Just West of Heaven

by Maureen Child

  Such trust was a thing not given lightly and the fact that she looked at him like he was some sort of dime novel hero hit him unexpectedly hard. As did her insistence on calling him “daddy.” Lord knew, he’d never really expected to hear that word applied to him and it humbled him to admit how terrifying that one little word was. And how much a long-buried part of him enjoyed hearing her say it.

  “Daddy, I hurt myself,” she said around a quivering bottom lip.

  “You’ll be all right, darlin’,” he said softly.

  “I knowed you’d come.”

  He smiled, took one of her little hands in his and curled his fingers around hers to give her a brief squeeze.

  Squatting beside her, he forced a grin and asked, “Well now, how’d you manage to do this?”

  She gulped a breath and wiped her nose with the back of her free hand. “I was sitting on it and it falled over and knocked me down,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears.

  “Can’t have that, can we?” he asked. Reaching across her, he grabbed hold of the bench with one hand and gently lifted it just high enough for her to scoot her feet from beneath it.

  She sighed and sat up so that she could rub her shin. Her black cotton stockings were torn and he saw a small patch of scraped flesh. Once she was free, he set the bench back down again and releasing her hand, lifted her off the floor. He’d check for sprains and broken bones once they were safely outside. For right now, all he wanted to do was get her clear of this place before a good stiff wind shot in off the desert and brought the whole building down.

  Cradling her against his chest, he supported her slight weight with one forearm under her behind. He moved to head for the door, but stopped when she placed both hands on his cheeks and turned his face toward hers. Her soft green eyes were on the same level as his, and staring into them now, he felt something inside him shift. Beneath her hands, his face grew warm and she smiled as her gaze seemed to look deep within him.

  “I knowed you’d come, Daddy,” she said softly, her little fingers moving on his skin like tiny feather strokes.

  Ridge smiled at her, despite the “daddy” thing. Now wasn’t the time to remind her she wasn’t supposed to be calling him that.

  “Sure you did, honey,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t leave you in here.”

  She gave a little sigh and shook her head and he couldn’t help thinking that her eyes suddenly looked as old as time. In that tiny, heart-shaped face, those green eyes of hers shone with ancient knowledge. “No,” she said softly, “I knowed you were coming to be my daddy.”

  “Jenna, honey...”

  She laid her palms flat against his cheeks and locked her gaze with his. Several long seconds ticked past and Ridge felt a small, niggling push at his mind. As if something was trying to make itself known. To make him see what he couldn’t.

  But that was foolishness.

  The little girl in his arms smiled again and said, “Not foolish, Daddy.”

  Drawing his head back, he stared at her and wondered at the coincidence of her statement and his thoughts. But he didn’t wonder long. The odd moment passed and Jenna was just a scared little girl again. Smiling, she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, silently putting her trust in him.

  And Ridge set that one strange moment aside, telling himself that he was getting fanciful in his old age. Then he headed for the door and the slash of sunlight beyond.

  ●

  Sophie felt as though she’d been holding her breath since the moment Ridge had stepped inside the schoolhouse. Her mouth was dry, her chest felt as though it were being squeezed by an invisible iron band. Arms folded across her middle, she held on tight.

  The small knot of people surrounding her talked and argued about the sad state of the building, but she wasn’t listening. Every ounce of her concentration was focused on that shadowy rectangle that was the open doorway.

  At last, he appeared, his tiny burden clasped close to his chest. Sophie’d never seen anything as beautiful as Jenna’s dirt-streaked face. She pulled in her first easy breath, and the voices around her faded into the background, becoming nothing more than a low murmur of sound. As soon as Ridge stepped off the porch, she snatched the little girl from his arms and ran anxious hands up and down her arms and legs, checking for injuries. But beyond a tear in her stocking and a small scrape on her shin, Jenna seemed in better shape than Sophie felt.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked finally, setting the girl on her own two feet.

  “No, Mama,” she said, flashing a wide smile at Ridge. “Daddy found me, just like I knew he would.”

  “Daddy?” someone in the interested crowd repeated.

  “What’s this?” another voice asked.

  “All of you hush,” Hattie snapped, then added, “Haven’t you ever heard a child play pretend before?”

  That question quieted the crowd of people who now clustered around them, but Sophie still winced at the implications and the no-doubt already-blossoming seeds of gossip.

  Jenna, however, was oblivious. Delighted by the attention, she looked up into the faces watching her and grinned, showing her dirty hands, palms out, “I falled down.”

  “You sure did,” Hattie said on a chuckle. “Got your dress all dirty too, didn’t ya?”

  The little girl inspected the damages, then noticed the tear in her stocking and the slight smear of blood. Her eyes went round and wide and her bottom lip quivered like a plucked bow string.

  “Oh, honey,” Sophie said quickly, “it’s all right.”

  “Surely is.” Hattie bent down, planted both hands on her knees, and looked the child directly in the eye.

  “How about I take you on home and get you cleaned up?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Sophie said quickly. “I’ll take care of her.”

  The older woman smiled and shook her head. Then, leaning in closer, whispered, “Honey, you got all these menfolks standing around feeling terrible about this child getting hurt. Don’t waste it.”

  “What?” Sophie tossed a quick look at the men now standing to one side and arguing among themselves.

  She hadn’t given them a thought before this. Now, though, since Hattie’d mentioned it, she did notice the uncomfortable expressions mingled with guilt-ridden tones.

  “Darlin’,” the woman whispered as she unnecessarily smoothed her hair, “when a man’s feelin’ guilty about not doin’ what he ought to have done, it’s the best time to get him to do it.”

  Hmm. She took another, longer look at the men and thought about it. She needed this schoolhouse rebuilt as quickly as possible. So maybe Hattie was right.

  Now that she knew Jenna was fine, it might be wise to make the most of this situation.

  “The town council has to vote on spending the money,” one man said loud enough to be heard over the others.

  How could they not vote to spend money on a schoolhouse for their own children? she wondered, her temper beginning to boil deep within.

  “Well,” a man with two long strands of hair combed over a bald pate said, “two of us are here. Let’s vote.”

  Sophie smiled at him.

  “That ain’t legal,” the first man countered.

  She scowled and opened her mouth to argue, but was cut off.

  “It is if we say it is.”

  Ridge spoke up and Sophie’s gaze shifted to him. His features were closed and tight and anger sparked in his cool blue eyes. Well, good, she thought and waited a minute to hear what he had to say.

  “That damn place is ready to fall down, George,” he said, facing the man arguing against spending the money.

  George ducked his head, hunched his shoulders, and took a step back. Almost as if he was afraid of the sheriff.

  “Not to mention snakes,” Toby put in quietly.

 
“Snakes?” Sophie nearly shouted, staring at Toby in wild disbelief.

  A couple of the men shifted, their feet shuffling in the dirt.

  “Yes’m,” the blacksmith said. “Sometimes in winter and spring, the rattlers go lookin’ for somewhere warm.”

  “That’s true enough,” one of the men in the crowd muttered.

  “Rattlers,” she muttered under her breath and took another long look at Jenna, as if checking for any unnoticed fang marks. Good Lord. Rattlesnakes. Falling down buildings. In trying to keep her sister safe from Charles, she might have gotten her killed by bringing her to this raw, unkempt place in the middle of nowhere.

  Glaring at Ridge, she said flatly, “You knew.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Not much point in telling you,” he said.

  “Point?” she repeated, giving in to the fear and anger pulsing through her. “Jenna’s my sis-daughter,” she reminded him. “Doesn’t that give me the right to know?”

  “You know now,” he said, shooting his friend a “why’d you open your mouth?” glare. “Does it help?”

  No. It didn’t. All it did was serve to feed her already overwhelming fury. Was this godforsaken town in the middle of hell?

  She should have gone to a big city, where she and Jenna would have been just two people out of thousands. At least she wouldn’t have been faced with things like rattlesnakes and sharp-eyed sheriffs.

  But it was too late to change anything now, she reminded herself. Tanglewood was now their home and it was high time she stopped trying to make it something it wasn’t and dealt with it on its own terms.

  After all, as her mother used to say, there was never a quitter in the Dolan family.

  And she wouldn’t be the first.

  Straightening her spine and lifting her chin, she looked from Ridge Hawkins to the rest of the men, pausing briefly to lock gazes with each of them. She’d always believed in speaking her mind and had long since stopped caring what others thought of what she had to say. After all, there were some benefits to being an “on the shelf” spinster. One of them being that you no longer had to dance attendance around a man’s feelings.

  Planting her hands on her hips, she took a long, deep breath and lit into them. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she started and the nearly bald man flinched as if slapped. “You hired me to teach and expected me to do my job in that?” She waved one hand behind her. Surrendering to the words pouring from her throat, she went on, stalking back and forth in front of the men watching her with wary gazes. She didn’t even notice the slight smile on Ridge’s face as he watched her.

  Tipping her hat back out of her eyes, she glared at the first man. “I shall need lumber.” She moved to the next man. “And paint.” She kept moving. “And windows.” In front of the last man, she added, “And help. This is not just a schoolhouse but my house. And my daughter and I are not going to fight the rattlesnakes for living space.”

  She nodded her head so abruptly her hat tipped all the way over her forehead and across one eye. Reaching up, she plucked it free, held her hatpin in one fist and shook it at her startled audience.

  “Now, I want you all to get busy and start doing what you should have done long before I got here!”

  Hattie clapped her hands together loudly and one of the men glared at her since he was far too leery of Sophie at the moment.

  “Nicely said, Red,” Ridge muttered.

  She turned on him like a snake. “As for you,” she said, advancing on him, still waving that hatpin dangerously. “You’re no better than the rest of them. You’re the sheriff,” she said. “You should have burned this place to the ground to make sure people would be safe!”

  “Now, hold on a minute,” he said, features tight and gaze narrowed.

  “I don’t have time to hold on,” she muttered, pushing past him and marching toward the schoolhouse. “It appears that like everything else that needs doing in this world, it will take a woman to get it done.”

  In stunned silence, the men watched her hike up the hem of her skirt and climb the rickety steps. Then, apparently too angry to be worried about any danger, she walked directly into the schoolhouse and began to drag the first of the battered desks out onto the porch.

  “I purely do like that girl,” Hattie murmured as she took Jenna’s hand and turned for home.

  CHAPTER Seven

  ONE WEEK LATER…

  “That female is hell in petticoats,” Ridge muttered, not for the first time in the last few days.

  Across the street, Sophie Ryan marched along the uneven boardwalk like a soldier on parade. Spine stiff, shoulders straight, she nodded to the people she passed and hardly seemed to notice the men scurrying to get out of her way.

  All week she’d been at it. Going from store to store, gathering “donations” from the merchants. She’d attended the town council meeting and had decided that the money they’d allotted for rebuilding the school should instead go toward buying books and papers and who the hell knew what else. The building supplies, she was demanding—and getting—from the storekeepers.

  He’d never really seen a tornado, but Ridge had a feeling they looked something like Sophie. Just spinning into town, setting down and sending everything in reach into turmoil.

  That red hair of hers bound neatly at the top of her head, skirts flapping with her brisk strides, heels clicking against the wood planks, she was a force of nature. And most folks in town had already discovered there was nowhere to hide once she had up a full head of steam.

  And the sheriff’s office hadn’t escaped her notice either. Joe Markham had been pleased as punch when the judge had cut him loose with nothing more than a ten-dollar fine and an order to stay out of trouble. Apparently Joe figured there’d be less work to do out on his farm than there was in town. Wasn’t Tall right now over at the school tearing the old roof off to get ready for the new? Hell, he told himself with a scowl. Before he knew it, Sophie Ryan would be the damn mayor.

  “And first thing she’ll do is fire me,” he muttered with a shake of his head. All week, he’d watched her as she took up her life in Tanglewood. He’d sat across from her at Hattie’s table, slept down the hall from her, and even caught her once leaving the water closet.

  He shifted uneasily remembering how she’d looked, all flushed and warm from her bath, small, pale hands grabbing at the edges of her faded green robe. Ridge never would have suspected a plain white cotton nightgown that covered a woman from neck to toes could be so blasted seductive.

  But damned if the image of her in that nightgown hadn’t kept him lying awake in his bed all night.

  Shaking his head now, he sucked in a deep breath to steady himself and deliberately pushed that memory of her to the back of his mind. Even lush curves and warm skin couldn’t lure him close enough to have to deal with her prickly temperament.

  Not to mention the fact that he still didn’t quite trust her. There was just something about her that set little alarms off in his head.

  From somewhere down the street, a dog barked furiously. Ridge stepped off the porch and into the street to take a look, grateful to have something else to think about besides Sophie Ryan. A freight wagon rolled past him, its empty bed jouncing in the ruts of the street and kicking up a cloud of dust that almost blinded him.

  Waving one hand in front of his face, Ridge pulled the brim of his hat down low to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun and stared off toward the edge of town. He saw a man alone, riding slow down the middle of the street. He held the reins in his left hand and kept his right on his thigh, close to the pistol holstered there. Even from where he stood, Ridge saw the tell­tale rawhide strips tying that gun down and he knew there was going to be trouble.

  He cast a quick look around the busy street and wished to hell it wasn’t Saturday.
Everyone from the outlying ranches came to town on a Saturday morning to do the shopping and to see some fresh faces. Got mighty damn lonely sitting on a ranch away from town all week. The merchants were doing a brisk business and he noted all the women and children bustling about the boardwalks.

  One thing he didn’t need was a gun battle with careless bullets flying all over everywhere, doing damage and hurting innocent folks. And he didn’t have a single idea how to avoid it.

  “Damn it,” he grumbled as he hitched his own gun belt a bit higher on his hips and started walking down the street toward the horseman.

  Sunlight beat down onto Tanglewood, giving the town its first taste of the coming summer. A clear blue sky shimmered with the reflected heat, and as he walked, Ridge felt a drop or two of sweat roll along his spine. It was always like that, he remembered absently. Just before trouble started, all of his senses quickened.

  He could taste the dust in the air, smell the bread baking in the restaurant, and hear the high-pitched shouts of children playing somewhere to his left. But even as his senses went on alert, his gaze never strayed from the man still moving toward him on a slow-stepping horse.

  It was all too damn familiar. How many times had he walked into trouble? How many times over the years had he actually courted it? Until he’d come here.

  To this town. And this life.

  ●

  “Mr. Simpson,” Sophie said, placing both hands on the polished wood counter and leaning toward the little man staring at her as though she might start foaming at the mouth. “I’ve already received a donation of all the lumber we’ll need from the mill at Ford Creek. All I’m asking you to do is donate the paint and window glass required to complete the job on the schoolhouse.”

  “Now, ma’am,” the man said, after clearing his throat loudly, “it ain’t that I don’t want to give ya the paint...”

  Sophie just looked at him, waiting. She’d been dealing with the merchants of Tanglewood long enough now to recognize the dance of delaying tactics. Though they all eventually capitulated, it seemed to make them feel better to fight her for a while first.