Chapter 6
Red hadn’t been able to think about anything all day except that he was married.
Married!
He’d left here yesterday a single man with too many chores and too many goals and not a second to spare for anything else. Now there was a woman in his house. The most beautiful woman on earth.
Cassie turned from his fireplace in his kitchen, and he thought back to how he’d held her in his arms all the way from town. He’d loved every minute of it.
“H–Hi, Cassie. I see you’re cooking.” He felt like some kind of monster to marry a woman standing on the freshly dug grave of her husband. But he’d seen no way out of the marriage. The crowd wasn’t even going to allow them to move out of the cemetery.
Cassie nodded and didn’t speak. Which gave Red a moment to remember why he’d married her—to save her. And why he shouldn’t have—because she wasn’t a believer.
Marrying Cassie was a sin, the greatest sin of his life.
But he’d had to help her.
But he could have thought of something short of marrying her.
Except he couldn’t think of anything.
But he should have tried harder.
But he’d tried hard!
The events had chased themselves through his mind over and over while he did his chores until he’d wanted to crack his head into a rock a few times, hoping the pain and a big knot on his temple would give him something else to think about.
It was just that at the time Muriel had been nagging him to save the poor little thing.
That overbearing Mort Sawyer had been ignoring Cassie’s pleas and demanding to the parson that they “get it done.” Then Cassie’d started screaming to raise the dead—which considering they were standing on her dead husband at the time, she might have been trying to do exactly that.
Throw in Wade looking on all hungry and evil, and it had all forced Red’s hand.
Except that wasn’t really the whole exact truth.
Yes, it was part of the truth but not all of it.
The only fool bigger than a man who tried to lie to himself was a man who lied to God.
Both were just a pure waste of time. Red was seven kinds of a fool, but at least he was an honest fool.
And the plain honest truth was, he wanted to marry Cassie.
He wanted to marry her almost desperately.
In his own way, he was just as bad as all those ruffians who were fighting over her.
Red couldn’t shake the idea that God had spent a lifetime preparing a perfect mate just for him, a woman somewhere who was a believer above all else, and Red had just gone and tossed God’s plan back in His face by marrying the wrong woman.
Cassie Griffin. Cassie Dawson. God, forgive me.
I do like the idea of her having my name.
Red had done his chores thoroughly, but it was a good thing he’d done them a thousand times before because his mind was not on his tasks.
Even though Rosie was going be hurting bad by the time he milked her, he left the cow until last because he didn’t want to go back to the house to leave the milk.
He almost dropped everything ten times and ran back to the soddy to see if Cassie needed help finding supplies, or lifting a bucket, or squashing a bug, or crossing a mud puddle.
Oh, no doubt about it, he had it bad. He wanted that woman—that overindulged, beautiful, non-Christian woman—desperately.
He sat down to Rosie, and she thanked him for his prolonged neglect by kicking him soundly on his backside.
Probably just what he needed. Soon as he finished, he’d grabbed the bucket and eggs and forced himself not to run to the house.
And now here his wife was, smiling at him—a sweet, shy smile—and holding a heavy pot.
He’d been twenty feet away when he smelled the cooking.
He’d assumed she wouldn’t cook. A person only had to look at her beautiful clothes to know she’d been pampered.
And everyone said Griff was broke because of Cassie’s greed.
Red didn’t listen to gossip, and he held that a man had free will.
And no one, even a wife as pretty and perfect as a China Doll, could make a man spend money if he didn’t want to.
And Griff had been stiff-necked and arrogant all on his own. No one could blame Cassie for that.
Red had seen the Griffin place and knew Cassie didn’t lift a finger outside.
He’d seen Griff working in the garden and hauling water, and everyone knew she bought all her dresses ready-made, so she didn’t sew.
Those were all chores that most women would do, especially when there was so much work on a ranch and Griff didn’t hire any hands.
But Cassie refused. Why, even on trips to town, on the rare occasion that Cassie would lower herself to appear, she rarely left the carriage, sitting alone, ignoring all and sundry. Yes, there was no doubt Cassie was spoiled.
How could a man unspoil a woman? He’d better figure it out, because however Cassie Griffin was, Cassie Dawson was going to have to rough it. There’d be no more silk dresses. Yup, Cassie was going to have to learn, and if it had to be the hard way, so be it.
He felt all strict and manly standing outside with the milk and eggs.
Milking cows and collecting eggs were woman’s work, and she’d better start carrying her weight around here with the stock too.
Then Red asked God for an extra-large dose of wisdom and went inside to the wonderful smell of warm food and the even more wonderful sight of a beautiful woman.
She looked at him with that perfect China Doll face. She blinked her huge brown eyes at him, and maybe he could see why Griff would die trying to keep her happy.
Red stepped inside, setting the eggs down to swing the door shut without taking his eyes off his brand-new, beautiful, perfect wife.
His last thought as the door thudded shut was that he’d have to be careful, or he’d end up dying trying to keep her happy himself.
“Red Dawson, you’re gonna die.” Wade Sawyer lowered his rifle and rolled onto his back with a deep grunt of self-contempt. “I should’ve done it. I should’ve killed him where he stood.”
He’d had Dawson in his sights. One shot and the China Doll would be his. He’d take her away and not bring her back until she had accepted Wade as her husband. Not even his pa would have a chance at her.
He rested against the cool rocks on the overhang near Dawson’s poor excuse for a house. “No one would have known. And even if anyone wondered, who would challenge a Sawyer’s word?”
Something quick and hard twisted in his stomach as the dusk settled in through the branches of an overhanging pine.
A stray bullet could have hit his China Doll.
Wade tried to convince himself he’d held off with the shot because of that.
But it wasn’t true. She was nowhere in sight.
The truth was, he was a coward. He should have killed Dawson.
He should have proved to himself that he was man enough to take what he wanted.
He’d never had the guts to kill a man. He’d had his chances.
Drunken cowpokes looking for trouble. Rustlers.
A cardsharp once who had cheated him. His father’s men were always around, backing him up, as they’d done today with Tom Linscott.
And some of Pa’s hands were salty enough that they’d step in eagerly to do any shooting without Wade having to show his yellow streak.
“I’m a coward. I should have killed him, but I’m too yellow.
” Wade stared up at the sky and hated himself for being weak.
Losing the China Doll today was the final proof of it.
He should have stood up to his pa. He should have told that old tyrant that he’d have to kill his own son in order to claim that beautiful woman.
When they’d heard about Griff, he’d told Pa he wanted her.
His pa had said, “Let’s share her, boy.”
It made Wade sick to think it now, and to stop his head from working, he sat up and fished his pint of whiskey out of his saddlebag and took a deep pull on it, trying to drown out the memory of his father’s filthy suggestion.
His pa had gotten in the habit of thinking himself above the law.
And that included the laws of God. Once a man started thinking that way, everything he wanted to do was right.
Surely, even his father’s arrogance didn’t extend so far that he meant share the China Doll…
Wade’s mind veered away from the thought as he swallowed more of the rotgut.
What Pa had meant was, he’d take the land and Wade could have the woman.
But that wasn’t what Pa said. And even if Pa intended to leave Cassie to Wade, Pa would still be her husband and Wade wouldn’t be able to marry her and treat her honorably.
Even the hint of something so foul happening to the China Doll drove Wade into a rage.
When Pa had said those words, “Let’s share her,” Wade had lunged.
Mort, in his seventies and half crippled from arthritis, had backhanded Wade so hard, he’d been knocked to the floor. Then he’d kicked Wade in the ribs until Wade had cried and begged him to stop.
Mort had grabbed his hair and jerked his head back and roared, “You come at me, you’d better be ready to win, you whinin’ pup. You’re eighteen years old, but you’re lyin’ on your belly crying like a baby girl. Now, I expect you to back me up today.”
Wade should have crawled out of the room and come back with a gun. Instead, he’d followed his father’s orders and humiliated his China Doll. He’d mocked her in front of that crowd. He’d played the fool because he always did.
He hated his father. How often he’d dreamed of having the strength to beat him into the dirt.
How often he’d had nightmares that ended in his own death at his father’s hands.
But his other favorite dream ended when he killed his father.
He woke up half crazy from all those nightmares, and only whiskey would quiet the torment.
Now Wade drew deep on his brown bottle, then lay on his back and nurtured his anger and fed his hatred, focusing it on Red Dawson.