Carol Ritten Smith

by Stubborn Hearts

  Stubborn Hearts

  Carol Ritten Smith

  Avon, Massachusetts

  This edition published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

  www.crimsonromance.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Carol Smith

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-5412-9

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5412-4

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-5413-7

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5413-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © 123rf.com

  This book is dedicated with love to Mom for always believing in me and my dreams. Thank you for your inspiration and encouragement.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Also Available

  Acknowledgments

  Stubborn Hearts would not exist if not for the help of many.

  My heartfelt gratitude goes to my family and friends who read the manuscript and offered great advice; and to everyone at my writers’ group, Red Deer and District Writers Ink, for their helpful critiques and insights.

  Also, a big thank you goes to my editor, Jennifer Lawler, for her guidance and patience.

  And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my husband, Denis, for his love and support and for never saying, “You haven’t started supper yet?” You’re my hero.

  Chapter 1

  Tom Carver pulled his coat up around his neck and leaned into the night’s hard rain. Streams of muddy water coursed down the street, and the downpour had already submerged portions of the boardwalk. Though he didn’t relish getting soaked to the bone, he welcomed the deluge needed to douse the possibility of any prairie fires. As he passed the doors of the Star Saloon, the jovial brouhaha reaching his ears told him he wasn’t the only one relieved to have the rain.

  He should have known that this storm was coming. Old Jack seemed extra stiff today. Had Tom been as smart as his dog, he’d have stayed home too. He’d have been cozy and dry instead of suffering the drizzle down the back of his neck. But then, it wasn’t raining when he’d left to see Abigail.

  Another bolt of lightning struck and the buildings on either side of the street shone ghostly white in its light. Almost immediately, a crack of thunder resounded, and the boardwalk reverberated beneath his feet.

  Damn! That was close.

  He broke into a run, hoping his barn hadn’t been the target. A lightning strike could set an old barn ablaze as quickly as a spark to dry kindling. When he arrived out of breath, everything seemed fine, but to be safe, he jogged a circuit around the barn. At the far side he stopped short. The door was ajar. He distinctly remembered closing it, which meant someone had opened it. He crept inside.

  Tom stood dead still, ears straining to hear footsteps. There. The steps came closer. He waited until the intruder passed in front of him, then tackled him from behind. They landed with a hard thud on the packed dirt floor, the prowler flattened under Tom’s weight.

  “Ow! You’re hurting me! Get off!”

  By the small body size and high voice pitch, Tom concluded he had caught a young boy. “Quit your damn squirming,” he growled. “It won’t do any good.”

  But the struggle continued, and Tom pinned the boy’s arm back between his shoulder blades and applied moderate pressure. The scuffle ceased immediately.

  “All right, that’s better. Now I’m going to let you up and you can tell me what you’re doing in my barn. It better be good, because I’ve a mind to take the reins to your backside for trespassing.” Tom eased off his weight, but as soon as he did, the youth scrambled forward on all fours. Tom lunged, grabbed him by his belt, and yanked the intruder to his feet by wrapping a free arm around the lad’s front.

  Tom stopped short when his hand grasped something soft and malleable. Intrigued, he tested the shape again, this time more gently. A rounded breast settled pleasantly into his palm. Hmm, nice, he thought, sorely tempted to fondle it longer. Curbing his lusty urge, he moved his hand to the lady’s shoulder.

  By now, he was downright curious as to her identity. “Ma’am, I’m gonna let you go and you better not move. Hear me? I won’t hurt you.” He loosened his hold, and when she didn’t try to escape, he reached for a match in the tin holder on the wall behind him. “I hope I didn’t harm you none, but in the dark I thought you were a boy.” He flicked the match with his thumbnail and held it high, clearly illuminating a long coppery braid. It was still dripping, indicating she hadn’t been out of the rain very long. “Now turn around so I can see who you are.”

  Tom’s eyebrows lifted in recognition. “Well I’ll be … Miss Patterson, you’re the last person I expected to find sneaking around my barn.”

  The town’s new schoolteacher remained silent.

  Tom gave her a quick once over and decided he had seen scarecrows better dressed. An old jacket hung from her shoulders and her frayed trousers were so covered with mud, it was difficult to distinguish where the trousers ended and her equally muddy boots began. A pocketknife lay close to her boots.

  Tom picked it up. “This yours?”

  She snatched it from him and, having found her voice, snapped, “It must have fallen out of my trousers.” Considering it took some effort for her to shove it into her front pocket, he suspected she was lying, but he couldn’t fathom why.

  She sidestepped around him. “Thank you and goodnight,” she said, as if she’d been his invited guest.

  Tom stepped in front of her. “Hey! Not so fast. What were you doing in my barn?”

  Her large eyes glanced at the door and Tom expected her to bolt. But suddenly and completely, her fear seemed to vanish. “I was looking for my cat. He wandered away a few days ago. I thought I saw him come into your barn.”

  Tom couldn’t hide his disbelief. “Are you telling me you’re looking for your cat in the middle of the night in this downpour?”

  She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin as if daring him to call her a liar.

  Having occasionally played poker, Tom was a good judge of when someone was bluffing and he was tempted to call her on it. Instead, he chose to see how this farce would end. “Did you try calling him?”

  “Of course, but he didn’t come.”

  “So you figured you could just sneak into my barn to look for him.”

  She puffed up with indignation, reminding Tom of a little Banty hen. He fought to keep a straight face.

  “For your information, Mr. Carver, I did not sneak and I resent your saying that. If anyone was doing the sneaking it was you! Are you in the habit of jumping on women in your barn?”

  Her question begged a salacious comeback and Tom couldn’t deny himself the fun. “Sadly, I haven’t jumped a woman in this barn for a while.” Even in the soft lantern light he could see he
r face turning red, whether in outrage or embarrassment, he wasn’t certain.

  “I never meant it that way and you know it!”

  “Oh, sorry, I guess I misunderstood.” He tried to look remorseful but did a damn poor job of it. “Hey, why don’t I call my old dog? Jack hates cats. He’ll find him.”

  As he raised his fingers to his mouth to whistle, she grasped his elbow. “No! No, that’s fine. You’re right. Why on earth would my cat be out in this weather? I must have been seeing things.”

  “Tell you what. Give me a description of your cat and if I find him, I’ll bring him back.”

  “Um, well,” she stammered, “he’s white with some orange and some black on him.”

  “He’s a calico?”

  “Yes, that’s right and his name is … Cally.”

  “You don’t say!” Tom studied the small-framed woman before him. He thought everyone knew that calico cats were female, one of those interesting quirks of nature. Apparently, Miss Patterson either didn’t know that fact and was too dim-witted to tell a male cat from a female … or she was lying. Tom leaned heavily on the latter explanation. “I’ll keep an eye out for Cally.”

  “Thank you. I won’t bother you any longer.”

  “No bother. Wouldn’t you like to wait until the storm lets up?”

  “I don’t mind a little rain.”

  Tom stepped aside to let her pass. Right, he thought, a little rain. He watched her slog through the deepening mud. “Oh, Miss Patterson?”

  She turned. Wet strands of hair plastered her face. “Yes?”

  “You should take those britches over to Abigail Craig’s and have her let them out a bit. They’re a tad snug through the hips.” Seeing the fury on her face, Tom expected her to fling a gob of mud at him or blast him with a few caustic remarks. She simply clenched her fists, tightened her lips, and turned on her heels, nearly toppling over into the mud.

  As Tom did a quick check on his horses, he chuckled. As if he was going to believe her cockamamie story about a cat! But why on earth would she lie?

  • • •

  Once the boardwalk ended, the streets of Whistle Creek were nothing but mud and rivers of muck. With every step, the mire sucked at Beth Patterson’s boots. By the time she got home, her legs were wobbly and her muscles ached. She was soaked through and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. This was all Bill’s fault. She’d throttle him when she got her hands on him.

  She never thought he’d be home, sitting at the table. Globs of mud settled underneath his chair. “You idiot!” she yelled. She wrestled the pocketknife from her trousers and flung it at him. It bounced harmlessly off his chest. “What were you thinking, trying to steal Mr. Carver’s horse?” She hung her drenched coat on a peg.

  “I had it all planned, and if you hadn’t come along, I would have been on my way to Tannerville by now.”

  “On your way to jail,” she countered, removing her muddy boots and shaking as much sludge from her trousers as she could. “You’re lucky he caught me and not you. I had to lie through my teeth to explain what I was doing in his barn.”

  Bill shrugged. “I knew you’d think of something. When I saw him coming, I snuck out the door on the other side.” Then, as if first noticing her garb, he asked, “What are you doing in my clothes? You look stupid.”

  “When I went in to kiss Davy goodnight, I saw you weren’t in bed. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together, you with your grand ideas of owning a horse. I was in such a hurry to stop you, I grabbed whatever was handy.”

  “Davy told you whose place I was going to, didn’t he, the little snitch.”

  “No. I had to pry it out of him. You’re lucky I did.” She went to the dry sink and washed her hands and face in a basin of cold water before sitting at the table opposite him. “Honestly, I can’t believe you, trying to steal the most recognizable horse in town. You must have rocks for brains.”

  Bill rose from his chair.

  “Sit down!” Beth ordered, and for once her brother did as he was told. “You could have jeopardized our safety. You know we can’t risk drawing attention.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  She slapped her hand down on the table. “No, I don’t think you do. We need to — ”

  Bill jumped to his feet, nearly knocking over his chair. “Shut up! I’m sick of you bossing me around. Just ’cause you’re three years older than me don’t mean you’re smarter, ’cause you’re not. You don’t know squat about nothing. I’m gonna get me a horse. You’ll see.” Bill slammed the door behind him.

  She yanked it opened. “Where are you going?” He didn’t give a reply.

  She ached for her bed, but, since she was too upset to sleep, she set to work cleaning up the mess. She filled a bucket from the copper boiler on the stove and began to mop up the mud.

  “Beth?”

  Taken by surprise, she jumped, nearly dropping her mop.

  Davy stood in the bedroom doorway, holding the front of his nightshirt away from his skinny body. “I wet the bed. Please don’t be mad. I tried, but I couldn’t hold it any longer.”

  “Oh, Davy.”

  “When you went after Bill, you made me promise to stay in bed. Remember?”

  “I didn’t mean you couldn’t use the pot under the bed.” If she hadn’t been so emotionally and physically spent, Beth might have seen some humor in the situation. Instead she wanted to sit there and have a long cry. Digging deep, she summoned one last bit of patience. “Change into another nightshirt, and crawl into my bed. I’ll wash your bedding in the morning.”

  A few minutes later, dressed in dry bedclothes, Davy padded from his room to Beth’s. “You coming?” he asked.

  How she wished she could. “I’m going to wait for Bill. Then I’ll come.” While she rinsed out her mop, she wondered if Mr. Carver believed her story. Probably not. Unbidden, the memory of their few minutes in the barn returned in vivid detail. Bad enough to be caught in his barn, but the rough treatment, his falling on top of her, and then … Her cheeks heated at the memory of his recent manhandling and she slapped her mop hard against the wooden floor and swished it around with vigor. She refused to give him any latitude because he thought she was a boy. Slap. Swish. Swish. And the audacity of him, making that lewd comment about her “britches” being too tight through the hips! Slap. Swish. Swish. Shame on him for looking. What sort of man was he? A scoundrel! She ceased mopping as she searched for a better word. A reprobate? No, worse than that. A defiler of women! Yes, that’s what Tom Carver was.

  Slap. Slap. Swish. Swish. She scrubbed the floor with a fervor, conjuring up reasons to dislike him, while at the same time desperately trying to ignore her conscience niggling at her. Fine! All right, she admitted grudgingly. He wasn’t all bad. When she had arrived at Whistle Creek’s train station with her two brothers, the school committee almost turned them away. But Tom Carver believed her sob story about their parents’ untimely deaths and how she couldn’t leave her siblings behind. Tom was the one who had convinced the other committee members to let the three of them stay.

  Beth threw the muddy water outside and refilled her bucket. She bent to work, mopping up the remaining mud. She still couldn’t quite believe how lucky they had been. Though she had no formal training as a teacher, she relied on her years of attending a one-room school to get by. Soon she was taking attendance and assigning lessons as if she’d been doing it for years.

  Then Bill got a job at the livery. Sadly, working with horses spurred his idea of owning his own horse, despite the fact they couldn’t afford one. They had several arguments, but there was no reasoning with him. At sixteen, he was increasingly difficult for her to handle. Oh, who was she kidding, she thought. She had no control over Bill whatsoever.

  She shuddered to think of the consequences had he been caught stealing Carver’s horse. Details of their dreadful past would surely be exposed. Best case scenario, they’d be run out of town. Worst case, Beth would hang for what she had done.
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  • • •

  Bill returned home late the next afternoon. He looked as though he’d been on the losing end of a fist fight. His cheek was abraded, his left eye was all but swollen shut, and his chin was caked with dried blood from a bloody nose.

  “Where have you been?” Beth grilled. “And what happened to your face?”

  Giving no explanation, Bill tramped into his room and slammed the door.

  • • •

  Monday, Beth ushered her students outside to eat their lunches. She wanted to utilize the quiet time to mark their spelling tests. Freddie North’s spelling was dreadful and it wasn’t only the big words that were giving him trouble; even words that the first graders could spell stumped him. Beth resolved to spend extra time with him. The thought annoyed her, not because she begrudged the time or work, but because Freddie didn’t care one bit about his studies. He would rather pester the other children. He was the biggest, the oldest, and by far her most challenging student in the classroom.

  Something hit the roof and Beth knew a noisy game of ante-I-over had been initiated. It was difficult to concentrate on paperwork with the ball thumping on the school roof, and children screaming as they chased each other around. Ten minutes later the racket stopped, indicating that the children had moved on to some other entertainment.

  Soon thereafter blonde-headed Inga burst into the classroom. “Miss Patterson, the boys were throwing Penelope’s hat and now it’s in the tree and they can’t get it down.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Beth often wished the large spreading maple in the corner of the schoolyard wasn’t there, and if it hadn’t been such a beautiful old tree, she might have chopped it down herself.

  She followed the girl outside to the maple where everyone stood gazing upwards. High above their heads, lodged in the crook of a branch, sat Penelope’s bonnet decorated with feathers and bows, looking like a fancy bird’s nest.

  Beth berated herself for not having the foresight to put that hat safely in her closet until classes were dismissed. Something that garish was bound to be too tempting for any boy to leave alone.