My Heart's Desire (24 page)

"I'm certain she did," Jolene said. "But you were traveling alone and—"

"Mr. Cedar was with me."

Jolene smiled gently. "I don't think that would have counted for much in the widow's eyes. She took one look at your fancy clothes and made an assumption about you. That's probably why you were directed to Georgie's."

"She thought I was a—"

"Whore," Jarret interjected.

Rennie was mortified. Not for herself, but for Jolene. Her dark emerald eyes narrowed on Jarret.

"Oh, honey," Jolene said. "Don't take offense on my account. I got Jarret's money on my bedside table, provin' the sort of woman I am." She tilted her head in Jarret's direction and batted her eyes. "And the sort of man he is."

Ruddy color flushed Jarret's lean features. His chair scraped against the floor as he pushed away from the table. He poured himself more coffee and stood by the stove, leaning against a butcher-block table.

The revelation that Jarret had shared Jolene's bed made Rennie fight for composure. She was bothered by the fact that she was bothered at all. She hadn't expected that when she'd made her decision to come west. Not that she would have changed her mind, or
could
have changed her mind, but at least her reaction wouldn't have taken her by surprise.

"If Mrs. Shepard wouldn't let me in," Rennie said to Jolene, "why did Georgie throw me out?"

"He knows a lady when he sees one," said Jolene.

Rennie's gaze didn't waver from Jolene. "So do I," she said softly.

Now it was Jolene who flushed scarlet. She bent her head and began to eat.

Jarret leveled his coldly remote blue stare at Rennie. "I think it's about time you tell me why you're here," he said. "I can't imagine with Duffy as a guide that you've lost your way."

"I came to find you," she said calmly.

"And you have. Now why?"

He was the same and somehow not the same, Rennie thought. The sapphire eyes that were so startling were distant now, without any trace of humor. The amused smile was absent as well. The patrician nose, the sun lines etched at the corners of his eyes, and the long, dark lashes were all familiar features of a face that was oddly unfamiliar now. Weight loss showed in the way his shirt lay across his shoulders, in the worn band on his belt that was notched one keeper more tightly, and in the tautness of his skin beneath his day-old beard. He spoke curtly, without the drawl that hinted at some private enjoyment of the moment. She recalled that he had always been capable of sarcasm to make a point, but that no longer seemed to be his intent.

Jarret Sullivan was just plain mean.

Rennie set her fork aside. Her hands folded around her coffee cup. "I had thought you would understand my being here immediately," she said. "Have you heard nothing of what's happened to my father?"

His dark brows pulled together in a faint frown. "News is slow to get to these parts."

"Not that slow," Jolene said, giving Jarret a significant look. "A person who spends most days starin' at the bottom of a glass doesn't hear too much."

"Shut up, Jo," he said.

Jolene let his order roll down her back. "What's this about your father, Rennie?"

"He's disappeared."

Jarret returned to the table and sat. "What do you mean he's disappeared? How can a man like Jay Mac go anywhere he can't be found."

Jolene whistled softly. "Your father was John MacKenzie Worth?"

Rennie nodded. "You know him?"

"Doesn't everybody?" she asked. "Guess he was about as well known as President Grant."

Jarret jerked his chin in Jolene's direction. "Why are you speaking of him in the past tense?"

"Because he's dead." She glanced at Rennie. "I'm sorry, Rennie, but that's the word in all the papers that come to Echo Falls.
Rocky Mountain News
carried it on the front page. It was quite a story."

"I know," Rennie said. "My sister Michael wrote it."

Jolene's forehead furrowed as she raised her eyebrows. "Now you're makin' no kind of sense."

"You've got that right," Jarret said. "Rennie, what are you talking about? Is Jay Mac dead or isn't he?"

Rennie's eyes lowered. She stared at her hands. Her fingertips were pressing whitely against the cup she held. "It depends on who you ask," she said softly. "Michael believes he's dead. She doesn't want him to be, but she can't convince herself otherwise. Ethan says Jay Mac probably couldn't have survived the wreck. Mary Francis has accepted it. Skye and Maggie, too. Mother's in mourning, but she still doesn't believe it's true. It's for her that I had to come." She paused a beat then admitted, her voice a mere thread of sound, "And for me. We both need to know what happened."

Jarret looked to Jolene for more of the answer. "What did the papers report?"

"Jay Mac Worth was on the train that wrecked near the Iron Ridge Pass a few weeks back."

"Six weeks," Rennie said. "It was six weeks ago. December sixth." She raised her eyes to Jarret. "You didn't know?"

He shook his head. "I never heard anything. Not about the wreck. Certainly not about Jay Mac."

Jolene's chestnut eyes darted between the two of them as she went on. "Sixty people were killed in the wreck, including all the crew except one porter, I think. The train jumped the track at some place called—"

"Juggler's Jump." Rennie and Jarret spoke at the same time.

"I know the place," Jarret said when Rennie gave him a questioning look. "It's a dangerous curve, and there's no place but down from there. I'm sorry, Rennie."

He said it as if he meant it, and he said it as if Jay Mac were certainly dead. Rennie shook her head. "His body's never been found," she said. "Ethan traveled from Denver to direct the search and couldn't find my father's body. Everyone but Jay Mac was accounted for."

"There could be good reason for that," Jolene said quietly. "This country's wild, Rennie, and unpredictable."

"My brother-in-law said the same thing," she said.

Jarret's tone was blunt. He could not spare her pain
and
have her come to her senses. "You should have listened to Ethan. He knows this country. He wasn't—"

"He says you know it better." There was a challenge in Rennie's voice. She had not come so far to be turned away easily. "When I wrote to Ethan and Michael and told them what I intended, Ethan said you were the person I needed to see."

"And now that you're seeing me?"

"I want to hire you, Mr. Sullivan. I want you to take me to Juggler's Jump and help me find my father."

Jolene was watching Jarret carefully. He looked as if he was regretting leaving his bottle at the bar. She was not surprised by his reply.

"I'm not for hire," he said tersely.

"But—"

Jarret got up from the table. "Forget it, Miss Dennehy. I'm not interested." He left the kitchen before she could get in another word.

Jolene sighed and looked at Rennie curiously. "Did you really think he would help you?"

Rennie pushed her plate away. "I thought he would take the money. He has before."

"Doesn't look like he wants it this time. Look, honey, he's probably just tryin' to save you the heartache and the money."

"He doesn't care about my heart."

"He doesn't care all that much about money."

Rennie was skeptical. Jarret Sullivan was a bounty hunter. If that didn't entail a serious interest in money, then Rennie couldn't imagine what did. He had accepted ten thousand dollars from Jay Mac to interfere in her life. He wasn't merely interested in money. He was greedy. She assumed her mistake in dealing with him was not naming the amount she was willing to pay. "Where has he gone?" she asked.

Jolene shrugged. "I don't rightly know. Upstairs, maybe. Or back to his cabin. He has a little place on the outskirts of town. Won it in a poker game a few months ago." She shook her head as she read what was on Rennie's mind. "I don't advise going after him now. He's got a sore head for one thing, and he likes his privacy for another. Give him some time to think about your offer."

"I don't have time," Rennie said. "You said yourself that snow's coming this way. All trace of my father's trail could be lost if I don't start out now." Dismissing Jolene's advice, Rennie grabbed her coat and ran after Jarret.

Duffy Cedar was the saloon's sole customer. As soon as he saw Rennie come out of the kitchen, he knew who she was looking for. He lifted his glass of whiskey and pointed toward the street.

Rennie shrugged into her coat on her way out the door. She saw Jarret walking toward the livery and called to him. When he didn't hear her, or pretended not to, Rennie raised her skirts and ran after him. She caught up to him in front of Henderson's Mercantile.

She reached for his arm and brushed his coat sleeve. "Mr. Sullivan, please have the decency to stop while I talk to you."

He did stop. So suddenly, in fact, that Rennie nearly barreled into him. He made no attempt to steady her as she rocked on her feet. "What is it you want?" he asked with icy impatience.

"I've gone out of my way to find you," she said. "The least you could do is hear me out. I'm prepared to offer you fifty percent more to find my father than he offered you to stop my wedding."

"Fifteen thousand dollars?"

"That's right." Had she piqued his interest?

"Go home, Miss Dennehy."

Rennie rocked again on her feet as if hit a second time. He may as well have said "Go to hell." It was delivered with the same venom. "I'm going to Juggler's Jump," she said. "With or without you, I'm going to find what's become of my father."

"Without me." He started to walk away.

"Twenty thousand dollars."

Now he did say it. "Go to hell."

Rennie didn't try to follow him. She waited until he had disappeared into the livery; then she returned to Bender's Saloon. Jolene was waiting for her.

"He didn't change his mind?" asked Jolene.

Rennie shook her head. "You were right about that." She glanced around. "Where's Mr. Cedar?"

"Under the table."

"Too much drink?"

"See for yourself. He's under the table."

Rennie's attention shifted from the seat Duffy had occupied to the area beneath the table. Duffy was flat on his back, eyes closed, the empty bottle of watered-down whiskey beside him. His chest rose abruptly as he snored. "I suppose there will be no help from that quarter," she said, disgusted.

"What do you mean?"

"If Mr. Sullivan won't help me, then I have to find someone who will."

"You're not going to find anyone to set out this afternoon. There's not that many fools in Echo Falls. Maybe not in all of Colorado. Not with the blizzard that's comin' this way."

Rennie took off her coat and folded it over her arm. "What am I supposed to do, then, Jolene?"

She shrugged. "What most any of us do at times like this. Wait."

Waiting was not what Rennie did best, but she didn't share that with Jolene. "Could you show me my room?" she asked.

"Certainly. It's just about time for everyone else to start risin' around here. That's as good a time as any to make yourself scarce."

Rennie's dressing room at home was bigger than the room Jolene showed her. It didn't matter. It had a bed, and that was enough to recommend it. When Jolene left to find Nick Bender and explain about the new boarder, Rennie unpacked a few toiletries from her valise and laid them on top of the pine chest of drawers. Tilting the cracked mirror on top to an angle that served her, Rennie removed the pins from her hair and brushed it out. When tears came to her eyes she pretended it was the hard bristle brush against her scalp that caused them. The corner of her mind that knew better would not reveal itself.

Rennie removed her dress and shoes and lay on the bed. The mattress was soft and sagged in the middle. The down comforter was warm. She turned on her side and stared out the window. Her vision blurred again as the first snowflakes fell. She drifted asleep thinking about someone other than her father for the first time in six weeks.

* * *

The snow lasted two days. Rennie had never seen anything like it. With little to do but watch it fall she grew to know its every tumbling whim. It came in waves on the back of the wind, gusting and swirling, obliterating the mountain peaks, the limber pines, and finally Echo Falls itself. A rope was strung from the back of the saloon to the privy so that boarders and patrons wouldn't lose their way during one of nature's calls. Miners carried great clumps of snow on their boots and created a small flurry inside the saloon when they shook themselves off.

Bender's was busy. Miners who couldn't find their way to the adits and shafts had no such difficulty making their way to the saloon. For two days, in accordance with Jolene's wishes, Rennie avoided the noisy activity below stairs. On the morning of her third day in Echo Falls Rennie had had enough. She went downstairs to escape the boredom and instead found the means of escaping Echo Falls. Clarence Vestry and Tom Brighton would not have been given a second glance in New York. But this was Colorado. Rennie did more than give them a second glance. She hired them. By afternoon she and her guides were headed for Juggler's Jump.