The Texan's Dream (2 page)

TWO

JONATHAN LOOKED UP AND SAW PLAID A MOMENT before pain shattered his world. A wool-wrapped sledgehammer plowed into the side of his face. He tumbled to the ground, the airborne weight now resting on his chest.

With one hand covering his eye, he shoved at the body on top of him and fought his way out from under yards of material. He rolled, then stopped as the cold, solid earth grounded him.

“I’m sorry!” came an Irish voice. “I didn’t see you.”

Jonathan opened one eye, the only eye he could, and stared at the bookkeeper. Fighting to control his rage, he brought her features into focus. She lay in the frozen dirt of the narrow backstreet, as close to him as a wife might sleep beside her mate.

Swirling snow drifted across their bodies, trying to brush them away as easily as it did bits of paper and leaves. Jonathan didn’t move. He didn’t feel the cold or the wind. He just stared at the strange woman beside him and attempted to control his anger enough to breathe.

Kara O’Riley slowly sat up, testing each joint for damage. Her wool cap had tumbled and a long strand of midnight hair wiped across her face.

To his amazement, Jonathan saw anger in her eyes. She seemed to think he’d bothered her terribly by being in her way.

“Madam, I was wrong.” Jonathan’s blood seeped between the fingers he held over the cut just above his throbbing left eye. “Your nearsightedness won’t get you killed, but it will me! What were you doing?” he shouted, blowing a frosty breath into the air. Had he lost all survival skills in the week he’d been surrounded by buildings?

“Oh, it wasn’t me sight,” she defended herself, her accent thickening as her anger climbed. “I always close me eyes when I drop.” She leaned closer, touching him on the arm. “Speaking of eyes, one of yours is looking poorly. I think it has the imprint of me heel against it.”

Jonathan shook free of her touch, wondering how many of his brains were scrambled into the dirt. It took him a moment before he reasoned out the impossible and glanced up at the window above.

“I took a shortcut,” she said as if her exiting from the window made sense. She retrieved her cap and stuffed the wayward strand beneath it.

He stood without offering her a hand. Any woman who jumped out of windows was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, or else was completely insane. He had no idea which and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

But as he smeared blood off his cheek, she was beside him once more, blotting his wound with her handkerchief and pushing his hand away so that she could see the cut.

Jonathan tried to gently shove her aside, but the woman had the persistence of a starving horsefly.

“You really should have that cut seen about, Mr. Catlin.” She patted at the blood with her small hankie.

He fought the urge to swat her away. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t relent. “Oh, no. You never know. You could get an infection that would blind you and make the whole side of your face shrivel up. A wee cut can fester and grow.”

Jonathan stared at her with his good eye. He’d been wrong about her. He should have warned the scorpions and snakes. “My lodgings are only a block away. I think there’s a doctor who offices nearby. I’ll have him take a look at it.” He had suffered enough black eyes in his time to feel a doozy of one coming on now.

“I’ll guide you.” She hooked her arm in his as if she now considered him not only wounded but senile.

Jonathan fought the urge to comment about the outrageousness of her suggestion since she was not wearing her glasses, but decided for once in his life to give in. Since she had no idea where they were going, he led her toward his hotel.

Within a few steps, her limp made him stop. “Are you injured, miss?”

“No,” she answered without letting go of his arm. “Your face broke the heel of my shoe.”

“Sorry,” he caught himself saying before he thought.

With him bleeding and her limping, they moved down the street to the doctor’s office in silence. As he remembered, the office was next door to the hotel. The same aging doctor who took his meals in the hotel greeted them wearing a white laboratory coat stained with tobacco drippings.

Jonathan couldn’t help but be thankful it was early. He’d seen the doctor take enough liquor at dinner to be able to operate on himself without chloroform, provided he could hold the knife.

The old man wasted no time asking questions; while Jonathan removed his coat, the doctor got out the tools of his trade. He cleaned the small cut on Jonathan’s forehead and applied crushed yarrow leaves to stop the bleeding. “You’ve got the worst black eye I’ve seen, son. Bar fight?”

Glancing at Kara, who was patting his arm like he was a house cat, Jonathan offered, “No, she gave it to me.”

The old man shook his head. A few drops of brown dribbled from the comer of his mouth and fell unhampered to his lab coat. “Is that true, miss?” he mumbled.

“Aye,” she answered. “He got in my way.”

Jonathan watched her carefully. She was little more than a ragamuffin, but she held her head high. As she shifted, she kept changing height because of her uneven heels. But she was adventurous, he’d give her that. No woman he knew would jump from a window. And she was mothering. She’d pestered him to death trying to keep him from bleeding on the way over.

An idea sloshed across his throbbing brain. A mothering woman might be just the answer for helping out his friend. He glanced up at her hair once more. Black, all right. Perfect. She could be the key he needed. If she didn’t drive him mad first, Jonathan thought, she might be of some use during a stop he must make before reaching the ranch.

The doctor left the room to prepare a cloth soaked in leaves and bark. The office grew suddenly confining with neither of them talking to one another nor looking directly at the other.

Jonathan’s thoughts were filled with plans. A black-haired woman would walk in and out, past the guards without problems. But was she adventurous enough? If she could jump from a window, she might be.

She broke the silence. “If you are waiting for me to apologize, Mr. Catlin, you’ll be growing older before me eyes.”

“I wasn’t expecting an apology.” Jonathan used two fingers to carefully touch the swelling on his face. It felt like warm oatmeal covered with a thin layer of skin.

“Then you’ll be firing me, and I won’t be waiting for you at dawn outside that big fancy hotel of yours.”

Jonathan opened his mouth to answer, “hell yes,” but reconsidered. She shifted slightly, and he noticed the dirt and rips in her thin jacket. Even with one eye, he could see no one would wear such a light jacket on a day like this unless it was the only coat she owned. And while he was guessing, he’d wager the shoes with one heel were her only pair.

He looked at her face carefully. Without the glasses she was pretty enough. But the feeling that no one treasured her, no one cared about her, haunted him once more. Maybe that’s why she tried so hard with the mothering. She wanted someone, anyone, to care just a little that she was there.

Jonathan frowned. He had no time or desire to get involved. Miss O’Riley would have to take care of herself.

“Did Clark give you money for expenses?”

She lifted her chin and stared out the window. “He did, and I’ll be returning it to him, if ’tis fired I am.”

“It’s fired you’re not,” he mocked, remembering her telling Clark that her things were probably on her landlady’s porch. “But, I’d like you to stop wasting time here and get the supplies you need. Give the doorman at the Mayflower Arms your former address, and I’ll have your things picked up and brought to the hotel. Which, by the way, isn’t fancy or big. There should be no problem booking you a room for the night, so you’ll be sure to be ready at dawn.”

She didn’t move.

Jonathan lifted his coat as he stood. “It’s starting to snow. Take my coat.”

“Oh, no.” She backed away. “I couldn’t.”

He held the coat for her. “Nonsense. I’ve only got to walk a few feet to the hotel entrance. All I want to do for the next few hours is put the poultice the doc is making on my eye and drink my pain away. You can’t be hurrying about the streets in a torn jacket.”

She turned away from him and allowed him to place the coat over her shoulders. “I’ve heard herbal tea is good. You might want to drink that with a touch of whiskey blended in.”

Jonathan let his hands rest on her shoulders for a moment. It had been a long time since he’d been so near a woman. He slowly breathed in her scent. He wanted no one in his life, but now and again the nearness of a woman stirred his senses with a longing for something he’d never known.

“Thank you.” She moved a step away, hugging the coat to her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Mr. Catlin.”

He dropped his hands, feeling foolish for touching the shoulders of his own coat so lightly. “Buy warm clothes for the remainder of winter and have them delivered to the hotel. I’ll see you at dinner to check that you haven’t forgotten anything. Where we’re going, there will be little chance to buy more.”

When the doctor returned with a pack for Jonathan’s eye, she slipped out the door without a word. Jonathan couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever see his coat, or her, again.

“Lie down for a few hours with this on your eye, and it’ll cut the swelling.” The old man folded the cotton square into an oilcloth. “Nothing will help the color. It’ll be black and blue for days.”

Jonathan took the cloth package and paid.

“A bit of free advice,” the doctor offered as he opened the door for Jonathan. “Stay away from that Irish lass.”

“Thanks.” Jonathan turned up the collar of his jacket. “But your advice is a little late.”

The old doctor shook his head. “Already terminal. I was afraid of that.”

Jonathan rushed into the wind. The icy air felt good on his wounded face. He smiled thinking of what the doctor hinted. Let the doctor think what he liked. Jonathan wasn’t in the habit of explaining anything to anyone. It didn’t matter anyway. The old man had no way of knowing that no woman would ever mean anything to him. He might not be out of his twenties, but he’d already watched one too many people he loved die. No one would ever again get close enough to matter.

At the hotel, Jonathan made Miss O’Riley’s reservations and ordered a bottle of whiskey and hot herbal tea sent to his room. The Mayflower Arms was an old hotel that specialized in pampering guests. All the rooms had sitting areas and fireplaces. By the time Jonathan built up the fire and relaxed into one of the overstuffed wing-backed chairs, the whiskey and tea awaited.

He poured himself whiskey and downed it, leaving the tea untouched. While the liquid warmed his body, he unwrapped the cotton eye cloth the doctor had made. It smelled of elderberry and tobacco.

He smiled, then winced at the pain. Kara O’Riley had done the impossible. She’d surprised him. Blindsided him completely.

Jonathan swore he’d never let it happen again. From now on, he’d watch her every move. A wee little Irish girl would have no chance of getting the better of him again.

THREE

SNOW FELL LIGHT AND COTTONY AS KARA LIMPED down the street. She wrapped Jonathan Catlin’s warm coat around her and grinned. The saints were certainly good to her today. First a job, then money, and now a fine wool coat to walk the streets in. She wouldn’t have to run from place to place, she could just walk along as warm as can be.

Boots, she thought, boots would be her first purchase. Warren’s Boot and Shoe Store closed before the mercantile. From the darkening sky, she guessed there was little time left. Boots had to come first. Mr. Warren had his name printed on heavy brown bags so everyone would know she’d bought something there.

Kansas City was a menagerie of stores strung together by uneven boardwalks. Banks, saloons and hotels lined the main street, but the side streets held the more interesting shops where Kara could find what she needed. There, ladies and prostitutes brushed shoulders as they selected material and hats. Farmers’ wives made wide circles around the unwashed. Chuck wagon cooks in the mercantile ogled the women, and cowhands wandering the backstreets looked for pleasures to relieve them of their money.

Kara knew the shops well, though most she’d only peered inside through the windows. On days she didn’t have work, she’d still leave the boardinghouse early, so no one would talk. Then she’d walk the streets, waiting for a reasonable time to return.

She’d memorized the names of the store owners. Though she didn’t know them, she pretended she did, calling each by name as she passed their businesses. No one knew her, for she was rarely a paying customer. But that didn’t matter. As long as she knew them, she didn’t feel so alone.

The cobbler, Mr. Abraham Warren, made fine shoes for ladies who arrived in carriages. Once, his assistant had patched Kara’s shoes. She’d stood in the store and waited while the young man worked. She watched ladies dressed in finery come in to try on shoes, then complain about how they fit. Mr. Warren waited on them. He smiled when he passed Kara, but he never spoke to her. A cobbler must surely know when someone has to wait for a repair, they owned only one set of shoes.

When Kara entered his shop, Mr. Warren motioned for her to see the assistant. With her limp, there could be no question what was wrong.

But Kara passed right by the assistant and sat in the chair at the front of the store. “I would like to buy a pair of shoes and a pair of boots, Mr. Warren.”

The old man’s eyebrows disappeared into his bushy gray hair. “Two pair?”

Kara nodded. “If you have what I need on hand. I’ve no time to have them made.”

“You’ll be paying for them and taking them with you today, miss?”

“Miss O’Riley.” Kara offered her hand. “And I will.”

Warren touched her hand lightly. “Very fine, Miss O’Riley. I’m sure we’ll be able to fit you properly.”

Suddenly boxes appeared around her. Kara straightened with pride. “Now, I’ll be buying no fancy shoes. Come dawn, I’m going to Texas and I’ll need boots and shoes to last a year.”

Warren nodded as he sorted through the boxes. In less time than she thought possible, she walked out of the store wearing new shoes and carrying a bag with boots inside. She buttoned her warm coat and carefully turned the bag so that the shop’s name showed. If she were staying in Kansas City, she’d use the bag to carry everything just to let folks know that once she’d been able to buy new shoes from a fine shop where they called her by name.

To her astonishment, she’d already spent six of her dollars. Six whole dollars. Four for the boots and two for the shoes. She always thought new shoes would feel grand, but after a few minutes they felt too narrow, pinched her toes, and the heel slipped when she walked.

Kara laughed. She was rich indeed if she could complain about her new shoes.

At Bayley’s Mercantile she began her shopping in the stationery department. She’d need a ledger book, pens, extra paper and a leather writing case to carry everything in. For the first time since she’d graduated from Miss Abigail’s school, Kara would look like a real bookkeeper.

The next aisle held store-made skirts and blouses with lace at the collars. Since she saw no place to try on the clothes, Kara guessed at her sizes. Three white blouses, two dark skirts, undergarments, stockings, a shawl, two nightgowns that cost all of eighty-five cents each and a short traveling coat of wool. As she rounded the aisle, she selected a brown raincoat that she thought reasonable, at four dollars, and necessary.

The store grew dark. Kara carried her bundle to the front. In a few minutes, someone would light all the lamps so that late shoppers could continue. She needed a total before picking out a hat, gloves and luggage. What she had selected must cost twenty dollars. At least a few coins had to be set aside to pay a boy to help her carry everything and for the night’s lodging, in case Mr. Jonathan Catlin didn’t pay for her hotel room. He might not, she reasoned, since her employment didn’t officially start until dawn.

Her fortune was dwindling fast. She wanted to add a five-dollar watch to her stash, provided there was enough left over. After all, a bookkeeper should know the time.

As she waited, half-hidden behind her bundle, the clerk talked with a tiny woman wrapped in a huge black shawl that was large enough to hide two small children in its folds. The woman slowly counted out her pennies from a small change purse.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t let you have any more on account,” the clerk whispered as the customer ahead of Kara kept counting.

The woman held out her handful of pennies. “But I have almost enough for the milk and bread.”

The clerk looked like she might cry. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Mr. Bayley said I’m to let you have nothing until you’ve paid at least a portion of your bill. He’s already let you go months more than he normally would, what with your husband dying and all.”

“But if I pay any on the account, I won’t have money for the milk or bread.” The woman sounded logical, but her voice shook slightly. Her white, thin fingers held to her shawl as though the whole world had grown suddenly cold.

The clerk pulled two quarters from her pocket. “I could let you have this. With your pennies, you could buy something from the market tomorrow.”

The tiny woman coughed, shrinking into the huge shawl as she did. “My children haven’t eaten for two days as it is. I can’t put them to bed another night with empty bellies. If you could give me just a little for them. I’m not all that hungry myself.”

Kara’s gaze met the clerk’s over the pile of new store-bought clothes. I’ll have no use for a watch, Kara thought. Probably no one in Texas cares what time it is anyway.

“Excuse me.” Kara moved around the clothes. “I hate to interrupt, but I just came into a little money, and I have to spend it before dawn. I wonder if you’d allow me to pay for …”

“Oh, no, no.” The little woman backed away.

“Please.” Kara offered her hand. “I’m leaving for Texas where I’m sure I’ll have no use for money. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Kara laid ten dollars on the counter.

“All of it?” the clerk asked. She stared at the money as though it were a fortune.

“Every dime,” Kara answered. “And make sure there’s ten pounds of potatoes.”

The little woman started to protest as the clerk quickly filled boxes with supplies. Flour, sugar, coffee, bacon, tins of peaches and green beans and a wool blanket on top of each box.

“No argument, please,” Kara said. “You’d be doing the same thing for me if I were in your place. This way we’re both doing each other a favor. I won’t have to worry about the outlaws robbing me on the road.”

Tears rolled down the clerk’s face as she slid two boxes of supplies across the counter. Salt, soda, tea, milk and two loaves of bread. “I put in a bottle of medicine that will soothe that cough, Mrs. Adams, and the candy for the children comes free with this large an order.”

Kara pulled out another ten. She could do without the raincoat and the third blouse, and her luggage could be carpet, not leather. “Put ten dollars against her bill so Mr. Bayley will let her buy here again.”

The clerk nodded while the woman stared in disbelief.

“I really appreciate this,” Kara said. “You don’t know what a worry I was having thinking I’d be carrying all this money.”

A boy who had just finished lighting the lamps offered to help Kara and Mrs. Adams cart the boxes. Kara promised to be right back for her clothes and entrusted the clerk with her bag of boots until she returned. With the tiny woman leading the way, they marched down the street while people stared.

The night grew darker with fewer and fewer street lamps. The path turned from board walkways to worn ruts between the buildings. Kara’s new shoes made a squeaking sound after she stepped in a puddle, and she had to walk on her tiptoes to keep from drawing attention.

The widow’s house was little more than a shack, but Kara noticed it was neat. While the boy built up a fire in the grate, the widow snuggled her two children into the new blankets, and Kara stacked the food along the bare shelves.

“Thank you,” Widow Adams whispered. “If you’re ever back from Texas, stop by. I promise I’ll find a way to repay you. I’ll never forget you.”

“It’s not necessary to repay anything.” Kara smiled, feeling warmer inside than any new coat could ever make her. “It’s enough to know that I have a friend if I return. There’s something terribly lonely about leaving a place with no one to notice you’re gone. I think it would be like walking in the sand and not leaving a footprint.”

“You now have a friend,” the widow promised. “I’m Mary Ann Adams and I’ll give you my address. You can write me when you’re settled. Just use this address with an ‘in the back’ note on the envelope. The postman will bring it around.”

Kara felt herself about to cry as she accepted the scrap of paper. “You’ve already paid me back.” She thought of how she’d write when she got to Texas. Everyone there would know that she had a friend and wasn’t all alone.

“I promise I’ll write and if I send a letter along to my father, will you post it from here?”

“Of course.” Mary Ann looked like she might question the strange request, but didn’t.

Kara added, “I don’t want anyone back home to know where I am, unless, of course, my fiance, Devin O’Toole, shows up.” She wondered what would be the odds on that. A man who couldn’t make it to the train station probably wasn’t going to come this far for her.

Mary Ann nodded. “Any favor I can do, I’ll do gladly.”

A few moments later, they hugged and Kara walked out with the boy from the mercantile. While she tried to figure out how she was going to make her remaining money stretch to buy what she needed, the boy whispered as he walked beside her, “That was mighty nice, what you did back there, miss, buying all that food and saying you’d write.”

“Thanks,” she answered, only half-listening.

“But, how do you figure that little woman is going to cook all that food, being I used the last of her coal to stir up the fire?”

Kara forced herself to keep walking as his words sank in. She could do without new undergarments. After all, no one saw them. They’d probably be no more comfortable than her noisy new shoes. If they squeaked any louder, she’d have to take up whistling to block the sound.

She stopped walking. “Can you buy coal this late?”

“Yes,” the boy answered. “But two buckets will cost you a quarter.” When she hesitated, he added, “I’ll deliver it free every week for a few months if you’ll trust me with the money ahead of time.”

“We’ll both deliver a few loads. Then with your weekly deliveries they’ll have enough to last the winter.” The ledger book would fit in her suitcase now that she’d decided to leave out the raincoat and the needless new undergarments. And the book didn’t need a leather pouch just so she could look professional. Who would be looking at her anyway? Extra paper was a waste. It would probably only ruin on the trip.

An hour later, her new shoes hurt so much she no longer cared that they made noise. Kara and the boy found a place to buy coal and hauled it for blocks in tin buckets. Her plaid skirt was more gray than plaid, and the fine wool coat Jonathan Catlin had loaned her looked like it had been dyed to match.

The widow thanked them several times and wanted them to join her for supper, but Kara had to get back to the mercantile. She must buy what she could and return to the hotel. Jonathan Catlin had asked her to join him for dinner. It was already long past time. Surely he’d understand that she’d been shopping.

As they rounded the alley to the street, a huge woman leaned out her first-story window. “That was mighty nice of you folks to buy the widow all that food and coal, but who’s going to haul it out of here when I kick her out? She ain’t paid a month’s rent since her husband died. He was a good man. But all men are the same. Once they’re dead, they’re worthless. She can’t stay any longer.”

“But you can’t do that.” Kara stormed toward the landlady. Kara had seen her type before in almost every place her family had lived. They were always sweet and promising all kinds of things when you first rent, but when you fall a few weeks late they turn sour.

“Look, deary. I don’t want to, but I got people waiting who’ll pay good money. I ain’t no charity ward. She’ll find somewhere else.”

“How much does she owe?” Kara figured she could do with one new blouse, after all she’d have a new jacket to wear over it most of the time. And who needs a shawl when one has a jacket? The shawl would have to go.

“Three dollars a month.” The woman grinned, showing bits of her dinner between her teeth. “She’s five months behind.”

Kara counted out twenty dollars and used all her change to make one more. “Well now she’s two months ahead.”

The fat woman stuffed the bills in her bustline. “Fair enough. I don’t mean to be hard, you understand. It’s just business.”

“I understand.” Kara walked away with two dollars left in her envelope. Two dollars left of the fortune she’d had only a few hours ago.

I can buy a nightgown and the ledger, she thought. I didn’t really need all the other things.

The boy walked beside her. “You wish you hadn’t given all your money away, miss?”