Immortal Cowboy. Alexis Morgan
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town that had formed the backdrop of the nightmares that had haunted her since she was thirteen years old.
Before that summer, she’d played in the deserted buildings as a child, loving every minute of her visits with Uncle Ray. But that last trip, everything had changed and she hadn’t been back since. The memories flooded through her mind.
How ironic that she’d run across a reference to Blessing now when it was too late to share it with Ray.
Rather than letting herself get dragged back into the past, she closed the book and put it in her bag. For now, she had to finish before the shipping company arrived. Most of her things were headed for storage; the remaining few would be shipped to the cabin up on the mountain where she’d need them for her research.
As she sealed the last box, she paused to look around her office. Odd that it felt as if she were leaving for good rather than for the summer. That was ridiculous. Of course she’d be back in the fall. The terms of Uncle Ray’s will had only dictated she had to live on the mountain through August, not the rest of her life.
By the end of summer, hopefully, she will have laid the past to rest once and for all. She’d return rested and ready to pick up the pieces of her life here at the university. That was her plan, and she was sticking to it.
* * *
Later that night, Rayanne curled up in her favorite chair, ready to learn what Jubal had to say about Blessing. Since no one in her family had ever answered her questions about the town, perhaps she’d finally find them for herself.
Did she really even want to?
As a rule, she did her best not to think about the solitary man who wore a black duster and carried a rifle. After all, he and the others only existed in her imagination. But if that were true, why had she continued to be plagued by such vivid, horrifying dreams about them?
Worse yet, why had she secretly compared every man she’d met to a nameless man with black hair and blue eyes?
She’d spent years searching for even a mention of Blessing with no luck until now. With a mixture of trepidation and excitement, she opened the book to the last page she’d read and started over at the top.
When she reached the lines where Jubal mentioned his next stop was to be Blessing, she took a deep breath and turned the page. His words drew her back into the past. He described the valley where the town sat with near-perfect detail, enough to convince her he was talking about the one on Uncle Ray’s mountain.
Jubal said most of the townspeople had moved on to greener pastures after some tragedy had occurred. He also alluded to a gunslinger who had met his fate in the street outside the saloon, his tone implying the man had gotten no less than he’d deserved.
Rayanne stopped right there to give herself time to process what she’d just read: there really had been a gunfight in Blessing. Did Jubal have more to say on the subject? With her pulse pounding in her head, she drew a deep breath and turned another page.
“Whoa, this can’t be!”
But it was. Not only had Jubal written more about the shootout, but he’d also included a picture. As the reality sank in, her hands shook so badly she dropped the book. She picked it up again.
Nothing had changed. Even in the faded tintype, it was easy enough to recognize the man who’d haunted her dreams for fifteen years. He wasn’t wearing a hat, but the hair was the same. So were the intense, pale eyes that stared up at her from the page. She bet they were blue. In fact, she knew they were.
The gunslinger had a name—Wyatt McCain.
He was real.
He’d lived and died right there in the dusty streets of Blessing.
For years, her family and the shrink they’d dragged her to had insisted that she’d made it all up. Her mother had blamed her father for filling Rayanne’s head with stories about the Old West. In return, her father had blamed her mother for leaving their impressionable young daughter alone with her nutcase brother. The shrink had blamed it all on her parents’ constant bickering and its effect on their daughter. Idiots.
None of them had even considered the possibility that it had all been real—the people, the gunfire, the blood and, most of all, Wyatt McCain.
Had Uncle Ray known? Was that why he’d come to her in the dream to say goodbye? He’d mentioned a gift they’d shared. What had that been about?
Now that she had a few facts to go on, she wouldn’t rest until she’d learned everything she could. Once she had her arsenal of evidence, the facts would free her of the nightmares from her past. Even if no one else ever knew the truth, she would.
A real man had died that day in the streets of Blessing, one who haunted her dreams a hundred years after his passing. She would tell his story—her story, too. Her purpose clear, she set the book aside and started a list of what she needed to take care of before she left for the mountain.
Chapter 2
The road leading up to Ray’s cabin was in far better condition than she’d remembered, but otherwise it all looked the same. Funny, it felt as if the cabin had been patiently waiting all these years for her return, but this time as owner rather than guest.
Rayanne eased her car around a slow bend to the right, her pulse picking up speed even if the car didn’t. After fifteen years, she was about to catch her first glimpse of the chimney that marked the location of her new home. The trees had grown taller, but she could just make out a glimpse of gray stone.
Tension had been riding her hard ever since she’d learned of Ray’s death. All the arguments about her decision to take a last-minute leave of absence from her job and move to the mountain hadn’t helped. But as she neared the cabin and the freedom it had always represented, the muscles in her shoulders and neck eased, and her mood lightened.
“Well, Uncle Ray, we’re almost there.”
Wouldn’t her mother freak out to hear Rayanne carrying on a one-sided conversation with her uncle? Well, not him, exactly, but the pewter urn that contained his last remains. One of the sidebars in his will was a request that Rayanne scatter his ashes on the mountain. He’d left it up to Rayanne to pick the time and place.
But until she carried out his wishes, she found comfort in the notion that her uncle was riding shotgun and could actually hear her. Maybe she was losing her mind just like her mother had said when she learned Rayanne had willingly accepted the terms of the will without a court fight.
Not that her mom’s opinion mattered. The mountain and the town that had haunted Rayanne for years was now hers, lock, stock and belfry. That is, provided she moved there and stayed through the entire summer. Come September, she was free to stay on or move back to the city. But if she didn’t follow the dictates of her uncle’s will to the letter, the entire estate would pass to a distant cousin. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening.
It hadn’t been a surprise that Shawn had agreed with her parents. However, if there was any hope of a future for the two of them, she needed to find the answers she’d been looking for.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Uncle Ray, but I don’t plan to live up here for the rest of my life.”
A stab of guilt had her giving the urn a remorseful glance. “But I will stay long enough to find answers to questions that my folks would never let me ask. And with luck, I can find enough information about the short history of Blessing itself to write a paper.”
Her mouth curved in a wide smile as she considered the possibilities. If she didn’t have enough information for a scholarly paper, there was another option. She loved historical romances, and she already knew the time period inside and out. Surely she could come up with a story line that fit the few facts about Blessing that she’d been able to uncover.
The ideas twirled and danced through her head. A beautiful schoolteacher for the heroine would be just the ticket. And the hero would