Scandal at the Cahill Saloon

by Carol Arens

  As far as that went, neither did innocent little Cabe. Losing the only mother he’d ever known might scar him. That thought made him stop. He started to turn around…to forget the whole thing and go back. But in the end, blood was blood. Arden would want him to raise her son.

  A niggling voice in his head reminded him that, were that the case, she would have told him where she was. He wouldn’t have had to sleuth about, searching town after town, tracking Arden’s baby.

  It struck him that perhaps his reasons for taking Cabe from Leanna might not be as noble as he told himself. In the end, was he just trying to get his sister back through the boy?

  He stepped through the front door of Leanna’s Place prepared to do what he had to, but not thinking much of himself for doing it.

  The saloon was finally polished and shining. Carpets lay over gleaming wood floors, a piano sat beside a big fireplace that was filled with cut sunflowers. Bar stools, with cushions that matched the carpets, were placed before a long counter. A mirror on the mantelpiece reflected it from wall to wall. Poker tables took up most of the big room but there was space for dining tables near the piano and the fireplace. Chairs and couches had been scattered about the perimeter in arrangements that invited conversation.

  Leanna’s Place breathed elegance and welcome. The ladies ought to be proud of their hard work, smiling instead of sniffing and dabbing their eyes.

  Lucinda wasn’t sniffing, though. She paced from one end of the long room to the other, cursing Cahill Crossing and everyone in it.

  Leanna stood near a window that faced the street, sweeping glass off the floor.

  “Our new window will be here soon,” she said, while shoving a shard of glass with the toe of her boot. “It’s prettier than this one, anyway. It’s a big stained-glass picture of a pasture and grazing horses.”

  “What’s this?” Cleve must have bellowed because the women who hadn’t noticed him enter jumped.

  “Cleve!” Leanna leaned her broom against the wall and hurried toward him. She tugged the bow at the back of her apron, straightened it. She wiped her hands on the front. “It’s good to see a friendly face.”

  “What happened here?”

  “Someone threw a rock through our window,” Lucinda spat. “A second sooner and it would have hit Miss Leanna.”

  Cleve closed his eyes. He sucked in a clammy breath. If Leanna chose to expose herself to ridicule for no good reason that he could figure out, that was her choice.

  But physical danger? That was all the more reason to take his sister’s child and get out of this town. A pretty little ranch seemed better by the moment.

  Why couldn’t he banish that nagging voice in his mind? It wasn’t his fault that Leanna would be left brokenhearted in a place that reviled her.

  Still, whatever decisions she’d made in her life had nothing to do with him. If those decisions put her in danger, he wasn’t her brother or her husband…hell, he wasn’t even her lover.

  A man who had never even kissed a woman had no obligation to act as her protector. He had one obligation and he’d come to take care of that.

  “Is there someplace we can talk privately?” He needed to settle this and in a hurry, before he got caught in the dewy blue glow of her eyes and ignored, once again, the reason he had come.

  “I’ve only got a moment.” She walked before him out of the back door, then closed it behind them. “I promised Cabe we’d spend the whole day together. Maybe you’d like to come riding with us?”

  That careless thinking alone was reason for him to take the boy. Where was the woman’s common sense? Riding alone after the threat she had just received?

  “No, I—” All of a sudden his tongue wouldn’t work. It lay against the roof of his mouth thick as a wadded-up playing card. “It’s time to settle that business I’ve been putting off.”

  “It’s high time. I’m sure it can’t possibly be as dour as the expression on your face.”

  She smiled at him and his heart shot straight to his gut. She had no idea that he was about to leave her bereft.

  It would be easier if he didn’t have to discuss it right here in the very spot he had first seen her weeping her heart out. He’d thought then that she looked like an angel.

  It turned out that she was an angel…and a mystery.

  What other woman would sacrifice her reputation to be a mother to an orphan and a friend to the fallen? He couldn’t think of a single damn one.

  “What is it, Cleve?”

  She looked up at him with damp ringlets sticking to her forehead and temples. Sweat moistened her upper lip and glistened on her neck. Pink lace stretched across her bosom, rising and falling with her breathing.

  “I’ve been meaning to speak with you.... There’s something…I… It’s about—”

  Oh, hell and damn!

  He wrapped both hands around her snip of a waist and lifted her. He drew her against his chest. Her breathing, quick and fast, matched his.

  He kissed her deeply, thoroughly and, he feared, with his heart.

  There! Now, he had the right to protect her.

  He set her down and watched her eyes slowly open. It was like the sun rising on a bright clear morning. Like an old dream dying but a new one on the rise.

  “I’m a gambler. I’m good at it.” He let his hands linger on her waist because something about it felt right. “The thing I’ve been meaning to talk to you about is a job. I’d like you to hire me.”

  Chapter Five

  Leanna sat alone at a poker table wearing her favorite gown. This pink dress of fine silk had earned her a bucket load of tips over the past couple of years. It was seductive enough to keep a gentleman’s attention not wholly on his game while modest enough that he wasn’t fully aware why.

  She shuffled a deck of cards, then shuffled them again. It would be nice to blame the fact that she had only one customer on the persistent drizzle that had been falling all day, but the establishments on the other side of the tracks were as busy as fleas on a dog.

  Her one patron, the young man who had delivered her goods from the train depot, was well into his fourth beer and a deep conversation with Massie. Even if the room were alive with gaiety and music he would be too smitten to notice.

  At least Hearts for Harlots was a success. It was plain as a penny that Massie would soon be returning home with a husband and a bright, shiny ring to lead the way.

  It was for the best, really, that the opening of Leanna’s Place was off to a slow start. Her mind wasn’t as sharp as it ought to be this evening.

  It hadn’t been for a couple of nights. The daytime hours passed easily enough, full of things to keep her mind focused. But when the sun set, so did sound thinking.

  As soon as Cleve arrived for work, moths flipped about in her belly, the same as they battered the lamps hanging on the porch.

  Every time he looked at her, and it was often, she felt his kiss warm her lips all over again.

  The blush heating her cheeks was not the worldly image she sought to portray. How was she to play the part of a world-wise saloon keeper when it wasn’t only her mouth growing warm when he glanced at her with a secret and a smile.

  She really ought to stop reliving that kiss in her mind, nurturing and polishing it as though it were a gold nugget.

  Cleve had wanted a job, and had been very persuasive in applying for it. She ought to leave what had happened between them as simply that. A simple kiss, a onetime kiss.

  The man was a flirt to the bone, she understood that, and still she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was quite a bit more to the kiss than “Won’t you hire me?”

  In case the kiss hadn’t been enough to sway her, he had pointed out that Leanna’s Place needed a man for the sake of the ladies. He would watch over them in ways she might not be able to.

  He’d taken on the role of champion to her girls. Maybe that is what made her feel so tenderly toward him, that made her long to kiss him again.

  Just now Clev
e leaned against the frame of the open front door with his arms folded across his chest, gazing out at the drippy night. His black suit and white shirt indicated that he was ready for business. His necktie was knotted in a bow of the latest fashion and his boots reflected the light of the lanterns hanging on each side of the door.

  He looked polished, suave, a professional gambler to the core.

  She and Cleve were alike in some ways. They weren’t fully what they appeared to be. How many women knew that beneath the natty clothing his muscles were firm and warm? How many knew that one of his kisses could melt the most tightly bound corset strings? How many guessed that the quick-fingered man of cards had an honest heart and that he cared for the plight of helpless women?

  She didn’t want to guess how many women knew those things, but she knew them and they touched her. Cleve Holden was quickly winning a piece of her heart.

  Cleve straightened away from the door, then crossed the room. He pulled out a chair at her poker table and sat down.

  “It’s early,” he said. “Things are bound to liven up.”

  “What do you think of the young man with Massie?”

  Cleve plucked the cards from her fingers. He shot her the smile where one side of his mouth lifted slightly higher than the other and a pair of creases flashed in his cheek. “Let’s draw high card to see who gets to have a word with him.”

  He shuffled the deck, then set the cards between them.

  Leanna drew a jack of spades; Cleve claimed to have picked a queen of hearts.

  “I’ll catch him on his way out.” Cleve shuffled again. “One more round?”

  “What are we playing for?” She drew a card and left it facedown on the table.

  “I draw high, you go riding with me.”

  “And if I drew high?”

  “I go riding with you.”

  Leanna turned over the ace of clubs.

  Somehow, Cleve pulled out the ace of diamonds.

  “Imagine that?” he said with a lift of one brow.

  “We go riding with each other,” she answered with her mind full of visions of a day alone with Cleve.

  “You have a lovely blush.”

  “I don’t…” How could she? She had never been the blushing type before.

  She wasn’t able to argue against the telltale color in her cheeks because in that instant customers walked into the saloon.

  Leanna stood. She tweaked the silk gathers of her skirt, then walked forward to welcome Willem Van Slyck, Cahill Crossing’s banker.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Lucinda and Cassie taking note of how the greeting was performed. Massie looked away from her young man with a sigh.

  Leanna was more than half-surprised to see the banker. She had invited him last week when she’d opened the account for Leanna’s Place, but to Van Slyck, social appearances meant a great deal.

  The banker was tall, like his son, Preston. At one time he would have had Preston’s good looks but the years had dimmed them. His graying hair, neatly trimmed along with his mustache and beard, announced his age, but it was the shadows and puffiness under his eyes that hinted of a soft, indulgent life. Still, his suit, precisely pressed, was the height of fashion.

  The senior Van Slyck had been unmarried for as long as she could remember. There had been rumors of a wife who had run out on him. The story was, the woman had returned for the instant of time it took to leave the infant Preston on his doorstep.

  Cleve shook the banker’s hand and invited him to a game of cards. Van Slyck declined, saying that he hadn’t come to gamble but to spend a quiet evening in a place that wasn’t tainted by loose women and dodgy dealings.

  A few moments later, Lucas Burnett, the owner of a ranch that bordered the 4C, came in combing away raindrops from his black hair with his fingers. He nodded a greeting to her, then to Cleve. He strode toward the bar.

  The next patron to come through the door was another neighbor of the 4C—Don Fitzgerald.

  “Leanna?” He made to pat her shoulder like she was still the little girl who lived next door. Seeing her shoulder bare, he hesitated, then nodded his head instead. “Fine place. Good luck with it.”

  At the bar, Fitzgerald had a short conversation with Lucas Burnett. He shook Burnett’s hand, took the drink he had ordered, then went to sit with Willem Van Slyck.

  The rancher was a rugged-looking man, even in his evening clothes. He wore his mustache full and long enough to curl at the tips. He had sharp eyes that looked as though they had never crinkled in humor.

  From his stool at the bar, Burnett watched his neighbor chat with the banker. He finished his drink and went out the front door.

  An hour later Arthur Slocum, Cahill’s longtime lawyer, joined Willem and Don.

  Things were looking up. If men of their social standing spread the word that Leanna’s Place was not a viper’s nest, perhaps the wives of other respectable citizens would allow their husbands a night out.

  Several customers came and went. The last three were not who she had hoped for.

  Preston swaggered through the open door with a woman squeezed between his ribs and underarm. Ira and Johny Fitzgerald strolled in behind him. Like their fathers, Preston and the Fitzgerald boys seemed an unlikely alliance.

  While Preston appeared as well-heeled as Willem, Ira and Johny looked as wild as a pair of tumbleweeds.

  All three of them were trouble. Preston only looked more civilized, which, she supposed, made him all the more dangerous.

  “Good evening, Father.” It was early and already Preston’s words were slightly slurred.

  Willem shot his son a frown. “That woman doesn’t belong here, Preston. If you want to stay you’ll have to send her back.”

  Ira Fitzgerald bumped the girl with his hip and ogled her mostly exposed bosom with pale blue eyes.

  “Aggie is the reason we’re here.” Preston slashed a handsome smile at the clearly frightened woman. “It seems that Miss Cahill has been troubling the ladies across the way. Filling their heads with hopes, dreams…lies. Isn’t that right, Aggie?”

  Johny Fitzgerald spun Aggie out from under Preston’s arm. He pinched her breast.

  “Whores only dream of men and money, isn’t that right, Ag?”

  “That’s right, Johny.” Aggie stared at the floor.

  “Don’t disgrace me, Preston. You’re drunk.” Willem scowled at his offspring.

  “Just a little, Father. Never fear, we’ll be on our way as soon as Miss Cahill hears what Aggie came to say.”

  “You mean what you dragged her here to say.” Leanna was trying her best not to make an enemy of Preston, but poor Aggie was frightened. “Aggie, you don’t have to leave with them.”

  “Say your piece, Ag.” Johny patted her on the rear.

  “Miss Cahill,” she murmured. “I know you mean well, but we don’t want you making trouble. I like what I do, the men and the money. Just stay away, that’s what I came to say.”

  Flanked on one side by Preston, Johny on the other and Ira at her back, Aggie spun away and pushed through the men toward the door.

  Her escape was blocked by Cleve, who filled the doorway, his legs braced. He caught her by the upper arms and stared down at her.

  “Miss Aggie, don’t go with them,” he said in a low, firm voice. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “I’m safe with the boys.” Leanna saw Aggie’s eyes glisten looking up at Cleve. “They take real good care of all the girls.”

  She wrenched out of Cleve’s grip and dashed into the night. Preston, Johny and Ira followed, laughing.

  “We’ve got us some wild sons, Willem,” Don said, his voice carrying across the room. He twirled his mustache and propped his boots on a table.

  “You proud of that?” Willem waved to Massie, ordering another drink. “I’ll be relieved when Preston learns to act like a man.”

  “A man like you?” Don laughed low in his chest and swirled the whiskey in his glass.

  The next morning, summer
was at its most well behaved. Not too hot or windy or too extreme of anything, except beauty.

  Weather-wise, it was a perfect day to go riding with Cleve, but a storm brewed in her belly.

  The confrontation that she had dreaded for two years was coming upon her before she had emotionally prepared for it.

  Bowie had informed her only an hour ago that Quin was leaving town to visit his new wife’s estate in the East. If Leanna wanted to resolve her estrangement with her brother, it would have to be now.

  For the better part of an hour poor Cleve rode beside her, probably wondering why she was so distracted.

  In the end, she told him about Quin. How, growing up, he had been her protector, her champion against one and all, only to have their bond shattered on that horrible, miserable day of her parents’ funeral.

  Cleve admitted that he understood shattered bonds.

  A short time later, crossing the yard of the home she had grown up in, her knees felt like jelly. Cleve walked close to her. It was silly, but it almost felt as if he had taken on the role that Quin had abandoned.

  “Even though Mama is in the family plot, I see her everywhere, Cleve.” She clasped his hand and felt his strength flow into her.

  “When I left the homestead—” Cleve squeezed back “—I thought I saw my mother weeping. I can understand your brother wanting to hold it all together.”

  “I wonder if he still hates me.”

  “If you are Leanna Cahill, he never hated you.”

  Leanna and Cleve turned toward the voice coming from behind them.

  A beautiful woman with pretty chestnut-colored hair and clear green eyes hurried forward wearing a stylish traveling gown. She kicked the skirt, then snagged the hem up in her fingers. She appeared annoyed that the pretty thing got in the way of her quick firm steps.

  “You must be my sister-in-law,” the woman said. “The rumors I’ve heard of your beauty are all true.”

  No doubt she’d heard many more rumors than that. Quin’s wife must be a rare woman for not insulting her on the spot.

  “I’m Leanna and this is Cleve Holden. You have to be Mrs. Cahill.” Mama’s name, she thought with an ache in her heart.