Rebecca Hagan Lee - [Borrowed Brides 02] (6 page)

Tessa faced off with her attorney. “What about below the surface?”

David shrugged, then walked to his desk, sat down in the comfortable leather chair, and rested his elbows on the blotter, his long fingers forming a steeple against his full lower lip. “Why don’t you tell me?”

It was tempting. Tessa wavered a moment, torn between self-preservation and an even greater need to protect a defenseless nine-year-old boy. She wanted to tell David Alexander her side of the story and be done with it. But to do so would endanger Coalie. She couldn’t take that risk unless she knew she could trust David with the information.

“You might as well tell me now,” David said quietly watching the changing expressions on her face as she pondered the situation. “Telling me the truth is the price you’re going to have to pay to stay here under my protection.”

Tessa turned back to the stove and began to warm her hands. “Nothing changes.” Her voice was soft but laced with bitterness. “Everything has a price.”

“That’s right, Tessa. When you cause a scandal, you pay the price. My price is the truth.”

“I didn’t kill Arnie Mason,” Tessa said. “That’s the truth.”

“Do you know who did?”

Tessa shook her head. “It happened so fast. And the room was dark. I couldn’t see clearly. I only saw the movement. And…” She suddenly remembered the feel of warmth on her face. “And something hit me in the face.”

“What hit you?”

“I don’t know. Something light. Warm.” She shuddered, brushing her cheek with the back of her hand. “I thought it was blood.”

David began to pace the length of the room. “Did Arnie Mason have any enemies that you were aware of?” He turned to face her.

Tessa let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “I didn’t know Arnie Mason. I’d seen him around the Satin Slipper, but I didn’t know him.” She looked her attorney straight in the eye.

“What was he doing in your room if you didn’t know him?”

“He wanted something from me. But I didn’t kill him.”

“Did you lure him up to your room so someone else could kill him?” David asked the question, though he dreaded the answer.

“What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“Answer the question,” he demanded. “Please.”

“I woke up and he was there.”

David looked skeptical. “You always sleep fully clothed?”

“I’d been on my feet all night. I was tired. I dozed off. There’s no law against that.”

“But you invited him to your room?”

“No.” Tessa’s face mirrored her disgust at his question. “I didn’t
invite
him.”

“Then how did he get in?” David raked his fingers through his hair in a show of frustration.

“I’m thinking he opened the door and walked in. Just like everybody else.”

David ignored her sarcasm. “Why didn’t you simply lock the door?”

“Because,” Tessa answered bluntly, “the doors on the rooms of the Satin Slipper don’t have locks.”

That surprised him. He’d never thought about the lives of the women who worked in places like the Satin Slipper. Never wondered if they’d all chosen their profession. Saloon girls were simply there. To serve.

David studied his client for a moment, staring into her beautiful blue eyes. He wondered suddenly if she’d had a choice. “So you couldn’t have kept Arnie Mason out of your room, even if you wanted to?”
Or anybody else
, he added silently.

“No.” Tessa met his gaze and David caught a fleeting glimpse of the vulnerability she kept hidden deep inside. “That was the price I had to pay for our shelter,” she told him. “A room of my own, but without a lock on the door.”

Before David could formulate another question, the back door opened and Coalie stepped inside, the full bucket of coal bouncing against his leg. When David reached for the heavy bucket Coalie heaved a mighty sigh. Then he looked at Tessa, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Coalie, why don’t you show Miss Roarke where she’ll be staying while I fill the stove and make some fresh coffee?” David didn’t have the heart to spoil the boy’s pleasure. He set the bucket by the stove, scooped up a shovelful of coal, and added it to the glowing embers.

Coalie grabbed Tessa’s hand and led her across the main room to the door on the left side of the short hallway. “This is your room, Tessa,” he told her as he turned the porcelain knob. “See, it’s got a lock and key and a window and…” He opened the door with a flourish.

“Curtains.” Tessa breathed the word reverently, hurrying across the tiny bedroom to touch the red-checked material.

“They ain’t Irish lace.” Coalie’s brow wrinkled when he recalled how he and Tessa used to lie in bed at night and talk about living in a grand house with Irish lace curtains at the windows and a silver crucifix on the wall. “And you don’t have a silver crucifix, but there’s a bed big enough for two and room for a cradle, and there’s feather pillows and quilts and everything.” He looked up at Tessa, seeking reassurance.

“Oh, Coalie.” Tessa turned to the little boy. There were tears in her eyes as she fell to her knees and opened her arms. “It’s grand. It’s simply grand.” She sat on the floor of the room holding Coalie pressed against her body until she heard the tread of David’s heavy footsteps in the hallway.

“It’s not much.” David spoke from behind her, unable to resist seeing her reaction. “But it has a lock and a key.” David reached around, removed the key from the outside of the lock, and placed it in Tessa’s palm. “Feel free to use it.”

She looked up, and her gaze was caught and held by David Alexander’s intense dark-eyed stare. Tessa didn’t know how long they looked at each other; it could have been minutes or hours, but David finally broke the spell when he turned and retraced his steps into the main room of his office.

Searching for some task to occupy his mind and cover his growing agitation, David lifted the coffee pot from the stove, his long strides quickly covering the distance to the sink. He was in trouble. Big trouble. God, she was a beauty! And worse than that, she was a beauty who sent his pulse racing. But it wasn’t just her looks. There was something else about her. Something that called out to him, urging him to make her a part of his life. He wanted to protect her, to surround her with warmth and food and security. He wanted to take care of her and Coalie, and that scared the hell out of him. He hadn’t been this drawn to a woman in a long time. David recognized the warning signs, but this time he was afraid he might be too late to prevent the damage. He might be too late to save himself. Unless…

He could withdraw from the case. He
should
withdraw from the case. David repeated this decision in his head for the hundredth time since he’d met Tessa Roarke. He removed the lid from the pot, threw in a handful of ground coffee beans, then filled it with fresh water from the pump. He paced back to the stove and slammed the coffee pot down on the burner. He should take her back to the sheriff and tell him to find her another attorney. That’s what he should do. David stalked to the front door and flipped the sign to
Closed
.

He sensed trouble hovering just over the horizon. He could see it, feel it, and he knew from bitter experience what to expect. There would be another scandal. A scandal every bit as damaging as the one that had cost him his career in Washington. Representing Tessa Roarke would bring a myriad of problems he’d be better off without. He knew it as certainly as he knew his own name, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to withdraw from the case.

Why not? The answer was there in her stubborn refusal to tell her side of the story, in her quiet pride, in her fierce determination to fight for what was hers. David had seen it the moment Deputy Harris escorted Tessa from the Satin Slipper. He’d seen it again there in the bedroom when she met his gaze.

David paced over to the cupboard and removed a cup, then stomped to the stove and filled it with boiling coffee. He realized he was willing to court scandal and disaster and any number of minor catastrophes because she needed someone to believe in her innocence. And he knew how it felt to have a whole town turn against you. Remembering that feeling, David gulped his coffee. The scalding liquid burned his tongue, the roof of his mouth, and all the way down his throat as he forced himself to swallow it. Damn. He had to get out. He needed to get away from Tessa to think before he did something more serious than burn his mouth on a hot cup of coffee. David had to get out of the office before he marched into the guest room, took Tessa Roarke in his arms, and kissed her. Or shook her. He finally admitted he’d been wanting to do both since their first meeting in the jail. Grabbing his coat, he opened the front door and stepped outside. He stood on the wooden sidewalk breathing in gulps of the cold air, squelching the feelings threatening to suffocate him.

Turning to the west to let the setting sun warm his face, David began the long, cold walk down the street.

From the bedroom Tessa heard the front door open and close. She heard the scrape of her reluctant host’s boots on the boardwalk seconds later. Once again she and Coalie were alone in a strange place.

She got up from the floor, took Coalie by the hand, and together they explored the living quarters.

Tessa quickly discovered there weren’t any homey, womanly touches in the apartment except in the room David had given her. The office was crammed with boxes of papers and books, piles of loose papers and big, thick, dusty books. The storeroom was nearly as bad. The shelves contained more boxes and more books. A small cot with a pillow and a couple of wool blankets stood in the far corner; the space underneath was stacked with books.

Coalie could stay there, Tessa decided, rather than in the room with her. That way they could both have their privacy.

She opened the door to the other bedroom and walked inside. A huge bed layered with several patchwork quilts occupied one wall. She opened the armoire across from the bed and peeked inside. It was filled with men’s clothes—wool suits and linen shirts. Several pairs of boots and two pairs of dress shoes were lined up across the cedar bottom. A plain square table stood near the headboard on one side of the bed and a gentleman’s mirrored shaving stand on the other, a razor, strap, shaving mug, and a comb and brush on top of it. The only other piece of furniture was a straight-backed cowhide chair in the corner near the window. There were no pictures, no personal mementos, no sachets or little bowls of potpourri, nothing to echo the personality of the man who slept there except the piles of papers and books and a patch of orange cat hair that clung to the center of the quilt.

Tessa sighed. The place could use some cleaning and a woman’s touch. She found a broom in the storeroom.

“Okay, young man,” Tessa said to Coalie, once they’d covered the small apartment. “Let’s see what we can do with this place.”

Tessa stood in front of the stove stirring a pot of beans. David could smell them as soon as he opened the door to the office. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I found Horace Greeley outside.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice, dropping the wooden spoon into the simmering beans. She murmured something beneath her breath as she fished for the utensil. “Ouch!” Tessa jerked her hand away from the pot, then immediately licked the tips of her burned fingers, soothing the hurt. “Look what you made me do.” She turned to David. He was holding the big orange tomcat she’d chased outside with the broom. “That was the only big spoon I could find.” She made an attempt to retrieve the spoon with her other hand, and this time she succeeded.

“I’m surprised you found one at all.” David watched as she hurried to the sink on the back wall of the office and pumped water. She rinsed the spoon before returning to the stove. “I don’t do much cooking,” he admitted. “I usually eat at the restaurants around town. I thought that’s what we’d do tonight.”

“I don’t think you thought about it at all,” Tessa snapped. “If you had, you’d have known I won’t be going out for all the town to stare at.”

She was absolutely right. He hadn’t given dinner any thought. He’d been too busy thinking about other, more important things, like how he was going to endure living with her during her case.

After setting Greeley on the floor, David moved toward the stove. “It looks as if you’ve made yourself at home.” He glanced around the room. A pot of coffee boiled alongside the beans, two opened tin cans sat in the dry sink. A wooden-handled kitchen knife lay beside them. Two mismatched china plates, two earthenware mugs, and two spoons were set out on the table that had been in his bedroom. His leather desk chair and two office chairs were arranged around it.

She’d swept the room and rearranged the furniture to her liking. Even his desk was neat, his papers and files carefully stacked on the surface and on the floor and the bookshelf behind it.

“May I?” He lifted a mug off his desk, reached around Tessa for the coffee pot, and poured himself a cup of the brew. Staring at the two place settings, David felt like an intruder in his own home. He knew his feelings were unreasonable. She hadn’t known when to expect him back. But still it bothered him to know he’d been excluded from their family supper.

Tessa followed his gaze as she stirred the bubbling beans. “I didn’t know when you were coming back,” she explained, smoothing her right hand down the front of her skirt, “or
if
you were coming back. We were hungry. Coalie found some food in the storeroom next to your boxes of books and papers—two cans of beans and three tins of horse meat.”

David glanced at the labels on the cans in the sink. “What did you do with the horsemeat?” He was almost afraid to ask. “It’s for my cat.”

“I put it in a dish for him.”

She watched as the animal jumped from the floor to the table and began nosing around. “Outside.” She began to stir the beans even faster. “Two cans of beans. That was all there was.” Tessa rushed on, embarrassed and angry. “No flour, no sugar, no potatoes, no tea.” She looked at him challengingly.

David gazed at the becoming flush of pink highlighting her cheeks, then at the hollow of her throat revealed by the collar of her green calico dress. He could almost see the rapid beat of her pulse. “I apologize, Miss Roarke. In my rush to get you out of jail before nightfall, find a suitable place for you to stay, and get some decent clothes for you to wear, I gave little thought to the mundane necessities like flour, sugar, potatoes, and tea.” He looked her straight in the eyes.