The Lawman Takes a Wife

by Anne Avery

  “Anyone bothers you, you tell me. I’ll take care of them.”

  “I…ah…thank you.”

  “Mmm,” he said.

  Since there really wasn’t anything else to say, she took her leave. He walked her the whole five steps to the jail door and stopped, but she’d swear he watched her until she’d unlocked the front door of Calhan’s and slipped inside. She didn’t have the courage to look back and see for sure.

  The familiar routine of opening the store didn’t go quite as smoothly as it usually did. She jammed the right window shade when she tried to roll it up, forgot to change the Closed sign to Open until the first customer banged on the door, wanting in, knocked over the display of soap, then forgot to get the day’s cash for the cash register out of her small safe until she had to make change.

  From thoughts of kisses to thoughts of sheets. It wasn’t, Molly decided, an improvement.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Molly Calhan was avoiding him.

  Witt was no expert on women, but even he could figure out that much. It had been two weeks, going on three, since she’d last come by the jail. In all that time, all he’d had from her was, “Good morning, Sheriff. What can I get for you today?” followed by a “Will that be all?” and then the total for his purchases and a “Here’s your change.” And that was it, except for the occasional comment about “Nice day today, isn’t it?” which really didn’t count for much of anything.

  He wouldn’t have had that much if he hadn’t resorted to some pretty desperate measures. Gradually, ounce by ounce, he’d bought up every sweet treat and candy she had in the store—so much that she’d had to send a special order into Denver for more before he’d emptied that glass-fronted case entirely.

  He bought licorice whips and peppermint drops, horehound squares and lemon drops and sour balls. He bought gumdrops and roasted peanuts and malt balls and toffees and chocolate drops and red-hot cinnamons, taffy and lady kisses and seven different flavors of chewing gum. He bought them by the pack and the bag and the box and the half dozen, but he only bought them one kind at a time, and never more than he absolutely had to.

  The only thing he hadn’t bought was a chocolate cream, but that wasn’t from not wanting to.

  Most of what he bought he ended up sharing with the children of Elk City. There’d been a lot to share. So much, in fact, that he couldn’t hardly turn around these days without tripping over one or another of ’em, coming and going. He’d had to make a rule of never giving them anything outside of Calhan’s or he’d have been tethered to that store as tight as any horse hitched to the rail out front.

  Worse, folks were beginning to notice.

  “Been to Mrs. Calhan’s, have you, Sheriff?” they’d say with a grin and a wink when they’d find him doling out the sweets. Or, “Got a lemon drop, sheriff? I swear, my mouth just puckers up at the very thought of one.” Or, “I’m considerin’ buyin’ up stock in a candy factory, Sheriff. What d’you think? Will this run on the market hold?” And then they’d snicker and walk away and he’d be left standing there, looking like a damned fool and feeling even worse.

  They hadn’t yet noticed that his nightly rounds were taking him by the Calhan house more often than any other place in town. He’d never have survived the ribbing if they had.

  He hadn’t started out this way. In fact, he’d been relieved when three whole days had gone by without seeing her. But then that Friday when she’d apologized for running into him on the street had swung round to Monday and there was Dickie on his doorstep, so to speak, chattering like a magpie and sweeping up more dust clouds than he was sweeping dirt into the street, and Witt had been forced to admit he hadn’t forgotten her at all.

  That’s when he’d left Dickie to his dust and wandered over to the store. He was out of shaving soap and candy, so it wasn’t, or so he’d told himself, as if he were trying to find an excuse to see her. No, he was just a fellow who needed soap and Calhan’s was the closest.

  She’d been cold as frost in January. Not rude, of course, but not warm and friendly like she’d been. What smiles she’d had were reserved for other customers, not for him, and there were no free samples of chocolates to be had. He’d eventually wandered back out feeling strangely out of sorts.

  The first pack of kids he’d come to, he’d given them the gumdrops he’d bought. That had cheered him up a little, so he’d gone back for more. Molly had been even frostier than before. That had made him mad, and the more he’d thought about it, the more his mad had festered.

  It wasn’t as if there was anything between them—just dinner and a kiss and a chocolate cream, and he doubted she even remembered the chocolate cream. It wasn’t as if he expected anything to come of their relationship, either, despite the way his knees went weak whenever he thought of her, which was far too frequently for comfort. No, it was the principle of the thing. A man had a right to a little respect, after all, especially when he’d hired her son and offered to help with any piddling little troubles she might have with ungentlemanly bankers.

  When he’d walked into Calhan’s the first thing the next morning, he’d told himself it was just to prove she couldn’t drive him away so easily. But he’d caught her by surprise, and when she’d spun around to face him, he’d seen that little start of eagerness that she wasn’t quite quick enough to hide.

  Oh, she’d tried to hide it under a sudden bustle to dust this and straighten that, but he could tell the difference.

  He had to admit, he’d rather enjoyed seeing her all flustered like that. Usually it was he who got confused when there were ladies involved, not the other way around, and he found he liked the feeling of coming out on top for once.

  It hadn’t done him any good, though. She’d just gotten frostier and more formal than ever. He hadn’t had a good “Nice day, isn’t it?” for over a week. In fact, she was so cool, it was a wonder he hadn’t gotten chilblains from the cold.

  Which might not have been so bad if she hadn’t started a fire way down deep inside of him that refused to die out, no matter what.

  “So we’re agreed. Elizabeth will coordinate the cakewalk and the punch stand, MayBeth will choose the music for the town band to play, and Coreyanne will speak to Reverend Brighton about the invocation. The decorations committee—of which I am in charge—will see to rounding up the men to make sure the job gets done right and on time.”

  Emmy Lou frowned at her notes, then peered over the tops of her reading glasses at Molly. “I’m assuming the decorations will be here on time?”

  “They’ll be here.” Molly had to grit her teeth to keep from snapping.

  She’d been ordering the decorations every year since Calhan’s first opened for business, and every year Emmy Lou, who’d long ago staked out the decorations committee as her personal fiefdom, had pestered and fretted and fussed over those decorations until they all wanted to scream.

  This year the desire to scream had been replaced by open talk of armed mutiny. Through some stratagem no one quite understood—there was much dark muttering of bribes and blackmail, though Molly doubted it had gone quite that far—Emmy Lou had not only maintained control of the decorations committee, she’d managed to be named head of the entire Founders’ Day celebration.

  She was the first woman in the history of Elk City to be granted that distinction, and Molly privately thought they’d be lucky if the Society members didn’t come to blows before this was over. Word was going round that Mayor Andersen was paying more frequent and extended visits to Jackson’s saloon than even he was accustomed to, and that Zacharius Trainer had taken to joining him.

  “You’re sure they’ll be here?” said Emmy Lou. “I can’t stress enough how important it is that the decorations arrive in time.”

  Molly nodded. Emmy Lou eyed her doubtfully, and for a moment, Molly feared she’d launch into a long-winded lecture on the subject. There was a collective, muffled sigh of relief when, after a moment’s hesitation, Emmy Lou turned back to her notes ins
tead. The evening’s meeting had already gone two hours longer than normal, and since they were meeting at Emmy Lou’s house, Emmy Lou was sitting in the only comfortable chair in sight. Molly’s backside had gone from stiff to sore, then moved straight into numb more than an hour ago.

  “Cakewalk, punch stand, music, invocation, decorations,” Emmy Lou muttered to herself, one by one ticking the items off her list with a stubby pencil. She raised her head. “Is there anything I’ve missed?”

  “What about the treats for the children?” said Louisa Merton. “Nobody’s mentioned those, but you know we always have something to hand out afterward.”

  The room went dead silent. No one moved a muscle; no one so much as breathed. Molly could swear her collar had suddenly gotten tighter. Trust Louisa not to have heard the gossip and gone blundering right in.

  “Treats?” Emmy Lou said in awful tones.

  Louisa blenched, clearly uncertain where she’d stumbled, but quite certain that she’d not only roused Emmy Lou’s wrath, but the resentment of everyone present who’d finally begun to believe there might be an ending to the meeting after all.

  “Treats,” said Louisa in a small voice. “Little bags of candy? The ones we give to all the children after the speeches and before the fireworks? You know, treats?”

  “Hah!” said Emmy Lou. She deliberately put aside her list and pencil, an awful gleam in her eye. “We won’t be having any treats this year.”

  “But…why?” Louisa glanced around the room, puzzled. “Nobody told me anything about it.”

  No one offered to explain. Few even dared to meet her troubled gaze. Someone coughed and shifted uncomfortably, but when Louisa glanced that way, the room went quiet again.

  Molly stared at her hands, knowing what was coming. Her fingers kept wanting to curl into a fist. Deliberately, she folded them in her lap, then raised her gaze to meet Emmy Lou’s wrathful one.

  “Why?” Emmy Lou snapped. “Because there’s not a child in town who’ll have any teeth left to be eating sweets come Founders’ Day. Not after our good sheriff gets through stuffing them with every gumdrop and penny candy that Calhan’s has to offer. Isn’t that right, Molly?”

  “It’s true the sheriff has been quite generous with the children,” Molly said with forced calm, “but I seriously doubt he’s been so generous that their teeth are in any danger.”

  “Much you know about it!” Emmy Lou was almost quivering with indignation. All the satisfaction of having taken command of her Founders’ Day army had vanished beneath the reminder that her husband was not sheriff, and that she was the only one in town who was sorry for it.

  She’s heard the rumors about her husband and the mayor. Molly stared into Emmy Lou’s hostile, angry eyes, shaken by the unmasked truth she saw there. She’d always understood the woman’s anger and resentment that life hadn’t granted her the power and status she aspired to. Until now, she’d never sensed the pain that lay beneath the anger.

  “So long as you make your profit,” Emmy Lou said bitterly, “I suppose it doesn’t matter, but someone needs to tell you—”

  “Goodness!” said MayBeth Johnson, peering at the watch pinned to her breast. “Look at the time! Emmy Lou, I hate to break up the meeting, but if I don’t get back right now Mr. Johnson will call out the army, looking for me!”

  She jumped to her feet. The rest of them eagerly followed suit, nervously chattering about how late it was and my! how time had flown and hadn’t it been a fine meeting but so much to do, you know, really best get home. The chatter was half-drowned in the scraping of chairs and the clatter of teacups and saucers being rounded up. More than one, under the pretext of straightening her skirts, rubbed her backside and grimaced.

  In the midst of it all was Emmy Lou, hiding her feelings behind a spate of orders and sharp reminders that simply served to drive everyone out the door all that much faster.

  Molly carefully didn’t look her way, afraid her own feelings might show too clearly. The last thing Emmy Lou would want was pity.

  Once out the front gate, Molly gratefully drank in the cool night air. Bonnie and Dickie were probably beginning to wonder where she’d gotten to, but she didn’t much feel like rushing home. Not yet. She’d take the long way round, she decided. Stretch out the kinks from so many hours of sitting on that hard, straight-backed chair.

  Most of the other ladies seemed to feel the same about not rushing home. Once safely out of sight of the Trainer house, they clustered in the street, eager to talk.

  Coreyanne Campbell, usually the most even-tempered of them all, was the first to speak. “Much more of this and I swear I’ll resign from the Society.”

  “We’ll all resign,” said MayBeth fervently. She glanced around to see who was still present, then added, “Someone needs to have a long, hard talk with the mayor. Whatever was he thinking, naming her head of the whole thing?”

  “She must have caught him at something,” another added. “She’s wanted the job for years, but no one was crazy enough to let her have it until now.”

  Quietly, Molly edged away. She was tired and the last thing she wanted right now was to listen to her friends work out their anger in this kind of talk.

  Louisa Merton stopped her before she’d gone five feet.

  “I’m really sorry, Molly,” she said earnestly, laying her hand on Molly’s arm. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, but I didn’t know about the candy. Honest, I really didn’t.”

  “You didn’t get me in trouble.” Molly patted Louisa’s hand. “It would have come up sooner or later, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Molly smiled. Louisa was often silly, but she was young and she had a kind heart. “I’m going to take the long way home, so I’ll be going by your place. Do you want to walk with me?”

  Louisa glanced at the cluster of women behind them.

  “They’ll be breaking up in a minute,” Molly assured her. “There really isn’t much to say, after all.”

  “But that won’t stop them from saying it, will it?”

  Molly laughed. “No, I don’t suppose it will.”

  They covered the first block in thoughtful silence. Louisa wasn’t one who could keep silent long, however.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said slowly, as if picking her words with care, “is why Mrs. Trainer is so upset about the sheriff giving out all that candy. It’s just a little bit, you know, and he mostly gives it to kids who wouldn’t get much, otherwise.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Molly had to fight to keep the eagerness from her voice.

  “He gave me some.” The dark hid the blush Molly knew glowed on Louisa’s cheeks. “A lady’s kiss.”

  Louisa giggled. “I don’t think he realized how it looked—him giving me the lady’s kiss, I mean—until I said something, and then he turned red as those red bandannas in your store.”

  “Did he?” Molly said, sternly ignoring the envy pricking at her.

  “It’s a shame he’s so old. He’s not really bad looking once you get used to him being so big and all.”

  He’s not old! she wanted to shout.

  “No, he’s not bad looking,” she said instead.

  And she should know. She’d been studying every line and curve and shadow on his face these past three weeks. Every time he’d stepped inside her store, she’d found herself searching for each familiar detail—that spot on his jaw that he often missed shaving, the way his eyelids drooped when he wanted to hide what he was thinking, that one dark, curly hair at the corner of his brow that always wanted to go a different direction from the others.

  Even as she’d fought to maintain her dignity while she’d counted out chocolate kisses and weighed up gumdrops, every nerve in her body had been attuned to his slightest move and word and gesture. She couldn’t help herself. After a while, she’d given up trying and settled for maintaining that safe, prim facade of hers, instead.

  This sudden, aching need she’d discovered within hersel
f was frightening and exhilarating, all at the same time. After so many years of marriage and raising children, after four years of widowhood, she no longer knew how to control it, and wasn’t sure she cared to try.

  Witt Gavin had become so much a part of her life, whether he’d intended to or not, that she worried when he was late or distracted or too quiet, even for him.

  In three short weeks she’d learned his little tricks and habits. He frowned when he was trying to decide between the licorice and the red-hot cinnamons. He kept his change in his left-hand trouser pocket on the side away from his gun, and when he pulled it out to pay for his purchases, he also pulled out the scraps of paper and odd little bits and pieces that seemed to accumulate in a man’s pockets. His lower lip pooched out a little when he sorted through the junk to find the coins he wanted, as if it helped him concentrate on the task at hand.

  It had been all she could do to keep from offering him another chocolate cream, just because she wanted to watch him while he ate it.

  She thought of the way that crooked smile would creep across his face, and the laughter that could light up those changeable eyes of his. She thought of the way that dark lock of hair would fall across his brow sometimes, and the way he’d blink whenever she said something that caught him by surprise, of those broad shoulders and chest, and the strong arms that seemed made to hold a woman close.

  No, Witt Gavin definitely was not bad looking.

  She thought of that slow, deep voice, and shivered.

  With a few casual words, Louisa had undone three weeks’ effort of trying to pretend that this attraction to him wasn’t serious and didn’t matter.

  “In fact,” Louisa added confidingly, “a big man like that sort of makes you feel…safe, don’t you think? Makes you feel like more of a woman.”

  Molly made a little strangled noise deep in her throat. She turned the corner on Hanson Street, ducking slightly to avoid the branches of a big pine that stretched out into the path, and ran right into DeWitt Gavin. Even in the dark, she knew him.