Adam, Devils on Horseback: Generations, Book 1 Page 12

  “That is more true than you can know.” Eve closed her eyes as she rocked, eager to flush the last half an hour from her mind. “He’s a poison that destroys everything he touches.”

  “He’s not your brother.” Tabitha’s tone told her she already knew the answer.

  “No. He’s a nightmare I never wanted to see again.” Eve took a deep breath. “I’m sorry he ruined our meal and I’m sorry you ever had to lay eyes on him.”

  “I’ve seen worse.” Tabitha shrugged. “Living on a ranch in Texas, you see the dregs of humanity ride past. Then you have people like Adam, Clint, Spencer and Elias. The good outweighs the bad.”

  Eve managed a smile. “You are the angels of light, all six of you, compared to Wade. Compared to me. I don’t belong here.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  Tabitha would ask questions, there was no doubt of that. Eve wasn’t prepared to answer them. The sad truth was she would lie to save herself, because it would save Adam and his family.

  Yet the other woman asked no further questions. She sipped her tea and gazed out at the sunlight-dappled ground. Eve had had little time to make friends, and most girls and women avoided her. She knew how to blend into the background, to be unnoticeable and become a shadow.

  Now she was front and center, wife of the red giant and part of the most prominent family in town. She did everything but blend in. Eve should have realized nothing good would come of her association with the Sheridans.

  After Wade’s appearance, she knew her life in Tanger was over. She would leave that night, after everyone had gone to bed. Eve knew how to sneak away without notice. All she needed was dark clothing and a few supplies.

  “That’s the thing about the Devils. We all belong.”

  Eve frowned at Tabitha. “Devils?”

  Tabitha’s grin widened over the rim of the glass. “Our fathers were a mounted group during the War Between the States. When they rode into battle, they screamed to bring down the hounds of hell on their enemies. Folks started calling them the Devils on Horseback.”

  How appropriate. She’d heard the part about the men being in the war together, but to know they were creatures of darkness made a difference. She now understood how she felt at home with the Sheridans and their extended family.

  Eve was a devil, just not on horseback.

  “I don’t want anyone to try to do anything to Wade. He’s my problem.”

  Tabitha snorted. “You’re crazy if you think for one minute the rest of the boys aren’t already plotting. I could get rid of him permanent-like, if you want.”

  Eve should be shocked by the suggestion, but instead she was touched. Not many people had protected her and now this woman, whom she barely knew, had offered to commit murder for her. She shook her head. “No, I told you. He’s my problem.”

  “I won’t argue with you.” Tabitha set her glass down on the railing. “But you’re wrong.”

  Eve wasn’t sure how to convince this woman, a stranger, that she didn’t need any help. The Devils and their families ran over everyone else’s objections for their own purposes. That could be good or bad. In this case, it was bad. Wade would not take kindly to someone trying to get rid of him.

  He would seek more than a nasty revenge on them. He would kill them, and Eve couldn’t have anyone’s death on her conscience. No, she would go to Wade tonight and find out what he wanted. She’d do what she must to get rid of him, including disappearing herself.

  “You’ve got a resigned look in your eyes.” Tabitha pursed her lips. “We really aren’t all that bad. Hell, they might even try legal means.”

  That was the last thing Eve wanted. If they looked into Wade’s past, they would find hers. All the sordid details of what she’d done, and what she was hiding from her husband.

  Perhaps she would vomit.

  “I like you, Eve. You seem like a good person beneath the ragged clothes and the strange man from your past.” Tabitha regarded her.

  Eve laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I’m a good person? You got that all wrong.”

  The other woman continued as if no words had been spoken. “We all make choices in our lives that don’t make sense. Look at me. I wear trousers and a gun. I spend my days with horses and cattle, knee-deep in shit. And what did I do? I fell in love with a man who can’t see me.” Tabitha sat beside her and stared with an intensity that made Eve squirm. “You’ve made bad choices too. None of that matters. What’s important is what we do now and tomorrow. It’s who we choose to be.”

  Eve knew it couldn’t be that simple. Nothing in life would allow her to erase all she’d done as if she were washing a slate. Tabitha was wrong. Very wrong. There was no saving a woman who’d sold her soul years ago.

  “You make the right choice or I’ll find you.” Tabitha’s threat was said with a smile. “I don’t let anyone hurt my family. And now you are my family too. A friend in need.”

  Eve didn’t know whether to hide or laugh. She couldn’t have imagined a week ago that her life would be inside out and upside down.

  How could it get any stranger?

  * * * * *

  Adam managed to sneak away from town an hour later, riding Jesse’s borrowed gelding. He started at the point where he’d last seen the gypsies, a half-day’s ride outside of town. From there, he searched for them. His stomach growled as the day wore on and he regretted missing supper with his family. He hadn’t told them he was leaving because he didn’t know how to explain why. And he didn’t really want to explain why.

  The sun was setting when he saw the wagons in a meadow up ahead. He hoped it was the same group that Eve had been traveling with. People walked around the wagons while a fire burned in the center of the semicircle of rigs. As he rode up, the men stopped what they were doing and watched him approach.

  He had a rifle on his saddle. No Texan rode without some weapon handy, but he didn’t have a pistol, which meant he wouldn’t be fast on the draw. A rifle was good but it required a bit more time to aim. The gypsies no doubt were wary of him.

  Adam pulled the horse to a stop and looked at the faces surrounding him, each with a closed expression but none with outright hostility. There were about half a dozen men, none of whom looked happy to see a stranger.

  “Good evening, fellas.” Adam pushed his hat back on his forehead. “Is there a Luca here?”

  “What you want with him?” an older man with shards of silver in his black hair spoke.

  “I need to talk to him about a woman that may have been traveling with him. Her name is Eve.”

  “You wasted a trip.” Luca emerged from behind one of the wagons. “She is gone from us.”

  “I know.” Adam gestured to the fire. “Can we sit down? I have questions.”

  Luca’s dark gaze narrowed. “She is not to return.”

  Adam wondered exactly what had happened between the gypsies and Eve. “She won’t. I married her.” Adam dismounted and patted the saddlebags. “I brought two bags of flour as a gift.”

  “We can talk.” Luca spoke to another man in his language. The younger man took the flour from Adam and the rest of the men disappeared, leaving Luca.

  “We speak.” The older man sat on a log. Adam had no choice but to sit on the ground. He didn’t mind. This way Luca was higher, which gave him a visual advantage.

  Adam was just happy the man was talking to him. At least he wasn’t sitting in a pile of donkey shit and nursing a sore head from a beating.

  “She is not a good wife?” Luca shook his head. “Eve has too much ideas for a woman.”

  “No, Eve is a good wife. Helped saved my father’s life.” Adam tried to find the words to ask what he needed to know. “I want to know more about her and where she came from.”

  Luca poked the fire with a stick, but he remained silent. The night peepers chirped around them, f
illing the air with their early evening song.

  “She traveled with your family?”

  “For a while. Two summers.” The older man wasn’t very talkative.

  “Where did she join you?”

  Luca met his gaze. “She was singing for food on the street. We need her to sing with us, so she join us.”

  Adam wasn’t surprised. Eve sang like an angel. “Did she tell you where she came from?”

  “No. She come from nowhere.”

  “Did you ever hear her mention a man named Wade?” The root of the problem, the name that made Adam’s gut clench.

  Luca frowned. “She worked at a place for sick people.”

  “She mentioned the hospital but didn’t tell me why she left there. Do you know?”

  “Eve want to be someone else. She try to be Roma, but I know it isn’t right.” Luca pointed at Adam with the stick. “Maybe she can be right with you.”

  The conversation was going in circles and it wasn’t helping him discover anything new about his wife. He needed to try a different approach.

  “Did anyone hurt her?”

  “Not my people, but she has scars on her back from a whipping.” Luca’s statement flattened the air between them.

  “Pardon?”

  “I see her back. It’s old scars, white marks. She try to hide it.”

  Adam closed his eyes. He hadn’t seen her back. When they made love in the mill, they had been facing each other and there was no time to explore every inch of her. He would change that as soon as he returned to Tanger.

  “Do you think she was hiding from someone when she left the hospital?”

  “Maybe.” Luca glanced behind him. “Simza, come here.”

  An older woman emerged from the shadows. Her scowl could have frightened small children.

  “I do not wish to speak of her.”

  Luca spoke sharply to her in their language. The woman sat down with a flounce, then spread her skirt around her.

  “She is his wife. You tell him what he needs to know and then he leaves.” Luca’s tone brooked no argument.

  Adam’s heart picked up speed. Whatever the woman was going to say he didn’t want to hear, but he had to. It was why he rode so far to find information. His marriage and the rest of his life depended on it.

  * * * * *

  Eve sat in the darkened room and watched through the window as the moon rose. The night had settled into a mild, springlike temperature. The sounds in the house finally stopped long after midnight.

  She still sat there, her satchel of things in her hand. She left the gingham dress hanging from a hook on the wall. Taking it wouldn’t feel right. The only things she would carry with her were memories. The Sheridans and their family had given her a home, if only for a short time.

  She did have a pocketful of rocks, though. Three of them, each a precious gift from Adam. She would treasure those and remember him every time she looked at them.

  Adam had disappeared after the disaster at the restaurant and hadn’t returned. Not that she blamed him. The scene with Wade had embarrassed and shamed her. Hopefully Adam realized she wasn’t the right wife for him. Leaving would be the best solution for all of them, but especially him. Adam was a knight, coming to her rescue and showing her what a true marriage should be. What love was.

  She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, but she was falling in love with Adam. Her red giant was the best person she’d ever met in her life. His soul was sweet and untarnished, his heart pure and unselfish. He was everything she wasn’t.

  Eve had to leave before he returned, before he knew the full, ugly truth about her and her past. She was a coward and she accepted that. Adam would move on and find a woman who was better suited to be his wife. Since she married him as Eve Tate, he’d be free—because that woman didn’t exist.

  She got to her feet, holding her shoes and satchel. Pins and needles exploded down her legs and feet. She’d sat for too long. As she shook out the discomfort, she opened the door and crept out into the darkened hallway. The stairway was to the right and she moved forward at a snail’s pace, fear of being discovered making her overly cautious.

  When Eve reached the bottom of the steps, she let out a breath of relief. No one was about and no noise sounded. She opened the door and stepped out into the fragrant night air. As she bent down to slip her shoes on, Adam spoke from her right, scaring a year off her life.

  “I wondered if you would be gone already or whether I’d have to have this conversation with you.”

  She pressed a hand to her racing heart. “Jesus, please us, you scared me.”

  “Where are you going, Eve?” His voice was devoid of emotion, which frightened her more than him appearing in the middle of the night.

  “I have to go.” She sounded pitiful and guilty.

  “Running away?”

  Eve sat down in the chair beside him, her heart heavy. “Yes. It’s the best thing for everyone.”

  He laughed without humor. “Making decisions for both of us already?”

  “Adam, you knew when we met that I wasn’t the right woman for you. I’m not a good person. I’m more like Wade than a woman worthy of you.” She blinked away the stinging in her eyes. “You’re so much better than me.”

  “Who decides that?”

  She blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “Who decides who is better than someone else? You? Me? Uncle Zeke?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I needed to know who you were, not who you let everyone see.”

  Dread began to push aside her guilt. “What did you do?”

  “I found the gypsies and asked them to tell me about you.” Adam’s words fell like rocks in a still pond. A roaring began in her ears and drowned out the sounds of the night.

  “Oh my God.” She leaned forward to keep herself from weeping like a fool. No doubt Simza was full of information. Now Eve might even have to leave the state of Texas. “How did you know about them?”

  “I saw the wagon right after the accident. I found out where they were camped.” He paused. “Why didn’t you tell me about your time with them? About you?” His voice was full of confusion and, to her horror, pain.

  “I’m sorry, Adam. So sorry. I never meant to hurt you.” She gulped in a breath of air through her tight throat. “The last person on earth I’d want to hurt.”

  “Not being honest hurts me more than telling me the truth.”

  “The truth is ugly.” She felt her heart tearing in half.

  “I don’t care if the truth is ugly. I care about you, Eve. I don’t even know if that’s your real name. I don’t know if anything about you is true or if it’s all a lie.” His voice had thickened with emotion.

  She could hardly put her thoughts together so they would make sense. “It’s all a lie. Except one thing.”

  “Which thing is that?”

  She closed her eyes. “You. You’re the one good thing in my life. The only good thing.”

  “Not good enough.” The chair thumped, and then he was in front of her on his knees. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.” Tears burned her eyes.

  “Yes, you can. Tell me.”

  “You’ll hate me.”

  He sighed. “I don’t think that’s possible. Right now I feel like I’ve been dragged down the street by a half-dozen horses. But I’m here, with you, listening.” He took her hands in his big paws. “Tell me.”

  The words, long trapped inside her, erupted from her mouth. Eve was about to tell her story.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I was born in a whorehouse. One of the women was my mother. I don’t remember what she looked like because she never claimed me. The cook in the building took pity on me and made sure I was fed. She’d sing me to sleep and tuck me into the bed in the corner of the kitchen, near the stove, so I’d
be warm.”

  Eve’s voice had flattened as she spoke. “The cook convinced me I had to leave, so I ran away and hid in the wagon. The part about the rancher finding me and the orphanage was true. I was only there for a few years. From there, I learned how to take care of myself any way I could. I ate from slop buckets, from trash bins, even stole food when I could get away with it.”

  “You were a child.” He couldn’t imagine being on his own at five and finding what he needed to feed himself.

  She shook her head. “I was never a child. I had an old soul from the moment I was born into that place. I would’ve done all right on my own, maybe even found a way to make a living when I got old enough. But then I met Wade.”

  The name on her tongue sounded like a death knell. Adam knew the man wasn’t to be trusted.

  “I was eleven, or something like that. He caught me eating in an alley behind a restaurant and boasted about having a full pantry and bacon and biscuits.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t naïve enough to believe him, but hungry enough to take a chance. He had a few children in a little shack at the edge of town. They smiled at me as they ate the biscuits and bacon. I gave in to my hunger and ate more than my belly could hold.”

  Adam was afraid to ask her what happened. He didn’t have to.

  “I woke up in a haze with a man over me. He was whispering nasty things to me and his cock was between my legs. It was the pain that pulled me out of the opium. The food had been laced with it. Wade had drugged me and sold me to this man for five dollars.” She clenched her hands together, her entire body as taut as a bowstring. “I wanted to escape, but I couldn’t move. After that man left, there was another and another. Wade would feed me more drugs and some food to keep me alive.”

  Adam was horrified. And the white-hot rage returned to choke him. He would kill Wade with his bare hands.

  “It went on for a couple years or so. Wade had a boss that told him what to do and he controlled me. I never met him, though. They must have decided, because I had such an innocent face, I would be a good partner in his schemes. Wade promised me he wouldn’t sell my body if I helped him.