Texas Moon TH4 (8 page)

"Then you'll have to rely on Jed to tell you what to do." The schoolteacher stood up and brought the pie out of the pantry.

Peter watched her cut a generous slice and felt his mouth water. He wasn't certain if it was from watching the pie or the teacher. When he'd first appeared at her door this evening, she hadn't been wearing her spectacles, and her hair had been tumbling loose from her chignon, making her look years younger than her present guise. Since then, she had jerked all that golden glory back into a knot and donned her spectacles and an apron three sizes too big for her. He wasn't fooled. Beneath that bulky cloth was a figure he'd die to hold. He could barely keep his eyes on the food for waiting for a glimpse of the real Miss Harrison.

"Does this Jed live here in town?" he asked, trying to keep up the conversation. "I suppose I ought to go over and introduce myself and get some idea of where we need to start."

She set the pie slice in front of him and he caught a whiff of some light scent that made him think of soft skin and smooth sheets. He wondered what it would take to seduce a schoolteacher. From the frozen scowl on her face, he assumed it would take an all-out assault. She no doubt thought him lower than scum. He didn't have much time to prove himself any different.

"Jed lives on the far end of Main Street, in the blue house. He's working on the livery this week, so he's in town."

She sat primly across from him, sampling the tiny sliver of pie she had cut for herself. She hadn't eaten scarcely a bite all evening, Peter realized guiltily. He'd cleaned up everything in sight. He sought for some way past her reserve. She'd taken his earlier compliments without comment. He'd never fancied himself a ladies' man. He'd never had to be. But he wished he had the facile tongue necessary to reach this goddess.

"I'll go over and see him just as soon as I help you with these dishes, Miss Harrison. This has got to be the best meal I've ever eaten."

She scowled at him as if he had told her the meat stunk. Did she hate all men or just him?

"I can clean up, Mr. Mulloney. The schoolhouse is a good deal more important."

She stood up and began cleaning off the table, deliberately turning her back on him when he rose with her. Peter carried his dishes to the dry sink and poured hot water from the stove into the basin. She went outside to fetch cold water from the pump as if he weren't there.

When he picked up the towel and started to dry the dishes she set aside to drain, she grabbed the linen and glared at him.

"Go see Jed, Mr. Mulloney. My duty is to feed the prisoners, not keep company with them."

Not an ounce of emotion touched his face as he handed her the plate and the towel. "You're quite right, Miss Harrison. Thank you for dinner. I'll see you in the morning."

He strode off without looking back. Janice watched him go with an increasing knot of indecision in her stomach. Her mind was telling her one thing and her conscience quite another. Peter Mulloney was a gentleman to the bone, even if he was a greedy bastard. A man like that could provide the best doctors for Betsy. He could ensure her daughter a life of ease so that she would never have to marry or bear the burden of grief and poverty her mother had known. For Betsy, Janice would do almost anything.

Could she set aside her hatred and pretend to respond to the blatant loneliness in Peter Mulloney's eyes to ensure her daughter's happiness?

He made it so easy for her. He showed up early the next morning, clean-shaven, hat in hand, his hair still slightly wet from washing. He didn't smile, but he complimented Janice on how fine she looked, then looked as if he had been handed heaven when she set scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him. A hungry man couldn't be wary when filling his stomach. Janice poured fresh coffee and sat down across from him.

There wasn't anything tender or soft in Peter Mulloney's face as he sipped at the coffee, but Janice had seen the desperation behind men's eyes often enough to recognize it. She didn't know what had caused it in this man. She knew nothing of the feminine wiles necessary to wheedle the knowledge out of him. She only knew what loneliness and hunger could do to a person. Reluctantly and with great caution, she plied that knowledge now.

"You eat as if you haven't seen food in a week," she murmured, pouring him a second cup of coffee.

"Longer than that, truth be told." He neatly scraped his plate clean with his fork and didn't protest when she brought him more toast and jam. "Beef jerky and train fare can't be called eating."

"Train fare? Have you traveled far to get here?"

He sat back and sipped at his coffee now that his stomach was full. He still didn't smile, but Janice could feel his appraising look. She had left her spectacles off this morning. She only needed them for reading, but they added years to her age and made an excellent preventative against unwarranted attention. For the first time in her life, she was attempting to attract a man's interest. She shuddered inwardly at the thought, but kept Betsy's pale face and sweet smile uppermost in her mind.

"I've just come in from New Mexico," he answered. "And rode up here from the station at Fort Worth.'

Janice nodded and rose to clear the table. Her stomach was so tense she feared she would have to throw up what little food she had eaten. She wasn't any good at this sort of thing. She despised this man. How was she going to catch and hold his interest without making a fool of herself?

"I understand you wanted to see Jason. Did you have a chance to talk with him before he left for Houston?"

"Only long enough to know I'd better get this school built before he gets back." Peter got up and helped her clear the table, although what he really wanted to do was sit here for the rest of the morning, sipping coffee and watching the odd shadows flit across the teacher's face She had a soft voice that he suspected could carry a note of authority when she wanted. He'd heard a hint or two of that last night. He wondered what had changed her mind about him since then that she actually condescended to speak to him.

"Everybody around here pretty much lets Jason have his way. He and his brother own the biggest ranch in these parts as well as the town bank. They're fair men but it doesn't pay to get on their wrong side."

Peter picked up the towel and started to dry the dishes that she was washing. This time, she didn't stop him. "I kind of got that figured. I'm needing to talk to them about some business, so I'll try to stay on their good side."

She nodded and handed him a cup. "I didn't think you were the one to set that fire. You worked too hard to stop it. I tried to tell them that, but I'm only a woman."

Peter heard echoes of his past in that last statement. How many times had Georgie, his ex-fiancée, told him he wouldn't listen to her because she was "only a woman"? How many times had he actually ignored women because he though them frivolous? For the most part, they were, he supposed.

But over these last years, he'd met one or two who had taught him how to survive. He didn't think this fragile-looking schoolmarm could teach him anything about surviving, but he didn't intend to ignore her either. He had decided he needed a woman, and she was very definitely all woman.

"Women have been the cause of wars. It's not smart to ignore them," he surprised himself by saying. Georgie would choke and swallow an apple whole to hear him say that. He ought to gag on the statement himself, but he continued to dry her dishes.

She sent him a telling glance that said she wasn't fooled. "You'd better go get Jed and the others to start hauling off that debris, Mr. Mulloney. I'm perfectly capable of finishing up here."

Well, he should have figured a schoolteacher wasn't stupid. He had just hoped an old maid might be easily persuaded. Now that he thought about it, it was a trifle odd that a woman as lovely as this one hadn't been snatched up long before. He would have to be a little more cautious in his seduction. Peter set down the cup and returned the towel to the rack.

"Will you be here for lunch?" he asked.

"I'm working over at the newspaper this morning. I'll come home around noon to fix something cold. If you're still working, I'll leave it out for you."

Peter nodded and walked out, but he was already counting the hours to noon. His stomach was full, so it wasn't the thought of a meal that kept him going. It was the flicker of something almost flirtatious in the schoolmarm's eyes—rusted from disuse perhaps, but still flirtatious. He'd had enough women look at him that way to know what it meant. He almost managed a smile as he started in to town.

Maybe the old-maid schoolteacher had a cold bed that needed warming.

* * *

Janice flinched as a gunshot rang out on the main street of town. Looking up from the legal papers spread across the kitchen table, she noticed the sun had set some time ago. Her gaze went to the stew cooking over the stove, and her belly rumbled. Mulloney should have been here hours ago. Maybe he had decided to run off while the sheriff was occupied with the rowdies in town.

Even as she thought it, she heard a light knock at the kitchen door. It swung open before she could answer. He stood silhouetted there against the blue-black evening sky, his hat tipped back off his forehead. In the lamplight, he was every bit as handsome as she remembered, just a world older.

Another gun fired somewhere beyond the thin walls. Mulloney closed the door behind him, his gaze never drifting from her. "Is it always like this around here?" His hand unconsciously fell to his holster when a yell and a rifle blast sounded farther down the road.

Janice hastily stacked her papers and began to clear the table. "Just on Saturday nights when the men come in from the ranches. Sounds like the sheriff has his hands full tonight. It's dark. I thought maybe you'd found somewhere else to eat tonight."

Peter set his hat aside and reached for the dishes in the high cabinet while Janice busied herself setting the meal on the table. "You mean you thought I'd skipped out while the sheriff wasn't looking."

Janice sent him a swift look, but as usual, his face was expressionless. "It was a possibility," she admitted.

"I can't go anywhere until I talk to Jason Harding." He took her hand off the heavy stew kettle, and she jerked away as if his touch rather than the pot had burned her. "I can fill my plate from the pot. There's no sense lugging it around."

She backed away and let him fill both their plates. In the dim light of the lantern, his shadow rose larger and malevolently more masculine than she remembered. She didn't like men to get too close. This man was not only too close, but too big, too overpowering. In her head, she knew Jason was wider and probably stronger, but Jason never infringed on her territory like this. She hurriedly took the seat Peter pulled out for her.

"It won't hurt any for me to see you get your schoolhouse back while I'm waiting," he said, as if there hadn't been any silent tug of wills between them.

"Since you didn't set the fire, that's gentlemanly of you." The touch of irony in her voice was subtle. She hoped he didn't hear it.

"I've been looking into that," he replied, undeterred by her sarcasm or oblivious of it. "I'd say from the path of the fire that the wind blew toward my camp that night, not away from it." He reached for the bread and cut off a slice.

He opened his mouth—whether to continue his discourse or to eat the bread, Janice would never know—when a rifle blast shook the walls. Glass shattered in the front room.

Outraged, Janice leapt to her feet, but Mulloney grabbed her waist and pulled her down. Before she knew what was happening, she was lying on her kitchen floor with a strange man half on top of her while what sounded like a band of Indians whooped and hollered in the street outside.

Chapter 7

"Get under the table and keep your head down." Peter didn't have time to consider how good the schoolteacher felt beneath him. He'd learned about keeping his priorities straight years ago. Saving his skin took precedence over a surge of lust.

He shoved her to safety while his hand went to his gun. The sheriff had said nothing when Peter claimed the revolver earlier today. A man just didn't live without a gun out here.

Crawling to the doorway between the kitchen and the front room, he surveyed the damage. No lamp burned in here, but he could see the glitter of broken glass from the reflections of the kitchen light. The front curtains blew slightly in the draft from the broken window. The noise outside had grown ominously quiet. Peter got to his feet, and keeping out of sight of the window, he crossed the room.