by Pam Crooks
All too aware of how he watched her, too, as if she consumed his every thought, she gathered her wits tightly around her and attempted to break the disconcerting web that had spun itself around them.
“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” she said. “My name is—”
“Grace Reilly. I know.”
She cocked her head, not altogether surprised that he already knew. How else would he have found her at Lindell’s?
“Camille must have told you about me,” Grace said.
“She did.”
“She’s a lovely lady.”
Again Grace recalled the kindnesses the woman had showed her. Where would she be now, tonight, without Camille’s help?
“They don’t come any finer,” he said. He regarded her. “She’s my mother.”
“Yes. She told me.”
Camille and Jack. Mother and son. Grace couldn’t see much resemblance between the two. The same gray-green eyes, she supposed. And the same shade of dark golden hair, but there, the similarities ended.
“Then she would’ve told you my name is Jack Hollister,” he said with a smile that could’ve melted butter.
“She did.”
A belated realization that her response was an exact match to his landed an answering smile onto her own lips, but she quickly stifled it. She couldn’t let herself relax with this man. He didn’t yet know Bess was her mother, or that Carl was her half brother, and if he did, he wouldn’t be so quick to give her one of his buttery-smooth smiles.
Nor would he be pleased to learn that Carl would just as soon kill him as see him breathe, and Grace had to do everything she could to protect them both.
The lamplight shrouded her in softness, and if he didn’t know better, Jack would have thought she’d floated down from heaven on a cloud.
An angel draped in blue.
Full and thick, the color of rich sable, her hair framed her face in precisely pinned, fashionable rolls. Not a single strand appeared out of place, despite the fact she’d just been resting. Traveling, too, for who knew how many days.
He fisted his hand against a strong craving to feel the silken mass. To experience its weight sliding through his fingers.
“I must thank you for saving me from that horrid man this afternoon, Jack,” Grace said quietly. “If you hadn’t, the consequences would have been unthinkable.”
“So don’t,” he said huskily.
“Think about it? How can I not?” Her lashes, as rich and thick as her hair, lifted. Perfect crescents framing her blue, blue eyes. “It’s not something I can forget.”
In the rush of sympathy that swept through him, an intelligent response escaped him. It was likely the truth. Wouldn’t be easy for anyone to keep from reliving what she’d gone through.
“Hell of a scare, for sure,” he said finally and cocked his jaw from how trite the comment sounded.
For a moment, she said nothing, and those blue eyes clouded before glancing away. He sensed her distress went deeper than she let on, triggering him to wonder what she wasn’t telling him.
“Would you like to sit down?” Her composure collected again, she extended her arm, slender like the rest of her, and indicated a plain wooden chair near the fire.
“No, thanks. I’ll stand,” he said.
But his glance slid toward the bed behind her. Topped with a red-and-brown checkered quilt and wide enough for both of them to sit.
Or lay.
His blood began a slow and steady warming from the thought of what it would be like to fall back onto that quilt with her. Damned if she wasn’t one hell of a distraction. Lusting over her wasn’t why he was here. And what made him think she’d even want to sprawl on the quilt with him? A scar-faced ex-lawman who turned cowboy to escape the ugliness of his past?
He scowled, jerked his glance back and found her watching him. Defiantly. As if she knew exactly why his eyes had strayed behind her.
No shrinking violet, this one. Yet a faint blush touched her cheeks, and Jack knew she wasn’t as unaffected by the thought of them on the bed as she’d like him to think.
“You have any idea who he was?” he demanded roughly, changing the subject to one less far-fetched and giving him the advantage, something to sink his teeth into. To keep from thinking of things he shouldn’t.
His gruffness startled her. “The stranger from this afternoon, you mean?”
“Why would he want to kidnap you?”
“I have no idea.” She crossed her arms and shivered. “I never saw him before, and I hope I never do again.”
Jack let the comment pass. Whoever the lowlife was, he’d had a reason for attempting his attack. It wouldn’t matter that he’d failed. He’d just try again.
“Do you have a husband?” Jack blurted the question chafing under his skin. “Someone the stranger might use you against?”
“Like a vendetta? For ransom?” She appeared appalled at the idea and shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not. I’m not married yet, Jack. And if I were, no husband of mine would have dealings with the likes of him.”
“Then how would he have known you were here, fresh off the train?”
“I don’t know. Believe me, I’ve wondered that very thing myself. All I know is he was watching me. I’m sure I was simply a—a spontaneous—”
“No,” Jack said sharply. “You weren’t. The risks were too great for him to just steal you away in broad daylight.”
“But the streets and boardwalks were deserted. There was no one around to see.”
“He had motive, Grace. Motive.”
Her throat worked. Jack knew he was scaring her, but she had to understand how much danger she was in. Every lawman knew crime at any level always started with a reason, however misguided.
“Robbery, perhaps,” she said hesitantly. “I dress well, and he would’ve assumed I was wealthy.”
“Yet he never took your purse. Or your leather satchel.”
She paled. “No.”
“If it was money he wanted, why didn’t he just rob the restaurant? The day had been a busy one. The till would’ve been full.”
A shaky breath slipped through her lips. “True.”
Jack tried another angle. “Where were you headed when he grabbed you?”
She hesitated. “To the police station.”
Jack’s brow arched. That he hadn’t expected. “Because?”
“I needed help finding a friend, but then I changed my mind, and—”
“Allie Gibson,” Jack said, reiterating what his mother had already told him.
“Paris,” Grace corrected quickly. “Paris Gibson.”
Paris? Jack wondered if Camille had been wrong in her information. Or if Jack had somehow misunderstood.
His gut told him neither one. Didn’t make sense that Grace would’ve traveled so far to see a man old enough to be her father. And in the time Jack had known him, Paris had never mentioned her.
He grunted and once again had the feeling she was hiding something. “You wouldn’t have found him in his apartment, Grace. He left for Minnesota a week ago.”
“He did?” She sank down onto the side of the bed as if the information had blindsided her. “I had no idea.”
She turned silent so long, Jack felt compelled to keep talking.
“He went back there to hire a private investigator for Allie. She’s in a heap of trouble, and there’s a fair number of us who believe she’s innocent. Her father’s doing what he can to sort things out.”
Her eyes rounded. “You know about Allethaire’s troubles?”
“Every detail.” Of how a forged draft found its way into a fat envelope of cold, hard cash planted in her traveling trunk. Evidence linking her to an embezzling scheme back in Minneapolis, then robbed minutes afterward by a gang headed up by a man named Boone. Jack nodded grimly. “She told us.”
Clearly restless, Grace stood again and strode toward the window. She stared, pensive, through the glass panes into the black
night outside.
“She left Minneapolis in such a hurry,” she said softly, almost to herself. “The scandal was about to break, and she must’ve been so frightened over it. Her reputation was on the brink of being ruined. I can only imagine how awful this whole ordeal has been for her.” Grace whirled back toward him with her brows furrowed in puzzlement. “You call her ‘Allie.’ Why? I’ve always known her as ‘Allethaire’.”
He shrugged. It had been Mick who insisted on using her nickname since he found her given name far too pretentious. “It’s a different life out here for her. Guess she was ready for a change.”
“How is she, Jack? Is she holding up all right?”
“She’s fine.”
He declined to tell her that, in truth, she was more than fine. Probably happier than she’d ever been in her whole life. Mick had asked her to marry him, and she’d agreed, and she was likely planning the details of her spring wedding at this very moment.
But Jack would let Allie tell Grace her news. It was just the sort of thing females liked to talk about.
“How can she be fine?” Grace demanded. “She has to be devastated by all that’s happened.”
“She’s fine,” he said again. “I promise.”
Grace stared at him. Then, she spun toward her blue coat, hanging next to the door. “I’d like to see her. Now. Tonight.” She grabbed her hat. “Would you take me there?”
Jack hooked a thumb into his hip pocket. “Take you where?”
“To her father’s apartment.”
“She’s not staying there,” he said slowly.
She went still. “But you said she’s here. In Great Falls.”
Jack pursed his lips. “I never said that.”
Bemused, she frowned. “But you said you talked to her.”
“I did. She’s staying at the WCC—”
“The Wells Cattle Company?”
“One of the biggest spreads around.”
Her breath left her in a gush. “So Allethaire has told me.”
“Paris is building his hydroelectric plant there, on Wells land.”
“Yes. She told me that, too. She’s very proud of him for it.”
To say the power plant was crucial to the prosperity of the entire territory and one more feather in Paris’s prominent hat was an understatement.
“That’s where I live,” Jack said. “At the WCC.”
“As one of their cowboys?” She appeared taken aback.
He didn’t move. It wasn’t so long ago being a cowboy was just what he wanted to do. Immerse himself in a safe, mindless job. To start over in a new life and forget the failures of his past.
But somehow, with her, it felt so damned…menial. Like he’d never had aspirations for anything more than that.
She wouldn’t know how everything he’d ever worked for, dreamed about and succeeded at had been destroyed, thanks to his old man. Nor would she know about outlaws or betrayal, of blood fighting against blood.
Grace Reilly had only known how perfect life could be.
He scowled at their differences. “That’s right. I’m one of their cowboys. So I know for a fact it’s too far and too late to ride out there tonight.”
“I understand.” She appeared so disappointed, guilt rolled through Jack for denying her. She peered at him beneath those dark crescent lashes of hers. And his knees went weak. “Could we see Allethaire tomorrow?”
That she wanted him to take her instead of hiring someone else startled Jack. That she only intended to use him as a means of transportation didn’t.
What red-blooded man would deny her?
“We’ll head out around noon,” he said gruffly. “Should be warmer then.”
“Yes, of course.”
Abruptly aware, then, of how he’d spent the last week on the back of a horse, that he needed a bath, a shave and a set of clean clothes, he turned on his heel to leave.
“Jack?”
He halted in midstep. Turned back around to face her.
She strode toward him, her skirts rustling with every slow, purposeful step. She placed a hand on his arm, her touch as bold as it was seductive. Her full mouth softened.
“Thank you again for all you’re doing for me,” she said softly.
She turned his brain to mush. Seared his skin with the warmth of her hand, and branded the sweetness of her voice into his memory.
Mostly Grace Reilly filled him with the certainty that having met her, his life—and his heart—would never be the same again.
Chapter Five
The next morning, after Grace dressed, fixed her hair and made the bed, she parted the drapes covering the only window in her room. The day had dawned bright and crisp-cold, with a deep azure sky that stretched nearly cloudless. A heavy blanket of snow had fallen overnight and painted the yard a pristine white. In contrast, the street running along the front of Lindell’s Boardinghouse had already been muddied and rutted by trampling horse hooves and wagon wheels.
Her perusal shifted to the tree growing tall past the house’s roofline, close to the window. A bird had flown into the tangled canopy of naked branches and perched contentedly, only a few feet away, directly in Grace’s view.
The little snippet of crimson was unexpected and striking amidst the tree’s winter dreariness, and recognizing the species, Grace clucked her tongue in delighted surprise. Her grandmother had been an avid birdwatcher, a hobby that Grace had learned to enjoy with her, and though she considered herself a mere amateur, Grace knew this little bird was a rarity in the territory for this time of year.
The Redheaded Woodpecker had strayed from its usual migration toward a warmer climate, and the novelty of seeing him this late in the year compelled Grace to rush to her satchel for her camera. With the Kodak in one hand, she wrestled the window open with the other. Brisk cold assailed her, but she didn’t bother going for her shawl. She didn’t dare lose this opportunity to capture the woodpecker’s image on film. What a prize to show her birdwatching club when she returned to Minneapolis!
She leaned out the window as far as she could, and balancing the black box-shaped camera in her left hand, she leveled her gaze downward and centered the bird in the lens. With her right hand, she pulled the cord to cock the shutter, advanced the film with the camera’s key, then pressed the trigger, all in three efficient and well-practiced motions.
“Perfect!” she breathed.
As if he sensed Grace got what she wanted and had no further need of him, the woodpecker opened his wings and fluttered away. Grace withdrew and closed the window.
The camera was one of her most prized possessions, a gift from Grandmother last Christmas. Grace wasn’t often without it, for reasons just like this one, the fun and spontaneity the Redheaded Woodpecker presented, and hadn’t the little creature been a model subject?
Unlike Charles Renner, who used to resist most every time she wanted to take his picture.
She sobered at the sudden thought of her former business partner and the Literary Aid Society’s liaison within the Minneapolis community. At first, his help in organizing their endeavor to build the grand library the city needed had been invaluable. But his growing arrogance and underlying greed had soon convinced her grandmother trouble was afoot. Time proved she was right, and Charles’s power and access to Society funds ended up being the root of all Allethaire’s troubles—and Grace’s, too.
Unfortunately Grandmother had died before she could provide evidence of her suspicions of an embezzling scheme, and now it was up to Grace to find the truth and see him convicted.
She alone possessed the information to do that—by way of the meticulous records her grandmother kept as president and founder of the Ladies Literary Aid Society. Now that Grace had taken over in her place, she was convinced the truth lay hidden in those files. She just needed a little help finding it, that’s all. She needed Allethaire, who well understood Grace’s inadequacies and would be only too eager to help her comb through the ledgers to read every word and
decipher every amount noted in the columns.
Grace knelt in front of her satchel and assured herself the papers were all still there, encased and hidden in the red-ribboned hat box she kept inside.
She tucked her camera away, and with her thoughts still heavy on Charles, she untied the red ribbon and withdrew a manila packet. Inside was a picture she’d taken of him with a friend at a political function.
It had once been her favorite. Soon after meeting him, she’d foolishly fallen for his power, charm and good looks. Even now, she had to concede his handsomeness in the photograph. With his tuxedo and starched white shirt against his dark skin, his black eyes and angular features, his trim moustache and his hair expertly oiled, he’d dazzled her with his smile that night while she focused the lens on both men, glasses of brandy clasped in their hands.
Despite the well-groomed and equally handsome appeal of the other man, she’d had eyes only for Charles. He inspired her admiration, having made a name for himself as a community leader and a rising politician.
But her infatuation had been short-lived and withered altogether with the embezzling charges. Now, she felt only contempt and resentment for the man, and more than ever, she couldn’t wait to meet with Allethaire and find the evidence they needed to convict him.
She returned the packet to its place in the hat box, retied the ribbon and rose. Funny how she couldn’t think of Allethaire without thinking of Jack Hollister, too.
How strange to know him now, all these months after her mother’s death. Even stranger to know she’d be traveling with him out to the WCC in just a few hours. She should abhor the prospect, she thought on a wave of guilt. Sharing a ride with the man who had a hand, even a remote one, in killing Mama should be unthinkable.
But it wasn’t.
He’d had nothing but concern for her from the moment she’d first laid eyes on him. Whether pouring coffee or saving her from an outlaw’s devious intentions, Jack had been honorable to a fault, concerned for her welfare, capable of keeping her safe, and what woman wouldn’t want to be protected by him?
She owed him her gratitude. Indeed, she must worry more of what he’d do when he found out who she really was. Daughter of the wild and unruly Bess Reilly, with a list of crimes as long as his arm, who would have gladly shot him dead if she’d had a chance.
