The Stranger by Suzy

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