The time was midnight according to the moon’s blazing sight right over head. Bending his knees at an angle, hovering over a pile of leaves, twigs, anything that’d be useful to start a fire Chris needed.

Beyond the town’s blazing candle lights sat his small shack in the hills, only him and his two horses, one that needed to be tamed and Chris would have no problem doing it tomorrow when he woke, but he’d have to fall asleep first and like most nights, he couldn’t. He needed the sleep, needed the caress of a pillow against his whiskery face. But he just couldn’t do it. He had too much on his mind. Too much to think and do before he could drown himself in restful sleep.

Most nights he’d just lie in his cot of a bed, finger length feather mattress, and wooden boards piercing his back. It was hard enough to roll on his side and try to find sleep that way, but it was useless like everything else he tried to accomplish now-a-days.

The town was booming. Making progress he recalled Mary telling him. Too much progress he remembered answering back and that too much ended up being not needed anymore. With enemies of all kind across the country from Mary’s fast spread newspaper, no man dared to step into the Four Corners territory unless they had the need to be killed. Pistol or not, it didn’t matter.

Mary was happy, he supposed. Chris didn’t know how happy since he hardly talked to her anymore. She was a busy woman, a special woman, and she did not have the time to talk personal business about their growing relationship. And as nice as that sounded, Chris was almost hopeful she would drop the paper for at least five minutes and talk to him about something, anything but news and the town.

Two years and counting being a resident in Four Corners, he gave up on Mary long after her newspaper made success in Dallas, Texas and she was promoted to senior editor down there but she refused to take the job as she wanted to stay close to her home, close to Judge Travis, and maybe stay close to him.

But like he’d been telling himself over and over, he didn’t need to care. Just protect.

The small camp fire stirred a spark and broke out in a quickening fire. Chris leaned off his knees to ease the sudden falling asleep tingle in his feet. He stood up and watched the fire ablaze higher, hotter.

In an open maroon shirt, baring his chest and in those fitted black pants, he took off his hat and it fell behind his back. He ran his hands through his hair to free his forehead from sweat after making the fire that freely burned.

And when he thought he was alone, he wasn’t. With his gun belt still buckled around his waist, in the dark in the distant he saw a figure, a wagon he foresaw riding up slowly. Instinctively, his hand whipped back to his gun and he knocked off the leather, safety strap and waited for the lone wagon with its owner to approach.

Coming closer in the darkness, when Chris thought they’d stop, they didn’t as the driver veered to a diagonal, probably figuring they were about to ride right into a fire and probably knew the horses wouldn’t like that on their hooves.

Making the turn, Chris eased the tension in his hand, his veins, and released his hold on the pistol. But he didn’t let his attention leave so delicately away from the passing traveler and their noisy wagon in the late night.

When he thought he would see a dirty, old man in the driver’s seat, he didn’t, he saw a woman.

Beautiful, frail, quiet, and content.

At least she looked beautiful to him in the midnight darkness. Maybe it’d be best to let up on the whiskey he thought. But he couldn’t take his eyes off that woman alone in the wagon, sitting alone in the leading.

What he saw of her in the pitch dark with little light shining from the fire, he couldn’t see much. Because the woman held a dark purple or black hood, Chris couldn’t tell, over her head. Covering her entire body in fact. What he did see was the shine of her brown locks, curving around her face, casting a shadow darker than he’d expect a woman would allow. Creepy.

Mysterious was the better word, but like everything else as soon as she disappeared from his sight and off his property, he disposed the thoughts.

Knowing Buck for fourteen years now, he must’ve rubbed off on him whenever he saw a lady. Senseless and untamed he’d described his friend.

Oh, that’s why he needed the sleep he remembered. A lady had finally tamed Buck Wilmington and he was getting married in three days time and preparation began the following dawn.

Watching the wagon disappear in the trees, Chris figured on its way to town. He turned his back on the fresh lit fire and poured a bucket of water on it, already having the need to end this night of misery now with nothing on his mind but sleep.

From afar in heated desert air, Chris could tell the town was booming for the wedding. Newcomers— possibly family— only Louisa’s— rode into town either in carriages, on horses, and some just plain walking.

Carriages were full of antiques, saddle bags, garments, decorations it looked like from the gunslinger’s point of view.

Pony quickened his pace more than Chris liked and before he knew it he was amongst the wedding guests. He slowed his horse down, pulling on the reins and at his destined stride into town, a few of the guests tipped their hat at the man all dressed in black. Not something that was normal to the guests or to Chris when each man, woman kept their stare on him as he passed by.

Shaking his head, Chris went along into town, realizing why the guests wouldn’t leave him alone. Why they wouldn’t keep their eyes off him. It was a wedding, and Chris just wore black. Laughing inside to their snobbery opinions about his clothes compared to their whites and blues, he unsaddled his horse in front of the saloon, watching guests pass behind him.

And like everything else, he didn’t care.

Chris turned around and looked beyond the saloon doors when he heard the usual hoot and holler of any drunk. Then before he knew it, those hoots from within the saloon came outside, making the guests more nervous in the dusty town where they couldn’t believe the wedding was going to take place.

Feet cress-crossing, one of the three drunks toppled over on his stomach by his own mistake and another tripped over him, landing in the dirt at Chris’s boots. And the third, without noticing the young gunslinger behind him, pushed him forward and his whole body jolted into a wooden post.

Adjusting his hat and shifting from hip to hip, Chris looked at JD with a crooked grin. “Problem, JD?”

The youngest gunslinger of the seven held his pistols in the holsters and had circling anger in the eyes and his nostrils flared. “Not a thing, Chris, except these men tried to make trouble for Inez. Demanding free drinks.”

“Looks like you took care of it,” he said at the same time moving to switch JD positions where as he stood with his back to the saloon now and JD stood looking at it.

“Yeah, sure did,” JD released heated breath from his lungs then kicked one of the men in the leg as he started to walk off. Chris gave a nod of satisfaction and just when he was about to disperse behind the saloon doors, JD asked, “Have you seen Buck?”

Chris turned around placed his hands on the swinging doors, “Can’t say that I have.”

“Okay. Just thought you might’ve seen him.”

“It’s still early, kid, he’s probably sleepin’.” And Chris didn’t wait for another question or answer when he walked into the saloon.

Turning around, JD released his hold on his pistols and damn near got the wind kicked out of him when a massive arc of lilies passed over his head.

“Sheesh!” he gave a hoot with cool breath passing through his closed lips and he reached for his hat when it about toppled off his head from the gusty wind the lily arc brought. He figured they never saw him for how short he was.

Damn. Being short did bring some disadvantages. Especially if you were a short gunslinger.

He looked back inside the saloon doors for Chris but he was already swallowed in the cigar smoke, the piano keys, and all the hearty women. He moved his stare across town and landed on Mary and Louise standing outside The Clarion.

Odd seeing the two women together, JD thought, when all they did was fight over Statehood, and now over anything arguable that continued to show how different they were.

Despite their differences, how both despised the other for what they believed in and what they stood for, Mary found she wanted to be helpful to Louisa with this wedding and to get her the Hell-Out-Of-Dodge before her mind changed about she and Buck leaving for her business expedition.

That must have been Mary’s plan. To assist Louisa with the wedding, hurrying the bride along so she wouldn’t think of anything else about her rights and her ways and help her leave the following day.

JD adjusted his hat to those thoughts of Mary, wondering if that’s really what her plan was. Knowing Mary for nearly two years now, he should be right on the spot. Her convincing and sedate manners coated layers over her snappy tongue and her mapped out routines.

Looking over the two women, Mary held a pad of paper as the wife-to-be talked her ear off about what she wanted for the wedding, JD only supposed. Reading lips wasn’t exactly helpful from where he stood and that with locals and guests passing across his stare.

Then watching them shift from their standing pose in front of the Clarion doors, Louise began a pace across the floorboards before reaching the hardware store and Mary followed behind indolently, as if mouthing a word or two about how she needed to slow down with her chatter.

Laughing inside, JD turned his feet to another angle and saw a new outlook of the town, beginning to really shine with whites, sapphires and crimsons dyed decorations.

This was really happening. Buck was really getting married and he knew it right away when JD found him at last at the end of the lot, stretching and jumping his muscles and bones alive for the lively mid-morning scurries. He was dumb struck with a dumb grin smacked across his lips, his mustache rising with each corner of his mouth and JD had to laugh out loud.

Untamable Buck Wilmington was getting married in less than seventy-two hours. No wonder that smile looked the part.

If Buck could be tamed and married, sticking to one woman for the rest of his life then it was damn possible for anyone in the world to fall in that line of love. To find their soul mate.

Watching Buck step off the hotel’s front boards, JD smacked the side of his pants to rid of the dust the wind so voluntarily left on him. He couldn’t take the hustling of the usual day-to-day controlled rounds of the town and JD just had to be by Buck’s side to flow into the jovial music, the live babble as wedding guests continued to arrive from the town’s entrance, and be noticed when he gave a hop of rolling, uncontrolled laughter to show how excited he was. To let everyone know he’d never attended a wedding before.

Getting ready to run and do all the motions he’d promised himself to do and be one of the crowd, that’s when he saw her…

Pass Virginia’s hotel; pass the hardware and Mrs. Potter’s general stores, walked, more like glided, was a dark haired angel. With reins in her hands and two, full bred, whiskey golden horses attached to those reins, followed behind.

She was simply beautiful. Extravagant. Different from any woman he saw in these parts of the country side. Not like the female bounty hunters, or Lydia and her bunch of beauties, or Ella Gaines. This mysterious woman in town, a newcomer or a guest apart of the wedding ceremony was different. This woman was in his town, the town he help protect.

Moving his eyes down the length of her body she wore a smoldering purple, silk cape that swayed up and down her legs from hip to ankle as she walked against the wind. The richest dark hair curled around her face underneath a hood and that dark, slender dress beneath the cape, showed every other time as she walked. The dress that clung to her body, her curves, the v-neck sliding right down to her…

“JD!”

Lost in ecstasy with amazing gorgeousness, JD hadn’t realized he moved away from the saloon doors, walked out in the middle of the lot to keep that mesmerizing woman in his path. But when he heard his name being shout, he snapped back into veracity when he recognized the holder of the tone.

“Mary!” he stopped to a sudden halt when he saw now a light, blond haired woman so close to him that he thought she might read his mind about what made him lose his sense for those thirty seconds.

Balancing her arms that held the ashen, pearled wedding gown Mary backed up from the young gunslinger with a startling laugh. “Almost had this custom made dress in the dirt there, JD.” She regained her steadiness with the weighty gown.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Travis.” JD apologized when he noticed, yeah, he almost did another useless mistake.

“No, it’s fine.” She forgave him straightforwardly. If she had dropped the dress, JD knew, Mary probably wouldn’t have care. By the look of her generous smile, her quick forgiveness, and the walk around him, she figured if she dropped it, there would no other way to get another wedding dress delivered in due time for the ceremony. And Louisa would simply have to wear it dirty.

Turning around after she walked around him, thoughts spiraling around in his head about what just happened there about the woman and now Mary. He opened the doors of the Clarion, Mary’s home and business, for the editor and she merrily took it.

After Mary walked all the way in, he tried to decide whether to follow or stand outside and just observe like he’d been doing. He decided to stay out front and when he looked down the town lot for Buck, where he last saw him departing from the hotel, the soon married-man-to-be was nowhere in sight. Having a hunch of where he could have ran off to, that dark, mysterious beauty popped right back in his head, coming up front to cloud his eyes when before the thoughts were hidden somewhere in the back of his head. He did a quick turn around to see if he could catch that woman all dressed in purple but like Buck, she was gone too.

And just that quick from a short ten second run in with Mary. He huffed out a short, annoyed breath when he couldn’t find her. Oh well, he thought, if she was here in town for the wedding, Louisa’s maid of honor or something, he lived with the thought that he would see her again and soon…maybe.

Then his thoughts did a big u-turn and he wondered where Casey was. And those thoughts didn’t last long either when Buck ran into his shoulder.

Ah Buck… there he was.

“Buck, where did you go? I just saw ya.”

That ear to ear smile never left Buck’s mouth, “Hey you, JD.”

“You nervous?”

“About what?”

“Marrying Louisa. You’re no longer gonna be a bachelor, Buck. You can’t hang around anymore women. This is it for ya.”

“I know this is it for me, and I’m glad I made the right ‘it’ choice.”

JD closed his mouth, his eyes widened. “So, this is really gonna happen for ya, ain’t it?”

Buck nodded willingly, “Can’t wait, pard.”

JD put his hands back on his pistols. A habit of his when he was nervous, or just didn’t have anywhere else to put his hands. “You took my advice then, didn’t ya?”

“I’m a fool, JD. I think you gave me the best advice anyone could give.”

“Even after that major put down you gave me in return when I suggested about marriage in the first place?”

“Yeah because right after you said that to me I asked Louisa if she would.”

“And…” he lifted his chin in the air for acknowledgement and gratitude from the great and powerful Buck Wilmington Buck thought he was.

“Thank you, JD.” There he said it out, blunt and loud for anyone passing by to hear. A lightweight of frustration from pass time arguments with Buck, a stunning feel of glee lifted off his shoulders to those three simple words, Thank you, JD.

And what was left to say except, “You’re welcome.” There was no need for banter, or teasing, or even a laugh. A good smile would do for Buck, for JD when that smile curled the ends of his mouth in response.

Buck tipped his hat at his comrade, and began to open the door to the Clarion but Mary poked her body out and pulled the doorknob from him.

“No men, you are not allowed in here.” She said then turned to Buck particularly. “You can see your bride later. We’re fitting her in the wedding gown.” And that was that and she shut the door. Buck gave a twinge and JD laughed when they heard the click of the doors’ lock.

“Well, that’s not fair,” Buck pouted.

“Nothin’s fair anymore, Buckling.” JD gave his friend a pat on the back and they together turned away from the locked Clarion doors. “Don’t you know its bad luck to see the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding?”

“That’s superstitious, JD.”

JD shook his head, “Just like you said when I bought that potion from that Chinese man? You believed me then.”

Buck adjusted his hat, felt beaten from his question. It was true. He believed in that potion, but hell, that was a long time ago. Times have changed, he’s changed. He kicked some dirt on his boots and walked off the Clarion floorboards.

“Yeah, well, that’s just between you and me.”

Just as he suspected, just as he liked, Chris was alone in the saloon, but hardly. With the late men dizzying around the wooden building, the wood that made up the floor, the place was anything but alone.

But unusually for a Wednesday night no one bothered him. No one made a fuss, or refused a drink they didn’t order and throw a tantrum over it. Nothing like that this night and Chris was thankful. He wouldn’t say he was on duty, just observing. Making sure things were as they were supposed to be, but like anything was now-a-days.

Meaning, his small posse of seven men was slowly fading and it shocked the hell out of Chris to find it was going to be Buck the first to leave the group for a while. Of all people, of everything going on in the country, it had to be Buck leaving his side. The gunslinger/friend he’d known for a good part of his life, the saneness he used to have when Sarah and Adam were still alive. Buck knew how Chris was, how great of a man he was to his family, to his horses, to his land. He knew him inside and out, and now it was time to say those goodbyes Chris had lodged deep down in the pit of his stomach for the past two years since he and Buck ran into each other’s past when Chris needed him for a job.

You could always count on Buck…his infamous words. And those words never let him down when Buck always showed up in the wrong place but at the right, precise time.

And now he was leaving and before he hadn’t seen him for five years, Chris wondered how long it would be this time before they saw each other again.

Holding his whiskey mug close to his mouth, savoring the sinful taste on his lips, on his tongue and lost in his world, he didn’t see the woman enter the saloon.

---

Tightly restricted within her discomfort corset and skin tight, gown, the woman palmed her lower stomach. She tried to take a relaxed breath of air, but it was no use and she quickly regretted for changing into this dress compared to her silk, clingy one she had on this afternoon.

Stepping out from in between the swinging doors, Natalie looked about the place, the dirty, dusty saloon she saw herself in. She pulled tighter on her cape and ever so neatly, pulled the hood off her do-up curls and dropped it behind her back. To her surprise, not a man… yet… had noticed her uncanny introduction. And that was a good start. She didn’t want a man, no less a drunken man, walking up to her with his sweet talk and gaud awful breath of fresh and old booze.

Silent, she moved across the bunch of tables circled together in the core on the first floor and she walked right up to the bar without trouble.

Maybe this was going to be a good night, she thought.

She hoped a lot better than she had two nights ago in Slater Town. With those drunken men at her beckon call. Surrounding theirselves at her door, waiting by her wagon, sleeping outside the hotel window. And then having a run into with a few men she knew and once she saw them, she had to leave the town as sly as possible. In the middle of the night, that’s how she did it and she’s been looking over her shoulder ever since.

Men she never wanted to see again. Not after what she heard what happened… She couldn’t face him again. Not yet.

---

Chris looked up when he saw the woman walk across the dusty floor in that dark dress of hers, confident, shy, not welcoming any man who tried to introduce himself. She had that walk to intimidate any man to back up and leave her alone.

And he noticed that walk right away.

But still he didn’t do anything about it and that’s how he preferred it. He took the last drip of his whiskey and set the glass firmly back on the damp table, still dripping raindrops from the ceiling after the early morning rainstorm. The water splashed as the mug dropped in a puddle, splattering some of the dry spots left.

He let go of the mug handle and leaned back in his chair and pulled his hat further down his forehead. An ache poked the center of his spine and he jolted up to recover the pain. He didn’t want to feel that kind of pain again so what he had left to lean against was the wet table or he could leave. And he didn’t want to leave and go back to the hotel because he knew he’d fall asleep and he’d rather do anything but sleep right now.

Chris put his elbows on the table, the water seeping into his black duster and for a quick moment, it felt good. Cool against his skin where his body only knew heat from the blazing sun’s rays all day. He leaned his elbows harder on the table, the glass mug between his arms, and he stopped. He let the coolness take over his body and that coldness seemed to take over whatever thoughts flew around in his head. And that’s when he looked up and saw her again.

The woman at the bar, her back to him, her head crooked to the side as she talked to Inez about what to order then left her alone.

Narrowing his eyes, a wrinkled confusion spreading across his forehead and shifted his hat, he remembered her. The same woman who crossed his path last night, and who struck him dumb for five seconds of his life. But last night and now, he never saw her face, not even in the cracked mirror before her could he see her face from where he sat.

But this wasn’t a good feeling; it was a lousy feeling on his part. She was just a woman, a woman who pleased men, or better yet, just a woman who was passing through town. Not for a second did he think she was here for the wedding. Not dressed like that, and she sure wasn’t a friend of Buck’s. Chris spotted that right off too. Even when every woman was his friend’s type, she wasn’t somehow.

She was different. And how the hell did he know she was different? He never met her before in his life. He never spoke to her, never made eye contact. Didn’t even know what the sound of her voice was like.

Chris quickly rid his thoughts of her. When she made an impact on him already, he knew he couldn’t get involved even if she was a working girl. He took on Maria so hastily in Purgatory, why not this woman too?

No, Chris yelled in his thoughts.

---

Natalie stared at the shot glass on the bar Inez left her after she paid her nickel price. Cheap price always meant cheap liquor, she thought.

Disgusted with the taste of liquor in the air, why on earth would she order some for herself? She hated the thought of liquor, the taste of beer, the smell of anything alcoholic.

Would this be called torture, she wondered.

She reached for the shot glass and held it in the palm of her hand. She brought it up to eye level and studied the waviness of the liquid with her movement. Yeah, disgusted was indeed the right term and she used torture perfectly for her wonderment. She knew she couldn’t drink this puppy down now and not this late. She needed some space from her horses, from her personal wagon she stored in the livery, and breathe some fresh air. And as it seemed the saloon was the most likely place open and alive for the night, she had no choice but to head in here and now she regretted it horribly.

Natalie set the drink back down on the bar counter, drips of liquor tipping out onto the countertop. And she just stood there when she knew she should be getting the hell out of there before trouble she knew would soon stir.

She put her hands on the countertop and heaved her tired body off the bar and as she turned to walk out of the saloon, and gustily, dirty man, smelling of liquor, was right behind her, shielding her to move or leave.

“You gonna… drink that… shot, missy?” he slurred his words.

“No because you are. It’s on me.” She hissed but gently as she turned and handed the man the shot. “Don’t have too much fun.” And with that, she planned to walk around his six foot four build, his aging face, and those hairy knuckles until they groped her to stop.

“Where you think you’re goin’, missy?”

“Away,” Natalie said tightly.

“Not a chance. You didn’t even let me buy you a drink.” The man tightened his grip on her wrist when he shifted from her forearm, pretending to be friendly.

“If you saw I didn’t drink that one,” she watched him drink the shot and dispose the glass over his shoulder, and she heard it shatter on the floor. “You can bet I won’t ask for another.”

With her still in his hold, he walked to the bar and slammed his palm on the counter for Inez, and she was there in less than a heartbeat. “I’d like another of what you offered this woman here, and whatever else this woman would like.”

Inez looked at Natalie, “What would you like, senorita?”

“Nothing,” she told Inez coldly, then turned to look at the man holding her to him, “I don’t want anything. Let me go.”

“Put it on my tab,” the gray haired man told Inez.

Inez put her hands on her hips and leaned on one hip, “I’m not serving you anymore drinks until you let the senorita free, senor.”

“I told you to get me my drink, senorita!”

“And I told you to let the woman go!” Surprised by her own raised voice, Inez looked across the ways at Chris, hiding in the dark corner. Where she usually found him.

He nodded, she nodded in acknowledgment, and Natalie had no idea what was going on behind her back between bartender and gunslinger. All she had her mind set on was this man holding her wrist, more like squeezing her wrist waiting for blood circulation to cut off.

“Damn you, man, let me go!” she yelled in his face, in his ear. And then without waiting for reassurance she was going to get free from him, she smacked him across the face with an open hand. Then she asked for it when he slapped her across the face the same way, only with the back of his hand, hard and jagged.

Not one other man in the saloon bothered to help her or even care…except Chris Larabee.

When those hairy knuckles came up to cup her face between thumb and the other four fingers, Chris jerked that hand away so quickly, bending back the man’s fingers. Natalie heard the crack of breaking bones.

Screaming in agony, the old man released Natalie’s wrist and she brought it up to her chest, rubbing around it with her other hand. Chris leaned back up with the man still in his hard, jagged hold. He looked up and locked eyes with Natalie and her swelled cheekbone. Her eyes chocolate brown, his emerald green, they clashed and surprised heat soared between them.

But only for a mere second did that bliss occur when the man came back up with his pistol in his other hand. He tried to stick Chris with what bullets he had, if any, but swiftly enough and courageous, Chris pulled the gun out of the man’s hand and put a firm hand on his back and pushed him outside the saloon doors, and he followed.

Natalie let her arms fall free to her sides after that immediate one-on-one fight and took in the smack across his face and the smack he to her returned right after. She looked at Inez, standing behind the bar, and she gave Natalie a gentle smile, and with her eyes, letting her know that everything was taken care of now. That she not need to worry about that man again.

After Inez offered her condolence, she offered to give her an rag full of ice for her swollen cheek, but Natalie refused and walked out of the saloon with a dozen eyes lurking all over her body from the men who didn’t give a hoot about what just happened.

She stepped out in the midst of the fresh cool night with the swinging saloon doors swaying behind her backside. The incident that just happened left her thoughts, her memory as soon as she sucked up fresh air into her lungs. This, right here, was good for her, hale.

Ready to end the night with another restless night as she’d done night after night with tossing and turning, she reached behind her and pulled her hood back over her head. As she did this, she couldn’t help but listen to the sound of a rocking chair creaking outside the saloon windows.

She turned her head, fingertips still on the rim of the hood; she saw the gunslinger that helped her. Mysterious in his own right, his own head as he sat rocking coolly in the rocking chair that sent goose bumps down her spine that she looked away from him quickly before their stare took hold like before.

Instant attraction, she may have called it. Attraction she didn’t want or need right now, or ever. What she wanted was to sleep a goodnight sleep but even that looked hopeless.

Natalie whipped her head back to forward when she noticed he stopped rocking in the chair. She turned her entire body down in the opposite direction of Chris and began her long stride to Virginia’s Hotel.

And Chris never let his eyes drop from her departed, gliding walk.

“Ezra, it would be a way to help us,” Mary pleaded to the fancy talking gambler as he stood with an arch in his back and the look of are you kidding me?

“Invite my mother to the wedding?” he asked then laughed.

Mary put her hands on her hips, noticeably annoyed. “It could be your contribution to this wedding, Ezra. If only you—“

“If only what, Mrs. Travis? To help assist of making my life more miserable than it may already be?”

“To assist with the wedding. With a woman of her kind, her ideas would help tremendously.”

“She’s been married to five men. She’s not gonna be a bit of intellectual assistance but to talk you out of it. She has no experience in the love life category.”

Mary released a breath of hot air and put her arms up in protest, “You still have to invite her.”

Ezra shook his head, “By the way things are looking and what I wrote to her in my last letter, I’m sure she’s already well on her way here.” He forgot he mentioned a thing or two about Buck’s unprepared announcement about a wedding and the date to be locked in matrimony in due time. In everything, Ezra wished his letter was lost in the taking to his mother, or she didn’t bother to read it until it was too late.

All wishful thinking, he knew that.

“So we can expect her?” Louise asked coming into the conversation as she walked through the Clarion doors with two older women behind her.

“Let us hope not,” Ezra turned to her. “Otherwise, your wedding day will become your living nightmare.” He turned back to Mary, “And you will no longer be in charge. She’ll take over everything. I assure you.”

“Take over everything?” Louisa’s voice rang like a heifer getting jabbed with a steel, hot poker. Mary couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t take this woman parading around town as if she owned the place.

And when Mary least expected it, Louise walked right up to her. “I thought you were handling my wedding, Mary.”

“I am, Ms. Louise,” Mary clenched her jaw. “It’s just I would like some help with the preparation. One woman can’t do it alone.”

“Why another hand to help? You have the whole town’s work, don’t you?”

“I need someone who knows what they’re doing. Who’s been through this before.”

Louise exchanged looks with Ezra then looked back at Mary, steaming inside, ready to explode with frustration. “You were married. You’d done this before.”

Mary grabbed the side of her dress where it rested against her hip and she tried to control her sudden rage she didn’t know she had before. Not like this anyway. Not like this kind when all she wanted to do was punch this woman to another dimension.

The day Buck and Louise announced their plans to wed up to now, Louise had been nothing but aggravating to Mary. Mary knew she should have kept her mouth shut when she volunteered to help prepare the wedding. If only she knew it was going to be this intricate. But just the thought of a wedding in Four Corners sounded glorious, romantic, something to add to the newspapers Mary knew she should have just bit her tongue then, and she tried her best to do that now.

Just bit your tongue, she told herself.

“Well?”

She was looking at Louise, she knew that, but she’d rather look through her than anything. From the start they didn’t like each other and till this day they still don’t and Ezra and the two women saw this.

“Maude will help me,” Mary said alas.

“If she comes in time that is,” Ezra added. “Like today, the wedding’s tomorrow.” And it was his time to go then. He put his hat back on his head and walked out of the Clarion after arguing with Mrs. Travis for the last ten minutes about his mother. Ezra knew he only dealt with his mother or talked about her was when he either received a letter, or she showed up unexpected. Never had he talked about her any other time. He knew better not to. It’d jinx him. And as smart as he was and incisive, being in the middle of two beautiful, arguing ladies was not his prerogative.

---

Well was it and jinxed was perfect. Maude had received her son’s letter three days prior and since she had only been in two towns away from Four Corners, and speaking of a wedding in his last letter…she knew she had to be there. And because it wasn’t her walking down the isle, she was more than generous to take up Mary’s offer to assist in decorations, seating arrangements, the guest list, the food.

With the wedding guests coming to town in all hours of the night from long journeys, Maude took up the pleasure to pursue Roger McCormick, the new hotel manager, into letting the guests have rooms for a small fee. And as to see Maude so good at that with a smile and her devilish talks, she’d won the heart of the manager and he agreed without hesitation then pleaded to be her escort to this wedding.

And as Ezra did, he stood behind his mother, watching, admiring, shaking his head with wonder and if he wanted to admit it only to himself—he was ashamed.

---

The wedding setups looked fantastic. Decorations and all, JD thought as he walked down the isle where the bride was to make her last walk a free, single woman before she taking the hands of Buck Wilmington, giving herself away.

“I’ve never been to a weddin’ before,” JD said.

“You told me, son.” Josiah said, standing at what looked to be an alter with that lily arc over his head and two wooden columns supporting it on both sides of him. He stood there under the arc of lilies, reading over a bible verse, mouthing the words to himself.

“You married folks before, Josiah?” JD asked, taking another walk down the isle.

“Just once.”

“Once? Who?”

Josiah turned the page of the bible then said, “My parents.”

JD stopped walking down the isle, and looked up at the preacher with the sun in his eyes.

Josiah looked up from the bible then, knowing he had a pair of young eyes staring at him. “Yes, my parents.” He answered the question in JD’s eyes.

“How old were you?”

Making his way off the alter’s wooden step down to the windy dirt at his feet, he looked at JD now sitting in a wooden, custom made white chair. Not many chairs, estimated to be ten, and most the guests had to stand.

“Oh,” Josiah took a deep breath. “I was twenty. My father…he never believed in the holy binding of matrimony. He always said that if he truly loved his wife, he didn’t need some pray to tell him.”

“So, what changed his mind?”

“My mother.”

JD crooked his head to the side, confusion in his eyes. “But—“

“It was her dying wish. She never liked my father’s way of doing things. Yeah, he was a holy man, but he never thought once to marry her. He just thought there wasn’t a need to show how much he loved her. And she never liked that. She loved him too, just the same, but she always wanted God to accept her unwedded marriage, having children and not married. She didn’t want to die until she did something right. And that was it. She wanted to marry my father.”

“And you wedded them,” JD said, a smile touching his lips.

“After I did, that night she died.” Josiah looked away from the kid’s young face, remembering the last night he saw his mother. She was in her bed, pale and looked cold, but she held his father’s hand tight in hers. Letting him know and his father just how much she never wanted to let go. And just how happy she was to have her wish with a small smile spread on her cold lips.

Josiah pulled his eyes off the ground and at JD again. He patted his back with two, firm hits then stood up and walked off.

“Thanks preacher.” JD said aloud. That conversation, something that personal struck JD hard in the chest, the heart. Knowing that Josiah’s last wedding he attended left him with both joy and sadness.

And now looking off in the distance, the town bustling for this wedding that was taking place in less than twenty-four hours, JD couldn’t help but shiver. A shiver that fell over his shoulders, down to his spine, right to the base of his feet. Something not blissful, not weak. Something that was about to happen.

---

In the day’s heat peak, Chris couldn’t had picked a better time to haul in his new, untamed black stallions he purchased from the town of Anderson. For most of the morning to now mid-afternoon, Chris and Vin worked in scorching heat, heavy, layer and layer of clothes to Chris’s shack in the hills.

But they were use to it. Especially Chris when most of his wardrobe consisted of dark combinations.

Shutting the corral’s wooden gate, Vin took off his hat and dabbed a cloth at his forehead. “It has to be the hottest day of the year. Not even a hat is much use.”

Chris just smiled. His solution to every question, comment, answer thrown his way. Just a smile or glare or not any expression at all did the trick for him. And he’d used it plenty of times to know he didn’t have to speak an entire day if need be.

Turning on his heel, Vin put his hat back on his head to shade what he could of his eyes from the sun. “Sure are some good kind of horses you got, Chris. They’d sure keep you busy.”

“No point to it.”

“You are comin’ to the weddin’ tomorrow, right?” Vin asked with caution after he shut the corral gate.

“No reason not to,” Chris shrugged then offered his hand to the bounty hunter. “Thanks for the help.”

Vin nodded to his thanks like he’d performed times before and headed on his way back to town, turning every which direction to make sure nothing happened for his friend in waiting behind him.

Chris watched as his comrade now became a speck in the distance. His camaraderie with the bounty hunter had developed immensely over the last two years and he couldn’t have been more proud to label him a friend. Watching over his back, showing up in places where you’d least expected yourself let alone any help, Vin was always there at the right, precise time.

Occupied with time and now two brand new, untamed horses, Chris knew he had to get to work at once before his thoughts take a detour in the remote hills where he spent most of the day’s hours at. Before he began to contemplate about the wedding ceremony he couldn’t accept as true was happening tomorrow, and the new guests coming into town, what dangers it could cause, and that woman…

Ah hell, that woman!

---

“Whoa, girl,” Natalie veered her horse’s reins up, her Beauty, to prevent stampeding into the undersized corral where two black mustangs and one sorrel were kept. If it hadn’t been for that one wild mustang kneading at the flimsy wooden fence, and the breeding season for her Beauty, she wouldn’t have made such an arrival on this man’s property.

And he saw her. That same woman in the saloon last night. The same woman who put up a struggle, never backed out until he came along and ruined her brick of courage.

Locking eye contact with the gunslinger, Natalie apologized, “I’ll go around.” And when she did, Beauty wasn’t having it. Kicking spurs into her horse’ side, she demanded for her to stop pouncing up and down like a damn fool. But her pleads didn’t match up to what Beauty did. Without holding tighter, Beauty kicked up and slammed her black hooves in the grass, digging into the dirt, knocking Natalie backwards, and she fell off. She moved her elbows to break her fall just in time but it wasn’t much use when she got the wind knocked out of her.

Lying flat on her backside, she hadn’t realized a lone silhouette, the frame of a man stood in her focus of the sun.

That damn horse, that’s all she could think about. That until the man’s hands came to her arms and pulled her off the ground with questions she didn’t have answers to.

Brushing off her dress, she realized Beauty’s reins were missing from her hands and panic sprawled through her boiled veins. And the man must have known what she was thinking and he handed her the reins and she uncaringly snatched them from him.

What’s wrong with me, she asked herself. For not keeping a better eye on Beauty? Knowing she wasn’t ready to take the morning walks on this strange country side of Mexico? For not realizing it was breeding season?

Beauty bucked and tried to heave out of the reins but Natalie tugged down hard.

The shadow moved into her now, closer than Natalie would have liked and she managed to glance up and right into the eyes of that man…the gunslinger from last night in the saloon. And she did it again, she looked up and right into his sea-green eyes and quickly found herself getting lost again. She shook her head from the ditsy attraction before it took over, and she tried to walk around his masculine frame.

“You all right?”

His first words, Natalie thought.

“Fine,” she shot back coldly and cursed something under her breath. She did just take a bad fall and like anything else, she tried to dust off the pain, the ache in her back, the throbbing in her boots.

Chris took the reins from her hands when he noticed the horse mischief again. And then his doubt about the horse’s formation came down to a conclusion. “She broken in, or is it just breedin’ season?”

When she realized she no longer had a hold of the reins, she turned around and looked up the height of his body to his eyes, at his rugged complexion after a hard day’s work with the five o’clock shadow cheekbones. “That…just breeding.”

Chris kept his body stiff but he shook his head. He knew that wasn’t right and that she probably didn’t know when her horse’s breeding season started.

And Natalie didn’t even know this man. She only knew his face, his looks, and the way she watched him take an interest in her horse.

“Mind if I take a look at her?” His attention switched back to hers, her dark hair blowing in the afternoon breeze, her dark eyelashes flutter then with dissent stocked in her eyebrows.

“Yes, I mind. She’s been tamed for over three months now.” Natalie said reaching for the reins.

But Chris pulled away, “Not long enough to take her out ridin’.”

“That’s not your prerogative.”

“Then you won’t mind if I take a look at her.” Oh, yes, Chris could be very charming in the rudest manner possible and when she didn’t protest a second time he found she took him up on the offer. He turned his eyes back to the horse. “From the look of things, ma’am, your horse’s formation is still rigid. If she was a fixed horse when you came around mine, you wouldn’t had trouble.”

“I told you she’s still breeding,” Natalie said tightly.

“Breedin’ season, no offense, ended two months ago.” Chris released the tight grip on the reins, “For your horse anyway.” And without her permission as if he was to wait for it, Chris led Beauty to the corral.

Natalie couldn’t believe this. As he took her horse, her only transportation back to town she’d come down to the fact that she was stuck there with him, with a man she didn’t know. And when she paid her almost every dime on the hotel room she had no money left to give in exchange to his generosity.

“You don’t have to do this,” Natalie said tightly as she followed him. “I don’t have money to pay.”

Chris opened the corral gate after he tied Beauty’s reins to one of the wooden posts, “No charge.”

Take aback, Natalie couldn’t argue with it. She couldn’t argue about anything no less with his help, his kindness. Or even the acceptance that she didn’t have to pay.

All she could offer this man was her name, if that, if she dared giving it away. Ready to open her mouth to introduce herself after giving up on aggressive speech, she changed her mind quickly and dispersed the idea. She had to keep her mind set on one thing and one thing only: to not mention her name to any person in the town. One word that she was here in town around these joyous, unfamiliar people could cost lives.

She’d done so well through the last five towns, the last two years with making herself instinct to her past. Opening up to this man, this gunslinger wasn’t worth it.

Chris glanced over at Natalie as she unhooked the metal clasps of her purple cape. Much too hot to be wearing anything heavy, let alone that cape. But then again, he shouldn’t be thinking that because he was dressed in his usual attire: long sleeve black shirt, fitted black pants, his gun belt that weighed heavily around his hips today, and black boots. And his hat.

Natalie disposed of the cape from her body and held it in her arms. She wore the same clingy dress that outlined every crease of her body and Chris had to look away before his ogling took on a whole other train of misleading thoughts.

She watched him open the gate, walk in and retrieve his three male beauties and lead them to the side of the shack. Not gone for a ten seconds, he returned quickly just as he left and led Beauty into the corral now, alone, with no one to bother her…except Chris.

He closed the gate not exchanging another look at Natalie as she walked around the outside circle of the corral, watching him and her horse. She watched him take her horse in his hold, pet her mane, cross in front of her eyes to the other side of her feminine build. He slid his hands down the length of her belly, and pulled on the saddle, adjusting the straps.

This caused Beauty to neigh with displeasure and she kicked her feet up in protest. Chris moved back after taking a look under her belly to find Natalie watching closely.

“Shouldn’t take long,” Chris said, breaking the tension in her concerned eyebrows.

“And you don’t mind?” she asked.

Chris shook his head, “Not unless she kicks me.”

Natalie smiled, releasing tension. But she wiped it away when she saw he didn’t acknowledge her smile and instead turn his attention back on the work at hand.

“Thank you then,” she did manage to say.

“Nothing to be thanked for.”

Natalie huffed out a breath to that answer, “Don’t you accept anything good, Mr. Larabee?”

Chris shot his head up and glared right at her, “How do you know my name?”

“I wouldn’t if the folks around town didn’t shout it all the time. You must be an important man.”

“No more important than any other man,” Chris grunted as he shifted positions to the other side of the horse.

“You don’t accept anything good then?” she asked. He grabbed the reins and yipped for Beauty to start moving. Surprisingly Beauty obeyed his command.

“Not anymore, ma’am.” Chris turned his head and sent a chilling look over his shoulder that sent unexpected pleasures down her spine. Just his look, the intensity in his green eyes, could make any woman melt.

“Best you stay out of the way.” He said when Natalie hadn’t realized she was leaning against the wooden gate that was half open. And she didn’t realize she was making her way into the corral to assist him in whatever he was trying to do with Beauty.

Okay, she knew she crossed a barrier a woman wasn’t meant to cross with a man and his horse. But this was her horse. She didn’t answer to his last comment and instead she turned around and shut the gate.

Chris put his attention back on whatever he was doing, and he leaned away from the wild horse, calming the horse down, letting her trust him with every stroke of his hand on her mane. The horse needed to learn manners, cooperation with him, respect, and he needed to move in the most understanding movement he’d play as a quick trick. The way he trained his russet Pony.

He kept eye contact with the wild stallion, never letting her drop out of focus or get out of hand whenever he tugged down on the reins. Only one thing stands between him and a loyal, lifelong bond with you: fear. And Chris knew this, lived with it. And then Beauty neighed screamingly loud and kicked up to her hind legs to this rebellious man she did not recognize.

Natalie couldn’t help but cringe to this thought. She had no right to let the gunslinger pursue her with her horse, his ways of wrangling, and the strict temper he carried when he demanded Beauty to calm down.

Releasing the tension with the reins in his fist, Chris walked around the horse a second time, playing no games. He knew her strength, the way she kicked in protest to his sudden strength.

He followed the horse to the outside of the corral then stepped back to start up another round of follow laps around the lengthy, encircled corral. Backing up to the middle, he watched her begin to shift her feet into a running structure, the way horses positioned their legs to dance wild. And Chris noticed this, spotted it right away and he snapped the reins in his hands and it smacked Beauty on the back. His own method to stillness.

Neighing again, and over and over, Chris waited, waited for what she might do next. Then without precaution or worry of his own safety he snapped the reins back up with a yell and the horse began to run swiftly, smoothly around the corral in circles.

Following with ropes and a simple smile, Chris turned in slow circles as Beauty ran like the wind. Simple enough as it was a simple task; he had everything to smile about and nothing to think about except the horse running freely in circles, the gentle wind blowing back her long, black mane. And his smile that spread quickly from ear to ear.

---

Natalie stood quickly to her feet and walked up to the corral to find Chris still locked in his own heaven with her horse. Even when she was thankful to him for his help, she had to get moving back to town.

Shaking her head, she fumbled with the corral’s locked gate and when she least expected his help again… Chris opened it for her with a swift of his fingers.

“She’s a kicker but managed.”

Natalie looked at Beauty, “More of a handle than you expected?”

“No. She handled just fine.” Chris said then handed over the reins. “She shouldn’t give you any trouble now.”

“You didn’t have to do this.”

Again, she looked up and right into his eyes and she saw something in those green eyes that wasn’t good, something dark and livid. Eyes she recognized before.

She turned away and said, “You don’t want gratitude, or accept money I cannot give. So, there’s nothing to say further.” Vaguely she remembered slipping her cape back over her shoulders. She pulled her hood up from behind her and placed it over her brunette locks and her fearsome brown eyes that wouldn’t look at him again. “Good day to you, sir.”

Natalie turned and walked to Beauty and saddled the horse without trouble. Taking the reins in her hands, urging on the horse to get moving…Chris’s deep voice instructed her to a halt.

“You always travel alone?”

Natalie turned the horse in his direction, “It’s better that way.”

“Not always.” He said, walking toward the shack, passing her straddled up high on the horse. “Travelin’ alone… you always make enemies that way.”

Natalie shook her head, “Well, like last night, Mr. Larabee, you saw with your own eyes I can handle.”

“And if I wasn’t there?” Chris blurted out, surprised with his question.

Natalie was not having it that way. She didn’t want to be taken as a fool, a vulnerable woman. “You don’t even know me or a name. How can you underestimate my abilities to protect myself?”

“Forget it, ma’am. Didn’t know you were vulnerable on the subject.”

“Didn’t know is the right answer, sir.”

And with that snippy reply, Natalie tightened the reins in her hands and turned Beauty around in the direction of town. She then looked over her shoulder at Chris, leaning carelessly against one of the wooden posts supporting his shack. His male features glowing in the sunlight hymns. The glare in those beautiful eyes. The intensity in his legs, his chest, his whole body. She watched him a bit longer to see him hook his thumbs in his gun belt. And when he watched her just the same way, the same detailed thoughts, she quickly turned her head and galloped away.

The birds soar, people stop eating their morning mealtime, and horses neighed from the lots and from the livery when an unexpected squeal came out of the soon-to-be wedded gunslinger.

Buck couldn’t control himself. He had to shout, bawl, jump up and down, and do anything humanly doable to get the wedding jitters out. And he let all and sundry know just how joyful he was.

“I’m getting married!” he raised his arms high, shouting with no end that he was getting married and will no longer be a free man after the night’s celebrations.

He took a woman he never saw before and swung her around several times before turning green in the face. He released the woman and her husband took her before Buck decided to inflict anything else to a total stranger.

That was until he saw Ezra walking toward him. “Must I remind you, groom, that these people aren’t any happier to be here than you or I.”

“What are you talking about, Ezra? I’m getting’ married!”

“So you’ve screamed for the past three extensive minutes.” The fancy talker led the jovial groom to the jailhouse.

“It’s my weddin’ day, why does everyone have to be in such a gloom mood as if I just died?” Buck asked after taking back his body control, pulling out of Ezra’s hold.

“Because it’s hardly past six in the morning, must I remind you, Mr. Wilmington.”

“In that case, Ezra, what are you doin’ awake?”

“I’m awake because I was forced to give you this.” Ezra slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a crisp, brand new black tie. “This is for you.”

“A weddin’ present, Ezra, already? And from you?” Buck laughed with question then snatched the tie from his hands.

“Not from me, I assure you. From my mother.”

Buck looked up at Ezra with now a composed expression across his face. “Your mother?”

“Don’t take it to heart now, Buck. She found it at the bottom of one of her travel bags.”

Buck shook his head, “No, it’s the thought that counts. Nice of her to even think I needed it.”

Recollecting last evening’s dinner date with Maude when she talked everything over with Buck about the wedding bemused Ezra with the confusion in Buck’s eyes. That he didn’t remember their long conversation. “Yes, given the fact she talked with you last night about the entire suit itself.” He laughed then disposed the laugh after realizing it was too early for him to be awake.

He’d spent the previous night in the saloon gambling his money away on a cheap skate gold ring that wouldn’t be able to pay much except for a later occasion. He was drunk and took the deal and the ring and now here he was trying to sleep it off and Maude comes banging on his hotel door for him to get out of bed, shouting through that she found something she thought Buck might need.

And from the look of Buck’s surprised expression, his mother was right, Ezra dejectedly had to confess.

“Well, thank my mother. Giving out charitable belongings is not one of my true natures.” Ezra said and patted his friend’s shoulder and left, leaving Buck with the black crisp tie in his hands.

“Don’t matter what you say, Ezra, because I’m gettin’ married.”

Oh yeah, it was going to be a glorious day.

---

JD stepped out of Virginia’s hotel in a fresh, crisp trouser suit that outlined his young man figure right down to his newly waxed boots. His heels clicked on the stilted floorboards as he made his approach into the intense sun. He tugged down on the white lapel and tried to take a breath to ease tension when the realism that Buck was getting married today.

Could there be anything else better in the world, JD thought.

Then a wagon stopped before him. Recognizing the driver, Nettie Wells, JD’s innards did a twist when he knew his girl waited good-naturedly inside the stagecoach. Nettie tipped her hat at JD with a generous smile and before the young man knew it, Casey’s hand came out of the shade of the stagecoach window and she opened the door from the outside. Too slow in reaction, JD didn’t think to open the stagecoach door and lend a hand. Instead, like Casey would have liked, he waited for her to make her presence.

Taking off his hat, JD put it to his chest, and tried to keep his pounding heart in. One step out of the stagecoach, he took a bottomless gasp when Casey graced him with a girly grin. An expression JD would never guess to come from her, the tomboy. The soft, gentle complexion he knew when he first saw her in front of the jailhouse. The edge in her eyes, the worried sweat on her forehead, in her hands, her body and today JD saw none of that.

Slowly he stepped off the floorboards into the dirt and met her.

“Can you believe this is happening, JD?” she asked in the voice he knew.

The young gunfighter skimmed the length of her dress, the lavender beads around her neck, and the scent of honeydew in her curls. She was beautiful, but he couldn’t bring himself to say so.

“JD?” Casey said uncomfortably with his gauche stare. “Well, say something. You’re making me itch.”

JD shook his head, trying to come up with the right word to describe her prettiness other than just beautiful. That word alone was awkward, even for him. “You look nice, Casey.” Nice one, JD. He never understood why he couldn’t say what he meant. Why he didn’t have the animal magnetism Buck had… his free spirit?

But that compliment was enough for their young relationship, JD decided and gave her another smile and he stuck his arm out and she looped her hand inside and grabbed hold.

---

This was it. This is what Buck’s been waiting all his life for…or not, Chris thought as he galloped to the livery. Today Buck was getting married. Knowing his good friend would have hooted and hollered in every way feasible at first wake, Chris wasn’t there to share that happiness with him.

Later he would be. It didn’t matter if Chris didn’t see fit with the proposal of already settling down with a woman. It mattered if it was the right woman and knowing Buck for more than a decade, he never thought that’d be possible.

And when Chris didn’t want to, he couldn’t stop thinking of the woman, the stranger who snuck on him twice without warning. If he had expected her he would have ignored the vigorous woman with the spice in her tone, the glare in her eyes. He would have ignored her stranger’s beauty, and the vanished glow only a woman held.

Chris would have ignored her completely after that night in the saloon, but he didn’t and he couldn’t now. This woman, her beauty, was as enticing as a full bottle of vodka. He couldn’t let it go, he wouldn’t walk away, and he needed to drink it all down. Taste it… taste her.

And that sudden thought, the mental image of the woman beneath his moving body knocked Chris right back into reality when he noticed he hadn’t unsaddled his horse yet.

The wedding…oh, yeah.

He needed to get rid of this woman who lit his blood to floundering blue, cold and rigid. He decided this was enough. Enough thinking about a woman he didn’t know, didn’t want, and couldn’t have. A woman he needed to lose and concentrate on the day’s events and what mattered most now was Buck and that this was his day. And like everything else in Chris’s life, he had to let this mystery go and focus on not what but who.

Buck. The wedding.

Unsaddling his horse, Chris smiled and remembered how he wasn’t keen for this wedding from the start, and where he was when the news went public…alone in the saloon. And he remembered slamming his beer glass down on the table spilling what was left of the alcohol, bothered with the heart-stopping news.

It wasn’t that he was displeased with the actual wedding. It was the after story, the life of a marriage, children, the everlasting love between man and wife. None of that fancied Chris…only that it wasn’t happening to him. Call it envy, he remembered thinking. He was jealous. Buck was going to have everything he lost. The love of a family, the comfort of a decent home, the loss of guns and the joy of raising horses. And he didn’t know how to be glad for him, or commemorate the news with his old comrade. It was too hard.

Chris walked out of the livery, his black duster blowing behind him as he walked against the wind. Yes, this wedding was indeed happening as he strutted past the wedding guests in decorated suits and gowns. All the pearls, the beads, and the richest fabric he’d ever seen on these sides of the tracks. He stopped in the focus of the town lot and he hooked his eyes on the display of the seating, the lily arch, the ashen and azure ribbons gusting with the blustery weather.

This was really happening…

He looked around a bit longer before he began his walk toward the jailhouse. That was until Josiah walked by him, lost in a book. And the book didn’t transpire to Chris, until the ex-preacher stopped his walk, that it was a bible he held.

Josiah took a notice in the corner of his eye at a sinister outline. “Chris?” he turned to face him. Chris put his focus on the preacher. Josiah shifted his weight, catching a foretaste of vast hurting in the gunslinger’s eyes. “You okay?”

Chris narrowed his eyebrows, not liking the question. “Why?”

“No reason. It’s just that—“ Shifting his weight once more, Josiah fumbled with the bible in his hands, then crept it up to rest it against his chest, over his heart. “Buck’s been needin’ to see you is all.”

Tension eased in Chris’s eyes with now question. “What’s this about?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Chris gave a soft snicker, “That’s a first.”

“He’s in the church waiting.”

---

He couldn’t get it to tie. Well, he could but not the way he wanted it to look. Not the way it was meant to. Fumbling with anxious, shaky fingers, Buck tried to make this black tie Maude gave him work.

But it wasn’t.

He swore softly, fumbled some more until a knock at the half opened door interrupted him. Buck turned midway and watched Chris walk in quietly.

Chris didn’t exactly look directly at Buck; he more searched the tiny room in the back of the church. When the searching ended, Chris landed his eyes on the core of the room: the mirror, the lone silhouette standing in front of it but now with his back to it.

“You wanted to see me?” Chris asked low and controlled.

“Just the man I wanted to see.” Buck said, too wound up to fake any manly force. He swallowed. Cleared his throat. Tried to think of something to say, an excuse to be standing here in this suit he never imagined wearing. In silence they both considered this look of the married man to be. In his suit, clean, not one trace of dust on him. And Buck let out a relaxed breath appreciating Chris’s cool approach. “What’d you think?”

Chris mapped out the sketch of the man before him. And then he thought to add some more comments about the un-like Buck suit. He started with the boots; too shiny for even his liking… they weren’t dirty enough. The straight legged black pants outlining his lengthy gunfighter legs up to his hips then following a pallid, ruffled fabric narrowed his manly build. His brand new cufflinks, the crisp shirt clasped under the fitted black suit.

For a moment—a moment too long—Chris couldn’t look away and before the awkward silence and the uncomfortable stare took hold he said, “Think you’ve mastered the look of a banker, Mr. Wilmington.”

A laugh escaped from Buck’s nervous, tight expression, “No, this is a man’s suit. Not a fancy talkin’ banker or businessman one.”

“And this is your suit.”

“Yeah…” This was his suit. Buck turned around to face the mirror, admiring. “My weddin’ suit.” He shook his head still amazed with overpowering bliss, and his face glowed Chris saw watching his mirror image. Then Buck’s luminous eyes narrowed to look right back at Chris’s reflection. “I admire the time you spent to yourself a suit.”

Okay, this he could play with. The rigidity in his body and the frame of his nearing emotions about this wedding, he frowned and pretended to inspect himself. “I’m clean, ain’t I? My clothes, my boots. Even brushed the dirt off my hat.”

But Buck was right. Chris hadn’t taken the time to get himself properly dressed. He wore the same attire he wore day after day: black boots, black duster, his pick of the week… a royal cobalt chemise, and those fitted black pants.

“Well, yeah, that is somethin’,” Buck chuckled. “ But I guess I’ll take what I can. I known you for fourteen years to know this is as far as you go.”

“Now I thought we’ve known each other for twelve years.” And he gave a grunt of laughter remembering how neither he nor Buck would ever get the number of years straight of knowing the other.

And the smile that came so willingly on Buck’s lips, it was difficult for Chris to contain even a small one. But he managed and the look Buck held gave into the gunslinger’s quiet envy.

Chris knew there was no need to be jealous of Buck, and he tried everything possible in that split second to be happy for his friend. To be okay with this, knowing things were changing again, and will continue to change from here on out.

“Damn this thing,” Buck gave up with the tie, throwing his hands down at his sides in frustration. “I knew I shouldn’t have accepted this thing from Maude.”

Chris shook thoughts from his head, and walked the few feet toward Buck and gathered the ends of the black tie, adjusted it from behind his neck, folding down the flipped collar, and began to tie it for him.

Buck felt a bubble of laughter spring from his empty stomach when Chris had to take the initiative with the tie himself. Then silence crept between the two friends and Buck’s sudden belly laugh turned still, then to repentance. When the world stilled in his head, when his eyes stopped blinking from being so damn nervous, he looked right at Chris’s concentrated eyes. Those sad eyes he could no longer hide.

“I’m sorry, Chris.” Buck spoke gently; making sure those simple words didn’t hit a sore spot.

“Because you can’t tie it yourself?” And obviously Chris didn’t get Buck’s outward confession.

“Because I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”

Chris tightened his grip on the tie, gritted his teeth and went straight back to the tight expression he carried when he entered the room. “Don’t.”

“Today's my weddin' day and it’s supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but I can't stop thinkin' about yours.” Oh, Buck used that infamous soft spoken tone that’d melt women’s hearts in a split second.

But Chris wasn’t a lady he needed to womanize. He knew what was what, and he hated how Buck always reminded him of the past with his family. “It was a long time ago.”

“Chris, you once said that if I found someone to spend the rest of my life with, loving that woman forever till the day I die then there's still hope for the rest of us. Even you.”

“You know me well enough, Buck, it’ll never happen. I won't let it.” Chris managed. His throat was tight, his mouth dry. He dropped his hands from his friend’s neck, finishing with the tie.

“Yeah, I know you, Chris. And I remember you that day. With the same dumb smile, the butterflies in the stomach.” Buck laughed to relive tension in his throat, the tremble in his jaw. “You were so dizzy you couldn’t walk or see straight.”

Jaw set tight, hard, Chris glared at him, “That feeling only comes so often, Buck. Don’t waste it thinking about me.”

“I won't if you’ll acknowledge my guilt about that night. Let me have what's rightfully mine when you know I had a part in your stay in Mexico!” To his surprise, Buck raised his voice.

“I told you that it wasn't your fault. I could have left when I wanted to but I didn't. That was my choice! You have no guilt, Buck! Let it go!”

“I can’t just let it go, Chris!”

“Gonna have to,” Chris settled with a calm reply.

“There’s no point of one man dealing with the guilt of two.”

“And there’s no point in two of us being miserable.” Cooling off, Chris edged back and turned away from Buck’s seething eyes. He didn’t want to fight, not now, not today. If only Buck would just drop that the death of his wife and son was not his fault. He’d told Buck time and time again that he had nothing to do with the murders and how he must let it go. He told him that evenly, protecting him from thinking the worse about that night when he and Buck saw the fire from a distance. Riding as fast as their horses could take, losing personal belongings on the way. The reins to the horses they bought. Just to get to the house in time before it downed in inevitable flames.

Whenever Buck brought up his wife and son, Chris always remembered that night and he remembered how scared he was. The frantic tears he cried the strained voice screaming for them. And how he willed to dash through the door right into the fiery fire, but Buck grabbed him before it’d kill him.

He couldn’t think about that night anymore.

“Chris, you're my friend and a good one at that. I won't let you suffer. Not anymore,” Buck said.

Chris let his hands slump from his gun belt and he turned around to face him. “Why do you want the guilt, Buck? Why? There's no guilt on a weddin' day. Why are you doin' this?”

“Because I'm gonna leave this town, these people tomorrow and you. I need to know you'll be okay and I want to take the pain off your shoulders while I can.”

Chris shook his head and he tried to swallow, tried to moisten his throat. “Bring back Sarah and Adam then. You bring 'em back and then the pain will go away. Can you do that for me, Buck?”

Perhaps that was a way to ease Buck’s guilt. To let him really have it with how it was with him now and will always be. His family was gone and Chris had to accept that, the truth. And that’s what Buck needed to do now.

“No way in God's name is that possible but I can reverse the past to now if you'll be by my side at the altar. Just like I did for you on your weddin' day.”

His best man. Chris glanced down at the floor, disturbed, bowled over, bothered, and ticked. He placed his hands on his hips then and looked Buck right in the eyes giving no indication he was poking amusement to this offer.

“If I do this, will you leave all this crazy talk about guilt be?”

Then out of the blue in the most unrespectable situation ever, Buck planted a smirk on his lips from ear to ear. “I don’t think so, stud.”

Louise didn’t get her way over a quick wedding.

Buck refused to rush into the wedding and wanted the guests to enjoy themselves while they can so he could manage to suck down all his fear into his gut and continue to prepare for this big step ahead of him. He was getting married, he said over and over, believing the truth that it was in deed real. Chris tried to talk some sense into him. He couldn’t believe he had the nerve to listen to JD’s advice about women. What went through his head when the young gunfighter first suggested marriage? Yes, Buck knew he was in love with this woman, all women in fact, but this woman he will soon marry he loved more than life itself.

And from Maude Standish’s personal opinion on marriage she laid out to him last night, Buck didn’t know what he got himself into. A chance to be happy with one woman for the rest of his life, and the chance to move on from the guns, the fights, the loud-cackling drunks in the night… the chance to have a family.

Chris walked out of the jailhouse after exchanging words with Vin inside. He had to get some fresh air as the wind blew through his clothes, cooling down from tension he didn’t noticed he had. And the sun wasn’t helping him either. He moved his hat further down his forehead and leaned against a wooden post as he watched guests take seats as the wedding was about to begin.

He saw JD and Casey in the front row, talking and Casey laughed at what JD whispered in her ear. Nettie Wells sat beside her and she kept a chair open for Vin. He moved his stare across Ezra and Nathan hanging out by the alter in conversation with Josiah. Chris knew this was going to be a very long ceremony because everything Josiah did, he’d take to the heart. Every word spoken, it’d carry onto another word, another prayer ending with how weddings were important, the most important part of anyone’s life, and how rarely it happened anymore.

He saw everyone else he’d usually see within a day’s time except Mary. He hadn’t spotted Mary yet. Above all people with this wedding taking place and the preparation, Chris figured she’d be the one standing with Josiah or Ezra but she was no where in sight…not in plain sight that was.

The jailhouse doors opened and Vin walked out. “Lively bunch we got here today.”

“Hope they’ll get what they came here for,” Chris said.

“Yeah, Mary’s done good. Maude too.”

Chris grunted, “I reckon.”

Vin looked crossways at the gunslinger, “You’re not for weddings?”

“Never knew what the big deal was.”

“Is that how you felt when you married your wife?” Vin asked. Chris looked at him. Of course that’s not how he felt. He felt as if the world was on his side that day, that every enemy rejoiced him, forgetting how they were mistreated. His wedding day was something to remember, to cherish. And he remembered every breathing second of Sarah standing before him with a ring of white roses on her head, her small bulge where their son grew with life. How he laid his hand on her belly and gave her their first kiss as husband and wife.

“You ready for this?”

Mary. Chris recognized her voice immediately. And his memories of his wedding disappeared.

He turned and watched her make an approach toward him. “It ain’t my weddin’.”

Mary huffed out a breath and glanced over at Vin. “Oh, I know that. I mean for Buck. You ready for him to get married?” Mary asked and between he and Vin, letting the sun’s heat stroke her face and blond curls.

“He didn’t need my say whether this was right or not.” Chris said as he turned his attention back on the crowd.

“Then what do you think?”

“I don’t.”

He looked at Mary then and she looked right back at him. Something between these polar opposite people struck Chris hard in the chest and he had to look away. He didn’t want to look at Mary that way. Thoughts he didn’t want to invite in his head while other misguided thoughts about the lady stranger he had yet to see again.

Mary crossed her arms over the white satin dress that covered her shoulders and wore low around the neck. She took a deep breath and looked beyond the crowd, admiring her work with the setup and thinking about nothing in particular except Chris. “Well, I think if you are truly in love with someone you won’t be able to imagine your life without them. To know this is the one you were born for and why you waited.”

Chris’s mouth twitched to a grin, but he quickly tossed it before she saw. And thinking about what she just said about waiting for the right love, he had to ask her, “Think that happens for a second time?”

Now Mary put her attention on him, “Yes.” She spouted out, almost in disbelief that he’d ask her that. “Don’t you?”

Chris wanted to shake his head yes, but knowing he could only love one woman, and Sarah was gone. “No, I don’t.”

And her smile dropped, the breath taken from her lungs. Chris turned away from her and with that end note, his last comment; Mary could do nothing but smile. Was he lying? Was he telling the truth? Could she ever manage to give him the love that was stolen from him those four years ago? Right now, no. She could wish that she might be able to sometime down the road, but what mattered now was this wedding.

“Mary?”

She turned to where her name was spoken and she found Vin standing before her. She smiled from ear to ear when she watched him extend his arm for her to take as an escort to the wedding.

“Would you?” he asked.

“Yes, Vin. Thank you.” And Mary took that arm, looked at Chris one last time, then left with Vin.

Chris winced from the sun’s powerful light as he watched Vin take Mary to the wedding. He didn’t feel wrong for saying he didn’t believe love could happen twice. He felt no pinch of regret. She needed to know and he let her know without hesitation. And it was the truth. He leaned off the wooden post knowing he had to get down there at the alter for Buck; all he had to do was move his legs, do the motions, and be done with it. Easier said then done, he thought. He did a quick run over the town’s crowd one more time, looking down the stretch of town and across the lot and when he did he saw her again.

Natalie watched the guests and folks involved with the wedding ceremony. She was in awe as she held a bag of supplies she purchased in Mrs. Potter’s general store. With her cape covering her body the shape of the dark violet gown molded every inch of her chest, her belly, her long legs.

Chris noticed: those legs, those hips, her beauty.

Natalie stopped in front of Trevor’s Hardware store to admire the wedding with unyielding soft eyes. From across the lot, Chris couldn’t make out if she was pleased or in a great deal of pain as she watched the guests whisper and listen to the soft wedding hymns. And then those brown eyes circled over at him. Heart skipped a beat, Chris watched her watch him. And then her eyes lightened up and the sparkle disappeared. She set her jaw tight; her lips dry as she couldn’t look away.

The connection of that damn attraction leaped again from his heart to hers and Chris was the one to look away before it took a hold of him and he’d find himself walking over to her. Asking her to take his arm and allow him to escort her to a wedding she wasn’t invited to. A wedding she happened to fall upon on her travels.

No, he couldn’t do that. Not after having that talk about marriage with Mary, the second chance at love. And none of that fancied Chris. He had to get rid of this woman who so willingly captured his eyes, made him forget about the real world and do nothing but drown himself in her sweet scent.

“Mr. Larabee?”

Chris turned and he saw Maude looking at him. “Ma’am?”

“It’s time, son.”

Chris heaved himself off the boards and into the threatening sun. He looked back at Natalie but she was gone suddenly. Not in his view, not anywhere. A wave of misguided emotions stung into the pit of his gut but he managed to keep his cool long enough to walk up to Buck at alter standing in front of the guests. He removed his hat then and set his hands behind his back and waited for the ceremony to begin.

Then when he thought things couldn’t get any worse bringing up old memories, about his wedding— the first glimpse of the bride walking out of the Clarion doors caught not one, but every male’s attention…even Chris’s.

To take this woman as your awfully wedded wife. To love her, honor her; cherish her for all the days of her life. Louise walked off the boards into the dusty street and the two seamstresses followed, holding her satin veil. With the brightest smile, tears in her eyes, the dizzied mind that she was alas getting married to a man she’d been waiting for all her life.

Taking those tiny unwedded steps down the isle, Louise gazed at Buck, the short distance she had before she’d be in his arms. He’d take her hands and help the rest of the way to the alter and stand before Josiah and do this thing. And from here on out, things did not cool down and Buck and Louise were married under the broad blue southern sky and Chris smiled the whole time.

Natalie walked down the lot so she could get a better look at the married couple giving their first kiss as man and wife. She wrapped her arm around the wooden post and held on tight. And for what… so she wouldn’t cry in front of these people? So she could show these people that she was a soft woman beneath the rough talk? To see how much she wanted that love with a man again.

She leaned the side of her face against the post, just watching and admiring. The wind blew like mad in her face, pushing back her brunette hair. The sensation of the warm summer breeze trickled down her spine, causing a throbbing rush of emotion to clog her throat.

It’d been too long since she’d drown herself in love and passion. She wasn’t use to this charge of emotional bliss that soared through her veins, shooting out her heels. How she longed to be kissed the way Buck kissed Louise.

But those were mere illusions of her past, and she needed to leave the past with the people who were stuck there. She closed her eyes and thought how she could push away what she had with her husband. The love he gave the past six years, and the last love he scorned on her body. One treasured memory following a tragic one was not healthy on her soul and she could do nothing but push back.

Then suddenly what she heard she never thought she’d hear again.

“Mrs. Rose?”

---

When the wedding chimes rang and the guests cheered after Buck and Louise pulled away from the kiss, Chris could do nothing but smile. From ear to ear, he couldn’t contain the grin and he couldn’t help but clap and cheer with the others. You owe this much to Buck if not more, he told himself.

Then to keep the sun off his eyes he put his hat back on and tipped it down further on his forehead for the usual comfort. He watched Buck and Louise walk down the isle and a disarray of yellow, brown, and white beans were tossed.

Chris laughed too, but held it in as he watched his friends. Too caught up in the joy of marriage, he hadn’t noticed Natalie standing off in the corner until he looked over and saw a man stand next to her. And her expression and the way she moved her body away from this man warned Chris this wasn’t good.

---

“Randall McArthur…” Natalie stumbled and took a step back from the roaring faintness she suddenly felt. She blinked a few times to get rid of this man she knew for a long time now but no matter how many times she did, he’d stay. “Randall…how did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

What? Natalie shook her head, knowing what he said couldn’t be true. She’d been so good keeping scarce from town to town, pushing forward when something was too suspicious. She was good at that.

“Mrs. Rose-”

“Please!” she shot her hand up to stop him from speaking her name again. “You must not speak my name. Understood?”

Randall stared at her long and hard. He saw the scare in her whiskey eyes, the fragile attempt of her hand to make sure he didn’t say what she’d kept secret for so long. But he had to tell her why he was there, and why he had been looking for her and he needed to tell her now before the rush of brutal memories vanished and she’d turn and stalk away.

“Listen to me, okay? Listen. Alex is only two towns away. At least a night’s ride from here. You have to get out now!” He said and put the wooden cane he held on the floorboards for balance.

This man didn’t like Natalie or her husband Alex from what she remembered when they were neighbors and ranching, and sharing cattle, horses, food, and welcoming invites into their home. Randall never accepted their generosity. Even after he knew Alex lost his cool, and his mind…he never once helped her when she needed somebody, anybody, and he was the closest one there, and that night when he heard her screams for help. So what was he doing here now?

She had to ask.

“Why are you here, Mr. McArthur? What brought you to find me?”

Randall shook his head and released a hot breath of air. “Because he did this to me.” And he pointed down at his right leg and hit the shin with the cane and the hit was hard and hollow. He looked back up and saw the fear in Natalie’s eyes and then he lifted his pant leg and revealed a wooden post in exchange of his leg.

“He shot up my leg and I had to have the damn thing amputated.” Randall scoffed, and abruptly rolled the pant leg back down. “And I’ll spit on his grave when that man’s dead.”

Natalie leaned up and took a step back to the harsh of his tone. “And I thought he’d be better by now.” She figured he would be after she’d gone. Maybe alone he was better off to heal his own wounds. But now…

Randall laughed, “Better!” the cane wobbled in his hands as he continued that hideous laugh.

“What is it then?” Natalie shot back, irritated with this dirty old man that use to care what he looked like, how clean he’d always treat himself. He was just the opposite of what she remembered. Had those two years really changed not only her but everyone she knew also? And he wouldn’t stop laughing, or shaking, aw hell! “Mr. McArthur!”

He sprung forward and roughly grabbed her arm. “Listen to me! He’s coming for you. You have to leave now, Natalie!”

“Let go,” she hissed, and tried to pull off from this man she didn’t know anymore. But he wouldn’t and he kept explaining why he traveled her all this way. He told her about her husband’s battles with guzzling beers. The severe damage he’d do in each town just looking for her. How, her husband she once thought never harm a living soul unless it was business, would threaten every man, woman, and child until he found her. And she had to start and ask him why.

“You have to leave!” he shrieked, the grip tightened on her arm. “Or you’re dead!”

“Okay, Randall, just let me go.” Natalie pleaded. She couldn’t back him down with words, or the spice of her tongue she’d use occasional to get rid of the drunken men. It didn’t work on this man. She didn’t have the strength to pull away and run.

“You leave now then!” he barked. His old man scowl didn’t let up, the voice aching with nerves, or the rasp of his heavy breathing.

“Okay,” Natalie breathed and tried again to lift from his hold but he still held on until a dark shadow cast over her eyes and she now stared at a pair of broad shoulders of a man and Randall was forced to release her.

“I think the lady said let go,” Chris said, his voice low and guff.

Randall looked over the man’s shoulder at a terrified Natalie Rose. “I hear her, mister.”

And Natalie only heard Randall talking. The strong presence of Chris’s protection wouldn’t allow her to see him. She heard Randall start to jabber again, the sound of someone losing their mind about which word to say that’d sound better than the other choices. Adamant that he might stumble across the wrong word, she eased around the masculine build and stepped between Chris and Randall.

“Mr. Larabee,” Natalie said calmly. “I’m fine. He let me go and I’m fine.” She smoothed down her silk dress then put the cape’s hood over her head. “Really, there’s no problem. Mr. McArthur was just leaving.” She glared at Randall, their stare smacked and heat boiled, and then she nodded stiffly, letting him know she heard him clearly about her husband.

Randall accepted the nod then looked at Chris, “Everything’s fine ya see.”

“Tonight Mr. McArthur,” she said evenly.

Chris narrowed his gaze at Natalie after her last comment.

“Better you do before it’s too late,” Randall said.

Chris didn’t like this talk and he didn’t like the way this elderly man treated this misgiving woman he knew so little about. But when their little exchange of misguided secrets about tonight the comments left an unsettling spill of wonder in his gut.

“Tonight,” she said tightly, her jaw locked.

“Good day to ya then miss.” Randall tipped his hat and walked away and when Chris turned to look at Natalie she too had the urge to leave the scene before he had questions.

---

The night was going about as well as Chris had imagined. He went through the motions, talking to whichever of the locals cared to seek him out in his corner in the outskirts of town where Buck and Louise’s wedding reception held. Mostly they wanted to thank him for the invitation—apparently, he’d invited them! Not Buck or Louise— and to congratulate him for handing the organization of the celebration over to Mary.

Apparently she was a sensational hostess.

Rick Johnson raved about her barbecue marinades. Sasha Lambert gushed about the fairy candles and asked if she could borrow them for her husband’s surprise fortieth.

“Surprise?” her husband muttered. “The only surprise is that none of you noticed that feminine stranger walking amongst us. When did she arrive?”

“Who is this woman?”

“Are you all blind?”

No, Chris wasn’t blind. He could see the woman who miserably haunted his dreams these last few nights. The women he tried to resist but couldn’t. Mary popped in his view now and he had the respect to see her now when the other woman with secrets was no where in sight. He watched Mary walk amongst the crowd, laughing, pouring empty wine glasses, holding her stomach as she listened intently to whom she conversed with. She wore the white canvas buttoned shirt and a rosy colored prairie skirt that sketched every curve of her legs, and a gentle sway when she moved. He swore beneath his breath, every time she’d lean over to pick up a piece of food from the buffet table, to stop watching her.

“A knockout dress, huh?” Buck said at his side.
Chris scowled, not because Buck noticed Mary, but because he’d noticed him noticing Mary. Continuously. He had to stop staring.

“Enjoying your celebration?” he asked.

“Of course.”

Chris lifted a curious brow at that answer. “Well, I suggest you get back to it then.” His gaze slid back to Mary, the stranger’s vibrant opposite. She was talking to Mr. Jacobs, her head tilted as she listened intently, and in the muted garden moonlight, she practically glowed.

He turned and looked away, and when Buck wandered off to check on his wife, he moved to a shadowy corner where he couldn’t see Mary anymore. She could talk till she was blue in the face about loving this place, her work, what mattered. Before his mind began contemplating about a life with this woman who strongly believed in morals of each new dawn, he stood glowering in the shadows, wondering how quickly he could execute a round of farewells when music started up.

A few couples took to an arbitrary dance floor and he knew he’d missed his moment for a quick-leave-taking. He watched the dancers, drawn by the image of coupledom and unable to look away. He watched their hands connect and their bodies brush, saw their shared smiles and moments of eye-meet, and felt a restless emotion swell inside him, a pain he didn’t want to name or know. A loneliness he thought he’d learned to control.

Abruptly Chris turned to leave and stalk out of the loving dancers, their lives, the celebration of united love and he disappeared into the shadow of the trees.

---

Natalie sat on a body rock by the pond watching the moon’s reflection upon the calm water. She held a wine glass she deliberately took from the beverage table at the reception she walked by and no one saw her make the steal. For a woman who never drank in her life, she figured one glass of the richest scarlet wine wouldn’t hurt this one time. For a night when she needed it desperately.

She swished the drink around in the glass but she didn’t take her eyes off the water. Randall McArthur rang in her ears, the sound of his voice quenching her beating heart to a quick, rough rapture. He scared the life out of her after her name was called out in a town she was a stranger in. Never had she thought she’d hear her name spoken aloud like that again.

The words he told her about her husband. The nasty details about his amputated leg and how Alex lost his mind completely… she was forced to hear it all.

Not a good man, Natalie! She heard Randall scream in her ears, grabbing her arm, squeezing and getting up real close. He warned her to get out of this town and get out now. And she planned to as soon as she finished her wine and her gaze, and the last moment of freedom she’d knew she’d never have again if Alex caught her…

But her freedom didn’t last and although her husband was nowhere near, Natalie sensed another presence lurking towards her from a shadow of trees. “How did you know I’d be here?” she asked taking her eyes off the water, watching Chris walk up, taking each step at his desired slow pace.

“I didn’t.”

She accepted his quiet approach. Her bottom jaw trembled and a tear fell from her blurry vision as she gazed at him. What was she crying for? Oh, she had to get rid of the tears before he came any closer.

Chris, five feet from her, gazed down at the stilled pond. She moved her eyes to look over his rigid body frame with a glass of whiskey in his hand, the fitted pants he wore so well, the long duster, and the midnight beard. This was, indeed, a good-looking man.

Natalie shook her head to get rid of those thoughts and she felt a cool breeze scrape across her face that wasn’t the midnight wind. Was she still crying or did the tears ever go away? She wiped at her eyes again and blinked hard before he turned his gaze on her and watch her actions, the tears falling.

“What brings you here, Mr. Larabee?” she asked, dabbing her wet fingers on her dress.

He took a navy handkerchief out of his coat pocket and handed it to her, which meant he had to get even closer to her than he’d like. More than she’d like. “It’s Chris.”

She lifted a hand and gladly took his handkerchief. Her mind was in a whirlwind to the sound of his husky voice, the tightness in his throat when he watched her dab at her eyes with his handkerchief. He had to look away before his emotions grabbed hold of his joints and he’d run over to her and caress her, hold her to him, ease down the tears that came out so willingly. Chris didn’t even have to know the reason for her tears. He had an urgent need just to hold this woman. He didn’t know whether or not she felt the same need, but she must have known what he was thinking when she turned from his stare back at the pond.

Natalie rested her hands in her lap holding the handkerchief as she took a deep shaky breath. She remembered he said something about his name. Small talk? She wondered. He told her his first name. It wasn’t only Mr. Larabee it was Chris Larabee now. Not so formal, she assumed, as that was not the kind of man he was. And she could tell that by just looking at him and how he lived in that small shack in the hills. This was a rugged loner. The loner who could only work in those fitted pants, who wore layered clothes to shield of what real beauty he had beneath it all.

Natalie bent over to pick her wine glass beside the rock, “Figure you know my name by now.”

“No,” Chris mumbled and looked over at her.

“You heard that man say it this afternoon. Hell, he shouted it.”

“Wasn’t payin’ much attention to details.”

That wasn’t true. He heard Randall right and clear. Everyone in town probably heard him. So it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference if she repeated her name again…even if he was lying.

“It’s Natalie.” Immediately she regretted that, and ached to the sound of her own name coming right of her own mouth. Silence, awkward, too uncomfortable, ready to stand and run off to the hotel and drown myself in sleepy sorrows. She had to do something before she’d make another fool out of herself in front of this man. But she couldn’t move. The pond’s mesmerizing beauty wouldn’t let her leave.

“You always wander off like this, Chris?” she asked then her mind snapped to the sound of his name humming through her lips. A smile curled now and she had to look away when she became too giddy for words. She shook the new thoughts from her head and already forgot what she asked him.

“Sometimes,” he muttered then gulped down the remains of his drink. By the time he finished his edginess had escalated to an acute tension that held his backbone and shoulder muscles rigidly straight. He thought about her name, how well it fit her curved female figure. The kindness in her eyes now that were once spiced with edge and a voice that no longer sounded rough, but soft and welcoming. “Sometimes it’s better to be off alone. Nobody tells you what to do or how to think.”

“You prefer it that way? It has to be the loneliest feeling in the world.” She fixed her eyes back on the surface of the pond that glistened silver in the late night moon.

“Wasn’t given a choice.”

“Then you and I have the same bad dreams.” Natalie hadn’t wanted to talk about this, what she was feeling, but she found she couldn’t stop and with the gunslinger looking at her like that: his head crooked to the side, his lips a thin tight line, his jaw locked, those green eyes slit. And if he stopped looking at her that way, she might have the nerves she had the last time they’d talked and get up and leave before too much was spoken.

But she needed someone to talk to, someone who knew what she might be feeling and those thoughts wiped out any odds to leave. “We weren’t given the choice to be alone. Your life changes in the blink of an eye. And you’re powerless to stop it.”

“You don’t know how I grieve.” Chris went completely still. He was forced to look away from her teary eyes and down at the wet mildew soaking his black boots. He couldn’t put a finger on what he was thinking, what went through his mind now at this point in the midnight air that willingly filled his lungs with toxic. And he wasn’t drunk…at least not yet to indulge into a conversation such as life changing events, a woman’s tears, thinking about the past.

Aw hell, she was just like Buck when it came down to talking about what really happened to his family. Buck wouldn’t let it go, and even if this woman didn’t know why he suffered, the pain in her eyes wouldn’t let him let it go either.

Chris swore softly, and she huffed out a breath.

“My sentiments exactly, Mr. Larabee,” Natalie stood and walked over to the pond’s edge and picked several pebbles from the ground at her feet and ran them through her fingers, and despite the intensity of the moment he couldn’t stop watching the play of her hand, the slow stroke of her thumb. “But I need to get it out one way or another. Just as good as you are here otherwise I’d be talking to the wind.”

“Get what out?” he watched her study the pebbles another second. “Is this about that man earlier?”

“Yes.” She tossed the pebbles into the water. Chris watched the disturbance of their entry ripple across the water in ever-increasing rings until they disappeared altogether. And when Natalie looked up again, her eyes were as mirror flat as that silver-blue surface. “I need help.”

It took a moment for her meaning to gel, it was so unexpected. Chris swallowed hard—he had to in order to speak. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought I knew how to handle him, but I don’t.” She said after a beat of pause.

“Him?” he asked carefully.

“My husband,” she said curtly.

Throbbing tooth, pull it, get it over with. “What’s he done to you?”

“He saw me. We fell in love. He gave me a son.” Natalie looked up, and although her voice was flat, even, controlled, the look in her eyes was raw. “And then he took my son away from me. He shot and killed our son by his accident, by his own hands, his gun and he was drinking.” A drunk, Chris guessed, and why she didn’t much like to drink.

To make the pain go away he assumed after what her husband did, but in her situation, she told Chris he was drunk when he did it. That knowing lodge heavy in his throat and he tried to control the sudden rage he felt occurring in his gut.

Natalie knew she captured his attention and as she continued her voice shook with the depth of her emotion. “And I heard the gunshots. Still everyday I hear them. And I ran…” Her eyes widened and, to his horror, filled with moisture again. Damn, but he’d rather face a herd of enraged horses than a woman in tears. Especially a woman like Natalie, whose tears meant something.

“I ran so fast through the fields to where his gunshots were fired and I saw my baby. And screaming, that’s all I did was scream.” She sucked in a shaky breath, thick with those brimming tears. “Alexander…he didn’t do anything. He didn’t say, or do a thing expect rant about how he thought it was a thief stealing the stock. That it was an accident.”

“You believed him?”

“He’s my husband. I had no choice.” She made a low growly sound in her throat, a sound of struggled and exasperation that kicked him hard in the gut like that herd.

“You did have a choice, Natalie!” Her name sounded almost perfect coming up his vocals, shooting out his mouth with how angry he was in that moment.

“You don’t know him, Chris! You weren’t there two years ago. You have no idea what he and I have been through after Robbie’s death.”

He wanted to tell her he had an idea. That he knew how she never wanted to wake in the mornings, never wanted to get out of bed and start the day. How she couldn’t look at another child and not think of her son. To have to live without him, move on…Yeah, Chris had an idea of what she went through.

He curled his hands into fists and waited for her to stop and walk away, or stop the crying before his resistance gave in and pull her into his arms so she could cry. But he stayed put and kept his distance as far from her as possible.

“What does this all have to do with that man you saw today?”

Natalie shot him a quick glance over her shoulder, “He was our neighbor.”

“Miss,” Chris murmured, looking at the ground away from her stare. “If this man, or your husband is a threat by any means to the town, you let me hear it now.”

“Mr. McArthur will not be a threat to you, but I can’t promise what my husband will do if he learns I’m here.”

Anger boiled Chris’s blood knowing this woman brought another enemy into town. He knew her beauty was too good to be true. It was back to business now, but business he didn’t want to get involved in. Not tonight anyways. A good gunfight might sound good tomorrow but not tonight when everything and everyone was having a good time celebrating love.

If he was going to do this, he had to do quietly and alone. “Can you tell me anything specific about him?”

“It’s not your problem, Chris! I’ll be gone and if he comes into this town, he’ll be gone just as quick when he finds I’m not here.”

“And then you’ll keep running until fate catches up to you?” he asked and something uncoiled deep in his gut. Natalie wouldn’t face her husband and she’d just keep running.

“Tonight I’m leaving. This is not your business.” She turned to leave but he caught her by the arm before she had the chance to sweep by him.

“What did he do to you that you’re runnin’ from?”

They locked eyes then, hard and strict without so much of an ease up on his grip holding her. Her breath seethed through her nostrils, tears falling down her cheeks, their shine reflected off the moonlight. Natalie couldn’t hide from this, not from the glare in his eyes, the concern for either her or the town’s sake.

“The last time I saw Alexander, the last ounce of affection he gave was when he forced himself on me. Held my neck and had him a great time. And of course I let him.” She swallowed down hard tears, “Fighting him off would have done me no good. He’d just go faster, do it harder. Then he left.”

That instant Chris’s grip on her arm eased and he let her pull away. He watched her hold her gaze on him and for solitude second, their connection flashed with ready heat. Too mesmerized by this appealing woman, and as much as he wanted to strip her down right then and lay her down in the grass and wash away all her emotions, kiss the tears away, he had to stop and rethink the sudden fantasy that lurked through his blood right down to the throbbing manhood aching for her touch. He didn’t need to have her like that, not after what she confessed to him. The very thing that caused to her run away in the first place.

All he could do was end their emotion converse as quickly as possible so he could get the hell out of this mess he’d been trying to keep back for three years now. Chris had to make sure this woman was speaking the truth and if she were, he had to prepare for another battle.

“Natalie, understand, all right? You have to tell me what Alexander looks like. Who he rides with, what he does, and how he does it.”

“Chris—“ Resisting already, Chris had to grab both her arms and make her look at him straight in the eye. “You’re not runnin’ anymore, you hear?”

“You’re no match for him!” Tense, she tried to wedge out of his grip.

“You don’t know me,” he told her directly.

Natalie looked right at him, not daring to look away. He held the eyes of a serious gunfighter, the best in the west appeal. This was no game; she knew that from her travels the past two years. Then she started to have second thoughts about confessing all that she had to him. Did he even care? Was there care in this man she stood staring at? Was he just as callus and life-taking as her husband?

“No, I don’t know you.” She told him back with the spice in her tone Chris recognized from their previous run-ins. And then he let her go and she grabbed a fistful of her dress and walked away.


Natalie was able to sneak away from the celebration without so much being noticed by the guests. She walked the short distance back to town, and as she entered, she turned back and over her shoulder at the dark shadowy trees where she left the man who wanted to help her, who tried to help her. And when she wanted to accept his help, she couldn’t. This was her business and her business alone. If Alexander ever caught her, she had to deal with him. It wouldn’t matter how scared she was, she had to face him, face down the fears that stabbed her gut. A pain she had to get rid of one way or another, and the results would not be wasted or painless.

She turned back around with full force, strong willed and big-headed, back to being filled of confidence as she was the day she walked into town. She lifted her cape’s hood and placed it over her head and began the distant walk toward Virginia’s hotel.

Keeping her space from the locals who decided not to join in the festivities of the wedding celebration, Natalie was close to her destination until she landed eyes on another man she recognized just a few buildings down from where she stopped dead in her tracks.

Andy Scout… Alexander’s right hand man. Andy Scout— who never left her husband’s side during their gun fighting years, their plays, and their down right dirty combination of death and liquor. Andy was always rotten from the beginning. She could tell then when Alexander was happy and overwhelmed with all he had with her and Robbie. But since now that was gone, and she’d run off…Alexander would not be the man she fell in love with and Andy would have had a hand with his insanity.

Then suddenly Andy’s cold blue eyes looked her way, and in the dark Natalie turned abruptly hoping to herself, to God, he didn’t see her. She grabbed the hood covering her head still and away from the corrupt gunslinger. No noise yet, that was good. She didn’t hear the shuffling of boots on the floorboards or the soft sway of the dirt coming at her. To turn and check, that would be a definite catch, and she had more brains than to do something stupid like that.

Her stomach churned, her eyes began to well up again with heated tears, and her legs shook that she had to buckle them to quit. Taking a few deep breaths then releasing those moments later, she found the strength she needed and quietly and ever so slowly she began to move her feet then she quickened her pace as fast as they would take her to the back entrance of the hotel she needed to store herself so she could think about what to do next.

Leaving tonight? Not so much. Natalie would surely be caught if she gave the idea an attempt. She had to stay hidden for the rest of the night. At daybreak, she contemplated, she’ll be gone.

She didn’t move. Not one muscle. Hell, she hardly even breathed and when she did, short breaths are what came out mouth, her soon to be clogged nose with ingested body fluids. And she was scared.

Natalie sat on the edge of the hotel room’s bed eye level with the windowsill. She remembered she cracked open the window just a little to have constant breeze flow through but for one she didn’t remember opening it and two she couldn’t feel the breeze. She was that scared.

And did she sleep or did she stay in this position all night to the early morning until now when the sun beamed high and scorched above the town to tell the locals that it was late afternoon? Was it really this late already when her initiate plan was to leave before dawn? Natalie couldn’t move though. She would not move from her room, have the courage to check out of the hotel, or even so much as hide her face as she walk amongst the townspeople to get her horses, her wagon and get the hell out of dodge before it was too late. But no, she couldn’t do what she’d planned to at dawn. She was too scared to move…to stand for her legs would surely give out on her.

She knew Andy Scout was in town, most likely looking for her. She couldn’t take that chance and walk out without being stopped by one of Alexander’s boys. And she knew every single one of them, what they looked like in great detail, what size boot they even wore. Then Natalie discovered that it had been two years since she’d last seen these men and it’d be more than likely Alexander wouldn’t be riding with the same gunslingers. She just didn’t know and not knowing could be the worst mistake of all…if she didn’t know.

Natalie had time to think over and over about what to do next, but since her legs were in no hurry to move and get out of this town, neither was she more anxious to get caught and taken straight to Alexander by one Andy Scout. Taking a few short breathes which helped so little, she opened her ears from the disgusted screams in her head to listen to the busy talk of the townspeople outside her window, in the hotel corridor, everywhere.

“Can’t be all that bad, Buck.” She heard a young man say just below her window, and even though she didn’t recognize the voice, it was very clear through the crack.

“You try sittin’ on a wagon butt board for three days straight. That’s how long it’ll take to get to Winchester.” A voice she did recognize and it could only have come from the newlywed himself, Buck Wilmington.

Last night at the reception, Natalie couldn’t help but glimpse at Louise as she went on and on about her new job in Winchester, just three days away. She explained how long travels never bothered her, but she didn’t know how her husband would like it. And Natalie knew then from Buck’s voice he wasn’t exactly thrilled the way he groaned, breathing heavily as if he was carrying something large and over the top too heavy for him.

Natalie would take a look herself to find if she was right or not, but peeking her head out the window would surely give herself away. She didn’t want to risk it. She was enjoying this small conversation between comrades just below her two-story window above. So she stayed put.

But her time clock was ticking, the hours were slowly disappearing and if she’d wait for another chance to escape without getting noticed tonight, she had a fifty percent chance she would get caught. If Andy Scout was the same man she knew years ago when he and Alexander first started out as partners. He was the sly one as her husband was the fast gunman. Andy was a clever bastard.

Natalie opened her mouth and released a hot breath of air that been sitting in her tight throat for a while. No, she couldn’t wait any longer. She needed to leave; she would not let her guard down. She’d been doing this for too long now to just quit and be scared of one man she knew she had the power to fight off. She’d been practicing her self-defense for a while now, not with Randall McArthur as he was an old, crippled man. But she knew how to take care of herself…after all she had to learn. After what happened with her and Alexander’s last contact.

She got to her feet, buckled her knees and began to scatter around the room for all her belongings and throw them in her one suitcase.


By the time she packed her things and gripped the bag strap for dear life, she managed to clean her look up a bit. To dispose circles under her eyes, the heated cheeks, the messed hairpins. Before she left the hotel, not yet checking out, she tossed her hood’s cape over her head and tried her best to cover her face entirely.

Natalie walked outside, the sun’s heat blasting away on her already nervous, sizzling body. She looked in every direction; spotting the locals she only knew and saw from last night’s reception and from the time she’s been in town. The wedding guests too were ready to get out of this town and to Natalie’s relief; she only hoped she could blend in with the crowd and sneak away as sly as possible. She held her bag strap tight in her sweaty palm from her nerves kicking in full blast as she held her hood’s cape over her mouth and nose with her other hand.

After crossing an open alley, she made a quick turn around to make sure no one in particular was following her, looking in every which direction as it seemed but not straight in front of her as she smacked clean and hard into…

“Whoa there!” Buck yipped and picked her bag up that fell out of her sweaty fingers. “Sorry, ma’am. Wasn’t looking where I was goin’.”

“Nor was I, Mr. Wilmington.” Natalie said under the satin fabric. She didn’t let herself let her hood go and offer this kind man a smile.

Buck did the smiling for the both of them. “You know my name?”

Natalie nodded then said, “Everyone knows your name. At least by now they should.”

He cocked his head to the side with still that gentle, melting smile of his. “I don’t think I have the pleasure of your name, ma’am.”

No, no, no, Natalie told herself. “My name isn’t necessary to have. You’ll forget it as soon as I walk by.” And she tried to walk past him but he stopped her. Her eyes fluttered open, wider now, and she gripped her bag tighter in her hands. Even so much as a gentle smile from this man couldn’t make her worries go away.

And Buck saw this, “Everything okay?”

“What tells you I’m not?” she spiced her tone up now, eager more than ever to get rid of him.

Buck wouldn’t let it go. His happiness and moaning about this long travel ahead of him suddenly stopped to worry for this woman he didn’t know except for her look and whispers about town, and the look in her fretful eyes told him a different story after she said she was okay. “Forgive me again then.” And he stepped aside; he had to for her sake. Something was up and as Natalie pushed her way by him, Buck didn’t have to think twice about informing the other guys…especially when one of his guys noticed this woman.


Natalie held herself close. She gripped her bag harder with each ragged breath she took as she walked down the town lot, blocking out any contact with the locals she’d pass. The run into with Buck Wilmington alone was enough to handle, to take in and think did she give too much away by the sound of her voice, the beaded sweat along her cheekbones, her eyebrows. The hollow colds in her eyes.

And did he really think something as soon as she left? Is that why he gave in and allowed her to leave the way she did, as quickly as she did? Immediately, Natalie turned around to see if she could find Buck and to her unlikely surprise, he was no where to be seen. She cursed under her breath and thought maybe he did suspect something and he went off to do something about it, tell his comrades, to tell his new wife, tell anybody for that sake. Either way, Natalie would be gone and they’d have no leads to where she went off to.

But then a twinge of running away and never coming back ached her heart, pulsed in her brain that she may never see this one Chris Larabee again. A man who willed to help her when she asked for it. And then she came to the thought of why she asked for his help from the start. She didn’t need his help and in the wee hours of the morning, she begged herself not to get anyone else involved. So what if she was running. Running away right now was her best solution and her only. She couldn’t afford to take anymore chances, to speak anymore out about herself and especially to a man who looked as if he knew what he was doing with a gun.

When Natalie found this Buck Wilmington gone from where he and she just had their run-in, she turned back around, disposing of any self-stiffness as before, to rid the scare in her eyes and as soon as she faced the scenery before her, she again ran into a tough masculine build, but she stopped her feet from falling into his arms.

She looked up at this man who stopped her walk and suddenly the scare in her eyes came back. She recognized the stubbly chin, the crazed eyes, little hairs aligning his cheekbones, on his upper lip, the craggy dead tresses that wore as his hair, the dark, threatening cloud that hung above his head.

“Andy Scout,” Natalie said controlled and tempered, but inside she was screaming, breaking down— no, no, no, no.

“Mrs. Rose,” Andy mumbled: the two time loser without a cause or a love for life. “Funny to find you here.”

“Funny isn’t the word, Andy.” Through clenched teeth, Natalie fought against her tears, the emotions to stay tough and keep courage.

“And why you say that, Mrs. Rose?” he asked, a taunt of play in his voice.

“Stop calling me that,” she said, gripping her bag strap, cutting off circulation.

“That’s your name, right?”

Natalie went still. She looked at this man for as long as her eyes could hold before she turned away abruptly and tried like she had with Buck prior and walk by him, but unlike Buck Wilmington, Andy refused and grabbed her.

“Let me go,” she hissed when pressure of his hand gripped her elbow.

Andy thought about letting her go but it was just a tease of bad luck and soured eyes, “Think I’m gonna let you go just like that? After we’ve been lookin’ for ya for so long? Not a chance.” He squeezed her arm.

“Come on, Andy, leave me be. Let me leave. I don’t want to cause a scene and get you killed for it.”

“Death would only be my greatest adventure, Mrs. Rose.” He looked over her head then and found no one in particular looking over at them. Andy’s gaze came back on Natalie’s fretful expression and he smiled at this. “Oh, come on, Natalie, it will be like old times.”

“Old times are dead.”

“Just like your son?”

In a fit of uncontrolled but quiet anger, Natalie lifted her hand and curled it into a fist and was ready to slug Andy but his hand caught that fist and he relaxed her hand and linked fingers.

“Let’s get out of the sun.” He held their connected hands close to his chest then wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, folding his dirty fingers into her soft brown hair and without much of a fight, only more numb, Natalie allowed him to lead her where ever they were going.

Her walls crumbled, her courage died…


He knew he should be going. He knew his wife was waiting for him in front of Virginia’s Hotel doors for him. He knew he shouldn’t get caught into another gunfight of mixed pleasures and giddy up commotions he enjoyed so much when it came to taking lives.

But Buck knew he couldn’t get involved for Louise’s sake. And when the suspense was down right killing him to go and seek adventure about this new woman in town, a woman who caught every wranglers, cowboys, and elders’ attention whenever she graced her presence. A woman Buck had yet to know with all the wedding preparations taken place and all. A woman he knew his old friend had an attraction towards, and if this woman’s eyes showed him just how scared she was of something coming about that made her move her feet so quickly, Buck couldn’t let this mishap of a maybe murder take place. Not to her, not for Chris.

So he did it. He made the move and walked right into the saloon and peered over the getting wasted locals, the already drunks, and the regulars. He tipped his hat when Inez walked by him and she flashed him a friendly smile. Standing by the saloon’s swinging doors, the mid-afternoon breeze flapping against his back, he turned away from the bar and found whom he’d been searching for on the opposite side of the floor, in his usual sitting area with Ezra and Nathan keeping him company.

Then Buck took no time to walk his way right toward him.

“Chris?”

In the middle of a card game, Ezra called out his usual tone whenever someone interrupted one of his precious games but Buck blocked him out and looked right at Chris, tucked back in the corner, lost in the poker cards he held.

“What is it, Mr. Wilmington that you had to interrupt?” Ezra asked calmly with a roll of the eyes.

“Chris,” Buck repeated and after he did Chris looked up and met his concerned gaze and waited. “I don’t know if you’d call this a fact, but it is definitely a wonder.”

“What are you talkin’ about, Buck?” Nathan asked, entering the conversation after seconds of silence.

“I wish I knew, Nathan.” Buck said, turning toward to the healer then smacked his palms together. “I don’t know if she’s in trouble, if she needs our help—someone’s help.”

“Mr. Wilmington, aren’t you suppose to be gone now?” Ezra asked, shuffling the cards.

“Yeah, of course I’m meant to be gone now!” Surprised he raised his voice, as everyone in the whole saloon was too when they turned their attention to the corner where all four gunslingers were.

Buck shook his head, trying to make sense of what he was trying to say. “The woman, the new woman roamin’ about town. I think there’s something goin’ on we’re not suppose to know about.”

“How do you know this?” Nathan asked.

“I have my suspicions, don’t I? And she’s in trouble. If you only saw her face, Chris.” Buck switched his attention back on the man he was only meant to talk to about this.


“Andy, please…” Natalie stammered through angry tears she dared not try and release. If she did she knew he’d see straight away and do something really to make her cry. It was just the way Andy Scout was.

“I caught you once, Natalie, and I told you I do it again and again and again until you stay put.”

“As you can see, Andy, I haven’t learned from my mistakes.”

Andy gave the most satisfying expression Natalie ever saw coming from him. “Maybe you’ll learn from this one.” He then shoved her tiny figure through a pair of doors and she landed directly in the focal of the barbershop building. Where there would usually be customers, the locals requesting a shave or a simple haircut, there were none but a man sitting in one of the fancy spinning, padded chairs with a sack over his head.

“Ah, Mr. Randall McArthur!” Natalie instantly turned around to the high-spirited voice that belonged to Andy walking in after he’d lock the doors.

Randall McArthur? Natalie turned back around to face the man sitting in the chair only to now see his face had been revealed, the sack gone.

Randall McArthur!

Shocked and overwhelmed with emotions she thought she controlled, she turned back to face Andy whom stepped right beside her. “Andy, please!” She begged and she was not one to beg to any man but in this case, she had to do some serious begging if Andy was going to do what she’d suspected. With four men standing over the older man tied helplessly to the chair, a rope in his mouth, dry tears surfacing his aging eyes.

“I don’t know, Natalie, I just don’t know about this one.” Andy said, shaking his head sarcastically, pretending he cared about this old man’s life when really Natalie knew it was all a scam, a plead for her to go with them wherever they were going. A joke for her to get back to Alexander.

“Andy, let him go. He has nothing to do with any of this!” Natalie yelled, but Andy covered her mouth before she had the chance to scream again.

“Lady Alexander, must I remind you that we are in a protective town surrounded by seven killer gunslingers?” he breathed on her and she felt her eyeballs dry up and the taste of vomit coming up her throat.

He released her when she threatened to bit his hand and then she said, “Mr. McArthur is not your business, Andy. I am. Whatever you’ve been planning the past two years, it does not concern him. Let him go.”

“You don’t see the truth, Natalie, because he is involved in this. He’s been involved from the start. He’s been nothin’ but a snitch against me, Alexander, the rest of us. He found you before we did to snitch on us and I have to say, I am very tired of it. Did Mr. McArthur come here and warn you we were comin’?”

Natalie bit her tongue and she bit down hard. No way could she be the reason again for this man’s punishment. So she didn’t speak a word about his involvement with her sudden leave. “No, he did not. I was leaving today as it was.”

Andy shifted his weight, switched his gaze on her astounded words, and then he gave up, not believing a word. “Well, I guess all I can do now is end this poor man’s misery because before we tied him up, beat him severally, he told us he did come here and tell you to run.”

And that was it. She’d lost the battle, the inferior rage she held deep in her loins for him to let the old man go. Natalie had nothing left to give, nothing else to give in exchange for what was about to happen.

Before Natalie could prepare for the worst, Andy grabbed her arms, twisted her weak body around and she was forced to lean her backside into his stiff chest and he brought his arms up and wrapped one across her chest and with the other he held her wrists together.

“Go on, Maxton, do what you were hired to do.” Andy whispered as low as he could but it was like a siren in Natalie’s ears. The man he called out as Maxton glanced over his shoulder at them with a sick, silly grin. Kenneth Steele untied the rope around poor Randall’s mouth and he choked out to catch a breath of air but as soon as he was able, Maxton came at him with his personal picket knife. With Kenneth holding the old man’s shoulders and Ronald Chest holding his jaw, Maxton pulled out his tongue.

“Andy?” Natalie said through a breath of air.

“Natalie…” Randall managed to speak.

“And what did they use to do to the prisoners who’d lie in the medieval times, Natalie, any guesses?” Andy asked but he didn’t wait for her to answer nor could she with eyes wide open and the sounds of deep throaty cries coming from Randall McArthur she stood only footsteps from. Crazy-eyed, she couldn’t take her eyes off Maxton and his rough edged knife. And then a blood-curdling scream arose from her
throat and Andy did nothing but let her scream as he strained her to watch.


If only you could have seen her face…

Chris dropped the cards in his hands and looked over Buck, then came to his eyes and looked at him hard and controlled with question buzzing around him. Yeah, Chris knew something was up with that woman. He knew it from the start and after what she told him last night…he knew. But Damnit, he could only swear to himself after realizing from Buck’s voice and his emotional state of mind that Natalie Rose planned to run again. That he really knew. And he didn’t know who to be angry with more, himself or Natalie.

“Chris, don’t you get what I’m sayin’?” Buck asked and before he could finish a last minute thought…

A scream then, a shout, a holler came blaring from outside the saloon windows and the open swinging doors and all three occupants of the table and the card game shot out of their chairs.

Ezra and Nathan ran outside into the open town lot where Pete McGee, the barber, searched for help of any kind from anyone. “Help! You must help me!” he yelled and Nathan ran up to him and stopped him from running into a crowd full of onlookers.

“What’s wrong, Mr. McGee, what?” Nathan asked, holding the man’s arms.

“There’s a man in my building! He’s bleeding severally!”

Both Nathan, Ezra, and Pete McGee turned to find a man stumbling out of the barbershop bleeding from his mouth. Internal bleeding, Nathan wondered, but he could only do so much from where he stood. Taking that sign into effect, he charged after the man covered in blood, trying to hold in what he could with his hands, but his weakened legs gave out. Nathan spotted right away a false leg helped support him partially, but that didn’t matter now. He was bleeding and Nathan had to help him.

Vin and Josiah came running from the direction of the church and JD and Casey ran down the town lot from just getting back in from a long afternoon ride.

The man fell down in the middle of the town, unable to keep hold of his balance with no cane, with no support. And Nathan caught him in mid-fall and Ezra helped lay him down in the dirt.

“Oh, Lord!” Ezra gasped, choking back vomit lodged in his throat from the amounts of dark blood this man had pouring out. “Shouldn’t we get him out of the sun?”

Nathan looked up, still unaware what was exactly wrong with this man he held in his hold, and found quickly the town’s suspicious wonder crowd around them. He turned his gaze on the opening saloon doors and watched Chris and Buck walk out and moving fast up to him, up to this man who was in dyer need of medical assistance.

“Have no where else to put him. He won’t budge.” Nathan said to Ezra’s minute long ago comment about how he can’t have this man here with everyone around, watching, whispering, wondering.

And it was true, the old man wouldn’t move and he’d do nothing but put all his weight into his backside and allow not one person carry him off somewhere. It’d only conflict more pain. Nathan looked down at the man and blood just poured out of his mouth uncontrollably. And then he saw the man tried to say something. A word or two, maybe even a sentence but Nathan couldn’t make it out.

“Don’t talk, sir. We’ll get you fixed right.” He told him.

“What happened?” Chris asked, standing above Nathan and Ezra.

“Not sure yet, Mr. Larabee.” Ezra moved his hat further up his forehead to look at the gunslinger better. He recognized the man as soon as he walked up.

“Natalie!” the old man screeched through pain, blood, clenching teeth and Chris could swear he felt his heart jump. Nathan leaned in closer then to inspect the man’s mouth and he asked someone, anyone for something to wipe the blood away so he could have a better look. With a few handkerchiefs thrown at him, he only took one and tried his best to wipe at the man’s chin, his bottom lip, and what he saw when it was clear enough to make an accurate conclusion…Nathan leaned away from this man, startled to what he found and shocked as hell that he still managed to speak.

And Josiah saw the terror in the healer’s eyes and the way he moved his hands away from the man’s mouth. “What is it, Nathan?”

Nathan looked up, the sun beaming in his eyes. “He has no tongue.” He then glared right at Chris and just like that, the quiet gunslinger was on his knees, pushed Nathan away and Ezra’s hands and gripped Randall McArthur’s shirt collar and pulled him to his face.

“Natalie.” Chris said in the form of a question. “Where is she?”

“Please—” Randall splattered out, or that’s what it sounded like he said according to Buck, Ezra, and whoever else was close enough to hear. “They— took her—away.” Not bad for a man with no tongue.

“Where?” Chris demanded the answers right now and he gave the old man a jerk to get them out.

“Chris…” Buck said to this sudden need to know.

“You tell me, mister!”

“Help her…” Randall slurred with more blood pouring out. “The old Rose—ranch. Just past Dover’s—Creek.” He brought his weak hands up and placed them on top of Chris’s hands. “Please he—lp her. Men—did this-to me. Not—good men.”

“Gunslingers?” Vin asked.

“Plea-se— go now—or the-y’ll –kill her.”

“Chris, we can’t know for sure she needs our help.” Mary said tired and aggravated Chris would risk his life over a woman he didn’t know. “You could be riding blind into a trap.”

Chris wouldn’t hear it, not from her, not from anyone else who shook their head at him and his quick temper to get out and search for this woman. He put his boot in the stirrup and looked Mary right in the eye. “To have to cut out a man’s tongue just to keep him quiet?”

“But what about you?” she waved her arms wide. “What do you really know about this woman?”

“I know enough, Mary!”

“Enough to die over?”

He swung into his saddle, adjusted his weight. “Everyday you wake you have a chance of dyin’. What makes today any different?”

As intended, his words sidetracked her attention. She wanted to ask him how he really knew this woman. How did she come into his life in just these couple of days being in town? And she huffed out a breath, avoiding the almost obvious answers in her questions.

Her abstracted expression tightened and she looked up at him sharply. “Don’t go, Chris.”

“It’s not up to you.”

And before she could speak again, Vin and Josiah rode up fast, saddled and ready to go with him for this insightful adventure.

“You ready?” Chris asked as he looked away from Mary’s expression and gathered his reins. This was not the way things were suppose to happen, the journalist thought. She didn’t even know this woman, what she looked like, who she really was, and all Mary could think about was the safety of these men who protected the town. She found she had to ask how long they’d be and what they were in for but they didn’t know themselves, and she was without a reason to ask.

She turned abruptly when a breeze of two other horses rode up occupying their owners, Nathan and Buck, she was forced to move out of their way and stand back by the Clarion doors.

“If we leave now, we can get there by nightfall.” Buck’s voice rang deep and swore in Chris’s ears as he turned his horse around to face the newlywed.

“Buck, you’re not comin’ with us.”

“I have to. I’m involved now.”

Chris clenched his teeth, locked his jaw, and gripped the reins tighter. “You’re not comin’, Buck!”

Then the Clarion doors swung open and Louise stepped out amongst the threatening news with her new husband riding out to seek trouble again. She didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to use her wit tongue and tell him to stay. She heard Chris do that for her, but not even his long time comrade could make it clear through Buck’s head that this was not a good idea.

But he tried again anyway. “Stay here, Buck. You’re not making Louise a widow the day after your wedding. Go to her, celebrate, and make love till you fall asleep.”

Vin kicked the side of his horse with his heel and started to ride off with Josiah and Nathan following.

“Come on, don’t do this.” Chris said, easing the rough sound in his tone. He glared at Buck hard in the eyes as Buck did the same right back. And before they broke the glare, Buck gave a nod and a tip of hat then unsaddled his horse.

Chris then turned to Mary standing in front of the Clarion and back at Buck, who waited to see what he’d do next in this time of need and self-alliance. He kicked his horse gently and his stallion gave a nudge and Chris was off riding into a blind war leaving behind his most valuable friend as Buck watched him ride away into the war he was no longer apart of.


Natalie was tired. She wasn’t allowed to ride one of her own horses and she had to trudge behind burly Andy Scout as they rode hard and fast and long through thick, windy trees. At times she’d find herself bumping her head into his masculine back, wanting to fall asleep from the pain this ride carried deep into her muscles, but she couldn’t. She had to stay awake, alert of the area they rode past, so when she found the courage, she’d lost hours before, she could run off and leave these men in the blink of an eye.

And when she knew she wasn’t dumb, Andy and these men she did not recognize were leading her to a place she never wanted to go back to. A life she lost, the love she had for it now gone, and the painful memories it carried in the depths of the soil. How she never wanted to go back.

When the ride slowly came to a halt, Natalie lifted her weakened torso off Andy’s backside and held herself up and stiff. Un-ladylike she kicked her legs on one side of the horse and found enough strength to lift her bottom off the saddle and jump to her feet and begin her run like crazy through the deep, dark forest until she was lost in the eyes of Andy Scout and whoever cared to search for her.

But it didn’t happen like that and she only wondered what would happen if she made these stunts. She watched Andy unsaddle the horse instead and without expecting it, his hands came up and gripped her hips, the hardened corset she wore didn’t give her a lick of air to breathe, and Andy literally forced her off the horse and he held her in front of him, hands still on her hips.

“Let me go,” she protested and pushed him off her body and away from his. She looked around where she finally was and she only needed a few seconds before reality struck her and her mind would bring her back to the place she voided for the last two years. And how she hated being right all the time.

“Okay, Andy, you’ve had your fun.” Natalie mumbled, and brought her hands up to her hair and adjusted the hairpins and her satin violet cape over her body, around her woman curves.

“Not yet I haven’t.” Andy said then laughed and pushed Natalie ahead to make her start walking where their destination really was. He and Maxton, and the others began to walk with her, beside her, behind her, next to her. They all circled Natalie so she’d have no way to escape. And this only boiled and chilled her veins to a point of suffocation.

Andy pushed again, his force hard on her shoulders, a pain in her back, chills running down her spine as she moved faster along the muddy trail toward her old ranch.

“Okay now. This is enough.” Natalie said and began to turn around and when she did, Andy punched her in the face and she went down in the grass, the mud soaking her violet gown. With her hands pressed down into the wet mud, and her now loose brunette curls lathering her face, she let her tears fall from the fist impact and just because she was so scared. She tried to suck up those tears, and it was useless but she promised herself only to sob quietly and not jerk her shoulders as much and she begged for her arms to not fold and give out for that would give away her tears to these men she didn’t know anymore, not even Andy Scout.

“Hell, Andy, I told you to bring her here, not torture her.”

A familiar voice, Natalie thought and her synapses snapped back into wonder and curiosity. Then she felt a pair of hands take hold of her upper arms, squeezing a bit but not as rough as Andy’s grip, and pick her up off the muddy path. She looked up then and right into a familiar pair of blue eyes she couldn’t remember the last time she’d look into.

“Alexander?” she whispered.

“Hello Mrs. Rose.” Her husband smiled, but not the gentle smile Natalie knew and fell in love with. And hearing him say Mrs. Rose sounded just awful coming out his mouth.

And Alexander must have known what she was thinking because he turned that smile right down to a frown. “Not happy to see me, love?”

“Should I be?”

“Of course you should be.” The grip on her arms now tightened and Natalie felt the rush of burning tears surface her red-rimmed eyes. “It’s not everyday the husband finds his wife after she left him two years ago.”

“You left me!” she raised her voice, her shaky, uncontrolled temper.

“I was comin’ back.”

“Before or after you left your mark on me, Alexander?”

He glared at her, his nostrils seething with fire to the thought of raping her. How she had to just bring that up! “It was a good mark.”

“How’s that?” scared out of her wits, she still managed to use what little spice she had left into her tone. She cocked her head to the side and asked him again.

Too much talking, Alexander said to himself and looked behind his wife at Andy Scout and his other men and nudged them to follow him and Natalie toward the house.

Alexander squeezed her arms and led her in the direction of their homestead, in the distance, standing alone in the dark like ghosts of confederate soldiers haunted it. Little candle light shown through the windows and Natalie’s heart pumped harder and harder as Alexander talked.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through these past two years just lookin’ for ya. You have no idea what went through my head not knowing where you were. Thinking that you were off loving on another man. Raising another family. Forgetting completely about what we had, what we shared, and what we lost.”

“Alexander, that’s not true.”

“And you blame me for what happened to our son. You blamed me and you ran off because you thought I’d do it again…to you.”

“No, I didn’t blame you. I believed you.”

“But you left anyway.” He stopped in front of the house, just before the timber porch steps.

“You don’t understand, do you? I didn’t leave you.” Natalie said through a shaky voice now as she was not about to go inside that house she’d been trying to avoid for so long now. He was not going to make her walk in there and pretend as if nothing happened to her, to her son’s bedroom, their bedroom where they last kissed, last loved each other. She begged in her mind that he wouldn’t do this to her.

“Please, Alexander.”

“Please what?” he asked and he turned her around hard and made her look at him in the eye. “Please don’t? Don’t make you go into this house? Don’t make you remember what we shared?”

“Yes…” this was it. “Don’t make me remember.”

“Don’t you love me anymore, Natalie?” he said her name and she felt a pinch of regret fill her eyes and she knew she was done for when he saw the answer. He released her arms then and stepped back. “Don’t worry, babe, because I’m about to show you just how much I still love you.”

Then everything went dark.


It was a long ride and the sun set earlier than most nights. It was damn near impossible to make clear where they were exactly headed but having Vin Tanner on your ride, he knew the right place, which direction, and whose tail you were on. And Chris rode just as hard and fast beside him with Nathan and Josiah in the rear.

Just a few more acres and they’d be over Dover’s Creek. Just a few more hard gallops over the creek and they’d be lost in the lands of Natalie’s old ranch.

And Chris couldn’t think straight. He was filled with angry emotions he thought he controlled while on this long ride out here, but it was impossible by this point as they were almost at their destination. Someone took Natalie, the woman who taught him nothing more but sorrow and grief with her past stories, about her husband and what he did to her, how he left her and never came back. And now that he was back, Chris only thought that’s why she was kidnapped. Her husband would want nothing more to have her again, kill her if need be and hell that’s what he didn’t understand. The poor woman did nothing but love this man with her whole being. There was no reason to torture her, or tortured the crippled even, just to have his way. No man who treated woman that way should live to see the new dawn. And if this kidnapping was about to lead into another killing spree, then so be it because Chris wasn’t thinking about nothing but the worse.

“Just over that ridge! Directly!” Vin hollered loud enough over the rushing of the horses’ gallops, the hard dirt beneath their hooves so Nathan and Josiah could hear.

Chris gripped the horse’s reins tighter as all four gunslingers heaved up a steep hill and just as they reached the top, and looked beyond to find a bushel of dead woods, a small lit ranch shown through the cracked branches.

“You ready to fight like Kilkenny cats?” Vin asked as all four men hang fire at the top of the hill to consider what to do next instead of riding in with spit and vinegar.

“Is that a bluff, or do you mean it for real play?” Josiah asked.

Chris didn’t take the time to look over his comrades. All he had on the mind was getting down there in time. They were too far away to tell of any activity outside the ranch and hell he wasn’t going to wait to hear a scream or gunshots. But he didn’t want to kick up a row either because that’d surely cause a lost gunfight with many dead.

With guns or knock galley west, it didn’t matter to Chris and it sure as hell didn’t matter to the others as they sat and watched and thought about what to really do in this moment in time, sitting in the dark, under the moon and stars.

“I’m not takin’ any chances,” Chris said tightly. “I’m ridin’ out there.”

“We better not waste this fine ride out here then.” Nathan said with a crooked smile.

“Make sure your plunders are in tight. Looks like we’re on the shoot.” Vin said quietly to himself, but really giving advice to the others.

Chris couldn’t wait anymore. He kicked the side of his horse with spurs and the horse neighed and kicked up high in the air, standing on his hind legs then lighting a shuck, he galloped off the hill and down the steep narrow ridge, riding deep into the broken branch forest as fast as he could. Chris couldn’t pull in his horns, looking for trouble was his gift and he was damn near good at it every time and smart, but when this trouble included a woman he didn’t know nor want feelings for, he had no other choice but to ride with blind rage.

With Vin following up on one side of him and Nathan on the other, before they reached the exit out of the forest, Chris aimed for Josiah to hideaway behind some bushes and lose his horse as fast as he could muster and then he motioned for Nathan to follow him and he looked over at Vin as he already gave him the initiative that he had a plan of his own and he already peter out, goner from Chris’s sight in a bleak of a second.

Before Chris and Nathan became too close to the ranch, he told Nathan with the glare in his eyes to stop and they unsaddled their horses behind three thick blooming green bushes. Nathan grabbed Chris’s reins and he tied their horses to a tree while Chris took no chance to wait and he got on his hands and knees in the mildew grass and began to slyly crawl up to one of the ranch’s side windows. Simon pure, he thought, and his heart began to race a mile a minute with each crawl. He loved every second of this excitement, but he had to think serious and dispose of any sick, silly grins because this inflicted someone…someone that meant something to him but again he tried to get the mitten and he passed the buck to be lost of any kind of shindy.

But even when he didn’t think of Natalie as a woman he’d ever get close to, he still had to save her. He peeked his head up and looked through the broken glass window and tried to look for somebody, anybody…Natalie… but there was no one in sight and that knowing left an uneasy pinged in his gut. Not knowing where these men were, if maybe Randall McArthur lied to them, Chris had to find out and he had to now. He leaned back from the window, lifted his hands off the wood siding and looked behind his left shoulder at Nathan.

“No one?” the healer asked and Chris nodded.

“Best check around the side.”

“Maybe they knew we were comin’.”

“If Mrs. Rose was speakin’ the truth about her husband, then that can’t be true. He’s not smart enough.”

“How do you know for sure, Chris?”

Chris looked around the land, the moon shining hard on them. “Just know.” He took his peacemaker out of the holster and held it to his chest. “Gotta trust me on that. No movement on in the house. None that I can see. Be ready for anything.” Chris gave Nathan a nod of relief, letting him know he had his back on whatever situation had in store for them, and just like that, he swiftly shuffled past Nathan and slowly maneuvered back to where their horses waited.


Vin made right and clear to stay out of the way in the direction of the homestead. He made himself invisible behind a stock of deadwood, still propped high on his horse and to get off the horse he’d surely be the one the bad guys never find. He held the butt of his gun on his hip, unlocked and ready to fire at any given moment. He narrowed his stare on the homestead in the not so far distance for any movement. In the darkness of the now late evening, he wanted nothing more than to be right where he was: hidden and ready to go.

And when he thought he was lost in the world of mindless thoughts, movement stirred on the front porch of the homestead and Vin’s lips curled into a smile. He looked to his west and tried to locate Chris and Nathan but he couldn’t find them. He then looked further west and tried to spot Josiah somewhere in the depths of the forest, but he was no where to be seen either. Knowing he wasn’t the only one who spotted this man wandering around on the front porch, Vin was none too excited about him more than he was about the man just inches from him.

A man, purposely a gunslinger to some but a dumb pard to Vin, walked right into the dead forest to take a piss. Not any further than he was to the bounty hunter, Vin thought he should make a noise, a rattle, a mistake on purpose just to get this man’s attention.

And he did. He clicked his gun’s ready to go latch, the sound ringing through the deadwood and Ronald Chest looked up and right into the black forest, not seeing a soul in sight. Nervous as he was being out here all alone, half drunk and out of it, he zipped up his trousers and as he was taking mouse steps backwards, keeping an eye on the forest, he bumped into a stiff body frame and he instantly jerked around, pulling out his pistol from the leather holster, but Josiah slapped it out of his hand.

“Goin’ somewhere?” Josiah asked using that mystified tone of his, the creepy tone that shrink any man’s courage.

“I think he was about to.”

Ronald turned around and felt another hard body block him from running off to spread to the others they were not alone.

“Who the hell are you guys?” Ronald demanded to know. “And where the hell is my gun?” he started to bend over and search for his gun but Vin knocked back up and grabbed his collar.

“Where is the lady, mister?”

“What lady?”

Josiah laughed softly to this. “You know what lady.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ronald tried to rasp out of Vin’s tight hold but he’d just pull tighter. “I suggest you get off me, sir, before you have a whole gaggle of men on ya.”

“Do I look scared of that?” Vin asked, putting a bit of cockiness in his tone. He looked at Josiah then and motioned for him to turn around. “You see that other man up there at the house, Josiah? Maybe if we, say, cut out this man’s tongue, do you think he’ll do something about it?”

Ronald’s eyes widened, “I didn’t do that to that man!”

“Don’t matter! You took a part!” Josiah barked.

“Get off of me!”

“Askin’ you one more time, mister. Where is she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about.”

Without a warn, Ronald was ripped out of Vin’s hold and turned abruptly around to face the ex-preacher’s hard eyes. “You tell us now because if you don’t…my face will be the last thing your eyes will see. The breath you’re breathing on me will be your last. So tell me where Mrs. Rose is.”


“Sweetheart, this…”

She knew that voice. She recognized it clearly but she could not see the mouth it spoke out of. Natalie wanted to open her eyes, she tried, but all she had was a blurry vision, unsettling tears rocking in her eyes, and when she tried to reach down and wipe at her eyes, she couldn’t.

“Nope, don’t even try it.” Alexander said and the bed, she guessed was lying on, tilted to the side when he sat his bottom on the edge of the cotton mattress. “Hands are tied, love, and you can’t get free. Not even to wipe your own tears away.” And then when her vision cleared a bit, she felt hot hands on her face, then a gentle, cool massage on the delicate skin beneath her eyes as Alexander padded her tears away.

“Don’t cry, my love. It will all be over soon.”

“What do you mean?” Natalie coughed up.

Alexander wavered his hand around the room and with startling eyes; Natalie saw before her a room full of waxed candles. She dropped her bottom jaw, amazed with how many candles could fit in this tiny room, the room she recognized to have once been their bedroom two years ago, and she laid on the same bed he made love to her time after time, the bed he gave her a child, the bed where she gave birth to that child. The same bed she’d cry in night after night while he was away getting drunk, getting into fights at the local saloons, and she’d just cry.

But now the room was slightly different and the hundreds of candles made her feel neither comfortable nor safe in her position, especially with her arms tied above her head. What was going on…?

“Alexander, what—what are you doing to me?”

“I’m loving you, Natalie. My wife. And I’m about to show you just how much I love you.” He smoothed down her wild hair and she forced her head back down on the mattress.

She was going to cry again…oh how hard she was going to cry. “Alexander! Please…let me go! You don’t ever have to see me again. Just let me go!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple!” she fought against her tears as she watched him bend over and pick up a candle. “Please…don’t do this!”

Alexander ran a hand through his loose brown hair, free from his cowboy hat, and took a deep breath. “I have no choice, Natalie. And that’s the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes, because I can’t live knowing you’re out there alone and surviving without me. I can’t know that. You were my life, my son was my life and he’s dead now because me, because of you.”

“Alex, I forgave you for what you did. Isn’t that speaking enough for the both of us? I forgive you.” Natalie said through clenched teeth, through burning tears and she failed them as they ran down her cheeks. “Please, don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

“Don’t beg, Natalie, because you’re a better woman than that.” Alex said then leaned down and kissed his wife on the lips for a long sensual lock. But the kiss didn’t last as she cried too hard to keep hold of that kiss and her bottom jaw trembled with fear knowing what he was going to do to her. Knowing there was no one around to help in her time of most need.

The bedroom door flung open and Andy Scout stood in the doorway along with Maxton. Alexander turned around and waited for Andy’s sudden intrusion to have reason.

“We have a problem,” Andy said sternly.

“What’s the matter?” Alexander asked, leaning back up, candle still in his hand.

“We’ve searched all over the land, a good twenty yards before the forest and dead corn stock, and…”

“Come on with it!”

“We can’t find Kenneth or Ronald.”

“What?” Alexander stood up from the bed, taller than both Andy and Maxton, and walked up to them, still holding that candle.

“Like he said, Alexander, can’t find neither one of ‘em.” Maxton said.

Alexander turned around and stared right at Natalie on the bed. “You befriended anyone in that town, Natalie?”

Natalie went still, but her body managed to tremble anyway. No, of course she didn’t befriend anyone back in Four Corners. She hardly spoke a word to a few of the locals. How would anyone know of her whereabouts?...but she knew exactly who could have taken Alexander’s men, and yet she answered nothing to his question.

“Natalie!” he raised his voice but quickly grew tired of this play around junk. He walked up to her again, helplessly laying on the mattress, and bent down and gave her another demanding kiss. He tried to slip his tongue through her teeth, but she dared not let him for she may just bit the tip off. She sunk her head further down in the mattress so he’d stop giving into what his body craved.

Alexander pulled away, and gazed at her shut eyelids. “I love you, my wife.” And before she had time to open her eyes and react, he dropped the candle he held for so long on the mattress and it fell on its side, rolled off the bed and flames instantly flared. In a fit of uncontrollable anger, Andy and Maxton stepped out of the room to allow their leader to take force and knock down all the candles as flames roared, the tiny flames enlarging to high, burning blazes. And Natalie screamed for dear life…

Vin held Ronald by the collar as Josiah led the way over to Nathan locked down behind the bushes with Kenneth Steele tied to a tree in the foreground, knocked out.

“What happened here?” Josiah asked.

“Got tired of him just standin’ up there. Chris did anyway.” Nathan mumbled.

Vin shoved Ronald into the tree and decided to do the same Nathan did but his fun vanished when he noticed Chris was nowhere in sight. “Where is Chris?”

Before Nathan had a chance to reply, a spark jumped from the homestead and to all three gunslingers’ surprise, the homestead was on fire, high fires absorbing into the dark skies and Vin released Ronald and he, Josiah, and Nathan sprinted off the open yard toward the ablaze ranch.

“Oh, my God! Mrs. Rose?!” Nathan yelled and tried to find a way into the house, through the front door, the back door…something to just get inside.

“Where’s is she?” Vin yelled at Josiah as he tried to look through a window but all he saw was smoke and flames.

“We gotta get in there, Vin!” Josiah hollered back. “Look about you! Make sure no one’s on your tail!”

“Come on! Get to the front of house! We can get in that way!” Nathan ran as fast as he could. “Mrs. Rose?!”


Natalie screamed and screamed and screamed. She screamed so hard she felt her heart give in and drop down to her belly.

“Alex!!!” the room was rapidly catching on fire and she had no idea what she to do…how to break free. Pry her hands out of the rope or just let her skin melt as the heat washed over her? Her wrists burned and bled already from already trying to break free, and it was no use and she was out of strength from screaming and the heat and smoke was getting to her now. She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t do anything but try and scream again to see if anyone cared. That was she about to die, meet her fate…how she didn’t want to die…not like this…not in the hands of her own husband’s faults.

The smoke drained her tears and she laid her head back on the mattress, ready to give up all hope, her eyesight a blur again, until a figure bust frantically through the back window, close to the bed where her weak body laid, and glass sprayed everywhere. And she was damn near death from the smoke she inhaled deep into her lungs.

Chris moved his hat down his forehead to shade his eyes from the flames and smoke and he used his shirt to cover his mouth as he fixed his eyes on the body. He fell to the bed and gathered enough strength in his arms to break loose the ropes with a spare knife in his boot and heave the woman’s limp body off the bed. He carried her in his arms over to the broken window as her body dangled lifelessly.

This couldn’t be happening. Chris was so angry he couldn’t see straight. He had no reason to control his anger with this man he only knew as her husband. How her husband didn’t care if she died how it could—would affect those around her. How he could just give up hope in a life he once knew and kill the only living soul that brought truth to his insane behavior! A woman who did nothing wrong and that’s what Chris was so angry about. She did nothing wrong!

Gently and ever so slightly, Chris set Natalie’s body outside the broken window, making sure her dress didn’t catch on a jagged piece of glass, and he followed hastily just before the drape windows went up in the combustion.

Natalie’s comatose body fell in the sodden meadow and Chris leaped out and inadvertently lost his balance and fell on top of her. He slid his hands under her shoulders then and dragged her away from the house before it wholly drowned in flames.

Not far away enough, Chris couldn’t take any chances and move her too much until he knew she was breathing. He lifted her head in his hands and came right close to her smoke covered face.

“Natalie? Natalie, come on. Wake up.” He rocked her head in his hands, keeping her right in his face until she coughed out and faintly opened her eyes. “Good. Okay, good.” And then she cried. She tried to open her eyes again but the aflame smoke flew into them and she cried out again, and earsplitting. Natalie cried with force and mixed pain of smoke and disturbing thoughts that her husband tried to kill her…literally for pleasurable and on intention.

And she continued to shed tears as Chris heaved her off the grass to her feet, and he wrapped an arm around her backside to keep her on balance with him. He didn’t have a chance to defend himself either when he heard the sound of a pistol’s click.

Chris shot his gaze up to the sound of that click and right into the eyes of Andy Scout. Natalie, too weak to notice her surroundings, didn’t hear the click of Andy’s gun.

“Looky here what I found,” Andy said, not pleased with the fire’s end result when Natalie here was in front of him, alive. “Woman’s suppose to be dead, mister.”

“Murdered, you mean?” Chris shot back, equally unpleased.

“Yeah, yeah, something like that.” He cocked his pistol up and right at Natalie. “So the fire didn’t get ya, Nat, but my pistol never misses a shot.” Andy, oblivious to how quick Chris Larabee really was, held the pistol at eye level directly in front of him right at Natalie.

“Say hello to Robbie for me, won’t you, Natalie?” Andy asked and as he was about to aim and shoot for the kill, when Chris would hear a gunshot fired and he’d be ready to place himself in front Natalie, he did but it didn’t come out of Andy’s pistols but from behind him.

Andy Scout screamed a low, throaty cry of pain and he looked over at his right shoulder and pressed down as blood gushed out over his fingers. In rage, he turned around and faced Buck with his favorite rifle in his hands.

“Why don’t you say hello to Satan for me, you bastard.” Buck groaned a hearty growl and shot off another round of bullets right into Andy’s not so tough now chest.

And as his corpse fell to the ground, Buck looked up into Chris’s graved eyes.

“You thought you were just gonna leave me behind, did ya?” Buck said.

“Good thing you didn’t listen to me,” Chris said.

Buck stuck out his hand and Chris accepted it but only for a second before the woman he held close to him almost fell to her knees again. He held her up and tightened his arm around her waist.

“Come on, we gotta go find Alexander.” Buck said and helped Chris lead Natalie to the bushes. When she finally realized what was going on, she found some strength and lifted her body off Chris and pushed away from Buck.

“What’s the matter, Mrs. Rose?” Buck asked her to this sudden defense guard.

“You can’t kill him!” she yelled.

“What the hell is she sayin’, Chris?”

“Buck, you can’t kill Alexander. Not here. Let him stand trial and face a judge. You just can’t kill him,” Natalie pleaded. “Please don’t fight with him. He’s a good man.”

“Natalie, he tried to burn you alive!” Chris entered the conversation with hell spit fire. He couldn’t believe his ears about what this woman was speaking. She wanted them to keep her husband alive and stand for trial? No, he’d done killed too many men to just stand in front of a jury and have a judge make a decision for the rest of his life. Chris had to bring down Alexander, and he planned on it one way or another, and if that included a vocal fight with his wife, bullets flying, then so be it. Alexander was going to die.

Then a couple of gunshots were fired off near the façade of the burning homestead and Natalie did a quick turn around and looked at Chris right in the eyes with a thousand questions. Chris didn’t return that glare and instead look beyond her towards Buck and they gave each other the let’s go approach.

Natalie, too weak to hardly stand on her own, Chris grabbed the inside of her right arm and held her behind him as Buck took the lead toward the gunshots.


A horse shot out of the barn doors and Maxton took aim right at Buck as they were walking toward Vin, Nathan, and Josiah in the front. Vin saw this gunslinger with his gun held high and screamed out for Buck and Chris to look out before he shot off his gun and killed the torturer Maxton and he toppled to the ground.

Then another man on a stallion rode out right after Maxton’s diminish and Vin tried to shoot that man down too but he had no such luck this time around. He turned his horse around, and landed eyes on Natalie as she stood protectively behind Chris, away from the burning homestead. The horse neighed and Chris, Buck, Josiah, and Vin and Nathan began to waste bullets into this man.

“Stop!!!” Natalie screamed, pushing away Chris and Buck as she stood out in the heart of the front lawn before Alexander. “Stop it!”

“Natalie?” Alexander huffed out an angry breath. “Damn it’s hard to kill you.” He guided his horse towards Natalie, his rifle still out and erect before all the five gunslingers.

“Was that the intention, sir?” Buck asked, angry boiling his veins.

Chris stepped away from Buck and moved his duster away from the gun on his belt to show Alexander he was not playing. In the roar of the wind blowing, Chris’s duster blew behind him and Natalie turned around to face him. “This doesn’t need to go any further!” and he had to yell just so Alexander and the others could hear him over the hustling wind.

“It can never stop, Mr. Larabee! You have my wife now, that slut you have!”

“That’s enough, mister!” Vin growled, edging his way toward him, anger filled eyes, the glow from the moonlight, his rifle arched up and forward.

“This doesn’t concern any of you!” Alexander spouted out, his horse shuffling around in the mildew.

“It concerned us as soon as you stepped foot in our town.” Buck snarled, gripping his pistol harder in his hand.

Natalie turned around and faced these five gunslingers who wanted nothing but to help her and tear down the bad element on this land. She looked at each and everyone of them before turning her gaze on her husband. She tried to find some sympathy in Alexander’s eyes, but she saw nothing. He was crazy just as she remembered. But she eased Chris back anyway, then Buck, and finally across the land at Vin, Josiah, and Nathan. She told them to step back, away from her husband’s crazed mind for she feared the absolute worst.

“Alex, please! You’re no match for these men! You’re all alone!”

Alexander didn’t believe her. “Andy?! Ronald?!”

“Like the lady said, mister, you’re all alone.” Buck teased.

“Don’t Buck! Just don’t.” Natalie screeched, backing Buck off with a hand gesture. “Alex, put the gun down. Please! They will kill you if you don’t!”

“Ain’t nobody gonna kill me, Natalie!”

“You better listen to her, Alexander,” Vin said. “This isn’t a game here. You’re out numbered.”

“Then call it murder if you kill me!”

“Call it self-defense!” Buck yelled as he moved closer to him. “You tried to kill your wife! Your wife! The woman you were meant to spend the rest of your life with! The woman who bared your child! The child you killed!”

And there it was. Natalie jerked around and glared hard at Chris. He told Buck about her son? About the accident? About the only thing that could really destroy her husband to the hilt? She trusted Chris when she told him about her son’s death. She confided in him and this is how he treated it? By telling people…? Spreading the word that this stranger in town was married to an insane gunslinger?

“No Buck! That was an accident!” she cried out. “Put your guns down, men! Now!”

“Don’t you ever bring up my son’s death! Don’t you—“ Alexander clicked the rifle back again.

“Stop it, Alex!” Natalie yelled, and she ran up to him but he kicked her down and she fell backwards on her bottom, her dress mixing in with wet mud and grassland. Unnecessarily as it was, Natalie didn’t expect such a kick and she felt a strong embrace on her body tugging at her arms.

“Back the hell up,” Chris barked, aiming his pistol right at Alexander high on his horse. He then motioned for Vin and Josiah to step away as he meant business now and business just between the two of them. Call it a fair fight if you will. “Get back, Vin! Buck, Nathan just get back.” Chris reached down and gripped beneath one of Natalie’s arms and tried to get her to stand and as soon as he made that touch down, he heard the almost too famous, too close to the ear click of a gun right at his head, and then the ghastly breathing of a man.

“You move on inch, gunslinger, and my wife will be the last woman you’ll ever see.” Alexander gritted his teeth.

Chris cleared his throat, “Forget already I’m not the only one here?”

Natalie pulled out of Chris’s grasp when she heard fresh pistol clicks and she pushed Chris out of her husband’s aim. “No!” she stands before him, protecting Chris in a way only she could do. “I will not let another human being suffer for me and my husband’s mistakes.”

“Back him up then, Natalie. Back him up now.” Buck said.

Alexander turned in his saddle and watched as the others started to slowly walk back up to him. He reached around for another gun on his hip but Vin jerked closer.

“Don’t do it.”

Chris tugged Natalie behind him but she had a fit about it and stayed as close to her husband as possible. “Stop it! Don’t do this, please! Please don’t fight them! Please! You don’t have to die, Alexander!”

“Who says it will be me dead?” he asked.

Natalie widened her eyes, “Alexander…”

“Get away, woman!” he shouted and aimed to kick her again but Chris shot off his gun, right into Alexander’s open chest and then Buck let off, then Vin and Nathan and Josiah at the same time and he fell over the horse’s saddle to flat on his back.

“No!!!” Natalie ran to Chris with tooth and nail and slammed her tight fists into his rock solid chest and hit him over and over until tears rolled down her cheeks, leaked on her neck, soaking into the satin fabric of her dress. “No! No! No!” she kept hitting him until she was red in the face and had no strength left. And Chris let her. He let her fight him with fists until she gave up, leaned her face into him and cried out.

When she felt Chris’s hand begin to stroke her hair, she pushed away from him with sobbing filled eyes and turned and ran over to her husband’s corpse.

“Justice has prevailed,” Josiah whispered.

Natalie fell to her knees. She reached for her husband’s lifeless hand and cried.

Tears strained her face…salty, moist tears that didn’t look they’d let up for hours if not days. Natalie held Alexander’s hat tight to her body and she didn’t think to let up to look up into the dreary midnight skies, the thick threatening clouds filled with rain, and the not so relaxing darkness that crept down her spine. But she didn’t want to look up and find the clouds opening and release raindrops. She felt the coldness on her skin, soaking in her wild hair—loose from the pins, and her smoky face. Tears dropped from her eyes, ran down her cheeks and landed on her puffy lips she couldn’t suck in and she slipped her tongue out and tasted the tears. And then she let out of a soft cry as she walked silently back into Four Corners.

Natalie fought Chris off when he wanted her to ride his horse back to town, but time after time he demanded she’d refuse. So angry, so sad, so drowning in tears, she didn’t care if her dress got dirtier than it was, she made up her mind and walked alone and she continued that slow, sympathy walk with Chris far behind her, leading the reins of his horse, and Buck and Vin on their horses, while Josiah walked with the body of Alexander wrapped in a body cloth strapped on his horse.

When they entered town in the calm, empty manner they did, the then lively bunch of the locals still alert and bustling around stopped when they caught glimpse of the miserable woman leading the four peacemakers.

Ezra walked out of the saloon, tucking in a stack of poker cards inside his vest pocket, and JD strolled out of the livery and slowly put one foot before the other towards Natalie and the others.

“Come on,” Vin whispered and guided his reins toward the Undertaker building, where Natalie was heading.

Chris watched Natalie take tiny steps toward that building, and he couldn’t help but tug on his reins and clench his teeth to a solid lock of restraint. “Better get him to where he needs to go, Josiah.” He mumbled after he knew the ex-preacher was close by with the body.

Natalie had her back to Chris, to Vin, to Buck, and Josiah when he passed her to go right up to the doors of the building. She didn’t want to look at any of them, her protectors, the men who willed to risk their life just to save hers. She wouldn’t allow herself to look back for she may fear the worse and cry harder beyond her control. She was afraid that if she looked over her shoulder and right into Chris Larabee’s eyes, she’d do just that.

And damn, that’s what Chris didn’t understand. He wanted her to turn and look at him, look at him with those sorrows filled eyes telling him how angry she was at him. How he should have waited to pull the trigger. How he shouldn’t have killed the man she loved. How he couldn’t just do things like that anymore. Chris needed her to turn around and explain all this to him just with her eyes. He needed that from her. He didn’t want her to suffer, believing it was her fault for her husband’s death, how he wasn’t worth it.

“Is this done now, Chris?” Buck asked strictly with the same glare in his eyes he held with him when the gunshots were fired just hours before.

Chris turned and stared into those eyes, “It’s done. Go on home.”

Buck gave him no more than a nod before riding off to the Clarion where he knew Louise would be waiting for him with Mary. He hopped off the horse and as soon as he walked up to open the doors, Mary did him the favor and she allowed him to walk on inside.

Mary watched Buck enter her business, but that interest faded when she turned her attention back on the scene before her: Vin helping Josiah with a body, Nathan taking his time to unsaddle his horse, and Chris watching from a distance his eyes locked on another woman standing by the doors of the Undertaker. She knew this woman had struck gold in Chris Larabee’s mending heart, but what was really there that she could do for him? A shiver slipped down her spine then and Mary crossed her arms to keep warm from the desert night.


Oh, she couldn’t look at him. Not now. She was too angry to give him anything but disgust in her eyes. But Natalie wasn’t livid anymore; she wasn’t disgusted for what happened, she was just so sad to contemplate anything other than her tears, her hurting.

In the corner of her eye she saw Chris unsaddle his horse then and walk around to stand before it, still with the reins in his grasp.

“Easy…” Josiah said as he and Vin snapped off the reins to the body and slowly lowered it to the ground at their feet. Natalie’s jaw trembled and a fresh batch of tears faltered when she saw her husband’s arm stick out of a loose gap. She wiped at her eyes but it did no good when a new wave washed over and she did everything in her power to keep her sniffs under control.

But catching a glimpse of her deceased husband’s profile beneath the cover-up, she cried out softly and put a hand to her chest to keep from busting out with tears of rage again all over the place. And Chris Larabee would be the first she’d attack.

Josiah covered the body back up and Vin looked up and over his shoulder at Natalie standing alone behind a wooden post holding up the Undertaker’s panel and he couldn’t help but feel for the now widow of this man he held at his feet. He looked up and right into Natalie’s eyes and she felt a sudden mixed jolt of anger and aggression. The bounty hunter was not the man she fell in vain with. She had no right to have these angry feelings toward him and her attention aimed to the corner of her eye, gazing right at Chris, standing in an erect profile by his horse, watching her.

He was watching her, staring her down and Natalie didn’t have the nerve to pull away from his strong gaze. She didn’t move she didn’t shift her weight; she hardly cared about the stream of tears falling down her face, dripping to her neck, evaporating on her dirty hands.

Her dirty hands? Natalie jerked her head down, only she thought she did when her gaze slowly changed from the harden gunslinger’s eyes to down at her hands. There, they were covered in dirt, mud. Her dressed skidded with grass stains, and black as the night fingers. She then brought her hands up to her neck, felt a burning around the back, and pulled her hands away to smear off more dirt. She touched her tears under her eyes and she knew she had dirt just about everywhere from the fire flames, the smoke, the muddy ground, the wet land. Puckering her lip up, she looked across the town lot at Chris again and he still hadn’t looked away from her yet.

Natalie took her eyes away from him again and again watched Vin and Josiah heave the body of Alexander and take him in the murky depths of the Undertaker. It was over now. She knew that. Chris wanted to think he knew it as he watched her slowly begin to take a step away from the building, away from him. And when she looked up at him for the last time, another bolt of resistance shot through her eyes right into his, and she left him with the knowledge of guilt, and self-pain. She didn’t forgive him. She wasn’t going to forgive him. And she never wanted to look at him again…


There she stood by the window with her gaze locked on the undertaker building, her skin ablaze after the hour long bathing. From this point of view, the building looked baleful and empty. And her husband’s corpse was alone and she didn’t understand why that lonesomeness crept through her veins.

It was over. Her husband was at peace so why wasn’t she? She didn’t have to fear for her life anymore, never had to glance over her shoulder or travel from town to town. And that was the dreadful reality. Why did she still feel this way? The way when a loved one departs and you grieve for sometime, a day maybe two, and then you’d move on and live again…and she still cried.

She wanted him back. Maybe not Alexander himself, but the man he was. Before death and hate tore them apart because she still loved him, and she needed someone to hold her again. Rub her back, telling her everything was going to be all right.

Natalie wrapped her arms around her body, covered from neck to toe in a satin robe, the only coolness on her heated body. She held the lapel to her neck in a fist as she stayed in a gaze at the haunting undertaker.

Then there was a knock at the door, a ring in her ears, and she didn’t look to see who intruded on her tears after the door opened then shut.


Chris took a second to take in the dark room and then the lone silhouette at the window. For a brief moment their gazes collided and heat of mixed anger and need passed through them. He walked across the room right up to her glowing in the moonlight, her eyes ablaze in tears.

The sudden rage Chris didn’t know was there came out and he clutched his hands into fists and he leaned forward so close their noses almost touched.

“He’s ain’t worth your tears, Natalie. He wasn’t even worth a bullet, but he got mine and I don’t regret it. That man deserved to die, you don’t. He ain’t worth it, y’ understand me? Not your tears— not you.”

That came out the Chris Larabee way: hard and direct. He leaned away, back to his comfortable state but he didn’t let up the glare in his rigid eyes, the heat in his body.

This was it. He was through having these mixed feelings for a woman grieving over a man who did not exist anymore. Chris let himself get too close for comfort, and he damned himself for that feeling now. He sucked in a cool breath, shifted his weight, and then turned away from her.

Good. He had the strength to walk away and leave her without another look back…he had that power until he felt the brush her fingertips grace his abdomen, and she forced him to look at her. Aw hell.

Natalie dropped the insanity act, going straight for what she was thinking before about needing a man…and since her anger and heart were laid out for inspection, this was a good time just as any to reveal to the gunslinger what she truly needed from him.

And she edged closer to Chris and whispered, “Then make me forget him.” Tears burned in her eyes, and just like that Chris’s walls of strength crumbled to the floor and he went silent, shutting off his oxygen, and listened to the fast escalating of his heartbeat.

Natalie moved her fingers then and palmed the curve of his gun belt, tugged on it and pulled him to her, moving her hands up his chest until she came to rest at the top button of his collared shirt. She didn’t wait for his resistance or push her hands away. After that first touch, she knew he was here to stay and she waited no longer to take.

She looked into his eyes then moved down to his lips, his throat, that first button of his black shirt, and unbuttoned it.

And Chris didn’t move, not one muscle. Midway down his shirt, Natalie caught glimpse of his sun-kissed chest, the ripples of his stomach, the specks of hair leading to his trail. She heard his breath skip to her touch as she got a firm grip on his shirt and pulled it free from his trousers and his whole body trembled and jerked when his hands shot up, finding strength to cover her hands and stop her from going further.

Mortified to this sudden intrusion, Chris knocked all sense back into Natalie’s mind and in the low light her eyes gleamed dark and hot, “Do you want me to stop?”

Did he want her to stop? The question was distasteful, scaring his wits right back into ready mode. He planned to leave her in her thoughts and tears. He wanted to get rid of her mesmerizing expressions, her mysterious ways. He wanted to leave her but his feet would not allow him. And he was afraid that he might enjoy this, enjoy her if she planned to take their new relationship to the next level.

But he wondered all this and didn’t bother to respond to her already forgotten question. He didn’t want to talk anymore, and he didn’t want to debate with himself why. And he sure as hell didn’t need her watching him with those serious, solemn eyes that made him want to run a mile…and made him want to lash out at everything about why being here was wrong.

No, the way she was looking at him didn’t help at all. Especially with her hands so close to where he ached for release. Taking it slow to the brink of losing one’s mind, Chris watched the question in her eyes turn to wonder then widened as he tugged on her hands, what am I doing, and slid them lower to his gun belt.

No longer in control, Chris allowed her to dip lower and the accidental brush of her fingers against his erection completely zapped his synapse. He helped to get rid of his gun belt and before he knew it he sucked in another quick breath but the oxygen didn’t make a lick of difference when she undid the waist button and started on his fly. His vulnerable parts of his body were exposed for her eyes to see, how she unbuckled and unzipped him in one smooth tug, her cold hands on his flesh was unbearable to take much longer.

He needed something to hold onto, to ground him against the dizzying roar of heat, and just when he aimed for the sash on her robe, the pressure of her hands on him released and she was now looking up at him. In the whisper of a moment, she stripped his duster off and it dropped to their feet.

Too serious to crack any humor, a smile, or a simple shrug of the shoulders with Chris trying to make sense of what drove him to her room in the first place, to ask her to stop, but she cupped his face in her palm and looked right into his eyes, her gaze dark and steady and serious. She felt the bristly texture of his unshaven cheek, the warmth of an exhaled breath, the tension that held his whole body straight and erect, and she ached to kiss him so badly that her lips stung with the wanting.

“Yes…” she mouthed and stretched to kiss one corner of his mouth and then the other. She made a sound low in her throat, a kind of smoky hum that rolled through him in one long, hot wave that caught him totally unprepared, completely at a loss. She held his face close and hard then she ducked beneath that broad-brimmed hat and kissed him.

All Chris could do was close his eyes and thread his hands into the thick softness of her hair and kiss her back. And Lord how he kissed her back. With a hunger he couldn’t control with a thoroughness he no longer wanted to control. They came together in an unchoreographed duel as she wrapped her arms around his neck then brought her hands to his shoulders then she pulled him close to her as she guided him toward the bed but his feet tried to stop her.

“Let yourself go,” she whispered in his mouth. Her voice so close, her body, her breath that it sloughed over his skin and seeped into his blood. He watched her lean forward and kiss his chest. Watched her eyelids flutter shut and that sight—soft and engrossed and sensual—brought on a surge of lust so intense his knees all but buckled.

But he stopped from drowning his senses into a night of consensual lovemaking. She dipped to sit on the edge of the bed, looking up at him with a thousand misgiving emotions spilling in her veins. And the light concern in his eyes weren’t helping the worries either. She lifted her bottom and scooted further up on the bed and now waited for Chris to do something, anything to show he wanted her.

He gazed down at the woman who wanted—no needed him. She needed him to come to her with the enraptured look on her face, the softening on her lips, and the please-take-me challenge in her eyes. And how much he wanted to fall into her body, lay thickly between her thighs and forget about the real world for the rest of the night, the rest of his life.

And he stood there staring down at her still as the night. She looked up at him vulnerable and exposed. She propped up on her elbows, her legs bare where the robe slithered away on either side of his legs.

So much for the I-gotta-get-out-of-here anger. He was stuck there, but for how long? He cursed at himself for again thinking too much instead of doing what he wanted. He cursed at himself for letting her take control over his mind and body and soul. He cursed he didn’t have the better strength to just walk away when she slid her hands working the buttons on his shirt. And he cursed at himself over and over with no end as his hands dropped to the unfinished shirt and he shed the remains along with the rest of his clothing. He dropped his hat on the bed and Chris placed one hand on the mattress, slowly, looked up at her with a nervous gaze, and slowly, he placed the other hand down and soon before he knew it, one of his thighs settled between hers, and he couldn’t help himself from digging into her heat.

She responded with a deep hum of satisfaction.

When she was forced to lay on her back, for a second their gazes collided and he felt such a jolt—a left-right combination punch of need and fear and dread and desire—that he immediately ducked down to her mouth. They met with lips and tongues, with teeth and passion, and Chris closed his eyes against the onslaught. He slid his hands inside her arms and brought them above head and held them there with one hand as the other traced and learned every curve of her body until settling between her thighs, prying them apart.

The brush of his fingertips against her skin nearly brought her undone. Natalie licked at his bottom lip then sucked a breath from his mouth when the pressure of his body, where he ached, rested heavily between her.

Chris roughly found the slit in her robe and slipped his hand beneath the satin fabric and cupped her bottom then stroked over and around her hips to finally rest on her thigh, holding her still to him. The robe came apart from a weak knot. He released her hands and slowly he kissed his way down her body, drinking in the soft taste of her skin and the husky rasp of her breathing and the strong arch of her back when he took each nipple into his mouth. When he palmed the curve of her belly and slid lower to hook his fingers in her underwear, she sucked in another ragged breath.

“Please.”

He came to her again and kissed her mouth, nipped at her bottom lip, ran his tongue along her jaw line. He pulled back enough to glimpse at her long dark curls scattered on the mattress. He watched her reactions to this sudden tease of his hand cupping her thigh to him. With her mouth dropped, she opened her eyes and watched him watch her. She brought her trembling hands up to touch his face, then circled around to squeeze the back of his neck, playing with the hairs on his nape. She then tightened that grip and he leaned forward as she leaned up to meet his kiss.

This was too much for just kissing. He had to be inside her and Chris wouldn’t waste another breath of life to accomplish that goal. He released his hand on her thigh and angled his waist to rest hard and strict between her and she had no other place for her legs then around him.

Natalie met his eyes and slowly drew him into her wet velvet heat. As if she’d divined his need for slow, his craving for self-control, his fervent desire to keep a grasp on the sweat-slippery reins of restraint.

He curbed the incessant need to close his eyes and give himself up to the wild primal instincts of his blood. He needed to be that steady, solid, unfailing man he’d created.

“Slow,” he breathed as she took him to the hilt, and then she squeezed some internal muscles and drove the air hissing from his lungs. Dizzy with lust, with need, with her, he struggled to hold himself still, to withdraw inch by inch, to not drive himself all the way in, again and again.

Slowly he pulled back, and she squeezed her thighs around him and held him there while she stroked his tongue, in his blood, wrapping him in a thick, sweet cloak. He kissed her throat, nuzzled his face in her shoulder and bit her earlobe as he moved with a slow rocking cadence while the pressure built in the back of his brain and in the tightly bound tension of his muscles.

Her hands slipped through his hair, caressed the long muscles of his back and then griped his biceps as she arched up to meet a stronger thrust, changing the angle, driving even deeper and crying out with her pleasure. That was it, that guttural cry of pleasure, that sound of complete abandon, the buck of her hips and the drag of her flesh against his.

“It’s okay. Take what you want,” she murmured, her voice as thick and tight and hot as his body. “Now, Chris, please.”

Heat engulfed him. A blazing sensual storm he could no longer fight. He drove faster, harder, deeper until his breath exploded, fast and furious, as his climax came in a blinding explosion of pleasure that swallowed him whole.

Letting their bodies cool in the tangled sheets, Natalie didn’t let up the lovemaking for one second and when she reached up to kiss Chris’s mouth again indicating she wanted more. He took this pleasure and regained his breathing and began to move again, but Natalie resisted and placed her hands on his chest.

“Not like that,” she whispered through heavy panting. She twisted from beneath his body and rolled on her stomach. “Like this.” Natalie looked at him and waited, waited to see what his next move would be to this new way of making love.

As the seconds passed Chris grew tenser, more wide awake and he found strength in his limbs and so attuned to the silence on the noiseless late night. And that was possible because he was concentrating so hard on anything but the tenderness in her eyes and the sound of her rigid breathing.

She watched him, waited only a few seconds more before Chris came to her shoulder and kissed it.

This was definitely okay.

He moved her hair from her neck, and it was okay to kiss her there. It was okay to kiss the back of her neck, kissing it senseless, and then he kissed down her spine until he moved back on top of her, repositioning himself to slide into her from behind. Adjusting from both pleasure and pain, chills spilled down her spine as he started to move again.

Natalie gritted her teeth, grabbed for the pillow mashed against the bed board, and squeezed as hard and tight as she could. Her breath pushed through her clenched teeth and what she made herself do only lasted one second when she bit down into the down pillow. And that didn’t help the strenuous pain and giddy deep in her loins, the growing climax, the shiver in her toes as they curled and kicked up.

Chris tried everything in his power to maintain what his body pleaded to do to her. And that was drive into her with no end. To just keep thrusting as if this was their last day of living, their last breath to take in, their last time to make love with all the passion they’d bottled up for so long.

With her legs in the air, her face buried in the pillow, Natalie’s breath escaped right out her lungs when he drove into her burning body over and over. She didn’t have the strength to lift her head, her hands, her body for that matter. And when he slipped his hands underneath her shoulders, and held onto her as he released what he’d been holding back for the second time…when another roaring climax crushed through him, out of him, and deep into her body.

She tried to whisper something but he couldn’t hear her and like he needed to. If anyone said a word to him loud and clear right at the moment, Chris wouldn’t have heard them for nothing. He was lost in ecstasy, allowing his body to cool as he covered her heated back with his rock hard chest, as he dipped his face down and nuzzled into her shoulder, moving her moist hair away to then lay his cheek flat on her back. He took deep breaths, long breaths, and kissed her shoulder, sending another round of chills down her spine, but too tired to realize the hormonal arousal beginning to start up again, Natalie released the pillow she held so tightly and twisted back around to lay her backside down on the cool sheets and look up at his drowsy-eyes. He was spent, and so was she.

And when she rocked hard against him and murmured, “Thank you.” Chris took her like that again, in a long, lazy joining, and again in the predawn quiet when the pace was slow and sensuous with enough time to recognize his earlier bout of fear for what it was.

Not performance anxiety or any sense of disloyalty to the wife he still loved, but fear that he would enjoy this—enjoy her—so much that he would never want it to end. That he’d want to grip his fingers on her jaw and drag her mouth down to his, to swallow her cries of release whole and absorb them into his body.

That he would want this to go and on and never end.

Somehow Chris managed to set himself away from Natalie’s body before the arousal of taking her again entered his thoughts, but he couldn’t stop touching her. He propped himself up on an elbow, running his fingertips along her bare arm as she rested closely beside him, her face nuzzled into a pillow, her nose touching his chest, her eyes closed, falling into a deep, restful slumber. She had her arms curled to lay beneath her face, smashed into her knuckles as her shoulders shrugged up to her neck, getting more comfortable while asleep.

Chris felt her body shudder to his soft touch. He watched her, fearing again for the worst that he never wanted this night to end. That he never wanted to let this woman go, free himself from her beauty. He never had the thought of getting out of her bed, scooping up his clothes and walking out to head for his own room. And this time he wasn’t angry for what he did when he’d finally realize he was no longer drunk, and his mind clogged with terrifying memories. A bottle of whiskey was not the point in this matter, and he more praised himself for not having to go down to the saloon just to forget about what he did to this woman. The truth was right, Chris made love to this woman sober, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had this much pleasure to take her as many times as he wanted, as many times as she’d let him all night long. He hadn’t slept. He never wanted to close his eyes. He never wanted this to go away.

This wasn’t Chris Larabee though. This wasn’t the man he created three years ago when his whole life flashed before him. Natalie was the kind of woman who needed the change in Chris to happen and be his old self again. And he saw in Natalie, as she slept to close to him, that he wanted to do it for her without regret. That he was ready to move on, how he knew that’s what Sarah always wanted for him, to not feel any pain, and just move on and live.

And that knowing truth rested heavily in the pit of his stomach and he heard the words come right out of his mouth, “I love you.”


“Mrs. Travis?” Nathan said as he accidentally ran into the journalist in the kitchen of Virginia’s Hotel.

“Nathan.” Mary smiled as she waited patiently outside the kitchen doors for Henry, the cook, to finish what she requested.

“Getting yourself a good breakfast?” Nathan asked.

“Oh no, not for me. For Mrs. Rose.” She looked up and right into the healer’s generous glare.

“Well, that’s mighty kind of you, Mrs. Travis.”

“Please, it’s the least I can do. I know she must be going through a lot after the death of her husband.”

Nathan nodded, then said, “It was for the better good. If only you knew—“

“I do know, Nathan.” Mary said quickly, dropping that friendly smile and giving him a solid glare. “You all forget that I lost a husband myself. I know how she feels. How she grieves.” But the truth was, she didn’t know all the details. She didn’t know Natalie’s husband tried to kill her in their own home, on their old land. She didn’t know that, and Nathan was out a reason to tell her so. And he just let Mary pass when she retrieved the tray of breakfast foods from Henry, and she returned the smile back and walked away.


Later in the morning, when the town was waking up, outside Natalie’s window, the sun blazed high and bright right on Chris’s back as he sat in a chair by the bed, still watching Natalie sleep. Her breasts would rise and fall underneath the white sheets, her position had changed when Chris got out of bed, but she was still beautiful as ever from the position of the chair. Her long brown hair in a tangled mess all around her, drooped down on her shoulders, falling off the side of the bed as she lay her cheek flat on the mattress.

She was so beautiful.

Back in his black pants and the shirt on but unbuttoned, Chris leaned on his elbows, his hands in fists at his chin as he watched her.

Then he heard voices on the other side of the hotel door. He jerked his head away from the sleeping beauty and right at the door as someone knocked a couple of solid knocks.

When no one else knew he was there, with Natalie, the woman who grieved, cried out loud over her husband, the woman he’d just made love to all night long, Chris fixated his feet into stand up mode but the door opened without another knock warning and once he saw the blond journalist he knew as his friend, he shot up to his feet as if he was on fire and after Mary caught the glimpse of the scene before her: Natalie…naked in bed, sleeping. Chris…in her room as she’s naked in bed…himself half dressed. Wrong picture…oh, what a wrong picture! With the breakfast tray in her hands, the glass coffee cups rattled and the silverware clanged. She looked up and right into Chris’s surprised glare and just as she was about to set down the tray, or keep a hold of it…or even drop it to wake the poor woman, Chris was about to say something and that triggered off Mary’s rage.

She released the silver tray and it fell to the floor, causing inappropriate clatter on the wooden floorboards and before Chris could move from his spot by the bed, Mary was gone in a spit of fire and Natalie woke up…


“Mary!” Marching right after her, in the burning morning’s sun and right in the middle of town where onlookers stopped and watched. “Mary!” Lacking shoes, the gunslinger managed to chase down Mary and grab her by the arm and she twisted around right out of his hold, and kept on walking. The dirt sizzling his bare feet, Chris stopped his slow jog toward the journalist and yelled in frustration, “Unless you want me to yell across town with what I have to say then I suggest you stop.”

That ticked off Mary hard and she turned on her heel and marched right up to him, “You may have authority in this town, to be the law, but you will not tell me what to do!”

“Damnit Mary, I don’t wanna tell y’ what to do.”

“Then you tell me what happened last night that made you wind up in that woman’s bed!”

Chris’s jaw tightened, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“What wouldn’t I understand?” Mary took a deep breath after asking her throat burning question, and she eased back her tongue but left her dying devotion for Chris Larabee glare in her eyes. “Chris, I love you. I’ve always loved you, why do you keep doing this to me? You’re sleeping with women around the clock when you can have a solid one right here… forever.”

Chris swallowed hard, and tightened his hands into fists. “Mary, it’s not like that with you and me. It never was.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I’ve tried to see your ways of life but you want nothing but that damn paper!” the tables were turning. “And I can’t live like that.”

Shaking her head with tears in her eyes, “I’ll change my ways then, Chris. If that’s what it will take for you to be with me.”

“You don’t know how to change. You’re not capable of it.” Chris was finished with this conversation and as he turned to get his damn feet out of the burning dirt, Mary reached out and touched his arm.

“Life’s about change and compromises and—“

He ripped his hand out of her grasp like she had to his, “Getting the truth out? You made promises not compromises on your husband’s grave when you swore you wouldn’t give up. And you, right now, with these words you don’t know of, is like spitting on your his grave. His dreams, remember? And that’s why we can never be, Mary.”

“Chris—”

“Now I’m sorry for what you saw, but I ain’t sorry now. Apologies are a waste of breath and I do not regret making love to that woman.” And that was the solitary truth.

Trying to control her tears when she discovered she lost this fight with Chris, that she lost him, she managed to ask, “And her, Mr. Larabee?”

And that question struck him like a bullet. He wasn’t expecting that to come out of Mary’s mouth. When she only wanted him for herself, she had the guts to ask about another woman. That she did have the guts for. Chris watched the tears well up in her eyes, and said, “I don’t know yet.” Because he didn’t know himself.


At the sudden awakening this morning, Natalie sat on the side of the bed, sheets pulled to chest, eyes blocking the sun glaring through the open curtains where she remembered she stood the night before, in tears, holding herself before a man in black came to her room, right up to her, and made love to her. Where she stood and undressed him slowly, needy, aching.

But that was last night, early this morning and now when her head was clear, her thoughts gone, the sadden truth about her husband’s death old news, Natalie was through with this, with this town. She needed to go home, wherever she picked that home to be, and leave. She let herself get too involved with a man she never wanted to be apart of her life. And somehow she needed to tell him that before he came back to her in the room, with her exposed and vulnerable looking. Before he’d take her look into his advantage and gaze into her eyes, she knew she’d melt right into his body and beg him to make love to her again in the early morning break.

No, she had to gather strength and move to her feet before he came and did just that. She moved the sheet from the floor wrapped around her legs to stand and as she did she bent over and gathered her clothes off the floor.


Chris didn’t come back to the room, for the whole morning, and Natalie decided to pack up her things for good and head out. For having this thought of Chris walking through the door, she was scared for what her heart might give. What he might want more in return. She already gave him her body, her broken heart, her soul. She needed to be free of him and she thought by leaving would be the only solution to both their problems.

When she came out of her bedroom an hour before, she found Nathan walking in the lobby of the hotel and she asked him kindly to gather her wagon together and she offered to pay him the good help but he didn’t take it and told he’d be happy to do it with no charge. A thing Natalie wasn’t use to on her travels alone. The kindness out of a good heart from men she didn’t know.

And when she half expected it, there was a knock at the door. Natalie snapped her attention on the door, the expression she lacked to commit last night when Chris knocked and walked in, and when she was waiting for the door to open, it didn’t and then there was a second knock.

“Ma’am?”

Ahh, Nathan, Natalie thought. “Come in.”

The door opened and Nathan walked in with his hat in his hands. “Your wagon is ready for ya, Mrs. Rose. Just down in front of the hotel.”

Natalie returned her attention back on her suitcase, “Thank you, Mr. Jackson.”

“I’ll accept only if you call me Nathan.”

She looked up at him and smile ruptured across her lips, “Thank you, Nathan.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

“Now you call me Natalie. That’s the only name I’ll answer to now.” Her husband was dead, so what was the point of keeping his last name? Natalie didn’t have an answer for that one.

“Natalie,” Nathan said slowly, considering the sweetness of her name coming through her pained voice. He looked at her again, right at her this time without a shy glance or a quick gaze and he stood and watched her pack up. So much can happen in less than twenty-four hours, in the less than the hours of the night, and Nathan only had a few things running through his mind on which she was doing last night, last late night with a friend of his, and then the quick tempered of one Mary Travis this morning and Chris chasing after her in the middle of the town lot. And how quickly she moved her hands and folded her dresses; Nathan couldn’t help feel a pinch of remorse following his thoughts.

“Natalie, is it okay if I ask you something?”

Natalie looked up and right into the healer’s eyes. “What is it?”

“I apologize if I’m intruding but I couldn’t help to notice Chris…”

What? “Excuse me?”

“Please let me finish.”

Natalie turned her body and faced him, “I’m sorry. Please finish.”

“You’re leaving, and I see that and I have a good guess why, but Natalie, my friend needs you. Please don’t leave like this.”

“Mr. Jackson,” Natalie shook her head. “Nathan, this isn’t your business. We happened between Mr. Larabee and I is ours alone. I’m sorry—“
“No need to apologize to me, but I’m asking you, don’t leave him like this.”

“Like what?”

“He’s a quiet man, a stubborn one at that, and he knows what he wants and he makes us know exactly what he wants on occasion when it comes down to a fight. I’ve never had to worry over my life when it came down to Chris watching my back. He’s a good man who’s dealt with more death than you could possibly understand.”

Natalie huffed out a breath of anger, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No kidding. He lost a child, and a wife. His entire family and the person who did it, he got close to, a woman he once had affairs with. Ella Gaines did took them away from Chris. You must know where I am coming from to understand that you can’t leave him because he won’t be able to bear it, or to stand living.”

Natalie turned her back on the healer and crossed her arms across her chest to consider all that he told her about a man she just made love to so many hours ago. How he’s talking to her as if she was the only other woman Chris Larabee wanted other than his wife. And that he wanted her to be with him…but forever? To love her and marry her? Could she commit to him with this…after he killed her husband? It was too soon…she barely knew this man except for all the hours of the previous nights. She brought her hands up to her neck and remembered, shivers spilling down her spine from just remembering his touch, that manly touch. But she jerked back to reality and turned back around to face Nathan.

“What are asking of me, Nathan? What are you asking me to give?”

“I’m not asking, Natalie. You have to let yourself know that this is where you belong. I know you’ve only been here for a few short days, but you gotta know he loves you.”

“Loves me? He barely knows me.” And she loved him, that’s what was so scary.

“Believe me he does. He loves you more than he loves being a gunslinger. More than he wants to just let go. You can’t stop this. The pain, the broken hearted. He just needs you.”

It took three hours to think on Nathan’s last request, his last beg to stay with the town, live here in Four Corners, and be with Chris Larabee. And still after the incident this morning with Mary Travis, Chris had yet to come back to her room and tell her he wanted her to stay, and how the journalist played in the cards with his and Natalie’s sudden romance. But he never came back, and that knowing he didn’t burned another cigar hole in her heart and as for Nathan’s asking, Chris made up her mind for her when he didn’t come back.

And Natalie stood in the barn amongst piled haystacks her horses had been feeding on and gathered her saddlebags and tightened the reins and saddles where her wagon would be hooked onto.

She was dressed back into her traveling attire: the silk purple dress, her dark cape, the hood not on yet shading her eyes, and her black boots. She was ready to begin another day of travels and rest in whichever town she came to by the end of the night.

She worked her hands to tighten the reins tighter and her horses neighed to this discomfort and she apologized softly to them, to herself, to Chris Larabee…wherever he may be at this time of the day.

“Natalie?”

Out of nowhere in her imagination did she think to come upon that deep, soothing voice that belonged to none other than Chris. Natalie turned her head slightly to look over her shoulder at him, his dark eyes gazing into hers, and she turned away before she had a chance to turn her whole body and walk into his arms because of those concerned eyes.

Chris managed to move his boots and walk slowly up to her as she concentrated hard on the reins instead of on him. “Vin just got back from the look out. It’s clear.” He figured he should say something he was use to about making sure the coasts were clear and there were no more gun play or coming about fights. But when she didn’t turn his away after he told her everything was safe, that she was going to safe, he spoke her name again. “Natalie?”

Still no warning she was going to look his way and when his gaze dropped from her profile, he came down to her busy hands working on the same knot when he first came in to see her.

And then it hit him. She wasn’t ignoring him or the fact she was going to be okay. She didn’t want to have to face him and tell him she was leaving. Her hardened expression and the work of her hands told him that’s exactly what she was planning to do.

“Leaving already?”

Natalie stopped with the knot and dropped her hands to another piece of the reins, near the saddle. “If anyone comes looking for me, I’ll have a good forty-eight hour start.” She swallowed, trying to control her urgent tears and stay as strong as can be. “I can’t stay.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Chris said softly, not at all how he would approach a conversation to anyone else. He wanted to tell her that he’d prefer if she did stay, but the looks of things, he knew that if he did it would include some heavy explanation on his part about his past.

Natalie took a deep breath and turned his way as if she knew what he was thinking and what she said next knocked the breath right out of his lungs. “I know about Ella Gaines.”

Chris didn’t move a muscle and his jaw tightened and his teeth clenched.

“I heard what she has done to you and how she’s capable of doing it again.”

“She can make her threats, Natalie.”

“She can?” she asked in an almost surprised question and he didn’t let up to answer her. “What if she acts on those threats, then what? She’ll burn me alive too?” That was wrong to say, and Natalie quickly shook her head from the nasty thoughts and the soreness of her question. “Forgive me. It’s not how I meant it.”

“You mean there’s another way?” Heated anger boiled in his blood, in his veins, and Chris had to hold his hands into fists to control a ready to come about outburst. “She won’t come back.”

“How can you be certain?” Natalie stopped messing with the reins and turned her body to face him with sure honesty and a ready to go argument about all this. “How do you know she won’t come after me once she learns I’m with you? As your wife, the mother to your children?

“Because I won’t make the same mistakes again. That woman ruined my life with Sarah and Adam. She turned me into a man I never wanted to become.”

A snort escaped Natalie’s lips and she shook her head with the unexpected. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Chris. You’re not that kind of man.”

“Then you don’t know me.”

Natalie backed away when she realized she was stepping closer toward his stiff body frame. “I did last night.” She turned away from him again and back to setting her reins as tight and comfortable as possible. When a few seconds of silence passed by that seemed to slither along like hours, Natalie managed to shrug her shoulders and smile knowing she was giving the gunslinger no indication she was going to stay with him.

“You’ll know this is the better way once I’m gone.”

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Folks know you, Chris. They know what you’ve done. The men you killed, my husband…” she paused to take another breath and she stopped working the reins again to just stare at the work she was accomplishing.

She remembered distinctively about what she asked of Chris last night. She asked him to make her forget about her husband and he did just that and loved her the way a man was suppose to love a woman. The way men and women show just how much they love each other. A feeling Natalie had forgotten until last night.

But no, she wouldn’t let herself think on it anymore. She was deeply thankful to Chris for making her forget about her husband for the night but now it was morning and there he stood in front of her with pleading eyes, begging her to stay because she knew just how much he loved her, and she had to push him away. And the only way to do that was to make him angry with her.

“You’re the bad element, remember? With your reputation, your ways…I’ll just be in your way. I have to go.”

“Because of my reputation, that’s why you can’t love me?” Chris splattered out, again controlling his anger with a tight expression and stiff muscles.

And when Natalie laughed out a loud, a laughter Chris never thought to hear come out of her body in this precise, serious moment, he was taken aback and somehow hurt.

“Love you?” she asked, repeating the word love to herself. “How can I love a man who seeks danger and doesn’t care if he lives or dies?” she shook her head and looked up into the high cathedral ceilings of the barn. “I wasn’t raised to be like this. I wasn’t raised to have enemies. I was put on this earth to love my husband; my son and now that they’re gone… I want nothing else but to be alone. Don’t force me to want what I can’t have.” Then she felt the tears well in her eyes as she kept on talking, the cracks in her voice. “I want someone I can grow old with. Someone to hold onto when I die. Can you be that man, Chris Larabee?”

Chris didn’t utter a word. He felt his muscles give in a slight but nothing too dramatic to put comfort in Natalie’s eyes to tell her he wanted to be that man. Because in both mind and body he wanted to be that man for her, he wanted to be with her for the rest of her life, and to still kiss her when she’s ready to die and give her soul to the heavens. He wanted to be that man she could laugh with, and how much he missed laughing. And it scared him so much because the last time he felt the need to drop to his knees and cry to be with him was when he proposed to Sarah Connelly.

If he knew this woman took his breath away just as his Sarah did, then there was no time to waste to make her stay, and he sure as hell didn’t want to let go so easily.

But her hard voice stopped his fairy tale thoughts.

“See, you don’t know why you’re here, do you? Nothing will change.”

Chris had to pick up the slack on his side of the argument. “You don’t know that. You want a family again. So do I.”

“Yes, but not with you. I’m afraid of you, Chris.” Natalie said and that was the sad truth, and it only hit Chris like a ton of bricks. “I’m afraid of Ella Gaines…of what she’s capable of. What she did to your wife and son. They weren’t expecting to die. They were waiting for you to come home, but you never did.”

“I had a trade to finish.” Chris couldn’t believe this. He didn’t want her to think he never came back home those three years ago on purpose. He had no idea what he was up against, that he had any threats at all. He had his life back in order. He had his own land to raise, a beautiful family to protect. He had no idea there were still enemies of his roaming around close to his land. That a woman from his past had all the stone heart to take his family away from him. A woman he hadn’t seen for twelve years until just two months ago was behind it all.

“I know. But enemies, Chris? Enemies you didn’t know you had did that to them. And you will always have enemies.”

“Ella Gaines is my only enemy.”

“And after you kill her and have your revenge, how many more will you have?”

“That woman ruined my life already but I’ll be damned to let her do it again.”

Natalie’s heart all but gave for this wounded man who wanted nothing more in return but her love. A love she cannot give anymore. “I can’t. I need to protect myself, alone without you.” And that was the truth. She wanted to give her heart to this man, this gunslinger with all the power in the world but she knew that wasn’t possible and if anything had happened to him because of the work he does, Natalie knew she wouldn’t be able to survive it.

“Then what we have means nothing?” she heard Chris’s voice stammer out through hard, anxious tears.

Natalie dropped her hands to her sides and looked at him dead in the eye. “Nothing I do means nothing. I’m not ready to be a wife to another man and I know that you won’t be able to be the man I need. That I won’t be able to be the wife that you loved. It’s not worth it.” She turned back around and bent down to retrieve her satchel. And she did to avoid any misgiving thoughts she knew Chris was feeling at that given moment to her last comments.

And she was right. Chris was livid he could hardly see straight. “Not worth it?” but again he kept his cool. “Not worth it!” he wanted to run to her and grab her arms to stop her from working and look at him, but he didn’t and instead tightened his fingers curled in his hands. “What do you think, Natalie that you’re not worth being loved?” Surely she didn’t mean she wasn’t worth anything of good and peace like her husband that was slowly rotting after the burial earlier that morning. Surely she must have meant something else.

Natalie turned and faced him, “I’m not worth it and that’s why you deserve better than me.” A painful knowing she held deep in her stomach that she wasn’t worth this man’s love. That he grieved for a long time over his family’s death and how he wasn’t ready to give that love away again. How he wasn’t ready to start over and begin anew. Natalie knew she wasn’t worth his love, that she shouldn’t be the one he’d give it to.

“There ain’t no one. No one else I want.” Chris pleaded again but again kept his stiff body in order.

“I won’t bring you down with me, Chris.” She shifted her weight and took a step toward him, feeling a new side of confidence growing within her. “And if you love me, you’ll let me go.”

“Natalie—“

Natalie quickly brought her hand up and rested her fingers on his full lips. “Don’t remember me like this.” Her eyes dropped from his blurred green eyes to his lips, mesmerized again and completely falling weak in the knees that these lips, his lips kissed her, loved on her. And before she had to time to think any of this through, she leaned into him and placed her lips on those luscious lips of his and held. But her kiss didn’t last long and she pulled away and looked into his eyes again. “Remember me like that and what we shared.” Natalie ran her thumb across Chris’s bottom lip. “Don’t forget.”

Then with reins to her horses in her grip, she gave a gentle tug and walked past Chris into the sun to leave for good.

One Month Later.

Wow, Chris didn’t think she’d really leave him like that. With her kiss still sore on his lips, the light touch of her thumb tracing his bottom lip. The look in her eyes telling him the truth behind her scared secret love for him. That she did love him but couldn’t bring herself to say it to him. He just knew.

And now it had been a month, and Natalie Rose was really gone.

There would be the usual fights in Four Corners with the drunks, the ready to go men who wanted nothing more to just fire their weapon in the skies. The sort of play Chris grew tired of dealing with. But it was his job, and he was under oath by Judge Travis to keep the town in order…along with his six other comrades.

Chris was their leader, that wasn’t a lie, but even the leaders lose sight of having fun in the usual gunfights and drinking silly plays. He was just tired of it all. Mary was back to the second name bases with him and she hardly spoke to him if even that whenever they crossed each other’s pasts. Still as it may be with Natalie gone, Chris could never find that kind of comfort in Mary only his wife and now Natalie could give him. Mary wasn’t his type. Wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted for him in the long run. She was just a friend, a companion, but not for him as a lover.

And how he still ached for Natalie…wondering where she was.

After a couple of days of endless nights and boring summer days in the heated town, Chris exchanged conversation with Vin as they headed toward the livery so Chris could retrieve his horse. The two met Nathan walking down the stairs from his room above and they all three went walking to the stables. Just for company, Chris assumed, as he was the only one who had the desire to leave town and go back to his shack in the hills.

After a few minutes of company from Nathan and Vin, they walked off as Chris walked into the livery and came back out with his horse trotting behind him. He told his comrades he was leaving for the day and if anything were to happen, to call for him right away. Though deep down Chris knew that nothing was going to happen in his absence, he saddled his horse and rode off out of town.

With Buck gone with Louise on their journey, Vin was the only other one who really knew Chris for the man he was. He knew this sudden leave of the woman who captured his friend’s heart was gone, and gone forever to him. He watched his friend ride off slowly out of the town before disappearing behind a few buildings.

Vin just knew Chris was hurting in more ways than possible. More ways like he’d just lost another loved one. Someone who was gone, but not forgotten. And yet another woman who took his heart and ripped it apart.


The sun began to set on his shack as Chris rode up to. His horses were in the corral just as he left them this morning, but oddly enough, something was off. When he remembered he left two horses within that wooden fence, there were now three.

He took his time to think upon those horses he remembered he left two, and didn’t come across the fact that he wasn’t alone here in the middle of the hills. Leisurely, he unsaddled his horse and opened the wooden gate to let his horse in to join the others before turning around to face his shack.

In the midst of the early evening and the quiet sunset behind him, he heard a faint sound coming from within his getaway home. He put his soul to rest and went back into gunslinger stature when he put his hand on his pistol, snapped securely in the holster on his hip. He took the small steps leading to the front door and when he heard a second sound of motion within the home, he pulled out his peacemaker and walked a little closer.

“Show yourself,” he demanded with the gun in his hands, aiming right at the door so if the thief decided to walk out, he’d gun them down without a thought.

But Chris was thinking, and he was thinking too much with his heart rather than his brain as the door slowly opened and the woman he only dreamt would come back to him walked out.

Natalie stepped out onto the small wooden porch and stared at Chris’s pistol aimed right at her chest. Chris didn’t know whether to be glad or angry she was here now after all this time. And then he realized he had the gun right on her, aiming for her heart and put his down by his thigh and looked away from her beautiful round eyes.

He had to be angry with her and show just how much when he knew he was dying inside to stay calm and collected and not run up to her and kiss her. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t be around what’s not yours?” he put the gun back in the holster. “You almost got yourself killed.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, Mr. Larabee.” Natalie said gently but still with the twinge of sadness in her voice.

“What is it, Natalie, why you here?” Chris asked, shifting his weight to control his urges but most of all to control what he knew he couldn’t have and that was her. But he was confused to why she showed up now and not sooner.

Natalie widened her eyes and took a step closer to the gunslinger she grew to love with every piece of her broken heart. “I’ve misplaced something very dear to me.”

Chris shrugged, still hard and ineligible to commit what he was seeing, “Can’t be here then.” He turned away from her beauty and headed back over to the corral.

“But it is,” she followed him. “And I found it now.”

“So you’ll be on your way then?” he shot back.

“Not until I can leave with it, but I’ll need your permission first.” Natalie put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He jerked it away, “Permission for what?”

Taken back by his sudden cruelty, Natalie whispered, “Permission to have you and to love you.” Chris didn’t say anything and kept his back to her. “Forgive me, Chris Larabee. The man who haunts my dreams at night, during the waking hours, as I fall asleep. I’ve made a mistake to push you away. I was blind to see how much you needed me to hold you, and love you, and just be with you. I’m a fool, Chris. Please. I was fool when I last kissed you and walked away until I finally realized that I was staring at my soul mate.” She looked down at her feet, “I was just so scared to love again. That I didn’t think it was possible to be loved again. After everything’s that happened.

But I know I want you, and I need you.” She looked down at her hands that rest on her belly. “And not just because I was scared. Because I have been given a second chance in this life, and so have you, to live a life together with the new life I’m carrying.”

Chris opened his eyes after not realizing he had closed them. He stared at the horizon, and where Four Corners was just a dot in the distance. Everything this woman said behind was so real it scared him to brink of cold shivers running down his spine. He wanted to turn and hold her and ask her what she meant by what she last said.

“Life?” he said.

“Chris, look at me.” Natalie urged, and again put a hand on his shoulder and slowly he began to budge from his stalked standing. He turned to meet her glowing eyes with tears and instinctively he wanted to brush them away.

“I made love to you with my heart and my soul and my body, and you gave me more in return than I could ever imagine…a child. Our child.” She moved her hand off his shoulder and ran down his trench coat to lace her fingers in his. “I want you back, Chris, now and for the rest of my life. If you’ll have me.”

“Why did you leave then back in town? When I begged you to stay with me. Why come back now and ask me for forgiveness?”

“I was so confused then. I didn’t know what I wanted for myself after Alex’s death. I didn’t realize that I could fall in love again. That I left all my love and joy back at that ranch.” She looked down at her hand connected to his, “And when I found out I’m carrying a child, I knew I was given a second chance with you to be happy again because I do love you and I am not running away from that again.”

Her words caught Chris by surprise as he watched her tears fall from her eyes. He lifted his other hand and gently wiped them away, finally coming to truth that this woman standing before him was the one he knew his wife had given to him.

“You love me?” he asked as he tipped her chin to look at him.

“So much,” she breathed a shaky breath. “And I just—“

Chris stopped her from speaking when he placed his finger over her lips. “You talk too much. It’s dangerous.”

Natalie opened her eyes to stare into his eyes, “As dangerous of having another woman with you in your every wake?”

“Nothing compares to that kind of danger.”

The stranger let out a small laugh and Chris cupped her face ready to kiss her, but stopped when she asked, “Do you love me?”

Chris opened his eyes when he was about to take the plunge to kiss her lips to look into her big brown eyes filled with joyful and hopeful tears. “I love you, Natalie. And I don’t know how.”

“Then how can this be? You don’t know me. All the little things about you?”

The gunslinger released a sigh, “We have time to get to know each other.”

“Will you ever be able to love me as much as you loved your wife?”

The words caught Chris by surprise then closed his eyes, gently massaging the back of her neck. “I can’t because you can never love me the way you loved your husband.”

“We have the memories, you and I to keep us strong. To keep us alive. And love. The new love I have for you and what I will give you. What I already have. I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“You never have to be.”

“Because I have my own gunslinger,” she smiled.

“Yeah, you do…” Chris said then bent down and kissed her lips. And the kiss would be their first to many kisses to come.

THE END