His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) (40 page)

Kit McCoy isn't fit to shine that girl's shoes.

The thought sobered him instantly. He'd forgotten Collie and his other mission. Michael just prayed he'd have another chance to talk sense into Eden, because he didn't dare wait around for her to calm down while Collie was running loose with a shotgun.

With Sera and Eden safely out of earshot, Michael waded back through Claudia's habitual smoke cloud on his way to the kitchen. He found his brother and neighbor huddled like conspirators over their coffee mugs, Rafe's golden head nearly bumping Claudia's silver one. Michael wasn't sure whether his shadow or his footstep alerted them to his presence. But he didn't like the accusation in the pair of eyes that rose to challenge him.

Once again, he found himself struggling with his temper. All Rafe had to do was arch that insolent eyebrow—like he was doing now—and Michael wanted to explode. Never mind that his black sheep half-brother hadn't said a word. Or that ten years should have been long enough to heal old wounds.

Standing there, Michael was twenty-one again, facing down the nineteen-year-old upstart who'd dared to show his face after a five-year absence and had announced he was taking Gabriel to Texas so the child could have his wish to be a cowboy before he died. All the pain, all the fury, all the futility Michael had been feeling for those two long years as he'd watched Gabriel's decline, had culminated in a release of such volcanic proportions that Rafe was lucky he was alive today.

Michael supposed Rafe still had good reason to hate him. God knew, if he were Rafe, forgiveness wouldn't have come easily to
him.

"Do you have a gun?" he blurted.

Wariness flitted through Rafe's mirrorlike gaze. He was too accomplished an actor, however, to drop his sardonic mask. "What would I need a gun for, brother?"

"To protect your sister from an outlaw."

Claudia's face darkened. "Kit McCoy is back?"

Michael nodded.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Because there's more, Claudia." He fought down his own agitation, doing his best to gentle his tone. "Collie's gone looking for him."

"What?"
The old woman turned nearly as gray as her hair. "McCoy is Collie's rat?"

Michael glanced at Rafe. Judging by his brother's narrowed stare, Michael suspected that Rafe had grasped the urgency of the situation.

"I'm going to find the boy. Talk some sense into him. In the meantime, I need you both to stay here, in case McCoy comes looking for Sera—or worse, she gets wind he's in town. Rafe, if I'm not back tomorrow, you'll have to keep her occupied. Especially come sundown. She'll try to sneak out her window."

"Why wouldn't you be back tomorrow?" Rafe demanded.

Michael hesitated. Claudia's gnarled hands were actually quaking. Never had he seen her looking so helpless, so... old. It bothered him more than words could describe. She'd come to dote on the boy. If Collie did something to get himself killed—with Claudia's gun, yet—Michael knew it would destroy her.

He forced a smile. "I'm due at the orphanage tomorrow morning. Sometimes, I'm detained there all day."

"You're a poor liar," Claudia croaked. "Do you have a gun?"

Michael cringed inwardly. He was in the habit of patching up men, not plugging them with bullets. Still, she had a valid point. "I keep a .45 in my office."

"And when's the last time you oiled it, much less fired it?"

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

"Never mind." Shoving back her chair, she stumped to the sink, tossed a sleepy Stazzie off the windowsill, then knocked over a couple of spice bottles to reach for the ammunition box behind them. Next, she grabbed her own six-shooter and holster, which were hanging too high for even Vandy's curious paws, from a peg amidst the dried herbs on the rafters. "Here." She thrust them both into Michael's hands. "The safety's on. Try to keep it that way."

Michael hardened his jaw to stave off his uneasiness. A preacher's boy-turned-doctor didn't have much occasion to fire a gun.

Rafe must have drawn a similar conclusion. He rose as Michael headed for the door.

"Might I suggest," he said casually, barring Michael's way, "that your first stop be the marshal's office?"

Michael shook his head, reaching around Rafe for the knob. "I don't want Collie thrown in jail."

"Better jail than boot hill."

Michael's heart skipped a beat. As much as he hated the idea, he knew Rafe was right.

The trouble was, Collie would never forgive him.

He yanked open the door. The wind slammed into him like a cold fist. Shivering, he tugged up his coat collar and grimaced at the roiling, charcoal sky. It had already been one hell of a night.

Now it promised to get worse.

Chapter 14

Lightning flashed false daylight, and thunder battered the window sash, rousing Eden from an exhausted doze. She shivered. The coals in the bedwarmer had long since burned out. She guessed dawn was an hour away.

Sitting gingerly in the ghostly half-light, she tried not to disturb Sera, who sprawled at her side. How her friend could have slept a wink through last night's cacophony mystified Eden. At one point, she'd thought that Claudia's roof would blow off. She hated storms. They always seemed to portend some dire circumstance.

But lightning had been spitting long before Michael slammed into Claudia's kitchen last night, so Eden tried to put her superstitions behind her. Hopefully, the confrontation with her husband was the worst that would come of this storm. The thunderheads sounded like they were finally chugging over the mountains. With any luck, sunshine would soon warm the valley, and a crystal-clear autumn day would follow.

The trouble was, she was dreading this day almost as much as she'd dreaded last night's storm.

With Stazzie weaving sleepily through her ankles, Eden crept into the dressing room to tug on a skirt and blouse. The only reason she didn't dare pad to the kitchen in her night wrapper was her brother-in-law. Claudia had insisted Rafe sleep in her house, rather than a hotel, and for all Eden knew, Rafe was already on the prowl, hunting for Arbuckles and jelly muffins.

It wasn't that she didn't trust Rafe; quite the contrary. Last night, she'd been so desperate for a sympathetic ear, that when she'd found him building a fire in Claudia's parlor, she'd spilled her heart to him. Although she'd divulged confidences about Michael that she'd had no right to divulge, her excuse was that she loved him. And that she worried he was too stubborn to take the first step to reconcile with his brother.

God knew, he hadn't been terribly conciliatory to her last night.

She sighed. As angry as his reasoning had made her, she'd believed his claim that he'd been abstinent rather than unfaithful. She'd been more than a little ashamed, too, to realize what an appalling image she'd had of her husband, that he'd seed his bastard in a widow who was already rearing a fatherless child. Knowing Michael's overblown sense of responsibility, Eden wondered how she could have thought that he cared so little for the price Bonnie would pay if he died. As exasperating as her husband could be, Eden loved him even more to realize he had shouldered the consequences and leashed his desire to spare her the burden of raising his baby.

Still, Michael had to learn that his shoulders were only so broad—and that she possessed a perfectly sturdy pair herself. She just wasn't sure that trotting back to his kitchen and his bed was the best way to teach him those lessons.

Hurrying along the chilly corridor, she tried not to trip over Stazzie as she descended the stairs to the indisputably warmest room in the house: Claudia's kitchen. To her surprise, her aunt was already seated at the sawbuck table. Her sparrowlike frame was hunched beneath the weight of a patchwork quilt, and her bony fist trembled as she sipped a mug whose contents looked more like Texas crude than coffee. Eden grew concerned. It wasn't like Claudia to let her hair hang in limp strands. More to the point, she couldn't ever remember seeing Claudia looking so grim, gray, or haggard.

"What's wrong?" she greeted, her eyes straying anxiously to the bottle of tonic at Claudia's elbow.

Claudia started. Catching her aunt unawares was another telltale sign. It worried Eden.

Claudia, however, was too canny to stay disadvantaged for long. She pasted on her habitual scowl. "This danged roof, that's what. I paid that MacAffee brat three whole shooting lessons to fix the leaks. Hell, that kid's worse at carpentry than gunplay. You seen him?"

"Uh... no." Eden doubted the roof was the problem. "But it's still early, don't you think?"

"I went to drag him by the ear outta my hayloft, but he'd already run off," Claudia said. "You suppose he's hiding at his pa's shack? Last night weren't any kind of night to be holed up on a mountain," she muttered to herself.

Eden crossed to the stove. Furtively watching her kinswoman, she tossed in another log. Despite the tonic at her elbow—or maybe because of it—Claudia didn't seem to be suffering any coronary distress. "Are you worried about Collie?"

"Nah. Just want to take the work he owes me outta his hide. Here now," she added irritably, glaring under the table. Stazzie was butting her head against Claudia's ankles. "Danged varmint thinks I'm gonna give her milk. Scat.
Scat,
you mangy cat!"

Eden giggled as Stazzie, rumbling affectionately, flopped like a rag poppet across Claudia's heavily darned socks.

"See, Auntie, Stazzie's helping you stay warm."

"Yer furball's giving me fleas, that's what," Claudia said, scratching sullenly at her calf. "And that coon of Collie's is worse. Say, where'd that critter run off to? I've been meaning to make me a hat."

"Oh, stop it." Eden spied Vandy snoozing in the copper soup kettle hanging over the wash tub. She shook her head. It really was odd that Collie hadn't come back for his pet. He knew that Stazzie and Vandy were likely to tear the house down if left unwatched for a solitary second. They feuded worse than Rafe and Michael.

And speaking of Michael...

"You seen that husband of yours?"

Eden winced. Usually it was Sera who did the mind reading.

"No."

"Humph
. Thought he'd be back by now. Maybe he holed up at Widow Witherspoon's last night. He would have needed somewhere warm to sleep in that typhoon. When are you two gonna kiss and make up?"

Eden blushed, distracted from asking why Michael had ridden to the orphanage. "Really, Auntie." She poured herself a cup of coffee.

"Don't 'Really, Auntie' me. I want nieces and nephews to bounce on my knee. I ain't gettin' any younger, you know. It's high time you and Michael stopped squabbling and started acting like man and wife."

Eden winced, recalling the letter she'd left her husband. Still, what choice had she had? She'd told Claudia how he'd slammed out the door, refusing, as usual, to listen to advice about his health, Rafe, or anything else. His stubbornness was making her miserable. "It's not like I haven't
tried
to be a good wife to him."

"Bein' a good wife ain't the same thing as being a good pretender."

She frowned, sitting across from Claudia. "What do you mean?"

"I mean this problem you think you're having with Michael ain't about him. It's about you."

"Me?"

Claudia nodded, her deepset eyes disconcertingly keen above her grizzled cheeks. "It takes two to argue, child. The minute you started pretending you didn't know about herbs, or healing, or anything else that might cost you yer man's approval, you started living a false life."

"I hardly think—"

Claudia snorted. "Now who ain't listenin' to advice? You want the truth, girlie? Michael ain't the one makin' you miserable. You are. God gave you certain gifts, and He expects you to use 'em."

"But I
did
try to use my gifts! I tried to be a good healer."

"Sure. You did it yer pa's way. You did it that Injun woman's way. But you never did it yer own way. You got a knack for helping folks that can't be bottled or prescribed. Someday Michael's gonna wake up and see that. Just like I did."

Eden shook her head, her throat constricting. "He won't even try my tonics."