A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  “There is now,” Wyatt replied, unconcerned.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her put her hands to her hips. Yes, sir, she was vexed. Not the least bit grateful that he’d just saved the cash holdings of the Stockman’s Bank, whatever they amounted to, and possibly her life and virtue in the bargain.

  “You can’t just make up laws,” Sarah challenged, “like some—some potentate!”

  “Can’t I?” Wyatt countered.

  “No!” she sputtered.

  “Well, darn,” Wyatt said, grinning. “Somebody should have told me that before I went ahead and did it.” He’d filled the wheelbarrow; now, he’d trundle it down the street to the jailhouse. Look in on Lonesome and see how the old dog was faring. If he was still feeling poorly, Wyatt planned to take him to see Doc Venable. Maybe there was a way to perk the mutt up a little.

  “Suppose those men intended to trade honestly with this bank?” Sarah persisted. “Now, they’ll never set foot in here again, thanks to you!”

  Wyatt shook his head as he wheeled the load of guns past her, leaned to open the door. So that was what was getting under her hide. She thought she’d lost a valuable business opportunity. “It would be a good thing if they didn’t,” he said, over one shoulder. “Since they meant to empty your safe.” Sarah was mad, all right, and he hoped she wouldn’t get over it too quickly. Anger was becoming on her, making her eyes flash like blue fire and her cheeks blossom pink as the tea roses growing behind his ma’s springhouse back on the farm.

  He set the wheelbarrow down on its three wheels and turned, standing on the sidewalk, to look at her.

  He never knew what came over him. Maybe he was just glad Paudeen and the others hadn’t called his bluff. He could still feel the hot August sun on his face, the breath in his lungs, the steady, strong beat of his heart.

  Maybe it was the way she looked, standing there.

  In any case, Wyatt stepped over the threshold, took her by the shoulders, and backed her across the room until she was pressed against the counter. Then he caught her chin in one hand, lifted, and kissed her square on the mouth.

  She stiffened, then opened to him. Her hands came up slowly, tentatively, and linked at the back of his neck.

  A thousand thoughts flashed through Wyatt’s mind as the kiss lengthened—he imagined bedding Sarah, right and proper, and all the pleasures that would entail. Her response was neither innocent nor awkward, but seasoned.

  This was no virgin spinster, an insight that both troubled Wyatt and intrigued him.

  When they finally broke apart, Sarah stared up at him, baffled and flushed, her hair even more askew than before. He accepted the truth then—he wasn’t leaving Stone Creek anytime soon. If Billy Justice came, looking to gun him down, all the better—he’d like to get that particular confrontation out of the way anyhow.

  If Rowdy and Sam came back, knowing he’d been part of the rustling operation down near Haven and bent on arresting him, he’d take his medicine, even if it meant going back to prison. Whatever happened, he wanted as much time with Sarah as he could get. Every minute spent away from her was a wasted one.

  She seemed breathless and a little frazzled. Instead of moving away, out of his embrace, as another woman might have done, she was in no hurry to lower her hands to her sides. They were still resting against the back of Wyatt’s neck.

  “Of all the nerve,” she marveled, in a strangled whisper.

  Wyatt kissed her again, lightly this time, and all too briefly. God, what he wouldn’t have given to lay her out on a soft bed, or in deep, fragrant grass, and pleasure her into feverish distraction. His whole body hardened at the prospect, and she must have noticed, because they were still pressed close together; her breath caught and her cheeks got pinker.

  She slid her hands down over his shoulders and chest before sidestepping him, and he knew by the way she moved that she’d wanted him as much as he wanted her. He’d taken willing women in broad daylight before, and in some unorthodox places, too. But Sarah Tamlin was, for all her tantalizing secrets, a lady. When he had her, it would be a proper seduction, slow and easy, in a real bed.

  “You might want to close up early,” he said, sounding hoarse. He went back to the wheelbarrow, took hold of the handles.

  She wouldn’t look at him, nor did she speak, but he saw her give a brisk nod.

  As soon as he’d stepped away from the door, he heard the lock turn behind him.

  Wyatt wondered if she wanted to keep Paddy and his gang out, or the new deputy marshal who’d just kissed her, and soundly.

  * * *

  KITTY STEEL OPENED the back door of the Spit Bucket Saloon when Sarah knocked lightly, two full hours after she’d closed down the bank. Skirting Main Street, Sarah had rushed to Stone Creek, and found her father and Owen safe beside the sparkling stream, fishing. They’d caught a mess of trout.

  “Is something the matter?” Ephriam had asked, squinting at her. He’d left his spectacles at home, evidently, or tucked them into his shirt pocket. To look at him, one would never guess he had episodes when he truly believed an invasion of the Confederate army was imminent.

  They were safe. That was all that mattered to Sarah.

  “No,” she’d said cheerfully. “I just decided to close the bank early today. Let’s go home and fry up those fish for lunch.”

  “Ephriam showed me how to clean them,” Owen had told her proudly, on the walk back to the Tamlin house.

  “I believe I could use a nap, after we eat,” Ephriam had observed, once they were inside.

  “A nap?” Owen had looked positively crestfallen. “I thought only babies took naps.”

  “Old coots do, too,” Ephriam had replied fondly. His eyes seemed to caress the boy.

  Sarah fried up the fish, managing not to cremate them in the skillet, and even though she was still shaken—not by what might have been a near robbery, but by Wyatt Yarbro’s kisses. When the meal was over and she’d cleared the table, Ephriam retired to his room, and Owen, despite his position on naps, began to yawn.

  “Just lie on your bed and close your eyes,” Sarah had told him gently. “You needn’t actually sleep.” Her mother had used that trick with her, when she was small. Just rest, she’d said, knowing Sarah would drift off.

  Full of fresh air and fish he’d helped to catch, Owen considered the suggestion, finally nodded, and went up to his room. When Sarah peeked in, he was sound asleep.

  She’d waited half an hour, then set out, via backstreets and alleys, for the Spit Bucket Saloon.

  “It won’t be the same without Maddie and Lark,” Kitty said now, as Sarah entered the shadowy little room where the Tuesday Afternoon Ladies Only Secret Poker Society met.

  The Society, as the members referred to it, had been founded three years before, when an epidemic of grippe struck the brothel above the Spit Bucket. Kitty, as well as several of the other soiled doves, had been desperately ill.

  Doc Venable had run himself down to a nub, trying to look after them, and finally issued a plea for help during the weekly church services. Of all the ladies in attendance, only Sarah had been willing to set foot in any part of the saloon, let alone the infamous chambers upstairs.

  During Kitty’s long recovery—two of her friends had perished—she and Sarah had become friends. In an effort to repay Sarah’s kindness, Kitty had taught her to play poker.

  Sarah, with her head for numbers, found the game fascinating. At first, she’d played with Kitty and some of the other girls, but eventually, word had leaked out and traveled along the female grapevine. Soon, Fiona had joined in, then Mabel Hemmings, who worked at the mercantile. When Maddie married Sam O’Ballivan and moved to Stone Creek, she joined, too. Lark Yarbro had started attending over the winter, sometimes bringing her baby boy, sometimes leaving him in Gideon’s or Rowdy’s care.
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  Today, Fiona had arrived early. She greeted Sarah with a slightly brittle smile.

  Sarah deliberately sat down next to her. From the looks of things, there would only be three of them in attendance that day, although Mabel was often late, and usually came tearing in after the first hand was dealt, struggling out of her apron as she burst into the room.

  “I hear there were two handsome men dining at your house last night,” Fiona said tightly, losing her grip on the smile but trying valiantly to sustain it. “Deputy Yarbro and that Eastern fellow, with the little boy.”

  The mention of Owen jabbed at Sarah. If Fiona suspected any blood connection between her and the child, the news would be all over Stone Creek within an hour after the poker game ended. And speculation would be rife.

  “Charles Langstreet was there,” Sarah said moderately. “He’s a business associate of my father’s.”

  “But handsome,” Fiona reiterated.

  “I suppose,” Sarah replied, careful not to look at her friend. And simultaneously realizing that Kitty was staring at her from across the table. Like many women in her scandalous sisterhood, Kitty had been widowed at a young age, left with two children and no means of supporting them. She’d scoured Denver for work, after her miner husband’s death during a riot—the union members had called him a “scab”—but there was none to be had. Every door had been slammed in her face.

  In the end, she’d had no choice but to leave her small daughters in an orphan’s home and search elsewhere for a way to earn a living. Finally, she’d found work on a cattle ranch outside Durango, cooking for the crew, since the lady of the house was ailing. With her first month’s salary and permission to bring her children back with her, as long as they didn’t get underfoot, she’d hurried back to Denver to reclaim her children.

  When she reached the home, breathless with anticipation, clutching stagecoach tickets for all three of them to make the return journey to Durango, she was informed that the little ones had been adopted by a wealthy physician and his wife, and taken back East somewhere. Stricken to the soul, having stressed that the arrangement was temporary when she left her girls, Kitty had begged for more information, desperate to track her babies down, but the officials at the orphanage refused. The adoptive parents’ last name was “confidential,” she was told, and besides, the children would have a better life with their new family.

  Kitty had never gone back to the ranch outside Durango.

  She’d asked questions of everyone she could find, but if anyone knew where her babies had gone, they weren’t telling. Frantic, half-wild with grief, Kitty hadn’t eaten or slept for days. She’d taken shelter in churches and alley doorways at night, and finally, when a man offered to buy her a drink, her destruction was complete.

  She’d accepted, found a dark and instant solace in the strong liquor, and asked for another. After that, she’d gone to the man’s room with him, and given over the terrain of her body, and been surprised to feel nothing at all when he degraded her. Offering herself to men was an easy way to get more whiskey and sustain the numbness that allowed her to live.

  Kitty had told Sarah all this while she was recuperating from her nearly fatal illness. Sarah had been heartbroken by the story, and outraged that, as a woman and a mother, Kitty had no legal rights at all. Eventually, with Maddie’s help and then Lark’s, she’d begun writing letters to faraway churches and charities, hoping to find Kitty’s daughters. When Kitty found out, she’d asked them to stop. Little Leona and Davina had forgotten her by now, she said, and that was for the best, given what she’d become since losing them.

  Of all the women she knew, Sarah figured Kitty was the most likely to understand what she’d suffered, giving Owen away. She felt an overwhelming need to confide in someone—Kitty, or even Wyatt Yarbro—though she had no intention of doing so.

  Wyatt might think ill of her, and Kitty, who still had occasional bouts with the bottle, might let something slip when liquor loosened her tongue. When she succumbed, albeit rarely, she babbled to anyone who would listen about her little girls. Sarah could not afford to have her spilling the story of Owen’s birth, too.

  The game began, and at first, Sarah’s cards were good ones. The ladies of the Society did not bet with matchsticks or buttons, like the more sedate Canasta club meeting in various parlors around town, but with real money. Sarah kept a stash of coins and small bills at home, in a coffee can tucked away on a pantry shelf, expressly for the purpose.

  Soon, though, luck began flowing in Fiona’s direction.

  And Kitty was still watching Sarah at intervals, stealing surreptitious glances over the top of her fan of playing cards.

  When the “meeting” was over, Fiona flounced off with copious winnings weighing down her handbag, and Mabel left, too, muttering that gamblers always died broke.

  “Guess there was quite a scene over at the bank this morning,” Kitty said when the others were gone, making no move to rise from her chair. She gathered the scattered cards expertly, though, her gaze fastened on Sarah. “A lot of our customers are grumbling that the deputy took their guns away.”

  Sarah didn’t comment.

  “Sarah?” Kitty pressed.

  Sarah met her friend’s eyes. “What?”

  “You want to look out for that lawman,” Kitty said.

  “Wyatt? Why?” A little thrill of apprehension went through Sarah. She couldn’t help recalling the kisses, and how they’d made her feel. “Do you know him?”

  “Met up with him five years ago, out in Kansas City,” Kitty answered. “He’s Rowdy’s brother, folks say.”

  Sarah waited, singularly alarmed, even though she thought she knew what Kitty was about to tell her—that Wyatt was a train robber, and he’d done time in prison for his crimes.

  “Whatever he’s telling you,” Kitty said implacably, “it probably isn’t true.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE DOG HADN’T MADE a turn for the better.

  After stowing all the guns he’d taken off Paddy Paudeen and his crew in the lone jail cell, locking the door, and dropping the key into his vest pocket, Wyatt loaded Lonesome into the wheelbarrow, being as careful as he could, and rolled him outside and down the sidewalk.

  Having met and liked Doc Venable the night before, at Sarah’s supper, Wyatt had confidence in the man. Venable mainly leaned toward people-doctoring, most probably, but surely he knew a thing or two about four-legged critters, as well.

  There were too many horses tied up outside the saloons, Wyatt acknowledged to himself, as he and Lonesome made their procession through the center of town, but he’d averted the immediate crisis, and right now, the mutt was a priority. As they passed the Stockman’s Bank, he noted with relief that Sarah had taken his advice and shut it down.

  He could get Lonesome looked after without shirking his duties.

  They drew some looks, Wyatt and the dog, and a few sheepish smiles, along the way. Wyatt asked the storekeeper, a balding man about as wide as he was high, the way to Doc Venable’s place, and was told he’d find the house directly behind the Spit Bucket Saloon, on the next street over.

  Since Lonesome seemed a mite embarrassed by all the attention, Wyatt decided to take a short cut between the Spit Bucket and the telegraph office. Careful not to jostle the dog too much while traversing the narrow and bumpy passage, the ground being littered with old whiskey bottles, a lone boot and other debris, Wyatt was taken by surprise when they emerged into the alley and practically ran right over Sarah. She’d plainly just left the saloon; the door was still half-open behind her.

  On taking a second look, Wyatt saw another familiar face peering out at him through the crack—a painted-up female with sorrow-worn features, a skimpy dress made of some shiny green fabric, and piles of dyed red hair.

  Now, where had he seen that woman?

 
; She pulled the door to before he could ask.

  Sarah, blushing a little, approached. She’d started when she saw him, but now she’d recovered her composure. Mostly, anyhow.

  Upon taking a closer look at Lonesome, her face changed. She drew a half step nearer. “Is—what’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s under the weather,” Wyatt said, watching her with amusement and the usual appreciation of all her physical virtues. She was clearly abashed at being caught sneaking out the back door of the Spit Bucket, but compassion for a dog fallen on hard times had distracted her. “I’m taking him to Doc Venable in the hope that he can dose him up with something, so maybe he won’t hurt so much.”

  Sarah came nearer. He smelled cigar smoke on her, and pondered the possibility that Rowdy had been right in maintaining that she had a tobacco habit. Wyatt didn’t approve, but it added to her appeal in a strange way, too. She was a complicated woman, and there was a lot to find out about her.

  Reaching down, she stroked Lonesome’s head. “Poor thing,” she murmured.

  Wyatt was surprised to learn that he couldn’t hold back the question hammering in the back of his mind. “What were you doing in the Spit Bucket Saloon?” he asked.

  She touched the pocket of her skirt in a subtle, fretful gesture, and then looked him directly in the forehead, neatly avoiding his eyes. “Kitty Steel is a friend of mine,” she said. “I like to visit her sometimes.” A pause, a deep, indrawn breath that made her fine breasts rise for a moment. “Is there an ordinance against that, deputy?” she asked.

  Wyatt chuckled, but when Lonesome gave a pathetic whimper, he sobered again. “No ordinance,” he assured her, inclining his head toward an unpainted house on the other side of the dirt alley. “Is that Doc’s place?”

  “Yes,” she said. Wyatt had expected her to veer off toward home, but instead, she walked beside him.

  Doc appeared in the back door of his house, probably having seen them coming through a window, and descended the steps to open a second door at ground level. “Bring that animal in this way,” he said.