by Stacy Gail
“What do you mean?”
“According to this journal here—” he pointed to a leather-bound notebook that seemed as fragile at the frame Oliver had broken, “—Declan called the bunkhouses a boardinghouse for wayward women. These women paid for the roof over their heads by giving comfort—his description, not mine—to the fine young men of the South Texas territory. Whatever form of comfort that was given was apparently left up to the ladies.”
Parker hooted with laughter. “Left up to them, my ass. I’ll bet he kept a firm grip on the transactions that went on there. How else did he pay for Thorne Mansion?”
“Of that, I have no doubt,” came the drawling reply. “Right at the beginning of the journal, old Declan had a detailed list of every woman who called those bunkhouses home.”
A sudden thought occurred to her, and she eyed Chandler warily. “I almost hate to ask this, but...”
“What?”
“Are there any familiar surnames on that list?”
He grimaced. “About a fifth of the current residents in Bitterthorn.”
“So...that means there are people walking around today who could very well be the descendants of a bought-and-paid-for quickie? Wow, talk about a bombshell.” Again, she looked over the contents of the time capsule—the journal, a couple of tintypes of women in undergarments or even less, the broken frame and tintype of a dour-faced woman, the contract papers, a palm-sized seal bearing an absurdly ostentatious coat of arms and a dirty strip of material held together by a grime-covered sunburst brooch. “I wonder if any of these descendants have a clue about where their Bitterthorn roots started.”
“They will as soon as I can scrape together a special edition.”
“Given that you have documentation that all these events occurred, and the Herald is the paper of record for this town, it is your job to report on it.” She wrinkled her nose, trying to imagine what her reaction would be to such news. “Do you think any of them will be embarrassed by this? I mean, it’s possible not everyone’s going to take this new twist with as much good humor as you.”
“I can’t help it if it’s the town’s founding history,” was the calm reply. “Good or bad, whatever happened in the past made us who we are today, and I’m not going to hide from it. Yesterday my ancestor Declan Thorne Senior was an upstanding pillar of this community. Today, to pay for a castle built by a royal architectural engineer, Declan ran a stable of Wild West prostitutes. Or to put a finer point on it, he hired someone to run that stable.” Then he grinned. “Isn’t that awesome?”
Honestly, the man was incorrigible. “Who did Declan have running his stable?”
“At most boardinghouses in the old days, there was a matron to take care of things, and this boardinghouse was no different. A woman by the name of Miss Louisa was the matron who oversaw the property and the activities of the wayward ladies.”
“Matron? Try madam.”
“No matter what label she answered to, it doesn’t appear that Declan Senior liked her very much.” He pointed to the tintype with the now-broken frame. “That’s her right there, and from what I was able to read in the last few entries in the journal, Declan made detailed notes on her every move. Oh, and get this,” he added while she leaned over to stare at the yellowed image of a woman in Civil War—era dress, complete with hoop skirt, dark cap of center-parted hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun and an aura of grim disapproval in her downwardly drooping mouth. “Remember that portrait hanging in my cousin’s yet-to-be-named bed and breakfast? Declan mentions that Emperor Max and his cousin Leopold really were in the area. Specifically in Miss Louisa’s company.”
And she’d thought she couldn’t be any more surprised than she already was. “Okay, I’m just going to put it out there and ask a naïve question. What were the soon-to-be condemned emperor of Mexico and his royal interpreter doing at Miss Louisa’s?”
“It doesn’t say, though I’d be willing to bet the two cousins were doing what every other guy was doing at Miss Louisa’s.”
“But according to history books, they were married men.” Then she heard herself and sighed. “Men are pigs.”
“Yes, we are, but some are better than others. I, for example, only oink-snort when I laugh at my own auto corrections.”
“A saving grace, to be sure. Are there any other delicious tidbits of historical gossip in there?”
“Not really. Declan Senior goes on to say that because he did business with Miss Louisa, he allowed poison to infiltrate their lives. According to him, fate punished him for it in the end.”
“How?”
“Doesn’t say. The only other thing that stood out was how the journal ended. Declan wrote that as much as part of him yearned to ruin the poisonous Louisa, he wasn’t going to do it. Thanks to the influence his new love had on him—his destined wife, Temperance Willoughby—he was closing that Chapter in his life. Which, I suppose, explains why that was the last entry, and how the journal wound up entombed behind the cornerstone. It’s like he wanted to bury all his secrets so deeply, so completely, he’d never again have to deal with them.”
“Temperance?” Looking up from the tintype of the stern-faced woman, Parker shot him a glance brimming with laughter. “Someone named Temperance took on a mighty cattle baron, who also happened to be the super-secret pimp-daddy of South Texas? She must have been one hell of a force to be reckoned with in her own right.”
“We Thorne men have a weakness when it comes to strong-willed females.” He leaned in to conquer her mouth with the bold seduction of his, and she mentally shook her head at how her pulse took off like a world-class sprinter. Every time he touched her, her silly body reacted like it was the first touch. Every freaking time. “You know how it is. Some traits that are handed down are just stronger than others.”
“You’d know that better than I would.” Her answer was absent. She was far more interested in weighing her soreness against the possibility of pushing him back on the desk and climbing on top of him. “My personal family history consists of knowledge of my parents and that’s about it. You’re the lucky one who has roots that can be traced all the way back to the creation of an entire town.”
“Yeah?” His lips cruised over the corner of her mouth to the crest of her cheek, then over her eyes in a feather light caress. Before she put conscious thought behind it, she came out of the chair to stand between his knees as he settled back against the edge of the desk. “That’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned family.”
“Not because of some deep, dark secret in my past or anything like that. My family’s just your typical military variety, living like nomads and never knowing where we’d be the next year. There was always something going on, at least.”
He brushed her hair from her temple so he could place a kiss there. “You’re a military brat?”
“Yep. Army, to be specific.” Her hands came to rest on his shoulders, and she couldn’t help but marvel at how well they fit together. “My dad was with Intelligence, so I never knew what he was up to, and my mom was a civilian data processor who worked for the military. Thanks to the nature of my father’s work, we were transferred all over the world—we moved three times alone during my sophomore year in high school. My mom can’t remember where I was born without referring to my birth certificate. It was Germany, by the way.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I’m their only monster. I imagine it was challenging enough, moving all over the place with one child in tow without making others,” she added honestly, vividly remembering the times she’d no doubt made her parents miserable with her tears and protests that they were ruining her life. “I wasn’t always happy to pull up stakes, and there were times when it seemed like that’s all we did.”
“That’s a hard way to grow up.”
“Not really. Not when it’s the on
ly way you’ve ever known. Besides, I always had my parents.”
“Are they still alive?”
“And kicking. They’re retired in Virginia, enjoying a house I designed for them with a beautiful view of their favorite golf course.”
“Glad to hear they finally sank some roots somewhere.”
“Oh yeah.” She rolled her eyes and rested against his chest. Amazing, how warm he was, and that she was eager to drink it in despite the heat outside. “I never thought they’d be the country club type, but they’re happy to play their daily round of golf with their cronies and host Bunco parties every Saturday. Isn’t that weird?”
“Not weird. Settled.”
“Trust me, that’s weird for them.”
“What about for you? Does staying in one place for more than a couple of seasons seem weird to you?”
“Not really.” Surprise moved through her that he’d question the very thing that had been gnawing at her. Though, all things considered, she supposed it was inevitable her mind would stray to her own wandering lifestyle. Digging up the deeply buried roots of Chandler’s family tree naturally made her reflect on how she was his complete opposite. “It’s not that I feel that staying in one place is strange. I don’t think that at all.”
“Yet it seems strange for your parents?”
“I figured out a long time ago that my family isn’t the most conventional. I mean, that was pretty obvious since every place we moved to had families that had lived in the same spot for generations,” she said, trying to find the right words. “Yours, for instance. It’s obvious you’re about as deeply rooted here as a man can get.”
For just a moment he looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. “No argument. But that’s not necessarily a detriment.”
She blinked. “I didn’t say it was.”
“You didn’t have to. And I can understand how this town might seem like nothing more than a wide spot in the road and people who choose to live here might seem like they don’t have any ambition,” he went on, surprising her even more. “But that assessment couldn’t be more wrong. If anything, you have to have a will of iron to make it work in a small town like this, which is the exact opposite of a lack of ambition.”
“Agreed.” She nodded, watching the bitterness linger in his eyes. Bitterness...and pain. “Chandler, who dared to even suggest that you, of all people, had a lack of ambition? Point them out to me so that I can beat the shit out of them.”
His eyes widened in shock before a huff of laughter burst from him. “No, it’s...it was a long time ago. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Who told you that load of crap?”
“An ex-fiancée.”
For some reason the words hit her like an invisible fist, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She knew he hadn’t been a monk before they’d crossed paths. Of course she knew that. But the idea that Chandler had loved someone enough to want to share the rest of his life with her set off an uncomfortable wave of disquiet that threatened to drown her. “Was she an ex before or after she horked up that bullshit about no ambition?”
“It all happened pretty much at the same time. I told her I had dreams of saving my town’s paper, and she told me my dreams were too small to fit with her Lake Shore Drive dreams. It’s funny how another person’s view of you can change how you feel about yourself,” he added, and the restless lift of his shoulder seemed more like an attempt to get out from under a heavy burden. “For a long time I secretly wondered if she wasn’t right—that I didn’t have enough ambition to make it in the big, bad world.”
“It takes an insane amount of courage and strength to hold it all together in a town too small to keep much of anything afloat,” she shot back, so furious at this faceless woman that she yearned to tear the shallow twit limb from bloody limb. “You believed you could make a difference at the Herald, you pushed yourself through college to do it, and now it survives as the paper of record for this town because of that belief. No one else could have done it but you. Show me where that spoiled little bitch managed to shape her corner of the world and add profound meaning to it the way you have with yours. Go ahead, show me.”
“Holy crap, calm down.” Laughing and shaking his head, he wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly her feet almost left the floor. “I did eventually figure out that her idea of ambition and mine were very different. Maybe she hoped to convince me into thinking that big-city life was the only lifestyle worth living—especially as it was the only lifestyle she’d ever known.” Then he shrugged and pulled back just far enough to rest his brow against her. “I don’t know. All I know is that I realized Bitterthorn wasn’t just where I was born. It was my home, and I’m proud to say that. She couldn’t see that, so that was the end of it.”
“You’re better off.” She’d never been happier to know that she was absolutely right in her assessment. And if he didn’t agree with her, she’d slug him. “I don’t know what it was that attracted you to that...that person in the first place, but she obviously didn’t get the real you.”
“Do you think you do?”
“I do more than that idiot,” she blurted before she gave it a thought. “Settling down in one spot has never been my way, I’ll admit. And I may not understand how it’s possible to become so attached to any one place that you can never leave it, but I sure as hell admire the strength and determination it takes to make it work.”
“Who says I never leave?” Chandler asked after a moment, his head tilting to one side as if to study her from a new angle. “I’ve got a great place in Colorado near Vail whenever I need to escape the heat in Texas, as well as a condo on the coast. I visit college friends up in Chicago whenever I get a chance. I’ve been all over Europe, Canada and the Caribbean, but I’ve still got the Greek Isles and Asia on my bucket list. My roots run deep here in Bitterthorn, but that doesn’t mean I’m tethered here for all eternity.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, because I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Good. Because even though I come from a small town, that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of exploring beyond the city limits.”
“Considering you’re determined to explore your own personal history and share it with the rest of the world, I don’t doubt it for a minute.” She made herself relax enough to grin, because part of her still felt like they were on the verge of some sort of battle over something she couldn’t even see. “When are you planning to release the special edition on the time capsule?”
“Tomorrow, if I can get it out by then. That’s when the shit’s really going to hit the fan.” A wicked gleam of anticipation lit his eyes, and she called herself all sorts of an idiot for being utterly charmed by it. “I can’t wait.”
Chapter Eleven
Thunder exploded while rain peppered the blind-covered window behind Chandler’s desk. In an instant his attention snapped to the flickering light overhead, his breath strangling to a halt as the electricity teetered on the edge.
Goddamn it, you son of a bitch, don’t you quit on me again...
For the third time since the storm began, the power cut out and plunged the Herald’s deserted offices into darkness.
“Fuck!”
As if in apology, a mechanical thunk sounded a second later as the emergency generator kicked in—a generator he suspected was powered by a single hamster running his guts out in a rusty wheel. Though he’d saved the layout of the Herald’s special edition countless times like a paranoid freak since the storm began, it was still only half-done. How could it be otherwise, when the screen froze every frigging time there was a change in power output? And forget about the photos he’d taken. Those damned things seemed to be uploading one pixel at a time. Every time there was a power fluctuation, everything slowed to an agonizing crawl.
He had to face facts. As much as he enjoyed the tho
ught of Bitterthorn waking up to the news of Declan Thorne’s bad-boy history, fate was determined to make him cool his jets. He’d just have to wait it out until Mother Nature was done wreaking havoc with the old building’s iffy wiring.
A sudden text chime dragged his attention from the computer screen.
“It’s midnight. Do you know where your architect is?”
His chuckle rumbled through the silence of the office, and his mood lightened as if by magic. Parker. How she managed to make the sun shine in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm was a mystery to him, but he was damn glad she did.
His mouth remained curved as he opened up the text window. “Let me guess. Right now you’re sprawled on a zebra-striped bed while your neighbors serenade you with ‘oh yes. Oh, YES. OH, YESSSS!’ Or something like that.” After all, that was where they had been twenty-four hours earlier. On the bed. On the floor. In the shower. On some weird sleigh-shaped lounging couch-thing that vibrated whenever they sat on it. Every surface in the Nooner’s Honeymoon Suite had become a stage for carnal adventure. Just thinking about it had his pulse thrumming in his cock, and the last of his irritation melted away. Considering their almost sleepless night, it was a freaking miracle he’d done any work at all today. Sleep deprivation, combined with images of Parker every time he closed his eyes, was enough to make him ache to go to her and forget about the paper, the time capsule and every other responsibility he had.
And when she’d gotten so furious on his behalf, all he’d wanted to do was hold on to her. Like a drowning man holding on to a life preserver. Like a kid holding on to a teddy bear. Like a man holding on to a long-lost love.
Just thinking about her made his arms hurt with their emptiness.
It took a minute for her next text to pop up. “All I heard back at the Nooner was the rain. Neighbors tonight were either nonexistent or firm believers in the silent orgasm.”
His snort of laughter sounded loud in his ears. “If they’re silent-orgasmers, they’re not doing it right. As you very well know.”