Broken Road

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty Two

The conversation went far in the night between the two of them. Whenever Winthrop strayed to something to personal, Devil brought him back to safe ground. She didn’t know how much more personal something could get after telling the guys your starting to feel something for you killed your father, but believe her there was. Winthrop didn’t like talking about his past much and not the she could blame him for it, but she wished he would share more of himself now that he knew pretty much everything about her after reading the report.

    Their little chat ended around one in the morning as Devil finally drifted off the sleep in her chair with Lilla in her arms, who had gone to sleep long before. It was odd how one squishy pink blob of giggles and smiles could relax even the stiffest of person into a pile of cooing mush.

   Winthrop simply sat for a moment in his high back chair staring at the young girl in amazement. He propped his chin on his fist and watched her, looking over every inch of her beautiful face, wondering just how such an amazing child could exist. She had gone through so much that would have broken so many and pieced a life together that held her up above the rest.

   Her eyes fluttered for the briefest moment, making him catch his breath, thinking she would awaken and think his staring strange. But she settled down soon enough cupping the child in the hollow of her chest and middle. The baby snorted a time or so and snuggled down against the warmth of her chest. Winthrop felt the prick of envy about that, but he could blame either of them. He knew how hard it was to raise a child when you were a child yourself, like he had done with his brother after his mother had left, but this was different. She wasn’t as alone as she thought she was. In fact he cared enough for the two to let them stay on his ranch and protect them from whatever it was that wanted to harm them, didn’t he?  In fact in had crossed his mind a time or two since the night they had spent together to ask her to stay-

    Now wait a moment! He shook himself. He didn’t want anything permanent, he told himself, this was just a time they were enjoying themselves. She hadn’t said anything about wanting to stay around.

    Something knotted in his gut. Of course she wouldn’t want to stay, none of them ever did.

   “You aren’t good enough to stay for. You may have money and good looks, but you think that will make any girl in her right mind stay? You are as cold as the winters that freeze this land. Your road is too broken for anyone to travel on. You are destined to die alone, Winthrop, just like our father,” Lisa had said in the cool tone of her’s before she had ran away with his cousin and what he had thought at the time, his heart.

   Clenching his fist and gritting his teeth he left his angry drain from him, there was no point in being baited by the truth. It had burned him in his very soul to hear the dark fear of his said by one he had cared for yet it had to be said sometime. At least he knew it now.

   There was nothing he could give her besides a place to stay and a fun time or two before even she would leave, finding something new to take up her time.

    Just thinking about the past left a bitter taste in Winthrop’s mouth and he didn’t like it at all. He slowly got to his feet and took the child from Devil’s arms. Devil fussed and frowned as she was searching for the baby in her sleep. Winthrop put the baby to bed and then took her mother up stairs in his arms and laid her in her own bed. Going against everything that had driven him for the whole of his life since he was thirteen he kissed her forehead gently and left the room closing the wood door behind him. It was going to be one hell of a morning.

~*~*~*~

Devil woke on the floor of her room late the next morning with the urge to spend all day there, but sadly enough it wasn’t meant to be. A ruffled and tired Royal came in to her room and promptly dumped her on to the floor with a firm tug of her blanket.