A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Not that night, at least.

  So he and Doc scrubbed up, as best they could, and sank into chairs to drink Sarah’s coffee. For all her bad reputation as a cook, the brew was a lot better than the acid slop Doc had served them after seeing to Lonesome.

  Sarah didn’t join them, but she made a point of pouring the hot liquid into their cups, her skirt sweeping past the backs of their chairs as she moved.

  “I reckon I need some shut-eye,” Doc finally said, to break the silence. He’d had three cups of coffee by that time, but apparently, he didn’t expect it to disturb his rest. “That was fine coffee, Sarah,” he told her. “Could have done with a dash of whiskey, though.”

  Sarah, still miffed, evidently because Doc didn’t let her wash down naked dead men in his cellar, flounced toward the door. “You’re welcome,” she snapped, wrenching at the knob.

  Wyatt rose wearily from his chair, aching in every bone and muscle. He needed to find himself an easier job—like breaking rock with a sledgehammer in the belly of some mine, or breaking devil-horses to ride.

  “Thanks for the help, Wyatt,” Doc said, and his half smile was tinged with good-natured sympathy.

  He’d been about to offer a word of thanks to Doc, for taking charge of the situation out in front of Jolene Bell’s Saloon the way he had; now, he just nodded.

  Wyatt followed Sarah outside and down the porch steps. She was moving fast, so he had to hurry.

  “Sarah,” he finally protested, catching her by the arm. “Slow down.”

  She stopped, but only because she didn’t have much choice, given the grip he’d taken. He loosened his fingers, worried that he’d bruised her.

  “I was only trying to spare you,” he said.

  “I don’t require sparing,” she shot back. “I’ve helped Doc prepare folks for burying plenty of times.”

  “Doesn’t this town have an undertaker?” Wyatt asked, exasperated. Why was a task that would have most people either running in the other direction or heaving up their socks so damn important to her?

  “Yes,” Sarah said acidly, “Stone Creek has an undertaker. Doc.”

  She’d managed to pull away, and now she was walking fast again. She’d cleaned up a little at Doc’s place, but her skirts and the bodice of her dress were stained red, and she smelled.

  Or was that him?

  Wyatt stopped to look down at his ruined shirt—more properly, Rowdy’s ruined shirt—and when he did, she got farther ahead of him, and he had to scramble to catch up. He wasn’t just hell on the grocery bill, he concluded grimly. He was hell on his brother’s wardrobe, too.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked, beside her now. “Bathing dead people, I mean?”

  She halted again, put her hands on her hips, and glared up into his face. “I love bathing dead people!” she shouted. “It’s one of my favorite things to do!”

  Wyatt started to laugh.

  Sarah started to cry.

  He took a gentle grip on her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “S-Somebody has to tend to them—” Sarah blubbered.

  Wyatt pulled her close. “Hush, now,” he said. “Hush.”

  “It was awful,” Sarah said, her voice muffled by his shirtfront, vibrating through his heart. The crying intensified to outright sobs. “And you stink!”

  Wyatt chuckled. “So do you.”

  They stood like that for a while, and Sarah’s close proximity caused a shift inside Wyatt. He stopped thinking about death; life was on his mind, and all the good things that it had to offer.

  “I’d give anything for a hot bath,” Sarah wailed.

  “I might be able to help you out with that,” Wyatt said, and waited for the explosion.

  She looked up at him, sniffling and teary-eyed and covered in gore, and still as beautiful as an Arizona sunset blazing across the sky. He’d expected her to give him what for, even slap him, but instead she said, “Lark and Rowdy have a real bathtub!”

  “They do,” Wyatt said, amused. “And you’re welcome to use it if you want to.” Generous of him, he thought. Wyatt respected other people’s belongings, but just about then, he’d have helped himself to Rowdy and Lark’s bed, too, if he could lie down with Sarah Tamlin.

  It was too early for that, though.

  “What would I do for clean clothes?” Sarah asked.

  “Reckon you could borrow one of Lark’s dresses. She’s about the same size as you are.”

  Sarah blinked. “It would be scandalous,” she breathed.

  “Absolutely,” Wyatt agreed solemnly.

  “You’d have to promise not to look until I’m dressed again.”

  Wyatt raised a hand, a man swearing an oath he’d love to break. “I promise,” he vowed.

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “I couldn’t.”

  “Sure you could,” Wyatt said. “Just think of it. Peeling off that getup you’re in now. All that hot water. Scented soap—”

  “Stop,” Sarah pleaded.

  Wyatt grinned. “Up to you,” he said. And he turned, betting that she’d follow.

  She did.

  Five minutes later, having taken a roundabout way, in the hope no one would see them, Wyatt and Sarah stepped into the little house behind the jail.

  “That way,” Wyatt said, pointing from the kitchen doorway.

  Everything ground inside him, he wanted so badly to follow her, strip off his own clothes, get right into the tub with her.

  Easy, cowboy, he told himself. Sarah was as skittish as a wild mare scenting wolves on the breeze, and if he made any sudden moves, he might scare her off for good.

  “I know where the bathroom is,” Sarah said, lofty now. Even a little imperious, for all her tumbledown hair and her stained dress. “Lark showed it to me when it was her turn to host the Canasta club.”

  Wyatt grinned. “I’ll see to the horses,” he said, though the horses didn’t need seeing to, since he’d given them hay and filled their water troughs earlier in the evening.

  She didn’t move until he’d gone out the back door and closed it behind him.

  * * *

  SARAH FELT WANTON, bathing in someone else’s bathtub, even if that someone was a close friend. She knew Lark wouldn’t mind, but it was still a very improper thing to do. She was, alas, alone in a house with an unmarried man, and naked to the skin in the bargain.

  Oh, but the hot water was glorious.

  There was real shampoo, in an actual bottle.

  At home, Sarah lathered her hair with a bar of soap and rinsed it with rainwater.

  She alternately scrubbed and soaked, but when she heard a door open and close in the near distance, she bolted upright. Scrambled for a towel. Her hair down and dripping, she stood in the water, listening.

  “Wyatt?”

  “Yup,” he replied. “Are you decent?”

  Sarah flushed from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet. “No!”

  She heard him laugh. Then the door opened a little way and his hand came through, holding out a calico dress.

  Sarah rushed over, snatched it from him, and almost shut the door on his arm.

  “Go away,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” Wyatt replied.

  She pulled the plug in the bathtub, dried herself off, wrapped her hair in the towel, turban-fashion, slipped on her dress, and crept out into the main part of the house.

  Wyatt was sitting at the table, his head bent over an open book. His clothes looked as though he’d passed the day in a slaughterhouse and his hair, shiny as a blackbird’s wing, was mussed. She imagined he’d have to bathe, and thinking of that made her turn red all over again.

  “I should go home,” she said.

  “Yes,” Wyatt agreed, closing the b
ook slowly, almost reverently, and getting to his feet. “Feel better?”

  She nodded, oddly spellbound. Something about seeing Wyatt that way, intent on a book, made her heart flutter. She put a hand to it. “I th-thought you were going to try to seduce me,” she said, and could have bitten off her tongue.

  “I’d like nothing better,” Wyatt said, his gaze sweeping over her, “but when I have you, it won’t be in somebody else’s bed. Since I don’t have one of my own as of yet, I reckon it will have to be yours.”

  Sarah’s breath flowed shallow, and she felt her nipples harden beneath the bodice of Lark Yarbro’s calico dress. She knew she should have waxed indignant; instead, she wished he didn’t have so many scruples. “Where do you sleep, if you don’t have a bed?” she asked.

  One corner of his mouth tilted slightly upward. “Out in the hayloft,” he said. “I passed one night on a cot in the jail, but it brought back too many memories, so I moved to the barn.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said.

  He extended a hand to her. “Let’s get you back to your place while the getting’s good,” he said. She came to him, and he took the towel from around her head and watched her hair fall, spiraling with the damp, around her shoulders and breasts.

  There was something so sensual about the act that Sarah’s breath stopped in her throat, broke free with a little gasp.

  If Wyatt had kissed her then, she couldn’t have resisted him.

  But he didn’t.

  He took her home, the two of them moving through the shadows and alleys like a pair of illicit lovers returning from a tryst. He waited until she’d let herself in through the kitchen door.

  And then he left.

  “Sarah?” It was her father’s voice. He came down the back stairs, a lantern glowing in one hand. “Where have you been? What happened to your hair?”

  She went to meet him, midway up the stairs, and gently took the lantern from him. “Papa,” she said, gently stern, “I’ve asked you not to carry these around when they’re lit. You could start a fire.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sarah, I’m not a blithering idiot!”

  “Hush,” Sarah said. “Owen will hear you.”

  “That boy’s sound asleep,” her father replied. “He and the dog are sharing the spare room.” His spectacles glinted in the light of the lantern. “What have you been doing? Your hair is down, and it’s wet—”

  Sarah retreated to the kitchen, set the lantern in the middle of the table, and went about making tea. She needed something to settle her nerves—and since she wasn’t a drinker, orange pekoe would have to do.

  She’d half hoped Ephriam would retire to his room again—she wasn’t used to all this lucidity on his part and found, to her quiet astonishment, and no little shame, that she missed her father’s normal befuddlement.

  Of course he did not retire, nor did he cease asking questions.

  “You haven’t been with a man, have you?” he asked, causing her cheeks to flame.

  “No!” Sarah cried, and in that instant, she froze. She’d left her soiled dress at Rowdy’s place—and the book of lies was in the pocket. Slapping a hand to her mouth, Sarah sank into a chair at the table.

  Just then, Owen appeared, yawning and blinking, in the doorway of the spare room. “Why’s everybody fussing?” he asked sleepily. “You woke Lonesome up, and now he’s crying.”

  “Crying?” Sarah echoed, confused. Then she realized that Lonesome’s last dose of laudanum had probably worn off, and he needed another. She fetched the bottle from its shelf and followed Owen into the small bedroom just off the kitchen.

  Lonesome whimpered.

  “Poor thing,” she said, and knelt to put a drop of medicine on the dog’s tongue.

  But Lonesome didn’t stop the pitiful noise he was making.

  “I think he wants Wyatt,” Owen said wisely. “He’s homesick.”

  “He can’t be,” Sarah said, stroking the dog, trying to calm him. What should she do? She couldn’t wake Doc—he was exhausted. He’d delivered twins today, and then attended to the gruesome business of preparing three bodies for burial.

  Tears shimmered in Owen’s eyes. “Do something,” he pleaded.

  Sarah turned her head, expecting to see Ephriam in the doorway. “Papa—”

  But he wasn’t there.

  “Papa?”

  “Bet he went to get Wyatt,” Owen said, with such hope that Sarah prayed it was true, for the boy’s sake as much as Lonesome’s. In the next instant, though, she remembered that her father had been wearing a nightshirt and nothing else.

  “Stay with Lonesome,” she said, rushing for the kitchen.

  Ephriam was gone, and the back door stood open. Outside, in the grass, crickets chorused.

  Not wanting to rouse the neighbors and have them looking out their windows to see Ephriam Tamlin, president and chief stockholder of the Stockman’s Bank, marching down the street in his nightshirt, Sarah called out softly. “Papa! Papa, please come back.”

  He was nowhere in sight.

  Suppose he’d gotten befuddled again? What if he ended up wandering around out there in the dark countryside, where all manner of terrible things could happen to him, a defenseless old man, alone?

  Panic clutched at the inside of Sarah’s throat. She couldn’t leave Owen by himself to go chasing off after her father, especially when he was so worried about Lonesome.

  Offering a prayer that Ephriam would be kept safe and, if possible, unseen crossing town in his bedclothes, Sarah closed the door and went back to the spare room.

  Lonesome had settled down a little, but his grief was heartrending. Great, shuddering tremors went through him. Was he dying? Had she given him too much medicine?

  Tears slipped down Owen’s cheeks. “Help him, Aunt Sarah. Please, help him.”

  Both of them were kneeling now, beside the dog. Sarah put one arm around her son’s shoulders and used the opposite hand to stroke Lonesome’s quivering back, hoping to soothe him.

  She couldn’t have said how much time passed—ten minutes? A half hour? Longer?

  Her heart leapt when the back door opened and she heard her father say, “In there.”

  And then Wyatt was in the room.

  Lonesome tried to get up and go to him, but he was too weak.

  “Lie still, now,” Wyatt told the dog, with gruff tenderness. He crossed and crouched, opposite Sarah, and stroked Lonesome’s head. Lonesome licked Wyatt’s hand and fell silent.

  “I told you he wanted Wyatt,” Owen said, sinking against Sarah’s side. “Will you stay with him, Wyatt? So he doesn’t cry? You can sleep here in the spare room, and I’ll go upstairs—”

  Wyatt started to speak, stopped himself. Looked directly into Sarah’s eyes. He’d had a bath, and he was wearing clean clothes. His hair was still damp, and smelled of hard soap.

  “I think that’s a fine idea,” Ephriam said. Bless him, he’d gone all the way to the other end of town, found Wyatt, and brought him back.

  Sarah offered a silent prayer of gratitude.

  “So do I,” Sarah said, gazing at Wyatt.

  “Then let’s all get ourselves bedded down for the night,” Ephriam suggested. “Do you people have any idea what time it is?”

  Sarah stood, ushered Owen out of the spare room with as much dignity as she could manage. Ephriam and Owen went upstairs together.

  And Sarah stopped cold. A small volume lay in plain sight on the kitchen table, next to the lantern.

  It was the book of lies.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WYATT SAT ON THE EDGE of the narrow cot in Sarah’s spare room, looking down at Lonesome, who lay contentedly at his feet, staring up at him with a kind of adoring devotion he’d never experienced before.

  “I can’
t stay here,” Wyatt told the dog, keeping his voice low. “Folks will see me leave the house in the morning, and think the worse of Sarah because I spent the night.”

  Lonesome gave a companionable sigh and laid his ugly muzzle on his forelegs, perfectly contented now that he had things just the way he wanted them.

  “And I’ve got things I ought to be doing,” Wyatt went on. Out on the trail, he’d sometimes carried on long conversations with his horse. Old Reb was a compassionate listener. “Guarding those guns locked up at the jail, for one thing. For another, tracking those men who tore out of town tonight, after the shooting. But here I sit, playing nursemaid to a damn dog.”

  A light rap sounded at the spare room door.

  Wyatt got up, crossed to open it. Sarah stood on the other side, still clad in Lark’s dress, though she’d plaited her damp hair so it rested in a thick ebony rope over her right shoulder. The little horse-tail rigging at the bottom, tied off with a pink ribbon, touched her waist.

  “You brought back my book of—my diary,” she said, watching his face closely. “I found it on the kitchen table.”

  Wyatt nodded, a little confused. “I burned your other dress in the kitchen stove at Rowdy’s place, along with my own gear. No amount of laundering was going to save those duds. When I felt something in the pocket, I took it out.”

  She drew a deep, slow breath, and let it out again just as slowly. “You didn’t read it?”

  “Sarah, of course I didn’t.”

  She sighed, relaxed a little. “Well, then,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “For bringing the book back, or not reading it?”

  She managed a sparse little smile. “Both.”

  “You’re welcome,” Wyatt said. “Sarah, I can’t stay here overnight. Is that wheelbarrow around here someplace? I’ll load Lonesome up and haul him on back to Rowdy’s.”

  “It’s in the shed out back,” Sarah said, but now she was looking troubled again. “Why can’t you stay?”

  “If I do, the whole town will say we—well—” He paused, felt his neck heat up. “It just wouldn’t be good, that’s all.”