The Sons of Johnny Hastings Box Set

by Patty Devlin

  The warm hug and common ground began a friendship between them. It was either then or later, when Celia complained her arse was still hot enough to fry eggs on. Of course, his rejoinder that if she swore again she’d be able to make bacon, too, also heated her face pretty well.

  They fell into a natural pattern of daily life. Jackson started the wood stove in the morning before he went out to the jail to check in. Celia would make them a simple breakfast and they would eat it together before heading off for the day. Of course, she didn’t think that she needed to be walked to the schoolhouse every day and balked the first time he did. Her arguing ceased quickly when he suggested they have the discussion over his knee. She did, however, feel special somehow when he showed up each afternoon to walk her home. His constant attention could be frustrating and yet made her feel special in a way she’d never known before.

  Celia really enjoyed teaching, but as the third week was drawing to a close, she had concerns and couldn’t talk to him about them. Each evening she would be fairly bursting with wanting to talk about her day, but when she tried, his overprotectiveness made everything worse. She was having troubles with some of the older boys but not huge problems because she’d taught older boys before. Young men of about twelve and thirteen couldn’t wait to be finished with school. They had a lot more on their minds than arithmetic and poetry. They had chores at home and their fathers wanted them to work harder on the farms or the family business. Celia was sure the problem would sort itself out with time. She was the new teacher after all, and they were testing her. But Jackson didn’t understand the way it was with boys or teachers and so he worried that the problem was specifically with Calvin Farley, or better yet his father, Hugh Farley, the other man Celia could have married.

  Then there was the problem of Frankie. It wasn’t really a problem either, just that the boy struggled and needed some extra help. Celia wanted more time to work with him one on one. She was certain she could help him catch up. She’d heard of new ways to help students, but she needed to evaluate him better to find out where he fell in the learning curve. It was possible he was suffering from a learning disability she’d learned about called dyslexia or some form of it. She just studied about it recently and many people had yet to hear about it. A lot of people suffered with it and thought that they could never learn to read. She really wanted to help Frankie before he became too discouraged. And that was already happening, because other kids were teasing him.

  When she had tried to explain that to Jackson, he became upset. He said that all boys struggle, and it was normal and to leave the boy alone and not to embarrass him. Celia thought that was the worst thing to do, but she couldn’t stay after school with the boy when Jackson came to pick her up every afternoon. So she’d worked it out by keeping him in for lunch a couple days a week.

  She wanted to talk to Susanna about Frankie so that she could help him more. Celia didn’t understand why it was such a sensitive topic. It didn’t occur to her ahead of time to pull Susanna aside.

  So when they were at the boarding house for supper after church Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Spectacles, the banker—whatever his name was—asked her how school was going, she told the group how much she loved it. And then she brought up a meeting about Frankie to Susanna.

  “Cecelia Grace, this is not the time for that. I told you to let it go.” Although Jackson said this low and near her ear, she still worried the others had heard.

  “It’s not a big deal. I just wanted to see if I could help him with some other stuff.” Warmth rose to her cheeks and the tips of her ears. The conversation around the table had come to a painful lull. The sound of silverware against the plates seemed amplified and to go on for an eternity, or perhaps merely only the few seconds it took Susanna to reply.

  “Oh, that’s not a problem, Celia. That would be wonderful. Frankie’s struggled all along and the other teacher made it so hard. He was so unapproachable. In fact, I think he made the problem worse. Frankie’s been talking about how nice you are, how much fun it is when you take them outside to do their lessons under the tree. Haven’t you, Frankie?” She smiled at her son and tousled his hair, giving him a wink.

  Celia sighed with relief as Byron caught her eye and gave her a kind smile. It was the little boy who set Jackson off again. “Yeah, but I don’t like it when I have to stay in for lunch and do extra lessons. The other kids tease me.”

  “He shouldn’t have to stay and do extra lessons if he didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe he can’t help that he don’t understand. If it’s not his fault then just leave him alone.” Celia recognized the voice. Deep, stern, and masculine—it was Jackson, but if she hadn’t known any better, she’d have thought it was coming from an eight-year-old boy. Before she could think of a sympathetic answer, something to soothe him and help them to understand better, his Viking princess mother spoke out, clarifying much of the problem.

  “Jackson, Celia’s talking about Frankie, not you, and I can tell she is kindhearted. She’s obviously looking out for Frankie’s best interests. Mr. Eagan should’ve retired twenty years ago. He was a beast and we shouldn’t have let it go on.” There was a tear in her eye as she placed her hand on top of her son’s.

  “Miss Celia, I mean, Mrs. Owens is way better than Mr. Eagan, even if she makes me stay in at lunch. I never want Mr. Eagan to come back.” Frankie shook his head back and forth, his eyes wide, face solemn.

  “No, Frankie, Mrs. Owens isn’t going anywhere, and Mr. Eagan is never coming back. Maybe we can set something up different so you don’t have to meet during lunch.” Susanna looked at Celia for approval before going on. “Perhaps you could walk home with her and spend some time before supper a couple days a week, or something.”

  Celia nodded enthusiastically, looking to Jackson for approval. His face stony, he sat glumly eating his meal in silence and refused to take part in the conversation anymore. When she looked back, Mrs. Owens and Susanna were both giving her sympathetic smiles. She really wished she were alone with one of them right now. If she was thinking correctly, Jackson most likely struggled with the same learning problems as Frankie, and he’d been unable to get help, which made so much sense. That must be why he’d argued with her so harshly at home when she’d tried to discuss Frankie.

  “I’ve studied learning issues at the university and how the brain processes information differently.” Celia was met with blank stares all around the table but went on anyway. “I’m certain by using different senses we can train the brain to process and store information more readily and I’m excited about the opportunity to help. It’s awful for someone to feel like they are less than someone else because of their family, upbringing, or education.”

  She would have gone on, but as soon as she’d answered a few questions and he could steal her away, Jackson did. It angered Celia at first but then she thought about how uncomfortable she’d have been sitting in on that conversation if she’d grown up with a learning problem and possibly been teased about it, too. Her heart broke for him. She had to remind herself of that again when they were alone and he started in on her right away.

  “How could you pick on the poor kid in front of everyone, Cecelia?”

  “Just Celia!” April was shaping up quite nicely; not one cloud could be seen in the endless blue sky. The nights were still cold, and that morning, frost had covered the ground on the walk to school. Of course, the sun had cleared it up by the time lunch had rolled around. The sunshine warmed Celia’s heart and she didn’t know how the man could be such a grouch on a day like that. “I didn’t pick on anyone, Jackson. I want to give him the help he needs so he doesn’t struggle for the rest of his life. Don’t you see that?”

  “No, he was surely embarrassed, you have to know that. I know, I’ve been in his shoes, staying in for lunch and recess, staying after school, never getting anything right, the rest of the kids laughing at you in class, the teacher thinking that you’re just messing around when you just don’t understand.”


  She sat up straight on seat of the carriage and turned around to look at him. “No, Jackson, it’s not like that at all. I know he doesn’t understand, and I know he can’t help it. That is why I want to help him. And I can help you, too—”

  “I don’t need your help.” He stared straight ahead at the road before him, his face hard and the muscles in his jaw clenching as he worked his thoughts out. “You’re getting carried away, but I’m not the boy’s father. I’ll just say this: if I find out you keep embarrassing him. I’ll take it out on your behind. Do you understand?” He turned and gave her a very intense look. His left eyebrow arched high above the other one.

  “Yes, Jackson,” she conceded so he would let it rest. It was such a beautiful day and his mood brought her down. “The weather is so nice today. Can we go for a ride out to the falls you told me about, please?”

  Chapter Five

  “What are you cackling about?” Jackson asked as he dropped down against the trunk of an old maple tree. He tried not to grimace as he shifted his hardened shaft to the side of his leg. Maybe he should’ve followed her and waited in the icy water. That might have helped. Watching her delightful form, as she clutched her skirt high above her knees and tiptoed through the rocky riverbed, played a number on him.

  “I’m not cackling, Jackson. Chickens cackle. I giggled. I just remembered little Donald Farley. He said the water was so cold the boys had headed north. I don’t know who he meant, but this water is so cold it burns.” She hopped back and forth, one foot to the other, and made her way back to the shore.

  “Those boys don’t have a lick of sense.” He didn’t know whether to sing or cry when she dropped her dress again.

  “The ones who headed north?” She reached for her shoes and stockings and came over to the tree to sit by him. Oh no, she’d pulled her skirt up again, baring those beautiful legs.

  He groaned. “No, that is just a saying, a very bad saying. Don’t repeat it. Hugh Farley doesn’t have a lick of sense, and it’s more than likely the boys will follow right in his footsteps. I don’t know why in tarnation the board would even think he was an option.”

  “The boys are sweethearts, every last one of them.” She glared at him defensively, stopping the progress her stocking had made over her delicate ankle. He wanted to take that stocking and slide it up her shapely calf and then continue to glide his fingers up her thigh to the warm juncture he would find there. Her words snapped his thoughts back. “They’re just misunderstood—judged unfairly.”

  “Oh yeah, and what of Thomas Farley telling Frankie that if something happens to me you’ll have to marry his father? What a little sweetie, huh? And maybe you don’t know about Calvin and Ronald whipping the tar out of the old teacher? The man was in his sixties. Sure, he probably deserved it, and more after his years of tyranny but they are unlawful little hellions and their father is the worst.”

  “Frankie said that Mr. Eagan strapped Donald. Wouldn’t you want Calvin and Ronnie to stop him—and strap him—if it had been Frankie in that situation?” She’d given up on her stockings and now sat up on her knees next to him, glaring at him.

  Jackson couldn’t stop thinking about her bare legs. “That’s not the point. The point is, if Hugh was any type of father, had a relationship with them boys, they would have went to him about the situation before it came to all that, and Hugh could have come to the school board. There is an appropriate way to deal with things.”

  “That doesn’t mean they are bad kids. They are misled, but the fact of it is, they had good intentions, good hearts.” She tossed herself back in the thick grass, spread her arms out and sighed a loud sigh of contentment. At the sound, his jeans seemed to groan with the loss of room at the crotch. What the hell had come over him?

  Oh, he knew what it was all right. Two months living with the little temptress. He lived in a constant state of arousal. Each of her deep breaths thrust her breasts higher and it took all of his control not to press himself over the top of her and start unbuttoning that row of tiny pearl buttons all the way down the front of that pretty peach blouse. Ninety seconds—he could have them unfastened, all of them in ninety seconds, he’d lay money on it—if he were a betting man.

  “Come on,” he grumbled, and grabbed her foot. He fumbled about, trying to slide her stocking in place. “It’s time for lunch. I’m hungry.”

  “Stop it, Jackson.” She slapped at his hands. “I’ll do—” Her lips, they were so full and pink.

  He couldn’t resist anymore; he had to see if she tasted as pretty as she smelled. The stockings were forgotten as he reached for her and she fit perfectly in his arms as his lips pressed down against hers. She opened up to him and he drank her honeyed nectar. He longed to run his tongue along her jawline, her neck, her collar… he settled for her sweet lips. His fingers were not as willing to settle. They traveled, stroking the little ridges in her spine, all the way up to her glorious mane to free the pins that kept it from him. “Beautiful,” he whispered against her ear and then moved onward to taste her neck.

  “Jack—” A delicious shiver danced over her limbs, almost overtaking Jackson. He wanted desperately to press her down in the grass and make love to her. He had to get ahold of himself.

  He untangled her from his arms and pressed one last kiss to her temple. “We should go. I want you so much, but… I don’t want to take you here, like this.” He watched her carefully as she put her stockings and shoes on. He felt like a randy, rutting greenhorn who couldn’t control his urges. Jackson wouldn’t be surprised if she ran away crying. He couldn’t really help himself though. He’d thought about going to The Lucky Lady but that somehow felt worse. He hadn’t slept in weeks, not with her tucked up against his side all night.

  They were both quiet on the way home. He knew she wanted to talk, or was thinking about him at least. She kept watching him. She was trying to be subtle, but the way she fluttered her lashes and tried to hide it only made it more obvious. They were about three houses down when he looked up and saw a man in an ugly top hat turning away from their door. He looked familiar. Oh shit, what the hell did he want?

  “Oh, hello, Marshal Owens, Ma’am.” He lifted his hat toward Celia, and Jackson felt ill.

  “Go in the house, Cecelia,” Jackson said, silently pleading with her to obey. She opened her mouth and looked as if she would argue, but thankfully did as he’d told her. He turned back to the lawyer as soon as the door closed behind her. “What do you want, St. James?”

  “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, if you haven’t already heard,” the older man said, scratching at the bare spot on the top of his bald head and bringing attention to his ring of scraggly gray hair that grew in odd tufts around the sides.

  If he didn’t look so serious, if Jackson didn’t know, didn’t feel it deep in his gut that this had to do with his father, maybe he would have laughed at the strange picture Hobart St. James presented. Jackson could barely mutter the huff of the single word “No,” but he knew. He knew there was only one reason for Johnny Hastings’s man to seek him out. The man had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with his son while he was alive.

  “He passed, night before last.” He held out a single envelope, and everything in Jackson wanted to ignore it or, better yet, let it fall to the ground so he could walk on it. But he couldn’t. He had to know what the letter said. “There will be a small service day after next.”

  Jackson nodded and went in the house, tucking the letter in his pocket as he closed the door.

  “What is it? Who is he? What did he want?” Celia was at his side as soon as he turned around.

  “Not right now, Cecelia,” he barked and then cringed when his saw her back stiffen. She turned away from him and he was torn between wanting to apologize, to hug her or tease her, anything to see her smile—or sneaking off somewhere private so he could see what he could make out from the letter. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. I just need to be alone right now.” He couldn’t hang aroun
d to explain. He needed to find his old friend, Johnnie Walker.

  *****

  Celia didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. If she had to guess, she’d say her lawman looked as if he was going to cry. She didn’t want to sit there and do nothing, wondering what in the world had just happened. Without another thought she marched out the door and headed up Birch Street to Susanna’s house. She would get answers one way or another.

  Unfortunately, her sister-in-law was not at home. Celia left there hoping to find her at the boarding house. She needed to talk and didn’t know whether Mrs. Owens would give her the answers she desired. She did have cause for second thought because Jackson didn’t want her to walk anywhere in the city alone. And Celia didn’t know how long he would be gone or if she’d get back before he did.

  She generally tried to please him and the most she usually earned was the look completed with a stern “Cecelia Grace.” She always argued that her name was just Celia, hence him teasing her by introducing her as Just Celia or calling for her that way. They had a pretty easygoing relationship. In the evenings, they went for walks or played chess.

  She surprised him one week by begging him to teach her to play poker and then beating him soundly. She’d bet him everything from washing dishes, sweeping the schoolhouse, to giving her a piggyback ride on the walk home. Thankfully, he hadn’t won the piggyback ride because that was one she hadn’t thought through. She would’ve been mighty embarrassed by that. But she had some new ideas for bets now.

  Even though everyone else did it, Celia felt awkward walking in the front door of the boarding house without knocking. Today of all days, she wished she had not. When she came into the foyer she heard voices right away. She recognized Mrs. Owens, but not the gentleman she was talking to. They were in the dining room around the corner from her and must not have heard her come in. Their voices were hushed but still, Celia could hear.