she did all the talking,” he bit out. He felt as though he could explode any second. “Don’t you have a bride waiting?”
“What did she say?”
“Leave off.” Matt shoved a hand through his hair. “There’s no reason to ruin your night. You’ve got a good woman. You should be in there enjoying her.”
“Tell me.” Moonlight slanted across Russ’s face as he braced one shoulder against the hotel wall.
Matt knew that patient stance, the expectant tone. His brother wouldn’t leave until he knew. “She made some smart-mouthed comment when I started walking away. Something about how she recognized my back since I was so good at turning away from her.”
His brother cursed.
Matt gave a harsh laugh. “You and I both know who turned their back on whom. The minute her pa died, she planned to leave even though she—” He broke off as he wrestled with another savage urge to hit something. To ride the hell out of Whirlwind.
“Even though she had agreed to marry you,” his brother finished quietly. “What else did she say?”
“That’s it.” Which was one reason Matt couldn’t figure out why seeing her had hit him so hard. Had torn into the deep hole inside him he thought had healed. They had been inches apart for less than one minute. He’d seen the hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t let himself. “It was no secret she had always wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t like her decision to go back east by herself, but I understood. Not the other though.”
“The miscarriage.”
His eyes stung. “If she hadn’t been so damn deter-mined to go to medical school right then, our baby would be alive.”
Even now, after all these years, Matt’s throat closed up when he thought about his child.
“She swore she didn’t know about the baby until after she arrived in Philadelphia,” Russ reminded. “That she lost the baby before she could write to tell you she was expecting.”
Matt had burned her letter, but it didn’t matter. The words she’d written weeks after leaving him were carved into his brain forever. “How could she not be aware that there was a life growing inside her? Her pa was a doctor and she helped him with patients often. She had to have known she was expecting.”
“Why would she lie?”
“She wanted what she wanted. She didn’t need anything here.” Even him, Matt thought.
“She’d been caring for Hardy for over a year.”
“And we helped her.” Them and Pa. That was when Matt had fallen in love with her. “So?”
“She left so soon after he died. Maybe she was grieving so hard she couldn’t think clear. Remember how I was after Amy ran off with that married man she’d been seeing while engaged to me?”
When he had lost his first fiancée, Russ had been negligent, withdrawn and as cantankerous as a bear with a thorn in his paw. Maybe Annalise had been a couple of those things, too. And if she had stayed in Whirlwind, Matt thought angrily, he could have helped her through it.
His brother shifted, disrupting the shadows. “Maybe she made a mistake by leaving then.”
“A mistake to go when she did, maybe, but claiming not to know about the baby? That was no mistake. That was a flat-out lie.”
It had been some years since he and Russ had talked about this in detail and his brother’s calm suggestion still angered him. And solved nothing. She was back, but for how long?
At the thought, hope rose. She had left once; it was entirely possible she might leave again. He jerked a thumb toward the hotel door. “Get back in there. I don’t want Lydia taking a strip off my hide because she can’t find you. You’re the groom, remember?”
There was an innate contentment about his brother these days, a sense of calm. Despite the somber expression on his face just now, Russ was happy. Settled. Matt had once thought he wanted that with Annalise. But he didn’t. Not with her, not with any woman.
Seeing his first love had left him feeling raw, cornered.
“You’ll be in for the toast?”
Matt nodded. “Get me a glass of champagne, okay?”
“If you’d rather, I can ask Pa to give it.”
“I’ll do it.” Annalise Fine wasn’t going to ruin this night more than she already had. Matt had moved on—many times—from her. He could do it again.
As his brother opened the door, he said, “I’ll be clear-headed when I make the toast, Russ. I won’t let you down.”
The other man squeezed his shoulder. “I know that.”
Matt stayed outside a few more minutes, trying to calm the fury pulsing through him.
After finally catching the band of rustlers who had been stealing cattle from the Triple B and surrounding ranches in several counties, he had anticipated things going back to normal, looked forward to a rest. The Landis brothers, all seven of them, were awaiting trial in Abilene’s jail because Taylor County was where they had done the majority of their rustling. Callahan and Nolan counties planned to extradite the gang to their respective counties once the Taylor County trial ended.
The capture of the seven bastards had been a long time coming and the result of more than just Matt’s efforts. He had every right to feel victorious. And Annalise had leeched it right out of him.
He had a Stockraisers’ Association meeting to attend in two days. Exhausted after months of spending intense effort on the rustlers, he didn’t look forward to the trip, but he was glad to have it. Come tomorrow morning, he would be on his way to Graham and away from Dr. Annalise Fine. And when he returned to Whirlwind, he intended to stay away.
In the days after seeing Matt, Annalise stayed busy. She treated a case of pneumonia, several sore throats, an earache and accepted an invitation out to Riley Holt’s for supper. She had known him and his brother, Davis Lee, her entire life and welcomed the chance to meet their wives, Susannah and Josie.
She had also examined J. T. Baldwin’s injured leg. She wanted to examine him more thoroughly before saying she agreed with the doctor from Fort Greer that he would walk again. At the end of their visit, Matt’s pa had mentioned—twice—that her former beau had been gone all week to Graham for a Stockraisers’ Association meeting.
She had murmured some unintelligible comment. She didn’t want to know where he was or what he was doing. She didn’t want to think about him at all.
Five nights after Russ and Lydia’s wedding celebration, she responded to a frantic plea from Davis Lee Holt, Whirlwind’s sheriff, to examine his pregnant wife, who had begun to bleed.
It was well after dark when Annalise stood at the foot of Davis Lee’s and Josie’s bed, asking questions. It was difficult enough to see her lifelong friend terrified, but the fear of miscarrying their baby on both his and his wife’s faces wrapped around Annalise like a coil of barbed
