by Renee Ryan
And that frightened her far more than his touch.
Chapter Nine
Trey met up again with Sheriff Lassiter exactly one hour after leaving Katherine on the Charity House porch. The traffic was dying down on the street, but Trey hardly noticed. A stream of tobacco juice arced through the air and landed inches from Trey’s feet.
“Nice shot, Sheriff.”
Lassiter ignored him.
Dropping into the empty chair that Molly had occupied earlier, Trey tried to focus his thoughts on anything other than the stubborn schoolteacher who made his blood boil with irritation.
With a shake of his head, he banished the disturbing woman from his thoughts and turned his attention to Denver’s notorious sheriff. Lassiter had pulled the wide hat brim over his weather-beaten face, the relaxed posture making him appear asleep.
Trey propped his feet against the rail in a gesture identical to the sheriff’s and inhaled the sharp, spicy fragrance of a coming rain. “Surveying your domain, Lassiter?”
With two fingers, the sheriff pushed his hat back, leaned forward and spat another rivulet of tobacco juice to the ground. “You get Molly home safe?”
“Yeah, she’s back at the orphanage, probably causing trouble already.” His tone reflected all the admiration he felt for the little girl, and all the frustration he felt toward the older sister.
“No doubt.” After a moment of shuffling around in his chair, the sheriff leveled a measuring look at Trey. “So what did our little Molly want from you that couldn’t wait until later?”
Trey lifted his gaze to the heavens. As the warmth of the day skidded behind threatening rain clouds, his mood turned the same dreary gray as the sky. “She just wanted to talk.”
He didn’t feel the need to add the particulars of their disturbing conversation, or to reveal the resulting clash he’d had with Katherine.
Lassiter dropped his feet to the ground, then leaned forward. “She came all that way, by herself, just to talk?”
“That’s what I said.”
Rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger, the sheriff slid a shrewd look at Trey from below his hat. “Molly’s a pretty little thing. Already a charmer.”
Why deny the truth? “I’d say.”
Lassiter shifted the wad of tobacco around in his mouth. “She’s a lot like her sister. Don’t you think?”
Trey knew where the sheriff was heading, knew he should put a stop to it, but he didn’t have the strength to fend off the attack. “A lot.”
Even as he spoke the admission, Trey accepted the complexity of the task that lay before him. Katherine Taylor was proving far more difficult than he’d expected. All he wanted was to secure her good reputation and protect Charity House from a potential scandal.
Or so he told himself.
But, even now, as frustrated as he was with Katherine, he could feel the pull of attraction between them growing stronger by the day. He was drawn to the way she made him feel less anger. His need to strike out dimmed when he was around her. But Trey knew the feeling was only temporary. The hate was still in him, bubbling just under the surface, festering and spreading like a cancer. Driving him to hunt down Ike Hayes and make him pay.
“Do you want to talk about the big sister?”
“No.”
Trey didn’t even want to think about Katherine Taylor until he figured out what marriage to her would mean to Laurette’s legacy.
One thing he knew for certain. When he focused on vengeance, he honored his wife’s memory. So Trey would focus on finding Ike Hayes. He would concern himself with the schoolmarm later. “I’m setting Drew’s trial for two weeks from next Monday.”
Lassiter nodded, taking up the new topic with ease. “You got the okay for the money?”
Trey snorted. “I’m through waiting for the Justice Department to approve my request. I want this trial over, even if that means using my own money to make it happen.”
“Too bad it ain’t a double trial. Ike is the real brains of the operation. Drew’s too stupid to have planned that raid in Colorado Springs all on his own.”
Trey couldn’t argue with the truth. Unfortunately, after his numerous conversations with Drew Hayes, he’d decided it wasn’t family loyalty keeping the man’s mouth shut. The outlaw didn’t know where his brother was hiding.
“At least we have one of them in custody. That’s gonna have to do, for now,” Lassiter said.
Trey nodded. “It’s something.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Trey caught sight of his deputy trudging down the street. The man’s shoulders were slumped in defeat.
Scuffing his heels as he walked, Logan wended his way around a horse and rider, a carriage, a mother and her small posse of children. With his head hung low, the twenty-year-old deputy looked like one of the Charity House children after a good scolding.
“Talking to that woman was a complete waste of my time,” Logan said on a wave of disgust.
Trey held back a sigh of resignation. “So Mattie won this round, too.”
“I’d have had better luck getting information out of a dead mule.”
As Trey listened to Logan expound on the worst of Mattie’s qualities, his mind sorted through various possibilities to get the tight-lipped madam speaking.
Rising in the middle of Logan’s tirade, Trey slapped his hat against his thigh and turned in the direction of Market Street. The thriving red-light district between Eighteenth and Twentieth Street had been the source of great frustration in Trey’s early days of marshaling. For weeks he’d fought a losing battle in his attempt to clean up the area. The community’s tolerance, coupled with the politicians’ blind eye to prostitution, had been too powerful an alliance to overcome.
Today, however, Trey was not on a moral errand. This one was far more personal. He’d had enough of women running him around in circles. At least one of them was going to cooperate this afternoon.
“Hey,” Logan called after him. “Where are you going?”
“Mattie’s. It’s time I explained to that ornery madam the value of female compliance.”
A clap of thunder punctuated his words with an ominous clash.
Resolved to get his answers, Trey stood outside Mattie’s brothel and considered the heavy double doors that led into the unremarkable two-story brick building. As though to mock him, the rain began falling in heavy sheets, making him impatient to be done with this filthy business. Without waiting for a response to his knock, he twisted the knob and pushed into the gaudy foyer.
Barely taking note of the decor, Trey continued forward, bypassing several pieces of furniture, including a red velvet divan.
Although it was still early afternoon, Mattie’s brothel was full of customers. Trey ignored the men, warned off Mattie’s infamous bouncer with a look and then trudged deeper into the activity around him.
The magnificence of this parlor house had always struck him as off-kilter with the rest of the world. The prostitution business did a solid trade in Denver, making madams like Mattie Silks among the wealthiest in town. As he continued to study the room and its occupants, Trey took special note of the women’s painted faces and their expensive dresses, designed in the latest Parisian fashion.
Circling his gaze to the back of the room, he found Mattie in deep conversation with a notable banker in town. The woman, in all her theatrical glory, was his link to Ike.
Today she would talk.
Trey moved in between the woman and her customer, not caring that he was interrupting. “I want a word with you, Mattie. Alone.”
She didn’t respond but instead chose to continue her conversation with her customer.
Trey took the opportunity to measure his small, blond adversary. Just like her brothel, everything about Mattie Silks was overdone. Her hair was too blond, her eyes were too large, and her mouth was too red. Born to live in the sensational, moment by moment, she struck a pose after every sentence she spoke.
Apparently, Ike Hayes had a ta
ste for the dramatic.
The notion made Trey sick. “I won’t ask twice,” he said. “Cooperate here, or I’ll haul you down to the jailhouse.”
With a studied toss of her blond mane, Mattie blessed him with a hard glint in her eye. “I’ve already dealt with one of your kind today. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll reconsider. But, for now, if you would please leave me to—”
“It’s important.” His tone made his point.
Her eyes went flat, the businesswoman gliding into place. “It’ll cost you.”
“I figured it would.”
Mattie Silks might be a well-known madam who peddled the charms of her “girls,” but she was also very shrewd. Money spoke louder than a smile, a handsome face or false words.
“Perhaps this will persuade you of the urgency of my task.” Trey fit a fifty-dollar bill into her palm.
With a diminutive grin, she closed her hand around the money, excused herself from her companion, then turned her full attention to Trey. With sugar dripping in her voice, she lifted an arched eyebrow. “Perhaps you would like to follow me, Marshal Scott?”
She led the way to her private sitting room.
Once inside, Trey shouldered the door closed behind them.
Mattie slipped the money inside a small compartment in her desk. “You’ve just purchased a full hour of my time. So what can I do for you, Marshal?”
Trey clenched his jaw. “I want answers, nothing more.”
Mattie’s gaze swept over him. “I never noticed how handsome you are, Marshal.” She leaned forward and trailed a finger up his arm.
Trey didn’t bother holding back a shudder of disgust. While he knew many men would be eager to sample Mattie’s charms, Trey was not one of them. He suddenly craved Katherine’s purity and goodness, to experience relief from the dark emotions that drove him to stand in this brothel and question this madam.
“Like I said before, I want information from you, Mattie. That’s all.”
Unfazed by his declaration, she looked him up and down, her eyes shifting with curiosity. “I know that glint in your eyes, Marshal. You’ve got a woman on your mind.” She tossed him a pitiful look. “Not one of my girls, of course.”
“Mattie, I’m warning you. This is not a conversation you want to have with me.”
The madam relaxed into a pose and summoned a faraway look to her eyes. “Now, I know you’re friends with that disgustingly noble Marc Dupree. And since Marc is, well, so noble and he’s married to Laney—another disgustingly noble creature—it can’t be her. So who else is there…”
Trey’s head spun with fury, but he held the emotion in check. He could see she was enjoying the sheer drama of her game. He would not give her the satisfaction of knowing how thoroughly she’d hit her mark.
“That leaves…” She held the pause for a long moment. “Kath—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Mattie.”
“Ah, but you see, Marshal Scott—” she shook her finger at him “—I’ve heard all about your shameless behavior with the not-so-proper schoolmarm. It’s obvious there’s more to the prissy Katherine Taylor than meets the eye.”
As soon as the false accusations fled Mattie’s lips, Trey’s anger exploded—the silvery edge of it tearing away the rational part of him. Unable to speak, he clenched his fists so tightly, his knuckles burned like fire.
“I’ll say this once,” he managed through his clenched jaw. “Never speak about Kath—Miss Taylor—in that ugly tone again.”
Hands on her hips, Mattie straightened, her eyes turning frigid. When she spoke, her voice filled with the harder side of the life she’d endured for thirty years—cold and nasty and vicious. “Like mother, like daughter.” She waved her hand back and forth.
In one swift movement, Trey captured Mattie’s wrist and held her firmly, but not tight enough to cause harm. “I’m through playing it your way.”
She held his stare, her gaze as unforgiving as he felt, but Trey saw the flicker of fear just below the surface. He leaned forward, their noses inches apart. Familiar anger surfaced, driving him to reach up and yank the information out of Mattie. Instead, Trey directed the ugly emotion into his hard tone. “Where is Ike Hayes?”
“Changing the subject, are you?” Her voice held none of her fear, only cold contempt.
“I paid you good money, and I want my answers.”
Her gaze cleared, then hardened as she slid the successful madam into place, a woman who had seen and done it all. For a price. “You won’t find Ike through me.”
Though he was revolted, and so angry he could barely see straight, Trey still pulled his lips into a grin. “Make no mistake, Mattie, I will get my answers.” He let go of the breath he’d been holding and dropped her hand. “But not like this.”
He turned, leaving her breathless and glaring. Opening the small compartment in her desk, he retrieved his money.
“Have you no shame?” she said, rushing toward him.
Stopping her pursuit with a look, he dug into his vest pocket and then tossed a coin onto the bed. “For services rendered.”
Her glare spat fire, and her voice dripped with ice. “You’ve crossed the line, Marshal Scott.”
Pivoting on his heel, he threw her one last, disgusted look. “It’s not the first time.”
He turned his back on her and yanked open the door.
“You don’t want to make an enemy of Mattie Silks, Marshal. It’s a mistake.” Her bitter warning shot through the cold silence that had entered the room.
Trey treated her to one final withering glare. “And you don’t want to make an enemy of me, Miss Silks. It’s a bigger mistake.”
Chapter Ten
Hours after leaving Mattie’s brothel, Trey couldn’t stop thinking about the woman, her lies and the ugly business she ran. His gut twisted in anger as he considered the kind of men who frequented the establishment, violent, immoral men like Ike Hayes, who stole life for the sheer pleasure of it.
Anger surged through him, threatening to consume him, but Trey tamped it down with a hard swallow.
How many of Katherine’s childhood years had been spent in a brothel like Mattie’s? How many times had she observed women taking money in the place of love and respect? How many lonely nights had she worried her own life would become the same as her mother’s—only to have her fears realized when a former customer of Sadie Taylor’s stole her innocence?
In that moment, the line between vengeance for Laurette and restitution for Katherine blurred in Trey’s mind. He couldn’t understand why God would allow such kindhearted women to suffer brutality. Apparently, there was no mercy in this cruel world.
Leaning back in his chair, Trey propped his feet on the desk in front of him and speared a hand through his hair. Mattie had made it clear that talk had already begun about him and Katherine, just as he knew it would.
Well, Trey might not be able to right the wrong done to Laurette, at least not specifically, but he could correct the mistake he’d made with Katherine. Then maybe, maybe, he could alleviate some of his guilt over failing Laurette.
And regardless of Trey’s past defeats, Katherine deserved freedom from her fear of all men, including him. If only he understood how she could cling to an invisible God that had abandoned her to a childhood inside a filthy brothel, a childhood that had ultimately led to one night of unspeakable violence. In spite of her personal hardships, she still held strong to her faith.
In that moment, he realized it was that very faith that drew him to her. Before meeting her, he’d been consumed with anger, driven by his hate and blissfully ignorant of the need for peace in his life. Marriage to Katherine Taylor might be just what he needed to start a new life.
But if he did talk the woman into marriage, what would it mean for his love for Laurette? Already, thoughts of his wife were becoming hazier and harder to grasp. In fact, he hadn’t even thought of Laurette the past few times he’d been in Katherine’s presence. If he found Ike and personally served up ju
stice to the outlaw, perhaps then Trey could come to terms with Laurette’s murder at last and move on with his life.
He exhaled a ragged breath. Because of his growing feelings for Katherine, he had not only betrayed the memory of his wife, but he’d inadvertently added further ruin to a fine woman’s shaky reputation.
Well, he couldn’t change the past, but he could right the future. It wasn’t until after hours of hard thought that an idea finally materialized, one that just might work to convince Katherine to marry him.
Lack of sleep, Trey discovered, made him very smart.
Katherine woke from a fitful, dream-ravaged sleep. Squinting through the shadows, she dragged in a shaky breath and studied the clock on the mantel. Midnight.
Sighing, she tossed to her left, turned to her right, then rolled back to her left again. Unable to find a comfortable position, she huffed, kicked at the sheets, then set to tossing back and forth again.
She turned to prayer, whispering aloud a portion of the thirty-second Psalm. “O Lord, You are my hiding place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. You…”
Unable to remember the rest, she tried another from Matthew. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
No matter how hard she tried to quote Scripture, she couldn’t dispel the image of Trey Scott’s tender expression as he’d taken her hand into his to show her a moment of comfort. He’d been so kind to her, so gentle, and Katherine never knew she could feel such…confusion.
Before Trey had come along, she’d been completely satisfied with a future dedicated solely to Molly and the other Charity House children. Security, comfort, love—those came from her heavenly Father. There was no point in wondering what other blessings she might find in marriage.
Sleep. She needed the blissful escape of sleep. But even the familiar sounds of the Colorado night couldn’t soothe her. The rustling of leaves grated on her nerves; the insects chattering with one another distracted and annoyed. Of course, the fact that Trey’s parting words still echoed in her ears didn’t help matters, either.