Ol’ Marcus cleared his throat and his eyes went hard. “You’re under arrest, Kimball. Now, if you don’t feel like coming along peacefully, I’ll be more than happy to make Kat a widow.”
Well, hell. Jake eyed the other man. He wasn’t as tall as Jake, but he was sturdy. Jake would have to work to take him down. Mixed with a locked-and-loaded gun and a restaurant full of innocent bystanders, that option didn’t present a good opportunity for success. Frustrated and furious with both himself and his bride, Jake raised his hands and backed away from Kat. “This is cold, Katrina.”
She lifted her chin, then addressed the man with the gun. “Deputy Wagoner, if it’s all right with you, I’ll wait here while you lock up your prisoner. I hope you’ll return when your business is done.”
Then, Jake’s wife, the little witch, ticked her lips and added, “I’ve a mind to savor some dessert tonight.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN MARCUS ESCORTED JAKE out of the restaurant, Kat sank down into her seat, oblivious of the excited hum of conversation stirring around her. She trembled like a willow tree in gale. He’s here. Jake is here. Why?
She gripped her necklace, still warm from his body heat. Oh, my. Oh-my-oh-my-oh-my. He came after me.
“Ma’am? Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
Kat glanced up at a waitress. “Bourbon, please. With ice.”
The liquor scorched its way down her throat and chased the numbing cold of shock from her body. Kat took a second, fortifying sip, then tried to focus. Tried to consider the ramifications of what had just happened. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get past one main thought.
He came after me.
She hadn’t a clue how long she sat there, her mind spinning. She couldn’t believe Jake was here. Here, in Fort Worth, Texas. Not in Tasmania. Here looking dapper and handsome and…jealous. He’d looked jealous.
Why had he come? For the children? Had he come to take the children away from her?
“He’s not taking my children.”
“Kat!” Mari said, sounding as if she’d been repeating the name for quite some time.
Kat gave her head a shake. Her sister was sitting in the seat Marcus had vacated, holding a baby outfitted head to toe in pink. Kat looked at little Jenna, and as always her heart melted. “Oh, let me hold her. Where are your other little ones? What are you doing here?”
“Drew, Maddy and Travis are at Willow Hill,” Mari said, handing over the baby. “I’m here looking for you. Luke sent me a note telling me what happened.”
Kat cuddled Jenna close and pressed a kiss to her petal soft skin. “He’s here, Mari.”
“Actually, I hear he’s in jail. Your husband follows you halfway across the world and you have him arrested, Kat?”
She shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time. You should have heard him, Mari. He’s the one who steals and runs, then he has the nerve to act like I was doing something wrong by having a nice, quiet dinner with Marcus.”
“Why were you having dinner with Marcus?”
“We’re Jenna’s and Travis’s godparents. We’re planning the christening celebration.”
“Oh. Over bourbon?”
“I didn’t start drinking until after the men left.” Kat smoothed a finger over the baby’s silken blond hair. A smile tugged at her lips. “He sounded jealous, Mari.”
Mari folded her arms over her full breasts and leaned back in her chair. “I think that this is the perfect time to repeat one of my favorite sayings—I told you so.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why he’s come or why he’s not in Tasmania.”
“I know why he’s here.” Mari snagged a roll off Kat’s bread plate, tore off a piece, and ate it. “The man loves you, Kat. The power of the necklace is at work here. You wait and see, Jake Kimball has come to Texas to prove that your love is powerful, vigilant and true. I predict that soon we’ll be two-thirds the way toward breaking the curse. So,” she leaned forward, her eyes alight with excitement. “Shall we go bail your husband out of my husband’s jail?”
Kat considered her sister’s question. She recalled her shock, the fierce rush of elation when she looked up and saw his angry face glaring down at her. Then she remembered the sadness she’d felt upon awakening that spring morning to find him gone. He’d hurt her. Terribly. “No, Mari. Let’s not.”
Her sister blinked. “You’re going to leave him in jail?”
Kat smiled down at the baby in her arms. “Yes, I think I am. You’re the one who thinks he needs to prove that his love is powerful, vigilant and true. Let’s see if it’s powerful enough to get him out of jail—and past the McBride men.”
“Oh.” Man’s eyes went wide. “Papa. I hadn’t thought of him.”
“Papa and Uncle Tye and Luke and maybe even Billy, for that matter. He’s grown up an awful lot of late.”
Mari winced. “Poor Jake.”
Kat bit her hp. “He’ll find a blizzard on a mountain in Tibet more welcoming than the Fort Worth jail.”
The sisters’ gazes met and held. Together, they burst into laughter.
“I’M GONNA shoot him through his cold black heart.”
Seated on a thin mattress atop a cot in a six-by-five- foot jail cell, Jake looked up into the barrel of a gun. Great. Just great. How many guns would he have to face before this godforsaken day finally came to an end?
“You can’t shoot him while he’s inside the jail cell, Trace,” said a second man, a fellow that looked exactly like the fellow pointing the gun at Jake’s head. “Luke would get into trouble for that.”
Trace McBride and his twin brother, Tye. How fun was this?
“I’d just as soon you not shoot up my jail, Trace,” Luke Garrett agreed. “We’re still trying to get the bloodstains off the walls from last time someone got shot. Now, I could turn him loose…”
“Yeah, Luke.” A young man with hair and eyes the color of Kat’s fixed Jake with a belligerent glare. “That’s a plan. Let him go. I want to give him a good ol’ Texas welcome before you shoot him, Pa.”
Must be one of Kat’s brothers. The oldest one, probably. What’s his name? Billy?
The four men lined up in front of his jail cell. Three of them wore a look of angry scorn and fierce determination. They were an intimidating bunch. Big and broad and mean looking. Itching for a fight Luke Garrett simply looked amused.
Jake found that rather reassuring. For all their talk, they wouldn’t actually kill him. He didn’t think. Probably not, anyway.
They wouldn’t think twice about hurting him, though. Jake ran his tongue across his teeth, wondering if he’d come out of this missing one or two.
What worried him more than anything was the fact that ol’ Marcus, dear, seemed to have disappeared. Jake thought Kat’s remark about dessert had been for his benefit—she’d wanted to piss him off—but just in case, well…if he’s sharing Kat’s dessert, I’m gonna kick his ass.
Jake needed to get out of this cell. Standing, he folded his arms, briefly met Kat’s father’s mean gaze, then focused on the sheriff. “What am I being charged with?”
Luke Garrett shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. You’re in Texas now, boy. We do things a little different here.”
“I want a lawyer.”
Billy McBride snorted, then piped up. “I’ll be his lawyer, Luke. Let me in the cell to confer with my client.”
With that, Jake had had enough. He stepped to the cell door and wrapped his hands around the bars. Addressing Trace, he said, “This is getting us nowhere. What do you want from me?”
“Your black heart on a spit.” McBride’s blue eyes burned into him like a hot branding iron. “You hurt my little girl.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“To you, yes.” Be damned if he’d spill the beans to Kat’s father before he had the chance to talk to her. “I have a lot I’d like to say to my wife.”
“What took you so long to come after her?” Tye McBride asked, folding his arms across his broad chest.
“That’s part of what I’d like to tell Kat.”
“Run it by us first,” Luke Garrett suggested.
Jake eyed the men, one after the other. These were Kat’s relatives. People she loved. Put in their shoes, he could understand their aggression. Hell, maybe he would just tell ‘em about his journey. Let‘em hear how much fun he’d had on his trip to Texas.
Jake let go of the bars and allowed his hands to drop to his sides. “I left Chatham Park bound for Tibet on a Monday.”
He took them through every broken engine part, each busted axle, every washed-out bridge, broken saddle strap, illness of man, beast and barnacle on the trail. The longer his story went the harder his audience listened. They appeared to forget their frustration and put aside their anger in the face of a trip that would have given Jason and his Argonauts a run for their money.
Jake concluded his tale with the train robbery in East Texas and his unfortunate encounter with a skunk after retrieving Kat’s necklace and the altar cross from the criminals. “Then, when I finally make it to Fort Worth, I land myself in jail before I can finish my first glass of whiskey.”
“Holy hell,” Billy McBride breathed. “You had the worst luck of any man I ever heard!”
Tye McBride looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck. Luke Garrett shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels, his gaze looking everywhere but at Jake. Trace McBride reached for the back of the desk chair, then sank blindly into the seat. He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his thumb and fingers.
“Bad luck,” he murmured. “Son of a bitch.”
For a long moment, the only sound to be heard in the jailhouse was the nervous tap of Billy McBride’s boots against the wood floor. Jake gazed at one man after the other. Something was up. What did they know that he didn’t?
His expression troubled, Trace McBride looked to his brother. “What do I do now?”
“I think you have to stay out of it,” Tye advised.
“That goes against my instincts.”
“I know, brother.”
Trace drummed his fingers on the desk. Jake tried to figure out just what was going on.
“You want me to let him go, Trace?” Luke Garrett asked.
Jake took a step forward at that, but his father-in-law responded, “No. She had him put here. She’ll have to be the one to let him out.”
“Wait a minute,” Jake protested. “I want to see a lawyer.”
“We’ll get around to that,” Luke said.
Trace McBride scratched along his jawline. “Where is that damned cross?”
“Uh, Pa?” Billy frowned. “I don’t think you should mix religion and cussin’. Not when it involves the Bad Luck Cross.”
Luke shrugged in agreement, then said, “Marcus has gone to get the cross from Kimball’s hotel room. I thought I’d keep it here in the safe.”
Jake’s jaw gaped. “What? He can’t do that. What about my rights?”
“You’re in Texas now,” Trace explained. “In my son-in-law’s jail. You don’t have any rights unless we want to give them to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Jake plopped down on his cot as Trace McBride rose to his feet. He studied Jake, scowled at the gold hoop earring Jake wore in one ear, then sighed heavily and shook his head. “It’s the hardest thing in the world, being a father to girls. Those little ones of yours are precious. At least I can take some pleasure in knowing what you have ahead of you.”
With that, the McBrides departed the jail. Jake gave Luke Garrett an incredulous look. “What the hell just happened?”
A wide grin wreathed his brother-in-law’s face. “Can’t you figure it out? Papa McBride just welcomed you to the family.”
BRIGHT AND early the following morning, after dropping Robbie off at Widow Hill in response to her mother’s pleas to babysit, Kat accompanied the girls downtown to the jailhouse. Luke and Marcus were both on duty, and they welcomed the visitors with smiles and peppermint sticks. Kat watched the girls distract the sheriff using feminine weapons of giggles and charm Luke never noticed when Caroline-the-criminal lifted the key ring to the cell door off the peg behind his desk and tucked it into her pocket.
Kat decided to keep the bit of thievery to herself for the moment. She remained in the outer room with Marcus when Luke took the girls back to the cell to visit their uncle Jake, although she did stand near the doorway so that she could peek down the hall and observe the conversation.
It was the best entertainment she’d had in…well…since early this morning when Mari came by to describe the scene at the jailhouse last night as shared with her by her husband. Now Kat smiled in smug satisfaction while Jake endured tears and silent recriminations, puppy dog eyes and martyred airs from his abandoned nieces. Then the girls let him have it.
They scolded him, berated him, badgered him and bullied him. Before all was said and done, he made promises to them he’d spend the next twenty years working to keep. If he meant to keep them, that is. The bounder.
Yet for all his thieving and deceiving, she’d never known Jake Kimball to flat-out he. He dodged the truth, avoided it danced around it but when he gave his word, from everything Kat had seen, it was good.
The girls asked him to promise that he’d never leave them again. Kat leaned toward the doorway, listening carefully to his reply.
“Ah, pumpkin, I can’t promise that,” Jake said. Kat could tell he chose his words carefully as he added, “What I can promise is never to go unless it’s very important, and never to go again without telling you goodbye first. That was wrong of me, girls, and I apologize for it.”
“Why did you do it, Uncle Jake?” Belle asked. “It was mean!”
“I know, sunshine. I guess I was scared.”
“Scared!” said a trio of voices. “You?”
“I was scared to face y’all. I think I knew deep in my heart that I shouldn’t go, but I thought I needed to.”
“Because you wanted to visit your brother. Kat told us.”
“Did you find him?”
“No.” He paused and Kat strained forward, listening. Listening. Finally, frustrated, she peeked around the doorway. Jake was looking right toward her. Their gazes met and held. “I went a little ways, then turned around. I figured out that as bad as I wanted to find my brother, even though it was the last promise I made to my father before he died, I simply couldn’t be away from my loved ones that long.”
“You mean us?” Theresa asked.
“Yes, you. My family. The people I love. You, Miranda, and you, Theresa, and you, Belle, and you, Caroline. And Robbie.” Then, looking his wife straight in the eyes, he added, “And you, Katrina.”
Her heart stuttered. The breath whooshed from Kat’s body. Her emotions whirled and swirled as if they’d been caught in the winds of a dust devil. Hope, yearning, need…and fear. Fear and distrust.
“I want to talk about why I left,” he told her. “I—”
Silently she shook her head, cutting him off. She didn’t want to hear his excuses. They’d just hurt her. Every time she opened her heart to a man, he hurt her. She felt bruised, beaten down.
But she wasn’t defeated. Not Kat McBride. Not the new Kat McBride.
Cautious. That was a good word for how she was feeling. She’d been here before, listening to a man declare his love for her. Time and heartbreak for her and those whom she loved had proved her error in believing his words.
Still, she wanted to believe Jake. She desperately wanted to believe. But she needed to be certain. She needed to have all her doubts erased, all her fears laid to rest. She wanted to trust him. Be damned if she’d settle for less.
Kat wanted Jake’s love, but only if it was powerful, vigilant and true. Then maybe she could risk loving him in return.
She drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. So, Jake McBride, you love me?
His gaze burned into hers, steady and fierce.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Prove it.
With that, Kat exited the jail, instructing Luke to send her girls down the street to the mercantile once they’d finished their visit with their uncle.
She spent the rest of the morning glancing over her shoulder as she went about her errands, anticipating the appearance of jailbreaker Jake since she knew the girls must have slipped him the keys. The girls obviously expected their uncle’s arrival, too. By midafternoon, they stood sentry on the front porch of their new house. He never showed.
By suppertime, Mari arrived to tell her why.
“Your husband is sick as a dog, Kat. Luke says he can’t keep anything in his stomach. They moved him to a hotel room and—”
“A hotel room!”
Mari nodded. “Luke suggested bringing him here, but Jake was afraid of passing the illness to y’all. The doctor thinks he must have picked up a bug on his travels.”
“Is he at the Pickwick?” Kat asked, frowning. “I’ll go-”
Mari put out a hand to stop her. “Luke said Jake insisted you and the children stay away in case what he has is contagious. The Pickwick’s manager’s wife said she’d look in on him from time to time.”
Kat couldn’t help but worry about the man, and she checked with the hotel manager’s wife periodically throughout the evening. Shortly before ten she was relieved to learn that Jake’s illness had passed, and he’d ventured downstairs to the restaurant for a meal. She slept peacefully that night.
The following morning she once again waited for him to appear. By noon she’d begun to stew. Before she could work up a good anger, however, word arrived from her mother, of all people, that Jake had suffered yet more trouble.
This time the incident was more serious, her mother’s note said. A valve in Jake’s hotel room had malfunctioned, and natural gas leaked into his room during the night. Luckily, another guest noticed the smell and alerted authorities who’d revived Jake. He was weak, but he would recover. He was resting at, of all places, Willow Hill.
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