Loving Linsey

by Rachelle Morgan

  It was hard to believe, even harder to admit, that there’d been a time—a long time ago—when he’d been interested in her. Sure, she was lovely. Hell, as much as he hated to say it, she had the kind of beauty that could stop a war—or cause one. Curves filled out the seams in dresses that used to sag on her gangly frame. Eyes bright as polished amber. Lips ripe enough to tempt fate. Even the pumpkin red hair she’d had as a kid had become more golden over the years, the curls looser, somehow softening her features, yet doing nothing to dim her personality.

  Then again, there had always been an aliveness about Linsey that attracted him, a carefree spirit that beckoned to him like breath to a dying man. . . .

  Daniel wiped his hand down his face, cursing.

  He’d been seventeen when he’d entered Tulane, nineteen when he’d gotten his degree. At twenty he’d begun working in the local hospital where he met Charlotte. They courted for a year, but it wasn’t until her father arrived from Vienna to accept a teaching position in Maryland that Daniel had grown serious about her. He’d known even then that Ian McIntyre’s immense influence and prestige in the medical field had prompted him to propose to Charlotte more than any affection he felt for her.

  Then his mother’s illness had driven him home. Coming back to Horseshoe, to his mother’s debility and his father’s iron fist, felt like a death sentence. And Linsey . . . she’d been his glimpse of sunrise from the gallows. Young, refreshing, reckless. Always from a distance, always with discretion, he would watch for her, wonder about her, want her. Charlotte had been the means to a promising future; Linsey had been a forbidden fantasy.

  He’d gotten over his insane infatuation the day Linsey had cost him the opportunity of a lifetime.

  Of its own will, his hand reached for the varnished box that sat on his desk. It had been a gift from his mother the day she died: a keepsake box, she’d told him, to hold his most treasured mementoes. From beneath the hinged lid he retrieved a rumpled, water-stained envelope, the postmark smeared, the address nearly illegible.

  He didn’t need to open the letter to know what it said. Charlotte’s blurry script had been burned into his memory that long-ago summer day:

  Trustees approved your surgical fellowship. If you are not here by the first day of August, Daddy and I will assume you have no interest in working under his direction.

  It had been the chance he’d been waiting for his entire adult life.

  And it had come and gone without his even knowing it . . . until a month later, when several townsmen had finally located and fished the mailbag—and Charlotte’s letter—out of Horseshoe creek.

  The rush trip to Baltimore had been a wasted effort. His apprenticeship, and his fiancée, had already gone to another. And no wonder: a chance to study under Ian McIntyre was a coveted position, especially since a year later the man had taken his skills back to Vienna.

  It might as well have been the moon, as far as Daniel was concerned.

  He slumped back in the horsehair chair and stared unseeingly at the ceiling. God. He’d never wanted anything so badly as that apprenticeship. He’d worked his fingers to the bone, socialized with all the right people, devoted all his spare time to charity work to broaden his skills. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done to get it—even committing himself to the life sentence of marriage to McIntyre’s daughter.

  But in one fell swoop, Linsey had ruined everything.

  Forgive her? The letter crumpled in his fist. When hell froze over.

  Chapter 3

  If your shadow is touched by a passing hearse you will be the next to ride in it.

  “Well, that certainly went well,” Linsey muttered.

  She glared into the apothecary for several long minutes, a tenuous grasp on her own temper, before realizing she stood alone on the boardwalk, looking through the window like a vagrant child.

  With a frustrated sigh, she turned a half circle and headed toward the smithy shop. How was she supposed to give her sister the gift of a life mate if the gift wouldn’t cooperate with her?

  Cooperate. Ha! Daniel barely tolerated the sight of her. She could understand his anger in the beginning. She’d probably have felt the same way if the situation were reversed, and he’d been responsible for the loss of an important letter of hers. But for the love of Gus . . . two years?

  And why was the incident entirely her fault? Had she been the one driving the coach? Had she caused the horses to bolt straight toward the creek’s banks and dump its passengers and its cargo into the water?

  Linsey stopped at the corner of Wishing Well Lane and the road to Houston, and closed her eyes. No, she wouldn’t do this, she chided herself. Aunt Louisa always told her to accept the consequences of her actions, and Linsey had been the one to suggest—okay, insist—that the driver turn around after the rabbit had darted out in front of them. Everyone knew that a rabbit dashing across your path meant bad luck would follow, unless one turned around and began the journey anew. And though she’d only been trying to protect a coach full of people, every deed had its price.

  That particular one just happened to be someone else’s dream.

  The weight of regret lay as heavy on Linsey’s soul as the heat coming from Oren Potter’s furnace. She thanked her lucky stars that he wasn’t around. The smithy had a knack for sensing things about people that they didn’t always want known, and Linsey didn’t feel much like pretending all was well with her world. She strode to the huge workbench to the left of the entrance and sorted through the bins.

  Keeping her thoughts from straying to Daniel was like trying to stop a full-speed locomotive with a haystack. Yes, she’d admit he had every right to hold her to blame for his getting rejected by that college back East and, according to the gossip mill, being jilted by the woman he’d intended to marry. Frankly, Linsey couldn’t bring herself to shed any tears over that. A woman who would jilt a man just because he wasn’t attending her daddy’s school wouldn’t have made much of a wife—but her opinion hardly mattered here. What did matter was persuading Daniel to put the past behind him and look to the future: a future with Addie.

  Since Addie could hardly talk to the man without swooning, the responsibility of getting Daniel to notice her rested on Linsey’s shoulders. But unless she settled this storm between them, she’d not be able to convince him to talk to Addie, much less court her. If only there was some way to make it up to him—

  Her hand froze upon a pile of two penny irons. Her head snapped up.

  Make amends to someone I have wronged.

  That was it! That’s how she could make things right with Daniel—by replacing the bride he’d lost with an even better one! And by matching him with Addie, she’d fulfill two wishes with one stroke!

  Her spirits lifting with the brilliance of her plan, Linsey shoved a handful of nails into her pocket, dropped a few coins on the workbench, and left the smithy.

  Fate seemed to be in complete agreement with her intentions, for she spotted Daniel coming out of his father’s store, carrying yet another crate to the buggy parked in front. Well, no time like the present, she thought, starting in his direction.

  A bulbous black coach drawn by a pair of mules pulled into the business sector just then, forcing Linsey to wait on the curb while the vehicle lumbered by. Once the way had cleared, she stepped over a puddle onto the road. She didn’t get two paces across it before it struck her that the coach rolling down the road was none other than the community hearse.

  And it was heading straight for Daniel’s shadow.

  For the first time since she had taken the job as schoolmistress, Addie wished she were anywhere but inside the stuffy confines of the one-room schoolhouse.

  She sat at her desk, Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation open in front of her, yet in her present state of mind, she couldn’t solve a single one of Peter’s playful puzzles to save her soul.

  She knew she should be furious with Linsey for forcing her into such a humiliati
ng encounter with Daniel Sharpe this morning. Marry Daniel indeed! It was true that she’d dreamed of the day she might share his name and bear his children, but how could she consider marriage to Daniel—or anyone else for that matter—when Linsey . . . when her sister . . . oh, heavens, Addie could barely think the word without a sharp pain gripping her.

  Addie wanted so badly to discount the omen. Logic told her that looking into a mirror couldn’t kill a person. And yet an unshakeable doubt had inserted itself under her skin, into her mind, causing goose bumps to break out along her arms. Over the years, she’d witnessed too many coincidental instances to easily brush aside prophecy. Aunt Louisa and Linsey claimed they’d all been signs. Addie didn’t know what to believe, but she couldn’t forget that her own father had been snakebit right after his picture had fallen off the wall.

  She could have sworn she’d cried herself tearless, but now she felt them well up again. She’d already lost her father. And even though her mother was alive and well, she might as well say the same about her for all Addie saw of the woman.

  God . . . what if it was true?

  What if, before the end of the year, she lost her sister, too? What if Linsey’s glance into that mirror truly had been a warning?

  “Miss Witt, is somethin’ wrong?”

  The sound of her name startled Addie from the frightening thought. She blinked back the sting of tears. A roomful of expectant faces came into focus, one in particular. “Did you say something, Bryce?”

  “We finished our tests,” the eight-year-old said. He pointed at the book in front of her. “Do you want us to bring out our primers?”

  After a moment’s indecision, Addie set the book atop her meticulously planned schedule. She couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork today, anyway. “How about taking an early recess instead?”

  A cheer rose up from her pupils. Twenty freshly scrubbed youngsters ranging from five to thirteen made a mad dash for the coatroom at the front of the building. The older children eagerly helped the younger children don their wrappers, then practically mowed them over in their haste to get outside.

  Following along, Addie couldn’t blame them for wanting fresh air since the recent rains had undoubtedly kept them inside all weekend, too.

  She paused at the back of the room beside Bryce’s desk, her attention caught by the drawing on his slate board.

  Addie brought the slate closer to study the caricature of herself staring out the window. He’d captured the anxiety on her face with amazing accuracy. Had she been that transparent?

  “Bryce?” she called to the boy on his way out.

  “Ma’am?” Once he saw the slate board in her hand, the color in his cheeks paled, making his freckles stand out. Defensively, he drew his shoulders back. “I finished my test. I put it on your desk.”

  “I know you did.” He always finished his work well ahead of the other children. “This is very good.” She tapped the frame.

  The tension in his lanky body eased, though his dark blue eyes remained wary.

  “You caught my mood quite precisely. Are my emotions always so apparent?”

  He shrugged a bony shoulder. “Not really. You just seemed sorta bothered today.”

  “Yes, I guess I am. You may join the other children.”

  As soon as he slipped out the door, Addie returned to the chalk drawing, studying it with a thoughtful frown. It was better than good; it was amazing. In the years since Bryce Potter had joined her classroom, she’d noticed more and more signs of exceptional talent, the least being his swift comprehension of academic studies. This semester alone saw him doing the work of an eighth-grade student. The only thing left was taking his graduate exams.

  But then what?

  She’d never come across a child with so quick an intellect as Bryce Potter, and he was only eight! Too young for a university, too advanced for her classroom.

  Addie swallowed and set the slate on his desk, feeling inadequate.

  In the cloakroom, she found little Amy Simmons struggling with the buttons on her threadbare cloak. Addie pushed thoughts of Bryce to the side, and knelt to assist the girl.

  Just as she finished and started to rise, a shadow blocked the sun. A sideways glimpse brought into view long, muscle-bound thighs clad in brown woolen trousers. Her gaze rising, Addie took in a blue-and-green flannel shirt stretched tightly over a powerful chest and arms that could squeeze the sap out of a tree. Addie straightened slowly, her pulse beginning to jump at a perplexing and highly irregular rate. “Why, hello, Mr. Potter.”

  “Miss Witt.” He nodded his head without disturbing one strand of the thick black hair slicked back from his brow.

  Though not a classically handsome man, with his crooked nose and lazy eye, Oren Potter was what many would term the strong, silent type, with a brawny figure and bulky muscles formed by years of wielding hammer and iron in his blacksmith shop.

  “Bryce forgot his lunch this morning, so I took a break from work to bring it by.”

  She reached to take the pail from him. “That wasn’t necessary.” His fingers brushed hers and a spark leaped between them. Addie yanked her hand back, shocked by the sensation.

  Hoping he hadn’t noticed her reaction, her gaze shot to his craggy face. The hooded cast of the smithy’s gilded lashes didn’t hide the direction of his regard. Teal blue eyes had focused on her . . . on her . . . oh, my.

  A blush burned its way up her neck and into her cheeks. Addie placed a flustered hand over her bosom and licked her lips. She gave him as wide a berth as the cramped cloakroom allowed, though she couldn’t escape the scent of straw and cinder and brazed iron that filled the space. It gave her little comfort to noticed his face had turned an even deeper red than the schoolhouse door. “I-I’d never let one of my students go hungry,” she said to break the strained silence.

  “I didn’t think you would, Miss Witt,” he said, worrying the brim of his hat between work-worn fingers.

  “I-I always bring a spare lunch. But on the occasion I forget, there is always another child with more than enough food to share. . . .” She couldn’t seem to stop babbling. What was wrong with her? Perhaps she hadn’t been born with Linsey’s open and outgoing nature, but rarely did being in the presence of a man—save for Daniel Sharpe—reduce her to a stuttering idiot. Even then, Addie couldn’t recall a single time when Daniel caused sparks to shoot from her fingertips as they done brushing against Oren Potter’s knuckles. His knuckles, for heaven’s sake! And he the parent of one of her students, no less.

  The unsettling thought spurred her toward the door. “I understand the inconvenience this errand must have caused you, Mr. Potter, but I do need to supervise the children.”

  “I’m sure you do.” He popped his hat onto his head and opened the door for her, being very careful to step back a goodly distance.

  She proceeded him out the door and paused on the stoop beneath the brass bell Aunt Louisa had donated upon the school’s construction. Shading her eyes from the sun, Addie scanned the yard, mentally counting the children—though she would have counted grass blades to keep her mind off the man behind her. A group of boys shot marbles beneath the pine tree beside the schoolhouse. Several of the girls played jump rope near the white picket fence. Beyond them, ladies in bonnets or shading themselves beneath parasols strolled past the shops, gentlemen congregated outside the mercantile, and midday traffic preceded down the lane at a crawling pace.

  A movement in the street brought her attention swinging back to a red-haired figure in flapping burgundy skirts dashing across the path of a fast-moving black carriage. Addie’s breath dammed up in her throat. Her heart stopped cold. “Oh my heavens . . . Linseeey!”

  Chapter 4

  Eyes, which reveal their owner’s thoughts and feelings more clearly than any other part of the body, have always been considered vehicles of strong spiritual power.

  She pushed him into a goddamn horse trough.

  Daniel cursed himself for not expecting something lik
e this, for not bracing himself the instant he’d seen her racing toward him as though wildfire licked her heels.

  But it happened so fast, the shove to his midsection had come so unexpectedly, that he found himself flying ass over appetite over the hitching rail before he could blink.

  He sat upright, sputtered grimy water from his mouth, and wiped his eyes. In the street, the horses reared against the traces of the black carriage Ira Graves used to cart folks to their final resting places. The crate of vaccine vials Daniel had been lifting into his father’s buggy lay shattered across the boardwalk.

  And in the center of it all stood Linsey Gordon. His gaze zeroed in on her immediately, pinning her in place.

  Hands clapped against her mouth, eyes wide, she stared back at him with an expression any onlooker might mistake for astonishment. Daniel knew better. He’d been the target of her machinations far too long to believe her apparent surprise was anything other than a cover for spiteful glee.

  To his further humiliation, well over a dozen people had seen his ungainly spill and loitered around snickering at their very own Doc Jr., drenched from head to toe and sitting in a damned horse trough of all places.

  Hot fury infested his bloodstream as Daniel braced his hands on either side of the trough and struggled to haul himself out of the water—no minor feat, considering the small confines his large body had landed in.

  Once he managed to stand, he fixed Linsey with a glare hot enough to make a grown man quake in his boots. “What in the Sam Hill did you do that for?”

  She shrank at his bellow. Unfortunately Daniel couldn’t savor the satisfaction of making her cringe for long before pride got the best of her.

  She straightened her shoulders, tilted her chin at a defiant angle, then damned if she didn’t stride right up to him and plant her hands on her hips. “It just so happens that I saved your life.”

  He tilted his head to the side and squinted at her with quizzical disbelief. “What?”