Rocky Mountain Redemption Read online

  He didn’t know if he was ready for that, either.

  While she tucked the leaf into her reticule, Ben jumped down from the wagon and crossed to her side, lifting her down. “It’s only fair to warn you…”

  “Warn me about what?” She burrowed a hand in the pocket of her cloak.

  “Some of the busybodies in the congregation will probably beeline for you just as soon as the pastor says his last Amen.” Winking, he crooked an arm and held it out for her then led her up the steps of the white clapboard church. “Don’t mind them if it happens, though. They’re fairly harmless. Besides, they’ll love you.”

  Upon opening the door, he stepped into the harmonious sound of his favorite hymn. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt as proud as he did now, walking into church with a lovely young woman beside him.

  He had to remind himself that Callie was Max’s widow.

  And his employee.

  But he sure did have a hard time remembering that.

  While the congregation sang the last strain, he noticed heads turning, staring at him as though he’d brought the Queen of England into their midst. Ben was certain that his appearance here with Callie would be an all-out shock. Over the years, the townsfolk had finally gathered that he wasn’t in the market for a wife and, for the most part, had ceased trying to set him up with every eligible young woman this side of the Rocky Mountains.

  That had been a relief of epic proportions.

  He wasn’t sure he was in the market now, but he couldn’t deny the attraction and growing feelings he felt for Callie. And he sure couldn’t ignore them since they seemed to consume his every thought.

  With a hand placed lightly at her back, he ushered her into a pew toward the back where Joseph and Katie stood singing. The eager way Katie greeted Callie, and the way Callie seemed to glow from that warm acceptance, made his heart swell with an odd sense of satisfaction.

  When the song ended and the people turned in the pews to greet each other, Joseph leaned toward Ben. “You’re putting the fear of God into some of these women.” He shot Ben a playful grin.

  “What?” Ben asked, confused.

  “Katie tells me that Callie’s liable to make a stir among the single men, with how pretty she looks.” He leaned back in the pew then, all casual and carefree, as if he’d just made some benign comment on the weather.

  Katie answered with a shake of her head and bridled grin.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben could see a pink blush touching Callie’s cheeks.

  Throughout the service, he found himself inarguably distracted. First…by the simple fact that Callie, beautiful and extraordinarily resilient, was seated here beside him. And second…by the guarded reactions he witnessed from her. Her tightly balled fists. The rigid posture she’d maintained throughout the service. She closed her eyes and tensed several times, as if bracing herself for a regular old fire-and-brimstone, pulpit-pounding message. Hugged her arms in unyielding protection of herself—a stark contrast to the single-minded strength she normally displayed.

  But it was the visible sigh she gave at the benediction that made his heart fall hard. It was as if she was inordinately grateful to have made it through the church service without some scathing rebuke aimed her way.

  The image still weighed him down when they arrived at Joseph and Katie’s house to join his family for dinner. The way she seemed to trudge on in the face of her apparent fears made him want to pry away all of the demons of her past.

  Though right now it seemed she was facing a new demon.

  Aaron.

  From the moment they’d stepped foot in the house, Ben could see and feel the heated stare coming from his brother. For some reason, Aaron’s mistrust and dislike of Callie had swelled like some infected wound in the past two days. Though he had no intention of making a scene about it, Ben was bound and determined to wrangle Aaron aside and pin him with a few pointed questions.

  “Callie, I want you to meet my family. Of course, you already know Katie,” he said.

  Katie threw her arms around Callie in a huge hug. “This is my husband, Joseph,” she said, stepping back. “He’s the second Drake brother.”

  When Callie reached for Joseph’s hand, Ben noted that the usual awkwardness that new folks felt with Joseph’s blindness didn’t seem to be present. At all. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Good to meet you, too,” Joseph greeted congenially. “Sorry if I embarrassed you with the comment in church.”

  Her carefree chuckle made Ben proud. “That’s all right.”

  “Katie’s told me a lot about you.”

  Callie shifted a surprised look to Katie.

  “All good, Callie,” Katie affirmed.

  “This is Zach,” Ben continued. “He’s the baby of the bunch.”

  The past months that Zach had spent working on a cattle ranch just north of town had done him a world of good. At twenty-two, he seemed comfortable in his own skin. Even sported a manner of contentment about him that had been refreshing to see. And he looked healthy, had packed on hard work-induced muscle. Though he was a good three inches shorter than Ben’s six feet three inches, Zach made up for it in his sturdy build and quick speed.

  Zach held out his hand to Callie. “It’s nice to meet you, Callie. Good to have you join us today.”

  “I’m glad to be here.”

  “I hear you’ve been spending time reading classic literature,” Ben aimed at Zach, chuckling when his brother rolled his eyes in mock annoyance. “Shakespeare and the like… Maybe you can do a little recitation for us today?”

  “Yeah, what do you say?” Joseph added.

  “What is this? Pick on your little brother day?” Sighing, Zach angled an exasperated gaze down at Callie. “They love to do that to me. They think it makes them all big and powerful. Honestly, I doubt they could even understand the stuff.”

  “Really,” she braved, sliding a hand to her mouth.

  “Well, that’s insulting enough,” Ben parried.

  Zach stuck Ben with a good-natured glare. “Ya know, you’ll rue the day you decided to pick on me.”

  “You’re all talk,” Ben retorted in dismissal. “Powerful as a charging bull, but harmless as a nursing pup.”

  “Rue the day?” Joseph cracked with an ire-provoking smirk. “You’ve definitely had your nose in Shakespeare again, haven’t you?”

  “So what if I had?”

  “Nothing.” Joseph crossed his arms at his chest, shaking his head in innocence. “Not a thing.”

  Zach sighed. “Don’t think that just because you can’t see, Joseph, I won’t take you.”

  Joseph pulled his shoulders back, his deep amber eyes sparkling as he rubbed his hands together. “I’ll be waiting for you. Listening for your every move.”

  “And this is Aaron,” he said, gesturing to where Aaron leaned into the corner of the room.

  Callie stepped forward and held her hand out to Aaron.

  When Aaron merely looked from her hand to her face as if determining whether he could stand touching her, Ben almost decked him. Right then. Right there. Scene or no scene. No matter what bias Aaron had against her because of Max, it didn’t warrant that kind of rude behavior.

  At Ben’s scathing, dart-throwing gaze, Aaron finally came to his senses and stepped up to shake her hand, but the look in his eyes bordered on sheer malice as he peered down at Callie.

  “Callie, would you be so kind as to help me in the kitchen?” said Katie in a rescuing request.

  “Of course.” Callie slid her hand from Aaron’s grasp. When she turned to follow Katie, she avoided Ben’s searching gaze and whisked right past him.

  Not a second later, Ben jerked a thumb toward the door, fully expecting Aaron to follow, and if he didn’t…well, then Ben would drag him out. When the door closed, Aaron, Joseph and Zach were all standing on the porch with Ben.

  “What was that all about?” He balled his fists at his sides. Glared at Aaron.

  Aaron managed a
disbelieving snort. “What are you doin’ bringing her to church? And then here?”

  “We invited her for dinner, Aaron.” Joseph raked a hand through his hair. “Katie wouldn’t have it any other way. Neither would I.”

  With a rough shake of his head, Aaron narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care if the president of the United States invited her. She has no business being here.”

  Ben jammed his hands to his waist, his blood nearing the boiling point. “She has just as much business being here or at church as you or I do.”

  “Well, if she’s fooled you that bad, then you’re twice as blind as Joseph here,” he spat out, slapping the back of his hand against Joseph’s broad chest.

  “Keep my eyes out of this.” Joseph raised his hands.

  “Sorry.”

  “What is the matter with you, Aaron?” Ben challenged.

  The loathing that had cloaked Aaron’s words hung in such an awkward fashion for him—as if wearing an overcoat four sizes too big. He’d gone through a difficult time in the past months, but even that didn’t account for the bitter edge with which he spoke.

  Ben attempted to tamp down his ire. “I mean, I know that you and Max weren’t exactly on the best of terms when he left, but why do you have to hold that over Callie’s head?”

  Aaron’s jaw muscle visibly pulsed. “It’s not right that Max could plant an unwanted kiss on Ellie-girl without so much as a thought. He did it just to spite me, even though he knew good and well that her lips were for me, and me alone.”

  “I’m sorr—” Ben began.

  “Then he added insult to injury and blistered me in a fight,” Aaron added, his jaw so tense, Ben thought his tendons might snap. “It’s something I’ll never forget.”

  Ben remembered well how enraged Aaron had been that night. Drunk, Max had stumbled in one evening shortly before he took off for good, and had helped himself to a kiss with poor unsuspecting Ellie. She’d tried to push him away and wriggle from his grasp, but he was too strong and too drunk.

  Settling his hands at his waist, Ben commanded Aaron’s attention. “It was wrong what he did to Ellie and to you.”

  “It was wrong what he did to me. To Ellie. To you. To all of us,” Aaron hissed, throwing his hands up. “But for some reason, you had to go after him to try to make amends. Not once, but several times.”

  “I’d hoped to reason with him.” Ben felt the old, familiar clamping in his gut at the memory of each failed endeavor. “To talk some sense into him.”

  “He was weak. Weak willed.” Aaron pulled his mouth into a rigid line and gave his head a stiff shake. “And it seems to me that if you have to talk someone into doing what’s right, then it’d be just as easy for them to be talked out of it. They’ve gotta want to do what’s right. And Max, he never did.”

  Ben’s whole body tensed, ready to retaliate with some kind of excuse, but Aaron made sense. “You’re probably right. As many times as we’d try to convince Max that he was heading down the wrong path, he never would turn around for good.”

  Aaron jammed a finger into Ben’s chest. “Exactly. And if he did it for a short season, then it wouldn’t take more than a gentle breeze to blow him into the wrong path again.”

  “I had to try,” he finally said. “I promised Ma I’d raise him to walk the right path.” And he’d failed. Miserably.

  “I don’t think Ma or Pa, either one, expected you to raise the dead.” Aaron jammed his hands into his pockets. “And as far as I’m concerned, that would’ve been an easier task.”

  Joseph gave a frustrated sigh. “Ben carried more responsibility with Max than you may realize, Aaron. It wasn’t easy being the oldest and having to look after all of us.”

  “I’m not questioning that. What I am questioning is why, with the way Max betrayed us time and again, he feels the need to look after that girl in there.” Aaron cast a glance over his shoulder to the front door. “She just can’t be trusted. Max said himself that he’d shacked up with some harlot.”

  “You watch your mouth,” Ben warned, his voice low as he glared at his brother.

  Aaron met his icy, angry stare. “That woman in there helping Katie is one-and-the-same. Do you know that?”

  “You know how easily Max lied.” Joseph’s jaw pulsed.

  “I just met her, but I sure can’t imagine Callie playing the harlot.” Zach’s eyes grew wide. “Come on, Aaron…lighten up. Does she look like one to you?”

  Aaron narrowed his scorn-filled gaze.

  Ben stood firm, the ready contempt Aaron exhibited raining down upon him. Images of the dress Callie had shown up in flashed like streaks of lightning through his mind, the tattered and worn ruby-red dress, cut so low in front that the word decent would come nowhere near describing the garment.

  But nothing about her—not her actions, the way she walked, the way she handled herself around other men—would come close to measuring up to her being a harlot.

  “She just doesn’t have it in her,” he finally said.

  Aaron raised his eyebrows in a way that had Ben ready to haul off and hit him. “She’s a harlot, Ben, and she’s going to rob you blind, just like Max did. Mark my words. Even from the grave Max is trying to tear us apart. And he’s using his widow—his harlot—to do it.”

  Ben jammed his brother against the side of the house, doing everything in his power to contain the fierce anger rushing through his veins. “I’m warning you now, if you don’t shut your mouth about this, I’ll shut it for you,” Ben ground out. But even as the words crossed his lips he wondered why he felt the need to so vehemently defend Callie. Something about this sprightly young woman had snagged every single protective bone in his body. Maybe his heart, too.

  Chapter Ten

  Callie had never felt quite so wanted. Or unwanted, where Ben’s brother Aaron was concerned.

  She glanced around the kitchen in the doctor’s office, searching for the thick pad she needed to lift the steaming teakettle of water from the stove.

  Aaron was nothing if not surly. Proud. Arrogant, really. She hadn’t shrunk back from his unfriendly, cold greeting that—she recalled with a generous amount of indignation—had come as hard as tack from him. If not for dear Katie saving the day and suggesting Callie keep her company in the kitchen, Callie might still be standing there, five days later, toe-to-toe and nose to chest with Aaron.

  His reaction only confirmed Max’s descriptions of his brothers, and had irritated her almost as bad as a rock in her shoe. As far as she was concerned, she’d spent far too much time and mental energy trying to reason his response. Maybe he harbored more ill will toward Max than could be overcome. Or maybe he simply had a strong aversion to auburn hair.

  With a dismissive shrug and sigh, she headed toward the exam room where Ben waited with a twitchy Mrs. Duncan. Whatever had caused him to be so aloof, she wasn’t about to let it waylay her.

  Things were finally starting to look up.

  Callie hadn’t ever felt so useful. Between cooking hearty meals for Ben, cleaning his office and home, and assisting him with patients, her days were full. And very rewarding.

  On the way home from knitting with Katie one day, she’d even gotten an offhand chance to talk with one of the girls from down at the Golden Slipper. Callie had beelined to strike up a conversation with the woman.

  Someday, after she had the debt paid off and a little nest egg for herself, she wanted to maybe try to help some of the ladies. Where others looked on them with a derisive snort, Callie had seen another side to the women in her months of cleaning for Whiteside. She had to believe that those women yearned for something more than what they had settled for. That somewhere hidden beneath their hard exteriors were vulnerable young women in need of a friend and a fresh start. And Callie wanted to be that for them.

  She entered the exam room, feeling bolstered by the fact that she was making a difference. The wages she’d received so far had been generous. In fact, if things continued as they had been the past ten days, s
he could well deliver the remainder of the balance to Lyle Whiteside by Christmas. Though this would be her first Christmas without Max and she was sure to feel that loss, being freed from his gambling debt, and from a mean-spirited bully who stood for everything she detested, would be an enormous weight off her shoulders.

  Feeling a wonderfully foreign sense of control over the direction of her life, she set the kettle next to the basin and smiled. “Here’s the hot water you asked for.”

  “Thank you.” Ben glanced her way as he stood in front of Mrs. Duncan.

  Callie turned and took in the plump woman who sat perched on the examination table, her full skirts draped around her in a fluff of light gray-and-peach print fabric. Like a hen refusing to leave her nest, she folded her hands in her lap all prim and proper, while fiery-red wisps of hair frayed from her chignon in an unruly contrast.

  “So, you’re Miss Callie…” A sedate, almost deflated smile contorted Mrs. Duncan’s thin lips.

  “Just Callie,” she responded, unable to miss Ben’s quick wink. “How do you do?”

  “I saw you at church a few days back. But land’s sakes, I can’t seem to go far without some soul or t’other stopping to speak at me,” she muttered, somewhat self-importantly. The way the woman worked her hands and leaned forward slightly conjured up unpleasant images of a spindly spider preparing to cocoon its prey.

  Callie bit back an amused grin. At least it was glaringly apparent what this lady was here for. Information.

  Callie hated to disappoint her.

  “By the time I’d made my way clear to the back of the church, why, you were up and gone already.” Her haphazard eyebrows rose in awkward arches over her eyes. “Seems that you made an awful fast escape.”

  “Actually, I lingered for several minutes.” Callie stepped over to the cupboard and retrieved a tray of clean and readied medical tools for Ben. She took shamefully morbid satisfaction in lifting a sharp, gleaming scalpel from the metal tray, as though inspecting it. “I had the pleasure of meeting some of the church members. Very nice people you have here in Boulder.”