Читать книгу The Cowboy Who Caught Her Eye - Lauri Robinson - Страница 10

Carter moved toward the door that led to the living quarters, where the scent of cinnamon rolls filtered into the store. The sisters were squabbling again. This in itself was nothing new, but Karleen’s apology said it was worse this time. Not that he was surprised. He had a harder time than usual holding his tongue when it came to Molly’s attitude, too.

He was disgusted, mainly because the two might start pulling each other’s hair out, not that it was any of his business, but there was enough going on without them fighting. “I’ll be right back,” he told the only customer left in the store.

“Take your time,” the preacher said.

Carter couldn’t decide whether to leave the man alone or not. Most folks trusted a man of the cloth, but he didn’t. Religious folks—men and women dressed in their black-and-white clothes—had been the ones who kept plucking him off the streets in New York and plunking him down in orphanages. Until he’d been old enough to make a clean getaway. A westbound train, with two other boys his age.

Karleen, once again shouting Molly’s name, had him glancing toward the little girl perched on a stool and writing the alphabet in a tablet with a stubby pencil. “You keep an eye on him,” he said.

Ivy nodded, and then giggled as she glanced at the preacher. The other man laughed too, and Carter had to let his guard down, admit the store and the girl were safe. He darted through the doorway and down the hall that led to the kitchen, where he asked, “What’s wrong?”

Turning from the open back door, Karleen shook her head. “I’ve upset her.”

“What else is new?” Carter asked, though he didn’t feel any humor. Molly Thorson woke up as ornery as she went to bed. He’d testify to that. Had wondered if she was going to throw the eggs he’d carried into the kitchen this morning at him.

“No, I really upset her this time,” Karleen said, clearly despondent. “And I shouldn’t have.”

A part of him would rather not, but still he said, “You go see to the customers, I’ll go make sure she’s all right.” He’d long ago learned people were easier to deal with when they were rational, and worked long and hard on mastering his ability to put people where he wanted them so he could get the information he needed. But he wasn’t overly confident anything he’d learned would work on Molly Thorson.

“Maybe we should just leave her alone,” Karleen whispered.

That would work too, except the pleading look in the girl’s eyes said she was sincerely worried. It wasn’t as if he was responding to her silent plea. No girl—or woman—would ever make him do something he didn’t want to. The bickering had to stop. That’s what it was. There were more important things at hand. Like his latest bit of information. With a nod, he moved toward the door. “I’ll just go make sure she’s all right, and then I’ll leave her alone.”

“Thank you, Carter.”

“You just don’t let those cinnamon rolls burn,” he said. Being a friendly cowboy with a never-ending grin was already getting old, but he had to keep it up. And would. “We’re going to need them when the next train arrives.”

He’d played a lot of roles in his life, but this was the first time it included dealing so closely with women. It had to be done, though, as had his conversation with Wilcox yesterday. The railroad man hadn’t been impressed, or happy to offer an apology, but Carter had told him if there was any hope more money would surface, people needed to be filtering in and out of the store regularly. Locals, not just the few passengers looking for cinnamon rolls. No one was making big purchases, but they were spending money. Cash, and he checked the serial numbers on every bill.

There’d been one that matched in the drawer this morning. It was in his pocket now. He’d replaced it with one of his own. Trouble was, he had no idea how it got there. He’d watched every transaction, knew who’d handed over bills and who’d paid with coins, and not one person had used a five-dollar bill. Yet that’s what had turned up.

A touch reluctant—for he did want to be in the store, watching that drawer—Carter stepped off the back porch. After a quick search of the yard, he entered the barn and blinked, adjusting his focus after the bright sunlight. He’d cleaned the barn last night—something that had sorely needed to be done—after supper. That’s where he found Molly, sitting on a pile of fresh straw he’d pitched down from the hayloft and scattered into one of the empty stalls.

She jumped to her feet when she noticed him and ran toward the other end of the long walkway.

“Molly,” he said calmly. Someone knew how that bill in his pocket got in the drawer. Karleen was too talkative to hold a secret of that magnitude, and Ivy was just a babe, which only left one person. Therefore he had to find a way to have a normal, calm conversation with Molly.

He said her name again as she started to climb the ladder leading to the hayloft, but when she turned, looking at him over one shoulder, he shouted it, and ran. In all his years of living, of chasing people and capturing them, he’d never truly seen one go completely colorless. But she had, and her eyes had rolled upward.

His heart was galloping inside his chest. He was thankful he’d arrived in time and caught her just as she’d slumped. Slowly, gingerly, he lowered her onto the extra mound of hay he’d thrown down last night for today’s feeding and crouched beside her.

Visions flashed before his eyes, as they had been doing since he’d arrived in Huron. Times he’d forgotten, or buried so deep he thought they were gone. Things back in New York, when he was just a kid. Right now it was Amelia he was remembering. She’d only been ten when she’d died, and she had been the one reason he’d stayed at that last orphanage as long as he had—almost two years. He’d left after her death, and never looked back.

Giving his head a clearing shake, Carter whispered, “Molly?”

She didn’t move, but she was breathing, had just fainted. He’d never seen that either. Heard of it, of course, but never seen it, and wasn’t too sure what to do about it. On more than one occasion, he’d seen a man get knocked out, so he checked her head, in case she’d bumped it in her rush up the ladder.

Amelia had fallen out of a tree. A broken rib punctured her lungs. That’s what one of the nuns had said.

Carter tossed the sudden thought aside and let his hands roam over Molly’s arms and then checked her ribs. When his exploring touch went lower, ran over her midriff, he froze. Every last part of him, and all his thoughts collided like bees swarming into a hive. He sat there for a moment, too stunned to think and then, darn close to being afraid, he touched her again. Felt her stomach from side to side, top to bottom.

Drawing his hands away, he stared, as if he could see through her white apron and gray dress.

Most men his age, somewhere around twenty-seven, knew a woman’s body, and he did, too. She wasn’t big and round like some he’d seen, but Molly Thorson was pregnant.

Pregnant.

Not quite believing it, he reached over, touched her stomach again. There were layers of material between his palm and her skin, but he’d bet every last dollar he’d ever earned he was right. That firm little bump he was feeling was a baby. She was pregnant.

No wonder she was so ornery. She was pregnant and didn’t want anyone to know. But this took two. Where was the father? Who was the father?

A tiny moan sounded and he drew back his hand, but then pressed it to her forehead. “Molly?”

She opened her eyes but closed them again. “What happened?”

“You fainted.” He grasped both her shoulders, and a large part of him wanted to shake some answers out of her, but he wouldn’t do that. Just touching her had his fingers tingling, telling him just how spooky this was. Not that he scared easily, but pregnant women, they were scary. “Can you sit up?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not yet. Everything’s still spinning.”

“All right, just lie there for a moment.” She was probably spooked, too. An unwed pregnant woman had to be. Leastwise he assumed she was unwed, and believed that assumption to be true. He never catered to others’ assumptions, he liked proof, but his own were another matter. Right now he assumed something else, that she was scared spitless. “Do you want some water or something?” he asked.

She licked her lips. “No, it’ll stop in a minute.”

“This has happened before?” A new dimension had just been added to his case, one that had him wondering if he should wire headquarters and ask for a different assignment. That thought had never crossed his mind before, and was more than a little out of character—any character he’d ever played—but an assignment had never put him smack-dab in the middle of a scandal of this proportion. The town was going to tear her apart when her condition was revealed, which was bound to happen. If he was still here, still working at the mercantile, he’d have to defend her. Pinkerton man or not. He already felt it welling inside him, and he wasn’t so sure he was comfortable with it.

“Yes.” Her sigh was heavy enough to hold water. She opened her eyes then, stared at the ceiling overhead. “It’s happened before.”

His assignments were to solve cases, catch robbers or track down murderers, not protect people—other than himself—which is how he liked it.

“Does Karleen know?” he asked.

Fear flashed in her eyes before she closed them. She swallowed too, like a gulp of someone set to hang at noon. He’d witnessed that more than once.

“Know what?” she asked.

She hadn’t even told her sister. Karleen had said there used to be a time when Molly laughed and was a joy to be around, but that lately she wouldn’t even talk and was irritated about everything. Having held secrets, personal ones, for many years, Carter could relate. It had taken him years to learn how to make his past work with him instead of against him. She, however, didn’t know how to do that, and didn’t have much time to learn it.

“That you’ve fainted before,” he said. “Maybe you need to see a doctor.”

“No,” she said, scrambling to sit up.

“Slow down,” he scolded, helping to ease her into a sitting position.

Pushing his hands aside once she was sitting, she snapped, “I don’t need to see a doctor.” She tugged at her apron then, fluffing it away from her stomach. “So don’t be telling Karleen I do. And don’t be telling her I fainted, either.”

She was back, all grouchy and grumpy, and in a way, he was happy. A grumpy Molly he could deal with. However, now that he knew why, things had changed. There hadn’t been anything in the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s Investigative Training Manual—which he had memorized—about pregnant women, and he doubted his dictionary was going to help in this situation either.

“Come on,” he said, tucking his legs beneath him to stand. “I’ll help you into the house where you can lie down for a bit.”

“I don’t need to lie down, and I don’t need any help.”

He stood and crossed his arms. Was reminded of being in the cabin, when he’d challenged her to make him leave. It had been childish, but she’d been behaving like a child then, and was again now. She scrambled to her feet, which goaded him a bit. He did want her to need help. His. Just to prove his point.

She flounced her skirt and her apron again before turning about and, nose in the air, marched toward the doorway.

Carter watched her go, all the way out the door and into the sunlight, where she stopped, turned to see if he was still watching her. He was, and tipped the brim of his hat up, just so she’d see how closely.

She tilted her head slightly, but didn’t move, just stared back at him.

It was a showdown of sorts, a duel, where neither of them had guns, just a challenge to see who’d make the first move, look away for even a split second.

She was going to get awfully hot standing in the sun; he could stare down a rattler.

It took about that long before she finally spun around and stomped off for the house, and Carter let out a long, slow breath. He removed his hat then and wiped away the sweat. This woman had him on rocky ground, and there was no wondering about it. He didn’t like it, not one little bit.

Thoughts of quitting no longer floated around either. He’d never not solved a case and he’d solve this one, too. The only thing he’d ever run away from was New York. That’s how it would remain. Though he just might move on to Montana sooner than later. It might be time.

Carter left the barn, but made it only as far as the corral. Sampson was there, tossing his head. They’d been together eight years now, the only family he’d ever had.

Right from the start, he’d told Allan he wouldn’t promise to be an agent for years. He couldn’t. He hadn’t known if Chicago was where he needed to be, and since then, even with all the traveling he’d done, he still didn’t know.

The only things he remembered about his father were words. Sometimes they still echoed in his head. Like right now. He didn’t know how old he’d been—somewhere around five, close as he could figure—and they’d been boarding the boat with a crowd of others heading to America. “That’s where we need to be,” his father had said.

There were other words, too, that his father had said, then and in the days that followed, about how he’d feel it when they arrived, how he’d know when he found the one place in the world he was supposed to be.

Carter was still waiting to feel it, still believed he would someday. That his father had been right. Work with the agency had taken him across the nation and back again, and the closest he’d come to a connection was up in Montana while searching out cattle rustlers. Something about the land there, how it met the sky, had him contemplating exactly what his father had been talking about.

The cattle-rustling assignment had been five years ago, and standing here now, looking over a horizon that was somewhat familiar, Carter questioned if it was time to go back to Montana.

He spun around, took in the customers wandering into the mercantile. Should this be it, his last assignment? Is that why this case had him pretending to be a cowboy working his way to Montana? Why it had memories surfacing that hadn’t been there for years?

Irony or fate? Things happened like that at times, fell into place, and he accepted them. Both into his work and his life.

It took work for things to fall into place, though and that’s what he needed to focus on. Find the money, and find who stole it. One person knew, and he was going to have to put everything into getting the information out of her. If she hadn’t told anyone about her pregnancy, finding out where she came up with new five-dollar bills was going to take finesse.

Good thing he’d had years of practice.

Molly was going to be sick, but for the first time in months, it had nothing to do with the baby inside her. The laughter coming from the store was enough to make anyone sick to their stomach. She’d had to listen to it for days now. Karleen laughing. Carter laughing. Even Ivy was laughing more than not.

She didn’t mind that. The past few months Ivy had grown somber, and Molly knew why. She’d tried harder the last couple days, attempted to smile and be more pleasant, especially to Ivy, but her irritability hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had grown. Carter Buchanan was to blame. Not even weeding her garden, as she was doing right now, helped.

Karleen had to say his name a hundred times a day, and Ivy fifty. Even customers asked for him by name. Molly was so tired of hearing that one single name she could scream. She didn’t scream; however, she did refuse to say his name. She called him Mr. Buchanan when she had to speak to him. He, on the other hand, called her Molly. Only family called her Molly, she’d told him that at a moment when she was speaking to him. It hadn’t helped. He still called her Molly.