To Love an Outlaw (Into the West #1) (A Wattpad Reading List Choice)

Chapter 11

 Sonny McQuade woke by degrees the following morning, consciousness returning in the form of insistent birds chirping from outside his brain somewhere. It was difficult to open his eyes; they felt heavy; puffy; full of grit. His head pounded, like a hangover when he was in his teens and positive he could hold his liquor. All in all,with eyes still tightly shut, Sonny found himself wondering if it was going to be worth waking up after all. Especially with those damn birds creating such a racket...

 Slowly the gunfighter cracked one eyelid against the muted early morning light, and immediately wondered where he was. He knew he'd never been in this particular room. He didn't recognize the lace curtains fluttering in the dawn breeze. Was he back at the boarding house? Or in a whorehouse? And if so, why did he feel like a train had run over him, and then reversed to do it again? Had he been in a saloon brawl?...

 Gradually his eyes focused and lit on various objects around the room, like the dark wood highboy with an oval looking glass above it on the wall, or the low bureau with a silver hairbrush and comb set resting in its center. As he took notice of these feminine objects, Sonny's memory began its cowering return, creeping back as though afraid it might be smacked into oblivion. At last his hesitant gaze landed on the rocking chair and its occupant beside the large, comfortable bed he languished upon. Sonny was not too surprised to find Miz Callie West curled up against the wall with one delicate hand propped under her chin, sound asleep. He could never forget the woman to whom he owed his life, who had shown him he was worth much more than the paper his Wanted pictures were printed upon She rode his memory always, and today was no exception. Whatever else he'd forgotten, Miz Callie West and her kindness would not be one of them.

 Yesterday at last invaded his memory: the rifle shot, his ignominious fall from his horse, the widow and Noah rescuing him, and the surgery. Ah, yes, the reason why his whole body felt trampled. Turning his head on the pillow, Sonny saw the bandage on the left side of his chest, so near to his heart. An involuntary shiver coursed through his body. So close; this attack was so close to ending his life. If it had not been for the feisty widow and her refusal to leave him be, the great Sonny McQuade would now be entering history books as one of the fastest guns in the West, cut down in his prime.

 He owed Miz Callie West his life.

 The thought kept circling around his head, waking up the rest of his brain from its stupor. Sonny McQuade didn't cotton to feeling beholden to anyone. He'd relied on himself for so long, needing another person really didn't figure into his life plan anymore. But being in the widow's debt? That was a whole other story. Any event that kept him in closer proximity to Miz West he'd gladly embrace. He truly believed the woman was his salvation. Never before in the last ten years had he felt he had a chance at a normal life. He'd always believed he would die before forty at the hand of a faster gun. He'd accepted that fact. There really had been nothing to live for. Until now.

 Now he had the life he'd been seeking almost within his grasp. He lay his head on the same pillow at the same place every night, had steady, satisfying work, and a youth who looked up to him instead of wanting to replace him by killing him. All he lacked was the love of a good woman.

 Examining Callie while she slept the sleep of the exhausted, Sonny cautiously admitted to himself that he just might have found that woman in the lovely widow West. Although he alone knew how wounded inside Miz West actually was, on the outside she didn't take any guff from others. She was fiercely independent, wanting to be beholden to no one. And Sonny admired her for all of it. Her personality attracted him; had snared him from the first. That, and her baking prowess. As for her looks...

 Sonny's eyes narrowed on the widow, as he studied her more carefully. She was beautiful, and brave. Miz West appeared fragile, yet possessed a strength of character not found in many men, evidenced by her ability to pick herself up after a marriage to that monster. She didn't look resilient enough to survive being bound to a chronic wife beater, let alone run a ranch and start a business. Yet she was. And that integrity was probably what drew Sonny to the widow; kept drawing him. From the pie supper onward, the gunfighter found himself thinking about Miz West; had even machinated his presence on her ranch.