Keegan's Lady (44 page)

Ace closed his eyes. "You have to know that I would never choose money over my wife. I’d rather lose everything than lose her."

"Really?"

Ace cracked open one eye. "I get the point. Don't drive it into the ground. What you're failing to see is that there's far more involved than me dumping a bunch of money into a railroad spur. If I go ahead and build, the sons of bitches who hung your pa are going to come out smelling like roses. I can turn loose of my plan to get revenge, but I'll be damned if I'll buy back land from those bastards so they can make a profit."

"Then don't. Only make offers equal to what the originally invested."

"They'd refuse to sell."

"If they do that, you can threaten to sit on it and foreclose when they can't make their mortgage payments. They'll sell. If they don't, they'll lose their asses. You've got the advantage of time on your side, Ace. You can hold out until they go under." He gave a low laugh "Just think how it'd be for those dirt farmers who have managed to hold on to their spreads. If you actually build that spur and buy their land at decent prices, they'll think Christmas came in August."

Ace smiled slightly. "I reckon they would, at that."

"Think about that side of it, all the people you'd make a miracle for, including one for yourself. It's not often a man gets a chance to play Santa Claus on that grand a scale."

"With money I made with the sweat of my brow."

"You can love money, Ace, but it ain't gonna love you back. On a cold winter night, you can't cuddle up to it for warmth. It can buy you a lot of things, but as you pointed out, it can't buy you a woman, and it can't give you children."

Ace mulled that over. "On down the road, if I build that spur, those bastards will be able to ship their cows to Denver right along with mine, I'll be providing them with a means of economic growth."

"Every cattleman in these parts will ship his cows on that rail. You can't pick and choose. You've got to turn loose of it, Ace. Let bygones be bygones. Punishing those men isn't going to bring our pa back. All it'll do is mess up the rest of your life. Let God be their judge. He'll settle up with them when they try to get through the old pearly gates."

On the tail of a long, drawn-out sigh, Ace said, "I'll think about it, Joseph. That's all I can promise."

"Do me one favor?"

"What's that?"

"If you decide to build that spur, don't be an idiot and go telling Caitlin anything until you've rectified matters." Joseph swung down off the rock. "You're right. At first, she may hate you. The only way you'll be able to convince her not to is to have proof, in black and white, that you've had a change of heart."

With that, he struck off for the house.

Ace remained sitting on the fence in the semidarkness, his thoughts turned back in time, not to the night of his stepfather's death, but to all the gentler, happier times before that, times that Ace had allowed to be overshadowed by a single, awful memory. After a lot of soul searching, he concluded that Joseph was right; their pa never would have condoned this madness. He would have long since put the tragedy behind him and gone on to build a happy life on a foundation of love, not hatred.

Now Ace had a chance to do just that with Caitlin. How much was she worth to him? You place a very high price on yourself, Miss O'Shannessy. He wouldn't go bust if he built the railroad spur, but doing so would put a very large dent in his capital.

He remembered Joseph's burning gaze and the stern expression on his face. No one knew Ace quite as well as his brother. The point is, what's she worth to you? A fourth of your money? Half? Joseph never had learned to pull any of his punches. This was one time Ace was glad he hadn't. He couldn't put a dollar amount on Caitlin's worth. If he had to throw away everything, right down to the last dime, he'd still feel like a lucky man if she was in his arms.

Ace decided then and there that a railroad spur would be built between No Name and Denver, after all. No foreclosures or financial ruin for anyone if he could avoid it. Just a gigantic investment in the future. His and Caitlin's.

Ace felt as if a thousand pounds had been lifted off his shoulders. Sliding down off the boulder, he struck off for the house to get Caitlin. As Joseph had so cleverly pointed out earlier that day, it was high time Ace grabbed her by an ankle. They might both end up going under. The girl had a load of problems, and Ace wasn't at all sure he was strong enough or smart enough to help her fix them. But, by God, he was going to try.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As Ace approached the house he saw that all the doors and windows had been flung open. Given the coolness of the evening, that struck him as strange. Then he smelled smoke. Thinking that Caitlin must have burned something else, he took the steps two at a time, strode quickly across the porch, and came reeling to a stop as he entered the living room.

Peering through the haze, he saw that the top of the table was covered with stew. It looked as if someone had upended the pot and smeared the contents everywhere.

Juice and clumps of scorched vegetables had dripped from the table onto the benches. Worse, his beautiful varnished floor was covered with water.

Joseph stood in the middle of the mess, a sopping wet towel clutched in one hand. The front of his chambray shirt bore smears of stew juice. The look on his face was nothing short of murderous. A number of towels and blankets, which he'd evidently thrown on the floor to soak up the water, lay around him. From the kitchen, Ace could hear David and Esa cursing a blue streak and pounding on something.

"What the hell happened?" Ace asked. He glanced worriedly around. "Where's Caitlin?"

His brother waved to a hand clear smoke from his face. "Caitlin happened."

"What?"

With a swing of his arm, Joseph indicated the mess. "Caitlin did all this."

"What the hell do you mean, Caitlin did all this?"

"I mean she purposely dumped the stew on the table, smeared it everywhere, and then said, 'Oops! What a lerrible mess!' Then she wiped her hands off on me and said, 'Oh, dear, I seem to have gotten stuff all over your shirt!' That's what I mean."

Ace felt a cold sensation seeping through his boots. He glanced down to see that he was standing in at least an inch of water.

"The flood came after the stew and the stove," Joseph said as he bent to grab another towel. "Excuse me, but your precious varnished floors will be ruined if I don't get this water up, and I'm a one man wring-out brigade. David and Esa are trying to open the fucking flue damper. She built up the fire, closed the draft, then beat on the handle with the poker until she bent it so bad you can't work it." As he strode toward the kitchen, Joseph threw Ace a glance over his shoulder. "She said you have a penchant for clearing the air and calming the waters, or some damned thing like that."

Clearing the air and calming the waters? Ace gave his boot a shake. "Where the hell did all this water come from?"

"She overflowed the bathtub."

Ace followed Joseph to the kitchen. David and Esa, who were trying without success to open the stove damper, had so much soot on their faces they looked like raccoons. Smoke billowed from the oven door and up around the hole covers.

"Do you know where the pliers are?" David asked Ace. "We can't get a good enough hold on this lever with I our bare hands to turn it."

So stunned he could scarcely grasp what he was seeing, Ace waded back through the house to the water closet, found the pliers where he'd left them earlier in the week, I and returned to the kitchen. As he handed the tool to David, he said, "Do you guys seriously expect me to believe Caitlin did all this? What actually happened here?"

Joseph turned from the sink, his hands still wrapped around a towel. "When I got back to the house," he said acidly, "she was banging things around in the kitchen. At first I thought she was just cleaning up the pots and pans or something. But the banging kept getting louder, the way it does when someone's slamming stuff around to get attention. When I asked her what was wrong, she came out to the table, looking mad as blazes, and said nothing was wrong. That nothing ever went wrong around here, and she was sick to death of it. Sick to death of us. Sick to death of you. Sick to death of all the pretense."

"The pretense?" Ace echoed, glancing incredulously at the stove again, which was still puffing smoke. "What the hell did she mean by that?"

"She's your wife. How are we supposed to know what she meant!" Joseph turned back to the sink to wring out another towel. As he gathered the cloth in his hands and gave it a twist, his furious stance left Ace with little doubt he wished he had his hands around Caitlin's neck. "All I know is, she was mad, and she made a hell of a mess."

Raking a hand through his hair, Ace stepped to the archway and stared at the destroyed living room. As his gaze came to rest on the floor, he felt a rush of anger. Three coats of varnish, possibly ruined. Hours of work, down the privy hole. He swung back to his brothers.

"I realize it may sound like a really stupid question, but where were you while she was doing all this?"

"Which part?" Esa asked, rubbing soot from under one eye. "While she was throwing stew, beating on the stove, or flooding the house?"

Ace felt anger building within him—a hot, surging anger. Why would Caitlin have done this? It was the sort of destruction one might expect from a spoiled, intractable child, not a grown woman. It was madness. He shot glares at all three men. "Where were all of you?"

"Well, I was standing right about where you are while she beat on the stove. That came after the stew, so Joseph and David weren't in here."

"Where were they?"

"Out by the table. Just sort of—" Esa broke off. "Geez, Ace. We all just kind of stood around and didn't know what to do. Why are you mad at us? We didn't make the mess!"

The stove belched a cloud of smoke. Ace coughed, waved a hand before his face, and stepped over to jerk the pliers from David's hands. As he set to work trying to turn the stove damper, he said, "I cannot believe that three grown men just stood and watched while one small, timid woman wreaked havoc. Why didn't one of you stop her?"

"I asked her to stop!" Esa said defensively.

"And?" Ace demanded. He could feel his eyes bugging a little and knew he should calm down. If he didn't, he would be sorely tempted to warm Caitlin's little backside when he finally got his hands on her.