Chapter 28

28

Maeve left the children in the care of the utterly patient Michaela. She went up to her room to clean up. It had been a very long day. She moved to the pitcher of water and washbasin on the dry sink in the corner. A mirror hung on the wall above it.

Looking up, she stared at her face reflected in the mirror. Scratched up and bleeding on the right side from forehead to chin. Her hair was a nightmare, her dress dusty and torn in places where she'd slid across the rocks.

Her arm was bleeding under one of the torn spots. She felt battered everywhere. Very gently she dabbed the blood off her face, then shed her yellow calico dress. It was one of two dresses she owned, and it might be saved if she could scrub the bloodstains from it.

Right now, though, she wanted to get back down to the dining room and hear everything that had happened while she was in the clutches of the Darnells. And she wanted to see Dakota again.

That thought pulled her out of her distress. She changed into her green dress, then set the yellow calico one in the basin of water for a good soak. She combed her hair and found two bumps she hadn't noticed in her general aches and pains. After a few moments washing the blood out of the dress, she quickly hung it over a chair and hurried out of her room so fast she almost ran over Dakota. He'd been leaning against the wall outside her door, his arms crossed. He smiled when she rammed into him.

"In a hurry, pretty Maeve?"

"Dakota." His name came out like a whisper on her lips. She wanted time with him, to talk together without danger and prisoners and trials, and without babysitting.

It would have to wait.

"I was in a hurry to see you again. I can't believe how nice it is to hear you say such sweet words to me. I'm sure it's a flaw in my character to let it make me this happy."

Dakota tilted his head a bit in the tiniest of shrugs. He straightened away from the wall. "I'll try to compliment you enough that you take it as your due and don't contemplate your character when you hear sweet talk. I favor that green dress. It makes your hair look like the brightest sunrise and brings out the blue in your eyes. I'm sure sorry you're scraped up, but you're still the prettiest thing I've ever seen."

The two of them walked downstairs, Dakota's arm warm on her back. It helped her forget all the worries and ignore, for the most part, the sickening knowledge that she'd killed a man.

Maeve and Dakota entered the dining room to find it abuzz with the whole Holt-Collins clan, along with Brand Nolte and his children.

No judge was present. She was probably right now sentencing two men to be hauled away to prison.