Millie Criswell, Mary McBride, Liz Ireland

by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge

  What he didn’t know, of course, was that Matty had rigged out the entire store with mirrors to prevent any such pilfering, mostly from the likes of a particular pair of brothers, Samuel and Hamuel Crane, as identical in their looks as in their larcenous little hearts.

  She’d been watching this green-eyed, sandy-haired stranger, thinking what a pity it was that a man with such elegant and graceful hands couldn’t put them to a better use, dreading the moment when she would have to apprehend him. Then, just when she was about to reach under the counter for her pistol, Luther Killebrew had come through the door waving his.

  And then she’d gone and done it. It wasn’t that she had thought it all out. The plan seemed to hatch itself somehow, and it seemed so brilliant at the time. She’d save Will Cade from the bounty hunter. She’d snatch him from his fate, and then the gambler would be firmly in her debt. He’d be beholden to her. Morally bound to pay his savior back. Ethically required to make things right. To set things fair and square.

  Will Cade owed her, and she needed help in the store. It just made perfect sense.

  Only now, with Luther Killebrew gone, it suddenly occurred to Matty that relying on the conscience and moral fiber of a thief was as foolish as trying to rob the poor. She’d just made a terrible mistake. It served her right, too, for not consulting Charlie first.

  “Well.” Matty swallowed hard. She’d have to get her pistol after all, she guessed, and maybe even shoot the man. But just then, in one of her rigged up mirrors, she could see the silver handle of the hairbrush peek from his wool sleeve, then slowly ease out onto the table. Perhaps he had a conscience after all.

  “Well.” The scoundrel stood there, staring at her, his face impassive as a clock. “That’s a mighty deep subject, ma’am.”

  Matty crossed her arms, standing a few inches taller than her five foot three and trying her best to sound like a Baptist preacher instead of a going broke storekeeper. “You owe me, Will Cade.”

  He nodded. “That I do, ma’am. That I do. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to accept a small fortune in sheer gratitude.”

  She shook her head. It galled her to have to admit what she was about to say, even to a stranger. “I need help here in my store.”

  He didn’t reply, but one of his sandy eyebrows lifted slightly, as if to say, Go on.

  “I need someone to transport heavy merchandise from the depot. Someone to tend the higher shelves.”

  “You need a man,” he said as his green gaze skimmed her from head to toe.

  Matty stiffened, feeling color blaze across her face, wondering suddenly if the fact that Will Cade was a handsome devil had had something to do with her unpremeditated rescue of him. “You’re very rude.”

  He laughed softly while his gaze traveled around the store. “I’ve been called worse. But I’m also strong enough to fetch your heavy parcels and tall enough to tend those upper shelves. I’ll help you, Mrs. Favor. For a while, anyway.”

  “You will?” Matty had expected more resistance.

  “Like you said, I owe you.” He glanced toward the curtained off back room. “Got any place I can sleep in here?”

  “There’s a room upstairs,” she replied before considering the consequences. She didn’t want him staying here, but Lord knows she needed help. “It’s cold, though.”

  He laughed again and his green eyes glinted. “What isn’t?”

  “Well,” Matty said. “It’s a deal, I suppose.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “I hope I won’t have to be counting hairbrushes every day, Will Cade.”

  If he was surprised by her accusation, he managed to hide it. If he felt shame, it didn’t show.

  “Or,” she continued sternly, “be forced to telegraph the good folks in Leavenworth to tell them where to find you.”

  He splayed a finely shaped hand over his coat in the vicinity of his heart. The crescent scar reminded Matty of a pearly slice of moon. “You can trust me,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t. But I can use you, at least until Christmas.”

  “Fair enough.” He cocked his head, which set that suddenly comely grin of his on a precipitous angle. “What’s Mr. Favor going to say when you tell him you’ve gone and hired a dog bit dandy to help out?”

  Maybe I just won’t tell him, Matty thought as she turned away, pretending not to hear the gambler’s question. Maybe for once in my life I’ll do something on my own.

  “Follow me,” she said briskly. “I’ll show you the way upstairs.”

  Chapter Two

  In the following week, a fresh foot and a half of snow accumulated in Ellsworth, an inch of which found its way through a break in the window glass in the mercantile’ s upstairs room. It was colder than a witch’s…

  Will cursed as he used the handle of his razor to break the thin veneer of ice in the china washbasin, preparatory to splashing the frigid water on his face. He spent as little time as possible up here in Matty Favor’s spare and arctic room. Each evening, after she locked the front door and disappeared wherever it was that her Charlie, the lucky devil, awaited her, Will would let himself out the back door and trudge through the knee-high snow, across the railroad tracks, toward the warmth of the seedier side of the little cow town.

  There, once he’d thawed out sufficiently, he’d play poker until he won just enough for his evening meal and a few shots of rye. It never took him long to accumulate the necessary couple bucks. He didn’t even have to cheat.

  After that, rather than battle with frostbite in his lodging over the mercantile, he’d spend the next few hours in the parlor of the sporting house with Mrs. Runyon and her little crew of hard luck whores— Rosemary, Flo and Ilsebein. Business was slow, and the women seemed grateful for his company.

  If his scheme with the stolen hairbrush had worked out, Will expected that by now he’d be a rather permanent guest there, most likely in Mrs. Runyon’s own bed. The madam made it pretty clear from the outset that she fancied him. She was generous with her cigars and plum brandy, although she didn’t seem to be quite sure whether she was investing in a stud or a gelding.

  In all honesty, Will wasn’t all that sure of his status anymore, either. What kind of fool slept alone in a bleak and freezing room above a store when he could just as well have eased between a warm and willing woman’s sheets? It didn’t make much sense.

  Why, he asked himself for the hundredth time while he watched his breath take shape in a frigid puff, was he doing this? And for the hundredth time the answer was the same.

  Matty.

  Flame-haired, blue-eyed Matty.

  Married Matty.

  Mrs. Charles Favor.

  He had yet to see the husband.

  She’d done more than merely rescue Will from Luther Killebrew. Matty Favor had made him feel necessary in a way he hadn’t been ever since he’d come home from the war. Helping her every day in her woebegone store had helped him forget, if only for a while, that he wasn’t a good man anymore. Her presence in his dreams this past week had kept his demons at bay.

  Whether those demons were chasing him or vice versa, Will couldn’t exactly say. Six years ago, he’d come home from the war, back to the beautiful, misty mountains of North Carolina where he’d left his beautiful, misty bride, Caroline. He’d been ready to hang out his shingle and practice the peacetime medicine for which he’d been trained, and he’d been more than eager to begin the family he’d dreamed of for so long.

  So much for dreams. Six years ago the mountains had greeted him in all their misty glory, but his beautiful bride was gone. So was his brother, Matthew— the one who’d stayed home “to keep an eye on things” while his older brother went off to war.

  “Run off,” his father had said. “The shameless harlot and that no-good, thankless boy. Forget about them, Will. Wherever they’ve gone, it’s halfway to perdition.”

  But the demons wouldn’t let him forget. The demons replaced his dreams, and Will set out on the road to perdition to find them.
r />   While he shaved, he contemplated his face in the shard of mirrored glass above the washbasin. Sometimes he barely recognized himself. The past six years had added twelve to his visage, making him appear forty-three instead of his actual thirty-three. He had the look of a gambler now—wary and closed—instead of the open and sympathetic expression of a physician. No wonder Matty didn’t trust him.

  Matty.

  Just the thought of her made his lips quirk in an uncharacteristic smile and his heart buck in his chest.

  To say that she needed help in her store was putting it mildly. The shelves were poorly constructed and of inferior lumber, most of them groaning under too much dusty merchandise. Her odd assortment of tables displayed an equally odd mix of goods that nobody in a struggling Kansas cow town needed even if they could afford elaborate brass inkwells and silver dresser sets and delicately painted silk fans.

  In addition to what he’d already transported for her, there was still half a ton of unmarked goods stacked in wooden crates at the depot, waiting to be signed for and hauled down the street to be inventoried and placed on the overloaded shelves.

  That was assuming she actually inventoried anything. Her penmanship was abysmal, so the fact that she failed to make the proper entries in her account books didn’t really matter. You couldn’t have read them if she did.

  Her business wasn’t exactly brisk, either, although it did pick up once word got out about Will, the new man, the dog bit dandy, working there. The women who came into the store, though, seemed to spend more time flirting with him than they did buying things.

  Hard as he tried, he couldn’t figure Matty Favor out. She didn’t flirt with him exactly. One minute he’d catch her looking at him as if he were a piece of lemon meringue pie or a Christmas gift tucked beneath a tree. The next minute her blue eyes would go all frosty and she’d cluck her tongue and tell him to dust someplace or to rearrange a shelf.

  Will finished shaving, then dried his face and went downstairs to stoke up the fire in the potbellied stove, telling himself not to be too eager to see Mrs. Charles Favor coming through the door at seven thirty, as she always did, with snowflakes on her eyelashes and winter roses on her cheeks.

  As always, she’d say a crisp good morning while she whisked off her dark blue cloak. She’d hang it on the hook behind the door, and then stride behind the counter with the cash box she carried home every night. After a while, and when she thought he wasn’t looking, she’d bend down surreptitiously to check the second little cash box she kept hidden under a floorboard.

  Will kept wanting to tell her that if he meant to steal her blind, he’d have done so long before this. God knows he’d considered it that first frigid night upstairs, but then he’d started looking forward to seeing her the next morning and the next one after that. She was a married woman, though, so mostly what he told himself was that he was merely enjoying the view while paying off his debt to her, not to mention avoiding being on the run for the next few months, looking over his shoulder for the likes of Luther Killebrew.

  “I could reinforce those shelves behind the counter today,” he told her when she finally settled herself on the stool behind the high wooden counter.

  “That would be fine,” she said. “I consulted with Charlie last night, and he agreed it needs to be done despite the fact that the price of lumber is so high right now.”

  “Cheaper in the long run, I’d guess. Better than having a gross of those tins and bottles coming down on your pretty head.”

  He liked to make her blush, to watch her light blue eyes widen and the color creep up from her prim collar to blaze across her face. It reminded him of his wife when he was courting her a million years ago. In that other life. The one before the war. The one that didn’t exist anymore, except for when it haunted his dreams.

  “You’re running short on black cotton thread, I noticed. Might want to order extra next time. And you might want to consider a new supplier. You’re paying way too much with that outfit in Chicago.”

  “Mmm,” she murmured while she counted yesterday’s receipts. “I’ll have to consult with Charlie about that.”

  Charlie again, goddamn it. “Maybe I’ll see if I can borrow that horse and sled again this afternoon to haul the rest of those crates up from the depot.” Will waited a second before he added sourly, “Unless, of course, Charlie has made some other plans that I’m not privy to.”

  “Not to my knowledge.” She was counting pennies now, her concentration aided by the rosy tip of her tongue peeking out from a corner of her lovely mouth. Will could feel his temperature rise a degree or two at the sight.

  “I guess you didn’t consult him about that,” he said more irritably than he’d intended.

  What did they do? he wondered. Lie in bed all night talking about the price of lumber? Did Charlie ever kiss her during all these consultations? Did he sample that sweet pink tongue? Did he twine her long red hair around…?

  “It’s time to open up,” she said, ignoring his comment, and his presence as well, while she turned to glance out the mercantile’s front window. “I see Lottie Crane’s already back for whatever it was she forgot yesterday.”

  Will unlatched the door, knowing all too well why buxom Lottie Crane was back for the sixth straight day. The woman probably hadn’t rubbed up against Charlie Favor’s cousin from Saint Louis quite enough the day before or thrown him ample winks. Lord, how he wished Matty were similarly inclined.

  “It’s surely cold out this morning,” the Crane woman said when she stepped inside. Her plump cheeks were ruddy from the cold and her snub nose was running, but even so she managed to gaze at Will with a good deal of warmth while she peeled off her gloves, and then thrust her pudgy hands in his direction. “Why, just feel my hands, Will. They’re like two blocks of ice.”

  That they were, and graceless and chapped to boot. Will let them go as quickly and politely as he could.

  “Did you forget something, Lottie?” Matty asked from her perch behind the counter.

  “Silly me,” she said. “I meant to get a couple licorice whips for my boys.”

  Matty frowned at the empty jar near her elbow. “Looks like we’re all out.”

  “There’s more in back,” Will said immediately. “I saw ’em yesterday. I’ll go and get ’em.”

  He fairly sprinted through the curtains into the back room. Then, in no rush to find the licorice and return, he lowered himself onto a crate, lit a cigar, leaned back and listened to the women bantering out front. The Crane woman had a voice like a consumptive crow in a corn patch. But Matty! She was more like a meadowlark in springtime. You didn’t even have to see her face to know she was beautiful. Her voice alone conveyed it.

  The crow was going on at some length about her twins, Samuel and Hamuel, and wondering aloud if Matty couldn’t order a musical instrument or two just in case one of the dear, sweet boys turned out to be musically inclined.

  The meadowlark, quite predictably, replied that she would consider it. No doubt after she consulted with Charlie.

  Will sat up and dashed his half-smoked cigar on the floor, then ground it with the heel of his boot. He was developing a real dislike for Charlie.

  “I’ll just go see what’s keeping Will back there,” Matty said, having heard more than enough about the terrible twins’ untapped intelligence, hidden talents and untried musical skills.

  Licorice, my Aunt Fanny’s backside. Lottie Crane was here again to ogle Will Cade. In the week the gambler had been here, Matty had seen more women in the mercantile than she’d seen in church in a week of Sundays. She didn’t even know there were so many females here in town. The silly, simpering things.

  “Be courteous to all of our customers, Matty, no matter the money they spend,” Charlie always said. “Even the ones who only buy half a spool of thread or ask for just a single needle out of a paper case. You never know when somebody’s rich old Aunt Sophronia or Uncle Spud might pass away and leave them a fortune they’ll be happy
to spend in our store.”

  It wasn’t easy being courteous. She didn’t appreciate the women fingering her chinaware and drooling all over her dry goods even if she did appreciate their business. Matty was half tempted to tell them her new assistant wasn’t Charlie’s cousin at all, but a black-hearted gambler and no-good cheat, just to see how fast they’d run the other way.

  But, of course, she wasn’t going to spill those particular beans. Will Cade was good for business, even if she didn’t trust him half as far as she could throw him. Not that she wanted to throw him. He was, she grudgingly admitted, a pure pleasure to look at. It was something she did far more often than she should have, too.

  Still, she’d have to be a dead woman not to appreciate the width of his shoulders and the suggestion of hard muscle beneath the fine white linen of his shirts. His eyes were a wonderful green with just a hint of gray in them, like the tender underside of leaves. His mouth was finely sculpted, and when he smiled— which wasn’t often—his teeth shone a brilliant white against his skin.

  And then there was his hair. Matty had never been to a beach, but she could imagine that Will’s light brown hair might sift through her fingers like warm sand.

  All week she’d been telling herself she obviously wasn’t dead and that it was perfectly all right to look as long as she didn’t touch, and now she told herself the same thing again, just as she pushed through the curtains that closed off the back room, and charged straight into the gambler’s arms.

  “Whoa, now,” he said in that soft and silky Southern spun accent of his.

  For a minute, Matty couldn’t quite catch her breath. She just stood there, her senses suddenly drenched in shaving soap and bay rum, her nose buried in the pure male scent of wool lapels where wisps of cigar smoke and hints of rye whiskey lingered. She was dizzy with it. Good Lord, she was nearly drunk. She raised a hand in order to steady herself, only to encounter a warm and solid wall of chest and the hard beating of the heart behind it.

  How could something so wrong, she wondered, feel so absolutely right?