Outlaw Hearts(221)

“I’m glad for you, Pa.” Lloyd pushed with his arms, trying to sit up straighter. He winced with pain.

“Let me help you,” Jake told him, coming closer to the bed. He reached around the boy to support him, helping him scoot up; but before he could let go, Lloyd’s arms were around him. “I’m glad you didn’t get yourself killed trying to help me, Pa.”

Jake crumbled, embracing the boy tighter. “Thank God I found you alive,” he said in a near whisper.

Lloyd felt the man tremble, and he hugged him tighter. Miranda opened the door just then, and she drew in her breath at the sight. Lloyd looked up at her. “I don’t know which one needs holding the worst,” he told her, his voice shaky with emotion. “Me or Pa.”

Miranda came closer, touching Jake’s back. “I think it’s your father, Lloyd. He was thirty years old before anyone held him in a loving embrace.”

Jake kept a tight hold on the rosary beads, and a tighter hold on his son.

***

December 1890

Jake balanced his eleven-month-old grandson on his knee, making the boy laugh when he jiggled him extra fast. “Ba-ba,” the infant said with a grin, using his word for grandpa. He reached out with fat little arms, and Jake took hold of him and let the child rest against his chest. He looked around the room of the rambling, frame house he and Miranda had rented in Guthrie, Oklahoma. His job compelled him to be gone for long periods at a time, but he was home for Christmas, and it was a good feeling.

He breathed deeply of the smell of Miranda’s baking, watched her lovingly as she took some cookies from a baking pan and laid them out on a tray. She glanced at him, and he knew she felt the same stirring desire he did at the memory of their lovemaking last night, his first night home in six weeks. He chuckled at the way she actually blushed a little before turning to go back into the kitchen, and already he was anxious for night to come again. Age had certainly not affected their passion or their energy for making love.

In spite of the violence he sometimes experienced when out chasing men through the wilds of Oklahoma’s backcountry, this was the happiest, most peaceful time of his life that he could remember. Living on the ranch in Colorado had been good, and they all missed it; but the cloud of being a wanted man had always been hanging over him. That was gone now. Brian was doing well in his practice, and he and Evie lived only a few houses away, close enough to be company for Miranda when he and Lloyd were out on an assignment.

Brian was out on call right now, and Evie was helping Miranda with the cookies. A Christmas tree stood in the corner, decorated with popcorn and ribbons and cookies…and topped with his mother’s beautiful cross and rosary beads.

He patted little Jake’s back, still a bit overwhelmed that Evie had named her son after his grandfather. He still fought the feeling that he did not deserve all of this happiness, this loving family, this peace; but he had long ago given up trying to convince Miranda she should never have married him, and deep inside he knew life would not have been worth living at all without her.

Lloyd came inside then from picking up the mail, and Jake grew a little alarmed at the look of surprise and near pain in Lloyd’s eyes. He kept the baby in his arms as he sat up a little straighter. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Lloyd held up an opened letter. “It’s to me,” he said, “from Beth.”

“Beth!” Evie was coming into the room then, followed by Miranda. “What does it say, Lloyd?”

The young man looked dumbfounded, keeping his eyes on his father. “She wants to see me…wants me to come to Chicago. Her husband was killed in a ferry accident two years ago, and she says she needs to talk to me about something very important.”

“Then you’d better see about getting some time off to go,” Jake told him.

Lloyd turned away, removing his gun belt and hanging his weapons high on a hook where the baby could not get to them. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I just got over her. I don’t know if I want to see her again.” He looked back at his father. “Does she think she can just pick up where we left off? Do you think that’s what she’s thinking to do? I don’t think I could do that, Pa, after the way she let her pa just whisk her out of my life like that when I never really did anything wrong. She said she loved me once, said she’d never let anything come between us.”

“Lloyd, you don’t know that’s what she wants,” Miranda spoke up. “Everything that happened was a terrible shock for her too. Maybe she just wants to explain. After all, she was only sixteen years old at the time, and she was under the thumb of a very powerful man. She must know how she hurt you. Maybe she just needs to get it off her mind.”