Adrienne deWolfe (10 page)

"Merrilee's parents were killed by white men when she was four," she said, struggling to keep her tone matter-of-fact. "She remembers little of the incident, other than that she was thrown against some rocks and left for dead."

Wes stiffened visibly. She could have sworn he grew taller by an inch.

"And her leg?"

Rorie glanced after Merrilee, her heart aching for the child. "It was injured in her fall. Fortunately, a traveling preacher and his wife happened across the campsite and found Merrilee before the coyotes did. They did what they could, but they were no doctors. By the time they brought her to Jarrod, the bone had set and there was little he could do."

"Jarrod?"

"Yes," she said coolly, her guard on the rise again. "My husband."

Those keen, searching eyes at last focused on her, and Rorie fidgeted, although she couldn't say why.

"So your husband was a doctor, eh?"

"He still is."

Surprise registered on his features. "Was Jarrod the same sawbones who treated Boudreau's gunshot wound?"

Rorie studied him narrowly, but she saw no reason not to answer. "No, Jarrod was long gone by then."

"I see."

She bristled at the speculation in his soft voice. "And now, Mr. Rawlins—"

"It's Wes, remember?" The mischievous light returned to his eyes. "At least, it was this morning."

An acute twinge of embarrassment pierced her chest. "Yes, well, I believe you have a barn roof to repair."

His grin was slow and lazy and filled with a heart-tripping warmth. "And a fence, and a swing, and maybe even a toy and a shoe."

She blinked, uncertain how to respond to his offer. She would have liked to say that Shae would fix the children's things, but ever since Gator's murder, Shae had been devoting his spare time to guns, which worried her immensely.

She needn't share with Wes her fear that Shae was obsessed with vengeance, she told herself. Nodding, she turned to hurry away.

"Miss Rorie?"

She hesitated, surprised to hear her childhood nickname. No one ever called her that anymore, although she remembered the last time clearly. It had been her fourteenth birthday, and her mother had whispered her name as she'd kissed her cheek. The next day, Mama had died, and Papa had relegated her to a nanny. Rorie had seen little of him after that, except, of course, when he'd needed an accomplished hostess for his political dinners.

Uncertainly, she glanced over her shoulder at Wes. "Yes?"

"He was loco, you know."

His voice was just gentle enough, just compassionate enough, to make her turn back around.

"Who?"

"This Jarrod feller. For letting you go, I mean."

Her throat tightened. For a moment, it was all she could do not to give in to tears. She knew Wes Rawlins had a gift for flattery, yet the sincerity in his manner was hard to discount. Maybe it was because she wanted so desperately to believe in that particular truth.

"Thank you. Wes."

He smiled again, looking pleased by her concession. Tipping his hat, he turned and strolled toward the barn.

It might have been the perfect reconciliation, except for one thing. He hooked his thumbs over his gun belt, and Rorie was reminded once again that her handyman was something more than he professed to be.

Chapter 5

Sometimes Wes amazed himself. The damnedest things could come out of his mouth.

Take, for instance, the wisecrack he'd made the day before when he'd said Jarrod Sinclair was loco. Wes didn't know where the hell
that
had come from, but after blurting it out to salve Rorie's feelings, he'd realized he'd meant it. Every word. Just like he'd meant his compliment, when he'd told her she had pretty hair.

Usually he flattered sweethearts, not murder suspects, and the lawman in him cautioned the flirt that he was taking too much pleasure out of this investigation. The last thing he needed, or wanted, was to feel sympathy for a woman he might have to arrest.

Although the darker side of a female's nature had always appealed to Wes, he wasn't going to risk his badge or his personal freedom over a dalliance with Rorie—even if he did find evidence to clear her name.

Wes had always been careful to keep his sights off the marrying kind. A man could do a lot worse than a bawdily affectionate calico queen, and besides, Wes could always count on a whore not to complicate his life with expectations. Not that getting hitched was bad, he mused. He'd seen the good it had done Cord.

But Cord had married Fancy, and Fancy was one in a million. There wasn't a woman alive who could compare with her, although there were times when he rode up to a new cathouse filled with anticipation, hoping that this was the place where he'd find her: that courageous, passionate, darkly sweet angel who'd steal his heart from Fancy.

He smiled mockingly at himself. Of course, that never happened.

Maybe it was just as well. He didn't believe in dumping a new bride on his doorstep so he could ride off to collar renegades. When the time came for him to put down roots—and that was still a long spell off—he would be plenty sure he could give up outlaw-busting without regrets. No wife of his was going to walk the floor, worrying he was dead. He'd learned the hard way how much pain a man's absence could cause when he'd watched Fancy stare after Cord's traildust.

The old anguish threatened, and Wes clenched his teeth. Deliberately, and with a good deal of practice, he shoved the feelings back down.

He loved his brother. The man could be overbearing and stubborn at times, but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was that Wes had let his feelings for Fancy get the better of him. And he'd hurt Cord. Never, ever could he go home and face his brother again.

Wes drew a shuddering breath. It was better not to think about home. It was better to get on with his investigation.

Since Shae had dragged him off the previous evening to fell an oak for lumber, Wes had missed the family dinner. With Ginevee scrubbing pans at one end of the house, and Aurora tutoring Topher at the other, Wes had also missed an opportunity to snoop through drawers and cabinets.

But today was a new day. The sun, which had climbed to its zenith, was hotter than the devil's branding iron. Rorie had ended class early so the children could go to the fishing hole at Ramble Creek. Only Merrilee remained behind, apparently content to pick wildflowers, one of which she'd shyly presented to him.

Since Rorie and Ginevee were busy with laundry, and Shae was fixing a dining room chair in the toolshed, Wes figured he'd have a good ten minutes to prowl the house undisturbed.

Whistling with practiced nonchalance as he climbed down from the barn roof, he strolled toward the privy, let the door bang loudly, then circled back through the trees to slink inside the kitchen door. All this subterfuge was child's play to a man who delighted in tracking and stalking.

Since he'd come looking for clues, preferably written ones that might indicate discord between Gator, Shae, and Rorie, Wes stopped first in the stretch of floor space that served as sitting room, dining room, and schoolhouse. He could tell Rorie conducted her lessons there because of the slates stacked neatly on a pinewood sideboard.

A small desk stood wedged in one corner, and he started his search there, hoping to find a ledger that might indicate Gator's worth and thereby point toward a motive for Shae and Rorie to kill him. Pulling open drawers, Wes rummaged among polished river stones, broken chess pieces, a bag of marbles, a limbless doll, and a variety of other junk that Rorie must have confiscated from inattentive students.

He couldn't help but be tickled when he found several marked playing cards and a piece of butcher paper on which Topher had scrawled, "cheating is wrong," about twenty times above his signature.

Opening the next drawer, Wes leafed through the paper cutouts, valentines, and dried flowers that had been carefully preserved between the tattered pages of an old reader. He suspected these items were Rorie's treasures, gifts that she had received from the children. It touched him in an unexpected way to see the value she placed on things of no monetary worth.

In the next instant, he was making a face at himself.
Yep.
My brain is most definitely turning to mush.

The remaining two drawers revealed little more than school supplies, so he turned his attention to the sideboard, with all its drawers and doors. He knew a grim sense of satisfaction when he found it was locked.

Apparently Rorie kept something in there that she valued even more than handmade gifts.

Removing his hat, he fished from the inner lining the widdy that he'd confiscated from a weasel-eyed stagecoach driver, who'd tried to jimmy a passenger's trunk. Wes had a whole collection of ring shiners, knuckle dusters, shaved dice, counterfeit money, and other outlaw memorabilia back home in a box. He kept the widdy with him, though, because it was useful in detective work. He wasn't any Pinkerton, but he'd been known to turn up a fair share of verdict-clinching evidence with helpful gadgets like widdies.

Setting his hat back on his head, he went to work, jiggling the old, stubborn lock with his thief's pick. He'd no sooner swung open the door, when a bobbing, pig-tailed shadow upon the sideboard caught his eye.

"Hello, Mr. Wes."

He didn't know what jumped harder, him or his heart. Turning, he found Merrilee standing in the open doorway holding a basket of flowers at least half her size.

"Hello, Merrilee."

He tried to smile, but it was hard to appear innocent when facing those big, mahogany eyes.

"What are you doing in Miss Rorie's private cabinet?"

"Well, I..." He glanced down, straining to come up with a plausible lie, and noticed the wilted flower twined around his belt loop. Remembering the annoying honeybee he'd had to squash earlier, he looked back at Merrilee. "I, er, was looking for medicine."

Merrilee's eyes grew even bigger, if that was possible. "Medicine? Are you sick?"

With a sleight of hand that a cardsharp would have envied, he slipped the widdy into his back pocket. "Not as sick as that honeybee is."

This humor was clearly lost on Merrilee. She frowned. "What's wrong with the honeybee?"

His smile was genuine this time as he struggled not to laugh. "That old bee had a run-in with my belly, and since I don't much like to be stung—"

Merrilee's gasp cut him off, and she dropped her basket, spilling flowers all over her moccasins.
"Bee sting?"

She was backing for the door, and Wes saw instantly that he'd made a mistake;.

"It wasn't a very big bee sting—"

"I'll get Miss Rorie."

"Merrilee, wait!"

But she was already hurrying down the hall, her pigtails bouncing behind her.

Wes muttered an oath. God love the child, she meant well, but he was going to have a helluva time explaining to Rorie how he'd opened her locked cabinet, not to mention why he was snooping in the first place. He didn't think she'd believe the medicine story, and that meant he would have to come up with some other whopper. Unless...

He smiled wickedly to himself.

Unless he found some way to distract her.

* * *

"Miss Rorie!"

Rorie started to hear Merrilee—shy, respectful Merrilee—call her by her childhood nickname. She supposed it was inevitable, though. The previous night during prayers, Topher had slyly tested the waters in front of the other children by asking God to bless "Miss Rorie."

That morning, she'd learned Topher's influence had spread to Po, when the toddler presented her with the biggest, ugliest toad she'd ever seen in her life and crowed, "Lookie, lookie! I named him Miss Wor-wee!"

Somehow, she'd managed to greet her new namesake with decorum.

In truth, Rorie didn't mind the orphans using her childhood name, since she'd often wished Jarrod would do the same as proof of his affection for her.

What Rorie did mind was the implication behind Wes's use of the name. She had no intention of encouraging a greater familiarity with her hired hand, nor did she want her children to. Unfortunately, the children had spent all of their play time the day before shadowing Wes. And Wes had spent his work time charming, entertaining, and
educating
them, God forbid.