by Amy Faye
A talent for fighting and for shooting only brings down trouble on your head, in the end, and Chris had a bellyful of trouble that he wasn't ever going to be done with. No, he'd just as much like to get away from trouble if it were possible.
Trouble had a way of finding men like Chris Broadmoor, though. Maybe it was a punishment for his sins, or maybe it was just the same bad luck that had nurtured that talent in the first place, but something always seemed to conspire to find him in positions he wasn't going to be happy with.
While his mind was still churning over the idea of Marie Bainbridge and how hard to put his foot down against their acquaintanceship, trouble found him again, and with his mind occupied, he managed to miss his chances to avoid it from a long way off.
"Chris, hey. It's been a long time."
When he heard his name, the bartender stiffened, in the same instant reflexively moving to start doing the job of preparing a drink and realizing who was speaking.
"What are you doing here?" His voice was low and held a threat that he knew he didn't need to voice in order for the message to get across.
"What kind of greeting is that, after all these years? What's it been, five years?"
His jaw tightened. "I said, 'what are you doing here,' and I meant it, Jack."
Chris's eldest brother had skin dark from the sun, thick and leathery. When he smiled, his face spider-webbed into too many lines for a man who wasn't yet forty.
"I'm here to see my baby brother," he answered. "And find out what's been happening the past few years."
Chris didn't match his brother's smile. "You don't gotta worry 'bout me, Jack. I'm fine here. Let me be, and there won't be no trouble."
"Trouble? What trouble?"
The gold from the eldest Broadmoor's tooth gleamed, and trouble dug in to stay.
Twenty-Three
Marie hadn't exactly gotten the answers she wanted. No, that wasn't entirely accurate. It sounded like she might have gotten some of it–she hadn't gotten any sort of response from Chris at all, and she wasn't exactly enjoying the feeling that at some point, the other shoe was going to drop and she was going to see exactly what had him so riled.
Nobody was going to come to her and ask her about whatever relationship she may or may not have had with the local bartender. Rumors moved fast in Applewood Junction, and just about everything else moved slow. So talk was common, and idle talk the most common of all.
Most of the time, you didn't hear any of it unless you were doing the talking or doing the listening, because as a rule, nobody ever stopped to confirm what the truth was. There wasn't a whole lot of point in asking, because if it was nonsense, then you looked like a fool. If it was true, then nobody would ever admit it in the first place.
If someone had come by, Marie reasoned, it was because there was more to it than trying to confirm a rumor. And if there were more to it, then either Chris wasn't telling her everything, or he'd run them off before they got to telling him the real reason they were there.
In the end, it didn't matter one bit which had happened, because the end result was that she didn't know what she needed to know, she wasn't told what they'd come to tell her, and that meant, sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, there would be more to deal with later.
Eventually, they would come by at a time that Chris wasn't there to act surly, and then she'd have to deal with it. The only question was how long they'd wait to deal with her, and how much she'd suffer for the wait.
Marie's head pounded. Another night of being able to sleep should have had her almost back to normal, now. Jamie certainly seemed fine. But every time she woke up, even though hours had passed, she felt as if she'd only just closed her eyes a moment before.
She'd slept as much as she possibly could, the past three days, and she felt as if she just needed a nap to get by. Nothing she could do would improve it.
Maybe she was a little sick, the schoolteacher reasoned. With all the craziness going on, no doubt she was more prone to sickness. Worrying about Jamie and about the schoolhouse and now about all this, it wasn't good for a person's health.
She made a mental note to talk to the doctor about it, and tried to get her head back into classes. Every day was different, she knew. Some days seemed to race by. Others took a toll, seeming to last forever. And yet, at the end of the day, it was always manageable.
Today was one of the days that dragged. In the end, she'd be over it, easy as can be, but until the bell tolled out three on the clock, when she'd watch the children go, she had to bear it. All too soon she'd feel as if they hadn't been there long enough, after all.
And sure enough, though the time passed slowly, within little more time than the blink of an eye, it seemed, she was standing by the doorway, with a wisp of nostalgia as she watched the children go. All of them, of course, except for one. He had his head down on a desk, his eyes shut. Out like a light.
She was about to close the door behind her and start planning for the next day when she heard someone coming. She looked over and her worries were answered. The other shoe, it seemed, had not taken particularly long to drop.
It wasn't the same woman, of course, but she could see the same expressions, the same stiffness of manner. And, she noted, this time the husband seemed distinctly less beaten-up.
She also noticed that the clothes the couple wore were quite fine. If there were any residents of Applewood Junction who had any sort of money, Marie would have been surprised to learn about it. Daddy had some money, back in New Orleans. Nothing to put on airs over, of course, but enough that the move out west was a strain for her.
Which meant that, in all likelihood, the pair had dressed up specifically for the occasion, as if they were going to address a celebrity. The look on their faces wasn't that sort of expression, though. She took a deep breath and forced a smile.
"Can I help you?"
The woman glared while her husband, arms linked around hers, spoke softly. "You're not going to be allowed to continue this, you know."
He wore a sneer that was reflected perfectly in the way that he said the line.
"I'm sorry, Mr…?"
"Mr. Bradbury," he said, as if she ought to have known who he was. "I'm a deacon at the local church, and we have noticed that you haven't been attending our services."
Marie tried to smile, but couldn't keep the confusion off her face completely. "I'm sorry, is there a problem, Mr. Bradbury?"
"You've been seen with that boy in there," he said, glancing through the window at Jamie. "And gallivanting around with the wrong sort of person. Now, of course, anyone would be so charitable, with the tragedy that befell young Mr. Pearson's family. But I suspect that you're not doing it out of some Christian effort, are you? After all, you don't attend services."
Marie kept her lips pursed together for as long as she could. Catholics weren't exactly regarded fondly in the area, she knew. It hadn't taken long to suss that out. She might as well be godless, or a Mormon, or worship the natives' strange gods, as to be Catholic.
It was always a matter of time before she responded, though. She couldn't simply ignore his comments, regardless how much she might have liked to, in the way that she couldn't have ignored a slap in her face.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Bradbury, but I don't believe we've met before."
He sneered, the implication requiring no words.
"No, and I don't know that I would like to again, Miss Bainbridge. I only wanted to make sure that you knew that we're not going to stand for this sort of behavior. A chance to rectify yourself is the Christian thing, after all," he said, with the emphasis on 'Christian' as if she were going to be cowed by it.
Marie scowled. Maybe Chris was right to have kept her out of it. Because she was three things, after all. First a schoolteacher, second a Catholic, and third, most troublesome of all, she was Irish.
And the Irish in her had her blood boiling right now, whether she liked it or not.
Twenty-Four
There isn't a wh
ole lot of chance that if one of the Broadmoors is in town–well, one other than himself, Chris corrected automatically–that the others are far. They certainly aren't unaware of where the rest are. He was the only one who left, the only one who'd even talked about leaving.
So there wasn't a chance in hell that he was going to believe it when Jack Broadmoor, the crown prince of whatever the hell Chris's brothers called themselves, said he was there alone, and nobody else knew where Chris was hiding out.
He was making an attempt, however pathetic, to calm Chris down. It wasn't going to work, and there was no way it was ever going to. The hell he'd gone through to get away from his brothers was all he needed to remember to know that there was no reason he'd ever go back, under any circumstance at all.
None of this was a surprise. None of it could have been a surprise. Jack was as smart as a whip. He could be surprised; Chris had seen it himself, with his own eyes. More than that, he'd seen it on several occasions. But the things that would surprise Jack were things that couldn't be predicted.
No, panic was exactly what Chris ought to have expected, and if he ought to have expected it, then he expected it, simple as that. He'd tried to play it cool, of course. Jack always tried to play things cool. So when Jack told him that he should really relax, that there was nothing to worry about and everything was fine, it was hard to guess which was the right way to go.
Chris took a deep breath and pressed himself into his bed and closed his eyes tight. Someone else might have been able to see through the plan. He wasn't one of those people. Marie was a teacher, maybe she had a solid head for these kind of things.
But just the same as there was no way he didn't get nervous with his brothers around, there was no way he went and explained the entire situation to Marie. She shouldn't have been involved with him at all. He wasn't going to have her any more involved than necessary if he could at all help it.
He let out a deep breath and got up. There was time for laying around and there was time for work, and it was time for work. Luckily for Chris, he didn't have to go far.
Unluckily for him, when the big man finally dressed and stepped through the door, trouble was already waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. Like most trouble, it didn't look immediately like trouble, and that was why Chris didn't know to avoid it.
"Hey, man," Jim drawled. "How you doin' today?"
The bouncer was sitting in his corner of the room, looking suitably pleased with himself in spite of having done nothing in particular to deserve it.
"Hey yourself," Chris responded.
He couldn't shake a vague dislike for Jim, but they spent most of every afternoon together. There was no reason to be uncivil, he reckoned. And maybe, somewhere under the veneer of lecherous idiot, there was some meat to dig into. He'd worked there for three years and hadn't seen a single hint of it, but there was still time to turn things around.
"You heard the talk?"
Chris checked the ice chest to make sure it was still cold, checked the taps on the kegs, but he answered all the same. "Talk? No, no talk. I've been in my room."
"Oh yeah?" The question was entirely tone, and Chris didn't miss out on what the bouncer implied. He scowled.
"Alone, in my room."
"Sure. So you ain't heard then."
"No, Jim, I ain't heard."
"Some folks talkin' to your lady friend. The Bradburys, if I hear talk right."
"She's a free woman, she can talk to who she likes."
"Talk is, the conversation weren't all friendly."
"No?"
"Not the least bit friendly. Say the Deacon and his wife came by to say they weren't gonna let–now, I hear his exact words were, 'godless heathen bitch' and Mick swears on a stack of bibles that's what he said–get her claws into no child–"
Chris's sneer deepened. "I'm goin' out for a bit."
He rose and stepped out the door. He didn't have time for this. Couldn't Jack have made an appointment? After all, he had trouble to dust up. Jack was just enough more that he was going to have to figure a way to handle it all at once, and no matter how it went down, it wasn't going to be pretty.
He leapt up a short set of stairs and inside. There were folks sitting in the pews, but no preacher sitting there talking to them. It was just as well, because apparently the distraction of Chris Broadmoor, the subject of a good deal of the town's gossip and rumor-mill, was too great.
He rapped on the door harder than he ought to have, and when he didn't get an answer, Chris rapped on it again. The sound of movement inside was followed a moment later by the padre opening the door. When he saw Chris's face he lost the sanguine expression he'd worn opening the door.
"Come to confess your sins?"
"No, father. I think we ought to talk inside."
The man's expression didn't change. He didn't particularly want to talk to Chris, and Chris didn't blame him. He didn't particularly want to talk to the preacher, either, but the situation called for it either way.
"Fine," he said, his lips pinching together. "Make it quick."
Chris stepped through the door. "I don't put much stock in rumor, father, so I thought I'd come and confirm with you."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Broadmoor."
"I'm sure you don't. Your deacon, Mr. Bradbury, was apparently talking all kinds of trash to the schoolteacher."
"Mr. Bradbury's a good man," was all the pastor said. But he wasn't denying it, Chris noted. And that told him what he needed to be told.
Twenty-Five
Her day was only going to improve from here, Marie thought. After all, this late in the evening, there was no chance that things could get worse. With Jamie down for the night, she had a little time to read by lamplight, and then she'd spend another night on the couch.
She was glad for having a couch at all. A suite was far more than she ought to have expected from a town like this, and especially from a room that she shouldn't even have been in. She let out a breath, wondering when, if ever, she was going to get back into the room she had paid for over Owen's. It wasn't as if she was suffering here, but how long could repairs possibly take?
The knock at the door was soft and caught her completely by surprise. Maybe things could get worse, after all. If nothing could change, nothing could get worse. But if someone else had come to give her the business, then she wasn't in any sort of mood.
For a long time, the schoolteacher considered ignoring the knock. A second knock came a little louder. A third might have risked waking Jamie, and she wasn't going to have that.
Marie spent the few seconds it took to walk across the room mustering whatever indignation that she could find, and then put the lid on it and left it to simmer while she opened the door, ready to give whoever was on the other side of it a piece of her mind.
Chris looked as tired as she felt, and yet the second that she saw who it was, the fatigue seemed to melt away on its own.
"Oh," she said. She didn't sound happy to see him, but the truth was that there was nobody who she'd rather have had on the other side of the door.
"Is this a bad time?"
"Shouldn't you be at work?"
He looked down. "I had other things to take care of. Other people can take over."
She'd never seen anyone else manning the counter of the saloon, though it occurred to her that she hadn't seen him doing it much, either. One of the benefits of not going into the place when she could avoid it.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
His face pinched together in a look that might have been frustration. "I've been talking to folks the past couple hours."
"Isn't that normal?"
"Not in this case, no."
She wanted him to get to the point, but at the same time she knew that if he wasn't doing it now, he wasn't looking forward to whatever he was going to say next.
"What's the problem?"
"It's about Jamie."
"You don't have to put any stoc
k in them, you know," she said. Marie settled back into her seat and looked up at him.
In the low light, Chris seemed almost larger than life, even bigger than usual. Looking up at him from where she was sitting as he paced across the room was like looking up at a Demigod, or something, she thought. Too much for any woman, certainly too much for her.
"I wouldn't, normally."
"Then why are you worrying now?"
"You haven't been here long enough to make the connections, if nobody points them out." He didn't sound like he wanted to offend her, but there was a condescending edge to what he was saying that he couldn't round off in spite of himself.
"What, you don't think I'm smart enough to know who my friends are, is that it?"
"No–I didn't say that," he said. He looked like the comment dug in just under the skin. "You don't know who the Padre is, do you? Talk is, you haven't been to the church, so you wouldn't know, right?"
"What's your point?" She wanted to get out of the defensive spot that she'd dug herself into, but so far she wasn't managing it. Surely he wasn't just going to bully her for no reason, but if he was going to make a point, she didn't know what it was supposed to be so far.
"That's the whole point. I don't think you know who you're dealing with, and I know you're not fool enough to lie and say you know exactly who these folks are when you don't."
"So what are you trying to say, then?"
"What I'm trying to say is, if you think you can just ignore him, you're in for a very rude awakening."
"What's so special about this preacher?"
"His brother's the very same territorial governor that called you out here, don't you know? That's the sort of thing that causes trouble, where I'm from. Maybe you city folks–"
Her face blanched. "So–"
"So if he doesn't want you watching Jamie–hell, even teaching the kids–then it's not just God's ears that he's got his lips to. Exactly."
"What do we do, then?"
Chris let out a long breath. That was the question, wasn't it? Eventually, it had to come down to what they were supposed to do about it, and he didn't have an answer to that.
