“I didn’t?” Dory frowned and straightened her ruby brooch. “Surely I did. You’re just misremembering.”
“No. Ace told me. He did it with all the boys, so I guess he felt it was his responsibility to talk with me, too.”
“Oh, dear.” Dory continued to frown. “What did he tell you?”
Eden hadn’t felt like laughing since she’d blown a farewell kiss to Matthew. But she rocked back on the hay bale now, hugging her middle as she gave way to bone-melting mirth. “He said if I fell in love, I should always carry a penny in my bodice.”
“Whatever for?”
Eden giggled. “If my beau grew amorous, I was to hold that penny tight between my knees.”
“Dear God.” Dory cupped a hand over her eyes and sank back down on the hay bale to laugh with her daughter. “Men. God love him, he meant well.” Another frown stole over Dory’s lovely face. “I can’t believe I failed to talk with you. Where was my head at?”
“You were so worried about teaching me which fork to use for my salad, I think you forgot.”
Dory dissolved into laughter again. “You’re probably right. I hadn’t been intimate with a man for so long, I could barely remember what it was like.” A dreamy expression moved across her countenance. “Well, that’s an overstatement. I remember very well. It was just a joy that I’d lost, so I guess I chose not to dwell on it.” Her face seemed to glow as she thought back. Then she turned to look questioningly at Eden. “Does your Matthew . . . well, does he make you feel as if he just handed you a handful of stars?”
Eden smiled and lightly rubbed her hand over her stomach. “He makes me feel as if he has handed me the moon as well, Mama. Maybe the whole universe.”
Dory chuckled and patted Eden’s knee. Standing again, she turned, her smile gone, her expression compelling. “From this point on, Eden Coulter, it is no longer about only you and Matthew. You must force yourself to eat. If you can’t sleep at night, you must take naps during the day. And when your thoughts grow gloomy, you must find a way to cheer yourself up. Babies in the womb don’t thrive when their mothers are upset. It is your responsibility to make sure Matthew Coulter’s child grows strong within you, makes it into the world, and lives to adulthood. If you can’t do that for yourself, then do it for Matthew.”
“I just can’t believe I may be pregnant.”
Dory rolled her eyes. “I’ll see how you feel about that in the morning when you’re feeling nauseated again.”
After that conversation, Eden spent a lot of time sitting on Ace and Caitlin’s veranda swing, watching the horizon for a horse and rider in the distance. One week became two, and two became three. Following her mother’s advice, Eden tried to cheer herself up by writing Matthew letters. She poured her heart out onto the paper, telling him how very much she loved him, about the possibility that she was pregnant, and how eagerly she awaited his return. She addressed each letter to him in Crystal Falls, general delivery, and asked Ace to mail them for her. If Matthew returned—and she clung to the belief that he would—he could read the letters someday when they moved to Oregon.
Matthew had been on the Sebastians’ trail for over three weeks when he settled under a juniper tree one afternoon while resting the horse and mule. Eden. God, how he missed her. Sometimes he found himself selfishly wishing that he had invited her to come with him. She wouldn’t have hesitated to accept. He knew that. But then he might have been instrumental in getting her killed. He had no idea how this would end, only that he was losing his enthusiasm for the chase and starting to question his sanity.
As always, the Sebastians were as unpredictable as a bunch of brainless hens being chased by a fox, flitting in first one direction and then another. Matthew remembered telling Eden that he’d run them to ground, lickety-split, and be back before she knew it. She hadn’t believed him, and now he had to admit maybe she’d been right. He might be tracking those bastards for another three years. Hell, so far as he knew, possibly even six or seven. In seven years, Eden would be thirty. Her dreams of having lots of babies might never happen if she waited that long for him, and deep in his heart, he knew she would.
If he was gone for years, a part of him hoped she would have him claimed legally dead and get on with her life, but another part wanted so much to be the man she woke up with every morning. And therein lay the dilemma for Matthew. He no longer felt certain he should be out here. Damn it. Maybe Eden had been right about everything else as well, and he’d just been too blind to see it. When they’d been ambushed by the Sebastians, they’d both come close to dying. Matthew would never forget his startled amazement and incredulous relief when he realized that help had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A miracle? He’d gone up on that slope to die, praying Eden would do as he said and run, but bless her brave heart, she’d stayed to spend her last spare bullets in an attempt to save him.
God truly had granted them both a second chance, and he was an idiot to be throwing it away. Why wasn’t he with the woman he loved, making the most of the opportunity God had given them? Instead, he was riding toward possible death. As Eden had said, nothing he ever did would bring Livvy back. Nothing he did would wipe out what had happened to Eden, either.
So what was he doing? He was on a fool’s mission—that was what. He’d said his good-byes to Livvy. She’d even made his watch glint gold in the starlight to tell him he had her blessing. Or so he would always believe. Yet here he was, still chasing her killers. Matthew sighed and leaned his head against the tree. His hat knocked forward over his eyes, creating a blind from the sun. Pictures swam through his mind of the night when he’d rescued Eden, what he’d witnessed before slipping into the Sebastians’ camp to free her. When he thought about what those animals had done to her, he couldn’t help but want to spill their blood. Eden believed his sole purpose for being out here was to avenge Livvy’s death, but that was only partly true. Yes, the bastards needed to pay for what they’d done to his first wife, but more important to Matthew now was stopping them from hurting anyone else and punishing them for what they’d done to Eden. She was still alive. She had to live with the memories. Livvy was up in heaven, singing with the angels, not down here, going through hell.
He would never forget when he’d stood on a creek bank one night and watched a beautiful young woman scour her skin raw with sand. I’m fine, Matthew. I lived through it and came out on the other side. And God love her, she had. Maybe he’d helped her in some small way, but mostly Eden’s recovery gave testimony to her incredible strength of spirit. She had been determined not to allow the Sebastians to ruin her life, and she’d won the battle.
Now she wanted to enjoy that life, grab hold of it with both hands and live it to the fullest. And she needed him beside her to do that. So what was he doing here, chasing men who were as difficult to catch as fruit flies? Eden wanted him there to hold her in his arms. She wanted him there to give her his babies. She wanted him there so they might build a future together.
A pent-up breath shuddered from Matthew’s chest. His body went limp. He needed to get his head on straight and go home to his wife. Any husband worth his salt stayed around to provide for his family. Right now, Matthew was so down on his luck he could barely provide for himself, let alone for a woman and possibly a child. He needed to get his ass back to work.
Since the day of the ambush, Matthew hadn’t had the heart to examine his timepiece. He knew the bullet had damaged it beyond repair. But he removed it from his coat pocket now, his intent being to bury it. Eden’s heart had been in the right place when she had insisted that he continue to carry it on his person, and he’d come to understand her reasons, but he was having no more of that. His memories of Olivia would always be there, buried deep like the watch soon would be, but there’d be no room from now on for memories of her to be a part of his everyday life.
As Matthew drew the mangled gold case from his pocket, he gave in to habit, thumbing the back to feel the inscription he’d memorized. He winced and drew h
is thumb away. The watch cover had been badly mangled by the bullet, the metal jagged and sharp, the fine lettering obliterated. He turned the timepiece over, and what he saw made him smile. The only words left now were Love and Matthew. No more about forever. Livvy’s name was gone. There remained only a simple command from one of heaven’s most special angels, Love, Matthew.
Oh, God, seeing that watch, mangled into a twisted mess with only those two words winking up at him, set Matthew absolutely free. Eden was right again. More than one miracle had occurred the day of the ambush. He knew that for certain now. For as long as he drew breath, he would believe that Livvy had guided his hand that morning to put the timepiece in his breast pocket, that she’d been trying to protect him so he could live to know the joy of loving again.
He was finished with chasing the Sebastians. He was finished with letting them ruin his life. If we let that happen, Matthew, they win, Eden had told him. And it was true. The bastards would maraud and murder until they were stopped, but it wasn’t his job to bring them to justice.
He was going home to his wife.
Late one afternoon about a week later, Eden was sitting on the porch swing, watching Little Ace for Caitlin, when she saw a lone rider top the horizon. Time after time, she had seen someone approaching and allowed herself to hope it might be Matthew, but it had always been one of her brothers instead. She refused to do that anymore. The disappointment hurt too much.
Only this time, despite her determination not to get her hopes up, a strange, tingling sensation moved over her skin, similar to how she felt during the calm right before a lightning storm, when the air fairly snapped with static electricity. Eden pushed slowly to her feet, her gaze fixed on the rider. As he drew closer, she saw that he was leading a pack animal, and the horse looked as if it might be a gray. A thrill of excitement shot through her. She picked up Little Ace, threw open the front door, and settled him back on his feet in the sitting room.
“Caitlin, it’s Matthew. I think it’s Matthew! I have to go meet him.”
Coming from the kitchen, Caitlin beamed a smile and made a shooing motion with the skirt of her apron. “Go! I’ve got Little Ace. Go.”
Eden slapped the door closed and hurried down the front steps. Matthew. It was definitely him. The gelding was indeed a gray, and she recognized the way Matthew sat in the saddle, broad shoulders relaxed, upper body swaying with each movement of the horse. Gathering her skirts and petticoats into her fists, Eden broke into a run.
“Matthew!” she cried out, even though she knew he probably couldn’t hear her yet. “Matthew!”
He must have seen her then, because he nudged Smoky into a trot. Eden never broke stride. She streaked down the road, out through the entrance gate, and into an open field, so overjoyed she never spared a thought for the wagon wheel ruts and gopher holes that might trip her. She ran until she grew breathless and got a stitch in her side that brought her staggering to a stop. But Matthew kept coming. Soon she could see his dark face clearly. He was grinning—that wonderful, heart-stopping grin that she’d thought never to see again.
Smoky skidded to a stop about twenty feet from Eden. She broke into a run again as Matthew swung down off the horse. They met in a collision of bodies, Eden flinging her arms around his neck with such force that she knocked his hat from his head, Matthew locking her in his hard embrace. For several seconds, they were both too overcome with emotion to speak, so they simply clung to each other. Then when the words finally came, they both spoke at once, saying the same thing.
“I love you so much!”
They both laughed, tears slipping down their cheeks as they swayed together in the wind that blew across the flats.
“Did you get them?” Eden finally found the presence of mind to ask.
“I gave it up,” Matthew whispered, his voice gravelly with emotion. “To hell with finding the bastards. I had to come back. You’re the most important thing in the world to me, Eden. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, matters more to me than you do.”
“But, Matthew, it meant so much to you. I don’t want to be the reason you give up on catching them. If you need to go after them, go. I’ll wait. No matter how long it takes, I’ll wait.”
Matthew turned his face into her glorious hair and breathed deeply of her scent. She smelled like rosewater, which was new, but beneath that was her own special essence, the one he’d dreamed of so often over the last month.
“I’m not going anywhere. From here on out, we’re sticking together. I’ll never willingly leave you again, never.”
Matthew told her the story about the watch and how he believed Livvy had sent him one final message—to move on with his life and love Eden with all his heart. When he finished talking, Eden drew back to look up at him.
“You buried it in southern Colorado?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do. There’s no room in my life for Livvy now, sweetheart. No room in my heart for her, either. I’ll always have memories of her, but that’s all they are, memories.” He bent his head to trail his lips over her finely arched brows. “If I’m going to carry a watch engraved with words of love, I want it to be one from you. Maybe it can be your wedding gift to me. I promised you a proper ceremony, remember, with a preacher and all the trimmings.”
Eden smiled up at him, her blue eyes dancing with amusement. “Without any chickens in attendance?”
“Definitely no chickens, or goats, either.”
She pressed her palms to his lean cheeks, drinking in every detail of his face. “You’re freshly shaven.”
“And clean from head to toe. I stopped at a creek for a bath before coming here.”
Her cheeks grew warm with excitement. “I have wonderful news, Matthew. I think I’m expecting.”
“Expecting what?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck again, pressing as close to him as she could get. “I think I’m pregnant. I’ve missed my curse only once, but that isn’t normal for me. I think we have another baby Coulter on the way.”
Matthew whooped with joy, tightened his arms around her waist, and twirled across the grass with her. Then his heart caught and he stopped. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
She giggled. “I’m not made of spun glass, Matthew, and neither is the baby. Of course you didn’t hurt me.”
He kissed her then—deeply and thoroughly. She melted against him, parting her lips and holding nothing back. As he tightened his embrace around her, he knew he’d made the right choice.
He held the whole world in his arms.
Before they went to the house, Eden and Matthew sought a private place where they could talk and plan their second wedding. They ended up sitting under the gnarled old oak where Joseph Paxton Senior had been hanged so many years ago. After seeing the tree and learning from Eden what had happened in this peaceful place, Matthew recalled the story she had told him about Ace’s long-ago obsession with exacting revenge and clearing his stepfather’s name. It was good that Ace had let go of that and married Caitlin instead. Matthew had learned the hard way that there was a lot more to life than setting wrongs aright. When a man allowed himself to be consumed by hatred, he missed out on all the sweetest things life had to offer. Sitting there in the shade with Eden, seeing her lovely face again, was very, very sweet, a moment he would always remember. To think that she might be pregnant with their first child was even sweeter.
“I want to have our second wedding right away,” he told Eden. “I need to get back to work and provide for my family, and I can’t do that until we get to Oregon.”
“I love the sound of that word, family,” she said softly, her palm curled protectively over her middle. “Just think, Matthew. We may soon have a child.”
Matthew lifted her hand and pressed a kiss on her palm. “You’ve already made me the happiest man alive. If you’re not pregnant, it won’t matter to me. If you are, it’ll be the icing on the cake.”
Eden closed her fist around the kiss and then hugged his arm.
“Are you sure you won’t regret not going after the Sebastians?”
“Absolutely positive. It’s over for me. I’ll never look back, only forward.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed in contentment. “I hope it’s a girl, Matthew. If it is, I still want to name her Olivia.”
“You aren’t going to be mulish about that, are you? I’d rather name her after someone in one of our families.”
Eden told him how she felt about naming children after people who were still alive. “I think it’s confusing for everyone, and embarrassing for the child later in life. When Ace’s son grows up, he’ll probably still be called Little Ace. I don’t want to do that to our children.”
Matthew had grown up being called by both his first and middle names much of the time because he was a junior. He had never minded it all that much, but he could see Eden’s point. “We could name her after one of our grandmothers then.”
“We’ll have other daughters, Matthew. I want our first to be Livvy’s namesake. It’s important to me.”
Matthew recognized that tone in Eden’s voice and knew she had her mind set on it. Olivia. He’d always loved the ring of it, and he thought the nickname Livvy was cute. It definitely wasn’t an important enough issue to butt heads with Eden over it. He had a feeling they’d do enough head butting over the years without quarreling over little things.
“What are you grinning about?” Eden asked, her tone laced with teasing accusation.
Matthew chuckled. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I was just thinking that I’ve tied up with a sassy, headstrong lady who’ll probably need to be reminded on a daily basis who wears the pants in this family.”
She giggled. “It’s true that you wear the pants, Matthew, but always bear in mind that I wear the bloomers.”
“Why is that important?”