Linda Miller - A Wanted Man - A Stone Creek Novel

She hadn’t told him anything about herself. What Rowdy knew, he’d gleaned from Mrs. Porter’s eager chatter.

Lark was a schoolteacher, never married, popular with her students.

She’d been in Stone Creek for three months, during which time she’d never sent or received a letter or a telegram, as far as Mrs. Porter could determine. And Mrs. Porter, Rowdy reckoned, could determine plenty.

Lark Morgan’s clothes gave the lie to a part of her story—they were costly, beyond the means of any schoolmarm Rowdy had ever heard of. He wasn’t convinced, either, that she’d never been married; there was a worldliness about her, as though she’d seen the seamy side of life, but an innocence, too. She’d been a witness to sin, he would have bet, but somehow she’d managed to hold her expensive skirts aside to avoid stepping in it.

Mentally Rowdy cataloged his other observations.

She’d dyed her hair—there was a slight dusting of gold at the roots.

Her dark eyes were luminous with secrets.

She was unquestionably brave.

And she was just as surely afraid. Even terrified at times.

He’d joshed her a little earlier, claiming the devil was his pa, and she’d flinched before she caught herself.

Could be she was a preacher’s daughter, and the devil was serious business to her. Some folks, Rowdy reckoned, paid so much mind to old Scratch and his doings that they never got past a nodding acquaintance with God.

Mrs. Porter finished her meal, setting her plate on the floor so Pardner could have at the leftovers, and set about brewing up a pot of coffee. A lot of people didn’t drink the stuff at night—said it kept them awake—but Rowdy thrived on it. Could consume a pot on his own and sleep like a pure-hearted saint until the dawn light pried at his eyelids.

Lark hesitated, then took a second helping of hash. She was a small thing, with a womanly shape, but Rowdy had seen ranch hands with a lesser appetite. He wondered what kind of hole she was trying to fill up with all that food.

His own hunger appeased, he excused himself from the table, noting the look of relief that flickered briefly in Lark’s eyes, and scraped what was left of his supper onto Pardner’s plate. When he returned to his chair, the pretty schoolmarm was clearly startled, bristling a little.

“I’ll clear away the dishes,” Rowdy said to Mrs. Porter, once she’d gotten the coffee started and showed signs of lingering to fuss and fiddle.

Mrs. Porter looked uncertain.

“It was a fine supper,” Rowdy told her. “And I’m obliged for it.”

The landlady’s eyes shone with pleasure. “I am a little weary,” she confessed girlishly, sparing nary a glance for Lark, who seemed torn between tarrying and rushing headlong for the back stairs. “Perhaps I shall retire a little early, leave you and Miss Morgan to get acquainted. Mai Lee and the mister ought to be home soon. I always leave the back door unlocked for them.”

Lark rankled visibly at the prospect of being alone with him, but she didn’t rise from the table. She’d put down her fork, and her hands were out of sight. Rowdy was pretty sure, from the tense set of her shoulders, that she was gripping the sides of her chair with all ten fingers.

Rowdy stood, out of deference to the older woman. “A good night to you, Mrs. Porter,” he said, gravely polite. “I’ll wait up for Mai Lee and her man and see that the door is locked before I turn in.”

Mrs. Porter nodded, flustered, mumbled a good-evening to Lark, and departed, pausing once on the stairs to look back, naked curiosity glittering in her eyes. Like as not, she’d wait in the upper hallway for a spell, eavesdropping.

Rowdy smiled at the idea. Sat down again.

Lark stared into her plate.

“I guess I’ll take Pardner out for a walk,” Rowdy said. “Maybe you’d do me the kindness of keeping us company, Miss Morgan?”

Lark’s gaze flew to his face. She bit her lower lip, then nodded reluctantly and got to her feet. He’d been right to suppose there was something she was itching to find out, but it was clearly a private matter, and she knew as well as he did that Mrs. Porter had an ear bent in their direction.

Together they cleared the table, setting the dishes and silverware in the cast-iron sink. Rowdy pushed the coffeepot to the back of the stove, so it wouldn’t boil over while they were out, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Lark took a cloak from the peg by the door and draped it around her shoulders. Pardner, eager for an outing, dashed from Rowdy to Lark to the door, exuberant at his good fortune.

Lark smiled and leaned to give the dog’s head a tentative pat.

Something stirred in Rowdy at the sight.

“Does he have a leash?” Lark asked, as Rowdy crossed the room to stand as close to her as convention allowed, donning his own hat and coat.

He smiled. A leash? She was from a city, then, and probably a large one, where respectable folks didn’t allow their dogs to run loose. “No, ma’am,” he said. “Pardner sticks pretty close to me, wherever we go. Wouldn’t even chase a rabbit unless I gave him leave, and I never have.”

Rowdy opened the door, braced himself against the chill of the night air, and went out first, so if there was trouble, he’d be a barrier between it and Lark Morgan.

Pardner slipped past them both but waited in the yard, turning in a circle or two in his impatience to be gone, until they caught up.

“Your name isn’t Rowdy Rhodes,” Lark said, in a rush of whispered words, the moment they all reached the wooden sidewalk.

Pardner proceeded to lift his leg against a lamppost up ahead, while Rowdy adjusted his hat. “And yours isn’t Lark Morgan,” he replied easily.

Lark reddened slightly under her high cheekbones. Lord, she was a beauty. Wasted as a small-town schoolmarm. She ought to be the queen of some country, he reckoned, or appear on a stage. “Lark is my name,” she argued.

“Maybe so,” he answered. “But ‘Morgan’ isn’t. You’re running from something—or somebody—aren’t you?”

She hesitated just long enough to convince Rowdy that his hunch was correct. “Why are you here, Mr. Rhodes?” she asked. “What brings you to a place like Stone Creek?”

“Business,” he said.

She stopped, right in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing Rowdy to stop, too, and look back at her. “Am I that business, Mr. Rhodes? If...if someone hired you to find me—”

“Find you?” Rowdy asked, momentarily baffled. In the next moment it all came clear. “You think I came here looking for you?”

She gazed at him, at once stricken and defiant. She had the look of a woman fixing to lift her skirts, spin on one dainty heel and run for her life. At the same time, her chin jutted out, bespeaking stubbornness and pride and a fierce desire to mark out some ground for herself and hold it against all comers. “Did you?”

Rowdy shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said quietly. “I did not.”

Lark still didn’t move. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You don’t,” Rowdy answered, keeping a little distance between them, so she wouldn’t spook. “But consider this. If I’d come to Stone Creek to fetch you away, Miss Morgan, you and me and Pardner, we’d be a ways down the trail by now, whether you wanted to go along or not.”

Her eyes flashed with indignation, but the slackening in her shoulders and the slight lowering of her chin said she was relieved, too. “You are insufferably confident, Mr. Rhodes,” she said.

He grinned, tugged at the brim of his hat. “Call me Rowdy,” he said. “I don’t commonly answer to ‘Mr. Rhodes.’”

“I’d wager that you don’t,” Lark said. “Because it isn’t your name. I’m sure of that much, at least.”