A Wanted Man (10 page)

Rowdy opened his mouth, then closed it.

Lark smiled, plainly enjoying his consternation. “Roland’s best subject is reading, believe it or not. He’s really quite intelligent.”

“Twenty-two?” Rowdy repeated.

Lark folded her arms, tapped one foot on the frozen ground. Waited for Rowdy to take the hint and leave.

Pardner gave a sad moan as all the kids trooped back inside the schoolhouse, with Roland “Beaver” Franks bringing up the rear and casting sour looks back at Rowdy over one meaty shoulder.

“It doesn’t bother you that he chases Lydia home and pulls her hair?” Rowdy asked, shoving his hat to the back of his head, peeved.

“I spoke to him about it,” Lark said. “And he stopped immediately.”

“Not according to Lydia, he didn’t,” Rowdy said. He took his grandfather Wyatt’s watch out of his inside coat pocket, popped the lid with a practiced motion of one thumb and checked the hour. Ten forty-five. “What time does school let out?”

“Three o’clock,” Lark answered, already turning to go. “Why?”

Rowdy didn’t answer. He just looked down at Pardner and said, “Three o’clock.”

Lark sighed and walked swiftly away.

When she got inside, she shut the door hard behind her.

Rowdy stayed where he was for a minute or so, pondering the presence of a twenty-two-year-old man in a schoolhouse.

Mentally he added one more item to the list of things he knew about Lark Morgan.

She was dangerously naive.

P
ROMPTLY AT THREE
, Lark opened the schoolhouse door to dismiss her students, and was taken aback to see Rowdy’s dog sitting patiently outside the gate.

Baffled, she descended the three narrow steps to the ground and looked down the road, first toward town, then, seeing no sign of the marshal, she scanned the countryside.

Apparently, Pardner had come alone.

Children streamed past Lark.

Terran O’Ballivan and Ben Blackstone mounted their horses, bareback, and made for the ranch. Roland lumbered by, muttering a goodbye to Lark as he went, a
McGuffy’s Reader
clasped in one big hand. The others left, too, the older girls, slates and tablets and schoolbooks clutched to their chests, prattling and giggling about the dance to be held at the Cattleman’s Meeting Hall on Saturday night.

Pardner watched the human parade go by, panting now.

Lydia, as usual, was the last to file out of the schoolhouse.

Pardner gave a welcoming yelp when he saw her, and rose to all four feet.

“He came to see me home, Miss Morgan!” Lydia marveled, in a whisper of high excitement, when she caught sight of the dog.

Troubled, Lark hastily banked the fire in the potbelly stove, gathered up her cloak, lunch pail and lesson books. By the time she’d locked the schoolhouse door, Pardner and Lydia were already well on their way.

In the brief time Lark had known Rowdy Rhodes, she’d seldom seen him parted from that dog, but he was nowhere around now.

Was he sick?

Injured perhaps?

Lark hurried to catch up with Lydia and her canine escort.

“Maybe Mabel will let me give him a bone,” the little girl told Lark eagerly, as she joined the procession.

“We had one in our soup last night, at supper.”

Mabel, Lydia’s very young stepmother, was “no better than she should be,” by Mrs. Porter’s assessment. Lydia’s father, the only doctor in Stone Creek, was a lithe, delicately built man with almost womanly features and—also according to Mrs. Porter—did not wear the pants in his family. Lark had observed, upon making the doctor’s acquaintance, that he seemed dreamy, and somehow detached from the world around him. She’d wondered if he took a tipple now and then, or had a habit of dosing himself with laudanum.

Still a little breathless from hurrying and at once worried about Rowdy and feeling eminently silly for doing so, Lark summoned up a smile.

They crossed the road, woman, child and dog, headed for the row of tiny clapboard houses lining Second Street. The homes were set at some distance from each other, and several had small barns. Milk cows watched their passage, from barren, postage-stamp pastures, with interest.

“You don’t have to walk me home, Miss Morgan,” Lydia said. “I’ve got this dog for company.” She frowned. “Do you know his name?”

“Pardner,” Lark said, feeling ridiculously proud to be the possessor of this information. “Like
partner,
only with a
d.
The way cowboys pronounce it.”

“Oh,” Lydia said. “I think Rover would suit him better.”

“I don’t think he’s much of a rover,” Lark answered, still glancing anxiously this way and that, expecting, even hoping, to see Rowdy somewhere close by.

“Marshal Rhodes says he doesn’t wander.”

Pardner sticks pretty close to me, wherever we go. Wouldn’t even chase a rabbit, unless I gave him leave….

“Are you worried about something, Miss Morgan?” Lydia asked, looking up at her in concern.

“No,” Lark lied. “I was just thinking about tomorrow’s spelling bee.”

“I guess you don’t have to know which way letters are supposed to face to say what words they make,” Lydia mused. She was such a serious child, desperate to do everything right.

Lark smiled and touched the little girl’s shoulder gently. “You’re making very good progress with your letters, Lydia,” she said quietly. “You got most of them right today.”

Lydia patted Pardner’s back thoughtfully as they walked.

Soon they reached the Fairmont house, a modest place built close to the road. The yard was rocky dirt, and there were no trees close by. There was no barn, either—no fence and no milk cow.

It made, Lark thought, a bleak visage.

Pardner stopped when Lydia started up the foot-hardened path leading to her front door.

“I’m going to ask Mabel for that soup bone,” the child called from the threshold.

Pardner and Lark waited.

“Where’s Rowdy?” Lark whispered to Pardner.

Of course he didn’t answer, he just looked up at her with warm, trusting brown eyes.

A moment later Lydia reappeared, her small face creased with disappointment. “Mabel won’t give me the soup bone,” she reported.

Lark smiled, anxious to reassure the child. “I don’t think Pardner is disposed to eat right now,” she said, before turning to go. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Lydia.”

She felt Lydia watching her and Pardner with a sort of clutching hunger as they walked away.

Lark fretted over Lydia, but her attention soon turned to Rowdy. It was silly to be concerned about him, she scolded herself silently, as she and the dog made their way toward the marshal’s office. He was a grown man—a marshal, for heaven’s sake.

He could take care of himself.

Nevertheless, Lark followed Pardner, who seemed to know precisely where he was going. Mrs. Porter would be waiting at home, with tea and gossip, and Lark knew she shouldn’t be tardy.

Still, she stuck right with Pardner, instead of turning toward the boardinghouse. Her shoes pinched and she was cold and she wanted that tea with a powerful yen. What in the world was she doing, tramping through town behind a dog?

Pardner bypassed the jailhouse, trotting around back.

Lark trekked on.

They passed the little lean-to barn, and Rowdy’s horse was inside.

The sound of a hammer cracked in the brittle air.

Pardner woofed once, happily, and broke into a run.

Lark hurried along behind, hoping no one had noticed her.

Rowdy appeared in the doorway of the tumbledown house on the property behind the jail, grinning. A stack of lumber stood on the ground nearby, and Pardner streaked past it to hurl himself at Rowdy, who laughed and crouched to greet the dog with an ear-ruffling and a few words of welcome.

Lark stopped, dizzy with an incomprehensible degree of relief at the sight of him.

“Afternoon, Miss Morgan,” Rowdy said, standing again. He’d set the hammer down on the threshold to pet Pardner, and now he braced one shoulder against the framework of the shack’s doorway.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Rhodes,” Lark replied, feeling all the more foolish for the blush that burned in her cheeks. She wanted to walk away, but something held her rooted to the spot, like some venerable old tree.

“Anything wrong?” Rowdy asked, still leaning against the doorjamb, though his arms were folded now.

“I was just—I was worried when—”

He waited, damn him, enjoying her misery.

Lark tried again. She must complete her errand here, such as it was, and leave. Just leave. “It’s only that Pardner came to the schoolhouse alone, and—”

“You were worried about me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. And why else would you follow Pardner all the way back here?”

Lark sighed. “All right. I
was
worried. Are you satisfied now?”

“Yes,” Rowdy said, with a sudden and dazzling grin.

“Flattered, too.”

Lark finally worked up the will to turn away, only to turn back again. “What are you doing with all this lumber?” she asked.

“Replacing the floor in this old house,” Rowdy said.

“I’d invite you in, but you’d probably fall through and break a leg.”

Lark instantly bristled. “If
you
didn’t fall through, I probably won’t, either,” she argued, even though she had no desire whatsoever to set foot inside that tilting hovel. There were probably rats and insects in there. Cobwebs, too.

Rowdy’s grin flashed again. He straightened, made a be-my-guest gesture with one hand. His blue eyes twinkled with challenge.

“I don’t have time to dally,” Lark replied, tacitly refusing. Why wasn’t she moving? Heading home to Mrs. Porter’s, for tea and news and a seat near the fire?

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Rowdy said. “You were insulted when I said you oughtn’t to come in. Then I invited you, and you balked.” He paused for a long, strangely charged moment. “And when we ‘dally,’ Miss Morgan,” he went on at last, “it won’t be in a cold, dirty shack with the wind blowing through cracks in the walls.”

Lark took three furious steps toward him. “We are not going to
dally!
” she replied, in a bursting whisper.

He threw back his head and laughed. When he looked at her again, though, the twinkle was gone from his eyes. They smoldered like the banked embers of a blue fire.

She waited for him to speak, which was her second mistake. Coming here at all had been her first, and she had only herself to blame for the consequences.

He was standing in front of her before she actually saw him move.

He rested his hands on her shoulders, searched her wind-chapped face and kissed her.

Lark made a startled “mmmm” sound, when their mouths collided, and then he was really kissing her. His tongue moved against hers, and his lips—well,
his lips
—

Drunken heat flashed through Lark. She trembled, and stood on tiptoe, and kissed Rowdy Rhodes right back.

When they finally broke apart, Rowdy looked stunned.

“Oh,
shit,
” he muttered. Hatless, he shoved a hand through his hair.

“Well,
that
was a gallant thing to say,” Lark retorted.

He laughed again, quietly this time, but the baffled expression lingered in his eyes. “Go home, Lark,” he said. “Go back to Mrs. Porter’s place, right now. If you don’t, I can’t promise I won’t take you inside my nice, warm marshal’s house, kiss you until your clothes melt, and have you like you’ve never been had before.”

Lark started to speak, then stopped herself, because she had no idea what she’d say. Her cheeks ached, and so did every inch of flesh beneath her somber black woolen frock, her camisole and petticoats, and her bloomers.

Mortification gave her the impetus to turn on one heel and start to walk away. Fury made her turn back again, though, with a hand shooting up to slap Mr. Rowdy Rhodes for his outrageous impudence.

Kiss-you-until-your-clothes-melt,
indeed.

He caught her by the wrist, easily stayed the blow she’d fully intended to deliver, and with all her might, too.

“Go
home,
” he said.

“Let go of my hand,” Lark replied tartly, breathless.

Slowly, staring into her eyes, Rowdy opened his fingers and released her.

Lark’s hand fell to her side.

There was nothing to do
but
go home.

Feet as heavy as if they’d suddenly turned to bedrock, Lark straightened her cloak, patted her hair, pivoted smartly on one heel and walked away with all the dignity she could muster.

She’d only covered a few yards when he halted her with a single hoarse word.