“Kane, please, I’m an old lady,” she called after him, trying to keep up.
“Ain’t nothin’ old about a lady, he shouted over his shoulder. “I shoulda stayed with prostitutes,” he mumbled. “They only want money.”
> Opal only caught up with him when he was inside his office, papers in his hand. “You have to get her back.”
“Like hell I do. I don’t want her back.”
Opal sat down, fanning herself, out of breath. Surreptitiously, she adjusted her new health corset that was boned with thin blades of steel. “If you had no hope of getting her back, you’d be on a train to somewhere else.”
Kane sat in his red leather chair, silent for a moment. “I don’t know how to get her back. If she didn’t marry me for my money, I don’t know how I won her in the first place. Women! I’m better off without her.” He looked at Opal through his lashes. “You think she’d like a present?”
“Not Houston. She has her father’s morals. Apologies and declarations of love won’t do it either. She is so rigid. If there were some way to make her move back in and give you a little time, perhaps you could convince her that you didn’t just marry her in order to repay Mr. Fenton—who really can’t be blamed for not allowing his daughter to marry the stableboy.”
Kane opened his mouth but closed it again. His eyes lit. “I do have a way, but . . . No, it wouldn’t work. She’d never believe I’d do such an underhanded, dirty trick.”
“It sounds perfect. Tell me.”
Kane hesitantly told her and, to his disbelief, Opal thought the idea splendid. “Ladies!” Kane muttered.
Opal stood. “Now, I must go. Oh yes, dear me, I almost forgot. The reason I came was to tell you that the train car arrived and I couldn’t possibly accept it. It’s really too expensive a gift. You’ll have to take it back.”
“What in the world would I do with a pink train? You can travel in it.”
Opal smiled fondly at him. “Dear Kane, we all have our dreams; unfortunately, if they come true, sometimes they aren’t as nice as the dream. I’d be scared to death to travel.”
“Well then, park it somewhere and have it for your tea parties. Are you sure this thing with Houston’ll work? I don’t know if I want her to believe that I’d do somethin’ like that.”
“She’ll believe you, and I think that’s a very good use for the train, but you could have it redone in another color.”
“If you don’t accept that thing, I’ll move it to your front yard.”
“Since you’re blackmailing me . . . ” she said, eyes twinkling.
Kane groaned as she kissed his cheek. “I feel that everything will go well now. Thank you so much for the train, and we’ll have you and Houston to dinner next week. Good-bye.”
Kane sat for a long time, muttering about women in general and ladies in particular.
Chapter 26
Houston had to stifle a yawn as she hurried down Lead Avenue, trying to get her errands done before it started to rain. She was tired after the turmoil at Pam’s house last night that had kept all of them up late.
Zachary had gone to see his cousin Ian at the new house Edan had bought and asked him to go to Kane’s to play baseball. Before Ian was half through expressing his opinion of Kane, Zach put his head down and rammed the older, larger boy in the stomach. They fought a bloody battle for thirty minutes before Edan found them and separated them.
When Zach returned to Pam, his collar clutched by Edan, Jacob was there visiting. He saw his precious grandson covered in dried blood, his face scratched, bruises forming. And touching him was someone connected with Kane Taggert.
Another war began.
Pam, worried about her son’s health, wasn’t concerned with who and why, but Jacob was. Immediately, he began attacking Edan.
“Your fight’s not with me,” Edan said, then left the house.
Jacob started demanding answers from Zach, and when the older man realized that Zach’d been defending his father, Jacob’s anger knew no bounds. His wrath turned to Pam and included comments on her fitness as a mother and allusions to how she came to have Zach in the first place.
For the first time, Houston saw Pam’s temper, and Houston understood why Kane had turned her down the day of the wedding. Both Pam and her father said things they couldn’t possibly mean; neither seemed to have any control. If Kane and Pam had tried to live together . . . Houston didn’t like to think of what could have happened.
Zachary entered the fight, torn between protecting his mother and wanting to be on the man’s side. Both Pam and Jacob started yelling at him.
“That’s not the way to handle a Taggert,” Houston whispered to herself.