Anthology - BIG SKY GROOMS

by DAVIDSON, Carolyn. MALLERY, Susan. WILLIAMS, Bronwyn (in) Montana Mavericks

  When Cam had explained that he had taken her in against money owed him and named an exorbitant sum, Will had been shocked. “The woman’s a gambler?”

  “Not her. Feller that left her here. Claimed she was his sister.” Cam had waggled his bushy gray brows.

  “So you took her in against her companion’s marker?” If he’d heard the tale before, he hadn’t paid much attention. At the time, her reasons for being here hadn’t seemed all that important.

  “I bought up the kid’s IOUs when them gents he was playing with woulda taken it out of his hide. It come down to a draw as to which one could work it off quicker, him or her. She ain’t much to look at, but he’s worse’n useless. Weak chin, soft hands. I took her on, but maybe I’d’a done better with him.”

  So Will had anted up and Cam had handed over the IOUs, signed with an indecipherable squiggle. One thing he’d learned on the way to making his first fortune was that money spent was money put back into circulation. And as long as money was circulating, he would manage to snag his share. As a wealthy man he had more to spend, which would in turn benefit the town, which would only add to his own riches in the long run. What goes around, comes around. He’d heard it all his life, and in banking circles it was doubly true. And the Kincaids, after all, had a social responsibility.

  Now his boots rang out on new wood as he strode across the wide front porch. A beaming Lizzy, her pink cheeks clashing wildly with her hair, met him at the front door. Wrapped in an apron that would fit a woman three times her girth, she invited him inside. “Come and see what we’ve done.”

  The first thing he noticed was the smell, a combination of harsh soap, new lumber and something else—something that reminded him of branding time back at the ranch.

  “See the new windows? I thought first we’d paint the walls and then we’ll finish the floors. After that, we can decide on rugs and draperies.”

  We.

  He really should resent it, yet somehow, he didn’t. He had invited her to take charge, and she had done it. It was determination to earn her keep that put that proprietary note in her voice.

  They toured the second floor, where Violet Gibson, widow of the man who had taught both Caleb and Will to hunt and trap, was attacking a filthy fireplace, her skirts tucked up between her ample thighs and pinned in front. “Lord, help us, Mr. Will, you liked to scared me to death!” She fumbled with the pins, and her skirts fell modestly over her boot tops. “You didn’t say nothing about me cookin’ for your men, so I didn’t. Left it to Miss Lizzy. But if you was to ask me, I reck’n I could manage both jobs.”

  “No, no, that’s all right, Mrs. Gibson, you keep on with what you’re doing.” A vision of Lizzy in a similar situation, her skirts tucked up to her waist, caught him off guard, and he hurriedly led the way back downstairs.

  “The freight wagon delivered some more things this morning,” she said in that breathless little voice that was so at odds with the determination he’d glimpsed more than a few times. “I had them put in the room off the kitchen. You can look them over and tell me what needs doing.”

  It would be the plumbing. He had made up his mind when he left Chicago that when he built himself a house in Whitehorn, it would have indoor plumbing. As the Tanner place hadn’t been equipped for such modern conveniences, it was going to require a bit more than the appliances, themselves.

  Lizzy touched her hair self-consciously and then she squared her shoulders. “You’re probably wondering what I’ve been doing all day.”

  “No, I’m not. What I’m wondering is, what the devil is that smell?”

  “Oh. Well now, I never actually said I was a good cook, did I?”

  His eyes narrowed. Ruby wandered into the front room and leaned against his thigh. As a guard dog, about all she could do was bark, but she’d outlived her usefulness on the ranch, and so Will had claimed her before the new manager could have her put down.

  “We got the stove set up, with the stovepipe and all, this morning. It’s a—a lovely stove, but you see—”

  Yesterday Will had asked Tess Dillard to get up an order of basic supplies and send it out to the Folly. He wouldn’t have had any idea what to include, other than coffee, tinned milk and sugar. Except for a few lean years when he’d had to hunt or fish for his supper and cook it on an open fire, he had dined in restaurants these past nine years. “Not what you’re used to, huh?”

  She beamed, looking almost relieved. “That’s it! I’m not used to—to the oven. But I managed to scrape most of the black parts off the biscuits yesterday, and the meat—well, the men said it tasted all right, anyway. They’re really quite nice.”

  There were degrees of “nice”. By hiring older men and letting go a couple of the younger ones, he thought he’d handled any problem that might arise. He would have to talk to them again. Trouble was, there was no way he could do it without calling attention to what it was he was trying to obscure.

  Standing in front of the fireplace that had been scoured with vinegar and washing soda, Will looked at the small woman he had once considered plain as a mud fence. There was nothing plain about her. Even her hair, which was her worst feature, could hardly be called plain.

  He didn’t know exactly what to call it, but nothing about the woman was plain, as in homely. As in ordinary.

  Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE CARPENTERS were good. The work was progressing far more rapidly than he’d expected. There was still a lot to do, but in spite of his eagerness to begin work on his bank, Will didn’t want them to skimp on repairing his house. Lizzy was beside herself with excitement over the way the place was taking shape. As often as not when he rode out late in the afternoon for a brief check on the progress, she would be outside, shading her eyes against the setting sun to admire each new accomplishment.

  Yesterday it had been the last section of porch railing. Today it was the ready-milled trim he’d ordered by telegraph, with a bonus for prompt delivery. At this rate, the job would be done within the month, he thought, nodding to the old carpenter he’d known slightly all his life. When Lizzy wandered over to join them, the old man’s face split in a wide, yellow-toothed smile. “Now, don’t you go trippin’ over them tools, Miss Lizzy, I’ll have Homer clear ’em off the porch directly he comes down off’n the ladder.”

  “Have you come to have dinner with us? I cooked sausage and beans.”

  Will opened his mouth to speak, but the foreman beat him to it. “Meant to tell you, m’ wife’s got this church social this evening, supper on the ground and all. She’ll be needin’ me to help her tote the basket.”

  “Oh. There certainly are a lot of church socials in town. Wasn’t there another one just the other day?”

  The man looked embarrassed and muttered something about raising money for the new school. It was the first Will had heard of such a project.

  “Well, then, you’ll have to stay, Will. I’ve cooked far too much, I’m afraid. I’m almost certain I measured a cup of beans for each person into the pot, but I must have miscounted. There’s enough to feed an army. For dessert I cooked dried apples….” Her voice trailed off as a worried look replaced her eager smile.

  “I reckon the other men’ll be wantin’ to leave early, too, ma’am. We all go to the same church. Never miss a social, nosiree. Wife wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Lizzy looked so crestfallen, Will wondered how the man had the heart to disappoint her. Obviously she had labored over a special treat for their dinner.

  Sausage and beans? Chuckwagon fare, at best. In fact, their old cook back in the days when Will had been a part of the ranch operation could cook circles around half the chefs in Chicago. You wouldn’t find fancy garnishes on the tin plates he served when they rode up to bring the herd down for the winter, but his fried mountain oysters and sonovabitch stew, made from calf’s brains and a variety of internal organs, were the best in the world.

  Lizzy sighed. Against his better judgment, Will heard himself sayi
ng, “I’d be pleased to join you for supper, Miss Price.” He stressed the formality in case any of the men got the wrong idea about their relationship. She was a temporary housekeeper, that was all. The sooner her brother came back to take her off his hands, the better.

  If he really was a brother. More than likely, the man who had left her at the saloon had been her lover. What brother would leave his sister in a place like the Double Deuce?

  What brother would rob his own brother’s safe?

  Wrenching his mind away from distracting thoughts, he said, “You and the men think about that barn I’m needing, Millard. If you could work it into your schedule, I’d be much obliged.”

  Meanwhile, the sooner he found his housekeeper another position, the sooner he could get his mind back on more important things. The trouble was, he wasn’t having any luck finding her a suitable job, much less a safe place to stay. Not that he’d gone out of his way to look.

  Will had just taken his seat at the table when Violet Gibson strode into the kitchen to remove her apron. She took one look at the small blackened links in the skillet, at the large covered pot on the stove, and shook her head. “I’ll be leaving now, Miss Lizzy. First thing tomorrow I’ll start on them back rooms upstairs.”

  “Are you sure you won’t stay, Mrs. Gibson? I cooked plenty for everyone.”

  “Church social. Wouldn’t want to miss that, now, would I? How-do, Mr. Will. Glad you come along to keep Miss Lizzy comp’ny.”

  Will cut a sideling glance at the covered pot and put on his diplomat’s smile. “My lucky day, Mrs. Gibson. Sure you won’t join us for supper?”

  The minute the woman left the room, Lizzy, at her most pugnacious, said, “You don’t have to stay. Nobody invited you.”

  “Now, I could’ve sworn I heard you inviting me to join you not five minutes ago. Is there something wrong with my hearing?”

  Lizzy blinked furiously and thrust out her surprisingly firm little chin. The tip of her nose grew red. “You don’t need to spare my feelings. I’m not a very good cook, yet—actually, I’m a terrible cook, but I can’t bear to waste all that food.”

  Before Will could assure her she was a wonderful cook, the best in the world, she took out a single plate and slapped it down on the table.

  “Please. I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind,” he said quietly. “We need to talk.”

  Without a word, she took down another plate. There were no napkins. He’d ordered a set of plain dishes and flatware, enough to get by with until he was ready to move in. Over beans that were unsalted and under-cooked, sausage that had been all but incinerated, and lumpy, unsweetened stewed apples with a dollop of cream, he told her they needed to make a list.

  “Tasty,” he said, forcing a smile as he poured more cream over the tart apples.

  “Mrs. Gibson brought the cream. I would have used sugar, but it was full of ants, so I threw it out.”

  Gamely, he told her he would have done the same. “Never could abide ants in my food. They taste like spoiled pickles.”

  “Actually,” she said, flashing a hint of a dimple, “they taste more like capers.”

  “Capers?”

  “It’s a sort of flower bud that’s been cured in brine…I think. Our old cook used to—” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Pushing his plate back, Will tipped his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on. Your old cook used to do what?”

  “Nothing. I was just making conversation. If you’re finished, we could have coffee in the parlor, only you don’t have any furniture there yet. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Furniture styles, and how you’d like things arranged?”

  She was talking too fast and looking so miserable, he gave in. She had her secrets—so did he. It was increasingly evident that she came from a respectable background, and that somehow, she and her rapscallion brother, or at least, the man she’d been traveling with, had managed to get into more trouble than they could handle.

  He knew how that was. She was young—too damn young for him to be thinking the kind of thoughts he’d been thinking lately. He did remember how it was, though. When you were young and on your own, mistakes could pile up faster than they could be dealt with. He had managed to survive and even learn from most of his mistakes.

  How would it be with a woman? What lessons had she been forced to learn before winding up at the Double Deuce?

  The meal over, Will wandered into the room at the front of the house that had been designated the front parlor. Discouragingly bleak, the walls were a dingy shade of gray, the patched plaster making ugly white blemishes.

  “Yellow,” he said when Lizzy joined him in the doorway. “I do believe you’re right. Now, the first question is, should we paint the woodwork to match, or sand and varnish it?”

  Ignoring the acrid smell emanating from the kitchen, he drew her out, asking her ideas on furnishing one room after another as they wandered through the house. At this point, what she did with his house didn’t seem half as urgent as solving the puzzle that was Lizzy.

  They talked about furniture. Horsehair and velvet and some guy named Louis. He promised to order whatever she thought he would need. And whatever it was, he would live with it. Live with it long after the funny little woman who called herself Lizzy Price was only a distant memory.

  She talked with her hands. Graceful gestures that were no less effective because her hands were reddened and her fingernails were broken. There was a faint glow of perspiration on her upper lip.

  And then she yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “The carpenters come early, and I try to have coffee made, at least.”

  He could picture her, scurrying to the kitchen in her nightgown to set the water to boiling, then racing back upstairs. What would she sleep in? Red satin? White flannel? The nights were growing cooler. He would have to see about installing a new furnace.

  Flannel, he decided, because picturing her in a skimpy film of red silk was more than his imagination could handle. Wearing virginal white flannel, sleeping in his bed. The same bed he had slept in more than half his life, dreaming little-boy dreams of fishing for brown trout and hunting bison and grizzlies, wildfowl and lost gold mines.

  Later on had come the adolescent dreams of girls and kissing, and what went on beyond kissing. Later still had been the kind of dreams a man dreamed when he knew what went on beyond kissing.

  After he’d robbed his brother’s safe and left home he had stopped dreaming. Not until several years had passed had he dared to dream again, and now, here he was, well on his way to making his biggest dream come true. If he hadn’t taken on Lizzy’s problems he’d have been even closer to his goal. But Lizzy, he reminded himself forcefully, was only a temporary setback. Sooner or later he’d be rid of her, and then there’d be no holding him back.

  “You’ll need a new mattress, and lots more linens,” she stated, her pale eyebrows knitting in a slight frown.

  “There you go. That’s why I hired you—you know about these things.” Was he spreading it on too thick? The woman obviously needed reassurance. Needed something, at least, and reassurance and a safe place to live was all he was prepared to offer. “I’ll bring the buckboard tomorrow and we can ride into town and see what Tess Dillard can come up with. They’ve got a good stock of drygoods. What she doesn’t have we can order from a catalog if you’ll help me pick things out.”

  It would serve as a test, he rationalized, to see if it would be safe to set her up in town. To see if anyone would remember the skinny, orange-haired woman who had briefly worked at the Double Deuce. Mrs. Harroun would never have hired a saloon girl to work in her boardinghouse, but Lizzy no longer looked like a typical saloon girl. Never had, for that matter.

  “All this is going to cost you a fortune, and we’ve hardly even begun.” She looked so earnest, he felt something in the region of his heart that was likely only indigestion. The gullet and the heart weren’t that far apar
t…were they?

  And that was another thing. No matter how often he told himself she was simply an obligation he had assumed—a way of passing on a few favors that had been done for him during the lean times in his past—he was beginning to suspect that bringing her here had been a mistake. He should have given her enough money to leave town and let it go at that. She would have survived…more or less.

  But he’d started down this road, and it was too late now to turn back.

  Squaring his shoulders—and incidentally, his resolve—Will turned toward the front door. Lizzy followed him outside. It was one of those evenings when the last rays of the setting sun seemed to hang on forever, gilding the entire world for one magical moment.

  Which was why, Will told himself later, he had done something irreversibly stupid.

  Something else irreversibly stupid…

  Turning back, he took her face in his hands. With a feeling of inevitability, he lowered his face to hers. Every sensory organ he possessed was acutely aware of the faint scent of lilacs that seemed to surround her, even when she was scrubbing his walls with the harshest lye soap.

  He was going to have to kiss her. It was either that or lay awake another night while his imagination ran wild. Something about this particular woman acted on his senses like a lodestone.

  A breath away from touching her lips with his, he paused, as if to give her time to pull away. Or to give himself time to come to his senses.

  Neither thing happened. So he closed the infinitesimal distance and covered her lips with his. Hers were trembling.

  God, maybe it was his!

  She was unbelievably sweet—like a rosebud, a bundle of velvety petals pinched tightly together, guarding the sweetness hidden inside. How could anything so slight and bony feel so soft and feminine in his arms? He gathered her closer and deepened the kiss. She might have worked in a saloon, but he could almost have sworn she’d never been kissed by a man before. Maybe a chaste peck on the brow by a father or a brother…