Heaven in My Arms

by Colleen French

  Heaven in My

  Arms

  Colleen French

  Copyright © 1998, 2018 by Colleen French. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of The Evan Marshall Agency, 1 Pacio Court, Roseland, NJ 07068-1121,

  evan@evanmarshallagency.com.

  Version 1.0

  This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by The Evan Marshall Agency. Originally published by Kensington Publishing Corp., New York, under the title Angel in My Arms and under the name Colleen Faulkner.

  Cover by The Killion Group

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  February, 1869

  Carrington, Colorado

  Celeste sat lightly on the edge of the iron bed and smoothed the crisp coverlet. Her friends filed quietly into the room and surrounded the bed. She heard nothing but muted footsteps, the swish of starched petticoats, and the hiss of the gas lamps that lit the room. For once, the lively group was subdued.

  "John," Celeste whispered, half-fearing he was already dead. "John, love. It's Celeste. Can you hear me?" She took his bony palm and smoothed it between her two hands. His skin was gray and transparent. Cold. "John," she persisted as she willed herself not to cry. "They're all here, as you asked; Sally, Kate, Titus, Ace, even the Reverend."

  John MacPhearson's eyelids fluttered. He inhaled a whistle of air and his chest rattled like a stove pipe. He coughed and struggled to catch his breath.

  Celeste lifted his worn hand to her lips. "It's all right," she soothed. "Take your time."

  John sucked in another labored breath and opened his eyes. "C . . . Celeste?"

  She put on her best smile and leaned closer. Before his illness, John had been a strikingly handsome man with sparkling black Indian eyes and salt and pepper hair. The sparkle was gone from his eyes, the luster gone from his hair. "Here, you old codger. Where else do you think I'd be?"

  Another cough wracked his body, and everyone in the room seemed to struggle with him to gain the next breath. The air smelled not of a cloying sickroom, but of sunshine and herbs. Celeste wouldn't have it any other way.

  After a long, tense moment, John managed to smile. A decent smile for a man dying of tuberculosis at fifty years old. "Thought you'd be playing cards at Big Nose Kate's. It's . . . it's Sunday, ain't it?"

  Celeste's heart swelled with sorrow, but she gave a little laugh. "Ah, we've got hours yet. Still time to get in some Black Jack before supper."

  He closed his eyes. "Put a chip in for me, will you, sweetheart?"

  "I'll do that."

  He closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Silver?"

  "Right here on the end of your bed," Celeste assured him.

  The yellow dog lifted its head and whined pitifully, as if already in mourning for the death of his master.

  "I—" John started to speak, but a fit of coughing seized him.

  Celeste helped him lift a bloodstained handkerchief to his lips and held his shoulders as his frail body fought to gain another breath. He exhaled with a rattly whoosh and everyone in the bedroom exhaled with him in sympathy.

  It took so long for him to inhale again that Celeste wondered if this would finally be John's last breath. The thought of losing her friend twisted painfully in her heart, but he had suffered too long. No man as good-hearted and full of life as John MacPhearson deserved to suffocate to death.

  For a long moment everyone stood and stared at John and Celeste, probably wondering if he were dead. There was Big Nose Kate, the madam of Kate's Dance Hall, dressed in her Sunday best red crinolines, and Silky Sally in her silk sheath gown as shimmering as a drop of water. Titus, the washed-up gold miner, stood to the rear in his dirty denims, smelling of cheap rye whiskey. Ace, the young deaf and dumb half-breed, stood at Titus's side, perhaps to catch the miner if he began to sway. The last visitor was the good Rev. Joash Tuttle, who hovered on the far side of the bed, dressed in a tight, cheap black suit, a worn Bible cradled in one arm. Celeste knew every man and woman in this bedroom would mourn the loss of John MacPhearson, a man they called their friend.

  "Celeste," John whispered hoarsely.

  "I'm here. Right here." She gently dabbed at the bloody corners of his mouth with the handkerchief.

  "Knew you'd stay with me 'til the end . . ."

  "Why wouldn't I? You'd do the same for me."

  Sally sobbed and Kate handed her a lacy handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown. "Straighten up or get out," she hissed as she elbowed her young charge.

  Sally dabbed at her painted lips and sniffed. "I'm sorry."

  John struggled to sit up in the bed, and Celeste reached behind him to fluff the goose down pillow. "Called you all here to—" he gave a hacking cough "—to witness my—" cough "—signature." He pointed to the carved rosewood armoire on the far side of the room. "Fetch my box, Celeste. You know, the tin one."

  Deftly, Celeste retrieved the battered tin box painted with Indian symbols from the clothing cabinet and returned to John's side. "Here you go."

  With a shaky hand, he opened the box and rifled through papers and a few photographs. "Got it." His head fell back on the pillow and another fit of coughing wracked his body. When he could breathe again, he held out his hand to the reverend. "Gimme your fancy fountain pen, Joash. I know you got it inside that funeral suit of yours."

  The reverend handed his friend the pen. "Not my funeral suit, I'll have you know, John. It's my lucky card-playing suit."

  The joke, though weak, was enough to make everyone in the room laugh and crack the veneer of awkwardness.

  "Hell, you ain't gonna win, lucky suit or not," John teased.

  Sally poked the reverend playfully in the side. "I was hoping to win enough off you to buy myself that new pot of rouge, Joash."

  The reverend laughed with them.

  John uncapped the pen and squinted to focus his eyes. "I want you all to witness that I'm of sound mind. This here's my will and last testament." He sucked in a breath. "I won't bore ya with the details, 'cause I know you got a card game to git to, but I don't want no one contestin' my words after Fred hauls my body off in that new glass hearse of his." He paused. "I'm givin' the house to my Celeste."

  Celeste's gaze met his. "John, your son—"

  "Let me speak, will you, girl? I ain't got much breath left in me," he panted.

  Celeste folded her trembling hands in the lap of her pearl gray sateen gown. "I'm sorry, go on."

  "I'm leavin' what's left of my bank account to her, too. Hell, it would have been hers anyway if the stubborn tart would have married me."

  Celeste smiled, taking no insult from his words. She was a tart.

  "And . . . and the mine claims I bought up," John wheeze
d. "I'm leavin' half to Celeste, half to that rich son of mine back in California." He tapped on the tip box. "There's a sealed letter for him inside, Celeste. All you gotta do is post it."

  She nodded, afraid to speak. She didn't want John's fancy house with the gaslights and flush commode. She didn't want his money. She didn't want his worthless gold claim. She wanted John. She wanted him to live.

  "That's all I got to say." John signed the crinkled document with a trembling hand.

  Celeste caught the pen as it fell, while John was seized by another coughing spasm. "That's enough visiting," she told the group as she eased his frail shoulders back onto the pillow. "Go on back to Kate's."

  John's eyes flickered open. "Bye to ya, friends. It's been a wild ride."

  One by one the men and women filed out of the bedroom, each stopping to touch John's hand or kiss his cheek. Each said goodbye in their own way, then left the room. Celeste closed the door behind them, and returned to John's bedside.

  "You still here"—cough—"Celeste, love?" John didn't open his eyes.

  "Still here." She took his hand once again.

  "Tired," he murmured.

  "Then sleep."

  "More tired than that."

  A lump rose in Celeste's throat. Doc Smite said John should have been dead days ago. He didn't know what was keeping him alive. Celeste knew. She was keeping him alive. John was staying here for her sake.

  "So go," she said softly. She brushed a lock of his hair off his forehead, fighting tears. "Go find that mother lode you've been looking for all your life."

  "Think I might"—cough, hack—"do that. First, a kiss."

  She smiled. Tears ran freely down her rice-powdered cheeks. "I thought you'd be wanting something more than that," she teased.

  As she brushed her lips against his cheek, he lifted one hand to caress her breast. "Maybe after a nap, eh, sweetheart?"

  She kissed him again. "Whatever you say, John."

  He opened his eyes, his mouth widening into a grin, and for a moment John looked like the handsome man who had swaggered into Big Nose Kate's Dance Hall and into Celeste's life a little more than a year ago.

  His eyes drifted shut and the smile faded with a sigh. It was a full minute before Celeste realized he was no longer struggling for breath.

  John MacPhearson was dead, and she was once again alone in the world.

  Chapter One

  Carrington, Colorado

  4 Months Later

  June, 1867

  Fox MacPhearson stepped off the train with a leather satchel in his hand and a strange sense of hope in his heart.

  The Baldwin locomotive's whistle wailed and the wheels screeched as it pulled through the station behind him. In a puff of smoke the train was gone, and Fox was alone on the wooden platform.

  So what now? Fox brushed his hand over his bare chin. He'd worn a beard and mustache for years, but on impulse had shaved it the morning he'd left San Francisco. A cleansing ablution. As he washed the facial hair down the drain, he'd washed away his past. Here, in Carrington, he hoped he would find the start of a new life.

  He removed his father's letter from inside his dusty wool tweed overcoat. Plum Street. That's where he was headed. That was where his new life would begin. Number 22 Plum Street.

  Fox deliberated on the platform and stared at the rickety depot steps that led to the street below. For some reason he was hesitant to go. Not just because in going to his father's home he would have to deal with the emotional baggage of words left unsaid, but because . . . because . . . He sighed. Hell. He didn't know why he was standing here.

  Fox took the warped steps two at a time. He reached the wooden sidewalk that kept pedestrians' shoes out of much of the mud of Carrington's rutted street, and made a decisive right turn toward the false-fronted stores lining both sides of the road through town.

  It was mid-afternoon, but there were few people on the street. Many of the stores' window shades were drawn shut. The community did not appear to be the bustling gold mining town that, in his letters, his father had led Fox to believe it was.

  A creaky sign, hanging by a nail from a corner post, read: Apple Street.

  Fox nearly laughed aloud. After the bustling city of San Francisco with its port of call, opera houses, and art museums, Carrington was little more than a crossroads, a slum near the docks of the bay city. From the look of the loose shingles and broken windows, Carrington hadn't seen gold in years. Maybe that was why Fox had been forced to wait two days in Denver for a train passing through.

  He passed a boarded-up storefront. Smythe's Emporium the peeling painted sign stated over the door. He walked past several private homes. Tinny piano music filtered through the open door of The Three Caballeros Saloon. He passed the saloon, though his heart pounded and his palms broke out in a sweat at the thought of a shot of rye whiskey. But he no longer drank. Drinking was one of the vices that had brought him to this pathetic one-horse town to begin with.

  A half block ahead, Fox spotted the first humans he'd seen in Carrington. So it wasn't a ghost town, after all. There was a big woman dressed in waves of red crinolines. She had a rather prominent nose, but pretty blue eyes and a come-hither smile. Her rouged red lips and cheeks gave evidence of her profession. The woman standing beside her, laden with brown paper parcels, was barely more than a girl, with a fine mane of wheat-blond hair. A whore, too, but a natural blond whore. Fox had known enough bleached women in his life to recognize a natural one when he saw her.

  The blonde was dressed in a shimmering sheath, not the billows of skirts and protruding bustle common to the day. The gown met tightly at her ankles, so that she had to take tiny steps to walk. On anyone else the outfit would have been ridiculous, but on this woman, it was exquisite. Up until a few months ago, she would have been just the type he would have taken for a tumble in bed.

  "Good afternoon, ladies." Fox swept off his bowler hat and gave a slight bow.

  "Afternoon to you," the woman with the big nose responded warmly. "Just come to town on the four-thirty, I see." She offered a gloved hand. "Kate Mullen, but my friends call me Big Nose Kate."

  He hooked his thumb in the direction of the train depot. "Guess the stop's not long. The conductor nearly pushed me out the door as the train passed through."

  The young blond woman laughed shyly. Her heavily rouged cheeks and the thick blue shadow on her eyelids detracted from her ingenuous beauty. "Have business in town, sir?" She shifted the weight of the bulky packages from one slender arm to the other. Her steady gaze made no excuses for her appearance, nor for her vocation.

  "Um. Yes." Fox hedged, hesitant to say why he was here, just yet. "I suppose I do. I'm looking for Plum Street."

  Big Kate's blue eyes lit up as if she were privy to some secret. "Plum Street? Expected there, are you?" She studied him more carefully.

  "Yes, as matter a fact, I am."

  The wooden sidewalk creaked under her weight as Big Nose Kate took a step toward him. "We could show you if you want. Not that this sniveling town is so big a fine, smart man like yourself couldn't find your way on your own."

  For a moment Fox thought she would reach out to stroke his coat, or perhaps his cheek, but she didn't. For a whore, she had a touch of class. He replaced his black wool hat on his head. "Just point me in the right direction and I'll be on my way. I don't mean to trouble you."

  "Wouldn't trouble us a bit if you stopped by Big Kate's Dance Hall tonight," the blonde said in a finely textured voice. "I'm Sally, Silky Sally." She managed once again to blush beneath her heavily rouged cheeks.

  "I just might do that." He smiled and winked. He had no intentions of frequenting a whorehouse. That fragment of his life was gone, washed down the drain with his beard. "Plum Street?" He lifted his brow.

  Kate pointed a red lace-gloved finger. "You're headed in the right direction, handsome. Two blocks south. If Petey, the town drunk, is passed out on Plum and Peach, just step over him. He's harmless."

  "Th
ank you. I'll do that." He tipped his hat and passed the two women on the plank sidewalk.

  "Big Nose Kate's is on Peach Street," Kate called after him. "Can't miss it. It's one of the few places still open on that side of town."

  Fox waved over his shoulder, but did not turn back. Two blocks down, he turned right onto Plum Street. The wooden sign at the corner had a plum painted beside its name, only the purple had faded to a pale blue. The street seemed to be mostly residential; white clapboard houses with varied roof lines, elaborate porticoes, and gingerbread moldings. Each home was trimmed in a different confection color; bright pink, seafoam green, lavender. The houses appeared to have been no more than ten years old, built during the town's short gold boom, no doubt.

  Plum Street was a pleasant, tree-lined street, out of place in the desolate, muddy town. He smiled to himself as he passed an empty porch swing shifting in the breeze. No wonder his father had liked it here.

  At Peach and Plum, Fox did not encounter the town drunk. He read the numbers on the houses as he walked, amused that the townspeople would actually anticipate the need to give the houses numerical addresses, as if they had expected the town to grow to the size of Denver or Colorado Springs. But the practice served his need.

  Number 22, Plum Street. He halted on the wooden sidewalk to study the white frame house, trimmed in sunshine yellow. It looked almost identical to the other houses, except that while some of the others appeared abandoned, this one was definitely occupied. While many of the others had been left to deteriorate, someone had obviously taken care of this house. The clapboard walls had been painted recently. The shutters hung straight. The glass of the windows were squeaky clean and unblemished by cracks or breaks. A stone walk had been laid and flowers planted on either side of the walk. It was like a house out of a child's fairy tale.

  Fox halted on the stone walkway feeling somehow undeserving. Would his father be disappointed that he intended to sell the home? Surely he hadn't expected Fox to live here in Carrington. Fox, who had traveled the world, Fox, who had once owned town houses in San Francisco and New York City at the same time.