But because he’d felt the need to give her that assurance, Patrice was very, very afraid.
Tangled up in her thoughts, Patrice hurried down the boardwalk only to run face first into a solid masculine wall. Stunned by the impact, she stumbled back and was righted by a pair of strong hands gripping her upper arms.
“Why, Miss Sinclair. Fancy running into you.”
She regarded Reeve’s obnoxious Northern friend with an indignant glower. “Mr. Dodge, please be so kind as to watch where you are going!”
His jaw unhinged, then a smile cut its way through his whiskers. “Why, ma’am, I am not opposed to letting pretty women walk all over me. In fact, I throw myself at their feet regularly and let them use me as they will. But ma’am, I don’t take abuse where none is due.”
While she huffed and tried to think of how to save herself from making an apology, the brash banker saved her the trouble. He released her arms
and brushed away the creases he’d made in her sleeves.
“I regret standing in the path of your righteousness. Next time, just let me know you’re coming, and I’ll throw myself prostrate so as not to give you such a jolt.”
She laughed, at his raw charm and her own unprovoked rudeness. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dodge. I didn’t watch where I was going.”
“I enjoyed doing the watching for you, ma’am.”
She responded to his broad grin with a relaxed smile. Then gave a gasp to find herself hauled up in his bearlike embrace. He smelled earthy, all manly smells—cigar, leather, coffee, and wool. The brotherly hug was over before she could protest, then he laughed at her expression of dismay.
“I didn’t mean to shock the petticoats off you. It’s just that I haven’t seen a halfway friendly look since I got here and was dying for a glimpse of someone who wasn’t measuring me for a noose or a coffin. I hope I didn’t offend you. Fifteen and a half, if you’re wondering. That’s my neck size if you’re looking to buy rope.”
Surprisingly, she found herself warming to the abrasive Michigander.
“I was just about to go have my tenth cup of coffee over at the boardinghouse. Only place that’ll take my money. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d be forever grateful if you’d come sit down with me. You don’t have to talk or anything. Just sit there and let me pretend I’m not alone for a little while. I’m so starved for company I could spit.”
“Please don’t spit, Mr. Dodge.” Her gentle chiding was followed by the lift of her elbow. “I could use some coffee.”
Surprised, then grinning profusely, he tucked her arm through his with judicious care and towed her toward Sadie’s.
Every head in the dining room turned when they entered. Dodge hitched her arm in closer to his side. “ ‘Into the valley of death,’ “ he muttered. Then his smile broke wide as Delyce Dermont approached them. “ ‘Morning, ma’am. You’re looking as bright and shiny as a freshly blued barrel this morning.”
Delyce froze at the gruff compliment and, after darting a furtive look around, allowed a blush to creep up into her wan cheeks. “Good morning, Mr. Dodge, Miz Patrice.” If she felt any particular curiosity about the two of them together, she didn’t make it known. “Breakfast or just coffee this morning?”
Dodge glanced at his willing companion. “Breakfast, a big one. Miss Sinclair?”
“Just coffee, Delyce. Thank you.”
Delyce led them through the bristle of hostile glares to a table tucked back in an obscure corner. After he’d seated Patrice, Dodge dropped into his chair and sent those angry stares scattering with the direct fix of his own.
“Funny how I always seem to get this same table. I wonder why that is?”
Patrice chuckled. “Could be you’re bad for business, Mr. Dodge.”
“Or very good for gossip.” He drew out a thick cigar, trimmed it, and had a match to its end before thinking of his dining partner. “You mind, ma’am?” he asked around the Havana clenched between his teeth.
“Go ahead, Mr. Dodge. It won’t be the worst thing I’ve inhaled this morning.” Not bothering to
explain her remark, Patrice settled back to observe her companion. A cloud of blue smoke unfurled to conceal his features, then dissipated, baring shrewd eyes for her study. Hamilton Dodge might be unpolished, but there was no doubting the intelligence in his gaze as he likewise studied her.
“Are you from a small town, Mr. Dodge? You seem familiar with their politics.”
His lips bowed up around the fat cigar. “Medium-sized and growing, but lots of small-town minds. They’re the same all over, North or South.” He continued to stare at her, gaze friendly, curious, and penetrating. Nothing mysterious about a man who laid his cards out faceup. She liked that. She liked him, despite his politics. Or perhaps because he wasn’t ashamed of them.
“Do you have family up North, Mr. Dodge?”
“Oh hell, yes. Six older sisters, mother, father, uncles, aunts, twenty-four cousins, passel of nieces and nephews. We could populate our own territory.” The warmth in his expression made her think of the engulfing hug.
“You must miss them.”
“Like a pair of thick, dry socks, ma’am.” He concentrated on his cigar for a long moment, expression going wistful.
“Why did you come down here?”
He made it sound simple. “Reeve asked me.” He sent a smoke ring spiraling toward the tin ceiling and gave her a steady look. “When a man takes a bullet for you, you don’t ask why.”
Breakfast arrived just then, platters of it, along with a pot of steaming coffee. Conversation and questions were interrupted while Dodge devoured the huge quantity of food like someone who’d gone
without long enough to appreciate its value. Patrice sipped the strong dark brew and wondered over the loyalty of a man who’d uproot from home and family because of a debt to a friend. And she was a little envious. Imagining the alienation and homesickness made her marvel at him all the more.
After the last drip of gravy was sopped up in biscuit, Dodge tipped back in his chair to enjoy the rest of his cigar over coffee. He smiled at Patrice.
“Go ahead and ask.”
“About what?”
“Whatever’s making your eyes cross like that.”
Patrice leaned forward onto her elbows and pitched her voice low. “I understand you handled the conversion of the Glendower estate into gold.”
Dodge puffed leisurely, then said, “Ma’am, you want to know my deepest, darkest secrets, I’ll spill them at your feet. You want to know if I sleep naked or what I fantasize about, I’d tell you that, too. But when you ask me to break a business confidence that doesn’t concern you, you’d have to rip out my gizzard and I still wouldn’t divulge a single decimal point.”
Blunt. Truthful. Honorable. Yes, she liked him very much.
“So, Mr. Dodge, do you sleep naked?”
The casual way she broached the question took him off guard, then he threw back his head and let out a whooping laugh. “Goddamn, you’re something. If it weren’t for Reeve having prior claim, I’d surrender up my bachelor state in a second. And no, I don’t, but you might be able to persuade me.”
Patrice fell silent, prickling over his statement. “Reeve Garrett has no claim on me.”
He grinned at her brittle announcement. “If you say so, ma’am.”
Ignoring his smugness and the way it both alarmed and agitated her, Patrice changed the subject. “If you can’t talk about the money situations of others, are you at liberty to share information concerning mine?”
“What do you want to know?”
His willingness to be forthcoming surprised and scared her a little. How much did she really want to know? She gathered up her gumption. “I know we’re mortgaged to the bank. How deeply?”
“Ma’am, you might say the bank owns everything right down to your lacy garters.”
She shuddered to hear it spoken at last. Seeing her pallor, Dodge slid a large hand over hers, not pressing but just letting it rest there for a moment.
“Miss Sinclair, I see banking as a way to build up a community not to tear it apart. If I was in the ruination business, I’d be in politics.”
She managed a wan smile. “Then you’d help us with a loan?”
“I’d do my best. I’m just waiting for someone to ask. The people in this town are too busy looking for my pitchfork and horns to consider that I might be here to help them. Are you asking for extended credit?”
“My brother borrowed a great deal of money from another source.” She couldn’t believe she was confiding all to a total stranger, but the relief of having someone she could trust brought the words out in a flood. “I don’t know the terms. I don’t know the amount. Are we in trouble, Mr. Dodge?”
She looked up at him, desperate for reassurance. His hesitation shot down that hope.
“How much do you owe on back taxes?”
“Some have been paid off. I don’t know how much is left.”
He snubbed out the stump of his cigar and stood, amicability replaced by a crisp professionalism. “Why don’t we go on down to the bank and I’ll see what kind of paperwork I’ve got on file.”
Patrice went weak with gratitude. He wasn’t promising miracles, but he wasn’t sawing off their last branch either. All traces of guilt about sneaking the information behind Deacon’s back were gone. She couldn’t help if she wasn’t prepared. And Deacon wasn’t telling her anything.
On their way out of the dining room, they passed behind Sadie Dermont. She hovered over one of the tables, too busy with her rumormongering to notice them.
“The poor squire thought they’d lost it all. Heard his bastard boy stole the family’s money and hid it in a bank up North under his own name. And that Yankee banker he brought down here helped him do it. They’re in cahoots, I tell you.”
Dodge paused long enough to say loudly, “Thank you for another fine meal, Mrs. Dermont. You make me feel like I was in my mother’s kitchen.”
Sadie whirled, her homely features stark with dismay, then flushing a deeper crimson of embarrassment. But not apology.
Dodge tipped his flat-crowned hat to his hostess and fixed her with a leveling stare before shepherding Patrice out into the clear morning light. “Shall we take that walk, Miss Sinclair?”
“It’s Patrice.”
“I know.” He cupped her elbow with a proper
deference and said, “I was just waiting for the liberty of using it.”
All the boards had been pried free from the bank’s windows. The close-set bars were as solid as ever, but much of the glass was reduced to jagged shards. Dodge stopped at the door and Patrice gasped, looking away quickly.
“Wonder if it’s edible?” Dodge murmured as he took down the ratty carcass of a small furred animal left nailed to the door. Beneath it, the words
Go Home
were spelled out in uneven strokes. He sniffed at the mutilated creature and reared back. “Guess not.” He gave it an unconcerned toss into the street. “Thought someone might be leaving me supper.” He touched the still-wet lettering. “Think they’ll give me a discount on paint over at the mercantile? This is the fourth time this week I’ve had to touch up.” He didn’t share what the other messages imparted. Patrice shivered. She could guess.
“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked as he herded her inside.
“I was afraid of cannon fire. I was terrified of rolling over a dead man for fear of knowing him. Certain sounds at night were enough to make me ruin my long Johns. But I’m not afraid of ignorance, ma’am. It just makes me mad as hell.”
He didn’t look angry or in the least disturbed as he waved her into a leather chair across from his big desk. A bunch of his loose papers were pinned under a glass paperweight shaped like a windmill. Patrice blinked back a rush of unexpected tears. She’d given it to Jonah, laughing that he’d been tilting at them all his life. He’d always kept it in a prominent place of honor to show how much it had meant to him, both the gift and the fact that she’d
given it to him. A week later, she’d accepted his proposal. She jumped slightly at the feel of Dodge’s palm against the small of her back.
“Patrice, if there’s anything here that you want, you just go ahead and take it.”
She took a breath and smile determinedly. “Thank you, Mr. Dodge, but I have everything I need to keep my memories alive.”
He nodded without further comment, then said, “You can drop that Mister.” He settled into Jonah’s big chair looking right at home. That should have disturbed her, but it didn’t. She sensed Jonah would have liked him sitting there. Dodge unlocked a bottom drawer and shuffled through some files. He drew out a heavy one marked Sinclair at one corner in Jonah’s precise hand. Dodge flipped through the contents with unreadable interest before regarding her.
“It’s not good.”
“How ‘not good’?”
“I just might own your firstborn, too.”
She put a trembling hand to her lips, fighting the quiver of helplessness. Dodge said nothing, giving her time to deal with the news and find her own strength. Which she did.
“What can we save and how?”
“What do you have to keep?”
Everything. Every handful of dirt, every blade of grass was precious to her. But she was practical. “The house. Enough land to grow a self-sufficient crop.”
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “It’ll be tight.”
“But not impossible.”
His crooked smile bolstered her sagging spirits. “But not impossible. First, I think you ought to—”
He broke off as his gaze went beyond her. Patrice twisted in her seat to see Reeve at the doorway. “C’mon in,” Dodge called. “Patrice was just filling me in on all the county’s eligible females.”
An easy-to-read lie that stated a private conference had been in progress and don’t ask about what. Reeve didn’t.
“Patrice, are you about ready to go?”
Patrice nodded and stood. Impulsively, she extended her hand to Dodge. He got to his feet and clasped her small fingers within the curl of his larger ones, not bringing her hand up for a kiss but rather pressing it firmly.
“I’m glad we got the chance to get to know each other better, Mr.—Dodge.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am, too. And if you get to wondering about any of my other sleeping habits, you just ask.” He winked, then grinned at Reeve’s stiff expression. “We can finish our talk next time you’re in town, Patrice. My guess is you’d rather not have me at the house.”