Crossings Read online

  PRAISE FOR STEF ANN HOLM AND HER CAPTIVATING ROMANCE

  WEEPING ANGEL

  “Exciting. . . . Memorable characters. . . . Stef Ann Holm’s incredible talent for re-creating romantic Americana makes this novel a simply marvelous work of fiction.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Affaire de Coeur

  “Light-hearted romance at its very best! Ms. Holm has written a charming story as fresh as a summer’s day. . . . Sweet and witty. . . . Entertaining. . . . It’s not often that an author can make your heart beat a little faster and leave you smiling—Stef Ann Holm is one of the gifted few!”

  —Kristina Wright, The Literary Times

  “From the very first chapter you know you’re going to be swept away with love and laughter. Weeping Angel had me chuckling long into the night. . . .

  —Sharon Kosick, Annie’s Book Stop

  “Weeping Angel is a treasure! I loved every minute of this delightful story.”

  —Mary Bracken, Book Depot

  “Funny, tender, and completely enjoyable. . . .”

  —Adene Beal, House of Books

  “An enchanting read. It’s nice to know people still believe in heroes.”

  —Koren K. Schrand, K&S Paperback Exchange

  “Weeping Angel has a warmth and charm reminiscent of the early works of LaVryle Spencer. . . . A delightful, well-written tale of love.”

  —Denise Smith, Aunt Dee’s Paperback Exchange

  “A funny and endearing romance. . . . It makes you want to smile.”

  —Trudy Audette, Raintree Books

  “Stef Ann Holm has a great book here. . . . I loved it!”

  —Donita Lawrence, Bell Book & Candle

  “Warmhearted, homespun, charming. . . .”

  —Karen Wantz, Willow Tree Books

  “This is a great story. I loved the plot, the characters . . . the setting, everything!

  —Cynthia Lee, Court’s Book

  “[A] delightfully entertaining tale. Ms. Holm has done it again.”

  —Monika Schneider, The Paper Pad Bookstore

  “A good old-fashioned romance—I couldn’t stop chuckling!”

  —Dawn Acosta, Cover to Cover Bookstore

  “A truly romantic and delightfully enchanting story. . . .”

  —Joan Adis and Nikki Cranditte, Paperbacks & Things

  “Stef Ann Holm is a true voice in . . . western romance. Weeping Angel grips the reader’s attention from the first page and doesn’t let go.”

  —Sharon Walters, Paperback Place

  “Weeping Angel had me spellbound. . . . I couldn’t put it down. . . . I thought it was wonderful.”

  —Donna Nickodan, Books Galore “N” More

  Thank you for downloading this Pocket Star Books eBook.

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  Fondly for Joe, Michele, and Tara Smaltz, whose century-old farmhouse in modern-day Genoa is shared by two mischievous ghosts who sometimes call Michele’s name and have a penchant for making dishes disappear.

  A Note to Reader

  Genoa was the first town established in Nevada, and much has been written about its history. Since facts vary, I’ve altered some names, events, and the years in which they occurred. For the sake of my story, I’ve delayed the town’s founding to coincide more closely with the Pony Express. This is fiction, after all, and in fiction the truth sometimes has a way of stretching to suit the writer’s needs. . . .

  Chapter

  1

  Genoa, Nevada Territory

  April 1860

  He called himself Carrigan, and everyone in Genoa figured his mind had to be one cartridge short of a full load for him to prefer a solitary life. Those rare times he came into town with that massive Walker Colt he kept at his side, his eyes were flat and unemotional, leaving to wonder if he’d ever cracked a smile.

  Rumors about him abounded, tumbling through Main Street with the sagebrush. Some claimed he’d killed at least two dozen men and was the fastest draw west of anyplace east. Others said he’d earned a haphazard living as a cowboy, a gambler, and an extractor of venom from rattlesnakes before coming to the Carson Valley. However, the tapestry of known facts concerning these professions was threadbare.

  All agreed he was unfriendly. For he had chosen to live as a hermit on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, where gold was scattered like raisins on a cake. Carrigan had been holed up there prior to the town’s founding. A party of the new pioneers had ridden to his cabin to make his acquaintance, but they had been welcomed with the whine of a bullet. The group left posthaste, and no one who knew he was there had ventured up his mountain since.

  Until Helena Gray.

  Helena had heard his cabin was built above the northeast section of town where dusk was premature. Ascending the incline spiked with Jeffrey pines, she kept her woolen hem lifted and her gaze downward to concentrate on footholds in the damp ground. She made no effort to keep her approach silent. Talebearers eager to enlighten said Carrigan greeted trespassers with the steel nose of his he-man gun. She had no desire to test that theory.

  As she climbed, she recalled their first meeting a year ago. He’d come to her father’s general store to trade some pelts for tobacco, a basket of eggs, and a copy of the Territorial Enterprise. Impressively tall and broad in the shoulders, he’d been as quiet as a stone wall when she’d waited on him. She hadn’t been able to dispute the fact he was an imposing character. Why she hadn’t been apprehensive about his presence, she couldn’t quite say. Perhaps it was because she understood his need to go off alone. She might have done the same thing had it not been for her mother. Instead, Helena had stayed with her family and knit her torn life into a thin but serviceable fabric.

  The smoky scent of a campfire and the aroma of cooking meat wafted through the cool air. Despite her resolution, Helena’s heart pounded an uneven rhythm. She stopped abruptly to listen. The faraway squawk of a blue jay and the wind filled her ears. A tin utensil scraping the bottom of a pan pulled her attention in the direction of the sound. She tried to gauge the distance. The breeze through the pine boughs played an eerie tune, and she caught herself glancing uneasily over her shoulder. She wished she could have come before evening, but she’d worried about leaving her sister alone to tend the store. Waiting until after closing hadn’t left Helena with much light to guide her way. Inching the woven check shawl higher on her neck to ward off the chill in her spine, she proceeded.

  It had rained for a short time in the afternoon, and the woolly violets that littered the bank felt slippery beneath the soles of her shoes as her thoughts drifted back to the past. Now and then, Carrigan had returned to the store to keep up his mild smoking and liquor habit. He never said hello to a stranger—the entire population of Genoa consisting of nothing but, to a recluse like him. The only person he swapped enough words with to be called a conversation was her father. Both men shared a mutual respect for animals. In later months, they’d made arrangements for Carrigan to supply Gray’s stockyard with swift horses for their Pony Express station. Few could deny there had ever been a more impressive sight than Carrigan parading that string of high-spirited mustangs down Nixon Street.

  Though Helena doubted Carrigan’s receptiveness, there might have come a time when he would have shared a supper table with her father. But she would never know. Five days ago, someone killed him. Since then, the fate of Helena and her younger sister, Emilie, had been openly discussed as if they were incapable of thinking for themselves. There was no shortage of eligible men, and she
had had several marriage proposals, most of which were based on strong sentiments against their running the station, stockyard, and store alone. Helena had been fending off the bachelors until today. Today the men had done the unthinkable. They’d backed Helena into a situation that forced her to make a decision about her and Emilie’s future.

  Helena chose to go see Carrigan.

  Twirling poplar leaves disguised the noise she made as she came to a copse of saplings, their density screening her. Embers from low flames glowed in the gray sky, illuminating the big and muscular figure of a man. Carrigan sat in an open-sided shelter, its roof sagging in the middle like an old mare’s back. There were no chinked walls to hold off the weather, nor embrace the heat and keep warmth cloaked around him. Only the bulky mackinaw jacket covering his torso. He rested a run-down bootheel on the edge of a crate. The crude table at his elbow was low and cluttered with objects—most notably the Walker Colt. He held a bottle of Snakehead whiskey between his thighs, one hand loosely wrapped around the neck. A cigarette relaxed in the corner of his mouth, and he squinted against the smoke to watch his supper cook.

  An air of wild and dangerous isolation hung around him, and she sensed the power coiled in his body. When he leaned forward to turn the skewered haunch of some small game, his movements were filled with a restless energy that had Helena’s heartbeat thumping madly.

  A dog’s low growl came from the shadows. Before she could announce herself, Carrigan had picked up the huge revolver and pointed its gleaming barrel directly at her.

  “I’ll kill you where you stand unless you show me your hands.”

  Helena’s blood ran cold, and she couldn’t move or speak as a big black dog appeared with its ears thrown back and teeth bared. The click of the gun’s hammer echoed inside her head, loud and reverberating with serious intent. She opened her mouth, and words tumbled forth in a low volume. Her scratchy plea not to shoot was lost on the wind. Somehow, she managed to lift her fingertips skyward before Carrigan made good on his threat.

  “Come here,” he commanded in a voice icy and exact.

  Foreboding numbed her legs. In the cast of firelight, he did intimidate her. His eyes were hooded, the nostrils of his hawkish nose flared and distrusting. Hair the color of pitch was wind-ruffled around his plaid collar. The lines of his rugged face were not put there by the emotions of love and pride; they looked to be the scars of battle.

  She walked forward, trying to swallow her fear, but it was as thick as dough. A tremor shook her voice when she said, “It’s me, Helena Gray. I’ve waited on you in the store. . . .” His consuming stare was so unnerving, she momentarily lost her train of thought. “I helped you with your purchases. You know my father. . . .”

  Carrigan’s brows drew together in a withdrawn expression as he studied her briefly but didn’t answer. Removing the cigarette stub from his lips, he flicked it into the fire. “Does August know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “Then go home.”

  She let his comment pass, though the intensity of his gaze had her pulse spinning. “My father doesn’t know where I am because he’s dead.”

  Carrigan was silent, his face stony. The dog snapped his jaws, his sharp teeth biting at the breeze. Carrigan moved his gaze on the animal. “Obsi, lie down.”

  Helena’s arms were tingling. “May I lower my hands?” she asked.

  Grumbling, he turned away, and she took his dismissal as a yes. He set his revolver on the table and picked up a long-handled spoon to stir a shallow pan of beans. Afterward, he adjusted the skewer. When he turned toward her, the sharpness in his eyes waned to disbelief. “How did it happen?”

  “He was murdered in our store five days ago.” Wetting her lips, she continued with a sadness in her tone she was unable to mask. “Our cash box was taken with not enough in it worth killing for.” The horror of the scene haunted her sleep and tortured her waking hours, and she thanked God it had been she and not Emilie who had discovered their father’s body.

  A distilled silence feathered the campfire’s smoke before meat drippings hit the flames. Carrigan flinched when loud pops erupted, sending a shower of embers over the sooty containment rocks. He sat quiet and erect, his steely expression diminishing somewhat with the sparks in the wet grass. “Have you eaten?”

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

  He removed his meal, fixing a plate for the dog and himself. Then Carrigan proceeded to eat, using a fork and knife. His manners were cultured, unlike those of the old sourdough miners who sat in front of the Metropolitan Saloon. Taking intermittent swigs of liquor, Carrigan consumed his modest dinner and acted as if she weren’t there watching.

  Helena’s leather-laced ankles grew tired from standing on the slant, but she hadn’t been offered a seat. Not that there was an extra one. On first glance, there had appeared to be no back to the lean-to. Now she could see that the rear wall was the side of a crude cabin. And on closer inspection, the squat table held a coffee grinder and jars for making sassafras bars, a tobacco pouch, and an assortment of spice tins and oil vials.

  “Is anyone searching for the man responsible?” Carrigan’s inquiry broke her perusal.

  “There is no law or sheriff in Genoa. We’re a provisional part of the Nevada Territory. Mr. Van Sickle, our justice of the peace, and Mr. Doyle, our undertaker, are the few men holding legal professions.”

  “So nothing is being done?”

  “I gave my account to Mr. Davis, the deputy postmaster, and to Judge Kimball, but he can’t do anything without a suspect.”

  “Nothing is being done,” Carrigan muttered in a caustic tone.

  Helena grew perturbed. He made it sound as if she didn’t care. “What else can I do?” she asked bitterly. “There are no witnesses.” Her voice clogged with tears she refused to spend. “If I could track the outlaw myself, I would.”

  Carrigan set his plate aside and stared into the firelight as if the flame beckoned. Lifting the bottle, he took a long swallow, then held out his hand. “A drink will help. Whiskey can be a good cure when there is no visible blood on your wound.”

  “I don’t believe so,” she returned, tightening the shawl more closely about her shoulders. “You can’t drown your sorrows. They know how to swim.”

  He apparently didn’t appreciate her caution, for he grew as touchy as gunpowder. “What do you want?”

  Girding herself with courage, she said, “I want to offer you a trade.”

  “For more horses?”

  “No.”

  A suspicious line formed at the corner of his mouth. “A trade for what, then?”

  She stalled, trying to entice him with the rewards. “You’d be able to select merchandise at the store. Tobacco and liquor. Supplies when you need them. Dry goods. Kerosene. Anything you desire at no cost.”

  “Everything has a price,” he insisted with a sharp edge of cynicism. “What do I have to give you?”

  She braced herself for his reaction. “Your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name isn’t worth shit.”

  Her voice faded to a hushed stillness. “It is to me.”

  “How so?”

  “I would like use of it. In marriage.” She took a deep breath and tried to relax. “Our marriage.”

  * * *

  The taste of whiskey went sour in Carrigan’s mouth. Resting the bottle’s end on his leather-clad thigh, he grew intoxicated by his anger. The emotion stabbed at his normally disguised pride. Hostility rushed through him to slip like a greased key into the lock of his resentment.

  He didn’t like being played for a fool.

  At first he hadn’t known who she was. The fragrance of crushed violets on her skirts had confused him. He associated the smell of coffee, gun oil, and cheese with her voice. But then he’d recognized the distinctive female scent that was hers alone and had been able to place her. The rose vinegar perfuming her hair had entered him like sweet breath into his
lungs.

  Ignoring her, he willed her to leave him alone, hoping his silence was louder than the words warring inside his head. Seconds passed. He felt her unwavering gaze on him. Blue. Her eyes were blue and soft and pleading. In that instant he hated her for evoking something within the barren shell of his heart.

  “Leave,” he mumbled.

  “Not yet.”

  He underestimated her fearlessness. She wouldn’t go away.

  “My offer is honest. If you become my husband, I’d trade whatever you needed in the store.”

  Glaring at her, he mentally sifted the rubbish she tossed. He could barely contain his smirk when he found a flaw in her strategy. “As your lawful husband, I would own everything in the store.”

  His satisfaction was enhanced when she nervously bit her lip. “Yes . . . you would. But I was hoping I’d be able to keep running things as they are. I didn’t think you’d have any interest in—”

  “Suppose I did?” he countered sharply.

  “Then we would discuss those arrangements.”

  He cocked his brow with growing distrust. The transparency of her remark grated on him. Her eagerness to please thinned his forbearance. “There is a price. What am I really worth to you?”

  “Protection,” she said simply and without pause. “People are afraid of you. If I were your wife, they would be afraid of me, too.”

  Surprise engulfed him. “Am I so crazy to them?” he mused aloud. “I hadn’t realized.” Stuffing the cork on his whiskey, he put the bottle away.

  She wrung her hands together, disregarding his mocking statement. “Nothing need change in our lives. We’d go on the way we have, except we’d share your name. And my house.”

  Carrigan stared hard, showing no reaction to her proposal. “No.”

  “Things between us wouldn’t be permanent. Just for—”

  “No.”

  She was clearly at her wits’ end, her eyes a mirror of desperation. Firelight played across her pale face and danced through her golden hair, which had been confined in a diamond-patterned net. Her features were dainty, but the suggestion of a wholesome figure lay beneath her shawl.