Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set

by Julie Ortolon

  “What’s going on?”

  Duke’s breath shuddered out. “Anna’s husband paid her a visit.”

  “What’s he doing out of prison?”

  “Getting himself killed.”

  Boyd had met Levens five years ago when the man tracked Anna to Claire’s house and threatened both women. Shortly after jailing the man, Duke had taken Anna to Pittsburgh to testify against her husband.

  Levens lay in a pool of blood. Duke checked for a pulse, knowing he wouldn’t find one; Dahlia had shot straight into Levens’s black heart. Levens had fought too hard and pushed too far. Maybe he’d known Dahlia would pull the trigger and end his miserable life. The abusive wretch deserved the bullet in his chest, but Duke felt a crushing weight settle on his shoulders. Dahlia had knowingly and willingly killed a man.

  *

  FAITH PUT THE children to bed then waited in the silent parlor with Millie. They were too tense and scared to talk. Duke had been gone for an hour, and Dahlia hadn’t arrived yet.

  Someone knocked on the door at nine-thirty, and Faith’s heart nearly stopped when she found Doc Milton on her porch.

  “Larry Levens is dead.”

  Faith pressed trembling fingers to her dry throat. “Is Duke… is he all right?”

  The doctor nodded. “Anna and Dahlia are at Boyd’s house. You’ll have to ask Duke what happened,” he said then offered to walk Millie to Boyd’s to be with Anna.

  Shaken and shivering, Faith grabbed a lantern and followed them outside. Alone with her worry, she buttoned her sweater against the chill then sat on the porch swing, listening to dry leaves scuttle across the ground and praying for Duke and Dahlia to hurry home.

  When they finally approached the house, Duke’s stride was shorter, his shoulders stiff. He wore a deep scowl and had his thumb hooked in the front of his gun belt, a sign that his shoulder was hurting. Dahlia was limping, and she pressed her hand to her hip as she slowly climbed the steps ahead of Duke.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right!” Faith leapt from the porch swing and threw her arms around her aunt. “I was worried sick about you two.”

  “I’m not all right.” Dahlia stared across the porch, her face ravaged by grief or pain or both. “I killed a man.”

  Faith’s heart stopped, and then she saw the anguish in Duke’s eyes and the strain around his compressed lips. Something awful had happened.

  “I had to.” Dahlia clamped her lips together, but couldn’t hold back her tears. “He wouldn’t have stopped,” she cried. “They never stop.”

  Faith pulled Dahlia onto the swing and sat beside her. “What happened?”

  Breathy sobs shook the woman’s shoulders. “I begged Daddy to let me come home. He said, ‘Obey your husband.’”

  Faith frowned, confused by Dahlia’s rambling.

  “I tried, God help me I did. But Carl wouldn’t stop.”

  As understanding dawned, sickness washed through Faith. Dahlia was telling her own story. She said she’d witnessed a woman being beaten by her husband, and that a minister refused to give her refuge. But that beaten woman was Dahlia, and the minister was her own father.

  “Oh, Dahlia….” At a loss for words, Faith rocked her aunt.

  “I didn’t want any man to touch me ever again.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Your mother let me stay in her house anyhow, and it was a whole year b-before I could work upstairs.”

  Faith’s heart contracted, and she pulled Dahlia close. “Shhh…” she whispered, comforting her and warning her not to divulge any more in front of Duke, whose bleak expression had changed to a sickly, suspicious scowl.

  Dahlia stiffened and sat up by degrees, as if she knew she’d said too much. “I want go home.” She wiped her palms across her cheeks and looked at Duke. “Unless you’re taking me to jail.”

  “What? Why would he?” Faith pressed her hand to her churning stomach. “Are you arresting her, Duke?”

  His somber look terrified her.

  “You can’t… that man killed people.”

  “I know, Faith, but…” He released a hard, shuddering breath. “Go home and rest, Dahlia.”

  The torment in his eyes killed any relief Faith expected to feel. Whatever had happened at Anna’s was torturing him.

  Dahlia got to her feet. “I’m sorry about everything,” she said, but Faith didn’t know if she was apologizing for saying too much, or for what she had done at Anna’s.

  She walked Dahlia across the street. Tansy was out with Cyrus, but Aster fixed Dahlia a cup of tea, and Iris rubbed balm on her sore back. When Faith returned home, Duke was waiting on the porch. She gave him a hard, thankful hug, needing to touch him to know that he was okay.

  “I was so worried about you,” she said. She sensed he wouldn’t talk about what happened at Anna’s, so she simply held him and listened to the peepers.

  “Faith, what kind of work did Dahlia do upstairs at your mother’s house?”

  Fear drizzled down her body like a freezing rain, coating her with ice. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

  “Who are those women you call your aunts?” he asked, his voice flat, controlled, cold.

  This was the moment she would crash to the hard unforgiving ground, and everything would shatter: her body, her heart, her life.

  “They’re my aunts, like Rebecca is Evelyn’s daughter,” she said, wanting him to understand her love for them.

  His nod acknowledged her right to claim the women as family, but she could see the truth dawning in his eyes.

  “Your mother didn’t just sell roses, did she?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did all your aunts work upstairs at your mother’s house?”

  She nodded because she couldn’t speak past the shame clogging her throat.

  He inhaled sharply, as if the truth had speared him in the chest, and his appalled expression broke her heart.

  “I knew you would look at me with disgust.”

  “How would you expect me to look?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “For God’s sake, your mother ran a brothel!” He stared at her as if seeing an unwelcome stranger on his porch. “Did you… were you…” His breath rushed out as if he couldn’t bear to ask the question.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I only gave massages.”

  *

  “STOP!” DUKE RAISED his hand, unable to listen to his wife any longer. He couldn’t stomach the thought of her hands on another man. To know she’d massaged their bare bodies twisted his heart into a painful knot. This was why his gut had kept insisting there was something she was hiding. And he suspected she was hiding more.

  “I had to think of Adam and Cora,” she said, tears brimming her eyes.

  Two hours ago her quavering voice would have wrenched his heart with sympathy. Now it left him cold.

  “Duke, I needed to get them away from the brothel. How could I do that by announcing where we came from?”

  She couldn’t have. He understood that. If anyone had known Faith’s mother ran a brothel and her aunts were prostitutes, Faith and her family would have been run out of town. If anyone discovered the truth now, their lives would be ruined. Her life. His life. His mother’s and brothers’ lives.

  And she’d married him knowing this.

  Her betrayal sliced through him. One slip of the tongue, and Faith’s reputation, and his own, would be ruined. His family’s reputation would be shattered, and the sawmill business would suffer as well as Radford and Evelyn’s livery. All because he’d been a blind, lust-deceived fool.

  “Who else knows about this?” he asked.

  “My aunts and Adam. We lived behind the brothel.”

  “How could any mother—” He pinched the bridge of his nose, furious that any child was exposed to such a life. No wonder Adam had a worldly look in his eyes. God only knew what the boy had seen, and what he’d shared with Rebecca.

  “I don’t know h
ow she stayed,” Faith said, her soft voice wringing his emotions. “I couldn’t bear raising Adam and Cora there. That’s why I changed my name and came here, to give us all a decent life.”

  “You what?”

  “My last name is Dearborn.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the headache throbbing behind his eyes. He understood her need to protect the children, but to lie and change her name and let him walk into their marriage blind.

  Radford had been right to be concerned, and he himself had been a fool.

  He felt deflated and cold and sick inside. And stupid. She had brought this mess to his doorstep, and he, being the lust-struck fool Radford had accused him of being, had opened the door and welcomed her into his life.

  “I had to do it, Duke. I couldn’t take a chance of having my name being traced back to that brothel.”

  “Then why didn’t you change Adam’s name?”

  “I would have, but…” She huffed out a breath. “He’s a boy. He wasn’t thinking when he told you his name.”

  It sickened Duke that the boy would even have to lie about something like that. “I married a woman named Faith Wilkins, not Faith Dearborn. Do you realize I could annul our marriage on those grounds?”

  Her lips parted, but no words came out. Her eyes flooded and she shook her head. “You can’t… Duke, no.” She clutched his hands. “If you annul it… oh, God, think of Cora.” Tears spilled over her lashes. “Please, Duke, you can’t do that. You can’t tell anyone about this or we’ll be driven away in shame.”

  Her tears gouged his heart. His anger choked him.

  “Don’t punish them because of me,” she pleaded. “I’m the guilty one. Don’t cast out two innocent children.”

  “Those innocent children are my responsibility now. How could I cast them out?”

  “Because you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. I hate lies. I hate being stupid. I hate being deceived.” He slammed his hand on the porch column. “I hate this burden you’ve put on my conscience!”

  “I had to,” she whispered, killing him with those sorrow-filled eyes. “I’ll get rid of the brothel as soon as I can.”

  His blood ran cold. “You own that place?”

  Her sheepish nod heated his neck and doubled his heartbeat. What she owned, he owned.

  Fury turned his voice to ice. “Do you know what will happen to my job and my family if anyone discovers that my wife, that I, own a brothel?”

  She shivered and clutched her sweater tighter. “I want to sell it, but I can’t find the deed. My mother had no will, and I haven’t been able to talk to a lawyer about this.”

  He gritted his teeth and faced the chill breeze, struggling to control his outrage. “Who was your mother’s lawyer?”

  “I don’t know. None of us knew anything about her affairs. She may not have even had a lawyer.”

  His fists clenched and his shoulder ached deep in the socket. “Where are her papers? Surely she had some?”

  “Just a key and a guestbook.”

  He faced his deceitful wife. “A what?”

  “Mama recorded the guests and their fees in a book. I don’t know what the key is for. It didn’t fit her jewelry box or any locks in the house.”

  Guests? The euphemism repulsed him, and he suddenly hated Faith’s mother. “Get the book.”

  “The deed isn’t there.”

  “Get it.” He didn’t want to talk. Not tonight. He was too outraged, too ready to smash his fists into a wall until he beat the frustration out of his system. In all his life, he’d never been so naive or made such a stupid, drastic mistake.

  Worse yet, he’d compromised his integrity tonight by not charging Dahlia for killing Levens. Her deadly shot had probably saved several lives, including her own, which Levens would have snuffed out in his rampage to punish and kill Anna; Levens had hurt both women, and probably would have killed them, but Duke had stopped him. He’d cuffed the man and would have taken him back to prison. Dahlia had known that, and she’d still pulled the trigger.

  Duke didn’t blame her, but his job was to uphold the law, not decide a person’s guilt. That job was for a jury. Once a person bent the truth—or the law—to suit himself, he would bend it a hundred times. Faith was proof of that. Her life was a web of lies.

  He didn’t lie, and he’d never supported or approved of prostitution in his life. But now he owned a brothel. His father would roll in his grave.

  Chapter Thirty

  *

  ADAM TOOK REBECCA’S hand and crept up the greenhouse stairs to the second floor where Faith dried herbs. It was closed on Sunday, which made it a perfect hideaway for him and Rebecca. But the sound of voices made him freeze near the top of the stairs. He brought his finger to his lips to warn Rebecca they weren’t alone.

  Patrick had Iris trapped in his arms and backed against the plank wall. “You’ll never get away from me,” he said.

  Dang it all! Adam had hoped he and Rebecca could sneak in here and talk, and maybe even kiss, but now everything was ruined because Patrick and Iris had gotten here first.

  “I wasn’t trying to get away,” Iris said, breathless. “I planned to bring you up here and seduce you.”

  Gads! Adam hoped Rebecca didn’t know he’d brought her here to steal a kiss.

  “You won’t respect me if I submit,” Patrick said.

  Iris laughed then got a strange look on her face. “I wish I’d met you before I… many years ago.”

  Adam ducked lower on the stairs, worried she’d seen him. Rebecca sidled closer, and he knew they should leave, but spying was too exciting.

  “You would have hated me then. I was afraid of spirited girls like you.” Patrick began unbuttoning Iris’s shirtwaist. “Are you wearing a corset?”

  “I never wear a corset.” She ran her hands down his stomach to the top of his trousers. “Until I was thirteen, I was so sweet and naive, I would have bored you to sleep.”

  Patrick pushed her shirtwaist open, showing off her lacy red chemise that Adam had seen drying on a rack in the house. “And you are definitely not boring, Iris Wilde.”

  “Being outrageous is more exciting,” she said.

  “I like outrageous.” Patrick buried his face in her breasts. “I like exciting.”

  So did Adam. But he clutched Rebecca’s hand and nodded toward the foot of the stairs. If he were alone, he might peek a little longer, but he had to get her out of here.

  Rebecca shook her head and grinned like she wanted to stay.

  Adam hesitated then saw Patrick put his whole hand over Iris’s breast. “I want you. Right here. Right now. Forever.”

  “I don’t need forever. Right here, right now, is enough.” Iris straddled his thigh, and Patrick ground his body against hers.

  Rebecca clenched Adam’s hand.

  “Marry me, Iris.”

  Iris gripped Patrick’s face, looking angry. “Don’t you dare fall in love with me.”

  “Too late. I fell the first time I saw you.” He kissed her neck and she got all breathless.

  “I’ll break your heart, farm boy”

  “I won’t let you.” He put his hand on the front of Iris’s skirt then pushed the fabric between her legs, making her gasp and causing Adam’s stomach to go light.

  “Men have been paying me to do that for twelve years,” she said.

  Adam gulped. Rebecca shouldn’t know this.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Patrick?”

  “Yes.” He pulled his groping hand away to lift her chin up so she had to look at him. “And now I understand why you’ve never met a man you wanted to marry.”

  Adam’s mouth fell open. Patrick didn’t care that Iris used to be a prostitute? Is that what he was saying? Because if he didn’t care, maybe Duke wouldn’t care that they’d lived behind the brothel. Maybe Rebecca wouldn’t care either.

  “My sweet, wild Iris.” Patrick kissed her very gently and looked sad, like he was dying or
something. “I’m a plain, honest man who loves you. Is that enough for you?”

  Iris looked like she was going to cry. “You deserve better.”

  “I couldn’t find better.”

  “Do you know how many men I’ve known?”

  “Too many,” he said, gently. “But now you know me, and I’ll take good care of you. Marry me. Let me love you.”

  And with that, he tugged her chemise down and put his mouth over her bare breast like he was starving.

  Rebecca’s gasp was so loud it startled Patrick and Iris apart. Adam grabbed Rebecca’s hand and pulled her down the stairs and outside into the windy afternoon. They raced down the bank and followed the creek to a pool and small waterfall near Rebecca’s home.

  Adam stopped, chest heaving from their run. “I didn’t know anybody would be there,” he said, but was too ashamed to look at Rebecca.

  “Were they… you know?”

  How did she know about… Gosh, he’d thought she was innocent, but she knew what happened between boys and girls. “Yeah, they were,” he said, heat scorching his ears. Did she think he’d taken her to the greenhouse to do what Patrick and Iris were doing? He’d just wanted a kiss.

  “I’ve seen our horses when they… a couple of times.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to SEE that,” he said, his voice squawking, which made his whole face hot.

  Rebecca didn’t even blink.

  “Will your aunt tell on us?” she asked.

  He hadn’t considered that, but if Iris blabbed, he was dead. Rebecca was supposed to be at a neighbor’s house, and he was supposed to be fishing in the pond behind the greenhouse. If Duke or Rebecca’s father learned they were together, especially in the greenhouse where they would have been alone if not for Patrick and Iris, they would string Adam up by his heels.

  Duke had been scowling all week, and Faith was crying a lot for some reason. This wasn’t the time to get in trouble with either one of them. But if Iris told, he was dead.

  “No one can know about this,” he said.

  Rebecca flushed, but she didn’t look away. “They’re grownups. Why would they get in trouble?”

  “They’re not married. It would ruin Iris’s reputation, and maybe Faith’s.” Adam sighed and sat on a rock beside her. “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise to keep it a secret.”