like old milk. His brother would have told him he was a fool. He would have called him a drunk and a cheat and told him to keep his dirty hands off of Miss Merritt’s slender waist, to mind his manners, brush his teeth and get a job.
Jake was scowling when they reached the middle of town where Waltham’s Emporium was doing a brisk business. A large man with silver hair walked down the steps toward a loaded buckboard.
“Papa! Papa!” Alex cried.
She squirmed like a kid at Christmas, and the old man froze in his tracks. Jake saw shock in his eyes, then a blossom of pure joy. He half expected the man to break into a run, but he couldn’t seem to get his legs to work any faster.
The bay chuffed, and Jake reined him in at a hitching post. Sliding out of the saddle, he reached for Alex. She shoved Charlie into his arms and slid off the bay. Half staggering with her arms spread wide, she ran to the silver giant of a man.
“Oh, Papa! You won’t believe what happened.”
The old man hugged his daughter like there was no tomorrow, and Jake stood by the horse with Charlie squalling in his arms.
He needed that drink worse than ever.
Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
William Merritt was a man of great emotion on even a quiet day, and having his daughter home at last was enough to make him shout with joy. It had been five years since he had seen her and more than ten since she had lived at home. It had been her mother’s idea to send Alex to live with her aunt in Philadelphia. William had fought the idea, but Kath insisted on giving their daughter a taste a taste of Eastern sophistication, including the opportunity to meet educated young men and wear stylish dresses. As always, Kath had stood her ground, and he’d given in.
And so he and his daughter had written letters, and because of the strange intimacy of paper and pen, William knew his daughter better than she knew herself. He had an uncanny ability to read between the lines, and for the past six months, he’d been worried about her engagement to Thomas Hunnicutt.
But those worries could wait. He squeezed her shoulders and something between a laugh and a roar ripped from his throat. She leaned back, her hands still in his, and he saw a thousand questions in her eyes.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just slowing down a little.”
But the dark circles under his eyes went beyond a man feeling his years, and if the truth be told, the pounding of his heart at the shock of seeing her scared him just a little.
More time…more time…more time…
Dear God, he’d be grateful for every minute.
“Papa, I’ve got so much to tell you.” She stepped back and William took a long look at her. Her face was red and near blistering. Baggy trousers hung from her hips, and a sleeve had been torn from her white blouse. Dried blood caked the bandage on her arm.
He grabbed her shoulders. “My God! What happened?”
“The stage crashed in a thunderstorm. There’s a lot to tell, but there are two people you have to meet first.”
William’s gaze roved to the man holding the baby. With his black eyes and black duster, he seemed more like a shadow than flesh and bone. Hard living, and only God knew what else, had etched deep lines in the young man’s face, and he had a thirsty look in his eyes.
William knew the craving when he saw it, and he felt a stab of sympathy for the young man. With his stubbled jaw and bruised face, he looked like a rounder, but the baby turned him into something else. He looked like a father, too, and William dared to hope his daughter had found a diamond in the rough.
The cowboy stepped toward Alex and she reached for the baby. Holding the infant against her breast, she nodded at the stranger.
“Papa, this is Jackson Jacob Malone. He saved my life. Twice.” Smiling, she held up the baby. “And this is Charlie.”
“Who does he belong to?”
“No one right now.”
William felt a twinge of disappointment that the cowboy wasn’t the baby’s father, and he cringed when he saw a light in his daughter’s eyes that reminded him of his wife as a younger woman.
I want another baby, Will.
Any man who had fathered a child by choice knew that look, and most of the time a woman got her way. Peeling back the white cloth shielding the baby’s head, he peered into his tiny face. “He looks brand-new.”
“He is. His mother died giving birth.”
“And his father?”
Alex shook her head. “She never said.”
William watched as the cowboy took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The man was ready to hightail it out of town, but someone had hammered good manners into him, and he didn’t even twitch while he waited for Alex to finish talking.
He had the air of a perfect gentleman, but William saw through him. He was polite because it had been beaten into him, and beneath his hooded gaze, William saw a man who cussed God and took comfort where he could find it.
He had known countless men like Jackson Jacob Malone over the years. He’d prayed with them and even buried a few of them when things went bad. He knew these men in his bone marrow because he had been one himself. Kindness would only make a man like Malone run, so William got tough and mean.
“This kid looks just like you, son. What lies are you telling?”
Anger rose from his black duster like smoke. “Let’s see, old man. The last woman I bedded was a whore in Glenville, and that was a lot more recent than nine months ago when Charlie here got started. Let me think….” Jake rolled his eyes skyward and twisted his lips into an insolent grin.
William saw right through the ploy. The young man wanted to shock him.
“As I recall,” Jake continued, “a sweet young thing spread her legs for me about then, but she was a blonde with big tits and the woman I just buried—”
“Stop it!” Alex glared at them both, then zeroed in on Jake. “How dare you speak like that about someone you—”
“Bedded?”
“I can ignore the language, but not the disrespect.”
William wasn’t surprised when his daughter turned on him next. “Papa, that question was out of line. You have no right to question Jake’s integrity.”
So it was already Jake and not Mr. Malone.
The young man didn’t say a word, and William, who never kept his mouth closed and only rarely regretted opening it, wasn’t at all sorry for riling him. He believed that “fight” and “flight” were God-given instincts, and Jake Malone was a fighter.
“My daughter’s right, Mr. Malone. I have a rude streak a mile wide. I owe you far more than gratitude for saving her life. She’s a treasure.” He stuck out his hand and waited for the man to take it.
William
