“I wanted to see how long it would take old Horace here to smell the chicken and come running.” David stopped trying to unbutton her shoes and moved his boots aside. Reaching for her plate, he filled it with fried chicken and potato salad. He handed it to Tessa, then filled his own.
Tessa watched his long fingers as he patiently tore pieces of chicken into tiny, cat-sized pieces for Greeley.
“No!” Tessa shrieked when David placed the chicken on the quilt. She scrambled to her feet, hurried to the cupboard, and returned with a saucer. Shooing the cat away, Tessa scooped up the meat and arranged it on the saucer. Greeley protested, weaving his way between Tessa and the dish, but she wasn’t putting up with his nonsense. She picked him up and hugged him, then set him down beside his saucer. “If we’d known you were coming,” she told the orange tom, “we’d have set a place for you.”
“Now you see why I eat in restaurants.” David chuckled. “He gets more of my food than I do.”
“He’s a growing boy,” Tessa commented, patting the cat affectionately.
“I thought you didn’t like mangy cats,” David teased.
“I don’t,” Tessa smiled, her eyes sparkling. “But this cat is far from mangy. He has a way of growing on you.”
“And his owner?” David prompted.
“Tolerable.” Tessa washed her hands in the warm water.
“Just tolerable?” David handed her a glass of wine, then returned his attention to her shoes, but he wasn’t having much success removing them.
“Very tolerable.” Tessa took the glass, then stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Buttonhook,” she explained. “This is a picnic. I want to wiggle my toes and feel the grass under my feet before it’s over.” She went to her bedroom and returned with the buttonhook for her shoes. She handed it over to him.
“Thanks,” David said, wielding the buttonhook effectively. He loosened her shoes, then slipped them off and placed them next to his boots. Finished, he dipped his fingers in the finger bowl, dried them on a napkin, and reached for more chicken.
Tessa stretched out on the quilt, propping herself up on her elbow and resting her head against the palm of her hand. She nudged David’s feet with one of hers. “Move over,” she ordered. “I want my toes to be toasty, too.” Scooting closer to the stove, she placed her stocking-covered feet over his, seeking the heat. “Oh, dear…” Tessa giggled.
“What is it?”
“Now I can’t reach my plate.”
“Not to worry.” David grinned. “I’ll feed you.” He picked up a piece of white meat and tore it into strips. “Open up,” he directed, tantalizing her with the delectable piece of chicken.
She did.
David popped a strip of chicken into her mouth. He realized his error when Tessa’s tongue touched the tips of his fingers. He groaned, shifting his position on the quilt to hide his sudden arousal. He took a swallow of the white wine. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
Tessa frowned, disappointed. “I think it’s a lovely way to eat supper.” She smiled up at David. “I’ve never been on a picnic before.”
David drained his glass. “Then we should do it more often.” He wanted to see her smile again. He wanted to taste her again, to drink the wine from her lips. He raised his wineglass, but she hadn’t touched hers. “Don’t you like the wine?”
“I’ve never had wine before.” She sniffed her glass and wrinkled her nose.
David chuckled. “Don’t smell it. Taste it.”
Tessa took a hesitant sip. She liked the tart sensation on her tongue. She smiled. “It’s good.”
He drained his glass, then refilled it.
Horace Greeley finished his meal then moved over to David’s lap.
Tessa laughed as the greedy cat butted at David’s hand trying to intercept the food.
“This is not for you, fella.” He tore another piece of chicken off the bone and held it out to her. “This is for the lady.”
She took the food in her fingers and nibbled at it. Greeley hurried over to investigate. David grabbed him.
“Watch it, boy, or you’ll be back on the streets fending for yourself,” he warned the tom.
“Is that where you got him?” Tessa studied the motion of David’s hand as he fingered the cat’s tom ear and massaged the thick orange fur.
“Yep. I found him when he was a kitten.”
‘Tell me,” Tessa urged. She loved the sound of David’s voice, loved the way it rumbled in his chest, not unlike the purring of the cat. “Tell me how you found him and how he got his name.” She reached for her plate. David passed it to her. “You talk. I’ll feed myself. I’m hungry.”
“I found him in Washington, at the train station,” David remembered. “A group of nasty little boys had sicced their dog on him.” He scratched Greeley’s chin. The cat purred enthusiastically. He stretched out next to David’s body, closing his green eyes until they were mere slits. “He was so tiny and helpless. Just a patch of spitting orange fur hiding beneath the steps of the platform.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran the boys and the dog off, then crawled under the platform to rescue him. I was afraid he’d dart out onto the tracks if I left him there.” David fingered the damaged ear. “The boys had hurt him. Ripped his ear. It was bleeding. I didn’t really think I could save him.” David wanted her to understand. “But I had to try.”
“Do you do that often?” Tessa wanted to know. “Do you make a habit of rescuing creatures in distress?”
“No.”
“Really? I wonder.”
She spoke so softly David looked up to see if he’d heard correctly. She gazed at him, her blue-eyed gaze penetrating his defenses. It was as if she’d looked into his soul. “I’ll bet when you were a little boy you always brought home wounded animals and baby birds.”
“How did you know that?” David challenged.
“It’s obvious,” Tessa pointed out. “First you rescued Greeley. Then me.” Her smile was smug, knowing.
“No,” he said. “Greeley was second.” He inhaled a deep breath. “You were third.”
“Who was first?”
He’d known she would ask. She couldn’t help but ask. But once he’d mentioned it, David had second thoughts about telling her the story.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Tessa told him. She pushed her plate to the side.
“I do.” The moment he said the words, the doubts were gone. He did want to tell her. He needed to tell her. Tessa would understand.
“Her name was Caroline Millen.”
“Oh.” Tessa wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest. “A woman from your past.”
“No.” David shook his head. He nudged her foot with one of his larger ones, then reached out and grasped her hand. He needed to touch her. To hold her. “A girl from my past. Little more than a child, really. She’d just turned sixteen. I found her, too.”
“Where?” Tessa prompted.
“Outside a theater in Washington.” He frowned. “I’d gone backstage to speak to the actors, so I left by the stage door. It was pouring rain,” he remembered. “I stepped out into the alley and saw her sitting on a packing crate in the middle of a thunderstorm, crying. I went over and touched her. When she looked up, I recognized her.” He gave Tessa an ironic smile. “Her father was Senator Warner Millen. I’d been to their house for dinner; we were acquainted socially. I thought highly of him. In fact, I’d been invited to Caroline’s first adult party and had escorted her to dinner.”
Tessa wondered if it had been a thrill for the young girl to be escorted into the dining room by a handsome man like David. She envied the faceless girl back east. Tessa knew what it was like to be held in his arms. She knew how it felt to make love with him, but she wanted more. She wanted to have the right to sit beside him, even dance with him in public, in front of crowds of people.
“Tessa? Would you like some?”
She turned her attention back to David. He had poured more wine into his glass. He held the bottle poised over hers, waiting.
“Yes, thank you.” She lifted her glass. “Go on,” she encouraged when David seemed satisfied to remain quiet. “You were dining with her in Washington.”
“Only once,” David said. “But I recognized her that night at the theater, and she recognized me.” His laugh was harsh. “That was my misfortune.” He paused to take a swallow of wine.
“What happened?” Tessa sipped her wine, waiting none too patiently for him to continue.
“I offered her a ride home in my carriage. She accepted. I took her home. I walked her to the front door, and I never saw her again.”
“That’s it?” Caught up in the story David had made sound like a fairy tale, Tessa was disappointed with the abrupt ending. It was supposed to have a happy ending or a tragic one. All stories did.
“No.” David managed a wry smile. “A month or so later Senator Millen stormed into my town house demanding that I marry his daughter. She was pregnant, and she had told her parents I was the child’s father.”
“But you weren’t.”
“I’d seen the girl only twice—once at her home and once outside the theater. That’s what I told the senator.”
“But he didn’t believe you, did he?” Tessa understood.
“No, he didn’t. Caroline had named me, and the senator was determined I would pay for ruining his daughter.” David put down his wineglass. “I tried to explain that I’d never had intimate relations with her.” He looked at Tessa. She saw the pain in his eyes, the memory of betrayal. “I thought the senator was my friend. I never dreamed… He was willing to accept me as a son-in-law if I married Caroline, but if I didn’t, he said he’d ruin me—destroy my reputation, my career in Washington, everything I’d worked to gain. I couldn’t believe it.”
“You refused to marry her, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. Tessa knew the answer, knew part of the story’s ending.
“Of course I refused. I didn’t love the girl, I didn’t even know her, and I wasn’t about to marry her.” David sounded frustrated. “But sometimes I think things might have turned out better if I had.”
“Don’t think about what might have been,” Tessa told him. “It hurts too much.” And it hurt her too much to hear him doubt himself. To wonder if maybe he should have married Caroline Millen.
“The senator kept his promise to ruin me. All would have been forgiven if I’d agreed to marry Caroline. Until I refused, I was son-in-law material, a fine, upstanding attorney. After I said no, I was the dirty, no-good half-breed who had raped his daughter.” He gripped her hand tighter.
“I’m so sorry.” Tessa drew in a breath at the raw emotion in his voice. She felt his pain. The pain of being accused of a terrible crime and knowing you’re innocent.
“My career in Washington was over.” David drank the last of his wine, then inhaled deeply. “So I packed my clothes and my shingle and came home to Wyoming.” He scratched the top of Greeley’s head. “That’s how this fella got his name. I was a young man going west, just as the real Horace Greeley had suggested. My cat was going with me, so I thought the name Horace Greeley was appropriate.”
“You came to Peaceable?”
“I opened an office in Cheyenne first, but the city’s growing. It’s full of businessmen and politicians who travel to and from Washington. The scandal followed me. Nobody wanted an attorney with a reputation for seducing innocent girls and abandoning them to the mercy of their parents. I stayed a few months, then bought the office here in Peaceable. I wanted to forget. This town needed another attorney. They didn’t care about the mess in Washington.” David moved the cat to one side. He picked up his fork and poked at his food. “So here I am. End of story.”
“What happened to Caroline?”
“She died,” David answered. “She gave birth to a little girl and gave the baby my last name. She died, still protecting her lover’s identity.”
His words were full of bitterness.
“You did care for her,” Tessa told him.
“Care for her?” David repeated. “I didn’t know her. Christ, I can’t even remember what she looked like.”
“But you think about her.”
“Every day of my life,” David admitted. “I think she might still be alive if only I’d tried to help her. She was desperate. Young and pregnant and afraid of her fathers wrath. I should have done more for her. I should have cared enough to marry her, but I didn’t. I believed in love. I didn’t care enough for Caroline to offer her a home and accept her child as my own.” He looked at Tessa. “I didn’t care enough to sacrifice my freedom, and I wasn’t there when her parents turned their backs on her and shipped her off to have the baby all by herself.”
“Why should you have been there?” Tessa asked him. “You weren’t the baby’s father. You were innocent. She lied about you to try to help herself, so she obviously didn’t care about you. Why should it matter so much to you?”
“Because no one should die believing she’s been forsaken,” David said fiercely. “I saw too much of that on the battlefield.” He turned to Tessa. “Don’t you see? She trusted me to do the right thing.”
“She used you,” Tessa corrected, “hoping you’d feel responsible. There’s a difference.”
“It doesn’t matter,” David said. “It doesn’t change anything. Caroline Millen is dead. Senator and Mrs. Millen are alone. And somewhere in an orphanage back east, a little girl with my last name feels she’s been abandoned.”
“So?” Tessa asked him, ignoring his look of outrage at her seeming heartlessness.
“What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“If you feel that way, what are you going to do about it?” Tessa demanded.
“What can I do about it?” David asked. “I’m not the baby’s father.”
“But you want her.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then find her,” Tessa ordered. “Bring her home.”
“I can’t take care of her by myself,” David admitted. “I don’t know anything about babies or little girls. And do you really think I could find a woman to take both of us on, a half-breed Indian and an orphan?”
“Why not?” Tessa told him, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “You did it. You were willing to take on a redheaded Irish girl and an orphan boy when no one else in town cared.” She reached out and placed her hand against David’s cheek. “I’d take her,” she told David. “I’d love her, and I’d never let her go.”
David looked down and met Tessa’s earnest blue-eyed gaze. He moved his face against her hand, then pressed his lips against her palm. Looking at Tessa, he knew he felt the same way. He didn’t intend to let her go. Or Coalie, or Lily Catherine, either. He wanted them all.
He hoped he could find a way to win them.
Chapter Eighteen
“It’s time.” Lee rapped on the glass pane in the back door after midnight four nights later.
David sat at his desk completely dressed, overcoat and all, waiting. As he’d waited every night since their talk at the Satin Slipper. He heard the knock, picked up his gloves and boots, and tiptoed to the back door. He slipped outside and sat down on the wooden step to pull on his boots. “I’m ready,” he said to Lee when he finished.
“Let’s go.”
David turned to lock the back door, then pulled on his gloves. Tessa lay inside sleeping. He hated leaving her alone, unprotected, but he had no choice. He had to see for himself what Lee was investigating. David followed Lee down the dark alley where two horses waited.
“How far is it?” David climbed atop his mount.
“A couple of miles outside of town,” Lee replied. “I’ve been watching the place for about a week now.” He looked at David, guessing his feelings. “You should be back well before daybreak. You won’t have to leave Tessa alone too long.”
They rode in silence until they reached Lee’s obs
ervation point. Lee hobbled the horses before leading the way. David fell into step behind him, crouching low to avoid detection. The chill air made breathing difficult, talking more so. They reached the crude shelter and crept inside, waiting.
David sat on the frozen ground and wrapped his arms around his knees, pulling his long legs up against his chest for warmth. He flipped the collar of his coat up around his ears and covered his nose and mouth with his dark wool scarf. Lee followed suit.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Lee whispered. “It’s too cold for them to want to linger outside. The mail train was robbed yesterday outside Laramie. They’ll come here to divide the cash.”
“How much did they get?” David asked.
“About six thousand dollars.”
Less than an hour later Lee’s prediction came true. David watched as three men rode up to an abandoned shack, dismounted, and went inside. All three carried bulging saddlebags.
“According to Eamon Roarke, Arnie Mason led the ring. He robbed several mail and payroll trains, but the ring is also into anything else that’s profitable. They’ve run stolen cattle through here. Also guns and illegal liquor.”
“Liquor.” David breathed the word. “Where do they take it? To the reservations?”
“You’ve got it. They’d have been pretty secure if they hadn’t decided to dabble in smuggling liquor,” Lee answered. “That’s what tipped Eamon off.”
“Of course.” David whistled low. “The best place to hide large amounts of stolen cash and large quantities of liquor is in plain sight. A saloon.”
“And not just any saloon,” Lee agreed, “but the largest, most profitable one in town.”
“The Satin Slipper.” David placed his gloved hands over his nose and mouth, blowing into them to warm his face.
“Why do you think I’ve been tending bar there?” Lee asked. “I worked at several others in town asking questions before I applied at the Satin Slipper. Myra’s clever.” Lee had to smile in admiration. “She’s the brains behind the operation. I’ve only caught a glimpse at the books, but she’s hiding the money there somewhere. Circulating small amounts at a time through the saloon.”