Page 95 of The Widow and the Wanted

It’s a good place to hide. Not a good place to breathe.

Sound carries wrong in there. Every shift of boot, every crack of the fire, seems to hang a second longer than it ought. Okee sits with his back half to the stone, staring into the fire with rigid shoulders, and I can't think of anything to say to him that won’t sound more forgiving than he deserves. For a man concerned with gambling with the lives of others, he sure rolled the dice on mine.

“Were you even going to tell me your daddy would have me hang alone on this bounty?”

“He never said that,” he says. His mouth flattens into a displeased line. “Even if he had, I would never allow that to happen.”

Lula hugs her knees beside the flames. “How tragic to be burdened with the weight of all the world on your shoulders, Okee Collins. Speaking for us all. Protecting us from evil and making every decision,” Lula taunts, weary.

Okee shakes his head and looks at me like I’ve slapped him. “When have I ever set the course?” he bites. Then his voice bends into a mean little mountain drawl. “‘There’s a job in Fort Gibson, Okee.’ ‘How about the Rockies this winter?’”

“Thank you for gracing us with your pristine company, Mr. Collins. We are but simple mountain folk,” Lula snaps.

The sight of her sitting there, chin tipped up, taking up for me like she ain’t the same woman who looked at me once like I was something to be put down, makes me want to pull her close and kiss her silly.

My heart takes to hammering. She turns to me, fire catching the green in her eyes, that stubborn little mouth set like she’d bite before she’d beg. God help me, I want to test it.

Gazing at Lula, my mind travels down wicked trails so long and winding I blink once and turn to Okee, for a moment forgetting what he’d ever done to piss me off in the first place. But when I remember, it stings twice as bitter.

“Let me ask you and you better answer me true,” I start, looking at him hard until he nods to agree. “Would you really send our girl away into the Territory by herself on account of some hurt feelings?”

For a second it looks like Lula might protest, but I reckon curiosity wins out and I can tell she’s listening for his reply.

He forces a humorless laugh. “It is not a matter of hurt feelings.”

“What is it then?”

“You know as well as I do what happens when you ignore orders.”

“Are you my sergeant?” Lula asks, bewildered.

“I told you to get down,” he says, pointing at her with an accusing finger, each word sharper than the one before. “So you climb out and greet them as if you estimated you could charm your way out of having our heads blown off.”

“Well it worked, so she was right,” I say. “Ain’t like you and me don’t know about takin’ risks.”

He stiffens at that. “I cannot protect her if she will not do as she is told,” he says, and the echo shocks everyone silent for a spell.

Lula stiffens and drops her head. The fire cracks and pops, casting the basin around us in gold as the darkness settles around us, and Okee tightens his fists as if to chastise himself.

Chapter 26

Lula

Okee’s voice still rings against the limestone, as if the shallow hollow where we took shelter were a bell. My gaze returns to Boone again and again, and each time I find him already watching me. For all the ways Boone Maddox has tried my patience, there is something honorable in him I have labored not to see. How could a man so plainly bred for trouble possess a chivalry I have never found in gentler men?

There is no soul Boone loves better than Okee. And yet he stood against him. For me.

A man does not cross the one he loves best for nothing. Not unless he believes the thing he defends belongs somewhere near his heart. And I have been near a man’s heart before. Near enough to feel it become a cage.

I’d understood Okee’s tenderness to be a thing with borders. That he is a man who can tuck me beneath a hide, kiss me senseless, and still set me aside the instant keeping me becomes too costly. But after his voice strikes the stone and comes back raw, I hear the truth beneath his pride and I fear the opposite.

What if he doesn’t set me aside?

A man can say he cherishes you while trimming away every dangerous, inconvenient piece of you. I fought too hard for a life of my own to hand it over again because a man’s mouth is soft and his arms are warm.

Okee claps his hands on his knees, rising from a crouch onto his feet. “I’ll take first watch. You two ought to get some rest.”

As he takes his rifle and sulks toward the rim of the cut, another part of me fears that he would keep me.