Read Hearts in Defiance (Romance in the Rockies Book 2) for Free Online Page B

keep
swingin’. You’re the kind who will. That’s what separates you from the hapless
drunks.”
     
     
    Long after Earp left to make his rounds, Billy pondered the
lawman’s words. Get back up and keep swingin’.
    His gaze traveled round the cell. Bricks, bars, and cobwebs. No
exit, no hope.
    Hannah would have told him
to pray, to trust that God had a plan.
    Disgusted, he snorted aloud
at that thought. Some plan.
    It had seemed so right and
easy a month ago to take this path and thumb his nose at his father’s threats.
Billy could still hear the fury in the voice, warning him to calculate the
losses.
    “I told you before,” Frank
Page had said from the settee in their lavishly appointed parlor, “try to find
her, contact her in any way, and I will cut you off—stop your tuition payments
and cease paying your gambling debts. All of it will end. You’ll be out on the
street with nothing.”
    Billy hadn’t doubted it for
a second, but he’d prepared. Those gambling debts were a farce. He’d been
saving money. Finding the Pinkerton report had only confirmed that his next
step was the right one.
    “She hates you,” his father
hammered. “I made sure she knew you abandoned her because you were afraid of
losing your inheritance. She will not take you back. She has settled nicely
into that bawdy mining town. Seems it suits her.”
    Billy didn’t miss the
implication, but then again, his father simply didn’t know Hannah. Perhaps if
she’d been abandoned in that town, alone with a child to take care of, that
might have put a different light on things. But Hannah wasn’t alone.
    “Hannah may not love me
anymore,” Billy said rising to his feet to stare down at his father, “but she
would never hate me. Not even me.”
    Did he still believe that?
What if she were cold to his arrival? Or worse, indifferent? Hope was not in
abundant supply at the moment. He didn’t know how he was going to get out of
jail, much less get to Hannah. He wanted to ask God for a miracle, but as Billy
surveyed the cell again, he knew he couldn’t ask for such an extravagant gift
from Someone he didn’t know. The thought filled him with an ice-cold emptiness
that struck deep at his soul.
    ~~~
     
     
    At dusk, the office door opened and Earp walked in, stepping aside
for Eleanor. Surprised to see her, Billy stood up and met them at his cell
door. “Eleanor, I’m so sorry about your deposit. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
He had no earthly idea how, but he wouldn’t let another woman down.
    “Eleanor here has called in a favor,” Earp said, a scowl
expressing his opinion of this development.
    Billy didn’t understand. His
gaze ricocheted back and forth between the two.
    “It is within my capacity as
marshal,” Earp continued, “to drop the charges and return to you your fine
horse.” A pair of keys materialized in his hand and he unlocked the cell door.
He looked at Eleanor. “We’re square?”
    Eleanor slapped him on the
arm. “We’re square.”
    Earp cast an irritated
glance back at Billy. “Your horse is out back. Now, get out of Dodge.” He
didn’t wait for a response. Earp turned and let himself out into the orange
glow of sunset.
    Eleanor shifted away from
the cell door. “Earp confiscated the bets. They’re in your saddle bag—minus my
winnings. Seems that since you finished the race, you won it.”
    Billy shook his head in
amazement and pushed open the door. His freedom and his money had been given
back to him through the kindness of a woman he’d met only hours before. “Why
are you helping me?”
    Eleanor shrugged, dropped
her gaze to her feet. “It’s what needed to be done.”
    “But why?”
    He waited, needing to hear
her explanation. She pursed her lips, thinking. “I was a Hannah.” She raised
her head as the confession left her lips, her eyes swimming with memories. “But
no one ever came for me.”
    Billy felt as if he’d been
punched again by Earl H. Goode. For the first time, he