Matt (The Cowboys) (2 page)

“Maybe,” Isabelle said, “but I can’t think of one that will settle the issue for good. This is no time for half measures, Matt. You’re facing pure greed on one side and self-righteous indignation on the other, not to mention a little fear that some of them might end up with a dark-skinned grandbaby.”

“If I have to, I’ll take the boys and leave,” Matt said.

“That’s not what Jake and I want.”

“You’ll lose all the money you put into his place,” Toby pointed out.

“Money’s not a problem,” Isabelle said. “Jake and I can—”

“I’m not taking your money.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

Matt didn’t have an answer yet. “Do you want me to get married?” he asked the boys.

“This isn’t a group decision,” Isabelle said. “We’re talking about your wife.”

“And their surrogate mother. I can’t make a decision like that without knowing how they feel.”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know why I keep trying. Where’s your common sense?”

Matt smiled. “You’re always complaining that Will hasn’t a lick of sense. Why should his brother have any?”

Isabelle’s harrumph indicated that she would have a great deal to say on that subject if she had the time. “You have brains enough if you’d use them, but there’s no use talking to you when it comes to these boys.”

“Would it have been any use talking to you about us?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Seventeen years earlier she’d talked Jake into adopting eleven orphans she’d pulled from the teeth of indifference and abuse. There was no one she wouldn’t have taken on to protect her boys, and they all knew it.

“Do you want Matt to get married?” Isabelle asked Toby.

“No. Women cause trouble.”

“How about you?” she asked Orin.

“Will it mean I can stay here?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess it’s okay.”

“Marriage would be good for you as well as the boys,” Isabelle said to Matt. “You spend too much time alone.”

“I have the boys.”

“If you want to put an end to this business once and for all, get married and adopt them.”

“Nobody’s adopting me,” Toby said.

“You can adopt me,” Orin said.

“Okay, we’ve settled that,” Isabelle said.

“The vote is split.”

“You cast the deciding vote. What is it going to be?”

Matt had never seriously considered marriage. No, that wasn’t entirely true. He thought of it often and dismissed it. He liked women, but he was uncomfortable around them. He never knew what to say. But that wasn’t the real reason he couldn’t get married.

His parents had died when he was nine, and he and his younger brother, Will, had gone to live with their uncle. For three years their uncle had sexually abused Matt. Nearly any physical contact brought up some memory of the pain and humiliation, the feeling of being sordid and foul. It would be cruel to marry any woman knowing he couldn’t perform as a husband. He counted himself lucky to be able to provide for two boys who needed a home and a friend. He was as close to having a family and being happy as he expected to be.

Now that damned preacher was determined to take it away.

The only way he could imagine marriage working for him would be as a business arrangement. There would be no pretense of emotional involvement, no physical relationship. They would look on each other as business partners.

That way no one would be hurt when the breakup came.

Matt didn’t know any woman who would accept such an arrangement. Women saw marriage as a lifetime commitment. They expected love and devotion. Matt could provide that, but it was the passion, the unblemished character, and a past that wouldn’t threaten their safety that he couldn’t provide. “I guess I have to consider it.”

Isabelle sighed. “You’re finally being sensible. Is there anybody you’d like to marry?”

Matt didn’t know why he should suddenly feel flushed. But if things had been different… Well, they weren’t, and there was no use thinking about it.

“Matt don’t like women,” Toby said. “He won’t even speak to them.”

“Doesn’t like women,” Isabelle corrected. “And there’s somebody he’d like to speak to,” she said, a slow smile spreading across her face as she watched Matt with eagle-eyed intensity. “He blushed.”

“I didn’t see it,” Toby said.

“Me neither,” added Orin.

“Who is she?” Isabelle asked.

“It better not be that schoolteacher,” Toby said. “I’ll leave the minute she sets foot on this place.”

“It’s not the schoolteacher,” Isabelle said, watching Matt carefully. “What about Eugenia Applegate?”

Bandera was a small town, the county sparsely settled. There weren’t more than a dozen single women of marriageable age. It didn’t take Isabelle long to reach the end of her list.

“That just leaves those two women who work at the saloon,” Toby said.

“Is that right?” Isabelle asked.

Matt didn’t answer.

“Which one is it?” Toby asked.

“It shouldn’t be either one of them,” Isabelle said. “If you think you’re in hot water now … It
is
one of those women. Don’t bother denying it. I can see it in your face.”

“I don’t see nothing,” Orin said.

“It’s got to be Ellen!” Toby exclaimed as his face split with a wide grin. “She’s got a body like—”

“You will not speak of any woman’s appearance as though you were describing a horse,” Isabelle said, turning a quelling look on Toby. “Is the boy correct?” she asked Matt. “Are you interested in Ellen?”

“I’m not interested in any woman,” Matt said. “But I’d have to be blind not to think Ellen attractive.”

“You know what people say about her?”

“Everybody knows,” Toby said, grinning like any sixteen-year-old boy over a salacious story. “She—”

“She didn’t do it,” Isabelle declared. “I worked for a man like Patrick Lowell. When he tried his tricks on me, I scratched his face and called for his wife. Ellen is a respectable woman forced into a dubious profession because of a man’s brutish nature and a woman’s jealousy. She’ll make a good wife and companion, as well as help you bring up these boys.”

“I don’t need no bringing up,” Toby said.

“You especially,” Isabelle said. “And it’s
any
bringing up. Matt, did you hear me?”

He’d heard her. He’d thought of Ellen from time to time. Outside of the fact that she was beautiful—what man could forget those pouty lips just begging to be kissed, her glossy black hair and haughty stance—she’d been caught in the same kind of web as Matt. Only her shame was public.

“She’s got those two kids of that young woman who died a few months ago,” Isabelle said. “With your penchant for taking in strays—”

“I ain’t no stray!” Toby announced.

“—she’s exactly the right person, especially if she knows anything about grammar.”

Matt had enjoyed thinking about Ellen now and then. It was a daydream he could indulge in when his physical needs pressed him hard, but marriage would put an end to that. All the guiltless pleasures, the secret fantasies, would be replaced by cold reality. She would be around all the time, wanting and demanding. She would probably expect him to make love to her. Just the thought of being touched brought back the nausea that had overcome him every time his uncle touched him. But if marriage would protect the boys, he’d do it. He’d figure out how to handle the physical part later.

One thing worried him. Everyone agreed Ellen was beautiful. They also agreed she was hard as stone. She would flash a brittle smile, but her eyes warned men to keep their distance. The boys needed warmth, love, understanding, and support. He didn’t know if Ellen could provide that, but there was only one way to find out. “Okay. I’ll talk to her.”

Ellen Donovan slammed the glass down on the bar so hard it broke. The sound of shattering glass caused the men in the saloon to fall silent. They all looked her way. “That’s nothing but children getting up to harmless mischief,” she said, glaring at the sheriff. She tried to ignore the anger churning inside her, to speak in a level voice rather than shout. “They just scattered the chickens. They didn’t kill them.”

“They’ve got into trouble before,” the sheriff reminded her, easing onto the stool right across from her.

“Nothing any different from half the kids in this town.”

She wished he hadn’t come to the saloon to make this complaint. It would be all over town before supper. Even though it was a slow afternoon, the few regulars would quickly spread the word. Ellen’s gaze took in the large room packed with tables for men to drink and gamble, and the bar stacked with plenty of glasses to fill up during the long evenings when she served her customers and tried to avoid their wandering hands. She couldn’t do anything about their eyes … or their thoughts.

“Those other kids have mothers at home to watch after them,” the sheriff said, “and fathers to tan their backsides when they need it.”

Ellen didn’t need the sheriff’s long-suffering look to tell her that she couldn’t work in the saloon and fulfill the roles of mother and father to two rambunctious children. Her landlady, Mrs. Ogden, tried to help, but she had her hands full taking care of her boarders and dishing up three meals a day.

“It’s got nothing to do with chickens or chasing pigs into the street,” Tulip Owens said. “It’s got to do with them being fatherless brats of a dead saloon girl. If they was the banker’s kids, everybody’d be saying they was cute and high-spirited.”

Ellen wasn’t especially fond of her co-worker, but she had to admit Tulip cut to the heart of the problem.

“That may be, but they’re not the banker’s kids,” the sheriff said, “though it’s his chickens they chased and his pigs they let out.”

“It’s all because of his wife,” Ellen said. “Mabel Jackson can’t pass Noah and Tess in the street without commenting on how it’s a shame children like that are allowed to run free all over town like wild dogs.”

“I admit Mrs. Jackson may overstate the case now and again—”

“It’s that preacher’s fault,” Tulip said, hands on hips, a frown on her heavily made-up face. “She didn’t act so holier-than-thou until he arrived.”

“I wouldn’t be talking bad about the Reverend Sears if I was you,” the sheriff warned Tulip.

“Nobody complained about Noah and Tess until he got here,” Ellen said.

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“They’re not your kids, not legally.”

“Their mother left them to me.”

“Where’s the will?”

“You know April didn’t leave no will,” Tulip said. “I’m not sure she could write that good.”

“April told everybody in town she wanted me to have her children,” Ellen said.

“She told people,” the sheriff said, “but she didn’t get anybody to write it down. Things might have been all right if there hadn’t been any trouble—I’m saying
might,
mind you—but there is trouble. According to the law, those kids are orphans, and it’s the state’s responsibility to put them into good homes.”

“There’s nobody around here going to open up their good homes to the fatherless children of a saloon dancer.”

“Those kids didn’t do nothing to be ashamed of,” Tulip said.

“You don’t have to
do
anything,” Ellen snapped. “I did everything I could to stay away from Patrick Lowell and his lecherous son, but there’s nobody in this town who believes me.”

“I believe you,” Tulip said.

“You don’t count,” Ellen said. “You work in a saloon.”

“Look, Ellen, I’m not here to argue with you,” the sheriff said. “I’m just here to tell you them kids are causing trouble again. Mrs. Jackson and the preacher have made up their minds they ought to be sent to an orphanage.”

“They can’t do that,” Ellen said.

“The state can. You know no judge will consider a single woman who works in a saloon fit to bring up two little kids.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Get married. The state’s not anxious to take on more orphans. They’ll be happy to have them adopted by a respectable married couple.”

Ellen’s laugh was bitter. “What respectable man is going to marry me? Everybody believes I tried to seduce my employer’s son and husband in her own bed.”

The sheriff smiled. “Old Patrick Lowell wouldn’t be the first man to attempt to take advantage of a woman, even in his wife’s bed.”

“Are you saying you believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. What’s important is what happens to those kids. As near as I can figure, you’ve got about two weeks. That’s when the judge swings by here on his circuit. Mabel is all ready to hand him a list of things the kids have done.”

“I’ll kill Mabel Jackson!” Ellen didn’t mean it literally, though she rather fancied the idea. Noah and Tess were the two best things that had ever happened to her. She loved and wanted to care for them, and Mabel was determined to ruin it.

Ellen had no desire to get married. She didn’t like men. She didn’t trust them.