Patricia Potter by Lawless

Author:Lawless
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

Monday morning broke clear and still, a golden haze spreading over the horizon. Willow looked out the window for the first sign of a cloud, but there was none. The sky was a light gray-blue, relieved only by a pale yellow sun, which would soon turn egg-yolk dark, hot and fiery.

Yet she felt strangely content, and she knew exactly why. He’d said he would stay.

Willow didn’t know why he made her feel so safe, particularly after the night before. She supposed she should have the same fear so many others did of him; she’d never seen one man drive off so many…and with only words and a gesture, ominous as it had been.

Not even the man at the dance had been that fast at drawing his gun.

Jess was all danger and vitality and strength and grace. And complexity.

He so wanted her to think badly of him: Lobo—outlaw gunslinger, White Apache. An uncaring, unfeeling killer.

Although part of her realized some of that was true, she could see the other Jess shining through the fragile armor like a nugget of gold long hidden beneath the surface. She’d learned to spot it long ago, when she’d nurtured young boys at her father’s school, many of them frightened, many of them belligerent because of that fear.

She knew her childhood had been a strange one, and that it had made her see things differently than other people. Her mother, who had desperately wanted a boy so she could name him George for Willow’s father, had died when Willow was born. Willow had grown up without the nurturing of a mother, and she’d grown up quickly. She’d also become playmate to the boys who boarded at the school, and then big sister and finally a substitute mother. She’d played with them, reasoned with them, and taught them, and she’d learned a great deal about people.

She’d learned that giving trust to a boy considered “bad” usually brought rewards. She’d learned that fighting often hid loneliness. She’d learned that nearly everyone wanted love, even when they protested against it. Perhaps those who did were the ones who wanted, and needed, it most of all. And she had, in those years, learned how to breach most defenses.

Time. Patience. Love. They’d worked with Chad, who had trusted no one for years, and Estelle, who had known nothing but abuse, and even Brady.

Jess had had more time to strengthen his defenses, but they were beginning to crumble, one at a time. She thought something quite magnificent would emerge.

Or was it too late? A little voice pierced her optimism. She still knew so little about him. She still didn’t know why he had taken up the gun, or how he felt when he—

But she wouldn’t think about that, not just then.

She scolded herself for daydreaming. One more week, and school would be out for a month for the harvest. She would have time then to spend with Jess, to learn more about him.

Willow took one last look out the window, and her gaze was caught by movement at the corral.

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