A Haunted Twist of Fate (9 page)

“Yes, it is. We’ll walk together.”

She relocked the saloon door and they started down
the sidewalk. “What about your truck?” She glanced back to see it was parked at
the curb.

“I’ll pick it up later.”

He took her hand again and held it as they strolled.
It was warm and he held tight, like he didn’t want to let go. Despite what
she’d told herself about not getting involved, his strong hand holding hers was
comforting.  Her stomach fluttered as if she were a schoolgirl with a crush.

When they entered his office, he shut the door
behind them and pulled down the shade on the door. Before she realized what was
happening, he’d swept her off her feet and into his arms and carried her to his
desk, where he sat her down on top.

“What on earth are you doing?” she light-heartedly
cried.

“You’ll find out in about two seconds.”

Fourteen

Colt held onto her shoulders to keep her from
tipping back.  He leaned in and planted a soft kiss on her lips. There was no
way he was not going to take advantage of an empty office.

“You taste good,” he said.

“You taste like maple syrup.”

Licking his lips, he grinned.  “Blueberry pancakes.”

“Do you eat pancakes every morning?”

“Nearly.”

He kissed her again, parting her moist lips with his
tongue, and began to feel the swell of arousal when she responded with her own
tongue. It was she who stopped and shot a glance over his shoulder.

“Someone could walk in any minute.”  She thrust her
hand into his chest.

“That’s why I pulled the shade and locked the door. To
keep the pests out.”

“Don’t you have a secretary?”

“Yeah. She’s off this morning. Doctor’s
appointment.”  He leaned in again, but she wiggled around him and hopped off
the desktop.

“I need to leave.”

He groaned with disappointment.

“I have more research to do,” she said, smoothing
her hair with a hand. Her mouth had become a thin line, and her brows knitted
together.

“I’m sorry, Shay. I’m coming on too strong again.”

Her half-hearted smile spoke of uncertainty, while
her lips and tongue had been very decisive. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
she said.

Ah. Sarcasm. “I think you liked it as much as I
did,” he challenged.

She sighed. “I never said I didn’t like it. I said I
have to go.” She gently pushed by him.

The woman was flustered, which meant she was
definitely interested. That he could live with. “I’d like to invite you over to
my house tonight. We can have supper together. Do you have any plans?”

With her hand on the doorknob, her hesitancy lasted
several seconds. “No.”

“Then it’s a date?”

She made him suffer in silence for a few seconds more
before craning her neck around. “Supper at your house is not a date. It’s
supper.  We both have to eat, I suppose.”

“Whatever you say.”

As he wrote out directions to his residence, she
asked, “Are there going to be any surprises in store for me, like there were
last night? Will there be more members of your family jumping out of the
closets?”

He handed her the paper with the address on it and
shook his head. “No more ambushes. It’ll just be you and me this evening. I
promise.”

“Okay.”

When she smiled, he couldn’t help but imagine the
possibilities.

“What time should I be there?” She rattled the doorknob
when it didn’t open.

“It’s locked, remember?” He stepped forward and
flipped the lock. “How about six?”

“Six it is. See you then.”

He tugged on the bottom of the shade, letting it
snap to the top of the window. Sunlight poured onto the sidewalk where he
followed her outside.  “Do you like Italian?” He reached for her hand, but
missed it when she moved it on purpose.

Her eyebrow arched, as if she were thinking
shame
on you
.  “It’s one of my favorites.”

“Italian it’ll be then.”

Their gazes locked, and then she waved goodbye
without another word.

He took a stance in the middle of the sidewalk and
watched her move down the block. She was petite, with curves in all the right
places. Her auburn hair was shiny and soft. Her hazel eyes sparkled when she
smiled, and she had the face of an angel.  Physically, Shay was everything he
longed for in a woman. Though the sexual attraction hit a 10.0 on the Richter
scale, he was beginning to realize there was more to her than physical appeal.
There was no denying the emotional connection he felt with her. He didn’t
understand it, or how it had happened, but he believed they’d been destined to
meet. Despite what he’d told her about not wanting to get involved in a
relationship, he hadn’t felt this happy in years. For the first time in a long
time, he could almost see himself dating a woman more than a couple of times.
Maybe even settling down again.

How would he be able to accomplish anything the rest
of the day, when all he’d be thinking about was seeing her tonight?  With Shay
on his mind, he stepped back into his office and picked up the desk phone to
check his messages. He’d just eaten breakfast, but food had nothing to do with
the insatiable hunger stirring in his gut.

* * * * *

“You’re back.” Doris greeted Shay when she walked
in. “Is everything all right at home?”

She didn’t want to explain about the writing on the
window. Doris probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. For now, it would be her and
Colt’s secret. “Yes. Everything’s fine,” she answered, suddenly remembering to
turn off her cell phone.

Doris pulled the huge binder and books out from
under the reception countertop. “Here you go.”

“Thanks. I’ll take these and get back to work.”

“Let me know if you need me to look up anything
else,” Doris called to her back.

Settling in and opening the second book, Shay
skimmed the Table of Contents. A chapter titled
Census
caught her eye.
When she flipped to that section, she was pleasantly surprised to find town residents
for the years 1885-1890 listed in columns. It only took a few moments to go
down the row of last names beginning with “A” since it was alphabetical. There
was Frank Averill’s grandfather’s name and occupation included for the year
1885.

Dean Henry Averill. Saloon Owner.
The
name
Cynthia Sarah Averill
was located above Dean’s name, with
occupation listed as
Wife
. No other Averills were listed. Shay wondered
about the name of the female apparition. She’d asked her name that night, but
had received no response.

This book included a wealth of photographs from the
early days. There were some photos of people, but most of the pictures were of
buildings in chronological order as the town sprang up. Again, she was pleased
to find some more pictures of the Buckhorn, showing both the inside and outside
of the building. One shot was of the bartender standing in front of the gilded
mirror pouring drinks for a row of customers.

Shay pulled the book closer. This picture was clear.
The bartender looked straight at the camera and smiled. His haircut was short
and parted on the side.  He had a bushy moustache and wore a dark vest over a
long-sleeved shirt and an apron at his waist. Could this be Dean Averill? Chances
were the owner had also tended his own bar. She stared at the photo for a
couple of minutes questioning whether his supernatural footsteps had been some
she’d heard walking the halls of the saloon at night.

An hour had passed by the time she finished going
through the book looking at all the photos. Disappointingly, none were of the
young blonde girl. Needing a break, Shay stood up and stretched and then took
the book to the front to ask Doris if she could make a copy of the snapshot of
the bartender. She wanted to have it, if and when she got to visit Frank
Averill.

Returning to the table, she opened the binder and
began the daunting task of reading through newspaper articles from the local
paper,
The Pioneer
. Not sure how to go about this search, she started
with the March 1885 papers, since that was when the Buckhorn had opened. She
would search for headlines that mentioned the business and any of its patrons
or employees, especially the saloon girls.

After two hours of reading about unusual deaths, the
amount of snow that fell on a particular day, the election of the sheriff (John
Manning, with his brother Thomas and cousin Pat acting as deputies), reports of
Indian attacks, a recent trip to Deadwood by a Mrs. Antoinette Ogden, and a
variety of other interesting stories about the town and its former inhabitants,
Shay had not found anything she didn’t already know about the Buckhorn.

Weary and cross-eyed, she marked the spot where she
left off and closed the binder, returning it to Doris in the front.

“I’ll keep it here under the counter until next
time,” Doris pleasantly told her.

Having worked through lunch, Shay’s stomach grumbled
in hunger, so she said goodbye and started the short trek home.

Fifteen

After Colt finished showing several homes to the
couple relocating from Ohio, and agreed to show them a few more tomorrow, he
drove to Frank Averill’s house. Last time he’d seen him, Frank had looked to be
at death’s door, but Colt had seen the man go through a spell like this before
and come out fresh as a rose on the other end of it.

The nurse swung open the door on the first knock. “Where
the hell have you been the past couple of days?” She didn’t bother to lower her
voice. “He’s been asking for you.”

Opal was a heavyset woman with a no-nonsense
attitude and either a bosom too large for her nurse’s uniform, or a uniform too
small for her bosom. Colt wasn’t sure which. Her hair was as short as a man’s,
and she cussed like a sailor. She was a tough bird, but Frank seemed to like
her.

“Nice to see you, too, Opal.”  Colt strode down the
hallway toward the bedroom, but was brought to a standstill when Opal caught up
and stuck her arm out and karate chopped him in the stomach.

“Watch it, Opal.”  He flinched. “Your arm’s as thick
as a slab of beef and twice as dangerous.” He’d learned through trial and error
that the best way to communicate with her was the way
she
communicated.

Opal smiled, flashing him canine teeth that looked
as razor sharp as a vampire’s. “Sorry, Colton. Don’t know my own strength.”

“Don’t call me that,” he warned good-naturedly. “I
haven’t been called Colton since I sat in the principal’s office in high
school.”

She grinned. “I like to rile you up. It makes my
day. You need to come around more often.”

“I’ll see what I can do to accommodate you from now
on. Now tell me why Frank’s been asking for me. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dying, fool.”

Colt rolled his eyes. “I mean, specifically, today.
Is he any worse than last time I was here?”

“Not worse. About the same. But he’s been
hallucinating some, calling out a lot of names. Yours, mostly.”

He sighed. “You have my cell phone number, Opal. If
he wanted to see me, you should have called. I told you to call anytime day or
night if he needs me.”

She shrugged. “I figured you’d be by sooner or
later.”

He stepped around her, which was not easy to do in
the narrow hall, and entered Frank’s bedroom. Frank lay in his hospital bed,
propped up on some pillows, and appeared to be asleep. Colt waited beside the
bed, staring into Frank’s ashen face, noting the once strong body that was now
skeletal, and remembering the fun times he’d spent with his granddaddy and
Frank as a boy growing up. They’d taken him hunting, fishing, on excursions to
Deadwood, and he’d even drunk his first beer with them on a camping trip.

His mental wanderings were interrupted when Opal
entered the room and thudded to the other side of the bed. She jiggled Frank’s
arm to wake him.

“You don’t have to do that,” Colt whispered.  He
frowned. “I can see he needs his rest.”

“He’ll get all the rest he needs when he’s six feet
under.”

“Good Lord, Opal, but you’re over the top at times. For
the life of me, I can’t figure out how you manage to land any nursing jobs at
all with that smart mouth of yours.”

She grinned again. “A lot of people like my outgoing
personality,
Colton
. But mostly, I
land
jobs, as you call it,
because I’m dedicated to my patients,
and
I’m the best damned nurse in
all of South Dakota.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Colt? Is that you?”  Frank stirred and opened his
eyes, but seemed to have trouble focusing. Colt clamped a gentle hand on his
arm.