A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

FIFTEEN

Falcon Hunt had handed her a puppy.

That was no reason to think such warm thoughts of him, but it was a sweet thing to do. A quiet, gentle, happy moment in her life, which had been loud and harsh and sad for too long.

And then his pain. Such a gentle act with the puppy. A man she’d trailed in the woods long enough to know how strong and smart and woods-savvy he was. And so wounded.

Those rugged, callused hands handing her that soft puppy. Its belly so full of milk she could almost feel it sloshing as the little critter slept. Her hands touched his as he gave the baby over. An expression on his face. Not a smile. Falcon wasn’t a big smiler, nor a big frowner. He didn’t laugh or yell. Not overly anyway.

He was a man in control of himself. It was a relief after the treatment she’d received in that will at the hands of Clovis, whose only type of control was to lie well enough you had no idea what went on in his fermented mind.

Now Falcon, who’d come here to invade her land, had saved that mama dog. And whatever his outward appearance, that injured, fiercely protective, half-wild dog saw inside to someone she trusted.

Cheyenne found herself trusting him, too.

She’d told him if he could remember when his ma died, if it was late enough that Clovis’s marriage to Cheyenne’s ma was illegal, the will wouldn’t stand. That meant Falcon would lose everything.

And still he’d faced pain, trying to remember.

She’d always hoped to marry someday, but her measure of a man was her grandpa. He was the kind of man she wanted to share her life with. And on the other end was Clovis. Her ma was a strong, wise woman in so many ways, but she’d let herself be fooled by Clovis. And a big part of that, Cheyenne knew, was because she’d married too quickly. Cheyenne believed Ma would have seen the truth, the rot at Clovis’s core, if she’d just gone more slowly.

Cheyenne was going to give any man she was interested in plenty of time to reveal his true self.

And here she was, thinking warmly of a man she hardly knew at all. Moreover, a man who didn’t know himself. For a moment, she’d thought he would kiss her.

She’d never imagined wanting such a thing, but she had. Inside, she was churned up, heated up, melting. It was the oddest feeling, and she wanted more of it.

Especially because it was only now that she realized how cold she’d been. How frozen inside. Yes, she’d known of how hard and angry she’d been since the reading of the Sidewinder’s will. But she now knew even before that she’d kept much of herself lassoed and hog-tied, never to run free.

Never had she imagined wanting to be touched and held by a man.

She thought of her hasty plan to marry Oliver Hawkins. She’d known him a long time. He might not send her pulse racing, but she knew him and wouldn’t be fooled by him. But now that she’d thought of kissing Falcon, she realized how impossible it would be to let Hawkins kiss her.

Here she sat with Falcon’s face still held gently in her hands. His eyes on her. He was so still, so silent.

She should pull back, but she didn’t want to. Didn’t want to let go of him. His eyes drifted closed, then, from deep in his chest, the words so quiet they reminded her of the dog’s growling, he said, “Thank you.”

The mama dog yipped, looking at the entrance to the cave, and Cheyenne turned to look out, reaching for her gun, afraid Ralston had come to check his cattle and saw the boulders moved.

The bull, Texas Midnight, poked his nose into their cave. Cheyenne’s nose almost brushed his. He bellowed hot breath right in her face and bunted the roof of the cave opening.

Cheyenne scooted back, which wasn’t hardly possible in the cramped space. The dog barked with more fury, wasted on the bull and upsetting for her and the pups.

“Do you think he can get in here?” Falcon whispered, and his warm breath from behind her was all the way different from the bull’s.

“Nope, and I think, for a while, we can’t get out.”

She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. Then she said, “You try and calm down that mama dog. I want to hold a puppy again.”

“Don’t answer this if it’s going to make your head hurt.”

Falcon turned to look at Cheyenne, who carried his bag, filled with puppies. He had the mama dog draped across his lap. Once the bull had tired of staring at them and wandered off, they’d loaded up the dogs, giving the mama plenty of time to sniff her babies to make sure they were all right, then they’d carried them down to the horses and headed for home.

“I’m going to come back for my bull whether the sheriff lets me have those cows or not, and to get rid of that barbed wire.”

“It looks like he kept the top of the trail wired up. But it’s all fallen down.”

“I suppose by the time it fell, the cows were used to the canyon and didn’t try and get out. But he should have wound up the wire and gotten rid of it.”

“We’ll find plenty of places where this Ralston will turn out to be a careless fool,” Falcon guessed.

“He got away with this thievin’ for a long time,” Cheyenne observed.

They wound down the side of the mountain.

“Give mama another sniff of her babies. She’s fighting my hold,” Falcon said for the umpteenth time.

Finally, he just took the bag, puppies and all.

“No.” Cheyenne made a swipe for the bag, but the mama growled and her ears went back.

Cheyenne scowled. “Why do you get to carry all the dogs?”

Falcon laughed. A nice change from the pain. “What did you start to ask? About me not answering if it made my head hurt?”

“Oh, that’s right. I want to talk about Harvey.”

Falcon, paying close attention, didn’t feel a single pang. “Just you asking about it didn’t give me pain. Let’s see.” When they finally reached the bottom of the mountain, and Falcon could pay less attention to his horse and the dogs had settled in to sleeping, he could think on Harvey.

“Just tell me what you see. Don’t search for more.”

“A mule.”

“What does his bridle look like? Does he have a saddle? Are you riding him or leading him?”

They were mighty good questions, and it set him to thinking, not of what he couldn’t remember but on the details of what he could.

After he’d told her all he knew about Harvey, he said, “And I saw a cabin. A little, ramshackle thing. It’s built into the side of a hill, or probably a mountain.”

“In the paper work we got, your address was a town called Chickahoochi Cove.”

“That rings something in me, but I can’t really remember it. It’s just a name that somehow seems right.”

“That’s probably your cabin you’re remembering.”

They rode along, a friendly sort of ride. Falcon talked of his cabin until his head started aching.

“Enough now,” Cheyenne said. “We’ve used up the day, and we’ll be lucky if they haven’t thrown our supper out to the chickens.”

“I hope they’ve saved enough to feed the dog.”

Cheyenne looked at the dogs, then her eyes raised to meet his. It was there between them. Falcon could feel her hands resting on his face. How it upset her to see him hurting. How close they’d been in that tight little cave.

“I’m starting to like you real fine, Falcon.”

It helped get the pain away from him.

“Let’s pick up the pace if the dogs can handle it,” she said. “I want to talk to Wyatt about those cows.”