CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Lori woke up in Morgan’s arms. Light was streaming through the window, and she wondered what time it was. Her body was stiff and sore, and she started to move, then stopped. He needed all the rest he could get. So she concentrated on watching his face.

She had never seen it at rest before. The severity was gone. The harshness. Long dark lashes covered those dark-blue eyes, which were always so watchful. She longed to touch that face. He’d been so gentle last night, so careful not to hurt her.

But he’d not said anything about love. And why should he? She had shot him, run from him, mistrusted him, and finally nearly gotten him killed.

His eyes flickered open, and he smiled at her lazily. “Hummm, you feel good,” he said.

“So do you,” she said.

He smiled wryly and stretched, groaning a little as his bruises made themselves known. “I might feel good to you, but not to myself. I don’t think …” He stopped suddenly.

Lori did what she’d been wanting to do since she woke. She touched his mouth, traced the hollow of his cheek, feeling the rough beard stubble. “Don’t think …?” she prompted.

But he set his jaw stubbornly as his hand felt his own cheek, and he winced. “I must look like the devil.”

She grinned. “You do.”

His eyes were still sleepy, lids half covering a deep, rich, amused blue. He shook his head. “It’s unfair. You’re still so damn pretty.”

Lori felt anything but. She knew her face must still be swollen. Her hair was a mass of uncombed curls, and her clothes … well, less considered the better. She stretched out against him, not wanting to lose that contact, that intimacy.

He moved away quickly, but not before she felt his response to her body. He sat and pulled on the shirt he’d been wearing. She barely remembered he’d taken his bedroll into another room last night.

“I’m going to get a shave and a bath,” he said. “I’ll have some water sent up for you. And then we’d better get you back to your family before your brother appears with a shotgun.”

Stunned by his abruptness, she just nodded, swallowing hard against disappointment, emptiness. He stood there a moment, his eyes shadowed, dark, wary again, and then he opened the door and left.

It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, leaving her this morning, and he wasn’t sure whom he was doing it for—Lori or himself.

He looked over at her. She was silent as she rode next to him. She had been silent since he’d returned to the hotel room, bringing coffee with him from downstairs. He’d also managed to scavenge some bread and meat.

Morgan had found a barber and a bathhouse and had indulged in both, letting the heat drain some of the soreness from his body. But it couldn’t drain the other pain. The pain of wanting something so much he couldn’t think around it. He had wanted her so damn bad this morning, but the specter of Nick kept interfering. And his badge. He had caused her enough grief and injury already. Even if she still cared for him after knowing about Nick, could she ever be happy as a Ranger’s wife? He was gone three quarters of the year, sometimes more. And she’d made it clear more than once she had little use for lawmen.

Morgan kept trying to tell himself it was only the extraordinary circumstances that had her believing she loved him. He had to give her time to discover that. No matter how damn much it hurt now.

He tried to shake the thought from his mind, to discipline his thoughts as he had so many times before. His hand reached into his pocket and found the object he’d just purchased at the general store. It probably wouldn’t even be appreciated, and it had taken a goodly portion of what little money he had left. They still had a long way to go to El Paso, though once in Texas he could stop at a Ranger station and wrangle some additional funds.

Lori glanced at him. She had directions to the camp. “I think we turn here,” she said, and Morgan saw her biting her lip as if to keep from saying more. He wanted to reassure her, God, how he wanted to do that. He wanted to reach out and just touch her, damn it. But he knew if he did that, he would do more. He would say things he had no right to say. Not now.

So he just nodded, turning Damien along with her mare. Christ, it was going to be a long trip to Texas if she went with them. Even now, he throbbed with an all-too familiar need for her. If there was some way to … prevent it, but after the last few weeks he doubted any effort on his part would keep her from accompanying them. He’d never met a woman with so much damn determination, so much grit. Any other woman would be swooning in bed for weeks after what she’d suffered last night with Whitey.

A brightly painted wagon soon became visible through some trees. Lori prompted her mare into a gallop, and Morgan followed behind, watching as she came to a stop and dismounted, taking quick steps to a striking looking woman standing next to a fire with Jonathon Braden. Morgan stopped, watching as she hugged the woman and then Jonathon, and feeling like the outsider he’d always been.

Suddenly, Nick appeared on foot next to him, his face inscrutable as it had been the first days of his capture, before the simmering anger and hostility had taken over. But something was different about him, perhaps in the very controlled rigidity of his features.

“We need to talk,” he said, and his voice was strained. Tense.

Morgan nodded and dismounted, tying Damien to a sturdy scrub. He found himself falling in step with Nick, allowing him to lead them away from the camp to the banks of a river. Cottonwoods and pines crowded the bank, and Nick found one, leaning against it as Morgan had so many times as he’d watched Nick and Lori. Now Nick studied him with an intensity that told him Nick knew, or suspected, they might be brothers.

Daniel!

Nick suddenly turned away, picked up a stone, and skipped it across the water, watching the circle form and then fade away. “I feel like that circle,” he said suddenly. “There and then not there.” He turned to Morgan, and his eyes were no longer inscrutable. They were filled with a kind of pain Morgan knew he couldn’t understand. But he felt it. Just as he had felt so many other things with Nick. A stabbing loneliness, bewilderment that the world Nick knew had been turned inside out.

Morgan didn’t know what to do, except try to absorb part of the agony, the confusion Nick felt. He’d had time over the past several days to adapt to the idea that he might have a brother. But he’d had no identity to lose, no family he’d spent a lifetime believing his.

“You’re sure?” Morgan finally said, not having to explain more.

“Daniel told me last night. He’d talked to … my mother after his conversation with you.”

Morgan listened as Nick haltingly repeated Daniel’s story and looked directly into Morgan’s eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“I wasn’t certain,” Morgan said.

“And you always have to be certain of everything, don’t you?” Nick asked bitterly. “You seemed certain enough that I’d murdered a boy.”

Morgan realized his hands were clenched into fists. He tried to straighten them, but he couldn’t seem to do it. So much was at stake now. He wanted to reach out to Nick, but he didn’t know how. His brother. His twin brother. And so much pain in him at the moment.

Nick whirled on him. “Dammit, say something.”

“What?” Morgan said quietly. “That I’ve gained something, and you feel you’ve lost a lot? That I have the best of the bargain?”

Nick stared at him, the confusion in his eyes deepening as the words seeped into his consciousness. “You’re …”

“Damn … happy,” Morgan said. He hesitated, not knowing whether Nick wanted to hear what Morgan needed to say. “And proud.”

“Of an outlaw? A man with a price on his head?” The words were flung out, a bitter challenge after weeks of frustration.

Morgan heard his own sigh, and he wished he had the gift of words to say what was in his heart, that he’d learned days, even weeks, ago that Nick was a good man. Loyal. Decent. Courageous. A man anyone would be proud to call brother.

And in the past weeks he had treated Nick little better than a vicious animal. Perhaps because of his own bewildering responses to the man, he’d given him even less consideration than most prisoners. And now Morgan didn’t know how to right things, to explain. Hell, there was no explanation. But he felt compelled to try. “I think … that from the beginning I sensed, maybe even knew, there was something so familiar about you … that, Christ, I don’t know,” Morgan said, and turned away. “What you said yesterday … at the spring. About missing something. I’ve always felt the same. I thought maybe it was because I never had any kind of family, but now I realize that it was you.…”

He stopped. “God help me, I know you hate the whole damn idea. I … don’t blame you. I put you through hell, and I understand …”

He started to walk away.

“Morgan.” Nick’s voice stopped him.

It was the first time Nick had ever called him by his given name. Morgan turned around, waiting. He expected a blow, not the question that came.

“When you … said you wanted to help, days ago, did you suspect anything then?”

“No,” Morgan said. “I just knew then you’d never shoot an unarmed man, much less a boy. I didn’t see that birthmark until yesterday.”

Nick was silent for a long time, then said with a wry quirk of his lips, “It’ll take some getting used to, this idea of having a … twin who’s a lawman.”

Morgan stood absolutely still, wondering whether he had heard correctly.

“It will probably take you longer,” Nick continued, his smile spreading, “to get used to having a somewhat lawless family. You get all of us, you know.” Mischief shaded his words.

Morgan’s gaze met Nick’s. He wondered if his own eyes were clouded, even a little wet, with the same emotions as Nick’s. He felt almost overcome by them, by wonder and discovery and something he couldn’t name. He held out his hand, and Nick took it, clasping it firmly, needing no words as differences drained away.

Morgan was the first to let go, and he hunted in his pocket, bringing out the object he’d purchased in Pueblo. He tossed it to Nick, who caught it easily and grinned as he fingered the harmonica in his hands.

“I thought you hated that harmonica.”

“I did,” Morgan said. “You enjoyed taunting me with that damn thing.”

“My one weapon,” Nick said soberly, remembering those first bitter days, but then he tried a couple of notes and smiled his thanks. Morgan realized his … brother, his … twin was also having difficulty in saying much. But then Nick’s smile disappeared. “Lori? Does she have any idea?”

Morgan shook his head.

“Damn,” Nick said. “I don’t know now whether to be indignant about my sister or … give you brotherly advice.” He looked at Morgan speculatively. “I wonder which of us is the elder.”

Morgan found himself chuckling. It had a rusty sound to it. “I think it’s probably better if we don’t know.”

Nick nodded his agreement, then his brows furrowed together. “What about Lori?”

Morgan had never shared his thoughts with anyone before. He didn’t know if he could, even now. “Are my intentions honorable?”

“Something like that.”

“I … wonder if maybe something of what she thinks she feels is just because of … my resemblance to you.”

Nick stared at him, then smiled. “That cursed nobility again, huh? That’s going to be hard to stomach on a regular basis. Lori and I will always be brother and sister, Morgan, no matter what. And you and I, for whatever reasons, are different enough that she sure as hell couldn’t mistake you for me, or vice versa. For some indecipherable reason, she fell in love with you, not your face.” His smile widened into a grin. “And I have a girl of my own as soon as you get my name cleared. Our name cleared.”

Morgan felt as if he had just been given the moon, and a shot at the stars, in one gift. It was the first gift he remembered, but it made up for all the ones he’d missed. Christ, it was all too much. A brother. And … perhaps Lori. Words stuck in his throat, crowded his heart.

He could merely nod and turn away, feeling the presence of Nick next to him, hearing his low voice. “We’ll work it out, Morgan. Some way. It sure isn’t going to be easy, not after all these years, not after the past month, not for either of us, but last night was one hell of a beginning.”

“You’d make a damn good Ranger,” Morgan said.

“Oh, no,” Nick replied. “All I’ve ever wanted was a home, a ranch to work.” He hesitated. “Have you ever thought about … giving up rangering?”

Morgan shook his head. “It’s all I know, all I’ve ever known. My … our father …”

Pain suddenly reflected in Nick’s eyes, and Morgan understood the uncertainty and confusion roiling around in him. To learn you’re not who you thought you were had to be painful. And he felt that hurting, just as he’d felt that knife that had penetrated Nick days ago. He experienced Nick’s bewilderment, loss, even as a quiet exultation flowed through Morgan.

Nick sighed. “Sometime I would like to hear everything you know. But … not now. I’m still trying to make sense of …” He stopped. “I think we’d better get back. Lori … I’m sure she knows now and is probably going crazy. I’m surprised she’s not here, trying to protect one or the other of us.” He shook his head. “She’s had a rough time lately with her loyalties.”

Morgan stopped, stared at him.

Nick shook his head. “Didn’t you know? She begged me to trust you, but I was just too damn angry. I knew she was in love with you, I knew it since I saw you two kissing at the cabin. Lori’s … well, Lori’s never been interested in a man before, not seriously. I’d never seen that look in her eyes, the way they followed your every damn step. It practically killed her to take my side against yours, but she felt … she had to. I didn’t make things easier,” he said wryly, “even when I saw how it was tearing her apart.”

Morgan took a deep breath. So she had trusted him, after all. It had been Nick who’d hesitated.

He nodded.

“Morgan?” Nick’s voice was hesitant. “Don’t blame my mother. She didn’t know you were alive.”

“I won’t. I’m just grateful she saved your life. And it had to take … a great deal of courage to tell what happened after all these years.”

Nick gave him a lazy, grateful smile. “Maybe you won’t be too hard to get used to, after all.”

Lori sat there, disbelieving, as Daniel told her and Andrew about Nick and Morgan.

Her mother sat quietly listening, great weariness and sadness in her eyes. Lori kept looking at her, as if seeking reassurance that what she was hearing was truth. Her mother looked years older, but she nodded occasionally as she listened to words she’d said earlier.

When Daniel mentioned that Morgan had seen the birthmark a day earlier and had suspected that he and Nick might be brothers, Lori felt betrayed, hurt, angry. Morgan had mentioned none of it to her last night. He’d been so quiet, so withdrawn, even when he had held her, just as he had been during so much of the first part of their journey.

She hurt for Nick. She hurt for her mother. She hurt for herself, though she knew Nick would always be her brother, no matter what. Yet it had to be devastating for him to learn after all these years that he’d been born to someone else, that he had a living brother. Especially a man he’d hated so fiercely.

And Morgan. Dear God. She remembered his telling her about growing up. No family. No one to love, or to love him. Now to learn that all this time he had a brother—not only a brother, but a twin. It must have been excruciatingly painful, but he had not told her. He’d never told her much of anything. He had never asked her for much, either, only trust, and she had thrown that in his face by running away and setting up another ambush for him. And yet he had come after her, had risked his life for her and for Nick.

Why didn’t you say anything? she wondered. But she knew. She’d given him no reason to trust her, no reason to confide in her. So he’d been silent last night, even as he’d tried to comfort her in that quiet, even way he had.

Andy was asking a dozen questions, but Lori had none. Her eyes met Beth’s, and she saw the sympathy in them. She rose and walked over to her, and Beth took her cold hands in her own.

“Nick told me last night,” Beth said. “I think he’s come to terms with it.”

“Morgan didn’t say anything,” Lori said stiffly.

“Nick was sure. Morgan wasn’t,” Beth said softly, casting a possessive look down at Maggie, who was playing quietly with a doll in the grass.

Lori looked down at her dress, chosen with such care an hour ago. She had changed clothes quickly after Morgan had left with Nick, putting on a clean dress from the trunk she’d left in the wagon when she’d gone north with Nick. She’d brushed her hair until it shone and had come out to wait for Morgan, when Jonathon and Daniel said there was something she and Andy should know.

Now she felt awkward and foolish. She had told Morgan last night she loved him, and he hadn’t replied. And he’d been almost curt this morning, in a hurry to leave the bed they’d shared, in a hurry to leave her. And he’d not said anything to her about Nick. That hurt worst of all. Something that important to Morgan, that important to all three of them, and he hadn’t even mentioned it.

“They’re coming,” Beth said.

Lori looked up and drew a long breath. They had both shaved this morning—Morgan and Nick—and, as they stood together, the resemblance between them seemed more incredible than ever. Even she had to look twice to tell which was which. Nick’s hair was longer, and he wore his holster on the left. Morgan’s smile was more guarded, his face more weathered. Until now their antipathy toward each other had somehow separated them; now it was gone.

Lori went over to Nick first. He gave her that familiar mischievous smile, the fun-loving glint back in his blue eyes. “You know?”

She nodded her head.

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” he asked.

Lori nodded again.

He leaned down and hugged her tight. “You’ll always be my Button, you know.”

She winced at the child’s nickname. “You’ll always be my big brother.”

“Damn right,” he said. His gaze wandered over to his double and back to Lori, and the smile disappeared as he evidently saw her unhappiness. “Ah, hell,” Nick said, “I don’t know who to be brotherly to.” He glared at Morgan. “Do you always have to be so damn uncompromising?”

Morgan regarded him warily.

“Then tell her you love her, for God’s sake,” Nick said in an irritated voice. “I’m not much good at wielding shotguns, especially at a newfound twin.”

Lori felt her face flush, but she managed to meet Morgan’s gaze directly. His was searching. She answered in the only way she knew, with her heart. She was handing it to him. It was all there in her face.

He smiled suddenly, and Lori felt as if a stormy sky had just opened up and revealed a glorious sun. “I think I’d better do what I’m told, Miss Lori,” he said, then looked at Nick. “But in private.”

He took Lori’s hand, leading her first to Fleur Braden. Jonathon and Daniel immediately moved over to her as if to protect. But Morgan merely reached out his free hand and took Fleur’s. “Thank you for helping my mother. Thank you for taking care of Nick so well, and thank you for being courageous enough to give him back to me. I know it must have been … very difficult after all these years.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. Jonathon cleared his throat, but his voice was somewhat raspy when he finally spoke. “Nick’s family is our family. You belong here now, too.”

“Thank you,” Morgan said simply. He turned back to Lori and smiled. A heartbreakingly open smile. And Lori knew she would follow him anywhere. She no longer doubted he had a heart, and she knew now it was the stubbornly forever kind.

“I love you.” Morgan said the words as if they were precious gems, each to be handled very, very carefully.

It had taken him nearly the whole day to say them, because it had taken that long for him to do it privately. But they had finally broken away after dinner, and he had taken her for a walk along the riverbank. The moon was a little larger, a little brighter, and it reflected in the swift, running water of the river. He had suddenly stopped and rubbed his fingers along the contours of her face. And then he’d said the words he’d promised to say.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” he said. “It was so damned hard to leave you, but … I had to know about Nick first. I kept thinking that maybe you … if he wasn’t your brother …” Morgan was stammering like a schoolboy who didn’t know his lesson. “Christ, I don’t know what I thought. I don’t think I’ve had a logical thought since I met you.”

Lori laughed ruefully. “You didn’t show it. I’ve never met anyone so deliberately careful.”

“Self-defense,” he said with a wry smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you suspected about Nick?”

“You were gone, and then … all hell broke loose.”

“But … last night …?”

“I wasn’t sure. And I thought he should know first.”

She stretched up on her tiptoes, kissing him slowly, lingeringly, feeling his lips hard against hers. She felt his arms go around her, clasp her tightly as if he were afraid she would disappear.

Her hands went up to his neck, playing with the thick hair. He still smelled of soap from this morning, and some seductively masculine scent that the barber had apparently used. The kiss changed from light and loving to greedy, each seeking more and more of the other, his tongue invading her mouth and hers responding to its sensuous wanderings. She needed him so badly, and that aching, yearning hunger stirred inside her again.

He finally pulled away. “I have so damn little to offer you, Lori.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do,” he said. He pulled far enough away so that he could look at her. “I’m a Ranger, Lori. The pay’s poor. It’s sufficient for a single man, and I have some money saved, but it’s barely adequate for two. I’m gone most of the year. The life is hell on wives.” The last words were ragged, and Lori realized he had thought of this before. “Dammit, Rangers have no business marrying. Love, contentment takes away the edge. It gets them killed. It makes widows. I don’t want that for you.”

Lori’s happiness seeped away, and a chill started to replace the warmth inside. She knew she would accept any life with him. But could she endanger him? You can leave the Rangers, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. She knew him well now, knew how much the Texas Rangers were steeped in him. It wasn’t just a job to him, it was who he was. She couldn’t change such an elemental part of him. He would eventually hate her if she tried.

“We’ll work it out,” she said fiercely. “Someway we will.”

Nick’s words. We’ll work it out. Morgan wondered whether he would ever have the same optimism the Braden clan had. He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. He wanted to think he and Lori had a future. Children. He closed his eyes as the image rambled around his mind with unexpected impact. A longing, deeper even than any he’d ever felt, stabbed through him like a jagged knife. Children with Lori. Children to raise as they should be. With love. Could he ever offer that? Love? Security? Safety?

Or would he leave orphans?

He felt the cry of pain deep in his throat. He wasn’t aware, however, that it reached the air until he saw Lori’s face, the mixture of compassion and grief and fear on it. Desperately, he reached for her, clasping her as a choking man struggling for air. She was that important to him now. As essential to him as breathing.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’ll never love anyone else like this. No matter what, I’ll always love you.”

The words, instead of a balm, only deepened his agony. He felt ripped apart. He knew he should leave, leave now, but he couldn’t, not when she was so near, not when she offered everything she had. He’d never known that kind of giving. He’d never been presented with a heart before, had never felt loved, wanted, and it was irresistible. He had been empty so long. So … alone. All his life.

Knowing he was doing the worst thing he’d ever done, the most despicable, he lowered his head and his lips met hers in mindless desperation. Her response was equally as desperate, as needy, and yet there was a sweetness in it he’d never felt before, in the way her lips gentled and her hands, her fingers, touched him. Physical need was there, it had always been there between them, but this was something so new and miraculous, so compelling, that he felt as if she had somehow reached inside and embraced his soul, wrapping his heart in tenderness and understanding. She loved him for what he was, what she knew him to be, and she told him that by not asking him to be something else.

We’ll work it out. For the first time he felt her optimism, shaded only by the residue of caution he feared would always be with him. How could anything this fine not be right, not be meant?

And then her body was next to his, and even through their clothes, there was communion. He stopped thinking altogether. He was lost in those splendid eyes of hers, lost in the silkiness of her hair, the smoothness of her skin. He felt her fingers touch his face as if they were memorizing each plane, etching every part of him into her being. And then the two of them were sliding downward, to their knees, kneeling together as their lips met again, exchanging wonders.

He felt her hands against his skin as his shirt came off, then her dress, and his hands went under her chemise, touching the already erect, hard nipples. He went slowly this time, his hands loving, seducing until she cried out to him, and when he entered her, he knew a depth of feeling, of love, that he never knew existed.

It was exquisitely painful, so powerful were their reactions to each other, so tender as to make him weep inside. As they climbed to fulfillment, the physical sensations became so much more, a sharing of self and joy that magnified every tremor of pleasure until Morgan wondered how anyone could withstand such magnificence.

And then he understood exactly how much magnificence one could tolerate as the world he knew exploded and was replaced by a totally new shining one.