Chapter Twenty
“Harmony…Tillis, I believe it is now,” Buck added, stepping closer, running his eyes over her as though to take inventory.
She stepped back, unable to do anything but stare. Then she grasped a trellis of ivy for support. He was more handsome than ever, but thinner, honed harder and, she suspected, stronger. She could not know what had made him so. His thick, sandy hair was a little longer, falling gracefully around his neck; and he wore a white, open shirt with loose flowing sleeves, tight pants, and high boots. Harmony thought he looked the way she imagined a man of the sea would.
Her hatred of him rose to the surface, buoyed by hurt, humiliation, and emotional devastation. Her green eyes blazed, and he knew her well enough to know exactly what she was feeling.
“What in God’s name are you doing here!” she managed to choke out.
He looked around the garden, then back at her. “I might ask the same thing of you.”
Why did he look so handsome, so sure? “I am Mrs. Wade Tillis,” she hissed, stepping back again. “That’s why I’m here!”
She saw anger and jealousy flash in his eyes, and she enjoyed seeing his response. He took a prerolled cigarette from the pocket of his shirt and lit it. “You love him?”
Her whole body was now wet with nervous perspiration. This was not the way she had planned to meet him. She was not prepared. She wasn’t even dressed! She still wore her gown and robe. She turned away. “That is no longer any of your business.”
“It is,” he said coldly. “Because I plan to kill your husband, Mrs. Tillis.”
She whirled, her eyes wide. “Kill him? Because he married me and gave me some respectability after you ran out on me? Do you know what people thought? Everyone knew!” Her breathing quickened. “You…you bastard! How dare you say that to me! You knew I trusted you! And now you dare to come back here and tell me you want to kill my husband!” She turned away again. “My God, I wish I had a gun in my hands right now!” she declared. “I’d shoot you myself!” Striving for control, she took a deep breath and stood quietly for a moment before turning to face him again. So far he had said nothing more. He was confusing her. Why had he come at all? “Do you know I’ve had men looking for you, to bring you back here so you could be hung for stealing my gold? You’re taking a risk in coming here, Mister Buck Hanner! Wade and I will have you hunted down, and when you’re hanged, I’ll celebrate!”
He watched her, his face sad. “You never answered my original question. I asked whether you love Wade Tillis.”
She glared at him, love raging in her soul but hate darting from her narrowed eyes. “I said it was none of your business! You get off my property, Buck Hanner! And you’d better ride hard, because men will be coming for you! I can’t imagine why you came here, unless it was to laugh at me. But you’ll not be laughing long! Now get out of here! I’m going to get dressed.”
She started to storm past him, but he grabbed her arm, squeezing it hard. “Answer my question, Harmony Jones!” he growled. He threw down his cigarette. “You’ll not leave this garden until you do!”
The touch of his hand on her arm brought forth waves of warmth and desire, responses she’d thought long dead, even though his grip hurt her arm. She turned green eyes up to his blue ones. Close! So close and so handsome. Yet it had all become so ugly. She could have loved him with such utter devotion, but she was hard now, perhaps beyond sweetening.
“Of course I don’t love him!” she sneered. “I married him because all decent women get married! I married him because I was lonely! He wanted my body, and I wanted his money! But most of all I wanted to hurt you! I wanted that more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
He felt her tremble, and wondered if she would fall if he let go of her. But he hung on to her arm, forcing back an urge to slap her. He knew Harmony too well. This was an act, an attempt to hurt him and thereby mask her own hurt.
“Did you really believe I’d run out on you?” he asked, searching her eyes.
She looked away, on fire from his closeness, wishing he could hold her again and tell her none of it had happened. She’d been so sure she would hate him when she saw him again. She wanted to hate him, needed to hate him.
“Of course I believed it,” she answered quietly. “Why shouldn’t I? Everyone else I ever cared about left me. That’s what’s so nice about being married to Wade. Neither of us loves the other, so no one gets hurt.” She looked directly at him, her green eyes colder than he’d ever seen them. “Wade told me about you, about how you go around using women to get ahead, about why you really wanted to marry Mary Beth—for her money! For her ranch! He told me what a drifter you are. I should have seen it, but I had to learn the hard way!”
“And you believed what he told you,” Buck said almost sadly. “After all we did together, all my vows of love and devotion, all our talks, our friendship. My God, Harmony, is it that hard for you to believe someone could really love you?”
His words cut her like a knife, wedging into her determination to be cold and hard and cruel, weakening her resolution not to let the love she’d once felt for this man cloud reality. She swallowed and tried to wrench herself away, but he continued to hold her arm, and she felt tears coming.
“No one has ever really loved me!” she choked out. “You promised to come back…and I waited…and waited! Now, after all the hell I went through, you show up! How can you be so cruel! Do you know what it was like…all that waiting…the hurt…the horror of realizing you weren’t coming?”
“Of course I know,” he said gently. “I was going through my own hell, Harmony.”
She tossed her head, glaring at him again, tears on her cheeks. “Your hell?” she hissed. “I lost a baby up there, Buck Hanner!” Her body jerked as she choked back a sob, and Buck’s eyes widened, a look of terrible sorrow appearing in their blue depths. “I was all alone.” She was crying now. “All alone up there! I lay all night in horrible pain—bleeding—losing the life you planted in me! If Hank hadn’t come along the next morning…I might have died!” She hung her head and wept. “It was the most horrible thing I ever went through! I screamed and screamed for you, but you weren’t there. Nobody was there! I’ve never been so frightened. Then Hank came, and he…buried it for me. I don’t even know…what it was!”
Bitter sobs escaped her, and suddenly his arms were around her and he was holding her tightly, so tightly, just as he used to do. For a moment she let him hold her. She wept against his chest and forgot she was supposed to hate him.
“My God, Harmony, I didn’t know,” he said quietly, kissing her hair.
She pushed away from him then. “Of course you didn’t know! You had already left me! Thank God Hank was kind enough not to tell anyone. But my reputation had already suffered from our being up there together. When I came back to town I could feel everyone’s eyes on me! I knew what they thought!” She stopped and sniffed, wiping at her eyes. “Finally, to stop the gossiping, I married Wade. At least he stays around!”
Buck sighed deeply and shook his head. “I’m goddamned sorry about the baby, Harmony—sorry you had to go through that. I suffered too, and it was worse because I couldn’t tell you what happened, couldn’t explain. Don’t you even want to know where I’ve been?”
She wiped at her eyes again. “What difference does it make now?”
He began to unbutton his shirt. “A lot of difference. It’s your husband’s fault I never came back, Harmony, and I don’t doubt he figured I’d never survive my ordeal. He made a tidy profit on me, and he figured he was rid of me so he could move in on your fortune. I’m not the one who’s made a fool of you, Harmony. Wade Tillis has done that.”
She frowned as he removed the shirt. “What are you doing? What are you talking about?” she asked, pushing a piece of blonde hair behind her ear.
He held the shirt in his hand and turned around, and she gasped at ugly scars on his back, some still pink. It would be many years before they faded, but it was obvious they would never really go away.
“There are more on my legs,” he told her. “I earned these stripes trying to escape to get back to you,” he added. “I hope that satisfies your vengeful little heart.”
He turned to face her, pulling his shirt back on while she stared at him in surprise. “What happened to you!” she whispered.
His eyes showed a trace of anger then. “You mean you actually want to know now?”
“Buck, I—” She didn’t know what to say. Could she have been wrong? Was it possible he really had loved her? “What happened?”
He buttoned the shirt. “Your kind husband had me waylaid,” he answered, his voice beginning to harden with hatred. “I left a message with the assayer to have someone go and tell you I’d be a little longer. Your gold was worth a lot. I knew it was a hell of a strike, and I didn’t trust the only man in town who could hire men to mine it—Wade Tillis. So I decided to take the samples to Colorado Springs, to a man I knew and trusted. I wanted to get the best and most honest men for the job. When I was asleep in my hotel room in Colorado Springs, several men attacked me. They put something over my mouth and nose, something that knocked me out. But before I went under I saw one face I recognized, Harmony. He was a Tillis man, the big one they call Buffalo.”
Her eyes widened. She saw Buffalo nearly every day, spoke to him often, had even fed him at her house. “Are you…sure?”
He rolled his eyes. “Who can mistake that mug?” He tucked in his shirt as she turned around and half collapsed, sitting down in the grass. Buck came to stand over her. “I was shanghaied, Harmony. When I came to I was in a filthy boxcar, locked in with other prisoners and cattle. We all sat in our own filth, tied and gagged and fed only bread and water. During that ride I slipped in and out of consciousness, and before I knew it I was on a boat, being hauled down to New Orleans, where I was put on a ship—a huge one that was putting out to sea. The ship sailed to China, with several captives like me on it. Most of the others didn’t make it through the filth and the rotten food and the whippings. But I did! I made it because I was determined not to satisfy Wade Tillis by dying! And I made it because I thought about you, my poor Harmony, alone on that mountain. I spent months in that dark hold, then I was forced to work on a merchant ship heading for San Francisco. I tried to escape once. How I lived through the beating they gave me for that I’ll never know. I just—I pictured your face…pictured lying in your arms. I held that picture in my mind while their damned whip ate into my flesh!”
“Stop it!” she screamed, her hands over her face.
“You have to know, Harmony! You have to know the kind of man you’ve married, what he did to us! He sold me, Harmony, like a slave! Most men who are forced into that kind of labor never survive! But I beat the odds, Harmony! I beat Wade Tillis at his own game! I lived, and the second time the ship put into San Francisco, I escaped. It took me a long time to be strong enough to make the trip back here, but I’m strong now—strong enough to kill Wade Tillis!”
She looked up at him quickly, tears on her face. “It can’t be true! What about your money? All of your money was withdrawn from the bank, as though you’d taken it and run off.”
“Harmony, don’t be such a fool! Wade Tillis owns the bank! The manager there will do anything Wade says. My God, how else do you think I got these scars on my back? How could I make up such a thing?”
She stretched out on the grass then, weeping, her humiliation and devastation knowing no bounds. How could any man use someone the way Wade Tillis had used her? She’d known he was evil, but she hadn’t truly understood how bad a person could be until now. She churned inwardly at the thought of having given her body to the very man who had caused such horrible things to happen to the man she loved. She’d even traveled Europe with Wade. She’d fallen for his game, the stupid child that she was. She realized that at this very moment Wade Tillis was probably scheming to make her entire fortune his, to rid himself of her so he could go on to someone else, leaving her with nothing. It all made so much sense. There was no easier way to get a woman’s money than by marriage. She’d known money was the basis for their marriage, but she had thought he’d intended to share and enjoy their wealth. Now she realized Wade Tillis had probably intended to steal everything from her. And Buck! Poor Buck! If only she hadn’t been so mixed up about trust and love. She’d been too willing to believe Buck Hanner had abandoned her, and while he’d been suffering, she’d been sharing the bed of his mortal enemy.
She felt a hand on her shoulder then. “I’m leaving now, Harmony.”
She sat up and placed her arms around his neck. “Oh, God, Buck, what have I done!”
He sighed and kissed her hair. He loved her, but it was different now. He had a man to kill, and it would be awhile before he could sort out his feelings, before he could hold Harmony Jones again and love her the way he wanted. She would have some thinking to do too, some healing. This was not the time to speak of love.
“I’m sorry, Harmony, but I have to go now.” He gently pulled away. “And I’m sorry I have to make you a widow. But I must. The hate in my heart is too great.”
She grasped his shirt. “You can’t just go into town and kill him!” she begged. “You’ll hang!”
“Not if I handle it right.” He grasped her wrists and pulled them away.
“Buck, they’ll kill you!”
“Not before I kill Wade Tillis.”
As he stood up, she scrambled to her feet, her hair tousled, her face soaked with tears.
“But Buck, what…what about us?”
Blue eyes looked her over. “What about us? We both have a lot of healing to do, Harmony. Maybe someday we can find what we had once”—he nodded toward Pike’s Peak—“up there. I love you just as much as I did then, but there are a few things in the way of that love right now.”
He walked farther down the path, toward a black horse. “Buck!” she called out. She ran toward him. “Buck, I still love you. I’ve always loved you. I tried so hard to forget, to hate you; but deep inside—”
He turned, wrapping her in his arms when she was close enough and kissing her hungrily. As his lips burned into her own with fiery savageness, his crushing embrace took her breath away. Suddenly he released her and pushed her away. “Not now, Harmony. Not this way, and not for a long time. Too much has happened. I’m damned sorry for all of it, for the way people have used you. I never did, and I never will, especially not now. Someday there’ll be a right time, a right place for us again.”
He hurried to the horse then, mounting up and riding off without another word.
She watched him go, gently touching her bruised lips, then doubling over from the near pain of the passion he had reawakened in her. Buck! Buck was here! He’d touched her, kissed her, held her. He still loved her. What had happened hadn’t been his fault after all! Her desire for revenge was gone now. She fell to her knees and wept. What had she become? A money-hungry and power-driven woman with no heart and no feelings. Buck Hanner had brought feeling back to her, in one great surge that actually hurt physically. Everything was so clear now. If only she had trusted a little more, if only she hadn’t been so quick to believe the worst…Hank was the only one who’d continued to believe Buck Hanner had not left her. Poor Hank. She’d been so mean to him. She’d been mean to a lot of people. She had let her abandonment in childhood destroy her capacity for happiness and love.
What if Buck couldn’t love her the same way he once had? After all, she had married Wade Tillis. Maybe it would never be the way it was for them. Maybe Buck would be hung for killing Tillis, and that would be the end of it—both men dead, the love of her life gone, no chance to make things right. Buck! She’d seen him, talked to him, touched him! She had thought he was gone from her life forever, and now here he was, back in Cripple Creek. He’d suffered terrible things just to get back to her; then he’d found her married to the very man who had put him through torment. She knew without anyone telling her that he had left out a great deal, that he’d suffered things he’d not even told her about. He was so much thinner and harder. In the moments he had been with her, she’d sensed a great change in him. His easygoing attitude was gone, his teasing nature, his happiness. There had been no handsome smile. He had become harder, just as she had. Could either of them ever again be the way they were on the mountain? Would that winter, those tender moments, be only a memory?
She stumbled through the garden to the house, the servants staring at her as she made her way blindly up the stairs. In her room, she threw herself on the bed and wept. A maid entered cautiously.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” she asked.
“Yes. Go away!” Harmony muttered. The woman left, quietly closing the door. Harmony did not come out of the room the rest of the day. She wondered how much more hurt she must endure in her life. How many more times would she be used? How many lessons did it take for her to understand that someone was making a fool of her? When would she ever learn who could and who could not be trusted? Why did she allow her childhood abandonment to haunt her? That was what it all came down to. That was what had made her do such foolish things. That was why, when she’d found a man who really loved her and would never desert her, she’d thrown him away when she’d felt betrayed.
Throughout the day she drifted from fits of crying into sleep, visions of Buck filling her dreams. She knew again the warmth of his arms, the glory of sharing his bed, the sweetness of his kiss, the passion his blue eyes awakened in her. But every time she opened her eyes she realized she was lying in a bed she’d shared with Wade Tillis while totally ignorant of how the man had deceived her, of what he had done to Buck.
She waited for what she thought would be news of Wade’s death, but that evening she heard him enter the house and ask the maid what was to be served for supper. He was alive! Did that mean?…Hurriedly, she washed her face and combed her hair. Then she put on a fresh nightgown and a robe, and hurried downstairs, to her husband’s study. He stood near the fireplace, lighting a cigar. She watched him carefully.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked.
Tillis shrugged. “The usual.” He puffed the cigar and looked her over as she closed the study door. “You’re still in a robe!” he commented.
She sighed. “I didn’t feel well today. I was going to come into town, but I changed my mind.”
He watched her suspiciously. “One of the maids said you came running into the house this morning looking very upset. Did some gardener bother you or something? I’ll have him disciplined.”
She looked into his dark eyes. What a clever man he was, making her think he cared. “No. It was nothing like that.”
“Well, you look terrible. Here, I’ll pour you a drink.” He turned his back, and she casually walked to his desk, where he kept a handgun. Apparently Buck had not yet made his appearance. Perhaps she could save him the trouble and keep him from hanging by killing her husband herself. She had nothing left now anyway. Wade poured two drinks and turned, paling slightly when he saw her holding the gun on him. The expression in his dark eyes changed from friendliness to viciousness.
“Well, well,” he commented, the cigar still in his teeth. “To what do I owe this loving homecoming?”
“I know what you did to Buck Hanner!” she hissed.
His eyebrows arched, and he carefully set down the drinks. Taking the cigar from his mouth, he set it in an ashtray, then stepped a little closer.
“You stay back!” Harmony warned.
He folded his arms, appearing casual and unconcerned. “Would you mind explaining yourself?” he asked.
“I saw him! I saw Buck this morning, and he told me everything!” she said boldly. “He’s going to kill you! Only I’ve decided to save him the trouble!”
She pointed the gun at Wade, her hands shaking, and he suddenly lunged. The gun went off and she screamed as he tackled her, knocking her to the floor. He ripped the gun from her hand and backhanded her with the barrel, badly cutting and bruising her right jaw.
For a moment everything was a blur, as pain pierced her jaw and neck. Then she heard someone enter the room.
“Get out!” Wade growled. “Get the hell out of here! This is between me and my wife! And keep your mouth shut!”
“Yes, sir,” a woman’s meek voice replied. The door closed again, and Wade jerked Harmony up, shoving her into a chair.
“Is that the truth? You saw him?” he roared.
She put her head in her hands. “How could you do it? I never knew you were that horrible.”
He grasped her wrists. “How many seconds did it take for him to get under your nightgown, wife of mine?” he snarled.
Harmony just stared at him. “You’re an ugly, brutal man, Wade Tillis,” she said quietly, her words slightly slurred because of her injured jaw. “It was my money, wasn’t it? Not just fun and sharing, only money.”
“Of course it was the money, you little fool.” He let go of her wrists suddenly and straightened, glaring at her. “When those men I sent to scare you off the claim were unsuccessful, I had to think of another approach.”
Men?…What he’d said suddenly hit her full force. The men who’d tried to rape her…if Buck hadn’t come along…“My God!” she whispered. “You sent them?”
He walked over and picked up the gun from the floor, where he had thrown it. He shoved it into his belt. “Of course I sent them. But again, Buck Hanner spoiled my plans, so I fixed it so the son of a bitch couldn’t get in my way again.”
He straightened his well-tailored jacket, and Harmony watched him, hating herself more than Wade Tillis. “Is there anything left in my name?”
He smoothed back his hair. “Very little. Of course, that wouldn’t have mattered if you had stayed happily married to me. But that probably won’t be possible now.” He grinned. “I had a hell of a good time while it lasted, though. And you’ll have to admit I was good to you, Harmony.”
She glared at him, her green eyes fiery. “You betrayed me, in the worst way! You took from me the only man I really loved, a man who loved me. You destroyed my only chance for happiness. Your greed and jealousy nearly killed Buck Hanner, and now he’s coming for you, Wade Tillis. I hope he kills you!”
“Well, he won’t.” Tillis picked up one of the drinks he’d poured and slugged it down. “How in hell he survived, I can’t imagine. No man survives a slave ship.”
“Buck survived, and he’s coming after you.”
“Shut up!” He set the empty glass down and came to stand in front of her. “I’m going back into town, dear wife, and I’m going to have our attorney draw up some papers. I imagine there’s no sense in putting it off now. I’m divorcing you, and you might as well know that you’ll have almost nothing left once I’m through with you. You’ve served your purpose. I’d have waited longer if things remained as they were. Now I have no choice.”
She looked up at him. “Do what you will. I don’t care anymore. Nothing matters.”
“You can have the mine. It’s pretty much spent anyway. I’m pulling my men off it. If you want to keep on mining it, you’ll have to find your own crew, but you won’t make enough from the mine to pay them, not now. It’s worthless.”
She slowly rose and walked on unsteady legs to the window from which she could see Pike’s Peak in the distance.
“Maybe not,” she said pensively. “But it’s still mine. I can go there if I want to. I can be alone there.”
He laughed, lightly, wickedly. “Go ahead. Women like you always end up alone anyway. Go up there and die for all I care. Die at your precious mine! You came to me once declaring it was yours and you intended to mine it. Well, Mrs. Tillis, I have reaped the benefits of your little claim after all. You may have it back now, with my best wishes.” He bowed low in mocking respect. “And I suggest that you start packing your things.” He walked to the door then. “Oh…don’t expect your ex-lover to come running back to your arms. He’s as good as dead, you know. If he comes after me, he’s putting a noose around his own neck.”
Wade walked out then, and Harmony stared at Pike’s Peak awhile longer. Yes, she still had something. She had her claim, she had memories of the winter she’d spent there with Buck Hanner. As she turned and walked out of the study, she heard Wade’s carriage pull away. She knew she had made things harder for Buck, for she’d told Wade Tillis he was in the area. She didn’t want to know what was going to happen. She’d hear…in time. She’d probably lost Buck for good anyway. It was all different now.
A maid rushed up to her then, taking her arm. “Ma’am, your face! You need a doctor.”
“It’ll be all right,” Harmony muttered. “Just help me to my room, Mary.” She looked at the woman. “And send Luke into town, will you? Something…something terrible is going to happen. It concerns my husband. I’ll wait in my room until I learn what has occurred.”
The woman frowned. “Did Mister Tillis do this to you?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t matter. I suppose I deserve it—for my stupidity. He’s divorcing me.” Suddenly Harmony felt lighter and she managed a weak smile. “I imagine I’ll have nothing but my claim left. That was all I had when I first came here. Isn’t that funny?”
Mary only shook her head. Harmony Tillis was talking strangely. “He can’t do these things to you, ma’am.” She led her mistress to the bed.
“It doesn’t matter, Mary. Nothing matters anymore.” Harmony closed her eyes. “I think perhaps I’ll go into the mountains again soon. They’re always the same, you know. They never change. They’re always there…so dependable…so strong and sure.” She thought of Buck. She’d probably never see him again. She’d done this to him—all of it. How could love lead to such horrors? “Strong…and dependable,” she said, “like some people.” She pretended Buck was holding her, and she soon slept.