Secondhand Bride (16 page)

C
hloe was brewing midafternoon tea when the knock sounded at her door. Her heart gave a fearful, joyous little leap, for she expected to find Jeb there, ready to rant or apologize, there was no telling which, but when she turned the knob and pulled, she saw that her caller was Holt Cavanagh.

He looked gaunt. His clothes were bloodstained, and he held his hat in one hand. “Becky tells me you’ve hired on as the new teacher,” he said.

Chloe blinked. Her first frenzied thought had been that Holt had come bearing bad news about Jeb, and the blood on his shirt and trousers bore out the theory, but his words indicated some other reason for the visit. She managed a nod and a whispered, “What happened?”

“There was some trouble on the Circle C,” Holt said. “I don’t reckon it would be proper for me to come in and talk, with you here alone.”

Chloe caught up with herself, shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t,” she agreed. “But we could sit here on the steps. Would you like a cup of tea?”

He looked mildly surprised, by the offer of tea, Chloe suspected, more than the seating arrangements. “No, thanks,” he said. He waited politely for Chloe to sit, and then took his place beside her.

“I guess you know I’ve got a daughter,” he went on, when they were settled.

Chloe nodded. “Yes. Lizzie,” she said. “I met her at the hotel, after the stage robbery, when Jeb and Sam brought her in. Poor little thing. How is she doing?”

Holt gave a deep sigh, turning his hat in his hands. “She seems to be holding up pretty well.” He paused. “I know you’ve got a job here, Miss Wakefield,” he went on, “but I’m wondering if we could work something out. It’s too far for Lizzie to travel, to come to school, but she needs an education and a woman’s company, and I’ve got you in mind for that.”

Chloe waited for him to outline the logistics, which eluded her at the moment. She was well aware that when he found out what she’d told Jeb, he might not want her help.

“I figured I could have somebody pick you up here in town on Friday night, and bring you back Sunday afternoon. In the time between, you could give Lizzie lessons and set her assignments to do during the week.”

“I see,” Chloe said. It was an odd world. He couldn’t set foot in the cottage, even in the bright light of day, without stirring up a flurry of gossip, but most likely no one would think twice about her spending two days on the Circle C, as long as she was serving as Lizzie’s teacher.

“It would be a temporary arrangement,” Mr. Cavanagh clarified, as a nervous afterthought. “Just until I could round up a governess and a housekeeper. Becky Fairmont will vouch for me, if you’ve got any worries about my character. We’re old friends, and we’ve had business dealings.”

Chloe blushed. She couldn’t put off telling him the truth for another moment. “Mr. Cavanagh, I—”

“Holt,” he broke in, with a weary smile.

“Holt,” she said, accommodatingly. “Before I agree to this, there’s something I have to tell you.” She drew a deep breath, let it out in a rush, with her hasty confession. “I did something terrible last night, at the Triple M. I told Jeb I might—I might—”

“Might what?” he prompted.

“Marry you,” Chloe blurted, and waited for the explosion.

To her utter surprise, he laughed. “Why?”

“Because he’s so all-fired sure of himself, I guess,” Chloe said lamely.

Holt was grinning, shaking his head, maybe at her audacity. “All right,” he said.

She looked at him in amazement. “All right?”

He laughed again, though something serious glittered in his eyes. “I’ll go along with the story,” he said. “For a while, anyhow.”

“Why?” Chloe asked, marveling.

“The hell of it, I guess,” Holt answered. “Truth is, I’m starting to like my little brother, but he is a mite on the cocky side. Now, are you going to look after Lizzie’s schooling, or not?”

“I’ll be ready and waiting next Friday afternoon, after school lets out,” she said, with wonder.

Holt looked profoundly relieved, and when he smiled yet again, the few doubts Chloe had skittered into the shadows, like mice fleeing the light. Jeb was bound to hear of the arrangement, and he could draw whatever conclusions he liked.

“Thank you, Miss Wakefield,” Holt said. “I’ll make this well worth your time. Lizzie’s a bright girl, if a bit headstrong, and she’ll be a fine student.”

“I have no doubt that she will,” Chloe said. If it wouldn’t have been too familiar a gesture, she would have patted his arm to let him know she liked and trusted him. Not that she didn’t intend to bring her derringer along, just in case she was wrong. “How well does Lizzie read? Do you know how far she’s gotten with her arithmetic?”

The smile faded. “I didn’t think to ask her either of those things,” he said.

Chloe suspected there were a great many things Holt Cavanagh had yet to ask his daughter, but since it was none of her business, she didn’t comment. If he cared enough to engage a teacher, even for just two days out of the week, he had the makings of a good father. And he wasn’t going to hold her up for a liar, even though he’d be perfectly justified in doing precisely that.

“I’ll find out when Lizzie and I sit down to our lessons next Saturday morning,” she decided.

He stood, his business almost complete, and put his hat back on. “I’d best get back to the ranch,” he told her. “Is there anything I need to have on hand? Textbooks and the like?”

“I’ll bring what’s necessary to start out,” Chloe said, still planted on the step. “We’ll take it from there.”

“Thank you,” he said, and headed for the gate. She walked that far with him, saw that a team and buckboard waited across the road, with a tired-looking cowboy at the reins.

Chloe watched as Holt crossed the road, climbed up into the wagon box, and elbowed the cowboy aside to take over the horses. He lifted his hat to her and drove off.

She sat a while, thinking, then went back into the cottage to pour tea. She’d be busy, between conducting classes in the schoolhouse all week and seeing to Lizzie’s education the rest of the time, but diligent enterprise would surely keep her mind off Jeb McKettrick.

She hoped.

C
hloe’s fine intentions served her well, until she went to the Arizona Hotel for dinner that night, just after seven, and found Jeb in the dining room, having a cup of coffee with Becky and Sam Fee. There were other diners present, cowboys, mostly, but they all congealed into a murmuring blur.

Hungry as she was, Chloe would have turned right around and gone home if Jeb hadn’t looked up and seen her. She froze like a squirrel facing a rattler when their eyes met, her nerves raising a sweet panic inside her, and he pushed back his chair, stood up, and ambled toward her.

He was all spruced up, she noticed helplessly, sporting Sunday clothes and polished boots. His hair was neatly brushed, and even though he wore his gun belt, he looked more like a Sacramento lawyer than a rancher.

“I was beginning to think I’d have to come looking for you,” he said, just as if she hadn’t presented him with divorce papers and told him she might marry his brother.

Heat spread into every part of her; she couldn’t help remembering the way he’d held her, touched her, driven her crazy, the night he’d come to the cottage. “Why are you here?” she asked. “I expressly told you not—”

“It’s a free country,” he said easily, though there was an edge to his voice and a challenge in his eyes. He tilted his head toward her; she felt his breath on her face. Mercy, but it was warm for October. “Relax, Chloe,” he teased, in an undertone as effective as a caress. “All I want to do is have supper with you. A sort of farewell dinner. Best we part friends, don’t you think?”

Her temper, sometimes her downfall, sometimes her salvation, flared. “If you think for one minute that I’m going to let you back into that cottage,” she whispered, “you’ve gone stark, raving mad.”

He laughed. “I could always sing,” he said.

“That won’t work twice,” Chloe shot back.

“Then I’ll just have to think of something else,” he answered glibly. He put out his arm. “Now, smooth your feathers and come have supper, before folks get the idea there’s a scandal brewing.”

If a twice-divorced schoolmarm wasn’t a scandal, Chloe didn’t know what was. She hesitated, then accepted his arm, knowing he’d make a scene if she didn’t. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Still at the table, Becky greeted them with a discerning glance and a smile. Sam stood, and nodded a somber greeting.

“I’d best get back to the jailhouse,” the marshal said. “Good to see you, Miss Chloe. Jeb.”

Chloe acknowledged Sam pleasantly, as did Jeb, and he left the table.

As soon as Chloe had settled into a chair, having deliberately taken the one beside Becky’s, and thus opposite Jeb’s, the other woman rose. Chloe barely refrained from grasping at her skirts, to keep from being left alone with Jeb.

He looked on all the while, wearing an insufferably smug grin.

“I’m hungry,” Chloe said, unsettled by his cheerful mood. Maybe he was up to something, and maybe he was just trying to confuse her.

“Good,” he said. “I think I’m in the mood for meat loaf tonight. What about you, Teacher?”

Chloe snatched the menu out of his hands and hid behind it. Her stomach, rumbling before she stepped into this dining room, was now doing a Mexican hat dance. While she was trying to think of something to say, preferably acidic, a man in a suit and string tie stopped beside the table.

“I was sorry to hear about those murders on the range,” the fellow said to Jeb. “First that poor woman and the stagecoach driver, and now Farness and that young cowboy. It’s as if the same old trouble is starting up again.”

Jeb’s smirk vanished, replaced by a grim expression. He glanced warily at Chloe, who had come out from behind her menu to stare at him with horror-widened eyes, then shifted his gaze to his friend’s face. “Whoever did it,” he said quietly, “we’ll find them, and they’ll hang for it.”

“Hanging’s too good for them,” the man said, and, with a nod to Chloe and a brief farewell to Jeb, headed for the lobby and the outside doors.

Chloe’s memory caught on the crimson stains she’d seen on Holt’s clothes when he came to the cottage behind the schoolhouse that morning. She’d been concerned then, but finally decided that he must have been doing bloody work on the ranch. “There were two more murders?”

Jeb nodded. “I wasn’t going to mention it, for fear it would spoil your supper,” he said, with a touch of sarcasm. “Somebody shot two men on the Circle C. In cold blood, evidently.”

The fine hairs on the back of Chloe’s neck rose like wire, and she gave an involuntary shiver. “Dear God,” she said. Killings were, unfortunately, not all that uncommon in the more rustic parts of the West, and she was still reeling from what poor Lizzie must have suffered, seeing her aunt and an innocent stagecoach driver die. The news of this second incident struck her midsection like a ramrod.

“We’ll find them,” Jeb said, and his eyes seemed veiled, even though he was looking straight at her. “Sam will get up a posse, and we’ll track them to hell if that’s what we have to do.”

Chloe was more terrified of the look on Jeb’s face than she was of any murderer. She saw an image of him in her mind, dead and bloody, and she was sickened. “That would be very dangerous,” she pointed out carefully.

“Around here,” he said, “when there’s a mad dog on the loose, we put him out of his misery.”

Chloe’s confused stomach churned. “But you could be killed!”

The smile was back, but it was so cold that Chloe would have welcomed the insolent grin he’d displayed previously, and heartily. “I won’t be,” he said. “But he might.”

Chloe clutched the edges of the table. She imagined herself visiting not one grave, down at the churchyard, but two, and if the mere prospect was unbearable, the reality might destroy her completely. “What if there isn’t just one man?” she demanded. “What if there’s a whole gang? I know you’re fast with a gun, but he—or they— might be faster!”

He leaned forward a little. “Worried about me, Chloe?”

“You are
impossible,
” she accused, finding it harder and harder to keep her voice down. “This is not some game, Jeb—it’s not shooting bottles out of the sky behind the Broken Stirrup Saloon!”

Becky swept over, a small pad and a pencil in her hands. “Would you two like to order?” she asked, with hasty good cheer.

“Meat loaf,” Jeb said, glaring at Chloe.

“Chicken, please,” Chloe said, glaring back.

Becky made notes, hesitated briefly, and went away.

“I don’t need you to tell me what’s dangerous,” Jeb said, his jawline taut, when they were alone again. “I’m a man, not a boy—or at least, you seemed to think so the other night.”

“That,” Chloe said, fighting tears, “was a terrible thing to say!” She started to stand up, planning to flee, though it meant starving all night.

Jeb stayed her with a sigh, and, “Sit down, Chloe. Please.”

Chloe sat, but supper, a tenuous affair to begin with, was completely spoiled, even though she choked down as much of it as she could, and so was her evening.

Thanks to Jeb, she would have another sleepless night.

W
ell, Jeb thought miserably, as he mounted up to make the long ride back to Holt’s place, where he was now an official resident of the bunkhouse, he’d sure fouled up with Chloe.

Again.

He’d intended to apologize for the way he’d acted at the ranch the night before, try to straighten things out a little, as hopeless as the task seemed, but he’d let his pride get the better of him, they’d had words, and she’d left the hotel, right after supper. Wouldn’t even let him walk her back to the cottage. Oh, no. Doc Boylen had come along just in time to do that.

He sighed. He was a natural botcher, that was the plain and simple fact of it. It seemed that every time he made the effort to reason with Chloe, he said or did the wrong thing—and he hadn’t done any better with his pa. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected the old man to say or do when he told him he’d be riding for the Circle C for a while, but it hadn’t been the shock and pain he’d glimpsed in his father’s eyes before he rode out.

The schoolhouse was dark as he passed it, but he caught a glimmer of light from the cottage in back, and imagined Chloe there, puttering with those thick and well-thumbed books of hers, or maybe making tea.

The moon, full for the last three nights, was waning, and thus the road was darker. He’d been over that trail so many times in his life that he didn’t have to think about it, and neither did his horse.

He’d traveled maybe five miles when the crack of a rifle sounded from a nest of boulders somewhere on his left; he felt the bullet splinter the bone in his upper right arm before he had time to react.

The pain was a blazing affront, a white-hot flash, but his training was ingrained. He reached across his middle and drew his .45 with his left hand, even as he fell.

He spoke sharply to the panicked horse, to drive it out of the line of fire, and rolled into the shadows on the side of the road. Another shot struck, pinging off the rock not six inches above his head.

His right arm felt as though it had been stomped to a mash by a team of dray horses. He scrambled deeper into the brush, cursing the darkness, breathing deeply and slowly, in an effort to gather his scattered thoughts and govern the inevitable emotions—rage, and no small amount of fear.

This was no time to lose his head.

“McKettrick!” his attacker shouted, out of the gloom. “You’re a dead man, so you might as well come out where I can see you!”

He knew that voice, but from where? His fitful mind tried to seize on a name, a face, anything, but the wildfire consuming his arm crowded out reason. “Who are you?” he yelled back, more out of reflex than because he thought there was a chance in hell the man would actually tell him. He was dealing with a bushwhacker; anybody but a coward would have confronted him in the open, in the broad light of day.

“Somebody with a powerful grudge,” came the response.

“I figured that much out for myself!”

“I hit you, I know I did. Come on out, now, and I’ll put you right out of your misery.” The voice was closer now, an evil crooning. A black fog rose around Jeb, threatening to gulp him down whole.

“I’m not going to make it that easy,” Jeb answered. His belly pitched; he gulped hard to keep from losing his supper—he couldn’t afford the distraction. In the near distance, he heard his horse, the comforting jingle of bridle fittings.
Steady,
he told himself silently, fighting to stay conscious. If he blacked out, he wouldn’t have a banker’s chance in hell.

“Now, don’t be a fool.” Closer still.

Jeb squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, tried to breathe in rhythm with the pain. “That’s good advice,” he said. “You might want to take it.”

A laugh. A familiar one.

Who, dammit? Why couldn’t he catch hold of the name?

The ground vibrated slightly under Jeb’s chest. Hooves. Someone had heard the shots. Someone was coming. Riding right into a bullet of their own, most likely.

He lifted the .45, fired the customary three-shot warning in the air.

The other man swore, whistled for a horse. Maybe he’d heard the riders for himself, and maybe he knew the signal for trouble.

Jeb raised himself far enough to see the road, sight in on the shadow he glimpsed there. He got off a shot, took a chunk out of the gunman’s left leg as he mounted.

There was a muffled cry of pain, but his assailant gained the saddle all the same. Jeb ducked just as another bullet struck the rock next to him.

The hoofbeats were louder now, drawing closer, at a fast clip. Four horses, maybe five.

“This isn’t over, McKettrick,” the rider called in parting. “We’ll meet again, I promise you that—whether it’s on this side of the veil or in the heart of hell!”

Jeb didn’t have the breath to answer. He laid his head down and let the darkness take him over.