Page 66 of In Honor’s Defense

Titan stood next to the two Baxter horses at the hitching post outside the jail. Luke moved toward his mount, thinking to grab a piece of jerky from his saddlebag to eat as they rode, but Damaris stopped him with a light touch on his back.

“Here.” She reached inside the food basket and pulled out a napkin-wrapped bundle. “You must be starving after riding all day.” Instead of handing the bundle to him, she backtracked a few steps to the wooden bench against the wall of the jail. “I saved you some food.”

She laid out the napkin like a picnic blanket and revealed two chicken thighs, corn on the cob, a biscuit, and two more of those butter cookies.

Saved him some food? Saved him all of her food was more likely.

He frowned. “I can’t take your supper.”

“I’ll eat when I get home.” She circled behind him and gave him a nudge toward the bench. “You’ve been on the road all day, and I don’t intend to send you off to battle Oliver Grimes without proper nourishment. I don’t have much of an appetite anyway.”

He let her push him to the edge of the bench, then turned to face her. “Damaris, I—”

“You can spare five minutes to eat a few bites while I take this basket back to the restaurant.” She met his gaze, and suddenly he understood.

She needed him to eat. Needed to feel like she was contributing something to the fight. Needed to feel like there was one thing in this flood of swirling circumstances that she could actually control.

“All right.” He cupped his hands around her arms and rubbed her sleeves with his thumbs.

Her eyes grew shiny, but she blinked away the excess moisture. More than anything, he wanted to pull her into an embrace. To shelter her from the emotional storm pelting on every side. But they both knew they didn’t have time for comfort. The sun would set soon, and with it would go his chance to bargain with Grimes.

Turning slowly, Damaris broke free of his hold and headed back to the restaurant on the square. Luke dropped onto the bench and gobbled down the food she’d left him. He barely tasted it, with the speed of his consumption and his level of distraction as he plotted out the best approach to use with Grimes. But it filled the empty hole in his belly, and for that, he was grateful.

By the time Damaris returned, he had her horse unhitched and Nate’s horse standing ready, its lead line looped around Titan’s saddle horn. When she circled to the left side of her mount, Luke laced his fingers and offered her a leg up.

Riding astride caused her skirt to bunch and exposed a few inches of her stockinged leg. Luke told himself not to look but did a poor job of obeying the order. Thankfully, his mission kept him on task and boosted him into his own saddle before he could embarrass himself by gawking. That flash of trim ankle and shapely calf might have set his blood to pumping, but it was the memory of a dejected Nate sitting slumped on a jailhouse cot that set his course.

He didn’t linger at the Baxter homestead, just tossed the spare horse’s lead line to Damaris and rode for the Triple G. The deep orange of the western sky warned that time was short.

He found Grimes in a rocker on his front porch.

“I thought you might be payin’ me a visit tonight,” the rancher said before lifting a half-smoked cigar to his mouth and taking a long draw. The end glowed red for a second before paling to an ashy gray. Grimes lifted his chin and blew out a cloud of smoke, then dropped the cigar butt and ground it into the porch floor with his boot.

Not sure what to make of the rancher’s somber mood, Luke dismounted and approached the porch with caution. “I heard you got your cattle back.” He might as well start by focusing on the good news. “I’m glad they turned up.”

Grimes pinned him with a sideways look. “Probably wish they’d turned up on someone else’s land, though, huh?”

Luke nodded, easing his way up the porch steps. “Yep. Woulda made proving Nate’s innocence a mite easier.”

Grimes stopped rocking and planted his boots flat on the floor. “You sure he ain’t involved?”

Luke met his gaze without hesitation. “I am.”

Grimes exhaled a groaning breath, then slapped palms to knees and pushed himself up from the chair. “He thinks I killed his pa.”

Whatever Luke had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.

Grimes wandered to the railing and gazed out over his land. “I know I ain’t exactly the friendly sort. Don’t have time to play nice with the neighbors when there’s work to be done, and there’s always work to be done. But for the boy to actually believe I killed Douglas . . .” He ran a hand over his face. “It shook me to hear him shout those words at me, Davenport. Shook me hard. I can’t get it outta my head.” He turned to face Luke. “Did you know?”

Luke nodded. “Nate shouted the accusation at me the first time we met, after I told him I was workin’ for you.”

“Did you think that I . . . ?” Grimes swallowed the rest of the sentence, shadows lurking in his eyes.

Luke leaned against the wall of the house and idly brushed at the travel dust coating his trousers. “I considered it.”

Grimes lurched away from the railing. “How could you think me guilty of such a thing?”

Luke held up a hand. “I didn’t say I thought you were guilty, just that I considered the possibility. I didn’t want to believe Wilson’s brother capable of such an act, but I didn’t really know you. And the more I learned about the way Douglas Baxter died, the more suspicious the circumstances appeared. You seemed to be the only one with motive. Until we uncovered another party who had something to gain from Baxter’s death. One who’s probably responsible for framing Nate for rustling your cattle, too.”