In short, Sadie didn't have the luxury to deal with a drunken Cass.
But the hothead had slammed into her dressing room anyway. Leave it to Cass to completely ignore the one, cardinal rule that she'd told him never to break: disturbing her between performances.
Now he stood, chest heaving, eyes blazing, behind her shoulder. His angel's face hovered like an angry devil's mask in her looking glass. Applying fiery lip paint to match the red flounces in her black costume, she noticed, fleetingly, that he'd shaved, that he'd slicked back his hair, and that he smelled of sandalwood soap. A pleasant change of pace.
"Why is he back?" Cass demanded in gravelly tones.
"He, who?"
"You know damned well who!"
She sighed. Apparently, tonight's game was 20 Questions.
"Wyatt?"
"Sterne!" he snapped.
"Oh." She grimaced. Yes, she'd seen the Wolf prowl through the swinging doors. "Whiskey? Poker? Why does any man walk into a saloon?"
"Lynx told me about you and Sterne," Cass growled.
Sadie rolled her eyes. No doubt Lynx couldn't wait.
"You left my bed to go to Sterne's!"
Technically, I left my bed.
"And then I found this," Cass accused, shoving a sheet of paper under her nose.
It was a musical composition with "Untitled" scrawled across the top. Recognizing her own handwriting, she glanced at the date in the upper right corner: May 10, 1879. Two weeks ago.
She caught her breath. He'd found Maisy's prayer! He must have been snooping through the secret compartment beneath Daddy's traveling trunk.
Shock gave way to hurt. Damn Jesse Quaid for flapping his jaw. She'd never broken her contract with Cass. She was a business woman, not a giggling half-wit! She knew that Cass was the best thing that had happened to her since he'd forked over that $6,000 to Chalkey.
But ever since Cass had walked back into her life, she'd been plagued by memories of Pilot Grove. As a catharsis, she'd turned to her music. Maisy's prayer was one of the most painful, and therefore private, laments she'd ever written. She'd never expected to sing the lyrics, much less to share them with a John. She could hardly bear to look at the shaky, tear-stained words beneath the bars of music:
"Secret angel of my heart,
I hate that we are parted.
I search for you each lonely night
By hunter's moon and pale starlight.
Through lost and lonely dreams, I wander.
Courage fails; my footsteps falter.
Don't leave me with this crying pain;
Restore my faith in joy again.
Angel of my broken heart, return to me;
Forgive me."
Fueled by feelings of betrayal, Sadie's anger started crowding out her grief. She rounded on her lover.
"Give it back! You had no right! That's my private business!"
"Well sure, it's private," Cass jeered. "You didn't want me to know you were writing to Lover Boy, asking him to come back."
"That's preposterous! I gave you my word for 30 days. Besides, I want nothing to do with Rexford Sterne."
"If it quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, then I'm of the mind it's a duck."
"What the hell do ducks have to do with anything?"
"Don't leave me with this crying pain," Cass mocked from memory. "Angel of my broken heart, return to me—"
She wanted to kill him. At the very least, she wanted to rake out his eyes, but she was too intent on retrieving that paper. She lunged for it, and he sidestepped, ripping the sheet in two.
She wheezed. He'd torn the page deliberately.
"No!" She leaped after his hands as he continued to dodge, shredding and tearing. "That's my only copy! Cass, it's my only—"
But in his jealous rage, he was ignoring the fists that she rained on his back and shoulders. He tossed the litter contemptuously at her feet.
She staggered, strangling on her breath. As if trapped in some slow-moving dream, she watched, horrified, as the pieces fluttered to the beer-stained floorboards, streaked with the crushed rainbow of cosmetics, smeared with swirls of dust and the occasional dead millipede.
Her heart shuddered. Clutching her chest, she fell to her knees, tears scalding her cheeks. Desperately, she tried to scoop up the remnants of her prayer, her plea for forgiveness for failing to save her beloved sister's life.
"Get up," he commanded impatiently.
"That was cruel!"
"And no more than you deserve for betraying me."
"Betraying you?" She was practically hyperventilating now. "Betraying you would be to march up to Bat Masterson and inform our sainted sheriff that he plays Poker most nights with a man who's wanted back in Texas for the murder of Abel Ainsworth!"
Cass sucked in his breath. The color drained from his face. Shock, disbelief, hurt—she saw the turmoil speeding over his features like thunderheads racing to cause a storm.
His eyes flashed.
And then he went cold. As cold as the Arctic in mid-winter. To see her Billy turn into a wall of ice was almost more than she could bear.
"Y-you did kill Ainsworth," she whispered, aghast. "I didn't want to believe..."
He quivered almost imperceptibly, like a predator tensing for a pounce.
She swallowed hard. They were alone. The music and the foot-stomping would muffle her screams. He was stronger than she; he never went anywhere without at least two knives and those Colts. She had nothing but her wits to fend off such a menace.
But somewhere inside that blizzard of rage, there had to be Cass—and more importantly, Billy. Her Billy. The boy who'd cried so hard in her arms that he couldn't gulp down enough air to breathe.
"You shot Ainsworth in the back of the head," she reasoned in a shaking voice, "and it haunts you. It ruined your life. Your rage got control of you that day. Like a demon. But you learned. You learned never to surrender to rage again. Didn't you?"
When he continued to quiver before her, his eyes narrowed to ice-blue slits, she demanded more firmly, "Didn't you?"
His throat worked.
His gaze tore free of hers.
Her breath expelled in a tremulous rush. Thank God she could still reach some part of Billy.
Cass ground his teeth hard enough to crack a few. How had Sadie turned the tables on him? And so neatly, too?
Because he had shot Abel Ainsworth. She knew that he'd vowed to plug the Klansman. She knew about the bounty on his head. She knew everything.
Except his side of the story.
He struggled with his renegade's fear of being caught, of being hanged, of needing secrets, silence, and safety to survive. In the end, none of those fears were as potent as his worry that Sadie would never be able to love a murderer.
Pain was clawing at his insides. He had to make her understand.
"It wasn't supposed to happen that way."
"What way?"
His dug rough fingers into his scalp. "The way it went down! Ainsworth was going to torture Lynx with a branding iron. I had to stop the bastard, don't you see? Ainsworth was wearing a gun, so I called out his name. He started to turn. But I'm so fast on the draw..."
The damning memories crowded in. The ghastly, leering face of Bobby's murderer, standing over another youth. A dark-haired youth with copper skin and panther-green eyes. Cass had peered in the blacksmith's window to find that stranger gagged and hogtied to the anvil, his shirt in tatters around his sweating torso. Lynx had fought like a wildcat against his bonds, blood dripping from his chafing wrists and ankles.
Meanwhile, Ainsworth had taunted his victim, laughing as he'd advanced with that iron. Its tip had glowed as white as the sun...
Shuddering, Cass scrubbed a hand over his face.
Somehow, he gathered the courage to look at Sadie. She still knelt at his boots in her heap of satin skirts, her make-up streaked with tears, her fists clenching pieces of that damned paper. He thought he might die if she started hating him f
or being too green to wait until that vicious, murdering bastard had turned fully to look him in the eye.
"Sadie, you have to believe me."
"I do believe you," she said, her voice choked with some turbulent feeling. "I know the man you are. I know that you would never kill in cold blood."
Air whooshed from his lungs.
"And you know the kind of woman I am," she continued, her chin rising a notch. "This song—this prayer—" she emphasized, "—was written to my sister. My twin sister. Maisy drowned in the river when we were five. I was there, and... and I couldn't save her."
His eyebrows knitted. An unwanted skepticism punctured his balloon of relief. His mind was a wee-bit fuddled at the moment, partly from whiskey, partly from remorse, but he couldn't remember a single other time when Sadie had told him she had a sister, much less a twin.
Damn.
Sadie was an improvisational champion, which would come in handy for a lie. She could spin a tragic yarn about this Maisy 'til the cows came home, and he'd have no way of proving or disproving the details. Anyone who might have remembered the truth lived in Pilot Grove—the one place in Texas where he could never return.
Still, he wanted to believe Sadie. He wanted to believe that Lynx was wrong about her intended rendezvous. That Sterne's return to the Long Branch was a coincidence. That this Maisy had actually existed.
He told himself he was a churn-headed fool.
"I'm sorry I ripped up your song," he said huskily.
He extended his hand, offering to help her rise.
She hesitated. To take his hand, she would have had to drop at least one fistful of those paper bits. She looked genuinely torn.
"Sadie," he murmured, aching to see the pain he'd caused her. "Let Maisy go."
She blinked up at him like a small, wounded child.
"Darlin', you have to let her go," he insisted gently.
Her brow furrowed.
Slowly, hesitantly, she trusted her shaking fingers to his palm. He pulled to her feet. A sob bubbled past her lips, and he cradled her in his arms, murmuring comforts. She clutched great fistfuls of his shirtfront. He sensed she was trying to compose herself.
"Sadie," he crooned against her ear, wanting nothing more than to make amends. To please her. He remembered the pendant in his pocket. "I have a surprise for you. It's a pres—"
A flurry of giggles and traipsing footfalls heralded the return of the chorus line. Sadie wrenched herself from his arms and grabbed for a handkerchief. A bare second later, the door banged open. A troop of heavily rouged and perfumed floozies—lead by Liliana—swept into the room.
"Cass," Lil crooned, her eyes glowing with lusty delight. "Did you come to see—Oh." Her face crumpled in disappointment as she spied Sadie's black-sheathed length darting out the door with a red, feathered boa and an ebony mask. "Good grief. What's she still doing here? She should have been backstage ages ago. You naughty boy! You almost made her miss her cue!"
Liliana tittered, batting her eyelashes, and Cass felt a wee bit nauseous. He decided to blame the whiskey that was sloshing in his gut.
With the ghost of his Coyote self, he flashed Lil's cooing flock of soiled doves his broadest grin before escaping into the hall. He could hear the band introducing some popular ballad. Sadie was supposed to sing again.
Nevertheless, he headed for the alley and a gulp of fresh air. He needed to cool his head before he returned to the taproom.
Because if I get within an arm's length of Rexford Sterne, he thought grimly, I'm going to punch a hole through the Old Fart's spleen.
Chapter 9
WOLF BAIT
The next morning, Sadie was relieved when Cass didn't interrogate her about Sterne. In fact, he seemed uncommonly distracted, impatient to get out of the brothel and on with his day.
By 10 a.m., she learned why. Cass was riding around town, making covert inquiries about Sterne. He was asking folks what they knew about Sterne's business, how long Sterne had known Sadie; how intimate Sterne's friendship was with Sadie.
So much for trust, she thought acidly.
Curiously, nobody seemed to know anything about Sterne—according to Liliana (by way of Jesse, of course.) Sadie found this piece of news intriguing. Apparently, the last time Sterne had been in town, he hadn't left much of an impression—at least, not on the merchants, the gamblers, or the bawds. Sadie, herself, couldn't remember seeing the man before last month. But then, Rangers enforced the law in Texas. Why should she—or any other Kansas citizen—know Rexford Sterne?
Around 7 o'clock that evening, she still hadn't laid eyes on Cass. That meant she couldn't explain to the hothead why Chalkey was sending her to the Harvey House. Apparently, there'd been some disaster in the Long Branch's kitchen (probably due to cook's not-infrequent tantrums.) Chalkey was worried that certain Friday night regulars would turn downright ugly if he didn't have enough beef pot pies on the menu.
So she set out on foot for the Harvey House Hotel and Restaurant, about ten blocks up the street. She walked openly on the sidewalk beneath the rising moon. She held her head high. She had Chalkey's written request and a fistful of his greenbacks in her skirt pocket. She had an alibi and the proof of her explanation. If either Cass or Jesse chased after her, accusing her of a forbidden tryst with Rexford Sterne, she vowed that she would shove Chalkey's letter up some Texican's nose.
Fortunately, the Harvey House could spare five pies. After making the chef swear what amounted to a blood oath, Sadie was satisfied that Chalkey would have his extra rations as soon as the pies finished baking.
Congratulating herself on a seamless mission, she exited the kitchen by way of the dining room—which had been empty when she'd entered the building only 10 minutes ago. To her dismay, she now found Rexford Sterne sitting at a linen-draped table near the foyer—her only exit to the street. He didn't have a coffee cup, a glass of water, or even a place setting. Nevertheless, he sat there just as casually as you pleased, his gray Stetson resting beside a vase of yellow daisies. He was rolling a smoke.
"Lookin' for me, Miss Michelson?" he drawled.
"Why on earth would I do that?"
"The way I hear it, we're lovers."
"Wishful thinking, no doubt."
Amusement flickered over his rugged features. "Are you always so fast on the draw?"
"Yep."
"I'll consider myself warned."
"You do that."
She really didn't want to walk past that table. But she figured it would be a blatant act of cowardice to turn on her heel and storm into the kitchen to find another exit from the building. What if there wasn't another exit? Wouldn't she look like a prized idiot, slinking back into the dining room?
She blew out her breath.
Fisting her hands at her sides, she crossed the room and halted before him. She knew why he'd positioned himself beside the dining room door—and his motives had nothing to do with eating. At the very least, he wanted to talk about Roarke Michelson.
Damn her curiosity, but she wanted to know what he had to say about Daddy.
She decided to take his bait.
"All right. Tell me."
He arched a salt-and-pepper eyebrow. "Tell you what, Miss Michelson?"
"You know damned well, Ranger."
The ghost of a smile touched his lips. He busied himself with his smoke: licking the cigarette paper, pinching its end. "You don't like lawmen."
"With good reason."
"And you want me to give you another one?"
"See here, tin-star. You don't just walk up to a woman, announce that you know how her daddy really died, and then ride out of town for three weeks."
"So you do care about something. Besides money."
"Don't toy with me," she warned in a low, venomous tone.
Undaunted, he snapped open his matchsafe; cupped his hand around the flame; and puffed until his smoke glowed. The stalling tactic was one that she, herself, had perfected over the years. It was a power play, intende
d to make the other party squirm.
Damn her nerves, but it was working!
"As I recollect, you were 13 when Roarke Michelson died."
Sadie stiffened. As he recollected?
"What do you remember about his death?" the lawman persisted.
That Mama didn't cry.
But Sadie wasn't going to tell Sterne that. She could barely admit the truth to herself. Mama's dry eyes had seemed so... traitorous.
"Union sympathizers ambushed Daddy in the Wildcat Thicket, about seven miles outside of town."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"You don't remember how he and Meg argued that night? Or how he stormed from the house, vowing to settle an old debt?"
Sadie's eyes narrowed to hear Sterne use her mother's pet name. "You seem to know an awful lot about my family's private affairs."
"Call it my job," he countered quietly.
She sensed sentiment in his tone. She found it offensive, especially since he'd been speaking of her mother.
"Oh, I get it. You poke around in people's closets. You rattle their skeletons. You enjoy lording secrets over lesser mortals."
"Any man who thinks you're inferior is one card shy of a full deck."
His praise annoyed her even more than his mockery had. "What's this really about, Sterne? A rut? You know Cass paid for exclusive privileges for one month."
"Ah yes. Cassidy." He tapped ash into the flower vase. "I've been meaning to speak to you about him, too."
Her hackles rose. Eight years ago, when the corpse of Grayson County's Klan leader had been discovered in his blacksmith shop, the sheriff had proclaimed that Abel Ainsworth had been murdered.
A murder charge had no statute of limitations.
"You leave Cass out of this," she flared.
Slowly, indifferently, Sterne sucked on his cigarette. "You have feelings for the boy."
She hated that heat was crawling up her neck.
"Cass made my life easier, that's all. He restored me to my rightful place as Chalkey's headliner."
"And when Cassidy rides on in one week's time? What then?"
Pistols and Petticoats (A Historical Western Romance Anthology) Page 15