Page 3 of A Dangerous Heart
“You taught him to meddle,” Isaac said coolly. “I want no part of this.”
He left without looking back.
“Aunt Clare, are you really gonna get married to a cowboy?”
Get-ing marr-ied, get-ting marr-ied.
The train chugged and clacked, its wheels singing Clare Barlow’s future.
She looked down at her eight-year-old nephew Ben, who gazed up at her with a wrinkled nose and an expression filled with curiosity. He had his mother’s soft brown eyes and ready smile, always seeing adventure around every corner of life.
“What do you know about being a wife?” On Clare’s other side, twelve-year-old Eli had his chin jutted at a stubborn angle and his arms crossed. His feet swung out into the aisle as if he couldn’t sit still. A trait he came by honestly, from her side of the family. The Barlows were always on the run.
When he wasn’t scowling, Eli was a handsome boy. Already more handsome than his father, with his intense dark-brown, almost black, eyes framed by thick lashes, and a square jawline that hinted at the man he would become. Not like his father, if she had anything to do with it.
Noth-ing, noth-ing.
Clare found a reassuring smile for both boys. “Yes, I’m really getting married. And he’s a rancher, not a cowboy.”
She would have to be enough. She’d gambled everything on this escape.
It wasn’t the courtship most young women dreamed of—marrying a complete stranger. But Clare’s belief in fairy-tale endings had been shattered years ago by her father. She’dlearned a harsh truth that many girls never grasped: every fairy tale contained a villain, and sometimes that villain was a part of one’s own family. A father. Or a brother.
“Can I be a cowboy too?”
Sweet Ben. Clare slid her arm around his small shoulders and pulled him closer. She whispered a reminder in his ear.
“Of course. And remember, you’re to call me Ma.”
“Okay,” he whispered back.
She’d waited until now to tell the boys about the plan. Too much was at stake. She’d been too afraid of being found out before they’d left Missouri. She’d spent the first hours of their journey constantly looking over her shoulder, certain that Victor would find them.
Her outlaw brother would kill her for running away. Doubly so for taking his sons.
She knew what she’d done wasn’t properly legal. She had no papers, no official claim to Ben or his brother. But she’d promised her late sister-in-law Anne in those last days before she’d passed. She could still hear her breathless plea.Take them. Keep them safe. Make sure they don’t grow up like him.
And Clare couldn’t break that promise.
The scenery out the window showed the Laramie Mountains in the distance.
Al-most there. Al-most there.
Calvin, Wyoming, was the next stop.
Absently, Clare noted the portly gentleman in the row in front of them getting up out of his seat. Before she’d fully registered it happening, Eli had slipped his scrawny arm between the seats and snatched it back with something clasped in his hand.
Clare caught his wrist in an iron grip.
“What is that?” Her whispered hiss and tightening grip had Eli revealing a fine gold watch with a broken chain.
She glanced over her shoulder at the man halfway to the hopper toilet at the back of the train. He hadn’t even registered the watch was missing. No one else paid them a lick of attention.
It was a valuable piece—gold-plated and everything. It would be so easy to slip it inside her pocket. The man wore a fine suit. No doubt he could buy another. Clare and the boys had little funds. Her past whispered to her: easy pickings.
She took the watch from Eli’s hand and dropped it back on the seat in front of them.
“We aren’t Barlows anymore,” she told him in a low, steady voice. “Remember the things your mama taught you. Thou shalt not steal.”
