The Lawman Takes a Wife

by Anne Avery

  “There,” Dickie said, saving her from the need to reply. “Done.”

  Hiram Goff scanned the form. He didn’t seem to think much of Dickie’s sprawling, ill-formed cursive, but there wasn’t anything else he could object to.

  “Now if you’ll sign, Mrs. Calhan. There. Thank you. And now young man, the money you wish to deposit?”

  Dickie dug out the coins and, after a moment’s hesitation, laid them out on the desk.

  “Twenty, twenty-five, seventy-five.” Molly watched, amused, as the pinched expression on Hiram Goff’s face smoothed out under the balm of counting money. “One dollar and sixty cents. Very good.”

  He fussily made out a deposit slip, then wrote down the amount in the savings book and slid the book across the desk to Dickie. “You’ve made a wise decision, young man. Watch your pennies and your pounds will look out for themselves.”

  “I don’t got no pounds.”

  “You don’t have,” Molly chided. “It’s a saying. It means your dollars will keep earning more dollars because you’re being careful with your pennies.”

  “You sure it’s safe?” Dickie demanded, suspiciously eyeing first Goff, then the bank president. He hadn’t touched the book.

  “Don’t be a fool, boy.”

  “Of course it’s safe, young man,” Hancock assured him with a condescending heartiness that raised Dickie’s hackles. “And even if by some wild chance bank robbers did actually steal our money, you can be sure the sheriff would stop them. That’s why we hired him, you know. Because he’s done it before.”

  “You mean he really is a gunfighter like Freddy Christian said he was?” Dickie demanded, suddenly eager.

  “I don’t know what Freddy Christian said, but Sheriff Gavin did, in fact, shoot two bank robbers back in Abilene a few years ago.”

  Dickie’s eyes popped. “Really?”

  Hancock nodded. “Shot them dead right there in the street. One shot each, straight to the heart.”

  “Wow!” Dickie said.

  Hiram Goff look grimly pleased.

  To Molly, it was as if the earth had fallen away from beneath her feet.

  Chapter Ten

  The minutes and hours crept past with excruciating slowness. By a quarter to seven, Molly had changed her mind at least two dozen times.

  She would walk out with DeWitt Gavin. She absolutely wouldn’t. She would, but she’d demand an explanation. She wouldn’t say a word. What was past, was past, and the man had obviously only been doing his job, and it was none of her business, anyway.

  When his knock sounded on the back door, she almost sent Dickie to tell him she was indisposed, but making her son lie for her was stooping a little low.

  “Sheriff Gavin.” She forced a smile. “You’re very prompt.”

  “Ma’am.” He’d swept his hat off the instant the door had swung open, and now he held it, two-fisted, in front of him like a shield. He looked, she thought, exactly like a man who wished he were somewhere else entirely.

  “Let me just get my jacket and hat,” she said, and remembered only after she’d shut the door in his face that she should have invited him in.

  When she emerged five minutes later, DeWitt Gavin was halfway down the long, narrow yard at the back of her house, bent over smelling the roses that edged her vegetable garden. She watched as he delicately cupped a blowsy red blossom, then buried his nose in its heart, and wondered what part of him was the man who’d shot and killed two people.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, she picked her way down the narrow, wooden back steps. At the sound of her footsteps on the path, he straightened.

  “Haven’t seen such pretty roses in a long, long while.” Gently, he ran the tip of his finger across one scarlet petal, then another.

  Heat washed through her. She could so easily imagine that finger tracing a path across her naked skin. “My husband brought them from Denver when we first settled here. He knew how much I loved my roses.”

  “Can’t be easy, having a garden this high in the mountains.”

  “It’s not. Nothing’s easy to grow here. Late frosts, early snows, cold nights. They all work against a gardener. Some things I don’t even bother with anymore. Corn hardly even gets high enough to tassel before the first freeze gets it.”

  He glanced at the neat garden rows that marched down the length of her yard. “You seem to manage pretty well, in spite of it all.”

  “I try.” Then, impulsively, “Do you have a pocketknife, sheriff?”

  That brought his head up. “What?”

  “A pocketknife. May I borrow it, please?” She shouldn’t do this. She really shouldn’t do this. But when, clearly bewildered, he handed her his bone-handled folding knife, she took it and neatly cut off a half-open bloom, then trimmed away the thorns.

  “There you are,” she said, extending the rose. Because she couldn’t help it, she smiled. “You can keep it in your water glass at the jail. Add a little color to the place.”

  When he continued to stare at it, she stepped forward and shoved the stem into the top buttonhole on his lapel, tugging it into place. By the time she finished, her head was spinning and her chest felt tight, as though someone had suddenly yanked on the lacing strings of her stays.

  She stepped back, away from him, fighting for breath.

  “Never had a lady give me a rose before.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  To Molly, her voice sounded overbright and slightly strained, but Gavin never noticed. He had his chin tucked all the way back to his Adam’s apple and his eyes half-crossed, trying to get a good look at the showy red rose that now adorned his lapel.

  “Shall we?” she said to distract him. The last thing she wanted was for him to start wondering why she’d picked that rose.

  In unspoken agreement, they headed west, away from the center of town and the streets where they’d be most likely to run into someone they knew. He didn’t offer to take her arm, for which she was grateful. She’d swear she could still feel the heat of him beneath his jacket, the rock-solid wall of his chest.

  Six blocks brought them to the edge of town. Elk City didn’t so much as end as it petered out. The houses got smaller and farther apart, the weeds beside the streets taller and more obstreperous, until the raw dirt road they’d followed simply ran into a meadow and disappeared.

  From here the land dropped away in a sweep of rocky soil and grass dotted with wildflowers. A boulder-strewn river that didn’t carry enough water to warrant the name tumbled down the cut, its waters not yet muddied by the mines farther down. Beyond the river, the land swept up again, the grass eventually giving way to pines, then raw gray rock and the rugged peaks of the Elk mountains.

  For a long while, they didn’t speak, too engrossed at the wild beauty before them for words to matter. Despite her sharp awareness of the man beside her, Molly could feel the strains of the day slipping away, just as they always did whenever she walked out this way.

  “This was a fine place to build a town,” the sheriff said at last, softly.

  Molly laughed. “You may not think so come winter, when the snow’s up to your waist and the wind’s howling and trying to freeze your bones. The only thing you’ll want then is a nice warm fire to cozy up to.”

  And someone to cozy up with, she thought, and felt a longing so intense it startled her.

  She glanced up to find him watching her. A shadow flickered across his face, then was gone. He deliberately looked away, to the peaks and the lowering sun that was casting long shadows in its wake.

  “Reckon a man gets used to the cold, just like most everything else,” was all he said.

  He feels lost, too, Molly realized suddenly. Divorce was just another kind of loss. Maybe not so wounding, but a loss nonetheless.

  “Let’s walk down to the river, shall we?” she said, as impulsively as she’d plucked that rose in his lapel. “To that clump of aspens, see? There’s a trail from there that will take us back up to the far end of town.”

/>   The grove of aspens and young pines seemed a world unto itself. This late in the day, the sun shot through the trees in bars and ribbons of gold, deepening the shadows, making it a place of secrets. The air was heavy with the smell of grass and damp earth and water. Elk City seemed a thousand miles away.

  Gavin halted at the river’s edge, just where a huge gray boulder thrust up out of the frothing river and the trees parted, framing a breathtaking view of the peaks to the west.

  “Pretty place” was all he said.

  “It’s one of my favorite spots, and a great place for a picnic on a Sunday afternoon.” As she often did, Molly clambered up the side of that upthrust rock and claimed a seat at the top, too late remembering she was supposed to be a lady and tugging her skirts decently around her ankles.

  He perched on the fallen trunk of an old pine that was the only available footbridge across the torrent for a mile in either direction. It gave him a good view of the peaks…and of her. Molly chided herself for the thought, but couldn’t help checking to make sure her hair was neatly in place.

  She had to admit, he was a rather breathtaking sight himself with the dying sun gilding the rough-hewn planes of his face and the strong, long lines of his body. The rose in his lapel provided an incongruous splash of color in this place where there were a hundred shades of green and brown, and not one dab of red.

  It took an effort of will not to look at the gun that hung at his side, readily visible now that his jacket had fallen open. If he was aware of the weapon, he gave no sign of it, too used to it, perhaps, to notice except when it wasn’t there.

  She’d swear there was a tension in him to match the tension that thrummed through her.

  “Thing I can’t get used to,” he said, breaking the silence, “is how quick it gets dark here once the sun goes down. Back in Kansas, seems the evening lasts longer.”

  Kansas.

  “Mr. Hancock said you’d been sheriff in Abilene.”

  He went still, suddenly, and his eyes took on the dull, dark gray of a brewing storm.

  “Undersheriff,” he said. He took a breath, slowly let it out.

  “Hancock told you about the men I killed.” It wasn’t a question.

  Her throat felt tight, as though his hand had fastened on it. “Yes. I shouldn’t ask, but there’s Dickie, you see. He looks up to you and I—I have to know.”

  For a moment, she didn’t think he’d answer. His gaze had turned inward, and judging from the shift of shadows across his face, he didn’t much like what he saw. Abruptly, he shoved to his feet. Three long strides took him to the river’s edge. For a long while he simply stood there, staring across the rushing water to the stark and distant peaks beyond.

  “They were coming out of the bank,” he said at last. “I wasn’t even on duty, but there’d been shots, screams. They were carrying money bags with the bank’s name stamped all over them and they were so panicked they were shooting at anything they thought was in their way. When they almost shot a child, then kept on shooting…”

  He turned to face her. His gaze pinned her to the rock.

  “I had to stop them before an innocent bystander got hurt.” His voice was rough with passion and remembered pain. “Contrary to what you might read in those dime novels your son likes so much, it’s not that easy to shoot a gun out of a man’s hand, even when he’s standing still. But I would have tried. I swear to God I would have tried if it hadn’t been for that child.”

  She saw the instant the fight drained out of him, replaced by the regret of a man who’d done what he’d had to do, yet never learned to accept it.

  “They were boys,” he said softly, sadly. “Just boys who thought it’d be easy to rob a bank, then found out it wasn’t and panicked.” He turned back to stare at the uncaring peaks that were fast swallowing the sun. “The oldest was nine days shy of his twenty-first birthday.”

  Molly shivered, then scrambled off the rock and crossed to him. At her light touch on his arm, he jumped as though he’d forgotten she was there.

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  He looked as if he wished he hadn’t, but all he said was, “We’d best head back. I wouldn’t want to be stumbling up that hill in the dark.”

  When he turned to lead her back, she stood her ground.

  “No,” she said. She laid her hand upon his chest to stop him, and wondered if he could hear her heart hammering in her chest. “Not yet.”

  She rose on tiptoe, slid her other hand around his neck and pulled him down to her. And then she kissed him.

  Night had fallen and a million stars had claimed the heavens by the time Witt had walked her all the way to her back steps. They hadn’t spoken a word since she’d retreated from that single kiss, there on the riverbank—he because he had no words and she, perhaps, because he’d left her nothing to say.

  He made no move to follow her into the house, just stood there at the bottom of the steps and waited while she opened the door and stepped inside. She paused in the doorway for a moment, head cocked, her expression unreadable while the lamplight spilled out around her.

  “Good night,” she said at last. “And…thank you.”

  A moment later she had closed the door behind her, leaving him speechless in the dark.

  Dimly he could hear her footsteps moving away through the house, then her muffled voice calling out to the children. He caught Dickie’s answering call, though he couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t hear Bonnie’s voice at all.

  He would have liked to linger, to just stand there and watch as the lights went out in her house, one by one. Town this size, though, there was bound to be somebody around who’d notice. All it would take is one sharp-eyed old biddy putting the cat out for the night and by morning half the town would know he’d been out in Molly Calhan’s back yard making a damned fool of himself.

  He only got as far as the garden’s edge. The scent of roses and of green, growing things hung on the night air, heady and rich with promise, tempting him to tarry. Even without the moon there was enough light to make out the neat rows of vegetables and the unruly masses of flowers that marked the borders.

  It would have taken a lot of hard work and patience to make this rocky Colorado mountain soil produce like this. Late frosts and early snows and cool nights, she’d said, yet still she’d planted and worked and dreamed of the harvest to come, despite the risks.

  A faint breeze curled past, rustling the leaves on the pole beans and whispering of settled things, of homes and kitchen gardens and the warmth of a place where a man could walk in the door and know that he belonged.

  Witt listened, and then he settled his hat more firmly on his head and slowly walked away.

  Dickie had demanded to know if the sheriff had told her anything about his adventures. Bonnie had been silently disapproving.

  Molly had neatly sidestepped her son’s questions and ignored her daughter’s sulking, but when she had seen them both safely tucked into bed and been free to seek her own, she’d found that sleep eluded her. Her mind and body were still too roused by that one quick kiss for her to settle down just yet.

  As often as she’d blushed because of DeWitt Gavin, you’d think she’d be blushing now, remembering. But she wasn’t. She hadn’t when she’d pulled him down and pressed her lips to his, either.

  DeWitt. What a stiff, formal name for a man who was anything but. From what she’d heard, he went by Witt, which wasn’t such an awkward mouthful.

  She tried it out, whispering it to herself. Witt.

  The name slid easily over her tongue. She liked the taste of it.

  Restless, she threw back the covers, then propped a pillow against the painted iron headboard and sat up, drawing her knees up and tucking her gown neatly around her feet, frowning into the dark.

  It hadn’t really been much of a kiss. She’d put a little more into it than she might have if she’d been seventeen, but not that much. There hadn’t been any tongues or heavy breathing—it didn’t count tha
t she’d had a hard time catching her breath afterward. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t leaned into her, hadn’t demanded more. He certainly hadn’t swept her up in his arms and tried to devour her. Unfortunately.

  If she’d been younger and known less of men, she’d have thought his silence afterward to be from disapproval. But she was thirty-one and had been married to a man she loved and she didn’t make that mistake—he’d been as shaken by that simple kiss as she was.

  What puzzled her was why he hadn’t tried to claim more. She’d have sworn he wanted to. And while she’d give the man due credit for being a gentleman despite his conversational failings, she didn’t think it was mere good manners that had kept him from taking advantage of what she’d offered. Call it vanity, but she knew when a man was aroused, and DeWitt Gavin had definitely been aroused.

  She squirmed a little at the thought.

  All right, she had taken him by surprise. That kiss had taken her by surprise, as well. It wasn’t until she’d come close and seen that hollow yearning in his eyes, not until she’d touched him, that she’d even thought of trying. She’d made the leap from thought to action in a blink. He certainly hadn’t resisted.

  He hadn’t participated, either, she reminded herself with a little snort of amusement. But oh, he’d wanted to!

  Her fingers curled at the remembered feel of his skin and the way his hair had brushed the back of her hand.

  He’d wanted to. She was sure of it. He’d wanted far more than just a simple kiss; more, even, than the tumble in the grass that any other man might have expected. A woman didn’t need such things spelled out for her. She’d sensed it in the way he’d gone still and taut when her lips had pressed against his, heard it in the aching quiet when she’d withdrawn an endless moment later.

  But what did she want?

  The question seemed to echo in the dark.

  What did she want? A week ago she’d have known. She could have listed it if someone had ever asked. She wanted her children to be healthy and happy and to grow up into strong, kind, happy adults. She wanted Calhan’s to expand and become more profitable, and she wanted to plow those profits back into the store and the investments that would provide for her children’s future. She wanted a new linen tablecloth, some new wallpaper for the parlor, and for Dickie to quit dragging his toes through the dirt so that his shoes wore out faster even than he could outgrow them. That was it, really.