“Les. Damn it, are you listening to what I’m saying?”
She opened her eyes and smiled at Ward. The tent flap was tied back and light from the campfire reached inside. She could see his thinning hair and drawn expression. He didn’t look like the handsome Prince Charming she had been dreaming of, a man who would carry her away to a house like Luther Moreland’s. She had always liked Luther’s house. It occupied a grassy corner lot off of Main Street. Tall cottonwoods shaded the porch, and there was a bay window with a large fern placed before the center pane.
“But you don’t look like him,” she murmured, disappointed. Prince Charming was tall and slender, and you couldn’t see his scalp through his hair. He didn’t shout, and he never criticized or made a woman cry. Prince Charming didn’t wear paper collars and cuffs or a shopkeeper’s apron, and he didn’t imagine snubs or insults in every glance. Prince Charming never ever squeezed so hard that he left bruises on a woman’s face and arms, and he never raised his hand in annoyance or anger. His lips didn’t disappear into a tight thin line.
“Les.” Ward clasped her shoulders and gave her a shake. “They had a meeting. They said that it’s your decision to stay with the drive. They’ll give you a week to heal, then you have to go back to work or withdraw. Are you listening? I told Frisco that you would stay with the drive, but he said he had to hear it from you.” Fury pinwheeled in his eyes. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to take that bastard down a peg!”
It was such an unlikely, unimaginable possibility that Les laughed. Ward drew back, then lunged toward her face and hissed. “You’ll see.”
She took his hand and smiled, floating, drifting. “I want to go home.” Not to the ranch house, but to a house with a bay window and a fern in the front pane. A two-story house with a cozy parlor and no view of cattle from any window. No furniture made out of horns.
“Les, I’m warning you. When Frisco asks, you tell him you’re staying with the drive.”
“Staying with the drive,” she repeated, frowning, trying to understand what he was saying. Did he want to take her for a drive in his gig? Would he stop in the moonlight, gaze tenderly into her eyes, and kiss her? “Do you love me?” she asked curiously. “You’ve never said the words.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. How much laudanum did Alex give you?”
“I want you to look at me the way Dal looks at Freddy.”
“This is a waste of time,” he said, disgust heavy in his tone. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
She floated above the pain, watching firelight flicker on the wall of the tent. Pretty patterns, like moving wallpaper. She thought Freddy and Alex spoke to her from the opening in her tent. One of the drovers called good night. And then Prince Charming came.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, smiling when he entered her tent and sat beside her. The campfire was low now and didn’t cast enough light that she could see his face, but she knew it was him. He held her hand gently and stroked her wrist.
“I’m so sorry you were injured, Les.”
Oh yes, that is what Prince Charming would say. He wouldn’t talk about meetings or cattle drives. She disengaged her hand and lifted it to touch his face. He covered her hand with his own and pressed her fingers to his cheek, moved her hand, and placed a kiss in her palm. Surprise and delight widened her eyes. “Do you love me?” she whispered. She wanted someone to love her, needed to hear words that she could throw against the pain like a shield.
“I have loved you for years.”
“Oh!” Tears filled her eyes because his quiet answer proved that she must be dreaming. Disappointment parted the cloud that supported her and she dropped into a cauldron of pain, groaning and moving her leg. The pain was hot and throbbing and more real than Prince Charming would ever be.
“Rest now,” he murmured, smoothing a wave of hair back from her forehead. “Sleep. Don’t worry about anything, just concentrate on getting well.”
His voice floated softly out of the darkness, tender with sympathy and concern. On some level of reality Les understood that the laudanum had conjured him and formed the words she longed to hear. Her dreaming mind gave him a familiar voice, but it wasn’t Ward’s.
That was the best part. He was nothing like Ward.
Chapter 14
Cold rain collected along the brim of Dal’s hat and dripped down the collar of his slicker. There hadn’t been much lightning associated with the last day and a half of grey wet skies, and he was grateful. A stampede on muddy ground was something he didn’t want to think about.