Page 120 of Conveniently Wed
"I don't hate her." He couldn’t say she felt the same. Not for certain.
At their first meeting, she had been pointing a gun—empty at the time, but he hadn't known that—at Owen’s younger brother, August. So Owen had tackled her to the ground. She’d been terrified, hiding from the men who had massacred her wagon train, and it had been dark. He hadn't realized until everything was over that she was ashe, and that she was pregnant.
Even if she had forgiven him for that, there was other bad blood between them.
"Maybe you don't hate her, but you sure don't like her."
Leo was right. Owen and Rachel couldn't seem to help arguing at every turn.
He sighed and stopped, turning to face his brother.
"It's my fault Daniel got himself killed." It was the first time he'd said the words out loud. But not the first time he'd thought them.
Leo's frown deepened. "How d'you figure? Daniel was a bully who tried to steal a horse, then tried to steal a wagon."
Rachel’s brother had been shot in the middle of a gunfight when Owen and Leo and the others from their company had been defending against an outlaw band who'd tried to murderthem and steal their supplies and animals—the same outlaw band that had killed Rachel’s other family.
"I should've tied him hand and foot,” Owen said.
Or had one of the younger men hold him at gunpoint. Maybe given him a horse and sent him on his way.
Any choice but the one Owen had made could’ve resulted in a different outcome.
The other men from the wagon train—including the one Daniel had attempted to steal a horse from—had wanted him hanged. Owen had thought he was sparing Daniel's life to bring him to the fort.
Daniel hadn't survived that long.
And Owen might never forget the keening wail Rachel had let out when she’d seen her brother’s lifeless body.
Leo’s voice shook him out of that terrible memory. “Guilt isn’t something to build a marriage on.”
Leo was as serious as Owen had ever seen him. His voice held an edge Owen hadn’t heard in weeks.
But at Leo’s words, Owen felt his shoulders relax. “It’s only until we reach Oregon,” he told his brother. “Then we’ll have it annulled.”
Leo scowled.
“What?” Owen was honestly confused at his brother’s response.
“You’d marry her and walk away?” Now Leo sounded offended. And as far as Owen was concerned, this wasn’t his business.
“This isn’t a love match.” Owen couldn’t help it. He bristled at Leo’s commanding tone. “It’s an agreement between the two of us.”
Leo sneered. “It sounds like something our pa would’ve done. He left one wife behind easily enough.”
Was that what Leo was worried about? “I won’t leave her penniless.”
Leo shook his head. “I thought you were different. But there’s a lot of Pa in you, isn’t there?”
Owen took offense to that. “Our father was an upstanding man. A man of honor?—”
“Except when he walked away from his family.”
Leo’s words felt like a slap. He wasn’t done yet. “And you’re gonna do the same. There’s nothing honorable in what you’re doing.”
Leo whirled on his heel and stomped off, leaving Owen fuming. He strode through a couple of parked wagons, grateful there weren’t any travelers nearby to have heard the words exchanged by the brothers.
Leo had no right to talk to him that way. Leo didn’t understand.
