Matty was heading out of the sheriff’s office for the evening, ready to head home and more than ready to find his bunk.
His boots had just hit the boardwalk when a sharp whistle drew his head up. Oscar and Seb approached on foot, leading their horses. His pulse sped when he saw the one man hog-tied and slung over Oscar’s saddle. Another rode Seb’s horse, hands tied in front of him.
“Catherine?” he called, rushing toward them.
“She’s fine,” Oscar responded quickly, immediately knowing what Matty meant.
“What happened?” He met his brothers at the corner of the boardwalk.
They tied off their mounts to the hitching post.
“They ain’t got no call to truss us up like this,” Floyd Chesterton fussed.
Matty grabbed the man’s shoulder as Oscar pushed him off the saddle, preventing him from falling face-first in the dusty street.
“How about assaulting a lady?” Oscar wasn’t gentle as he pushed Floyd toward the boardwalk steps.
Matty’s head started pounding. “He touched her?”
“Barely,” Seb grunted. He’d helped Ralph off the horse and onto his feet and now followed him up the steps. “I was on `em as quick as I could get close enough.”
They went inside the one-room sheriff’s office that doubled as the jail with three cells along one wall.
“It was a mistake,” Ralph said. He wasn’t struggling like his brother. His head and shoulders were hunched. He was docile.
Floyd pulled his arm away from Oscar’s hold, but met gazes with the sheriff, Al Dunlop. Maybe it was Al’s six-shooter at his belt that kept Floyd from struggling more.
“These two can’t arrest us—they ain’t deputies.”
Al shared a look with Matty. Matty had explained the situation to him in great detail after he’d returned to town.
“Seems like I remember deputizin’ these two men just this morning,” Al said.
It was a fib. Oscar and Seb had already been out at Catherine’s place this morning. But he appreciated Al’s support.
Al steepled his hands in front of him. “You boys wanna tell me why you’re terrorizin’ a neighbor? A female neighbor with an aging grandfather?”
Floyd’s chin jutted up almost to the ceiling, while Ralph stared at the floor.
“It didn’t start out that way,” Ralph said, voice low.
Floyd grunted, but Oscar poked him in the side and he hushed right up.
“Explain,” the sheriff ordered.
“Between the ice last winter and the storms last month, we lost everything. I know it wasn’t right, but we thought if we could find out if she had a stockpile of grain, we could convince her to share it with us. Or give it to us.” This from Floyd.
“Convince, or threaten?” Matty demanded.
Ralph glared. “Wouldn’t have been no threatening if she woulda agreed to marry me.”
Matty met his glare evenly, though his heart drummed in his chest. “A lady’s got a right to say ‘no’.”
“She ain’t no lady. Not dressed like that,” Ralph growled, his lip curling in that ugly, familiar sneer.
Anger boiling over, Matty started to move toward the other man, but Oscar halted him with a hand to his arm.
“Let the law handle him, handle them both,” his older brother said.
The sheriff took over questioning the two men, leaving Oscar, Seb and Matty to exit out onto the boardwalk.
Matty rubbed at the ache behind his neck.
“Was Catherine—you said she was all right,” he parroted Oscar’s statement from earlier when they’d first ridden up.
“She’s fine,” Oscar said. “Ralph grabbed her, shook her up a little, but he didn’t actually hurt her.”
“I shoulda been out there,” Matty grumbled beneath his breath. He’d been on duty in town while the sheriff had been tracking a couple of rustlers. Broken up a couple of fights down at the saloon and found Mary Jo Robert’s missing cat.
But he would rather have been with Catherine. She’d needed him.
Matty left in the dark of night to ride out to Catherine’s place the next morning. He had to see her. Had to know for himself that she was all right, even though his brothers had assured him repeatedly that she was fine.
It was early still when he arrived. The homestead was quiet. Likely Pop was still laid up, barely walking thanks to the foot he’d sprained.
And Pop wasn’t the one Matty wanted to talk to, anyway.
He found Catherine in the barn, her face pressed up against the milk cow’s belly, shooting streams of frothy white milk into her pail.
She rose when his shadow crossed into the open doorway and fell across her boots. Nearly kicked over the half-full pail.
“What are you—?”
He took her in his arms before she could finish the question. His mouth found hers and she responded to his kiss with the clutch of her hands on his shoulders, the sweetness of her lips moving against his.
He reassured himself that she was safe, she was perfectly safe, until they both panted for breath.
Then he clutched her to his chest, his hands at her shoulders. His breath sawed in and out of his chest.
“You really all right?” he asked, finally. The words stirred the fine hairs at her temple and they tickled his lips.
She nodded, but he felt her trembling against him. Whether from the kiss or residual fright from yesterday, he didn’t know.
“You didn’t have to come all the way out here.” Her voice emerged slightly muffled by his shirtfront. “Didn’t your brothers tell you I was all right?”
“They did, but you’re wrong. I did have to come out here and see for myself.”
He set her back slightly, far enough that he could look into her face.
“I care about you. A lot. I mean, a man doesn’t go around constructing barns for a woman he cares nothing about.”
Her eyes filled with tears at his words.
“Cath—”
She moved away from him and his arms felt incredibly empty. “We—I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.” Her eyes downcast, she went back to her milking stool. “Nothing’s really changed between us.”
His emotion swung widely, like a pendulum. He knew she only pretended calm as she methodically forced stream after stream of milk into the pail at her feet.
He hadn’t expected her to fall at his feet and declare that he’d been right, that she didn’t want to be alone anymore.
But he also didn’t expect indifference.
When his brothers had told him of Ralph’s vile verbal threats—and physical threats—to Catherine, he’d been unable to control his reaction.
He didn’t just care for her.
He was in love with her.
But she wouldn’t even look at him.
Two days after the dustup with the Chestertons, Catherine spent her morning scrubbing laundry.
The effort of scrubbing the fabric on the washboard used her entire body, and she was soon sweating, her hair clinging to her temples.
But she was still shaking as badly as she had been two nights ago.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what might’ve happened if Matty had never been injured, had never stopped at their homestead. Couldn’t stop thinking about his kisses. About what it might be like to really lean on him. For real.
If she hadn’t been able to rely on him and his family, what would the Chestertons have done to her?
For years, she’d prided herself on her independence, on not needing help from others around them.
And then Matty had crashed into her life with the force of a thunderstorm. She’d tried to keep him at a distance, but being near him had crushed the walls she’d constructed to keep her heart safe.
And now he was gone.
She’d turned him away. The obstacles with Pop were too big.
But she still wished he’d come back.
Pop wandered out of the soddy, leaning heavily on his walking stick. She’d told him what had happened. She’d had no choice but to divulge everything when Seb escorted her back. She couldn’t blame him, she’d been completely shaken up.
She’d worried that Pop would get lost in his memories, but he hadn’t. He’d first been angry, then quiet as he took in everything that Seb had told him.
After what had happened keeping secrets about the Chestertons’ threats, she knew that telling him was the right thing, but it didn’t keep her from worrying that he would disappear in his memories and not come back to her.
“You’re gonna scrub those pants to shreds, girl,” he said, hobbling her direction.
She looked down at her hands. The trousers she’d wadded up had become damp instead of wet as she’d scrubbed them against the board. She dipped her finger in the water—it had gone cool, she’d been woolgathering so long.
She sighed and shook out the trousers. They had gone partly dry and were a wrinkled mess.
She dunked them in the tepid, sudsy water.
“I suppose my mind was wandering,” she said.
Pop grunted. “Straight to that cowboy, I `magine.”
Heat flushed her cheeks. Yes, Matty was part of her muddled thoughts.
“You’ve always been content on the homestead—until recently.”
Because she’d let the fears born from that terrifying and humiliating week in the schoolhouse strand her out here.
She wrung out the trousers, twisting them between her hands. Water trickled down into the tub.
She wanted something different now. She hoped that she could have a family. Friends.
But with Pop’s health in decline, those things would have to wait.
“I’ve been thinkin’…”
“Dangerous words,” she said over her shoulder as she clipped the trousers to the clothesline.
“I ain’t gonna be around forever.”
Her heart leapt. But she spoke carefully. “Don’t talk like that.”
She pushed her sleeve up and fished around the bottom of the washtub, searching for any remaining clothing articles. There were none, and she stood with water dripping off her hand.
“It’s true,” he said gruffly. “And it’s time—past time—you started thinking about yourself. What’re you going to do when I’m gone?”
She flicked the water off her hands violently. “I don’t want to think about that now. There’s no use in it.”
“Do you think I don’t know how hard it’s been on you when I’m…not myself?”
Dementia. The word, the diagnosis the cowboy doctor had given rang through her head.
“What if I lash out at you again? What if I hurt you again? I don’t like you being here alone anymore. Not the way things are going.”
Hot tears burned her throat, but what could she say to that? “There are no easy solutions here, Pop,” she whispered.
“Not if you’re scared.”
She held up her damp hands helplessly.
“Ever since you were a little thing, you hated taking risks. But a man like that ain’t gonna wait around forever.”
Now she whirled to face Pop head on. “What?” Her words were laced with a laugh, but it was mostly hysterical.
“Your cowboy. Matty White. If he ain’t in love with you now, he’s well on his way. And unless I’m imagining things again, you feel the same for him.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks, but she couldn’t deny it.
“So what’re you gonna do about it?”
She shrugged, keeping her eyes low so maybe he wouldn’t see the pain caused by his words. “What can I do? He’s firmly ensconced in town. In his family. And you and I belong here.”
He scrutinized her with narrowed eyes. “Who says you can’t belong in town?”
Luella. Michaela. Those women years ago who’d belittled, insulted her mother.
“I had my reasons for hiding out on the homestead when I came back from the war, but your mama—well, maybe she could’ve made people forget what they wanted to talk about, if she would’ve tried a little harder. What she thought was a big deal, don’t have to be a big deal for you.”
She swallowed hard, hope beating painfully in her chest. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I think you should make plans to attend worship services in town tomorrow.”