Page 14 of The Copper Heir
It spoke volumes for Ship’s character that she knew exactly what he meant. Ship was a big talker, but he wasn’t known for being particularly eloquent or honorable. “My mother wasn’t always a prostitute. She was a schoolteacher first.”
His eyes widened for a moment in surprise before he hid the reaction and she realized that he hadn’t known that. She was used to people in Whiskey Hollow knowing all about her mother and how Ship had brought her and her bastard daughter to town from that fancy Helena brothel one day years ago. She still remembered how difficult it had been for her to leave the women at the brothel behind, the only family Emmaline had ever known. Her mother had thought she was doing the right thing for her daughter, giving her a real home with a real family. She hadn’t realized until it was too late that a legitimate husband and shelter wasn’t what made a family. Ship had never been intentionally cruel to them, but his crassness, his inattention and boorish nature had never made them feel at home.
Shaking herself out of the memory and to cover the gaffe, she continued on. “She brought her books along when Ship married her and we moved to his farm. She taught me what she could. Ship never really cared to learn anything...from her or anyoneelse. Pete let her teach him to read, but only just barely, and that’s only after she threatened to shoot his horse if he didn’t learn.”
He laughed, a gentle breath of air that made her smile. Their gazes met and held over that smile. “She sounds like a...special woman, your mother.”
“She was.” Her smile faltered as she experienced a pang at the loss all over again. A cough had ravaged her mother’s body one summer and hadn’t let up until she was gone. It had been over seven years now and it still hurt.
His green eyes darkened, becoming solemn. “I’m sorry you lost her.”
She nodded, trying to determine why that look from him touched her so deeply.
“If your mother’s gone, why do you stay with him?”
She shrugged, not daring to mention her sisters. She and the girls had been alone when her mother had died, Ship hadn’t come back until weeks later. She’d asked to leave then, to take the girls with her and go back to Victoria House knowing that Glory, the brothel’s madam, would help her find respectable work with her connections. Through the madam’s regular letters to Emmaline’s mother, she knew that while she ran a functioning brothel, women in trouble went to her all the time in search of aid. Sometimes they decided to become prostitutes, sometimes they simply stayed for a brief sanctuary and a train ticket out of town.
Ship had refused to even consider it, telling her that she could be a whore if she wanted, but she wouldn’t take his girls. After that, he hadn’t delivered any more letters from Glory. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to part with his children, even though she knew their best chance at a good life was to be away from him. She’d resigned herself then to life with Ship for alittle longer. Just until she could figure out a way to get the three of them away safely.
But that opportunity had never presented itself and here they were in danger. She couldn’t wait anymore. She had to get them to safety, even if it meant doing something unspeakable.
“Where would I go? I don’t have binoculars edged in gold.” That wasn’t completely true. Though she didn’t have money, once a man had asked her to leave with him, a widower who had worked at the stable in town for a few months before moving farther west. He’d become a regular at the saloon and one night, slightly drunk and missing his wife, he’d kissed her. It had been pleasant and repeated on other nights as well, but when he’d suggested that she leave with him, she’d gently refused because she couldn’t leave her sisters. Besides, leaving with him would’ve been unfair, because she’d only be using his affection to take her away from Whiskey Hollow.
“No, I suppose you don’t.” Suitably chastened, he looked back out over the valley.
“How is it that you do? You’re an outlaw like Ship. How is it you’re so successful? I always thought outlaws barely got by on the money they steal.”
“Some do. We earn a decent living.”
“No, there’s more,” she prodded. “I could believe that from Reyes or even the giant—”
“The giant?” He laughed and whipped his head back around to look at her.
“The big one,” she explained and raised her hand to the low ceiling of their little hideaway. “He dresses fine, but there’s something else, something underneath, a lack of refinement.”
“You’re good, Emmy. I was educated back East.” He wasn’t laughing anymore, but he still smiled at her. It was the brief half-smile that she was coming to crave from him.
“Then why did you leave that world and become an outlaw?”
He shrugged. “There’s more to life than binoculars edged in gold. My brother needed me. I had to help him.”
She studied him closely, trying her best to see what lurked behind those words. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask more, to find out all there was to know about him, but she knew that he wouldn’t answer. The situation they found themselves in wouldn’t allow him to answer. Why was she so willing to forget that with him? She looked away from his mesmerizing face and drew in a breath. “I suppose that includes stealing people who don’t belong to you.”
Instead of letting it drop, he touched her chin, his fingertips making her pulse race as he tilted her face back to him. His eyes were heavy and intense as they pierced hers. “I want you to understand that I never wanted to take you. I promise that when this is over I’ll take you back home if that’s where you want to go. In the meantime, I’ll keep you safe.”
As if fate was giving him a chance to prove true to his words, a bullet ricocheted off the boulder beside them, spraying them with bits of rock. The explosion of the gunshot seemed to fill the entire valley below them. Before she could react, he grabbed her and rolled with her in his arms, his larger body taking the brunt of the fall before coming to rest on top of her, his arms cradled around her head as another shot tried to find its way into their sanctuary.
Waiting just long enough to make sure that a third shot wouldn’t attempt to find them, he rose up to his knees, just to sprawl back down on her as another bullet attempted and failed to find them. “Goddammit!”
Her eyes stared up into his when he rose to his elbows above her to double-check that she was fine. “Are you hit?” she asked.
“No.” He should have been watching for the bastard tracking them, not letting his captivating charge distract him. If he didn’tget his head on straight he wouldn’t get them out of this alive, much less return her home. “You’re not hurt?”
“No.”
Now that the shooting had stopped, he moved to his knees, his body continuing to shield hers as he leaned forward to take a peek through the narrow gap between the boulders. The view was obscured, but he could make out the shadow of a man just below the tree line, his body partially hidden by a ridge of rock nearer the bottom of the slope. Hunter wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot, but neither would he. The rocks would protect them as long as they stayed low.
Moving back into his original position over her, he opened his mouth to reassure her, but the words hung in his throat. Beautiful wasn’t the word that would’ve come to mind when he’d first seen her. That word was reserved for the debutantes with their practiced smiles and perfect coiffures. Arresting had been more appropriate for her. She was pretty, but there was something about her that made you look twice just to make sure the glint you saw in her eye hadn’t been imagined. She was real in a way that no other woman had been for him.
