One Day, My Prince, page 5
Willem Sheridan’s shaving kit had proved adequate, as Stumpy’s smooth jaw attested.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” she asked curtly, returning her attention to her chore so her eyes wouldn’t be drawn to those sinfully snug denims.
“I feel a lot better,” he said, stepping into the room. She felt his presence, as if the very air around him was as charged as a thunderstorm. “Seems to me I need to move around as much as I can, especially if I’m going to be in shape to go to town Saturday.”
She turned to face him. “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Her heart gave a little leap in her chest. If the townspeople knew the girls’ father had arrived, they’d insist that she return to her own room at the boarding house, wouldn’t they? With Joe here, the girls had adult supervision. They didn’t need her anymore.
And Sarah needed to be needed more than anything. The idea of returning to her lonely room at the boarding house was almost as disheartening as the prospect of returning to New York and her father’s big, cold house.
“Why not?” Joe stepped closer, leaning over the stove to take a good long sniff of the stew, checking out the biscuits Clara had ready to go in the oven, and finally coming to a halt right in front of Sarah. And much too close; so close that she had to look up to see his face. The high work table and pan of cooling water were directly behind her, and she had no possible way to escape. None at all. “Sooner or later—”
“We have two more weeks before the judge arrives,” she interrupted. “I can’t … I don’t want to return to town and leave the girls out here all alone, and if the townspeople learn that you’re living here I’ll have no other choice.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly, and stared down at her with eyes that were amused, secretive, and deep—so deep she felt like she could fall into them and get lost. A long breath cleared her head of such ridiculous thoughts. Almost.
“First of all, they won’t be out here all alone. They have me,” he rumbled lowly.
“Well,” she said, using her most disapproving schoolmarm tone of voice, a domineering mannerism she’d learned from her Aunt Mabel. “I’m not yet certain that you qualify as suitable adult supervision for anyone.”
“Then stay,” he said casually, not at all insulted. “What difference does it make?”
Sarah sighed and gave a delicate push against his chest. Obedient, he backed away and allowed her to move to the stove. The stew didn’t really need stirring, but it couldn’t hurt. And darn it, she felt a strange compulsion to do something with her hands.
“I teach the children of this town, Stumpy,” she said, feeling much braver as she looked at the stew instead of him. “Their parents are not likely to approve of the current living arrangements.”
He laughed, carefully as his side was not yet completely healed. “Jesus, Miss Priss, we have seven little chaperones. You sleep upstairs and I sleep downstairs. I can barely walk, much less—”
“Still,” she interrupted, not at all interested in hearing what he was not yet capable of. “It’s not proper.”
Joe watched the back of Sarah’s neck, and the thoughts that ran through his mind were anything but proper. How could a woman look so all-fired parsimonious and so temptingly tasty at the same time?
Her blouse covered her to her chin, as usual, but when she leaned over to look into the cook pot, a tiny bit of the back of her long neck was exposed. Damn, he was hard-up if the sight of such a tiny sliver of skin turned his crank.
He’d seen plenty of naked women in his twenty-seven years. Plenty. He’d bedded lots of women prettier than this one, ladies who would do anything and everything—and had. Not so long ago, in Silver Creek, a pretty little saloon girl had practically jumped him at the bar. If he hadn’t had so much whisky in him at the time, he probably would’ve given her a smile and a no thanks, but at the time his head had been fuzzy from one glass too many, and he’d just wanted to drown out the memory of watching a man die. He’d always assumed a pretty woman was the way to accomplish that, right? A good memory to chase away the old one. A woman’s softness to make him forget that he’d killed a man.
He wasn’t exactly starved for a woman, so why did he want this one so bad? Hell, he didn’t even like her. She was much too prissy for his tastes, much too skittish. She started every time he walked into a room. She watched him warily, like she expected him to sneak up on her and jump her bones.
But that one glimpse of exposed skin beneath coppery red hair looked so damn tasty.
If he had a lick of sense he’d call off the deal he’d made with Alice, saddle up Snowdrop, and head back to Silver Creek to take care of the varmints who’d bushwhacked him, then get back to the Lockhart business. He still hurt more than he liked to admit, but he could do it. All he needed was a gun.
But he wasn’t about to go back on his word. Damn it, every time he looked at Alice he saw Tess—even though they looked nothing alike. At sixteen Tess’s hair had been as black as his own, and she’d always been tall and willowy, almost skinny. But their eyes … there was a desperation in Alice’s eyes he couldn’t ignore. He remembered that look—too well.
Somehow he had to make sure the Shorter girls were cared for. He couldn’t allow Alice to make the kind of sacrifice Tess had made, he couldn’t allow her to give up her heart and soul to keep her family together.
But he couldn’t stay here forever, either.
He continued to stare at the back of Sarah’s neck. Okay, maybe he didn’t like her much, but she seemed to be a good, reasonable woman. The girls could do worse. Much worse.
“I think we should all go to town Saturday,” he said, an idea striking him that was audacious and brilliant. He ignored the notion that the solution was a little bit too familiar. “Everybody. The girls, and you, and me.”
Sarah turned around and looked at him suspiciously. “Whatever for?”
“I think you and me should get hitched.”
Her only visible response was a widening of her dark brown eyes. “You’re insane.”
He should grin and agree with her; but he didn’t. If the Shorter girls had a chance of staying in their home, together and safe, this woman was their best shot. She wasn’t Tess, he reminded himself. Sarah Prince was a grown woman who knew her own mind and didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do.
Joe didn’t think of his sister often these days. She had her life in Tennessee, her own children to raise now that Harvey’s kids by his first wife were grown and gone. The last time he’d seen her she’d said she was happy. She said she had accepted her life and had even learned to love her husband, Harvey. Still, even though she’d looked happy enough, he hadn’t believed her. He’d never been able to forget the way she’d looked at sixteen … frightened, determined, desperate.
Since he’d come here, his sister had been on his mind too much. Best to get this situation under control and then get the hell out of town.
Alice might not agree, but Joe felt they could trust Sarah Prince. She wanted what was best for the girls, and would most likely do anything to keep them safe and together.
“My name is not Joe Shorter,” he said softly. “It’s Joe White. I never saw these girls until a week ago.”
She didn’t look at all surprised. “I suspected as much,” she said, somewhat snootily.
“But Alice saved my life, and I want to repay her,” he explained. “When she asked if I’d pretend to be her father so she and her sisters wouldn’t be split up, I said yes.”
Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. Surely she didn’t realize how the subtle move lifted and displayed her breasts. Yes, the woman did have world-class—
“What on earth does your subterfuge have to do with your ridiculous notion that you and I should…. “She swallowed hard and then wrinkled her nose. “Marry?”
A minute ago it had seemed like a good idea. Right now, he wasn’t so sure. But what choice did he have? “Well, I can’t stick around forever. I have business to take care of. Important business.”
She raised two expressive eyebrows.
“But you seem to have the girls’ best interests at heart, you seem to want to take care of them.”
“Of course I do,” she said softly.
A disturbing thought occurred to him. “You don’t have marriage plans already, do you? A sweetheart?” A Mr. Priss?
“No,” she said, and he could see that she gave the notion serious consideration at last.
Joe spread his hands, palms up. “We get hitched, the judge is satisfied, and when talk dies down I’ll slip away. If the folks in town believe that I left the girls’ mother years ago, they’ll surely believe that I up and did it again. If in a few years you decide you want to get married for real, you can say I’m dead. In a way, it’s true. Shorter’s dead, and we’ll be married using his name.”
“Which means we won’t really be married,” she said thoughtfully. She seemed to like that part of the idea. In fact, a small, almost unnoticeable twinkle lit her eyes, and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. At that moment the prim and proper Miss Priss looked downright impish. “Well, that would solve a problem or two.”
He was dying to know what kinds of problems Sarah had that could be solved by a pretended marriage; he didn’t dare to ask.
He didn’t get the chance, anyhow. Glory ran into the kitchen, her little legs pumping, cheeks rosy, eyes bright. She looked as if she had every intention of throwing herself at him, and he braced himself.
It was hardly necessary. Glory slowed down as she neared him, and when she wrapped her arms around one leg and gave it a squeeze her touch was gentle. The face she lifted to him positively glowed.
“I had a good day at school today,” she said with a smile. “I read out loud, and did arithmetic, and at recess I played with Harriet Tidwell.” Joe smiled back; Glory was a happy child in spite of the fact that her life to this point, all five years of it, had been filled with hardship and loss. She surely didn’t remember her real father. Alice had said she’d been a baby, a few months old, when Albert Shorter died. After struggling for a few years to make it on their own, and failing, they’d eventually traveled here, Elizabeth Shorter and her seven daughters. Maybe they’d had a few good years here before things started to go wrong again with Willem’s death, then Elizabeth’s.
Something deep in Joe’s heart was moved unexpectedly. There was no way he’d let some deranged woman get her hands on Glory and change her name and try to make her into a replacement for a child who was long dead.
He looked at Sarah again, and saw the same determination in her eyes, the same protective conviction. Something in his heart lurched again, and he didn’t like it.
Deacon stared down at a dark place in the earth, a sign of disturbance and nothing more. No body, no grave, no bones. He raked a distracted hand through his hair and ground one heel of his boot into the gritty earth.
“You’re sure he was dead?” he asked softly.
Leonard nodded his head viciously. “O’course I’m sure. I shot him, and he fell, and we slapped his horse on the backside and run it off. If he wasn’t dead when we left him here, he was soon after.”
Deacon lifted his head and gave Leonard and Isaac his most chilling glare. Rosie was right. They were morons. “A bullet in the head would’ve finished it,” he seethed.
Isaac spoke up nervously. “It was real dark, and we heard some coyotes—”
“Yeah!” Leonard’s face lit up as the idea hit. “It was probably the coyotes what got him. That’s how come there ain’t no body.”
Deacon wanted to believe the explanation, he really did. He wanted to believe that these two idiots had done their job and Joe White was truly dead.
But he didn’t.
He lifted his head and looked out over the barren, hard landscape. There weren’t many places a wounded man could go, especially on foot and bleeding. And he was bleeding, as the dark spot on the ground testified. Maybe White had stumbled a while and died a short distance away from here. Then again….
With a low muttered curse, Deacon leapt into his saddle and headed back for Silver Creek. Leonard and Isaac rode hard to keep up, but they were clumsy and slow. For a few minutes they talked incessantly, trying their best to convince Deacon, and themselves, that they’d done their job well. After a while they lapsed into an eerie silence and fell back. Suddenly, Deacon felt sure that Joe White was not dead.
As he headed toward town, he accepted that notion. So what if the man wasn’t dead? He was out of Silver Creek, and out of Rosie’s bed. He smiled at the thought. Deacon himself had been in Rosie’s bed all week, and she hadn’t mentioned Joe White one time. She’d been a mite moody, but that would pass. He was sure of it.
Long before he reached the saloon, Deacon began to whistle. He forgot the morons behind him, the nuisance that had once gone by the name Joe White, and remembered only Rosie.
What was it about that particular woman that made him so dang crazy? He loved all women and they loved him. He loved the way they looked and the way they smelled and the way their bodies felt against his. He liked the way women laughed, and the way they smiled when they were happy. But lately, he’d just been thinking about one woman, and that was danged odd.
Deacon didn’t worry about this new, odd development. Why should he waste time worrying when everything was going so well?
He tied his horse at the hitching post in front of the saloon, and pushed his way happily through the swinging batwing doors. The saloon did a modest business in the afternoon, a few slobbering drunks and a couple of professional gamblers waiting for the crowd of suckers to begin to arrive. Deacon ignored them all and climbed the stairs, two steps at a time, to Rosie’s room. She might still be asleep, but he’d wake her if she was. And she wouldn’t mind, neither. He knew how to wake her just right.
The first thing he noticed when he opened the door was the empty bed. Then he began to notice other, more ominous signs. Rosie’s perfume and little jewelry box were not on the tall dresser where she always kept them. The wardrobe doors were hung open, and inside there was a dark emptiness instead of colorful silk and satin.
He turned his head slowly. The mirror over her vanity had been broken, shattered, the cracks working their way out from the center as if it had been punched hard right there. Suddenly he felt a little sick, ill deep in his stomach and high in his throat.
When he heard the rustle of silk behind him, he spun around quickly, hoping … no, Deacon Moss didn’t hope, not for a woman.
Another of the girls stood there, framed by the doorway. She was a pretty girl with ordinary brown hair, dark eyes, and an hourglass figure. He’d seen her around, in the past week, but hadn’t paid her much notice.
“Hi, Deacon,” she said with a wide smile. “Rosie said you might stop by.”
“Where did she go?” He didn’t much like the harshness in his voice, the raspy croak.
The girl shrugged her shoulders and walked into the room. “She wouldn’t say. My name’s Lola. Rosie said I could take care of you, since she’s not working here anymore.”
He didn’t know what made him angrier; that Rosie was gone or that she’d just hand him over to another woman like he was … like he meant nothing to her. He wouldn’t have handed her over without a fight. Dammit, he’d killed for her!
Well, he’d had a man killed for her, but that was almost the same. Only he wasn’t so sure Joe White was truly dead. Maybe he’d come back to town and stolen Rosie away. Right from under his nose!
He stared at the whore before him. One woman was just as good as another, right? Rosie had been getting tiresome anyway, mooning over the fate of Joe White, daydreaming when she should’ve been giving him her full attention. And … and she was too darn skinny. Now this woman had some meat on her bones. Hell, once she was naked and in the bed he likely wouldn’t know the difference, he wouldn’t think of Rosie at all.
Lola licked her lips seductively, but Deacon barely noticed.
“If you know where she is,” he said quietly, “You’d better tell me. Now.”
Lola’s seductive air vanished. “I told you, I don’t have any idea where Rosie went. She wouldn’t tell me or anyone else. She just packed her bags real quick and left.”
She could have taken the train, a stage, or she might have hired a horse. Silver Creek was a crossroads of sorts; people moved in and out of town all day and all night. How the hell would he ever find her?
Deacon shoved Lola into the hall and slammed the door in her face. Never in his life, not once, had he treated a woman roughly. His mother had taught him better than that. But he couldn’t stand to look at Lola for one more second, and he wasn’t ready to walk down the stairs and face anyone, not just yet.
So he sat before the broken mirror and stared at his fractured reflection. He felt, for the span of a single heartbeat, like he was as cracked and broken inside as the looking glass.
“Who’s the best?” he whispered.
No one answered.
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Chapter Five
All the way to town, Sarah tried to convince herself that Joe’s suggestion was a good, reasonable solution to a potentially disastrous problem.
She cast a surreptitious glance at the man who drove the wagon. While he didn’t look happy, he didn’t look particularly unhappy, either. He looked determined, resolved, and almost content. For some reason of his own, Joe wanted what was best for the Shorter sisters. How could she fault him for that?
All seven of the girls rode in the back of the wagon. They were unanimously in favor of the marriage, but Faith and Glory had been the most exuberant upon hearing the news. Of course, they had not been told about the part of the plan that included Joe’s leaving. It was almost as if they expected him to stay. What an unreasonable and ridiculous notion. If he was thinking of staying on, he certainly wouldn’t need to marry.
