Cowboy Come Home (30 page)

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Authors: Janette Kenny

BOOK: Cowboy Come Home
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He’d find out damn soon, he thought, as he cut down the street between Hein’s Grocery and Doc Franklin’s house.
Mrs. Gant’s boardinghouse sat the next street over, but the elevation made the walk seem farther. He bounded up the steps then paused at the door to steady his breath.
The climb was nothing, but the excitement pounding inside him made it hard to draw a decent breath. He blew out the air trapped in his chest, inhaled deeply, and stepped inside.
Mrs. Gant was in the parlor, serving tea to a lady seated on the stiff Victorian sofa. Neither seemed to have heard him come in.
That was fine by him, for it gave him time to study his sister. Her golden hair had darkened to a rich honey. Her features were still delicate and refined, but she didn’t resemble their mother or father.
She wasn’t a cute little pixie anymore. Nope, she’d grown into a beautiful woman with all the curves in all the right places. But it was the odd combination of grief and fear in her eyes that gave him pause.
“I am so sorry to be the one to tell you that Lester has passed over,” Mrs. Gant said, verifying what Dade suspected had caused his sister’s distress. “I didn’t know where you’d gone, but when you didn’t come back last fall like you said you would, I thought maybe you’d heard.”
“No, I had no idea,” Daisy said. “What happened?”
“It was just awful,” Mrs. Gant said. “This ruffian came to town, intent on robbing the bank. Lester was there, and before he could turn and confront this no-account, the ruffian shot him dead.”
Daisy pressed a hand to her mouth, clearly horrified by the news. Mrs. Gant’s version was close enough to the truth that Dade didn’t see the need to comment.
“I tell you truly,” Mrs. Gant said, “I shudder to think what would’ve happened if Dade Logan hadn’t stepped in like he did and ended the robber’s reign of terror on our town. No telling who else would’ve been gunned down if not for your brother’s courage.”
Dade winced. The townsfolk had taken to embellishing the events of that day to the point Dade cringed every time he heard it. Now was surely no exception, for Daisy’s face had leached of color at the mention of his name.
“W-what?” Daisy said in a voice that was way too high.
“Yes, indeed, your brother is a hero.” Mrs. Gant launched into telling Daisy the details.
This surely wasn’t the reunion he’d had in mind. A sound of disgust must’ve slipped from him for Mrs. Gant glanced his way and smiled.
Daisy, on the other hand, looked ready to bolt as her head snapped up and her gaze clashed with his. Instead of recognition lighting her eyes, they narrowed with suspicion and something bordering on dread.
Mrs. Gant patted Daisy’s hand. “It’ll be all right now, dear. You have family to help you through this difficult time.”
Daisy shook her head. “No! I’m an orphan.”
Dade scrubbed a hand across his nape, frustrated and more than a mite worried about his sister’s increased distress. He wasn’t surprised that Daisy hadn’t recognized him after twenty years, but forgetting that he existed signaled something else entirely.
“You saying you don’t remember me?” Dade asked.
She shook her head, her gaze focusing on his tin star before lifting to his face. He hadn’t thought she could get any paler but he’d been wrong.
“Don’t you remember that Pa left us at the Guardian Angel’s Orphan Asylum?”
She shook her head and stared at him with troubled eyes.
“You recall being in the orphanage?” he asked.
She frowned. “Some. Mostly I was scared.”
So was Dade, but it did him no good then or now to admit it. How could her memory be that bad?
She’d cried and screamed for Dade after their pa had dumped them there, and put up more of a ruckus when they’d been separated—boys in one wing of the drafty old building and girls in the other.
They’d seen each other precious little after that, but she hadn’t forgotten him then. She’d pitched a fit when they took her away on the orphan train, to the point that they’d had to restrain him from going after her.
As the wagon pulled away, he’d vowed he’d find her and keep them together as family. But he hadn’t been able to keep his promise.
“Reid, Trey, and I tried to find you,” he said, but though they’d run away from the orphanage a few months later, they’d failed to pick up the trail of the orphan train that Daisy had taken west.
He’d failed his sister.
“Reid and Trey. Are they family?”
“They’re as close as brothers to me.” Or were. “But they aren’t blood kin like we are.”
Daisy didn’t look the least bit relieved. In fact, she acted more leery than before as she turned to Mrs. Gant.
“Is he really my brother?” she asked the older woman.
Her trust in a stranger was a gut punch to Dade. It didn’t ease his mind none that Mrs. Gant was giving him a long assessing look either. He knew trouble was coming before she voiced an opinion, which the lady always had on everything.
“Well, he says he is. But all we have is his word.” Mrs. Gant pinned him with a squinty stare. “You have any kin in these parts?”
He hoped to hell not. The last thing he needed was for his outlaw pa and uncles to show their faces. He’d be lucky to get out of town without getting shot.
“No kin left but me and Daisy,” he said, and he reasoned that could be true. Any day he expected to get word that his old man and renegade uncles had been gunned down.
He swore under his breath, damning his pa again for abandoning his family. Daisy had only been four years old when they’d arrived at the Guardian Angel’s Orphan Asylum. She’d just turned five when she’d been put on the orphan train.
“Forgive me for being skeptical.” Daisy swallowed hard and looked up at him. “But I was told that I had no family.”
“That’s a lie,” Dade said. “You’ve got me.”
Daisy grimaced and seemed not the least bit repentant about her aversion to him. “If you’re telling the truth.”
Dade scrubbed a hand over his mouth to smother a curse that ached to burst free. What the hell could he do to convince his sister of the truth?
“Well, this is quite an interesting turn of events,” Mrs. Gant said. “You don’t favor each other at all. Pity you don’t have a photograph of when you were children. We’d likely be able to put all doubts to rest then.”
Truer words were never spoken. “There was one,” he said, barely recalling the day it’d been taken but knowing it had happened all the same. “Ma kept it in her locket.”
Daisy was clearly uncomfortable with his recollections for her cheeks turned pink, and she began fidgeting with something at her throat. He gave a passing glance at the blue cameo broach pinned to her bodice, then just gaped at the locket.
“That’s it, handed down to her by her ma.” He could’ve sworn pure panic flared in Daisy’s eyes. “Before Pa left us at the orphanage, he pinned that to your dress.”
Her lower lip quivered as she turned to Mrs. Gant. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Well, let’s have a look inside that locket,” Mrs. Gant said, taking the words right out of Dade’s mouth.
Daisy squirmed, as if nervous over finding the proof of his claim. Finally she unclasped the cameo from her bodice, hesitated a moment, and then handed it to Mrs. Gant.
“My hands are shaking too badly to search for the clasp,” Daisy said.
Not so for Mrs. Gant. The lady found and opened it before Daisy finished talking.
“There’s nothing inside it,” Mrs. Gant said.
Dade should’ve figured that’d be the case. And did Daisy just let out a sob? Or was that a sigh of relief?
The older woman closed the broach and pressed it back into Daisy’s hand, then enfolded her in her arms. “There, there. You’ve been through too much, what with just hearing that your beau passed on. And now all this about having a lost brother.”
“What happened to the photographs?” he asked his sister.
“I have no idea,” Daisy said. “I didn’t even know this was a locket until just now.”
He snorted at that. How could she not know?
Mrs. Gant chastised him with a look that would’ve done a schoolmarm proud. But he wasn’t backing down. Not now.
“Look at the back of the broach,” he said, then stubbornly waited until she did as he said. “The inscription reads, ‘Be true to yourself.’ The initials
TL
are struck below it.”
A frown marred Daisy’s smooth brow. “Who’s
TL
?”
“Our mother. Tessa Logan.”
Her narrow shoulders slumped as she tightened her fingers around the broach in her hand. “That’s it exactly. I guess that means you’re telling the truth.”
“It does. I’ve been looking for you for years,” he said.
“Well now you’ve found me.” She didn’t sound particularly happy about it.
Dade couldn’t fault her for that. He couldn’t even grumble much about her hesitation now.
They were strangers. She’d lived a life apart from everything she’d known, just like him. She’d obviously lost her heart to Sheriff Emery and had intended to marry him. Or had she?
“Why didn’t you come back last fall?” he asked.
“I couldn’t decide if marrying Lester was the right thing to do,” Daisy said, and avoided meeting his eyes. “By the time I knew what I wanted, winter hit and snowed me in.”
That sounded fine on the surface, for he’d been stranded here as well. She’d gone back to wherever she’d called home, thought things over, and then returned to marry her beau. But Lester was dead, shot down by a young outlaw who was trigger-happy.
He reckoned it was better it happened now than after they’d married, leaving Daisy a young widow, perhaps with a baby. Yet Daisy didn’t seem all that brokenhearted over Lester’s death. In fact, she appeared more worried than anything.
“You never did say where you were raised,” Dade said to break the awful silence.
Daisy fidgeted just enough to make him think she was uncomfortable talking about that. “A mining town west of the divide.”
“This town have a name?” he asked.
She looked away. Swallowed. “Burland.”
He’d heard of it. A couple of men had swindled claims out of many a miner, ending up rich while the rest of the miners went broke. Considering the way she was dressed, he had a feeling she’d been raised in one of the rich households.
So why marry a poor small town sheriff when she could likely have her pick of gentlemen? Now that Lester Emery was gone, why stay here with a brother she didn’t remember?
“Will you return to Burland now?” Mrs. Gant asked.
Daisy’s narrow shoulders went stiff. “There’s nothing left for me there.”
Mrs. Gant tsked. “Then you should stay right here with your brother. That’ll give you both time to get to know each other again.”
“Thank you,” Daisy said, her smile as thin as Dade’s waning patience.
He ground his teeth. She wasn’t sticking around because she wanted to get close to her brother again. Nope, she had nowhere else to go. That wasn’t a kick in the shins but it came damned close.
His little sister had been a delicate, fragile child who’d clung to him. She’d been unbelievably shy and prone to tears. But the Daisy before him seemed to have developed the grit to take off on her own across the Great Divide.
She also possessed an alluring womanly charm that called to some need deep inside him. Hell, if he wasn’t her brother he’d have been drawn to her.
He shook off those disquieting thoughts and focused on the problem at hand. He still didn’t know what type of folks had taken in his sister and raised her.
Not that it mattered. She had him to protect her now, just like he’d sworn he’d do twenty odd years ago.
If she’d let him. Right now that didn’t seem too likely.
Dade blew out a weary breath. For damn sure he had his work cut out for him gaining her trust.
 
 
Maggie Sutten read the determination in Dade Logan’s brown eyes and knew with a sinking heart that she had landed smack dab between a rock and a hard place.
She’d had no idea that Daisy had a brother. A brother who was waiting here in Placid for her to return. A brother who’d spent years trying to find his sister.
Heavens to Betsy! Now he believed he’d done just that. Could things get any worse?
They surely would if Whit Ramsey found her.
However, for now she’d do well to play along with Dade Logan. That was the best way she could hide from Whit until she decided what to do next.
Yes, Whit would turn over every rock in Colorado looking for Maggie Sutten. He’d never dream she’d assumed another name and be living with a man.
And there was the advantage that Dade was a lawman. Though in truth she didn’t think that would stop Whit from taking her.

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