by Tina Leonard
She did hear snoring. His chest fell with rhythmic breathing, and she knew he really had nodded off, just like that, out of sheer determination to shut her out. “You’re the daddy,” she said softly, just to try out the words.
Not a hitch in those z’s. Rip Van Winkle wasn’t about to be disturbed by some climactic pronouncement.
She wanted to cry but all of her tears had been squeezed out of her long ago. Being strong didn’t mean a woman couldn’t cry, but it did mean she usually had better things to do with her time, so Liberty left Duke in his state of slumber and departed.
It was very still across the street, as if the Tulips Saloon was waiting for life to be breathed back into it. Liberty straightened her shoulders and walked through the pretty, stained-glass doors.
All her friends sat at tables, waiting to see whether she would need comforting or if wedding bells would finally ring. Sadness and a bit of embarrassment clutched at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him.”
He wouldn’t listen was more the truth, but it didn’t seem fair to air every piece of their dirty laundry.
Pansy opened her arms, and Liberty rushed into them, squeezing her eyes tightly shut so that she wouldn’t see Duke’s face, so crestfallen when he realized his own town had left him out-and it was all because of Liberty.
“YOU COULDN’T HAVE BEEN more of a pissant if you’d tried, Duke,” Pepper said to her older brother late that afternoon when he slunk home, tired despite his nap. Duke glanced at her, then at Zach, with some surprise. Pepper was lying out in a bikini around the pool, soaking up some waning September sunshine after being up north so long, and Zach was coiling up a hose he’d been using to water the plants around the patio.
“Just let it drop,” Duke commanded, unwilling to talk to anyone about what had happened. He had no idea what his brother’s and sister’s roles had been in today’s drama, but what he did know was that they, and most of the town, were on Liberty’s side.
Damned if he knew why.
Zach shrugged, not about to throw any weight on his side of the sinking ship to save him, Duke realized. There would be no peace in his house until they’d had their say, obviously. “Spit out all the opinions you want, and then the matter’s closed,” he stated, feeling angry that his own siblings were against him. Who could you count on if not family?
With a sigh, Pepper went back to reading a magazine. It was a medical journal, Duke saw as she defiantly flipped pages. Zach went inside, abandoning the whole family council process.
Though Duke should have felt relief, the silent treatment just brought him more anxiety. Shouldn’t someone recognize that he wasn’t the enemy?
Of course, it wasn’t often that Pepper was put out with him. For as long as he could remember, he and his siblings had been tight as ticks.
Liberty had been the one knot in the tight rope of their existence. As a child, she’d sneaked across the small ravine, deftly climbing the barbed-wire fence of their property and playing pranks on them. It had been like having their own personal, mischief-making elf. Milk would disappear. Pots would be rearranged on the patio. A cow would be wearing a bow around its neck at Christmas. Once she’d put firecrackers in their mailbox. Small ones, of course, but it had gotten their attention.
And then they’d laid a trap for her, figuring to put a stop to the antics of the Wentworth waif. One Christmas Eve night, they put candy canes all along the patio leading to the front door, a colorful sugar trail designed to catch a child who was doubling their chores with her mischief. As they sat at the family Christmas table, laden with home-cooked food and covered with fine linen, they innocently waited to see if they’d have a visitor.
When they heard the cowbell clang and the bucket release its four gallons of water, they knew they had her and went gleefully dashing from the table.
Liberty had been standing on the porch, soaking wet, caught in the act of staring in the window at them before taking off at a run. Their mother, coming up behind them, had seen the two handprints she’d left against the window as she’d peered in, and it wasn’t Liberty who got in trouble that night. Their father had given Duke, Zach and Pepper such a talking to, and then their mother had marched them over to the Wentworths to apologize to Liberty and her parents.
What they’d seen in the Wentworth home had surprised them. There was no Christmas table adorned with glowing candles and laden with home-cooked food. No decorations. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth sat in front of a fire, each reading a book, completely unaware that their daughter had been gone at all, and apparently disinterested that it was Christmas Eve.
But what Duke never forgot was the look in Liberty’s eyes as she stared at his mother—it was the hungry look of a child who desperately wanted the attention his mother was giving her. His mother toweled off Liberty and then handed her the strand of candy canes they’d used as bait. Not only that, she went back and retrieved the presents he and his siblings were supposed to get for Christmas that year and gave them to Liberty.
He’d resented that, until he saw those three toys in Mr. Parsons’s pawnshop window and realized Liberty had never even gotten to play with them.
From that day forward, she was one of them. She ate at their table for meals, and she walked to school with them. Zach was her same age so they became the closest, though Pepper had followed Liberty around like fog.
He had tried to hold himself aloof, as he’d been uncertain of her. Thirteen years old, he’d been a jumble of hormones and teenage pride and not sure what to think about the little girl who, once she was cleaned up, stoked some part of his being he hadn’t been aware existed. Oh, the girls chased him, and he ignored them for the most part, because he’d been interested in football and baseball and rodeo.
But Liberty nagged at him, and he was never quite sure what to do with those confusing feelings. So he ignored her.
But one time he’d come upon her and Zach and Holt in the barn attic, and he was astonished by what he saw. Liberty and Zach had dressed Holt in a costume, an old wrangler’s outfit for Halloween, and they were busily sewing and stuffing material on him. Holt was the sewing dummy, or whatever one called those things, and they were improvising.
Duke couldn’t even thread a needle, wouldn’t have known how to start, and the jealousy that hit him took him clean by surprise. When Zach wore the costume to the Halloween Ball in town that night, Duke had been positively pea-green.
And he really hadn’t understood why. As costumes went, they all looked fine. Liberty was a bride, Pepper was a witch—not too far off the mark there, he’d thought with brotherly snide-ness—and Holt, who tagged along, was a British punk rocker. Duke wore his football uniform with streaks of grease under his eyes, in no way feeling dressed up at all.
When Zach won “Best Costume” that night, Liberty hugged him with glee and kissed Holt’s cheek, and Duke knew something special had happened he’d been left out of: Liberty’s secret mission.
She was going to design things. And he would be left out, because he had no patience for thread and small stitches and lace, and wouldn’t stand still and be a sewing mannequin.
But Zach and Holt would.
“So are you going to sit there and sigh all day, or are you going to say what’s on your mind?” Duke demanded. “I can tell you’re about to burst with advice.”
“No,” Pepper said, giving him a bland look over her journal. “I’m not.”
“Oh, come on,” Duke said. “You need to give me the blah-blah-blah so you’ll feel you’ve done your part to demoralize big bro. Pardon me—I meant, shove common sense into big bro’s lumpy thick skull. Sermonize is the word I’m looking for.”
Pepper laughed. “Don’t be a pissant with me, Duke. I don’t have to take it like poor Liberty does.”
Poor Liberty didn’t take anything from anybody. “Liberty does what Liberty likes.” And that included stranding him at the altar in a dress she’d designed just for the occasion. No doubt she would now be wearin
g maternity clothes she’d designed as well.
He’d never forgive her.
He went inside, feeling a shower might ease the knot of tension at the base of his skull. The knot in his heart couldn’t be eased at all.
“I think Pepper’s right,” Zach hollered from the kitchen. “As much as I hate to gang up on you. You need to nail your boots to the floor, if that’s what it takes, and be still and silent until Liberty’s gotten to say everything she needs to.”
Duke went in to face his brother. “When did you learn about the party today? Excuse me for thinking you’re a traitor, but somehow I have this feeling you should have mentioned that my ex-fiancée was having a baby shower.”
Zach mashed his hat down low on his head and drummed his fingers on the chopping block before setting down the knife he’d been cutting onions with. “I didn’t know until Pepper told me. And Pepper didn’t know until Pansy called her. No one really knew until the last minute. Pansy accidentally read some notes she’d written wrong. The macular degeneration makes it hard for her to see some pieces of letters sometimes, and she got the date mixed up. Today was the day Valentine was bringing out a couple of cakes for Helen to choose from, only Pansy misread and called around to ask a few people if they knew today was the day, and we all scrambled to get there. It was entirely a miscommunication. Although it did turn out nice,” he said happily, munching a bell pepper. “I do love anything Valentine bakes.”
“Which does mean that everyone in fact knew of a baby shower, which means everyone knew that Liberty was pregnant.” He glared at his brother. “Except me.”
“You’re not on the grapevine, that’s for sure,” Zach agreed. “Gossip doesn’t exactly flow through your office. Does your phone even work? Mr. Parsons hasn’t been picking up lately.”
Shouldn’t the sheriff know as much or more than any of his citizens? He relished his role of plot-buster. How had the ladies gotten two plots past him in one week? And what else was bubbling in their cauldron? “Why doesn’t gossip flow through my office?”
“Because you take yourself so seriously,” Zach said, “and frankly, no one in their right mind was going to tell you that Liberty was pregnant. That wouldn’t be gossiping. That would be…” His words trailed off under Duke’s withering stare.
“Would be?”
“Dangerous,” Zach said. “Where you got your hot temper from, I’ll never know. Dad didn’t have much of one. Mom sure wasn’t hot-tempered. But where Liberty’s concerned, you’re an eager spark. I sure hope you don’t pass that temper of yours on to your—”
Zach froze, his eyes wide.
Duke’s antennae went straight up, quivering. “Go on,” he said silkily. “You were saying something about passing my temper?”
Zach hurriedly chopped peppers and onions and then part of his hand. “Damn!” he exclaimed, sucking on his finger for drama, Duke was certain, because there was no blood. “Go away, Duke. You’ve completely destroyed my focus!”
Duke grunted and left, annoyed with both his siblings. He sat on the porch, leaned against a pillar and stared up at the late-evening sky, feeling a lot like Mr. Carmine searching the heavens for something meaningful and finding goose formations to admire instead. It felt as if the world was against him. His dog had deserted him. His fiancée was more than just an ex; she was enlarging her world with a baby and leaving him behind again, in a matter of speaking. His citizens—and they were his—were plotting against him, and his office. Everything that mattered to him was leaving him in a desperate state of helplessness, which he hated, but the thing he hated most was that Liberty didn’t love him anymore.
And all he wanted to do was kiss her lips and hear her sigh his name.
It just wasn’t fair to want something as much as he wanted her. But she just wasn’t going to say, “Yes, Duke,” like he wished she would.
Maybe if she were more easygoing, everything would have worked out. Still, something nagged at him.
Something that said maybe, just maybe, his sheriff’s hat had gotten a bit tight on his big, stubborn head. It occurred to him that maybe pride was a meal worth swallowing when his dessert could be eating wedding cake from the fingers of his beautiful bride.
Chapter Five
“It’s not working,” Pansy said to Helen as they sat at a table with Valentine and Liberty the next morning. Floral teacups and delicate bowls filled with fruit covered a lace tablecloth, but despite the festive decorations the mood of the women in the room was somber. “This whole Ladies Only Day appears to have gone awry.”
Liberty looked at Valentine. “Tulips will be a harder town to build than Union Junction, most likely.”
Valentine shook her head. “Men will be drawn to your eligible bachelorettes. It’s just that the whole concept is in its early stages. And remember, mine was a Men’s Day, designed to flatter the local menfolk for Father’s Day.”
“What Pansy means,” Helen said with authority, “was that we can’t even get the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes we have in this town on the same pony, much less bring men to this town for some of our beautiful girls.”
Liberty shook her head. “I agree with Valentine. We’ve only just begun to build the town, and the concept is somewhat transparent. We’ve made the day about our social time, when we should have made it about our talent and our attributes. And that Tulips is the perfect place for growing families.” Liberty was quiet for a moment, then said, “We need to hold a ball.”
Valentine stared at her. Pansy and Helen sat up straight.
“And invite men from nearby towns who are interested in finding a wife,” Liberty said. “Not me, of course, but the women here who would love a man to date.”
“Why not you?” Valentine asked.
“Not me because…I don’t dance,” she said instead of saying because I have loved Duke all my life even though he’s a stubborn ape. “But I design very beautiful gowns,” she said, “and I have lots of beautiful things to dress up our town’s fair ladies in.”
Pansy blinked. “What about Duke?”
“What about him?”
“Well, someone would have to tell him our plan,” Helen said, “and so far as I can tell, he hasn’t been in a receptive mood. He doesn’t have much patience with this whole Ladies Only Day idea, and when we tell him we’re expanding it—”
“Tweaking it,” Valentine said. “It would become a Tulips Day, like Union Junction’s Men’s Day.”
“It’s still not working,” Helen said. “Your day was to celebrate your men. Our day would be to showcase our debs, spinsters and widows.”
“And I don’t want to give up our Ladies Only Day,” Pansy said. “I look forward to our monthly meetings.”
“We talk every day,” Helen said.
Pansy added, “I know. It drives Duke mad.”
Liberty leaned forward. “But he’d like it if we called it Tulips Men’s Day. We could tell him we were turning over a new leaf and making it all about men.”
They took that in for a moment. Pansy’s gray eyebrows furrowed. Helen’s little mouth bowed. Valentine picked at the fruit bowl in front of her, lining up the strawberries and blueberries in a decorative row.
“It’s good,” Valentine finally said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing we would have done to get around the Jefferson brothers of Malfunction Junction. Appeal to their machismo and manly pride.”
“Actually,” Pansy said slowly, “we’re just really talking around the one thing that we’ve messed up, which is all my fault. Liberty, I’m so sorry that I got Duke upset with you. Even more upset than he already is. Er, was.”
“Is and was,” Liberty said, “and Duke’s been in a perpetual state of irritation with me ever since he discovered I had returned to Tulips. Don’t blame yourself at all,” she told her friend, hugging Pansy to her and feeling the frailness of her bones and the softness of her hair. “Besides, how could I be mad at you? You ladies are my dearest friends.”
“Excuse me,”
Duke said, his sudden appearance startling all of them. His gaze bounced to Liberty and then away. “Have any of you seen my dog?”
Helen shook her head. “She’s not here.”
“She’s not with Mr. Parsons, either.” Duke frowned and Liberty could see the concern on his face. “Mr. Parsons says he thought she went off with that young cowboy who was here.” He glared at Liberty.
“Blaine?” Valentine smiled at Duke. “Blaine went down to the Chop House to get a burger. I believe I did see a flash of gold slinking after him, now that I think about it.”
“Oh.”
Duke appeared to be unsatisfied with that information. Liberty smiled at him to try to make him relax, but the old magic didn’t work on him. He glared at her again, said, “Thanks, ladies,” and left.
Helen sighed. “It’s going to be very ugly around here for a while. I think the best thing we could all do is steer clear of the sheriff until his mood improves.”
Liberty felt Pansy squeeze her hand and hug her a little more, and it did help—some. But not as much as it would have if Duke had given her a bit of a glance that didn’t have ice on it.
DUKE WENT BACK to his office, not about to run after his faithless dog. But to have Molly go off with Liberty’s new cowboy friend was just too much!
“That was fast,” Mr. Parsons said, glancing up from straightening his cell when Duke strode into his office and threw himself into his desk chair.
“Did you find her?”
“Our dog has gone off with a strange man,”
Duke said. “Something we should have told her is unacceptable.”
“I meant Liberty,” Mr. Parsons said, and Duke sighed.
“Liberty is where she always is, tightly knit into the town beehive with the queen bees who are after my hide.”
“Think there’s only one queen per hive,” Mr. Parsons said, but Duke was too miserable to care. His dog, his woman, his town—they were all slipping from his grasp. He watched Mr. Parsons pick objects up from a shelf, expertly dust under them and then replace them. Carefully, the elderly man tucked a small ledger book into a copper box, making certain it was locked.
