The Sheriff (Historical Romance)

by Nan Ryan

Winn DeLaney simply smiled and signaled the white-jacketed waiter.

  “May I get you something else, sir?” asked the beaming man.

  “The lady will have a piece of pie,” Winn said, and looked at Kate. “Mince? Cherry? Apple?” At the mention of apple, her eyes lit and Winn nodded. To the waiter he said, “Hot apple pie and fresh coffee for both of us.”

  When the exquisite meal was over, the sated pair left the dining room, causing turning heads and whispers just as when they’d entered. They crossed the spacious hotel lobby and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  It was a lovely evening and neither was anxious to end it. As they leisurely strolled up the mountain toward her home, Winn let his hand slip slowly down Kate’s arm until he clasped her fingers warmly.

  Kate immediately noticed that his hand was as soft as her own. Clearly this was a man who had never done any manual labor.

  “I don’t believe you’ve mentioned what your profession is, Mr. DeLaney,” she said.

  “Winn,” he again corrected. He smiled then and told her, “I speculate in gold, Kate. I buy and sell claims throughout the goldfields.” He laughed then and said, “Have a claim you’d like to sell?”

  “I do have a claim,” she said proudly. “But it’s not for sale.”

  “I was only teasing,” he assured her.

  “I inherited a mine called the Cavalry Blue from my great-aunt Arielle VanNam Colfax.”

  “That explains what a genteel young lady is doing in Fortune. I had wondered.”

  Kate smiled. “And I had wondered what a sophisticated gentleman was doing here.”

  Both laughed.

  Kate found Winn DeLaney to be intelligent, congenial and easy to talk to. With little prompting she explained that she had left her Boston home after the death of her dear uncle, he being her only family. She said she had taken the cash inheritance he’d left her, and come to California. She was hoping to find gold in the Cavalry Blue, and fully intended to stay in Fortune until she did.

  Winn listened attentively and asked tactful questions, subtly encouraging her to talk about herself.

  At last Kate said, “That’s quite enough about me. I know next to nothing about you, Winn.”

  “Not much to tell,” he said.

  “Ah, that isn’t fair. I want to know all about you.”

  Winn DeLaney smiled. Then he told Kate that he was thirty-one years old, had never been married, lived permanently in San Francisco where he had an aging mother and a younger sister who was married to a doctor. He said he had been fortunate in business and that his successful ventures had brought him to Fortune, though he couldn’t predict how long he might be here.

  “I hope,” he concluded, “I’ll be staying long enough to get better acquainted with you, Kate.”

  She smiled, pleased, and said, as they stepped into the clearing by the lake, “I do as well.”

  Once they reached the front porch of the darkened mansion, Kate stopped and turned to face her tall, blond companion.

  The moonlight striking her full in the face, she said, “Thank you for a lovely evening, Winn.”

  “The pleasure was all mine, Kate,” he said. “Promise we’ll do this again soon.”

  “I promise.”

  “Next Saturday night?” he quickly suggested. “An early dinner and afterward perhaps the theater?”

  “The theater?” Kate repeated, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “Haven’t you seen the bill posters around town announcing the arrival of Lola Montez?”

  “Lola Montez in Fortune?” Kate’s eyes grew wide.

  He nodded. “Yes. She’s appearing at the opera house next Saturday night. Shall we go?”

  “Oh, yes, I’d love to.”

  “Then let’s plan on it. Now, I mustn’t keep you any longer. Thanks again for an enchanting evening, Kate.” He paused as he gazed down at her upturned face. Then he asked politely, “May I kiss you good night?”

  “Yes you may, Winn.”

  “Sweet Kate,” DeLaney said softly as he took her chin in his hand, slowly lowered his head and brushed a chaste kiss to her lips. Then he turned and walked away. Kate watched until he left the moonlit clearing and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

  “You call that a kiss?” asked a low masculine voice that Kate immediately recognized.

  She whirled around to see Travis McCloud pushing away from the shadowed porch pillar he’d been leaning against.

  Her temper immediately flared. Her hands went to her hips as she snapped, “I will not allow…”

  The sentence was never finished, because Travis was at her side in a heartbeat. He took hold of her upper arms, drew her to him and kissed her.

  Really kissed her.

  He pressed her head back against his supporting arm, and his insistent mouth masterfully parted her trembling lips. His tongue slid between her teeth to touch and toy with hers, and Kate involuntarily shuddered. She pressed a hand against his broad chest, trying to push him away.

  Only she didn’t.

  She swayed into him as though his lean body was a powerful magnet, pulling her against him. His fiery, forceful kiss was unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and it evoked frightening sensations in her.

  Suddenly Kate realized that she was kissing Travis back. She was sighing and squirming and eagerly molding her lips to his. She was clinging to him and shaking like a leaf and growing faint and dizzy with delight.

  Abruptly he released her.

  Kate’s eyes flew open in puzzlement and surprise. Travis turned and left without a word or a backward glance. With her brows knitted and one of her hands on her throbbing heart, she watched him walk away in the moonlight.

  Both dazzled and aggravated, she called after him, “You call that a kiss?”

  She seethed with anger when she heard his deep laughter.

  Fourteen

  Kate hoped Chang Li knew what he was doing.

  She watched as the wiry little man thrust a shovel into the packed earth and began digging a large hole directly behind the mansion. He was building her a cistern.

  Chang Li had observed Kate hauling water up from the lake, and he told her she needed a nice large cistern to collect rainwater. And today, a Saturday, he had begun work on the new project.

  Since hiring the sweet-natured Chang Li, Kate was more than pleased with the way he diligently worked the Cavalry Blue. He had also worked tirelessly to help her make the mansion more livable.

  Thanks to him, the wood stove in the kitchen was working properly again and the fireplace chimney in the drawing room had been cleaned and was ready for use as soon as the first chill of autumn arrived in the high country. Cordwood had been cut and neatly stacked by the marble hearth.

  And it was Chang Li who had brought up, from Barton’s Emporium and Dry Goods, a brand-new zinc tub for Kate’s baths. He had carried the tub up on his head, and she had laughed when she saw him coming. He’d laughed with her, then asked where she wanted it.

  “Right there in the drawing room,” she had instructed, and ushered him into the house. Chang Li had carefully placed the tub to the left of the fireplace and nodded when she’d said, “This will do nicely for now. When we strike gold, I shall have a huge Carrara marble tub imported from Italy.”

  He grinned, bowed and handed over her little drawstring bag of gold dust, with which she had paid for the tub. Kate had been as thrilled as a child when she found her first traces of placer in the stream that flowed by the house. Each and every day she carefully collected tiny flecks of gold dust and used the precious placer to purchase necessities.

  Kate was grateful to Chang Li for all he’d done. She had never seen a harder worker than this slight man, who didn’t complain and seemed to never tire.

  She was touched when, out of the blue one morning, he arrived for work and said, “Need big favor, Missy Kate.”

  “Name it,” she had replied.

  From his loose-fitting white trousers, he
withdrew a small leather pouch with a drawstring pulled tight. “All my money inside,” he explained. “Live in tent city with thieves and pickpockets.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry you can’t—”

  “Is okay. Not afraid. But afraid money be stolen. Can I leave here with you?”

  “Well, of course you can, Chang Li. I’ll stay right here on the porch. Go inside and hide your stash anywhere you choose. I promise it will not be disturbed.”

  A smile spread over his thin little face. “Missy Kate most kind, most kind.” He indicated the leather pouch. “I save money to bring wife and girl child to America.”

  “I hope you soon have enough,” she said.

  “I will.” His grin broadened. “Make much more since I work for you.”

  Now, as he labored to excavate a crater for the new cistern, Chang Li hummed happily. Cal, the calico cat, had wandered out to see what was going on. He ambled up onto the newly turned earth and peered at Kate’s assistant, making a low rumbling sound in his throat. Then he hissed his displeasure when Chang Li, rhythmically tossing dirt out of the hole, harmlessly sprinkled him.

  Kate laughed as the angry cat raced toward the house, leaped up onto a windowsill and disappeared inside.

  “Chang Li, I need to go into town, so I’m leaving you to your project.”

  The industrious Chinaman continued shoveling as he said over his shoulder, “Yes, you go, Missy Kate. I be right here.”

  “I need to purchase a pair of kid gloves,” she said, eager to share the news that she was going to the theater. “Mr. Winn DeLaney is taking me to see Miss Lola Montez this evening.”

  Chang Li’s shovel stilled in midair. He lowered it, leaned on it, swept his long queue back over his shoulder, wiped the sweat from his brow and squinted at her. “Who is this Mr. Winn DeLaney? Not know him.”

  “He recently arrived in Fortune,” she said. “He’s a wealthy gentleman from San Francisco.”

  Chang Li frowned. “What he doing in Fortune? You sure you safe with him?”

  Kate laughed merrily. “He has business dealings here. And I told you, he is a gentleman with sterling manners. I am completely safe in his company.”

  “Very well.” Chang Li nodded and went back to work.

  Smiling, Kate turned and went inside.

  She was safe with the refined gentleman, Winn DeLaney.

  The same could not be said, however, for Fortune’s cocksure lawman. Travis McCloud was certainly no gentleman. A gentleman did not kiss a lady the way he had kissed her.

  But oh what a kiss it had been. A kiss Kate couldn’t seem to forget, no matter how hard she tried. Over and over she had guiltily relived the heart-stopping moment when the darkly handsome sheriff had pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She recalled how the heat from his lips had reached all the way down to her toes. She was inexperienced, but she needed no one to tell her that the kiss they’d shared was rawly sexual. It had been downright frightening in its intimacy.

  She was not naive enough to suppose the moment had meant anything to him. She didn’t care. It hadn’t meant anything to her, either. Not a thing. Travis Mc-Cloud was an ill-mannered, cynical, egotistical man who’d had no right to grab her up and kiss as if she were one of the loose women from the saloons.

  Doc Ledet had said that McCloud had been raised in a proper Virginia home by aristocratic parents, though Kate now concluded that he had since shed any patina of grace he’d once possessed. He was as rough and rugged as the community he policed, and he was undoubtedly a threat to any decent woman.

  Kate suddenly wondered if the sheriff had a sweetheart. Was there one special woman who willingly shared his heart-stopping kisses? And even his bed? Kate frowned, distressed at the thought. She’d be fooling herself if she supposed that the lusty sheriff never made love to anyone. She realized that Travis McCloud was the kind of man women—all women—found exciting. There was an alarming prospect of danger surrounding him that was highly erotic.

  Then she scolded herself soundly. She would not waste one more minute thinking about the arrogant sheriff.

  As she began to get changed for her trip to town, Cal meowed plaintively from somewhere in the house.

  “What is it?” she called, and stepped out into the hall.

  She saw no sign of the cat, but followed the sound of his continued meowing. Kate walked the length of the hall to the back of the house. She went into the large kitchen, looked around, but still did not see the cat.

  “Cal, where are you?” she called, then went back into the corridor, following his meows. She found him in one of the many back rooms, seated in front of a closed door, one she had never bothered opening, supposing it was nothing more than an empty linen closet.

  Cal’s curiosity sparked her own. “All right, all right,” she said, “we’ll have a look inside.” Cal made a low rattling sound in the back of his throat and rubbed against Kate’s skirts.

  She carefully opened the door and peered inside. A set of wooden stairs led down into darkness. Cal raced down the steps and disappeared. Kate shook her head, turned and went for the coal oil lamp. She returned, lit the wick, held the lamp aloft and cautiously descended the creaking wooden stairwell into a gigantic basement.

  As curious as the cat, Kate looked around. Odds and ends of furniture were scattered about in a haphazard manner. Wooden cartons and barrels were stacked along the walls. She ventured forward, opened a box, sneezed from the dust she’d stirred, and looked inside. Dishes. Fine bone china dishes banded in gold. She held up a fragile plate, blew the dust from it and admired it. Then she carefully lowered it back to the carton.

  She was opening another box when Cal’s furious scratching and mewling commanded her attention. She turned to see the cat vigorously clawing at a covering of heavy burlap that was draped over a large gilded frame holding a painting or mirror. Cal’s sharp claws snagged in the rough burlap and he yanked at it until the burlap fell away and pooled on the floor.

  Kate went over to investigate.

  “Oh my,” she murmured aloud.

  A portrait of a grand old lady with a gaunt, pale face, dark hair and deep-set, penetrating eyes sat looking back at her. The woman wore an elegant gown of shimmering taffeta, and diamonds and rubies graced her throat and sparkled on her fingers.

  Arielle VanNam Colfax.

  Kate stared, transfixed, feeling as though she was being watched from beyond the grave.

  “Where’s the gold, Auntie?” Kate asked aloud. “It’s me, Kate. Your great-niece. The one to whom you left your inheritance.”

  The lady in the portrait continued to hold her regal pose and fix Kate with those piercing eyes.

  Kate said, “Aunt Arielle, you belong upstairs.”

  Warning Cal to stay out of her way, Kate struggled to get the heavy oil painting up the stairs and into the drawing room. There she leaned it against the wall beside the black marble fireplace, and carefully cleaned the dust and cobwebs away from the portrait and its heavy frame.

  “Soon as I get the mansion restored,” she promised the lady in the painting, “I’ll hang your portrait above the fireplace where it belongs.” Then she said, “You believed there was gold in the Cavalry Blue, didn’t you, Aunt Arielle?”

  The lady in the portrait revealed nothing.

  Fifteen

  As Kate prepared to go into town on that warm Saturday morning, she told herself she hoped to high heaven she wouldn’t be unlucky enough to encounter the overbearing town sheriff. Nonetheless, she chose one of her better dresses and brushed her hair until it shone. After all, she might see her handsome new suitor, the charming Winn DeLaney.

  Wishing she had a parasol so she didn’t have to conceal her hair, one of her best features, Kate reluctantly drew on her straw bonnet, picked up her reticule, waved goodbye to the lady in the portrait and walked out the front door, with Cal trailing after her.

  “No, you are not going with me, you bad cat. Stay here!” she commanded, and the cat stopped, gl
ared at her, then stretched out on the porch. Kate smiled and said, “I’ll be back soon.” Cal pointedly ignored her. “Be a good boy while I’m gone.”

  On the short walk through the pine forest, she planned how she would go directly to Barton’s Emporium and pick out a pair of dainty white kid gloves to wear to the theater that evening. The gloves were an extravagance she couldn’t really afford, but she wanted look like a refined lady for this special evening.

  Once she’d purchased the gloves, perhaps she would stop in and say hello to Dr. Ledet.

  When Kate reached the buildings of town, her breath grew short. She assumed it was the high altitude combined with the growing heat of the day. She stopped where the wooden sidewalk began, took off her bonnet and carefully smoothed her hair.

  Barton’s Emporium and Dry Goods was three blocks away. If she stayed on this side of the street and walked directly to Barton’s, she would have to pass the city jail. She considered crossing the street in an effort to avoid a possible brush with the sheriff, but she immediately checked herself. She was anything but timid or submissive, and she had no intention of allowing the marshal to influence her behavior. She wasn’t about to slink around Fortune in constant fear of bumping into Travis McCloud.

  Kate lifted her chin and set out down the sidewalk. But as she neared the city jail, she could feel her heart beating erratically. Would she see him? Was he just inside? Would he venture out when he caught sight of her? Would he step into her path so that she would have to stop? Would she get a glimpse of those sensual lips and that powerful physique?

  Kate was a few short feet away when the sheriff did indeed step out of the jail. She stopped abruptly and caught her breath.

  Travis’s dark head slowly swung around. He saw her, glanced at her with bored indifference and barely nodded. Then he unhurriedly crossed to the other side of the street.

  Kate paled at the slight. She felt her face grow warm and her stomach clench. She hurried on her way, vowing she would in future stay as far away from the city jail—and the brooding Sheriff Travis McCloud—as she could possibly get.

  She would give all her attention and all her kisses to the attentive Winn DeLaney.