Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (8 page)

“Doesn’t matter none. I’m just so glad you’re all right.” She drew closer, tightening her hold on his neck once more.

Speechless, Prentice suffered her show of affection.

The little clingy thing had to be a few years younger than Ethan, and this made her at least fourteen years younger than Prentice, which made him feel ancient. He knew he was in a twenty-three-year-old body, but he didn’t feel like a twenty-three-year-old. He knew also that in this time in the Old West, young people matured faster than in his time. They grew up with more responsibilities, they got married and had children earlier, and they died much younger than in his time. When he looked at it like that, maybe he and Ethan and Ginger were all about the same age.

Thinking like this, however, wouldn’t help his current situation in the slightest.

He didn’t want to have anything in common with these people, not when he had every intention of leaving them. He didn’t want to feel empathy or get attached. He needed to hold onto his sense of superiority as much as possible or he would lose control of the situation entirely. He would lose sight of what he needed to do.

Prentice grasped Ginger by the biceps, pulled her arms from around his neck, and drew back to look at her. “You need to leave, Ginger. Go back home to your family.”

“But I thought maybe we could go for a walk down by the pond. It’s a nice night out.”

Prentice looked to Ethan’s parents for help. He didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings, but he really needed to get her out of here…now.

Clint seemed to get the message, gently but firmly grasping Ginger around the shoulders and guiding her to the front door. “Come along now, young lady. Ethan’s been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. He needs his rest and he can’t rightly get that with you hanging all over him, now can he?”

Ginger walked to the door but glanced over her shoulder at Prentice.

Damn it, if she started crying…

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Ethan?”

“Sure.” What was he supposed to say with her looking at him like that with those big puppy dog eyes?

However, if he could swing it, he fully intended to avoid her as much as and as long as possible. He had some errands to run in town, errands that didn’t include having a chit hanging onto his every word and movement.

Young love. He’d never experienced it himself and often wondered what all the fuss was about when there were so many more things in life to worry about than who you were going to be strapped with for the rest of your days.

Prentice could not be bothered with such frivolity. He had more important things to think about, like his self-preservation and survival.

Clint closed the door behind Ginger and made it back to the dinner table.

What did one do in a situation like this, Prentice wondered. He was no longer hungry, if he ever had been, and he wanted to go upstairs to Ethan’s room. Was he supposed to ask for permission, like a little kid, to leave the table? He was really unused to this tradition of sit-down eating in. He’d rarely shared any meals with his parents. They’d always been too busy to spend time at home but especially too busy to spend time with him.

He had a feeling Kate wouldn’t look too kindly on him not finishing his meal, but he just couldn’t keep up the charade any longer.

Prentice stood, stretched, and made a show of yawning. Clint had given him his opening.

He figured he’d better use it. “I’m tired. I think I’ll head up to bed now.”

Neither Clint nor Kate looked at him askance. Early to bed, early to rise and all that rot was the motto out here in this time after all.

Prentice left the dining room, headed through the cozy and well-furnished great room to the staircase.

Modest by his standards, but Kate kept a nice house, all the wood furnishings polished and shining as was the newel and banister to the staircase.

He headed up the stairs, took a chance and opened the door to one of the two rooms on the floor. The brown and blue color scheme and other masculine accessories marked it as a young man’s room so he figured he wasn’t in Clint and Kate’s room. If he’d made a mistake, he guessed he could always put it off to disorientation and fatigue. Since he didn’t have his powers of coercion, he might as well play the sympathy card whenever he could.

Now that he was here, he realized he actually was tired. He had been through a lot, coming back from the dead and what not. The town’s people had made such a fuss at the store he hadn’t had more than a moment to himself.

There was no television, but he didn’t miss that as much as he missed his other creature comforts like his stereo system where he could listen to his classical CDs, his state-of-the-art fridge from where he could retrieve a cold micro-beer, and his high-tech computer where he could do some research and prepare. It wasn’t like he could actually put “unsavory character” in a search engine and Ethan’s assailant would pop up with vital statistics, location, and a picture though, so what would be the point?

Prentice flopped back onto the bed and decided he’d start his mission tomorrow with a sharper mind and more of his faculties intact.

Whatever he did do in the next several days, he knew he would probably make several people very unhappy, especially the man, or woman, who had killed Ethan Crawford.

* * * *

Ethan’s murderer went through the swinging doors of the town’s saloon and headed straight to the crowded bar.

Before he could even get his order in, he noticed the buzz among the men at the bar and the tables scattered throughout the floor where men were playing poker. Everything looked like it should, just another lively Saturday night with the painted ladies making their rounds among the cowboys, miners, and fur trappers, entertaining the men, and a piano player fingering a tune.

Something was off, though, and he could feel it. He’d felt it ever since he’d left the outskirts of Elk Creek a couple of days ago with his earnings from that last bank job.

He thought about his last meeting with Ethan.

Damn fool kid had to go and grow a conscience, making a ruckus about coming clean.

Now why would he want to go and do a fool thing like that for? Kid could have gone places, but he’d wanted to go back home, make amends to his family, and settle down with some girl—a right upstanding citizen he wanted to be.

While out on the road, the kid had come to realize how much he missed home and how much he didn’t like disappointing his mother and father.

What a spoiled little nipper!

He should have known better than to take a kid like Ethan Crawford under his wing. He’d been too focused on what the kid could do for him, planning for his next job. Sure, Ethan was wet behind the ears. With the right training, though, the kid could have become a first-rate rustler and bank robber, a gunslinger to be proud of.

He’d tried to mentor the kid, had hoped to make him a full-fledged partner in his concerns, but the kid just didn’t have what it took for a life on the road making his fortune any way he could, being a man.

“What’ll it be, pardner?”

He glanced at the bartender and said, “Your best whiskey.”

“Coming right up.” The bartender turned from the bar to do his customer’s bidding.

He turned toward the main floor, leaning back on his elbows against the shiny bar top.

When the bartender placed the full glass at his elbow and gave him the price, he took two coins out of his pocket and tossed them onto the bar. “So, what’s all the buzz about around here? Somebody important die?” He didn’t think anyone had found Ethan yet, and even if they had, it wasn’t as if he would rate much attention outside of his own community. He was just another kid who’d met the wrong end of a six shooter. It wasn’t like he was Billy the Kid or Jesse James.

“You’re not from around these parts, are you?”

“Nope. Just passing through.” He raised the drink to his lips, took a gulp and winced as the liquid fire burned a path down his gullet—right good stuff!

“News from a couple of towns over is this young feller done rose up from the dead like Lazarus.”

He choked on his next swallow, spluttered and spewed the remnants across the floor.

The bartender rushed to pat him on the back. “You all right there, feller?”

“Don’t rightly know. You said someone…rose from the dead?”

“It’s been all anyone can talk about today. Darnedest thing. I haven’t heard news like this since, oh, about a year ago in the spring when they had a lynching over there in Elk Creek, but somehow the man that had his neck in the noose, suddenly didn’t and somehow someone else wound up with his neck in the noose, like magic or something.”

He didn’t believe in magic and he didn’t believe in coincidence either. He had to be sure, though, before he thought about making any kind of move. “This young fella that rose from the dead, he got a name?”

“Hmm, let’s see…” The bartender ducked beneath the bar and emerged with a newspaper in his hand, The Daily Transcript. He opened it up to the third page. “Yep, there it is, right there.” He handed the paper over to his customer and pointed to the story.

He thanked the bartender and began reading.

His thoughts strayed to that early dawn when he’d walked the kid out to the well and shot Ethan in the back as soon as he’d turned away. He could have sworn he’d killed him.

He didn’t know how or why, but Ethan Crawford was still alive.

He’d have to go back as soon as possible and see that the deed was done right and proper this time…before it was too late.

Have you lost your mind?

Ki read the telegram that had arrived with his mother’s response and smiled.

She had taken the news of his impending nuptials about as well as he’d thought she would, which was to say she hadn’t taken it well at all.

His mother’s message went on to further accuse him of attempting to send her to an early grave and trying to single-handedly ruin his future with this quixotic folly. What, pray tell, was he hoping to accomplish and prove?

Ki chuckled, folded the telegram and stuck it in his pants pocket.

“Any response you’d like me to send, sir?” the telegraph operator asked.

Despite popular opinion, Ki did not like upsetting his mother. He, however, did not like anyone telling him how to run his life, especially not his mother. He loved her and respected the sacrifices she had made for him over the years, but his life was his own. He’d done enough trying to please her and honor the memory of his father going to law school and becoming a lawyer. He wasn’t going to let his mother tell him who he could and could not marry.

In some part of his brain, Ki realized a part of him was just being contrary. He knew damn well that Lucy was not the kind of girl in the least he would have looked at twice in New York. Not that she wasn’t beautiful, but she and he just came from different worlds. The social class system wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t something of which he always approved, but it was the way things were.

Here in Elk Creek, he was free of the social constraints that said someone like him and someone like Lucy shouldn’t be wed. Here in Elk Creek he could follow his conscience and do what was right for him instead of what was right for someone else or society. It didn’t hurt that Lucy wasn’t too hard on the eyes either.

Ki smiled at the thought of his wife-to-be.

Little Miss Lucy was as cutting as a prickly pear and he had spent the better part of the week trying to get her to retract her claws and fangs or, as the locals said, pull in her horns.

What had Uncle Rance done to her to make her distrust people, but especially men, so? Knowing his uncle’s proclivities, he couldn’t imagine the man touching her in a sexual way, even if they were married. He figured their marriage, like his would be to her, one of convenience. That probably meant Uncle Rance had touched Lucy in a violent way and that made Ki angry, protective, and strangely sympathetic. He felt as if he and Lucy had both suffered under the same regime of emotional and physical abuse and now shared the same war wounds over which to commiserate.

When he wasn’t trying to prove to Lucy that he wasn’t quite the irresponsible, rich, spoiled bachelor she made him out to be, he was checking into Uncle Rance’s business concerns at Peyton’s and his uncle’s house and property on the edge of town.

The saloon practically ran itself, but leaving Cody at the till was out of the question under the circumstances. Cade Malloy, one of Lucy’s aforementioned friends, had agreed to run the bar until someone more permanent could be found. Mr. Flint had smoothed the situation over with the court to push things through while the estate was still in probate.

The house was another matter and had gone unlived in since Uncle Rance’s death.

When Ki had visited it to see what he and Lucy would eventually be dealing with for living arrangements, the coziness and fashionably-decorated interior surprised him. There was dust on every surface that wasn’t covered with a sheet, but what was under it all revealed a keen eye and feel for vibrant colors and soft fabrics. The furnishings and their arrangement rivaled the decor of any well-heeled family home he’d ever visited in New York, The Hamptons, or Paris.