“Mercy, Lila.” He raised the lap rug and wiped his face. “You sound like we’re a hundred.”
“I’m twenty-two.” She’d never told him before, and saying so sounded both young and old at the same time. “I fear I have lived many lives in that space of time. You?”
“Twenty-five. I have lived the same.”
His deep blue eyes looked her full on, and she read the lines of regret. Well, she had been taught to hope. “Bronx, we have much to learn in the whole of life ahead.”
She brushed her hand over his damp cheek.
“Not so, Lila. I got a Pinkerton after me. And with good reason.”
“But you are innocent.”
He took one hand off the reins and wrapped her fingers around his, both of them jumping a tad at they touched. “Not of horse thieving. Of killing, yep. But nobody knows, ’less Rebekah tells the truth. ’Less Five Beans does the same.”
“Five Beans?”
Bronx started up the buggy, slowly. “Phillipson Percival. Big rich rancher. Calls himself Five Beans. Means he leaves one chamber of his six-shooter empty. He busted up the painted cat and blames me for killing the marshal who went after him.” He glanced down at her, and her breath hitched just at the depths of him. “In the best of times, Five Beans’s a flannel-mouth liar and richer than a silver mine to boot. Nobody goes against him. I’m proof. Me…and the dead marshal.”
“Oh, Bronx, the truth has to be real. Somehow, we can find it.” Emmett had taught her that. Had taught her the truth about herself, no matter how disagreeable she had found it. How he had loved her, anyway. But that, she decided then and there, that had been a life she no longer lived. Bronx was here, and Bronx was now.
“I don’t see how, Lila.” Bronx’s sadness chilled in the air; his left arm crept around her shoulders as if to warm her. She tingled. “I don’t stand a chance. I did time for horse thieving, and I plan to keep on working, adding to my stash so I can restitute the horses I stole. I got a good memory if I retrace my steps. But the killings. I...” His hair, the lightest today she’d seen it, flopped over his shoulders and begged for her touch. “I don’t stand a chance.”
“Bronx, somehow we can fix this.” An idea bloomed inside her head. “I don’t know that you should leave Colorado. The governor might help you in your innocence. He prevented Doc Holliday’s extradition to Arizona.”
Bronx rolled his eyes. “Doc is a famed man. From a fine Southern family. I got no such bloodlines.”
With force, she stomped her boots in the footwell. “No. This is a day to rejoice and be glad. We both are intelligent people. Perhaps I can...”
“No, Lila. This fight is mine alone. Let it rest. But I take you at your word—I do want to rejoice. I do want to be glad.” He reined in the horse two houses from Dornfeld’s, with no one else around on the quiet street. “So, this is what I’ll do.”
He gathered her against him on the wagon seat, as if not caring if the whole of Leadville saw. His Stetson tumbled to the seat, and her fingers entwined together at the back of his neck. Heat and sweetness exploded throughout her at the taste of him, desire settled in the deep of her body, and she knew then she was a whole woman and had been one all along. With joy, she shivered as love’s song whispered around her.
“Oh, Bronx,” she murmured against his firm mouth. “Oh, Bronx.” His name flew off her tongue and came back again.
Blood fired through the veins of his neck and pounded his heart against her own. “Oh, Lila, this is my dream.” He unbound her hair, pulled back and held it to his kiss. “My sole dream. Or maybe my soul spelt the other way.” His laughter was soft in her hair. “I think since my first sight of you, I’ve dreamed this. And you...the first time our eyes met?”
“Bronx, it didn’t take long at all.” But there was Emmett, always Emmett. Until now.
“Should say, never had a teatime with a lady before. Never wanted to before.” Then he turned bleak eyes. “But the sad story now is...I must leave before I get caught. I’ll work hard to clear my name. I’ll come back somehow.”
“Bronx, I finally have a chance to leave Leadville myself. To sell Gethsemane for a righteous cause. A legitimate chance, with no guilt that I’m breaking a deathbed vow. An opportunity to become the woman I was meant to be.”
“What if that woman is meant to be with me?”
Her heart jumped halfway up her throat. Was it meant they leave together? “Maybe.”
Bronx pulled up to the door, and helped her from the buggy.
“Let’s talk later. I best unhitch Chad, then seek Doc Holliday’s advice. He has...a place I can go, should I need. I’ll stay low.”