He drew in his breath and let out a sigh of a man in pain. “I guess that’s when it all began. I hated everybody because I had lost Santana, felt the pain of knowing I was the one who had killed her. I knew I was no good because I had killed my own father. The banditos didn’t care. He was nothing to them, and I was young blood and was learning how to shoot. I fell in with them easy enough, and from then on that’s all I ever knew—raiding and killing and stealing. After a while I went off on my own, landed in Indian Territory and took up with whiskey traders and gunrunners.” He shrugged. “You can figure out the rest. Word spread among others of my kind that I had killed my own father. Somehow that made me even more notorious. Some men taunted me about it and I shut them up with my guns. I got to be real good with guns of all kinds, and men began challenging me. Once you get a reputation like that, there is always someone who wants to prove he’s better.”
He came closer and stirred the fire. “Anyway, it all just kind of got away from me. My life was out of control, and I didn’t know how to change it. When I was young I used to think about having a wife and being good to her, figured maybe some way I could make up for how my pa was, prove to myself I wasn’t going to be like him. But then I’ve got that mean streak, got it beat into me, I guess. For most of the past few years I just made up my mind I was meant to be bad and to never have a normal life, so I just let go and raised hell and did all the things people expected Jake Harkner to do, took out my hate and anger on anybody who even looked like they were going to get in my way. The last couple of years, though, I don’t know…”
He stuck the cheroot between his teeth. “Maybe age does something to a man. I’m getting tired of the way I live. I just don’t know how to change it.”
He faced her then, taking the cheroot from his mouth. “You’ve got no obligation to stay with me, Randy. I’ll understand if you don’t want to. I’m not even sure if I know how to love anymore. You’re right in what you told me once. The thought of having feelings about anything scares me to death; but from what I can figure, the way I feel about you has to be love, or as close as a man can get. I just don’t know which is worse, living with you and seeing you hurt because of me, or taking you to Nevada and going on from there without you. You’d forget about me soon enough.”
Miranda rose, studying the ruggedly handsome face, seeing both the little boy and the man who needed her in his eyes. “Never,” she answered. “I could never forget you, Jake. I’d rather die than live without you now.”
His eyes moved over her, and she felt flushed and warm at the memory of the things she had let him do to her the night before.
To Jake, she looked like an angel, standing there in that yellow dress he liked, her hair brushed out over her shoulders, her blue-gray eyes softly glowing with love. Was it possible something this good could come into his life? “You just might die sooner than you should if you stay with me.”
“Then so be it.”
He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. “Randy, you’re a beautiful, respectable woman, intelligent, probably well-schooled. Hell, I can’t even read good. You could marry a banker or a doctor, live a normal, peaceful life—”
“Is that a proposal, Jake?”
He met her eyes and he just watched her for several seconds before answering. “I guess maybe it is.”
“Then I accept.”
He frowned. “Randy, you’d better give it some thought.”
“I don’t need to. I want to be your wife, Jake, no matter what the danger. We’ll go to Nevada, maybe to California, someplace where no one knows you. You can start over, Jake. You’re capable of loving and worthy of being loved in return. We’ll just take one day at a time and enjoy that day’s freedom to love and be loved.” She stepped closer. “Your pa was wrong to tell you you were a bastard and no good. It isn’t your fault that he bought your mother and never married her. It isn’t your fault that a man like that fathered you. You might have his build, but you’re nothing like him, Jake, not in any other way, do you understand? You’ve got to quit believing the things he told you, because he was just being mean. I can see right through you, and you are good, or you wouldn’t be talking to me like this now. You wouldn’t have ridden Outlaw half to death trying to find me, and you wouldn’t have helped me like you did. You know now that you can’t stay away from me any more than I can stay away from you.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. “I’m not afraid of it, Jake. I’m only afraid when I’m not with you. I want to be your wife and know that you’ll never ride out of my life again.”