Drew (The Cowboys) (26 page)

“I’m not in love!”

“Then why were you kissing this river rat in full view of anybody who happened to pass by?”

“I told you.”

“That was no excuse.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“Then you’d better not tell anybody. They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“If you’re going to be angry at anyone,” Cole said, “be angry at me. It was my fault.”

“It sure as hell was,” Zeke shouted, “and you can be sure I’ll get to you soon enough.”

“Fine, but leave Drew alone.”

“You’re not going to tell me you’re in love with Drew, are you?” Zeke demanded.

“Would you believe me if I said I was?”

“Hell, no.”

“Then I won’t bother answering your question.”

“I might believe you’d try to marry a rich man’s daughter, but I sure wouldn’t believe a drifter has fallen in love with a woman who wants nothing but her own working ranch.”

“If you want to know the truth, I like your sister. She’s a fabulous shot and good with horses and goats. And she’s pretty in the bargain.”

“What’s this about goats?” Zeke asked, bewildered.

Cole smiled at Drew. She smiled back.

“Nothing important. Now unless you want to attract even more attention than you have already, you’ll put that gun away.”

Several couples had interrupted their courting to watch the unexpected confrontation. Cole was certain they were disappointed it hadn’t ended in a shooting. Nothing exciting ever happened in little towns like Norton. A shooting would have given people something to talk about for weeks to come.

“Drew’s coming with me,” Zeke said.

“Is that want you want?” Cole asked Drew.

“It’s better this way,” Drew said. “I had a good time. Thanks for dinner.”

“See you tomorrow morning.”

“No, you won’t,” Zeke said. “We’re heading for Memphis tomorrow.”

“We’ll need to practice,” Cole said.

“I’ll let you know,” Drew said. She looked back once. Cole thought she was going to say something. Instead she waved—a small motion with her right hand—turned, and walked off into the night with Zeke.

A fierce battle raged inside Cole as he watched Drew disappear. He wanted to go after her, demand the right to accompany her back to the hotel, demand the right to ask if she really did like kissing him, ask if she’d do it again.

Another part of him held him back, saying he was a fool and he ought to thank his lucky stars Zeke showed up before he did something stupid like tell Drew he loved her. Or worse still, make love to her. He reminded himself he’d been sent to collect evidence to prove Drew was behind the string of robberies. Though he hadn’t found any direct evidence, he couldn’t ignore the growing circumstantial evidence. He’d found it without really looking. If his captain called upon him to defend his performance in this case, he’d have a hard time doing it.

He might think Drew was innocent, he might have a conviction that went right down to the core of him, but he didn’t have any proof. What’s more, he didn’t have the first bit of evidence—not even a well-founded suspicion—who might be behind these robberies.

He’d fallen down on the job no matter how he looked at it All he’d managed to do was become infatuated with a woman who might be a master criminal. For the first time in his career, he’d failed to carry out an assignment. He was a disgrace.

Cole turned and walked down to the river. He didn’t dare go back to the hotel yet. He knew he’d go looking for Drew, and right now he had to do some serious thinking, the kind of thinking he couldn’t do when Drew was occupying his thoughts, or when he remembered how she felt in his arms, how wonderful it was to kiss her, to have her kiss him back. He’d half expected her to refuse his dinner invitation after the disaster with the goat. Just remembering it caused him to smile.

Somewhere inside that tightly wound-up woman was a another woman struggling to get out. He didn’t know what she was like, but he was certain she wasn’t dead set against men or marriage. She probably wasn’t ashamed to admit she had a soft heart, one that would cause her to invite a bunch of old people to come live with her if they didn’t have anywhere else to go. She was also perfectly capable of admitting she loved her brothers and came close to worshiping Jake and Isabelle. She would also admit she wanted and needed love to feel complete.

Cole knew he had no right to stir this woman from her long slumber. That was a job for some young man who could approach Drew with an honest and open heart, who could come to her believing in all the goodness of which she was capable, absolutely certain she could never do any wrong.

It certainly wasn’t a job for a man who had lied to her from the very first.

Cole watched the water flow by, wishing it would carry him to some place where he felt none of this indecision, none of this distaste for the work he had to do, for what he’d already done. He was caught between his duty and his desire to get to know Drew better, to become part of her life. But as much as he fought the battle over and over again, he knew the outcome had already been decided. He’d begun in one camp. It would be impossible to change to the other now. No matter what he said to himself, regardless of the excuses he might make, he knew he’d already compromised any chance he had with Drew. The sensible thing to do—the only thing, really—would be to get on with his job and leave as quickly as possible.

It would be better for him. Better for Drew, too.

He wondered what she really thought of him. She was so determined she could never feel anything more than a tepid friendship for any man that she wouldn’t admit to herself she might actually be fond of Cole. He didn’t dare use the word
love.
Just the sound of it frightened him. The loss and pain it implied were too great to think about.

He could be putting himself though all this agony for nothing. Maybe she didn’t feel anything more than a mild liking for him. Maybe she had been mesmerized by the kiss, not the man behind the kiss. That wasn’t a very flattering thought, but Drew had made it perfectly plain on many occasions that she was less than impressed by Cole Benton. It was quite possible she had let him ride with her, accepted his invitation to dinner, walked down by the river because she was tired of resisting, not because she’d learned to like him.

Then why would she say he was charming, gentlemanly, even sweet and boyish? It wasn’t the kind of compliment a man wanted to hear, but it was exactly the sort of thing a woman would say, especially one who seemed to believe it was her role in life to take care of everyone she met.

It was time to find out if Drew truly liked him, to decide whether his feelings for her were merely infatuation or something deeper. Once he knew that, he could decide what to do. He didn’t know what that might be, but at least he would be doing something to clarify his situation, instead of sinking deeper and deeper into a morass of questions, doubts, and worries.

He’d never acted like this in his entire life. He’d always known exactly what he wanted to do. He remembered his mother’s words when he’d left home.

“A woman will bring you to your knees one of these days,” she’d called after him as he walked down the steps to his waiting horse. “She’ll make you bow your head and beg. I’m just sorry I won’t be there to see it.”

Cole had been absolutely certain his mother was wrong. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Memphis, Tennessee

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Cole said to Myrtle.

“She’s not here.”

“But everybody from the show is staying at this hotel.”

“We can if we want, but we don’t have to.”

“Where did she go?”

“She didn’t say.”

Cole was more than frustrated. He was angry. Drew had disappeared. Zeke and Hawk, too. They had four days in Memphis and only one show, a wealth of free time. He’d been hoping to spend it with Drew.

“Did she say anything about meeting me for practice?”

“No. We didn’t have a chance to talk. She left directly from the train. She said she’d see me in a few days.”

Myrtle seemed surprised Cole didn’t know Drew’s plans, but he wasn’t about to explain that though Drew had accepted him in her act, she hadn’t accepted him in any other part of her life. He believed she wasn’t the thief, but her disappearance did nothing to reassure him. He couldn’t prove her innocence as long as she closed him out of her world. If she were with him just once when a robbery took place, it would go a long way toward removing suspicion from her.

That wasn’t the only area in which he needed reassurance—or more information. He’d hoped to discover the extent and nature of her feelings for him, if she felt anything other than irritation and weary acceptance. He’d also hoped to learn more about the extent of his own emotional involvement. Cole had left home rather than be forced into a kind of life he hated, and into marriage with a kind of woman he couldn’t respect. Drew gave every indication of being the kind of woman he’d spent the last ten years looking for. Falling in love with her might be the worst mistake of his life, but turning away before he knew whether she could love him might be even worse. Most men weren’t lucky enough to find the perfect woman. Cole thought he might have. And he couldn’t turn his back until he knew whether she could love him.

And if she were responsible for the robberies … well, he’d figure out what to do about that if the need arose.

But he was getting ahead of himself. He’d been doing that ever since he met Drew, which was probably a good indication he ought to keep his distance. It would be safer, but he knew he couldn’t.

A day later he found a reason to change his mind. A well-known business firm in Memphis, one of the few to keep large amounts of cash reserves on hand, was robbed. The description of the thieves was the same as in all the previous robberies. Cole couldn’t make himself believe Drew was responsible, but he had no proof. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to talk to his commanding officer.

“I want to be taken off the case,” Cole said when he’d been ushered into his captain’s office.

“No greetings? No how-is-your-family? No stories to tell?”

Cole felt some of the stiffness leave his body. “Sorry, Ben. This case has got me so wound up, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“In that case, we’d better start with a drink. Whiskey okay?”

“Fine.”

The office was small, bare, and lacking the comforts afforded most officers of Captain Benjamin Wattle’s rank, but the government didn’t spend much money on its covert operations. Ben was lucky to have an office. He’d had to provide the furniture himself. Since he came from a modest background, he’d limited himself to a desk and a chair, a chair for his guest, and a cabinet that held his records as well as his liquor. Two Audubon prints and a plain white curtain at the single window were the only touches of decoration.

“You can sit down,” Ben said. “This isn’t a military review.”

Cole settled into the chair across from Ben’s desk and accepted a glass of bourbon whiskey, but he didn’t relax despite the fact that he and Ben had known each other for nearly a dozen years. He felt that he’d failed his old friend, failed himself as well, and he didn’t like it.

The captain poured himself a drink and settled back in his chair. “I had expected to get regular reports from you,” he said, sipping his drink. “I haven’t heard anything since that first week.”

“There hasn’t been anything to report.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll have to explain that remark.”

“As I told you, there was no problem working my way into the show. I became part of Drew Townsend’s act that first night.”

“But you were only coming out of the stands at the end of the show to shoot against her. You couldn’t learn much like that.”

“The boss wanted to spruce up her act, so I started coming up with ideas for things she could do. She didn’t like it at first, but it gave me a reason to meet her at practice every day, for us to work together in every show.”

“That still leaves a lot of time.”

“I couldn’t come up with an excuse to spend all my time with her, but I tried to make sure I saw her or her brothers as often as possible.”

“What brothers?”

“According to her, she and ten boys were adopted by this couple in Texas. When she decided to join the Wild West Show, they insisted two brothers go along to make sure nothing happened to her.”

The captain didn’t say anything, but Cole could tell from his expression he was already questioning what Cole was telling him.

“Whatever else might be right or wrong in this case, the watching over her part is right. I stumble over her brothers all the time, especially an ex-slave called Zeke. I can’t decide whether he hates my guts or just all white men.”

“I’m not interested in Zeke.”

“You would be if you saw him. Her other brother is a half-breed Comanche.”

The captain began to show more interest. “The reports say the men in the robberies wear masks.”

“And there are always two, never more, never less.”

The captain took a sip from his drink. “Go on.”

“Three robberies have taken place while I’ve been with the show, one when the three of them took a train the next day, one when they stayed a day late, and one here in Memphis after they disappeared.”