The Horseman

Chapter Nine

Dillon woke with a start. The doorknob clicked shut and he blinked, looking around. Jeez, he’d fallen asleep. He raked a hand through his hair, and the movement made him notice the kinks in his back.

Katelyn was worth it. His chest warmed with a tender fierceness. She looked better this morning. Still pale as the sheets, but better. It was something to feel good about. It didn’t matter what the doctor had said-Dillon had still worried. He stayed the urge to touch her. To run his fingertips along the curve of her cheekbone. To kiss the soft tip of her nose.

One day. Soon. He wanted the right to kiss her. To claim her soft rosy lips with his. To hold her while she slept, safe against his chest. To feel the soft comfort of her body against his.

His blood burned in his veins, and he stopped his thoughts right there. This woman was his, and he intended to honor her. To respect her. To treat her so well she would love only him.

The faint bruise on her cheek was a shadow, nearly gone, but every time he looked at it rage kicked through him. She’d been badly hurt. Her dream last night…Hell, it had to have been horrible for her.

He swiped his hand over his face. He’d better never see that fancy judge who’d married her. Who had thrown her away like garbage in the street. He knew the type. Had worked on too many rich men’s ranches not to know there was ugliness in the hearts of rich men as well as poor. The rich covered it better with their money and varnish. Only a weak coward struck a woman. Only the lowest sort of man left a woman because she hadn’t borne him a son.

I’d be happy with a dozen daughters, he wished he could tell her. The thought of having a family with this woman, why, that choked him up. Seized his throat. Made his eyes burn. A family. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

And best of all would be having Katelyn as his wife. He’d cherish her. No doubt about that. He would love her so well and hard that she’d forget any other man.

Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned, struggling against the laudanum. Or was it another bad dream? The thought of her being afraid made him desperate. Should he wake her? Or comfort her?

She moaned again, a low, despairing sound in her throat. He laid the length of his hand to her jaw, cupping her face tenderly.

No more bad dreams. He willed the words from his heart to hers. You are safe now and forever. I swear it.

She stopped moaning and pressed her cheek into his hand, snuggling closer.

His heart cracked wide open. Love for her spilled in, filling him up.

Her eyes opened. She saw him and sighed in what sounded like relief.

The love in his heart began to hurt. A keen, tightening ache. He’d comforted her. And she liked it.

“Good morning,” he greeted her, because it was the best morning of his life. “How are you feeling? Can I get you anything? Tea? Water?”

She glanced past him to study the room. “Where’s Mrs. Miller?”

“Must have gone downstairs. What do you need? I’ll fetch it.”

“I, uh, need Mrs. Miller.” She bit her bottom lip and stared at the colorful pattern on the quilt.

“Why, I’d help you out-oh.” Realization hit him. “Sure, I’ll, uh, get the innkeeper. You wait right here.”

Embarrassed, Dillon couldn’t look at her as he smacked the door shut behind him. Offering to help her- jeez.

He found the innkeeper in the kitchen, stirring eggs over a red-hot stove. Breakfast for the few other guests. He convinced her to let him take over, he’d been taking care of himself for thirteen years and knew how to handle a fry pan. Katelyn needed her, and that was more important than cooking breakfast for strangers, anyhow. Mrs. Miller called him an impertinent fellow, which wasn’t the worst thing he’d been called in his life, and handed over the spatula.

A man didn’t know how to cook, huh? He found a second pan, melted butter and set the grated potatoes to browning. Cooking over a stove was a luxury. How many nights had he fried up supper over a campfire?

Too many. The open range of Texas under a sky clear and bright. Or high on a Colorado plateau. On the endless plains with the coyotes howling. It had been a lonely life.

Maybe that loneliness was about to change.

He’d do his damnedest to make sure of it.

“Feeling better this morning, are you?” Mrs. Miller asked in her pleasant way as she left a cup of bracing tea on the edge of the small night table. “Goodness, you had that Mr. Hennessey worried. He stayed the whole night, as improper as that was. I couldn’t get him to budge.”

“I know you stayed, too. Thank you.”

“Doctor’s orders. And they are still in effect, missy. You lay back. The doc was most clear in his orders. You’ve been through a very serious thing. Lost a child myself I did. My first. It is a heartache to this day.” Sadness welled in the woman’s eyes. “Although it has been thirty years.”

“I’m sorry.” Katelyn tamped down the wave of grief threatening to rise up and bury her.

“I am, too. It’s hard to lay to rest that sorrow, but time has helped. You’ll have more children one day, as I did, and that will help fill the emptiness. It’s my guess your Mr. Hennessey would help you with that. A bachelor his age, he’s serious. He’s looking for a wife.”

The pain left her reeling, and Katelyn struggled to dull that, too. The innkeeper had no way of knowing there would be no more children. No family to fill Katelyn’s emptiness. The future stretched out before her like a void.

Alone.

“A man that age, he’ll make a good husband. Mark my words.” Mrs. Miller swept through the room straightening pillows and knickknacks and folding a crocheted afghan. “He’s been around. Got all the temptation out of him. He’s done everything he’s wanted to do by this time, is my guess, and he’ll make a steady husband. I’ve seen it before. Trust me-you live long enough, you see the pattern of things. Your Mr. Hennessey is devoted to you. Are you hoping he’ll be offering you a ring soon?”

“I’m hoping that I can get out of this bed in a few days.” She didn’t want to think about Hennessey. “I can’t pay what I owe you. I wish I could, but perhaps I can find work here. I’ll be good for the debt.”

“Goodness, you fret too much.” Mrs. Miller halted by the bedside and patted Katelyn’s hand with maternal kindness. “You get well first and worry about that later, when you’re stronger. Besides, you’re not alone. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. When a man like your Mr. Hennessey courts you, he means it. He’s paying for your stay here. And the doctor, too, as I understand it.”

He’s not my Mr. Hennessey, she wanted to say, annoyed and frustrated and irritable because she wasn’t feeling well. Instead, she inhaled deeply and started counting. By the time she hit fourteen, her temper began to wane.

It was good, too, because there he was, striding through the doorway as if he owned the rights to her. Hennessey looked pleased with himself, confident and bold, and he dominated the room with his presence.

She ought to hate him for it. For making her pulse surge and the memories return. His voice reading her to sleep. His touch of comfort against her face, and how she gave in to it, pressing her cheek into his warm palm. She was ashamed of how she’d needed him, and she knew it.

She didn’t need him now.

“I know the doc said broth and tea, but I figured you might be hungry.” Only then did she notice the plate he held, heaped with scrambled eggs with a melted topping of cheese, thick slices of crispy salt pork and golden- brown, butter-fried potatoes.

Mrs. Miller’s hand flew to her throat. “Why, you can cook! I can’t believe my eyes. I thought I was in peril of scaring my guests away if I left you alone in that kitchen.”

“I’m a man of my word.” He winked, making light of it, but his truth rang true and undeniable.

Truth Katelyn didn’t dare believe in.

“I left the plates in the warmer. I didn’t know what rooms have guests.”

“I’d best go see to it, then.” Mrs. Miller scurried by, pausing to study the plate of food he held, shook her head