Liz Ireland (11 page)

Before she could think of anything to say to break the awkward silence between them, Rose Ellen came rushing down the stairs in a fresh, pretty dress of blue organdy
dripping with bows and all manner of furbelows. She appeared in the doorway in all her overdecorated glory, beaming with pleasure at the sheriff.

“Why, Barton! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon!”

Barton stood, looking Rose Ellen over with appreciation. It would be hard for a man not to. Emma’s little sister had a perfect figure, with a tiny waist and plump little arms that had the appearance of never lifting anything more taxing than an embroidery hoop.

“I told you I would,” Barton said.

So. He
had
come to see Rose Ellen.

“Emma said you had a headache. I hope you didn’t get up from your nap on my account. Maybe you should go back to bed….”

Rose Ellen rolled her eyes. “That pesky old headache went away the minute I heard your horse coming up the road, Sheriff. A visit from you is better than a powder.”

Emma listened to her sister’s banter and felt vaguely nauseated. Marriage had done nothing to dull her sister’s desire to charm men, apparently. She stood. “I’d better get back to the kitchen or we won’t have any dinner to offer the sheriff.”

Barton looked at her with concern. “I hope I haven’t kept you, Emma. I enjoy speaking with you. Seems like we never do get a chance to talk.”

Stunned, Emma almost tripped on her own feet on the way back to the kitchen…and she proceeded to forget all about that missing knife.

“My, this meal is delicious!” Barton lied enthusiastically.

Emma smiled.
My, this meal is dragging on endlessly
, she thought in despair.

It was just herself, Rose Ellen, Barton and Annalise, and
Emma missed Lang and Lorna acutely. Especially Lorna—although she couldn’t blame the younger woman for being too intimidated by the sheriff’s presence to come downstairs. And frankly, her culinary skill this evening wasn’t lure enough to tempt a wary soul. The bread, though scraped to her niece’s specifications, didn’t fool anyone into thinking it wasn’t burned. The carrots were stringy, and the beans were slightly overcooked. There wasn’t enough pie to go around, so Emma did without. Even with her sacrifice the pieces were laughably small.

But for all that, after he’d lapped up the last bit of lip-curling tart apple on his plate, and chewed through the crust that after a day was as fit for resoling boots as for human consumption, Barton Sealy leaned back in his chair and emitted a rumbling, satisfied sound. “Mmm-mmm!”

Rose Ellen had had a fake smile splashed across her pretty lips all evening, but Annalise, her miniature double, looked at the sheriff as if the man were crazy. Emma almost laughed.

She supposed the sheriff was just being nice to her so she would go away and leave him alone with Rose Ellen, which she would have been happy to do. She still hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to Lang about what he was doing with that knife. With the sheriff here, she was wary of drawing any undue attention to her boarder.

“I could use a little stretch after all this wonderful food.” Barton’s gaze shifted to Emma.

When those two blue eyes honed in on her, Emma felt frozen in surprise. “By all means,” she said. “Feel free to take a walk, if you wish.”

He chuckled. “I only wish to if you’ll agree to accompany me.”

“Me?”
Emma blushed at her foolishness. The man couldn’t have made himself any clearer. But why would
he want to take a walk with her, when Rose Ellen, the woman for whom he’d apparently carried a torch for lo these many years, was sitting right across the table from him?

The sheriff chuckled. “Naturally, if you’d rather not…”

Emma remained glued in her seat. She knew she shouldn’t turn down a moonlit stroll with Barton Sealy. The idea was preposterous. She didn’t quite understand what had caused him to choose her over her sister, but this was not an opportunity that came along every day.

When she glanced over at Rose Ellen, her sister appeared to be taking the slight more placidly than expected. “Go on, Emma.” She even stood and walked them to the door, as if she were chaperoning them.

Barton took her arm as they left the house, which put Emma even further on guard. Something was definitely wrong! She glanced back at the house and saw her sister watching them anxiously, straining her head forward as if to hear what they were saying.

Suddenly Emma understood. Her sister had obviously appealed to the sheriff to have a talk with Emma, like a wayward child, and the sheriff was performing the favor for his old sweetheart’s sake.

“Rose Ellen tells me you have a boarder now,” Barton said when they were probably just out of earshot of the front door.

Emma’s whole body stiffened. At least the man didn’t waste any time getting to the crux of things! “Yes.”

He stopped and looked at her then. Those blue eyes that could melt the most steely feminine heart failed to perform their magic on hers. To think she’d almost turned Lang in to the sheriff this afternoon! Now the knife-wielding outlaw seemed less sinister to her than the machinations of her own sister.

As she remained silently glaring up at him, not offering any more explanation, the sheriff’s expression slowly changed from wildly flirtatious to understanding. To her surprise, his smile broadened and became more genuine. “I can tell that you guessed your sister came to see me this afternoon…about you.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

He chuckled. “Rose Ellen told me all about some of the plans you were hatching. For the farm.”

Emma felt riled, like a mother cat protecting her litter. Her farm idea was still so new, so unformed, that she couldn’t bear to have someone pick it apart just yet.

But Barton didn’t shoot the expected hole in her balloon of hope that she’d been floating around in all day. Instead, he looked at her with something akin to admiration. “That’s smart thinking, Emma.”

She gaped at him.
“What?”

He gestured to the field to the side of her house. “I suspect that’s about the most fertile land in the area. I never expected you would have the enterprise to try to make a go of it, though.”

Her throat strained to swallow back her surprise. “Oh, well…I’m just starting to plan it all out.”

His nod was approving. “That’s the way to do it. Take your time. Plan. That’s smart thinking.”

For a moment it felt as if her head would swell so big she wouldn’t be able to keep it upright.

“That boarder you took in was a good idea, too,” he added.

“You think so?” She knew she didn’t have to ask for the sheriff’s approval—especially when the alleged boarder was a fiction and might be an outlaw who would kill them all—but she couldn’t help marveling at how different Barton’s attitude toward her was since the last time they had
spoken. “After the storm you seemed to indicate that you thought I was crazy, just like everyone else in Midday thought.”

“Oh, well…I’m still not comfortable about Lorna McCrae. I think you’re making a mistake there, Emma.” Emma bristled, but before she could retort, he calmed her by adding, “I know now, however, that you are only doing what you think is right. Out of the goodness of your heart.”

“It
is
right,” she insisted.

Barton tilted an amazed glance at her. “You know, Emma, I admire you.”

She hesitated, not knowing where the conversation was about to turn. The sheriff was so unpredictable, it felt as if the earth under her very feet had gone squishy.

“When Rose Ellen came by today and started telling me all about what you were doing out here, I have to admit, I was with her at first. Your sister’s a very convincing woman. Then I started wondering why. Why did I always follow along with Rose Ellen and her crowd, when it was really you I felt the sympathy for?”

She let out a breathy gasp of shock.
“Me?”

He nodded. “You know, it’s funny. All those years when you worked side by side with your father, I always admired you. I thought it was because you were so knowing, and competent, and smarter than other women.”

Her face was burning. “Oh, I—”

He cut her off. “But I don’t think it was just your smarts that caught my eye. It was you.” He grinned. “I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking so plainly, but you’re so quiet, I think it gives a man the feeling that you don’t want him to notice you. At least, that’s the feeling I always got….”

As his words trailed off, Emma desperately feared that
they wouldn’t start back up again, and that this startling confession of Barton’s would go forever unexplained. And that just couldn’t happen! Every syllable felt like a vindication—evidence that living in her sister’s shadow and following the beat of her own drummer hadn’t been wrong. She felt like the tortoise crossing the finish line looking back at the hare panting in exhaustion twenty yards behind her. In fact, her own personal hare was still silhouetted in the doorway, watching them intently.

She broke out in a smile that felt as if it had been twenty-eight years in the making. “But you’re wrong! I always wanted you to notice me, but I never thought you did.”

He shook his head in wonder and squeezed her arm just firmly enough, intimately enough, to make her jump. “It’s funny how two people can walk around for years and years and never quite cross paths at the same time, isn’t it?”

Not funny, tragic. But now, shockingly, it felt as if the tragedy might come out with a happy ending after all.

How strange life was—how quickly things could change!

Lang sensed he was in trouble the moment Emma stepped across his threshold.

After storming through the door without so much as her usual knock, she crossed her arms and glared at him disapprovingly. “May I ask why you find it necessary to arm yourself in my house,
Mr. Archibald?
”

Though there was a tacit agreement between them that she should call him by his fictitious name in front of the others, her emphasis on it now in private didn’t bode well. Plus he didn’t know what she was talking about.

He bowed deeply. “Yes, nurse.”

She tapped her foot impatiently. “I’m not joking.”

“And I’m not armed.” In fact, he wished he were. Surely now that they were on better terms she wouldn’t begrudge him a way to defend himself if he really got in a pinch—say, if that sheriff came up the stairs to investigate the new boarder. Having a lawman directly below him for hours on end had played havoc on his already strained nerves.

“Aren’t you?”

He squinted at her, taking in the high color in her cheeks, her glorious green eyes, her simple checked gown that managed to make his stomach tighten with desire in spite of all its plainness. “Of course not.”

“I’ve heard differently.” After a short stare down in which neither of them gave an inch, she explained, “The knife?”

Comprehension dawned, and he smiled with relief. For a moment he’d feared Emma was going to pitch him out of the house for wielding a carbine only she could see. Now he could understand the source of her anxiety. Davy had probably told her about the knife he’d borrowed. “I’m sorry, I should have returned it.”

The knife lay where he’d left it in the little drawer of the side table next to the bed. Inside this compartment he’d also put the things he and Davy had been working on—a carved horse and the beginnings of a head for a doll. Emma stepped forward to retrieve her kitchen utensil, but stopped in amazement when she caught sight of the toys-in-progress.

She lifted the horse out of the drawer and exclaimed in surprise, “How wonderful!”

It was still a rather crude figure, only half done, but Lang was pleased with how it was coming. And he was more pleased by the expression of delight on Emma’s face. “I
thought I’d make it for Davy. Poor kid is all at loose ends in that room by himself.”

“It’s beautiful!”

He laughed. “It’s not done.”

“Oh, but you can tell how it will be….”

Her green eyes flashed to him, and he felt a reflexive tightening in his gut that he tried mightily to ignore. But ignoring his feelings for Emma was getting harder and harder.

“Davy shouldn’t be out of bed, you know,” she scolded. “You shouldn’t be encouraging him.”

“Do you really mind?”

She looked again at the horse and smiled, then idly studied the block that would be the doll’s head. She touched it gently with one of her long, delicate fingers. “Not really.”

“I thought the time would pass faster for him if I had him involved in our secret project.”

She nodded, then sighed. “It seems I’ve discovered all sorts of secrets today.” Then, when he looked at her questioningly, she crossed the room away from his prying stare.

Lang sat up straighter in bed, sensing trouble. More trouble—just what he needed! “What did the sheriff want here?”

“How did you know it was the sheriff?”

“Davy told me. Davy knows everything, and he’s especially impressed with lawmen.”

She grinned, then spun on her toes. For a moment he thought she might burst out with another of her surprising statements, but instead she closed her mouth and flung herself into her customary little chair and smiled. “You came awfully close to getting turned in. I discovered the missing knife just before Barton arrived.”

“Barton?” Lang asked.

“That’s the sheriff.”

Trouble started to pound in his head as insistently as the constant ache in his side. “I didn’t know you were on first-name acquaintance.”

Roses bloomed in her cheeks, and Lang knew that there was indeed rough water ahead. “He…spoke to me tonight. Alone.”

Lang looked down at his hands, which lay worrying the woolen blanket—then wished he’d looked elsewhere. A man’s hands told a lot about him, and his didn’t speak particularly well. They were large, and sunburned, and callused from years of laboring. They were a poor man’s hands, and for the past day or so he’d begun to forget that’s all he was, ever had been, and ever would be. Once he’d loved a woman who’d laughed at him for daring to have feelings for a lady when he was just a foreman, and all he’d had left after she got through laughing at him was his good name to bolster his pride. Now he didn’t even have that. He’d thrown all that away with these same hands that had wielded a gun in a robbery.