“Not like you, eh?” Matt drawled with a grin.
“Oh, I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t fit in here at first.” Seymour settled his hat on his head. “But this is my home now, and I intend to spend the rest of my life here.”
“Well, keep your eyes open,” Matt said, “and maybe that life will be a mite longer.”
Seymour frowned. “Surely, no one will try to kill me in broad daylight.”
“Probably not, but you never know,” Sam said. “Just be careful, that’s all.”
“I intend to be, I promise you.” Seymour nodded to them and left the marshal’s office.
“We gonna follow him and keep an eye on him?” Matt asked.
“Give him a minute,” Sam said. “We don’t want him to think that we believe he can’t take care of himself.” Sam frowned in thought, tugging at his earlobe as he did so. “Does it seem a little funny to you that Seymour’s uncle shows up yesterday afternoon, and then last night somebody tries to kill him?”
Matt stared at him for a second, then said, “Why in blazes would Seymour’s own uncle want to kill him?”
“I don’t know. Probably one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other. It was just an odd coincidence, that’s all.”
Matt grunted. “And I reckon that’s all it was. Maybe those bushwhackers were planning on robbin’ the bank or something like that, and they wanted to get the local law out of the way first.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. He inclined his head toward the door. “Let’s go make sure Seymour gets to the hotel all right.”
They stepped out of the marshal’s office and looked toward the hotel. Seymour had almost reached the building. He nodded and smiled to the townspeople he passed. Several boys trailed along behind him, watching him with something akin to hero worship. That was a far cry from how things had been shortly after his arrival in Sweet Apple, when children had followed him only to jeer and taunt him with cries of “Seymour the Lily-Livered! Seymour the Lily-Livered!”
Seymour disappeared into the hotel. Matt and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. As long as Seymour was in there, he ought to be safe.
With a friendly nod to the desk clerk, Seymour started up the stairs to the hotel’s second floor, where his uncle’s room was located, along with the rooms rented for Rebecca Jimmerson and the three salesmen. Only one of the men, Warren Welch, struck Seymour as being the right sort to be a successful salesman. Daniel McCracken was too sullen, and Ed Stover too big and bearlike and intimidating. But he supposed he could be wrong about them. The only true measure of success was results, and Seymour wished them all luck. He would do what he could to help them. He owed his uncle that much.
Reaching the second-floor landing, Seymour turned and started toward his uncle’s room. The corridor was deserted. As he walked along it, he heard a door open behind him but didn’t turn around, figuring that it was just another guest departing his or her room.
The next second, Seymour heard the faint scuff of shoe leather on the carpet runner, and this time the sound came from close behind him. He started to whirl around as alarm bells went off in his mind. The other attempt on his life was too recent for him to have forgotten it. His hand stabbed toward the butt of his gun.
“Oh!” Rebecca gasped as she stopped short and flinched backward. “Seymour! What’s wrong?”
As she stared at him, he realized how foolish he must look, standing there in a half-crouch with his hand hovering closely over his gun, ready to hook and draw, as Westerners put it. With a sheepish look on his face, he straightened and moved his hand away from the Colt.
“I’m sorry, Miss Jimmerson,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You did more than startle me,” Rebecca said. “For a second there, I thought you were going to draw your gun and shoot me!”
“I would never do that! You have my sincerest apologies. It’s just that . . . well, I’m sure you haven’t heard about it, but last night some miscreants attempted to shoot me.”
Rebecca put a hand to her mouth in shock. “No! What sort of terrible place is this, Seymour?”
“It’s not terrible at all,” he said. “It’s just . . . different from New Jersey. Very different.”
“Evidently.” Rebecca composed herself. “Are you looking for your uncle?”
“That’s right. I thought I would talk to him and those new salesmen. Perhaps I can give them some advice that might prove useful in expanding the business of Standish Dry Goods here in West Texas.”
“That’s very generous of you.” She moved closer to him and put a hand on his arm. “But that can wait. I want you to come with me and tell me all about everything that’s happened to you since you got here. From what I’ve heard, it’s a very exciting tale.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that . . .”
She smiled and slipped her arm through his before he knew what she was doing, as she had the day before. “Don’t be so modest, Seymour. Now come along and talk to me.”
“Well, I suppose we could go downstairs and sit in the lobby—”
“We’ll go to my room,” Rebecca declared.
Seymour felt a surge of nervousness ripple through him. “I don’t know. That wouldn’t really be appropriate, would it, Miss Jimmerson?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Seymour,” she scolded him. “We’ve known each other for years. You can call me Rebecca. And you don’t have to worry about being alone with me in my hotel room.” She laughed softly. “I won’t attack you or anything.”
Seymour felt his face growing warm. More than warm, it was downright hot. He thought about how upset Maggie O’Ryan had been simply because she’d heard about him walking past the Black Bull arm in arm with Rebecca. How would Maggie react if she found out that he had been alone with Rebecca in her hotel room?
Despite his nervousness, though, Seymour had never really been able to argue successfully with a woman, especially an attractive, assertive one like Rebecca. He found himself walking down the hotel corridor at her side and then entering her room with her. Only when they were inside did Rebecca relinquish her hold on his arm, and then only so that she could close the door behind them.
They were alone.
This reminded him of the visit she had paid to his boardinghouse before he left New Jersey, when she had brought him the gun that now rode in the holster on his hip. They had been alone then, too, but at least the door had been open, as the landlady insisted that it always be if one of her boarders had a caller of the opposite sex.
“You see, Seymour?” Rebecca said with a smile. “You’re perfectly safe. After all, you’re the marshal of Sweet Apple now. If I cause any trouble, you can always . . . arrest me. You could handcuff me and put me behind bars.”
Seymour was having trouble getting his breath. He wanted to reach up and tug at the collar of his shirt, but he was afraid of how that would look. He settled for swallowing hard and forcing himself to drag in a big lungful of air.
“I could never do that, Miss Jimmerson . . . Rebecca,” he said.
“I might not mind. I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything to me that I didn’t deserve.”
How had she gotten so close to him? One second she was on the other side of the room, the next only a step away from him. So close that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. So close he would barely have to reach out to touch her.
Trying to keep the desperation he felt out of his voice, he said, “You . . . you wanted to hear about everything that’s happened to me since I came to Sweet Apple.”
“That’s right. Tell me all about it, Seymour.”
He did, leaving out some of the more gruesome details of the gun battles in which he’d been involved, but not sparing himself any of the humiliation he had experienced early on, when he had been known as Seymour the Lily-Livered and The Most Cowardly Man in the West.
What appeared to be genuine anger flashed in her eyes as she heard those stories. “How dare people treat you
so badly?” she asked. “They had no right to say those things!”
“They had every right,” Seymour said. “Respect has to be earned, and I did nothing to earn it. Not until I met Matt and Sam.”
“Matt and Sam?” Rebecca repeated with a slight frown.
“My deputies. Well, unofficial deputies. Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves.” He told her about the blood brothers and how they had come to Sweet Apple on the trail of Deuce Mallory and the rest of the gang that had raided a town up in the Texas Panhandle while Matt and Sam were there. He also mentioned briefly some of the other dangerous exploits Matt and Sam had taken part in during their adventurous career. Being a newspaperman, J. Emerson Heathcote knew all about them and had been glad to fill Seymour in.
“They sound quite dashing,” Rebecca commented.
“I’d be happy to introduce you to them,” Seymour offered. He knew what would happen if he did. Rebecca would be instantly smitten with one or both of the blood brothers. Young, pretty women just naturally fell for Matt and Sam. The only one in town who didn’t practically swoon when they walked past was Maggie. She seemed immune to their charms . . . which was one more reason Seymour thought she was so special.
So he was surprised when Rebecca shook her head and said, “No, that’s all right. I’d be glad to meet them, but don’t go out of your way to arrange an introduction, Seymour. The real reason I came out here with Mr. Standish was to see you.”
That statement was even more of a shock to Seymour. “Me?” he said. “Why would you want to see me? I mean, I know we were cordial enough back in New Jersey, but—”
“Seymour.” Suddenly she was standing even closer to him. Both of her hands rested on his chest. “Seymour, don’t you understand? Don’t you know how I feel about you? How I’ve always felt about you, ever since we met?”
Seymour could only gulp and shake his head. He didn’t understand anything. He didn’t know anything. He was suddenly, totally lost, and it was the way Rebecca smelled and felt as she leaned against him that made him that way. His head had begun to spin.
It seemed to explode right off his shoulders as she came up on her toes and pressed her lips to his in a passionate kiss.
Chapter 9
Seymour’s pulse hammered like a drum in his head as he finally managed to pull away from her. Kissing Rebecca was wrong, completely wrong, and he knew it.
And yet, her lips had been so soft and sweet and warm . . .
They curved now in a devilish smile. “What’s wrong, Seymour? Haven’t you ever been kissed before?”
“Of course I . . . I’ve been kissed. But not like . . . I mean . . .”
“Not like that, I’d wager.” She sounded quite satisfied with herself.
He had to shake his head and say in a hollow voice, “No. Not like that.”
“You just don’t give yourself enough credit, Seymour. You never have. You don’t see what a handsome, desirable man you really are.”
Could she really be talking about him? It didn’t seem possible to Seymour. Even now, after all the changes he had gone through since coming to Texas, he didn’t think he was the sort of man who could possibly be attractive to a beautiful woman like Rebecca Jimmerson. She could have had the pick of any man she liked.
Why in the world would she pick him?
“Now that we’re being truthful,” she went on, “how do you feel about me, Seymour? Have I wasted my time coming out here to see you? Or is there a chance that there might be a reason . . . for me to stay when your uncle goes back East?”
He felt that he had been caught up in a rushing river, buffeted along swiftly by the current until he couldn’t breathe and the world was spinning madly around him. He had nothing but instinct to guide him as he said, “I’m sorry, but . . . there’s someone else.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened in surprise. “Someone else?” she repeated. She sounded as if she could hardly believe that idea—which went directly against what she had just been saying about him being handsome and desirable.
Seymour’s brain was all in a muddle now. The only thing he could think of to do was to plunge straight ahead with the truth.
“Her name is Maggie,” he said. “Miss Magdalena Elena Louisa O’Ryan, to be precise. She’s the local schoolteacher. A wonderful young woman. You’d like her, you really would—”
“I’m sure,” Rebecca interrupted, her tone cool now, the way her green eyes had become when she found out that Seymour was already romantically involved with someone else.
“So you see, it . . . it’s really not appropriate for me to be here . . . with you . . . for more than one reason,” he stumbled on.
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to do anything inappropriate, Seymour,” she grated between clenched teeth. She put a hand against his chest and practically shoved him toward the door. “You should go ahead with the errand that brought you here. Go talk to your uncle.”
He managed to bob his head. “All right. I . . . I’ll do that. I’m sorry, Rebecca . . . Miss Jimmerson. It wasn’t my intention to hurt your feelings—”
“Hurt my feelings?” Rebecca gave a brittle laugh. “What in heaven’s name makes you think you’ve hurt my feelings? I was just trying to be polite to you, Seymour.” Her lip curled. “You seem so awkward and out of place here. I thought your spirits could do with some lifting, that’s all.”
“Oh.” He blinked at the sledgehammer quality of her words. “Well, I . . . I’m glad you’re all right.”
“I’m more than all right,” Rebecca said with another laugh. “I’m fine, just fine.”
“Good. I suppose I’ll see you later.”
She gave a noncommittal shrug of her shoulders, as if the question of whether or not they would see each other again meant nothing to her. Less than nothing, in fact.
Seymour reached behind him, fumbled for the doorknob, got it open after a second, and escaped out into the corridor. Rebecca swung the door shut behind him with what seemed to be a bit more force than necessary, but he told himself that he might have imagined that.
After taking a couple of deep breaths, Seymour removed his hat and sleeved sweat off his forehead. Never in a million years would he have expected the encounter with Rebecca to go like that. He thought that he would have been less surprised if she had hauled off and punched him, instead of kissing him.
Come to think of it, there at the end she looked like she wanted to punch him. And maybe he would have deserved it, although for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything he had done to lead her on or to make her think that he felt anything for her other than friendship.
There was no figuring out women, he thought. A man was wasting his time to even try. Seymour put his hat on and went across the hall to his uncle’s room.
The bitter taste of defeat filled Rebecca’s mouth. Rage seethed inside her. Some of it was directed at Seymour. How dare he reject her like that? Did he think she was really interested in hearing about his frumpy little schoolteacher? Was he really that foolish?
Part of her anger was directed at herself, though. She had thought that if she could establish a liaison with Seymour, she could double-cross Standish and tell Seymour all about what his uncle was really planning. Then Seymour would go back to New Jersey and take over the dry-goods company, and Rebecca could go with him, free at last from being in Standish’s power. True, she was the one who had chosen to place herself in the position of being Cornelius Standish’s mistress, but she was tired of his coldness and his brutality. She wanted to escape from his grip, but she didn’t want to have to give up all the comforts to which she had grown accustomed in the process. Seymour had seemed to be the perfect way out.
Except for the fact that he didn’t feel anything for her except some mild friendship. As unlikely as it seemed, he preferred another woman to her.
Well, if that was the way Seymour wanted it, then whatever happened from here on out was on his own head. Standish needed to know about those two drifting gunfighters who had befrien
ded Seymour, because it was likely they would have to be disposed of, too, somewhere alone the way. Otherwise, they might protect Seymour from any more attempts on his life. At the very least, they had to be decoyed, distracted, gotten out of the way.
She would tell Standish all about it, Rebecca decided, as soon as Seymour got through talking to him. And in the meantime . . .
She stretched out on the hotel bed and cried bitter tears, tears that she would never admit to another living soul she had shed.
His Uncle Cornelius didn’t seem particularly happy to see him, Seymour thought when Standish opened the door of the hotel room. Seymour thought that Welch, McCracken, and Stover might be here, but Standish seemed to be alone.
“Hello, Uncle Cornelius. How are you this morning?”
Standish grunted. “Is it always this hot out here? It was stifling last night. There wasn’t even a breath of fresh air.”
“I don’t really know. I haven’t been out here long enough to become familiar with the climate. But I suspect it is rather warm most of the time.”
Standish stepped back and motioned for Seymour to come in. “What do you want?” he asked.
“I thought I’d come talk to you about establishing a sales territory here in West Texas. I might be able to give some pointers to your new salesmen.”
Standish shook his head. “That’s not necessary. They have plenty of experience at what they do. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
“Really, I wouldn’t mind—”
“Forget it, Seymour.” Standish’s voice was cold and sharp. “You made your decision. You have your job as marshal to take care of. You should concentrate on that.”
Seymour was surprised that his uncle seemed genuinely offended that he’d resigned from his position. He had always gotten the feeling that Uncle Cornelius didn’t like him very much, especially after Seymour’s father had died and the two of them inherited the company jointly. Perhaps he had misjudged his uncle. Perhaps Cornelius did feel some honest affection for him.
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