Wanton Angel (25 page)

“Webb!” Bonnie cried out, in a frantic appeal to his reason. She could feel his hand poised high above her very vulnerable bottom even though she could see nothing but the floor. “Webb, you can’t do this!”

“I know,” Webb said, with resignation, “and yet I’m going to.”

It was then, heaven be thanked, that Katie appeared in
the kitchen doorway, holding Rose’s small hand in her own, and gasped, “Mr. Hutcheson, don’t! Please don’t.”

Webb gave a long sigh and released Bonnie, who scrambled to the opposite side of the kitchen and stood with her back pressed to the sink, her teeth gnawing at her lower lip, her eyes flashing with amazement and fury.

“I’ll go now,” Webb said, sounding and looking distracted as he rose slowly to his feet.

“I think that would be best,” Bonnie replied coldly.

When the door had closed quietly behind Webb, she turned to Katie, who looked horrified.

“I don’t want to hear another word about this incident as long as I live, Katherine Ryan. Do you understand me? It never happened.”

Katie swallowed. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Bonnie lifted her chin and went about setting her valise on the table and opening its stubborn catch. The music box Eli had given her was on top, carefully wrapped in one of her petticoats. She unwrapped it and traced the beautiful painted angel on its top with a wistful motion of her index finger.

“Isn’t that pretty, ma’am?” Katie cooed, admiring the box with wide eyes. “It’s an angel, and she’s got dark hair just like you do!”

Bonnie stiffened. An angel. Of course. She had been expecting some kind of snide attack from Eli, and she’d nearly missed it! Here it was, a subtle but effective reminder of her hurdy-gurdy days—or, more properly, nights—as the Angel.

She set the box aside, unwilling to give in to a primitive urge to send it smashing against a wall, and with a modicum of dignity brought out a small rag doll for Rose Marie and a bottle of jasmine-scented cologne for Katie.

Both girls were delighted with their gifts and, per Bonnie’s decree, Webb’s temporary loss of reason went unmentioned.

In the end, it was not Katie but Rose Marie who betrayed the humiliating secret. It happened the very next day, not fifteen minutes after the train from Spokane had arrived in Northridge.

T
HE AFTERNOON WAS
chilly and dark and the sky was heavy with rain. Because of this, Bonnie had built a busy, crackling fire in the store’s potbellied stove and lit several kerosene lamps. As Katie perched on the lid of the pickle barrel, reading, and Rose sat contentedly on the floor, playing with her new doll, Bonnie was in the rear storeroom, making space for the merchandise Seth had ordered for the rebuilding of Patch Town. At the sound of the little bell over the front door, she smoothed her hair and her skirts and went out to wait on the customer.

The “customer” was Eli, who stood watching Rose with such a disapproving expression that Bonnie’s attention turned instantly to her daughter.

Rose was mercilessly spanking her doll.

Eli’s gaze sliced to Bonnie’s pinkened face. “Is that how you discipline my daughter?” he demanded, in a quiet but nonetheless lethal tone.

Before Bonnie could answer, Katie closed her book with a snap and blurted defensively, “Of course it isn’t! Our Rosie’s only acting out what she saw yesterday, aren’t you, sweetling?”

Rose Marie now had no interest in her doll. She struggled laboriously to her feet and toddled over to Eli, who immediately
lifted her into his arms. He smiled at the child and embraced her, but there was a chill in the gaze he turned upon Bonnie.

“Go upstairs, Katie,” Bonnie said calmly.

The girl hesitated. There was defiance in her manner, defiance directed not at Bonnie, but at Eli. “Shall I take the baby, too?”

Just the thought of the squall Rose Marie would put up at being separated from her beloved papa gave Bonnie the beginnings of a sick headache. “No. She’s fine where she is.”

Katie gave Eli one last insurgent glance and scampered up the stairs.

“What exactly did Rose see?” Eli wanted to know. There was a note of suspicion in his voice and a quiet obstinacy in his manner.

Bonnie bit her lower lip, reluctant to admit what had happened—or nearly happened—but fully aware that she had to do just that. If she didn’t explain, Eli would draw his own conclusions and the result might be a terrible misunderstanding. Finally she said, “Webb 1-lost his temper and—and he—”

Eli blanched. “He what? By God, if he laid a hand on my daughter, I’ll—” he paused, and a knowing look flashed in his eyes. He drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “Wait a minute. It wasn’t Rose that Hutcheson walloped, was it? It was you!”

“Webb didn’t wallop
anyone, “
Bonnie hissed, red to her ears, “Katie came in just in time to stop him. And don’t you dare turn self-righteous, Eli McKutchen, because you’re no better than he is! Why, just the other day, you were threatening to do the same thing!”

“Are you defending Hutcheson?”

Bonnie gripped the edge of the counter. “Certainly not,” she said loftily. “I wouldn’t even consider forgiving Webb, were it not for the fact that I know he didn’t really mean to hurt me.”

Laughter sparked in Eli’s golden eyes but left his mouth unchanged. “Didn’t he?” Carefully, he set Rose back on her feet, and she went back to playing with her doll, though this time in a more kindly fashion.

Bonnie sighed and averted her eyes. “I suppose he did,”
she conceded, unable to believe what had almost happened even now, after she had had a whole night to think about it.

There was a short silence and then Eli chuckled. It was a low, innately masculine sound. “How did you manage to provoke the poor bastard into losing his reason, might I ask?”

At last Bonnie was able to lift her eyes to Eli’s face. She straightened her spine and raised her chin. “It was the talk, I think. Webb was upset by things he’d heard about you and me. Too, he’d ordered me to avoid those union men who came in on the train yesterday and I said I wouldn’t be held hostage—” she paused, swallowed. “I guess I baited him, as well.”

Eli sighed and, to his credit, there was no look of triumph about him. “I can sympathize with Hutcheson’s position. At the same time, I’d like to break his neck. In fact, I mean to let him know that if he ever tries anything like that again, no matter what you’ve done to irk him, I’ll kill him.”

Eli sounded completely serious, and Bonnie shivered even though the snapping fire in the stove was keeping the store warm. “You are being most hypocritical, Eli,” she said evenly. “You might have responded in just the way Webb did.”

Eli shook his head in angry marvel. “You’re still going to see Hutcheson, aren’t you? You’re going to let him suffer for a while, and then you’re going to forgive him.”

“I would have forgiven you,” Bonnie pointed out, realizing only as she actually spoke the words that they were true.

Her former husband was not appeased. Indeed, stiff annoyance showed in every magnificent line of him. “That’s generous of you,” he said tightly. After a short, sour pause, he went on. “But I’m not here to talk about Hutcheson—I came in to tell you that I’m moving out of the hotel. For the time being, I’ll be living at Earline’s.”

Earline’s? Bonnie was possessed of a sudden and incomprehensible need to scream, stomp her feet and throw things, but she hid all those feelings and spoke moderately. “I’m sure that where you choose to live is none of my affair.”

“I would have to agree, dear,” Eli said, with a look of barely suppressed delight. “But alas, you are raising my
child and if Rose needs me for any reason, I want you to know where to look.” He tipped his fashionable round-brimmed hat, which he had never bothered to remove, and after a word with Rose, he left.

Bonnie was full of outraged frustration and, worse, she had no way of venting those feelings. She did note that while Eli’s plan to live in Earline Kalb’s rooming house made her half frantic with jealousy, Webb’s residing there had never bothered her. Even learning that Earline was Webb’s mistress had not ruffled her, but if Eli were to take up with that woman …

Bonnie gave the pickle barrel a hard kick and uttered a little cry that had more to do with bruised emotions than bruised toes. Rose looked up at her with startled McKutchen-gold eyes.

“Don’t ever fall in love,” Bonnie warned her daughter, with a shaking of her finger.

Rose responded with a crooked grin so reminiscent of her father that Bonnie was forced to smile. She called to Katie that it was all right to come back downstairs and returned to the task of preparing the storeroom.

Webb appeared just as she would have closed the store for the day, wearing a contrite expression and carrying a spray of soggy violets in one hand. It was raining very hard outside, and his suitcoat and hair were both dripping wet.

Shaking her head, unable to hate a man who had, for the most part, been a loyal friend, Bonnie ushered Webb over to the stove to warm up and dry off. She took the flowers, picked, no doubt, along the banks of the Columbia, and asked Katie to put them in water. As if the poor things weren’t already half drowned.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie. About last night.” Webb shrugged out of his sodden suitcoat, shivering a little. “Will you forgive me?”

“I shouldn’t,” Bonnie said. But then an angel at her shoulder reminded her that she had deliberately goaded Webb, that she hadn’t been and still wasn’t forthright where her feelings for Eli were concerned. “But I will forgive you, if you’ll pardon me for what I did.”

Poor Webb looked so relieved that Bonnie wanted to cry. It would have been so much easier if he’d stayed angry and
even declared that he’d have nothing more to do with such a hellion, but easy things were rare in Bonnie’s life. So rare that she didn’t even bother to hope for them anymore.

There was coffee heating atop the potbellied stove, and Bonnie poured a cupful for Webb, extending it as a sort of olive branch. How she dreaded hurting him, even after the debacle beside her kitchen table. “Do you think this rain will ever stop?” she asked, just to make conversation.

Webb’s shoulders, visible through his damp shirt, moved in a shrug. “I’ve been considering moving my presses to higher ground,” he said.

Bonnie thought of the vulnerability of Patch Town and shuddered, but it was warm and cozy inside her mercantile and she quickly recovered from that moment of curious dread. “You’re welcome to bring them here, Webb. There’s plenty of room in the store.”

“I’ll think about it,” Webb sniffled. The poor man had already caught cold; he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. “If anything happened to that equipment, I’d be ruined.”

Bonnie thought of the toughs who had ridden into Northridge aboard yesterday’s train. It was a touchy subject, but she brought it up anyway. “Have you had any more trouble, Webb? About your articles opposing the union, I mean?”

“Things have been quiet,” he said, and Bonnie noticed then that he was avoiding her eyes.

“The strike hasn’t ended, then.”

Webb edged closer to the little stove and hugged himself against the cold. “Half the men are still out. The union leaders have been telling them that the new cabins and the shorter hours McKutchen has offered are some kind of trick. They say that Eli’s just trying to keep the men from organizing, that he’ll backtrack to the old way of doing things once he’s gotten rid of the union.”

“How can they believe that?” Bonnie asked, with rather too much spirit. “Eli does mean to build those cabins, Webb. I know because I took the orders for paint and nails and pipes and such.”

Webb was still shivering so that Bonnie frowned and sent Katie upstairs to fetch a warm blanket. “Some of the men
don’t believe there are going to be any cabins, Bonnie. And they expect Eli to show them the road for rebelling, rather than giving them back their jobs and cutting back their hours.”

When Katie returned with the blanket, Webb wrapped it around himself and gratefully sank into the chair Bonnie found for him. He sat close to the stove, with his feet on its cast-iron base.

“Those men on the train looked mean,” Bonnie reflected, feeling a little cold herself. She folded her arms and drew nearer to the stove, though she kept it as a barrier between herself and Webb.

“I’m surprised none of them have been in here,” Webb replied. “They’re all staying next door at the hotel.”

Bonnie was reminded of Eli’s move to Earline’s rooming house and she wondered if the overcrowding of the hotel had been the reason for it. She was, however, too proud to ask Webb if his accommodating landlady had taken in a new boarder. She could imagine how Earline would fuss over Webb’s cold, and though she would have welcomed a pang of envy, she felt nothing even vaguely like it. “I’m not sure I want the trade of those odious men,” she said belatedly.

Just then a small cloaked figure dashed into the store, setting the little bell ajingle. Lizbeth Simmons pushed back her rain-drenched hood and smiled broadly at Bonnie.

“I do hope you’ve a pot of tea brewing!” the visitor sang merrily.

Bonnie smiled. Webb had taken definite notice of Miss Simmons; he rose slowly to his feet in acknowledgment of her presence.

After introductions had been made, Bonnie apologized for not having tea prepared and offered coffee instead. Lizbeth accepted a cup with delight, lacing it generously with both cream and sugar before sitting down in the chair her hostess provided.

“I have a list,” Lizbeth told Bonnie. “Please don’t let me rush off without making my purchases.”

So, Bonnie thought wryly, Miss Simmons has not yet been approached by a delegation from the Friday Afternoon
Community Improvement Club. “Are you staying at Genoa’s?”

Lizbeth was enjoying the warmth of the stove, the coffee and Webb Hutcheson’s gaze. “I am. It’s most enjoyable, too. So many books, and I have use of the reed organ, as well.”

“How are Susan Farley and her baby?” Bonnie asked with real interest. A part of her had been holding its breath ever since that poor little infant’s birth.

“Miss Genoa says that baby gets bigger every day,” Lizbeth replied happily. “He doesn’t need to be kept in the oven anymore.”