by Jillian Hart
“What are you doing in town? I thought you spent most of your time at the trading post on the other side of the county.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. Not when I’ve come in as a deputy and not as your husband’s best friend.”
Foreboding twisted deep in her midsection. Claire tried to calm Thor, who was sidestepping in his traces as if he wanted to get as far away from Logan as possible. So she had her hands full and she nearly missed the gleam of triumph in the deputy’s cold eyes.
He knew about Thor. Her stomach wrung tighter. Whatever he had to say was not going to be good news.
“I’ve been over to the sheriff’s office. We’ve had a long discussion about you.”
Her grip tightened protectively on the reins, as if that could keep him from Thor. “What on earth would you have to discuss about me with the sheriff?”
“The fact that Ham’s murderer still hasn’t been caught. We’ve got a couple of suspects, you know. Not enough evidence, but let me tell you this. A woman cheating on her husband may be motive enough for murder.”
“What?”
“You were there on the property the night he was shot. In fact, there was just you and Hamilton there. And Joshua Gable came along, pulled a gun and shot your husband dead. Isn’t that what happened?”
“No!” Horror coursed through her like black fear. She watched his attention slide again to Thor, a purebred Clydesdale worth more than Logan earned as a deputy in two years.
This was retribution, she knew that. And what he was accusing Joshua of—while heaven knew it could be true—he had no proof. None. Or he would have pulled this much earlier.
Just stay calm. Fortunately staying calm was a skill she’d learned in her marriage, and it was useful now. “Logan. What is wrong with you? Have you been drinking?”
“The question is, what is wrong with you, Claire? Cheating on your husband. Shame on you.” Logan’s manner grew harsher, a tough lawman scolding a criminal.
Except she was no criminal. And she was not as easily bowed. He’d only seen her as Ham’s wife, placating him, working to keep the man from losing his temper. It hadn’t been her choice, but it had been the consequence of her decision to marry. And there was no way on earth she was going to bow down to another man. To let any man, even an armed lawman, talk to her that way.
“Deputy, that is enough. You know good and well I was true to my husband—”
“How long have you and Gable been together?”
“Ham barely let me leave the house alone. I had no chance to have a liaison with anyone.”
“How long, Claire? How long did you want your husband dead?”
His face burned red with rage, but it was a sly and calculated one as well. Thanks to Hamilton, she had learned the difference. “This is a public street. You either take me to the sheriff’s office or leave me be. You’re out to make trouble and I know why.”
“I’m a law-abiding deputy. I don’t make trouble.” With a cool grin, Logan eased back in his saddle, his purpose apparently fulfilled. “You best consider coming with me to the sheriff’s office.”
“We both know I did not kill my husband.”
“We both know that if you didn’t, I have evidence to arrest someone else.”
Her stomach turned at the darkness that seemed to drift off him like a foul odor. “You have no evidence and no witness.”
“I can pay for one.”
Her mouth hung open in shock.
“Here’s the sheriff now. I know you figure Gable and his brothers will be riding to your rescue, but this is one thing he can’t blame me for. You’re the one who killed your husband.” His eyes were laughing at her. “Not even your highfalutin lawyer will be able to get you out of this. You should have let the Hamiltons have the land, Claire. And let me have your horses. A humble deputy has to make what money he can.”
Her mind was spinning. None of this made sense. Logan was a good liar, but the sheriff, surely he could see through the truth. Logan was mad, that was all, and her attorney could sort this out. There was no need to panic. No need to worry. Liars didn’t always win. She was innocent.
But Joshua… The blood iced in her veins. Joshua was not.
Coop Logan leered down at her, his malice palpable. He knew the position she was in. The stifling feeling pressed in on her as if from every direction. She was helpless. Trapped.
Just as she’d been as Ham’s wife.
Joshua clamped his jaw tight in frustration. The women in his family were going to be the death of him. If it wasn’t his grandmother getting into arguments in town or his mother with her list of ways to improve his life, his sleep, the right woman to marry, it was his sister, as bright as the sun in the flawless sky.
He was worried sick about her. She was so happy. If this marriage didn’t turn out to be all she hoped it would, then it was a long, long way to fall. He didn’t want to see disappointment and heartbreak hurt his Bets.
“This is the last trunk, I promise.” She snapped the latch and bounced up, shining.
Hell, she was beaming happiness.
“Joshua, you’re frowning. Stop!” She laughed like a lark’s trill and kissed his cheek. “I’m happy. Trust me for a change. You’re not the only one who can make a good decision.”
“That man is not good enough for you. We both know it.”
“You’re right. He’s far too good for the likes of me. I’m just lucky he wants me to be his wife.” She swirled away in a cloud of yellow calico.
“This is too much happy for me.”
He hated how bright the sunshine was streaming through the window, as if to mock him while he knelt to heft the enormous trunk onto his shoulder. He’d protested, done everything he could to stop this relationship and, still, Betsy was determined. If he pushed her any harder to abandon her wedding plans, then he knew he would lose her.
“You didn’t like me working as a laundry lady, and that worked out wonderfully.” Betsy led the way down the stairs, clearing away Jordan, who’d collapsed on a step to eat a cookie he’d stolen from her kitchen. “I met my Duncan on my laundry route.”
“See why it was such a bad idea?”
“You’re glum because you were wrong about my business and my fiancé.” She held the door.
He shouldered through with the impossibly heavy trunk. “What did you put in this thing, anyway?”
“Go ahead and try to change the subject, but you are wrong every once in a while, my dearest brother.” She huddled on the front step in the cold wind. “I saw Claire today.”
Claire. All thoughts flew out of his head. His toe jammed into the steel belt of the wagon wheel and pain jolted through his foot as the trunk tumbled from his shoulder.
The crash as it hit the wagon’s tailgate said it all. Betsy had mentioned the one thing that could rattle him. And she’d done it on purpose.
“Go inside. You don’t have a coat.” He scowled, hoping he looked mad enough to send her inside so the subject of Claire wouldn’t be debated and henpecked to death. “Go on. Git going.”
“I’m used to your bark, big brother.” When she should have scurried inside, she calmly swooped down the stairs, her gentle love for him undeniable. “What happened? Claire came by to leave off a wedding gift and your mare. I gathered from what she didn’t say that you aren’t courting her any longer.”
“I never was courting her.”
“Fine. Then, uh, calling on her.”
He gave the trunk a shove so it wedged up tight against the porch chairs he’d stacked in earlier. “I wasn’t calling on her, either.”
“But I thought—”
“Everyone just assumed. I was helping Claire out, that was all. I had my reasons, but that’s all it was.” He was lying to her. He was lying to himself. But damn it, it was easier than admitting the truth. Betsy was in love. She’d lost all rational sense. She’d never see his view of things.
It didn’t matter anyway, because Claire understood. They just had
to wait out whatever this attraction was. It would eventually fade. All things changed. All things ended. She had her life. He had his responsibilities. That was a lot to toss away on the chance a marriage might be a happy one.
He didn’t have that much trust in anyone.
Different lives, different outcomes, different choices. They would never be. It was that simple.
“Claire told me that you boys stole her horses back for her.” That was Betsy, tenacious without end. She followed him up the steps and back into her house. “You wouldn’t have risked so much unless she meant a great deal to you.”
“She does mean a great deal to me.” His confession startled him, mostly because he’d vowed never to admit it. Especially to himself. And because in saying it, he made it real, and in making it real, it hurt that much more.
“Oh, Joshua.” Betsy squeezed his hand, a comfort as always.
He was a man; he didn’t need comfort. “I’ll grab Jordan by the ear and haul him upstairs with me. We can fit that bureau on the back of the wagon.”
“Good news.” Betsy sighed, holding on to his hand as if she didn’t want to let go. As if she could sense the deep well of sadness he didn’t want to admit to having. “The road to my Duncan’s house goes awfully close to Claire’s home. You could stop on the way back and see her. Maybe you should see her, Joshua. Talk to her. I had so hoped you might find someone to love.”
“I don’t need love. I need another hand around to help me out with the ranch.” It wasn’t true; they both knew it. But it was easier to let the lie be than to erase it with the truth—that he needed Claire more than he could ever say, ever measure, ever believe.
And that’s why he intended to send Jordan with the wagon. And stay behind to do the evening chores.
The less temptation, the better.
“Let’s go over your story once more to make sure I have it right.” The sheriff hunkered down on the chair across the small scarred table. “You were coming home from town. The mare lost her footing on the hill.”
“There was an ice storm. It was slick.”
“The horse fell, the wagon wrecked and you were hurt.”
Images racked through her. She’d been pregnant. She’d been afraid for her baby. Joshua had come out of that storm like a mythical hero come to life. How could she mention his presence that night? How could she ever harm him?
She couldn’t. She could not tell the truth since that would condemn him. There was no mistaking the Hamilton brothers, who were seated just beyond the metal bars at the sheriff’s paper-strewn desk. If she mentioned Joshua was there that night, then they would hear. And they would leap to all kinds of wrong conclusions. Ones that could only hurt Joshua.
“I was pinned to the ground for a while.” Claire remembered every detail of how Joshua had stood up to Ham and defeated him. How Ham had fallen to the ground, bleeding, trying to shoot Joshua…and how he’d failed.
One thing she would never forget was the gentle regard Joshua, a stranger, had paid her that night. Helping her up. Carrying her to the cabin. Rushing for the doctor.
Making sure Ham wouldn’t hurt anyone again. But that didn’t make him a murderer. If Joshua had killed him, then it had been self-defense. Not that she trusted the sheriff to believe that. Not with the Hamiltons sneering in the back room.
The sheriff didn’t seem interested as he asked, “Who helped you up from the wreckage?”
“I helped myself. I learned to do that a lot after I’d married Ham. He wasn’t a good husband.”
A thud came from the next room. Reed was on his feet, his drunken howl so nearly identical to Ham’s that it sent shivers creeping down her nape.
“Ham was a better man than the likes of her deserved!”
His temper seemed nearly the same, too.
“Sit down, Reed!” Logan snarled somewhere out of sight. His voice dropped into a whisper and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. But she could feel it. Feel the malice in the dank, musty air. Feel the glee at their victory so close…and it did look as if they would win. The sheriff was on their side. She hadn’t realized that until she’d walked into the jail and spotted the Hamiltons lying in wait.
“I went straight to bed and there I stayed until morning.”
“Alone?”
She remembered how Logan had hinted that she’d been unfaithful, so she was very firm in her answer. “Alone. Don’t believe everything you hear, Sheriff. Some men have no decency, so telling a lie is nothing to them.”
“And it’s the same for some women.” The sheriff pushed back his chair and stood, unfolding to his full height, but he wasn’t as tall or as impressive as Joshua.
Joshua. Even here in the cool must of the town jail, she thought of him. Her soul yearned for him, like a summer wildflower watching and waiting for the dawn.
The sheriff caught hold of the open cell door. “I’m charging you, Claire Hamilton, in the shooting death of your husband.”
Everything within her stilled. No, it couldn’t be true. She’d done nothing wrong. At night anyone could have shot Ham. She was in the house, wounded and afraid she was losing the baby, which she had been. The doc had arrived, the rest of the night was foggy and vague. She’d awoken the next morning exhausted and hurting in more ways than she could count, and Ham was simply not there.
And if you say this, then those men will keep looking. They’ll logically decide to question him next. And what if they find out the inconsistencies?
What if they discovered she’d lied to keep Joshua out of this mess? She loved him. How could she say the words that would ruin his life?
“Hey! Woman!” Reed lurched onto his feet, his hands fisting and his temper as hot as fresh coals. He crowded into the narrow space between the desks and the cells. “I’m gonna make sure you hurt. That was my brother you killed so you could play the bitch to high-and-mighty Gable.”
“Out of my way.” She lifted her chin, preparing for whatever came next. She wasn’t afraid of being hit. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Not anymore. She couldn’t explain it as she shoved past Reed to take her place inside the empty cell.
The door clicked closed with a metallic snap, and the echo of it resounded off the stone walls and floors.
“You can’t talk to me like that! Hey, Sheriff, she can’t talk to me like that—”
Reed’s words faded away. Claire felt her knees giving out and so she dropped onto the only piece of furniture, a cot—not comfortable at all—and listened to the final clicking turn of the key, locking her in like a criminal.
This can’t be happening. She couldn’t believe she was free one moment and jailed the next.
On the other side of the bars, the sheriff snapped his key ring onto his belt. “I expect you’re using the Gable family’s lawyer? Do you want me to send for him?”
Yes. She was scared inside. Joshua’s cousin was an excellent attorney. He’d know what to do. He’d help her. He could get her out of here and prove that she’d had nothing to do with Ham’s death.
And yet, would that only force Logan and the Hamiltons to accuse Joshua? What if he was here right now instead of her? He had the largest ranch in the county to run. He had his family to take care of and care for. Everyone in the Gable family depended on Joshua.
“I won’t be needing my lawyer, thank you.”
“All right, then. I’d feel sorry for you, a woman locked up in a cell. But the truth is a man’s dead because of you. Ham was a friend of mine, too. Believe me when I say I’m gonna make sure you get exactly what you deserve.”
Getting what those men thought she deserved…that’s what she was afraid of.
Chapter Eighteen
Joshua’s back was killing him. Did his sister have to have such heavy furniture? He would have been grumbling about it, since he was so damned miserable anyway, but the arrival of Betsy’s fiancé became a greater torment. Betsy was downstairs right now with the mountain man who was probably only interested in sweet Bets for her inherita
nce.
Red hazed his vision as he tamped down a dynamite rage. He heaved the feather mattress off the bed. It hit the floor with a boom that echoed in the rafters above.
Boots pounded up the stairs. Too fast of a gait for Jordan. Too powerful for quieter brother James. Joshua wasn’t surprised to see Liam march into the room with his typical dour determination. “Got that headboard ready? No. What’s wrong? I thought you’d have the whole house moved into those mountains by now.”
“I’m in no hurry to pack Betsy off to her new husband.”
“That Duncan isn’t such a bad sort.” Liam caught the end of the headboard. “I got to talkin’ to him downstairs. He’s not as lazy as you think. He’s a woodworker. He sells furniture to several of the furniture stores in the county.”
“He’s a mountain man.”
Joshua didn’t want to like the man and he wouldn’t. Nothing was going to change his mind. Too much was at risk for him to be swayed now. Claire Hamilton’s misery at the hands of her husband had convinced him he was right.
Betsy might not listen to him—she might marry the man anyway—but Joshua was going to make damn sure that no man hurt his little sister. No matter what. That Liam had been taken in by this mountain man irked him even more. He wrenched on the braces and yanked the headboard from the frame.
“Whoa, brother. What did the bed to do you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Oh, I know.” Liam shook his head and grabbed the footboard before it could tumble to the floor, leaving the fact that this was to be his sister’s marriage bed unspoken between them. “Are you going to be able to give her away at the wedding? Or am I gonna have to get all dressed up in a coat and tie?”
“If it were up to me, I’d fly her up to the moon and banish her there.”
“But how do you know there aren’t a bunch of mountain men who live on the back side of the moon? The minute you’d leave her there, if you could get her there, one of them would be bound to charm her into loving him.”