When she reached the Younger farm there wasn’t any sign of Cole. Having only taken the time to throw a blanket on the back of her horse, Zee already found herself sitting in a rather uncomfortable position, and the dark gloom of the lonely farm wasn’t exactly soothing.

In the eerie moonlight she could just make out the large black scar on the ground where the barn had stood only a year before. The place had been so cheerful back then. The army had left town, Jesse had finally kissed her, and they’d saved Cole from hanging. That night had been so perfect, and had ended so tragically with Ma James and several other townsfolk dying in a series of scare-tactic raids done by Pinkerton’s detectives, burning many family farms in the area to the ground.

Her horse bent down to sample the grass in the front yard while she continued to gaze around, her spirits slowly sinking. She’d been duped. She could’ve stopped him from leaving and she hadn’t. Zee swore, thoroughly spitting on her own name, and Cole’s for good measure. She’d trusted him and she should’ve known better. Of all the stupid things...

“You surprise me, Zerelda Mimms.”

She jumped just about half a foot off the back of her horse, turning her head around as she frantically searched for the voice that had just addressed her. “That better be you, Coleman,” she said, with what she hoped sounded like conviction.

Deep chuckling came from her left, to the south of the acreage as Cole and his horse emerged from the trees. “Now I know for sure you ain’t no outlaw’s girl. You should know better than to call out a wanted man’s name in the dead of night when you don’t know for sure who might be listening,” he drawled, trotting slowly past her on his way toward the north field. Zee encouraged her horse to follow, falling in beside him.

Compared to the state he’d been in when he’d left her place, he seemed relaxed in the saddle. He sat with his regular semi-sideways slouch, his reins held loose and his whole body swaying lightly to the rhythm of his horse’s trot, evidence of a man who’d spent much of his life on horseback. She wondered if and how he’d blown off some of that steam he’d built up all afternoon and evening, or if it was merely the ride that had calmed him.

“Thought you said I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you on horseback. Seems like I beat you here,” she said, burring him a little for the sake of being irritating.

“Made a stop first, then took the scenic route. Waited out in the woods for a bit with my gun cocked to see if you were the stupidest bounty hunter west of the Mississippi, or just a dim-witted little girl trying to get an outlaw legend alone.”

She gasped at the brashness of his words. “Coleman Younger, I never!”

He pulled one of his sixes out in the blink of an eye and pointed it at her head, cutting her oncoming tirade short. “Jesus-Fucking-Christ, Zerelda. I told ya once tonight and I’m not gonna tell ya again. You ain’t my mama. She was the only one who ever called me Coleman besides the doc and the hangman. Now are you gonna shut up, or am I going to have to scare your horse so bad he’ll bolt all the way to the county line?”

She’d frozen with her mouth slightly open, her eyes stuck on the muzzle of his peacemaker. If she hadn’t been so afraid she might’ve debated in her mind if he actually had the balls to do it.

If any of them did, it would be him.

“Well?” he pressed, sounding calm.

Zee tried to speak and failed. She cleared her throat, licking her lips. “No,” she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear her over the thumping of the horses’ feet and the creaking of leather.

“No what?”

“No, Cole. I’ll shut up.”

He holstered his gun and looked ahead, seeming to have suddenly forgotten her. They went on for a moment or two in a horribly tense silence.

“Is that the first time you’ve ever drawn on a woman?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them. Immediately afterward she wondered if she should try to make a break for it before he shot her.

“Yeah, well, in the complicated words of my overly-educated cousin, Frank James, I’ve had a rather dire decade, Zee,” he reminded her, voice clipped and irritated. “My little brother getting shot today seems to have pushed me to the end of my rope. Now, everyone knows I’m the toughest sonnovabitch in town, but there is only so much bad I can take before I feel the need to start sharing it with others. There, there’s my horse, right where I said he’d be.”

She looked where he motioned, ahead and to the left, under a giant tree standing in the middle of an otherwise empty pasture. Sure enough, three horses stood under it, still fully tacked, and from the look of it they were all asleep.

“Grab one of them, will you?” he said before sliding off his mount and walking over to take the reins of his horse, and Bob’s bay gelding, leading them over toward the house and hitching them at regular intervals along the post out front. He was nearly done unsaddling them by the time Zee caught up with him, her meandering pace just one of the outward signs she’d become lost in thought. She didn’t say a word as she went about loosening the saddle on a mare that belonged to Jimmy.

She followed him into the house, carrying in the mare’s saddle and blanket.

Cole dropped his load of tack on the floor and then fumbled around with getting a lantern lit in the darkness, finally illuminating the room. He picked up all the saddlebags and placed them on the kitchen table. Opening them up, he removed the contents, some of which included money rolls. From the bag he’d had on the stolen gelding, he removed a large bottle of whiskey, and suddenly Zee had an idea of where he’d ‘stopped’ between her place and his farm.

“You’d better get back before your daddy starts wondering what happened to you,” he said at last, never looking up from the money he counted, stacking the bills in semi-neat piles.

“What, you aren’t coming?” she asked. She’d been waiting for him to get up and go with her.

Cole shrugged. “I thought about it. I could go back and spend the night agonizing over whether or not Jimmy’s gonna die, and how I could’ve saved him if I’d been a little quicker, a little smarter. But, I think I’d rather stay here and get raging drunk, bust a few chairs, go kick the dog if I can find him, and then pass out until sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

Zee shook her head, raising her hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand. What about Becky and Laurie? You said you’d be back to make sure they were okay tonight.”

“Thought about that on the way over here too, and I think the girls would be better off if they didn’t get used to having me around. Let’s face it, I’m either gonna get shot or hanged before age twenty-five.”

Zerelda growled her frustration, and to her added dismay he didn’t even seem to notice. Then, she had an idea.

She quickly walked over to the cupboards and started going through them, and upon finding what she was looking for, she marched over to the table, took a seat, and banged a shot glass down in front of Cole.

He looked up slightly at her, his regular mean smirk shaping his features. “Well thanks, Sugar, but I was planning on drinkin’ it straight from the bottle.”

“Cut the crap and pour me a goddamn drink, you son-of-a-bitch,” she snapped, her eyes flashing as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“You can’t drink with me, Zee. You’d never keep up.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’ll see.”

He laughed at her tenacity, grabbed the bottle, and pulled the cork to pour her some.

As soon as the little glass was full, she picked it up and held it in front of her, glaring at him with all her might. “If I can take a shot as well as most of the men you know, you have to come back with me tonight. Deal?”

Cole rolled his eyes. “That ain’t the kind of talk I’d expect from a good little Christian girl, but all right, you have yourself a deal.”

Zee smirked before throwing back her drink, nearly choking on the horrible burning liquid, and hardly able to keep herself from coughing when she smacked the glass back down on the table. She swallowed hard, trying to get the hot iron out of her throat.

“Just as good as any man,” she informed him, nodding once as if to confirm her own statement.

Cole’s mean smirk had turned to one of vast amusement. She knew the look well from their childhood days. It was the cutest expression she’d ever seen on a young man, the way he cocked his head, and grinned sideways, a slight divot appearing in one cheek, making him appear boyish. But based on what she’d both witnessed and heard in the past, a slight chill settled in her bones when she saw that particular mischievous look of his.

“Na, not as good as any man. The point is to see how many drinks in a row you can handle, not how you take just one,” he enlightened her, refilling the small glass.

She picked it up, still glaring at him, but inside she wondered if she was going to be sick. He held out the bottle and allowed it to briefly clink against her shot.

“Cheers,” he invited, slumping down in his seat and raising the bottle to his lips. Zee did the same, throwing back the drink like she had the last one, only this time she did choke.

He didn’t laugh while she coughed and sputtered. In fact, he didn’t say a word. When she finally looked up, she saw why. He had the bottle of whiskey tilted until it was nearly vertical, and he was rhythmically chugging it down in long pulls—like he’d been born drinking hard liquor.

He studied her critically out of one eye, watching her watch the muscles in his throat grow taunt and then relax with each practiced gulp.

“How long have you been able to do that?” she asked, and he finally lowered the half-empty bottle, setting it on the table and whipping his mouth on the cuff of his jacket.

“Just about forever. Started sneaking beer from behind ol’ Davy’s bar when I was ‘bout eleven. Moved on to the hard stuff a year or two later. Now I’m just hoping I’ll drink myself to death before I get shot in the back, or hanged.”

“You’re certainly well on your way,” she agreed morbidly, leaning forward and letting her chin rest on both fists. “Tell me something, Cole. What sort of plans for the future does an outlaw make on his off days? When you’re hiding out in some farmer’s barn with the horses and pigs, what sort of things do you wish you could have if you were living a normal life?”

“What, you mean like along the lines of a family and that sort of thing?”

Zee shrugged. “Whatever you want. What would be Cole Younger’s ideal lifestyle when he settles down somewhere far away from Liberty Missouri, and hangs up his six guns?”

Cole took another swig from the bottle his hand had yet to lose contact with. He was still eyeing her, and that look was back on his face. That dangerous ‘I’m going to drive you nuts’ expression he pulled off so well.

“Well, mostly I sit around on those long days wishing that Jesse wasn’t my cousin, and that he was a bit prettier. Then I figure we could dress him up in a wig, bonnet, and skirt and have a right good time with him. It ain’t easy, goin’ months at a time without female company.”

Zee felt her face turn bright red and her eyes turn to saucers. Had he really just said what she thought she’d heard him just say? He wanted to—with Jesse?

“You what?” she heard herself ask stupidly.

Cole just grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “I told ya, you don’t know shit about me, Zee. If you did, you would’ve known I’d been drinking the second I rode up to the house just now. Stopped at Malone’s new bar and figured I’d get the axels greased before I started to go heavy tonight. That bit about Jesse, that’s just how I am when I ain’t sober. I say the most shocking thing I can think of, and more often than not it gets me in a nice big heap of trouble. You should’ve seen the shiner I gave Jess when I pulled that one on him last month in a saloon up near the Iowa boarder.”

Zee rolled her eyes, imagining the fight. “I believe you are just about the most vulgar man I’ve ever met, Mr. Younger.”

He laughed, leaning heavily on the table with one forearm until it creaked and groaned as he heaved himself to his feet. He picked up the bottle, and threw the saddlebag he’d stuffed all the money into over his shoulder before motioning toward the darker portions of the house. “Bring the lamp, Zee. I gotta go lie down somewhere in case I pass out. There ain’t nothing I hate more than waking up with a stiff back from sitting up all night.”

Zee complied, taking the lamp from its hook and then subconsciously following him to the first door they came to in the hallway. He opened it and walked in, dropping the bag on the only chair, and then thumping down on the bed, bouncing a little on it.

“Hang it there,” he said, motioning to the lamp hook.

Again she complied, then just stood there, looking at him grinning in her direction in the low light.

“What now?” she asked tiredly, wondering if she should just turn around and leave. She was starting to wonder why she’d stuck around as long as she had. It was obviously no use trying to soften the hard exterior of Cole Younger with a woman’s touch.

“You do look a little like my mama. I just realized it. You’ve got a similar nose. Eyes and hair are all different, but the nose is there. See, she’s in that picture right behind you.”

Zee turned to look. Sure enough, there was a portrait of Mrs. Younger sitting in a rocking chair, pregnant with one of her five children.

“That you with her in that picture, Cole?” Zee asked, teasing lightly.

“Nope, that would’ve been Jimmy she was carrying. It’s fitting...” he trailed off, taking a drink and staring at the rough floorboards.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

Cole patted a spot on the bed next to him. “Come on over, and I’ll tell ya all about it. Jesse said you’re a right good—ah, what’s the word... Damn Frank, he’s never around when I need him!”

“I’m a good what?” Zee asked indignantly. She figured there was probably another immature comment about to drop out of the outlaw’s mouth.

Cole snapped his fingers a couple times as if the action might bring the word to him out of thin air. “You know, the stuff ya do for him. To his back and his neck when he gets all tensed up like he does. They got those kinds of girls in the cities. Frank knows them big complicated words. He’s real good at figuring out what I’m talking about so I don’t sound like such an idiot.”

“A masseuse?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t misreading him, and he was indeed making reference to something so harmless. She had given Jesse a shoulder rub or two. She’d gotten to nearly be a professional at using her hands on a man’s back when she was a girl.

Her brother Webb hadn’t been born with a good spine, and it had pained him at times. There had been days when all he could do was lie in bed and the only thing that made him feel any better was having her work on him. She didn’t doubt that his bad back was one of the reasons why he became the only Liberty Boy Cole didn’t manage to bring home alive from war.

“Yes,” he said immediately, as if grateful she’d supplied the word before he’d dug himself any deeper into a hole. “A masseuse. Do you think you could do that for me? Just for a little bit? Jesse shoved me backward over a table during the robbery, and I think I must’ve jammed my shoulder,” he said, shrugging the injured part in question and grimacing like it pained him badly. For the barest second he sounded very much like a hurt little boy.

Finding his soft request tugging at her heartstrings, Zee obliged him. Walking over and sitting down next to him on the bed, she scooted a bit behind him and cracked her knuckles before hesitantly starting on the thick muscles connecting his neck to his broad shoulders.

Cole groaned a little. “Shit that feels good. Just keep that up and I’ll tell ya whatever you want to know.”

“Whatever I want to know, huh?” she said softly. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to know from him. But, considering that he was well on his way to being drunk, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask him a simple question or two, just to keep him awake for a while. She looked around, taking in the size of the bedroom they sat in. “Did your parents give you the biggest room, or did you claim it when you came back from the war?” she asked at last.

He rolled his shoulders against her hands. “Hm, this was mama and pop’s room. Mine was across the hall. That’s why it’s fitting tonight, seeing that picture of my mother. Jimmy was conceived in this bed, and so were the girls, and Bob. I was always a light sleeper, but it took me a long time to figure out that the creaking springs in here meant I’d be cursed with a new sibling in the near future,” he said, taking a drink.

Zee wrinkled her nose a bit. “I’m glad I didn’t have to go through that,” she drawled. “Webb was older than me. Besides, I really don’t remember my parents ever being intimate. Mama was always so ill. All I can remember is daddy taking care of her.”

“I wouldn’t call what my parents had ‘intimacy.’ There wasn’t anything intimate about it,” he informed her, scratching absently at his forehead.

Zee moved her hands down between his shoulder blades, kneading muscles that had suffered far too long from the sort of tightness that came from being on the run. “Well, sometimes love fades. You weren’t there when they first got married. For all you know your own conception was all sweet intimacy.”

He turned to look at her over his shoulder, his expression both grave and thoughtful. She paused, looking back at him and waiting for him to speak.

“I didn’t realize there were still people in town who didn’t know about me,” he finally said.

“Know what?” Had she missed something? Judging by funny expression on his face, she had, and it was something big.

“Part of the reason I have the reputation I do is because no one expected me to turn out civil. They didn’t figure anything good could come from a boy conceived in a whore house in St. Louis. Didn’t you ever wonder why I had blonde hair and blue eyes when everyone I’m supposedly related to has brown hair, brown eyes, and darker skin?” he asked, not sounding mad, just curious...

“So, your mama was a paid girl?”

He nodded. “Yep. My daddy was a river rat. Hell, he was probably an outlaw too. Maybe a pirate on the Mississippi. Figure that’s where I got my temper, from him.”

“But, I thought paid girls had ways of getting rid of babies. Usually they didn’t have a choice about it.”

Cole shrugged, casting his eyes downward. “Yeah, they probably do—but my Aunt, Mrs. James—when she found out her sister was pregnant, she had Uncle James and a few other men go to St. Louis and get her. Aunt James used to tell me how when my mother came to live with them she was half-starved, because the people runnin’ the place where she worked wouldn’t let her eat a lot of the time. She’d gained weight with me, and since she hadn’t told them, they thought she was sneaking some off to the side, getting fat. The Jameses, they tried to get her healthy again, but she still had me early and it just about killed us both.” He chuckled at the memory of the story before continuing, much to Zerelda’s bewilderment. “Uncle Frank used to say he’d pick me up, and I was so small I fit in just one of his arms.”

“That’s terrible, Cole.”

“Of course it’s terrible. I probably would’ve been as big as Bob if I hadn’t been born premature. At my height do you have any idea what a boy with my sort of history has to go through to get any sort of respect in this town?”

Zee shrugged, even though she knew he wouldn’t be able to see it because of her position behind him. “I don’t know. I suppose you’d have to beat up the biggest, strongest man from Liberty when you ran into him and his men in a saloon during the war, and then have every man and boy from your home county who gave witness write their girls about it.”

Cole only shook his head. “At the time, I thought that just about did it too. Then I started robbing banks. Gotten nothing but respect since then. Both good and bad.”

“Hmm,” Zee hummed, still kneading along his spine with the heel of her palm. “So, what happened to your mama, after you were born? What did she do?”

“Mama? Oh, she had to go stay at your place for a long time, so your pop could look after her. Aunt James was trying to wet nurse me, and care for Frank. He was only about a year old then. She probably could’ve handled two babies, but I was as stubborn then as I am now. I’d hardly eat. They didn’t think I’d make it. So when things started getting bleak, Aunt James mixed up some corn mash and fed that to me with a bottle. Said I took to it straight off and I got so greedy about it that by three months I was the fattest baby she’d ever seen,” he reminisced, laughing shyly.

“Your mother must’ve married Mr. Younger soon after that, didn’t she?”

“I think so. It wasn’t too long. He was getting on in years, probably figured it was better to have a family to hand his land over to when he was gone than to shun a whore and her bastard.”

Zee smiled sadly, sliding one comforting arm around his chest and hugging him from behind while she let her cheek come to rest against the back of his neck. “Sounds like he was a good man,” she whispered.

Cole nodded once. “Yeah, he was. When he wasn’t drinkin’ and no one was around to shame him. Sometimes his friends would taunt him about me not bein’ his boy. Some would claim they’d been around to see my mama, and she’d been more than courteous. Them nights he’d come home and beat the hell out of me and her. He had problems with a brain disease as he got older. He got so sick he could hardly take care of himself sometimes. Lived in horrible pain. After the episodes he had, or the drunkenness, he’d always be sorry about hurting any of us. He couldn’t stand what he was becoming. He finally made the mistake of turning on Becky and Jim; knocked her down, and was just about ready to kill him. I gave him his peace that night. Mama went in childbirth some months later.”

“You killed Ray Younger?” she said, stunned nearly stupid.

Cole took the hand she had resting on his chest and squeezed it. “Thought you knew by now, Zee. I’ll kill anyone who threatens my family, or my farm. For me it ain’t a choice. It’s just something to be done.”

Not pulling from his grip, she eased herself around him so she could look him in the face while sitting beside him. “Is Jesse like that? For him, is killing something just to be done?”

Cole shrugged, a slight frown lining his features. “For Jesse? Na, it ain’t the same for Jesse. He thinks too much about most things, and I don’t think he can forget the faces. I think they haunt him in his sleep. Now you tell me something, Zerelda. Have you ever been properly kissed by a man, or has my little cousin been failing in his duties?” he asked, quite obviously changing the subject.

“Jesse’s kissed me,” Zee said, defending her old boyfriend. “Once,” she admitted under the scrutiny of a very critical look from Cole.

“Hmm.” He cocked his head to one side. “Well, since you’ve only been kissed by a man who’s experience is with paid girls, I suppose it would be nice if I filled in the gaps of what you’ve been missing, wouldn’t it?”

Again her eyes widened slightly in shock. “Paid girls! Jesse’s been to see paid girls!”

“Slow down, Zee. There ain’t a man in the gang who hasn’t been with a paid girl. When a boy goes to war a virgin, and sees some of his best friends die in so many horribly ways, he goes and gets it fixed in a hurry. All you can do is try not to die before you’ve gotten a chance to live,” he said quietly, leaning toward her while gently pulling her slim arm toward him, whispering in her ear, “Some things make a man do crazy things. Like nearly hanging from a noose. Makes him realize the things he really wants.”

She was about to ask him what sort of things he really wanted when his lips suddenly captured hers, then there wasn’t much room for conversation.

He had a softer manner of kissing a girl than Jesse. The way his mouth pressed gently against hers felt neither demanding, nor expectant, just...sweet, simple. He smiled contentedly after he pulled away a few inches, like he was awful proud of himself. He pressed the whiskey bottle against her chest.

“You ain’t had enough to drink, Zee Mimms. So get working on that bottle. I’ll tell you when you can stop,” he said, that beautiful smile of his hypnotizing her into complying with his wishes.

Zee took the bottle. “My goodness, Cole. You’ve just about got me convinced that you’re quite the charming young gentleman,” she said, the words dripping with amused sarcasm.

He nodded, looking at her dully. “Yeah. The Younger charm’s just getting warmed up. Now shut up and drink,” he ordered, still grinning as one of his arms wrapped tightly around her waist and pulled her close so he could kiss her again.