Donovan's Bed: The Calhoun Sisters, Book 1

by Debra Mullins

  “Thank you, Suzie,” Sarah said, glad her sister wasn’t pressing for more.

  “But I still think you need to do something about your husband, Sarah. If you don’t claim him, one of those other women will.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  A thunderous boom exploded into the night, followed by crackling and hissing. A flash of green fire lit the sky outside Sarah’s window.

  “Fireworks!” Susannah squealed.

  The sisters crowded together at the window as brilliant colors lit the sky. The wooden walls of the office shook each time an explosion rent the air, and they giggled like children with each new blossom of fire that discharged above them. Sarah’s thoughts turned to Donovan, and she wondered if he was up at Miller’s Pond watching the fireworks, too. Did he think of her? Did he imagine her with him, his arms around her?

  Was he as lonely as she was right now?

  She pressed her lips together tightly as her volatile emotions threatened to escape in a torrent of tears. She missed Jack lying beside her at night. She missed the way he teased her and the way he touched her. Had she been wrong in not trusting him to protect his family from his past? Was she too cowardly to take a chance on them?

  Maybe Jack was right. Maybe she hadn’t had enough faith—in either of them.

  If she had been absorbed in the fireworks, she wouldn’t even have heard the squeak of the floorboard behind them. But since she was distracted with her own thoughts, the noise grabbed her attention, and she turned her head.

  Luke Petrie smiled over the barrel of the gun pointed at her. “Hello, Sarah.”

  Donovan arrived home to an empty house and an empty bed.

  Shirtless, he stood at his bedroom window and watched the dazzling display of color and sound as fireworks lit the night sky. He had gone to the picnic merely because he felt obliged to, but he hadn’t enjoyed himself. Juliana Tremont had spent most of the day trying to monopolize him, Mrs. Castor had tried to worm information from him, and Susannah had alternately glared at him or stared in sympathy.

  Damn it all to hell, he was sick to death of women and their confusing emotional storms.

  How was a man supposed to change what he had been? He couldn’t erase the past—though he admitted now that he’d been trying to do exactly that. He couldn’t escape who he’d been and what he’d done. Without Blade, the boy he had been long ago might have not made it to adulthood.

  But Blade had also cost him the woman he loved.

  He raked a hand through his hair. All this circling around was bound to drive a man insane. What he needed was a good night’s sleep.

  He peeled off his clothing and climbed into his lonely bed. The cool sheets were a bleak reminder of how Sarah used to warmly cuddle up against him, her legs tangled with his. It was also too quiet. He missed the way she mumbled in her sleep. Sometimes he would have a conversation with her, asking questions that she would sleepily answer, and then laugh in the morning when she couldn’t remember any of it.

  God, he missed her.

  Tomorrow he would bring his sassy girl home, he decided. Whether she liked it or not.

  “What’s this all about?” Susannah demanded.

  Luke’s face twisted into an expression of pure hate. “Well, well, if it isn’t Sister Sue.”

  Knowing the longtime enmity between Luke and her sister, Sarah stepped in front of Susannah. “It’s me you’re here to see, Luke. Leave Susannah out of this.”

  “Now, that’s not fair, Sarah.” Luke reached behind Sarah and yanked Susannah forward. “I can’t play favorites, you know.”

  “Let me go, you maggot.” Susannah tried to twist away, but froze as Luke shoved the revolver before her eyes.

  “I suggest you stay very still, Sister Sue—unless you want that pretty face messed up like that guard outside.”

  “Luke,” Sarah said, trying to distract him, “what do you want?”

  “I just want what’s mine, Sarah.”

  “She doesn’t owe you anything!” Susannah snapped.

  “Shut up,” Luke growled. He pulled Susannah close to him and jabbed the gun into her ribs. His desperate gaze met Sarah’s over Susannah’s shoulder. “And you had better stop playing dumb and give me what I want, darlin’.”

  “There’s nothing I would like better, but you’re talking in riddles,” Sarah replied carefully. “What is it that you want, Luke? Money? Me? What?”

  “You? You think I came all this way just for a woman?” Luke laughed. “You overestimate your charms, darlin’.”

  Sarah’s cheeks burned, but she held his gaze steadily. “Then what is it, Luke? I can’t read your mind.”

  A smile stretched across his face. “You really don’t know, do you? Your father never told you what he did to me?”

  “He died before he had the chance.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him, you know. I thought it was that feeble sheriff following me into the bank. I wouldn’t have killed your father, Sarah. At least not until he told me what I wanted to know.”

  “And what was that?”

  Luke’s face tightened. “Where he had hidden my plates.”

  Sarah frowned. “What plates?”

  “The good china?” Susannah sneered.

  “I’ve heard enough from you,” Luke snarled. He raised his arm and struck Susannah on the back of the head with the butt of his gun. She slid to the floor in an unconscious heap of leaf-green dimity and silver-blonde ringlets. Sarah cried out and rushed toward her sister, but Luke swung around and pointed the revolver in her direction. “Hold it right there, Sarah.”

  “Luke, please! Let me go to her.”

  Holding the gun steady, Luke poked Susannah with the toe of one shiny black boot. “She’s still breathing, darlin’. And if you wish her to continue to do so, you will listen to me very carefully.”

  Sarah fisted her hands at her sides. He looked almost happy to have hurt her sister. A kind of demented joy lit his eyes, as if he took pleasure from the pain of others. ”I’m listening.”

  “Your father was very protective of you, darlin’. He suspected that my motives for courting you were not pure, and indeed, he was right. I did need you, Sarah, but not for your female companionship—though you proved to be a surprisingly hot piece of tail. I wanted you for your printing press.”

  “What?” Sickened by his crudeness, she could only stare. “What are you talking about?”

  “I had acquired some rather authentic-looking plates for printing stock certificates. Ah, now you see,” he said with a malicious grin as her eyes widened at the revelation. “Yes, Sarah, I needed you so I could have access to your printing press. I had a brilliant plan to sell false stock in the railroad to the unsuspecting. People would have paid good money to be a part of such a growing enterprise, and by the time the fools discovered they’d been tricked, I would have been long gone. But your father disrupted my plans.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes,” Luke snarled. “And you needn’t look so happy about it. Your father paid for stealing my plates and hiding them from me, didn’t he? I decided to rob the bank so that my time in this dismal town wouldn’t have been wasted, but he managed to ruin that, too. I’m glad I shot the old fool!”

  With effort, Sarah repressed the harsh words that she longed to fling at him. He would only kill her, and Suzie as well. That she had ever allowed such a man to touch her revolted her, but that she had actually considered Jack to be like Luke really sickened her.

  The two men could not be more different, she realized with bitterly clear hindsight. Jack had killed, but in the name of justice and only when absolutely necessary. Luke killed on a whim—and enjoyed it.

  “What do you want from me, Luke?” she asked quietly.

  “My plates,” he said. “And you.”

  “Me?” Bile rose in her throat. “I thought you said you hadn’t come back for me.”

  “I didn’t. But I intend to have my revenge, Sarah.” His eyes narrowed. “Do
n’t think I don’t know who led the sheriff to me last time. But first, I want the plates.”

  The menace in his tone made her skin crawl. “I don’t have them.”

  “Your father did. You find them, Sarah.” He crouched down and hooked his arm around Susannah’s waist. Rising, he dragged her sister with him like an old blanket. “You find those plates, Sarah, and then you bring them to me. You have two hours.”

  “Wait!” she cried as he edged toward the door. “Where should I meet you?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” he sneered, shifting Susannah until she hung like a sack of flour over his shoulder. “Do you think I’d tell you where I am so you could send the law after me again? If you want your sister to see the sun rise tomorrow, you’ll find me.” He grinned, his eyes gleaming with malice. “Though part of me hopes that you won’t make it, Sarah. It would give me such pleasure to shut her mouth—permanently.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I know you will.” Luke shifted his grip on Susannah. “And do come alone, darlin’. I’d hate to dispose of your sister…prematurely.”

  He flung open the door and slipped outside. Briefly he was illuminated by the fireworks as he flung Susannah across the pommel of the saddle and climbed onto his horse. Then he kicked his mount into a gallop and disappeared into the night.

  Thunderstruck, Sarah listened to the sound of the retreating hoofbeats with a sense of unreality. Every conviction by which she had lived her life for the past three years had been wrong. Every assumption she had made—wrong. Every decision—wrong.

  She glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. It was nearly ten o’clock, and Luke had said that she had only two hours. She had to find where her father had hidden the plates—if he hadn’t destroyed them—and then find Luke’s hideout and save Susannah.

  She knew she wouldn’t be able to save herself; Luke would kill her for certain. But if she managed to get Susannah to safety, the sacrifice would be worth it.

  Sometimes in a desperate situation, there wasn’t time to be careful about who lived and who died. And sometimes there just wasn’t a choice. Jack had tried to tell her that, but she hadn’t listened.

  She knew now. She would happily pull the trigger on Luke herself if it meant that her sister would live.

  She could accept who Jack had once been, because it had made him the man he was now. A good man. A strong man. A man whose priorities centered around his family. He would have made a wonderful father for their children. They could have been happy, if only—

  A flicker of an idea broke through the soul-deep regret. An idea that might just give her the chance to have the life she wanted. But in order for it to work, she had to believe in Jack, and she had to believe in herself. She had to have faith that their love for each other was stronger than the past.

  And she had to trust in Blade—a man she knew to be dangerous, but a man she loved nonetheless.

  She needed Jack. She needed Blade. She needed both of them.

  She glanced at the clock again. Five minutes after ten. She had little time to set her plans in motion. If all worked out, Donovan’s secret might be in danger of exposure. But, she hoped, they would all be alive to argue about it.

  With new hope blooming in her heart, she started tearing the newspaper office apart in search of the missing plates.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the end, it was almost too easy.

  Sarah sat on the floor amid the junk from the closet and looked down at the printing plates in her hands. They were of high quality—too high to be fakes. Obviously, Luke must have stolen them. No wonder he wanted them back.

  She had found them buried at the bottom of the box of old type that she had dragged from the closet earlier that day. How lucky that she had decided to clean out the office only that morning—she might never have found them otherwise.

  She slipped the two gleaming plates back into the soft leather bag that had held them and rose to her feet. The search had taken nearly an hour, and now she had just over an hour left to find her sister. But she was confident that she would make the deadline. Luke wanted the plates, which meant that he wanted her to be able to find him—so he wouldn’t have hidden someplace difficult. She already suspected where she might find him.

  Her only worry was that his dislike for her sister might tempt him to do away with Suzie before Sarah could locate them.

  She closed up the office and quickly walked over to her mother’s corral. Slipping the plates into her saddle bags, she mounted Senseless, a strange calm settling over her like a cloak of confidence. She knew there was every chance her plan would fail, and that she could die tonight. But at the same time, she had faith in the man she had come to know so well. If there was anyone who could help her survive this, it was Jack Donovan.

  She took a last look at the house where she had lived for so many years. She had been blessed with loving parents and a nice home. Not all people were that lucky.

  Jack hadn’t been.

  Yet despite her happy childhood, tragedy had found her, just as it had found Jack. Fate didn’t discriminate when it handed out the heartache, and people did what they had to in order to survive.

  Jack had become Blade. She had turned to the newspaper. And in trying to get through, they had found each other—and love.

  She was depending on that love now, not just to save her life, but for her sister’s as well.

  Sarah said a silent farewell to the house she might never see again and swiftly headed toward town.

  Main Street was fairly deserted, but at the Four Aces, lights still burned and music and laughter carried out into the night. She spotted the familiar figure of Mort leaning back against the wall outside the saloon. Johnny and Gabriel sat nearby, setting up the checkerboard by lamplight. Sarah reined in before the trio.

  “Evenin’, Mrs. Donovan,” Mort greeted her. “Awful late for a ride, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I need your help,” she replied with no preliminaries. “Luke Petrie kidnapped my sister, and I’m going after them. I need one of you to go fetch Jack right away.”

  The legs of Mort’s chair hit the wooden sidewalk with a thud. “The hell you say!”

  “Ma’am, wouldn’t it be better to wait for your husband?” Johnny asked hopefully.

  “There’s no time,” she said urgently. “Will you help me?”

  “We’ll rustle up a posse to go fetch your sister back,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s a very good idea, but I’m still going,” Sarah said. “Tell Jack I’ll be at Stony Ridge.” She kicked her horse into a gallop, leaving the three men in the dust of her departure.

  Donovan was already up and dressed when Mort knocked on his door. Despite his best attempts, sleep had eluded him. Maybe it was because Sarah wasn’t beside him for the seventh night in a row. Maybe it was the kiss earlier today that had made him realize that he couldn’t last another night without her. Whatever the reason, after an hour of tossing and turning, he had risen from his bed and pulled on his clothes, determined that he would not spend another night without his wife beside him.

  Even if it was on that cot in the back room of the Chronicle.

  Yet now Mort stood on his doorstep with news that chilled his blood. Petrie had kidnapped Susannah, and Sarah had gone after them.

  Alone.

  “Marshal Brown’s forming a posse,” Mort continued. “But Mrs. Donovan told me to come and fetch you.”

  “My wife sent you?” At Mort’s nod, Donovan let out a deep sigh. Finally, Sarah had given him an indication that she had faith in him. But the cost might be her life. “I’ll be there directly. Tell Marshal Brown not to leave without me.”

  Mort nodded and hurried down the steps to his horse.

  Donovan shut the door. Already the change was coming over him. That dark, quiet part of himself that produced the deadly Blade had awakened, pushing aside the frenetic emotions that could tangle a man’s thoughts during the hunt. The only thing that lingered was
his love for Sarah. It was so much a part of him that he could not put it aside, even though it could distract him, and cause him to make a mistake at a crucial moment.

  But he would not let that happen. He would keep his emotions in check and take care of Petrie once and for all.

  It was time for Blade to ride again.

  Sarah pulled Senseless to a halt and stared at the rocky precipice known as Stony Ridge. The mountain was riddled with a series of caves, left from the long ago meanderings of a river that no longer existed. A few years before, there had been a brief resurgence of the gold rush that had led Josiah Burr to found the town. The “gold strike” lasted only as long as it took to verify that the gold was pyrite again, and then died down. But one prospector, Horace Plunkett, had stuck it out. Until the day he died three years ago, he had been convinced that he would strike gold on Stony Ridge.

  When Sarah had seen the words “Property of H. Plunkett” printed on the bag that held the stolen plates, she had known exactly where Luke held her sister hostage.

  Sarah got off Senseless and tied him to a tree near the base of the mountain. Slowly she unfastened the saddlebags. As she lifted them from the back of the horse, the contents clinked together, making her stomach knot. She knelt in the dirt and opened one of the bags, reaching inside to pull forth the cold metal from within.

  The derringer gleamed in the moonlight.

  She reached into the pouch again and pulled out the ammunition for the tiny pocket revolver. With shaking fingers, she loaded the weapon as her father had taught her long ago. Then she slipped it into the pocket of her heavy brown skirt.

  Sarah knew she might not survive to see the morning. But this might even the odds.

  Quickly, she closed up the saddlebags and, slinging them over her shoulder, took the horse’s reins, and headed for the path that led up the mountain. As she wove her way along the rocky track that led to Horace Plunkett’s old cabin, the sky was cloudless, and the stars bright.