To Wed In Texas

FOURTEEN

“UNTIE HIM!” THE LITTLE LADY ORDERED. ALL THE meekness of when she'd first entered the kitchen had disappeared along with most of the trail dust. “Untie him right now, Wes McLain.”

Karlee glanced at the savage, now tied to a chair with Wes standing on one side and Wolf on the other. Both men looked like they'd fought a tornado and lost.

“I'm not going to untie him, Allie,” the scarred man grumbled. “He'll kill me. It seems he's not too happy at the thought of my being his brother-in-law.”

The woman glared at Wolf as though she expected him to follow orders even if the scarred man did not.

“Don't look at me.” Wolf held his hands in the air in surrender. “I ain't even kin, and he don't like me. I'm not untying him without four Rangers to back me up. I'm also not getting in the middle of an argument between a husband and wife.”

Allie glared at them both then knelt in front of the wild boy. She placed her hands on his knees and spoke to him softly, in a language no one else in the room understood.

The boy shook his head and pulled at his ropes. He gave no hint of understanding what she was trying to tell him.

Adam walked behind the chair. “You're going to have to untie him soon and let me doctor those wrists or he'll have an infection.”

“He's so wild,” Wolf mumbled. “I'm surprised he didn't gnaw his own arm off to escape. He bit me so many times I probably got hydrophobia.”

Wes pulled Allie gently to her feet. “I know it hurts you to see him tied, darling, but it's the only way. He'd kill us all if he had the chance.”

Allie tried once more speaking to him in Apache, but he wouldn't answer. His eyes spoke volumes though. He hated her and everyone in the room. All he wanted was to be as far away from them as possible.

“I could take him down and put him in one of the cells at the jail downtown,” Wolf offered. “Then at least he wouldn't be tied.”

Allie's eyes filled with tears. “You can't put him in a cage. You can't.”

“Then he stays tied,” Wolf insisted. “I'm too old to fight him again tonight. One of us will have to stay up to keep an eye on him. If he gets free, he'll murder us in our sleep.”

Allie tried again to speak to the boy. He didn't answer but held his chin proudly as though daring them to kill him.

“All right.” Allie reached to touch his face, but he jerked his head back. “I'm too tired to argue. He stays tied tonight, and I'll try again tomorrow. I should make coffee and we'll take shifts watching him.”

“No.” Wolf winked at Karlee standing in the doorway with Adam by her side. “Let Karlee make the coffee. She makes it so strong, it stands up beside a man all night and keeps him awake.”

“Karlee?” Allie turned and noticed her for the first time.

“Karlee McLain,” Adam corrected. “It seems Daniel married again while we weren't looking.”

All at once everyone started hugging Karlee. Allie patted her face and welcomed her. Wes swung her around and planted a kiss on her cheek. Adam's warm hug was too long and tight to be anything but sincere.

“We're mighty glad to have you in the family.” Adam smiled. “We've all be hoping our little brother would find love again.”

Wes shoved Wolf. “Tell us all about it, Wolf. I have a feeling you know the details of this secret marriage.”

Wolf scrubbed his face with cold water. “ 'Course I do,” he mumbled beneath the towel. “I was the best man.”

Karlee held her breath. Now the charade would be over. Wolf would tell them why they married, and the family would no longer have to act happy. She'd been just a means to an end and nothing more. She wasn't part of their family, only a necessary tool to hold it together.

“It was a simple wedding.” Wolf lowered the towel and stared at Karlee. “And, to my recollection, it was the most normal wedding any of you McLains ever had.”

Wolf didn't say another word.

Wes began telling the details of how he and Allie married in the middle of a near gunfight, with Allie holding a knife in her hand. Adam laughed about Daniel marrying him and his wife while they were tied up in a cellar waiting for Wes to be hung as a horse thief.

Karlee found the stories unbelievable and wonderfully distracting. She asked questions, and the men talked first of their lives now and then of Daniel as a boy. They were his big brothers, so they thought they had a right to tell everything, good and bad, that ever happened to Danny.

They talked of May, for she could not be separated from their brother's past. They told of how she followed him home from school when he was six and how they all loved her, and how he'd chopped the barn down the night she died giving birth to the twins.

Karlee didn't mind the stories. Somehow it felt warm inside to know that the man who was now her husband had been capable of such love once.

Allie warmed the stew. While the others ate, she tried to feed the young man she believed to be her brother. Over and over she called him John, but he never even looked up when she said the name.

He refused to eat. When she addressed him in Apache, he lost some of the fire in his eyes, but nothing more.

Karlee did the dishes. Just after dark, Valerie and her mother brought home sleeping girls with powdered-sugar smiles.

Wes excused himself to care for the horses while Adam checked on Daniel. Wolf spread his bedroll beside the boy's chair and stretched out, listening to Allie talk to her brother. No one knew what she said, but Karlee guessed Allie was reliving every detail of her and John's life in the settlement and describing the day of the raid.

When the twins had been put to bed, Karlee returned to ask Allie and Wes to take her room for the night. She wanted to be near Daniel, she told them.

Wes put his arm around Allie's small shoulder and pulled her to her feet. “We'll try again tomorrow,” he said in a voice kinder than Karlee would have thought the hard man would ever use. “We both need rest.”

Allie nodded, her body leaning into him for support. “But if he doesn't respond,” Wes led his wife toward the door, “we may have to face the possibility that he's not your brother. The Rangers recover many former captives every year.”

“His hair is darker than I remember,” Allie admitted. “The eyes are the same color, but they are filled with such hate. And there's a scar on his chest about where I remember he'd been wounded.”

“There are scars all over his body,” Wolf added.

“He doesn't look Apache.” Wes tried to comfort her. “Even if he's not your brother, he's not full-blood Apache like he claims.”

Karlee studied the boy more closely. The savage looked Apache to her, but then she wasn't sure she'd ever seen one. Maybe she was looking more at his actions and dress, or lack of it. In truth, if his hair was cut and he wore regular clothes, he would appear like most young men his age. Only, most young men his age didn't look at everyone as if they planned to slice them up for stew meat.

Wes pulled Allie into a hug. “We've come a long way. Let's get some rest.”

They moved upstairs leaving Wolf and Karlee alone in the kitchen with the boy, who appeared to have fallen asleep in his chair.

Karlee lowered the wick on the table lamp. “You didn't tell them why Daniel and I married.” She straightened the tablecloth so she didn't have to gaze directly at Wolf. “I was wondering why.”

“I didn't figure it was anyone's business. A marriage is a marriage.”

“But don't you think they'll know we're not in love when Daniel recovers?”

Wolf huffed. “I don't know. Half the couples I see don't look like they're in love. I figure love's something you make up your mind to be in, not something you fall into. That probably explains why I'll always be single. There ain't never going to be a woman who makes up her mind on loving me.”

Karlee moved to the door. She'd always felt the same way about herself. Now, she'd found a man who wanted to be married even if he didn't want her.

Crossing into the parlor, she curled up in the chair next to Daniel's bed. He was resting quietly, his bandages clean and free of blood. His sandy blond hair curtained the white blindfold over his left eye.

She blushed, remembering how she'd washed him so completely. Aunt Rosy would have one of her fainting spells if she knew how boldly Karlee had touched this man.

Laughing to herself, she leaned over him until her cheek rested lightly on his chest. The strong rhythm of his heartbeat seemed to welcome her again.

“Good night, husband,” she whispered as she stretched and kissed his lips. He might never be a full husband in every way to her, but she could pretend tonight. There were a house full of relatives who called her Daniel's wife and somehow it made her feel like she belonged.

Deep into the night, Karlee awoke to the sound of Daniel's moaning. He clawed at the blindfold with bandaged hands as he twisted in his sleep.

She slipped off her chair and knelt by his side, pulling his hands from his face.

“Daniel,” she whispered, “Daniel, don't pull the blind-fold off.”

He batted her away, but she returned, sitting on the edge of the bed as she held each arm just above his hands. “Please don't.”

He stopped fighting and leaned back, awake enough now to escape from the dream. He seemed to be forcing himself to take deep breaths.

“I'm tired of the darkness,” he finally said in a voice that told Karlee he was fully awake. “I can take the pain in my leg and the constant need to scratch my hands, but I can't stand the darkness. It's like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff with only blackness below. I know eventually I'll have to step off, but will I fall one foot or a hundred?”

Karlee didn't know what to say. It would be cruel to give him false hope and crueler still to give him no hope at all.

“I'll wait with you until the dawn,” she finally said. “No matter how long.”

Daniel sneered. “And what if it never comes?” He almost choked on the words.

“Then you're stuck with me.” She tried to laugh though tears rolled down her cheeks.

Daniel smiled. “Hell of a deal.”

Karlee patted his arm. “Preachers aren't suppose to swear.”

“And if I wasn't a preacher, Mrs. McLain, would you stay married to me?”

“I married the man, not the profession.” Could he really think that just because he was blind he could no longer be a minister?

He was silent for a long moment. “Would you mind rubbing some more salve on my hands?”

She began unwrapping his hand in answer. As she rubbed in the greasy medicine, his fingers moved with hers. When she spread the salve, he caressed her hand until she had as much on her as now covered his burns. If hands could dance, she thought, they were dancing.

“Is that better?” She wrapped his fingers with fresh bandages.

“It helps. The darkness doesn't seem so complete when I'm touching someone. In those first few days, I think your touch was the only thing that kept me sane. Even when I didn't say anything, the feel of your hands pulled me back to earth again and again.”

“I'm glad I could help.” Karlee wiped her fingers on a towel and moved back to her chair. He had a way about him, a way of making her feel needed without making himself seem helpless. “Maybe you can sleep now. Do you need anything else?”

He lifted his hand. “Come here.”

As she had when he asked her to marry him, Karlee put her hand in his and allowed him to pull her close.

When her legs bumped the edge of the bed, he tugged again.

She crawled onto the bed, not knowing what he wanted.

“Lie down next to me,” he whispered. “I don't want to be alone.”

Very carefully, she stretched out at his side, leaving only an inch between them.

He opened his arm, and she used his chest as a pillow.

“Are you cold?” He placed his hand at the back of her waist and pulled her against him. She was surprised how easily she fit next to his side, almost as if they were a match.

“No,” she managed to say while she tried to breathe. They were doing nothing improper. Nothing wrong. Yet the room seemed to have grown summer warm.

“Do you mind keeping me company, Mrs. McLain? I don't want to be alone tonight.”

“No.” She swallowed hard. “I don't mind.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

With her tucked securely against his side, Daniel drifted into a peaceful sleep.

Karlee had never been more awake in her life. Each time she breathed, the smell of him filled her lungs. His heart pounded in her ear like a drum. His hand moved slowly from her back to the fullness of her hip where it rested peacefully.

She told herself he was asleep, that he didn't know, or feel anything with the bandages and her layers of clothes. After all, he was a preacher.

She twisted until she pulled his hand back to her waist.

After a few minutes, he slid his fingers back to the fullness of her hip.

He can't feel anything, she reminded herself.

But an hour later, when she was finally almost asleep she could have sworn he patted her bottom lightly and spread his fingers over the curve of her hip.

Tomorrow, wild savage, company and all, she'd have a few words about what the preacher wasn't feeling between the clothes and bandages.