Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] (37 page)

Read Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] Online

Authors: With Heart

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers]
4.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Please don’t break my heart, Johnny,” she gasped when his mouth left hers.
“Ah, sweet woman. You’ll likely break mine when you realize what an ignorant, rough man I am. But you’re a fever in my blood, and I can’t stay away from you.”
“Oh, I’m glad! Then you do care for me?”
“Care? I’m crazy about you!”
“I love you, too. Love you so much.”
“You do? Really—?”
“Yes, yes, yes. You’re every hero I’ve ever written about all rolled up in one.”
He laughed joyously against her face.
“Are you as happy as I am?” she asked, and leaned back to look into his face.
“I don’t know. How happy are you?”
“Let’s see . . . happy as a dog with a tub full of bones. Happy as a fox in a henhouse. Happy as a boy with a new slingshot—”
“Happy as a cowboy kissin’ a pretty, sweet little redbird?”
“As happy as that! Johnny? I need to hear you say it.”
“Sweet girl, I’m not good with soft words. I’ve never said those words in my life. I’m crazy about you—”
“Say you love me, but only if you mean it.”
“I love you,” he said with a touch of desperation. “But I’m scared! So many things could go wrong. What if, after a while, you change your mind . . . and see me as nothing but an ignorant breed with manure on my boots? Christ, that’s why I’m so damned afraid to take that step over the line.”
“I love you.” She drew back to cradle his face in her hands. “You’re afraid since we have the power to hurt each other simply because we love each other. I understand what you mean,” she said, and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’m afraid, too, you know.”
“I don’t want you to ever be afraid of anything.”
“But I am . . . at times.” She rested her cheek on his shoulder. “I’m afraid of being old and having no one to love me. Now I’ll be afraid of losing you.”
“The same goes here,” Johnny gently reminded her.
It didn’t matter that they were sitting in front of a honky-tonk. They could have been sitting on a busy street in the city. The cab of Johnny’s old truck was their world. Johnny told her of his dream to have a large cattle and horse ranch. She told him how lonely she had been growing up and that she would like to have lots of children. He hugged her, kissed her, and said that he would do his part to help her get them.
They laughed, hugged, kissed, and talked nonsense. It was past midnight when Johnny stopped the truck in front of Hazel’s and walked Kathleen up to the porch.
“I’ll not go down to Vernon tomorrow if you’ll go with me on Saturday.”
“Does that mean that you’ll come in tomorrow and sit in on the meeting?”
“Kathleen, sweet girl, don’t expect me to accept that . . . man. I simply can’t. He means nothing to me.”
“He told me that he understands how you feel because he would feel the same. He just wants to know you.”
“Kathleen, I don’t want him hanging around waitin’ for me to call him
Daddy!
”
“Just come help us. If what we suspect is true, it will turn this town upside down.”
“Do you still want to go to Red Rock on Sunday to see Tom and Henry Ann? It’s about fifty miles over there. We’ll have to leave early.”
“I wasn’t going to let you wiggle out of that.” Kathleen wrapped her arms around his waist. “I don’t want to go in. I’ll not sleep a wink.”
“I’ve got to get home. I’ve got stock to tend to.”
“Tonight?”
“At daylight.” He kissed her quick, then with a groan, long and hard. His hand moved down to her hips and for a moment held her tightly against his aching maleness. “Go in while I’m still able to let you go,” he whispered.
“You’ll not get much sleep.”
“More than if you were sleeping with me. ’Night, sweetheart. See you tomorrow.”
• • •
Kathleen did sleep, so well that she had a bounce in her step and a sparkle in her eyes when she came into the office and went through to the back room.
“Morning,” she called out to Adelaide and Paul, who were standing close together beside the table where Paul was tearing down a page and throwing the type in a bucket.
“My, you look bright-eyed this morning.” Adelaide’s hand lingered on Paul’s arm when she turned to speak to Kathleen.
“Must be the date she had last night with that cowboy, huh?” Paul said with a wink.
“We did some great detective work last night. But I’ll wait and let that
cowboy
tell you about it when he gets here.”
“He’s coming back in today? He spends more time here than at the ranch. We ought to charge him rent,” Paul said in a complaining tone.
“All right, you two. I am happy this morning. Happy as a dog with two tails to wag.”
“Are we invited to the wedding?” Adelaide asked with wide-eyed innocence.
“It hasn’t gone that far, but if it does, you’ll be at the head of the list.” Unable to keep the smile off her face, Kathleen went back to her desk determined to get as much work done as possible.
She worked steadily to catch up on the items for the next week’s paper. She wrote the church and school news first, then a story about the local baseball team, who would play their last game of the season next weekend. She had begun to work on an editorial she had started about the need for a benefit for the local Volunteer Firefighters’ Association when a husky gray-haired man came into the office.
“I was lookin’ at the pictures ya got out there of that girl. I was the one who found her. Name’s Kilburn.”
“Hello, Mr. Kilburn. I’m Kathleen Dolan. I took the pictures.”
“It warn’t no accident, miss. I said that when I brung the sheriff out there. That girl was beat up bad and throwed out.”
“The car did run over her—”
“Pete Carroll’s brains is scrambled,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “When he looked at her, he said that she couldn’t a got all that done to her gettin’ hit by a car. Now he’s changed his tune.”
“Perhaps someone changed it for him, Mr. Kilburn.”
“Why’d anyone go and do that? It’s plain as yore nose on yore face. I hit Pete up about it this mornin’. He said Doc Herman looked at her and said she was hit by a car. That’s what he said. ’Course, if Doc said black was white, Pete’d take it for gospel.”
“I wonder why that is. Do you know?”
“I ain’t knowin’, miss. I ain’t wantin’ nothin’ to do with that Doc Herman.”
“Why is that, Mr. Kilburn?”
“He’s got too uppity to lance boils, sew up cuts, or come out to see sick folks. He’s got that nurse to do it all, and she ain’t no doc.”
“He delivers babies,” Kathleen said, and watched his face.
“Harrumpt! I heared tell that he’ll take in a girl what got ruint and not charge her folks a dime. Folks come from all over bringin’ him girls that ain’t wed.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“No, missy, I don’t know it fer a fact, but it’s been talked about ’round here for years.”
“A lot of
married
women come here to have their babies,” Kathleen said softly.
“I ain’t knowin’ ’bout that. When any a my folks get sick, we go down to Vernon.”
“Do you mind if I quote you saying that you think Clara Ramsey’s death was no accident?”
“In the paper?”
“Yes, I’m writing a story about it for next week’s paper.”
“Ya can say so if ya want. I’m sayin’ what I think.”
“I’ll see that you get a copy of the paper.”
“I ain’t sayin’ this just to get my name in the paper.”
“I know that. You seem to be a man of conscience.”
“I ain’t been able to think of nothin’ but that poor girl since I found her.” He anchored his battered hat down on his head. “Got to get back home to Mama. She’s all tore up, too, thinkin’ what happened out there on the road.”
“Thank you for coming in, Mr. Kilburn.”
As soon as the man left, Kathleen ripped the paper out of her typewriter, inserted a fresh sheet and began to type rapidly.
The death of Clara Ramsey was not an accident according to the rancher who found her body in a ditch alongside the road last Tuesday morning. Mr. Dale Kilburn, whose ranch is a mile south—
By midmorning she had finished the last page of her story, read it and edited it, and was ready to put it on the hook beside the linotype machine. She looked up. Johnny was lounging in the doorway leading to the back room, watching her. Her heart fluttered with a joyous surge of pleasure, then took off like a runaway horse.
“I didn’t know you were here.” She stood, her eyes bright with happiness at the sight of him.
“You were writing. I didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’ve got a story from Mr. Kilburn, who found Clara’s body. Do you want to read it?”
“Tell me about it.”
Unable to keep her feet from going to him, she crossed to the doorway. His eyes feasted on her face.
“Tell me I didn’t dream last night,” she whispered, her hand on his chest.
“What did you dream?” he teased.
“That you and I . . . that we—”
“That we what?”
“Johnny Henry!” she scolded. Both hands were against his chest, now, pushing him back out of sight of the front window. She tilted her face, her eyes smiling as her hands and her arms encircled his waist. “Don’t . . . tease me, you nitwit!”
Johnny’s face was creased with smiles.
Oh, Lord, he is beautiful, and sweet and dear and thank you, God, for bringing me here!
He lowered his head and kissed her, softly, gently, and quickly.
“Hey, there, cut that out!” Paul’s voice was stern. “We can’t be having such as that going on in our pressroom.”
“It’s been going on in this pressroom for three or four years when you thought I wasn’t looking,” Johnny retorted. “You kiss Adelaide every chance you get.”
“Yeah, but . . . Addie and I are adults.”
“I’m not forgettin’ that you owe me the price of two tickets to a picture show. And where’s that two bits you owe me?”
“What are you two talking about?” Kathleen kept her hand on Johnny’s arm as if she was afraid he’d disappear if she wasn’t touching him.
“A while back he offered to pay if I’d take you to a picture show. Now he’s trying to chicken out.”
“Well of all things! You had to be bribed to take me out?”
“I was going to take you anyway; but if he was dumb enough to offer to pay, I wasn’t going to turn it down.”
The smile in his eyes and on his lips was real.

 

Chapter Twenty-three
A
t noon Kathleen and Johnny walked down to Claude’s and ordered hamburgers. Seated at the end of the counter they watched Claude at the grill and listened to Gene Autry singing “Red River Valley.” Johnny put a nickel in the jukebox and soon Bing Crosby was crooning, “
I don’t know why I love you like I do, I don’t know why, I just do.
” His hand beneath the counter searched and found hers.
“Well, well—” Claude brought the hamburgers and lifted his brows up and down several times. “What’s going on here?”
“None of your business, you nosy old goat,” Johnny retorted angrily, but he was smiling.
“Knowed it the minute ya brought her here. Ya was lookin’ all cow-eyed then.” He wiped his hands on his apron and glanced at the other diners before leaning close to say in a confidential tone, “You owe me, son. My burgers draw pretty girls like flies.”
“What do you want, Claude? My arm or my leg?”
Claude’s face had lost its grin when he spoke to Kathleen. “You’ve stirred up a hornets’ nest, miss, with those pictures in the window. Some of the merchants are wanting to boycott the paper. The sheriff says she was hit by a car.”
“Dr. Herman says it was an accident. We think she was murdered—beaten, thrown out of the car, and run over.”
“Doc says folks won’t come here and buy goods if they think a murderer is running loose.”
“If they withhold advertising because we’re trying to get to the truth about a poor girl’s death, then we’ll fight back with a story that will shake up this entire county; and the merchants might find themselves being boycotted by their customers.”
Claude’s laugh was as dry as corn shucks. “Ya got ya a little fighter here, boy. Hold on to her.”
“Pressure was put on the
Gazette
to accept
his
decision that what happened to Clara was an accident. Why? Don’t you want to know why he was so anxious to do that? It isn’t because people won’t come to town. That story won’t wash.”
“Town’s got a clean record compared to some.”

Other books

Connect the Stars by Marisa de los Santos
Flicker by Melanie Hooyenga
God War by James Axler
Magic Time: Angelfire by Marc Zicree, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
El librero de Kabul by Åsne Seierstad
The World Shuffler by Keith Laumer
The Oath by Jeffrey Toobin
Grey Zone by Clea Simon
Hungry for You by Lynsay Sands