Scandal at the Cahill Saloon

by Carol Arens

When he had come upon Mrs. Greenly clutching an empty rope in her hand and watching while the animal happily romped from one end of Town Square to the other in only a matter of seconds, he had offered to buy the beast.

  Mrs. Greenly had snatched the dollar bill from his hand and replaced it with the rope.

  In the fifteen minutes that he had owned Stretch, he was pleased with the purchase. A dog this size would be a protector. It wasn’t clear what Stretch’s pedigree might be. He was tall, lanky with a deep chest; his sleek fur was gray and dappled with black, except for his feet which were white and shadowed by dust.

  “Melvin and Cabe might try and ride you,” he warned Stretch as they strolled toward the home that Cleve had been banished from. “You do resemble a cow.”

  Soulful, saggy brown eyes peered up at him.

  “All right, a horse.” The dog swished his long dappled tail.

  From close by, someone hammered a piece of wood over a window, apparently fearing whatever might be coming with the clouds. The sound echoed sharply across the road.

  Startled, the dog jumped and glanced behind him.

  “Not you, too.” Cleve patted the knob on top of the dog’s wide head without having to reach down to do it. “What do you think? Hail the size of cow pies or the Cahill Curse? I’ve heard that and a few other things.”

  Stretch answered with a soft “Woof.”

  “Here we are, boy. Between the two of us, you, at least, have a shot at getting inside.”

  Facing the front door, Cleve figured he had a right to walk right in, but he knocked.

  On the other side of the panel he heard light footsteps cross the floor. Leanna’s, he was certain.

  She opened the door.

  “I’ve brought Melvin his dog,” he announced before his wife had a chance to slam the door in his face.

  “That, Cleve Holden, is no dog.” She reached her hand toward Stretch’s floppy ear. “It’s a co—”

  “Stretch prefers to think of himself as a horse.”

  With her hands on her hips, Leanna studied the dog.

  “In any case, I don’t have a stable.”

  “Stretch is a house dog. He’s partial to a soft couch from what I’ve been told.” He couldn’t help it, his wife’s scowl made him grin.

  “Take yourself and your beast off my front porch.”

  “It’s not my beast, its Melvin’s.”

  “Go away.” She began to close the door but Stretch nosed his way inside. True to his reputation, he headed for the couch. He sat down on it.

  That’s where Melvin discovered him a few seconds later, with his hind quarters on the cushion and his paws on the floor, looking very humanlike in his pose.

  The bond between the boy and his dog happened faster than a blink.

  While Leanna considered the happy scene taking place a few yards away, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  “I reckon the dog is staying,” Leanna said. “But you are not.”

  At that point Cabe dashed into the room looking for Melvin.

  He hurried to Cleve and yanked on his pant leg. He pointed to Stretch. “Horsee, Papa!”

  “You’d better leave. I don’t want my son getting false ideas about riding dogs and you being his papa.”

  “There’s nothing false about me being his papa. Nor about the way I love him, or you.”

  “Everything is false about that, Cleve. It was from the very first day.”

  Stretch lifted up from the couch and trotted to Leanna. He slid his head under her hand, then leaned against her, forcing her to correct her balance.

  “You’ve tricked me into keeping this mammoth, now leave my home.”

  “The lie I told you was wrong, I know that. I’ll respect you by leaving these four walls. But not the front porch. I’ll be easy to find if you need me.”

  Stretch gazed up at Leanna, his soulful canine eyes full of devotion.

  “That’s the most foolish thing I ever heard,” she exclaimed.

  It probably was, but he went outside and plunked down in a rocking chair. Miles away lightning crackled over the horizon but was too far away to make a sound.

  The front door slammed. This was shaping up to be a very long wait.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next day, the still-distant flashes of lightning had folks jumping at shadows. They shuttered windows and bolted doors. The Cahill Curse coming home to roost, the whispers went.

  Tonight, the saloon had seen only half the number of patrons. She had been forced to close up an hour early.

  Simpleminded nonsense.

  She opened the door to the upstairs bedroom where Cabe and Melvin slept. Stretch, lying on the floor between the beds, opened one eye at her and wagged his tail.

  She covered Cabe’s shoulders with a blanket, then did the same for Melvin before going to the window and drawing back the curtain.

  She peered down at the porch. At two in the morning it was utterly dark outside. She couldn’t see a foot beyond the windowpane.

  Just then, lightning scattered across the horizon to illuminate the porch in flashes and flickers.

  Stubborn man. Earlier, Cleve had followed her home from the saloon. She’d shut the door in his face and insisted that he spend the night in a hotel. Still, there he sat for the second night, squeezed into a chair and watching for goblins and criminals who might pop out of the darkness.

  Did he think that acting as a human shield would get him back inside? That it would make her believe that he loved her, after all?

  It would not! She was well aware that he was only sitting down there for Boodle’s sake. If Cleve were free to take the child, he’d no doubt be far from Cahill Crossing and all its trouble by now, no matter that he promised that he wouldn’t. Truth was not Cleve’s strongest virtue.

  Another flash revealed him twitching in the chair. It couldn’t be comfortable, sitting and staring at nothing for hour upon hour.

  For one thing, she had taken the cushions inside. For another, he was too large for the chair’s woman-size frame.

  Bullish man. Balancing that rifle over his knees for half the night had to be a strain.

  She let the curtain fall back in place.

  “No disrespect to you, Stretch. I’m sure you are a fine watchdog. But the pitiful truth is, and I wish it wasn’t so, I will sleep better because he’s out there.” She patted the big, solid head. “Good night, then.”

  She smothered the bedroom lamp, closed the door, then walked into the hall. She snuffed out a lamp on the hallway table, then tiptoed to another window overlooking the porch.

  She gazed down in time for a brilliant flare to reveal that Cleve was now shivering.

  She had no call to feel sorry for him. His uncomfortable condition was his own choice.

  A choice he had made for her safety, an unwelcome voice in her mind reminded her. Because, the voice pestered on, he claimed to love her.

  She went downstairs to bank the parlor lamp.

  She snatched a blanket from the couch, then sat down and covered herself with it.

  Wrongheaded man. Her Winchester hung over the mantel, loaded and ready to be fired. Protecting Boodle was her job, not his.

  She ought to fire the weapon at Cleve. At his feet anyway, just to get him off her front porch.

  She pictured him limping away, finally accepting that she would not forgive him. And why would he even want the forgiveness of a woman he’d never wanted to marry in the first place? What difference would it make?

  The one and only thing the man wanted was his nephew and she knew a very good way to point it out.

  She stood, shrugged the blanket over her shoulders and strode to the front door. Once Cleve acted in the way she knew he would, she would be free of him.

  There was the chance that he might set a lawyer on her to try and take her Boodle away. It was a certainty, though, that she would set her brothers on him.

  Opening the door, she stepped out into the darkness. Fractured light i
lluminated Cleve’s face.

  Difficult, handsome man. If she were to be completely truthful, she’d have to face the fact that she would miss the way his hair dipped over his forehead in a brown swirl. In every man’s smile from here until forever, she would see that crease in his cheek and remember how it flashed in flirtation and mischief.

  She’d try her best not to pine for the way he always looked past her face and saw her soul. He knew things about her that no one else knew.

  “You win.” She tossed the blanket at him. “You can take Cabe anywhere you want. Just go away.”

  She wouldn’t give her son up, not in a thousand years. This was simply a way of proving his intentions. Once he demonstrated those, she would be free to kick him out of her heart as well as off her front porch.

  Cleve was quick. One instant he was lounging awkwardly in the chair and the next he had her pinned to the wall, pressing her in place with his belly and hips.

  “I won’t take that child from you and you damn well know it.” He held her shoulders against the wood slats, his palms hard and tense. “What’s your game? Have your brother arrest me for kidnapping on my way out of town?”

  “I told you, you can have him.”

  His breath panted against her face, hot and quick. She had to close her eyes because even in the dark she saw his expression. Frustration, anger and—this she knew even with her eyes closed—sorrow.

  He caught the hair behind her ears and tangled his fingers in it. He lifted her face and pressed the tip of his nose to hers.

  “I’m not going any damn where without you. I won’t quit my job and I won’t quit your porch.”

  She pushed her hands against his chest to shove him away, but she let them rest over his thudding heart because, suddenly, she wasn’t sure whether to shove or yank.

  “You are the most stubborn, bullish, wrongheaded, purely difficult male I have ever known.”

  “That must be why I’m going to kiss you. You can forgive me later.”

  She yanked. He lifted her with the kiss. Lightning struck the night and for the first time in days she heard far-off thunder. It trampled across the sky and rumbled in her veins.

  Cleve pressed her to the wall with his hips. He lifted the hem of her shift, kneading her thighs and spreading them.

  “You know that I love you.” He nipped her earlobe. The heat of his breath scorched her resolve. The pure male scent of him stole inside her. It invaded and conquered. “Admit it, Leanna. Tell me you know it.”

  “You are persistent beyond reason.” She hadn’t meant to moan that, but with night pressing in black as pitch, her senses intensified. All she could do was feel. Feel his hands caressing her waist, then stroking the curve of her hip. Feel his hard body shifting while grinding her to the wall.

  Feel the truth…acknowledge it.

  “I know it.” The admission didn’t break her. She thought it would have. “I know you love me.”

  He cupped her bottom with his nimble gambler’s fingers. Lifting her, spreading her, he plunged home. She clenched about him but he didn’t respond to the slide of her hips.

  “Do you forgive me, love?”

  She answered by rocking against him.

  “Say the words.”

  “I forgive you.” She fell apart from her heart outward. “I’ll always love you, Cleve.”

  He took her and shattered her. Now and forever he owned her love…and her trust.

  When the world gathered once more around her, she found that she was sitting in his lap while he rocked her in the too-small chair.

  “I expect I should have said this a few moments back,” she murmured. She nuzzled her nose into the crook of his neck to inhale the scent she had missed. “Won’t you come inside?”

  “Now that you mention it, I believe I will.”

  He reached down. In one fluid, powerful male movement he stood, carrying her in one arm and the shotgun in the other.

  On the safe side of the door, he kicked it closed with his boot.

  The bed blurred before Cleve’s eyes. He fell face-forward onto it.

  After two nights spent sitting on the front porch staring out into the dark, his head felt like lead, his eyes like sockets full of sand.

  Now, with the ones he loved behind locked doors, and Stretch to keep watch over the boys, to listen for things that humans couldn’t hear, he closed his eyes.

  He felt his boots being yanked off, then the trousers that still sagged around his hips.

  Soon he was bare, his wife naked and velvet-skinned beside him.

  He tucked her into the curve of his belly and she wriggled her bottom in close to his groin. He’d feared that he would never share that intimacy with her again.

  Leanna spoke but he was too weary to make sense of the words. Still, the sound of her voice seemed like a lullaby soothing away life’s troubles. He floated in and out, cloudlike, hearing a word here and another there but not making sense of anything.

  He smiled when he heard her mention ranch. That dream loomed before him more precious than ever. Child flitted through his mind. When his voice would work again, he’d tell her about his dream of a passel of sky-eyed, dark-haired brothers and sisters for Cabe.

  That would be something for her to talk to her mother about.

  He felt a kiss brush his forehead.

  “I never quit loving you, Cleve.”

  And she never would. He’d spend his life making sure of that.

  “Stretch, come out from under the table.” Leanna offered the dog a biscuit left over from breakfast, but he whimpered at it. “A strapping fellow like you ought to be fearless in protecting the house.”

  Expecting Stretch to protect the house from the unrelenting bolts of lightning scattering over the land was unreasonable. No doubt, dogs all over town were hiding under tables.

  “Boodle, baby, come over here and sit next to Stretch.”

  Cabe leaped upon the dog’s wide neck and squeezed. “Horsee.”

  “He’s a dog, remember? A horse wouldn’t lick your face like that.” Or be cowering under the furniture. “Since you’re going to grow up on a ranch, you’ll need to know the difference.”

  Cleve ought to be home from escorting Dorothy and Melvin to the train station shortly. They would all feel a bit more courageous then.

  Hearts for Harlots had seen another success when Dorothy had felt worthy enough to contact her cousin who lived only an hour’s train ride away. The cousin had children Melvin’s age who were excited to meet him. Luckily for Leanna, Dorothy had chosen not to move closer to her cousin, but to remain in Cahill Crossing, to continue to work for them when they moved to the ranch.

  A sudden bolt of electricity flashed so close that it must have struck in town. Thunder rattled the house.

  Leanna jumped and covered her thumping heart with her hand but Cabe gazed calmly up at her.

  “S’at, Mama?”

  “It’s called lightning, the sound is thunder.”

  “Big,” he commented, then stroked Stretch’s nose.

  Ten minutes later a fist pounded on the door.

  “Thn’d,” Cabe told the dog.

  Leanna pulled aside the curtain over the window beside the door.

  “Just Uncle Bowie,” she said, and let him inside.

  “Better come quick—lightning hit the roof of your place. The ladies are plenty scared.”

  “As scared as that?” She indicated the dog under the table while she gathered up Cabe.

  “Not quite.” Bowie lifted Cabe from her arms. “Leastwise, they’re not under the table yet.”

  Bowie’s big horse carried the three of them to town in under two minutes.

  She had expected to see a few curious folks come to inspect the damage, but not a crowd. And most certainly not Preston, going from person to person, whispering.

  Carrying Cabe up the front steps with Bowie behind her, she heard Preston commenting on the Cahill Curse.

  Interfering gossip. He was worse than the p
ostmaster. At least the postmaster talked about everyone. Preston meant to cause grief to her alone.

  “Move along home, folks,” Bowie ordered. “It’s not safe to be standing out in the open.”

  “Marshal, come quick!” a voice called from the street. “The jail’s just been hit!”

  “Maybe they’re right, we are cursed.” Bowie kissed her cheek, then ran for his horse.

  The crowd followed Bowie. Apparently, the prospect of escaping, or at least incinerated, prisoners was of more interest than frightened former harlots.

  “What was our damage?” Leanna asked Lucinda while she handed Cabe to Aggie.

  Aggie remained in the saloon while Leanna followed Lucinda and Cassie upstairs.

  “The roof of the top bedroom is singed but it didn’t burn,” Lucinda answered.

  Leanna hurried up the stairs to Aggie’s top-floor bedroom. Smoke puffed from the blackened point where the rafters peaked but it grew fainter while she looked at it.

  But if rain came with this lightning storm there would be some damage.

  “I’ve got to get Boodle back home before it begins to pour. Maybe you can get some buckets to catch the drips. Push the furniture up against the walls just in case.”

  “We’ll take some of it downstairs.” Lucinda dragged a quilt from the bed and Cassie gathered up the pillows.

  Leanna snatched a pair of chairs and carried them with her to the second floor. She set them in the common area between the bedrooms, then descended to the main saloon.

  Preston stood in the center of the room. He held Cabe in his arms. Aggie had apparently fled.

  “Put my son down!” Leanna demanded, but a hit of thunder dulled her shout.

  She rushed forward and Preston lifted Cabe beyond her reach. He stared at Cabe’s face, into eyes that were a perfect match to his…and his father’s.

  “Who is his mother?” For once Preston’s suave manner deserted him. His eyes locked on Cabe’s as he settled him to his chest and rubbed his hand over the dark curly head.

  “I am. Give him to me before I have you arrested.”

  “Better think that over,” he said without looking at her. “It’s you who will be arrested. I’m simply a wronged father. Kidnapping is a serious offense. Even your brother won’t be able to let that pass.”