Table of Contents

Cover Page

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Excerpt

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About the Author

Copyright

10TH ANNIVERSARY
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A Family For Carter Jones
Ana Seymour

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my daughters Kathryn and Cristina with admiration, pride and love

“Perhaps it’s just the brandy,” Jennie said aloud.

Carter looked down at her in surprise. “Perhaps what is just the brandy?”

She made a little twist with her mouth. “Nothing.”

“Oh.”

In a minute they would be at their rooms. He would open her door and say good-night like the gentleman he promised to be. Suddenly she blurted out, “I was wondering if it was the brandy that was making me remember the night you kissed me.”

She could feel him stiffen beside her. It was a relief to have let it out. Now he’d probably laugh and tell her that she was perhaps a little tipsy, and then they could part and get some sleep.

Instead he said in a voice that had grown slightly hoarse, “I haven’t needed brandy to remember it, Jennie…”

Prologue

Vermillion, Nevada

May 1881

Unlike most girls who blossomed into womanhood at the same sedate pace they used to walk across the room at their first adult social, Jennie Sheridan reckoned that she’d pretty well completed the process at a gallop within the space of six weeks.

Sitting on the porch swing with a lump in her throat the size of a rolled-up pair of socks, she looked away from her sister and counted backward. Six weeks. The first snowdrops had already started appearing on the hills outside of town the week they’d lost first their mother, then their father two days later. Her entire world had turned itself inside out within six short weeks. And now this.

“When?” she asked Kate, forcing the word out and avoiding her sister’s eyes.

Kate’s voice was almost inaudible. “Well, it’s nine months, right? That would make it sometime around Christmas.”

“Some Christmas present, huh?” Jennie tried a smile, but her lips threatened to quiver, so she tightened her mouth again.

“Oh, Jen, I’m so very sorry,” her sister murmured.

Jennie’s unshed tears drained back down her throat as she looked up to see Kate’s eyes filling. Jennie reached to take her younger sister’s hand, then changed her mind and slid across the wooden slats of the swing to enfold her in her arms.

Kate put her head down on Jennie’s shoulder and began to sob. “I never thought I could be so wicked, Jennie,” she said, taking big gulps of air. “It almost makes me glad that Mama and Papa are gone.”

Jennie straightened up at that and took a firm grasp of her sister’s shoulders. “That’s nonsense. You’re not wicked and you’re certainly not glad that our parents are dead.”

Kate gave a little jerk at the harsh sound of the last word. “Can you imagine what they would have felt, Jen? What would they have said to discover that their unmarried daughter was about to have a child? I was always supposed to be the perfect one, you know.”

Jennie gave a sympathetic nod. Her sister’s bright blue eyes were full of anguish. And she was right. Their parents would have been devastated by this news. Jennie had always been headstrong, allowed her stubborn ways and occasional childish tantrums. But Kate had been the perfect one.

Well, nothing was perfect anymore.

“Isn’t there some way you can contact him?” she asked.

Kate looked up in horror. “To tell him about the baby? I wouldn’t even think of trying. He left me, Jennie. Without so much as a goodbye. You can’t know what that means after you’ve…you know…given yourself to a man…”

Her voice trailed off and the tears started flowing again. Jennie gave a deep sigh. She would not be afraid to confront the blarney-talking Irishman who had swept in and out of town like a cyclone, scattering her sister’s reputation and pieces of her heart in its wake. But perhaps this wasn’t the moment to pursue the subject. “I suppose this is a silly question, but…are you sure, Katie? You haven’t been to see Dr. Millard.”

Kate moved away from her sister and set the swing in motion with a push of her heel. “I’m pretty sure, Jen. I haven’t had…you know. And it was always every fourth Sunday…like clockwork. Now I’ve missed twice. And I’m…ah…tender up here, like the womenfolk say.”

Jennie nodded, miserable but not embarrassed by her sister’s frank description. She and Kate, just sixteen months apart in age, shared even the most intimate details of their lives with each other. At least, they used to share, Jennie amended, until Kate met up with that scoundrel. “Well, the first thing is…you have to see the doctor.”

Kate took a deep, jagged breath. “I’d die first. It would be almost as bad as telling Papa.”

Gentle Dr. Millard had taken care of their childhood hurts and illnesses since they were born. The week her parents had died, he’d stayed at the Sheridan house day and night, even though there were other influenza cases in town. “Sweetie, you have to tell him,” Jennie said. “You’ll need him to take care of you and…and the baby.”

Kate looked down at her lap and shook her head firmly. “I’m going to take care of myself. Mama had us without any doctor helping.”

“But only because they were living up in the mountains then. And besides, she had Papa.”

“Well, I have you.”

“Kate Sheridan, I don’t know the first thing about babies.” Jennie tried to keep her tone free from the desperation that was creeping over her.

Kate set the swing rocking at a more frantic pace. “Well, I don’t, either. But I’m afraid we’re both about to find out.”

The tears had ended, and suddenly there was determination in Kate’s tone. Jennie let out a long stream of air. Together they could do this. No matter how bad it got. They had always supported each other, and since the deaths of their parents, it had become something like a sacred pact between them.

When Kate had broken down at their dead mother’s bedside and refused to leave, it had been an equally heartbroken Jennie who had pulled her away and tucked her into the bed Kate hadn’t slept in for the previous five nights.

When Harmon Wentworth, the banker, had told them that their parents had left them virtually without funds, it had been calm, logical Kate who had kept Jennie from total despondency. They were capable, able-bodied women, she’d insisted. Not girls any longer. They would find a way.

Now it was Jennie’s turn to be strong again. And this time it appeared she’d have to be strong enough for the both of them.

Chapter One

August 1881

“I’m sorry, ladies, but I don’t see how that particular task falls under my jurisdiction,” Carter Jones said crisply. “It’s a job for the sheriff.”

Mrs. Henrietta Billingsley, Miss Margaret Potter and Mrs. Lucinda Wentworth stood before him in a row, shirtwaists billowing. Carter looked down at the papers on his desk and shifted uncomfortably, creaking the leather of his chair.

“Sheriff Hammond won’t be back from visiting his sister in California for another three weeks, and by then that…that person’s shameful condition will be apparent to God and every man wearing trousers in this town,” Mrs. Billingsley insisted.

Carter looked up at the florid face of the town’s leading matron. “I reckon God’s aware of the problem already, Mrs. Billingsley. After all, isn’t he the one responsible for creating a new life?”

“Not this life, Mr. Jones. This was the devil’s work, pure and simple.”

Carter sighed. “Sheriff Hammond left your son, Lyle, as deputy, Mrs. Wentworth. You could get him to serve the papers.”

Margaret Potter stared down her long nose with a look that had been known to freeze truant students twice her size dead in their tracks. “He refuses to do it, Mr. Jones. He says we have to wait for the sheriff. Lyle has always been a difficult boy. And everyone knows he’s always been sweet on Kate Sheridan.”

Lyle Wentworth may be difficult, but he wasn’t a boy. He had to be at least, twenty-three, Carter reckoned. But in the few weeks since he’d arrived in Vermillion, he’d realized that Miss Potter continued to treat her former pupils as recalcitrant adolescents even though some of them had begun sprouting gray hair.

“Lyle’s not difficult.” Lucinda Wentworth defended her son in a voice so small it sounded as if she hoped Margaret Potter wouldn’t actually hear her.

“Sounds to me like Lyle has the right idea,” Carter said. “Let’s just wait until Del gets back to handle this.”

“Delbert Hammond will be no more eager to serve these papers than Lyle,” Miss Potter said with one of her chronic sniffs. “It’s your responsibility representing the interests of the territory to see that the decisions of the court are upheld.”

Mrs. Billingsley leaned over Carter’s desk, her formidable breasts perilously close to his face, and slapped down the sheaf of papers she’d been holding. “Those two Sheridan hussies have no business opening their home as a so-called boardinghouse in a respectable part of town. If they want to run something like that, they’ll just have to go down to Tinkersville and hang a red lantern in front like the others.”

Carter grimaced. He’d not met either of the Sheridan sisters since he’d taken over the post of district attorney, but he’d caught glimpses of both young ladies, and they had not struck him as likely candidates for the tawdry streets of the notorious Tinkersville district.

Miss Potter continued, “It’s taken us a month to get the order to shut them down. And now that we’ve got the papers, we’re not willing to have that situation continue one more night.”

“Have they been disturbing the peace in some way, ladies?” he asked mildly.

“They’ve been disturbing the harmony of this community,” Mrs. Billingsley huffed.

“And twisting the minds of the innocent schoolchildren,” Margaret Potter added, her words punctuated by vehement nods from her friend.

Carter stretched his long legs under the desk, then picked up the bunch of papers and looked at them with distaste. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

As he walked toward the neat white clapboard house at the end of Elm Street, Carter went through a mental rehearsal of the speech he was about to give, with little enthusiasm for the task. He knew that the Sheridan sisters had lost their parents and fallen on financial hard times recently. And if it was true that the younger sister was bearing an out-of-wedlock child, as the town rumor mill had it, then Carter would have preferred to stay ten leagues away from the entire situation.

The house was well kept up with a flourishing vegetable garden to one side and neat rows of geraniums along the front. No one could say that the Sheridan boardinghouse represented an eyesore. But, of course, that had nothing to do with the court’s ruling. Nor did the unwedded state of Kate Sheridan.

The ruling was based strictly on the town ordinances that had been passed not a year ago carefully separating the business part of town from its prosperous homes. It was the latest idea in city planning. Carter had never seen much sense to it, himself, but he was an ambitious man, and if zoning regulations were popular with the people, he would not be the one to argue against them.

As he mounted the front steps, he tried to get a picture in his mind of the sisters as he remembered seeing them about town. One had been striking, blond and tall, willowy. He wasn’t as sure about the other. She’d been shorter, he thought, with mousy brown hair. Rather nondescript, if memory served.

It was neither young lady who opened the door to his knock, but a young lad of about twelve. “Who are you?” the boy asked without a smile.

“The name is Carter Jones. I’d like to talk with Miss Kate or Miss Jennie Sheridan.”

“What about?” The boy had intense brown eyes that looked old in the middle of his youthful face.

Carter hesitated. It was absurd, but he almost felt as if he owed the boy an explanation. “I’ll state my business to the Misses Sheridan, if you don’t mind, lad,” he said finally.

“Come back later. Miss Jennie said I wasn’t to let anyone ‘sturb Miss Kate.”

To Carter’s amazement, the boy began to swing the door shut in his face. He put a hand out to hold it open. “Well then, I’ll talk with Miss Jennie.”

“Can’t. She’s gone to the store.” He paused and held up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. “Oh. There she comes now.”

Carter turned to look down the street. Walking toward them with an almost childlike skip to her step was the Sheridan sister he’d dismissed as “nondescript.” Carter’s mouth dropped open.

He knew he’d been working too hard since he’d come to Vermillion, but up to now he hadn’t thought that the overwork had struck him blind. Had he actually seen this girl in town and not paid her any attention? He ought to make an appointment with Dr. Millard that very afternoon to have his eyes examined.

Granted, her sister with her statuesque blond good looks had drawn his eye, but this girl was exquisite. She was not as tall as her sister, but her figure was perfection, with curves that were tantalizingly outlined by the worn spots in her faded green dress. Her hair was not the least bit mousy, but a rich mahogany brown that glinted in the morning sunlight. And her face would stand out in the portraits of Godey’s Lady’s Book.

He closed his mouth and swallowed away the dryness. Busy with his fledgling career, he’d been without a woman for too long. And under normal circumstances, the delectable Miss Sheridan would have seemed to be a perfect victim for his well-developed skills in the art of seduction. Suddenly his present duty seemed more than unpleasant—it seemed downright inconvenient.

“This gentleman’s looking for you, Jennie,” the boy yelled to her. “And I wouldn’t let him ‘sturb Kate, just like you told me.”

The young woman’s pace became more sedate as she approached them. She smiled first at the boy, and said, “Thank you, Barnaby.” Then she turned the smile toward Carter, causing his heart to skip a beat. But her smile died as she glanced at the papers in his hand. “What can I do for you, sir?” she asked. Her huge brown eyes had grown wary.

“Ah…” Carter fished about for an opening gambit. It was an uncharacteristic hesitancy for his normally glib tongue. He prided himself on always knowing what to say in every situation. The consummate politician. Someday he hoped the skill would take him to the heights he had secretly dreamed of since he was a boy not much older than the lad who stood in the doorway staring at him.

The sudden childhood memory restored some of his power. The Sheridan girl was beautiful, but that didn’t mean he had to lose his wits talking to her. “Perhaps we should go inside and discuss it,” he said smoothly.

Jennie looked from Carter to the boy. “Barnaby, you go on in and see if Kate needs anything.” Then she mounted the four steps to the stoop to stand directly in front of Carter. She was several inches shorter than he, but somehow it seemed as if her eyes were level with his as she said gravely, “My sister is…indisposed. I’d rather talk right here, if you don’t mind, Mr. Jones.”

The sound of his own name surprised him. “Ah, you know who I am, Miss Sheridan. I apologize for not introducing myself immediately.”

“This town does not keep secrets, Mr. Jones. Everyone knows about the new young prosecutor from the fancy law school back East.”

“Harvard,” Carter put in with a smile.

“Harvard,” Jennie agreed with no softening of her own expression.

Carter blinked, trying to concentrate on the business at hand instead of the way the morning light brushed Jennie Sheridan’s high cheekbones with the faintest blush. Irrationally his heart was beating a tattoo inside his chest. Yes, it had been too long since he’d been close to a woman. At least a woman the likes of the older Sheridan sister.

He tried another of his politician smiles and willed his voice to sound smooth. “Nevertheless, it was remiss of me. We’ve never been formally introduced and perhaps you—”

“Mr. Jones,” Jennie interrupted. “It’s been some weeks now since anyone in this town has bothered to observe good manners with me or my sister. And this is heavy.” With her free hand she gestured to the basket of groceries hanging over her arm. “If you would be so kind as to state your business, I’ll let you be on your way.”

Carter tried to take a step back to distance himself from the intensity of those brown eyes, but his heel hit the edge of the stoop. He stopped himself just in time to keep from tumbling backward onto the ground. Jennie Sheridan watched him without blinking.

“I could come back if this is an inconvenient time.” His smile was not quite so self-assured.

“I guess that would depend on the nature of your business. Recently, my sister and I have had to deal with a lot of things that aren’t much convenient at any time. Is this that kind of business, Mr. Jones?”

Carter hid his chagrin at the coldness of her tone. With his tall good looks and practiced charm, Carter had been able to soften the hearts of the haughtiest of debutantes in Boston society. But he had a feeling that Jennie Sheridan was regarding him with no more interest than she had in the black ant that was crossing the wooden stoop at their feet.

“I guess you’d put this in the category of inconvenient,” he admitted, giving the papers in his hand a shake.

“It’s the court ruling, isn’t it?”

Carter met her eyes and nodded. She held her head stiffly, her delicate chin up, as if she were waiting for a blow. “They’ve turned down your petition. You’re not allowed to have a business in this part of town,” Carter said gently.

Jennie closed her eyes for just a moment, but when she opened them, they held anger, not resignation. “Three renters. That’s all it is. Three people to fill out the bedrooms in this big place.” She gestured to the house behind her. “Why, it should be a crime not to let the rooms out, with the silver boom in town. People need places to stay.”

Carter ruffled through the papers in his hand. “You have an employee, it says…” he began.

“Barnaby?” Jennie gasped in disbelief. “He’s twelve years old. And he had nowhere else to go—”

“That boy is the employee?” Carter interrupted.

Instead of answering the question, Jennie backed down the stairs to the wooden walkway and pointed up the street. “You see all those fancy houses, Mr. Jones? There’s not a one of them that doesn’t have a servant of some kind. Gardener, maid, livery man. We have Barnaby. One boy and two women. We run this place. We muck the horses and grow the food. When the pump broke out back, I was the one who fixed it. When the roof leaked this June, I was the one on a ladder patching it up.”

She seemed to gather steam as she continued to talk, her features becoming more animated. Carter was so entranced that he found himself losing track of what she was saying. When she paused, evidently expecting a reply, he could only manage to say, “It does seem a bit unreasonable to classify that boy as a business employee.”

“Well then, tell that to your precious courts, Mr. Jones.” She marched up the stairs past him, her basket nearly knocking the papers out of his hand. “And tell them that if they want to force two orphan sisters, one of whom is ill, to leave their home, they’ll have to come in here with the sheriff and a passel of deputies and carry us out.”

As Carter tried to formulate an answer, she wrenched open the door, stalked inside and slammed it in his face.

“Well, what was he like?” Kate asked.

“Who?” Jennie was kneading bread dough. Lord, it seemed as if she spent half her time kneading bread these days. She couldn’t understand how just three men and a boy could go through so many loaves each week. Goodness knows, she and Kate hardly touched the stuff. Jennie was always too busy or too tired to eat, and Kate had had no appetite since she’d started getting sick early in her pregnancy. Her face had grown gaunt and, except for her now obviously protruding stomach, she was alarmingly thin. Jennie had pleaded, alternating tears and threats, but Kate still refused to be seen by Dr. Millard, which was not only dangerous to her health, but pointless, since by now everyone in town knew that she was with child.

“The new district attorney,” Kate said with slight exasperation. “What’s he like?”

“I don’t know…he’s…he’s just a man. Who cares?”

Kate sighed. “Just because he’s a man doesn’t eliminate him from consideration as a human being, Jen dear. There are good men in the world. Not all of them disappear leaving…problems in their wake.”

“Not all of them are like Sean Flaherty, you mean.”

As usual, her sister’s eyes chilled at the mention of her erstwhile lover’s name. Jennie hated that look.

“Think of Papa,” Kate said after a moment. “He was a good man.”

“He left us, too,” Jennie said under her breath, slapping the bread as if it were Carter Jones’s handsome face. The new district attorney had been handsome, she would admit that much to herself, if not to Kate. But then, Sean Flaherty had been handsome, too, and look where that had led her poor sister.

“Jennie! How can you say such a thing? Papa didn’t leave us—he died.”

Jennie stopped pummeling. Her shoulders sagged, and she gave the ball of mixed dough an apologetic pat. “Yes, he died. It wasn’t his fault, but he’s gone, nevertheless.”

“Well, maybe it’s not Mr. Jones’s fault either that they gave him those papers to bring here. If you’d been a bit nicer to him, we might even have gotten him on our side.”

Jennie used the edge of her hand to chop the mass of dough into loaf-size chunks. “Oh, I’m sure the fancy Haah-vard man would take the side of a couple of unimportant, disgraced, utterly poor women against the whole rest of the town.”

Kate looked gloomy. “I’m the one who’s disgraced, not you. It’s not fair that you should pay for my sins.”

Jennie smiled at her. “My sister, the sinner.”

“I am. I did.”

“You were in love, Kate, and falling in love’s not a sin.” She dropped the last loaf into its pan with a satisfying plop, then added, “It’s just stupidity.”

Kate shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve soured you on men for good.”

“‘Twas Sean Flaherty soured me on men, not you. Not that I ever had much time for them in the first place.”

“Because you never met the right one.”

Carter Jones’s smile flashed through Jennie’s mind. She’d been thoroughly irritated by his smile, but beyond the irritation, she’d felt another sensation. Equally disagreeable, she decided, kind of like the prickling of a heat rash. “There is no right one for me, Katie dear,” she said breezily. “I intend to grow old as a happy and peaceful old maid.”

Jennie finished wiping her hands on the dish towel and hung it on the rack, then turned to look around at their tidy kitchen. “And what’s more, I don’t care how many Mr. Joneses they send after us—I intend to do it right here in my very own house.”

“So what are we going to do about the papers?”

“They can go to the devil with their papers. I’m not leaving here. And since we can’t afford to stay here without the money from our boarders, they’re not leaving here, either.”

Kate slid awkwardly off the stool where she’d perched to watch her sister’s labors. Jennie refused to let her help much with the cooking anymore. The heaviest job Jennie would allow her was wiping the dishes after dinner. And even then, Jennie herself took over when it came time to put away the heavy pans. For weeks Kate had been too sick to argue with her sister’s proclamations and now, though she was feeling better, she seemed to have adapted to the unusual circumstance of allowing her sister to take care of her. “Are we going to tell them about it?” she asked.

“Tell the silverheels?” The silverheels was Jennie’s nickname for the three miners who had taken rooms at Sheridan House while they hired on at the Longley mine up the canyon. She’d called them that from the first day the three young men had arrived, joking that they hoped they wouldn’t track too much silver dust onto her mother’s prized Persian rug in the parlor. Jennie had laughed and welcomed their business and had never let on to them that a bit of silver dust would be a godsend in the Sheridan sisters’ lives at the moment

“Well, they’ll probably find out about it Especially if Mr. Jones takes you up on your invitation and comes trooping back here with the sheriff to shut us down.”

Jennie felt the pulsing behind her right eye that always preceded one of her headaches. “The sheriff’s away in California. They told me so in town today.”

“Well, they’re not just going to forget about it. Didn’t Sheriff Hammond leave a deputy?”

Jennie fixed Kate with a look. “Lyle Wentworth’s the deputy.”

Kate colored. Lyle had tried to court Kate since they were children, much to the wealthy Wentworths’ dismay. Before Sean Flaherty showed up in town, some people thought Lyle would go against his parents’ wishes and ask Kate to marry him. Kate had refused to see him since she had found out about the baby. “I suppose you could go talk to Lyle,” she said, her voice subdued.

“Me?” Jennie said, her hands on her hips. “I suppose you could go talk to him.”

“Jen, you know I can’t do that.”

“Criminy, sis. Someday you’re going to have to talk to people again. It doesn’t make much sense for us to go through all this effort to hold on to this place if you’re going to shut yourself away in here the rest of your life as if you’d been buried right along with Mama and Papa.”

Kate clasped her hands over her big stomach and looked down. “I can’t see Lyle, Jennie. Please don’t ask me.”

Jennie gave a little huff but didn’t pursue the matter. “I think I will tell the silverheels that those old biddies are trying to shut us down. Maybe they’ll have some ideas.”

“And maybe you should talk to that Mr. Jones again. He’s a lawyer, right? At least he should be able to tell us what our options are.”

Jennie stared straight ahead as another quick memory of Carter Jones’s striking face flashed in front of her like the image from a stereopticon. How odd, she reflected. Perhaps it was somehow connected to her impending headache.

“I’ll go see him in the morning,” she agreed finally. “Tonight I’m going to let Barnaby help you with the dishes while I nurse one of my megrims.”

Carter Jones sat in his small office and stared at the bookshelf on the opposite wall as if willing one of the leather tomes to magically open up with the answer he sought. He’d been at it much of the afternoon, more time than he could afford to spend on a matter that, after all, was not even his concern.

Zoning ordinances were so new that it didn’t appear that there was much body of law on them. And, though he’d read the court’s decision half a dozen times, he’d been unable to come up with any ideas as to how to render it null. He had no doubt that the self-appointed moral guardians of the town, Mrs. Billingsley, Miss Potter, Lucinda Wentworth and their cronies, would be back tomorrow in full force when they learned that nothing had been done to change the situation at Sheridan House.

Carter threw his pencil down on the desk and pushed back his chair. His stomach was rumbling its disapproval of his decision earlier in the day to skip lunch. He hadn’t felt much like eating after his encounter with Jennie Sheridan. The prospect of one of the Continental Hotel’s shoe-leather steaks was not thrilling, but it would at least fill the hole in his middle.

He leaned back toward his desk to straighten the piles of work. No matter how hungry he was, he wouldn’t leave an untidy office. A cluttered desk meant a cluttered mind, he’d always believed. The pencil he’d thrown in disgust was carefully retrieved and put in its tray—on the used side of the tray, not to be confused with the freshly sharpened ones that he put there every morning.

He ran his hand over the neatly arranged writing instruments with a certain satisfaction. At least it was possible to inject order into a certain portion of his world. He didn’t want to admit how unsettled he’d been by his trip to Sheridan House. He still wasn’t entirely sure why. The girl was pretty. The young boy was engaging. But none of it was his problem.

There was a soft knock at the door. He jerked his hand away from the pencils and said, “Come in.”

It was the temporary sheriff’s deputy, Lyle Wentworth. Carter wasn’t particularly pleased to see him. Though they were both eligible young men in town, the two had not become friends. Carter found him overbearing and petulant. He’d seen Lyle kick back a chair and stomp out of the bar over a two-bit poker game. Of course, as the only son of the town banker and the pretentious Lucinda, Lyle had probably been raised to believe he was a cut above the rest of the world. Carter, on the other hand, had known at a young age that he’d better start climbing, because he was starting life at the bottom rung.

“Evening, Lyle,” he greeted his visitor.

“What in blazes are they trying to do to the Sheridan sisters?” Lyle asked without preamble.

Carter raised his eyebrows. The demanding tone was characteristic, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what interest Lyle Wentworth would have in the plight of the Sheridans. He leaned over his desk and put his hand down flat on the court order that he’d not served that morning. “The court says they can’t take in boarders in that location. They have to stop it or move to another house.”

“They don’t have any money to move. Or to survive if they can’t get that extra rent money. What are they supposed to live on with both their parents fresh in their graves?”

Carter let a stream of air out threw his nose, still mystified as to the motivation behind Lyle’s inquiry. “This order doesn’t concern itself with what they’re going to live on. It just states that the way things are, they’re in violation of the law.”

“It’s damned nonsense, fostered by a bunch of the town’s old biddies. The Sheridan sisters aren’t hurting a thing in that house.”

Carter slid his hand off the papers and grinned. “Well, according to the oldest Sheridan sister, the only way we’re going to get them out of there is to carry them out.”

Lyle’s scowl softened. “That sounds like Jennie, all right So you talked to them already?” At Carter’s nod, Lyle stiffened and asked, “Did you see Kate, too?”

“The younger one? No. Her sister said she was ill.”

Lyle’s head jerked up. “Ill? What’s wrong with her?”

The motive behind Lyle’s interest was becoming more apparent. It appeared he was smitten with one of the girls. Which one? he wondered. Carter was surprised to realize that he was very much hoping that it was not Jennie who held the rich young man’s interest, though she would be the most likely candidate. It would be tough for any man to be in love with Kate Sheridan under the current circumstances.

“What’s wrong with Kate?” Lyle insisted. The slight tremor in his voice gave Carter the answer to his question.

“I’m sorry, Lyle. Her sister didn’t elaborate. I assumed it had something to do with…” Carter hesitated. Surely Lyle knew about Kate Sheridan’s condition.

“With her having a baby,” Lyle finished for him, his voice tight.

“Yes.”

Lyle kicked the heel of his boot backward into the door frame, gouging the soft pinewood. “I don’t want them bothered, Jones,” he said. “Not by you nor by those old gossips who are trying to run them out of town.”

Carter pushed back his chair and looked up at the young man. After a moment he said, “I intend to see what I can do to straighten this out.”

Lyle nodded and spun on his heel to leave. Carter could hear the clatter of his fancy, high-heeled boots all the way down the stairs. This was an interesting development, he thought, since the way he understood it, one of the “old gossips” Wentworth had referred to was Lyle’s own mother. Carter wrinkled up his nose. Small-town politics. He had little patience for it. But if he had to put up with the foibles of the local denizens in order to proceed up that ladder he was determined to climb, he’d put aside his distaste.

And in the meantime, straightening things out meant that he’d have to pay another visit to Jennie Sheridan. Which was not such an unpleasant prospect.

Chapter Two

By the time he’d washed down the last piece of the Continental’s totally flavorless meat with a third mug of beer, Carter was ready to admit that the prospect of a return engagement with Jennie Sheridan had him interested. Hell, it had him downright bothered. He’d planned on postponing the encounter until tomorrow, but with the pleasantly warm hum of beer singing inside him, he stood on the steps of the hotel wondering if he should change his mind and go immediately.

“Evening, Carter.” The gruff voice of Dr. Millard was unmistakable. It could be intimidating to someone who didn’t know the disposition of the town’s only doctor.

“Dr. Millard,” Carter acknowledged. “You out seeing a patient this time of night?”

“I came looking for you. I’m concerned about this campaign against Jennie and Kate Sheridan.”

Yet another champion for the beleaguered sisters. Carter smiled. It was beginning to look as if the two lovely orphans might cause a regular civil war in town.

“I was just about to head over there,” he told the doctor.

“To the Sheridan house?”

Carter nodded.

Dr. Millard looked up and down the street. Only a few evening stragglers were still out. “Now?”

Carter gave one of his self-assured nods. “I imagine those poor girls are quaking in their shoes wondering when the sheriff is going to show up to move them out of there.”

Dr. Millard looked doubtful. “Have you met Jennie?”

“Yup. This morning. She was…”

“She’s not exactly the quaking type,” the doctor interrupted.

“No. Perhaps not. But I imagine she’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve decided to help her and her sister out of this muddle.”

Dr. Millard looked amused. “I’m relieved to here it, Carter. Ah…just how do you plan to do that?”

Carter peered into darkening street and blinked to find it empty. “I don’t know. I’ll…file an appeal or something. Get the court order blocked. I can talk to Mrs. Billingsley and get her to forget the whole thing.”

“That’s about as likely as a blizzard in July.”

Carter gestured grandly. “Would you like to come with me?”

The doctor grinned. “My boy, I’d love to see Jennie’s face when you give her the good news that you’ve gallantly decided to ride to her rescue.”

“Well, come along then.”

Millard’s smile died. “I can’t. Kate’s been avoiding me since the beginning of her…problem. She refuses to see me, and I can’t go over there without her welcome. She’ll let me know when she’s ready for my help.”

“Hey, Doc. Haven’t you learned by your age that women don’t always know what they want Sometimes a man just has to step in and take over to keep them from making a mess of things.”

“Is that what you learned at that fancy Eastern school?”

“I learned it long before then. Give a woman a chance to argue and you’re sunk. If you want to help out Kate Sheridan, you should just march on over there and tell her so. Don’t let her get a word in edgewise.”

“And that’s the approach you intend to take with Jennie tonight?” he asked.

“Actually, it’s what they like,” Carter answered with a firm nod.

Dr. Millard made a click with his mouth. “Yup, I surely would like to see that.”

“Do you want to change your mind and come along?”

The doctor shook his head with a slow grin. “Nope. But you give Jennie my regards, you hear?” He turned to leave, and Carter could hear him chuckling all the way down the street.

* * *

“I thought I told you that you would need reinforcements when you came back here, Mr. Jones.”

Jennie Sheridan’s voice was even frostier than it had been that morning, but Carter was concentrating more on the way the neck of her maroon silk evening dress scooped out a circle of creamy white skin. The sight made the air stick in his throat. He’d tried to hold on to the idea that his interest in the Sheridan case was all in the name of justice and fair play. But standing here in the doorway looking at her, he had to admit that his motives were at a baser level.

Simply put, the diminutive, curvaceous Miss Sheridan made the blood race through his veins.

“I didn’t come to put you out of your home,” he said when he could trust himself to speak. “I came to offer my help.”

Jennie looked skeptical. “Your help?”

Carter looked up and down the darkened street. The new street lanterns had not yet been placed in this part of town. “Is it too late to invite me in?”

She bit her lower lip, drawing Carter’s eyes to her full mouth. “I guess not”

She looked down at his hands as if expecting to see the papers he’d brought earlier. He held them out, palms up. “No concealed weapons,” he said lightly.

The smile she returned was slight, but it was enough to restore the confidence that had slipped a notch when he’d felt the visceral effect of seeing her in that dress. She was, after all, a woman. And if there was one thing Carter had always been able to handle, at least since the time he’d graduated to long pants, it was women.

“I suppose you can come into the parlor for a few minutes,” she said, holding the door open for him to enter. “Our board…our guests are there playing cards.”

He followed her inside and placed his hat on the hall table. “And your sister…?” he asked as she started toward the curtained archway that evidently led to the parlor.

She whirled to face him. “What about my sister?”

He held up a peacemaking hand again. “I just wondered if I would meet her, too. I was talking earlier tonight with a friend of hers who seemed concerned about her welfare.”

“What friend?”

“Lyle Wentworth.”

Jennie made a face. “He used to be sweet on Kate.”

“Still is, if you ask me.”

Jennie ignored his comment as she led the way under the drapes into the cozy room where three men sat around a small round table covered with playing cards. A fire burned cheerily behind the grate of the painted brick fireplace. “Mr. Jones, I’d like you to meet Dennis Kelly, Brad Connors and Humphrey Smith.”

The men looked up from their game in acknowledgment of the introduction, but did not stand and offered no words of greeting. The one she’d called Mr. Kelly was a heavyset blonde with muttonchop whiskers. He said to Jennie, “Is he bothering you with those papers again, Miss Jennie?”

“Mr. Jones says he’s come here to help, Dennis,” she told him with a smile.

“Why can’t the town just leave these girls alone?” Kelly asked, turning his gaze on Carter. “Ain’t they got enough problems?” The other two men at the table nodded their agreement.

Still more defenders for the Sheridans, Carter noted. “That’s what I came to talk over with Miss Sheridan. I’d like to help her and her sister out of this dilemma.”

The three men didn’t reply, but sat staring at Jennie and Carter, making no move to resume their game. After a couple minutes of awkward silence, Jennie said, “Why don’t we go in the kitchen, Mr. Jones? I’ll pour you a glass of cider.”

Carter nodded and after a distracted “Nice to meet you” to the boarders, he followed her to the back of the house, relieved that he didn’t have to talk with her in front of such a partisan audience.

“So it’s the presence of those three men that’s causing all this ruckus?” he asked her as he sat on the stool she indicated.

She stood with her back to him, filling two glasses from a clay pitcher. “Yes. But, of course, they’re not the real reason.”

“They’re not?” She turned back and offered him one of the glasses. He took it, trying to keep his eyes off the way her slender white arm disappeared into a ruffle of maroon silk.

She perched on a stool on the opposite side of the table. “It’s Kate who’s the problem,” she said. “She’s going to have a baby.”

Carter was a little taken aback at her bluntness, but he recovered quickly, saying, “It’s not illegal to have a baby.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know it to talk to the people in this town. They’d just as soon lock her up and throw away the key.”

Carter knew a lot about bitterness, but it was hard to hear it coming from Jennie Sheridan’s beautiful lips. “I’ve met a passel of nice people in this town in the few months I’ve been here. I find it hard to believe they’re as vindictive as you say. In fact, besides Lyle Wentworth, I had another person offer support for you two today—Dr. Millard.”

Jennie’s expression softened. “Dr. Millard’s a good man. A lot of the people in town are. But then there are the ones like Henrietta Billingsley. I’d thought she was my mother’s friend. Now she comes around here and tries to blame Kate for my parents’ deaths.”

Jennie took a big swallow of cider and Carter could see that her hands were shaking. Unlike his own bitterness, which had been long-standing and coldly calculated, Jennie’s was raw, sharply edged with hurt. “I had heard that your parents died of the influenza last spring,” he said gently.

“They did. Kate’s condition had absolutely nothing to do with it—the very idea is absurd. They didn’t…know about it before they died. Kate didn’t even know then.”

“People say cruel things sometimes without thinking.”

“Oh, Henrietta thinks about them, all right. Then she goes ahead and says them, taking joy in the process.”

She held herself stiffly erect on the stool, and Carter had an almost uncontrollable impulse to walk around the table and pull her off the stool into his arms. He’d met the woman only today, but he was already feeling as if some invisible thread had wrapped itself around the two of them, tangling up her feelings with his own.

“You’ll have to learn to ignore her, then,” he said instead. “Just deal with the people who are worth your attention—people like Dr. Millard.”

His comment was rewarded with another half smile. “Yes, we do have some friends left.”

Carter started to extend his hand toward where hers rested on the table across from him but changed his mind. He had the feeling that Jennie Sheridan would have to be gentled more cautiously than a wild young mare. He withdrew his hand. “I’d like to be counted as one of those friends,” he said simply.

She smiled again, this time with a rueful twist to her mouth. “Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be shutting us down?”

“I’m an officer of the court, and there’s a court order shutting you down.”

The smile disappeared. “So there you have it,” she said softly.

“Which is why I spent a great portion of my afternoon going through law books trying to find a way out for you.”

He could see the sweep of her long lashes all the way across the table as she blinked in astonishment. “You did?”

He nodded. “I told you, I’d like to help.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

It was a logical question, he supposed, but he hadn’t expected it. And he had no idea what to answer. It didn’t seem that it would advance his case with her any to say, “Because you made my entire body come alive this morning when I saw you walking down the street toward me.” It was a woefully inadequate answer, even to himself.

“I don’t like injustices,” he said finally.

Jennie regarded him with genuine surprise. “I’ve misjudged you, Mr. Jones,” she said softly. “I think I owe you an apology for yelling at you this morning.”

Carter grinned. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you call me Carter.”

The glow in her brown eyes dimmed. “I don’t think I could do that”

“It’s not so much to ask. You call Lyle by his first name.”

“We’ve known Lyle since we were children.”

Carter slid off the stool and walked around to stand in front of her. After a moment’s hesitation, he plucked her right hand from where it rested on her knee and wrapped it in both of his. “You have lots of old friends in town. I’d like to be a new one.”

Jennie’s breathing deepened. She looked up into his eyes and nodded slowly without words.

“So you’ll call me Carter?” he asked softly, his voice persuasive, a little husky.

She gave another slow nod.

“Let me hear you say it,” he insisted. “Say, ‘good night, Carter.’”

“Good night, Carter,” she repeated, her eyes never leaving his.

He dropped her hand in her lap. “I’ll come by tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to wire the district judge in Virginia City about this case.”

Her only response was another nod and the wide gaze of her brown eyes.

He gave a satisfied smile and said, “I’ll see myself out” Then he turned, crossed the kitchen and went out through the front hall. By the time he got to the stoop, he was whistling and thinking to himself that perhaps the gentling of Miss Jennie would not be quite as slow a process as he had feared.

Flapjacks had been their father’s specialty. Or rather, they had been the only item that he ever cooked in his entire life, so it had been customary to make a big fuss whenever he, with great ceremony, donned their mother’s apron and took over the stove. Jennie and Kate had avoided the food for the first few weeks after the deaths, but when the silverheels had asked about flapjacks for breakfast, Jennie had decided she would take over her father’s duties.

She stood over the pan ladling and flipping until there was a platter of the fluffy cakes big enough to feed, as Kate pointed out each time, the entire Seventh Cavalry…or three hungry miners.

“He said he wants to help, but he didn’t say how?” Kate asked her sister as Jennie watched carefully for the first bubbles to rise on the last batch.

“He said he’d get back to us today with more ideas,” Jennie answered carefully. She’d had no choice but to tell her sister about last night’s visit from Carter Jones. The silverheels would have revealed it if she hadn’t mentioned it first. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to discuss the encounter with Kate. It had left her too confused.

“So what did you talk about?”

“I don’t know…just…well, Lyle, for one thing.” That ought to shut her sister up, Jennie thought smugly.

But she was wrong. Kate continued the interrogation. “What about Lyle?”

“Mr. Jones says he’s still smitten with you.”

Kate shrugged. “That’s his problem, I guess. Any man who would be fool enough to carry a torch for a fallen woman deserves to suffer.”

Jennie knew it was unhappiness, not cruelty, behind her sister’s brittle words. “Fallen woman, indeed,” she snorted.

But Kate would not be led away from the subject. “Well, what did you think of the man? You never answered my question about him yesterday.”

What did she think of him? “Think” wasn’t precisely the word she would have chosen. It had not been rational thought that had made her turn into a speechless goose last night when Carter Jones had taken her hand and looked at her with those riveting gray eyes. “I think he was sincere about wanting to help. And, Lord knows, we can use all the friends we can get these days.”

“And he’s a lawyer, which is good. But why does he want to help us?”

What had he said? Something about injustice. Jennie didn’t completely buy it. Carter Jones didn’t strike her as the idealistic type. But she was afraid to offer the only other explanation that seemed logical, because it was a possibility that she didn’t even want to consider. He couldn’t be attracted to her. For one thing, they’d barely met. For another, the last thing either Jennie or her sister needed in their lives was another fast-talking, charming scalawag of a male.

She piled the last three flapjacks on the platter, then put down the turner and wiped her hands on her mother’s apron. “I don’t know. It’s probably a lawyer thing. They’re always trying to see if they can find an angle that no one else has thought of.”

Kate started to pick up the platter, but Jennie pushed her sister’s hands out of the way and lifted it herself. By now Kate had stopped protesting when Jennie took over her share of the work. “Well, it doesn’t sound as if he left a very good impression on you.”

Jennie headed toward the door of the dining room. “Good enough,” she said, keeping her voice light “At least I didn’t yell at him and slam the door in his face like the first time.”

Kate giggled. “Dorie Millard says when you treat men badly it makes them want you more.”

Dr. Millard’s daughter, Dorothy, was notorious for giving advice on romance to anyone who would listen. Jennie would have liked to discount her words as giddy nonsense, but the truth was that Dorie had always had more suitors than any other girl in town.

She hesitated a minute before she said, “Mr. Jones doesn’t want me, Kate. The idea’s absurd.” Then she pushed her way through to where the miners were impatiently awaiting their breakfast.

Kate had perked up her head at Jennie’s last words. She’d only been teasing by bringing up Dorie’s proclamation. But the break in her sister’s voice had been unmistakable. And unprecedented. Could it be possible that Jennie was finally feeling what it was to be attracted to a man? Kate smiled, then clasped her hands over her stomach and addressed her unborn child. “What do you think, sugarplum? It sounds to me like we’d better have ourselves a look at this Mr. Carter Jones.”

Jennie tried to tell herself that she was acting no differently than she would on any other day. She and Barnaby cleaned up the breakfast dishes while Kate lay down for her morning rest Then she deliberately made herself put on her gardening dress, the least attractive thing she owned, and went out to weed and pick the vegetables. She refused to admit that she was hurrying through the task so that she could clean up and change her attire. And she picked her second-best day dress, the yellow one with five pink primroses tucked along the bodice. Of course, it was the one she’d been wearing when Jack Foster had told her that the yellow dress and her glossy dark brown hair made her look as pretty as a black-eyed Susan.

If she was jumpier than normal during the day, it was because she hadn’t slept well last night, still nursing her headache and thinking about that blasted court order. It had nothing to do with the fact that every time that broken shutter in front blew open she’d thought it had been footsteps coming up the walk.

In the end it was nearly five before he came. And by then she was more or less convinced that she truly didn’t care if she saw him again. But when she opened the door to see him standing there holding a nosegay of delicate purple flowers complete with a trailing ribbon, she knew that she was in trouble.

“How are you, Mr. Jones?” she managed to say calmly enough. “Come in.”

Carter frowned. “We’d progressed farther than that last night,” he said, handing her the flowers with a slight bow. “You called me Carter, remember?”

Jennie remembered every second of last night’s encounter. But she said, “It was done under duress, I believe.”

Carter laughed. “Turning legal on me, are you?”

“It’s your profession, Counselor.” The banter was making Jennie feel giddy. Growing up, she’d avoided the casual flirtations with the boys in town, preferring the solitude of home with her books or her music. Kate had always been the one who’d drawn the boys’ eyes, and that had been fine with Jennie. After Kate’s disaster with Sean Flaherty, Jennie was even more strongly convinced that men were not a necessary ingredient for happiness. Indeed, they could sometimes be the major obstacle to it.

Which didn’t explain why she was standing in her front doorway, grinning up at Carter Jones as if he were the candy man at the circus. She forced her face into a more sedate expression, took the flowers from him and gestured for him to come in.

“You can finally meet my sister,” she told him over her shoulder. “She’s back in the kitchen shelling some peas for supper.”

Carter touched her arm. His fingers were warm through the soft yellow muslin of her dress. “Would you mind if I spoke to you alone first?” he asked.

His suddenly serious tone made her stop at once. She turned back toward him. “Of course. We’ll go into the parlor.”

Once again they entered under the draped archway, but this time the room was empty. The table the miners had used for their card game was pushed back against the wall and held a vase of freshly cut flowers. Carter pointed across the room to the piano. “Do you play?”

Jennie nodded. “Yes. And Kate sings. We’re kind of a team,” she added with a smile. She sat down in one of the tufted chairs and motioned for Carter to take the settee.

“You and your sister watch out for each other,” he observed.

“Yes. We always have. But now more than ever since our parents are gone. Kate’s all I have.”

Carter’s face was still grave. “This has been difficult for you, then.”

“Losing one’s parents is one of the most difficult things…”

“No, I mean about your sister. Her…ah…problem.”

Jennie was silent for a moment. Finally she said simply, “Yes.”

“Then I hope you won’t think I’m presumptuous when I tell you I’ve been doing some work today on your dilemma.”

“Of course not.” She smiled at him. “I told you yesterday that I was sorry our first meeting was so…abrasive. I appreciate your help. Truly. Both Kate and I do.”

Carter gave a brisk nod. “First I should tell you that it appears that the court’s order on your zoning infraction is perfectly legal.”

Jennie’s smile faltered. “You mean, they have the right to make us stop renting to the silverheels…to the miners.”

Carter nodded. “So I decided we needed another approach.”

Jennie leaned against the back of the chair. Something about Carter’s businesslike manner was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. He seemed different than he had in the dim kitchen light last night when he’d taken hold of her hand. Now he seemed more lawyerlike, more like the overbearing males who’d dealt with her case when she’d gone to the district court to give her side on the zoning issue. “Another approach?” she asked warily.

“I talked to the members of the town council.”

Jennie’s shoulders sagged against the back of the chair. “You mean you talked with Henrietta Billingsley. Because Henry Billingsley runs the council and Henrietta runs him.”

“Yes, Mrs. Billingsley was involved in our discussions.”

“I’ll bet she was.”

“But I think we were able to come to an agreement that will satisfy everyone.”

“Now that would surprise me very much.”

Carter smiled at her, but his smile didn’t make her insides do the same flip-flops that it had the previous evening. “They’re willing to give you an exemption to the zoning ordinance to rent rooms here to a maximum of four boarders.”

Jennie’s eyes widened. “They are?”

“Yes.”

“I can hardly believe it.”

“I think you’d be surprised to find that many people in town have a lot of sympathy for you and your sister. They know that it’s not your fault that you lost your parents and were left in less than desirable financial circumstances.”

Jennie gave another disbelieving nod. “So we can keep on just as is?”

“Well, not exactly. It seems that the objection is not so much to the boarders as to the presence of…the…ah…”

“My sister,” Jennie supplied, her voice suddenly hard.

Carter nodded kindly. “There’s an asylum in Carson City where she can stay until such time as she is sufficiently recovered and the adoption of the child is arranged—”

Jennie was on her feet before he could finish. “An asylum!”

Carter rose from the settee more slowly. “It’s a home, really. A home for girls in trouble like your sister.”

Jennie literally sputtered with fury. When she could shape the words into speech she leaned close to Carter and said, “The only trouble my sister has is meddling busybodies like you who can’t leave decent people alone to live out their lives.”

“I’m trying to work out a settlement that will—”

Jennie reached to grab Carter’s hat from where he had laid it beside him on the settee and she went up on tiptoe to jam it onto his head, taking care to crush the brim in the process. Then she picked up the delicate nosegay from the table and stabbed it into his chest. “You can just take your settlement and your damn flowers and get out of here. My sister is waiting for me to help her fix dinner in our kitchen in our house, the house where she’s going to have her baby and raise him or her to be a more caring, tolerant person who will be worth more than every hypocritical member of the town council put together.”

Carter made a halfhearted attempt to straighten his hat with one hand while he held on to the mangled flowers with the other. Jennie finished her speech and, without giving him a chance to reply, whirled on her heel and stalked out of the room. As she disappeared under the doorway drapery, she fired back over her shoulder, “You may see yourself out, Mr. Jones.”

Chapter Three

If Carter had any intention of soothing his feelings by forgetting the existence of Jennie Sheridan, he was doomed to be disappointed. For the next three days, as he awaited the ruling he’d sent for, a constant stream of visitors paraded through his office arguing the pros and cons of the sisters’ case. Even the three shaggy miners who were boarding at Sheridan House put in an appearance, shuffling and looking ill at ease among books and papers instead of their accustomed tools and rocks.

Just about the only person who didn’t show up was the one person he secretly kept hoping to see each time the creaky office door announced a new arrival. The person who’d unceremoniously thrown him out of her house at their last encounter.

This morning the advocate for the Sheridans was once again Dr. Millard, who had finally been called in to consult on Kate’s condition.

“Something’s got to be settled in this matter. And I mean, immediately,” the doctor said, his expression unusually serious.

“Unfortunately, courts don’t seem to be too good at getting things done anywhere near immediately.” Carter frowned at the number of pencils scattered around his desk and began to replace them in their appropriate trough.

“They’d better make an exception this time. The health of a young woman might depend on it.”

“Kate Sheridan’s not doing well?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the condition of my patients, Carter. You’re a lawyer—you know that. But I’ll tell you that I’m making a professional recommendation that the Sheridans not be subjected to any more anxiety.”

Spending half his time on a dispute over a minor zoning infraction was not what Carter had envisioned when he’d taken the district attorney position. He’d been hoping for some kind of high-profile trial of the century that would have put him in the political spotlight for the entire state. Part of him wished the whole thing would go away. Another part of him wished he could yet come up with a solution that would make him a hero to the stubborn but lovely Jennie.

“I’ll send another wire to the court,” he told the doctor. “And in the meantime I could see the Sheridans and tell them that no one will be closing them down until we’ve heard on the appeal. Do you think that would help?”

Dr. Millard nodded. “It’s just not healthy for Kate to be sitting over there waiting for the sheriff to appear any moment. She needs total peace and rest.”

“A house full of men doesn’t seem too peaceful to me,” Carter observed.

“Jennie’s handling things. She won’t even let Kate make the beds anymore. Jennie does the cleaning, cooking, fetching water and cares for Kate, as well.”

Carter made no comment. He’d seen Jennie handling things. Himself, for one. But he’d also seen her turn shy and tongue-tied as a schoolgirl that night he’d taken her hand and asked her to call him Carter. Which was the real Jennie? he wondered. He wasn’t likely to find out if his last-ditch appeal on her case came back rejected, as he was almost certain it would.

Dr. Millard stood, pushing heavily on the arms of the chair. “Old bones don’t want to work some days,” he muttered. Then he looked across the desk at Carter, his eyes as piercing and sharp as any man half his age. “Go talk to them, my boy. Make up a story, if you have to. I’d wager it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve stretched the truth to tell a pretty girl what she wants to hear.”

Dr. Millard softened his accusation with a wink, and Carter grinned as he answered, “You’d win that bet, Doctor.”

He waited until the doctor had slowly made his way down the office stairs, then reached for his hat. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face Jennie Sheridan yet, but he would send that wire. At the very least, it would get him out from behind this desk.

Throughout his childhood Carter had watched the comings and goings of Philadelphia mainline society from hidden corners in laundry rooms and butler’s pantries. He’d not merely watched, he’d studied them until he could imitate the haughtiest Pennington or the most tiresome Witherspoon.

He’d learned early to keep out of their way, to allow no opportunities for the rich young offspring of the people his mother worked for to taunt him for his lack of a name. But it had been a lesson learned in heartache. His mother, Maude, had usually been too tired from her days of scrubbing floors and polishing mahogany staircases to lend comfort to the small boy who had, after all, been the result of an entirely improper upstairs-downstairs liaison that had been the one mistake in her circumspect life.

So Carter was left on his own to watch and plan. His blood was every bit as blue as these elegant men and women who passed him by each day as if he were no more than one of the marble statues currently in vogue. His father had given him the heritage, but not the name. Nor would he ever have the chance to do so. According to Maude Jones, Carter’s father had been sent off in disgrace on a grand tour of Europe after impregnating the family servant and had died in a carriage accident in Italy.

Sometimes Carter used to spin fantasies about what would have happened if his father had returned from that trip. He would have visited Maude in the tiny apartment she’d been forced to take to await the birth. There he’d have seen his son and would have been so full of fatherly pride that he would have resisted his entire family and taken Maude to wife. And Carter would be living in one of the fine stone mansions instead of lurking there in shadows, waiting for his mother to finish her endless toil.

Walking slowly down the main street of Vermillion toward the telegraph office, he wondered what had triggered his sudden reverie into the past. It had been months since he’d indulged in those memories. Months, too, since he’d written to his benefactor, a Mr. Arthur Trenton, one of his mother’s employers who had finally noticed the boy in the shadows and had seen fit to send the abnormally bright child first to prep school and then to Harvard.

Before his mother’s death, Carter had spun fantasies of Mr. Trenton falling in love with Maude and marrying her, which would finally give Carter the name he craved. But, of course, by then Maude was no longer the pretty English immigrant fresh off the boat. Years of labor had roughened her skin and dulled her bright eyes. Arthur Trenton never so much as glanced her way.

He’d send Mr. Trenton a wire instead of a letter. That would show him how prosperous Carter was becoming, how important. No time for pen and paper. Just a wire, businesslike and expensive. He’d tell him what an important position he’d obtained—district attorney. It sounded impressive. In a wire there would be no space to provide the exact details of his jurisdiction. He wouldn’t be able to tell the old man that his days consisted mostly of farm disputes and dealing with small-town politics.

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he nearly collided head-on with a solid wall of them. Henrietta Billingsley, Margaret Potter and Lucinda Wentworth, coming directly toward him with all sheets to the wind.

“Good morning, ladies,” he acknowledged with a forced smile and a tip of his hat.

“We need to talk with you, Mr. Jones. We were just going to your office,” Mrs. Billingsley said. She planted her substantial form directly in front of him, causing him to abandon any hope of slipping easily around the group to continue on his course.

“Let me guess the topic.”

Like a helpful sergeant at arms, Miss Potter continued, “It’s been four days, Mr. Jones. What’s the delay in dealing with those girls?”

“They still have that house open as if there’s not a thing wrong,” Henrietta added.

Carter waited, looking at Lucinda Wentworth. He was curious to see if she would add her voice, or if her son had convinced her to stay out of the fray. She darted nervous glances at her two friends, her pinched face looking strained, but remained silent.

“There’s been an appeal of the ruling,” Carter said finally. He wasn’t about to add that he himself had engineered the appeal. Not in front of this crew.

Henrietta huffed loudly, her face beginning to color. “We’ve already gone through an appeal. What are they going to do, appeal from now until the day that bastard child pops out for the entire town to see?”

Mrs. Wentworth gasped, then blanched and swayed toward Margaret Potter, who in turn was pushed toward Henrietta. As Carter watched with growing horror, the matrons began to topple like a row of buxom dominoes. In quick succession he threw his upper body to block Mrs. Billingsley’s fall, then reached his long arms around her to ward off the further descent of Miss Potter, who by now was entirely supporting the weight of an apparently unconscious Lucinda.

When Carter was assured that Mrs. Billingsley’s significant bulk would maintain her upright, he stepped around her, lifted Mrs. Wentworth from Margaret Potter’s shoulder and leaned her up against the post that sustained the wooden awning over the Billingsleys’ dry goods store. Her head hit the column with a thud and her eyes fluttered open.

Henrietta had recovered her balance and her voice. “Not another of your swoons, Lucinda. Honestly, you’re such a goose.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s pale cheeks grew pink with indignation. “Any decent person would be liable to swoon at that kind of language. I’m shocked at you, Henrietta.”

“It’s not the language that’s shocking. It’s the situation. To think of that hussy shamelessly flaunting her condition as if she had all the right in the world…”

Mrs. Wentworth appeared to be recovering rapidly, so Carter stepped back. Mrs. Billingsley’s eyes widened and her voice trailed off as she focused over his shoulder. Whether it was Lucinda Wentworth’s suddenly shamefaced expression or the slight hint of fresh lemon scent, he knew without seeing her that the new arrival was Jennie Sheridan.

He whirled around but could find no words of greeting. Her lips were tight, nearly bloodless. Carter watched, fascinated, as her eyes drilled into each of the three older women, then settled on Mrs. Billingsley. Her small chin went up and she said stiffly, “Far from flaunting anything, the hussy you refer to has not left her house for three months, thanks to people like you. Though I don’t recall you thinking she was so shameless when she spent a whole summer taking care of your twins when your mother was dying from consumption.”

She took a step to the side and fixed her gaze on Margaret Potter. “And I can’t remember that you thought Kate was a hussy, Miss Potter, when she stayed after school every day to help you set up the school library.”

She moved over one more step to the edge of the sidewalk. “And, Mrs. Wentworth, Kate was evidently good enough for your precious Lyle to set his cap for her.”

“He never…” Mrs. Wentworth began, but faltered as her two friends sent her withering looks, as though this lapse of discretion in her only son was entirely her fault.

Carter’s neck had grown sticky with sweat, causing his starched collar to prickle. “Ladies, I don’t think we’re going to solve anything…”

The women found common ground in ignoring him. All four seemed to be talking at once and mysteriously understanding what each of the other three was saying.

“And now that the entire town has begun this crusade against us, you all have her so upset that Dr. Millard says her health is in danger,” Jennie continued.

This statement brought a moment of silence into which Carter ventured once again. “Dr. Millard informed me this morning that Miss Kate Sheridan is not well,” he said, supporting Jennie’s assertion.

“Will she lose the child?” Mrs. Billingsley asked with a touch of eagerness that even she immediately realized was unseemly. “I mean…she’s not terribly sick, is she?”

Carter could see the rise and fall of Jennie’s breasts as she fought to keep her emotions under control. He himself wouldn’t be averse to giving Henrietta Billingsley a shove right over the edge of the sidewalk.

“I’m on my way to fetch the doctor now,” she said. The quaver in her voice told Carter that she was a lot more scared than she had let on in her feisty confrontation with the town matrons.

“I’ll go with you,” he offered.

Mrs. Billingsley looked stricken. “We were having a discussion, Mr. Jones.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If you’ll stop by my office tomorrow morning, I’ll be happy to consider any matter you’d like to bring up.”

He took Jennie’s arm and stepped off the sidewalk into the street so the two of them could outflank the three older women before they could make any further protest. She let him pull her along without speaking until they were safely out of earshot, then she slowed her pace. “Thank you for the rescue,” she said in a stilted voice. “I wasn’t in much of a mood to deal with those women today. But you don’t have to come with me.”

He looked down at her and said simply, “I want to.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“Let’s say I feel involved. Dr. Millard came to see me this morning and warned me that this situation was becoming unhealthy for your sister.”

Jennie nodded. “She worries too much. And she cares too much about what everyone else thinks.”

“But you don’t.”

“I care what Kate thinks. Or worthwhile people like Dr. Millard. But I certainly don’t care about the views of a bunch of old biddies with time on their hands and nonsense in their heads.”

“Good for you, Miss Sheridan. I’ve been known to ignore the court of public opinion a time or two myself.”

Jennie had continued walking along at Carter’s side in the direction of the. doctor’s office, but now she stopped and looked up at him with a curious expression. “I thought you were a politician, Mr. Jones. Your kind lives and dies by public opinion.”

Carter grinned. “It’s a matter of picking your battles. That and knowing when it might be worth it to fight on the other side awhile.”

“Well, I don’t know why you’ve decided that this is one of those times, but I’m grateful, Mr. Jones.”

“Grateful enough to call me Carter, like you did the first day we met?”

The tense look in her eyes was gradually being replaced by a warmth that was kindling another kind of warmth in Carter’s midsection. “Those guardians of the town’s morality you were just talking to will think it scandalous if they hear me.”

Carter grimaced. “It will give them something to think about besides your sister, then.”

Jennie smiled. “Yes. That’s a strategy I haven’t used yet. If I become a greater scandal, they’ll turn their attention away from Kate.” She moved closer to him and linked her arm through his. “I shall call you Carter. And you must call me Jennie. Loudly enough for them to hear it all the way back to Mr. Billingsley’s store.”

Carter chuckled. He had his doubts about the wisdom of her so-called strategy. As far as he could tell, the town matrons had plenty of ammunition to lob at Kate Sheridan and her sister both, if given cause. But he was enjoying her good humor. “Jennie it is,” he said with a grin.

“Thank you…Carter,” she replied, raising her voice as she said his name.

They turned their heads in unison and, sure enough, the three matrons were staring after them with appalled expressions.

Jennie and Carter smiled at each other, then started toward Dr. Millard’s once again. As they walked down the street, Jennie began to giggle. Carter had heard her raging and had heard her determined. He’d heard her with worry cracking her voice. But nothing he’d heard from her up to now affected him like that giggle. He found it more enchanting than a choir of angels.

Dr. Millard had been with Kate for over an hour. By the time he emerged from her bedroom at the far end of the hall, Jennie was pacing the parlor, taut with worry. Carter had left her at the doctor’s office after telling Jennie that he’d be interested in hearing a report on her sister’s condition.

She’d spent the first few minutes after arriving home going over the conversation she’d had with the handsome prosecutor. Carter Jones wasn’t so bad, she reckoned. Perhaps Kate was right that not all men were like Sean Flaherty.

But as the minutes ticked by and Dr. Millard still had not emerged from Kate’s bedroom, she began to get more and more nervous. She snapped unreasonably at Barnaby when he pushed aside the parlor door drapes, just because she’d hoped it was the doctor.

When Dr. Millard finally did come through the arched doorway, he looked tired and suddenly old. Her father and Dr. Millard had been the same age and the greatest of friends. But Papa’s cheeks had never had that pallid, puffy look. His lips had not grown crinkled with lines. And now, of course, they never would. Jennie felt a sob rise in her throat. She’d lost so much. Dear Lord, not Kate, too.

“You look like a child who’s had its toys snatched away, Jennie,” the doctor said gently. “Come on. Kate needs you to be strong right now, not weepy.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Dr. Millard’s words had hurt her pride and stiffened her back, which was most likely exactly the effect he had intended.

“Honey, some girls are blessed to have babies by the baker’s dozen without batting an eye, but your sister’s turning out to be a more delicate sort.”

Jennie bit her lip. “Is she going to be all right? I mean…is the baby…?”

Dr. Millard pulled on Jennie’s arm and led her to the settee, where he lowered himself into the down cushion with a heavy whoosh. “She’s bleeding, Jennie. That’s not supposed to happen. Could be she’ll lose the little tyke. Now, maybe that’s what’s meant to happen. Poor little thing without a father. You know sometimes the Lord…”

Jennie had let him pull her to a seat, but she sat erect, and when he began the last statement she jumped to her feet again. “Dr. Millard, this baby may not have a father, but it will have a family. A loving, caring family. So don’t tell me that it’s not meant to be. Just tell me what we have to do to be sure my sister has a healthy child.”

The doctor leaned back and closed his eyes with a sigh. “The only thing I can tell you is that she’s got to rest Keep her off her feet as much as possible. I know that puts a lot of burden on you.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“You should have some help.”

Jennie gave a little snort. “Shall I post a notice in the town square and see how many people come rushing to help the two wicked Sheridan sisters?”

“That’s not fair, Jennie. You know you have friends here. Lyle Wentworth came to see me about your sister. He’d help out around this place.”

“Kate doesn’t want to see him, Dr. Millard. And I don’t imagine you’d want me upsetting her.”

The doctor shook his head. “Definitely not. But there are others. That young Carter Jones seemed a bit taken with you when he escorted you to my place today. I bet he’d lend a hand.”

To Jennie’s amazement, she felt her cheeks begin to grow hot. Could she be blushing? Only silly girls blushed. Silly, lovesick girls. “I’m sure Mr. Jones has more important things to do than worry about us,” she said. “We’ll get along fine. I’ve got Barnaby to help out. And the miners will lend a hand, if I ask them. We’ll make sure Kate doesn’t so much as fluff the pillow from her bed.”

Dr. Millard pushed heavily on the arm of the settee and stood. He leaned over to put a soft hand on Jennie’s still-blushing cheek, which seem to burn under his touch. “You’ve got your parents’ spirit, girl. The same spirit that took them through all those winters in the mountains. Strong, independent people they were. Some of the finest I’ve known.”

Jennie nodded, her throat too full to answer.

“So you and I will do our best to take care of our Kate and of that grandchild of theirs,” he added.

As the doctor quietly left the parlor, Jennie stood staring blindly at the bombazine curtains. She’d been thinking of all the problems this coming child was causing, but what about the child itself? Her parents’ grandchild. Her sister was going to have a baby—a new life to carry on the proud tradition that her parents had done such a good job of passing on to her and Kate. Yes, she’d take care of Kate and of the baby, too. She wouldn’t let them down. And Dr. Millard was wrong. She didn’t need help from anyone to do it.

Chapter Four

Like the eye of a hurricane, Kate sat on a stool in one corner of the kitchen, viewing the scene with one of her serene smiles. Around her the room was in chaos.

Jennie stood next to the stove, sleeves rolled up, her hair fallen in damp ringlets around her neck. Dark patches had begun to show across her back where her dress clung to her sweaty body.

Barnaby had climbed up into the tin sink and was balancing precariously while he picked the good china plates one by one out of the high cupboard and handed them to Dennis Kelly, who took each fragile dish in his meaty hands and set it down on the table as if it were a piece of spun sugar.

Brad Connors and Humphrey Smith were standing together at the cutting counter, jostling each other and grumbling as they chopped vegetables.

“Smitty ain’t doing it right, Miss Jennie,” Brad complained. “He’s not cutting off enough at the tops.”

“You’re throwing away half the carrot, Connors,” Smitty replied. “I didn’t break my back picking those out of the garden for you to waste ‘em like that.”

Jennie set aside the big spoon she’d been using to stir the stew and reached to put the cover on the big pot. “It doesn’t matter, boys. However you chop them will be fine. We have plenty of carrots.”

“Well, someone else is going to have to go grub in the dirt and find them,” Smitty said under his breath, but he moved a step back from where Brad continued to chop furiously, throwing the top two inches off each vegetable into the garbage bin on the floor beneath them.

“I’m just grateful you’ve all agreed to pitch in and help,” Jennie said, her voice sounding a little weary. “Mr. Jones and the Millards have been quite a help to us and I don’t think I would have dared ask them to supper if Barnaby and I had to do it all by ourselves.”

“If you’d let me help…” Kate began from her corner seat, but she fell silent as Jennie fixed her with a stern look.

“We’ve told you to count on us, Miss Jennie,” Dennis Kelly said. He had finished stacking the plates Barnaby had handed him and was now warily transferring crystal goblets.

Jennie leaned back against the warm stove, heedless of her damp dress, and regarded the three men fondly. “I don’t know how we were so lucky to have you three come along just when Kate and I needed friends so badly.”

The skin around Dennis’s muttonchop whiskers turned bright red. “It’s a downright shame how the people in this town turned their backs on you two girls,” he said, his voice hoarse with indignation. “Why, you’re two of the sweetest little gals we’ve ever known. Right, boys?”

Smitty continued chopping, but Brad turned and said, “Sure as shootin’. Two of the prettiest, too.”

Dennis shot him a look of reproof. “We’ll help you through this. And I’d just like to see that old battleax try to stop us.”

Jennie’s smile broadened. She wouldn’t like to predict the outcome of a showdown between Mrs. Billingsley and her silverheels. Blood might be drawn. “Smitty, I think we have enough—honestly. You can put the rest of those down in the cellar.”

Barnaby handed down the last glass, then jumped to the floor. “When will Mr. Jones be here?” he asked.

Jennie pulled her mother’s silver watch from around her neck. “Goodness! It’s past six already.”

Kate slid off the stool. “Jen, I want you to go upstairs and get washed up. I’ll supervise the rest of this.” She held up a hand as Jennie began to protest. “I won’t make a move. I won’t lift a dish. I’ll just give orders to this handsome crew here.” She indicated the three miners and Barnaby with a smile and a wave of her hand.

Jennie looked doubtful. “Someone needs to drop in the dumplings.”

“I’ll do it,” Dennis offered. “Kate can show me how.”

“And the apple crisp should be done any minute now. You need to keep watch because that stove burns.”

Kate came up behind her sister and gave her a little shove toward the door. “We’ll handle it. If you don’t hurry on upstairs, you’ll be greeting your guests looking like the scullery maid.”

Jennie took a look down at her bedraggled frock and gave a wail. “I wanted everything to go so well.”

Kate laughed. “I wonder why. Dr. Millard and Dorie have eaten in this house dozens of times. Which means it must be Mr. Jones you want to impress.”

Jennie frowned. “I don’t want to impress anyone. I just feel that we should thank the people who have stood up against the rest of those close-minded—”

Kate gave her a hug and a more forceful push. “Don’t get started, sis. We’re here to have a pleasant evening. So go upstairs and get yourself beautiful.”

Jennie sagged a little against her sister’s arm, which tightened against her. It felt comforting. She took a deep breath and a last look around the kitchen. Most of the meal was ready. Barnaby had disappeared into the dining room with the first of the good plates, which he evidently intended to transport one by one. Kate was right. Everything was in good shape except herself. She leaned over to give her sister a peck on the cheek, then darted out of the kitchen toward the front hall.

Barnaby stood by the front door looking up at her with wide eyes. Behind him was Carter Jones. She gave a little shriek.

“Am I early?” he asked.

Bits of dumpling dough clung to her hands. She put them behind her back. “No. I’m…ah…late. I mean, I’m not quite ready yet.”

“Shall I come back later?” he asked uncertainly.

“No, of course not.” She wished there was some way to keep his eyes from roving up and down her stained old dress that way. She pushed at the hair that had fallen down her neck, but stopped as she felt it stick to her doughy fingers. “Barnaby, take Mr. Jones into the parlor, please. Then ask Miss Kate to come out and sit with him until I…until I come downstairs.”

His gaze had followed the movement of her hands and seemed to fix on where the tendrils of hair just under her left ear were now stuck to her neck with dough. Jennie could feel the beginning of one of those blushes whose existence she had so recently discovered.

He smiled at her, his gray eyes warming. “I’ll be fine, Jennie,” he said softly. “Take your time.”

She let out a long breath, irritated that her heart refused to slow to anything near normal. With a lift of her chin, she returned his gaze directly and said, “I’ll be down in five minutes.”

Dorie Millard had worn her hair styled in the same blond ringlets framing her face ever since Jennie could remember. She was two years older than Jennie, approaching old-maid status by Vermillion standards, but her single state wasn’t for lack of offers. Jennie reckoned she’d be hard-pressed to find an eligible male in town under the age of fifty who hadn’t asked for Dorie’s hand. But the doctor’s breezy daughter seemed perfectly happy to continue being the unmarried belle of the church ice-cream socials and the harvest dances at the back of the feed mill.

Jennie watched with unusual interest as Dorie turned her sunshiny smile on Carter, waiting for the inevitable male response. But to her surprise, Carter seemed to divide his attention equally among the ladies present. In fact, he addressed just as many comments to Dr. Millard and the silverheels, or at least Dennis. Brad and Smitty weren’t much for conversation.

She wouldn’t admit to herself that she was gratified by Carter’s apparent failure to be charmed by Dorie. After all, it was possible that he was just being polite. He was a politician, used to having to stay on good terms with everyone. With three women at the table, he probably knew enough not to play favorites.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t help noticing that Carter’s eyes followed Jennie herself when she began to help Barnaby clear away the dishes. And while Dorie was in the middle of one of her most vivacious stories, Carter was smiling at Jennie and seemed not to be paying the least attention.

She hummed a little ditty to herself as she went swinging through the door to the kitchen, her arms full of plates.

“The dinner went well, didn’t it?” Barnaby whispered when they were both on the kitchen side of the door. He seemed to sense her good mood.

Jennie smiled. “It certainly did, young man. Thanks to your help.”

Barnaby looked pleased but embarrassed. “I only put out the dishes,” he mumbled into his chest.

“You did a fabulous job.” Jennie reached over to give his small shoulders a squeeze. “You served the meal like a real waiter from the most elegant restaurant in Virginia City.”

He looked up at her with a grin. “Maybe we should open our own eatery. That would give old Pruneface Potter something to really complain about.”

Margaret Potter did have something of a prune face. Jennie struggled not to smile, but felt obliged to say, “You shouldn’t talk that way about your teacher, Barnaby.”

The lad shrugged, unchastened. “Shall I spoon out the apple crisp?”

Jennie nodded. “A ladle of cream on each one. I’ll bring the rest of the plates.”

She turned back toward the dining room, still smiling. She could hear Dorie’s merry laugh before the door swung fully open. Her friend was standing directly behind Carter, her hands on either side of his neck, pulling up on his starched collar. “I don’t know how you men stand these things,” she said in a teasing voice. “Why, look…you’re as chafed as a newly saddled bronc. Now would you care to repeat those words about women suffering for vanity?”

Carter looked uncharacteristically embarrassed and had his hands up trying to hold the collar in place as Dorie tried to tug it off. The three miners were grinning, Kate looked mildly shocked and Dr. Millard sat shaking his head at his daughter with a look of longsuffering resignation.

“Miss Millard, I think I’ll keep my ensemble as is, if you don’t mind,” Carter protested.

Dorie laughed again and pushed the four inches of collar back down into the neck of the shirt. “You see, you men suffer for vanity, as well.”

Jennie felt an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach as Dorie’s slender fingers rubbed up and down Carter’s neck. It was a bit chafed, she could now see. But it would be hard to imagine him without the snowy-white collar. It seemed almost part of him.

Dorie gave one last stroke to her victim’s neck, then let him go. “We’re not so different—men and women,” she said. “Old and young. Town and country. Everyone likes to think they’re so different, but we’re all human. Deep inside we’re all the same.”

As usual, Dorie’s seemingly frivolous words sank in with surprising weight. Jennie looked over at Kate, who was endorsing Dorie’s observation with a serious nod.

Carter had relaxed his stiffened position and was regarding Dorie with an odd expression. The heightened color was fading from his face. “You may be right about that, Miss Millard,” he said with a glint of admiration in his voice. Jennie’s heart plummeted. Another conquest. How did Dorie manage?

The happiness she’d felt in the kitchen with Barnaby had disappeared. With a strained smile she took the plates from in front of Dennis and Brad and turned toward the kitchen.

Dorie was still on her feet. “Shall I help you with those, Jennie?” she asked. It was impossible to be resentful of Dorie, in spite of her ability to turn the head of any male she wished. She was simply too much fun and too nice to dislike.

“Sit back down and entertain the folks, Dorie,” Jennie said with a little laugh. “Barnaby and I will bring in the sweets directly.” She looked back at the group over her shoulder. “How many want coffee?”

When every male voice answered in the affirmative, Carter pushed back his chair and said, “She’s right. You must continue to provide the entertainment, Miss Millard. I’ll help Miss Sheridan with the coffee.”

The three miners looked over at Carter with surprise. It appeared that the stiff public prosecutor had had more than his collar loosened.

Jennie hesitated, then finally said, “All right. I’d appreciate a hand.” She continued on into the kitchen, her arms just a little shaky from the heavy plates.

Carter was right behind her. “Miss Millard is quite a debater,” he said softly, for her ears only. “She should consider a career in politics.”

“Some folks in this town might say she already practices her own special brand of politics,” Jennie said dryly.

“Politicking with the men in town?”

“With the eligible ones, at least. Dorie wouldn’t make time with someone else’s husband, but every other male out of short pants is pretty much fair game.”

Carter grinned as he stacked the dirty dishes he carried on top of the pile. “Do I detect a note of jealousy, Miss Sheridan? I thought you two were friends.”

“We are friends. And I’m certainly not jealous of her. In order to be jealous, I would have to care about making time with the men in town myself.”

“Which you don’t,” Carter clarified with an amused smile.

“No, sir.”

“Is this enough cream, Jennie?” Barnaby interrupted their exchange by stepping between them holding out a bowl of apple crisp.

Jennie gave the boy a grateful smile. What was it about talking with Carter Jones that made the breath stick in her throat? “That’s just perfect, Barnaby. You can begin taking them out to the dining room. Remember to serve the ladies first.”

Barnaby drew himself up proudly and marched toward the door, holding the bowl of crisp like a tournament trophy. Jennie’s smile turned tender. Their little foundling was always so eager to please.

Carter appeared to read her thoughts. “He glows like a lightning bug when you pay him a compliment.”

Jennie nodded. “You should have seen him when he first came here. He was so shy that he could hardly utter a sentence. He used to hang back in the shadows hoping no one would notice him.”

An odd expression flickered across Carter’s face, but after a moment, he smiled and said, “He’s learning fast. He had no problem with shyness the other day when he was barricading the door against me.”

Jennie nodded. “He’s grown very protective of Kate and me. It’s quite touching.”

Carter tipped his head in the direction of the dining room. “You seem to have a room full of protectors out there.”

Jennie laughed. “I guess we do. The miners are great. They even helped with the dinner tonight.”

Carter leaned back against the kitchen counter and surveyed her. She presented quite a different picture than the harried young woman with dough sticking to her neck he’d encountered before dinner. Her hair was back up in a proper chignon and she was wearing some kind of bustled blue silk thing that sculpted her slender silhouette as if she’d spent the entire afternoon being pinned and stitched by a seamstress.

Carter reckoned that nine men out of ten would pick either of the two blondes in the next room over Jennie Sheridan. Kate was a sleek beauty and Dorie a vivacious charmer. But there was something about Jennie. Half the time she was acting stubborn and prickly, daring the rest of the world to say something bad about her baby sister. But then she had those moments of looking like a child who had lost every anchor she’d ever had in life. And somewhere in between both those Jennies was a glimmer of the woman she refused to admit to being, a woman whose passions might fit the sensual promise of that sculpted, low-necked dress.

Suddenly he realized he’d been staring for too long. And that Jennie was staring right back. Barnaby had whisked past them three times now, carrying the bowls of dessert one at a time into the dining room. He cleared his throat. “So he was lucky to find you,” he said.

Jennie looked confused and blinked her unfocused eyes. “Who?”

Carter smiled gently. There was definitely a woman inside there waiting to find her way out. He wouldn’t mind being the one to help make it happen. “Barnaby. He was lucky to find this place to live with you and your sister.”

Jennie swallowed hard and said, “Well, we were lucky to have him. He’s been a tremendous help.” She reached out and gave Barnaby’s shoulder a pat as he passed by with another bowl. Then she and Carter lapsed into silence as they watched the boy swing through the door. Neither one was thinking about Barnaby.

“Goodness,” Jennie said suddenly. “The coffee!”

She was slightly flushed, and just at the side of her slender neck in the precise spot where the dough had stuck earlier, Carter could see her pulse beating. “Relax,” he said, in a voice that was lower and more intimate than any he had yet used with her. “There’s no hurry. Everyone’s having a good time. Including me.”

He leaned over and brushed a kiss on her mouth, then backed away almost before Jennie could realize what he had done. He waited for a protest, but she simply stood and looked up at him, her eyes grown wide. Finally he flashed a smile and turned to cross the room to the sink. “All right,” he said briskly. “Put me to work.”

* * *

All the parlor lamps were lit, the wicks turned up full, but it seemed to Jennie as if a kind of haze hung over the room. She was feeling much the same kind of fog she’d felt after her parents’ deaths, though without the pain. She’d worked hard all day and knew that she was nearly giddy with exhaustion as they’d sat down to eat. But this was something else. It had started when Carter had followed her into the kitchen. As soon as the door had swung shut, closing them off from the other guests, her heart had begun to accelerate. When he’d touched her with his lips, it had settled into a fast staccato that was still drumming away inside her chest.

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