After the Ashes(79)

Corey must have read his expression because he grinned. “Know it?”

“How do you get there?”

Corey shrugged. “Never been there myself, but if you got a map, I can show you.”

“Then how do you know of it?”

Corey looked him straight in the eye. “They showed me. It’s where we were all supposed to meet up.”

Braddock studied him. Corey was either telling the truth or was an excellent liar. Braddock already knew the latter to be true.

Corey picked at a callus on his palm. “You won’t get out alive. If the Apache don’t get you, the rattlers will. There’s only one path through the canyon. You have to dismount and lead your horse through blindfolded. Horses know better than to go through something so steep and narrow.”

“I’ll manage.”

Corey nodded and smiled. “Yeah.”

Braddock stood. “I’ll get a map.”

He wrenched open the side door, eager to escape Lorelei’s brother, if only for a few seconds. He rubbed his forehead as he strode through the Hartman kitchen and into the living area. Guilt gave him a headache. A tingling on the back of his neck stopped him cold. He turned slowly, his hand poised to grab the Smith & Wesson strapped to his hip.

Beth sat in a rocking chair beside the front window, a sleeping Rachel draped over her lap while she sewed a torn patch on the sleeve of one of Jay’s work shirts. Her gaze knifed him.

“I’m getting a map,” he said.

“I know. Voices carry out here.” Her gaze dropped to her mending. The way she stabbed the blue cambric with the needle let him know she was still thinking of him.

Braddock watched her, willing her features to soften. He’d never seen sweet Beth look so vicious. Even the soft swelling of her belly and the sleeping child in her lap could not alter the chilling effect of her judgment. If she had a gun, he was sure she’d shoot him.

He held out his hand, took a breath to explain, then let it out. Instead he escaped into the boys’ bedroom to get a map from his saddlebag. Anything he tried to say to Beth would sound like an excuse. His reasons for leaving Lorelei had already begun to stack up short in his own mind.

He never should have made love to Lorelei under Beth’s roof. If he didn’t get out of here today, she’d be bending Jay’s ear until he was forced to marry Lorelei at gunpoint. Braddock sat back on his heels, map in hand, and felt a rush of relief wash over him like a waterfall. That was what he wanted. Why fight it?

He strode back into the living room and stopped in front of Beth. She didn’t glance up, but her pinched lips let him know she wasn’t unaware of his presence. He opened his mouth to tell her he’d do the honorable thing. He’d marry Lorelei. But his voice seized in his lungs. Dark, cold fear gripped him. Jay’s old wheelchair loomed in the comer of the room, just past Beth’s shoulder. A half-finished quilt was draped over the back, and a pile of mending filled the seat, but the big ugly wheels were in plain view. Why hadn’t he seen the hated chair before?

All too clearly he remembered the first time Jay had been in that chair. They’d forced him to leave his bed and plopped him in it against his will. He hadn’t met Braddock’s gaze at the hospital when Braddock came to prepare him for his wife’s visit. Jay had even cussed when Beth and the kids had come. But he’d been dying a little every day, and Braddock had known it was all his fault. He’d had to bring them.

To escape the sobering reminder of Jay’s wheelchair, Braddock stumbled through the kitchen. He had to leave here and never see Lorelei again. It was the only way. He couldn’t go through what he’d gone through with Jay. What he’d gone through hundreds of times during the war. Bad things happened when he was around. Lorelei would have hurt feelings when he left, but at least she would be in one piece. And if there were to be a child between them, any man would gladly take it with Lorelei. Jay would make sure he was a good man. A better man than Braddock.

With his hands braced on the door frame, Braddock paused to steel himself against facing Corey. He forced himself to remember who he was. What he was. During the war he had gone off alone each night to let himself be overwhelmed by his grief and horror, then hardened himself again for the next day. He could do that again. Eventually there would be nothing left to fight against. He would be numb.

Willing himself to feel nothing, he strode out the kitchen door. His efforts might have worked if the first thing he saw wasn’t Lorelei.

She gazed up at him and a well placed hammer came down to shatter his glass resistance. But he didn’t return her smile. What was there to smile about?