A devilish thought rose up, and she let the accompanying smile split her face. If he was supposed to keep an eye on her, she’d just have to make sure the man was blind…a low laugh rumbled from her chest as she made her way back to the house to set her new plan in motion.
Chapter Four
Tim checked his reflection in the beveled mirror over his bureau. Once he figured he looked as good as he could in his worn but practical blue button-down and denim’s, he turned back to look for his boots. They were at the foot of his large, four-post bed. A bed two times larger than the one he had back at home. The bed wasn’t the only big thing in the room; the armoire, the desk, the two chairs beside the large fireplace, and the bench where he sat to don his boots—all big and fancy looking.
If his ma were there, she’d click her tongue and mutter about the uselessness of such fancy furniture. “A man can rest his bones on a leather couch just as he could on a velvet one,” his ma’s voice flit through his mind. He smiled. No, his ma wasn’t into fine things, but she was a fine woman, and he hoped to one day find himself a wife just as practical, hardworking, and kind as his ma.
His thoughts moved to the little spitfire he’d plowed over on his way into the house. Joanna Stopay. Aunt Melda’s goddaughter. She was all fiery hair, bright, flashing eyes, and a face so delicate it looked to be made of porcelain. She sure was pretty…and downright feisty.
He didn’t know why her comments to him or about him didn’t bother him. She’d basically called him a lout, threatening to tattle to Uncle Thomas about him being in the house. He chuckled. She sure changed her tune when she realized who he was. And he couldn’t stop the wondering about her, who she was, and why she seemed in such a hurry to get out of the house.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel and finished with his boots. Standing, he straightened the line of buttons on his shirt and rubbed at his jaw, checking for the length of growth he knew he’d find there. Not enough time to shave. Ah, well, it wasn’t as though he had anyone to impress. Not that Miss Joanna would be much impressed by a clean-shaven Tim as she was with a scraggly one.
He chuckled again and left his room, making his way down to where Aunt Melda said the dining room was. He stopped dead when he saw Joanna standing at the foot of the stairs, glass of amber liquid in her hand, and a brilliant smile on her face.
His breath caught and he had to focus on each stair to make it to the bottom without tripping and falling to his death. When he’d seen her last, she was wearing a ridiculous yellow dress with matching bonnet, the color making her face look sickly. And yet, he’d liked what he saw. But now, she was dressed in a light purple dress with quarter sleeves and a high waist, and her hair was loose about her shoulders in a manner he could only describe as breathtaking. She was beautiful. And he couldn’t seem to think straight.
“Mr. Hanlon, I knew my uncle likes to have a drink before supper, so I thought I’d bring you one, as sort of a peace offering after the way I was rude to you earlier.” Her lilting voice charmed him, and he found it took a little more focus than usual to figure out what she’d said.
“Mr. Hanlon? Oh, no, that’s not me, that’s my pa—he’s a farmer.” Why did he say that? He cursed himself for being a bumbling idiot. “You can call me Tim, and I’ve already forgotten about earlier,” he lied. He hadn’t forgotten a single thing, but it was apparent all she remembered was the tension, whereas he’d remembered every detail of her face.
Her smile brightened and she stepped forward, holding the glass out. “Well, I still wanted to make sure you were comfortable, and that you felt welcome. Come on with me into the drawing room. You can sip that brandy and we can get to know one another.” Her voice was sweet, and she seemed genuinely sorry for her actions earlier, but he absolutely couldn’t drink the brandy. He’d never in his life drank a drop of spirits. His father was a dry man, and his ma wouldn’t have allowed liquor in the house even if the reverend brought it—not that he would. But how could be turn down her generous and thoughtful gesture?
Smiling awkwardly, he followed her into the drawing room and watched as she twirled around, smiled at him, and presented the glass again. Swallowing, he reached out with surprisingly steady hands, and took it. He brought the glass up to his nose and sniffed it, nearly crying out at the burn that attacked his eyes and nose.
Goodness but that stuff was hellfire.
Blinking back unmanly tears, Tim smiled again and quickly looked around for something to do with the brandy. He wasn’t going to drink it, but he didn’t want to offend Joanna, either. There! Nestled into a corner beside the table holding an assortment of bottles and crystal glasses was a potted plant. He fought back a moan of relief and made his way to the table, looking at this and that on the way there. It wouldn’t do for her to think he was up to anything. Living with a passel of women for most of his life had taught him many things, one of them being: move slowly, act normally, and you just might get away with it. Standing before the table, he turned to Joanna. She was watching him, her eyes hooded, her body tense. Was she waiting for him to drink the brandy? Why was this so important to her? It must be a custom I’m unaccustomed to. One the fancier folks in Montana take to.
He wanted to make her happy, but not at the expense of his morals. It’s now or never. Clearing his throat, he pointed to the corner of the room behind Joanna, and exclaimed, “Is that a real deer head?” When she turned to see what he’d gone on about, he bent over the table, dumped the brandy into the potted soil, and stood up again, all before Joanna turned back to pin him with an annoyed glimmer in her golden eyes.
She planted her hands on her hips and leveled a tiresome expression at him. “Of course, it’s a deer head. Don’t you have deer wherever it is you’re from?”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Yes, we have deer, I’ve just never seen one trussed up all life-like and nailed to the wall. It seems…”
“Hideous? Grim? Ghastly?” Joanna supplied, which only made him laugh again.
“I was going to say, unnatural. It doesn’t seem natural for a deer to be peeking at you from a wall inside your house.”
She arched an eyebrow at him then her gaze dropped to the empty glass in his hands. A slow, intriguing smile spread across her face. “I see you enjoyed your drink,” she said, her tone triumphant.
Goodness, she certainly wanted him to drink that brandy. And now that she thought he had, he could move on, perhaps ask her about her rush from the house earlier. “Yes, thank you,” he began, but before he could open his mouth again, a man wearing a bright red coat and black trousers appeared at the drawing room door.
“Miss Stopay, Mr. Hanlon, dinner is served,” he said, his voice nasally, as he turned and extended an arm toward the other end of the hall.
Waiting for Joanna to proceed him from the room, he followed the starched man and Joanna down the hall and into a large, gaudy dining room. The table was a good fifteen feet long, the walls were adorned with golden sconces and shelves holding busts of men he’d never seen before. The floor was dark hardwood and a large, oblong rug in the most glaring orange seemed shoved under the table legs, destined for a life of ugliness in an ugly room.
Lord, if Ma were here, she’d have a fit…of laughter.
“Come in, come in,” Uncle Thomas called from the head of the table. Aunt Melda sat on his right side, and she directed Joanna to sit beside her. Tim took the seat on Uncle Thomas’s left side, sitting in a chair so hard, he knew his hind end would ache for another five years. Trying to get comfortable, he almost missed Joanna’s quick glance at the clock, then her furtive glance at the door. Was she expecting someone?
Giving himself an inward shake, he forced himself to focus on the shallow bowl in front of him that contained a brown broth of some kind. There were pieces of carrot, celery, and an unknown chunk of meet.
“Beef stew,” Aunt Melda supplied, probably seeing the confused look on his face.
“Ah, yes, of course.” Tim picked up his spoon, dipp
ed it into the stew—which looking nothing like any stew his ma made—and took a sip. It tasted of carrots, celery, and burned leather. Holding back the urge to spit it back out, he swallowed it instead. His ma raised him to be courteous to his hosts, and even though they served shoe leather in their stew, he was going to make them think it tasted like brisket. “It’s delicious.” A snicker from across the table made him glance to Joanna. She was hiding a smile behind her glass of water. She knew he was lying.
He coughed to hide his chuckle and dipped the spoon into the muck again, hoping to high heavens it wouldn’t taste as bad the second bite. It did. It took everything he had, but he finished the bowl. He nearly groaned like a dying dog when the servers brought a plate of what looked like the meat from the stew.
Tim wondered it Joanna was suffering as he was, but when he looked over to her, she was again glancing covertly at the clock.
What is she waiting for?
Her gaze flicked forward, catching his, and a startled expression flashed over her face. But it was quickly replaced with a blank stare.
Miss Joanna Stopay was up to something, and since it was his job to make sure she stayed out of trouble, he immediately tensed. Just after arriving at the house, and colliding with Joanna, Uncle Thomas called Tim into his private office just off the foyer.
“I know you think I’ve brought you here to show you how to strike it rich like I did,” he began, and Tim felt apprehension pool in his belly, “but I’ve brought you here because I need your help with something very important.”
Abjectly disappointed and yet curious, he asked, “What can I do to help you, Uncle?” If anything, he was always polite, even if his uncle had just gutted his plans to start a new life.
His uncle sat down in a leather chair behind a mahogany desk and steepled his fingers. “I need you to keep an eye on Joanna. She’s recently lost her brother, and her ma, Melda’s dearest friend, asked that we take her in for a while. She was getting into all sorts of trouble in Shawnee, and her ma was worried she’d get herself hurt.”
Not surprised by Joanna’s penchant for troublemaking, Tim asked, “What kind of trouble?”
Uncle Thomas sighed heavily. “Her brother, Joseph, God rest his soul, was gunned down in the street by bandits who’d just robbed the bank.”
Tim let out a slow hiss. Lord, but that was a lot of heartache to take, especially for one as obviously passionate as Joanna.
“She swore to God and all witnesses that she’d find the man who killed her brother, and she’d bring him to justice.”
Fear and a smidgeon of admiration for Joanna flared up from his belly. “Her anger is understandable, but her plans…”
“Could very well get her killed. That’s why her ma sent her out here, to get her away from town, all the gossip about the robbers, and the dark alleys she’d taken to hiding in to find them.”
Tim rubbed at the back of his neck, weary from the long journey, and now wary about what his uncle expected him to do. “So, I’m supposed to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t go off into any alleys?”
Tom nodded, his expression serious. “That’s right. But I have another job for you, as well.”
As if watching out for Joanna wasn’t enough of a task, he only lifted his eyebrows. “What’s that?”
Uncle Thomas stood and came around his desk, then looped his heavy arm over Tim’s shoulders. “It’s nothing dangerous, just some deliveries. I’ll need you to go into town every week and retrieve a load of crates from the stagecoach station. Then you’ll just need to deliver the crates to my claim about two miles out of town. Simple, right?” his uncle exclaimed, slapping Tim on the back with enough force to make it sting.
Simple? Sure, it sounded simple enough. He’d made plenty of supply trips into Dry Bayou for his father. He could do it with his eyes closed, so the niggling feeling in the back of his mind was especially bothersome. Why, if the job was so simple, did his uncle feel the need to tell him it wasn’t dangerous?
He would keep an eye on Joanna, he could make deliveries from town to the claim, but something about the look in his uncle’s eyes made him wonder what he’d gotten himself into coming to Montana. A prickle of apprehension began at the base of his spine and slithered on up into his scalp.
Now, as he sat at the dining room table watching Joanna watching the clock, her expression slipping from nonchalant to wary, he wondered which job would actually be more dangerous.
Chapter Five
Don’t look at the clock, don’t look at the clock.
It was nearing six, which meant if she was going to pull off her plan, she’d need to get a move on.
Grimacing, she pinched her face and groaned, just loud enough for her aunt to hear.
“Joanna, whatever is the matter with you?” Aunt Melda’s tone was sharp enough it could’ve given JoJo a real headache if she wasn’t already used to the woman’s abrasive voice.
“It’s a headache, that’s all,” she said in a pained whisper. She had to make her aunt believe she was truly ill. It wouldn’t do for the woman to discover JoJo’s absence. “I think I’ll feel much better if I just get some rest.”
As if it were her own idea, Aunt Melda’s eyes snapped with decisiveness. “Of course, dear. Head on up to bed. We’ll see you in the morning.”
And that was all she needed. Letting out another soft groan, for good measure, she peeked at Tim out from under her lowered lashes and nearly stopped dead. The man was staring at her, his expression set in a hard line, and his gaze seeming to pierce right through her playacting.
Shoot, the man’s going to be laid out like a hibernating bear in less than twenty minutes, let him think what he wants. She knew it was a risk putting that sleeping draught in his drink, but she just couldn’t have the man watching her every move, not on a night when she needed to move freely. If he caught her sneaking out of the house and followed her, he would ruin everything she’d been working for since her brother’s death.
No man would rob her of the chance to bring Dalton Hess to justice.
She scooted back her chair and rose, casting a forlorn glance to her aunt and uncle, and plying Mr. Timothy Hanlon with a sly, calculated grin. Before he could call her on her fakery, she sidled from the room, her head in her hands, and her true smile well hidden.
In no time, she was in her room, changed into a white, linen pullover shirt and a pair of buckskins she’d stolen from a pile of clothes at the mercantile in Shawnee. She knew stealing was wrong, but murder was a much greater sin, so she banked on the fact that the Lord wouldn’t hold her measly theft against her, not when she was set to put a murderer in jail.
Checking to make sure the pillows were lined up under her counterpane, she walked backward and looked at it from the doorway. It looked just like she was still lying in bed. Anyone opening the door to check on her would assume she was fast asleep.
JoJo fought the sudden urge to laugh aloud and instead began gathering everything she’d need for her trip into town. She dug a pair of her brother’s old boots out from under her bed, took the worn cattleman hat from the back of her wardrobe, and pulled the gun out from its hiding place behind her headboard.
The weight of the gun was a comfort to her. It was the gun she’d learned to shoot with, it was the gun her brother taught her to shoot with. Burning anguish tore through her chest, leaving a raw, ragged hole. She bit back the tears. “I will avenge you, Joe, I swear it.”
Checking the cylinder, she snapped it shut and slid the gun into the holster beneath her loose shirt. Those men gathering somewhere in Morgan’s Crossing to plot something terrible didn’t have a clue she was on to them, and that meant she already had the upper hand. Her gun, her determination, and her wits ensured she’d finally succeed.
Lord willing.
Sucking in a lungful of calming air, JoJo opened her bedroom window and stuck out her head, scanning the yard for any of her uncle’s men. When no one and nothing moved, she slung her pack over her should
er and climbed out the window onto the dormer just three feet beneath it. When she’d first arrived at Wheeler Hills, she’d seen the window and the dormer just under it and knew she had to have that room. She’d pestered her aunt to give the room to her, saying that she couldn’t sleep in a room that faced west because she didn’t want the setting sun to blind her as she prepared for dinner. JoJo knew something as ridiculously trivial as that would annoy her aunt into giving her the room she wanted. It had.
She crouched and crab walked across the dormer roof to the edge where she’d made sure to lean a ladder against it that afternoon. It’s one of the things she’d been hurrying to do when she’d rushed headlong into Tim Hanlon’s chest. Thinking on it now, she’d known he wasn’t one of her uncle’s men the moment he’d apologized for running into her, or rather for catching her when she’d run into him. Her uncle’s men weren’t thoughtful enough to apologize—they were hard men used to living hard lives and not a one of them had probably ever spoken the ‘s’ word. But Dalton Hess…she’d make that snake spilled his guts about the robbery in Shawnee, killing her brother, and about whatever he was planning to do in Morgan’s Crossing.
More determined than ever, JoJo made short work of descending the ladder and slipping into the growing shadows along the side of the house. From this corner of the mansion, she could make it to the barn unseen if she was quick and quiet.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes and willed her breathing to slow. Her heart was galloping in her chest, and she wondered if anyone in the house could hear it. When the silence of dusk grew into the stillness of twilight, JoJo made a run for the barn and her horse, Billie. It took a bit of time to saddle Billie, but once she was ready, JoJo mounted her and made her walk from the rear-facing barn door to the very edge of the open grazing land between Wheeler Hills and the dusty tracks of land before town.
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