Page 70 of More Than Meets the Eye

But it was an ambush. Zacharias Hamilton was waiting for him. In possession of Logan’s full name and his intentions, as well.

Logan lowered his revolver and straightened his stance. The moment he’d been planning for seven years was upon him, and instead of satisfaction and triumph, he felt only dread and regret.

Fitting his revolver into its holster, Logan breached the threshold.

Zacharias Hamilton sat on a crude stool fashioned from a log from Logan’s woodpile. The missing sawhorses supported four wooden planks from his lumber stores to create a tabletop, and a matching log stool of dubious height sat close to the door, waiting expectantly for Logan to join the tableau.

“I understand you want to challenge me to a game. High stakes.” Hamilton’s face showed no emotion beyond a sardonic confidence designed to inspire the opposite effect in his opponent. He thumped a knuckle against the top of a thin leather pouch sitting on the table to his right. “I brought the deed.”

Logan shook his head. “Put it away. We won’t be playing.”

Hamilton raised a brow. “I thought that was your endgame.”

“It was, but not anymore.” Logan stared his nemesis straight in the eye. “I forgive you.”

He hadn’t known what to expect from Hamilton after uttering those words, but it sure as shooting wasn’t for him to leap from his stool like a wolf out for blood.

“You forgive me? No. That’s not how this works.” Hamilton advanced around the table. “You initiated this game when you came to Pecan Gap, when you courted my sister as a way to get close to me.”

Logan’s jaw clenched. “Leave Eva out of this.”

Hamilton jabbed a finger at Logan’s face. “You’re the one who brought her into it. The one who broke her heart and left her crying in your wake.”

Logan’s gut twisted at the image Hamilton painted. Eva, cheeks stained with tears he’d caused, her heart aching, the wings of her beautiful spirit clipped and sore. “I never wanted to hurt her,” he murmured through a clogged throat. “I love her.”

“Well, I love her too, and unlike you, everything I do and have ever done is to protect her. To provide for her.” Hamilton curled his hand into a fist and, with deliberate slowness, lowered it to his side. “Yes, I cheated your father out of his land. And I’d do it again to provide a permanent shelter for an asthmatic kid who was so thin you could see the outline of his bones through his skin and a little girl who prayed for a real home every night in her bedtime prayers.”

A growl rumbled in Hamilton’s throat as he pivoted away from Logan and stalked to his side of the table. “I’m sorry you and your ma lost your home,” he admitted, his back turned as he braced his hand against the framed wall studs, “but I ain’t sorry Seth and Evie found theirs.” He dropped his hand and turned to face Logan. He picked up a small, rectangular case from the center of the table and tossed it to land faceup in front of Logan. Two initials were tooled into the russet leather.

“J.M.?”

Hamilton’s face gave little away. “Jedidiah Mitchell.”

Logan’s brows shot up. “The riverboat gambler?” Mitchell was a legend. Even in Texas, people knew of him. Just as young hotheads with pistols sought to make a name for themselves by challenging experienced gunslingers to duels, young cardsharps sought to establish their expertise by taking down legends like Jedidiah Mitchell at the tables. At least they had, until a poor loser back-shot him in an alley in New Orleans.

“My father.”

Logan met Hamilton’s eyes.

“Those are his cards. The only thing of his I have left. I haven’t touched them since . . . well, since the game I played with Rufus.” Hamilton glanced away, leaving the horror of Rufus Fowler’s suicide unspoken. “Until today. You deserve a chance to win back what your father lost, and I deserve the chance to prove I can keep it without tarnishing what honor I have left by cheating.”

“I’m not going to play you,” Logan stated. “Not today. Not ever.”

Hamilton frowned. “But Evie said—”

“Eva said a lot of things, many of which crawled under my skin and took root this afternoon.” Logan widened his stance and forced his voice to ring with a confidence he wanted to feel but couldn’t entirely claim. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m letting the past go.”

“Because of Evie?”

Logan shrugged. “Partially. But mostly because it’s the right thing to do.”

Hamilton’s face hardened. “Deal the cards, Fowler.”

“No. I don’t want the game anymore.”

“But I do.” Hamilton regained his seat and snatched up the card case. His fingers trembled as he extracted the playing cards and started to shuffle, the cards moving choppily at first, then smoothing out as he repeated the motion and regained his flow. “I need to.”

To banish Rufus Fowler’s ghost. He didn’t say the words, but Logan could see the truth in his eyes. Hamilton was haunted and grasping at straws to escape the past, just as Logan had been.