These sounds and voices she recognized all too well.
Not bothering with her lamp, Katlyn snatched up her robe and hurried out to the landing.
Sleepy-eyed guests with mussed hair, wearing all manner of nightdresses and robes, long johns and nightshirts had begun to gather, clamoring about the noise. Someone said the word “ghost,” and Katlyn didn’t know whether to laugh or groan.
Cooper’s midnight antics might be amusing if they didn’t threaten disaster for the St. Martin.
Case appeared then at the rear of the crowd, Emily clinging to his neck. Somehow he’d managed to toss on a pair of black trousers and a gray flannel shirt. Katlyn recognized worry written in the lines furrowing his brow, but he gave the impression of calm control.
Even in the middle of the night, he maintained the dignified composure that inspired others’ confidence in him. At first he was so absorbed with his guests, he didn’t see her watching him.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said, pitching his voice to reflect the right balance of amusement and reassurance. “I’m sorry they disturbed your sleep, but I think they’ve had their fun for the night.”
Mrs. Erickson slapped a hand to her mouth. “Well, I’ll be! So this place is haunted. I’ve always heard the stories, but I never believed them until now.” She turned to her husband and beamed. “Richard, isn’t this exciting!”
“Well that’s one way of looking at it. And I hope for Durham’s sake and the sake of my investment here, the other guests see it the way you do.”
“Oh, of course they will. Real ghosts! How often do you get the chance to see, or hear, that! It’s positively thrilling! I can’t wait to get back home and tell Maribelle and Suzanna! They’ll be dragging Irwin and Henry up here before the week’s out. Maybe we could come back with them, Richard, and have one of those séances?”
Mr. Erickson smiled indulgently at his wife and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Slow down there, honey. I think I’ve had my fill of late-night visitors.”
Case turned from the Ericksons, glancing up at the landing to see Katlyn there.
When she saw him looking at her, she smiled and lifted her hands as if in surrender to Cooper’s willful tricks. Case couldn’t help but smile back, shaking his head.
For the next few minutes he walked through the crowd listening to the guests as they talked and shared what they’d heard. To his relief, the main reaction to the night’s disruption was laughter.
The guests seemed excited by the experience rather than frightened, eager to boast to all their friends that they had witnessed the antics of the infamous St. Martin ghosts firsthand.
Katlyn, watching, wondered if Cooper and his friends would actually wind up being good for business.
But before the thought fully formed, the sound of Janie’s shrill voice drowned it out. “I demand to see the owner! We want our money back.”
Janie, fully dressed, suitcase in hand, stood at the bottom of the stairs shouting. At her side, her husband tried to silence her, no understanding patience in his voice this time.
Katlyn hurried downstairs, taking Emily from Case as he went over to the young couple.
“I can understand why you’re upset, ma’am,” he began.
“Upset! Why I’d rather ride out tonight and face the Indians, banditos and the devil himself than stay in a haunted hotel!”
The old woman who’d shuffled up next to Janie, laid a hand on her arm. “They were nice ghosts, honey. Not like Uncle Redeye.” She turned a kind smile to Case. “I’m sorry, my daughter is a little anxious.”
“Mama!”
“My mother-in-law is right. Janie doesn’t get out much. She would probably be more comfortable at home.”
“It’s your choice, of course,” Case said. Business or no business, he wouldn’t mind seeing the back of the over-anxious Janie. “But if you’d like to stay, we’ll be offering all guests a free breakfast in the morning.”
“Breakfast!” Janie screeched. “We’re not paying one cent—”
“Yes we are, dear. We had a wonderful evening here and the accommodations are first-rate. And if you’ll bother to take note, all of the other guests seem to find this little incident amusing. Now let’s go.”
After settling the bill, Case escorted the trio to the lobby and summoned Bucky to ready their horse and buggy.
By the time the three had gone, the other guests had drifted back to their rooms and Case climbed the stairs in search of Katlyn.
He found her, Emily on her lap, asleep in the rocking chair in Emily’s room. Gently, he bent and lifted his daughter to tuck her into bed. The motion woke Katlyn and she yawned and stretched, giving him a sleepy smile.
“Let me walk you to your rooms,” he whispered when he’d settled Emily.
Nodding drowsily, Katlyn rose and leaned easily into him when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.
Case walked her to her rooms and Katlyn sighed when he moved away from her to open the door, missing his heat and the firmness of his body against hers.
“It’s been quite a night,” he said.
“Well, at least you can’t say it’s been dull. I guess Cooper missed all the shooting and fighting. All this respectability probably bores him.”
“That gives us something to look forward to. By the way—” Case reached into his pants’ pocket and pulled out the necklace. He made the gesture casually enough, but inside he tensed. “You left this in my room.”
“On purpose,” Katlyn said. She refused to take the gleaming silver from his outstretched palm. “I told you, I can’t accept it.”
“Why? If you don’t like it, I’ll have the gems reset.”
“Oh, Case, it’s not that. It’s the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’ve ever seen. But I don’t deserve it.”
“How can you say that? You’ve been a partner and more with me in all of this. You’re like a mother to Emily. I want you to have it.”
Putting the necklace into her hands, Case closed her fingers around it, lifting them to his lips to seal the giving with a kiss. “You deserve much more than this, Katlyn.”
To his surprise, her mouth began to quiver and then she burst into tears, rushing inside her suite. A moment later he heard her bedroom door slam.
She left him there, staring at the place she’d been, wondering if he would ever fully understand Katlyn McLain.
Katlyn glared at the blank sheet of paper in front of her and fought the urge to throw it, pen and ink out the window. It wouldn’t resolve a single thing but it would feel good to do something because she wanted to, not because a tide of events she couldn’t control swept her toward decisions she didn’t want to make.
She sighed and picked up her pen again. The sooner she got the details of the trip to Las Vegas, her mother’s admittance to the hospital there, and a job for herself settled, the sooner she could begin rebuilding her life. At the very least, she needed to send a wire to the hospital today to make sure they would be able to take her mother at month’s end.
Dipping the end of the pen into the ink, she started to write a few words of the message, hesitated, then threw her pen down. She hated everything she was doing, the lies, the leaving.
Most frustrating, she hadn’t been able to tell Case anything. With the hotel full, and the dinners and her performance to cope with, she’d had no time alone with him. It made her impatient and nervy, and at the same time, part of her was secretly glad to have an excuse to put off the inevitable.
“This telegram is one inevitable I can’t put off any longer,” she muttered to herself. She started again and just touched her pen to paper when a furious pounding rattled the door.
Katlyn’s hand jerked and the pen tip skittered over the page, leaving a trail of ink drops. Abandoning the wretched task altogether, she got up to answer the door.
Before she could reach it, Becky flung it open and rushed up to her. Tears streaked her face, making trails in the dusting of red
dirt. “Oh, Miss McLain, you have to help us. Please! I didn’t mean for it to happen, I really didn’t! But if Mr. Durham finds out, he’ll throw me out, I know it. I just know it!”
“Becky, it’s all right,” Katlyn said. She put an arm around the distraught girl. “Take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened.”
“It’s Emily!” Katlyn’s heart constricted and seeing the sudden tension in her Becky wailed, “Oh, I never thought she’d git into trouble like that, really I didn’t. It was just fun! You have to believe me!”
“I do believe you, Becky. But what’s happened to Emily?” Katlyn pressed.
“She’s stuck!”
“Stuck? Stuck where?”
“I-in the t-tree. Behind the h-hotel. Bucky and I like to climb it and Emily don’t git out of the hotel much, and I thought she’d like it, too, and, oh, I never thought she’d go and git herself s-stuck!” Becky gave a hiccuping sob and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.
“Well, what’s important now is that we get her down. Have you tried to find Mr. Durham?”
“Sally said he was with Tuck and Bat, gettin’ supplies. Bucky went to find him, but I was hopin’ you could git Emily down before he gits here.” Biting at her lower lip, Becky shot her a pleading look. “Maybe he won’t be so mad then.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Katlyn said, giving Becky a reassuring pat. “Now show me this tree.”
Katlyn followed Becky outside and behind the hotel. There, a short distance from the building, was a large, gnarled chestnut tree. Reaching it, Katlyn peered up into the twists and turns of branches. “Oh, my,” she said softly.
About halfway up the tree, Emily straddled a large branch, one foot caught in a crevice made by a vee between the branch and trunk.
“Emily, honey, are you all right?” Katlyn called up to her.
Emily nodded, barely moving her head. Katlyn could see she clutched the branch so tightly her fingers looked glued to the wood.
“What’re you gonna do?”
Katlyn glanced at Becky, touched by her faith. She looked back at Emily, then at the distance up the tree. “Go get her,” she said. “How hard could it be?”
Flashing a smile at Becky’s wide-eyed look, Katlyn knotted up her skirts as well as she could before grasping the lowest handhold and hoisting herself up.
“Um…Miss McLain,” Becky called up as Katlyn wrestled to find a place to put her foot, “have you ever climbed a tree before?”
“I climbed down the arbor outside a second-story window once when I was twelve,” Katlyn said, panting. “It can’t be that much different.”
As she flopped her arm over the branch closest to her head, Katlyn noticed Emily’s expression had turned from pure terror to a fascinated interest in Katlyn’s progress.
Well, at least I’m entertaining someone, Katlyn thought as she hoisted herself a little higher.
A few feet from reaching Emily, Katlyn heard voices behind her—Bucky’s, fast and excited, and Case’s, deeper and tense.
Case got to the foot of the tree just as Katlyn stretched her fingers up and touched Emily’s leg. For a moment he could only stare at the sight they made: Emily sitting astride a branch of the first tree she’d ever climbed, and Katlyn, her skirts hiked up to her thighs, climbing up after her.
He supposed he should be surprised. But then Katlyn rarely stopped to ponder before acting, and it was that unexpected quality in her that made her so alive, so appealing.
“Katlyn,” he said at last, “do you need help?”
“Well—” She dared a look down at him. “Not right at this moment. But I have a feeling getting Emily down is going to be a lot harder than getting me up.”
She hadn’t been exaggerating, Case thought half an hour later when he finally put his hands around Katlyn’s waist and lifted her down from the tree. Emily, standing close to Becky, clapped excitedly and ran to them, hugging Katlyn first, then her father.
“You rescued her, just like she rescued me!”
“No one would have needed rescuing if you hadn’t climbed that tree in the first place, young lady,” Case said, trying to look severe. But his relief at having both his daughter and Katlyn safe on the ground made it difficult to maintain a suitably hard expression.
“It’s my fault, Mr. Durham.” Becky spoke up behind them. She scuffed the toe of her boot in the ground and watched the dust kick up when they looked her way. “I’m the one who said it’d be fun to climb the tree. I thought she’d like it. I never thought she’d go’n git stuck. Never!”
She ended up turning a look both fearful and sorrowful on Case and it was obvious she expected him to reprimand her, and even throw her out of the hotel.
Instead, Case, with Emily in his arms, walked up to her and lifted her chin so their eyes met. “I know you meant well, Becky. But I think Emily needs a little more practice before she’s ready to climb that high in a tree again.”
“Oh, I promise, Mr. Durham, I’ll never let her do that again!” Becky said fervently.
Bucky lightly cuffed her arm. “If you’d told me what you were doin’, I’da never let you do it to begin with.”
“I think Becky’s had her share of tree climbing, at least for a day or two.” Case glanced at Katlyn and found her trying to hide a smile. “Would you like to give it another try?”
“No, thank you,” she said, then added with a mischievous smile, “not today, anyway.”
Case gave up trying to remain serious, laughed and took Katlyn’s hand as they followed Becky and Bucky back to the hotel. Sally met them at the door, fussing over Emily and Becky, raising her brows at Katlyn’s disheveled dress and hair. When she’d satisfied herself they were all more or less in one piece, she herded Becky and Bucky to the dining room for apple cider, leaving Case and Katlyn to tend to Emily upstairs.
“It doesn’t seem serious,” Katlyn said a few minutes later, after they’d both examined Emily’s slightly swollen ankle. “Cold compresses with aloe should make it as good as new,” she added, remembering her sister treating a similar injury to one of her boys.
Case nodded. Sitting next to Emily on her bed, he put his arm around his daughter. “You’re lucky Katlyn was here to rescue you.”
“Katlyn rescues everybody,” Emily said, then reached up and put her arms around Katlyn’s neck and hugged her tightly. “I love you, Katlyn. I want you to stay here forever and ever. Say you will. Please?”
Katlyn sat on the bed and held Emily close. She put her cheek against the little girl’s soft curls and closed her eyes against the tears that burned her eyes. “Oh, Emily,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
“Then don’t ever go away and we can always be together, you and me and Daddy. Just like a real family. Will you stay, Katlyn?”
A real family. Katlyn’s throat tightened painfully. But it was nothing compared to the hurt inside her, so keen and pure she wasn’t sure she could bear it.
She finally managed to speak, though her voice came out rough with unshed tears. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing I’d love more than to stay with you and your daddy.”
Emily’s smile flashed like sunlight and Case, watching Katlyn with his daughter, was struck by how much he loved them both.
It seemed, with Katlyn, it was something he had known for a long time, but only now admitted. Emily wanted Katlyn with them forever and he wanted it, too. It all seemed so simple now. No matter what lay in her past, surely he couldn’t be wrong about Katlyn’s feelings for Emily and for him. Not this time.
“Daddy,” Emily piped up. “I’m hungry!”
Case laughed and stood with Emily in his arms, pulling Katlyn up with them. “I think it’s time I fed both my ladies. I’m sure Sally saved us something.”
Katlyn smiled and tried to share in their lighthearted mood as they all went downstairs and joined Sally, Becky and Bucky in the dining room. Bat and Jack came in a few minutes after them, and even Tuck came out of the kitchen to hear Emily relate her adventure in the
tree.
Sitting next to Case, Katlyn ached every time his leg brushed hers or he casually touched her hand or draped his arm over the back of her chair in a possessive gesture that everyone seemed to accept as natural.
She belonged here and every time Case looked at her she saw that thought reflected in his eyes. How could she think of leaving the one place she was wanted, needed? How could she leave the one man she loved?
But even as the words formed in her mind, Katlyn knew there was only one answer to those questions. She had made a commitment to her mother and she would honor her promise.
A little while later, when Case was distracted by Emily’s animated telling of climbing the tree, Katlyn slipped out of the dining room. Pulling her shawl around her, she left the hotel and made her way to the telegraph office.
The clerk looked up as she came in, his smile fading a little seeing the bleak expression in her eyes.
“I need to send a wire,” Katlyn said shortly. “To Las Vegas.”
Chapter Sixteen
Case leaned against the front desk, finishing the last of his cheroot, waiting. He’d seen the last of the dinner guests out; those that were staying had gone to their rooms and most of the staff had either gone home or departed to their own beds. All but Katlyn.
In the late-night stillness, he could hear her moving about the dining room and the occasional now-familiar sound of her shuffling sheets of music or adjusting chairs perfectly back into place around tables. She was obviously biding her time until she was sure everyone had left or gone to bed. What wasn’t so obvious was why.
Ever since lunch today, when she’d slipped away unnoticed, he’d been aware of an air of sorrow around her, as if she were grieving. It wove its way into her music tonight so every song had a bittersweet quality, so keen at times it brought several women in the audience to tears.
It touched him, too, but made him uneasy and restless. Crushing out his cheroot, Case started for the dining room. Just as he did, Katlyn walked out, stopping abruptly when she saw him.
Their eyes locked and held, suspending time and space for a moment. Then Katlyn blinked and looked away.
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