Page 44 of The Gunslinger’s Bride (Montana Mavericks: Historicals #1)

S hots rang out, and immediately the kid dropped a pistol and held his hand to his chest, his face contorted with pain.

Linc Manley lay on his back in the street, one boot on the wooden stairs, his hat fallen away. He held a gun lifelessly in his gloved hand.

Brock had one hand on his gun, too, but Abby didn’t know if he was drawing it or putting it away; it had all happened too fast. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

People crushed in around the fallen gunfighter, and someone called for a doctor. “That’s you, Laine,” Abby said.

Laine’s almond-shaped, dark eyes blinked in dreaded resignation. She took Abby’s hand and they hurried through the slippery mud to the other side of the street.

Blood bubbled from a hole in Manley’s brocade vest. His breath wheezed from his throat. He looked at Brock and tried to say something. Abby covered her mouth with her hand and shuddered with the remembered horror of watching a man die.

Laine took an apron that Tess Dillard handed her and pressed it to the wound. Even Abby could tell it was a hopeless act.

“Like you said,” Manley rasped, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t talk,” Brock told him, leaning forward.

He took Brock’s collar and pulled him down. “One of us is dying here.”

Brock met his eyes.

“Someone…will always…want to be faster….” He chuckled, a ghastly, choked sound. When he coughed, Brock helped him turn on his side to spit out blood. Bile rose in Abby’s throat.

“Don’t let anybody take my guns,” Manley said, a vein bulging in his temple with the strength it took to speak.

Brock assured him.

His eyes rolled back.

Laine placed her fingers on his neck. “He is dead.”

The crowd murmured, and men turned to talk to each other.

Brock leaned over Linc Manley’s body with the front of his coat open, and Abby thought she saw him tuck something into the other man’s coat. Brock straightened, and his grim expression distracted her.

He bent at the waist, unbuckled the holsters from the man’s body and held them for a moment. Turning, he walked toward the kid, who stood surrounded by another, smaller crowd. Bart Baxter and Will held him between them. “His hand’s shot,” Will said.

“Good.” Brock leaned toward the boy and poked his chest with Linc Manley’s gun belt. “Maybe that’ll keep him from killing more people.”

The boy cringed and whined, “One o’ you sons of bitches shot me!”

“You’re lucky that bullet isn’t between your eyes,” Brock growled.

Sheriff Kincaid showed up then, raising a hand to silence the dozen voices talking at the same time. “Quiet!” He turned in a half circle. “Who saw the whole thing?”

Twenty voices declared they had.

“Who shot Manley?”

“He did.” In a consensus, they pointed to the kid.

“And who shot you?”

“Jack Spade,” he said, cradling his hand. Laine hadn’t made a move to help him. “I killed Jack Spade!” He glanced at Brock with uncertainty.

“You don’t know for sure he was Jack Spade.” James glanced toward the man lying in the street. “He’s dead?”

Laine and Brock affirmed that he was.

“Somebody take him to the livery, then. Briggs can lay him out.”

Brock handed his cousin the gun belt.

Sam came out of the hardware store with the makeshift stretcher they’d used to transport Mr. Waverly. “Somebody give me a hand.”

George Lundburg moved forward, and with another two men, they got the body onto the stretcher. Manley’s coat gaped open in the process.

The butcher leaned over his prone form. “I’ll be damned!”

Heads turned.

“Look at this!” He slid a small stack of colorful playing cards from Manley’s vest pocket and splayed them for everyone to see. Every one of them was a jack of spades.

Conversation rose all around them.

“Told ya I killed Jack Spade,” the kid bragged.

Brock drew back his fist and slugged him in the jaw with a sickening crack. The blow elicited a howl, but effectively shut him up.

James placed a restraining hand on Brock’s chest. “Can’t let you beat up any more prisoners.”

“Lock him in there with Matthews, will you, James? Let them kill each other.”

Abby elbowed her way to Brock’s side. “What did he mean by that? Have you talked to Everett?”

“Briefly. He’ll be heading out of town as soon as his jail time is up.”

“I hope you slugged him once for me.”

He slanted her a glance.

She’d been terrified of him getting caught in the middle of a gunfight. Seeing him standing here in the sunlight, as handsome and vital as he’d ever been, she breathed a prayer of thanks. “For a few horrifying seconds there, I thought I might lose you.”

Something flickered behind his blue eyes. “So did I.”

She had the feeling he didn’t mean it in the same context she had. Around them, paying Brock and Abby scant attention, neighbors talked and gestured and prepared to move on about their business. The gossipmongers had something more absorbing to dwell on now.

Laine hurried home to get supplies for the kid’s hand. Brock walked Abby toward her store and watched her climb the stairs, then stop and turn back.

“You put those cards in his vest pocket, didn’t you?”

His expression didn’t change. He was good at hiding what he was thinking. The only times she’d ever seen a reaction on his face were when they’d been involved intimately…and when he looked at Jonathon.

“Jack Spade is dead now,” she said.

He nodded.

She remembered the lightning-fast speed with which he’d leaped from her divan and held a gun to her head. She’d known then, she supposed. She’d known in her heart every time she looked at those guns, heard the regret in his voice, read the reactions only she could pick up on.

“You stayed away to protect your family,” she said, thinking aloud. “To protect me…and the son you didn’t know you had. It took more courage to stay away than to come home, didn’t it?”

He wasn’t answering. His face revealed nothing.

Over his shoulder, she saw Sam approaching. “Watch the store for a while, will you?”

Brock turned.

“Sure,” Sam replied.

“By the way,” Abby asked, “how’s that girl from the reservation working out? A big help with the baby?”

“A godsend,” Sam replied, then passed her on the stairs and entered the store.

“Come with me,” she said, and stepped back down and around the corner. Brock followed her up the stairs and inside her kitchen, pausing in the doorway to glance back down at the street.

“They have better things to talk about today,” she assured him, closing and locking the door. Abby removed her coat and took Brock’s. “I have something to say.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s have tea—or coffee, you like coffee.”

“Let’s get to the point. Everything’s a work of art with you.”

She filled the enamel pot with water and added a log to the cook stove. “Trying to make me mad?” she asked, measuring grounds.

“That’s something I don’t have to work at with you.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

She offered him a smile and a slice of corn bread.

He accepted the plate. “You can’t make me say anything I don’t want to.”

“It’s my turn to say something,” she told him. Behind her the coffee boiled, the aroma filling the air.

Brock took a few bites of the corn bread and set the plate aside.

Abby removed the pot and poured two mugs full, spooning sugar into Brock’s.

“You laid it all out for me,” she told him. “Shared your regret and your feelings and apologized…and I couldn’t take those extra steps. I was too afraid. Afraid you’d leave again, but more afraid of how powerful these feelings are.”

“I understand, Abby.”

“I know you do. And that’s why I was afraid.

That and a lot of other reasons. If I couldn’t love you, I had to hate you—I had to hate myself.

You said I was strong because I knew what I wanted.

But what I wanted I couldn’t have, and so I told myself I didn’t want it.

I told myself I didn’t love you. I told everyone I could that you were a detestable, vile excuse for a human being, and then I started to believe it.

“Until you came back…until I was forced to see who you really are and what I’d become.”

“You were hurt,” he said. “Hurt and young and scared, that’s all.”

“But you see,” she went on, “if I forgave you, then I would have to forgive myself. And if I forgave both of us, then I would risk loving you again.”

“And you love me, don’t you?”

“Sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she asked, tears threat en ing.

“About some things.” Stepping toward her, he took her hands, and she knew he could feel her trembling. “I’m sure I can stay here now. Nothing will ever make me leave again. Nothing.”

“I believe you.” She’d seen him slip those playing cards into Linc Manley’s pocket so that it would look like the man who had died was the famous Jack Spade. Why would he do that unless he was Jack Spade and he wanted to put that entity to rest once and for all?

She had never wanted anything as much as she wanted this man in her life, wanted him to have and to hold forever.

“Forgive me,” she begged softly. “Like I’ve forgiven you.”

Brock wrapped his arms around her and pressed her to his chest comfortingly. “You don’t need my forgiveness, Abby.”

She pulled back enough to slug his chest with a closed fist. “Don’t tell me what I need! I know what I need. I held on to those feelings of anger and resentment, and I talked bad about you to everyone. I blamed you for things we did together, without taking responsibility, and I need forgiveness!”

He grabbed her hand. “All right, woman, I forgive you.”

She laughed, but it came out a sob. “That’s better.”

“Shall we drink our coffee now?” he asked, his expression almost teasing. “That is why you brought me up here, isn’t it?”

“I brought you up here to tell you I forgave you and that I love you, but you make everything so—so difficult.”

His face did change then, a perceptible flutter of eye lashes and the flare of a nostril. It was a heady feeling to crack the steel-plated armor of a man like Brock Kincaid. Abby experienced the satisfaction of a personal victory.