Page 107 of Conveniently Wed
He nodded, jaw tight as he remembered all over again what that monster had done to her.
He knelt on the bank, shrugging out of his shirt.
Her hands were cool against his skin, but not as cool as the cloth she’d dipped in the creek. He jumped.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “Will we make it to Cheyenne tonight?”
“Early this afternoon. Maybe even by lunchtime.”
“With the cows?”
Ah, the cattle. He’d realized too late what was really important.
“I’ll let Ricky and the boys worry about the cattle. I don’t want your back getting infected out here on the trail.”
“But what about your papa?”
He turned his head to the side but couldn’t get a good look at her face.
Jonas would’ve known what was important well before Edgar had realized it. He imagined his pa would be pretty sore at him for letting Fran get into trouble like she had.
“He’ll understand if the deal falls through. We can look for another buyer.”
It wasn’t worth jeopardizing Fran’s health. Infection could be deadly.
She hesitated, one hand resting on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”
He was. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
Knock, knock.
Still shaken from the events of the morning, Fran opened the hotel room door and a shaft of late afternoon sunlight fell across the floor.
Emma.
Her sister vaulted toward her, knocking the door in, and Fran opened her arms in time to catch the younger girl in a firm embrace. Emma clutched her shoulders, avoiding the injuries on Fran’s back that Daniel must have warned her about.
A shadow moved outside the hotel door and for a moment, Fran’s heart tripped, thinking it was Edgar.
But when he passed through the doorway, she saw it was Daniel instead, carrying a brown-wrapped package.
And she couldn’t be disappointed that her brother was there, could she?
She pulled them both into the hotel room, laughing a bit tearfully.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she told her brother.
He set the package on the bed. “I almost wasn’t.”
His words stopped her. He was grim, deadly serious. Her brother, older by a decade, tended toward solemnity anyway, but the gravity of his words stopped her.
She and Emma sat on the bed while he told them just how ill he’d been with tuberculosis and how he’d come to track themdown. Hearing his story, she went from skepticism, to disbelief, to horror and then to thankfulness that God had spared her brother’s life. He’d come close to dying, but she hadn’t lost him.
Finally, Daniel shrugged out of her hug. “We’ll get this situation with the cowboy taken care of and get back to Tennessee.”
Fran shook her head. “Do you mean my marriage?”
He nodded. “You’ll want to annul it, won’t you?”
