AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back, interlacing his fingers and resting them on his stomach. He sucked in a short, sharp breath through his nostrils and blew it back out. “I’m a gambler and a gunfighter, Nora. Have been since the day I met Quick Shot Woodson in that alleyway. I might have made a name for him, but because of him I made a name for myself as well. And that put a nice, large target on my back.”
“I’ve had someone after me for as long as I’ve been carrying this gun,” he said, slapping the pistol strapped to his hip. “Whenever one would die or give up, another cropped up to take his place. Gunfighters who wanted to make a name taking me out. Gamblers who thought I cheated them of their money. Lawmen who wanted to see me behind bars or strung up. There’s always someone.”
“Is that why you came to Desolation? You’re running from someone again?”
He nodded. “An unusually persistent, but deadly, pain in the ass who won’t give up until he’s dragged me back to Denver in chains. And he doesn’t seem to care much if I’m dead or alive when he does it. So when I stumbled onto this town in the middle of nowhere, a town that might accept a man like myself…albeit with a few strange conditions…” He shrugged. “I took the chance.”
“So that’s why you won’t sign the papers?”
He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes studying her face before his gaze returned to hers. “It’s one of the reasons. If I sign those papers, they’ll get filed with the county office. There are no records out there with my name on them, nothing other than my birth certificate that showed I was ever on this planet at all. A marriage license…that’s a piece of evidence that would not only be dangerous to me but to the woman who was listed on it with me.”
She nodded, finally understanding this man who’d been a mystery to her since day one. For a hunted man, a wife was collateral, something his enemies could use against him. There truly was no room in his life for her. Though if he stayed in Desolation, if the ones who were hunting him gave up… The sheriff seemed to be safe enough. Perhaps someday…
What was she thinking?Somedaydidn’t help her. She needed a legal husband now. She needed to get that deed in her name before she lost everything. And not just any husband, but one who wouldn’t ask questions and who would preferably agree to divorce her or leave town or in some other way pretend she didn’t exist.
She wouldn’t dwell for a single second on the thought that maybe it would be nice to find a husband she actually wanted to keep. A husband who wanted her as much as she wanted him. She killed that thought before it could take root in her mind. There wasn’t a husband like that out there for her. So she’d take one who could get her what she needed and be on his way.
And Adam had made it more than clear he wasn’t that man.
She pushed her chair back from the table and carried her dishes over to the sink, quickly washing them. Adam brought his over, standing silently beside her while he helped. She didn’t know if he was as lost in his thoughts as she was in hers or if he was simply giving her space to digest everything he’d just told her. Either way, she was grateful he didn’t push for a response.
Because she had no idea what to say when everything she’d been working toward had just come crashing down around her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Adam threw another bolt of cloth over his shoulder and carried it into the back room for storage. It had been about all he’d done all day. Moving bolts of cloth, boxes, supplies, and a myriad of other items for Martha from one place to another.
One bolt, that had to weigh fifty pounds if it weighed anything, she’d had him take from the shelf to the counter and back again all in the space of five minutes. And when she’d realized she’d had him grab the wrong one, he repeated the process with three other bolts. He’d be willing to bet his left nut that she was just making up miserable tasks for him to accomplish.
Then again, he’d proven he couldn’t be trusted with more complicated tasks, like actually selling the material to anyone. But really, how was he to have known that a yard of muslin didnotcost the same as a yard of calico and that measuring it precisely did actually matter? Common sense didn’t apply in all matters, despite what Martha thought. So. He was relegated to fetching and carrying. As disillusioning as that was, he couldn’t truly blame her.
But once he put this bolt back, he was to join her in the kitchen. To help bake pies, of all things. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he was actually looking forward to the lesson.
After their dinner two nights ago, Nora had been unusually quiet. She hadn’t joked with him or even called him “husband” once, despite ample opportunities. Even worse, she’d allowed him to move into the house. He was relegated to a small back room that still served as storage space. But he was inside her home. Without having given her what she’d been after since the moment they’d met. That damn signed marriage license.
He’d wanted her to give up on him, but now that she apparently had, he wanted nothing more than to go back to the way things had been.
She had seemed quite pleased with the work he was doing around the house, though. And she’d nearly cried when he’d put that bowl of soup in front of her. He’d thought it odd until he realized with a sinking feeling in his gut that she had probably never had anyone take care of her like that. And it had been such a simple thing. Just a bowl of soup.
What would she do if he made her a pie?
He watched Martha carefully as she prepared the crust, sliced the apples, and combined them all together in a tin that she popped into the oven to bake. The smell permeating the kitchen was heavenly enough to make him embrace religion again, and his mouth watered every time he took a deep breath.
He watched as Martha made three more pies, each a different flavor than the last, and he was pretty sure he had the process down. Make dough. Slice apples and mix with sugar and spices. Combine together until it looked like a pie. Bake.
Should be simple enough.
Though from the look on Martha’s face as she stood with her arms crossed, staring him down, you wouldn’t think so.
“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked him for the fourth time.
“Martha, yes. Go. I have been watching you all morning. You have most of the ingredients already prepared and ready to go. All I have to do is combine them and put them in the oven and then pull them back out again before they burn. Even Lucille could figure it out.”
“Uh-huh.” She watched him for a few more moments, obviously having an epic internal struggle.
It was apparently part of Woodson’s employment agreement that Martha provide him lunch every afternoon, and since she and Doc had begun courting, she often went next door to his clinic after dropping off the sheriff’s lunch and ate her noon meal with the doctor. But with the Talbots’ party coming up, she had several more pies to bake.
“Martha. Go. If I run into any problems, you’re just across the street. I promise I will run outside and scream like a wildcat with a stubbed toe if I need your help.”
