Authors: Noelle Marchand
“You really are new to this town, aren’t you?” She laughed, then slowly transformed her face to a scowl. “I ran away from this town a few weeks ago. I got as far as the Texas border before ‘dear old papa’ got the sheriff to drag me back here kicking and screaming. He’s not suddenly going to have a change of heart.”
He gave her a skeptical glance. “Ah, yes. I heard you’re on pretty good terms now with that same sheriff who brought you home kicking and screaming.”
She sighed. “I’m just keeping Papa happy until I can make my move.”
“You’re willing to rob your own father for a ticket out of this quaint little place?”
She glared at him. “I’m not planning to rob him. You are. I see no reason why you can’t cut me a small take of that big Peppin safe in exchange for some information.”
That caught his attention just as she and Sean had thought it would. “You’d sell me information?”
She nodded as she tried to maintain her composure when she could hardly believe what she was proposing. She swallowed. She’d gone too far with this to back down now. “Yes, for the right price.”
“What if I refuse?”
She stopped to look at him. “Well, Silas. Let me put it this way. I’m prepared to make this process easy for you or I’m prepared to make it a lot more complicated. There is no in-between.”
He lifted a brow coldly. “I could kill you and be done with it.”
Sean had thought of that, too. She was ready with an answer. “Sure, but that wouldn’t get you any closer to robbing that bank. Besides, this is too small a town for you to get away with something like that. Are you willing to exchange bankrolls for a murder charge?”
“They’d probably just think you ran away again. No one would even look for you.”
“Of course they would. Besides, I thought you were a gentleman. I doubt you’d want a lady’s death on your conscience,” she said.
If he has a conscience, which I can’t be entirely sure of,
she realized but continued confidently, “Really, why go through all that trouble when having me on your side would make things so much easier?”
“All right. You’re in at three percent. You won’t get a penny more, so don’t ask for it. You’ll keep quiet and do as I say. Don’t ask questions. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Is that clear?”
She hid a frown at his command not to ask questions since her job was to do exactly that. However, she decided it was best not to push him on their first meeting. She nodded. “Completely.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he was agreeing to it, then he smiled. “Welcome aboard, Miss Wilkins. It’s going to be quite a ride. I’ll contact you again soon. Be ready.”
“Be careful how and when you contact me, Mr. Smithson. I have a reputation to uphold,” she reminded him. He nodded, then tipped his hat and left her to circle back toward the boardinghouse. She continued toward Main Street alone. She paused across the street from the bank to stare at it while she gathered her thoughts. She shook her head and whispered, “Well, I did it, Lord. Now what?”
Chapter Twelve
A
satisfied smile tilted Lorelei’s lips as she followed Ellie through the woods the next day. Her spur-of-the-moment decision to take Ellie up on her invitation to visit anytime had resulted in a wonderful day and an exciting new friendship. She glanced down to survey herself and shook her head. “If my mother could see me now, she’d faint.”
Ellie glanced back at her curiously. “What? Why?”
“Just look at me.” She stopped to exhibit herself. “My hands are red from washing clothes. My fingernails are stained purple from picking blackberries. I have a bruise on my arm from falling off a horse. I’m drenched from head to toe because you pushed me in when we went wading.”
Ellie rolled her eyes unsympathetically. “You tripped and fell in. That’s hardly my fault.”
“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, but I’m not buying what you’re selling.”
Ellie wrinkled her nose at Lorelei, then lifted her chin to curb a smile. “You may as well admit it, Lorelei. You…had…fun!”
“I certainly did.” She exchanged a grin with Ellie, then looked more closely at the young woman and singsonged, “You’ve been eating berries. Your teeth are purple.”
Ellie’s eyes widened as she guiltily pressed her lips together. “Well, don’t look so smug, Miss Wilkins, so are yours.”
“What?” She covered her mouth with her hand and groaned. “It’s getting worse by the minute.”
Ellie giggled. “Do you know what will make it better? A race.”
Lorelei laughed. “You didn’t even give me time to ask.”
“First one to the house without spilling their berries gets to freshen up first.”
“I don’t know, Ellie—
Go!
” She rushed through the woods toward the house, keeping a careful eye on her bucket.
“Cheaters never win!” Ellie yelled from a few paces behind her. Lorelei lengthened the distance between them in long, smooth strides. She rounded the corner of the barn and stopped abruptly when she came face-to-face with Sean.
“Lorelei,” he said in startled amusement.
She began to respond, then remembered to clench her lips together at the last second. She slowly became aware of the awful picture she must make. Suddenly Ellie shot past them with a triumphant laugh. The race! Lorelei sprang into motion once more with nothing more than a backward glance at her befuddled husband-to-be. She burst into the kitchen only seconds behind Ellie. Kate glanced up from her mending at their abrupt entrance but otherwise didn’t bat an eye at their appearance. Apparently, this sort of thing wasn’t unusual around the O’Brien house.
“I won!” Ellie declared.
“No fair. I ran into Sean.”
“You certainly did,” Ellie said with a teasing purple smile.
Lorelei laughed. “At least I remembered not to smile. I guess that means you get first dibs on freshening up.”
Ellie shrugged. “That’s all right. I’m used to the grime. You go on. Anything in my wardrobe is fair game. Just keep in mind that you’ll probably get dirty again.”
She frowned. “I don’t see how.”
“Ellie seems to attract messes, so you can’t go by her. Although it is good advice with three children running around here,” Kate suggested. “Besides, you’ll want to be comfortable at dinner.”
“Oh, I wasn’t planning to stay. I mean I don’t want to put y’all out. I’ve been here most of the day already.”
Kate set aside her mending to check on the stew she was cooking. “Don’t be silly. Now hurry upstairs unless you want Sean to get a better look at you.”
It wasn’t long before she’d cleaned up and changed into a simple blue blouse and navy skirt. She helped Hope set the table while Kate put the finishing touches on dinner and Ellie kept three-year-old Grace occupied. Nathan, Timothy and Sean soon filed inside. Sean washed his hands, then nonchalantly meandered over to take the seat beside her. “I was surprised to see you here but Nathan says you’ve been here most of the day and even helped him with the horses.”
She fiddled with her napkin. “I thought you were working.”
“Today is my day off. I always come home for dinner.”
Lorelei glanced from him to his sister. “Ellie didn’t tell me that.”
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “She wouldn’t.”
Ellie pretended not to hear them, though she would’ve had to have been deaf not to as she slid into a chair across from them. “We just keep adding more chairs to the table.”
“And more table to the table,” Nathan added as he took his seat at the head of the table. “That’s a good thing.”
“It certainly is.” Kate made sure her children were settled, then glanced at Sean. “Let’s say grace.”
Sean bowed his head. “Lord, thank You for the food and those who prepared it. We especially want to thank You for our unexpected company. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lorelei echoed along with everyone else, then glanced up at him. He smiled and handed her the mashed potatoes as dishes of food began circling the table. “What were y’all saying about chairs? I didn’t quite understand.”
Kate’s gaze swept around the table. “When our parents died they left two empty chairs at the table. Nathan filled one when he came. Lawson filled the other while he lived with us. Since then we’ve been adding chairs. One each for Timothy, Hope, Grace, and now there’s one for you.”
It took a moment for her to gather her voice. “Thank you. I’m honored.”
“I wish my parents could have known you,” Sean said without looking up from his plate.
“They would have liked you,” Kate said, but Lorelei couldn’t glance away from Sean when he finally met her gaze.
“I wish I could have known your parents, too.” she said softly.
Ellie smiled. “It’s all right. You’ll meet them one day.”
Lorelei nodded, then sat back to watch the O’Brien family interact with each other and Sean. He seemed to drop the mantle of responsibility just enough to enjoy dinner with his family, but she could still sense his tension. Or, maybe that was from her being there. She glanced around the table, then looked down at her food to hide her rising emotions. She’d never imagined his family would be so open, kind and accepting. They all knew the truth about her relationship with Sean but they didn’t seem to care.
Sean’s left hand strayed behind her to give a comforting rub to her back without his family’s notice. She glanced at him in surprise, then looked away as he drew his hand back. Who was this man? He was more relaxed. More gentle. More himself? She was starting to like him. That was fine. Like was a long way from love. Wasn’t it?
* * *
The stars stretched across the expansive Texas sky above where Sean settled on the thick, moist grass an hour later. His hands cushioned the back of his head. He could hear the soft undistinguishable murmur of Ellie’s voice as she talked to Hope and Timothy a good distance away. Lorelei stirred beside him. Her hand lifted, tracing out patterns he’d shown her in the constellations before she let it drop to her chest. He turned his head to look at her. “How long have you been here exactly?”
“My father dropped me off this afternoon. He was going to pick me up in an hour, but Nathan insisted he’d take me home when I was ready and that was the end of that,” she answered softly. “I like it here. It’s peaceful, simple, uncomplicated. Do you think the sky will look this big from our place?”
“It should.” He turned to look at the sky again. He just couldn’t get over how well she fit into his family. The children loved her because she played with them. Kate seemed to appreciate the way Lorelei was always willing to help out. Nathan obviously liked being able to explain his business and talk about his horses to someone who hadn’t heard him say it all a thousand times already. Ellie seemed to have found a new best friend. As for him, well, he wasn’t sure what he thought about it yet. He wasn’t sure what he thought about her anymore for that matter.
“Sean?”
“Yes.”
“I talked to Silas yesterday.”
He smiled. “I know. I saw you in the courtyard out my office window.”
“Oh.” She sat up and hugged her legs to her chest. “I told him I wanted in. He let me on the team—”
“Into the gang,” he corrected with a smile.
“—under the condition that I help out and keep quiet,” she finished. “I convinced him that I wanted in for an opportunity to get out of this town. He believed me.”
“That’s funny. I would have believed it, too,” he said as he sat up. “In fact it sounds—”
“Strangely familiar, I know.” She smiled almost cheekily in the moonlight. “That’s why it worked so well. Oh! The funniest part is that I told him you were just a pawn in my scheme to keep Papa happy.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s really funny.”
She smothered her mirth but not before a laugh slipped out. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be, but I don’t think you are.”
“He said he’d contact me soon.”
“I figured.” He heaved out a sigh. “Well, it’s pretty obvious that you have to continue. Don’t look so excited. You’re going to have to abide by my ground rules since this is an official investigation. You’ll have to let me know when he contacts you and the specifics of what is said. If he threatens you, you will let me know immediately. I reserve the right to pull you off the investigation at any time but especially if I feel you’re in danger. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“If you happen to think of this as a lark or a game or anything other than a life-and-death situation, you should shed those notions right now. We aren’t entirely sure who or what we’re dealing with, but we do know that Smithson is dangerous. You could get hurt or killed.”
She met his gaze soberly. “I understand that.”
He surveyed her for any sign of fear but didn’t find any. He nodded. “Good. When you meet with him, there is certain information you can give and certain information you need to try to get.”
“Shouldn’t I write this down?”
“No. I want you to memorize it.” He placed his elbows on his knees and leaned toward her. “If Smithson is working with someone else, and we know he is, then I can arrest him and his partner or partners before they ever set foot in the bank on the charge of conspiracy to commit an armed robbery. That means they agreed to carry out the robbery, then took some action toward doing so. We’re looking for evidence in the form of things like layouts of the bank, the date the robbery is going to take place, getaway plans, anything like that. You can draw that material out by advising them on all of it.”
She frowned. “But should I really tell the truth about that? What if they actually get away with it?”
“They won’t because we won’t let them,” he said seriously. “Tell them the truth. We don’t know how much information they already have, and we don’t want to let them think you’re double-crossing them in any way. We’ll have to see how deep they let you into their plans. So far you’ve been pretty clever about all of this. Keep your wits about you, and I think you’ll do all right.”
She leaned back, bracing her hands behind her, and tilted her head. “Was that a vote of confidence I just heard?”
“It certainly was.”
“My, oh, my. What an unusual day this has been. Maybe it’s time for me to go home. I don’t know how much of this I can take.”
Neither do I,
he thought at the sight of her smiling like that with the backdrop of a million twinkling stars. “I’ll get the horses.”