by Bella Bowen
She gave her head a quick shake, and the judge nodded.
“Very well. This is pretty much cut and dried.” He picked up the gavel. “It is the judgment of this court that, in consideration for the new information as to his character, that David Zollinger did intentionally write both wills on the twentieth day of May, 1840. Both parties were given ownership of the ranch in question. Therefore, both parties own said ranch.”
The gavel came down with a crash that made everyone jump even though they were expecting it.
Gen shot to her feet again. The judge’s brow lowered like a bolt of black lightning and she would have no sooner given her opinion than she would have pulled her Queen Anne from her bag and shot the man.
“Surely, in all 26,000 acres, there is room for two people to have enough,” he said in a low voice, but she suspected the statement was meant for her alone. “And I advise you to split the assets equally and quickly so your lawyers don’t end up owning the damned place. They’ll negotiate until the Second Coming if they’re paid well to do it.”
The judge stood, banged his gavel three times and declared the hearing over. He collected the scribbling man from the corner and they left the parlor. Freddy conferred with Mr. Atwood for a moment, then came to Gen’s side.
“The poor man’s a mess. I suspect he needs a drink in the worst way, and not just because he was threatened with jail. But your brother-in-law seems none the worse for wear.”
Devlin helped his lawyer gather his papers and led him to the door. At the last minute, he said something in the man’s ear that inspired Atwood to straighten up and lift his chin just before he stepped out.
“You’ll want us to stay and negotiate, I’m sure.” It was a question. Freddy looked worried that she might have taken the judge’s advice to heart.
“I think Devlin and I need to discuss it some before we start writing things down,” she told him. “You and your assistants have done enough for today. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. I’ll send Fontaine with a note when I decide the time.”
The men were all fairly cheerful as they filed past Devlin. Gen assumed because she wasn’t devastated by the verdict, Freddy and Company weren’t going to count it as a loss, so there were no hard feelings to be had.
She didn’t dare guess what Devlin was thinking. His face was as unreadable as the judge’s had been when he looked at her past Sheriff Toller’s shoulder. The lawman seemed as relieved as Mr. Atwood and in equal need of a drink. Devlin knocked him on the shoulder and gestured toward the open doorway. Toller tipped his hat in her direction, gave a tentative smile, then left.
Devlin pulled the French doors closed behind the man. He took a deep breath with his hands still on the handles. Then another.
When he turned to face her, there was murder in his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He was going to kill her with his bare hands.
He had thirty cowboys to find and lure back to Diamond Springs and a bunch of foremen he had to convince not to play pat-a-cake with a crew of women until he could eject them, nicely, from his home. On top of that, now he was going to have to babysit Genevieve—the burr that’s been under his saddle for nearly half his life.
Killing her sounded like the wise step to take first.
She backed away from him, though reluctantly, while he advanced on her.
“Ten years,” he spit.
She nodded. “I understand, but it wasn’t my fault—”
“I put my blood, sweat and… I worked myself to the bone on that ranch while you were off playing princess—”
“How dare you! You’re the one who sent me away! Otherwise I would have worked—”
“That’s bullshit. You would have wandered around the house crying your heart out and singing David’s praises until I choked you for it.”
“Not if you would have let me read his journals. You should have let me see for myself—”
She was backed up against the judge’s table with her fanny fitting just over the top. His boots were tucked up tight beneath her skirt. If he took another step, she’d fall back onto the surface.
He took a quick step backward. “No. Absolutely not. Even I couldn’t read much of them without wanting to dig up his grave and kill him all over again.”
She gasped, then tried to cover up the gasp with her hand, as if she could hide it from him after it had already escaped.
Listening to his words back again, he realized why she thought he’d killed David. He’d confessed something similar to his accountant on the day of David’s funeral, because he’d already found the journals at that point. She must have overheard him, because it was that day she confronted him when they had a little privacy at one end of the room.
He’d been too hurt to deny it. Then he’d been too brokenhearted to let her stay.
“Ask me, Gen. Ask me and I’ll tell you the truth. I swear it.”
She swallowed, but she didn’t back down. “Did you kill David?” It was only a whisper.
He looked her dead in the eyes and answered. “I did not.”
She crumbled to the floor and wept.
Through the frosted glass of the French doors he noticed a number of clear profiles. People were standing close, trying to hear what was going on between them.
He rushed to the door and opened it six inches. He was a tall man, and though they tried, no one could see past him.
He located Mrs. Kennedy behind her little counter. When she looked his way, he caught her attention. “Mrs. Kennedy. Clear the hotel, if you please. Use a broom if necessary. Or a gun.” The woman gave a nod and advanced on her unwelcome visitors with a gleam in her eyes.
Dev pulled the doors shut and flipped the latch into place. No one was coming in without breaking through the glass, which was still a possibility. He couldn’t blame them all for their enthusiasm. The fate of the town was being decided and they felt invested. But since Gen and he were the only ones who could freely speak about the ruling, the people of Sage River were just going to have to wait.
He returned to her side and offered his hands, then pulled her to her feet. She dried her face and tucked her handkerchief away. He knew her well enough to know that if she put the thing away, she’d decided she was finished crying.
She gave him a tentative smile. “Forgive me.”
He made her confess that she’d overheard what he’d said to the accountant the day of the funeral. He’d said it no other time—at least not aloud.
It was his turn for a confession. “It might have gone much differently, had I not been so hurt.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have sent me away?”
He shook his head. “I still would have sent you away. It would have been impossible to…resist temptation.”
His gaze went to her lips of their own accord. Then his mouth followed that same path.
Gen put her hands to either side of his face and he pulled her to him. Her lips were puffy from crying and he kissed them tenderly. She tasted like the ghost that haunted the bedroom he slept in, and he breathed her into the deepest recesses of his lungs, intent on keeping the taste of her there forever.
On his lips forever.
She met his kisses greedily and he forgot where they were. He didn’t care what had brought them to that room or why they’d been left alone. Only that she was in his arms and neither of them were leaving town.
But then he remembered their earlier kisses and how his heart had already broken once that day. It was still tender, if he was truthful.
He ended the kiss and put his hand alongside her cheek before he dared open his eyes. Would she be looking away? He had to know first.
But she wasn’t. She faced him fully and he opened his eyes to appreciate her embarrassed smile.
“Well, you’re facing me this time, so that’s a good sign.”
She rolled her eyes, but kept smiling. “Does this mean I’m forgiven?”
“If you can forgive me.”
“Done.”
>
“Then I move we put the past behind us, Mrs. Carnegie.”
“Seconded, Mr. Zollinger.”
He gave her a light squeeze. “Now we can start negotiating the terms for the end of the current war, shall we?”
She sobered slowly, then stepped back. Around the table she drew her finger on the surface. When she reached the far side, she eased into the judge’s chair, then folded her fingers in front of her as Van Fleet had.
“I want the house,” she said.
He paced away from her, unable to sit down. “You want the house. Which means you don’t want me in it?”
She shrugged. “There can be no men allowed on my ranch.”
“Your?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Forgive me, but I thought you were here in this very room when the judge ruled that we share the ranch.”
“No. He said we are to divide the ranch. And I would like my half to include the house.”
He laughed. “So, sharing the ranch, together—living together—isn’t something you’re even interested in.” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. But he wasn’t about to be kind about being rejected yet again in favor of some game she wanted to play with the society of the Wyoming Territory. The entire Territory.
She studied her hands. “Devlin, you know we can’t do that. The town already thinks…suspects…knows! We can’t possibly live in the same house without marrying. And we cannot marry.” She stood up and turned away from him. “I have to live by the society of which I am apart. And that society—”
“Calls you my sister.”
“Yes,” she said and caught a sob.
It was almost enough to soften him. But when his heart squeezed, the bruising cried out. She’d done this to him already. Chosen everyone else in the world over him. She was never going to change her mind unless the reclusive Queen Bloody Victoria got on a train for Denver City and came up to Sage River to give her blessing.
He laughed at the image in his mind.
She misunderstood. The sorrow on her face turned cold.
He almost opened his mouth to deny he’d been laughing at her, but perhaps it was better this way. Another misunderstanding might make it easier. After all, they’d faced the truth in that room and they were both left in pain.
“Fine,” he said. “You can have the house if I can have the horses.”
“Not all—”
“You can keep only what you need to maintain your land. The new herds are all mine.”
She nodded her head.
“I’ll take everything west of the springs. That gives us a clean line. I don’t want to quibble over a few hundred acres give or take.”
She nodded again. “And what about the springs?”
He smirked. Of course she would like him to fight for it. They’d shared memories of the place. The three of them had taken the silver from the place with their bare hands. They’d bathed…
He wasn’t going to hand it over, but he wasn’t going to admit the sentimentality of it either.
“We’ll call it neutral ground. But I don’t want any of your…women…using the place. You use it. No one else. And if silver rises again, we split it.”
“You can have—”
“We split it!”
“Fine. We split it.”
He wandered around the room, trying to think about what else he wanted while she was in an agreeable mood, but he also wanted to get the hell out of there. Let her explain to her adoring fans.
Then her remembered. “I want the journals. And the photograph. Just so I know you’re not gloating over them.”
She set her jaw. She didn’t want to surrender them. And he realized he almost wanted her to have them. At least she’d be reminded, over and over, that what she’d given up was his love.
“Never mind. Keep them. I don’t care…anymore.” Damn but he regretted the last word, but it was out of his mouth already. No taking it back. Then he thought of something that might make her feel better. “I want my bed.”
She shook her head, confused.
“You know which bed I’m talking about. The one upstairs. In your old room.” He shrugged. “I sleep better on it is all.” He didn’t like the look on her face. Couldn’t trust it. “And I’m coming to the house tomorrow, to walk through and make sure I have everything that’s mine.”
She opened her mouth to protest, no doubt.
“Tut tut tut. I don’t want to hear that bullshit about men not being allowed because I know the new houses you’ve planned aren’t going to be built by a dozen women holding rifles.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “We’ve got one big problem to address, though.”
He raised a brow and waited. He thought they’d skirted the one big problem handily—that being his broken heart.
She let go of a weary sigh. “We still have to find the murderer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gen knew she could have made a stronger case for dividing the ranch instead of sharing it. She could have argued that too many people were counting on her, and that she refused to fail the folks of Sage River. But they’d already addressed the truth of the matter.
She couldn’t marry him until society’s perception changed. And he wouldn’t wait for her any longer than he already had. While it was thrilling to discover that he did indeed still want her, they would have to flee to some wilderness to be together—some place no one would possibly know who she was and what they were to each other. But the world was getting too small for someone as famous as her. Even as far as California, she would be recognized.
But if the law was changing in England, there was still hope. And until Devlin actually married someone else, she would remain optimistic. But she decided it would be wiser to keep that optimism to herself.
“I don’t think we’re looking for a murderer,” he said, then dropped into a chair. “We’re looking for someone who wants to sabotage your new plans.”
“But who would care whether I succeeded or not.”
Dev shrugged and ran a hand through his hair. “Did you leave some enemy behind? Besides me of course.”
She wrinkled her nose at his poor taste in a joke. “Not unless David really was murdered. Maybe they don’t want me around because they think I might find some proof.”
“I didn’t want to tell you this, ever, but I thought it was possible that David shot himself on purpose. I guess now that you know how twisted he was, you might be able to handle hearing it.”
She shook her head. “I’m beginning to think he was enjoying himself far too much to ever want to kill himself. Unless he was that sick of me.”
He reached out as if he would spare her the pain of that possibility, but his arm dropped quickly.
“Don’t worry. I thought of that a long time ago, then dismissed it. If he was sick of me, he could have sent me back to New York City as easily as you did.”
Dev nodded. “So. Any other enemies?”
“Not unless someone in Sage River is an enemy of progress. If there is someone who would hate to see the town prosper and grow, become a small metropolis, with lots of money and faces coming and going. Maybe someone appreciates their peace so much their willing to kill to keep it.”
Her thoughts followed down that road a few steps and she felt a little ill with her next thought.
“Maybe someone here has a terrible secret and thinks they’ll be discovered if they’re recognized. If a lot of people are coming and going…”
Dev looked a little green too. “What made you think of that?”
“I was just thinking about the peace and privacy you and I would need if we were ever to run away and marry. We’d have to go somewhere where progress would be slow in coming. Sage River couldn’t be that place. Not now.”
“Not unless something happened to you.”
She swallowed hard. “You’re right. The burning the arch was probably meant to scare me away.”
“Losing the town hall was meant to discourage you.”
&
nbsp; “And now, everyone will know that I have been awarded half the ranch. They’ll know that my plans will go forward. I can’t be discouraged—”
“But you can be killed.”
She felt very vulnerable sitting there alone, and she felt the urge to get up and move close to the wall. There was movement on the far side of the frosted glass doors. Someone might be waiting for her right then.
She jumped when she felt someone beside her, but it was Devlin. He pulled her up out of the chair and wrapped his arms around her. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured.
She laughed lightly. “I’m glad you did. I needed to hear it. I might have stood around waiting for something to catch fire and missed a gun aimed at me.”
He held her tightly for a moment and she wondered if he was going to kiss her again, even though there was no point to it other than the temporary joy it would bring.
He did kiss her, but only on her forehead. It brought a different kind of joy she hadn’t expected. She suddenly knew that even though they couldn’t be together, he was going to be watching out for her. She’d always have someone she’d be able to turn to when necessary. She wrapped her arms around his ribs and pressed herself into him, trying to convey the same sentiment to him, that she’d be a friend, at least, when he needed one.
“Someone with something to hide,” he murmured. Then his breath caught.
She leaned away and looked up into his face. “What is it?”
He tipped his head back and groaned. “How could I have been so foolish?”
She tried to shake him a little to get his attention, but the man was so solid he probably never felt it. “Devlin, what is it?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to share his torment. “I know who it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR