The Stranger by Suzy

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.