Page 28 of Trail of Sunflowers (Texas Bloom #3)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

D eputy Gareth Glen loved his job.

Though it shamed him to admit it, he felt fulfilled as a sheriff’s deputy in ways he hadn’t as a poor miner’s son. His daddy, a hardworking man with permanently blackened hands and ragged clothing, had died in a cave-in in ’88. He’d refused to let his only son go into the trade and pushed him to finish schooling. To find an occupation that didn’t fill his lungs with sediment or keep him from sunlight six days out of the week. Lord, but Gareth missed that man. Maybe the old miner was looking down at him, proud and smiling.

A significant drawback of policing a small town was knowing everyone’s business.

Rumors circulated through the people inhabiting Dogwood, and they all found their way into the sheriff’s office. Gareth had intimate knowledge of people’s households, their deepest secrets, domestic troubles, and whether they owed money. Lawyers came and went in the jailhouse as often as the prisoners, and Gareth knew them all by their Christian names.

So, when a severe man in a suit with a well-groomed mustache walked into the sheriff’s office, Sheriff Ellis and Gareth came to attention. They had never seen this man before. The stranger had a severe limp; his left leg was straight and unbending. The cane gripped firmly in his left hand stabilized him, and his gait was confident despite its rolling nature.

“Help you, sir?” Sheriff Ellis asked, eyes shrewd above his smile.

“Be a miracle if you could,” the man said. Gareth stood and offered his seat, but it was declined with a curt head shake. “No one ’round these parts seems real willin’ to give up information. I’m looking for a man named John Stone.”

Sheriff Ellis reclined further in his old chair, its squeak ominous. “And what does this pertain to, Mr.—?”

“Talbot. Randal Talbot. Former Texas Ranger.” Mr. Talbot tapped his stiff leg with his cane; it made a muffled knocking sound. The leg was wooden. “Honorable discharge.”

“I’m Sheriff Ellis, and this is Deputy Glen. Now. Tell me about old John Stone. What sort of business do you have with him?”

“Not old John Stone,” the man corrected. Something ugly flickered across his face. “The son. John Stone, Jr. I got business with that murdering bastard.”

The sheriff asked him to elaborate, and Mr. Talbot complied with folded papers from his jacket pocket and a tale that widened the lawmen’s eyes.

Gareth listened carefully from the sidelines as the story unfolded, and if it had been about any other man, he was sure that Sheriff Ellis would have written everything down word for word. But the moment Mr. Talbot called Junior a “murdering bastard,” Gareth knew Ellis wouldn’t give this man’s words a passing thought. Ever since the Stone brothers had helped catch a caravan of stolen girls, the sheriff had held them in high esteem. After an hour of Randal Talbot making some grave allegations, unfolding wrinkled, faded paperwork and a copy of a court-martial dated two years before, Sheriff Ellis told the man he’d consider everything and would inform Mr. Talbot if he learned of John Stone, Jr.’s whereabouts.

When Sheriff Ellis didn’t ask where Mr. Talbot was staying or where he could be reached, the stranger’s face tightened in displeasure. He gathered his paperwork and stalked out, almost—but not quite—slamming the door behind him.

Gareth frowned and watched from the barred window as the one-legged man limped to his horse. At Randal Talbot’s hip gleamed a military-grade Colt revolver.

ISA SPENT EVERY night with Junior that week, and if the laws of physics weren’t in question, she’d be floating amongst the clouds. Minnie, Mrs. Hobb, and even Mr. Ricci commented on the changes in her demeanor, the ready smiles, the flush in her cheeks.

“It’s because I have my family’s blessing to travel abroad,” she told them serenely.

Minnie and Mrs. Hobb’s eyebrows rose when they discovered Junior would be traveling with her, but Isa pretended not to notice. The imminent travel made lying easier; no one questioned her claims to spend every night at her parent’s farm after a full day’s work. After all, she wouldn’t see them for months.

It didn’t matter that it took nearly three hours to reach Junior’s house. His house became an insular meeting place, a world where they could be together with impunity. The first night, he was waiting on the porch for her to ride up the driveway. He’d pulled her off Mirage before she had a chance to dismount. But every night since, he waited for her just outside of town, his .45 at the ready in case of danger.

Isa was so in love with him that it terrified her. Something large and out of control loomed overhead, some presence moments away from stealing this happiness from her like taking candy from a baby. Because surely her trysts with Junior were candy. Delicious, irresistible, and perilous when consumed in high quantities. And consume him she did. It was that or be consumed first; he met her hunger with a ferocity of his own. A gripping, clinging hunger with an edge of desperation amongst all the lust. The way he loved had to be more addictive than the substances in the opiate dens in low town.

Was it love? It felt like more. It was an obsession close to madness. A driving need. There wasn’t a word in the English language for it. She wanted evidence. Hard data. Neither of them had made statements of love despite the eloquent conversations of their bodies.

“I saw Sol yesterday,” Isa said when they returned from their moonlit ride one night. “He saw what you left on my neck and started asking questions.”

“What?” Junior leaned over Champion and shoved her hair to the side.

“You won’t see it in the dark, numbskull. Besides, it’s on this side.” She shook her loose hair back into place. It pleased him to release it from its pins and watch it come tumbling down. “Don’t be vexed. I told him it was a burn from my curling iron. It does look remarkably similar. I don’t think Poppy believed me, but she won’t say anything.”

“Izzy.” In that one word was a wealth of meaning.

Her jaw clamped shut. There it was. That looming presence, that giant God’s hand that wanted to take her candy away. But now that the threat was nearer, it didn’t feel like candy anymore.

It felt like a piece of her , and one of her favorite ones at that.

Junior was lecturing, and she resentfully listened.

“—think we need to be more careful. If Sol found out, if any of them found out…maybe we need to slow down.” He was more than concerned; he sounded truly afraid that what they were doing would come to light.

It hit Isa all at once. His need for secrecy, his fear of discovery—the blow should have struck her mind, but it swung and hit directly into her heart. It hurt. His description of what it felt like to be shot came to mind. The hammer strike, the subsequent numbness.

He was ashamed of what they were doing. What she considered beautiful was, to him, something to be hidden. Concealed.

And hadn’t she wanted to keep it a secret? Hadn’t she insisted she wasn’t too tired after working to ride to his house? Wasn’t she lying to her family, over and over again, to be with him? It hadn’t hit her until just now that she didn’t like keeping secrets. Not about this. Not about him. It made her feel dirty. Unwanted.

They pulled their saddles and tack from their horses and hung them neatly up. Junior was still talking to her, but his deep voice in the dark held no substance. Isa’s expression remained blank, her eyes downcast. She combed Mirage’s thickening winter coat with a currycomb without once meeting his eye. He stopped talking, and his footsteps were muffled near the barn entrance. A match flared; an old kerosene lamp was lit. She turned her back to its light, mouth pinched.

“Izzy.”

For the first time, Isa was sick of hearing that name. She could feel his eyes on her back, watching.

“What’s wrong?” He stepped into her horse’s stall.

“Nothing.” It was all she could get out of her bloodless lips. She felt cornered, a wild hare avoiding a child’s soothing, petting hands.

“Did I make you mad?” The little flare of disbelief, the undertone of humor, enraged her.

“I’m not mad, Junior. I think you’re right about slowing down. We should stop this.” It was impossible to keep her tone light. The raw, exposed nerve was too close to the surface.

“What?” All vestiges of humor disintegrated.

Fed up, Isa whirled to face him, her hair fanning out behind her. She wore his jeans and a soft, faded cambric shirt. She’d never felt so childish. So foolish. “I would hate for people to find out and for you to feel embarrassed. I should never have expected you to ever be proud to be with me the way I am with you. I’m not certain why I’m endeavoring to have some semblance of a relationship with you when you clearly don’t want one with me.”

“How the hell can you say that?” Junior’s voice rose, and the lantern swung dangerously in his gesticulating hands. He set it on the floor outside the stall, and the shadows shifted ominously. “You’re the one who doesn’t want to get married! What the hell do you think will happen if people find out?”

He made a succinct point, and it enraged her further. “You act as though my brother finding out about us would be the worst thing that happened to you. Pardon the hell out of me for feeling insulted.”

“It would be one of the worst things that ever happened to me, Isa!”

Isa disliked the range of emotions surpassing her levelheaded logic: the insecurity, the doubt. Disgusted in herself, she stormed past him. She needed air. Space. The stall was too small and close with him in it.

Junior blocked her passage. “Sol is my friend. My best friend. I don’t like two-timing him. And being with you is like stabbing him in the back.”

Something ugly inside of her broke free of its tether, and she laughed humorlessly in his beautiful, earnest face. “You had no compunction betraying him, John . You’re only afraid he’ll find out, like a child who’s not sorry for what he does until he’s caught.”

His handsome face paled. “Don’t call me that.”

Isa took advantage of his shock and hurt and slid around him to escape down the barn’s narrow breezeway. “Don’t be a goddamned coward, and I won’t.”

“Don’t call me that, either!” Behind her, Mirage’s stall door slammed shut. Isa was quickening her pace when his hand wrapped around her elbow.

“Let go!”

“Stop running away and talk to me!” he shouted. “Who’s bein’ the coward now?”

Chin high, Isa tried to free her elbow but couldn’t, so she stood rooted to the spot. “Fine. I’ll talk. I don’t like being dishonest with my family. I don’t keep secrets from them no matter how hard it is. What we’re doing feels wrong.”

“You call dressing like a man and gambling in secret bein’ honest?” His shout of laughter was cruel.

“I mean the important stuff!” she snapped. “I knew how disappointed Ma would be when I told her I wanted to move away and get an education. I knew how angry and afraid Sol would be when I told him I wanted to go abroad. I told them anyway . I can’t be like you, holding onto my secrets like a lead bullet in a gunshot wound, letting it rot me from the inside out. You’re so worried you’ll betray Sol like you did with Randal that you’re killing what you have with me!” She struck her chest with an open palm.

Junior released her arm, white-faced. “I never should’ve told you anything.”

That hurt. Isa pretended it didn’t.

“Well, I’m glad you did. That way, at least one person can be honest with you. You’re just mad that person is me.” Isa’s words tumbled out faster than her racing thoughts, and she wondered if she looked as wild as she felt. “And do you know what else? I’ll make this easier for you. I’m ending this…this attachment and I’ll never speak of it again. This way, you’ll have no more guilt with my brother, and you won’t have this shameful secret—”

Junior’s incoherent shout stopped her words. He stalked off in the other direction, his knuckles white spikes in his clenched fists. At the dark end of the barn, an explosive sound made her and the horses jump; he’d struck an empty stall.

“I won’t do this with you,” Isa croaked, striding to Mirage’s stall. She would leave. This was too painful.

His footsteps were loud behind her. “You did this,” he accused, and his voice was no better than hers, full of grit and hurt. “If anyone is to blame here, it’s you.”

Isa scrubbed her irritated eyes hard with the cuff of her borrowed shirt. He wouldn’t let her open the stall door. “You’re raving.”

He moved around her until he was between her and the stall, his face twisted up, unrecognizable. “I mean it. Ever since Austin, you’ve been a splinter in my side. Everywhere I turn around, there you are, bothering me and wrestling with me, irritating the hell—get back here, I’m not done! And now that I need you, can’t sleep without you on my mind, can’t wake up without thinking of you, can’t go to the outhouse because there you are! Now that I can’t live without you, you want to stop this—whatever the hell this is. Well, I won’t have it!”

“And I’ve told you. I will be someone’s first choice, not their last. You can’t even decide what you want more: to be my brother’s best friend or to be with me.”

Red-rimmed eyes as dark as the northern sea, Junior spread his arms wide and vowed, “I’ll tell him tomorrow. Hell, I’ll tell him tonight if you want. You’re betting I won’t, aren’t you? I’ll show up on his doorstep and shout it up at his window right now. I’ll go to your ma and pa’s house and tell them. And if they take us straight to the preacher tomorrow, then that’s the bed you get to lie in. A lifetime with me. If that’s what you really want, Izzy, I’ll give it to you. All of me, every day, until we’re so old, we can’t even fight anymore.”

He’d do it. Junior was calling her bluff and daring her to do the same. He’d do everything he just threatened, no matter how she begged and pleaded for him to stop.

While her mouth was ajar at his pledge, his promise, he closed the distance between them and wrenched her to him for a hungry kiss. She wasn’t aware of him carrying her to the house or of being stripped naked on the bed. They made love with all the anger and hurt burning inside of them. It was rough, and their need put bruises on each other’s skin. Their cries and groans echoed in the empty house.

Later, when the sweat dried on them and their racing hearts slowed to normal, Junior pulled her as close to him as she could go and said softly, “I want to tell you the truth about what happened.”