Briar stepped closer and leaned to see his child stretched across her chair, her head leaning in the woman’s lap. “Asleep?”
“Right after ye left. The lass can sleep through a stampede, it seems.”
“I’ll take her.”
“No, I ordered ye a pie,” she whispered, “and asked them to keep it hot till ye returned. No use wasting good food or hard-earned money.”
No sooner than Mina informed him, the waitress bought Briar the pie. He thanked her and decided that tonight he would give a slightly bigger tip than usual for the extra service.
Mina looked at him expectantly and he realized she was waiting for him to take a bite. He had been the commander of his own eating habits for almost four years now and he found her insistence both warming and irritating. Warming, because it felt good again to have someone care that he ate. Irritating, because that same care reminded him of the loneliness of his life.
He pushed the plate away. Better to get down to business and put their relationship into its proper prospective. “I need to open the station in the morning, Miss McCoy, sell tickets and do my daily rounds with the rest of the crew. I’ve decided to hire a man to watch the ’graph on the nights we need one, if you’ll listen in the afternoons. That would give you the morning with Violet, and she can take an afternoon nap on the cot while you work. Lord knows she’s slept through it a hundred times. The afternoon will let me finish the daily books and whatever else I didn’t get done earlier. Just decide which one or two afternoons you’d like off and that will be fine. Is that satisfactory to you?”
“When will
Briar would have told her the matter was not open for discussion, but he supposed he was now making it the woman’s concern. He thought about his schedule then decided he might as well give himself a little added incentive. After all, he had thoroughly enjoyed supper. “I’ll share the noon meal with you both, then after her nap, I’ll make sure she and I do something together.” He looked at his daughter and realized just how many months it had been since he could remember doing anything special other than share a meal or go to church with her. Months must seem like years to a child so young.
“Like we used to, Daddy? You didn’t forget how?” Violet sat up, her uninjured eye suddenly wide awake with expectation.
Had she just been pretending? “I haven’t forgotten, pumpkin,” Briar reassured her. Shame for his own actions of late made him stand and quickly pull the funds for their dinner from his pocket and place them on the table. The need to hold his daughter compelled him to take her up in his arms. The woman was right. He should be more attentive to Violet. He should have hired a temporary man when Nathaniel first left so that he could spend time with her. He should have been a better father in a hundred different ways. And he would be, beginning now. Tonight. “You ready to go home and rest those pretty eyes so they’ll be ready for church in the morning?”
“Can my angel go with us?” She nodded, sighing softly against his shoulder.
He looked at Mina. “Most likeliest place to let a new angel in town get to know people, don’t you think?”
She giggled and her head nestled into the crook of his neck. “I’ll show her to the Corbetts and the McCords and, oh yeah, to Mr. and Mrs. Harris. Daddy says Mrs. Harris used to own the gun shop, but she ain’t no devil. She’s a real nice lady. Her boys run the shop now. I don’t see them much ’cept at church. They’re old like Daddy.”
Mina took coins from her pocket and placed them by her plate. She laughed. “Just how old is yer da?”
Before the tattler could answer, Briar reached over and scooted the coins back to Mina. “Older than Exodus. Now keep your money. Supper’s my treat, remember.”
“Twenty-seven.” Violet giggled, then squealed when her father poked her gently in the ribs and began to tickle her.
“Cowboy counsel, gabby-girl, remember?” It felt good to hear her sweet giggles against his throat as she tucked her head and moored herself against him. “Especially with family secrets.”
“Cowboy counsel?” Mina asked. “’Tis an Amarillo saying, I’m thinking.”
“A Texas saying, ma’am,” Briar announced in his best Lone Star drawl. “Which means that you don’t run off at the mouth about things that should be kept private.”
“Angel says she’s twenty-three,” Violet interjected, then cupped her mouth. “Uh-oh, Daddy, it ran off all by itself.”
“Violet!” Briar and Mina objected in unison.
“Well,” she defended, spreading her fingers just enough to let through her explanation, “It just came right out and I was too tired to stop it.”
“God help us both.” Briar made a visual pact with Mina as he offered his free arm to escort her out of the restaurant. “We’re going to need Him.”
Chapter 4
They walked only a few streets before opening a gate to a yard that housed a handsome wood cottage painted the color of her ancestral homeland and trimmed with white gingerbread molding. Was this the Duncan home? “Ye’re not thinking of putting her to bed and leaving her alone while ye escort me to the station, are ye?”
“No, ma’am. I’m not. You’ll both be staying.”
Her fingers unlocked from around the muscular band of his forearm and she backed away. No matter what employment he offered, she could not sleep under his roof with him. Though she had never worn a heavy cloak of propriety about her shoulders, she tried to maintain a thread of decency. “I’ll not be obliged to sleep in yer home, sir. ’Tisn’t fitting.”
“It wouldn’t be if I were going to be sleeping there with you.” Though his voice reassured, the deep timbre of it enticed with the playfulness of their earlier banter. His eyes darkened to moonlit globes framed in lashes of ebony. “I’m loaning you my bed.”
Mina’s heart altered its beat, as if it were a tossed stone skipping along the surface of a pond. A warm bed where she would be safe from her troubles was what she had hoped for so long that now, when offered, it seemed more dream than reality. But sleeping in a place that would be filled with the sights and scent peculiar to this man seemed more dangerous than any of those nights spent hiding under tarps on the wharfs of St. Louis. He’d captured her interest with that first look they’d shared when she disembarked. The allure only deepened the more they had talked…when he touched her hand at supper. She must remember her anger with him concerning his daughter’s welfare, lest she be swayed by his charm.
Despite the voice of reason stirring her thoughts, her feet moved forward as if they had a will of their own.
He accepted her hand again and guided her to the porch. “Bunking in at the office and letting you and Violet sleep here really is the logical thing for me to do, Miss McCoy. It’s getting late, so I’ll need to situate Violet for the night. After I remove a few of my things we’ll have our discussion, then I’ll be off to the station. No one will find fault with those arrangements.”
Our discussion? She reviewed their talk at supper and realized he meant to interview her about her qualifications for employment. She was tired, and it had been a long journey. But she must remain alert. She would tell him just enough to satisfy his curiosity and nothing else. “Very well, then. If ye’re certain ’tis no trouble to ye.”
“I’ve practically been there every night this last month. One more won’t make a difference.”
“Ye’ve left that wee lass alone in the house?”
“Let’s get out of the night air, shall we?” He opened one of the two front doors that graced the cottage’s facade. “And yes, I suppose I did. But I checked on her hourly to make sure she didn’t need me.”
“’Tis a good thing ye live so close to ye work. Not that ye have to worry about strangers getting off the train and needing a warm place to stay.”
“
He left her standing in the parlor of his home while he disappeared behind a dark-wooded door that shone like a freshly washed apple at the back of the room. She set her valise down by the armchair made of the same wood and
