Chapter Eight
Harlan heard about the altercation before Kendall made it back up Copper Mountain.
One of the Stark cousins was down in Marietta doing his own errands that day, and he’d called to let Harlan know that he had seen an interaction he didn’t like much between Kendall and two strangers, right there on the street.
I don’t want to go telling any stories,Logan Stark told him, a laughable claim under any other circumstances, as the Starks lived on stories like everyone else on their side of the mountain. But the two strangers in question sure looked a lot like her.
Harlan thanked him, asked after the current state of the Lodge restoration project to be neighborly, and spent the rest of his afternoon out feeding the cows and puzzling over the scene that Logan had described.
It was hard to imagine Kendall actually getting worked up about something. About anything. Logan had said he’d heard her with her voice raised, something Harlan couldn’t imagine when she was always so steady. So quiet and watchful. Careful, even.
As if she was waiting, always waiting, to see which way the wind would blow at any moment.
Maybe this was the wind she’d been waiting on.
Harlan couldn’t wait to see if it had messed her up some, the way he’d like to do.
So much that he spent most nights enjoying a frigidly cold shower and didn’t bother pretending it was for the health benefits. It wasn’t. It was so he could keep his promises to Kendall and his hands to himself.
When he got back to the house, he expected her to come right out and tell him what happened, the way she did when new things happened around here. When she’d seen the group of dancers who were loosely connected to the art collective out beyond the ranch come into Cowboy Point and dance for the solstice. The way she had when she’d seen the signs for the upcoming Copper Mountain Rodeo in September and had wondered if she’d get to meet Ryder. The way she had when she’d seen him and his brothers round up the cattle on horseback.
Tonight she didn’t come out to greet him in the foyer, wide-eyed and filled with stories. She sang out a hello from the kitchen, the sort he’d expect if nothing out of the ordinary had happened to her in the course of the day, so he thought on that while he went about his usual ritual of cleaning himself up from a day of hard labor before he went to find her.
When he got to the kitchen, showered so that he didn’t smell like his work, she was focusing ferociously on food preparation. And he would have known she’d gone down to the big market in Marietta even if Logan Stark hadn’t called to fill him in. She had skewers of marinated chicken waiting for the grill and was currently assembling all-vegetable skewers as well. To the side, he could see a potato salad waiting and understood that she’d found a way to use the food they’d had left, knowing full well that more was coming.
Because one thing he’d discovered about Kendall was that she did not like to waste things. Food most of all. Something he found he admired more than he could adequately express, even though it wouldn’t have mattered if she did waste things. He could replace them.
But this way it was another chorus in that song that more and more was the only thing he heard, whether he was awake or asleep.
She glanced over and smiled. “It’s ready to grill whenever you are.”
And she still made no move to tell him anything, so he took the food she’d prepared outside and started the grill. When she came out and handed him the beer he liked and she’d clearly replenished down at the FlintWorks microbrewery in Marietta, he accepted it. He told her about the particular antics of the calves today. The fences that he’d repaired, because there were always fences to repair. The foolishness of his brothers, which was a favorite topic of his, though the real truth was that he didn’t like to think how he’d go about handling the ranch without them. Maybe because he knew he’d never have to.
It was easier to pretend they annoyed him.
Just like it was easier not to think about the fact Zeke said he was dying.
What he found easy enough to consider instead was what his wife wasn’t telling him.
When dinner was ready, they sat down at the table outside again. And Harlan was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t planning to tell him anything at all.
He really hadn’t expected that. It felt like a blow, and he didn’t like it.
“How was the drive down to Marietta?” he asked, on the theory that maybe she needed him to start her off.
She smiled. “Fine.”
“It was nice of you to do that much grocery shopping. I made sure to remind my brothers that you married me, not them, and they shouldn’t take you for granted. Or give you errands to do.”
“I don’t mind. It’s nice to feel like I’m a part of things, enough to be taken for granted a little.”
He waited for her to talk about the scene Logan had witnessed, but she started talking about the conversation she’d had with his father earlier today when she’d gone by the main house to pick up their grocery list. About logos, and the name she and Zeke had come up with for their booth at the Farm and Craft market, and an aside about bespoke cowboys that he couldn’t have followed if he tried.
Harlan felt that same, yet still unfamiliar lick of temper moving him. Because he couldn’t believe that she was really, truly going to pretend it hadn’t happened.
Whatever it was.
And the more she kept it to herself, the more he wanted to know why.
“So,” he said when they ended up back inside after clearing the table, “do you plan to tell me about those women?”
“What women?”
But he saw the way her shoulders tensed. “You know which women.”
He watched her pull in a breath. And then take her time turning to face him, likely to get her face to look that impassive. That calm. “They don’t concern you. They don’t concern anyone. They have nothing to do with anything that matters, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I’m guessing they’re family,” Harlan said, fighting to stay calm himself.
And he watched something… detonate in her at that. He could see it in her eyes. And the way she flushed and went rigid, then folded her arms in front of her. “Why would you say that?”
“Because the guy who called to tell me about this altercation that my wife was in on the streets of Marietta, an altercation you don’t seem inclined to share yourself, said they looked a lot like you.”
“That’s just…”
He watched her flail and felt two competing urges. One to let her, so he could see why she was doing this. And the other to protect her, even if it was from him and his questions. She sounded shakier than before when she let out what wasn’t quite a laugh.
“What’s funny is that they would both hate that,” she said, that funny almost-laugh still in her voice. “They don’t think I’m up to their standard, especially not now. I’ve let myself go, you see. And apparently, I was already too far gone.”
“They sound like they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Which is why I didn’t see any reason to bring them up.” She shook her head. “Yes, they’re family. No, I don’t want to talk about it and next time, you can tell your friend to mind his business.”
“What about my business?”
She was still staring at him with that look in her eyes, hectic and something a little too close to self-loathing for his taste. “What about it? What does it have to do with you?”
“Kendall.” That came out a little louder than he expected it to. And he didn’t like that he raised his voice, but then again, he didn’t like any part of this. “You’re my wife.”
“This isn’t part of the deal,” she threw back at him, sounding something like desperate, which he liked least of all. “They have nothing to do with anything that happens here, and that’s for your protection, Harlan. You don’t know what they’re like.” She blew out another breath, harsher than before. “It’s okay. They don’t know I’m married. I didn’t tell them.”
“Why would you think that’s okay? We are married. And I don’t care who you tell about it.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand, because you haven’t told me. You won’t tell me. And, in fact, you’ve gone out of your way to avoid talking about your past at all.” He folded his arms because he wanted to reach for her too badly. “I could have told you that’s a surefire way to make sure your past shows up.”
“You could have told me?” She laughed at that, but it was a brittle sound. “What past are you talking about? Your life of duty and family and responsibility? Your good, clean, happy life up here in these beautiful mountains, where every now and again—just to mix things up—you do something spontaneous that doesn’t hurt anybody? That past, Harlan?”
She threw up her hands, and he had the sense that he was finally seeing all of her. That this woman who he’d been waiting so long to see. And it wasn’t that he wanted to see her upset, because he didn’t—but that at least, now, he knew she wasn’t wearing any kind of a mask.
He wanted to tell her that, but her eyes were dark and flashing at him. “My past isn’t like that,” she told him. “The people I come from aren’t good.”
“But you are.” He saw her flinch at that. “You are, Kendall. Do you think I would let you come here if you weren’t? To my home? Here with all these people who matter to me? You were just telling me yesterday about how much things matter to folks around here. Do you think I’m any different?”
“I think,” she said in a quiet sort of voice that didn’t sound like her at all, and he hated it, “that you are a man. And men are willing to put up with a lot if it means—”
“I don’t think you want to finish that sentence.”
Her eyes seemed slick with misery then. Harlan could feel the shift in the air between them, how everything got stark. How even breathing seemed to hurt.
“I’m just pointing out a universal truth,” she began, but it was as if the words were sour in her mouth. They sounded sour between them.
“Do you really think that I’m that hard up for a woman?” he asked her gruffly. “Of all the replies I got to that ad, yours was the only one that interested me. And I figured that we would have a meeting and I’d likely get a lot less interested, but I was willing to take that chance. And sure, I was surprised to find that you’re as pretty as you are. But that’s not why I married you.”
“I think it’s exactly why you married me,” she shot back at him. “And you’re proving my point.”
“I want you to hear me when I say this,” he said in a very low and very urgent voice, moving closer to her so he could stand right there, near enough to reach out a hand and put it on the place where her arms were still crossed. “I want you to understand why I’m saying it. There is no shortage of pretty women in the world, Kendall. And I’ve never had a problem talking to the ones I’ve been lucky enough to meet. But none of them are you.”
She swayed a little at that, but she shook her head. And that defiant chin of hers went up again. “Harlan. I was there.”
“There is no possible way I would have gone through with something as crazy as finding myself a mail-order bride and bringing her home,” he told her flatly, his gaze hard on hers, “if it wasn’t you. You have to know that.”
She shook her head. Once, then again.
“This isn’t helping,” she said, though her voice sounded choked. Rough. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but for me, none of this is worth talking about. And you saying things like this just makes it worse.”
“Why?”
And Harlan could hear the dark current in his voice. The driving need to keep her safe. To make her feel better. To pull her close and show her that everything he’d told her was the truth. All those things at once, and while he was at it, an even greater need to hunt down those women and explain to them that this was not something he would allow.
Not his wife. Not on his watch.
“I’m not who you think I am,” she told him, her voice barely a scratch and her eyes too bright. “I don’t mean that I have some fake identity or separate passport hidden away somewhere. I’m not that fancy. But this costume I’ve been wearing here, of this woman who could belong in a place like this? She doesn’t exist.”
“She’s right here in front of me.”
“I wish I could be her, I really do. But who am I kidding?” Her voice began to rise then, too. “Deep down, people don’t ever really change. They don’t. They just wish they could.”
“I think they can,” Harlan argued. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of determination, and to be honest, most folks don’t have it in them.”
She looked like that had been a sucker punch, but she was staying on her feet. Somehow. “There you go.”
“So what I have to wonder, Kendall, is if it’s being here that let you be the real you for the first time. If you finally dropped that costume you wore out there. No change necessary. Just… no mask.”
And then he watched, in a mixture of astonishment and horror, as her face crumpled. As her shoulders shook, like a sob was ripping through her body.
“This has always been temporary,” she told him, though her voice was even more ragged than before. And he could see the tears begin to streak down her cheeks. “Damn you, Harlan, this was only ever supposed to be temporary.”
“I didn’t take temporary vows,” he growled. “And neither did you.”
She lifted her hands to wipe at her eyes and he could see that she was shaking, buffeted by that same wind he couldn’t feel.
But he could see it rip through her.
“You can trust me,” he told her, another vow that wasn’t the slightest bit temporary. “I promise you, whatever this is, you can trust me, Kendall.”
The sound she made then was like a sob, though he could hear frustration in it too.
“Trusting you is not the problem,” she told him, though she had to fight to get the words out. “Of course I can trust you. Everyone can trust you. You’re trustworthy, Harlan. That’s never going to be the problem.” She pulled in a breath then. It sounded like knives. And she wasn’t even pretending not to cry. Not anymore. “The problem is that you can’t trust me. I’m bad, straight through.”
“Bullshit,” he said, succinctly.
And then he proved it to her.
He stopped playing games. He stopped waiting.
Harlan kissed her, and this time, he didn’t intend to stop.
Not until she could see herself the way he did.