“Do you, dear?” the woman repeated.
Men. Not one of them was worth the air they breathed. Including Sheriff Jake McCrery with his you’re not a good kisser idiocy.
Mad enough to bite through one of Ratcliff’s plugged coins, Stacy stood. Snatching the parasol still caught on the door frame, she marched out the doorway.
As if he expected her, Winston Ratcliff stepped out of the hotel, shining a pocket watch on the lapel of his black suit coat. “Miss Blackwell.”
There wasn’t an ounce of pleasantry left inside her. Never without funds, Stacy dug in the tiny pocket sewn into the seam of her skirt. “One coin flip. The Marks farm against my house.”
The man had the gall to question her. “Your house?”
“Yes,” she growled, not giving a rat’s tooth if she lost the big house on the edge of town or not. “Heads or tails?”
“I’ll flip, you call,” he answered, pulling out his own coin.
“I won’t be taken with one of your plugged quarters.” She tossed his in the street and slapped her gold piece in his hand. “Flip.”
He tossed the coin in the air, and a brief bout of panic seized her vocal cords. Burying the fear amongst a thick coat of anger, she snapped “Heads” moments before the coin bounced off the boardwalk.
Balanced on its side, the coin spun for several feet, and her interest dulled with each revolution. Oh, there was some, because she loved to gamble, but in all actuality, the sour taste in her mouth told her she didn’t love it as much as she used to.
Ratcliff stopped the spinning coin with one boot. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes,” she answered as an odd coldness settled in her stomach.
When he lifted his toe, the sigh that left her chest made her wonder if she’d hoped for a different outcome. Chin up, she held out her hand, and when Ratcliff set the coin in her palm, she said, “The promissory note.”
He dug in his pocket, handed her a piece of paper. Without even checking that it held Chester Marks’s signature, she turned and marched toward the hat shop.
Pappy better hurry up. At this rate she’d own the entire Dakota Territory by the time he arrived. A place she couldn’t wait to leave.
Chapter Five
“Why aren’t you playing checkers?”
Herman shrugged. “Don’t feel up to it.”
With his elbows on his checkerboard and his chin in his palms, the old man looked as browbeaten as a homesick dog. Nine-tenths of the population of Founder’s Creek looked about the same. Jake could relate, He didn’t have the same light in his heart either.
“Where do you think she went?” his deputy asked.
Jake’s teeth were clenched, so he shrugged.
“You’re the sheriff, why aren’t you out looking for her?”
“Because she’s not missing.” Jake tossed aside the report he’d been pretending to read. Stacy was all his eyes wanted to see and they formed an image of her no matter where he looked.
“She’s been gone two weeks.”
Jake bit his tongue before snapping that he knew exactly how long she’d been gone. “She bought a train ticket. Left of her own accord,” he said. The same day he’d lied to her, let her walk out of his office. He’d sent wires to every city along the rail, but all he’d discovered was she’d switched trains in Yankton. Searching her home hadn’t given him any clues either. Still full of her belongings, it reminded him of a tomb.
Built for a railroad magnate’s family, the house had been an empty relic of the boom Founder’s Creek had known the year the railroad made the township a hub while laying the rail west. That had happened before Jake had arrived, but the house had always caught his eye. He’d considered purchasing it, had the money, but his salary alone wasn’t sufficient and that would have caused tongues to wag. So the house had sat empty until Stacy Blackwell’s arrival—just like him.
Herman’s sigh echoed off the ceiling. “It sure is lonely without her.”
His nerves couldn’t take any more. “I’ll see you later.” Jake grabbed his hat off the hook and left his office.
Walking the streets was worse than listening to Herman. Every time he passed a door someone rushed out to ask if he’d heard anything about her.
No, he wanted to shout, he hadn’t. But as soon as he did, he’d be gone as well. To wherever Stacy was and there he’d bare his soul. Tell her gambling wasn’t what haunted him. Never had been. After years of condemning the game, he finally understood exactly why he’d left it all behind.
Just then the train whistle sounded, echoing through the air and tearing at all that was left of his heart. A ball of anxiety had rolled in his stomach when he’d entered Ma Belle’s last week, but sitting down across from Ratcliff had been easier than he’d thought. There’d been no demons staring at him on those cards, just shapes and symbols on heavy pieces of paper. An odd almost painful ache formed inside him, the same as it had the night he’d won Stacy’s necklace. It hadn’t just been watching that woman die back in St. Louis. It had been seeing what her life had held that made him leave the tables.
Standing there in the street, momentarily deaf to his surroundings, Jake stumbled when someone rushed past him. Spinning on a heel, he caught a nearby post as others shoved him aside in their hurry.
“It’s her.”
“Just stepped off the train.”
“She’s back.”
Jake’s heart left where it had sat in his stomach the past weeks to clutch the back of his throat with the ferocity of a hawk. Passing several slower-moving people, his feet skidded to a halt when a frilly pink parasol popped up above the bystanders gathering at the train station.
The crowd parted, giving her room to pass out hugs and kisses on cheeks. Jake followed her every move, noted Herman was one of the first in line. A grin almost formed. It took the old man ten minutes to walk across the office, yet he’d made it across town in seconds.
When she lifted her face and caught his gaze, Jake dug his heels into the ground. As if she had to gain control of her senses as badly as he did, she closed her eyes for a moment. He locked his lungs, refused to let his gaze waver as she lifted her lids. Decked from head to toe in pink—a shade lighter than her cheeks—the little gambler would make any queen of hearts jealous, and the brief smile of her lips had his insides flipping.
She continued her greetings until her path ended directly in front of him. “Sheriff McCrery.”
“Miss Blackwell,” he returned with a slight nod.
Twisting that elegant neck slightly, she glanced over her shoulder. Jake’s innards collided as he recognized the man. It wasn’t because he disliked Adam Sinclair, but the fact the gambler knew him. Well.
“Sheriff,” Sinclair said.
They shook hands, with Jake holding his silence. He should have known a thoroughbred of Stacy’s caliber knew people from his past.
“I’m going to check myself into the hotel and order up a thick steak,” Sinclair said, looking at Stacy. “I’m sure the good sheriff will see you home.”
“All right, Adam,” she answered, leaning up to brush a kiss over the man’s cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jake’s hands clenched as he breathed through his nose.
“Bright and early, darling,” the gambler replied.
Sinclair had always turned women’s heads, and that hadn’t changed as he carried his leather bag up the street of Founder’s Creek. Every female nearby, young and old, paused to watch, which had Jake’s stomach gurgling.
“You will walk me home, won’t you, Sheriff?”
Riled enough to paddle her bottom right here and now, Jake replied, “Oh, yes, Miss Blackwell, I’ll see you home.”
Her smile didn’t fade, but a touch of uncertainty flashed in her sky-blue eyes as sh
e handed him her valise. The want to pull her into his arms and kiss the daylights out of her overrode the urge to paddle her, not that he would have minded touching her little derrière. Wouldn’t have minded it at all.
“My, I must admit, I didn’t expect such a large welcome,” she said, still waving to departing people while the two of them started toward her house on the edge of town.
“It’s a small town,” he quipped.
Marching along, fancy umbrella bobbing over her head, she took an audible breath. “Why, Sheriff, you sound as if you aren’t happy to see me.”
Jake swallowed the rumble in his throat. Happy didn’t quite describe what he was feeling right now. “Maybe I’m not.”
“Well,” she said. “I have no idea why you wouldn’t be.” Pointing her chin higher, she shrugged. “I’ve grown quite fond of your little town.”
“Perhaps because you own half of it,” he reminded her.
Smiling brightly, she clicked her tongue. “Now, Jake, you know it’s only five businesses and a house. Oh, and one farm.”
He hadn’t forgotten, nor had he forgotten how much fun sparring with her was, and he was honest enough to admit he’d missed it. But the way she’d said his given name had his old ticker doing double time and specific parts of him twitching. “That’s why they all met you at the train station,” he said gruffly. “Ratcliff has had a fine time at the tables.”
Her sigh floated on the wind. “And you haven’t tried to stop him.”
“There’s no law against gambling. You reminded me of that more than once.”
She nodded, but softly said, “Perhaps there should be.”
Jarred by something deep inside, he stopped and caught her elbow. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” she answered, shaking her head. Then, pointing at her house a few yards ahead, she said, “I’ll worry about Ratcliff tomorrow. Right now, I’m quite exhausted from my travels.”
“And where exactly was that?”
“Was what?”
Jake, fighting the images that attempted to form of where she might have been, who she might have been kissing, fell into step beside her as she started walking again. “Your travels.”
As if contemplating her answer, she remained quiet until they stopped on her front stoop. She pointed to the pot of yellow daisies. “You’re a gambler, Jake. You know sometimes you have to fill the table with your friends.”
He used the time gathering the key beneath the flowerpot to gather his wits. Sinclair had told her. Then again, maybe she’d known all along what his profession had been before moving to Founder’s Creek. Unlocking the door, he pushed it wide before gesturing for her to enter.
“Close the door, Jake. We need to talk.”
A click echoed behind her, but Stacy didn’t turn around to face him. Not yet. She had to convince her insides to settle down first. If not for Herman’s tight hug back at the train station, she’d have toppled face first in the dirt when she’d caught sight of Jake. It seemed humanly impossible for a man to become more handsome in a mere two weeks, but in her eyes he certainly had.
One touch is all it would take and she’d be lost. Her good sense said that. But land sakes she wanted to touch him, kiss him. So badly her insides were twisted in knots.
It was unfathomable, how much she’d missed him. Not a day, barely a minute, had gone by when she wasn’t thinking about him. Reminding herself why she’d left hadn’t helped much, but imagining the end, when she’d have the jackpot of a lifetime, had. Her decision had come quickly, right after she’d won Chester’s farm. Intuition, her gut, had told her to act fast, and she had. he was a gambler, and just as she’d told him, she knew when to stack the deck. Traveling all the way to Kansas City hadn’t been in the plan, but Adam Sinclair was the friend she needed to pull this all off.
Stacy’s musing helped assemble her senses. Drawing a breath, she turned. “So Sheriff McCrery—”
“No.” Standing before her, he shook his head.
The pull she felt toward him, as if she were a fish hooked on the end of his line, was stronger right now than it had ever been, and fighting it made her shaky. “No?” she repeated. “No, what?”
One hand pulled the hat off his head, tossed it to land on the tapestry chair near the door while his other hand folded around her fingers. “No, Stacy,” he said. “It’s not Sheriff McCrery, it’s Jake.”
Whether his eyes towed her forward or he tugged her hand didn’t matter; either way, she ended up in his arms, hers looping around his neck as their lips met with the ability to take her breath away.
On her tiptoes, stretching to make the connection as full as possible, she kissed him long and hard before breaking long enough to whisper, “Yes, it is.”
There was a guarded, questioning look in his eyes.
“I’ve missed you, Jake,” she admitted, tossing her carefully considered plan out the window.
His hands on her waist tightened, held her arched against him. “Not as much as I’ve missed you.”
With a grin that made her heart sing, he took her mouth again.
Kissing him was a phenomenon Stacy couldn’t describe, for she’d never experienced anything comparable. Nothing had ever tasted so good. Hours spent recalling their other kisses didn’t do justice to the way his lips teased hers right now, or the way his hands roamed her back, sparking waves of delight all the way to her toes.
Then his tongue found hers, and a hot need flamed inside her. The last time she’d kissed him she’d gone with her instincts, and did so again. Her hands roamed where they wanted, her tender breasts brushed against his chest, and an intuitive rhythm had her swaying against him.
His hands grabbed her bottom, held their hips tight together as he kissed her with such intensity she grew dizzy. When his lips left hers to taunt and tease her neck, she fought to catch her breath, but ultimately knew it wasn’t air she needed. The want consuming her was for the act she’d only heard about from others, and dreamed of doing with him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “So warm and sweet…” His hands framed her face and exuberance filled his gaze. “And beautiful.”
She bit her bottom lip, holding in the words she wanted to say. Revealing how she truly felt, deep down inside where her very soul resided, would be the biggest gamble of her life. Her gut was with her, told her to tell him, but a fear tugged at her. If she risked telling him, and lost, she’d never recover.
“Aw, Stacy.” His fingers slipped into her hair, removed the pins holding the clumps of curls above her ears. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Her teeth bored harder into her lip.
He kissed her forehead then took her hand. “Come on.”
“W-Where are we going?” she asked, already following him into the parlor.
“Sit down,” he said once they stood next to the divan.
Sitting wasn’t what she wanted. Her body was on fire. The desire still there, not even the fear he’d reject her love had dowsed it. “Jake, I—”
“Sit, Stacy,” he insisted.
Flustered, she plopped onto the cushion with absolutely no grace. The smile that flashed across his lips made her cheeks blaze. Good heavens, after kissing him like she had, his grin made her blush? She truly was out of sorts.
Rubbing his chin, he took a few steps and dropped her hairpins beside the lamp on the table. When he glanced her way, he asked, “How much did Sinclair tell you?”
With her thoughts focused on him, she stuttered, “S-Sin…” Reality had a way of worming itself in no matter how enjoyable the moment. Her heart all of a sudden weighed a hundred pounds. “Adam didn’t tell me anything more than you used to rule the faro tables.”
“And?”
“And nothing. He said others wondered where you’d gone. But he wasn’t s
urprised to hear you were the sheriff here.”
He nodded, but remained thoughtfully quiet so long, she said, “I figured you got tired of it all.” Maybe because that’s how she felt, though she hadn’t realized it until entering the gambling room in Kansas City. The thrill just hadn’t been there. Inside her.
“I did,” he said, sitting down beside her. “I got tired of it all.”
Chapter Six
Jake was about as worked up as a man could be. Not even the past, and all the years it had haunted him, lessened how badly he wanted to take her in his arms again. The moment the door had closed, the space between them had heated up and he couldn’t have stopped kissing her if the building had been on fire. He’d almost blurted out all the emotions piling up inside him, after that kiss, but then he’d seen fear creeping into her precious blue eyes. It was easy to recognize because there was a touch of panic inside him, and telling her everything was the only way to release it.
“Jake?”
Taking her hand, he kissed a knuckle. “Three years ago I was down in St. Louis. It was a normal day at the tables, some folks winning, others not.” He didn’t know what that woman’s name had been. Never did. She and her husband had been playing all day—they’d been young, their love had literally sparked between them—and she’d been jubilant, had her husband beaming and most of the room laughing at her glee. “A woman asked for a touch of advice on a game,” Jake said aloud. “I told her to bet on red nine, and red nine won. And then a gunfight broke out.”
He’d heard the first shot and turned in time to see the roulette dealer fall to the floor. Other shots had been fired and he’d run, intending to knock the woman out of the line of fire, but when he’d arrived it was to catch her as she fell. The nameless girl died in his arms, clutching his shirt and looking up at him with panic-filled eyes that faded as swiftly as her breath. When the husband dropped to his knees and comprehended his wife was dead, he shot the man who’d shot his wife and then turned his pistol on himself.
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