by Nerys Leigh
At Ben’s request, the men driving them to Evanston first took them to the camp on the far side of the valley to bid Hallie and Jeffrey goodbye. Their fellow Pinkerton agents were still working on their case and so would be returning to Denver separately.
While Ben subjected Jeff to some good-natured teasing about having solved their case first, Hallie took Kitty aside.
“So how did it go with Ben?”
Kitty glanced at him as he looked her way and smiled. As always, her heart leapt.
“Well, that answers that question,” Hallie remarked.
Kitty quickly looked away from him. “What do you mean?”
“Kitty, you’re just about glowing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in love.” A slow smile spread across her face. “Or are you in love?”
Kitty felt her cheeks heat. She may have gained in confidence, but it seemed she’d never lose the blushes.
She turned her back to the men. “Please don’t say anything.”
Hallie’s smile turned to concern. “Oh, Kitty, you haven’t told him?”
“What would be the point? I’d just be making a fool of myself. He doesn’t feel the same way.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” And she wasn’t going to allow herself to think otherwise.
She’d had plenty of experience of dashed hope in the orphanage, back when she’d still thought that her parents would come for her, or that a kindly couple would adopt her and raise her as their own.
Hope destroyed was worse than no hope at all, in her experience, so she wasn’t going to put herself through that pain.
“What about Jeffrey?” she asked, partly because Hallie had become a friend and she wanted to know, and partly to shift the attention from her and Ben. “How are you two getting along?”
Hallie looked down without replying, but Kitty didn’t miss her smile.
“And I suppose you’ve told him?”
Hallie waved her away. “I’ll get round to it.”
Kitty grinned. “I didn’t think so.”
~ ~ ~
Kitty was unusually quiet for the journey back to Denver.
She’d been fairly quiet on the journey to Utah, of course, but she’d changed so much since then. Ben took a little pride in that. He’d set out to make her confident enough to be a Pinkerton agent, and now she was. She didn’t need him anymore.
He tried to think of that as a good thing, but it wasn’t working. Sitting beside her in the train, her head resting against his chest as she slept and the memory of kissing her that morning still tingling on his lips, he finally had to admit to himself that his feelings for Kitty were deeper than just being her training agent, or even her friend. The problem was, he didn’t know what to do with that.
Was he really ready to commit himself to one woman when his entire attitude towards women up until then had been the very opposite of commitment?
Was he ready to be a real husband?
What would it mean for his career? Or for hers?
But none of that would matter if she didn’t feel the same way, and he wasn’t at all certain that she did.
He was sure she’d enjoyed his flirting, but that hardly amounted to love. How could she think of him as a suitable husband for life when he’d never thought of himself that way? He’d never even considered spending his life with just one woman, until his Kitten had come along and quietly made her way into his heart.
And if he could barely believe it, could he really convince her?
Chapter Eighteen
“What happens now?” Kitty asked as the cab that had brought them from the station drove away.
“We give Archie our report,” Ben replied. “And then, I suppose we go to the courthouse.”
Although his chest tightened at the thought, he kept his tone light, studying her face for any hint that she might be as unhappy about that prospect as he was.
Was that sadness in her eyes? Or was he just seeing things because he wanted to?
He moved his gaze to the house that served as the Denver headquarters of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Even though it had only been nine days since he’d last been there, it felt like a lifetime.
“I guess we’d better go in,” he said.
Neither of them moved.
She looked up at him. “Is something wrong?”
Gazing into her beautiful gray eyes, he asked himself the one question he’d been avoiding for days – if he let Kitty go, would he regret it?
“What do you want?”
She blinked at him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“If you could have anything in the world at this moment, what would it be? What is it you really want right now?” When she didn’t reply, he touched his palm to her cheek. “What do you want, Kitty?”
Her eyes glistened with moisture as she stared up at him, and for a lifetime of a few seconds he thought he’d made a terrible mistake.
And then she said, “I… I want…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want to stay married to you. I want to be your wife for the rest of my life.” She blinked back the tears pooling in her eyes. “I want you.”
His heart jolted in his chest, not with fear but with joy. He finally had his answer. He would never regret a single moment spent with Kitty, for the rest of his life.
Touching his fingers to her chin, he tilted her face up and whispered, “Good answer,” before pressing his lips to hers.
He could tell it was her first real kiss, the previous morning notwithstanding, and at first she seemed uncertain what to do. But then she softened, leaning into him and pushing up onto her toes, and all his thoughts fled as he wrapped his arms around his wife and kissed her with all the love and passion in his heart. She slid her arms around his neck, using her newfound confidence to return his kiss with all the passion in hers.
He didn’t know how long they stood there on the sidewalk, his heart soaring while they kissed as if they were the only two people in the world, before a loud tut and an indignant “Well, I never!” startled them apart.
Two older women stood watching them, the heat of their disapproval an almost physical force.
“Don’t worry, ladies,” Ben said with his most charming smile, “this is my wife.”
Unmollified, they marched away, and he caught a “…young people today should be ashamed of themselves…” before they were out of earshot.
Kitty lowered her eyes, her cheeks turning an adorable shade of pink.
He loved it when she blushed.
He touched his finger to her chin to raise her face. “I love you, and I don’t care who knows it.”
Her eyes widened. “You do?”
“Kitten, if that kiss didn’t convince you of that, we should go get a room at the nearest hotel so I can try again.” He was only half joking.
There was that blush again. “It’s just that no one’s ever said that to me before.”
His smile faded. “No one has told you they loved you? Ever?”
She shrugged. “The consequence of growing up in an orphanage, I suppose.”
His heart aching for her, he drew her back into his arms and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “I promise you that I will tell you I love you every day, and dance with you, and make up for all the years you had no one to love you by loving you with all my heart, always.”
She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. “I love you too.”
His breath caught in his throat. No woman had ever fallen in love with him. He’d never let them. But Kitty had gone ahead and fallen for him anyway, and he’d never been happier.
“Can I ask you something?” she murmured.
“Kitten, you can ask me anything.”
“What did you mean by ‘not right now’?”
“When did I say that?”
She raised her face. “When you were teaching me to shoot. You told me about how you’d ended up in Denv
er and I asked you if you had any regrets. And you replied, ‘Not right now.’ I’ve been going crazy trying to work out what you meant.”
He frowned, trying to recall the conversation, and then when he did, he couldn’t recall what he’d meant. “I’m not sure. I guess I just meant that there were times when…” He stopped, suddenly remembering. “I meant that at that moment I had no regrets, because I was with you. But I was falling for you and I knew that when we weren’t together anymore, I was very much going to regret it.”
She stared up at him, and when she spoke, she sounded breathless. “Oh. I… oh.” She lowered her gaze to his chest. “Um… do we have to give Mr. Gordon our report right now?”
“I usually get it out of the way as soon as I get back. Why?”
She raised her eyes to gaze at him from beneath her lashes. His heart began to thud at the uncharacteristically flirtatious move.
“I was just thinking,” she said softly, “about your suggestion of getting a hotel room. And…”
He immediately stepped back and grasped her hand. His Kitten truly was no longer the timid mouse he’d met the day they married, and he couldn’t have been happier about it, especially at that moment.
“Archie can wait. There’s a nice place a couple of streets away.”
He started off, stopping when she failed to follow.
She nodded down at their bags where he’d left them on the sidewalk. “Shouldn’t we take these?”
“Oh. Yes.” He grabbed the bags, to her giggles, and started off again.
“Are we going to go this fast all the way?” she asked, jogging to keep up with him.
“Yup. Physical exercise is good for a Pinkerton agent. In fact, let’s go faster.”
Chapter Nineteen
Four months later.
“There it is.”
Kitty’s stomach, which had been in a state of unrest since they’d gotten off the train in Chicago, slid to her feet.
She stared at the cluster of buildings nestled among the sleeping, snow-dusted fields; a rambling farmhouse and a collection of barns of varying sizes. Her shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
Ben brought the hired buggy to a halt, set the brake, and wordlessly wrapped his arms around her.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his embrace. She would have hoped she was disguising her fear, but she never could hide her feelings from Ben.
“Is this my brave Pinkerton agent who has spent the past four months hunting down criminals and bringing violent men to justice?” he murmured into her hair. “Set quivering at the prospect of meeting my family?”
“I’m not quivering,” she lied. “It’s the cold. It is ridiculously cold.”
His body vibrated with his chuckle. “Welcome to winter in Illinois.” He drew back to look at her. “I’ve said it many times before, but I think it bears repeating – they will adore you. They already adore you. In the words of my mother, any woman who could tame her philandering son has her undying respect and gratitude.”
Kitty gazed into the handsome face of her husband. She loved him more than anyone or anything else in the world, but he wasn’t always right. “But they haven’t met me. What if they meet me and change their minds?”
He slipped his gloved hand to the back of her head and drew her in for a kiss that stole her breath away.
When his lips finally slipped from hers, he murmured, “Kitten, I know you better than anyone, and I am completely and hopelessly in love with you. There is no way they are going to change their minds.” He kissed her frozen nose and released her to pick up the reins again. “Now let’s get moving so we can get inside. I’d forgotten how ridiculously cold it is here at Christmas.”
Despite his reassurances, Kitty was still nervous as they pulled up in the yard in front of the house and he helped her down from the buggy.
And then the door opened and a veritable crowd of people spilled out.
Kitty took an unconscious step back as the smiling men and women approached.
A gaggle of children ran across the yard, shouting, “Uncle Ben!” and laughing as he swept the younger ones into his arms and hugged the older ones.
A woman separated from the crowd and gave Ben a long hug before approaching Kitty where she’d hung back. A smattering of faint lines creased the corners of her eyes, and her graying blonde hair was tied in a braid.
She gave Kitty a smile filled with warmth. “You must be my new daughter.”
Kitty’s breath hitched and she looked from Ben to his mother. “I… I am?”
Mrs. Riley held out her arms. “You are.”
Blinking back sudden tears, Kitty stepped into her embrace, and all her fears melted away in the arms of this woman she’d never met but who she somehow knew would be the mother she’d always longed for.
Mrs. Riley drew back and smiled. “Come on inside and I’ll introduce you to your brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.”
An older man Kitty knew had to be Ben’s father waved at two of the other men. “Pat, Chris, get the horse settled in the barn and bring your brother and sister’s luggage inside.”
Mrs. Riley joined her husband as he headed back towards the house, calling, “Come along, Ebenezer. Supper’s almost ready.”
Ben groaned. “Ma, must you? You know how much I hate that.”
“I didn’t give you a perfectly lovely name to not use it,” she replied, disappearing into the house with the rest of the family.
Ben walked over to Kitty and slipped his arms around her waist. “Told you they’d love you.”
Kitty wiped at her eyes. “Yes you did, Ebenezer.”
“Oh no, you don’t!” She giggled as he picked her up, keeping his arms around her when he set her back down. “If you call me that one more time, I’m going to have to stop you.”
She snaked her arms around his neck. “And how are you going to do that? E–”
He cut her off with a kiss.
“–be–”
His lips captured hers again.
“–ne–”
This time the kiss lasted almost long enough to thaw her toes.
“–zer,” she ended on a dreamy sigh. “If you’re trying to stop me from saying your full name, you’re going about it in completely the wrong way.”
He gave her a sultry smile. “It’s working for me.”
“Ebenezer, you’re letting the cold air in,” Mrs. Riley called out.
Ben heaved a sigh. “Mother!”
Laughing, Kitty threaded her arm around his as they walked inside.
She had a real name, a career she enjoyed, a husband she loved with all her heart, and now she finally had a family.
She’d come a long, wonderful way from the timid foundling who’d barely been able to speak louder than a whisper.
Dear Reader
Thank you for reading An Agent for Kitty. I hope you’ve enjoyed Ben and Kitty’s story!
I’d love to hear what you thought in a review on Amazon. Reviews don’t just help other readers find my books, each one is also a little ray of sunshine for me! I love hearing how you’ve enjoyed my books, even if it’s just in a few words.
A couple of things to note about the book – the valley where most of the story takes place is entirely fictional, but I hope you can recognize elements of the wild and beautiful Utah landscape. And I’m not aware of emeralds ever being found inside a dinosaur skull, but my research suggests it is at least possible. So if you ever come across a dinosaur skull, be sure to check inside, just in case!
If you liked An Agent for Kitty, you’ll love my Escape to the West series. In 1870 five mail order brides travel to California to find new lives, but not everything turns out as planned in these tales of small town romance meets the Wild West! Each book is a standalone story and you can find book 1, No One’s Bride, HERE.
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If you haven’t yet read Hallie and Jeff’s tale, you can find their story in An Agent for Hallie by Julia Ridgmont. Next up in the Pinkerton Matchmaker series is An Agent for Opal by P. Creeden, and I will be back soon with book eight of my Escape to the West series, Courting Will, and my next Pinkerton Matchmaker book, An Agent for Phoebe.
If you’d like to get in touch, you can contact me via my FACEBOOK page or WEBSITE or at [email protected]. I love to hear from readers!
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BOOKS BY NERYS LEIGH
The Escape to the West series
No One’s Bride
A Hope Unseen
The Wayward Heart
An Unexpected Groom
The Truth About Love
More Than Gold
The Judge’s Daughter
Courting Will (coming soon)
The Pinkerton Matchmaker series
An Agent for Belle
An Agent for Clara
An Agent for Kitty
An Agent for Phoebe (coming October 2019)
