Tall, Dark, and Texan (12 page)

A woman’s voice drifted in the air, pulling her back. Jessie opened her eyes and saw Sage standing at the side of the barn with a tall man dressed in black.

“I’m fine, Drum. Stop worrying.” Sage sounded angry.

“You’ve been through a lot, Sage. Hell, you killed two men today.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” she snapped. “I also couldn’t save another, so I guess you could say this hasn’t been my day.”

“I know what you need, Sage.” He gripped her arm. Judging from his size, he could have easily pulled her any direction he’d wanted, but the tall man just held her.

There was no humor in Sage’s laughter. “What? You, Drum? You think I want you? I don’t think so.”

The stranger moved closer to Sage, but his words still drifted to Jessie. “One day, it’ll be me you need, but if I know you at all, I’d say right now you need to ride.”

He tugged Sage toward a magnificent black horse tied a few feet away. “I’ll let you ride Satan home.”

She hesitated. “What’s the price?”

“None. I just love seeing you ride. I’ll be right behind you on one of Anderson’s nags.”

Sage tilted her head. “No you won’t.” She took the reins and swung onto the midnight horse. “You’ll never catch up.”

With a real laugh, she charged out of the barn entrance and was gone.

Jessie heard the man in black swear and run for a horse.

TEAGEN SAW HIS SISTER STREAK THROUGH THE RAIN on a black demon mount that could have only belonged to Drummond Roak. He stormed across the road as Roak came out of the barn.

“Did you loan her your horse?” Teagen yelled above the thunder.

“Yeah. You got a problem with that?” He mounted and pulled in the reins on an animal ready to run.

Teagen’s hands balled into fists. This kid had been a thorn in his side for too long. “Yes, I have a problem with that. In case you didn’t notice, it’s raining. There are outlaws out there robbing people on the road, and she’s on your horse, which is the wildest mount we ever tried to train.”

Roak didn’t seem bothered by Teagen’s ranting. “She can outride either of us. No outlaw is going to catch that horse, and I plan to be right behind her if you’ll stop yelling at me.”

Teagen opened his mouth to continue, but Roak shot off after Sage. He stood staring in the direction they’d gone. The kid was as wild as his sister. If Roak had been a few years older, they’d either be courting or killing each other. Sage was probably already home, and much as he hated to admit it, she handled a horse as well or better than any of the McMurrays.

He glanced at the wagon and saw Jessie still sitting on the bench, shivering. Suddenly, Sage and Roak were forgotten. They could take care of themselves, but Jessie was out of her world. All that had happened today must have scared her to death.

Walking over to her, he tugged his oil slicker from the box beneath the seat and circled it around her shoulders. “You all right?”

“Yes,” she answered, but she was a poor liar.

“You hungry?”

She nodded. “But it’s raining too much for us to stop along the way home. I was looking forward to the picnic, but we’ll have to eat it when we get back.”

“Come here,” he ordered. “We’ll try the next best thing to a picnic.”

Hesitantly, she scooted across the seat. He lifted her and carried her to one of the new buildings that had a café sign over the door. As he walked, he admitted, “I’ve never eaten in town, but maybe it’s time I gave it a try.”

When they walked through the door, everyone in the small place stopped talking and stared. He knew nobody in town liked the McMurrays. He’d always preferred it that way. No one but Mrs. Dickerson had even tried to help them when their parents died, so he had little use for townsfolk. He’d never understood people who favored huddling up in smelly settlements when there was so much land in Texas. Hopefully, Jessie would just think this was a town of idiots and not question the reason they stared.

He walked to the only empty table and sat her down. “Coffee,” he said to the waitress in what he thought was a normal tone, but she jumped, then darted like a frightened deer.

A minute later two hot cups of coffee sat on the table. Jessie smiled. “The service is good here.”

He glared over her shoulder to the waitress cowering behind Jessie’s chair as if she expected him to pull his gun and shoot up the place at any moment.

“Do you want something to eat, Mr. McMurray?” she managed in a voice with an Irish accent that reminded him of his father.

Teagen frowned. He had no idea what to order. Finally he said, “Two plates of food and two desserts if you’ve got them.”

The girl was gone so fast he decided she must be part rabbit.

He looked around. No one in the room talked. A few stared openly, but most tried to act like they weren’t watching Teagen’s every move. Most were wet enough to be dripping puddles around their chairs, so they must have been part of the crowd who’d waited in the rain to see if the stagecoach driver lived.

Teagen waited. He didn’t plan on talking to Jessie with half the town watching and reporting. He smiled, thinking of his brother Tobin, who talked so little that folks thought him unable to speak.

A woman old enough to be a grandmother stood, pulling Teagen back from his thoughts. She walked to their table and ignored Teagen completely as she faced Jessie.

“Missus.” She held her wrinkled hands in front of her as if she planned to pray. “I want to tell you what you did in the hotel today was a brave thing. Most of us, man or woman, couldn’t have dealt with the sight. We’ve all known Miss Sage has a gift, but you. Well, you stood like a soldier beside her. We could see you from the window.”

“Thank you,” Jessie whispered.

The old woman wasn’t finished. “You didn’t know him, but Dodge was a good man, and you paid him respect by washing the blood off his face. Now, when his mother sees him she won’t have that memory to try to forget.”

Several others in the room agreed. The woman moved away, and conversation started at the other tables.

“I’m not brave,” Jessie whispered as the girl set two plates before them.

“You’ll do.” Teagen shoved her plate closer to her. “Now eat.”

She looked up, a little of the color back in her cheeks. “An order?”

“A request,” he answered, wondering what difference it made. She was hungry. She needed to eat. Why would it matter if he ordered or asked?

They ate in silence. Teagen didn’t like all the noise of the place once everyone stopped staring. It was like having dinner in the middle of a migration of magpies. He hated the food. The beef was tough and oversalted. The potatoes didn’t taste like Martha’s. The carrots were boiled until they had the texture of mush.

Still, he ate slowly, hoping Jessie would clean her plate.

She’d barely made a dent in the food when she shoved it away.

He didn’t dare shove it back. The last thing he wanted to do in this place was make a scene.

The girl picked up the plates and delivered a bread pudding for dessert. It was passable, but when he noticed Jessie eating, he set his spoon down. When she finished her pudding, he traded bowls.

She looked up in question.

“I’m too full to eat it,” he said. “I must have eaten too much of that mule meat.”

Jessie smiled at his joke.

He almost winked at her. She understood. He took a deep breath. So much for folks not thinking he had a sense of humor.

She finished off his pudding while he paid the bill. The room grew quiet again as they walked out. Teagen didn’t touch Jessie until they stepped into the rain; then he swung her into his arms.

She laughed. “I can walk.”

He didn’t know how to tell her that sitting across from her all that time and not touching her had been hard on him. He’d almost offered his hand when they stood, but he knew there would be more talk if he had. It didn’t matter what anyone in town said about him, but he didn’t like the idea of them talking about Jessie.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle so slight it seemed to hang in the air. She cuddled close to him as he drove home. Neither one said a word.

As they neared the bridge, Teagen slowed. He wasn’t sure what had happened on their journey, but somehow the two people who crossed the bridge this morning were different. No words had passed between them, but he knew she felt it as strongly as he did. Something had changed between them. Something good.

When they made it back to the barn, Teagen helped her down and held her to him a moment longer than necessary. In many ways it had been a terrible trip to town, but in a few small ways, Teagen didn’t want their time alone to end.

She thanked him when he turned loose of her waist and took one of the boxes. They walked to the house in silence, but not the kind they’d left this morning feeling.

Sage looked like she had had time for a hot bath. She greeted them at the door wearing trousers and a plaid shirt. “Come in, come in. We’ve all been wondering what happened to you two. It’s not like Teagen to wait out the rain.”

When Jessie passed, Sage whispered, “I didn’t know you were our houseguest, but I couldn’t be happier. It will be wonderful to get to know someone I already admire.”

“I feel the same.” Jessie placed the box on the mud room table and headed back for another, but Sage stopped her. “Oh, no. You stay here and get cleaned up. I’ll help Teagen bring in the supplies.” When Jessie hesitated, she added, “You’ve got three girls in the kitchen dying to see you.”

Teagen smiled at the gentle way his sister had manipulated Jessie. He set his boxes down and hugged Sage. “Glad you’re back,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay in Austin long. It’s too much of a cage for you.”

She knocked his hat off and laughed. “I had to come back. You’ve gotten the place in all kinds of trouble since I left.”

“Martha told you about the threats.”

Sage nodded. “And about the widow. You were right to bring her here. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to travel across the country with three little ones.”

“She’s braver than she knows,” Teagen agreed.

“Is that a compliment coming from you, big brother?”

He frowned. “No, it’s a fact.”

“Now that sounds more like Teagen.” She tugged him toward the kitchen. “Come on in. Martha made an early supper, and I invited a guest.”

“Not that preacher?” Teagen could barely stomach the dude. While two men lay dying in the hotel, he complained to everyone who would listen about his head wound that was no more than a scratch.

“No, not the preacher, but that might be a great idea. He and his mother were very pleasant before the shooting started.” She laughed. “You should have seen them when I pulled my guns from beneath my skirt. I thought his mother would faint. She was more upset about seeing my underskirts than about the shooting. When I started firing, she screamed after each round like some kind of crazy echo in the coach. Now, I’ll be lucky if they speak to me again.”

Teagen followed her though the kitchen door. “If not the preacher, then who?”

A man in black stood a few feet into the room, his gun still strapped on his leg. “Me,” Drummond Roak said with a silly smile on his face. He didn’t even have the sense to act like he wasn’t eavesdropping.

Teagen felt his fist balling up, but the noise of laughing little girls warned him that this was not the time or the place to be rid of the bothersome Roak. “Fine,” he managed to say. “Have a seat.”

Roak straddled a chair and looked at all the food Martha had spread on the table. The girls were in their chairs, Bethie tied up with apron strings as usual. Teagen guessed Jessie had already hugged her daughters and disappeared to clean up.

Everyone but Teagen seemed to talk at once. Sage told them of her trip to Austin and managed to leave out the problem on the way home until after the girls had vanished to look for a missing cat that had accidentally been left in the house.

Then she leaned forward and told every detail. Roak listened without comment. Teagen asked questions, then lectured her on being better armed next time.

“If I carried any more, my guns would outweigh me.”

“One more wouldn’t have hurt,” Teagen snapped.

“How was I to know the two people with me were traveling unarmed? Paul even told me he’s never carried. Imagine that.”

“Paul? Who’s Paul?” Roak asked between bites.

“The preacher,” Teagen answered before Sage could.

“Yes, the preacher.” Sage turned to Roak. “The one who I’m planning to invite to dinner as soon as he and his mother settle in.”

Both men said
no
at the same time, then stared at one another as if they couldn’t believe they agreed on something.

Sage gave them no time to add their opinions. “He’s a good man, and I’m finished with men who wear guns. I’m thinking my next beau should be a preacher man. He’s not that bad-looking, and his mother says they’re from ‘good’ people back East.”

“He’s not for you,” Roak grumbled.

Teagen frowned. He agreed with the boy again. Something must be wrong.

Sage stretched across the table until her nose almost touched Drummond’s. “How would you know? I happen to be looking for a man of peace.”

Roak shook his head. “If you hadn’t been armed this morning, you all would be dead, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Those good people would be starting to smell about now.”

“Maybe. But I’ll not bury another man I love. Paul’s the kind of man a girl can grow old with.”

“He’s not for you,” Roak said between closed teeth.

“And you know who is?”

“Me.” Roak stood. “I’m the right man for you.”

Teagen shoved his chair back, feeling the tension between his shoulders relax. Finally the boy said something he disagreed with. The world was back to normal. Before Roak or Sage could say a word, Teagen offered his hand to Drummond Roak. “Thank you for seeing her home. Stop by again sometime.”