West of Heaven

Chapter Two

“M rs. D-a-a-a-w-s-o-n!”

Jayne sat tight in the saddle and gave the mare full rein. The hood of her cloak slipped from her head and her hair collapsed in a tangle. When a shower of sleet burst from the sky, icy needles crackled through the trees and stung her face. The wind howled, masking the mare’s hoofbeats as they rounded the first curve. In another minute the road would be slick with mud, but for now it was safe for the mare to gallop.

“Mrs. D-a-a-a-w-s-o-n!”

The shout was fainter now. Surely the comfort of a warm bed and a hot meal would draw the sheriff home to Midas. The trail steepened and then veered east. Listening for Handley, she heard nothing but the storm and slowed the mare to a fast walk.

As suddenly as the sleet had started, it stopped. She raised her face to the sky where snowflakes as big as teacups were collecting on the trees. In front of her eyes, the pines were changing from towering sentries to lacy white angels.

Taking the greeting as a sign that coming back to bury Hank was right, she nudged the mare into a trot and rode straight into Ethan Trent’s meadow.

The rancher was nowhere in sight, but the grave was deep and surrounded on three sides by freshly turned earth. Snow mottled the brown mounds, and a loamy fragrance drifted to her nose on the stiffening wind. The scrape of canvas against dirt drew her eyes down the slope where she saw the rancher dragging a burlap sack past the splintery wall of the barn.

He could have been pulling a child’s sled, but she knew the sack held Hank’s body. She reined the mare to a halt, sat straight in the saddle and watched as Ethan Trent dragged his burden up the hill. His steps were slow and measured, his back rounded and his gloved hands knotted in the frayed weave of the burlap. When he reached the grave, he aligned the body with the long edge of the rectangular hole, paused for breath and bowed his head.

He was probably avoiding the snow, but she wanted to think he was showing respect for the act he was about to commit, if not for the man he was laying to rest.

She was grateful for that small comfort, but then he knotted his fists at his heaving sides, stared straight into the heavens and shouted a curse she would never repeat. With his oath ringing in the air, he dropped to his knees and rolled the corpse into the grave.

Jayne stared in horror. The veil of snow erased all color from her world except for the red flush burning across the rancher’s cheeks. Through the mist, she watched as he crossed one arm over his chest, rested his elbow on his forearm and pinched the bridge of his nose. His wide shoulders started to shake, and a low groan cut through the air as he raised both hands to his face and pressed them against his eyes, as if to hold in tears.

Stunned by a grief that matched her own, Jayne climbed off the mare and walked in his direction. As the horse clopped to the barn, the rancher’s gaze drifted to her face. Rising slowly to his feet, he blinked as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Golden hope flickered in his irises like a candle in an empty window, but it died as suddenly as it had appeared. In place of that hope, she saw a loathing as deep and lasting as the grave at his feet. Sneering, he picked up the shovel and hurled more dirt into the hole.

Fresh tears scalded her cheeks. “I’ve come to help you bury my husband.”

“Help me? God Almighty,” he said, heaving more dirt into the grave. “Where the hell is Handley?”

“On his way to Midas. We parted ways at the ravine.”

From beneath the brim of his hat, he assessed her with a cold stare. “You’re stubborn, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m strong-minded.”

“What the hell’s the difference?”

“A stubborn person just wants her own way. Someone who’s strong-minded has principles and lives by them.”

He looked down at the dirt thumping into the hole, lifted another load and sent it flying. His gaze shifted back to hers. “So what damn principle gives you the right to invade my privacy?”

If he wanted an apology, he wasn’t going to get it. “Common decency is what gives me the right, Mr. Trent. How would you feel in my shoes? What if this were your wife?”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Jayne realized that she had made a terrible mistake. The shovel stopped in midswing, hanging over the grave as the rancher stared blindly into the hole. She’d once seen ice break apart on the Ohio River. The fractured planes of his face were no less treacherous.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know you. I shouldn’t have presumed—”

“Damn right.” He slowly turned the blade of the shovel so that dirt and snow fell together in a tarnished mist.

Trying to be respectful, she said, “I should have realized—”

“You should’ve gone with Handley.”

“But—”

“Dammit, lady. Mind your own business.”

“I’m trying to apologize.”

“Don’t.”

Taking a step back, she bowed her head and kept quiet. She owed him that much for burying Hank, but every instinct told her that silence was the last thing this man needed. He was a kettle boiling in an empty kitchen, one that had long since gone dry and was ready to explode. She’d be wise to keep her distance.

Closing her eyes, she prayed for strength as the rancher worked. The rhythm of the shovel became a dirge, a wordless goodbye that lasted for a small eternity. The snow was blowing sideways by the time he finished.

Tamping the mound with the shovel blade, he said, “I’m done. You can sleep in the barn or freeze on the trail. I don’t give a damn either way.”

Jayne believed him, but it didn’t matter. She’d come back to say goodbye to Hank and that’s what she intended to do. She had a warm cloak and would make a bed in the barn out of straw. She didn’t need the rancher’s help. She felt nothing but relief as he stormed off, put away the tools and marched across the yard to the tiny cabin.

The door slapped shut. In the sudden silence and absence of all things human, she surrendered to the tears she’d been fighting for a week. She sang her favorite hymns. She recited the Shepherd’s psalm and walked through the valley of the shadow of death, over and over, until the words were a jumble.

Exhausted, she dropped to her knees and squeezed a fistful of dirt. Someday she and Hank would be together again, but not for a very long time. On one hand, life was uncertain and eternity was a breath away. On the other hand, that gap spanned thousands of days.

Rising to her feet, Jayne turned her back on the grave and looked across the meadow to the rancher’s cabin. An L-shaped sliver of light marked a small window covered with a sheet of boards. Next to it a vertical line gave shape to the door. She smelled wood burning in the hearth and saw a plume of white smoke rising from the chimney.

As the adrenaline drained from her body, so did her natural warmth. Shivering, she imagined sipping hot coffee and the heat of a fire thawing her toes. She also imagined the rancher’s gaunt frame and his filthy clothes. He smelled like the bottom of a barn. The horses were better company, and that was a fact.

Holding her skirt above the snow, she trudged back to the splintery shell of the outbuilding. The cold and the dark didn’t scare her in the least. She would make it through the night an hour and a prayer at a time.

Ethan let go of the sheet of boards covering the window. The flat wood dropped back into place and pinched his finger.

“Dammit,” he muttered, shaking his hand to get the blood moving again. He had been standing at the sill for close to an hour, and the crazy woman was still singing hymns. He hated that sound. It brought back memories of Laura humming lullabies to their children and singing in church.

The widow had to be frozen half to death, but nothing on God’s green earth could bring her husband back. Ethan knew that for a fact.

Damn him for a fool, but the window drew him like a magnet attracting iron ore. After downing the dregs in the coffeepot, he slid the plywood open again. The widow had dropped to her knees and bowed her head.

He could still taste the acid coffee in the back of his throat and his stomach was burning. He needed to eat something, but the thought of this morning’s charred biscuits didn’t appeal to him. Neither did another can of beans or canned meat or canned anything. Laura had been a good cook, even better than his mother, and Ethan steeled himself against the memory of real food even as the widow’s singing tugged at him.

Be Thou my vision, oh, Lord of my heart.

Naught be of else to me, save that Thou art.

God damn him to hell. The widow was singing Laura’s favorite hymn. Did she have regrets for words left unsaid and things left undone? Was she as alone as she seemed? As brave and daring as it appeared? She must have been crying, but the melody didn’t waver. Her shoulders stayed still and her arms remained stiff at her sides, as if by not moving she could make time stop.

Everything about this woman’s grief was familiar to him except the need to see her husband buried. He wished to God he’d never seen the casket holding Laura’s body with the baby on her chest, nor the pine boxes holding his two sons, nailed shut, one on top of the other in the grave next to hers.

His stomach rumbled with hunger, a defiant echo of life in the face of so much death. Hating himself for feeling that need, Ethan covered the window, slopped a can of beans on a plate and ate them cold. He washed the mess down with more bad coffee.

The hymn stopped just as he took the last swallow. Holding the empty cup, he pulled back the wood and looked for the widow. The sky had turned from gray to royal blue, a sign of twilight and colder temperatures, but the widow hadn’t budged. If she had a lick of sense, she’d get settled in the barn before nightfall.

Ethan felt a niggle of worry low in his belly. He knew how it felt to be numb with grief and, for an awful minute, wondered if she intended to freeze to death. He couldn’t let her stand outside much longer, but the thought of having her in his house was unbearable. Closing his eyes, he counted to ten and then to twenty, praying she’d be gone.

When he found the courage to look, he saw her walking down the hill through the ankle-deep snow. Heavy flakes dotted the shoulders of her cloak and he worried that her feet were wet. Even wrapped in heavy wool, she had to be shivering. When she reached the barn, she looked back at the cabin. Her eyes, he remembered, were bright blue, but in the dim light they were hollow and dark. He slammed his fist against the wall. He didn’t want her here. With a defiant tilt of her chin, she walked into the barn and closed the door.

He wondered if she’d find the matches and lantern he’d put on the shelf for her, and if she’d burrow in the fresh straw for warmth. The temperature would plummet before dawn, and the walls had holes the size of his fist. He’d made them in fits of rage.

She had to be hungry. The thought unnerved him, but he refused to give in to the small voice urging him to invite her inside. Loneliness was the price he paid for the worst decision of his life.

His shoulders sagged with a familiar guilt as he tossed two logs on the fire, stripped down to his long johns and rolled under the comforter covering the wide bed. In the silence of the night, echoes of the hymn she had sung drifted into his usual thoughts of Laura and the children. He considered going out to check on the widow, but he didn’t want to see her clear blue eyes. Besides, he reasoned, even a dog had the sense to get out of a storm. If Mrs. Dawson wanted to come in out of the cold, she could knock on his door. He might not like it, but he wasn’t quite heartless enough to turn her away.

Ethan knew how cold it could be at night. His ranch was situated on a high plateau in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Some winters were as dry as the southwestern desert. In other years his land endured as much snow as the Rockies. This winter had been mild and the spring storm would have been welcome, except for the woman in his barn.

Curled against the rough wall, he wrapped the blanket around his feet. The fire had burned down to embers and the cabin was nearly black. Sleep came slowly, bringing with it vivid pictures of his family. But instead of recalling happier times as he usually did, he relived the day they died. Vivid and harsh, the memories followed him into an exhausted sleep until the gray light of dawn filled the cabin.

Waking up with a jolt, he thought of the widow.

Boiling mad, he tossed back the blanket and pulled on his clothes. Just as he did every morning, he stood straight and stared at himself in the heart-shaped mirror hanging over the bed, trying to remember the man he had once been. It was a hopeless cause, and today it was worse because of the woman in his barn.

Guilt burned in his belly like a banked fire as he hunched into his coat and tugged on the gloves Laura had knitted back in Missouri. Pushing down on his hat, Ethan opened the door and groaned at the sight of knee-high snow. His gaze rose to the barn. Half buried in the drifts, it looked like a sinking ship, and his heart sank with it. The trail to Midas would be impassable for days and muddy for weeks.

The thought of having Mrs. Dawson on his property for another minute, let alone a week, turned his mood from sour to rancid. Fighting his temper, he stomped across the yard and stormed into the barn. He expected to see the widow wrapped in her heavy cloak in the pile of fresh straw, but she wasn’t there.

“Mrs. Dawson?”

The silence accused him of being a coldhearted son of a bitch. Had she wandered into the storm to die? He knew how it felt to fight that temptation. Only his pride and a sincere fear of hell had kept him from eating a bullet when Laura and the children had died. If Jayne Dawson had chosen that path, the decision was hers. They would both have to live with the choices they had made.

The thought gave Ethan no comfort. He made his voice louder. “Mrs. Dawson!”

A low moan drew him to the back of the barn. Peering into an empty stall, he saw a filthy horse blanket and the bottom edge of the widow’s navy-blue cloak.

“Lady, get up.”

She stirred beneath the blanket, then bolted upright as a chest-deep cough erupted from her throat. She covered her mouth with both hands, but the air still shook with the ferociousness of the coughing spell. Fever burned in her cheeks.

Ethan wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Her eyes were the color of the sky at high noon, and her straw-blond hair had frozen into a tangle. Remorse burned from his heart to his head. He treated his two horses better than he had treated this woman. What if it had been Laura in need, or his daughter?

He cleared his throat to soften his gravelly voice. “Ma’am, you need help.”

Struggling to breathe, she clutched at the blanket. “I am so sorry…to do this to you…I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t waste your breath.” He couldn’t bear that high-pitched wheeze. “Can you wait while I do chores?”

Nodding, she struggled to her feet and stood while he filled the feed bins and used an old broom handle to poke through the ice covering the water buckets. He needed to muck out the stalls, but it would have to wait. Mrs. Dawson looked ready to faint.

He leaned the stick against the wall. “We need to get inside.”

Instinctively he held the door for her, just as he had done a thousand times for his wife. The widow’s skirt brushed across his boots, then she waited for him to take the lead. Her eyes barely reached his shoulder. She’d never be able to match his stride, and so he swung his boot from side to side to kick a path for her.

He couldn’t hear her footsteps, only a light wheezing and the swish of her skirt. When she fainted, he barely heard the thump of her body sinking into the drift.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered.

Dropping to his knees, he yanked off one glove and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. Feverish heat burned straight through to his bones, and he saw that the collar of her shirtwaist was wet with perspiration. He shook her shoulder and called her name, but she didn’t make a sound.

The last thing in the world he wanted to do was to carry her, but what choice did he have? Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees, he rocked back on his heels and lifted her from the snow.

As her face rolled against his chest, he saw bits of straw stuck in her hair and sleep creases on her cheeks. He wanted to scream at the heavens as he trudged to the cabin, pried the door open with his elbow and carried her to his bed. The unwashed sheets still bore the mark of his body and the torment of his dreams. It seemed wrong to set her down in such a private place, but he did it anyway.

She moaned and muttered how sorry she was, whispered Hank’s name and called for her mother. He had to get her into dry clothes, but the cabin was barely warmer than the barn, and it made sense to leave her in the cloak until he had a fire roaring in the hearth.

He poked the coals and added two handfuls of kindling so it would catch fast and burn hot. The scrap box he kept by the rock fireplace held next to nothing and he kicked himself for being lazy about filling it. Hunching in his coat, he made a quick trip to the woodpile behind the cabin, stacked the logs on the hearth and laid a piece of dry pine on the embers. It caught with a whoosh, pushing heat into the room as Ethan looked at the woman on his bed.

She hadn’t moved a muscle, and he honestly didn’t know which would be worse—undressing a live woman or burying a dead one. All he knew was that he didn’t want to touch her, and he would have to do just that if she didn’t wake up. “Mrs. Dawson?”

No answer.

Ethan took off his coat and rested his palm on her forehead as if she were a child. Her fever shamed him. He imagined burying her next to her husband and waiting for the spring grass to wipe out the graves so that he could forget this moment, but he knew he would never forget.

He couldn’t see her chest moving beneath the cloak, so he touched her throat in search of a pulse. He found it in an instant, a strong beat that told him she wasn’t a quitter. “Lady, wake up,” he said.

Moaning, she struggled to open her eyes.

“Your clothes are wet from the fever. Can you get undressed?”

“This can’t be happening,” she said, almost whimpering.

“Here, let me help you, love.”

Love. His pet name for Laura. Horrified, Ethan shot to his feet, snatched his nightshirt off a nail and tossed it on the bed. “Wake up now. You’ve got to get out of those damp things.”

“I’ll try.” She raised her head and tugged on her cloak, but she didn’t have the strength to pull it free. Weaker than before, she fell flat against the mattress.

Steeling himself against the heat emanating from her body, Ethan wrapped his arm around her shoulders, removed the cloak and dropped it on the floor. “We have to get your shoes off, too.”

Nodding, she pulled her feet to the side of the bed. Her soles brushed his thigh, and he stepped aside as he unbuttoned the fancy boots and slid them over her ankles. Gritting his teeth, he rolled her stockings down her slender calves and tugged the cotton over her toes. They were small and pink and pretty. His stomach clenched, but he touched them anyway, just to be sure they were warm.

The woman was shivering now, struggling to undo the front of her jacket with her half-frozen fingers.

“Here, let me,” he said.

“I can do it—” But a racking cough stole her breath.

Forcing himself to look down, he slid his fingers beneath hers and undid the buttons. He pulled at the jacket sleeves until her arms broke free, revealing a white silk shirtwaist blotched with perspiration. Bravely, he worked those buttons, too, this time discovering rosy-gold skin and a chemise made transparent by a feverish sheen.

He tried not to look directly at the widow’s breasts, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking in the differences between her body and Laura’s. His wife was the only woman he had ever known in that way. She had been soft and round, a dark-eyed beauty with a complexion like cream. Mrs. Dawson’s skin made him think of the summer sun. On its own, his gaze roamed downward, where he saw her firm breasts and the shadow of brown nipples beneath the cotton.

A rush of desire made Ethan hard and angry. That ache belonged to Laura, and he didn’t want to feel it ever again, especially not now. He wanted to get the widow undressed, in bed and out of his head as fast as he could.

Her damp underthings needed to come off, but a man had his limits. He’d help her with the skirt, but that was all he could manage. Growling, he said, “Raise up your hips.”

Strangling on a cough, the widow did as he ordered, though she failed miserably to work the button at the waist. Ethan took over, looking at the ceiling as he maneuvered the skirt down her thighs and past her knees. As she curled into a tight ball, he dropped the garment on the floor, covered her legs with his quilt and shoved an old nightshirt in her face. “You can finish without me.”

Turning his back, he added a log to the fire and poked the coals. Only when the bed stopped creaking did he dare turn around.

What he saw shattered his lonely world like a splitting maul in a round of pine. The woman sleeping in his bed was beautiful. Wrapped in his blanket with her gold hair tangled on his pillow, she didn’t look to be much more than twenty years old. Ethan had a good ten years on her, and the past two had turned him into an old man.

He strode into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat near the fire to muddle through his thoughts. He had a woman in his bed burning with fever and coughing like a lunger. He didn’t want her here, but Mrs. Dawson hadn’t given him a choice or even a say in the matter.

Guilt sluiced over him. Laura, I’m so sorry for taking you away…

Laura had been content in Missouri, but he had wanted a change. She had supported his dream of owning land because she loved him, but deep down he knew she would have been happier to spend their lives in the same small town where they had grown up. He’d promised her a bigger house and a good life for the kids, but he had failed them all. They hadn’t made it past Raton.

Ethan didn’t want to think about that lost part of his life. The immediate problem at hand was Mrs. Dawson. As much as he hated having her in his house, he was stuck with her until the trail cleared and she recovered enough to ride.

Staring at the fire, he listened to the thud of snow falling from the trees. It was a lonely sound, but one he welcomed in his silent world. Today, though, other sounds filtered to his ears. Mrs. Dawson whimpered like a kitten in her sleep, and her cough rasped like sandpaper on fresh-cut wood. When she rolled to her side, the bed creaked and he thought of Laura filling the spot next to him.

Gulping the last of his coffee, Ethan rose and walked to the kitchen. As he passed the bed, the widow moaned and flung the blanket aside, muttering something about missing a train and calling to her mother. Sweat beaded on her forehead and he saw half moons of dampness on the nightshirt just below her breasts.

He picked up the blanket intending to cover her, but common sense told him her body needed to cool as the fever spiked. Not knowing what to do scared him, but what scared him even more was not wanting to look away.

Disgusted with himself, Ethan tugged the quilt up to her chin and turned to the kitchen. His boot caught on the clothing he’d dropped on the floor, and he caught a whiff of the barn. Bending low, he picked up the riding skirt, the jacket and the blouse. She’d have to wear them again. Hoping it would be soon, he hung the suit on the nail where his nightshirt had been and shook out the blouse.

Her scent filled him with a hunger that was both unwelcome and sharp. Closing his eyes, he buried his nose in the silk where he smelled honeysuckle and a woman’s skin. He ached for Laura, and yet this wasn’t her scent. She preferred lilacs and the feel of his clean-shaven face. Clutching at the fine silk, Ethan touched it to his cheek until his stubbled whiskers snagged it, hurling him back to his senses.