“Can’t we leave now? I done ate everythin’ I got given.”
“And then some.” Mustering a courteous smile, Cade pushed back his chair. It was just as well Tobe had spoken up. Cade suddenly felt less than cozy here himself…especially with Tobe’s entreating gaze—so much like Judah’s—fastened on him that way.
His brother wasn’t as tough as Cade was. He never had been. Their orphan life had been harder for Judah than it had been for Cade. That’s why Cade, as the eldest brother, had taken it upon himself to settle the discontent he knew Judah must feel.
He’d taken it upon himself to help Judah feel whole again.
For himself, Cade figured, it was already too late.
“I guess we’d better get going.” Signaling as much, Cade rose. “Thank you for dinner, Violet. Everything was delicious.”
“You’re welcome.” Violet gawked at him, seeming entirely taken aback. “But you’re not really leaving already, are you?”
“It’s time.” Cade summoned Tobe with a nod, rescuing them both from further questions. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to see Reverend Benson again. I would have liked to say hello—and to get this deal squared between us, of course.”
“‘Again’?” Violet repeated, seeming stuck on the word. “But when did you and my father ever—” She broke off, her gaze sharpening. “Did you help Papa cheat, too, like you did Tobe? Is that how you knew Papa won at cards the other night?”
Beside her, Tobe rose from his seat. Taking advantage of Violet’s distractedness, he swiped a butter knife. He slid the utensil’s long silver handle up his shirtsleeve for safekeeping.
Cade raised an eyebrow. The little troublemaker was on his way to becoming a full-bore criminal, the way he was behaving.
“I may have slipped your father an improving card or two,” Cade acknowledged. Reverend Benson had been on the verge of losing his clerical collar and his shirt in the game they’d played together. “But whether he used it or not, I can’t say.”
“Oh, I can say.” Violet folded her arms. “You’ll be happy to know that those winnings of his went to the church collection basket, though. My father is completely incorruptible.”
Cade frowned. “I’m not trying to corrupt anyone.”
Her raised eyebrows suggested otherwise. “Even me?”
That was easy. “Especially you.”
“Oh.” Paradoxically, she seemed almost disappointed.
That made no sense. At a loss to understand her—and wondering why he wanted to—Cade deepened his frown. Who cared what pious Violet Benson thought or felt? By the time the first snowfall blanketed Morrow Creek, he would be gone from here.
He would be gone from her life, likely for the better.
Tobe wriggled impatiently. “Are we pullin’ foot or not?”
“Yes.” Cade headed for the entryway. “It’s time to go.”
Tobe and Violet trailed after him. So did an odd sense of disappointment. He’d been having a nice time…until Violet had kicked off her damn reformer routine and ruined everything.
He should have known that taking up with a do-gooder was an endeavor doomed to failure. The two of them were like oil and water. Trying to put them together was like trying to glue down dice and expecting them to still produce a win. It didn’t work.
“You can’t leave yet,” Violet protested. “What about our…” She cast an aggrieved glance at Tobe, plainly hesitant to speak openly in front of him, then finished, “agreement?”
She meant his reckless offer that she behave as his lucky charm, Cade knew, in exchange for his pretense of a courtship.
“I reckon that’s worked about as much as it’s likely to.”
“For today, you mean?” Violet specified, hurrying in Cade’s wake to the front entryway. She handed him his hat along with a perplexed, entirely too-wounded look. “But tomorrow—”
“I don’t plan on tomorrow.” Cade reminded her. “Besides, your father hasn’t given his blessing yet. He might never.”
“But you can’t just leave!” Violet insisted. Her expression turned insightful. “If you’re merely being protective of Tobe—”
Cade scoffed, irked that she’d read his intentions so effortlessly. “Why would I be? I barely know the boy.”
“There’s no need for that,” Violet hastened on. “In fact, I was thinking—Papa and I have plenty of room. Tobe could stay here with us if he wants to. Just until he finds his family.”
Now it was Tobe’s turn to scoff. “I ain’t no charity case.”
Reminded of something similar that he’d told Violet himself just yesterday, Cade shifted uneasily. Like Tobe, he didn’t want charity from Violet. He wanted…nothing at all.
Except maybe a pinch of good fortune. And another smile.
Hellfire! What was wrong with him? He was behaving like a besotted fool—and all over a woman whose feminine curves scarcely showed beneath her prim, starched-and-pressed gown.
“I have no claim on the boy. He can do what he likes.”
As though freed—unreasoningly—by his statement, Violet crouched in front of little Tobe. Gently, she smiled at him.
“I’d be very pleased if you’d agree to stay here awhile, Tobe. You can have plenty of food and a nice soft bed, and I think we even have some spare clothes in the church’s donation box to lend you. You can wear them while I mend yours for you.”
“Not my overcoat!” The boy hugged it. “It’s new!”
Giving Cade’s former outerwear an overly observant glance, Violet agreed. “That’s fine. Of course, you’ll want a bath—”
Now Tobe looked petrified. “A bath?”
“Careful there,” Cade warned, unable to hold back a grin. “If you scrub off the grime, there’ll be nothing left of him.”
Violet tossed him an amused glance. Unreasonably, Cade felt blessed by her approval…and warmed clean through. too. He liked being included in their comfy, bantering conversation this way. It felt curiously as though the three of them were…a family.
That thought hardened Cade’s resolve instantly. He had all the family he needed in Judah. Everyone else could go hang. Including spinsterish Violet Benson and her interfering ways.
“Pish posh. There’ll be plenty of him left over!” Oblivious to Cade’s glowering look, Violet gave Tobe’s gaunt shoulders a heartfelt squeeze. She addressed the boy directly next. “I, for one, can’t wait to see what color your hair is!”
“It’s blond!” Tobe blurted. “Blond like my mama’s.”
“Truly?” Violet pretended to be flabbergasted. “Blond?”
At that, the boy actually giggled. “Yep! You’ll see!”
Cade couldn’t help staring. He went right on staring as Violet, with no evident persuasion at all, convinced Tobe to stay.
Disbelievingly, Cade stood by as Violet divested Tobe of his overcoat, his various pilfered household goods and even his hoarded-for-later foodstuffs. The latter she wrapped securely in a big plaid napkin and set on top of a cupboard in the kitchen.
“I’ll leave this right here for you, in case you get hungry later tonight,” she assured the boy. “No one will touch it.”
Cade shook his head. “When your father comes home—” Reverend Benson had not yet returned from his counseling mission “—he might mistake that food for his. He might take it himself.”
At his blunt statement, Violet blinked. She appeared surprised to find Cade still there. He’d followed her and Tobe into the kitchen from the entryway…just to watch over the boy.
“No one will take it. I wouldn’t promise otherwise.”
“Tobe, you should put that food with your things,” Cade advised gruffly. “Keep it close to you. You might need it later.”
Plainly perplexed, Violet turned to Cade. “He’ll have it later,” she insisted. “It’s right there. He doesn’t need to hide it.” She touched Cade’s arm. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Hard-won experience, Cade knew. A long time ago, he’d
learned to keep the necessities close and to trust no one.
But he refused to say so. He didn’t want to engender any more reformer’s pity from Violet…or to reveal any more of his own vulnerabilities. He’d thought he’d erased those long ago.
He had. Damnation, he had. But Violet didn’t seem to think so. She gazed thoughtfully at him, seeming on the verge of offering Cade a consoling emergency food packet of his own.
He, foolishly, almost longed for a chance to take it, if only it would please her. Hell. Would his gullibility to her never find an end? Cade had never experienced its like.
Fortunately, Tobe broke the silence between them.
“All right. That’s good enough for me, I reckon.” Happily, the boy took off his hat. He set to work on his shoes. “Where’s that bath? ’Cause I been itchin’ somethin’ fierce lately.”
To her credit, Violet didn’t even recoil. “I’ll get it.”
Still feeling baffled and discomfited in ways he didn’t understand, Cade stepped into her path. Determinedly, he took hold of Violet’s arm. He pulled her into an alcove where they could speak privately, then lowered his head. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” In the midst of capably rolling up her sleeves, Violet paused, plainly baffled. “Haul some bathwater? Heat it? I assure you, Cade, that I’m more than up to the challenge.”
Her cheerful smile touched him again. Cade resisted it. Frustrated by his inability to make her see the damage she might do to Tobe, he raked his hand through his hair. He fixed her with a warning look, determined nonetheless to have his say.
“Don’t give that boy too much hope. It’s not fair.”
“Oh.” In a heartbeat, her face softened. “I see.”
He wasn’t sure she did. “You don’t know what you’re doing. If you get Tobe used to a soft bed and regular meals and—” warm hugs, he’d been about to say, but he stopped himself just in time “—plenty of silver spoons to line his delinquent pockets with, it will be doubly hard for him when he has to leave.”
Violet appeared to consider that. In the hallway they’d found themselves in—lantern-lit, safe and intractably homey—she edged nearer to him. Confidently and somehow sadly, she gave him a long look. “You know, a wise man once told me that the problem isn’t giving up on hope. It’s convincing yourself you don’t want any hope, even when it’s standing right in front of you.”
Recognizing his own foolhardy words, Cade looked away.
He hoped she didn’t mean him. He truly didn’t need hope.
“I agree,” Violet continued staunchly. “So I can’t see anything wrong with trying to make sure Tobe never gives up on himself. I can help him find his parents, Cade. I can! I know almost everyone in town. I volunteer everywhere. I have access to records most people don’t. Everyone from Sheriff Caffey to the folks down at the train depot will help me get information. I’m dogged, too. I promise you, I can help Tobe. And I will.”
“You shouldn’t.” Hoping to make exactly that point, however he could, Cade backed them up to the hallway wall. He caged in Violet with his arms, then ladled as much seriousness into his voice as he could. “You heard Tobe before. He doesn’t want to talk about his parents, or where they went, or why he’s alone.”
“He’s only just met me,” Violet insisted, not daunted in the least by Cade’s intimidating posture. “He’ll talk later.”
Cade couldn’t help admiring her spunk. “Now who’s the miracle worker?” he asked. With an amused sound, Cade slipped on his hat. He touched Violet’s chin, then smiled. “All right, then. Have it your way.” He shook his head, knowing she was much too confident about her plans to find Tobe’s parents. “I’d wish you good luck, but I don’t seem to have any to spare right now.”
She grinned. “Does that mean I’ll see you again tomorrow?”
“I can’t rightly say.”
“You won’t say, you mean.”
Cade shrugged. Determinedly, Violet straightened her spine. Her maneuver put her chest right up against his. It turned out that her shape wasn’t quite as washboard flat as he’d imagined it was. Violet Benson was not curvaceous, but she was…affecting.
As though sensing her unexpected advantage, Violet tipped her face to his. She offered a kittenish smile. The mingled fragrances of castile soap, laundry starch and warm, feminine skin reached him next, making Cade go stock-still with longing.
Men at a gambling table didn’t smell like that. Neither did roving train cars or impersonal hotel rooms or bathhouses. Cade couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed inhaling quite so much.
“I’d be very happy,” Violet said, touching his arm with an utter lack of guile, “if you’d come back to see me tomorrow.”
Yes. Yes. On the brink of agreeing instantly just to see her smile again, Cade flashed his dimples at her instead. “Mmm. And I’d be happy if you’d rub up against me some more, sugar.” Deliberately, he gestured at her position. “But this time, move a little slower, please. I want a little more time to enjoy it.”
Just as he’d expected, Violet widened her eyes. She blinked, seeming to awaken to their compromising position. Then she smiled up at him. “You’re the one who backed us up here. Anyone watching would think you wanted to be this close to me.”
Damnation. She had him there. Cade put down his arms.
“You do, don’t you?” Defying his expectations this time, Violet stayed put, arms crossed. “You can’t scare me, Cade. As I said, I’ve done a lot of charity work. I’m not meek or naive.”
“But you are inexperienced. And I’m plenty skilled.”
She appeared to ponder that. Her expression turned subdued.
“Well,” she said. “If you don’t turn tail after this one evening together, I guess we’ll find out about that, won’t we?”
Her expression now appeared downright challenging.
Cade gaped. “I can’t believe you’re baiting me. Me.”
“Then we’re even. Because I can’t believe you’re trying to seduce me into not helping one small, innocent boy who’s all alone in the world! Even though you helped him first. You must have brought Tobe here for a reason.” Tilting her head, Violet examined Cade with uncomfortable perceptiveness. “I think I know what it was, too. Cade…how many orphanages did you stay in?”
Shocked, Cade stiffened. Memories rushed at him, black and lonesome and bitter to recall. He’d thought he’d buried them.
It took him a minute to recover. Dimly aware of Violet watching him, Cade sucked in a deep breath. Somehow he made himself toss off a smile. It was not his most dazzling effort.
“I’ve just decided,” he told Violet, “that I won’t be back tomorrow. It turns out, if this is good luck…I don’t much like how it feels.”
Then he tipped his hat to her and took himself away.
Violet Benson might have succeeded in “saving” one male of her acquaintance tonight, Cade told himself darkly as he stepped into the chilly evening air outside on the front porch, but she wasn’t getting her angelic hands on both of them. Not if he could help it.
And he damn well could.
Chapter Five
The nice thing about Sunday services, Violet thought as she sat, hands clasped atop her hymnal, clad as usual in her best jade-colored, worsted-wool bustled gown, in her customary place in the front pew of her father’s church, was that they afforded folks a much-needed chance to socialize after a busy week.
Of course, church services also helped save people’s immortal souls. That was of utmost importance, too. But from a secular, practical perspective, everyone liked to mingle. It was as simple as that. Church provided the best possible place to deepen old friendships and forge new ones, which was precisely what Violet had been doing ever since the gambler Cade Foster had left her standing in her own hallway, all flushed and breathless and feeling as hot as a Thursday afternoon in July.
I’d be happy if you’d rub up against me some more, sugar, she remembered him saying in that low, rumbly, unde
niably shiver-inducing voice of his. But this time, move a little slower, please. I want a little more time to enjoy it.
Heavens! Just thinking about their encounter now—in Sunday service, of all places, while her father droned on with his sermon!—made Violet feel all…tingly inside. She hadn’t realized exactly how close she’d gotten to Cade in that hallway. She’d been too busy wondering about him, trying to understand him, searching for a reason that explained his odd resistance to her plans to help Tobe. Who was doing just fine now, by the way.
After a hasty glance at the boy—who for today was being watched over by sweet Miss Mellie Reardon, one of her friends, and seemed to be enjoying all the attention—Violet reclasped her hands, then thought about Cade some more. She believed she was right about his having spent time in an orphanage. He’d been too distrustful of foundling homes to dismiss the idea outright.
But why? Why would Cade be so cynical about a place that only existed to help forlorn and abandoned children? She couldn’t think of a single reason. For a man who’d lectured Violet about the need for hopefulness, she decided, Cade seemed in miserably short supply of it himself. In the end, he hadn’t even been able to believe in his own gambler’s superstition.
If this is good luck…I don’t much like how it feels.
Well, that was doubtless because Cade hadn’t experienced its full effect yet! He certainly hadn’t given her a fair chance as a lucky charm, Violet thought in her own defense. At the rate things were going, he might never do so. She hadn’t so much as clapped eyes on Cade since he’d left her house the other night.
She knew he was still in town. Morrow Creek’s tireless gossipy grapevine—and all her friends, besides—had kept her informed of that much. But Cade hadn’t returned to ask for Reverend Benson’s blessing of their supposed “courtship” and attendant lucky-charm scheme, and Violet hadn’t sought out Cade herself, either.
Why should she? she asked herself as she shifted in her seat. Word had gotten out about the dinner she and Cade had shared. The knowledge that the mysterious new sporting man in town had paid a deliberate social call on plain, unremarkable Violet Benson had already perked up her prospects considerably.
Lisa Plumley Page 6
