After the Ashes(96)
When he straightened, Lorelei vaulted into his arms.
He lowered his head, taking in her scent. Dreams didn’t smell, and if he could smell her she must be real.
“I thought you were in Specter Canyon.” His voice sounded strange to him, as if he had swallowed sand.
“I wanted to, but Jay wouldn’t let me. I was so worried for you.”
He crushed her to him. “I’m never letting you go again.”
And he meant it. He wasn’t going to fight it anymore. It was too late to escape.
***
Braddock watched Lorelei wipe Langston’s blood off her hands with the hem of her tattered brown skirt. He wanted to look away, but he wouldn’t let himself.
Jay laughed, and Braddock tore his gaze away long enough to see Corey stuff a whole biscuit in his mouth. How could he eat? Braddock’s stomach had knotted itself up, but then again, Corey didn’t almost kill a man with his bare hands.
Braddock returned his gaze to Langston. He leaned his head back, his face obscured by a wadded bandanna. Lorelei touched the back of his head and said something in a voice too low for him to hear.
“Lorelei, get over here,” Braddock said too harshly.
Langston removed the blood-soaked bandanna from his face and glared. “You better do what he says. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
She laughed.
“Now,” he said, cutting her off. He turned and walked away before she had time to argue. He needed to keep her from talking to Langston.
He stopped several yards away. A stunted pinyon bent over by the wind provided a place where they could speak privately. The gnarled tree reached no taller than his chin but would block Lorelei from Langston’s view. If he thought she had something to fear from him, the more the better.
She caught up a few steps behind him. “You’re angry.”
He was sloshing through a dozen different emotions—relief to find her safe, disgust with his actions, fear of serious jail time—but curiously, anger wasn’t present.
“I was sick when I found out what Corey did. I would have given my own life to save yours.”
He gripped her shoulders and shook her. “Don’t ever say that again.”
Her eyes widened in shock. Tears blurred their shiny blue luster. “Please understand. Corey’s my brother, but I wouldn’t have let him lie to you. You believe that, don’t you?”
He loosened his pinching grip and urged her more directly behind the hunched tree. Langston was watching their exchange with keen interest.
“I almost killed him, you know.”
She jerked out of his grasp. “Corey?”
“No. Langston.” He watched her cheeks redden, and she studied the ground instead of him. That her first thought was for her brother no longer surprised him. She could no more stop loving and protecting him than she could change the color of her eyes.
“You have every right to want to see him punished.” She sighed. “I do understand.”
He lifted her chin. “Lorelei, I’m in as much trouble as Corey right now. More. I almost killed a deputy marshal.”
She shook her head.
“Yes. I was crazy with worry for you. I had to find you even if that meant killing Langston.”
She touched his arm. “But you stopped.”
“Because you showed up.”
She briefly pressed her palm against her eyes as if trying to make the trouble they were in vanish. “What happened? Did you meet up with Archie?”
“I made it to Specter Canyon.” He stopped himself. He couldn’t tell her about the gold or anything else that had happened up there. The less she knew the safer she’d be. “Did Archie take off with Corey?”
She shook her head and clasped her hands together in a worried fist. “He went looking for you to keep me from going into the canyon. He should have been back by now.”
He gripped her shoulders to calm her down. The furrowing of her brow warned that she was concocting another rescue scheme. “Archie can take care of himself,” he said.
In fact, Braddock suspected Archie got one whiff of booze and went back to leading the life he had led before they found him, but that was just one more fact he’d have to keep from Lorelei. If Braddock had his way—and he planned to—she’d saved her last wounded dog.
“Langston’s our biggest problem right now. When I found out that Corey tricked me I came looking for him, but I didn’t expect Langston to have found him first. His nose is probably broken, and he’s not going to forget how it happened.”
“Now you’re in even more trouble because of us. What are we going to do?”
Braddock let his breath out. If he only knew. He slid his hands down Lorelei’s arms. They were too thin. He stopped at her hands, then turned her palms up as if he could read their future there.