“Still cold?” Warren drapes the blanket around us again and tightens his arms around me so much that my cheek squishes into him. “There, is that better?”
Now that’s a tricky question.
I’m warmer, yes, but it’s the unwitting double meaning in his question that brings the stinging threat of tears the longer I think about it. Tears of wonder and the smallest bit of hope, because a man is holding me, and it’s…comforting. Like no one else could dare touch me as long as I’m in his arms. Is this how Emmaline feels when he holds her? Through a tight throat, I manage, “Better.”
“Good.” Warren shifts again, this time to brace a foot on the sofa before he pushes off to rock us back and forth. “I didn’t want just any woman, white or otherwise.” The chair creaks beneath our weight, and I relax into him little by little as his words rumble from his chest and into my ear. “You already know Jed and I were going after Dove and Abner. I didn’t expect to see you in the back of that wagon, but once I did?—”
“You pitied me,” I interrupt faintly. I’m not ignorant of the state I was in when he found me. Filthy, bleeding, and ready to end my life to save my baby.
“Ahh, darlin’, it wasn’t pity.” His heartbeat remains slow and steady, and it’s almost enough for me to believe him. “Ican’t deny that you needed help—you and I both know that. But there was something in those big blue eyes of yours and the way you looked at me all fiercelike. Like you’d kill me if I got too close to you and Emmaline.”
Emmaline.
My baby that didn’t have a name then, but was still there with me all the same.
“And once we got you to the doctor’s house and you told Mrs. Smith you didn’t have a husband, I knew you were meant to be mine. Saving you was the gentlemanly thing to do, but marrying you? That was all me, Mara. And if it turned out you had a man already, I’d have hunted him down for letting you get in that condition to begin with. That’s not how a woman’s supposed to be treated.”
Warren’s intensity brings to mind our trip here, the way he stopped on the road and asked me for the names of the men who hurt me. Names that I couldn’t give because I didn’t know most of them. A dark thought forms, and I ask, “Once you caught him, would you have killed him or let him live?”
He stiffens, and the low tone of his voice does little to hide the anger coating his words. “For the things he did to you? After I put a bullet in each leg, I’d have strung him up in the center of town and left him there for the vultures to peck his eyes out.”
Joe and Chance are dead and gone. Neil likely is, too, since he liked to cheat at cards. But the man who’s always just a nightmare away? That’s at least one name I could give. And to seehimfighting for his life at the end of a rope and clawing at his throat with those damned gloves would be my greatest pleasure.
“And as for little Emmaline…” Warren’s brow softens as heglances down at her. “Well, what man wouldn’t want to be a proud papa to the prettiest baby girl in Hope’s Stand?”
“But how can you feel that way when she isn’t yours?” I can’t deny that hearing him claim her is reassuring since no one can say she’s illegitimate, but what kind of man would do that so adamantly?
“Not mine?” Indignant, he stops rocking to stare intently into me. “It wasmychest you leaned back on when you brought her into this world. You squeezedmyhand when the pain was too much for you. It wasbothour faces her little eyes saw when you held her for the first time. I reckon all that makes me her papa more than it does that piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live, and I dare anybody to tell me otherwise.”
“Warren,” I whisper. “I…”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as many tumultuous feelings as I have in this night.
He stills, a peculiar gleam in his darkening gaze. “You know that’s the first time I’ve heard you say my name?”
My breath catches. It is. Other than the time I purposely called him Warner in a small act of rebellion.
“I love it, wife,” he murmurs softly. “Love the sound of my name coming from your lips.”
Wife. Heat flows into my cheeks, but I would be lying if I blamed it on the fire.
“And one day, wife, you’ll call me husband.” Warren traces my face with his gaze before settling on my lips, and the urge to squirm at the phantom touch is strong. Our mouths are close. So close.
Would he be gentle with his kiss?
Would he?—
No.
Too many feelings too soon. To call him husband wouldmean giving all of myself to him, and I know I’m not ready for that yet. I duck my head into his chest to hide and then I feel his light laughter more than I hear it.
“C’mon, darlin’. Let’s get some sleep before our little girl wakes up.”
As the rain pours and the fire snaps, he hums and rocks me in the creaky chair just as I rock Emmaline, and I fall asleep in the arms of a man who just might be my salvation.
CHAPTER 10
MARA
