“Oh, Jed and the others here will probably shake their heads, and some might even say a prayer for your soul, but at the same time they’ll know that you asked for what happened to you.” She found herself curious about this annoying man. Jed said Cash had been marked more than he had. By the war? By something else?
“You’re a nosy bitch, you know that?”
She imagined she was supposed to be offended. To stomp off, indignant, and leave the man alone. “I’ve been called that before, I’m sure. Behind my back, though. Never to my face.”
“In Rock Creek, being nosy can get you killed.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Cash’s pose remained casual, while the expression on his face was anything but.
Hannah looked him over as audaciously as he had her, unbending and annoyed. “You know, I thought you would be taller.”
Cash raised his eyebrows rakishly. “Aren’t you going to push me out of the way and rush out of here to knock down Sylvia’s door and make sure Jed is behaving himself?” he goaded, trying to change the subject, trying to get rid of her.
That had been her intention, hadn’t it? Until just a few moments ago. “No,” she whispered. “I have no right and no need to make sure Jed is behaving himself. He’s always been honest with me. I have no reason to think that will change this morning.”
“He and Sylvia have a history, you know.”
“I know.”
The smile came back, but it was no longer audacious and dangerous. This time the grin was weak, maybe even a little sad. “Hell, woman, aren’t you afraid of anything?”
“No,” she answered without hesitation. “Are you?”
“Nope.”
He was the one who walked away, pushing away from the doorjamb and heading calmly for the stairs. Eden intercepted him, as she descended those same stairs with a lively, light step.
“Daniel,” she said, real joy in her voice. “Are you hungry?”
Cash offered his arm at the foot of the stairs, and Eden took it with the ease of a familiar friend. “For your cooking? Always.”
Eden smiled at Hannah. “Would you like to join us for coffee and a bite to eat?”
“No, thank you.”
Cash leaned closer to Eden and grinned lasciviously. “Miss Winters has an urgent errand to run.”
Hannah lifted her chin and steeled her spine. She would not allow this common man to scare her into rushing after Jed as if she didn’t trust him. “No, I don’t. I would love a cup of coffee.”
The insolent gunslinger winked at her.
* * *
Even here, at a table with Eden and the annoying Hannah Winters, Cash sat with his back to the wall. His eyes were aware of every movement in this room and beyond, every person passing by the doorway to the lobby and the window that gave him a visual access to Rock Creek’s main street.
While Eden told him about the kids and how they’d grown, he stared at Hannah Winters. Damn her nosy hide, she was right. If he kept living the way he’d been living the past couple of years, he wouldn’t last much longer. No one was glad to see him come riding into town, and they all breathed a sigh of relief when he left.
Everywhere but here.
He was tired of never getting a good night’s sleep, of never trusting anyone he met. Hell, if he didn’t have Nate to watch his back, someone would’ve put a bullet into it long ago.
Miss Winters’s eyes kept cutting to the doorway, too. She wasn’t looking for trouble, though. She was waiting for Jed.
Jed Rourke was always trouble.
Cash turned his attention to Eden when she asked, “How long are you going to stay?”
He lifted his coffee cup and silently toasted her. “For good.”
She rewarded him with a huge smile. “Wonderful. I worry about you traipsing about the way you do.”
Eden Sullivan was too well mannered to point out his growing reputation, unlike Jed’s Hannah, but he could see the worry in her eyes every time he came home. Every time he left.
“I’m opening my own place. God knows this town needs a decent saloon.”
“Three Queens is very nice,” Hannah said.
“My place will have no singing, no entertainment. No women at all. This will be a man’s place. Whiskey and cards. That’s it.”
“No women?” Hannah asked, raising her eyebrows.
“I would bring in a couple of prostitutes,” he said, glaring at the irascible Miss Winters the same way she glared at him. “But it would be a waste of time. Eden or Lily would reform them before the week was out.” Besides, he was getting tired of painted ladies with false smiles, high-pitched laughter, and busy beds. Mostly, he was just getting tired.
Hannah’s head turned, as Jed’s tall form filled the entryway between the lobby and the dining room.
Jed nodded absently at Cash, smiled at his sister, and crooked his finger at the nosy Miss Winters. Hannah didn’t hesitate before rising to her feet and answering the silent call.
Eden dismissed the couple without a second thought. “So,” she said, leaning across the table. Ah, she was so damnably easy to read. He saw suspicion, a hint of disapproval. “A saloon.”
* * *
Jed tried to reason with Hannah, but it was an impossible task. Damn, she was the most unreasonable woman he’d ever met.
She sat on the bench in the deserted garden while he paced before her, taking long, restless strides.
“If you could’ve seen her...” he began.
Hannah shot to her feet. “Let me guess.” She laid the back of her hand on her forehead, placed a falsely moony expression on her face, and sighed dramatically. “Oh, Jed, how could you think such a thing,” she said, her voice breathy and too high. “I would never... I could never...” She fell against his chest, looked up, and fluttered her lashes. “Oh, hold me, darling. I feel faint.”
Ending her charade, she slapped him on the chest and stood up straight. “Is that about right?”
Closer than he cared to admit. “She’s not as strong as you are, Hannah.”
“Did you ask her about the man in her bedroom?”
He nodded. “She was just lonely, and she gave in to temptation that one time. It was a mistake.”
Hannah rolled her eyes in open disgust. “I can’t believe you fall for everything that woman tells you. I should’ve gone along to question her myself. So, who was this mistake?”
“She wouldn’t tell me,” he admitted.
She threw her hands in the air, displaying her total disgust.
He took Hannah’s hands and made her sit again. This time, he sat beside her.
“It’s not in Sylvia to kill a man.”
“It’s not in Rose or Baxter, either,” she said tersely.
“I don’t want to spend what little time we have left chasing after shadows and suspicions.” He leaned close, as if to kiss her, but stopped with his mouth an inch or so from hers. “We have better things to do.”
She laid a hand on his cheek and sighed. “Jedidiah Rourke, you must think I’m as silly and gullible as Sylvia Clancy knows you to be. I don’t give up easily.”
“I kinda figured that out.”
“So stop trying to seduce me into admitting that my sister is a murderer.”
“Hannah,” he said through gritted teeth, “she admitted it herself.”
“She was mistaken.”
He took a deep, calming breath. Surely there were more agreeable women in the world who would make him feel this way, women who were reasonable, who yielded now and then, who knew when something was over and done with!
“Hannah Winters,” he said softly, leaving no room for argument, “this is finished. Do you hear me? Clancy is dead. Baxter is free. Rose did it, and it was an accident. Let it go, and let’s just enjoy the rest of your time in Rock Creek.”
Her calm response, the lack of an argument, was damned unnatural.
“I hate to put my foot down, but you leave me no choice,” he said firmly.
“Feel that?” She guided his fingers over a soft, pliable lump beneath her skirt.
“Your garter?”
She nodded. “White,” she whispered, “with an edging of lace, a thin blue stripe, and a lavender rose.”
He grinned, for a moment, until she lifted his hand by the wrist and dropped it as if she’d touched something dirty and distasteful.
“I hope you found the description adequate, because you will never see it.”
She stood and walked away, head high.
“Hannah...” he began, rushing after her.
“Put your foot down,” she muttered. “I’ll have you know I don’t need or want another father to make my decisions for me. Put your foot down!”
“It’s just an expression.”
“No one condescends to me,” she snapped, rejecting his argument. “Not even you.”
Jed stopped in his tracks. He did not run after disagreeable women! Not even Hannah.
“Why do you have to make everything difficult?” he bellowed.
She didn’t answer. Just kept stalking toward the door to the hotel, crisp and stern.
“You’re not the only woman in the world,” he said, his voice lower as Hannah reached the door and laid her hand on the knob.
“I know that very well,” she said, her voice so soft he could barely hear her.
“And I’m not going to chase after you like some lovesick calf and keep up this ridiculous investigation into a murder that’s already been resolved just to make you happy!”
“I don’t expect you to,” she said calmly.
She slammed the door with a solid thud of finality. Hannah didn’t give up and he didn’t back down. Where did that leave them?
Chapter 18
Did the man think that just because she had slept with him, he could now tell her what to do? That after last night he controlled her? Put his foot down, indeed.
Spine straight, head high, Hannah stalked through the hotel lobby and kept going, onto the boardwalk and into the street. A chilly December wind lashed her face. Odd, she hadn’t felt so cold before, sitting in the garden. Tears stung her eyes, tears brought on by the harsh wind, she told herself, even though she knew deep down that wasn’t entirely true.
Why had she ever thought Jed was different? All her life her father had been her dictator, commanding her behavior and feelings. Richard had tried to do the same, hadn’t he? Since then, the men who had been so foolish as to think they could rule her life, thanks to the simple gift of male superiority, had been quickly sent packing.
No one would rule her life again, no one would tell her what to feel and how to live. Put his foot down!
People up and down the Rock Creek street walked and talked and went about their business.
Some of them nodded politely as they passed; a few ignored her. As she stood there, at the edge of the street, her heart sank; the wind-induced tears filled her eyes. She had never felt as lonely as she did at this moment, even though she had been alone most of her life. Had she begun to rely on Jed, so quickly? How foolish.
She had known all along that what they had was physical and interesting and... temporary. A few days together, no more. Even if she had begun to love him, that didn’t change the facts.
Finding the murderer was her only goal. Hannah shook off her melancholy and headed for the general store. First she’d confirm the fact that the slashing blow was the only one Rose had delivered, then she’d begin asking questions again. Someone in this town had murdered Reverend Clancy, and she was going to uncover the truth before she returned to Alabama.
* * *
Jed stuck his head into the dining room, hoping he’d find Hannah there drinking coffee with Eden and Cash as she’d been when he’d found her earlier. Instead, he saw his sister and the gun-slinger talking in low tones and laughing. Well, Eden laughed.
Cash turned his head to the doorway. “Miss Winters is not here,” he said, instantly sensing what Jed wanted to know. “She stormed out of the hotel like a soldier on a mission.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Jed mumbled. What kind of trouble would she get herself into now? Lord, when the woman got a notion she just would not let it go!
Nodding to Eden, Cash rose from his seat, grabbed his black hat, and headed toward Jed. “What’s going on?”
As they walked outside the hotel to be blasted by a gust of wind, Jed saw Hannah down the street, entering the general store. He kept his eyes on the spot where she’d emerge when her business there was done, leaning against the outer wall of the hotel as he told Cash what had happened since his return to Rock Creek.
Cash knew about Clancy’s murder and Baxter’s trial, since that was the hottest gossip in town, but he didn’t know about Hannah’s suspicions.
Ridiculous suspicions, Jed thought angrily. Just like a woman!
Adjusting the flat-brimmed hat on his head, Cash leaned against the wall beside Jed, seemingly at ease. Still, the man was never completely relaxed.
“What if she’s right?”
Jed jerked his head around. “What?”
“Well, it’s not like there’s not a dozen people in town who couldn’t have done it.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Rose confessed.”
“So did Baxter,” Cash reasoned. “They were covering for each other, right?”
“Whose side are you on, runt?” Jed bellowed.
Cash smiled, crookedly and easily. “I didn’t know we were taking sides.”
“I just want Hannah to get this fool notion out of her head,” Jed said more calmly.
“So you can keep her in your bed instead of following her all over town like a faithful watchdog while she plays at being a Pinkerton?”
Jed didn’t dignify that presumption with a response.
Cash’s eyes cut up and down the main street. “It’s the second wound that muddies the waters,” he said lowly and thoughtfully. “I can see Rose striking out at Clancy in the right circumstances.” He shook his head smoothly. “I can’t see her taking the second stab. It’s too cold. Too calculating for Rose.”
“Then Baxter did it.”
“Our Baxter Sutton?” Cash asked incredulously. “The man wouldn’t squash a bug if he thought there was a chance the thing might lift its tiny, dying head and bite him on the ankle. He wouldn’t even defend his family when El Diablo was terrorizing this town. Do you think he’s changed that much in four years?”
Gritting his teeth, Jed turned his face away from Cash. He kept his eyes on the general store down the boardwalk. “Maybe he has.”
“Okay, so who lured your Hannah out to Wishing Rock and tried to kill her?”
He could reason with Cash. Hannah wouldn’t listen, but Cash was a reasonable man. Usually. Well, sometimes. “She had a run-in with Oliver Jennings, and half a dozen other people since she got here. Coulda been any one of them.”
“Miss Winters does have a way of getting under a man’s skin, doesn’t she?” Cash asked softly.
“Leave your skin out of this, runt,” Jed grumbled.
Cash sighed and shuffled his feet. “Any other man in Texas who had the nerve to call me runt would get their fool head blown off for the trouble.” He shook his head and gave into a half smile. “That woman of yours said she thought I would be taller.”
At five-foot-eleven, Cash was tall enough in most crowds, but among their group, the six of them who had fought together on and off for more than ten years, he was the shortest. By about half an inch.
“Yes, well, grow a little bit and you won’t have to worry about it.”
“You I can understand. We’ve run together long enough you know I won’t shoot you. But your Hannah”—he shook his head—“she’s either got balls or absolutely no common sense.”
“No balls,” Jed mumbled, and Cash snorted a laugh in response.
But no commo
n sense sounded about right. Sure, Hannah seemed sensible enough, but when she got an idea in her pretty little head...
Cash nodded. “There she is.”
Jed shifted his head to watch Hannah as she stepped onto the boardwalk. The wind whipped her skirt and strands of her normally well restrained red hair.
If she was determined to continue this foolishness, he had no choice but to keep an eye on her. She wouldn’t like it, not after their recent spat, but what choice did he have? He’d just have to keep his distance while he watched.
Hannah clutched a new cane, an unadorned walking stick, as she set her eyes on something down the street. The rectory, perhaps.
“This can’t be good,” Cash said softly. “She’s armed.”
* * *
Since Rose had cried with relief when she’d learned there was a second stab wound, Hannah had no doubt that her sister was innocent. Baxter had been unarguably relieved as well, so Hannah was just as sure he wasn’t responsible for Clancy’s death.
Sylvia Clancy was the obvious suspect. Not because Hannah didn’t personally like the woman, but because she had been nearby and would have had easy access during the short period between the time Rose left the rectory and Baxter arrived. During those few minutes, someone had taken the knife and delivered the fatal blow.
Hannah gripped the head of the cane she’d purchased from Rose’s store. It was too plain for her tastes, but would suffice until an appropriate replacement for the cane that had been transformed into a torch could be ordered. She needed something to hold on to right now, something solid to grasp in her hand. Without it, she felt defenseless.
She used the head of the cane to rap soundly on the rectory door.
Sylvia answered quickly. She was fully dressed and prepared for company, unlike the last time Hannah had called on her.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Sylvia said, trying to swing the door shut in Hannah’s face.
The cane swung out and stopped the progress of the door. “I just have a few questions.”
“Jed told me about your suspicions,” Sylvia hissed. “You’re a crazy woman.”
Two ladies passed behind Hannah, not terribly close, but certainly near enough to hear every word that was spoken.
Jed (The Rock Creek Six Book 4) Page 20
