After 11 Years of Marriage, She Asked Her Cowboy Husband, “Do You Still Love Me?”—His Answer Broke Her Heart, Until a Stranger Arrived With a Secret That Changed Everything
PART 2
The g*nsH๏τ blew the front window to splinters, showering glᴀss and burning embers over the hearth rug.
Gabriel threw his six-foot-six frame over Charlotte and little Grace, shielding them with his broad back as another rifle bullet thudded into the pine wall inches above their heads.
“GET BEHIND THE STONE MANTEL!” Gabriel roared, his voice shaking the floorboards.
Outside, wind howled through the broken window, dragging freezing snow and gray gunpowder smoke into the cabin.
Thomas Blackwood didn’t duck. Blood leaked from his wounded cheek, but his lips curved into a cold, deranged sneer as he reached into his leather vest. “Hear that, Gabriel? The old man hasn’t forgiven you. And he’s not leaving Wyoming without his collateral.”
“Shut your mouth, Thomas!” Eleanor Harrow snapped, drawing an ivory-handled revolver from beneath her wool cloak. Her silver hair whipped wildly in the draft. “You brought this butcher to our doorstep!”
Charlotte huddled on the floor, her arms wrapped around trembling eleven-year-old Grace. Her heart hammered against her ribs so violently she could barely draw breath.
Her father.
Fifteen years ago, she had knelt in the freezing mud of a church graveyard, watching a pine coffin lowered into the earth. She had mourned him. She had wept over his letters.
“Papa…?” Charlotte whispered, her voice cracking as tears burned down her face. “Gabriel, tell me that isn’t my father out there. Tell me he didn’t say what I think he said!”
Gabriel didn’t look at her. His mᴀssive hands тιԍнтened around his Winchester rifle until his knuckles went ᴅᴇᴀᴅ white.
“Arthur Hayes didn’t de of consumption fifteen years ago, Charlotte,” Gabriel rasped, his voice raw with a decade of buried agony. “He faked his dath to escape a hanging rope for illegal land swindles.”
“And that’s not all he ran from, is it, Gabriel?”
The gravelly voice thundered through the shattered window frame again, heavy with malice.
Standing out in the swirling blizzard was a tall man clad in a heavy wolf-skin coat. Beneath the brim of his black hat, a lantern cast light over a face lined with deep scars—the jagged mark across his chin unmistakable.
Arthur Hayes.
Beside him sat four mounted riders, carbines resting across their saddle horns.
“Arthur,” Eleanor shouted toward the doorway, her revolver leveled. “The girls were never yours to bargain away!”
“The law says otherwise, Eleanor!” Arthur sneered, his cold eyes sweeping into the room until they locked onto Charlotte. A cruel smile spread across his lips. “Hello, my little girl. You grew up looking so much like your mother. The same stubborn eyes. The same foolish habit of trusting a Blackwood.”
Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat. She pushed herself upright against the wall, stepping between Grace and the window. “You let me starve! You let me work until my hands bled thinking I was an orphan!”
“I gave you to a respectable schoolteacher’s family so you wouldn’t ask questions about the Blackwater silver basin!” Arthur spat into the snow. “And what did you do? You let this hypocrite cowboy put a gold band on your finger! The very man who slept with your mother before you were even born!”
The words hit Charlotte like a bucket of freezing river water.
An affair.
She slowly turned toward Gabriel.
The giant rancher stood rigid, gray eyes glistening with silent, torturous shame.
“Gabriel…?” Charlotte whispered, her world spinning out from under her boots. “My mother…?”
“Charlotte, listen to me,” Gabriel begged, stepping toward her, his voice breaking. “Twenty-two years ago, before I ever knew you existed… Arthur was running an illegal timber syndicate. He beat your mother half to d*ath and locked her away in the hills. She ran to my father’s homestead in the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ of winter. I was nineteen. I hid her… and we fell in love.”
Gabriel swallowed hard, tears slipping into his dark beard.
“Arthur discovered the affair. He sH๏τ your mother on the trail, took you as a newborn infant to punish her, and swore that if I ever spoke her name, he’d burn my family’s ranch to the ground. That’s why Thomas is my son—he was born from an arrangement my father forced upon me to save our family from Arthur’s wrath!”
Charlotte pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. “Then why did you marry me eleven years ago? Was it love… or was it guilt?!”
“I loved you the moment I saw you in that schoolhouse, Charlotte!” Gabriel cried, his voice carrying the full weight of eleven years of silent heartbreak. “I swore before God I would spend every day protecting you from the shadow of your father. But three years ago, Arthur’s men found where Eleanor had hidden Grace’s twin sister… and the blackmail began.”
“Blackmail…?” Charlotte gasped.
Grace began sobbing into Charlotte’s skirts. “Mama… my sister’s name is Clara. She’s locked in the cellar beneath the old mill at Blackwater. They keep her in chains… they told her you abandoned both of us!”
Arthur Hayes let out a harsh, barking laugh from the snow.
“Touching reunion, Blackwood! But the clock is ticking toward midnight! In thirty minutes, the county circuit judge arrives at Blackwater to sign the transfer papers. The deed requires the signatures of both twin daughters to release the four-hundred-thousand-dollar silver trust!”
Arthur pointed a sawed-off sH๏τgun straight through the doorway.
“Send Grace out to the wagon right now, Charlotte! Or my men put a torch to your cabin and let you, your husband, and your bastard son burn in the ashes!”
Thomas Blackwood laughed softly from the corner, pulling a hidden derringer from his boot and leveling it directly at Gabriel’s back.
“Do what he says, father,” Thomas whispered, his gray eyes flashing with lethal venom. “Arthur promised me fifty thousand dollars once the silver rights clear. I’m not letting you ruin my future twice.”
“You miserable coward,” Eleanor hissed, swinging her revolver toward Thomas.
“DON’T MOVE, ELEANOR!” Thomas snapped. “One twitch, and I put a bullet through Gabriel’s spine!”
Gabriel didn’t flinch.
The six-foot-six rancher slowly lowered his rifle to the table, his eyes locking onto Charlotte’s tear-stained face. In his gaze, there was no fear—only the fierce, unbreakable devotion that had carried him through eleven years of silence.
“Charlotte,” Gabriel whispered, his voice low, steady, and clear. “Do you remember the question you asked me at supper?”
Charlotte’s lips trembled. “Gabriel…”
“I love you,” he whispered. “More than my own life. More than my soul. And no man on this earth is taking our daughters.”
Before Thomas could react, Gabriel lunged backward with the terrifying force of a grizzly bear.
His mᴀssive elbow caught Thomas beneath the chin with a sickening crack. Thomas flew into the sideboard, his derringer discharging wild into the floorboards.
“GET TO THE BARN!” Gabriel bellowed, snatching his Winchester from the table. “Eleanor, take Charlotte and Grace through the pantry pᴀssage! NOW!”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Gunfire erupted from the yard, chewing through the log walls.
Eleanor grabbed Charlotte’s hand and hauled her and little Grace toward the rear storage room. Gabriel stood in the open doorway, firing round after round into the blizzard, his mᴀssive frame an iron shield between the outlaws and his family.
They scrambled into the dark, freezing barn as the smell of burning kerosene drifted from the farmhouse.
“The fast team is harnessed,” Eleanor gasped, throwing open the side stall. “We take the river trail straight to Blackwater before your father reaches the mill!”
“No,” Charlotte said, wiping her tears, her green eyes blazing with sudden, terrifying fury.
She reached down to the wall, pulled down her father’s old heavy iron felling axe, and turned toward the door.
“We aren’t running, Eleanor. My father took fifteen years of my life, he stole my children, and he turned my marriage into a nightmare. We’re going to the mill… and we’re bringing my other daughter home.”
Suddenly, the barn’s rear hayloft groaned.
CREAK.
A heavy shadow dropped from the rafters into the straw directly behind Grace.
A rough, gloved hand clamped over the little girl’s mouth before she could utter a sound.
Charlotte spun around, raising the axe.
Standing in the dim lantern light was a tall, scarred man wearing the silver star of a territorial deputy.
In his other hand was a ticking brᴀss mechanism strapped to three sticks of black powder dynamite.
The fuse was already hissing, sparks raining onto the dry straw between their boots.
Five seconds left.
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