by Carol Arens
“Oh! A bank robber?”
“Where is the brain behind that pretty face?” Preston muttered, then louder said, “Don’t worry yourself, sweet. Bank robbers come during bank hours so that someone is there to open the safe.”
“If nobody’s there, come back to bed,” Lilly Mae’s voice whined. “It’s getting cold…and lonely.”
“Better watch out, Father,” Preston murmured, but being only a couple feet away his voice carried around the corner of the building as clear as a ringing bell. “Might be that someone’s scratching for your secrets.”
Cleve ushered Leanna into the closet of the saloon’s back room and slammed the door. He pressed her against the wall between a broom and a mop. A pail hanging on a hook clattered when his elbow knocked it.
Darkness so complete that it prevented him from seeing his wife’s expression wrapped them up. At least he could pretend that she was intimidated by his temper and half-sorry for disobeying him.
Her breathing came quick. Her cheeks, secured between his palms, flushed warm with excitement.
“Willem has secrets!” Her voice tickled his face. He wanted to make love to her, and badly, but first she had to understand that she could not put herself in danger the way she had.
“Everyone does. His secrets might not have anything to do with your parents.” He slid his hands down her neck to grip her shoulders where her gown sagged off of them.
“If you believe that, why were you there?”
His wife’s flesh felt like velvet beneath his thumbs. Almost, but not quite, against his will, he stroked her skin from collarbone to breastbone.
“Because I’m your husband and since I forbade you to break into the bank I had to do it myself.”
“As sweet as that was, you can’t forbid me.”
He could damn well try. “What was that you promised in our marriage vows? As I recall, it was…to obey?”
“Really, Cleve.” Heaven help him if she hadn’t just chuckled under her breath. “No one means that. It’s just something old and pretty to say. It’s tradition.”
He felt her hands reach down to touch him through his trousers. He dug deep for the force of will to make it through this lecture with his pants on.
“Here is my tradition—when I marry a woman, she is mine to protect and I can’t do it if she goes off willy-nilly whenever she wants to.”
“You’ve never been married before. You can’t have a tradition already.” There went button number one on his fly.
“Leanna, are you trying to drive me insane?”
“I’m only trying to find out what happened to Mama and Papa.”
“And I will help you with that, I promise, but you have got to promise me that you won’t put yourself in dangerous situations.”
There went the rest of the buttons. He could have refastened them, but didn’t.
“I promise I won’t put myself in danger…intentionally.”
“You’ll be the death of me, love.”
Since that was as much of a promise as he was going to get he gripped her silk skirt in his fists and gathered it up inch by inch. He nipped her shoulder. A shiver pebbled her flesh so he blew on it, whispering her name, to warm and smooth the chill.
“I think you care for me.” Her head tipped back against the wall and he nibbled his way up her throat.
“You know I do.”
“I think you love me.”
He’d give his life for her…in a heartbeat. Just this second, though, with her fingers stroking him, scrambling his brain, he couldn’t ponder on what that might mean.
Chapter Eleven
Leanna lifted the lace doily on her dresser top and peered under it. The pink teacup sitting between her brush and her comb was empty. It should have contained the gold bracelet that Chance had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
The one that she had been wearing last night.
She searched the floor around the dresser, then under the bed. On hands and knees, she ran her fingers against the nap of the rug in the middle of the room.
“Cleve, wake up.”
She glanced at the bed where Cleve’s bare self lay with the embroidered coverlet across his hips and one finely muscled leg on top of it. Midmorning sunlight pierced the lace curtain and cast a rose-and-lattice pattern across his face.
He blinked one eye open, then patted the mattress. “It can’t be more than seven o’clock. Take off that corset, Mrs. Holden, and come back to bed.”
“Don’t tempt me. I’m taking the ladies to the general store this morning. Besides, it’s nearly nine.”
Leanna stood. She crossed to the armoire scanning the floor while she walked. She pulled out a fresh petticoat and wriggled it over her hips.
“Don’t torture me.” Cleve sat up, setting his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his sleepy-looking face between his palms.
Two hundred pounds of muscled male, speckled with shadow roses from the curtain, beckoned her.
“We worked late last night.” He arched his brows and flipped back the coverlet. “The ladies are probably asleep.”
“The boys won’t be.” Leanna shook her head. “We might have a problem.”
She drew a simple but well-made plaid skirt over her head and buttoned it at her waist.
“The very last thing that you and I have is a problem.” Cleve shot her a grin. He stood.
Well, he was right, of course, about that. They had made love into the wee hours of the morning, and still, here he was striding toward her, his torture evident.
She drew her arms through the sleeves of a demure white blouse and buttoned it to the chin.
“Sometime last night, I lost my bracelet.”
“I suspect we’ll find it in the broom closet.” He stood in front of her with his hands on her shoulders. He dipped his head and brushed the tip of his nose to hers. “Don’t worry.”
“I wouldn’t, if it didn’t have my initials on it.”
Cleve reached behind her and yanked a shirt and pants out of the armoire. “I’ll go back to the bank and have a look.”
“Be careful, Cleve.”
He kissed her while shoving his right arm through his shirtsleeve. “I will if you will.”
“Seriously, what if Preston found it?”
Leanna turned toward the mirror to twist her hair in a bun and secured it with a pair of combs.
“Something tells me I haven’t finished giving Van Slyck what he has coming to him.”
Her hand clenched reaching for her bonnet.
Luckily, Cleve dashed out of the bedroom door without noticing that her fingers shook ever so slightly when she placed the hat on her head and plunged the hatpin home.
“I’m feeling a bit poorly to go out,” Aggie mumbled.
“Nonsense, girl.” Dorothy straightened Aggie's shoulders and pinched her chin between her fingers. “It’s time you quit your moping. We’ve all been where you are. If Miss Leanna says we need to practice decorum at the general store, that is what we will do.”
“Who knows? Along the way some handsome prince…or farmer might sweep us off our feet.” Cassie pressed her fingers to her modestly covered bosom and sighed. Her blue eyes stared past the stained-glass window of the saloon as though she could see him waiting for her to come outside.
“You better get your head out of the clouds, miss, if you don’t want to end up back where you started.” Lucinda tugged at her starched collar.
“It happened for Massie.”
Leanna bent over to pick up Cabe, smiling because it had happened for her, too. She would not have dreamed it possible, but her mind was forever filled with pictures of her naked prince, who admired her to no end.
“No one is going back to where they came from,” Leanna pointed out. “And if we don’t happen along any princes we will at least get some peppermint candy.”
“Cand!” Cabe clapped his chubby hands.
The walk from Leanna’s Place to the general store was short and much too direc
t. The weather this morning was a step away from heaven, with one foot still in summer and the other inching toward autumn.
Even though some of them were not comfortable with it, she led her students on a stroll about Town Square, then back toward the road to Fort Ridge and the general store. She felt like a mother hen herding her chicks through the hazards of the barnyard.
To Cassie’s clear disappointment not a single farmer showed his princely face.
A few folks gawked openly, but surprisingly, a few more merely ignored them.
Doc Lewis crossed the square to greet them, bless his soul. The ghost of a smile shadowed Aggie’s eyes. Well, a prince had shown up, after all.
A moment after Doc Lewis crossed back to the other side of the street, Leanna sensed malice aimed smack between her shoulder blades.
This sensation was different from the one she normally felt in town. Chances are it was Preston peeking from behind corners.
Leanna shook off the uncomfortable feeling. There was nothing to be done about it. If he knew that she had tried to break into the bank, he didn’t know that she knew that he knew. She still held the upper hand.
And really, it could be that Preston hadn’t found the bracelet. He might simply be angry that the ladies were slipping out of his grip.
Or perhaps Preston wasn’t lurking at all. Because of the missing bracelet, she might be imaging threats where none existed.
She had just led her brood in front of Rosa’s Boutique when the door to the general store opened and Minnie Jenkins stepped out, only yards away.
Leanna spun about and gathered her chicks about her. “Do exactly what I do. Say exactly what I say, and no matter what happens be proud of yourselves.
“Mrs. Jenkins!” Leanna strode forward with her hand outstretched and her smile beaming. “It’s lovely to see you.”
Minnie Jenkins, always poised, forever refined, stood like a deer caught gazing down the barrel of a hunter’s gun.
Leanna pumped Minnie’s hand up and down. “Please tell Ellie that I miss her and I look forward to calling on her.”
Minnie’s lips drew tight against her teeth. “I most certainly will no—”
Lucinda stepped forward to grasp the stricken Minnie’s hand. “Mrs. Jenkins, it’s lovely to meet you.”
Mrs. Jenkins tried to wipe her hand on her skirt but it was taken up by Dorothy, then Massie and Cassie. Each of the ladies greeted her with wide smiles and wishes to make the pleasure of Ellie’s acquaintance.
By this time Minnie looked as though she might faint dead away on the boardwalk. Now was the perfect time to press Aggie forward.
“Minnie,” Leanna said, holding the reluctant Aggie about the waist and pulling her forward. “This is our Aggie. I’m sure you’ve heard the things that Preston Van Slyck has been saying about her. Most of them were never true and the things that were true no longer are.”
Henry Stokes stood in the doorway, his pale blue eyes shifting between Leanna and Minnie. He gripped a broom in his hand and pretended to sweep. The man was a gossip. No doubt embellished tales of this encounter would be the talk of the town until a new tale came along.
Minnie swayed on her feet. Dorothy slipped a steadying arm about her shoulder. Aghast, Minnie yanked backward and tumbled into the arms of Lucinda, who set her upright.
“Do have a care, Mrs. Jenkins,” Lucinda cooed in exaggerated concern.
Speechless, maybe forever, the shocked woman stomped away.
“You did beautifully, ladies.” Leanna beamed at her charges. She turned to Henry Stokes, whose bushy brown hair stood on end more than it usually did. “A round of hard candy for everyone, Henry.”
“Yes…certainly, Miss Leanna. I’ll bring that right out. And there’s a letter from your brother Quin.”
“No need to bring anything out, we’ll come inside,” she answered.
“But… That is, these women?”
“I, for one, need a new hair ribbon,” Cassie announced, and strode inside the general store.
Leanna couldn’t recall when she’d been so proud.
Hearts for Harlots would be a success in spite of the Mrs. Jenkinses of Cahill Crossing.
Nothing that Preston Van Slyck and his crew could do would stop her girls from the respectable lives they longed to lead.
Cleve stood several yards from where Leanna knelt between her mother’s grave and her father’s. He stood quietly with his hands folded in front of him while his wife spoke to her mother like there was not six feet of dirt and eternity between them.
She clutched the letter that she had received from Quin to her breast. It was creased with wear, having been opened and refolded a dozen times or more. His wife had even stuffed it into her corset and carried it close to her heart all last night while she worked.
“Mama,” Leanna said, spreading the letter open to the grass over the grave. She shook her head and showed it to the headstone. She pointed it upward, then smiled at the cloud-dappled sky.
“Look at this! Chances are you already know, but Quin gave Cleve and me a wedding gift. Land, Mama. He gave us a portion of the 4C. I’m coming home! Cleve and I, little Boodle and…” She glanced back at him. She whispered something to her mother that he didn’t hear.
“Aggie’s doing a bit better and the other ladies are coming right along,” she chatted on.
While Leanna discussed the progress of her chicks, Cleve let his mind wander over the spread of land he and Leanna had just visited.
It wasn’t as harsh as the land he had farmed before. Quin’s gift was acre upon acre of rolling hills with fresh clear streams running through it. The turf was green and the sky so blue it hurt his eyes to look at it.
Earlier this morning they had decided where to build their house. They’d made love there, in the grass, with the sun warming their bare flesh, welcoming and blessing them.
Leanna had just told her mother she was coming home. Well, by damn, so was he.
A couple of months ago he had been a man with two things on his mind. Claim his sister’s boy, then get revenge on the monster who had ruined her.
Today he was a family man. He had a wife, a child and land. He ought to be as content as a toad in mud on a hot summer night. Just one thing stood between him and his future with Leanna.
Lies.
While Leanna spoke with her mother, sunshine glinted in her black hair. Curls tumbled down her back with bits of grass and dried leaves stuck in them, witness to their lovemaking.
She turned her pretty face to smile up at him, her eyes sparkling. Leanna Holden, his wife, had changed his life. He could never go back to being the man he was before. He didn’t want to.
Truth settled in his soul, as soft and certain as a feather drifting to the earth. He could try and deny it but all that would do is make him a bigger fool than he already was.
The day might come that Leanna found him out to be a liar; hell, it probably would. But between now and then he would not lie about this.
“Leanna.” He strode forward, then knelt beside her on the grass. “I have something to tell you and I want your Mama and Papa to hear it.”
Cleve cleared his throat. He looked up, nervous. Maybe dead people actually could hear him. “Mr. Cahill, Mrs. Cahill, I’m in love with your daughter.”
He looked away from the cloud he had focused on. Leanna stared at him, covering a gasp with both hands.
“I love you, Leanna.” He tugged her hands away from her mouth and kissed it quickly. “I only wish I’d told you sooner.”
“Some words never come too late.” She cupped his cheeks with gentle fingers and kissed him back. “I love you, too.”
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed against him so tight that he felt the patter of her heart, a heart that he would rather die than break.
“Cleve, I’m afraid to breathe I feel so lucky.”
“Go ahead, love, take a deep breath. I’ll always be here…I’ll always love you.”
He stood, lifting
her with him.
Leanna glanced at the sky, following the changing shape of the cloud. “You were right all along, Mama.”
“I’m taking your daughter back to town, Mrs. Cahill,” he said. “But I’ll bring her home soon.”
“I think it’s all right for you to call her Mama now.”
“Forgive me for being dense as a board,” he crooned into Leanna’s blush-pink ear. “I was yours from the first time I saw you bleeding all over the back porch of the saloon. I was just too dim-witted to know it.”
Leanna sighed with contentment; every bone and muscle rejoiced. She strolled about the saloon barely feeling the floor under her feet.
Cleve loved her.
With her parents’ deaths and the family disintegrated by hateful words, there had been a time when she’d feared her life might be shattered beyond repair.
But Cleve loved her. Now she had everything she had ever dreamed of…and a tiny something more.
The breeze gusting through the open front door threatened to scatter winning and losing hands to the floor. She crossed the room to close it, smoothing the gathers of her skirt over her belly as she went.
With her hand on the doorknob, she watched leaves tumbling across the road. Rocking chairs on the front porch tipped back and forth with no one in them.
A shadow moved in the street, then a young woman, clearly from across the tracks, stepped into the lamplight. She dashed up the stairs, glancing backward over her shoulder.
“Miss Leanna, I need your help.” She hugged her arms across her middle, shivering in her skimpy gown.
“Please, come in.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t.” She glanced behind her again. “I’d like to speak with you…in private. Can we walk a bit?”
“I’ll get my husband. We’ll be safer—”
“Oh, please!” The clearly distressed woman clutched Leanna’s elbow and drew her onto the porch. Lanterns swayed, squeaking on their hooks and shooting light in erratic patterns into the night. “I’ll only take a moment of your time…leastwise, I have to get back before I’m missed.”
