ch-fig

Chapter 6

The hurt in Tina’s eyes made Vince wish his legs were long enough he could kick his own backside.

He was tempted to try it, until Lana snorted and grumbled in her sleep. Vince decided to just kick himself mentally to keep his prisoner’s sleep from being disturbed.

He knew why it’d happened. He’d come riding in and seen the prettiest woman he’d ever known, and all he’d wanted to do was go to her. Be near her. He’d been unable to think of anything else. When she’d picked a fight with him—for no reason he could figure out—he was glad because he’d been thinking all the wrong thoughts from the minute he’d laid eyes on her.

They seemed to be forever fighting. Normally the little spat would have kept them apart well enough, but Vince was all in from his long ride. He was badly in need of a meal, a bath, and a good night’s sleep. All those things played havoc with his self-control, and confound it, when she’d smiled at him, all he could think about was how much he’d missed her.

He’d even missed watching her picket every afternoon. He was inclined to help her make another placard.

He didn’t think anyone knew it, but he’d made a habit of setting a chair by the small front window in his lawyer’s office and watching Tina march back and forth. He hadn’t missed an afternoon since she’d begun with her cause. That was one of the reasons he’d jumped into the middle of that fight so fast, because he saw the whole thing start.

The fight didn’t bother him overly. A fistfight was fun once in a while, so he couldn’t get too upset that she’d started one. He knew now that he’d hurried back to Broken Wheel partly because he wanted to see what trouble Tina had gotten herself into.

It seemed that a man could be entertained by a woman’s strange ways.

She’d snipped at him, and he’d answered back, glad for a reason to put distance between them. He never should have touched her. That was when things had gone wrong. Her sassy mouth and his firm grip on her supple, slender arms had struck a spark.

Moving restlessly, he admitted that spark was there before; she’d just fanned it into a flame. And that fire was still alive in him, deep in his gut. He’d tamped it down the best he could, but it was still there, smoldering, glowing hot.

He thought of how she’d looked when he’d apologized. Vince knew a thing or two about women. He’d hurt her. Shaking his head in self-disgust, he gave some thought to how he’d held her and then insulted her. He should’ve pulled over on the trail and slept, scrounged a meal somewhere, and come into town less on edge.

Except who could predict a thing like this would happen—just because a man was hungry and tired? He’d been hungry and tired plenty of times and nothing like this had ever happened before. And it wasn’t going to happen again, and for one very good reason.

Mother.

Something was very wrong with her. Worse yet, it ran in her family, which meant it ran in him.

And if he didn’t get Mother’s madness, Father was even worse.

Vince had known since he went home after the war that he never dared pass on any blood from his veins. He’d either be a tyrant or a burden. He imagined Tina being saddled with a man like either of his parents and felt only pity for her.

It was a mighty good reason for a man to never marry.

When he’d stopped in to see his parents in Chicago right after the war, he’d been sick in both body and soul. He needed care and time to heal. Vince had hoped he’d be welcomed home. Surely his parents had been informed he was a prisoner of war. Surely they’d worried. He’d hoped he and his father could mend fences and get to know each other as adult men.

Father was only interested in Vince if he came into the family banking firm. Vince wasn’t even that much opposed to banking. He just knew he couldn’t live his life under his father’s thumb, and his father would never treat him as anything resembling a partner. Father didn’t know how to share power with anyone.

The visit had been unpleasant between father and son, and worse because something had happened to Mother.

She hadn’t known who Vince was. She’d acted afraid and then cried out when he tried to hug her. At first he tried to excuse it because he knew how awful he looked. Though being looked at with fear by his mother was devastating, he knew she was a sweet but shallow woman and he forgave her, hoping she’d get used to the idea of his being home. He hadn’t really understood until he’d been there a month that she wasn’t upset by Vince going off to war and coming home sick and half starved, a burden to his family. She honestly didn’t know who he was. In fact, she didn’t seem to remember having a son at all.

On the day he’d realized that, he’d had to admit finally that something was really wrong in Mother’s head. She’d lost her wits in strange little ways. The one that was most glaring to Vince was that she couldn’t remember his name.

As soon as Vince was strong enough to get around, he’d asked Father what was wrong. Father wouldn’t talk about it except to say she was an embarrassment, just as her father had been. He had hired a companion for her, and Mother still dressed beautifully and went out to tea with her society friends. She seemed to manage fine.

But she’d forgotten her only son. Worse yet, she couldn’t even treat him as a friendly stranger. She feared him when he would enter the same room with her.

Vince had understood she wasn’t thinking right. But it had hurt so badly to have his mother as good as run away from him sobbing that Vince couldn’t stay. Between Mother’s fear and Father’s tyranny, Vince had moved along as soon as his health allowed.

Eventually he let his family know where he came to live, but he’d never gone home again.

Because of the recent letter from Father, demanding that Vince return to Chicago and take up the reins of the bank, they’d exchanged a wire or two when Vince was in New Orleans, just to make sure the man knew he wasn’t coming, ever. And he’d hunted through that medical library as if he were searching for the keys to escape from eternal fire.

It had nothing to do with Lana, and it wasn’t just to cure Mother. It was to save himself when his turn came.

He needed to apologize to Tina again. Only this time he needed to do it in a way that didn’t hurt her feelings but also kept her away from him.

And he needed to do it in a way that wouldn’t make Jonas load his rarely used pistol.

Vince wracked his brain. He’d always had a charming streak that worked well with women, not that he’d practiced it in a while, having kept to manly places since the war. But there had to be a right way to handle this. The right words . . . words that wouldn’t get him shot.

Rubbing both hands through his hair, he mulled it over, stumped, distracted by how nice it was to hold her in his arms.

Before even an inkling of an idea began forming, he heard the rattle of wheels and looked out the window to see a beautiful coach rolling into town. Black-lacquered paint with scrolled golden decorations. The elegant coach was pulled by a team of four shining black geldings and driven by a man in a black uniform.

Vince had never seen such a conveyance in Broken Wheel before, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone wealthy enough to own such a thing would bother to come to Broken Wheel. It flickered through Vince’s mind that it was as richly appointed as the carriage his father owned back in Chicago.

The coach was going too fast and it skidded as the driver pulled it to a halt. Dust enveloped the rig.

Then the dust settled. The coach door swung open. There was a long moment that for some reason riveted Vince’s attention on that open door. Of course any newcomer to this quiet town was interesting.

And then Father stepped out.

Dread kicked Vince in the belly. He had the wild notion that his father had appeared just because Vince was thinking about him.

He blinked to clear his vision in the hopes Father would go away.

But sure enough, there stood Julius Yates, wearing a tall silk hat and a black travel-stained woolen frock coat. He carried a black cane with a silver wolf’s head on its top. The same cane Father had carried for years with no real need for it, except that Father liked carrying something so costly.

Today Father was leaning hard on that cane.

Watching through the jailhouse window, Vince was frozen.

Pure stunned surprise accounted for part of it. What had Father been thinking to come out here? He must’ve headed out with all possible speed the moment he got Vince’s wire saying there would be no homecoming. Father had never in his life come to Vince; it had always been the other way around. Father would demand Vince’s presence, and Vince would appear at the appointed time. That defined his childhood, those audiences with Father. And Father had always had the knack of keeping Vince off-balance, appearing at unexpected times, turning his moods from cool tyranny to white-hot anger. Dealing with Father was where Vince had learned to get himself out of dangerous scrapes, which had served him well in the war and earned him the nickname Invincible Vince.

The other thing that struck Vince hard was realizing his father had gotten old. It’d been three years since Vince had seen Father, but the man had aged a decade. Or maybe Vince had been too sick to really see that the years were catching up to Father. Maybe this was why he’d increased the pressure on Vince to come into the business. Father’s hair was now heavily streaked with gray. He was bent over, moving slow, his hand trembling on the head of that wolf. He depended on his cane for balance as if the trip had almost done him in.

He’d been older than most fathers when Vince was born, near fifty, which made Father in his seventies now. Mother had been much younger than her husband, in her mid-twenties when Vince came along. Of course they were both getting older now.

But they’d always seemed ageless to him. His mother’s fragile blond beauty never changed. His father’s rigid spine never bent.

Father owned the biggest bank in Chicago and had his fingers in many other pies.

Beautiful Virginia Belle was the privileged daughter of a Southern plantation owner. Father had married her, and when Mother’s parents died, Father had gotten out of all investments in the South. He’d always been savvy about money, and he’d made a fortune to add to the one he already had.

Mother’s parents had also left a nice inheritance directly to Vince, though he’d still been young. His crafty grandmama had set it up so that Father couldn’t get control of it. It left Vince with more money than he could spend in a lifetime.

Another person stepped out of the coach and pulled his attention away from Father.

A tall, dark-haired young woman Vince had never seen before. She was a perfect female version of Julius Yates. Even from across the dusty street, Vince saw that her eyes were the same dark brown as Father’s and his own. She wore a dark woolen coat and a tidy black bonnet, none of it made with the fine quality material and expert tailoring of Father’s clothes.

But his father wasn’t the biggest surprise in that carriage, nor was the young woman who might be proof of his father’s lack of honor.

A slender, trembling, white-gloved hand stretched out from the dark core of that coach. Father ignored it, but the young woman quickly reached to offer assistance.

With agonizing slowness, one last person appeared. First, Vince saw the elegant glove. Next came a velvet reticule dangling from a wrist, followed by blue silk, ruffled cuffs. Past the blue cuffs emerged a beautiful mink coat. Finally, Vince saw the blond hair and light blue eyes. . . .

He tried to deny it just because he wanted to so badly, but the truth was inescapable.

Mother was here.

Mother, who belonged in Bedlam right alongside Lana Bullard.