“Why should I listen to anything you have to say when nothing but lies seem to come out of your mouth?” he scoffed.
She blinked in surprise. “That’s not true!” she protested. How could he
possibly think that she had lied about her love for him? “I lied to you, yes, but...”
“Forget it!” he snapped before she could finish. “I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth.”
Turning on his heel, he walked into the kitchen, heading for the back door.
For a moment, Kayla simply stared at his retreating form.
“Cord, wait,” she pleaded. “Where are you going?”
But he didn’t answer, choosing to ignore her instead, and by time she caught up to him, he was already out the door and heading toward the barn.
Kayla stood in the doorway, watching helplessly as he mounted his horse and galloped off. She couldn’t have been more hurt if he had slapped her. She
had known Cord would be angry when he finally learned the truth, but she
had at least thought that he would listen to her.
Tears stung her eyes, and she let them roll down her cheeks unheeded.
Perhaps he just needed to cool off, she thought. When he came back, he
would be calmer, she told herself, and they would be able to talk things out.
Chapter Six
Kayla didn’t know how long Cord had been gone. She supposed that it had
only been about thirty minutes since he’d ridden off, but to her it felt like it had been days. She had wanted to ride out after him, but she knew that she would never be able to catch up to him, especially when she didn’t even know where he was headed. So, instead she had sat at the table and sobbed.
She had thought that when Cord defended her to William that he had already forgiven her. Or at least been willing to listen to her side of the story. But then when he’d walked out without even giving her a chance to explain, she hadn’t known what to think. She had hoped that their love would be enough.
An urgent knock sounded on the front door then, interrupting her reverie, and her brow furrowed as she wondered who it could be. She hesitated, half-afraid that it might be William coming back to browbeat her again now that Cord had left. But when the knocking came again, more frantically this time, she knew that she couldn’t very well ignore it, regardless of who the caller was.
Getting to her feet, she went into the foyer to open the door. Rachel stood there, her cheeks flushed with color.
“Kayla, thank God,” the other girl exclaimed, rushing past her. “Your fiancé is here, in Copper Creek. Dalton’s bragging all over town, telling everyone that he knew you were lying about being Cord’s mail-order bride, saying that he tracked down your fiancé, and that...” her voice trailed off as she finally noticed Kayla’s tear-streaked face. “He was already here, wasn’t he?”
Kayla nodded miserably. “It was terrible. Cord was furious that I’d been lying to him,” she said quietly. “We had a big fight, and he left. He wouldn’t even let me explain. He just walked out.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know
where he went.”
Rachel made an exasperated sound. “He went where all men go when they
have a burr up their behind. He went to the saloon to get drunk.”
Why hadn’t she thought of that? Kayla wondered, and then felt her mouth go dry as another thought suddenly occurred to her. “If he runs into Dalton,
there’s no telling what he’ll do.” She grabbed her reticule from the small table in the foyer and started for the door. “I have to go to the saloon.”
“I’ll go with you,” Rachel announced, hurrying after her.
A few minutes later, they were heading for town in Rachel’s cart. Kayla
fidgeted nervously in her seat, her mind imagining al sorts of things. What if Cord had already run into Dalton at the saloon? A fight between the two men was a foregone conclusion, which would only result in Cord getting thrown
into jail, or worse, she thought, remembering how the men out west seemed
to have a penchant for solving disputes with a pistol. She shuddered at that thought.
By the time she and Rachel got to town, Kayla was a bundle of nerves, and
she almost leaped out of the wagon in her haste to get to Cord. She hurried into the saloon with Rachel at her heels, but when she got there, she was
dismayed to find that Cord wasn’t among the evening’s crowd. Had he
already been there and gone back to the ranch? she wondered. Or had
Rachel been wrong about Cord going to the saloon in the first place?
Determined to find out, she went over to the bar. The bartender, a stocky man with graying hair, was cleaning some shot glasses, and he looked up at her approach. He didn’t look surprised to see her, Kayla thought.
“I’m looking for Cord,” she said. “Was he here tonight?”
The bartender regarded her in silence for a moment, but then nodded. “He
was here,” the man said. “He was pretty upset, too, but he didn’t want to talk about what was eating him, so I let him be. Dalton Jeffries came over to talk to him about selling his ranch, though, and I’m pretty sure Cord sold it to him.”
Kayla stared at the man, sure she hadn’t heard correctly. “That can’t be,” she said quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself. “Cord loves that ranch; he would never sell it.”
The bartender shrugged. “Only telling you what I heard.” He gestured toward one of the tables with a jerk of his head. “Dalton’s still here if you want to ask him yourself.”
Kayla turned to see Dalton Jeffries sitting at a nearby table. He was playing cards with some men, but if he noticed her
