“Recompense?” Halsey sputtered. “Simply for being the unfortunate recipient of your bad shot?”
Rance barely heard Halsey when again her gaze lifted to his. A peculiar warmth having nothing to do with his wound seeped through Rance’s chest. An honest face. No one had ever said that about him. Hell, when a man was paid for his shot, his integrity mattered very little.
“Avram, the fact remains, I shot the man.”
“Then feed him, if you feel you must, and send him on his way. As for this ridiculous notion of hiring him on, the townsfolk shan’t see the logic in that, Jessica. You know as well as I that your reputation cannot withstand—”
“Avram, I care far more about righting my injustices and salvaging this farm than I do about vicious gossip.”
“So you say. But I ask you, what of me?”
“You? Why, Avram, busy as you are with the church, you need not bother yourself with the farm any longer. Odd, but I would think you most of all would understand my need for a hand and encourage it, knowing me as you say you do. After all, did you not advise Mabel Brown to hire on a farmhand when her husband passed on? I don’t recall overhearing even one dire bit of warning when Melvin Hodges filled that post.”
“Melvin Hodges is a toothless, bandy-legged old man, Jessica. He’s lived in Twilight longer than anyone. He’s harmless. Better still, we know him. He’s not some misbegotten devil of the prairie. And old Widow Brown is all but confined to her bed with rheumatism.”
“She’s a lovely woman, Avram. What are you saying, precisely?”
Halsey pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, as if to assuage some deep ache. “All I know at this moment is that you are making no sense whatsoever. And I shan’t stand here in your private...room and discuss the matter another moment.” Halsey glowered at Rance. “What the devil are you looking at, Stark?”
Rance gave the good reverend a bland look.
Jessica faced Rance, with that one slight shift of her shoulders entirely dismissing Halsey. And then Rance saw it all emblazoned in her eyes, too clearly, far too guilelessly, and that warmth in his chest burgeoned into a deep, gut-wrenching ache of realization. Rance had taken much more from her in Wichita than a husband, a father, a protector and provider. His had been the hand that thrust this house and farm into disrepair. He had brought her all this heartache and turmoil. He had put that uncloaked desperation in her eyes. And he knew, beyond a doubt, that without help, she would lose it all. Halsey would see to that, no matter how stubbornly she fought him, or the inevitable crumbling of the farm around her and the wilting of all her pitiful strawberry plants. A woman this self-righteous would stand stalwart for something that just might not be worth the fight.
Hell, he’d never met a woman who would choose back-breaking toil, even the humiliation of failure, over the relatively comfortable life Halsey was offering her. More than a few of the saloon girls he’d known in his lifetime had been widowed at young ages, with children and farms left to their care. They’d abandoned the harsh realities of farm life, the drudgery, the inevitability of failure, and opted for the life of a whore. The lesser of two evils, they’d told him, their faces ravaged by far more than the effects of unrelenting sun and wind as they bemoaned their lack of alternatives. Not Jessica Wynne. He couldn’t imagine a desperate Jessica bemoaning anything. She had scoffed at the doubters and was eager to pin her every hope upon a man she’d just met, out of some spurious sense of noble justice. The man who just happened to be responsible for it all.
Simply because she thought he had an honest face. Yet some part of him suddenly wanted to prove to her that he was deserving of all that misplaced faith. He wanted to give her back all he was responsible for taking from her and Christian. Perhaps then he could vanquish some small part of this damned guilt squirming in his gut. Then he would ride away from Frank Wynne’s widow and child, knowing he’d done all he could to right the wrong he’d done.
There was the risk of being caught by any number of bounty hunters certain to be after him. And then there was the matter of deceiving this woman.
Yet as his gaze clashed with Halsey’s over her blond head, he knew he couldn’t simply mount his horse and leave. Not yet, at least. If he did, she would lose it all. And he would sacrifice his chance at redemption, his opportunity to ease some of that confusion and pain he knew lay buried deep inside Christian’s narrow chest.
Rance had long ago numbed himself to that kind of pain. When a man—but he’d been just a child himself then, all of fifteen—when a child was left orphaned, he learned to live within himself, to create a secret place in his soul into which he could burrow if need be. The numbness... Hell, killing as many Johnny Rebs as he could in the war had tempered some of the anger, had even earned him honors, decorations only the most heroic deserved. But he knew better. When a man lived that long inside himself, he cared very little about death and dying, and even less about heroics.
Numb. Yes, he’d long ago grown entirely numb to anything but the most basic of human needs. Hunger. Thirst. The need for sleep. The need for sex. But Christian didn’t deserve such a fate. Christian deserved the second chance Rance had never been given. Perhaps this was, after all, the reason he’d come.
At the moment, he’d like to think the reason was founded on some noble aspiration and not just a fool’s blundering instinct.
“How is your shoulder, Mr. Stark?”
He found himself wishing she would say his name...Rance...in the same haunting tone. But he’d taken enough of a risk in telling her his name was Logan. “It should be well enough in a day or two, ma’am.” He flexed his right arm and balled his fist. “I can still manage a hammer.”
“No.” Halsey ground out the word. “I shan’t allow it. This will not happen, I tell you.”
“Be quiet, Avram. Mr. Stark, I can offer you food, and lodging in the barn. Your horse can bed down there at night and graze in the small field during the day...though the fence needs some work. I hope that will suffice until winter.”
“It will not,” Halsey said with a huff. “Winter is six months from now. Do you realize what you’re saying, Jessica?”
“Of course I do, Avram. Now calm down before you give yourself indigestion.”
“Indigestion? I shall thank the good Lord if I don’t succumb to apoplexy this very night.”
“Then you must remind me to give you two doses of your elixir before you leave, Avram. Is the arrangement suitable, Mr. Stark?”
Rance didn’t spare Halsey the merest glance. Nor did Jessica. “Fine, ma’am.”
“Good heavens, Jessica. Do you realize you’re all but conducting business with a perfect stranger in your private—?”
“I’ll start supper, then,” she said crisply, brushing past Avram, with Christian clinging at her heels.
“Jessica!” Halsey bellowed down the hall, his face mottled with rage. His color only deepened when Rance ducked through the doorway. Halsey shifted his shoulders, purposely blocking Rance’s path. “And where the devil are you going, Stark?”
Rance slanted the shorter man a hooded look. “To the barn, Halsey. Or would you rather I remain here in Jessica’s bedroom? The floor is remarkably comfortable.”
Halsey shook so with his rage, a well-oiled lock of hair spilled over his forehead. “Jessica!” he yelled in Rance’s wake. “I shan’t stand for it! You shall be my wife in a scant few months. And goodly wives must obey their husbands. It’s the Lord’s word. Do you hear me, Jessica? This outlaw shall not sleep one night in my