Grayson

Missouri 1878

Callie smoothed out her skirts as she sat down on a large moss covered boulder and looked around the small clearing. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky and she hoped that Grayson would get here soon because her mother and stepfather would be expecting her back. She thought of her stepfather and shivered.

He was cold and cruel. Nothing like the warm loving man her father had been. Her mother had been lost when Callie's father had been murdered two years before. His murderer had never been found and though Callie's mother had always had a habit drinking too much her habit became worse after his death. Callie had the scent of laudanum permanently burned into her nose since it too was always clinging to her mother as she walked around in a drugged and drunken fog. Callie often wondered how her stepfather Thomas was able to fall in love with her mother but then again she didn't think he really did love Susannah. Thomas seemed like a man incapable of feeling anything like love or compassion.

Callie missed the way life had been when her father had been alive. She would have been wearing a skirt that wasn't ripped and torn that was for sure. Her hands would not be calloused from the hard labor on the farm and her stomach would not be in a near constant state of hunger.

Callie's father had been a fairly wealthy man. Callie had no idea where his money was now. She was only sixteen, and a female, and therefore was quickly told it was none of her business by Thomas, the banker in town and the attorney left in charge of her fathers affairs. She wondered if it was coincidence that both the town banker, Ed Schmidt, and the attorney, Raymond Collier, were both good friends of her stepfathers.

Callie shook her head to clear the unpleasant thoughts. She didn't want to think of anything except Grayson. Her Grayson. Of course he had never said they were anything more than friends but that did not stop her from dreaming. Callie had been dreaming of being his wife for as long as she could remember. His family owned the land that connected to her families and back when her father had been alive the families had been very close. Since her fathers death they had drifted apart but that had not kept Callie and Grayson from remaining friends.

And every three days they would meet out here in their little secluded spot in the forest and he would sit beside of her and listen intently as she carried on about her life and told him all about her troubles. He would then, no matter how upset she was, find a way to make her laugh and he would tell her that someday soon she would be old enough to find a husband who would take her away from all of her problems.

Oh how she wished he would be that husband! Deep down she thought that he would be. There was something about the way she would catch his green eyes looking at her at times that made her think he saw her as more than a friend. She knew that he thought she was too young compared to his twenty-one years but she hoped that eventually he would get over that and they would move beyond friendship.

The sound of an approaching horse snapped her out of her thoughts. She worried about who could be coming and wondered what she would do if someone caught her out here alone. She was surprised when she recognized Grayson on the brown mare. He usually just walked the short distance from his families home. He brought the horse to a stop and jumped down. Callie could tell by the way his broad shoulders were sagging and the way his normally smiling face was lined with worry and sadness that something was very wrong.

She stood and ran to him and was surprised when he wrapped his arms tight around her soft waist and clung to her almost desperately. He had never held her like this before and she found her body heating strangely at being pressed against his. She pulled her face away from his hard chest to look up at his handsome face. She was shocked by the sadness she saw. His mouth was set in a deep frown instead of the normal warm smile. His tan skin seemed paler and his green eyes had lost their glow. He looked lost and it made her heart ache.