“And he came all the way here just to say hello?”
“He came because he wants Penelope Rose back.”
Her words struck him like a blow. “I see.”
“No, you don’t. His riverboat is failing and he thinks he can save it by bringing the St. Louis Songbird back. He’s wrong. I won’t go back, ever.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Threaten?” Katlyn frowned, truly confused at the question though Case had never looked more serious. “Luck? Of course not.”
“Then why are you afraid of him? Don’t deny it. I saw your face when you first recognized him.”
“I wasn’t afraid. I was—startled to see someone from my past here in New Mexico.” She said it confidently, as if she expected to be believed. She kept her hands under the table though, so Case wouldn’t see them shaking. “I thought I had left St. Louis behind and made a new start here.”
Case busied himself with lighting a cheroot before replying. He took a long draw on it, blew the smoke to the side, then looked straight back at her. “You seem determined to forget St. Louis ever existed.”
“Just as determined as you are to forget Silver Springs.”
“I left Colorado to protect Emily. What are you running from?”
“I’m not running, from anything or anyone.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” Katlyn said firmly. That, at least, she didn’t have to lie about. “I told you before, I came here because I was looking for a place to belong, a place I felt needed. Is that so hard to understand?”
“It is because it seems you had everything you could aspire for as a singer. Connor still needs you. Why give it all up to come here?”
To her horror, Katlyn felt tears sting her eyes. How could she explain that the way Luck needed the St. Louis Songbird was hardly the way she yearned to be needed? Everything had become so convoluted between them because of her deception, trying to unravel her feelings in a way that would make any sense to him was futile.
She didn’t want to be at odds with Case, not now, not after all they’d shared. She couldn’t afford to be weak. Yet all she wanted right now was to fling herself into his arms and ask him to hold her.
She blinked and fixed her gaze on her lap and Case’s coolness immediately fell away. He couldn’t stay detached, nurse his suspicions of her when she looked so small and vulnerable and alone.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
Katlyn raised her head. The lamplight caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. “Do you believe me, about Luck?” Impulsively, she reached across the table and put her hand on his. “I would never deceive you about something like that, or about how I feel. Never.”
“I believe you,” Case said, not knowing whether he was right or a fool to trust her. But it didn’t matter now. Maybe it never had and never would.
“Thank you,” Katlyn whispered and squeezed his hand.
She started to pull her fingers away but Case took her hand in his and, getting to his feet, drew her up and into his arms.
He held her close and she clung to him tightly. They stayed together, in the stillness and the shadows, both wishing there was nothing else between them but the feeling this was where they should stay.
Hours later Case paced the floor in his sitting room, wondering what to do about Katlyn.
He could argue with himself that her past was none of his business. Many people came west to escape their mistakes and start over. Whatever secrets haunted her shouldn’t concern him.
Except everything about her concerned him and he knew it wasn’t simply because he had invested the future of his hotel in her.
He was in danger of loving her.
He believed Katlyn when she said she would never deceive him. But he didn’t know if he could trust Penelope Rose. And he wasn’t about to commit his heart and his daughter’s future to another woman who was nothing she appeared to be.
Never before had he dealt backhanded with anyone. Katlyn, though, wasn’t about to tell him the truth.
A friend in St. Louis had recommended the riverboat songbird when he was looking for a singer. Perhaps Penelope Rose had left something more than her reputation behind when she abandoned her career there—rumors at least of why she suddenly departed.
If he knew, maybe he could help Katlyn. Maybe he could help himself before it was too late and he gave his soul to her.
Sitting at his desk, Case started writing a letter, determined to finish before he changed his mind.
The bite in the late-morning air prompted Katlyn to grab a blanket from the barn and drape it over Becky’s legs. The chill bite of autumn in the country breeze swept through the tattered sides of the old wagon Becky and Bucky were using to drive outside of town to invite ranchers and their wives to the new dinner show at the St. Martin.
“Now be back before dark and don’t forget those handbills. Please drop them at the general store, and the barbershop, and Mrs. Donaldson’s boardinghouse on your way back here. Oh, take some by the livery, too. And you might tack a few up here and there, too. It couldn’t hurt.”
“We won’t forget,” Bucky said with a grin. “You’ve been tellin’ us enough the last two days.” Clucking his tongue, he snapped the reins against the back of the spotted mare and the wagon lurched up the dirt road leading out of town.
“We’ll keep tellin’ them it’s real fancy, Miss McLain,” Becky called to her as the wagon rattled past. “This town ain’t never seen nothin’ like what you’re puttin’ on, that’s for certain.”
Katlyn raised a hand and waved after them. “I know. That’s what I’m gambling on,” she answered, mostly to herself, hesitating to add out loud that she hoped her gaming instincts weren’t anything like her father’s. If she had inherited his notorious bad luck, they were all about to land in deep trouble.
Too late to think about that now. Tugging her shawl around her shoulders, she headed back toward the hotel, ticking off a list of things yet to be done before the dinner show opened. For days she’d worked herself and everyone else to the bone, practicing, preparing, cleaning, polishing and planning.
There’d been some good-natured grumbling from Tuck and Bat, and Jack had teased her about her prowess as a general. But all in all, everyone fell in with her plans, trusting she knew enough to carry off her most elaborate performance yet.
Case had said little, seemingly willing to let her manage everything, offering only a suggestion here and there in between his long hours spent making repairs. Katlyn didn’t know whether his silence meant he believed in her or he was biding his time until she fell flat on her face.
And right now, she didn’t know which alternative seemed the more daunting.
Pushing in through the back kitchen door, Katlyn found Tuck hard at work arranging food on a plate to look the way she had described it ought to be presented. He looked up when she came in, exasperation written in his furrowed brow.
“It ain’t workin’, Miss Katlyn, this fuss and fanfare just ain’t me.”
Katlyn made her way around a sack of potatoes and a crate of canned fruit, angling herself between the big black stove and a haphazard stack of unwashed pots and pans on the dry sink to peek around Tuck’s wide girth at the worktable. Dozens of oddly cut scraps of carrots and radishes lay tossed aside in a heap. She glanced at the delicate pale green china plate at his burly fingertips, smiling at the contrast.
“Tuck, you’re doing fine. Here, if you’ll allow me to invade your kitchen for a moment, I’ll show you a trick with the radishes and carrots. A few cuts here and there and you’ll have just the right garnish for the ham.”
Tuck moved aside. With a heavy breath, he shook his head and handed her the paring knife. “Invade all you want. I sure ain’t gettin’ the job done.”
Katlyn tossed her shawl onto a chair. “You’re doing a wonderful job. I learned this from a cook on Luck Connor’s riverboat a long time ago. Here, watch this.” In a few d
eft slices, she turned a simple radish into something akin to a blooming flower, then created curly strips from thin slices of carrot. “Now if we put these in water and set them out in the evening air, by the time we serve dinner, they’ll be crisp as new lace.”
“Here, you try,” she said, offering him the knife.
After a few tentative cuts, Tuck mastered both techniques and held up his finished radish blossom with a grin. “Well, now, maybe you can teach an old dog a few new tricks.”
“There’s not much I can teach you. All I can do is add a few frills to what’s already the best food in town.”
“That may be,” Tuck said with a grin, “but you’re the best thing that ever happened to the St. Martin, Miss Katlyn. They don’t come truer than you.”
Katlyn’s smile drained away. She made a pretext of turning to gather up her shawl. “I’m just doing what I have to do,” she said quickly. “We all need this place up and running again.”
Case drew a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Ready?”
At the other end of the refinished bar counter, Bat gripped the ends and nodded. The two men hefted the weighty mahogany slab, shifting and sliding it slowly into place.
Katlyn watched from the door of the saloon, her eyes fixing on the muscles flexing in Case’s arms. He’d rolled his sleeves up until they caught and held snugly, and as he squatted to lift, she saw the sinuous length of his thighs and backside tighten beneath his denim pants. Knowing he didn’t realize she was there, she allowed herself the luxury of staring.
Before the destruction at the hotel, she’d most often seen Case at his elegant best, groomed to perfection, dressed in fine, tailored clothes. He’d always struck her as impossibly handsome, commanding attention and turning every woman’s eyes his way. To deny her attraction to him would be a lie.
But lately, working long hours on the renovations, his usually meticulously kept hair looked permanently mussed. Each day he’d put on the same denims that with time and wear had molded perfectly to his body. The comfortable old white cotton shirt he wore, he left carelessly unbuttoned, tempting her to slide her fingers through the dark mat of curls that caressed his broad chest. For days she’d been watching him, discovering a side of him she found irresistible.
Looking at him now, a trickle of sweat sliding down one side of his brow, muscles taut, eyes intense and focused on his task, he aroused something deep and intimate in her. No man, not even her former fiancé, had ever provoked such an impatient yearning in her. But it happened every time she so much as glanced Case’s way, causing her stomach to clench with excitement and a heady warmth to fizz through her blood.
Case pounded the last nail into the counter and tossed his head back, wiping the sweat from his face with the underside of his forearm. As he did, he caught Katlyn staring at him from the doorway.
“Come to check on the hired help?” he teased.
For a moment she only looked at him with an odd expression on her face.
“Katlyn? Are you all right?”
“All—yes. Yes, of course.” She shifted her shoulders as if throwing off some unsettling thought. “I…I was just watching—I stopped to see how you were coming along.”
“I see,” Case said, though he didn’t. She seemed nervous, rubbing her palms down her skirts, shifting her gaze everywhere but to him. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“What could be wrong?”
“Where you’re concerned, I have no idea,” Case muttered, shaking his head as she started picking her way through the piles of wood and sawdust to his side.
“Daddy, look what I made!” Emily, who’d been sitting on the stage with a pile of wooden blocks, now commanded his attention.
“Those are wonderful!” Katlyn exclaimed, coming up beside him to admire Emily’s handiwork. “Emily, you can build a castle with those.”
Emily looked up to Katlyn and nodded. “I already am. For the princess. See?”
Katlyn closely examined the little girl’s “castle,” a hodgepodge of wood squares heaped this way and that. “It’s beautiful, sweetie,” she said, bending to brush a kiss atop her head. “The princess will be very happy there.”
Katlyn straightened to find Case just behind her, so close she felt the heat of his body through her thin cotton dress.
“Your song inspires her imagination,” he murmured in her ear, his breath warm on her neck.
“She’s making good use of your wood scraps.”
“Well, every princess should have a castle, don’t you think?”
“Oh, definitely.” She turned, and finding herself at eye level to the rise and fall of his chest, looked up at him, a shaky little smile on her mouth. “And a knight in shining armor to defend her.”
“Will you settle for a more tarnished and slightly less heroic version of a champion?”
“Tarnished? Mmm…I don’t think so. A bit battered, maybe,” she murmured. She skimmed her fingertips over his bruised jaw. “No less heroic.”
She teased him but Case heard the note of longing in her voice she couldn’t hide. He felt a thrust of pure satisfaction remembering her expression when he’d caught her watching him before. He might not understand everything about Katlyn McLain but one thing she couldn’t keep secret was her feelings.
And if he didn’t move away from her, his own feelings right now wouldn’t be a secret, either, from anyone in the room.
Katlyn ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Case stared a moment too long, then took a quick step back. “I’d better get back to work.”
“Yes,” Katlyn agreed. “We’ve got so much to do.”
“Quite a bit.”
“Well, then…”
“I should—”
“And I have to—”
They both spoke at the same time, stopped and then Katlyn burst out laughing. She sidestepped around him and went to sit on the edge of the stage near Emily, stretching her legs out in front of her.
The tension broken, Case shook his head at her, smiling. “So, are we going to be ready to open on Saturday night?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be.”
“We’re in luck at least in one respect. The stage comes into town early afternoon so we should be able to draw in a few customers from there. Have Becky and Bucky had any luck with the ranchers?”
“Yes, several of them seem curious and their wives are eager to have a reason to parade their finery. And a couple of the mine owners and local businessmen are all interested in what we’re trying to do here.”
Case let out a wry laugh. “I have to say, I’m curious, too.”
Katlyn couldn’t mistake the concern in his voice. “Don’t worry,” she insisted with more confidence than she felt. “This is going to work, I know it.”
“You have a way of making me believe that,” Case said with a sincerity that warmed Katlyn.
“Oh, by the way, since I couldn’t pay Mrs. Donaldson for the alterations on the clothes for the staff, I’d like to invite her to the show. I think she’d enjoy the treat.”
Case nodded. “Of course. You ought to invite your companion, as well.”
Forcing her eyes to not turn from his, Katlyn returned what she hoped was an appreciative smile. “Thank you. I don’t think she’ll be well enough to leave her bed, though.”
The flatness of her tone, so at odds with her usual vivacity, knotted Case’s gut. Why was it that every time he mentioned the mysterious companion, everything about Katlyn changed?
Questions, doubts, suspicions plagued him each time the subject came up. But with all of the hard work and sacrifice she’d shown him, his daughter, his staff and his hotel, how could he suspect her of anything but honest dedication?
Why couldn’t he simply trust her?
In the silence, the letter he’d sent answered him when his heart could not.
On the eve of the first dinner show, Katlyn bustled about checking on Tuck in the kitchen, straightening Bucky’s bla
ck jacket and string tie, adding an extra petticoat to smooth out the lines beneath the dress she’d altered for Becky.
Passing Jack in the hallway, she tried in vain to persuade him to attempt to do something to his hair to keep it tame and away from his brow in a dignified fashion, but he merely brushed her aside with a wicked smile that made him look anything but dignified. Giving up, she went to give the dining room tables one last look.
If she didn’t fall asleep during her performance it would be nothing short of a miracle, she mused, hiking up her skirts to rush downstairs. She and Becky had done a quick job on her makeup and hair, but as she stole a glance in the foyer mirror at the bottom of the stairs, amazingly, it all seemed to her eyes to come together well.
The deep golden velvet dress suited her coloring, after Mrs. Donaldson removed all the excess lace and the ruffle around the neck, the now-simple design made it look like her dress, instead of one of Penelope’s castoffs.
For the first time since she’d come to the St. Martin, Katlyn felt comfortable. She might still be called the St. Louis Songbird, but tonight it was Katlyn McLain who would perform.
Inspecting the dining room, table setting by table setting, a deep sense of pride filled her.
“The room is magnificent. And so are you.”
Katlyn turned to find Case leaning against the broad pine frame that outlined the double pocket doors to the room. The last breath of smoke from his cheroot slid from his lips and she watched as he turned aside to grind out the butt, his motions slow, lithe, confident. Dressed in a perfectly fitted black suit, a few easy long-legged strides brought him face-to-face with her.
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” she murmured. “With everything.”
Gently he lifted her fingers and brushed his lips to the back of her hand. “You please me.”
“I hope I will, tonight of all nights. I so want this night to be a turning point for the hotel, for you. You don’t know how much I want this to be a success.”
“A turning point?”
“Yes, for everyone.”
“For us?”
“Case, I don’t—” Katlyn faltered. “You don’t know…”
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