Linsey almost choked. She’d eat poisonous berries before she ever married a snake like him. “I’m warning you for the last time, stay away from me.”
“Why are you being so difficult? We are perfect for each other—your beauty and money, my social position . . .”
So that was it. She’d always suspected that Bishop lusted after her trust fund, but he’d never admitted to it until now.
“Now put down the rock, and let’s get down to some real sparking.”
At the gleam in his eye, Linsey scrambled back, just before he lunged. His hand wrapped around her sore ankle, his fingers biting into the injured muscles. An agonized scream of pain and fury erupted from her throat.
Linsey didn’t think, couldn’t think past a desperation to make him leave her alone. She simply brought the rock down on his skull at the same time a loud pop rent the air.
He dropped like a sack of grain.
Linsey stared at him, stunned, paying little mind to the echo of a report swirling around her. “Oh, sweet Jesus, what have I done?” Her breath came in heaving gulps. God, what if she’d killed him?
Holding panic at bay, she leaned forward and reached for his neck. A pulse beat strong and regular against her fingertips. She slumped back on her heels, relief rolling through her. He’d always been an irritating rodent, but she’d never have wished him dead. Especially by her own hand.
“Miss Linsey?”
Startled, Linsey twisted around. Through a cloud of dust, she discovered Jarvis sitting on a big bay, holding the reins to an extra roan, and Oren Potter dismounting a cream-colored gelding, a shotgun ready in his hand. She was amazed that she hadn’t heard them approach.
“Did he hurt you?” Oren asked.
She got up off the ground and brushed the dirt from her skirts. “Not as bad as I hurt him. He’ll have a knot the size of a lemon and a whopping good headache when he wakes up.”
Both men looked first at Bishop, who lay face down in the dirt, still as a stump, then at her, then at Bishop again.
Oren moved to his side, rolled him over with his foot, and studied him closely as if making sure he was still breathing.
Linsey tamped down a swell of guilt. It was his own fault, she thought defiantly. He’d only gotten what he deserved. If he hadn’t been pawing at her, she wouldn’t have bashed him over the head.
“Mine or yours?” Jarvis asked of the blacksmith.
“Hers. Other than a bump on the head, there ain’t a scratch on him.”
Linsey listened to the exchange with puzzled curiosity. Only when Jarvis holstered his pistol did it click in her mind that the pops she’d heard hadn’t been Bishop’s skull cracking, but gunshots fired by one or both of these men. “It seems I owe the two of you my thanks.”
“And it seems you didn’t need our help,” Mr. Potter replied. “You handled him just fine on your own.”
“Nonetheless, thank you for coming to my aid.”
“You can thank me by telling me where you left my balloon.”
“A mile or two back that way.” She pointed east, deciding that this wasn’t the time to tell him what had happened to it. “I expect you’ll find Daniel between here and there, too.”
“You didn’t clobber him, too, did ya?”
“Of course not,” Linsey snapped. Though she probably should have, for sending her off with Bishop. “Last I saw, he was in perfect health and waiting by Mr. Potter’s wagon. He figured you might have been looking for us,” she told the smithy.
“Your sister hailed me down. She’s mighty worried about you.”
His voice was so gentle it almost brought tears to her eyes. “I figured she would be. I’d be deeply grateful if one of you could take me home.”
“Can you ride?”
“No. I’ve always meant to learn, but—”
“That’s fine; I’ll take you up with me.” Oren turned to the lamplighter and said, “Jarvis, why don’t you go on and fetch Daniel while I see Miss Linsey home?”
After Jarvis set his heels to the roan’s flanks, Linsey gestured toward Bishop. “What should we do about him?”
“He’ll have to walk. There ain’t enough horses.”
“He has his own horse,” Linsey felt compelled to point out.
With a delightfully wicked glint in his eye, Oren gave the animal a deliberate smack across the rump and sent it galloping off across the prairie. “As I said, there ain’t enough horses.”
Something wasn’t right. Daniel felt it in his bones. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but as he strode back to where the balloon had crashed, there was a knot in his gut that wouldn’t go away. He’d had this same feeling just before he’d gotten the letter from his dad telling him to come home because his mother was sick.
Was his Dad ill now?
No, he didn’t think that was it. It was something else. Almost as if someone needed him. But who? The only one he’d ever had the slightest connection to was his mother, and she was beyond needing anyone.
Daniel shook off the mysterious uneasiness. He could no more explain the feeling than he could explain why he was returning to the balloon to search for a stupid bauble.
Yet twenty minutes later, that was exactly what he was doing, scouring the crash site for anything that might resemble a good-luck token. A glint of gold in the grass near the spot where they’d fallen caught his attention. Daniel bent down and extracted a delicate chain. This was her powerful protection? A four-petalled leaf trapped between two glass disks?
She seemed to think so. He’d never heard anyone sound so convinced about anything as when she claimed that awful things happened whenever she was without the charm.
His brows pulled into a sudden frown. She’d noticed the amulet missing just before Harvey had shown up. Before that, she’d twisted her ankle because the basket had ripped. Daniel recalled each development in backward sequence. The almost-kiss, the crash, the broken equipment, the ripping up of the stakes . . .
If she’d lost her token when they’d first arrived at the empty lot—
Daniel cut off the thought with a disgusted grimace and shoved the amulet into his trouser pocket. No sane, rational, logical person believed in such flights of fancy. And he was nothing if not sane, rational, and logical.
Except there was nothing rational about the way he felt around a woman who was as nutty as a pecan tree.
The pounding of hooves created a welcome diversion, and Daniel raised his head just as Jarvis reined in his horse. He dismounted, walked toward the tree in a daze, and stared up into the branches with an expression of such comical despair that Daniel might have laughed if he didn’t feel so bad. Jarvis had been fascinated with ballooning ever since he’d come across an article about Montgolfiers when he was fifteen. And though he’d been saving every spare cent he made, and often talked about seeing the country, Daniel hadn’t realized until recently that he meant to do it in one of the hydrogen crafts.
A few steps brought him to his friend’s side. Daniel pressed a consoling hand to Jarvis’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your balloon, Robert.”
He shook his head. Shaggy brown hair brushed the upturned collar of his box coat. “She ruint it, Dan’l. That consarned female ruint my air ship. Three-hunnerd dollars right down the shitter.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. He was glad, though, that Linsey wasn’t around right now. Jarvis in a temper was not a pretty sight, and the farther away she got from him, the safer she’d be.
“Maybe we can fix it. Mrs. Mittermier is supposed to be magic with a needle and thread. I’ll wager she can mend the tears.”
“That’s the least of the damage. There’s still the busted tanks, the car, all my meters . . .” He ripped his hat off his head and flung it to the ground. “Damn that girl! I shoulda let Harvey have her.”
Daniel’s attention swerved from the tree to Jarvis. “What did you say?”
“I said I shoulda let Harvey have her. Me and Oren saw him gettin’ a little too friendly
with her, so we fired off a couple shots to scare him off. And this”—he lifted both hands and jabbed them in the air at the tree—“this is what I get.”
You’ll be sorry for this, Daniel. He saw again the contempt in her eyes, heard again the accusation in her voice. He’d thought it humorous to send her off with the pretentious sot, thought it might even the score for all the trials he’d suffered at her hands.
He’d never once considered that he might be putting her in danger. “Where is she now?”
“Home, probably. Leastwise, that’s where Oren said he was taking her.”
Without pausing to think about his actions, Daniel strode at a clipped pace to Jarvis’s horse. He’d just inserted one foot in the stirrup when Jarvis clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“To check on Linsey.”
“You got a death wish? That woman has been a curse to you for years, and you’re willing to go off half-cocked because some fella was rolling in the dirt with her? What’s gotten into you?”
For a moment Daniel just stared at Jarvis. Then the haze in his eyes slowly receded. Good question. Hadn’t he already learned that his weakness for that girl always resulted in disaster? Besides, when had he been appointed her protector? She was safe, being escorted home by a man more than capable of protecting her from harm.
He dragged in and released several deep breaths. “You’re right.” Again he said, “You’re right; I’d only be asking for trouble.”
“That’s the gospel truth. Hellfire, Dan’l, for a minute there you had me worried that you might be going soft for Linsey Gordon.”
Soft? For Linsey?
His wits might have been rattled up a bit lately, but he hadn’t lost them completely. “No need to worry, my friend. The day I go soft for Linsey Gordon is the day Cooter Hobart gives up moonshining.”
Chapter 11
An itchy nose means you will be kissed, cursed, or vexed, run against a gatepost, or shake hands with a fool.
By the time Daniel got back to Horseshoe, the sun had long since fallen behind the horizon, plunging the town into shadows. He made his way wearily up the stairs to his room, tossed his hat on the bed, then stripped out of his filthy shirt. He’d felt it was only fair that since he’d taken the first—and last—voyage in his friend’s balloon, he should stick around and help him haul the mangled craft home. Now all he wanted was a bath, a meal, and sleep—all at once, if he could manage it.
Wearing just his trousers and socks, he returned downstairs to fetch the wooden bathing tub. He set the tub in the middle of the kitchen, placed an oil lamp with the wick turned down low in the center of the small table, then stoked the stove to boil water.
He’d just placed a metal pail under the sink pump when a grumpy voice invaded the peace.
“About damned time you decided to come home.”
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at his father, standing in the doorway. The tassel of his long flannel nightcap draped over his shoulder and brushed against his protruding stomach, which was covered by a matching red nightshirt that barely hid his knobby knees.
“I had to help Jarvis get his balloon out of a tree,” Daniel said.
“I heard you and the Gordon girl crashed the blamed thing.”
No, Linsey had crashed the balloon. But Daniel didn’t bother correcting his father.
“What in Sam Hill did you think you were doing, Junior?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then lifted the filled bucket out of the dry sink. “Not now, Dad.”
“Not now? Not now? I had to cancel visits with four patients and close up the shop just to come searching for you.”
It figured. Daniel Sr. couldn’t dredge up any concern for the welfare of his only son, but he had plenty to spare for his practice. With a wry expression, Daniel replied, “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble on my account.”
“What were you thinking to take off in that contraption?”
Daniel sighed. It was the same question he’d asked himself a thousand times during the afternoon. It always came back to the same answer. “I don’t know.”
“Where was your sense of responsibility?”
“I don’t know.”
A critical gaze touched him clear to the bone as he poured water into the huge vat atop the stove. Daniel, Sr., had never been one to hide his disapproval, but tonight Daniel felt it keener than ever.
“You’d think for all the money I spent on sending you to Tulane, they’d have taught you some damned common sense!”
He’d never let him live down the fact that he’d paid for Daniel’s schooling, would he? “Not when it concerns Linsey Gordon. I doubt even a genius could figure out what goes on in her mind.”
“It don’t take a genius to see that she planned this whole thing just to get herself alone with you. A gal sets her sights on a fellow she fancies, then traps him into marriage by claiming he compromised her.”
Was that what happened between his mother and his father? Was that why they’d been so miserable together?
Daniel didn’t let himself dwell on the question. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answers. “That’s a fine theory, Dad, but if she’s so bent on forcing me into matrimonial bliss, why was she the one who insisted on walking back to town so her reputation wouldn’t be tainted?”
“Who knows the way a woman’s mind works?” Jabbing his finger in Daniel’s direction, his dad said, “But mark my words, boy, that gal’s husband-hunting, and she’s marked you as her victim.”
“Then she can just set her sights in another direction.”
“First sensible thing you’ve said in years. A woman’ll drain the life right out of a man—wear him down till he can’t think straight. And you’ve got more important matters to concentrate on than a marriage-minded spinster, if you’re ever gonna make something of yourself.”
Like you? Daniel was getting sick of being compared to a man whose biggest accomplishment was opening an apothecary in Cowtown, Texas.
No, that wasn’t fair, he thought with an inward sigh. For all it’s remoteness, Horseshoe did have its own quaint appeal. He was just tired. No sleep, the events of the day, his turmoil over Linsey . . . all were beginning to take their toll. “Go on back to bed, Dad. I’ll be up once I’ve finished in here.”
“Don’t be too late. I’ve got a long day ahead of me and I don’t want to be kept awake by a bunch of rattling down here.”
After Daniel, Sr., left the kitchen, Daniel stayed by the stove, waiting for the water to boil. Snatches of the dinner conversation at Louisa’s flickered in his memory. Talk of courtship, of marriage, of love. He’d had a feeling then that Linsey had designs on him, but he’d rejected the idea as being too ludicrous to believe. Now he wondered if his dad might be right.
He didn’t know why he was having such a hard time believing that Linsey might be scheming to trap him into marriage. In view of all that had been happening over the last few days, it wasn’t exactly inconceivable.
The question was, why? Why him?
Daniel scratched the side of his nose. He hated mysteries. They made him feel powerless, out of control. He’d much rather know what he was dealing with so he could plan his next move.
But Linsey was as unpredictable as the weather. One moment as calm and breathtaking as an autumn sunrise, the next moment wicked and stirring up more havoc than a spring storm.
The worst part of it was, Daniel had always been in awe of nature’s power. He loved to watch the lightning flash and hear the thunder roar. It set a fire in his bloodstream, a hunger in his soul.
Yet for all that he admired in a thunder-cracking, rain-pelting, lightning-forking performance, he also knew that only a fool stood out in the middle of one.
With a grim turn to his mouth, Daniel emptied the heated water into the tub, added cold, then shucked his clothing and climbed in. As he settled his neck against the rim, he made a vow to himself. Whatever Linsey had planned, he refused to fall for
it. She’d exposed his weakness this morning: the crazy attraction he couldn’t control. But he knew better than anyone that under that frivolous, flighty exterior he’d been so drawn to, hid the wicked heart of a woman who cared little who she hurt in her pursuit of what she wanted.
And for reasons he couldn’t fathom, she suddenly seemed to want him.
“Addie . . .” Linsey snapped her fingers in front of her sister’s face to break the trance she seemed to have fallen into. “Aaad-deee . . . are you in there?”
It wasn’t the first time Linsey had found her like this. Addie had been acting strangely since the day before yesterday, wandering around the house with a faraway look in her eyes. Linsey might have found it amusing if it wasn’t so insulting. One would think that with their remaining time together so uncertain, Addie would spend a little more of it paying attention.
At last she raised her head. “Hmmm?”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”
Blank hazel eyes slowly focused. Addie straightened on the sofa and pushed a needle hastily into the fabric stretched across her embroidery hoop, but Linsey could see she was still distracted. Probably pining over Daniel again. Linsey frowned. She hadn’t seen him in a couple of days, although Doc Sr. had stopped by to examine her ankle and given her the same warning Daniel had: to keep weight off it. But distance from the junior Dr. Sharpe hadn’t lessened the indignation she felt toward him for brushing off the loss of her token, and then forcing her to go off with Bishop.
And to think that she’d come a hair’s breadth away from kissing the wretch. The thin air must have dulled her wits. Not only would she never wish to betray her sister like that, but no woman in full command of her senses would let herself fall prey to a man of such churlish temperament.
If she never went near Daniel again, Linsey would spend the rest of her days in utter bliss. If it weren’t for the fact that Addie would wither up from misery without the arrogant, self-absorbed, unforgiving oaf, Linsey would forget the matchmaking plan altogether and concentrate on the other tasks still left undone.
Unfortunately she had to put her own feelings aside for her sister, and that meant keeping any derogatory thoughts regarding Daniel to herself. “I asked you if Mr. Puckett got that letter off to my father.”
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