One Heart to Win (34 page)

“This was your room,” he said in that same soft voice. “At the beginning of the year I had it readied for your return, but until then, it still had all your baby things in it. I would come in here every night before bed to tuck you in—in my mind. I knew you weren’t here, but I could imagine you were. I missed you so much, Tiffany. It was a double blow, when Rose left me, taking you with her.”

It sounded sincere, but she wasn’t fooled. My God, did he really think she would believe his lies at this point? Why couldn’t he just admit the truth? He might have doted on her as a baby, but he forgot about her as soon as she was gone. She would never believe otherwise because she had the proof, fifteen long years of proof.

She couldn’t bear any more of this—of him. Barely getting the words out past the lump in her throat, she said, “I must ask you to leave my room. I’ll stay here for the time being, but I would prefer that you and I dispense with the pretense. If you can’t respect my wishes, then I will stay in town until I hear from my mother.”

“Tiffany—”

“Please! Not another word!”

The door closed. She glanced back to make sure he was gone before she collapsed to her knees where she was. She put a hand over her mouth to silence the sobs. She didn’t understand. This shouldn’t still hurt so much after all these years. She should be rejoicing instead that she’d finally shown him that she didn’t care either. . . .

Chapter Forty-Three

Z
ACHARY HAD WANTED TO
talk. Hunter didn’t. His horse was still hitched to the post in front of the house. As soon as the Warrens rode off, he did, too. Zachary yelled at him to stop. In moments Hunter couldn’t hear him anymore.

He rode to town in a straight path that avoided the stretch of road where he’d seen the Warrens. At the Blue Ribbon Saloon he ordered a bottle of whiskey. Someone spoke to him at the bar, laughing and drunk. His fist flew. He didn’t even know whom he’d hit, didn’t care whom he’d have to apologize to later. He just grabbed the bottle and left. But he hoped he’d see a few of the miners on the street. He’d be happy to take out what he was feeling on them. He didn’t get lucky, didn’t spot a single one.

He left Nashart and rode all day, he couldn’t even remember where. By noon half the bottle was empty. It hadn’t done what he wanted. Her image stayed with him, riding off with her family, expressionless, not one bit of guilt or remorse on her
face for what she’d done. He finished the rest of the bottle and continued to ride aimlessly.

The second half of the bottle worked, just not nearly long enough. But it opened a flood of other memories. Jenny roping a cow and laughing at herself over how long it took her. Jenny making beds, washing dishes, cooking for them. It was a wonder she hadn’t poisoned their food. Jenny trying to put out a fire even when she didn’t know how—or would the truth come out now, that she had started it?

Was this her idea of fun, snooping on his family? Had she been laughing at them all along for believing her housekeeper story? And what an idiot he was, telling her how he felt about his fiancée—her! He wouldn’t put anything past that woman who’d tricked him into . . . There was no point in denying it. Her deception was killing him because he was in love with her. And it had happened so fast! He’d seen it coming and had tried to stop it. But seeing her with Caleb’s newborn son had clinched it. He was in love with a woman who didn’t exist!

He was sober again before he let Patches find their way home. The sun was setting. My God, he’d never see a sunset again without thinking of her and her enjoyment of them. That he could believe, but nothing else.

He entered through the kitchen. A mistake. He was going to have to avoid that room like the plague when he could see her everywhere in it. Andrew was the only one there now. He was reading Jenny’s cookbook as he stirred whatever was in the pot on the stove. So he was going to take over her job?

Maximilian rushed into the room at the sound of the door’s opening, then disappeared back down the hall when he saw it wasn’t his mistress coming home. Hunter wanted to laugh every time he saw that pig following Jenny about. She hadn’t
taken it with her. No, course she wouldn’t, it had all been an act, especially her affection for a pig

Warily, probably because of Hunter’s expression, Andrew whispered, “I didn’t know—”

“Shut up, kid” was all Hunter said as he passed through the kitchen.

He thought he could get away with slipping up to his room unnoticed and locking the door. But his parents were in the parlor, both of them. Both were staring at him the moment he came into view by the stairs.

He was surprised enough to stop. “How’d you get down here, Ma?”

“I carried her down,” Zachary grumbled. “We’ve been waiting here all day for you! She refused to go back upstairs, afraid you’d try to sneak in without us noticing.”

“I tried,” Hunter admitted with a shrug. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Sit down,” Mary said softly.

It was one thing to disobey Zachary. Hunter did that often enough, two males butting heads. But it was quite another thing not to comply with his mother’s dictates. He sat down, but he immediately changed seats to sit next to his mother on the sofa so the poker table wouldn’t be in his view. More damn memories of fun and laughter with Jenny that just made him even angrier now. Could she really have faked it all? He’d even thought that night that he’d never go to town on a Saturday night again if he could spend them all with her instead. What a fool he’d been!

“Don’t pretend you’re not going to be a happy groom now,” Zachary began. “You were all over that gal from the moment she got here.”

“All over Jenny, yeah,” Hunter said coldly. “But that’s not who rode off from here today.”

“So what if she fooled us,” Zachary replied. “We got to see what she’s really like, and let me tell you, I’m damned glad she’s not the snooty, high-muck-a-muck society gal I was expecting.”

“Isn’t she?” Hunter asked angrily. “You haven’t figured out yet that she was
acting
a part? What you saw and heard wasn’t the real girl, just a role she was playing.”

The pig clip-clopped down the hall at the sound of their voices, apparently still hoping to find his mistress. Max stopped there at the bottom of the stairs staring at them, almost accusingly, as if he were blaming them for her absence. Zachary threw one of Mary’s small, embroidered pillows at it, making it squeal and trot off upstairs.

“That damn pig,” Zachary grumbled. “You need to take it to her tomorrow, Hunter.”

“Why? She’ll just send it to their kitchen for dinner. Do you really think she befriended a pig of all animals? It was just another part of her deception. In fact, I don’t doubt she was meticulously deliberate in doing the exact opposite of what she’d really do, just so we wouldn’t make the connection between Jennifer Fleming and Tiffany Warren.”

“What connection?” Zachary demanded gruffly. “Them both arriving from the East at the same time? Them both having that pretty red hair? We would have just thought it was coincidence.”

“Yeah—unless she behaved the way she usually behaves, then we would have guessed pretty damn quickly. It hasn’t sunk in yet, Pa? She
is
that cold, snooty Easterner you were expecting her to be.”

“Not exactly,” Mary disagreed. “Keep in mind, your brothers
approached her, she didn’t approach them. And for whatever reason she went along with it, she came to us expecting to be just a housekeeper, which isn’t a strenuous job in the least, but we put her to work instead, real work. If she’s the spoiled, uppity rich gal you’re both now thinking she is, she would have quit right away. Society ladies don’t get their hands dirty. They always have a personal maid close to hand, too.”

Hunter snorted. “Now you mention it, she’s visited a woman at the hotel in town. Said she was an acquaintance she met on the train, but it’s probably her maid. The real Tiffany Warren wouldn’t have traveled this far alone, would she?”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Mary agreed, but reminded him, “We don’t know why she did this yet.”

“To spy for her pa, of course,” Zachary reasserted his earlier guess.

“To what purpose?” Mary interrupted. “We have nothing to hide. If anything, this smacks more of a prank and a whopper, to top any her brothers ever pulled. The Warren boys might even have talked her into it, but her father certainly wouldn’t have. Yet, I don’t really believe that, either. It’s just far more likely than spying.”

“Does it matter why?” Hunter said. “The fact remains, she’s a liar and a damn good one. We’ll never be able to believe a word she says now.”

Mary patted his hand. “I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. You can even direct some of it at me because I could see Rose in her, not clearly, but enough to make me wonder. Yet I said nothing.”

“Why the hell not?” Zachary asked.

“Because you stubborn jackasses would have gotten all up in arms about it,” Mary replied, staring at her husband pointedly.
“And because I figured she had her reasons. And also because I sensed kindness in her. She’d have to be the best actress in the world to fake that.”

Hunter stood up to leave. His head was starting to ache from all the possibilities, none of them good. “I’m going to bed.”

“You’re not going to eat first? Your pa talked that boy into taking over Jenny’s, that is, Tiffany’s job.”

“I’ve got a bottle of rotgut in me; food doesn’t have a chance of staying down tonight.”

Mary nodded, promising, “This will look better in the morning, Hunter. And tomorrow night—”

“I’m not going with you.”

“Of course you will,” Mary said. “You’ll probably even ride over sooner because you won’t be able to stand it, not knowing what her motives were.”

Hunter nodded for his mother’s sake, but he didn’t agree. He went upstairs and there was the pig again, standing outside Jenny’s door, waiting, hoping she’d open it, probably feeling as bereft as he was. Without even thinking about why he did it, Hunter picked Max up and carried him to his room for the night.

Chapter Forty-Four

T
IFFANY WAS ENJOYING A
happy reunion with her brothers at least. That painful knot in her chest eased throughout the day as one by one her brothers visited her in her room, expressing their happiness at seeing her again. Sam must have told Carl and Roy her reasons for staying with the Callahans, the ones she’d told him anyway, because they didn’t mention what she’d done, not once.

Carl was adorable. He was so bashful. He’d slicked back his blond hair to show her he was a man now, though he was only sixteen. But he’d always been shy, so it would probably take a few days for him to relax around her.

She’d expected Roy to be a little more vocal, but dreamer that he was, maybe he understood better than anyone else why she had done something so drastic. He slipped her a poem before he left her, his way of apologizing for being so angry at her in town that day.

By early afternoon one of the Warrens’ hired hands had delivered
her trunk of clothes. At Tiffany’s request, Sam had gone to town and brought Anna to the Warren Ranch.

“About time,” Anna had started to crow in an I-told-you-so tone until she noticed Tiffany’s red eyes. Then she amended, “So it’s not your choice to be here then?”

Tiffany had shaken her head. “And meeting my father was as horrible as I knew it would be. But I’m sure I’ll only have to endure it for another few days.”

“What’s happening in a few days?”

“I’m going to get a reprieve and go home where I belong. Will you come with me, or do you prefer working with hammers and saws now?”

“I enjoyed it for a few days, but that’s how quickly we ran out of work to do, so I was getting bored. This town is still too small for a full-time furniture maker, though it’s something I could pitch in on occasionally if
you
were sticking around. But Mr. Martin didn’t really need a helper, he was just lonely, spending every day in his shop by himself.”

There was one other surprise. When Sam had gone to town to fetch Anna, he’d run into the postmaster, who told him a package for Tiffany had arrived on the train that morning. It was her mother’s response to her first letter. Her mother’s having addressed it to Tiffany at the Warren Ranch was indicative of how angry Rose was. Tiffany didn’t think her mother had intended to expose her charade because in all likelihood Frank would merely have thought it was something they’d had shipped early to make sure it would be there when Tiffany arrived.