“Tell me. Did you lie to Christopher?”
Corey closed the distance between them with a menacing step. “Why do you care about him so much, anyway? He used you, then left you high and dry. He doesn’t care about you any more than Berkley did.”
“He’s coming back for me.”
Corey took off his hat and brushed his fingers through his rumpled hair. “He’s not coming back, Lori.”
“I swear to God, if you did something to get him killed you won’t be my brother anymore.”
Corey crammed the slouch hat back on his head. The brim covered his eyes, but the hurt was as clear as the anger flushing Lorelei’s cheeks.
“Did he say he was going to marry you?”
“He said he loved me.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.”
Lorelei hugged herself, refusing to look at him. No, Christopher hadn’t said anything about marriage, but there was a chance for them. A chance for Lorelei to be happy.
Corey squeezed her shoulders. “Come with me. We’ll start over. I’ll build a nice house. Buy you pretty clothes like you used to have before Pa lost everything. Soon enough you’ll forget Braddock ever existed. You’ll have beaux beating down the door.”
She jerked away from Corey. “That’s what you said when you left Kentucky with my life savings. Did you know Ma and I had to go without sugar that whole next year? But we were glad to do it for our little Corey. If this is the dream, Corey, I want to wake up.”
“You don’t know anything. You don’t know what I’ve done for us.”
“Tell me. Make me believe you’re something more than a criminal, that all those things Christopher said about you weren’t true.”
“I can’t talk to you.” He strode to his horse.
Lorelei rushed past him to grab the paint’s bridle. “You’re not going anywhere.”
The horse whinnied and shied sideways. Archie’s mare stomped in her stall, growing nervous at the commotion. Corey yanked Lorelei away from his horse.
She tried to kick him in the shin, but he managed to avoid her blows as he wrestled her into a soft pile of hay. Anger blurred her senses. She thrashed, desperate for a way to hurt him as he had hurt her. He straddled her stomach and stretched out her arms.
He squeezed her wrists in a painful grip. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can’t keep me here.”
She bucked her body in an effort to throw him off. Too soon she grew breathless. He was too strong. But that didn’t stop her from using her sternest older sister voice “You’re not leaving until you tell me what you told Christopher.”
At last Corey’s face flushed an angry shade of red, and he panted from trying to hold her down. “All I told him was how to find Mulcahy. That’s what’s going to get him killed. But you told me to tell him. You can’t blame me for that.”
“What else? What did you leave out?”
Corey rolled off of her and sat in the straw.
She crawled from the hay and stood. “You lied to me. Used me since the day I arrived. Even before that.”
He hung his head and picked at the golden dried grass. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Then please, please, tell me the truth. Were you honest with Christopher?”
He lifted his gaze. “There’s a lookout on the mesa approaching the canyon entrance. But that’s not the entrance everyone who knows the place uses. If you’re one of them, you use a back way. I didn’t tell Braddock about the back way.”
Though she suspected the truth, had begged to hear it, his words forced the air from her lungs. “How could you?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, ’cause I sure as hell haven’t, he’s a bounty hunter who came after my head.”
“Things have changed. He said he was going to let you go”
“And you said he was coming back.”
“For me.”
“What about me?”
“What about you, Corey? Everything doesn’t revolve around you. Christopher’s in love with me. He doesn’t care about you.”
“Let’s say he makes it back from his trek to find Mulcahy and comes away empty handed. Because if he survives at all, he won’t get Mulcahy or the gold. Then what? You think he’s going to settle down with you, empty handed? No. He’s going to turn to me, because something is better than nothing.”
“He’s not like that.”
“He’s a bounty hunter, Lorelei. Most of the time the reward is dead or alive. It’s not the kind of job that attracts the forgive and forget type.”
Lorelei stared at her brother, trying to find the lie in his words so she could tell him he was wrong. But she couldn’t. Her desire to have Christopher return put her brother in danger. Still, she wouldn’t let him leave without righting what he’d wronged.