by Lori Austin
“Fever.” Which often occurred in poorly treated gunshot wounds.
“Which you doctored and then—”
“They said they were returning to Texas.”
“Yet they were seen headed north.”
The marshal had been busy.
“I’m not responsible for their poor sense of direction.”
Eversleigh’s lips tightened. “I’d like to speak with them.”
“Look in Texas.” That should keep the man occupied for the next several years.
At last the marshal stepped onto the porch. His suspicious gaze met Ethan’s. “I’ll find out what happened.”
“We’ll enjoy hearing about it.” Annabeth shut the door in his face.
“We will?” Ethan asked.
She waited until the clomps of the marshal’s boots faded before she faced him. “I’d like to know what in hell happened. But I doubt he’ll be the one telling me.”
“No?”
“Giant? Had to be Mikey. And since he’s always with Fedya . . .” She spread her hands. “Who was the woman?”
“According to Fedya, ‘no one.’”
Annabeth snorted. Ethan agreed. Fedya wouldn’t have ridden his horse until it almost dropped dead on Main Street, with the woman both he and Mikey had called “Cathy” in his arms, all the way from Indian Territory if she’d been no one. Fedya had loved that woman.
Whoever she was.
“Who threw the sheriff out the window?” Annabeth asked.
Ethan shrugged. “I wasn’t here.”
“So it had nothing to do with you,” she murmured.
“Me? No. Why would it?”
Fedya had insisted he had done it; the woman insisted she had. Ethan had lost a few nights’ sleep over the lawman’s demise, but the fact remained . . . The sheriff was dead, and Ethan would probably never know the why of it.
Fedya Kondrashchenko could call himself Alexi Romanov and pretend pretty much anything, but he would always be the slickest confidence man both east and west of the Mississippi, and if he didn’t want anyone to know the truth of what had happened in Ethan’s room, no one ever would. Besides, Ethan had enough sins of his own to agonize over. He didn’t need to add someone else’s.
Annabeth peered at the street, brow furrowed, thinking hard, though about what, he couldn’t determine.
“Do you need money?” he asked.
She blinked. “What?”
“Is that why you came? I have some. I’ll give it to you; then you can go.”
The flush of fury began at the neck of her dress—frayed, faded, the garment hung on her as if it had been made for someone else. “You think I came back for your money?” Her mouth twisted on the last word, as if he’d offered her his latest crop of armpit hair.
“You certainly didn’t come back for me.”
“No?”
“Don’t.” He held up one hand, saw it was trembling, and put it back down.
“Don’t what?”
“Lie.”
She sighed, staring out at the town called Freedom, which was anything but. “Is your brother—?”
Ethan’s chest went tight. He couldn’t breathe. He spun, palming a blue bottle from the counter, then tucking the glass into his pocket before heading upstairs where there were locks on the doors.
Mikey was still Mikhail, which meant that, for Ethan, his brother was dead.
• • •
A door slammed, and several thuds followed. Annabeth continued to gaze out the window. Ethan could say what he liked; he could do what he wanted. But she wasn’t leaving.
Not yet.
She smoothed her hand over her skirt and grimaced. The garment was tired and pale—ruined—like her. She had no idea where Lass had gotten it; she hadn’t asked. Questions like that yielded troubling answers.
She’d always hated this dress, but she didn’t have another, nor occasion to wear one if she did. But suddenly, she wanted a different garment—one she’d purchased herself, one that hadn’t been tossed at her like payment.
Annabeth stepped outside, closing the door behind her. If Ethan decided to lock it before her return, he’d discover she’d learned quite a bit in the past five years. She could pick any lock ever made.
Folks milled about on the streets, more than she remembered milling about when she’d left. When she’d lived here before, the town was just big enough to afford a doctor, though it had boasted three saloons. Now she counted six, plus two mercantiles, three restaurants, a dressmaker, cobbler, milliner, and whorehouse. The sheriff’s office stood right next to Ethan’s place. Though it appeared deserted, the rest of Freedom was booming.
Since Lewis’s Sewing and Sundry stood closer than either of the mercantiles, she went there first. Inside, a familiar scent washed over her, and she sniffed, wondering what it was.
“Good morning.” A woman emerged from the rear of the building, her low, husky voice completely at odds with her small stature and doll-like beauty. The voice was that of someone who’d spent a lifetime in smoky saloons, singing—or worse—for her supper. But her face was unlined, youthful, her blue eyes honest and sweet, her hair the shade of daffodils, worn loose and caught at the nape with a pink ribbon. “I’m Mrs. Lewis.”
“I . . . uh, yes.” The woman lifted a brow at Annabeth’s discomfiture. “Good morning.” She felt huge and awkward. A redheaded troll in the presence of a princess.
“What can I do for you?”
“I need . . .” Annabeth indicated her faded gown.
“Of course.” Mrs. Lewis hurried forward, pulling a measurement cord from around her neck. “I can get started right away.”
“Do you . . . uh . . . have anything ready-made?”
“In your size?” Mrs. Lewis managed not to laugh in Annabeth’s face. Most likely because she was far too small to see into Annabeth’s face. “I don’t—” She paused, frowning; then just as suddenly, she smiled. “I do!” She clapped her tiny hands and hurried off on tiny feet.
She returned almost immediately, holding a light green day dress. Annabeth stifled a grimace. Pale green was not her color. Mrs. Lewis did not seem to notice. She attempted to place the bodice where Annabeth’s bodice resided, but she couldn’t quite manage it.
Annabeth took the gown and positioned the neck where the neck would go. The hem ended two inches higher than it should. The cuffs stopped an inch above her wrists.
“Don’t worry.” Mrs. Lewis tugged on the skirt, and Annabeth let go. “I can let down the hem and add longer cuffs. Won’t take me but an hour.”
“I assume you made this for someone.” She doubted Mrs. Lewis sewed clothes the size of an Amazon for her own amusement.
“I did. However, the lady left town without paying for it.”
“Won’t she be back?”
“Doubtful. But I can always stitch another. Would you like me to make those changes?”
As Annabeth had nothing but the dress on her back and the trousers in her saddlebags, she nodded. “Please.” The color would make Annabeth resemble a holly berry, but she didn’t have much choice. “Could I order more of the same? In my size but different material?”
“How many?”
“Three more.” She planned to burn the one she was wearing. “And the colors . . .” She lifted her hand to her hair, which also hung loose, but as it had been shoved beneath a sweaty hat for days did not look half as lovely as her companion’s.
“Of course.” The woman began to pull out bolts of cloth in browns, golds, and deeper greens. Annabeth pointed to one of each shade.
“I’ll need undergarments, stockings. Pretty much everything.”
“What happened to your clothes?”
Revealing that her husband had burned them was probably not a good idea. “Flood.” Annabeth cleared her throat.
“Oh!” Mrs. Lewis set her slim white hands on her rosy cheeks. “How horrible.”
“Yes. You’ll have the dress modified in an hour?”
“I w
ill.”
The door opened. Annabeth recognized Sadie Cantrell as soon as she walked in. They had been friendly before Annabeth left. The former frontier schoolteacher had done everything she could to make the young doctor’s wife feel welcome.
Sadie and her husband, Jeb, were old enough to have been the first settlers of the great state of Kansas. They were certainly among the first settlers of Freedom, or at least there was no one left alive to contradict the claim.
At the sight of Annabeth, Sadie’s one remaining good eye widened. “Hello, Sadie,” Annabeth began. “I’m—”
“Dead,” Sadie interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re dead.”
Annabeth opened her mouth, shut it again, then glanced at Mrs. Lewis, who spread her hands. Although the past twenty-four hours had been slightly hellish, Annabeth was fairly certain Freedom wasn’t purgatory.
“I assure you I’m not.”
“Ye better tell yer husband that, ’cause he’s been mournin’ ye somethin’ fierce.”
“Mourning?” she repeated.
Sadie eyed Mrs. Lewis. “Ye didn’t come to have a catfight with yonder sewin’ woman, did ye?”
Yonder sewing woman drew in a sharp breath. “What’s your name?”
“Annabeth.”
“Beth?”
Annabeth got a chill. “How did you—”
“Surname?” Mrs. Lewis snapped, and Annabeth, who’d been known for the past five years, and for many before that, as Annabeth Phelan nevertheless answered, “Walsh.”
The woman, who’d already paled as if Annabeth were the ghost Sadie claimed, gave a wordless cry. Her eyes fluttered, and she slid out of sight behind the countertop.
Annabeth hurried around the edge to discover Mrs. Lewis in a heap on the floor. She knelt next to her and caught again that familiar scent.
Mrs. Lewis smelled just like Ethan’s spare pillow.
• • •
The indentation of his wife’s head still marred the bolster. Though Ethan knew it was a mistake, he sipped at the bottle, staring at the curve in the white fabric, and the next thing he knew, he’d placed his own cheek right where hers had been.
He could have sworn the material was still warm from her skin, which was just foolish. It was the tail end of summer in Kansas. What wasn’t warm?
But the damn thing smelled like her. Also foolish. She’d been riding for days, weeks . . . who knew? She had smelled—of horse, sweat, and that disgusting old hat she’d pulled over her exquisite hair. So why, then, did he drift into the deepest sleep he’d enjoyed since she’d left with the scent of lavender soap filling his nose?
Because he was crazy. But he’d known that for a long time.
“Ethan!”
Her voice was further proof of his insanity, because he heard her calling his name as if she were right in the room. He swore she shook his arm, but that couldn’t be. He’d locked the door. Therefore he was dreaming again.
And since he was, he reached for her, tangling his fingers in her hair, cupping the back of her head with his palm, tugging her lips ever closer to his. He caught the scent of mint—she’d often chewed the leaves to freshen her breath, not that he’d ever found it anything but sweet.
She resisted at first; she always did. She’d left him; she hated him. But no matter the hate, the pain, the past, they’d always had this.
Their lips met, and she gasped, the reaction opening her mouth to his tongue, rubbing her breasts—no corset, how odd—along his chest. The friction—her clothes, his, nothing more—caused her nipples to harden. He tilted her head, delved deeper, and after an instant when he thought she might pull away—something that never, ever happened in a dream and therefore did not happen now—she kissed him back.
She tasted the same—the flare of whiskey in the dead of winter, mint juleps at the height of summer, intoxication of the very best kind.
The buttons of her bodice opened with barely a touch, and he slipped within. Cupping the warm, familiar weight, he ran a thumb across the tip. Ripe, round, and rigid, she groaned as he rolled the bud, the sound vibrating against his mouth, his chest, making him ache. She wasn’t the only one ripe and rigid right now.
In all his dreams, she’d been young, the way she’d been at Chimborazo, wearing a drab dress, a stained apron, and a horrid cap over her incredible hair.
He’d never seen anything quite like Annabeth Phelan’s hair. Not red, not really. Not orange either. But a brilliant hue in between that should have been unfortunate but wasn’t.
“Ahem!”
Ethan kissed his wife more thoroughly, running his hand from her neck, down her back to her buttocks, pressing her tightly against his larger-than-lately erection.
“Ethan,” she murmured.
“Beth,” he returned.
“Dr. Walsh?” someone said.
He opened his eyes at the same time Annabeth opened hers. For an instant he saw the self he wished he still was reflected there. Doctor. Husband. Lover. The man she’d believed him to be, because he’d pretended so well. Then he remembered the bottle in his pocket, the spare room nearby, and the reasons for what he kept in both.
He yanked his hand from her bodice. Something tore; a button came loose and hit him in the eye. That small pain was nothing compared to the shock when she scrambled off of him, sliding a knee down his manhood with just enough pressure to make him gasp.
He took one look at her face and understood it hadn’t been an accident. Annabeth knew exactly what she was doing. Always. So why in hell had she been kissing him?
He struggled to his feet, and a second bout of throat clearing had him spinning toward the door through which Sadie Cantrell peeked. “How did you get that open?”
Sadie pointed at Annabeth, who was trying, to no avail, to button a bodice sadly lacking a button right where a button was needed the most. The pale, beautiful curve of her breasts taunted him.
“It was locked,” he said.
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Please.”
What did that mean? He nearly asked, but Sadie butted in. “Doc, ye gotta come quick. Thought yer wife was gonna bring ye.”
“Come where?” he asked, though he was already following Sadie toward the stairs—slower than usual, with more of a limp than he liked, but he was following.
“Miz Lewis’s place.”
He froze. “What happened?”
“Cora done fainted dead away.”
Ethan got a very bad feeling. “What does my wife have to do with it?”
“They was talkin’. Then Miz Walsh said her name, and Miz Lewis swooned.”
A helpless, frustrated sensation swamped him. He should have done something to prevent this. But what? If he’d told Annabeth not to go to Cora’s shop, she’d have gone there straightaway.
He glanced at his wife. “Why did you—”
“I needed clothes.” She stopped fussing with the rent bodice and threw up her hands, casting Sadie an exasperated glance. “He burned mine.”
Sadie’s white eyebrows shot toward what remained of her white hair.
“I was going to ask why you came for me,” Ethan said. “You’re perfectly capable of handling a fainting spell on your own.” She’d handled far worse.
“I wanted to give you this.” She crossed the floor in three quick steps and punched him in the stomach.
He doubled over. On the way down, he saw a movement and twisted his head to the left, narrowly avoiding a knee to the nose.
One girl, five boys? Annabeth Phelan had learned young to fight dirty.
He could have sworn Sadie laughed, or maybe she choked. Although, when he glanced her way—after he made certain Annabeth wasn’t going to hit him again—the old woman’s face held only concern. “Ye all right, Doc?”
He nodded, rubbing his gut. “What the hell, Beth?”
“You slept with that woman.” He blinked. “In our bed!”
“Did she tell you that?” He couldn’t imagine Cora
discussing such a thing with anyone. Ever.
“She didn’t have to.” Annabeth snatched a pillow off the floor. “You could have at least laundered the sheets, Ethan.” He frowned, confused, and she made a disgusted, infuriated sound before she threw the pillow at him. It bounced off his chest and fell to the floor. “The thing reeks of her.”
He glanced at Sadie. “We should probably have this discussion later. Cora needs—”
“She done woke up just after yer missus left,” Sadie interrupted. “But she does wanna talk t’ ye.”
“No doubt,” Annabeth muttered.
Ethan ignored her. “Would you tell Mrs. Lewis I’ll be along directly?”
Sadie nodded and, after a curious glance at his wife, left.
“What did you think would happen?” Ethan lifted his gaze from the pillow that lay next to his foot. Annabeth still appeared furious, but now he was, too. “Did you think you could disappear for five years, then return, and I’d be sitting right where you’d left me?”
“You are where I left you.”
She was more correct in that statement than she knew. He was exactly where she’d left him in every way. Same house, same job, same town—in agony, full of hate, afraid of love, trusting no one.
Especially her.
“You mean to tell me no other man has touched you since you left?”
She turned toward the window, and his belly burned. He’d asked her what she’d expected, but what had he? From the first, everything between them had been a lie. Unfortunately, he hadn’t discovered that until after he’d married her.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
“Why do you think?” She continued to stare outside.
“Honestly, Beth, I have no idea.”
“Neither do I.”
CHAPTER 13
Annabeth started when a door closed downstairs. Ethan appeared on the street below, carrying his medical bag, hurrying toward Lewis’s Sewing and Sundry. Annabeth hadn’t heard him leave the room. She hadn’t even heard him on the stairs. She was slipping.
But Ethan had always known how to move without making a sound; he was very good at sneaking, lying, spying. The only reason he’d ever been caught was her.
He went into the shop; Sadie came out. Annabeth’s lips tightened. Was Ethan kissing the tiny, blond, perfect Cora? Had he told her he was sorry? That everything would be all right?
