Thief of My Heart (Watty Awards Finalist 2012)

Chapter 25

As they sat down to the table for supper, Evie hung on his every word as Heyes recounted the experience of finding and finally capturing the stallion.  It was hard to keep the pride from shining on her face as he told of his daring and skill when seizing the animal.  Was there anything about him that she didn't love?  No.  There wasn't.   

After making gluttons of themselves on the sumptuous meal that it had become customary for Evie and Miss Georgia to fix when they came back in from the canyons,  the boys sat on the porch smoking one of Mac's finest cigars.  Evangeline joined them after helping Miss Georgia with the cleaning up.  She sat on the porch floor at Hannibal's feet and laid her head against his thigh, while he absent mindedly ran his fingers through her glorious hair.  She listened as they made plans for breaking the stallion.  It was going to take a while.  They had fifteen mustangs now to train.  They wouldn't be going out again until they had at least four of them trained and ready for sale.  They figured it would take at least a month.   A smile spread across her face and a warm glow spread through her chest.  A month without having to wave goodbye to him.  A month of good night kisses.   She was so happy.  She was so in love.  Life was good.

In fact, life was almost perfect.  For Kid Curry there was good honest work he enjoyed doing, a soft readily available bed, three meals a day and a town full of bad poker players and pretty girls just a thirty minute horseback ride away. 

For Hannibal Heyes,  working with horses and making a living at it was not even like work.  He loved it.    Kid was content and he wasn't crabbing all the time about not having a bed to sleep in or food to eat. Here on the ranch the constant worry of being spotted was gone.  It felt good to be able to breathe easy for a change.  But most of all, there was Evie.  His sweet, beautiful, amazing Evie.  She was the reason he woke up every morning and rushed to the house for breakfast.  Kid rushed for the bacon and eggs.  Heyes for the glorious hair,  womanly curves and sweet smile.  He loved seeing her so happy.  The only time she  wasn't smiling was when a rider came out to the ranch with a telegraph.  It had been six weeks since the telegraph to her family in Nashville had been sent.  Although she never said so, Heyes knew that she was glad that no reply had been sent.  Every time someone rode in from town with a telegraph he watched her hold her breath and witnessed the anxiety that pinched her face.  Until it was revealed the telegraph was not a reply for Thaddeus Jones.  Only then would she relax and exhale in relief.  He and Kid had talked about it and had decided that her family must not care and that if they hadn't heard from them by now they probably weren't going to.  He would have to share that with Evie.  It would put her mind at ease. 

But he didn't get the chance.  Everything changed on that Friday afternoon in early November.  A rider came in from town with a telegraph for Mr. McCreedy.  Evangeline sat on the corral fence watching Hannibal and Jed work magic on one of the wild horses.  She was so captivated by the sight of Hannibal Heyes riding the rowdy bucking bronco, wearing only his Henley undershirt that stretched tautly over his lean muscular torso,  that at first she didn't even notice the rider when he approached the ranch house.  But when she saw Big Mac approaching the corral out of the corner of her eye,  she became concerned.  When he waved the piece of paper in the air to signal Kid to come over to the fence, she became scared.

Heyes jumped from the mustang's back to join the two men at the fence.  His eyes locked with Evie's as Mr. McCreedy announced that the message had come in care of him but was in fact for Thaddeus Jones.

Kid took the paper and read it to himself.   He looked at Heyes, then at Evie, then back to Heyes.

"Well, what's it say?"  Heyes asked impatiently.

"It's from a Mrs. Olivia Vanderbilt.  Says she's your aunt and she's coming to Red Rock to meet you."  He looked at Evangeline as he spoke.   "Says she'll be arriving in Cold Springs on the 11:00 a.m. train this Tuesday."   He held the piece of paper out to her, thinking she would like to read it.  She drew back from it slightly as if it were a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike.  Heyes took it instead and read it.  Evie spun her rump around on the fence rail and jumped to the ground and made her way silently to the house.

Heyes climbed over the fence and ran after her.  He entered the house and was met with the haunting melancholy notes of a Beethoven piece she loved so much.  This piece she only played when she was feeling blue or upset.  "The Moonlit Sonata"  he thought she had called it.  He let her finish the piece before he came and sat on the corner of the bench beside her.  "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

"She's going to ruin everything.  I just know it.  Everything is perfect.  You're perfect.  Our life here is perfect.  And I know she'll come in here and start trying to make all these plans for my life and she'll ruin everything.  And I know she's going to treat you like a bug on her shoe.  Just like they treated my daddy.  She'll find some way to take you away from me and then I'll hate her for it."

"Hey, no body's gonna take me away from you.  The only thing that could make me leave here without you would be a posse.  So there's no reason for you not to give her the benefit of the doubt and at least meet her.  Who knows, you might love her to pieces."

The look she shot him said, "I doubt it."

"Tell you what.  The train doesn't come to Red Rock.  She'll be arriving in Cold Springs.  That's about a half days ride from Red Rock.  We'll send the Kid to fetch her and it will be Tuesday night before she gets here.  Then when she gets here I'll turn on the old Hannibal Heyes charm."   He beamed his most unnerving smile.  "She'll love me to death.  I mean, really, who could resist dimples like these?"

She smiled in spite of her mood.  "She had better be able to resist them.  Because if she loves you and your dimples too much,  I'll have to kill her."

He had lightened her mood and put her mind at ease and he was glad. But he could tell something still bothered her.

She stood and crossed the glossy wood floor to stare out the glass pane of the French patio doors that lead to the veranda at the back of the McCreedy ranch house.  Miles and miles of alternating hills and woodlands and desert stretched as far as the eye could see.  How easy it would be to get lost out there.  Well, maybe not lost, just not found by anyone you didn't want to find you.  She heard his approach and felt his presence directly behind her.  She spun around and threw her arms around his neck and standing on her tiptoes crushed his lips with an open mouthed kiss.

She took him by surprise.  At first he grasped her waist to set her away, knowing she was desperately grasping for him in this moment of fear and uncertainty.  But the fevered urgency of her kiss had him encircling her waist and lifting her tight against him.  He returned her fevered kiss with all the hot urgency she was displaying.  Need  built up inside of him.  It had been building up for weeks now.  Every night when he said goodbye to her in the dark corners of the front porch the kisses they shared had grown longer, deeper and more passionate.  Her hands had grown increasingly more bold, exploring his chest, his back and even his back side.  He in return had done his own exploring.  Learning the feel and shape of her through the layers of clothes and under garments.  But the way she was kissing him now was different.  She was kissing him as though she would never be able to kiss him again.