by Carol Arens
Sitting on a quilt with her back against a tree trunk, she watched Cleve give each of the boys a fishing rod that he had fashioned from willow reeds. Strings tied to the ends of the reeds dangled in the water.
Melvin looked intent on listening to the instructions Cleve was giving on how to catch a fish. Cabe industriously clutched his willow pole in his fist and jabbered at it.
Cleve sat down on the stream bank with Melvin beside him and Cabe between his bent knees. No one caught a fish but that didn’t seem to ruin any of the fun.
After a while Cabe drifted to sleep and dropped his mangled pole in the water. Cleve carried him back to the quilt and sat down beside her, shoulder to shoulder. He cradled Cabe close to his chest.
“I’ll take him.” She reached over but Cleve shook his head.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to hold him.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t mind. She supposed she ought to. It might not be wise for Cleve to form bonds with her Boodle. When the day came that he moved on, she didn’t want her son’s heart broken.
If she married him, though, he wouldn’t move on. The sneaky thought poked at her mind, disturbing in its seduction.
“You’re good with children.” It was only fair to admit the truth.
“I used to be one.”
“Everyone used to be one.” But there was something about the way Cleve looked at her son. There was tenderness in the way he stroked the dark, sweat-dampened hair from Boodle’s forehead.
Leanna glanced toward the stream to check on Melvin. He sat with his bare toes in the water and the fishing pole gripped in both fists.
“Is there even a hook on that line?” she asked.
“The bait’s just tied to it.” Cleve grinned at her. “Today we’re fishing for nibbles.”
Leanna closed her eyes, listening to the rush of the stream and the whisper of the grass. Just above her a bird hopped from branch to branch, twittering. Kisses of sunshine and shade crossed her face. Some moments should never end.
“What is it that your brother has you fishing for?”
Her lovely moment ended like a bucket of rainwater poured over her head.
“You spied on us last night?”
“Not on purpose, and I didn’t hear it all, but enough to know that you could be in danger.”
How, she wondered, did one accidentally spy on someone? She didn’t ask because there was no point in casting a shadow on a lovely day.
“If you heard that,” she said, sweet as sugar and spice, “then you know that I promised my brother that I would be careful.”
“You think that Bowie walked away believing that promise?”
“Maybe not. Thanks to you he walked away believing I was about to become an honest woman.”
Cleve adjusted Cabe in his arms. He sniffed her son’s hair and kissed his round baby cheek, something a real father would do.
At that second Melvin jumped up. “I got a nibble, Mr. Holden! I got one!”
“Good work, son. Tie on more bait. See if you can get another.”
“Yes, sir!” Melvin sat down and stuck his feet back in the water.
“Leanna, I’ve heard the rumors. Won’t you tell me what really happened to your folks?”
“We’re cursed, the whole lot of us. Ma and Pa killed, Quin nearly. And I’ve brought unbearable shame on the family by becoming a mother without a wedding ring.”
“It is a tragedy about your folks. It was a blessing that Quin wasn’t killed. This little fellow—” Cleve gazed down and smiled at the peaceful sleeping face “—is a miracle. As I see it, there is no curse.”
Had Cleve kissed and wooed her for hours on end he could not have pressed his suit better. For just an instant she wondered if it might be possible to marry him.
It wouldn’t, she knew that, but what if…
“Tell me your secrets, Leanna.” He touched the hand that she had unthinkingly balled into a fist. “Let me help.”
His fingers, warm and strong, stroked her knuckles. She didn’t mean to, but she relaxed. Somehow, her head ended up leaning on his shoulder without her noticing it happen. Maybe he leaned in, maybe she did, but neither of them leaned away.
“My parents were coming home from Elk Grove when they died. I’m sure you know that from the gossip.”
Cleve nodded; he nuzzled the top of her head with his cheek. Suddenly the whole awful story poured from her. She told him about the shock of the news and the horror of seeing her parents’ bodies in the morgue in Elk Grove.
Moisture dampened her cheeks while she told him about the fight that had split the family for two years and how they were all coming back since Quin had discovered that their parents had been murdered. All but Chance, who would be along as soon as he got the news.
She wiped her cheeks dry. “Seems like I never run out of tears. Anyway, lately, anyone who might know something about what happened ends up dead. The last fellow, Saul Bream, a friend of Bowie’s girl, Merritt, lingered long enough to mention a name.”
“Van Slyck,” Cleve said. “I heard your brother say that.”
“Bowie wants me to listen in on Willem, since he comes to our place regularly.”
“And that’s all you’ll do?”
“Of course,” she said.
He tipped his head back, peering closely at her face.
“There’s no need to frown like that.”
“I wouldn’t if I believed you.” His expression only deepened. “Anything besides listening you leave to me.”
“You’re my employee, Cleve. I won’t ask you to be involved in my family’s troubles.”
“You can’t leave me out of them, either. Just as soon as you marry me they will be my troubles, too.”
“You know very well I’m not going to marry you.” She wasn’t going to kiss him, either, but before her head could object…she leaned over and did.
She wished she hadn’t sighed out loud. If only she could taste Cleve without her heart going into a flutter.
A woman ought to be able to appreciate the flavor of a man without succumbing to him.
But there were fluttery wings tickling her heart and she hadn’t a clue what to do about them.
“Many marriages start with less than this,” Cleve murmured.
“I shouldn’t marry you, Cleve.” The sigh of hesitation in her voice wouldn’t have happened had Boodle not stirred in his sleep, reached up a chubby hand and touched Cleve’s nose.
“Fis,” the sleepy young voice mumbled.
When Cleve kissed the chubby fist near his lips, it was as though he kissed her, too.
It would take more willpower than she had not to succumb to that tender seduction.
Leanna stared at the moon-bright night through the saloon’s new stained-glass window. She didn’t see much but Cleve’s reflection in it, sitting at his table and dealing cards.
He spoke to his lone customer. Given that she stared at a reflected image, she was able to watch his lips grin, twitch in suppressed humor, then narrow in concentration, for quite some time without anyone knowing what she was about.
She couldn’t recall ever seeing a man with a more appealing mouth.
She didn’t want to, but she did like kissing Cleve. Three nights after the picnic she still daydreamed of the way he had captivated her after her last denial of his proposal.
He’d set Cabe down on the grass, glanced at Melvin, who had fallen asleep, pole in hand beside the stream, then turned his complete attention on her.
His first move of seduction had been with his eyes. Before his lips ever touched hers he’d looked at her long and hard. Long enough that he must have sensed that her refusal was not as firm as it had first been.
The kiss was different than any that had come before. Not playful or provocative, this one was intensely possessive. She would be his, it said, and nothing that she could do or say would change that.
He was a huntsman, and she his prey. He was pursuit and she…surrender.
The heat of her
response, the way her bones melted to goopy mush, was impossible to deny. The grin he shot her when she finally managed to open her heavy lids told her that he had noticed.
What, she wondered while she tapped one finger on the glass, became of marriages that were based upon pleasures of the flesh? Maybe she ought to consider—
“Miss Cahill?”
“Yes, Mr. Webber?” Leanna said, spinning about with her cheeks flaming to face Massie’s beau.
“I’ve brought a note for you from Miss Aggie.”
He handed her a piece of paper that looked worn from repeated folding.
“I just want you to know that I wasn’t over there for any wrong reason. I’m a changed man, thanks to Miss Massie.”
“I’m pleased to hear that.” She opened the note. “How did Miss Aggie seem?”
“Scared, I reckon. Sick, too.” Massie’s beau looked at the floor. He scuffed his toe against the wood. “I used to be one of her regular customers, before Massie, that is. Aggie always did seem a timid thing, but now, well, I couldn’t help but read what she wrote. She needs help, Miss Cahill, and in a hurry.”
Leanna scanned the note. Sick and frightened summed it up.
“Thank you, Mr. Webber,” she said before she hurried toward Cleve, dealing cards to a trio of men.
“Mr. Holden,” she said. “May I have a word with you?”
“Of course, Miss Cahill.” Cleve stood and waved his hand at Lucinda, the signal that a change in dealers was needed.
Leanna hurried ahead of Cleve toward the back porch. Striding close behind her, he shut the back door.
“I need your help, Cleve.” She handed him the note. “You remember Aggie? She’s ready to come to Leanna’s Place but I think she is in danger.”
“I’ll go get her.”
“Not without me.”
“I’d argue that, if we had more time.”
“I think I might love you.” Leanna stood on her toes and hugged his neck.
She might love Cleve. She’d uttered that casually…in jest, but once said, the words hit her as the truth.
There was no time to dwell on that right now. She’d consider the startling consequences of that notion later.
Cleve snatched her hand. He kissed her knuckles, then kept hold of her while they ran out the back door toward the railroad tracks.
Cleve gripped Leanna’s hand, setting a fast pace. At the outset, he’d worried that her silk skirt and dainty shoes might slow her down.
He needn’t have been concerned. With her fancy hem tucked into the crook of her arm she skimmed the distance between the tracks and the bad part of town at the pace he set.
She looked like an angel doing it, too. Moonlight glinted in her dark hair and reflected in the gold threads of her dress. He imagined trumpets announcing her advance on Hell’s Corner Saloon.
He wouldn’t want to be the fellow who tried to keep her from retrieving Aggie.
“It’s that last place on the end.” Leanna stopped to catch her breath.
She pointed to a run-down-looking building. Lanterns with red glass hung from the eves of the porch, sending an odd glow onto the road. The open front doors spilled noise into the night and masked the natural sounds of crickets and frogs. A drunk stumbled outside, glanced at them, then undid his trousers to urinate where he stood.
Cleve nearly vomited. Had his sister worked in a place like this? Had she served such a man? He’d make sure Aggie made it out of here if it cost him his last breath. He hadn’t been able to save his sister, but maybe this woman would get a second chance.
“It goes against the grain, not to go bursting inside and carry Aggie away in front of their noses,” he grumbled. “But I reckon we ought to go about it more quietly.”
Leanna nodded. “Aggie’s note said she is on the second floor, the corner window around the back. Maybe there’s a back stairwell.”
There was a back stairwell. As luck would have it, the alley door leading to it stood open. The door swayed back and forth in the breeze, squealing on its hinges.
“Stay behind me,” he whispered.
In the deep shadow of the hall he felt her fingers burrow into his coat sleeve.
Five steps down the hallway, he stopped abruptly. A voice carried from behind a half-closed door to the right.
“Preston,” Leanna mouthed close to his ear. He frowned, recognizing that voice. The pair of times he’d encountered the man was a pair too many.
“Look here, Van Slyck,” another voice said. “You’re here to collect protection money? Well, I say, do some protecting.”
“You are still in business,” Preston’s voice said with its usual arrogance.
“No thanks to the Cahill woman, putting ideas into the whores’ heads. If Aggie wasn’t locked in her room, she’d light out on me in a second, and some of the others with her. I make most of my money off the whores.”
“Make an example of her.”
Cleve felt Leanna’s quick intake of breath.
“I beat her yesterday,” the voice said. “I do it again too soon and she won’t do me any good. The customers don’t take to sickly women.”
Leanna nodded, apparently agreeing with the curse he’d just blistered her ear with.
“Something’s got to be done about that woman, Van Slyck.”
“Don’t forget who her brother is. You want to draw the attention of Marshal Cahill?”
“What about that kid of hers? That would be her weak spot, sure.”
Leanna lurched toward the room but he restrained her. It was only concern for her safety that kept him from smashing the door wide and pounding the speaker to the floor.
“You are one evil bastard. The kid is just a baby,” Preston said, but he laughed.
Cleve nodded his head toward the swinging back door, grateful that the squeal of the hinges covered the sound of their footsteps.
Once outside, he spun Leanna about to face him, gripping her upper arms. “Marry me or don’t. Either way, I won’t let anything happen to your son.”
“I believe that, Cleve.” He felt the tremor of anger running through her body. “Let’s hurry and get Aggie out of here.”
He scanned the back of the building. It was a flat surface with no upstairs porch to allow easy access to Aggie’s room.
“There’s only one way to get in there,” Leanna whispered. “I’ll stand on your shoulders, get inside, then hand her down to you.”
“Too risky.” He took her chin in his fingers and stared hard at her. “I won’t have you up there alone.”
“When I asked for your help I didn’t put you in charge.”
“Back at the saloon, you are in charge. I’ll do every damn thing you tell me to. Right now you’ll do what I say.”
“Well, then, what do you say?” She glanced about as though daring him to find a way up to the room.
“There’s a ladder over there behind the café.” He pointed to where it lay in a trash pile not fifty feet away. “Wait here.”
He returned a moment later with a ladder tall enough to reach the window but he wasn’t certain it would hold his weight, let alone Aggie’s, on the trip down. He set the spindly thing in front of the window and climbed up.
He felt the ladder’s balance shift with the weight of Leanna coming up behind. He didn’t have time to warn her to get down and it wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. He needed to get Aggie away from here before someone decided to check on her, or before a client who didn’t care that she was bruised and battered paid for her.
He reached the window. He tried to shove it up.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Leanna asked from near his knee.
“Window’s nailed in place.” He glanced down. “There’s an opening but it’s too small for me to get through.”
“I can get in.” She shimmied up beside him, then squeezed through the crack.
Hell. He’d have held her back instead of helping her through had he not gotten a glimpse
of the woman on the bed.
Feeling as useless as a bet against four aces, Cleve kept watch through the window.
Aggie lay on a stained mattress with her knees drawn to her chin, shivering in nothing but a thin, worn shift. Her shoulder looked purple, swelling where it must have been punched. Her cheek looked worse.
When Leanna touched her she recoiled with her fists in front of her face. A trickle of blood dripped from her lip.
“It’s Leanna Cahill, Aggie.” Leanna bent beside the bed, speaking in soft tones. “Mr. Holden and I have come for you.”
“Oh, no. It isn’t safe.” She sat up with a groan. “You’ve got to go before he hears you.”
“Can you make it to the window? Mr. Holden will carry you the rest of the way.”
“What’s going on in there, Aggie?” a voice said from the far side of the door. “Who you talking to?”
“To myself, is all.” Leanna helped Aggie to her feet, with an arm around her waist to hold her upright. Too slowly, Aggie limped toward the window. “Just like before.”
“Your papa ain’t comin’. Might as well quit your blubberin’.” Floorboards creaked as though the man had stood up from a chair. “I don’t believe you’re talking to your dead daddy, no how. Now, where’d I put them keys?”
Heavy footsteps thumped down the hall, growing fainter as the man neared the stairs that would lead down to the saloon.
“Come on, Aggie,” Cleve said, reaching for her and easing her out of the window slot. “I’ve got you now.”
“Hurry! I hear the guard coming back.” Leanna eased out of the opening bottom first with her legs dangling out of the window. She scrambled backward but her skirt caught on a splinter. She tugged hard but the splinter held to the silk like it was stitched. “He’s turning the key in the lock! Get Aggie out of here!”
Get Aggie out of here? Hell would bloom spring flowers before he’d leave Leanna to the guard.
He scrambled down the ladder, two rungs at a time, then set Aggie on the ground.
“Well, now, what do we have here?” He heard the guard laugh in a disgusting way. “Miss Aggie’s replacement?”
Racing back up the ladder, the second rung cracked under his boot. He made a leap. The forth rung held.
