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

"Some folks talkin' to your lady friend. The Bradburys, if I hear talk right."

"She's a free woman, she can talk to who she likes."

"Talk is, the conversation weren't all

friendly."

"No?"

"Not the least bit friendly. Say the Deacon and his wife came by to say they weren't gonna let–now, I hear his exact words were, 'godless heathen bitch' and Mick swears on a stack of bibles that's what he said–get her claws into no child–"

Chris's sneer deepened. "I'm goin' out for a bit."

He rose and stepped out the door. He didn't have time for this. Couldn't Jack have made an appointment? After all, he had trouble to dust up. Jack was just enough more that he was going to have to figure a way to handle it all at once, and no matter how it went down, it wasn't going to be pretty.

He leapt up a short set of stairs and inside. There were folks sitting in the pews, but no preacher sitting there talking to them. It was just as well, because apparently the distraction of Chris Broadmoor, the subject of a good deal of the town's gossip and rumor-mill, was too great.

He rapped on the door harder than he ought to have, and when he didn't get an answer, Chris rapped on it again. The sound of movement inside was followed a moment later by the padre opening the door. When he saw Chris's face he lost the sanguine expression he'd worn opening the door.

"Come to confess your sins?"

"No, father. I think we ought to talk inside."

The man's expression didn't change. He didn't particularly want to talk to Chris, and Chris didn't blame him. He didn't particularly want to talk to the preacher, either, but the situation called for it either way.

"Fine," he said, his lips pinching together. "Make it quick."

Chris stepped through the door. "I don't put much stock in rumor, father, so I thought I'd come and confirm with you."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Broadmoor."

"I'm sure you don't. Your deacon, Mr. Bradbury, was apparently talking all kinds of trash to the schoolteacher."

"Mr. Bradbury's a good man," was all the pastor said. But he wasn't denying it, Chris noted. And that told him what he needed to be told.

Twenty-Five

Her day was only going to improve from here, Marie thought. After all, this late in the evening, there was no chance that things could get worse. With Jamie down for the night, she had a little time to read by lamplight, and then she'd spend another night on the couch.

She was glad for having a couch at all. A suite was far more than she ought to have expected from a town like this, and especially from a room that she shouldn't even have been in. She let out a breath, wondering when, if ever, she was going to get back into the room she had paid for over Owen's. It wasn't as if she was suffering here, but how long could repairs possibly take?

The knock at the door was soft and caught her completely by surprise. Maybe things could get worse, after all. If nothing could change, nothing could get worse. But if someone else had come to give her the business, then she wasn't in any sort of mood.

For a long time, the schoolteacher considered ignoring the knock. A second knock came a little louder. A third might have risked waking Jamie, and she wasn't going to have that.

Marie spent the few seconds it took to walk across the room mustering whatever indignation that she could find, and then put the lid on it and left it to simmer while she opened the door, ready to give whoever was on the other side of it a piece of her mind.

Chris looked as tired as she felt, and yet the second that she saw who it was, the fatigue seemed to melt away on its own.

"Oh," she said. She didn't sound happy to see him, but the truth was that there was nobody who she'd rather have had on the other side of the door.

"Is this a bad time?"

"Shouldn't you be at work?"

He looked down. "I had other things to take care of. Other people can take over."

She'd never seen anyone else manning the counter of the saloon, though it occurred to her that she hadn't seen him doing it much, either. One of the benefits of not going into the place when she could avoid it.