A Wanted Man (11 page)

“Lark?”

She stiffened her spine. Did not turn around.

He chuckled, and she actually
felt
the sound, ruffling the fine hairs at her nape. “I’ll see you at supper,” he said.

She made a strangled sound of pure fury and left.

Pardner followed her as far as the street, gazing up at her in piteous concern.

She paused, sighed and patted the dog’s head. “Thank you for walking Lydia home,” she told him. “Unlike your master, you are a gentleman.”

O
NCE
L
ARK WAS OUT OF SIGHT
, Rowdy let out his breath and muttered a curse. He shouldn’t have kissed her like that. Shouldn’t have said the things he’d said.

Oh, he’d meant them, all right.

Meant the kiss, too.

But now, because he’d said what he had, it was all going to happen. He
would
make love to Lark Morgan. And then his pa would rob a train, or a Wanted poster would come in the mail, with a sketch of his own face on it, and he’d have to hit the trail.

It had happened before.

It would happen again.

Rowdy thrust a hand through his hair. He was fed up with running, and in that moment, if Sam O’Ballivan had been standing in front of him, he probably would have turned himself in, just to be done with it.

But what would happen to Pardner if he did that?

What would happen to Lark?

He was asking himself those things when an old white horse trotted around the side of the jailhouse with Gideon on its back.

Seeing Rowdy, Gideon visibly gathered his resolve, reined in the horse and swung down out of the saddle. There was some gear tied on behind, wrapped in an ungainly bundle, and the boy wore an old wool coat and a brown hat pulled low over his face.

Pardner approached to sniff at his hand, and Gideon grinned at the dog and mussed Pardner’s ears, but when he turned to Rowdy again, his expression was serious as an undertaker’s.

“This where you live?” he asked.

“This is where I live,” Rowdy confirmed. “I guess somebody at Mrs. Porter’s must have told you where to find me.”

Gideon nodded. Swallowed once. “You said to come if I had trouble.”

Rowdy approached his younger brother, laid a hand on his shoulder. “What happened, Gideon?” he asked.

Gideon flushed. Chewed a while on what he wanted to say, maybe figuring how to put it. Finally, he said, “Pa took off last night, in a big hurry. Wouldn’t say where he was going, and wouldn’t let me go with him.”

Rowdy closed his eyes.
No,
he thought fiercely.

I’m not ready to run again.

I’m not ready to leave Lark.

Damn you, Pappy.

Damn you.

“Did I do right to come?” Gideon asked warily.

Rowdy nodded. Smiled. “Come on along with me,” he said. “I reckon you could do with some supper.”

M
AI
L
EE WAS ALONE
in the kitchen when Lark arrived at Mrs. Porter’s and divested herself of the lunch pail and lesson books, which she’d nearly dropped when Rowdy’d kissed her—in front of God and everybody. Hanging up her cloak, she frowned, immediately sensing something out of the ordinary, an uncomfortable shift in the atmosphere.

The Chinese woman stood at the sink, peeling potatoes, her back to Lark. Her child-size shoulders were stooped, and she didn’t say a word, or turn to offer her usual smile of welcome.

Lark put aside disturbing thoughts of Rowdy Rhodes and her concern for Lydia Fairmont, renewed when she’d walked the little girl home from school, a nameless fretting that came and went.

“Mai Lee?” Lark ventured, looking toward the stairs and the inside doorways, expecting Mrs. Porter to appear. “Is something the matter?”

Mai Lee did not respond. Usually she chattered, in her oddly cobbled English, full of news.

Still frowning, Lark took the teakettle, which would already have been singing on the stove on any other afternoon, and stood beside Mai Lee to pump cold water into it. Once again she repeated the woman’s name.

A tear slipped down Mai Lee’s cheek. “He buy house,” she lamented. “He buy
garden
.”

“What house?” Lark asked, setting the kettle back on the stove to heat, her voice gentle. “What garden? And who is ‘he’?”

Mai Lee sniffled, but she still wouldn’t look at Lark. “I save for house,” she said. “Save for garden.” A shiver went through her. “Now, is gone.”

Tentatively Lark touched her friend’s shoulder. Mai Lee and her husband had undergone staggering hardship and privation before leaving China, by Mrs. Porter’s account. Even now, they slept under a staircase, in a bed hardly big enough for one person, let alone two. They both worked long hours, never shirking, and while they seemed to consider themselves fortunate, given their cheerful spirits and quick smiles, glad of having ample food to eat and shelter, they nevertheless lived with a bare-bones simplicity that would have been difficult for other people—Lark included—to endure.

Lark was singularly alarmed by Mai Lee’s obvious upset, and still confused by her attempt at an explanation.

“Mai Lee,” she said quietly, “please, help me to understand. What house? What garden?”

“House behind jail,” Mai Lee said, her face a mask of wretched sorrow, even in profile. “Me save to buy. Have almost enough. Now
gone
.”

Suddenly it was all clear to Lark. Her heart sank.

Mai Lee and her husband had hoped to purchase the tiny place where she had seen Rowdy last, replacing floorboards. The homestead, one of the first in the area, had been abandoned years ago, and stood empty since then. The town of Stone Creek had held title to it, offering it for sale to anyone who would pay the back taxes.

And Rowdy had bought it. That answered a question she’d hadn’t thought to ask. She’d been too flustered to ask what he was doing there, pulling up floorboards and driving nails.

Lark stiffened. She couldn’t assume he’d known he was destroying a dream—he hadn’t been in town long enough to be privy to things she was still garnering after three months’ residence—but he was the source of Mai Lee’s despair, nevertheless.

“Oh, Mai Lee,” she said, “I’m so sorry.” Sympathy seemed a poor offering, in the face of the other woman’s sorrow.

Mai Lee nodded once, tersely, and went on peeling potatoes, rubbery from their long tenure in a wooden barrel in Mrs. Porter’s root cellar.

Knowing nothing else to do, and certainly nothing helpful to say, Lark went about brewing her tea. Presently, a noise at the door and a sweep of chilly air brought Mrs. Porter bustling in, carrying a shopping basket.

“I saw Mr. Rhodes on my way here,” she announced.

“He’s got a young man with him, too—came by here earlier, while you were at school. The boy had a horse when he came, but they’re both on foot now.”

Mai Lee promptly flung down her paring knife. The potato she’d been skinning landed in the kettle with a splashy
plunk
. She turned and scurried from the room, and the door to the little nook under the main stairs closed audibly.

“Merciful heavens,” Mrs. Porter marveled. “What’s gotten into Mai Lee?”

Before Lark could reply, the door swung open again, and Pardner pranced in, closely followed by Rowdy and a handsome lad of sixteen or seventeen years. The resemblance between man and boy was so strong that Lark blinked once, certain she was seeing things.

Rowdy was taller than the youth, more muscled, graceful where his companion was awkward. The newcomer had yet to grow into his strength, and his hair was a few shades darker than Rowdy’s, a butternut color, but Lark knew that in high summer, it would be fair as corn silk.

Despite these differences, they had the same blue eyes. The same expressive mouths, on the verge of a wicked grin, though the boy’s was set in a wary line at the moment.

The youth stood shyly just inside the door. At a nudge from Rowdy, he removed his ancient brown hat, held it with a diffidence that was not reflected in his taut jaw or watchful eyes.

Pardner lay down heavily, to one side of the cookstove.

Rowdy, meanwhile, made the introductions. “Mrs. Porter,” he said, “Miss Morgan, this is my brother Gideon.”

Gideon nodded politely, first to Mrs. Porter, then to Lark, though he didn’t smile. “Pleased,” he said, and blushed crimson.

Mrs. Porter, evidently over that morning’s chagrin at not being included in Maddie O’Ballivan’s invitation to Friday-night supper, fussed happily. “Come on in, Gideon,” she said. “Let me take your hat and coat. I’m sure Mai Lee—” She paused, realizing her cook was not present. “Where is Mai Lee?”

Lark pinned Rowdy with a brief but sharp glance. “Mai Lee,” she replied, “has retired to her quarters. She’s suffered a keen blow to her hopes.”

Rowdy frowned as he took off his coat and hat and hung them in their places.

In the interim, Mrs. Porter fairly tore the hat from Gideon’s hand. “I can’t imagine what would be troubling Mai Lee,” she chattered giddily. “The girl is the very soul of good cheer most of the time.”

Lark fixed her gaze on Rowdy. “It seems,” she said carefully, “that Mai Lee and her husband were hoping to purchase the property behind the jailhouse.”

Rowdy sighed, clearly registering the gravity of the situation.

Mrs. Porter, however, made to peel Gideon’s short wool coat off his shoulders, and he shrugged out of the garment with some haste, probably to avoid her fussing. “What a ridiculous idea,” the landlady prattled, with a wave of one hand. “Why, that house is barely fit to serve as a woodshed, and the well’s fallen in, too. There isn’t enough land there to do anything with, either. Mr. Porter always favored burning it clear and letting the weeds take it.” She tugged at Gideon’s arm. “Do sit down, Mr. Rhodes,” she urged.

“Payton,” Gideon said, casting a glance at his brother that was both beleaguered and stubbornly defiant. “My name is Payton, not Rhodes.”

Lark’s attention quickened at this. She watched Rowdy even more closely than before.

“Sit down, Gideon,” Rowdy told his brother.

Gideon sat, somewhat grudgingly.

“I’d like to speak with Mai Lee,” Rowdy said, neatly sidestepping Mrs. Porter, who appeared ready to herd him toward the table where young Gideon waited, looking uneasy, as though he might spring up and dash for the back door at any moment, not even stopping to retrieve his hat and coat from the pegs.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Lark told him, and her stiff countenance had more to do with the kiss they’d exchanged earlier than any personal judgments regarding his buying the property Mai Lee had wanted so much. “She has taken refuge in her private quarters.”

Rowdy leaned in, spoke gruffly, as though they were alone in the room, he and Lark. “Then perhaps you will be so kind, Miss Morgan,” he said, “as to roust her?”

“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Porter chimed, ever-helpful. Her lack of sympathy for Mai Lee’s position chafed at something in Lark, like sandpaper against raw flesh.

She glared at Rowdy as Mrs. Porter rushed out of the kitchen, so anxious to do the man’s bidding that she was breathless just calling Mai Lee’s name. “You might have given the poor woman a little time to get over the shock,” she said coolly.

His blue gaze moved over her face, came to rest, with exquisite focus, on her mouth. Her flesh tingled; she relived the kiss as surely as if he’d hauled off and done it again, right there in Mrs. Porter’s kitchen.

“I like to deal with situations directly,” Rowdy told her. He seemed to be implying that seducing her was one of those “situations,” but of course Lark couldn’t be certain. When she was around Rowdy, she seemed incapable of rational thought.

She colored up, incensed that it should be so.

He merely grinned.

Mai Lee appeared in the kitchen, following puffy-eyed and sullen in the wide, invisible path Mrs. Porter cut for her.

Rowdy studied Mai Lee, his gaze pensive, and then dismissed Mrs. Porter, Gideon and Lark from the room as grandly as if he were the owner of that house, and not merely a temporary boarder.

They all adjourned, at Mrs. Porter’s behest, to Mr. Porter’s study.

There, Gideon stood in the center of the room, looking as uncomfortable and anxious as he had in the kitchen.

Mrs. Porter straightened Mr. Porter’s desk, but did not, of course, throw away the cigar stub resting in the ashtray.

Lark paced, wondering what Rowdy was saying to Mai Lee.

She had her answer when Mai Lee suddenly sprang up in the study doorway, beaming.

“I quitting cook!” she cried triumphantly.

I
N HIS THOUGHTS
Rowdy reviewed the events leading up to the present prickly situation.

He’d offered to rent the ramshackle place behind his own temporary residence to Mai Lee and her husband, and she’d accepted immediately.

In her enthusiasm she’d flown the coop, dashed right out of the house, no doubt to find her husband and bend his ear with the news.

Mrs. Porter had promptly developed a sick headache and repaired to her bed.

He and Gideon and Lark had eaten, after Rowdy patched together a half-made supper from Mai Lee’s beginnings.

“What is Mrs. Porter supposed to do without a housekeeper and cook?” Lark demanded the moment Gideon had finished his meal, dutifully carried his plate and utensils to the sink and taken Pardner outside so he could attend to the customary dog business.

Rowdy sighed. Lark was clearing the table, doing a lot of bustling as she went about the task, while he ladled hot water from the stove reservoir into a pair of dented dishpans. “I don’t think Mai Lee meant she was quitting tonight,” he said, hoping he was right. “She and her man can’t plant anything for a couple of months, anyway, and the shack isn’t fit to live in. She just got a little excited when I told her I’d rent her the property for a dollar down and a dollar a month, that’s all.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rowdy noted with some satisfaction that Lark had softened a mite. She’d been huffy before. Had about glared a hole through him when Mrs. Porter practically swooned at the news of her servant’s imminent departure and had to be escorted upstairs to her room.

Lark had undertaken that duty, because the situation was delicately female, and when she returned, she’d been narrow-eyed and tight around the mouth.

She sank into a chair at the table, evidently accustomed to letting other people do the dishes without offering to help.

Rowdy added the observation to the list he kept in his head.

It didn’t mean she was selfish or lazy, he reflected. Lark was neither of those things. She simply wasn’t used to housework, a fact that tallied with her too-fine clothes and a certain elegance in her manners.

She could kiss, though.

Damnation, she could kiss.

“Some people,” he said easily, “would think it was a kindly gesture, my offering the use of that place to Mai Lee on terms I knew she could manage.”

Looking back at Lark, he saw that she’d propped an elbow on the tabletop and rested her chin in her palm. “Why is Gideon’s last name Payton, when yours is Rhodes?” she asked. That was another thing he’d noticed about her—that she had a way of switching horses in the middle of the stream, conversationally speaking. “Did you have different fathers?”

It was a tricky question.

The honest answer was no—Payton Yarbro had sired both Gideon and him. Still, with the fourteen-year gap between their ages, and the disparate ways they’d grown up—Rowdy on the home place in Iowa, Gideon in the back of Ruby’s Saloon and Poker House in Flagstaff—it would be just as true to say they’d come from separate families.

He was about to say yes, even though it went sorely against his grain to mislead Lark—which was an odd thing in itself because she hadn’t exactly been lavish with the truth herself—when she saved him the whole conundrum.

“I shouldn’t have asked you that,” she said, appearing at his elbow and taking up a dish towel. “It was far too personal an inquiry.”