Free When a Texan Gambles by Jodi Thomas

right here and knew your name and said you were their father.”
    Sam glanced past her to the clearing. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see children pop up from behind the rocks. He had somehow woken up from this drunk on the other side of the moon and everything was backward.
    He took a deep breath and tried to think. “What kids, Sarah? I don’t see anyone out here but you and me on this wide spot between the river and the cliffs.”
    “Of course not,” she answered, as if disgusted. “They disappeared.”
    Sam grabbed his trousers from her and pulled them on, ignoring the pain in his back. He needed to think and he always did his best when he was pacing.
    Walking back and forth between the trees and the water, he tried to remember anything that had happened the past few days. Only flashes of her blinked through his mind. He remembered her all wet and cold, the feel of her cuddled against his side, the way she faced him without fear. He knew how she looked in just her undergarments, but he couldn’t picture her on their wedding day. If there had been such a day.
    She had handed him one of the white shirts Ruthie always made for him. She knew his name. She’d found this place.
    Finally he figured it all out. He might be the one who just returned from a four-day drunk and who had been in so much agony he could think of nothing else, but she was definitely the one claiming crazy.
    Surely if they were married and had kids he would have at least one memory of it.
    Sam watched her closely, thinking he knew the feel of her touch on his flesh, but all the pieces wouldn’t fit together.
    He feared, in time, he’d get over being drunk, but she would still be crazy.

SEVEN

    “GET IN THE WAGON, SARAH,” SAM ORDERED, FIGHTING the need to swear. Slowly, over the past two days, he had remembered the details of their wedding, but most of the time after he’d been stabbed still floated in fog. In the bar that morning, she had said he would owe her if she helped him, but so far Sarah had not named her price. Maybe once they got to town she would find something in the mercantile that she considered payment for saving his life.
    “We have to go.” He tried to keep the impatience from his tone.
    She stood a few feet away, arms folded, acting as if she hadn’t heard a word he’d said in the last hour.
    “I’m not going,” she finally answered. “I can’t leave your children.”
    They’d been over this a dozen times. Every time Sam woke up, she mentioned the kids. Then he tried to convince her there were none. Surely, if they’d been around, he would have at least heard them. “What children?” he asked as if he hadn’t listened to her reply before.
    “The ones who disappeared.” She moved her head back and forth as if she were reciting a nursery rhyme.
    He stared at her, remembering how he thought she looked like an angel when he’d married her. The angel was sure doing a good job of making his life hell. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough yet to drive a team through the water and back to town. But if he stayed here without food, he’d never get any stronger. They’d even finished the last of the coffee at dawn. He either had to take his chances driving down the river or die here in the clearing.
    “We have to go.” Sam glanced up, guessing they had another three hours of daylight. Even if they left now, it would be late when they got to town. But there was no sense in waiting; conditions would not improve for them here in the clearing.
    “No.” She brushed the sleeve of an old dress she put on to travel. The faded blue garment looked even more like a rag than the one she’d been cutting on for bandages. The sleeves were an inch too long and had frayed until they were like thin lace covering her wrist.
    In his wildest dreams, he never imagined he’d find a woman as stubborn as himself. She might not come to his shoulder in height, but she obviously thought of herself as an even match for him.
    “Then