Lips That Touch Mine (49 page)

“I wouldn’t know one from the other,” Duke
said, looking through the doorway at the rows of flats covering the
greenhouse, “but I’d like to look around.” And he would enjoy the
pretty widow’s fetching blushes while he found out a little more
about her unusual business.

“Clean your hands and wait out front, Adam,”
Faith said. “We’ll be out in a moment.”

After Duke lit the burners for the tub and
boiler, he stepped into the greenhouse with Faith.

“This is comfrey,” she said, lifting a large,
hairy leaf on a plant about three feet tall. She stroked her
fingertip over a purple bell-shaped flower adorning the plant, and
it sent a ripple of warmth down Duke’s spine. He hadn’t felt the
stroke of a woman’s fingers across his flesh in a very long time.
His choice. He had friends who would welcome an intimate visit from
him; but after years of watching his brothers flirt and joke with
their wives, he just couldn’t stomach the hollow feeling that
followed him home after a late-night visit to one of his lady
friends.

“We use the root in tea to help reduce
inflammation and to heal broken bones,” Faith said. She moved to a
neighboring plant about a foot tall with strap-like leaves that she
didn’t touch. “This is autumn crocus. The seeds are used to treat
gout and rheumatism, but all parts of the plant are poisonous.”

Alarm bells went off in his head. “Then why
would you give it to a person? Aren’t you afraid of accidentally
killing somebody?”

She faced him squarely. “I know my herbs,
Sheriff Grayson. I have over one hundred varieties in my
greenhouse, thirty of which are highly toxic but of immense value.
I know how to use them for safe and effective treatments of minor
ailments, but I don’t pretend to be a doctor.”

He watched Cora dump a bucket of soil into a
mound on the greenhouse floor, and his gut tightened with worry.
“Aren’t you afraid to have these poisonous plants around your
daughter?”

Instead of answering, she lifted her slender
fingers and beckoned Cora. The child leapt to her feet and ran to
her side.

“Sheriff Grayson wants to see our dangerous
plants, Cora. Will you show him which herbs are poisonous?”

“That’s aloe,” the child said, pointing to a
green plant with long, tapering stems that reached up from the soil
like grasping fingers.

Duke reached out to touch the fleshy stems,
but Cora pushed his hand away.

“Don’t ever touch them!” she said
dramatically. “You could get poison on your fingers and rub it in
your eyes and go blind. Or you could get it in your mouth and
die.”

“I didn’t realize aloe was poisonous.”

“It’s good for healing burns and minor
wounds,” Faith said, “but it’s a violent purge if you ingest it. To
Cora, anything that could hurt her is off limits. That means no
touching.”

Duke nodded, then gave Cora a little bow.
“Thank you for protecting me.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, so sincerely that
Duke bit his lip to stop a grin. “I’ll show you more, but you can’t
touch them.”

“I won’t,” he promised, then followed the
little imp as she dashed from one dangerous plant to the next. “How
do you know which ones are bad?”

She pointed to a red ribbon tied to a stick
in the corner of the flat where the herb was planted. “Mama marks
them with a bright cloth. That’s foxglove, and ifs very bad because
it’s marked with red.”

“What if somebody came in here and stole all
your ribbons?” he asked, hoping his question wouldn’t offend Faith,
who stood protectively beside her daughter. “How would you know the
good plants from the bad plants?”

Cora wrinkled her nose as if he were a
pitifully stupid man. “I would look at their leaves or their
flowers.”

“What if someone like me came in and got
confused? I don’t know much about plants. What if I can’t tell if
it’s foxglove or a snapdragon?”

“Then don’t touch it.”

He laughed at her refreshingly honest and
simple answer. Faith’s lips twitched, but she didn’t gloat. “Since
you’re such a smart lady,” he said to Cora, “perhaps you can tell
me the name of that plant over there with the blue eyes and brown
handkerchief that’s watching us.”

The little girl pivoted on her heels and
looked behind her. “That’s not a plant!” she said with a giggle.
“That’s my aunt Tansy hiding behind the fennel.”

“Oh,” he said in a whisper. “Why is she
hiding from us?”

“Because she don’t like you.”

“Cora!” Faith gasped and laughed at the same
time, blushing dark pink as she spoke to Duke. “I believe your
badge has made Aunt Tansy wary.” She turned and gestured for the
woman to come out.

Tansy stepped into the row and offered a
nervous smile. Her hands flitted to her throat, and Duke thought of
a butterfly. She’d tied her kerchief on her head, leaving the tail
ends sticking up like antennae, and she seemed breathless and
alert, as if the slightest move would make her fly away.

“Good morning,” he said with a polite
nod.

Her vivid blue gaze flitted from him to Cora
to Faith as if searching for a place to land.

“Aunt Tansy, this is Sheriff Grayson,” Faith
said, but he sensed her reservation in introducing them.

“G-good mornin’, Sheriff.” Her soft southern
drawl surprised him. He would guess the blonde to be in her
forties, but he could never tell with women because they were
sneaky about concealing their age with face creams and hair dyes.
But no herb or balm could change Tansy’s demure southern drawl or
camouflage Iris’s dramatic Oriental looks.

Faith’s aunts could not be related.

Faith tapped her palm against a bushy green
plant that looked like a weed to him. “You may as well come out,
too, Aunt Dahlia.”

To his surprise, another woman with red pouty
lips stepped from behind the bush. She looked Tansy’s age, but was
shorter and more buxom, her hair and eyes dark brown. Maybe this
one was related to Faith, but not the other two.

“Hello, Sheriff.” Dahlia bobbed her head.
“Iris was right about you being handsome,” she said, then surprised
him further by reaching behind the bush and tugging a fourth woman
into sight. “This is Aster,” she said.

There was no doubt that Aster was the oldest,
and she had the air of one in charge. Though she was Faith’s
height, she had white hair, a solid build, and wide shoulders. She
stood like a soldier and met his eyes without a shred of shame that
she’d been caught peeking at him. “We’re glad you stopped by,
Sheriff. It’s good to know our niece has a man to depend on.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Faith scowled at the
women and slipped her hand into the crook of Duke’s elbow. “My
aunts will take up your entire day if you don’t escape now.” She
pressed her lips together and steered him to the front corner of
the greenhouse, where she’d set up a counter and shelves to make a
small store of sorts. “Don’t forget your balm,’ she said, snagging
the jar off the counter as they passed. She thrust it into his
hand, then hurried them outside to where Adam waited in the warm
sunshine.

“How can those women be your aunts?” Duke
asked, wanting to hear her explain it to his satisfaction.

“I used to ask my mother the same thing,”
Faith replied brightly, “but she assured me they were.” She pushed
the hair out of Adam’s eyes, putting an end to the discussion if
not Duke’s suspicion. “Come straight home from the store,” she said
to the boy. “You need a haircut. And don’t forget my cheesecloth
this time.”

He lowered his chin. “I won’t.”

Faith turned a warm smile on Duke that made
him wish they were spending the evening together. But she’d dodged
his question and he wanted an answer. She spoke before he could
pursue it, however.

“Thank you for your kindness today, Sheriff.
Please let me know how else I can repay you.”

She could pay him with a kiss from her pretty
pink lips, which had been distracting him for the last half hour.
Her lashes swooped down to cover her eyes, as if she knew where his
mind had wandered.

He hooked his thumb in his gun belt,
reminding himself he was here on business. “If this balm relieves
the ache in my shoulder, I’ll be in your debt, Mrs. Wilkins. I’ll
let you know how well it works.” He wanted her to know that he
would be back, that he would be watching her, and that he was
interested in more than her business.

“Consider it an even exchange, Sheriff.” She
kept her smile in place, but his gut insisted there was something
secretive about her, something odd about her business and her
aunts.

Maybe the boy could answer some of his
questions. He clapped his hand on Adam’s shoulder and turned the
boy toward town. “Well, young man, let’s go settle your debt with
Mrs. Brown.”

o0o

The minute the two males were gone, Faith
rushed into the greenhouse. Her aunts were gathered near a flat of
peppermint-scented geraniums, tittering and whispering. She didn’t
even want to imagine what they were talking about, but their
outrageous behavior must stop before the sheriff guessed the truth
about them—and herself.

She made sure Cora was occupied with her pail
and hand spade and safely out of earshot before she confronted her
aunts. “What were you ladies thinking?” she asked, certain they had
just forfeited their one chance to build a safe and decent life for
themselves.

“That the sheriff is the most handsome man
I’ve ever met,” Tansy said, placing her long, artist’s fingers over
her heart.

“The sheriff isn’t interested in a woman ten
years his senior,” Aster countered in her blunt fashion.

Faith gritted her teeth. “The only thing the
sheriff will be interested in is evicting us from his town.”

“The sheriff loved our flirting,” Iris
said.

“Well, I didn’t. I was terrified one of you
would go too far and—” She bit her lip to stop her rush of words,
but tears welled up in her eyes.

“Oh, dahlin’, don’t do that.” Tansy grasped
Faith’s hands. “There’s no need to worry.”

“This is our only chance,” Faith whispered,
choked by her emotions. “We have to be careful not to tarnish our
reputations.”

“We know that, child.” Tansy parked her hand
on her narrow waist. “We only teased the sheriff a bit.” She nodded
toward the corner where Cora was plowing a stick through soil. “Not
one of us will do a single thing to ruin that little girl’s
future.”

Her aunts adored Cora and Adam, and Faith
wanted to believe they would behave themselves, but she feared the
women had spent too many years working in a brothel to be able to
conform to polite society.

“Faith, you were so tense you were making the
sheriff suspicious.” Iris grinned with satisfaction. “I just
flirted a bit to get him to hook up the gas line.”

“I could have hired a man to do that.”

“With what?” Iris asked. “We each contributed
every penny we owned to make the move to Fredonia and set up our
business. Other than the few coins in your jar, not one of us has a
penny to our name.”

“All the more reason for us to mind our
manners and present ourselves as decent, respectable women,” Faith
insisted.

“Being respectable isn’t going to put food on
our table. The only way we’re going to eat this week,” Iris said,
“is to get some paying customers into that bathtub.”

“No.” Faith pressed her palms to her nervous
stomach. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to open a bath.”

“Selling herbs won’t earn enough to feed us,”
Iris insisted. “Our stock in trade is our ability to make men feel
good.”

“That’s exactly what worries me! You know
what people will think when they hear we’re giving herbal baths and
massages.”

“My growling stomach doesn’t much care,”
Aster said, her white eyebrows dipped in a scowl. “I vote for
Iris’s plan.”

“Me, too.” Dahlia patted the small paunch
beneath her large breasts. “Maybe we weren’t respected while
working at the brothel, but at least we ate well.”

Tansy nodded. “What harm can come of giving
herbal baths, as long as our patrons wear bathing garments and we
don’t give any massages in private?”

“The harm is that one false move, or one
nasty rumor, could tear our reputations to shreds, and it’s a risk
we can’t afford to take,” Faith said. “We’ve only been here three
weeks. Let’s wait a while and see how we do selling herbs.”

“We could afford to wait if one of us had a
husband who could provide for us.” Iris arched one ebony eyebrow at
Faith. “Maybe you should have flirted with the sheriff.”

“He wouldn’t want a woman like me.”

A sly smile tipped Iris’s lips. “Oh, he wants
you.”

Faith heaved an exasperated sigh. “I meant
that he wouldn’t want to marry a woman with my past.”

“None of us will get a marriage proposal if
we don’t get some men in the door,” Dahlia said. “Believe me,
Faith, they won’t come to buy herbs. The only way to get male
patrons is to make them feel good.”

“And in turn,” Iris added, “they will make us
feel good, which is my first requirement. The second is that the
man is handsome. The third is that he’s—”

“Who cares about feeling good?” Aster asked.
“I’d be happy with a man who has money and a comfortable home.”

Tansy hugged her arms to her waist. “I would
love to hear a man sing again.”

“Bah.” Dahlia patted her buxom cleavage.
“Give me a man who’s willing to put his money right here, and I’d
spend an hour or two with him.”

Faith threw up her hands and stared at the
women. “You are incorrigible! You’re all addicted to men.”

“Not addicted,” Aster said, “just in need. We
need money, and we can only get it from the men in town. Without
that bath, we’re going to starve.” Aster widened her stance and
crossed her arms over her chest. “When was the last time we ate a
decent meal?”

It had been at least a month. The week before
they left Syracuse they had barely slept, much less eaten a decent
meal. But their goal had been to stay alive and to get out of town
before Judge Stone returned and stripped them of everything they
owned. Faith and her aunts had pooled their money and hired a local
livery owner to secretly transport the contents of their greenhouse
to Fredonia. In addition to paying his enormous fee, Faith had to
buy the grist mill and pay a carpenter to install the huge windows
in the first floor. They were broke, out of food, and out of
options.