“Your father mentioned that,” Cade said.
He had probably talked about it while his thoughts were in the past, not realizing he was revealing her secrets.
“Joshua felt that Abilene was not a good place to begin a life together or raise a family.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Cade said. He was still at the window but had turned to watch her.
“He accepted a position in Omaha and left. He meant to find a place for us to live and to make certain the job was secure enough before sending for me.” She ran her thumb along the corner of a stack of papers on the desk. “He never came back.”
“Did he say why?”
She shrugged a single shoulder. “He never wrote to me. Not even once. So I can’t say what it was that kept him in Omaha, but I have a fairly good guess what kept him away from Abilene.”
“Cowardice and idiocy?” Cade suggested.
“Me.” She let her hands hang limply at her sides. Her energy was quickly disappearing. “I came to the conclusion years ago that he changed his mind about marrying me and chose to end things with silence rather than conversation.”
“I’d say that man owes you a conversation, and I think you oughtta make him pay up.”
She sighed and looked away from him. “But what if his explanation is he never really loved me, and Omaha was only an excuse to get out of telling me so?”
“Then he’s an even bigger lout than I’d suspected.”
She could laugh at that.
“Either way, you need to talk to him. You owe yourself an answer.”
He was right. She didn’t like the prospect of having things out with Joshua, but she needed to do it. She was nervous, uncertain. And she, who had endured the battlefields of Missouri and the death toll in Abilene, was afraid.
Paisley stood at the hotel desk waiting for Joshua. She’d sent a note up to room five, where Joshua was staying.
Paisley’s mind sat heavy and burdened. She’d thought many times what she would do or say if he ever came back. At first she hadn’t pictured herself doing anything other than throwing herself into his embrace and never letting go again. But as time had passed, the confusion and pain and the reality of his abandonment had rendered her heart, if not entirely indifferent, certainly no longer attached to him. Now he was in Savage Wells, and she realized the wounds he’d left were still unhealed.
Cade was right; Joshua owed her an explanation. Perhaps knowing why he’d left would help her close that chapter in her life for good.
The sound of footsteps pulled her eyes to the staircase. He’d always been a handsome man, something that had turned her head the first time she’d met him. But he wasn’t as polished and refined as Gideon, and he certainly didn’t have the authoritative air and confident manner Cade had.
“Paisley, you came. I’ve been trying to decide all afternoon what to say to you.” He reached out as if to embrace her, but she stepped back.
“I’ll make it simple for you,” she said. “Just tell me the truth.”
Dinner was in full swing at the restaurant, which occupied the ground floor of the hotel. A late stage had stopped in town. If Paisley had still been working nights, this would have been a long one.
“Is there somewhere a bit more private?” Joshua echoed her exact thoughts.
“Let’s go for a walk.” They’d have a bit of privacy without being entirely alone. She preferred it that way.
They stepped out, and Joshua offered his arm. She didn’t accept. It was, perhaps, uncivil of her, but she was embarking on a potentially humiliating conversation. Manners could wait.
“Why didn’t you ever write to me?” Paisley never bothered beating about the bush.
“I did.”
“If you mean to begin with lies, then there’s no point—”
“I did write,” he insisted. “But you never wrote back. After a while, I assumed you’d changed your mind.”
She looked up at him fully. “Assuming any of that is true, why didn’t you come back to Abilene when you didn’t hear from me?”
He tucked his hands in his coat pockets as they walked. “I wanted to. I wanted to see you again, to finally bring you to Omaha as we’d planned.”
“Why didn’t you?”
They’d passed the telegraph and stagecoach office, then the barbershop. Paisley only vaguely noted their progress.
“There was no reason to if you weren’t writing to me,” he said.
He hadn’t heard from her, didn’t know what had happened, and, yet, couldn’t think of a reason to go back home? “You knew more people in Abilene than just me. Did you ever write to any of them to ask after me?” That seemed like a pretty minimal thing a man could do to reconnect with his fiancée.
Joshua began fiddling with his pocket watch, pulling it in and out of his vest pocket but never looking at it, and certainly not looking at her. “It was a…private problem,” he said. “I didn’t want to make things awkward for you.”
Being abandoned by a man every person of her acquaintance knew she was engaged to had been extremely awkward. It seemed the person he’d meant to spare was himself. What was a little discomfort if he’d really loved her?
They turned back once they’d passed Mrs. Carol’s shop, where Main Street gave way to the open expanse beyond the end of town. There were still too many unanswered questions for any sort of easiness between them.
“In hindsight, I can see that I didn’t try very hard,” he admitted.
“As it turned out,” she said, “there wasn’t much worth trying hard for.”
He stopped on a dime, facing her with a somber expression and pulled brows. “But we’re together again. Fate has given us a chance to try again, to make things right.”
The thought filled her with something very near dread. No, there would be no trying again. That was her past, and she was a different person now. She would likely always wonder about what went wrong between them, but it wasn’t important enough to her to be worth walking that path again.
“I hope, in a very neighborly way, that you are happy in Savage Wells,” she said. “But neighborly is all we will ever be, Joshua.”
“I’m not giving up so easily this time.”
She sighed inwardly. For someone who hadn’t wanted to make things “awkward” for her four years earlier, he seemed determined to do just that now.
Cade watched Paisley and Delancey walk down the road. The reunited couple weren’t holding hands. They weren’t even looking at each other.
“What do you think of Delancey?” Gideon asked, sitting on a chair nearby.
“I ain’t sure yet,” he answered. “There’s something I don’t like about him.”
“‘Something you don’t like’? That something wouldn’t happen to be their one-time engagement, would it?”
“Does it bother you?” After all, Gideon was more justified in disliking Joshua than Cade was.
Gideon shrugged it off, though. “It bothers me that he hurt her and that what he did makes her question everyone’s sincerity and trustworthiness. That part bothers me, certainly.”
An odd response, that. Cade tried to keep his own answer as casual as he could. “If you need to challenge him to a duel, I’ll stand as your second.”
“I’m from Washington, not the turn of the century,” Gideon said. “Besides, I figure you’ll have a shoot-out in the street with the man and take care of it for me.”
Cade watched the man sip his glass of water as if the woman he loved wasn’t being inconvenienced—or worse—by a lout. “That’s a rather yellow-bellied way of defending your woman.”
Gideon choked on his mouthful of water. “My woman? Paisley?”
“I know you’re not formally courting her,” Cade said, “but anyone with eyes can see there’s something there. You comfort her, put an arm around h
er. She talks and laughs with you like no one else. I don’t know the whole story, but I ain’t blind.”
Gideon started to laugh and then couldn’t seem to stop. “I’ve been wondering why you haven’t been making up sweet to her,” he said between chuckles. “I’m not blind, either, and it has been apparent for a while now that you were pretty far gone on her.”
Cade didn’t think he’d been that obvious. “I’m not a cad,” he said. A decent sort of man simply didn’t try to win the affections of a woman who was already being courted, not when the one doing the courting was his good friend.
“Not a cad, perhaps, but not the most discerning fellow, either. I’ve told you all along that I am very fond of Paisley and I care a great deal for her, but not in a courtship-and-romance kind of way.”
That didn’t make any sense. “How could you not be? You know her so well; you know how amazing she is.”
“I do,” Gideon admitted, then took another sip of water. He was clearly fighting a grin. “But I’m rather obligated to think well of her. After all, what would Granny Aisling say if I spoke ill of my cousin?”
“Your—Granny—” Cade’s mouth momentarily quit working while his brain attempted to sort out what Gideon had just said.
Gideon laughed, and, just as before, he didn’t seem able to stop. “You thought…we were…courting.”
“It was an understandable mistake. You’re obviously fond of each other, and very well acquainted.”
“We’re family.” Gideon shuddered even as he continued laughing. “That’s…disturbing.” He shook his head as if trying to clear away the thought.
Cade’s mind spun. “She’s your cousin?”
“Her late mother was my father’s cousin,” Gideon said. “So we’re second cousins once removed, or first cousins twice removed, I can never keep it straight. But it amounts to the same thing. She’s my cousin. A family member. A relative.” He shuddered again and made a noise of distaste, but his laughing grin took any insult out of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gideon shook his head. “Do you usually require a glance at the family Bible when making a new friend?”
Cade gave it a moment’s thought. There really hadn’t been anything in Paisley and Gideon’s interactions that couldn’t be explained as the closeness of family members. Cade had assumed a romance existed, but, now that he was looking at it with open eyes, the two never embraced, never gazed into each other’s eyes. They laughed and pricked at each other, but never in a flirtatious way.
“She’s rather like a sister to you, ain’t she?”
Gideon nodded. “Exactly like one, though I only met her in person for the first time when I arrived here. I’ve known her through family correspondence ever since we were children. Her father had heard through the family that I was a doctor looking for a place to set up a practice, and, since there wasn’t a man of medicine within hundreds of miles, he wrote to me asking if I’d consider coming out West. They’ve only ever been Cousin Barney and Cousin Paisley to me.”
Cade’s mind was beginning to accept his suddenly very different circumstances. “You truly aren’t—”
“If you ask me once more if I am courting my cousin, I will punch you in the face.”
Cade laughed out loud; he couldn’t help himself. It was such an out-of-character thing for the gentle doctor to say. “Truce,” he said. “She’s your family. I understand that now.”
“Now that we’ve straightened out that matter, Sheriff O’Brien, here’s your next question. Will you be clearing the field of Delancey by fair means or foul?”
“Both?” He could think of a few foul means of taking care of the nuisance.
“Either way, I’m behind you,” Gideon said. “Paisley deserves better than a man who ran out on her, and you’d best make certain she knows that.”
He planned to make very certain of that.
Cade put on his best shirt and cleanest trousers, took extra care with his razor, and set out for the Bells’ home. The whispers about town put Delancey at the Bells’ place nearly every night since Mr. Bell had returned home after convalescing at Gideon’s. It was a situation that needed looking into.
He didn’t think Paisley was foolish enough to allow Delancey back into her life fully. But he wasn’t entirely sure he had found his way back there yet, and it was time and gone he put his full effort into that.
He knocked at the Bells’ door. He hooked his hand near his holster. If Delancey answered the door…Well, Cade would prefer things get off on the proper footing. But it was Mr. Bell who opened the door.
“Good evening,” Cade greeted. “Is Paisley about?”
Mr. Bell nodded. Cade stepped inside. He set his hat on a hook near the door. Voices sounded from the parlor.
“I appreciate the gesture,” Paisley said, “but we don’t need you to bring us food.”
“The town talks often enough of your straitened circumstances,” Delancey replied.
Cade glanced through the threshold into the parlor. Paisley and Delancey faced each other near the low-burning fire. Delancey watched her with pulled brows. She looked more than a little put out with him.
“You are struggling,” Delancey said. “I make a decent wage; I can help you.”
That is the wrong way to go about it, Delancey. Prick her pride and she’ll fight you ever harder.
“We have not yet sunk to being a charity case,” Paisley said.
“But I’ve seen people in the town give you things. Food, supplies.”
Paisley pointed a warning finger at him. “They are our friends. They have that right.”
“But I am—”
“—little more than a stranger.”
To Mr. Bell, Cade quietly asked, “How long’ve they been arguing about this?”
Mr. Bell shook his head, vaguely. “I…” The words stopped, but his head shaking didn’t.
The man needed an escape. “Have you had dinner?”
“No.”
“Has Paisley made anything yet?”
“I think so.” He didn’t look at all certain.
“Go see if there’s food waiting in the kitchen,” Cade said.
“But, Paisley—”
He clapped a hand on Mr. Bell’s shoulder. “I’ll send Paisley in. You go eat.”
He took the excuse Cade offered. Now to deal with the one causing all the trouble.
Cade stepped into the parlor. Paisley and Delancey eyed one another from a safe distance. They put him firmly in mind of two dogs standing guard, neither willing to turn its back on the other.
“You are being irrational, Paisley,” Delancey said.
“Not a wise thing to say to a woman who’s armed,” Cade warned, casually entering the conversation.
They both startled a little, but quickly recovered.
Delancey eyed Cade’s gun belt then glanced back at Paisley’s. “Does everyone in Savage Wells walk around armed?”
“The ones that ain’t dead.”
Delancey wasn’t satisfied. “It’s not right for a woman to wear a gun.”
Cade shifted his gaze to Paisley. “Your pa’s wandered into the kitchen looking for some food.”
“I hadn’t meant to delay his meal. He grows more agitated when he’s hungry.” She stepped toward the doorway, toward Cade.
Delancey stopped her with a hand on her arm. Cade held his tongue.
“I’m being overbearing, aren’t I?” Delancey said.
“Yes, you are.” Paisley wasn’t one for mincing words.
“I’m sorry. It’s only that, seeing you again, after all that happened—” He held his hands up in a show of helplessness. “I’m stumbling about, I know, but—second chances don’t happen often. I don’t want to waste this one.”
“Fate has thrown us together again,” Paisley
said.
Cade’s heart dropped to his feet.
“But,” she continued, “that doesn’t mean this is a second chance.”
His heart climbed right back to its proper place.
“I don’t give up easily,” Delancey insisted.
“You gave up quite easily four years ago.”
There was the razor-tongued Paisley he loved.
“I hate to break up a good spat,” Cade jumped in, “but Mr. Bell’s likely to get antsy and try cooking something on his own.”
Paisley turned away from Delancey and crossed toward the door.
Cade stopped her as she reached his side. “I like a woman who wears a gun, no matter what some fellows might have to say about it.”
She smiled. Delancey hadn’t made her smile once that Cade had seen. She stepped out into the corridor and headed for the kitchen.
Delancey looked directly at Cade. His wasn’t so much an angry expression as a jealous one. “You seem to enjoy assuming the role of her champion.”
Cade hooked his thumb over his gun belt and slowly sized Delancey up. “She don’t need me fighting her battles, but I’ll keep an eye on anything—or anyone—who hurts her.”
“She’s in no danger from me,” Delancey said.
“History says otherwise.”
To his credit, Delancey’s regret appeared sincere. “I’m not one to repeat my mistakes.”
Cade held his gaze. “A great many people in this town care about her. We won’t allow you to cause her any pain.”
Delancey raised an eyebrow. “I get the impression you’re intending to emphasize the ‘I’ part of ‘we.’”
“Indeed.” Cade let that hang in the air between them.
Delancey squared his shoulders. “You don’t frighten me.”
“I should.”
Delancey didn’t respond, but simply turned toward the front door.
Quitting the field already?
Cade meant to make a slower departure. He’d taken time with his appearance, after all. It would be a shame to waste the effort. He pushed open the kitchen door.
The Sheriffs of Savage Wells Page 21
