by Beth Ciotta
“Afternoon,” he said with a pleasant smile. Hard not to smile at a rare beauty, hitched or otherwise.
“Thank you for frequenting Cafe Poppy.” She bested his smile and escorted them to one of six tables. “I’m the proprietor, Mrs. Kaila Dillingham.”
Her accent--British?--caught him off guard, as did her enthusiastic greeting. He’d expected reserved, stuffy. Instead, she was friendly. Friendly and beautiful. “Pleasure, ma’am.” He wondered about her husband. Were he the law in this town, he’d inquire outright. Keeping the peace meant knowing a piece about those in your jurisdiction. Given his new appointment, he supposed that included everyone west of the Mississip.
Mulling that over, he eased Paris into a padded chair. Calico cushions to match the calico tablecloths and curtains. Sure was a frilly place. “Name’s Seth Wright. This here is--”
“--a woman dying of thirst,” Paris finished. “Could I bother you for a cup of tea, Mrs. Dillingham? And maybe some of whatever smells so good? Seth will have coffee,” she said before he could order. God forbid he prolong the conversation. “Thank you,” she added, dismissing the woman with a polite smile.
Apparently, the urgent matter was for his ears only. The best he could do was hear her out and hope this urgent matter concerned anything but Emily McBride.
“It’s about my friend Emily.”
Naturally. He settled back and listened as Paris relayed the same story Athens had shared minutes before. “I understand that you’re disappointed,” he interjected. “But, honey, things don’t always go according to plan. You’ll see Emily again. The timing’s just off.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. She’s in trouble.”
The hitch in her voice summoned a pain in his neck. He massaged the telling ache with a frown.
“What kind of trouble?”
“I can’t say precisely. It involves a secret and I made a promise. Promises are sacred.”
A belief that had gotten her in a passel of trouble in the past. “Why are you confiding in me and not Josh?”
“Josh wouldn’t do what has to be done because he won’t leave me when I’m in this condition. He’d send you. When I learned about this, you were still Sheriff and I didn’t want to impose so I sent Phineas Pinkerton.”
“The poet?” Seth had seen the pretty boy recite his flowery prose in various theaters, including the Desert Moon, the opera house owned by Josh and Paris. Didn’t care for the man’s delivery, though the poems were clever.
“In addition to a professional poet,” Paris informed him in a hushed voice, “he’s an intuitive detective.”
“A what?”
“Someone who solves crimes by reading or hearing a recounting of the case.”
“Does he have a background in law? Practical experience in enforcement?”
“He doesn’t need it. His deductive skills come naturally.” She frowned. “You look skeptical.”
“I am skeptical.” That was putting it mildly. “Paris, two of your brothers earn livings investigating and apprehending criminals. They’ve known Emily all their lives and when they’re not on the trail, they live in the same town as your friend. Why not alert them?” He thought back on Athens’s theory that Emily had made a bad investment. He’d mentioned her trusting nature and now Paris cited criminal types. Was it possible the preacher’s daughter fell prey to a flim flam man?
Paris shook her head so hard, her bun came loose. “Rome and Boston can’t know about this. None of my brothers can know.”
Naturally. “What about the local authorities--”
“Loose-lipped ninnies. Not an option.”
“Hence Pinkerton.”
“Hence my problem. Yesterday, I received a telegram from Mr. Pinkerton. He’s been offered a lucrative northeast tour. Regrettably, he said, he cannot continue his journey to Heaven. He’s heading back to New York!”
Tears sprang to her big brown eyes as she spewed the rest of her hushed tale. “If I don’t send help, Emily will take action herself. She’s that desperate to keep her secret and what does she know about thwarting blackmailers? She’s resourceful, but still. I’m beside myself with worry, Seth. Emily’s had a powerful run of bad luck. If you don’t go, something awful is going to happen. I just know it!”
“Hold up.” He pressed a clean bandana into her hands, hoping she’d stem the tears before they flowed. Weepy woman gave him heartburn. “Someone’s blackmailing Emily?”
“Don’t ask me why. I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone and promises are--”
“--sacred. I know.” He should’ve begged off Josh’s birthday celebration and taken an overdue holiday. He should have known better than to get mixed up with the Garretts. A pain in his neck, all of them, including, no, especially Paris. “How am I supposed to help Emily if I don’t know the problem?” How was he supposed to deliver a proposal to a woman mixed up in some sort of scandal? PMA was a government agency. Low profile. Athens expected to hook up with a preacher’s daughter, an angel. A respectable mother for his children.
“You understand women more than any man I’ve ever met, Seth. Use your imagination.”
He leaned forward, incredulous. “Are you suggesting that I seduce your friend into revealing her secret?”
“I’m suggesting you earn her confidence.” She blew her nose into his bandana. “Besides, you couldn’t woo Emily. She’s in love with Rome.”
He’d yet to meet a woman he couldn’t woo, but that was beside the point. “Maybe that’s just a girlish infatuation. Maybe she’s meant for someone else.”
Paris pursed her lips, studied him for a spell then smiled. “Maybe.”
He started to give her an earful then Mrs. Dillingham walked over with a loaded tray and stole away his breath. Gorgeous. Mr. Dillingham was one lucky son-of-a-bitch.
“Tea, coffee, and French macaroons,” she said, setting dainty cups and a plate of cookies between them. “Freshly baked. Do enjoy.” She spun away and greeted Doc Gentry as he lumbered into the cafe mumbling something about crumpets and jam.
Seth watched her go.
Paris kicked him under the table. “About you and Emily . . .”
He focused back on the half-pint. “Swear to God, Paris, if this is some sort of elaborate matchmaking scheme--”
“Of all the . . . honestly! You’re the one who brought it up. I was just thinking that if you chased off the person who’s making her life miserable and she just happened to fall in love with you at the same time--and you with her--well, I was just thinking I’d be all right with that. Better you than Mr. Bellamont.”
Never mind that she’d just insulted him, again. “Who in the devil is Bellamont?”
“Claude Bellamont. He proposed two weeks after Preacher McBride’s funeral. Emily turned him down, thank goodness. But what with her financial difficulties . . . Let’s just say she’s not herself these days. I’d hate to see her marry someone for the wrong reasons.”
Seth’s head threatened to explode.
Paris reached across the table and grasped his hand. “It’s not like you have anything better to do. You’re in between jobs, right?”
“Right,” he was obliged to say. He tasted his coffee. Black and strong. Good, but just about now a quart bottle of whiskey would be even better.
“Besides, you owe me.”
That coaxed a smile out of him. “How do you figure?”
“You forced me to marry Josh.”
No way, no how did he feel bad about initiating a shotgun wedding. Besides, he’d never known two people more in love. “Sweetheart, if I hadn’t hurried along the proceedings, your brothers would have. Josh compromised your reputation.”
“All he did was--”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Then hear this. If you don’t go, I will.”
He wouldn’t put it past her. “I’ll go.” He was going anyway. Only now his mission was twofold.
She blinked back more tears.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Stop fretting. And stop doing fool things like disappearing on Josh.”
“Mercy! What time is it?” She wrapped the macaroons in a napkin and bolted to her feet, the tea untouched. “I need to get back to the house before he discovers I’m missing and calls out the Rangers.”
Seth left money on the table, sorry he hadn’t gotten to taste one of those cookies. Glanced over his shoulder at Mrs. Dillingham, sorry he wouldn’t be getting a taste of her. Damn. He really needed to visit Fletcher’s.
He led Paris out onto the boardwalk, groaning when she tugged him into the alley. “What now?” “I have an idea.” “God, help me.”
“I’m thinking you should pretend you’re Phineas Pinkerton,” she whispered. “Emily’s already expecting him. Instead of staying at the local hotel, I suggested he rent a room in her house. She’s taking in boarders to earn extra money because of, well, you know. I’d feel better if you stuck close. That is until you dupe her tormentor, because who knows what he’s capable of? People won’t talk, because Mr. Pinkerton is, well, that is to say he favors . . .” She cleared her throat. “Let’s just say he’d be smitten with the likes of, well, you.”
“Forget it.” That Paris even knew about such things amazed him. Then again she was in the theater business. She’d probably seen it all. “Write to your friend and tell her there’s been a change of plans.”
“But . . .”
“No.” Yes, he’d just told Athens he could take on another man’s identity, but in this case--thankfully--it wasn’t necessary.
She blew out a dramatic breath. “Fine. But you better take care and not compromise her reputation, Seth. She’s got enough to worry about. Oh, and remember, if Emily comes up in conversation tonight--”
“--I’m to say nothing of my impending . . . trip.” He tugged on his hat, frowned as she fiddled with her hair, twisting, untwisting. He stilled her nervous actions. “Emily’s secret, whatever it is, is safe with me.”
“Promise?”
He looked into those doe-like eyes thinking she was slicker than a clay hill after a rainstorm. He did, however, respect her motivation and loyalty to her friend. “Sure.”
Twenty minutes later, Josh stormed Fletcher’s. “I need a favor.” He didn’t care beans that Seth had one hand on a bottle of whisky and the other on a dove’s bodacious ass. The matter, he said, stopping his friend midway up the stairs, was urgent.
Five minutes after that, Seth had issued a third promise. To deliver Emily McBride to Arizona Territory by hook or crook and before his friend’s wife worried herself bed sick. He’d done so without revealing his previous conversations on the matter with Athens or Paris. He didn’t like withholding information from Josh, but a promise was a promise and the objective was the same.
He told himself that he hadn’t given his word to anyone in vain. First order of business: clean up whatever mess Emily had made. A preacher’s daughter. A librarian. A woman the Garretts described as a shy woman with a heart of gold. How bad could it be?
Clean up the mess then deliver Athens’s proposal and escort Emily to Arizona Territory. If he was going to tame the west, he could sure as hell save one tarnished angel.
CHAPTER 3
Napa Valley, California - Two weeks later
“Damnation!” Emily McBride covered her mouth, shocked she’d blurted the curse aloud. In the library of all places. Thankfully, no one was within earshot. Well, except God. He heard everything. He also saw everything, knew everything, and she couldn’t help wondering if this was part of her punishment.
She envisioned her father shaking a condemning finger, imagined his slurred voice. “This is what you get for being deceitful!”
“Drat!” She paced between the non-fiction stacks, told herself to get a grip. Being asked to read an I. M. Wilde dime novel aloud at the Lemonade and Storytelling Social Club wasn’t divine punishment, just bad luck. “Snap out of it, you ninny. You’re paranoid.” She bumped up her spectacles and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re also talking to yourself. You really need to stop doing that.”
Townfolk whispered words like dotty and moody whenever they spoke of the late Preacher McBride’s daughter. They used to call her shy. Only she’d never really been shy, just content to dwell in the background, nose in a book, head in the clouds. She’d spent countless hours committing her own stories to paper, although she’d learned early on to keep the tales to herself. Her imagination cooked up scenarios unbecoming of a preacher’s daughter. Or so many said, including her father. Her mother, an avid reader herself, had cut her most deeply. “Listen keenly to my words and remember this always, daughter. Emily McBride must channel her talents in a more respectable direction.”
That night her heart had cracked, and never since healed.
“No one understands me,” she’d cried into her pillow. No one except Paris, a fellow artistic soul. The day the townfolk shunned the only female in the Garrett clan, they shunned the only child of the McBrides as well. “Artists have to stick together,” Emily had said, comforting her friend with a hug. Used to being around four older brothers, Paris suggested they shake on a lifetime friendship like men. So, they’d spit into their palms and clasped hands.
Paris became a recluse and Emily with her. She’d been the subject of hurtful gossip ever since. The other day she overheard someone call her crazy. Just because she’d swapped her conventional gowns for men’s shirts and split-riding skirts and started practicing sharp shooting. Just because she’d turned her father’s rural home into a boardinghouse and taken in Mrs. Dunlap, a forgetful widow with a knitting obsession. She had good reasons for these actions, not that she felt compelled to share them. For the first time in her life, her business was her own. At least it had been.
An anonymous busybody was currently making her life a living . . . Hades.
I know your secret.
Those four little words, typewritten on ordinary writing paper, delivered a mighty blow to her brave new spirit. The taunt filled her with guilt and dread. Now she wasn’t the old Emily, or the new Emily, just a confused Emily stuck in between. These days, she didn’t know whether to amend her Grand Design or ditch it. Her nerves were threadbare and things were about to get worse. Thanks to Paris, she was supposed to welcome a poet into her home. A man.
Her friend’s missive had arrived two weeks ago, give or take a few days. Mrs. Dunlap had misplaced the mail. By the time Emily read the letter, it was too late to relay her objections. The man was on his way. Though Emily appreciated what Paris was trying to do, she simply couldn’t accept the gesture. Or, rather, Mr. Pinkerton. She’d have to send the gentleman packing and that’s all there was to it. No matter how badly she needed his money. No matter how tempted she was to pick the intuitive detective’s mind as Paris suggested.
Confiding in him meant entrusting him with a secret. It meant putting her life in someone else’s hands, giving over control. The mere thought made her chest ache. She wanted to live life on her own terms. She wanted to voice her thoughts without fear of being struck by a lightening bolt or chided by opinionated prudes.
No, sir. She wouldn’t be leaning on Mr. Pinkerton or anyone else. Besides, she couldn’t take on a male boarder, even one with delicate sensibilities. She couldn’t withstand the added speculation as to her good sense, or lack thereof. If she didn’t mind her actions, her narrow-minded neighbors would pack her off to Napa State Asylum for the Insane.
Those same neighbors circulated a few feet away in the magazine and newspaper section of the library, gossiping over lemonade and cookies as they awaited the official start of the meeting.
Wound up from her agitated pacing, Emily rounded the corner and rested her forehead against the shelf stocked with the works of Charles Dickens. If only the committee would’ve voted Nicholas Nickleby as today’s feature as opposed to Showdown in Sintown. Was it possible that her anonymous tormentor, the cause of her financial and emotional woes, w
as on the Lemonade and Storytelling committee?
“There you go being paranoid again.” On the other hand, she had good reason to be wary. Two good, cryptic reasons signed, Your Savior. Dwelling on the gut-twisting mystery just now would only add to her immediate anxiety, so she blocked it from her mind. One crisis at a time. She clutched the dime novel to her chest, a swarm of emotions buzzing in her belly. The illustrated cover featured a heart-pounding sketch of Rome and Boston Garrett--Wells Fargo detectives and hometown heroes--in a showdown with a notorious road thief. It wasn’t the gun blazing scene that tripped Emily’s pulse, but the sight of Rome. She’d had a fearsome crush on Paris’s brother since she was nine. Unfortunately, the attraction was one-sided. Even though she was now twenty, he still regarded her as Preacher McBride’s bookish little girl. Emily McBride, the socially backward daydreamer.
Sighing, she sneaked another peak at the dime novel cover. The artist’s rendering of Rome was exquisite. So handsome in his brown duster and Stetson, menacing holster slung low on his lean hips. These days he wore his fair hair longer, making him look all the more rakish. She’d spent many a night wondering how it would feel to kiss a rake. Specifically, Rome Garrett.
“Mooning over your fantasy beau?”
Emily whirled. Mary Lee Dobbs, formerly Bernbaum. The woman Paris had once humiliated in song at a Lemonade and Storytelling Club picnic as payback for Mary Lee calling her Goofy Garrett. Self-conscious, she pressed the dime novel into the folds of her buckskin skirt. “I wasn’t mooning.”
“Yes, you were. Dream on, Emily. Men like Rome Garrett don’t fall for women like you. You look like Calamity Jane, for pity’s sake.”
Like that was a bad thing. Emily liked wearing her wavy blond hair in two braids. She liked dressing similar to the frontierswoman who’d ridden alongside legends such as Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter. An accomplished horsewoman and a crack shot, Calamity Jane was courageous and adventurous and Emily admired her with all of her heart. She didn’t care what Mary Lee liked. She didn’t like Mary Lee.
