Prologue Page 9

  The horse eyed him with some suspicion but didn’t shy as he drew near. Travis held his palm up to her nose so she could learn his scent. Chloe looked on as he ran soothing, experienced hands over her mare, moderately surprised to discover he really knew something about animals. As if feeling her eyes on him, he glanced up suddenly and looked over Lester’s bowed head to her window. She stepped back and closed the neck of her gown.

  “Good morning,” he called, and she could hear the impudence in his voice. “Can I have some breakfast or will I have to eat with the horse?”

  With that attitude he must have spent a lot of time in solitary confinement, she reflected irritably. “Breakfast will be ready in half an hour,” she called. “But Lester might teach you some manners.”

  Travis backed up to confirm the horse’s gender, then glanced up at Chloe again. “Maybe, but who’s going to break the news to Lester that she’s not a boy?”

  Chloe flapped a dismissing had at him and struggled to keep the smile off her face.

  When she called Travis for breakfast, she saw he’d put on one of his new shirts.

  “Does everything fit?” she asked, trying to ease the funny tension she felt at the sight of him. He’d been disagreeable when he was sick but still she’d felt his illness had given her a slight advantage. After all, it was difficult for a person to be masterful while wearing only a sheet. But it wouldn’t be so easy, she suspected, dealing with Travis McGuire now that he was out of his sickbed and dressed.

  “Just great,” he said, rolling up his sleeves to expose his forearms. “Even the underwear.” Chloe felt the heat rise to her face. “You did a good job of guessing the sizes.”

  Guessing was hardly the term she’d have used. She’d stood in the general store, envisioning his long limbs and wide shoulders while holding the shirts and jeans up to herself to choose the sizes Travis needed. The air in DeGroot’s Mercantile positively sizzled with Albert’s unasked questions while he hung at her elbow, watching her handle the long, narrow clothing. But her expression and demeanor effectively squelched Albert’s desire to pry.

  Chair legs scraped on the floor behind her as he settled at the kitchen table. “Tell me about your intended.” There was a sarcastic edge in his voice.

  She only winced at his choice of words while she pondered the amazing circumstances she found herself in. She knew this lie was going to catch up to her, one way or another. She put bacon and eggs on his plate. “Evan is the schoolmaster."

  Travis reached for his fork, waiting for her to continue. For a man who made it a practice to keep his distance, his own curiosity confounded him. But he prodded anyway—there was something about Peterson that put him on his guard. "And?"

  Chloe put the frying pan in the sink and pumped water over it. "Well, he, uh, he came to Misfortune a few years ago and he started calling on me after my father died, and uh . . ." There really wasn't much to say about Evan. He wasn't attractive, there were no noble qualities to extol about his character. He was a very plain man.

  As she fumbled for a better description, Travis voiced an assumption. "And he doesn't like my being here."

  Her gaze locked with his for a moment and then she poured his coffee. "Well, no, but what is there to like? You were very rude to him."

  "I suppose you think I was rude to Adam Mitchell, too. But I don't hear you complaining about that," he pointed out.

  "What does Reverend Mitchell have to do with this?" she demanded, startled by the reference. She hadn't thanked Travis for his help yesterday, but his manner and station didn't make her feel like she had to. "We were talking about Evan."

  Travis shrugged and poured a drip of cream into his coffee. "If my being here is such a problem for your schoolteacher, you should have taken up Mitchell's offer. But I imagine Peterson would like that even less."

  Chloe was livid. She flung her apron on its hook behind the door. "How dare you suggest such a thing? Do you really believe I'm the kind of woman who would let herself be kept by a man?"

  He leveled a calm, assessing gaze on her. "Not for a minute."

  "Then why would you even bring it up?"

  "Because there's not much difference between those two men." He rose from the table, towering and impatient, and thrust his empty cup into her hands. "Look, I don't give a damn about Peterson or his complaints. Just keep him away from me."

  * * *

  "What's going on over at Chloe's house, Evan? She was in the other day buying men's clothes, but I couldn't get her to tell me anything." Albert leaned forward, his elbows on the well-worn counter. The rest of the group pressed a little closer.

  This was the very thing that Evan feared, being the subject of the town's speculation. He wanted them to understand that he in no way approved of Miss Chloe's actions. "That drifter actually sat down at the table during our dinner the other night and helped himself. Nobody invited him, he just horned in." Detecting a sympathetic audience, he warmed to the subject. "And last night Miss Chloe told me she's given him a job, after she'd said she wouldn't. She claims not to like him, but she insists on letting him work there."

  "Better take her another box of those chocolates, Evan," Albert advised, adjusting his sleeve garter. The amusement in his voice was thinly concealed. "Looks like you maybe got some competition."

  Evan glowered at the flippant remark. That very thought had already occurred to him and he didn't like the idea at all. His palms began to sweat.

  Stifled laughter rippled through the group gathered at Albert's counter.

  Outrage percolated in Evan. Miss Chloe's involvement with McGuire was entirely inappropriate—tending a strange man who slept in a room he knew adjoined hers, selecting clothes for him, making fools of both herself and Evan. Well, no one was going to laugh at him. A screeching pain lanced through his head.

  "Don't you dare laugh at me!" Evan demanded.

  A couple of chuckles were suffocated into throat-clearing snorts. Evan was satisfied to see the expressions around him straighten under his reprimand.

  Albert's brows rose in surprise and his tone became placating. "Now, Evan, I was just joshing you. It takes a pretty brave man to deal with Chloe—you've proven that yourself. Besides, one of her best qualities is loyalty. Look how she took care of Frank all those years. You don't have anything to worry about."

  "Anyway, Chloe doesn't have much choice," Grady Hewitt put in. He took out his watch and compared its time to Albert's wall clock. "Old Frank left her in a real fix with that mortgage, you know. I wish now he'd never asked me for the loan. But if the bank has to take her house, I don't think you two will be very happy living in the Tollivers’s attic."

  That was true. One of the things Evan looked forward to was getting out of that attic when he and Chloe married. But did that mean he'd now have to put up with the blacksmith?

  "I won't tolerate his insubordination." Evan turned to Sheriff Winslow. "I'll be having dinner every night with Miss Chloe as long as that vagrant works there. But I can't be around every minute. I'd keep an eye on him if I were you, Fred. Mark my words, he's trouble."

  "Now, Evan," the sheriff reasoned, "the man hasn't done anything. Besides, I trust Miss Chloe to make the right decision. She has good judgment."

  Evan had always thought so, too. But suddenly she'd developed a blind spot and Travis McGuire was standing in it.

  * * *

  Late in the afternoon, Chloe went looking for Travis. After their conversation this morning about Adam Mitchell, she began thinking. She was loathe to admit it, but if Travis hadn't come in when he did, that scene with the minister could have been much worse. She supposed some kind of acknowledgment was in order. Perhaps that was why he brought it up. She decided to let Travis have his choice of desserts. That, and a brief thanks, were compensation enough. The town might gossip about her but no one could accuse her of having bad manners.

  But the blacksmith was nowhere to be found. The shop was empty and so was the yard. She even walked around to the front
to see if he was sitting on the porch swing.

  "Travis!" she called. What was he up to now? she wondered. She didn't have the time or the interest to chase him all over creation. She retraced her steps and there was still no sign of him. She stood by the pump and shaded her eyes while she scanned the property. "Well, for heaven's sake, where—"

  From the old shed behind the shop came the clattering racket of things falling, followed by a string of ringing, explicit profanities. Despite having lived in a rough mining town all her life, what she heard made her blush.

  Chloe hurried to the weather-bleached shed and found Travis coughing and rubbing the top of his head, surrounded by rusty chunks of iron scrap, old pieces of harness, tin cans with nails spilling out of them, empty bottles and assorted junk. A broken plank that had served as a shelf lay with one end still attached to the wall, the other on the dirt floor. Years of accumulated dust billowed from the doorway.

  "Is everything all right?" she asked and jumped back a step while he angrily threw things into piles.

  "Damn it, does it look all right?" Travis barked and glanced around the dark shed. Cobwebs crisscrossed his hair and shirt like a lace shawl. Scowling, he aimed a vicious kick at a milk can full of filberts and sent the nuts flying everywhere.

  Chloe lingered in the doorway of the musty, windowless room, unsettled by his tantrum. But it seemed to pass as quickly as it erupted because when he looked at her again, she saw only a hint of danger.

  He put his hands in his hair, leaned over to shake the dust out, then brushed at the webs on his sleeves. "Well, what do you want?" he muttered.

  Oh, that impertinence, she steamed, pursing her lips. Still, no matter how she tried to distract herself, she couldn't help but notice that his shirt was half unbuttoned. And, having noticed, her eyes strayed to his bare skin, the soft hair on his chest, the shadow his collarbone made at the base of his neck .

  She forced herself to look at his face. "I want to thank you for your help with Reverend Mitchell. I don't think I could have been as—um, persuasive."

  Travis jammed his hands into his back pockets, the action pulling his shirt open wider. "Well, I don't have any patience for self-righteous hypocrites like him." He began pacing like a caged wolf.

  Chloe had to admit that was a pretty fair assessment of the reverend. When she thought of his sloppy kiss on her hand, her insides clenched.

  "Anyway, I was wondering what kind of dessert you'd like. As a reward, I mean."

  "Reward?" His face clouded over.

  "Well, yes. You earned one," she replied, now vaguely apprehensive as he turned threatening again. "Don't you like to be rewarded when you've done a good deed?"

  His eyes on hers became so piercing, she felt trapped like a possum in lantern light, with no will to move. He stopped pacing and took a step toward her and then another. A shine of perspiration suddenly gleamed on his face.

  "I don't want a reward," he growled, reaching out to put his hands on her shoulders.

  At his firm touch, a thrill of fear, of uncertain expectation, flooded Chloe. Primal strength and power surged from him in waves. What was he going to do? Thrash her? Kiss her?

  Instead he pushed her aside and walked out of the shed, kicking up little dust clouds with each step. He stopped a moment and turned to face her, quickened with feral tenseness.

  "I didn't do it for a reward," he said, then went out the gate and crossed the road to the yellow grassland beyond the house.

  * * *

  Travis strode through the tall stalks, keeping his gaze leveled on the distant horizon. He sucked in deep breaths as he went, shaken by what had just happened. Five years locked in a jail cell had made him dislike small, enclosed places, but he’d never panicked like that before. When Chloe had put herself between him and the door, he’d felt trapped, claustrophobic, like he couldn’t breathe. He’d had to stop himself from running her down to get out of that room.

  He saw the tension in her face when he touched her. Apparently that was prohibited—no one was allowed to touch the Vinegar Princess. He sat cross-legged on a low rise that overlooked a wash filled with straggling wildflowers.

  And that business about rewarding him, as though he were an obedient dog, he reflected angrily. He pulled up a long blade of grass, its top gone to seed, and tore it into long, thin strips.

  He hoped Chloe Maitland had a hard skull because he expected to be butting heads with her a lot while he was here.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Over the next couple of weeks, Travis unobtrusively assumed his new role. He started slowly, having not regained his full strength. Rest and Chloe's improved cooking were helping.

  Without revealing how much money she needed, Chloe had told him he would work there for two months or until they made enough to pay the bank. If, at the end of those two months, she wasn't able to raise the cash, he'd be out of a job and she'd be out of her home. On the other hand, if they made more than she needed, they would split the extra. That part was fair.

  First he put the shop in order, repairing stalls and clearing away years' worth of dirt and trash. Chloe felt as though her father's ghost had risen when she looked out and saw Travis in the shop stoking the forge to get it ready for business. After all the months of dark silence, it would seem odd to hear the clang of a maul again. A dozen times she'd asked herself if she was making the right decision in hiring him. But time was slipping away from her and taking some kind of action was better than doing nothing. And after a while the ringing anvil slipped to the back of her mind and became a comforting sound.

  They didn't lack for business. Chloe had only to tell Albert DeGroot that the blacksmith shop was open again and word spread like a brushfire. From early morning till Travis came in for his dinner, horses were shod, kettles were repaired, new tires were made for wagon wheels.

  Curiosity drew their customers initially—everyone wanted to get a look at the stranger. The quality of Travis's work brought them back. That boy didn't talk much, it was observed, and he could get downright tetchy, one farmer told Chloe, if you asked him about himself, but he knew his iron.

  But Chloe didn't like Travis. To think she'd been reduced to hiring an escaped convict to work for her. Oh, she knew he did his job and was good at it. But the sparks still flew whenever they were within speaking distance, and sometimes not even that close.

  For the most part, he kept to himself in the shop, either working or in the little room she gave him, coming into the house only for his meals. With Evan over for dinner every night, she set a place for Travis at the kitchen table while she and Evan ate in the dining room.

  On the occasional evening, she'd look out the back door or the kitchen window and see Travis sitting in Frank's old spot by the big shop door, a bottle of whiskey resting on his knee. The sight brought back bad memories of her father, too drunk to stand, too tired to care. Once she even stepped out to the back porch and frowned at Travis to express her disapproval. To her intense annoyance, he only raised the bottle in a silent toast and took another drink. He knew she didn't like his drinking, she fumed. He simply chose to ignore it.

  But as far as his work was concerned, she was relieved that she'd made the right decision in hiring him. When a little money began to accumulate, she dared to hope she might save her home.

  As noon approached one morning, Chloe went down the back steps with a lunch tray for Travis balanced against her hip. It was another sweltering day. The only shade to be had was a two-foot strip running along the east wall of the shop. She crossed the dry yard and set the tray down on the old chair that always stood by the door. That was the chair she saw Travis sitting on some nights, sipping from a whiskey bottle.

  Chloe stepped into the shop's gloom. It was brightened only by the glow of the fire, rising and falling like a breathing thing. Travis stood at the forge slowly pumping the bellows. He wore a heavy leather apron and gloves but no shirt. As he maneuvered a pair of tongs in the low flames, Chloe could feel the increasing heat radiat
ing from the forge.

  Travis stared at her across the bed of fire, its red embers reflected in his eyes, his hair wet where it rested on the back of his neck.

  She paused before the sweating, muscled drifter, fascinated for a moment by the powerful image he projected. Then she remembered why she was there.

  "I've brought your lunch," she said, then turned to leave.

  "Have you eaten already?" she heard him ask. "No, my lunch is on the kitchen table."

  "Why don't you bring it out here? Unless, of course, you're afraid."

  "Of what?" she scoffed.

  "Afraid of eating with an outlaw."

  She turned back to face him. His eyes connected unwaveringly with hers. "I'm not afraid of anything," she said.

  Her reply was so matter-of-fact, so casual, he almost believed her. She might even believe it herself, but he knew it wasn't true. He pulled off the heavy gloves. "Well, then, shall we eat?"

  Unable to think of an excuse, she nodded and went back to the kitchen to get her sandwich and another chair. When she glanced out the window, she saw him at the pump, sluicing water over his head. It was a simple action but it stopped her, and she watched for a moment as rivulets ran over his shoulders and down his bare back into the waistband on his jeans. His forehead and cheekbone were healing but he still looked like his horse had kicked him instead of thrown him. What did the rest of his face look like, the part that was hidden by that beard? Then she caught herself. If only she could keep her eyes from straying to him. It was embarrassing, it was indecent, the feelings he stirred in her.

  He saw her standing on the back porch, trying to balance her plate and the chair, and came forward to take them from her.

  "Let's see if we can squeeze into that shady place over there," he said, indicating the shop wall.

  Conversation between them was still strained and she wondered why he'd wanted her to eat with him. Except for a compliment to her cooking, they sat in silence. Chloe fixed him huge meals, knowing the work he did burned a lot of energy.