Page 52 of Brian and Cora
Without shifting her gaze from Brian, Cora bent her knees for a quick pat, before straightening. "I owe you an apology," she said without preamble. "I was wrong to judge your work without reading it. Your book is..." She searched for words that wouldn't sound condescending. "Wonderful. Truly. I couldn't put it down."
His pen stopped moving. Something flickered across his face—vulnerability?—before his usual mask slipped back into place. "You don't have to say that."
"I'm not." She moved closer, still clutching the book, and perched on the edge of the other wing chair. "Jack Stone feels real. His friendship with Samuel has depth. The way you showed the railroad baron's corruption without making him a caricature. That scene where Jack has to choose between revenge and justice..." She shook her head. "I expected mindless adventure. Lots of gore. No emotions except for the hero’s love of his dog or his horse.”
“Jack Stone loved his horse.”
“He also loved his sister and his niece and the preacher’s daughter, even if he thought he wasn’t good enough for her.”
Brian’s expression softened, but the look in his eyes remained wary.
“You wrote about loyalty and moral choices and what makes a man honorable. I didn’t want it to end."
Brian cleared his throat roughly. "Well. That's... Thank you."
"How did you come up with the idea?" Now that the worst was over, Cora relaxed and settled deeper into the chair, lowering the book to her lap.
"I read about railroad corruption in the newspapers. Started thinking about what would happen if an ordinary man got caught up in it. Someone who just wanted to do right but kept getting pulled deeper into the conflict." As he talked, his eyes lit up, the guarded expression falling away. "Jack's based partly on a ranch hand I met here and partly on stories my grandfather told about honor and choices."
"Your grandfather sounds like he was important to you."
The light in his eyes dimmed. "He was. A long time ago." Before she could probe that painful-sounding past, he gestured to the bookshelf. "The others are there if you're interested. No more Jack Stone, though. Each adventure is different."
"I'd love to read them.” Cora put her sincerity into her tone. She gestured at the journal. "Are you writing just about your own experience, or about everyone’s?”
“Well, I don’t quite know about everyone’s unless they talked about what happened. After missing the robbers in Morgan’s Crossing, we split off and headed different directions, trying to track where they went, before all meeting up at the Flanigans’ farmhouse.”
He hesitated, then seemed to make a decision. "Want to hear some of it?"
"I’d like nothing better."
For the next hour, Brian read from his journal, his voice bringing the events to vivid life. Cora found herself holding her breath as he described racing around the stockade's perimeter, gasping when he was shot, feeling the chaos and fear and determination of that terrible morning.
"How are you planning to use this for your next adventure?"
"Not sure yet. Obviously, I need to change the details to protect the innocent—and the guilty." He tapped the journal. "Can't have my hero racing to open a gate with a bullet in his leg. Wouldn’t be realistic. But he can’t collapse on the ground andlet everyone else do what needs doing. Readers expect him to be more heroic than that."
"But that's exactly what makes it heroic," Cora protested. "You kept going despite the pain. You did what needed to be done."
He looked at her strangely. "You really think so?"
"I know so." She leaned forward, enthusiasm carrying her past their earlier awkwardness. "Brian, this could be your best book yet. The authenticity of it, the real danger."
"You understand," he said softly, wonder in his voice. "You actually understand what I'm trying to do."
"Of course I do. Now." She felt her cheeks heat. "I'm sorry I was such a snob earlier. My grandfather loved books—all books. He would have scolded me for judging without reading."
"Your grandfather sounds like a wise man."
"He was." The familiar ache of loss rose in her chest. "He died recently. That's part of why I came west with my great-aunt Rose."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
The simple sincerity in his voice brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back. “When he was so ill, Aunt Rose and I took turns reading to him. I wish I had known about your books then. I’ll bet one of your rousing adventure stories would have occupied his mind better than some of the boring scientific treatises he chose.”
“I’m not sure that’s much of a compliment,” he drawled.
She laughed. “You know what I mean.”
