In a Cowboy’s Arms (2 page)

“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’vesworn 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 claimsout 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.

A chill passed through her at the thought.

“Are you cold, dear?” Mrs. Gant asked.

“Just a case of nerves,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in at once.”

Dade tucked his hands under his armpits and eyed her, and for an instant she feared he could look clean through her and see she was spinning a mile-long yarn. “You end up with a good family?”

Painful memories of the first family who’d taken her in threatened to torment her, so she blocked them from her mind and focused on the Nowells instead. “They treated me well enough, though it was clear I was just the companion to their crippled daughter.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized Mrs. Gant had put two and two together. “I had no idea that Eloisa Reynard was your foster sister.”

Maggie forced a smile, for nobody here knew that Eloisa was in fact Caroline Nowell, the “Silver King’s” daughter. “We thought of ourselves as best friends.”

“You were fortunate,” Dade said.

If only he knew the truth! But that was a secret she had to keep. Just like she had to keep up the pretense of being Daisy Logan.

“Eloisa was a delight, and that made living there enjoyable,” she said, and that was the honest-to-God truth.

The hell didn’t come into play until her foster father had to pay up what he owed, and Whit Ramsey refused to honor the agreement of taking Harlan Nowell’s crippled daughter’s hand in marriage.

According to him, Whit Ramsey wanted Maggie.

If Whit had been a decent man and courted her, she might have considered his suit. But he was an overbearing snob and a lothario to boot.

She refused to marry him, but Harlan Nowell informed her she had no choice. She owed him for taking her in.

Maggie detested Nowell, and she didn’t have much more regard for his wife. But she loved her foster sister and had hesitated over abandoning her.

“You can’t marry him,” Caroline had said after the last argument Maggie had had with Harlan Nowell. “Leave. Go far from here and never look back.”

“I’m afraid what will happen to you,” Maggie had said.

Caroline had laughed. “I’ll grow old alone. No man wants to get saddled with a cripple.”

“Never say never.”

The long winter had proved true Maggie’s suspicions about Whit Ramsey. He came to visit often though he usually ended up secluded in the library with Nowell, but even on those rare occasions when he stayed for supper hepaid Caroline no attention at all. In fact, he’d often make some excuse and leave the room when she entered in her wheelchair.

So Maggie and Caroline planned out what she should do. Which, given the fact she’d told Lester she’d return to Placid, pretty much set the stage.

In the meantime, she went along with Harlan Nowell’s plans for a big wedding this spring and suffered Whit’s attentions.

The second the weather cleared and she found a chance, she ran away–ran here to Lester. Even then she’d backtracked and paid a painted lady to use her real name and take the train west. For if Whit got wind that Maggie Sutten was here, he’d come after her.

“You said there was nothing left for you in Burland,” Dade said, bracing a shoulder against the doorjamb. He gave the impression that he was relaxing and exchanging idle chitchat, but Maggie wasn’t fooled.

He was fishing.

“That’s right,” she said, and summoned up a sniffle.

“What happened to your foster family?” Dade asked.

“They came down sick with a fever over the winter,” Maggie said, thinking that was the easiest way to keep her lies from getting too tangled. “Father survived it. Mother didn’t.”

Mrs. Gant made appropriate sounds of distress. “Did dear Eloisa pass over too?”

“No!” The thought of Caroline dying made Maggie sick, though as it had turned out she’d lost the only friend she’d had anyway. “No, her father sent her east to live with an aunt and receive treatment at a hospital.”

Another lie, but again it’d divert attention away from Burland, the Nowells, and Whit Ramsey.

Mrs. Gant embraced her in a smothering hug again, and Maggie was just too weary to resist. “You poor dear, losing most of your foster family and your beau.”

“It’s been a trial,” she said, and felt tears sting her eyes over Lester’s death.

She’d genuinely liked him. But on the train ride here she’d finally decided she couldn’t marry a man she didn’t love. Not Lester Emery. And surely not Whit Ramsey.

“Now then I’m going upstairs and get your old room ready.” Mrs. Gant smiled at them, and Maggie noted the moisture in the older woman’s eyes. “For the first time in years this house will have a real family living in it.”