Abbie's Outlaw. Victoria Bylin

forced to marry to hide the shame?

      A daughter…his flesh and blood…

      John’s heart thundered against his ribs. The western sky was on fire and the mountains were as black as soot. As a coyote howled in the distance, another joined in the lament. The wailing reached one high note after another, ceaseless and haunting, until the night was full of pain.

      Was this how Abbie had felt when her monthly hadn’t started on time? Had she wanted to hide from the facts as badly as he did now? There was no getting around the evidence. Someone had told Susanna that he was her father, and Abbie hadn’t flat-out denied it. The girl was fourteen years old and, judging by Abbie’s description, looked just like him.

      He could only hope Robert Windsor had been a good man who had married Abbie for love. Perhaps he’d been a childless widower who’d wanted a family. The thought gave John a measure of comfort.

      Pushing to his feet, he walked to the back of the house where he lived in the guest room because it offered more privacy. He didn’t even allow Mrs. Cunningham inside. Once a week he brought his laundry out in a basket, and the housekeeper left everything folded by the door. He never made the bed, and he only opened the curtains when he needed to wake up with the sun.

      Thinking of his promise to meet Robbie, John pulled back the drapes. His gaze fell on the jagged pines behind the parsonage and then rose to the stars. He usually took strength from the glimmering sky, but tonight he felt sober and sad. Even the crickets sounded lonely.

      Lowering his head, he looked down at the desk where he wrote sermons and kept his two Bibles. One was so new the leather creaked when he opened it. The other had been a gift from Silas and was falling apart. The rest of the furniture included a wardrobe he didn’t use and a double bed he truly appreciated. Three years on a prison cot had given him a taste for soft mattresses, and this one was stuffed with feathers and down.

      Turning away from the desk, John shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of the chair. He had a rule. He never left the parsonage without the coat, and he never wore the coat in this room. He needed a place where he could snore and belch and just be a man. For the same reason, he slept buck-naked. Sometimes a man had to let his skin breathe.

      This was one of those times, so he stripped off his clothes and stretched facedown on the bed, shifting his hips to avoid a lump in the sheets. As he tugged on the cotton to smooth it, he thought of Abbie. She’d have a straw tick and the bedsheets would stink of lye. The girl in Kansas had appreciated fine things, like the satin nightgown he’d lifted off her shoulders.

      “Ah, hell,” John muttered.

      He could still feel Abbie’s lips, soft and unschooled. Her breasts had been round and tipped with rosy nipples that he’d been the first man to kiss. She had explored him, too. Generous by nature, she’d been far too brave for her own good.

      As for himself, he’d just been lustful. Except fifteen years had passed, and it was still Abbie’s touch he felt in dreams too personal to share. In time he’d come to believe that he loved her. John clenched the sheets until his fists ached. His thighs tensed and so did his belly. Every nerve in his body was alive and spoiling for a certain kind of fight.

      It wasn’t often that John wanted a woman. He’d put that need behind him when he’d put on his black coat for the first time, and he’d kept it there by focusing on women like Emma Dray. They admired his good looks and his passion for heaven. They said his sermons were brilliant and wise and told him he was a good man.

      They didn’t know him at all, but Abbie did. She knew he had bad dreams, and she’d understood when he wouldn’t talk about them. John had changed a lot over the years. He wasn’t the same kid who had seduced her, but beneath the coat he was still just a man, and a hot-blooded one at that.

      Abbie had been wise to choose the fleas.

      You goddamn slut!

      Abbie was back in Washington, trapped in her bedroom and using her arms to protect her face from Robert’s blows. Oh, God. Oh, God. He was ripping her hands from her face, squeezing her throat and calling her unspeakable names.

      “Bitch!” Only it wasn’t Robert’s voice that thundered through the boardinghouse walls.

      Robbie sat up on the pallet next to her bed. “Ma? Who’s shouting?”

      Abbie pushed to her feet and put on her wrapper. “I don’t know, but someone needs help.”

      “No! Don’t go.”

      Her son’s worry tugged at her heart, but she had been on the other side of that wall. Tying her robe, she said, “I’m going to knock on the door while you get Sally. Her room’s at the bottom of the stairs, remember?”

      Robbie jumped to his feet and pulled on his clothes. As they entered the hallway, she squeezed her son’s shoulder. “You better hurry.”

      After he raced down the stairs, Abbie tapped on the door next to hers. “Hello?”

      When no one answered, she pressed her ear to the wood. A whimper penetrated the barrier, followed by a man’s cursing. Abbie was about to twist the knob when the door opened a crack, revealing a young woman she had met at supper. Her name was Beth and she was looking down, trying to hide her face behind a curtain of golden-brown hair.

      Abbie stuck her foot in the door. “I can help you,” she whispered.

      Just as Beth moved her lips to reply, someone yanked her back into the room. Shrieking, the girl tumbled to the floor as Abbie stepped over the threshold. Sweat and whiskey hung in the air as a man the size of horse grabbed Beth’s forearm and tried to haul her to her feet.

      “Get up!” he ordered.

      “I can’t.” Clutching her ribs, Beth slumped to the floor.

      Abbie knew from experience that provoking a devil made him more violent, so she kept her voice low. “What’s your name, sir?”

      He looked over his shoulder and wrinkled his brow as if her good manners had confused him. “It’s Ed.”

      “Hi, Ed. I’m Abigail. Are you hungry? I bet Sally has pie and coffee downstairs.”

      As he let go of Beth’s hand, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Who the hell are you?”

      Abbie’s knees were knocking, but she had to keep Ed talking until help arrived. “My name’s Abbie. I’m no one.”

      “Well, Miss No One. You should have minded your own business.”

      Abbie prayed Ed would take the easy way out and let both women leave, but he raked her with his eyes, lingering on her breasts and her mouth. She knew all about bullies. They fed on fear, so she swallowed hers as if it were vinegar. She was about to offer to wrap Beth’s ribs when Ed curled his lips into a smirk and lifted a leather sheath off the dresser. Judging by the shape, it held a bowie knife. Weighing the threat to Beth if she ran for help, Abbie eyed the door, only to see Ed slap it shut.

      Focusing on the immediate need, Abbie stepped to Beth’s side and helped her to her feet. Leering at them both, Ed unsheathed the knife and turned it back and forth in the moonlight, inspecting the blade for sharpness with his thumb. Because knives left marks that were hard to explain, Abbie felt fairly certain he didn’t intend to use it. The motion was meant to terrify them, just as Robert had terrified her with lit cigarettes.

      As long as she and Beth weren’t trapped against the wall, she could buy time. Surely Sally had sent for the sheriff. But what if he wouldn’t come? What if he shrugged off a woman’s bruises as a family matter? Abbie’s shoulder throbbed with the tension. She’d been trapped in this alley before and she still bore the scars.

      “Reverend!”

      Jarred awake by pounding on the front door, John yanked on his clothes and jammed his feet into his boots. It had to be a stranger. People in Midas knew to come to the back door at night. As he fumbled with a button, the pounding turned into a drumbeat.