Home by Nightfall by Alexis Harrington

But that slop Virgil Tilly sells is hardly better than straight poison. He’s going to kill someone with it.”
    “Pop is the one who drinks Virgil’s brew. Sometimes Virgil mixes good whiskey with Jamaican ginger to stretch it out. That’s not dangerous, but I don’t like that medicinal taste. Of course, I don’t know what else he’s got behind the bar. I just buy plain Canadian Club from him. It’s expensive, but at least I know what it is.”
    “Riley, are you sure it’s a good idea ,” she addressed him, but bent a hard look on Cole, “to go into town and see all those people who knew you before the war, before things… changed ?”
    “I’d like to see the place I’m from and—”
    “Don’t worry,” Cole interrupted meaningfully. “I won’t leave him somewhere with no way to get home. Stop fretting, Susannah.” She had her doubts but she knew they couldn’t keep Riley sequestered out here forever.
    After they’d ridden off, Susannah made sure that everyone was busy with something—Riley and Cole gone into town, Shaw at Mae’s, and the boys in school—before she went to talk to Tanner.
    She found him in the tack room mending a stirrup with a big curved needle. Sitting on a length of upended log, he glanced upat her but didn’t say anything. She watched him work for a while, trying to think of a way to open the conversation. At last, she said, “Are you still speaking to me?”
    He pulled the wicked-looking needle through the leather with a pair of pliers. “Yeah. I just haven’t had anything to say.”
    “Why did you stop coming to supper? You told me you’d be at the table every night. I barely even see Josh and Wade anymore either. They were going to eat with us and sleep in the house. It was what you wanted.” She looked down at her lap, afraid of the answer she might see in his eyes. “Are you so angry with me that you can’t bear to be around me?”
    He put aside the stirrup and sighed. Pushing some tools off a rough-hewn bench across from him, he patted the seat. “Susannah, come here and sit down.” She hesitated, then finally went to the bench. “I’ve stayed away because it’s hard for me to pretend I’m not your husband and, well, to see all the fuss you make over a man whose ‘death’ I didn’t mourn.”
    She stared at him. “You always got along with Riley before he left. You worked well together.”
    He shook his head. “I’m not saying he wasn’t a good man or a good boss. He was. But he had something I wanted so bad, it ate me up every single day that I knew I could never have it. So much did I want it that I had plans in place to take the boys and go to Texas before that war business got started and Riley enlisted. I couldn’t stand to be here one more day. Then he left and I stayed because I knew you and Cole would need help to get those horses overseas. I wasn’t at all happy about sending them—I hated the idea of it. But they weren’t my horses, and I couldn’t change that so I kept it to myself.”
    Susannah closed her hand around an awl that was stuck in the end of the bench and pulled it out of the wood. Idly, she jammedit back in. Trying to make sense of what he was talking about, she asked, “What could have been so important that you’d go all that way and take the boys?”
    He took up the stirrup again and turned it in his large, capable hands. He gave her a rueful, exasperated smile that carried no humor. “I was in love with his wife. I had been since the first day I came to work here.”
    Now she downright gaped at him. “I—I didn’t—I had no—”
    “No, you didn’t know. Because I kept that to myself, like I did everything else. What good would have come of telling you, even after he left? He was still your husband and you were married. Most of the time I felt like a rotten bastard for loving you, wanting you. Especially after he went to war. The day that telegram came…I felt bad for you because I knew you were heartsick.