, cringing at the sound.

Several men on horseback rode toward them, mostly ranch hands, but at the front of the group was a young man who didn’t look like he’d come to Whitehorn to work. He wore no coat, but sported pistols tethered to his thighs and a pair of thin leather gloves.

The horses couldn’t hold their footing in the slick mud, and the young man impatiently waited for his mount to obey his commands.

From behind them, a commotion rose, and a throng of people appeared, most on the boardwalks to stay dry, but some running through the ankle-deep mud.

“Jack Spade!” the kid hollered, the shout echoing.

The crowd murmured. Some folks moved backward, others scrambled forward for a better look.

“Nobody here goes by that name,” Brock called back, slowly standing.

“Don’t matter what name he’s goin’ by, I reckon. I come to send him to glory. Him and anybody else who gets in my way.”

“That’s big talk,” Brock called.

Horror engulfed Abby’s senses, numbing her scalp, ringing in her ears. What was Brock doing? Stay out of it! she wanted to shout, but her lips were frozen, as if she was having a nightmare.

Sam stood, too, but he moved back against the wall.

Linc Manley crushed out his cigar with the toe of his boot and draped his coat back, away from his holsters. “Better think twice, kid. You’ve got a lot of years left for card games and pretty women.”

The kid laughed. “Guess your days are numbered, though, eh, Pop?” The kid dismounted, dropping his horse’s reins and taking a couple of steps forward. He stood wide-legged, facing Brock and the man in black. “Either of you got the gumption to draw?”

Abby’s scalp prickled with horror. Get away from there, Brock! Get back!

Brock’s coat still covered his guns, and he wore a pair of work gloves.

Abby’s stressed brain likened this moment to another many years ago, a day when her brother had looked just as cocky and sure of himself as the boy who stood in the street right now.

Fast as lightning, the kid drew both his guns.