Dalton, Tymber - Hernando Heat (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

He smiled, turning his hard face even more handsome. She knew he and his cousin, Joseph Lansing, lived just outside of Brooksville. Two confirmed bachelors, according to the young single townswomen who’d unsuccessfully attempted to claim either of them. Plenty of times she’d overheard gossip from one girl or another who’d plotted strategy to become Mrs. Joseph Lansing, wife of a successful cattle rancher and business owner. But Mason’s cousin proved as tenaciously single as he was.

“I’ll call for you around six, if that’s all right?”

“That would be fine.” She finished mending the seam, tested it, and neatly folded the trousers to add them to the pile of clothes. “There. All done.”

He stood. “How much do I owe you?”

She waved him off. “Nothing. Consider it thanks for helping my morning go from horrible to very nice indeed.” Truth be told, that’s exactly what he’d done. From her earlier melancholy, then the shock of dealing with Dorchester, and now nearly an hour of pleasant conversation that made her feel…almost normal.

More normal than she had in a year. He smiled again. She’d heard he was a tough but fair man who didn’t brook nonsense from people.

“I’m sorry we didn’t officially meet under better circumstances, Katie. I’ll make it a point to drop by regularly from now on. To check on you. Especially today. If he shows up again, I want you to send for me immediately and I’ll take care of it. Personally.”

Her heart fluttered at his protective tone. It reminded her so much of…

No. Not today.
She’d had a taste of normality and didn’t want to sink back into her grief. “All right. Thank you so much.”

He extended his hand, and she thought he would shake with her, but he kissed the back of her hand. “Then I’ll see you later, Katie.”

She blushed. As her heart sped from fluttering to a full-out gallop, she realized she didn’t mind the sensation in the least.

It was the best feeling she’d had since losing Paul.

Chapter Three

Mason kept an eye out all day for any sign of Dorchester returning to harass Katie, but didn’t spot him. He also passed the word with Sheriff Birch and the other deputies. All the men, who felt outrage on her behalf, agreed that the Dorchesters Senior or Junior wouldn’t be welcomed in town any time soon. Mason also talked to local business owners, who all agreed to keep their eyes open. Katie Dorchester was a quiet woman who wasn’t unfriendly, but other than going to local functions, she mostly kept to herself. Still, everyone who knew her liked the sweet woman.

He stopped by her shop again later that afternoon as he rode out to check a report of chicken rustling at a farm south of town.

Her smile as he entered her shop touched something deep inside him. She sat on a low stool, pinning up a dress hem. The owner of the dress, Sissy Baxter, stood on a table and held still while talking to her mother, Mary Baxter, who sat in a nearby chair and looked on.

“Good afternoon, Deputy Carlisle,” Katie said. The other two women couldn’t see her playful wink.

He tipped his hat and smiled in return. “Good afternoon, Miz Dorchester, ladies. I just wanted to stop by and make sure everything was all right. See how you were getting along.” He also knew, from what he’d heard around town, that Katie was a rather private person. The details of the morning’s showdown were no doubt already making their rounds based on his warnings to others to keep their eyes open, but he didn’t want to put her on the spot in front of her customers.

Especially the gossipy Baxter women.

Katie sat up, placing her hands on her back as she straightened and stretched. “Everything’s quiet. Did my mending hold up? No more uncomfortable drafts?” she teased.

His grin widened. She was a sharp, quick-witted woman. “Good as new, thank you, ma’am.” He tipped his hat again. “I’ll make sure to spread the word about your shop and your good work,” he promised. “Good day, ladies.” As he left the shop, he heard Sissy Baxter asking Katie about him.

Suppressing a chuckle, he had a feeling maybe he’d finally found someone he wouldn’t mind losing his heart to.

* * * *

It was Mason’s turn to cook dinner that night. For once he didn’t mind the task, his thoughts constantly wandering to Katie’s sad eyes and beautiful smile while he cooked. When Joe returned to the house a little before sunset, Mason had dinner waiting. “Don’t expect me for dinner tomorrow night,” he told Joe. “I’m taking Miz Dorchester to the church supper.”

“Widow Dorchester? Really?” He smiled. “I don’t know her. She’s a handsome woman, from what little I’ve seen of her.”

“Cute is the term I’d use.”

“I was trying to be a gentleman, Mase. Not that you would know anything about that.” Joe smiled at him over his cup. Mason-baiting was one of his favorite sports.

“Yeah, well, you ought to come, too, so you can see how much of a gentleman I am.” Mason regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

“You know what? I think I will,” Joe said. “That’s an excellent idea. Maybe I can warn the poor woman about you. How’d you end up talking to her, anyway?”

Mason explained the morning’s confrontation. He didn’t like the frown that emerged on Joe’s face. “What?”

Joe put down his cup. “Dorchester is bad news, cuz. Haven’t you heard of him?”

“I’ve heard of him, but not much about him. Why?”

“Well, maybe you haven’t heard much because he usually buys his way out of trouble with the Dade City sheriff. He usually stays away from Brooksville. None of the ranchers in the area like him. He and his brothers were into rustling back in the day. Free-range courtesies were low on their list of priorities. If you were missing cattle, chances were you could find them ‘accidentally’ wandering amongst Dorchester herds, if they were anywhere in close proximity. They didn’t make it a priority to send the cattle back to their rightful owners, either.”

Mason didn’t like the sound of that. “I have a feeling he’s not going to stop until he gets what he wants.”

Joe nodded. “It also wouldn’t surprise me if she suddenly died of an unfortunate accident.”

“What?”

Joe leaned back. “You were down in Tampa when this happened about ten years ago, but there was a rancher, Kendall Eddings, over in Lacoochee. Dorchester wanted his land and insisted Eddings sell it to him. Wasn’t a big spread, maybe a fifty acres or so, but one of the spring-fed tributaries of the Withlachooche River runs through it. Water in it even in the middle of a drought. That’s what Dorchester wanted more than anything, because his land butted up against Eddings’ spread.”

“What happened?”

“He didn’t come home one night. His wife sent for help, and searchers found him the next morning out in the woods. Best guess is his horse spooked and ran him under a low branch. Broke his neck. They found him sprawled on the ground.”

“But?”

Joe’s face darkened. “The first guy there said there were boot marks and other hoof prints all over the place. Like maybe he had a little help falling off and breaking his neck. His widow sold out to Dorchester the next week and moved to Orlando.”

Mason hated men who intimidated women. He hated bullies even more. Worse, he despised rich men who flouted their money and thought the rules did not and should not apply to them. “Then maybe you should come with me tomorrow night,” he softly said.

“I was just teasing you about that. I didn’t mean it.”

Mason, back in deputy mode, shook his head. “I want you to tell her that story yourself, if she doesn’t know it already. I also want you to make her an offer.”

“An offer? What kind of offer?”

“I want you to pay her to come to work for you, here at the ranch. We were just talking about it this morning, weren’t we? A housekeeper? It’d be nice to have a woman around here.”

“She’s not going to want to come work for me. She’s got a business.”

“I’m talking cooking and cleaning and that’s all, not farm chores. There’s not that much to do, let’s be honest. You pay people to do everything else. We’ll give her room and board and I can take her in to town every morning to her shop when I make my rounds, and bring her home every night. Ask her to clean in her spare time. I don’t like the idea of her living there by herself.”

“She’s safe in town. There’s a bunch of houses within screaming distance of her place.”

“I still don’t like it.” The fact that he felt so protective of her already was just another sign his heart had decided on the cute strawberry blonde with the sad face. He didn’t care she was a widow, either. “I don’t like that he’s sniffing around her place.”

“You said she’s got a gun. She can protect herself.”

“She shouldn’t have to.” He stood and took his dishes to the sink where he pumped water to wash them. “No woman should have to spend her life looking over her shoulder like that.”

* * * *

Joe quit objecting as he spotted the firm set of Mason’s shoulders and the tense angle of his jaw. He knew why Mason felt the way he did, even if Mason didn’t want to outright admit it. When Mason’s younger sister had refused a wealthy, spoiled suitor used to getting whatever he wanted, the man had gotten drunk and come back the next night with a pistol and shot her before shooting himself. The scandal rocked Tampa when it happened six years earlier, and was the reason Mason left for Brooksville. With Mason’s parents dead and his only sibling murdered, Joe had asked Mason to come live with him.

They’d grown up together, their mothers being sisters, and had been close until Joe’s parents moved to Brooksville to start the sawmill. He’d bought the cattle ranch, taking the sawmill over after his father’s death. His own mother had died a short time later, leaving him alone, too.

It’d only made sense for the cousins to share a place. Since Joe was friends with Brooksville’s sheriff, it wasn’t hard for him to get Mason a job he excelled at. The townspeople liked him, the sheriff liked him, and most importantly, the business owners liked him. Rumor had it when Sheriff Birch retired in a few years that Mason was already the favored replacement.

After he bid Mason good night, Joe retired to his own room where he stripped, lay in bed, and stared at the ceiling. Damn bed felt far too large for a single man. In all honesty, he didn’t want a woman around. A woman would remind him too much of Laura, and what he lost when she died a week before they were to be married. No other woman had ever caught his eye or his heart in the eight lonely years since he’d lost her.

Joe stared at his ceiling. Once again he thought about Mason’s proposal. He didn’t seriously expect the widow to want to come to work for him, but no, it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Maybe she would be good for Mason. He damn sure needed a woman in his life.

* * * *

Katie spent a restless night starting awake at every sound, familiar or not. She slept with the shotgun next to her in the narrow bed, and extra shells in the pocket of her nightshirt. She held no illusions—Dorchester wouldn’t give up.

Saying yes to Mason’s invitation to the church dinner might gain her an edge that way as well. If Dorchester thought she was close to a deputy, it might give him pause, make him think twice before he bothered her again. As a widow, it wasn’t like she was too concerned with her reputation anyway.

She was more concerned about staying safe.

Moonlight streaming through her back window illuminated her small mantle clock sitting on the shelf. It had been Paul’s, and she faithfully wound it every day, just as he had. It read three twenty.

That’s what she was staring at when a shadow passed across it. At first she didn’t realize what she’d just seen until she heard an unfamiliar scratching noise at her back porch door.

The screened porch had shutters, but she only closed those in bad weather. The screen door had a hook and eye latch, but anyone could cut the screen and open it.