scowled at the fading sunset. The idea of turning in his badge stuck in his craw in the worst way. He hated to do it, to give up the only thing that gave him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But as his father constantly reminded him, he had a duty to his family.
What was left of it. It had been just him and his father since Ma had hightailed it out of town when he was fourteen. He tried not to blame her. Get right down to it, his father was a first-rate bastard. He’d spent his whole married life and longer mooning over another man’s wife instead of his own, turning bitter when he couldn’t have her. Hunter hadn’t heard from Ma since she’d left. Sometimes on nights like this he wondered where she’d got to. Was she happy? Was she even still alive? Why hadn’t she thought to take him with her? He didn’t let the thoughts linger for long, though. Turned out Ma was as interested in being a mother to him as Vernon was in being a father. He guessed that there wasn’t enough about him to love. At least that’s what he believed for the longest time until someone else had shown him different.
Someone who had made him dream of a future full of possibilities he’d never considered. Of having a home. Of coming through the door once the sun had sunk into its nest behind the mountains and the stars took over the heavens, and being met by a passel of smiling children and a loving wife with pale blond hair and dazzling blue eyes who’d welcome him with open arms.
He’d come so close to having that once, but...well, he’d come close but not close enough.
Now, here he was pushing thirty and all he had to show for himself at the end of the day was the tin badge pinned on his chest.
“The men should sober up soon enough,” Jenkins said, coming up behind him. Hunter welcomed the interruption. He didn’t like wallowing in maudlin thoughts for too long. They had a way of making a man see all the things he’d done wrong in life. It could be a long list. “I can spring them once the sun goes down, send ’em on home if you want.”
“Let them sweat it out for a bit,” Hunter said. “Maybe it will give them pause if they think they might be bunking down here for the night.”
“Yucton wouldn’t like that. Says he don’t cotton to neighbors much. ’Specially smelly drunks who don’t have the sense to know when to keep their mouths shut.”
Hunter scowled. “You tell Yucton we’re running a jail, not a damn hotel. If he wanted to choose his neighbors he should have chosen not to break the law.”
That’s the way it worked in Hunter’s mind. You broke the law, you paid the price. It was as simple as that. At least it should be. But justice could be a mercurial mistress.
“Hey, ain’t that...?” Jenkins took a step forward and squinted through the early-evening light. Hunter followed his gaze.
His heart stuttered and his breath along with it.
Jenkins made his way to the edge of the planked sidewalk and leaned against the railing, a smile breaking across his young face. “Well, I’ll be hog-tied and roasted on a spit. Will you look at that?”
Hunter couldn’t look at anything else. Every muscle in his body went still as rigor. Had someone hog-tied him and roasted him on a spit, he wasn’t sure he would even notice. He knew what he was seeing. He just couldn’t believe it. Or didn’t want to.
“Meredith.”
He hadn’t spoken her name aloud in seven years, but it slipped off his tongue now as if it had been yesterday, bringing with it all the emotions he’d kept neatly tucked away deep inside. They rushed out now, caring little for neatness or order as each one raged through him and left him standing in front of his office wrecked and broken as if no time had passed at all and she was riding out of town instead of back in.
He’d known this day might someday come, but he had prayed it wouldn’t almost as fervently as he’d hoped it would.
And now it had.
* * *
Meredith Connolly sat in the wagon, her fingers grasped tightly around the handles of the small valise resting in her lap. The boned construction of her corset helped keep her back ramrod straight but her shoulders ached from the strain of holding them back while keeping her chin high.
She’d had no intentions of riding into town the way she had ridden out of it seven years earlier with a crushed spirit, broken dreams and empty bank account. Granted, the riding into town was mostly for show. Her aunt had squirrelled away some money from her business as a seamstress, a business Meredith had learned backward and forward, but it wasn’t substantial. She’d inherited enough to arrive back in Salvation Falls in style and start over. After that, it would be up to her. A fact that suited her just fine. She didn’t put much stock into relying on others. Not anymore.
Pride held her posture in check when her muscles began to ache from the effort. The plumed ostrich feather in her hat bobbed in her peripheral vision, blotting out the image of Hunter Donovan every time the wagon’s wheels hit a new rut in the road. Even from halfway down Main Street she had recognized his likeness, the relaxed posture as he leaned against the post outside the sheriff’s office, every bone in his body a study in ease. He was too far away to see the details of his face, but she didn’t need to. She’d memorized every line, every contour long ago.
She recognized the moment he realized who she was. Though his stance did not alter, the coffee mug in his hand went slack, its contents dribbling out and hitting the toe of his boot. She wouldn’t blame him for not recognizing her straightaway. Coifed and dressed to the nines as she was, it was a far different picture she presented than the one he was familiar with.
She refused to look his way, to give the strange tingling in her belly any credence. It was only nerves, nothing more. She had put away the feelings she’d harbored for Hunter Donovan a long time ago and she had no intentions of hauling them back out now.
Once upon a time, he’d told her she wasn’t good enough to take the Donovan name. Well, she would show him. She would show everyone who’d thought it impossible a Connolly would ever amount to much.
Meredith turned her gaze to the craggy mountains off in the distance. Their panoramic landscape refused to be ignored. It had been too many years since she’d seen the view. Its potency had not lessened since then. If anything, the sun-brightened tips of the mountains looked even more golden against the twilight-streaked sky than she remembered. The wildness of it called to her, penetrating the polish and sophistication Boston had adorned her with.
The wagon jostled to a stop and the driver, a man she didn’t know, hopped down.
“Meredith!”
Bertram Trent’s robust voice cut through the melee of people milling about at the end of the day. He bustled toward her and shooed the driver off, helping her down on his own. He had always struck her as a tangible version of Old St. Nick, and in the seven years she’d been gone time had only solidified the image. Thick white hair with a matching beard framed a round face and apple cheeks. Even his blue eyes sparkled with a merry twinkle that never seemed to dim. She set aside her valise and let him assist her down. Her feet no sooner touched the ground than he enveloped her in a warm embrace.
“Bertram! It is so wonderful to see you.”
“And you, my dear girl.” He pulled away and held her at arms’ length, giving his head a small shake. “As I live and breathe you are a sight for these old eyes. Every bit the vision of loveliness your mama was.”
“Oh, pish.” Meredith smiled at the compliment but shook her head. Vivienne Connolly had been a raven-haired beauty with the warm olive skin of her Irish ancestors. Even illness hadn’t been able to rob her of it. Meredith, on the other hand, was fair-skinned and prone to burning whenever the sun found its way beneath her bonnet. “We both know I favor my father in that regard.”
“I don’t remember your pa being quite so pretty, or dressed in such finery.”
Meredith glanced down at her traveling dress. It had wrinkled somewhat from the trip but had fared better than she expected.