Scandal at the Cahill Saloon - By Carol Arens Page 0,69

too far away to make a sound.

The front door slammed. This was shaping up to be a very long wait.

Chapter Fifteen

The next day, the still-distant flashes of lightning had folks jumping at shadows. They shuttered windows and bolted doors. The Cahill Curse coming home to roost, the whispers went.

Tonight, the saloon had seen only half the number of patrons. She had been forced to close up an hour early.

Simpleminded nonsense.

She opened the door to the upstairs bedroom where Cabe and Melvin slept. Stretch, lying on the floor between the beds, opened one eye at her and wagged his tail.

She covered Cabe’s shoulders with a blanket, then did the same for Melvin before going to the window and drawing back the curtain.

She peered down at the porch. At two in the morning it was utterly dark outside. She couldn’t see a foot beyond the windowpane.

Just then, lightning scattered across the horizon to illuminate the porch in flashes and flickers.

Stubborn man. Earlier, Cleve had followed her home from the saloon. She’d shut the door in his face and insisted that he spend the night in a hotel. Still, there he sat for the second night, squeezed into a chair and watching for goblins and criminals who might pop out of the darkness.

Did he think that acting as a human shield would get him back inside? That it would make her believe that he loved her, after all?

It would not! She was well aware that he was only sitting down there for Boodle’s sake. If Cleve were free to take the child, he’d no doubt be far from Cahill Crossing and all its trouble by now, no matter that he promised that he wouldn’t. Truth was not Cleve’s strongest virtue.

Another flash revealed him twitching in the chair. It couldn’t be comfortable, sitting and staring at nothing for hour upon hour.

For one thing, she had taken the cushions inside. For another, he was too large for the chair’s woman-size frame.

Bullish man. Balancing that rifle over his knees for half the night had to be a strain.

She let the curtain fall back in place.

“No disrespect to you, Stretch. I’m sure you are a fine watchdog. But the pitiful truth is, and I wish it wasn’t so, I will sleep better because he’s out there.” She patted the big, solid head. “Good night, then.”

She smothered the bedroom lamp, closed the door, then walked into the hall. She snuffed out a lamp on the hallway table, then tiptoed to another window overlooking the porch.

She gazed down in time for a brilliant flare to reveal that Cleve was now shivering.

She had no call to feel sorry for him. His uncomfortable condition was his own choice.

A choice he had made for her safety, an unwelcome voice in her mind reminded her. Because, the voice pestered on, he claimed to love her.

She went downstairs to bank the parlor lamp.

She snatched a blanket from the couch, then sat down and covered herself with it.

Wrongheaded man. Her Winchester hung over the mantel, loaded and ready to be fired. Protecting Boodle was her job, not his.

She ought to fire the weapon at Cleve. At his feet anyway, just to get him off her front porch.

She pictured him limping away, finally accepting that she would not forgive him. And why would he even want the forgiveness of a woman he’d never wanted to marry in the first place? What difference would it make?

The one and only thing the man wanted was his nephew and she knew a very good way to point it out.

She stood, shrugged the blanket over her shoulders and strode to the front door. Once Cleve acted in the way she knew he would, she would be free of him.

There was the chance that he might set a lawyer on her to try and take her Boodle away. It was a certainty, though, that she would set her brothers on him.

Opening the door, she stepped out into the darkness. Fractured light illuminated Cleve’s face.

Difficult, handsome man. If she were to be completely truthful, she’d have to face the fact that she would miss the way his hair dipped over his forehead in a brown swirl. In every man’s smile from here until forever, she would see that crease in his cheek and remember how it flashed in flirtation and mischief.

She’d try her best not to pine for the way he always looked past her face and saw her soul. He knew things about her that no one else knew.

“You win.” She