Betsy nodded as she stacked the dishes and dropped the dishrag into the basin. Somehow she made it across the small room to Joel without remembering how she got there. He waited for Uncle Fred to finish before turning her way, but that gave Betsy more time to soak up the toasty warmth she was feeling. Amelia’s head swayed slightly with the rise and fall of his chest. Her chubby white fingers lay atop the back of his sun-darkened hand. She looked so tiny. He looked so . . .
“Are you going to take her or not?” Uncle Fred asked.
Betsy blinked. Joel was watching her closely. What had she been thinking, stopping and staring at a man sitting in her kitchen? He wasn’t doing anything special.
Joel shifted in his chair to give her a better angle. Betsy extended her arms, but for a woman who’d been tending children since she was ten years old, she found it took some thought on how exactly to extract the toddler. There was nothing to do but lean into him, slide her arms between Amelia’s warm body and his . . .
He smelled good. Great stars above, he smelled good. And then, just as she got her arms around the girl and started to lift her away, he had the gall to stroke Amelia’s tangled hair and whisper into Betsy’s ear, “She’s got your curls.”
Betsy nearly dropped the poor child. Her throat stuck as he caressed the youngster’s curls one last time. Even as she pulled away, his eyes followed, taking in her own loose braid and escaping locks.
She had to get away. This had never happened to her before.
Betsy sailed into Uncle Fred and Sissy’s room and deposited the child into her bed. Before she’d even reached the mirror on the wall, she’d unplaited her braid and grabbed a brush. She’d worked hard all day at the dry goods store. She was tired. She was discouraged. She needed to get her head on straight. The man in there was only a man. She was getting him confused with her own fictional accounts of him. He wasn’t the Dashing Deputy. The Dashing Deputy didn’t exist. What did exist was a tiny cabin bursting at the seams with people. What did exist was a Kansas City editor who wanted more of her stories. She couldn’t let mushy feelings for the deputy get in the way.
She yanked her hair into a tight, controlled braid with no soft curls escaping. Then, for good measure, she twisted it up on her head and wrapped it around in a coil. She studied her work in the mirror. Severe, no nonsense, all tidy. But the tight coif only made her blue eyes bigger. The exertion pinked her cheeks and heightened her coloring.
Her mouth tightened into a line of frustration. She might look like a love-sick, dewy-eyed miss, but her mind was sharp. And so was her pen. She’d better get to work on another article before she lost her nerve.
When she entered the main room again, Joel was watching for her. His expression was unreadable, and she was determined not to put any thought to it. Instead she covered her mouth and faked a yawn.
“I’m tired. Good night.”
If he was confused by her sudden sullenness, he didn’t show it. Instead he stood and began apologizing to Uncle Fred for overstaying his welcome. Rather than standing around and listening to Uncle Fred’s assurances that they didn’t mind, Betsy carried a lantern into the office.
As soon as she could find a pen and her draft, she went to work. Betsy had discovered what her lawman was missing—a flaw. Every hero needed a failing. Eduardo was brave, smart, charming, and capable. He needed a weakness, and his would be . . . women.
After a moment’s thought, Betsy began penning an installment in which the lovely but treacherous daughter of a moonshiner double-crossed the deputy and was nearly his undoing. It made her feel better to give Eduardo feet of clay. While Joel seemed to have integrity that would protect him from mistakes like the ones Eduardo would be making, he often came up short in the charm and dash department, and she had to remind herself of that. No one was perfect.
Deputy Pickett sat astride his massive white horse and watched the barefoot mountain lass bend over the blackberry bush. Her unbound hair fell like a curtain of silk down her back. She brushed it aside with fingers stained a rich purple. When she saw him approach, she dropped her berry basket and spilled her treasure in the deep, emerald grass. He hoped she would be strong but was fully prepared to take her into his arms as he delivered the tragic news.
Picking up the paper, Betsy blew on the ink and then, seeing it was dry, slid it beneath the blotter. On tiptoe she danced to the window and peered up and down the street. Nope, he hadn’t left yet. He must still be talking to Uncle Fred. With a satisfied nod, she scurried back to the desk and slid the paper out.
The last word hadn’t completely dried before she’d hid it. Now it was smeared, but she traced over the word and took up where she’d left off.
“Miss Gibson, I’m afraid I bring bad tidings.”
Tears flooded her eyes, but with the courage innate to her family, she spoke. “Just tell me that you will never leave me, Eduardo. Anything else I can bear.”