with two twenty-four-ounce cans of beer instead of revolvers - an astonishing pelt of body hair, and a drunken grin. A white straw hat, on his lap instead of his head, was the only thing keeping him decent.
And Kitty wanted to fall to her knees beside him. She wanted to throw her arms around his burly, bushy chest and kiss him.
But due to the small knot of other Old Town reenactors around her, she resisted the impulse.
"You're going to have to fire him," said Mrs. Shea, of Shea's Dry Goods. The long skirt of her beige calico costume twitched in disapproval. "You only gave him one more chance, Kitty Wilder."
"I don't know, Mrs. Shea." Not only was Kitty willing to kiss Beau, she was willing to give him a thousand more chances, just in case one of them might rescue her from another confrontation with Dylan Matthews. "If I fire Beau, who will be sheriff?" She eyed the others around her.
"I'm committed to the livery stable," Jeremy said. "Nobody else knows how to drive the wagon."
"And you know I won't do it," Spenser Marsh added, his quavery voice anxious. "I'm only in the assay office until Friday. After that I'm visiting my granddaughter in Oregon for a week. I have a great-grandson to meet."
Kitty patted his liver-spotted hand. "I know, Spenser. It's on the schedule." Along the way, somewhere, somehow, her duties as "head" of the Hot Water Preservation Society's one-person advertising and PR department had also come to include hiring the reenactors and arranging their hours.
Some reenactors, like Spenser and her own great-aunt Cat, worked just enough to make them feel like they were contributing to the community's history and to minimally supplement their pensions. Others, like Jeremy, counted on the summer job to help pay for college tuition.
"By the way, we're nearly out of souvenir passports," Mrs. Shea said. "And someone stole the gold nuggets from the display at the assay office." She cast Kitty a sidelong, suspicious glance, as if the culprit might be Kitty herself.
Even other reenactors made it their life's work to try her patience as often as possible, Kitty thought, sighing inwardly. She smiled, though. "Thank you, Mrs. Shea. There's an order of passports ready at the print shop. I'll pick it up in the morning and take care of the display in the assay office after that." With the help of a handful of rocks and the can of spray paint she kept in her utility closet, she could easily replace the missing "gold."
Then a pop-hiss, signaling the opening of Sheriff Beau's next malt and barley beverage, refocused Mrs. Shea's displeasure. Her skirts twitched again as she pointed to the inebriated reenactor. "Fine. But what are you going to do about him?"
Kitty knew the older woman meant the beer-guzzling Beau, but that didn't stop her mind from leaping to the very same question. Regarding Dylan.
Another round of breathless panic dizzied her again, and she gulped in a breath. That Dylan had finally discovered she'd legally registered their marriage bee-lined beyond embarrassment on a straight path toward humiliation. If she faced him again, he was going to want to know why.
Her stomach churned. How could she describe her state of mind? Eight years before, she'd been barely eighteen when she'd woken alone in a strange bed - his bed - nearly naked and with the first and only hangover of her life. She'd registered the marriage certificate she'd found on the floor beneath her discarded blue jeans because...
God. She didn't know a non-humiliating way to explain the impulse. Partly it had been a way to keep hold of some of that night's magic. Of the magic night the most handsome, most sought-after, most respected young man in town had talked to her, one of the notorious Wilders. Really talked to her. He'd laughed with her, kissed her. Married her, and then -
"He's going to keep causing problems," Spenser predicted, giving his head a mournful shake. "You better get rid of him."
Kitty's eyes widened. "You think I can just tell him to lea - " She cut herself off, remembering they were talking about Beau, while she'd been thinking about Dylan. She was still thinking about him. What was she going to do when he caught up with her again?
Biting her lip, Kitty glanced up the steep rise of dusty
Main Street
. For six blocks, gingerbread Victorians sat cheek by jowl beside more rustic buildings of hand-shaped brick and native stone. Most of the buildings were