Tymber Dalton - Hernando Heat

Two days later, Edward Dorchester Senior returned to “talk” to her again.

She ran him off the property by putting two loads of rock salt in his backside from Paul’s double-barreled shotgun. Fortunately, Ross Steger was there to witness Dorchester’s threats of bodily harm. When Dorchester returned an hour later with a deputy, Ross stood up for her and told the deputy Dorchester had threatened her, and that he was lucky she’d only used rock salt and not buckshot.

When they left, Ross shook his head as he watched their dust trail head down the road. “When are you leaving, Katie?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve got a wagon coming. I want to be out of here as soon as possible.” She smiled. “Do you have a place for me yet, or should I pack a tent with everything else?”

“Not yet, but you can stay with Edgar’s family while we get you settled. They already extended the invitation. Let’s get you over there and we can find you a permanent place. I’ll get my son to come with us. I have a feeling the Dorchesters aren’t going to stop until they get their hands on this property.”

She shouldered the shotgun. “If he or Junior sets foot on my property again, next time it’ll be a load of buckshot in their faces, and not rock salt in their hind ends.”

She fended off two more visits from her former father-in-law in the month she lived at the Smiths’ home before she settled into a small shop in downtown Brooksville, right in the center of town. With a dry goods store and the fire brigade on either side, and two churches across the street, it quickly helped her build a good reputation. She became friends with several women in town who helped bring her business. After a while, she came to call it home.

She made her home in the shop’s back room, surrounded by mementoes of her beloved Paul.

Every night she fought the urge to cry herself to sleep from sheer loneliness. She stared at Paul’s picture one night as she tried to go to sleep.

“You said you wanted me to be happy,” she whispered, “but I’m afraid I don’t know how without you.”

With the sound of crickets chirping outside, she rolled over and prayed for the darkness to take her.

“Goddamn it, this coffee tastes like water!” Deputy Mason Carlisle opened the kitchen door. He stepped onto the porch and slung the offending liquid out into the yard, scattering chickens in the early morning light. “Why the hell you bother making it if you’re only going to waste it like this, Joe?”

His cousin, Joseph Lansing, arched an eyebrow at him. “Why the hell you drink it if you don’t like it? Some of us like coffee we can swallow without needing a spoon to scrape it out of the cup first.” He tolerated his younger cousin living with him because he loved him.

That was the only reason.

Well, maybe not the only reason, but it was the only reason he’d publicly admit to. Having Mason around beat living alone. Not by much, admittedly, but his thunderstorm of a cousin was enough of a distraction to help keep Joseph’s own mind off the past.

Amused, he watched as Mason rolled his brown eyes and grabbed the coffee pot off the stove. He stomped back outside and dumped it and the grounds over the edge of the porch and into a flowerbed before returning and pumping water into the sink to rinse the pot and start over. “You’re hopeless. You know that? You need a wife.”

“You need a woman worse than I do. The people of Brooksville expect their deputies to not need a bib when they eat.” He nodded toward Mason’s shirt, which sported a huge grease spot on the front.

Mason looked down. “Goddamn it!” He finished fixing a new pot of coffee and set it on the stove to boil while he stormed back to his bedroom. “This is ridiculous!” he yelled from his bedroom in the back of the house. “You need a maid!”

“I thought you said I needed a wife?” Joseph called back. “It’s not my fault you don’t know how to wash a shirt properly.”

The two cousins were as different in looks as they were personality. Easygoing, blue-eyed Joe at thirty-four, with his sun-bleached blond hair, was three years older than intense, brown-eyed and dark-haired Mason. Joe’s successful lumber mill only added to the income from his thriving cattle ranch on the outskirts of Brooksville.

Mason returned sporting a relatively clean shirt and holding the dirty one, which he dumped into the sink and began scrubbing with a bar of laundry soap. Joe watched on, amused. “You look like you’re about to lose a button on that one,” he teased Mason.

Mason swore again as he looked down the front of his shirt. “I don’t have time for this nonsense this morning.”

“Do you have any other clean shirts?”

“No!” He threw the soap into the sink, where it bounced off the enamel with a loud, clanging thump before it shot out of the basin again and sailed across the kitchen.

Joe burst out laughing.

“Shut up,” Mason growled.

Shaking his head, Joe disappeared to his room and reappeared with one of his work shirts. “Here, wear this. Take that one”—he nodded to the one Mason currently wore—“into town with you this morning. I’m sure Widow Dorchester can mend it for you.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. Good idea.” He quickly changed. “I’ve got two more that need buttons. I should take those in, too.”

“Good idea.” He shook his head as Mason disappeared to the back of the house again. Heaven help me, he thought. Thank God Mason was far better at being a deputy than he was at taking care of his laundry.

That boy really does need a wife.

Katie awoke at dawn, as she usually did. After lighting her oil lamp and firing up the stove on the small back-porch kitchen, she put on a kettle of water to boil for her morning tea. She had three dresses to finish hemming today for Mrs. Palmer’s daughter’s trousseau. The girl would be leaving for her honeymoon after her wedding next weekend. Not to mention Mr. Greenville, who ran the dry goods store, said his latest shipment of fabric should arrive today. She had specially ordered several bolts for herself to complete some pending orders, and he’d assured her she could have first pick of the others as well.

She performed her morning ablution and dressed while she waited for the kettle to boil. As every morning, she stood in front of her husband’s picture. “Good morning, Paul. Going to be another warm one today.” While several women friends had hinted they could introduce her to single male relatives, she shunned that kind of contact despite her loneliness and longing.

She’d had the best husband in the world. How could any man compare? Not to mention the men who’d approached her, or who had been volunteered to her as available, weren’t exactly…handsome.

Most mangy cow dogs had better looks.

She sat at her tiny table, sipping her tea and eating a leftover biscuit from the previous night’s dinner when a loud knock on her front door startled her.

Who could that be? Her hours were clearly posted on a neatly lettered sign beside the door, and a check of the mantle clock showed she still had thirty minutes before opening. Peeking through the curtain separating her bedroom from the rest of her store, she spotted a familiar foe trying to peer inside.

Blast that man!

She grabbed her shotgun, which she kept loaded with rock salt, and stormed to the front door. When she threw it open, the senior Dorchester looked startled before his expression turned calculating.

“Good morning, Katherine.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk. This is silly, for you to be living over here by yourself. You should be home in Dade City, with family.”