Almost 20 years ago (!) I wrote a series of stories featuring Hank Lawson and an original character Emma Jane Brown. The stories are still on the site (Road to Heartbreak, Loyalty and Trying to Catch Your Heart, along with two unfinished ones, Choice or Chance and Blood and Water). When I read them back now, I cringe a little and so I wanted to re-work them with an older, and hopefully more mature writing head on my shoulders. I tried keeping within the original story, but 16 year old Emma Jane doesn't really resonate as much now with 40-something Isabella2004, so I decided to change it into a new story with new characters and circumstances. I hope you enjoy should you choose to read :)

Prologue

Colorado Springs, Colorado

20 December 1869

The cold was different here, somehow, though she wasn't quite sure how or why it could or should be.

But it was different.

The air had a tinge to it that she had never experienced back home in San Francisco. Perhaps it was because there was so much vast open space here across the rolling plains, so different from the crowd and crush of the city. The wind was given more freedom to bend and twist and turn, leaving its indelible mark behind. And yet, when she thought of all the times she had stood and watched the waves crash against the bay and felt the salty tang in the air, she found herself wondering what could possibly be more spacious than the sea? That vast, rolling greatness spread out before her, the promise of faraway lands, of different lives and different people. Perhaps, instead of turning on her heels and fleeing east landwards, she should have fled westwards and across the water. Who knows where she might have landed.

"Gonna catch yer death out here."

She didn't turn at the sound of his voice, perhaps because his words held more meaning that he no doubt meant to ascribe to them. Perhaps it would be preferable to die out here and have him bury her in the town cemetery, granting her the honour of permanent citizen rather than someone merely passing through as they contemplated what to do with their life.

How would she be remembered, once she was gone?

"I ain't jokin'. Wind's gonna cut ya in half."

"I'm all right. It feels good." She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and kept her eyes fixed on the darkness above them, hoping that he would go back inside and leave her to her thoughts. But the sound of his boots coming closer only served to put pay to her wishes.

For a moment, he said nothing, though she could feel him close behind her.

"Ya don't have to go."

"Yes, I do."

"Ellie…"

She closed her eyes, loving and yet hating the nickname in equal measure. In all her life, all her thirty years, he was the only one to ever use it and she knew, even now, that she would never let anyone else ever use it again.

Afraid to look, yet afraid not to, she turned to him, her gaze instantly travelling upwards as it always did to meet his gaze. "Thank you."

He frowned slightly, "For what?"

"Everything."

His jaw tightened ever so slightly. "Ain't done nothin', not really."

"We both know that ain't true…isn't true," she corrected herself. For once, he didn't smile at her slide into local parlance. "I could have fared much worse than I have. Not many men would have done what you did and not expected something in return."

"Just cause I ain't taken it, doesn't mean that I ain't wanted to." She felt her cheeks flush and lowered her head, only for cool fingers to gently touch her chin and pull it skywards again, his index finger slowly caressing the skin of her jaw. "So Goddamn beautiful," he said softly, "and so far out of my Goddamn reach."

The wind chose that very moment to quieten, to still the air around them. The raucous sounds from inside the saloon faded away to nothing as her eyes danced across his face, as though seeing for the first time the blueness of his eyes, the bristle of his moustache and beard, the contour of his jaw, the mass of golden hair that she had thought, more than once, about running her fingers through…if he had wanted it, she had wanted it too. But something, bigger even than their agreement, had stopped her. If she was really going to adhere to the plan they had made, it would do neither of them any good to break the barrier now.

"Early stage in the morning," she heard herself say hoarsely. "I should…"

"Yeah, guess ya should." He dropped his hand and stepped back, allowing her to move past him towards the saloon door. "I'll miss ya."

She paused, one hand on the door, this time too afraid to look upon him again.

"I'll miss you too, Hank."