Linda Miller - The Rustler

Owen remained in his chair, his eyes fixed on his plate. He seemed to have shrunk a full size, and his head was bent at an angle that made Sarah’s heart hurt.

She proceeded to the front door, Charles following.

“I can’t leave the boy alone at the hotel,” Charles said, before she had a chance to speak. “Will you keep him while I’m away?”

Sarah nodded, surprised. She’d expected some kind of harangue.

“I might be gone for several days,” Charles warned.

“I’ll look after him,” she promised. “Charles, I—”

Something ominous flickered in Charles’s eyes.

Sarah straightened her spine. “He refers to himself as a bastard. Owen, I mean.”

“He’s precocious,” Charles said, taking out his pocket watch and checking it with a frown. “And he lies constantly.”

“Is he lying about Christmas? Having to stay at school alone while everyone else goes home for the holiday season?”

Charles’s mouth took on a grim tension. “It isn’t always convenient to have a ten-year-old underfoot,” he said. “Marjory’s nerves are—delicate.”

“Convenient? Charles, he’s ten. A child.”

“Marjory—”

“Damn Marjory!” Sarah whispered furiously. She was in no position to anger Charles, given the shares he held in the bank, but her concern for Owen—her son—pushed everything else aside. “What do I care for the state of your wife’s nerves?”

“They’ll hear you,” Charles said anxiously, inclining his head toward the dining room. “Do you want the cowboy to know you gave birth to an illegitimate child when everyone in Stone Creek thought you were getting an education?”

“Oh, I got an education, all right,” Sarah said bitterly.

Charles consulted his watch again. “I have to go,” he said. “I have paperwork to do, before tomorrow’s meeting.”

Good riddance, Sarah thought. She’d gotten a reprieve, as far as the bank was concerned, but another part of her was alarmed. Was this “meeting” with the other shareholders? Several of them lived in Flagstaff, a relatively short train ride from Stone Creek. Suppose Charles had asked around town, heard about some of her father’s recent escapades, and made the decision to take over control? Alone, he couldn’t do it. With the help of the other shareholders, though, he could be sitting behind her father’s desk the morning after next.

With the first smile he’d offered all evening, Charles ran his knuckles lightly down the side of Sarah’s face. “I’ll be back in a few days,” he said, as though he thought she was pining over his departure. “A week at the outside.”

A week with Owen. A week to cover her tracks at the bank.

She tried to look sad. Might even have said, “I’ll miss you,” as he seemed to expect her to do, but since she would have choked on the words, she swallowed them.

He bent his head, kissed her lightly, briefly on the mouth.

She stepped back, secretly furious.

“Still the coquette,” Charles remarked smoothly. “You’re not fooling me, Sarah. I remember how much you liked going to bed with me.”

Sarah’s cheeks pulsed with heat so sudden and so intense that it was actually painful. She would surely have slapped Charles Langstreet the Third across the face if she hadn’t known the crack of flesh meeting flesh would carry into the nearby dining room.

“Good night, Mr. Langstreet,” she said.

He grinned, turned, and strolled, whistling merrily, down the porch steps, along the walk, through the gate.

Sarah watched him until he was out of sight, then turned and nearly collided with Wyatt, who was standing directly behind her.

Her heart fluttered painfully. How much had he heard? Had he seen Charles kiss her?

She could tell nothing by his expression.

“I’d best be leaving, too,” he said. “I’ve got to count horses in front of saloons.”

“What?” Sarah asked, confused.

He chuckled. “Rowdy’s way of watching out for trouble,” he said, taking his hat from the coat tree. “Thank you, Miss Tamlin, for a fine evening and the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

Something tightened in Sarah’s throat. “If I’m to call you Wyatt,” she heard herself say, “then you must call me Sarah.”

His smile was as dazzling as the starched shirt he’d put on to come to supper. “Sarah, then,” he said. The smile faded. “That Langstreet fella,” he began. “Is he...? Do you—?”

“He’s a business associate,” Sarah said. It was a partial truth, and she wondered if she ought to record it in her book of lies.

“That’s good,” Wyatt said. His dark eyes were almost liquid, there in the dim light of the entryway. “Because if I stay on in Stone Creek, I mean to set about courting you in earnest.”

“If you stay?” She’d known he was a drifter, an outlaw, that he’d be moving on at some point. So why did she feel as though a deep, dark precipice had just opened at her feet?

“Reckon I’ll be deciding on that further along,” he said. “Good night, Sarah.”

For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her, just as Charles had—his face was so very close to hers—but he didn’t. And she was stunned by the depths of her disappointment.

She watched until he passed through the front gate, turned toward the main part of town, moving in and out of the lamplight. Then she closed the door quietly and went back to the dining room.

Doc and Owen were busy clearing the table.

“Is Papa leaving me here?” Owen asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Sarah said, taken aback, exchanging quick glances with Doc, who’d paused in his plate-gathering like a man listening for some sound in the distance. “But only for a few days. I thought you’d be—well—surprised—”

“Papa’s always leaving me places,” Owen said. His manner was nonchalant, though there was a slight stoop to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.

Doc shook his head, though the boy didn’t see.

Sarah contrived to smile and moved to help with the work. “What sort of places?” she asked, in a tone meant to sound cheerful, as though abandoning a child with people who were virtual strangers to him was a common occurrence, and wholly acceptable.

“Once, I lived at a hotel all by myself for a whole week,” Owen told her. “It was scary at night, but I got to have whatever I wanted to eat, and Papa gave me lots of spending money.”

Sarah could not look at him. He might see what she was thinking. “Why did he do that?” she asked lightly, when she could trust herself to speak. Again, her gaze met Doc’s, but this time, the look held.

“He had meetings with a lady. She wore a big hat with pink feathers on it and rode in a carriage with six white horses pulling it.”

Sarah drew back a chair and sank into it, breathless.

“Are you sick, Aunt Sarah?” Owen asked, clearly frightened.

“I’m f-fine,” Sarah muttered. She wouldn’t have to write that lie in the book to remember it.

“Let’s wash up these dishes,” Doc told the boy, his voice a little too hearty. “Since your aunt Sarah went to all the trouble to cook it and all.”

Owen nodded, but his eyes were still on Sarah. “I’ll be quiet,” he said. “If you have a headache—”

Sarah longed to gather the child in her arms, but she didn’t dare. She’d weep if she did, and never let go of him again. “You don’t have to be quiet,” she told him softly.

Doc put a hand on Owen’s shoulder and steered him in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ll wash and you dry,” he said.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHILE OWEN AND DOC WERE washing dishes, Sarah went upstairs, looked in on her father, who was sleeping soundly, then opened the door to the room across from her own. It contained a brass bed, a washstand and a bureau, and soft moonlight flowed in through the lace curtains.