Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

"Mr. Bradbury," he said, as if she ought to have known who he was. "I'm a deacon at the local church, and we have noticed that you haven't been attending our services."

Marie tried to smile, but couldn't keep the confusion off her face completely. "I'm sorry, is there a problem, Mr. Bradbury?"

"You've been seen with that boy in there," he said, glancing through the window at Jamie. "And gallivanting around with the wrong sort of person. Now, of course, anyone would be so charitable, with the tragedy that befell young Mr. Pearson's family. But I suspect that you're not doing it out of some Christian effort, are you? After all, you don't attend services."

Marie kept her lips pursed together for as long as she could. Catholics weren't exactly regarded fondly in the area, she knew. It hadn't taken long to suss that out. She might as well be godless, or a Mormon, or worship the natives' strange gods, as to be Catholic.

It was always a matter of time before she responded, though. She couldn't simply ignore his comments, regardless how much she might have liked to, in the way that she couldn't have ignored a slap in her face.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bradbury, but I don't believe we've met before."

He sneered, the implication requiring no words.

"No, and I don't know that I would like to again, Miss Bainbridge. I only wanted to make sure that you knew that we're not going to stand for this sort of behavior. A chance to rectify yourself is the Christian thing, after all," he said, with the emphasis on 'Christian' as if she were going to be cowed by it.

Marie scowled. Maybe Chris was right to have kept her out of it. Because she was three things, after all. First a schoolteacher, second a Catholic, and third, most troublesome of all, she was Irish.

And the Irish in her had her blood boiling right now, whether she liked it or not.

Twenty-Four

There isn't a whole lot of chance that if one of the Broadmoors is in town–well, one other than himself, Chris corrected automatically–that the others are far. They certainly aren't unaware of where the rest are. He was the only one who left, the only one who'd even talked about leaving.

So there wasn't a chance in hell that he was going to believe it when Jack Broadmoor, the crown prince of whatever the hell Chris's brothers called themselves, said he was there alone, and nobody else knew where Chris was hiding out.

He was making an attempt, however pathetic, to calm Chris down. It wasn't going to work, and there was no way it was ever going to. The hell he'd gone through to get away from his brothers was all he needed to remember to know that there was no reason he'd ever go back, under any circumstance at all.

None of this was a surprise. None of it could have been a surprise. Jack was as smart as a whip. He could be surprised; Chris had seen it himself, with his own eyes. More than that, he'd seen it on several occasions. But the things that would surprise Jack were things that couldn't be predicted.

No, panic was exactly what Chris ought to have expected, and if he ought to have expected it, then he expected it, simple as that. He'd tried to play it cool, of course. Jack always tried to play things cool. So when Jack told him that he should really relax, that there was nothing to worry about and everything was fine, it was hard to guess which was the right way to go.

Chris took a deep breath and pressed himself into his bed and closed his eyes tight. Someone else might have been able to see through the plan. He wasn't one of those people. Marie was a teacher, maybe she had a solid head for these kind of things.

But just the same as there was no way he didn't get nervous with his brothers around, there was no way he went and explained the entire situation to Marie. She shouldn't have been involved with him at all. He wasn't going to have her any more involved than necessary if he could at all help it.

He let out a deep breath and got up. There was time for laying around and there was time for work, and it was time for work. Luckily for Chris, he didn't have to go far.

Unluckily for him, when the big man finally dressed and stepped through the door, trouble was already waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. Like most trouble, it didn't look immediately like trouble, and that was why Chris didn't know to avoid it.

"Hey, man," Jim drawled. "How you doin' today?"

The bouncer was sitting in his corner of the room, looking suitably pleased with himself in spite of having done nothing in particular to deserve it.

"Hey yourself," Chris responded.

He couldn't shake a vague dislike for Jim, but they spent most of every afternoon together. There was no reason to be uncivil, he reckoned. And maybe, somewhere under the veneer of lecherous idiot, there was some meat to dig into. He'd worked there for three years and hadn't seen a single hint of it, but there was still time to turn things around.

"You heard the talk?"

Chris checked the ice chest to make sure it was still cold, checked the taps on the kegs, but he answered all the same. "Talk? No, no talk. I've been in my room."

"Oh yeah?" The question was entirely tone, and Chris didn't miss out on what the bouncer implied. He scowled.

"Alone, in my room."

"Sure. So you ain't heard then."

"No, Jim, I ain't heard."