Cheryl St.John - The Gunslinger's Bride

“I can’t see as how this will do anything except confuse our relationship,” Everett pressed. “Jonathon has to get used to a new father.”

Her heart raced at his words, and her mind went blank for a moment.

“Kincaid’s presence is only going to muddy the waters while I’m trying to be his father.”

Of course he didn’t know Brock was Jonathon’s father. He was referring to himself! The waitress brought strong tea and she laced hers with cream, something about the thought of Everett being Jonathon’s father making her uneasy. She wanted a father for him, so she should just be thankful for his concern and willingness to take on a ready-made family.

“You could be referring to half the population of Whitehorn when you refer to him as Kincaid,” she said lightly, without touching the subject.

“No one even knows where he’s been all these years,” Everett continued quietly, flattening a palm on the tabletop.

Abby finally found her voice. “I heard him mention he’d been a U.S. Marshal.”

“There’s a fine line between marshals and hired guns,” he replied.

His comment brought even more awkwardness to their meal. Their food arrived and Abby tasted her glazed chicken.

Several minutes later, Everett laid down his fork with a clank. She turned her head and followed his scowling gaze to the patrons being seated several tables away. Accompanying Will and Lizzie Kincaid was Brock. Big as you please, he folded himself onto a chair directly facing their table. The three Kincaids got settled, greeted neighbors on either side of their table and glanced around.

Brock’s gaze unerringly met Abby’s. One side of his mouth inched up in that provocatively irritating manner, and he gave her an exaggerated nod.

Her heart jumped.

Abby didn’t want to greet him civilly, but Everett was watching her reaction, so she returned the nod with a stiff smile and jerked her head back to their own table. The nerve of the man! He’d known she was going out to dinner and he’d deliberately come here to torment her!

Her chicken tasted like sawdust, and she had trouble swallowing the delicately browned potatoes. All she had to do was turn her head and she’d find him staring at her. Using every ounce of her resolve, she ate her entire meal without glancing over once. Why did he have the power to make her heart race so erratically, then stop altogether? Why did she want to know where he was looking and who he was talking to? That he held so much control over her was a revelation she would have rather never faced.

The waitress cleared their plates and brought them fresh tea, and Abby sipped hers as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

“He’s making himself right at home,” Everett said.

“Whitehorn is his home,” she replied, hoping Everett hadn’t noted her wry tone. And Whitehorn being Brock’s home was the problem. Most of the problem, anyway. She could have continued her life the way it had been, married Everett and been perfectly happy to never set eyes on Brock again. Instead he’d come back and deliberately turned her world upside down at every opportunity. Where was this going from here? She couldn’t begin to imagine. She gave Everett a sweet smile for no reason, and he became flustered under her gaze.

They finished their tea and sat speaking about the weather and the telegraph news for nearly half an hour, as though Everett, too, was loath to let Brock run them off. Finally, Everett pushed his chair back and stood, coming around to assist Abby.

She refused to look again, though she could feel Brock’s gaze on her back the whole time she walked to the foyer and slipped into her coat. The cold night air felt gloriously refreshing on her heated skin. Everett took her arm and guided her over the treacherously icy boardwalks.

“Thank you for dinner,” she told him at the top of the stairs. “Would you like to come in?”

“Just for a moment. It’s getting late.”

It wasn’t late at all, but rarely did he come inside to be alone with her. She had always appreciated his thoughtfulness, knowing he was protecting her reputation, but she grew lonely, too, and craved adult company on these long winter nights. Her relationship with Jed had been warm, but never passionate or truly personal. Sometimes she imagined a man who would wrap his strong arms around her, kiss her with more than duty or perfunctoriness.

They stood inside the door in their coats, and Everett leaned toward her as was expected of him. Abby raised her face and accepted his kiss. She was older now, wiser and more mature. Not having to hide her relationship with Everett stole the excitement she’d known in her impetuous youth. Those were factors in the lack of passion they shared, and she was glad for it. Not being crazy in love allowed her to make better choices. What was passion compared to stability, anyway?

When they pulled apart, he kissed her cheek and went down the stairs. His form disappeared into the darkness beyond the gas lamp, and she closed the door, leaning her forehead against the cool wood and blotting out acute disappointment. She had herself to blame. She’d allowed Brock liberties before marriage. She had never been courted properly, and the proper way was slowly. Everett was a gentleman.

Abby remained at the Spencers’ for over an hour, since Jonathon wouldn’t let Asa stop reading to him. Daisy chatted to Abby about this and that.

Descriptive words caught her attention, and she realized the story Asa read was one of the many dime novels glorifying Jack Spade, the legendary gunfighter. She had never told Asa not to read such a book to her son, so he wasn’t going against her directions, but the man should know better than to fill a boy’s head with such violent tales!

“Mama, did you know how Jack Thpade got that name? Cauth he leavth a jack of thpadeth on the body of the bad men he killth.”

She had never heard about the gunman leaving a jack of spades on his victims, and she didn’t think Jonathon had needed to know it, either. She would talk to Asa the following day and let him know she disapproved of his bedtime stories.

“Jack Thpade ith in town, Mama, did you know that?”

She took her son home and put him to bed, then undressed herself and climbed beneath her heavy quilt. An hour later, she had barely begun to doze when Jonathon’s cough woke her. She checked on him, finding his skin warm and his hair damp. After bathing his face with cool water, she sat at his side until he slept peacefully, then tiredly lay down beside him.

The following morning, Jonathon was still warm and the cough nagged. Abby went to get Daisy, who’d been preparing for church, to sit with Jonathon while she went to Laine’s. The town council had been looking for a new doctor since Dr. Leland’s death. Harry Talbert took care of teeth and boils and the like, but Abby had complete confidence in her Chinese friend’s herbal remedies.

“I will come,” Laine said after Abby woke her and told her of Jonathon’s symptoms. She packed several small cloth bags and a few tiny bottles in a basket, and they trudged along the paths in the shin-deep snow and up the flight of stairs.

“It’s nothing serious,” she told Abby, after checking Jonathon over, looking in his eyes and mouth, and listening to his heart and lungs. “The fever will run its course and he will feel better. I will make a tonic for his cough, though. He will sleep better, then.”

“Thank you, Laine. You’ve attended Jonathon through all his childhood ailments, and I wouldn’t trust a licensed physician as much as you.”

“Thank goodness many of the families in Whitehorn feel the same.” Laine grinned. “And my father is none the wiser about the nice nest egg I have set aside.”

Her father didn’t approve of her practicing herbal medicine on the townspeople, so over the last few years she had deposited her earnings in the bank without his knowledge.