Lisa Plumley

by The Honor-Bound Gambler

  Grumbling, Cade said, “You blushed at him.”

  “Blushed at him?” Growing more amused now, Violet gave his arm a good-natured poke. “Exactly how does one blush ‘at’ someone? Especially me? I don’t possess a single feminine wile that I know of.” When Cade didn’t relent, she sighed. “Honestly, Cade, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”

  With a powerful, obstinate gesture, Cade crossed his arms. He gazed into the middle distance toward a passing wagon, silently refusing to say more. His profile faced her, all hard and determined…and grouchy. Very, very grouchy.

  Realizing the truth at last, Violet boggled.

  “You are jealous!” she crowed.

  “You needn’t sound so all-fired happy about it.”

  “Happy? I’m thrilled!” Violet admitted unabashedly. “No one has ever been jealous of my affections, Cade. Not ever.”

  “They should have been. This town is full of fools.”

  “You’re sweet to say so.” She beamed at him. She couldn’t help it. How could he possibly be so smitten with her? She’d done nothing at all to deserve him. “I remember when your Mr. Blackhouse tipped his hat at me, of course. It did excite me a little. But only because I’m not used to the attention. Frankly speaking, he is quite a handsome man, of course, so anyone—”

  “Handsome?” This time it was Cade’s turn to boggle. “You think he’s handsome?” He released an annoyed gust of air, then turned his attention with new zeal toward the street. “I guess some people might think so. If they like the slick type.”

  His gruffness was beyond endearing. He did care. What’s more, he was obviously unused to caring as much as he did.

  “I especially fancy Mr. Blackhouse’s lovely hair,” Violet teased further. “It’s so very blond, with all those gorgeous waves in it.” Unable to resist joshing Cade, she gave a teensy squeal, then clapped her hands together in apparent exaltation. “It makes him look like a sun-kissed angel! Don’t you think so?”

  Cade snorted. He shook his own dark, tousled hair, undoubtedly without realizing he did so. “The only thing less angelic than Simon Blackhouse is old Beelzebub himself. Don’t be fooled by his stupid hair,” he warned ominously, “or his pretty face or his impeccable manners or his crates full of money—”

  “Is this meant to put me off him?” Violet interrupted pertly. “Because you’re making him sound like quite a catch.”

  “—or his private luxury train car,” Cade went on relentlessly, “or his valet or his damnable mysterious past—”

  “Ooh, how intriguing!” Violet gushed, clasping her hands girlishly. “A mystery man! With his own valet, to boot!”

  “—or his constant offers of reckless wagers—”

  “Oh! That reminds me!” Violet butted in, forgetting to josh Cade for the moment. “I met someone today, and I think—”

  I think he might be the man you’ve been searching for all this time.

  “—because Simon Blackhouse is a damn blackguard, through and through,” Cade growled in a plainly possessive and resolute tone before Violet could tell him her news, “no matter how harmless he might seem. He’s no good for a woman like you.”

  With her jaw fully dropped now, Violet stared at him.

  “He’s not nearly good enough for a woman like you,” Cade continued relentlessly, “and if you can’t see that, well…”

  “Well?” Breathlessly, Violet waited. “Well, what?”

  “Well…” Exasperatedly, Cade cradled her cheek in his hand. He drank in the sight of her. He drew in a deep breath. He shook his head. Despairingly, he said, “Words aren’t enough.”

  “Enough for what?” All of a sudden she was scarcely keeping up with him, Violet realized. Jealousy, it seemed, was a powerfully confusing emotion for all parties concerned. “What are you trying to tell me? What am I supposed to see? Are you—”

  Before Violet could finish asking questions, Cade’s mouth was on hers. In the earthy stillness of the livery stable, he kissed her…so expertly, in fact, that Violet forgot all about the dimness and hay and soberly painted wooden stalls. All she could think about were Cade’s lips, soft and insistent on hers, and Cade’s mouth, warm and wet and delectable against hers, and Cade’s hands, steady and arousing against her neck and jaw, and even as she tried to formulate her last, almost-forgotten query—just to assure herself that she could—all Violet could do was grab ahold of Cade’s vest and just hang on. There was something about the way Cade kissed her, with slow, lazy strokes and tiny rousing bites and gentle, soothing glides of his lower lip, that made her entire mind simply shut down to all other sensation.

  “You’re supposed to see that I’m all you need,” Cade announced when he was through kissing her. “You’re supposed to remember that, now and always, whether I have the words to say so or not.” His gaze remained rapt on her face, his vivid blue eyes dark with passion. “But if you need another demonstration just to set that lesson for certain—”

  “I do!” Violet avowed, feeling all aflame. With her last dredges of wit, she added, “You’d better hurry up, too, before I run after Mr. Blackhouse and launch myself a comparison scheme.”

  Growling against her hair, Cade gave her neck a tender nip. The combination of his rumbling voice and naughty mouth made shivers race down her spine. Blindly clutching his shoulders, Violet gasped. They were still in the stable, she remembered belatedly, in public, where anyone could see them. This was risky. It was foolhardy. It was—she realized as Cade framed her face in his hands and brought his mouth to hers again—utterly and completely necessary. She’d stop breathing without this.

  “Ahem,” came a voice from nearby.

  Unwilling to acknowledge that intrusion, Violet squeezed her eyes shut a little bit tighter. She went on kissing Cade, telling herself that the sound she’d heard had most assuredly been a snuffling horse or a kicking mule or a distant bit of thunder…never mind that autumn storms were rare in Morrow Creek, and she’d yet to meet the beast of burden who could sound like—

  “Ahem.” That intrusion came again, more loudly this time.

  Oh, no. Possibly it was Owen Cooper. She would ruin Cade’s apprenticeship! Urgently, Violet pulled away. Through her dazed vision, she glimpsed Cade’s face, impassioned and wonderful.

  He wore the same expression he always did when he kissed her, which was besotted and determined and arresting in equal measure, and before Violet knew precisely what she was doing, she’d put both palms to the beard-stubbled sides of his jaw and was kissing him again, crowding herself closer and closer…

  “You’re going to have to let the man do his work sometime,” someone said from nearby. Very loudly. “Otherwise he won’t be able to repay his gambling debts—especially his debt to me.”

  With effort, Cade wrested himself from Violet’s embrace. In obvious shock, he stared. “Reverend Benson!”

  *

  “Papa!” Violet gaped, too. For indeed it was her father who’d been futilely trying to get her attention for the past few minutes. He stood beside a curt-looking Owen Cooper, both men impatiently waiting for her and Cade to quit spooning in the stable like addle-headed lovebirds.

  Too late, Violet recalled that the livery stableman had famously shunned all things frivolous and sinful, from gambling to drinking to carousing with women. Although he was still young and vibrant, widowed Owen Cooper had become the most straitlaced man in Morrow Creek…all for the sake of his little daughter, Élodie. He would not approve of Cade and Violet’s behavior.

  Of course, neither would her poor beleaguered father.

  Chin held high, Cade stepped up. “This was not Violet’s fault, Reverend Benson.” He put out his palms in an appeal to be heard. “I encouraged her to see me. I took advantage of her naïveté. I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry. But I care about—”

  “No! It was me! All me.” Violet crowded aside Cade in her haste to take the blame. Earnestly, she faced her father. “I knew you didn’t want me to
see Cade, Papa, but I did it anyway. I did it because he needs me! Because I care about—”

  “It was me, sir,” Cade insisted, head bowed. “All me.”

  “I won’t have it!” Determinedly, Violet shook her head. “I knew you made that wager with Cade to make him quit seeing me. But I also knew I could help him repay his debt to you, so I set out to help him, and everything just ballooned from there—”

  “Only because I allowed it to,” Cade contended with new and convincing forcefulness. “I should have known better, but—”

  As he continued, Reverend Benson and Owen Cooper exchanged an inscrutable look. Then Mr. Cooper piped up. “Isn’t anyone going to apologize to me? It’s my stable you’re besmirching.”

  Was that a glimmer of amusement behind his equable facade? Violet wondered. No, it couldn’t be. Not with Owen Cooper.

  Instantly, Cade did as the stableman wished. “I’m sorry, Cooper,” he said in a contrite and resolute tone. He frowned. “I never meant for this to happen, especially here. If you want me to leave, I understand. I’ll collect my things and—”

  “Of course he won’t want you to leave!” Instantly loyal, Violet shook her head. “You’ve been doing a good job here. Anyone can see that. Mr. Cooper is an understanding man. He—”

  At that, Cooper put up his hand, signaling her to stop. Then he did grin. He was amused! “Enough. I have customers to see to and work to do.” He tipped his hat to the reverend. “I trust you can manage this all on your own, Reverend?”

  Gravely, Violet’s father surveyed her and Cade. He gave a solemn nod. “With some prayer and divine guidance…yes, I can.”

  Even as she watched Owen Cooper amble away, Violet swallowed hard. Whenever her father decided he needed the help of the Almighty to deal with her, it was not a positive sign.

  Seeking assurance—or maybe trying to give away a smidgeon of it—she shuffled closer to Cade. Behind her skirts, she took his hand. She squeezed it. Cade squeezed back, delivering her a world of comfort in that single familiar gesture.

  After her father bade goodbye to Mr. Cooper, he turned again to Violet and Cade. His spine was stiff, his face filled with censure, and at the sight of his obvious disappointment, it was all Violet could do not to crumple in dismay herself.

  “I never meant to let you down, Papa,” she said.

  “I know that, Violet.” Contemplatively, her father examined her and Cade. He took in their close-together posture, their tightly clasped hands…even their heads, automatically tilted to faintly and supportively touch. “I also know that you’re capable of ignoring my wishes if that’s what’s needed to follow your heart. Otherwise, you never would have taken to delivering meals to the prisoners at Sheriff Caffey’s jail, for instance, entirely against my better judgment and my explicitly stated wishes.”

  Violet squirmed, remembering that incident from last year. Papa had thought she wouldn’t be safe at the jailhouse. She’d insisted on doing her charitable work there anyway, arguing that no one needed aid more than those people who’d been forsaken and separated from the people who knew them and cared for them.

  She guessed she still maintained that philosophy—after a fashion—with Tobe and Cade. Her feelings for them had grown far beyond the compassion she’d felt toward the inmates, though.

  “It wasn’t that I wanted to defy you,” Violet said in her own defense. “I had to do what I thought was right.”

  “I understand that,” her father told her. “I realized then that that’s the sort of person you are—the sort of person you’ve always been. You’re helpful and kind and determined, and I rightly cherish those qualities in you. I’m proud of you.”

  For a moment, confusingly, all her father did was smile at her. Violet began to nurture a burgeoning hope that her father would neither disown her nor begin praying for her redemption—nor decide to march her and Cade down the aisle by force. Not that that last consequence would have been entirely unwelcome….

  Unfortunately, her father dashed her newfound optimism by frowning at her in a troubling fashion. He inhaled deeply.

  “But that incident taught me one important fact—you do have a contrary streak, my dear. That streak, coupled with the fact that you’re about as wily and cynical as a newborn puppy—”

  “Papa!” Violet exclaimed, thoroughly taken aback.

  “—meant I could hardly ignore what was going on when you became enamored of a hard-bitten, hard-drinking, dangerous-looking professional gambler who was willing to slip me an ‘improving card’…and was able to discern that I would use it.” Somewhat sheepishly, her father glanced at Cade. “But I could hardly just rush ahead willy-nilly, either,” he told Violet. “Approving your friendship would have sent the wrong message. Yet if I forbade you outright from seeing Mr. Foster, you might have rebelled and begun a relationship purely because I’d prohibited it. I’m sure you appreciate the fix I was in.”

  Violet did not. She felt much too baffled for that.

  “I didn’t want to increase Mr. Foster’s rascally allure by putting him off-limits—” astonishingly, here her father winked at Cade “—but I felt duty-bound to step in and protect you if I could. Because the truth is, Violet, you’ve given too many foolish men far too many opportunities to hurt your feelings—and all because you insist on seeing the best in people.”

  He meant the times, Violet knew, when she’d given someone a chance to become close to her, only to learn that he was solely interested in her as Adeline Wilson’s best friend—as someone who could offer an introduction to the most beautiful woman in town.

  “Seeing the best in people is what you taught me to do,” she said in her own defense. “It’s the Christian thing to do.”

  “It is,” her father agreed. “But it can be dangerous, too. Seeing good where there’s also plenty of bad can be misleading. People are a fickle mix of both.” He slanted a perceptive glance at Cade. “So when you told me about your Mr. Foster and I saw that telltale sparkle in your eyes, I knew I had to…intervene.”

  “You mean you had to separate us,” Cade guessed in a knowing tone, “before we became too involved in one another.”

  Astonishingly, her father nodded. “Yes. As a result of my wager with you, Foster, I reasoned that either you would realize my gullible daughter was not easy pickings for a scoundrel—”

  Violet frowned, unhappy to hear herself and Cade described that way. “I’m not gullible, Papa! And Cade is no scoundrel.”

  “—or you would rise to the occasion and prove yourself. Either way, I reckoned things would work out in the end—without my inciting Violet’s more defiant instincts. Judging by the way you two have been mooning over one another since I’ve been here, I’m guessing everything is coming along just fine.”

  “I wish you’d trusted me, Papa,” Violet protested. “I wish you’d let me make my own decisions about this.”

  “But I did!” Her father blinked. “You didn’t have to know what I’d done to acquit yourself splendidly—from arranging these apprenticeships for Mr. Foster to helping him quit gambling and drinking. You did all that on your own.” At Violet’s look of bewilderment, her father explained, “The desk clerk at the Lorndorff told me you’d been visiting Mr. Foster to help reform him of his debauched habits. That’s admirable work, my dear.”

  Violet and Cade exchanged a guarded glance. Violet bit the inside of her cheek, suppressing an urge to confess everything. Too late, she recalled that her father knew just as many—if not many more—residents of Morrow Creek as she did. It made sense that he would learn of her comings and goings without much effort. How could she have been so blind? So blithe? So foolish?

  At least her father apparently thought that all she’d done was legitimately reform Cade by helping him quit drinking and gambling and carousing, though. There was a blessing in that.

  “But all that generous charitable work would mean nothing,” her father continued in a more fired-up tone, warming to his usual oratory vigor now, “i
f your Mr. Foster hadn’t done his share. I put as many obstacles in your path as I could, sir, but you hurdled them all.” Briskly, he saluted Cade. “Well done. I approve of you, and I approve of your courting my daughter. The two of you officially have my blessing and my well wishes.”

  Violet felt delighted. Cade appeared gobsmacked.

  “You were testing me?” he asked, skipping over her father’s hard-earned approbation for the moment. “You weren’t trying to get rid of me? You were testing me?”

  “I had to.” Reverend Benson’s tone sounded matter-of-fact. “I had to know if you truly cared for Violet or if you were simply using her for your own nefarious and immoral purposes.”

  Cade scowled. “I would never abuse Violet that way.”

  “Well.” Her father chuckled. “Of course, I know that now. But I also had to know if you were worthy of my daughter, too.”

  I could be moved to approve of the right man, Violet recalled her father saying earlier. The man who could make you as happy as you deserve to be.

  Cade had been that man, just as she’d hoped.

  “You liked Cade,” Violet accused her father. “You liked him!” She shook her head in astonishment. “Why didn’t you just tell me so? We could have avoided all this subterfuge.”

  Her father gave her an unreadable—but quite possibly playful—look. “Where would have been the fun in that?”

  “Fun? Papa!” Exasperated, Violet waved her arms. “What is fun about sneaking around, meeting in smithies and stables—”

  “You will have to quit smooching in public,” her father cautioned her. “I can’t condone that. I’m old-fashioned that way.”

  “—and not knowing if your love is doomed?” Growing suddenly overwhelmed, Violet inhaled. Beside her, Cade squeezed her hand. “Don’t you know? I worried every day that I would have to choose between you and Cade, Papa. That I would want to be with him and you would say no. That a decision would be forced on me that I was in no way prepared to make. It was crushing me!”