A Kiss for Cade (2 page)

Addy’s eyes flew open and fixed on the ceiling. Zoe leaned closer. “A little more water?”

“Cade. Tell him I love him, and I understand why he did what he did to help Ma and Pa.”

“Addy, please. You’re going to be fine. You can’t die. I couldn’t live without you.” Zoe turned away briefly to wring out a cool cloth, and when she turned back, Addy’s eyes were closed.

Stepping back, she straightened, her eyes automatically checking for the slow rise and fall of Addy’s breathing. Leaning closer, she frowned. Throwing back the light sheet, she bent her head to Addy’s chest and listened for a heartbeat.

The only sound that met her ear was the buzzing noise of the cicadas outside the window.

Chapter One

W
ell, if that don’t beat all. Cade Kolby, showin’ up after fifteen years as if he hadn’t been gone a day.” Sawyer Gayford shifted in his chair to watch the town’s famous prodigal son ride in.

Roy Baker, editor of the
Winterborn News,
elbowed the dust from the front window of the barbershop and craned his neck. “Never saw anything like it. Look at him. You’d swear he didn’t know he was the most feared bounty hunter in Kansas.”

“There’s your headline this week, Roy,” Sawyer said. “‘
Kolby Shows Up for His Sister and Brother-in-Law’s Deaths’
, only they been in the ground a week.”

Roy snorted. “This
week
? Cade coming home will be news for months to come.”

“Kolby left as a boy, but he’s coming back a man.” Walt Mews motioned for Roy to sit back down in the barber chair. “Looks like he’s been rode hard and put away wet.”

Sawyer spat tobacco juice in a tin can he carried. “Heard tell he’s shot and killed ten men.”

“Some say twenty,” Roy said.

Walt snipped the final bits of hair around Roy’s ear. “More like fifty.” Then he shook out the barber cape. Reaching into his pocket, he plucked out a coin and flipped it to Roy. “You win. I bet he wouldn’t come.”

“I knew he would,” Roy said, chuckling as he pocketed the windfall. “Mac and Senda raised him right.”

“Humph. He’s ornery, if you ask me. Run him off once with a shotgun for tying my cats’ tails together,” Sawyer complained. “Nearly killed each other afore I got ’em loose.”

“He was full of it, all right,” Walt agreed, glancing out the front door.

Adolescent boys playing marbles around the hitching post abandoned their shiny agates and shooters and raced to watch the arrival of Winterborn’s most notorious citizen.

“He wasn’t all that bad as a kid,” Walt mused. “When my Edna hurt her back, he showed up to weed her rose garden. Then he sat a spell with her to eat the sugar cookies she baked him. Seems like he was a right thoughtful young’un.”

Sawyer grunted. “The boy’s made hisself quite a reputation.”

“The missus don’t hold with all that killin’, but I say a man’s got to do what he’s got to do.” Walt closed the shop’s door. “A man with a price on his head expects trouble.”

Roy snickered. “That little redhead’s been in a snit for fifteen years, thinking he wasn’t going to show up. The girl’s ill-tempered as a hornet. The wife sent me over to the store this morning for flour and oatmeal, and Zoe nearly took my head off.”

“Hard to believe she was sweet on Cade at one time.”

Sawyer nodded. “Yeah, you’d think she’da had better sense.”

Walt straightened the shelf beside the mirror in front of his barber chair, lining up pungent-smelling hair tonics alongside each customer’s personalized mug, painted by Edna Mews’s questionable artistic hand. “Zoe’s daddy, may his soul rest in peace, would’ve stripped the hide off Cade if he’d known those two were sweet on each other.”

Roy got up to stretch. “He knew. He just couldn’t do nothin’ about it.”

“I say it’s good Kolby left when he did. Zoe might not have married Jim Bradshaw if he’d stuck around,” Walt said.

The men looked toward the front window as Cade’s brown-and-white pinto trotted by.

Sawyer shook his head. “Wonder how long he’s gonna stay?”

“Just long enough to find his sister’s brood a good home, I’ll wager.” Walt patted his pocket. “I got a silver dollar says he’s not planning to raise those kids. Men like Kolby don’t stay anywhere long.”

“Times are hard. Won’t be easy to find a family eager to take on four extra mouths to feed,” Sawyer said.

Roy lifted a shoulder. “I heard Zoe wants the kids, but I don’t know how she thinks she could take care of ’em. Jim left her a mountain of debts when he died, and she can’t keep the wolf from the door as it is.”

Walt polished his spectacles with a cloth, his eyes still following the rider. “I heard she’s got some real financial woes with the store. That little woman’s seen her share of trouble.”

Roy scratched his head. “It’ll be interestin’ to see how she and Cade take to each other after all these years.”

Sawyer chuckled as he got up and put on his battered hat. “Yep. Real interestin’.”

Chapter Two

A
grin played at the corners of Cade’s mouth as he rode through town. Winterborn hadn’t changed.

Old Man Thompson peeked out the land office window, checking his watch as though he had some place to be. Walt was looking out the barbershop window, making bets on the chances of him showing up. Cade chuckled, thinking about how he and Ben Pointer had often snuck Walt’s
Police Gazette
out of the shop and read it behind the livery.

Bet my last silver dollar that same row of mugs with Edna’s silly pictures is still on the shelf in front of Walt’s chair
. His grin widened when he thought of those mugs. Bless her heart, no one thought of Edna as an artist except Edna.

Milly Mason’s millinery boutique still sat above the barbershop. Ladies favored the outside entrance to avoid the “unsavory” atmosphere of Walt’s shop below. The men’s salty language had put a bloom on many a sensitive cheek.

Unless someone had struck gold, very few in town could afford Milly’s fancy Eastern hats, and it appeared that fifteen years hadn’t changed her clientele.

Nodding, Cade graciously doffed his hat to a couple of well-dressed ladies about to enter the millinery.

The image of his mother ogling Milly’s hats weighed heavily on his mind. Senda Kolby wasn’t able to afford even the ribbons from one of Milly’s bonnets, much less the whole fine creation. But she never complained. As she said, she prayed for the best, expected the worst, and thanked God for what he gave her.

The smile faded. He could afford a hundred bonnets now, but Ma wasn’t around to enjoy them. Regret hit him hard. Word of his folks’ death had reached him six weeks after their burial. Pa had died from a farm accident; Ma, a month later, from pneumonia. He tried not to think about family. Or settling down to a good life with kids and a wife. He would take care of Addy’s business and clear out as quick as possible. Winterborn wasn’t home anymore.

The mare picked her way slowly down Main Street, approaching Ben Pointer’s blacksmith shop and livery stable. The sign over the door said Ben would shoe horses and oxen, sharpen plows, and repair farm implements.

“Ben Pointer and Sons” registered. Ben was a couple of years older than Cade. Did he have boys big enough to help? A lot could happen in fifteen years.

The jail came into sight. Was Pop Winslow still sheriff? Was he still handing out horehound sticks? Memories gripped Cade, deepening the ache like a branding iron hot in his belly. He’d known coming back wasn’t going to be easy.

Up ahead, the old swing he and his sister, Addy, had played on still hung next to the windmill. Worn and frayed, the rope swayed loosely in the late summer breeze.

Memories rushed back, and he blinked hard to clear the mist from his eyes. Him and Addy playing at the jail as youngsters or diving into the swimming hole. But now Addy was dead. Only thirty-two years old, and she was gone. Distance and years had failed to dim the closeness they shared. He might not have come back home as often as he should have, but he’d always known she was there. Each night as he’d gone to sleep in a cold bedroll before a waning campfire, he’d taken comfort in the thought that he had people who cared: Ma, Pa, and Addy—a family waiting for him, when or if he came back. Somehow it had made the days and nights more tolerable.

Now Ma and Pa were gone. Addy was gone.

The corner of his eye caught a glimpse of a redheaded woman entering the drugstore. His quickening heartbeat caught him off guard. For a moment he thought it was Zoe. It wasn’t. He settled back in the saddle, his grin resurfacing. Zoe Bradshaw. Now there was a woman not easily forgotten. Visions of a cloud of red hair, damp and tangled after an afternoon swim in the river, caused a twinge. Fifteen years, and he still hadn’t met a woman to match her.

Her message the previous week had been curt. “Get your worthless hide to Winterborn. Now.”

Worthless was a little harsh; he wasn’t
worthless
. Some would even say he was doing a civic duty by bringing in a ruthless killer, but in Zoe’s eyes he wasn’t a man of his word. The thought still stung, but he supposed he’d earned her disrespect. When he’d ridden out all those years ago, he’d promised to come straight back. “Straight back” turned out to be fifteen years.

He’d meant to come back, eventually, but after so many years passed, with as many outlaws looking for him as he was for them, he’d figured it was better to keep going for a while. Next thing he knew, Addy had written and said the redhead was marrying Jim Bradshaw. Zoe and Bradshaw? Now that provoked him. She hadn’t waited for him—she’d gone and got herself a bridegroom. So who was fickle? He’d decided right then and there she wasn’t worth grieving over. If he hadn’t had to come back on account of his nieces and nephews, he wouldn’t be here now.

Reining his horse to a halt, Cade eyed the Bradshaw General Store, located down the street past the butcher shop. It looked almost the same with only one difference.

The mare shied, her tail swishing away a pesky fly as he stared at the wooden sign creaking in the breeze above the store. The
Winter-born News
office had moved into the upstairs floor, where sleeping rooms had been. Addy had written that Zoe had kept the store after her husband’s death and was living in the back quarters. Most likely that’s where he’d find the children. He squirmed, dreading the thought of facing the spitfire after all these years. He’d sooner fight a wildcat bare handed.