Sullivan (21 page)

Hell, he didn't want his thoughts to head in that direction, so he returned his attentions to a morose Sullivan.

Sullivan was a good man. Honest, quiet, a great scout, and a fair shot. He was an outstanding soldier, but he was no more the marrying kind than Jed himself was.

And the half-breed was not going to ruin Eden's life. Jed wouldn't allow it.

* * *

The children were at school, and Rico and Nate had left the hotel together a while back. Something to do with their horses, Rico had told her. She'd been so angry, still, that she hadn't paid as much attention as she should have to what he'd said.

She was alone in the hotel, brooding and preparing lunch, when she found the note. Again it was pinned to the cutting board.

This is your last warning. Get out of town while you still can.

If she hadn't already been upset about Sin and Jedidiah, she might've panicked. But the truth of the matter was, nothing at all had happened after the last note of warning. Perhaps in Texas this sort of thing was considered a joke, just as in Texas a marriage could apparently be set aside on a whim.

Last night and this morning she'd felt so completely and irrevocably married, a part of an unbreakable union, and now... Now she was alone again. Sin had been hers for a short time, and now, impossibly, she felt as if everything she'd known to be true was over.

She snatched up the note and headed out the door and across the street. If she knew Jedidiah and Sin, they were in the saloon at this moment, fighting over her. They each had their own plans for her future, and neither of them had any regard for her own desires. Without her there to intervene, they might have come to blows again. It made her heart lurch to think of the two men she loved most in the world fighting with each other, literally pounding each other with their sizable fists. They were family now. They were like brothers and should treat each other with love and respect. Men! She would never understand them.

Perhaps, if either of them cared for her at all, they could put their differences aside long enough to figure out who was sending these notes.

Laughter rang out as she pushed through the bat-wing doors and entered the saloon.

She wasn't prepared for the sight that met her eyes. Jedidiah and Sin weren't fighting; they were sitting together at a table in the corner. Jedidiah was laughing, and so was the blonde on his knee. The brunette on Sin's knee laughed, too, as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Cash stood nearby, surveying the scene with a smug smile on his demonic face.

Her heart sank. A scantily clad woman sat on Sin's lap, and she looked quite comfortable there. She looked as if she'd sat there before. Her husband didn't look inclined to push the hussy off his lap, though he did, at least, have the decency not to be laughing at the moment.

Sin saw her first, laid his eyes on her in a way so intense she felt it. The expression on his face didn't change one iota.

With her head high, she walked to the table. "I hate to interrupt," she said icily, "but it seems I have received another note of warning." She slapped the note on the table. "If there were a sheriff in Rock Creek I would take it to him, but since there is no lawman in office at the moment, you two will have to do."

"Eden," Jedidiah muttered, "you don't belong in here. This is a
saloon
."

"I'm not staying," she said, giving Sin a quick glance. "I just wanted to hand this message over to... to someone."

They looked over the note quickly. Cash didn't glance at it at all, but Sin gently assisted the brunette off his lap and stood. "I'll walk you back to the hotel and take a look around."

"Yeah," Jedidiah said, patting his own companion on the rear end as she left his lap. "I'll go with you."

"No, thank you," Eden said icily. "I didn't mean to interrupt your fun. Besides," she added, "I don't want either of you in my hotel."

"Eden," Sin began in a low voice.

"I'm sure there's a room for you here," she said calmly, furious for allowing herself to believe that there was something special between her and this man. He might just as well have spent last night with one of the saloon girls. What they'd shared in bed was all he wanted from her, all he'd ever wanted. She'd been a fool to imagine more.

"You're going to have a big old hotel with no people living in it!" Jedidiah thundered.

"Nate and Rico will be there," she said calmly. "And Millie and Teddy. Once I have the place fixed up, I hope to attract a better class of clientele."

"Who are Millie and Teddy?" Jedidiah asked, obviously confused.

"My children," she said simply, offering no other information. Let him figure it out for himself!

"Your... children."

"I'll explain later," Sin said as he stepped around the table.

It was embarrassing to have this personal exchange take place in front of Cash and Jedidiah and those horrid women, but she didn't want to face Sin alone, not ever again. And she had to know.

"You don't love me," she said, "do you?"

"I never said I did."

An unpleasant flutter jumped in her chest, and she felt momentarily light-headed. "No, you didn't. You've always been very honest with me, haven't you?"

She pulled her eyes away from Sin and looked at Jedidiah. "All right," she said. "Null and void. I hope you're satisfied." She walked away with as much dignity as she could muster. "But you still can't move back into my hotel," she added as she reached the swinging saloon doors.

* * *

He'd never seen anyone look so hurt, but what choice did he have? If he told Eden he loved her, she'd never let him go. She'd be determined to make their marriage work. She would never give up. And Jed was right; she deserved better. Eden deserved better than to hear a man tell her what she wanted to hear just to make her happy for the time being. She deserved better than a lie.

"There's a problem, you leave the hotel," Cash said, "and another warning mysteriously appears."

"She kicked me out," Sin said, waving Laurel aside when she made an attempt to sit on his knee again. "Why would she write a threatening note to keep me around when she just booted me out of the hotel?"

"Because she's a woman, and they rarely make sense." Ethel protested that statement, and Cash added a polite, "Present company excepted, of course."

And the truth was, Sullivan had to admit, Eden hadn't kicked him out until she'd come in here and found him with a woman on his knee. Now that he'd all but told her he didn't love her, she'd never forgive him. She was so sure what they had was love. He was just as sure it was purely physical and wouldn't last.

"It's not like Eden to lie," Jed said, shaking his head slowly. "She wouldn't make up something like that."

"Is it like Eden to do whatever she must in order to get what she wants?" Cash asked dryly.

Jed shook his head. "No. Eden's always thinking about other people, not what she wants for herself. She's always been that way. You should've seen her as a little girl." A wry smile crept across the big man's face, a smile that spoke of his loving protectiveness of his sister. "Even then she was pretty as all get out and sweet as sugar. She was always taking in animals. She'd take in any old stray that crossed her path, wounded, disfigured, sick animals no one else wanted."

"I don't think she's outgrown that trait," Cash said, his voice low.

Jed apparently didn't hear. "One time we had a three-legged cat, a blind hound dog, a bird that couldn't fly, and a half-dozen scrawny kittens she'd found down by the lake."

Sullivan's gut tightened. Damn it, he didn't want to be one of Eden Rourke's wounded strays. He didn't want her to feel obligated to take him in and heal him. "Teddy and Millie," he said.

Jed looked pained. "Her children. Is that what happened? Has she graduated to taking in people now?"

"I'm afraid so," Sullivan answered.

They both agreed that Eden didn't belong in Rock Creek, that she deserved better, but they couldn't decide on how to make her leave.

Cash looked thoroughly disgusted. "You're both considerably bigger than she is. Why don't you just toss her in that wagon of hers and take her home?"

Jed shook his head in dismay. "She'd just turn around and come straight back. She has to want to leave. She has to be ready to go."

"So," Cash said, being unusually helpful today, "how do we get rid of her?" When Sullivan and Jed both glared at him, he said, "I mean, how do we convince Eden that it's in her best interest to return to Georgia and the fine life she so richly deserves?"

In the still air that followed his question, in that moment of complete silence, a far-off scream split the air. Sullivan jumped up and ran toward the door; Jed was right behind him.

"That was Eden," the big man said as they ran across the street.

"I know."

Chapter 14

Eden slammed the cast-iron skillet against the floor and then stepped quickly away to observe the results from a distance. She shivered, but she didn't scream again.

Mere seconds later Sin ran into the kitchen, a six-shooter in his right hand. Jedidiah, armed with his rifle, was directly behind him.

They stopped abruptly when they saw her standing there with the skillet in her hand.

She knew good and well why they were here; the scream had been quite loud. "Sorry," she said. "I've never seen one of those things before." She pointed to what remained of the creature on the floor.

"Scorpion," Sin said in a lowered voice.

Eden wrinkled her nose. "Are they poisonous?"

"Yes," Sin and Jedidiah answered at the same time.

"I suppose one just wandered into the kitchen," she said with a weak smile. "I looked down and... there it was."

"And you killed it with a skillet," Jedidiah said proudly, casting a grin in her direction.

"You should've gone across the street to get me," Sin said, censure in his voice and in his eyes. "You had no idea what you were dealing with."

She was too annoyed with him to acknowledge his concern. "I knew it was considerably smaller than me," she snapped. "And there was just the one."

"Two," Jedidiah said, his smile fading as he stepped past Sin and stomped on a scorpion that skittered out from under her worktable.

"Three," Sin muttered as he caught sight of yet another scorpion boldly making an appearance from near the base of the sink. After he squashed the creature with his boot, he lifted Eden off her feet and tossed her over his shoulder. She landed with a sudden expelled whoosh of air and a gentle bounce, and she dangled there while Sin and Jedidiah checked the corners and crevices of the kitchen for more scorpions.

From her undignified position, Eden gathered her breath and said haughtily, "This is not necessary, Mr. Sullivan. Please put me down. Jedidiah," she said when Sin didn't comply, "would you please tell him to put me down?"

"Later," Jedidiah said as he found and killed a fourth scorpion. "We don't want one of these scorpions running up under that skirt of yours."

The idea made her shiver, and then she sighed, trying to maintain her self-respect as she hung from Sin's shoulder like a sack of meal. When she spotted something slithering near the rear door, she pointed and squealed. So much for dignity, she thought as Sin spun around and did away with the small but dangerous creature.

All in all they killed seven scorpions before Sin carried her from the kitchen and set her on her feet in the dining room.

"How do you suppose they got into the kitchen?" she asked as she did her best to straighten her hair. Hanging upside down from Sin's shoulder had ruined her once-neat hairstyle.

Jedidiah and Sin exchanged a look that excluded her.

"You don't suppose someone purposely
put
them there, do you?"

If the two most important men in her life were worried, and they clearly were, she certainly should be. A note was one thing, but this... This was more than she'd bargained for.

"You stay with Eden," Jedidiah said, wagging his rifle in Sin's direction. "I'll check the hotel from top to bottom." He took a couple of long strides toward the lobby before stopping and turning around. He frowned and narrowed his eyes. "On second thought, I'll stay with Eden and you check the hotel."

Sin didn't argue, but left without so much as glancing in her direction.

"Where are Rico and Nate?" Jedidiah asked when they were alone.

"I'm not sure," she said. "They left about an hour ago. Before I found the note."

It was the first chance she'd had to be alone with Jedidiah since his return, her first chance to be alone with her brother in years. She looked him over thoroughly. He hadn't changed too much in the past five years. There were, perhaps, a few lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before, and his hair was a little bit longer than she remembered. Apparently, he still didn't think to shave often, and his clothes were chosen with comfort in mind. He favored soft buckskins and leather and always had. But, oh, he was a sight for sore eyes... even when she was angry with him.