Chapter One
Deadwood, South Dakota
It had been a huge risk, reaching out to him for help, but her options were less than limited. Shannon clutched the small, folded piece of paper and glanced at the clock, again. If he had left within a few hours of sending the telegram with his response, he should be on the train arriving in the next half an hour.
Pacing the floor wasn’t going to bring the train into Deadwood any sooner and all her pacing did was upset Rachel Anne. Shannon forced in a slow, deep breath, while brushing her thumb over the folded paper. As if the three words held some sort of strange power, a sense of calm settled over her. Just three little words. On my way. Rachel Anne would be safe. No matter what had happened before between them, she knew to the very depths of her soul, Rachel Anne would be protected.
“Momma?” Rachel Anne’s voice, soft and sleepy, cut through the dimly lit room.
“Why aren’t you asleep, baby?” Shannon slowly turned to the child illuminated by the low-pitched lamp in the small bedroom behind her.
“Not tired.” Rachel Anne stifled a yawn. The ragdoll she clutched danced and bobbed as she rubbed the heel of her hands against her eyes.
Shouting in the street below was followed with the immediate barking of gunfire. Taking a set of rooms on this end of town would not have been her first choice, but she had also reasoned no one would look for her in the worst part of Deadwood. The wry thought crossed her mind that most of Deadwood was the worst part, in spite of the attempted reforms brought by the iron fist of one Seth Bullock. More shouting and a loud crash downstairs caused her and Rachel Anne to flinch.
She scooped her daughter into her arms. “It will quiet down in a little bit. You need to be back in bed.”
Rachel Anne shook her head. “Don’t want to.”
“I know, but you need to go to sleep.” Shannon ran a slow hand over her daughter’s rich, russet hair. She carried her into the small bedroom and settled the girl onto the bed. As she pulled the blankets up over her, she left a kiss on her daughter’s head. The lingering, faint scent of lavender whispered to her, a reminder of everything she had given up in her flight from Denver.
“When can we go home, Momma? I don’t like it here.”
Shannon kissed her head again. “Soon. I promise. Soon.” Her heart clenched with the pain she had caused her child. She’d been forced to leave Colorado with little more than the clothes on their backs and the small amount of money she had always kept hidden in a jar. She couldn’t even wire for more money from the bank because it would bring too much attention to her and reveal where she was hiding. The only reminder for Rachel Anne of that small home was the ragdoll she clutched all through the journey from Denver to Deadwood.
A knock on the door lanced into Shannon. Rachel Anne’s frightened gasp and widened eyes twisted that blade deeper. She pressed a finger to Rachel Anne’s lips and handed the ragdoll to her. “Stay here and don’t make a peep.”
Rachel Anne clung to the doll.
“Stay under the covers. It will be all right.”
The child nodded once then burrowed under the blankets and pillows.
Shannon straightened and left the room, pulling the door partially closed as she left. She picked up the small but deadly revolver kept near the door to the suite of rooms, its weight steadying her hand. She stepped to the side of the door. Forcing a calm to her voice she didn’t feel, she let herself slip into a language pattern she had fought hard to unlearn. “I ain’t expectin’ no one. Who is it?”
“Josh Taylor.”
The deep, baritone voice on the other side of the locked door washed a relief over her so intense her knees buckled. Despite the relief, caution made her hesitate to unlock and open the door. It sounded like the voice she remembered, but it didn’t. The voice was deeper, with a sense of maturity that hadn’t been there before. “Prove it.”
“How do you propose I do that, Shannon?”
She moved another step to the side of the door. “I ain’t openin’ this door until you prove to me you’re really Josh Taylor.”
A chuckle sounded, dark, tempting, and amused. “Let’s see...For the record, Harrison and Rachel Taylor are my parents. I’ve got a sister and a brother, too. I asked you to marry me. After telling me you weren’t good enough and told me to never come around again you ran off that night.” The amusement faded and a hard edge entered the words. “That proof enough, Shannon?”
She still hesitated. “Who did you ask for permission to marry me?”
“Shannon, if you open the door, you’ll see it’s me.” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Open the door.”
“If you ain’t gonna prove to me who you are, go away.” She swallowed the sudden fear rising in her chest. “I got a gun, and I know how to use it. Go away, Mr. Taylor, if that’s who you really are.”
A soft thud sounded against the door, as if he had hit it with as little force as possible. “I didn’t ask for permission to marry you, because I told you no man had the right to think of you as property. I did ask for Judge Adams’s blessing. His wife, Alli, had twins the night you left.”
Twins? She hadn’t known. She had fled into the night with the first gusty cry of a newborn.
“Open the door, Shannon. In the past thirty-six hours, I’ve ridden through hell itself. I’ve been on two different stagecoaches, a train, almost got into a fist fight downstairs with some drunk…” The edge to his voice vanished, replaced with a softer tone. “You sent for me. I’m here.”
Her hand shook when she shoved the key into the lock and twisted it. She swung the door open, the revolver held ready if she was wrong and it wasn’t Josh. The soft thud she had heard must have been his head dropping to the door, because he stood leaning into where the door was.
He slowly raised his head. His gaze swept over her, lingering on the revolver she held in a less than steady hand, and finally settling on her face.
The nineteen-year-old boy she remembered was gone, replaced with a broad-shouldered man. Her throat tightened around a sudden, inexplicable lump. Her lungs refused to work, and her mouth was suddenly as dry as the grass in August. Without a word, she stepped back, gesturing for him to come in.
He looked her up and down again. She glanced at the floor between them, conscious of the faded day dress she wore. With an effort, she forced herself to look up and met his eyes, then took another step away from the open doorway.
“Do you really need that with me?” He gestured toward the revolver, even as he walked into the room. He caught the edge of the door, giving it a gentle push to close it.
“No, I don’t suppose that I do.” Shannon set the weapon on the small table near the worn-out settee. The heavily curtained windows on the other side of the room drew her attention. Look anywhere but at him, because if she looked at him, she would be staring. Still, she couldn’t take her sight off him, and she turned to him. “I have to be careful.”
He levered a brow up in minute degrees and he tilted his head. “Care to explain your telegram?”
Before she could answer, the bedroom door slowly swung open, revealing Rachel Anne clutching her ragdoll. Shannon leaped across the room, putting herself between Josh and her daughter. She bent to the child, turning her around and back into the bedroom. “Go to bed.”
Once Rachel Anne climbed into the bed again, Shannon pulled the door closed. She sucked in a steadying breath before she turned around. Surely, he couldn’t have seen much in the fleeting moments before she put herself between him and Rachel Anne. He certainly couldn’t have seen the similarities between her daughter and his own mother—the vibrant russet colored hair, the elfin features to her face…
His rigid stance, clenched jaw, and narrowed eyes destroyed that hope. “Instead of explaining your telegram, you can start by explaining her.” The sharp, cutting edge returned to his voice. “Did you know when you left?”
“Keep your voice down.” Shannon moved away from the closed door. “My daughter will never be anything I have to explain to anyone.”
Josh moved a step closer to her, his words low and harsh. “You want my help for whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, you’ll explain her to me.”
The room was suddenly too small, too close. The air felt as if it was thick as molasses and impossible to drag into her lungs. To give herself a moment to gather her thoughts, Shannon poured a glass of water. Even that was hard to move past the gigantic lump in her throat. “You grew up on a ranch. You know how babies are made.”
He snagged her upper arm, jerking her closer to him. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Panic overrode her senses for a moment. She swung the heavy crystal glass back but stopped short of hitting him. Water splashed over her shoulder, down her back, and pattered on the floor.
His eyes darkened further though he never shifted his sight from her face. “Put it down, Shannon.”
“Let go of my arm.” She forced a levelness to her voice, hoping to belie the quaking in her belly and the shuddering seizing her chest.
Josh released her arm but didn’t move further away. With deliberate movements to hide how much her hand shook, she lowered the glass onto the table. The silence between them grew with each beat of her heart. She had to put some space between them. The old settee would have to suffice, and she let herself sink into the uncomfortable seat, managing to avoid the spring that often jabbed her in the back.
Movement drew her attention back to him. He unbuttoned the form-fitting frock coat, revealing a badge pinned to his vest and a heavy revolver tucked into a holster under his arm. Without a word, he shrugged out of the coat and draped it across the back of the only other chair in the room. Neither of them broke the strained quiet as he eased himself into the ladderback chair, folded his arms across his chest, and crossed his ankle over his knee.
The width of the room between them did little to reduce how imposing he had become in the past five years. The slender, rangy youth was gone. The hinted at squared jaw was now chiseled and strong. His dark brown hair had deepened to almost black and the soft waves were gone. The width of his shoulders surprised her. There was a cagy tautness to his mannerisms and bearing that would discourage most from trying him.
Loud shouting with a subsequent crash from the saloon on the first floor startled her. She glanced at the door. It wasn’t locked. She rose, then sank back into the settee and into the offending spring with the unspoken order when he said, “No one is coming in.”
Shannon shifted away from the jabbing spring and looked across the seeming chasm looming between them. “You’ve changed.”
His brow jacked up and he added a slight head tilt. “So have you. You don’t want to tell me about her, so why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”
Sending him a telegram with a plea for help had been her only remaining option. She didn’t know how much she could tell him without placing him in the same danger she found herself. She searched his features, looking for the warmth she remembered in his expression. He had changed and she wasn’t sure it was a good change. There was a cool distance to him, as if he kept the world completely at arm’s length, as she had once done.
“I’m in trouble, Josh.”
He didn’t move, and the distance didn’t alter. “I assumed as much from your cryptic telegram. What kind of trouble?”
Shannon twisted her head over her shoulder, reassuring herself the door to the bedroom was closed. When she brought her sight back to Josh, the cool distance had become glacial. Whether or not she wanted to discuss Rachel Anne with him, she would have to talk about her daughter at some time in the near future. Not now, though. “There’s a man who’s trying to kill me.”
His brow lifted again, higher than the last time. “Why?”
“I saw a man murdered.” Shannon closed her eyes, trying to push away the memory of that heated argument and the subsequent single gunshot, watching George Davidson’s lifeless body crumble to the floor, and the horror flooding her with the emotionless, icy cold callousness in Robert Rhodes as he stepped over Davidson’s body.
“Were you the only witness?”
“I don’t think he knows I saw…” The shouting from downstairs began again, and she trailed off.
These shouts sounded different. Panicked. Glass shattered in the sitting room and something wet and heavy thumped against the closed, heavy curtains. Before she could register fully what was happening, flames erupted up the curtains.
Deadwood, South Dakota
It had been a huge risk, reaching out to him for help, but her options were less than limited. Shannon clutched the small, folded piece of paper and glanced at the clock, again. If he had left within a few hours of sending the telegram with his response, he should be on the train arriving in the next half an hour.
Pacing the floor wasn’t going to bring the train into Deadwood any sooner and all her pacing did was upset Rachel Anne. Shannon forced in a slow, deep breath, while brushing her thumb over the folded paper. As if the three words held some sort of strange power, a sense of calm settled over her. Just three little words. On my way. Rachel Anne would be safe. No matter what had happened before between them, she knew to the very depths of her soul, Rachel Anne would be protected.
“Momma?” Rachel Anne’s voice, soft and sleepy, cut through the dimly lit room.
“Why aren’t you asleep, baby?” Shannon slowly turned to the child illuminated by the low-pitched lamp in the small bedroom behind her.
“Not tired.” Rachel Anne stifled a yawn. The ragdoll she clutched danced and bobbed as she rubbed the heel of her hands against her eyes.
Shouting in the street below was followed with the immediate barking of gunfire. Taking a set of rooms on this end of town would not have been her first choice, but she had also reasoned no one would look for her in the worst part of Deadwood. The wry thought crossed her mind that most of Deadwood was the worst part, in spite of the attempted reforms brought by the iron fist of one Seth Bullock. More shouting and a loud crash downstairs caused her and Rachel Anne to flinch.
She scooped her daughter into her arms. “It will quiet down in a little bit. You need to be back in bed.”
Rachel Anne shook her head. “Don’t want to.”
“I know, but you need to go to sleep.” Shannon ran a slow hand over her daughter’s rich, russet hair. She carried her into the small bedroom and settled the girl onto the bed. As she pulled the blankets up over her, she left a kiss on her daughter’s head. The lingering, faint scent of lavender whispered to her, a reminder of everything she had given up in her flight from Denver.
“When can we go home, Momma? I don’t like it here.”
Shannon kissed her head again. “Soon. I promise. Soon.” Her heart clenched with the pain she had caused her child. She’d been forced to leave Colorado with little more than the clothes on their backs and the small amount of money she had always kept hidden in a jar. She couldn’t even wire for more money from the bank because it would bring too much attention to her and reveal where she was hiding. The only reminder for Rachel Anne of that small home was the ragdoll she clutched all through the journey from Denver to Deadwood.
A knock on the door lanced into Shannon. Rachel Anne’s frightened gasp and widened eyes twisted that blade deeper. She pressed a finger to Rachel Anne’s lips and handed the ragdoll to her. “Stay here and don’t make a peep.”
Rachel Anne clung to the doll.
“Stay under the covers. It will be all right.”
The child nodded once then burrowed under the blankets and pillows.
Shannon straightened and left the room, pulling the door partially closed as she left. She picked up the small but deadly revolver kept near the door to the suite of rooms, its weight steadying her hand. She stepped to the side of the door. Forcing a calm to her voice she didn’t feel, she let herself slip into a language pattern she had fought hard to unlearn. “I ain’t expectin’ no one. Who is it?”
“Josh Taylor.”
The deep, baritone voice on the other side of the locked door washed a relief over her so intense her knees buckled. Despite the relief, caution made her hesitate to unlock and open the door. It sounded like the voice she remembered, but it didn’t. The voice was deeper, with a sense of maturity that hadn’t been there before. “Prove it.”
“How do you propose I do that, Shannon?”
She moved another step to the side of the door. “I ain’t openin’ this door until you prove to me you’re really Josh Taylor.”
A chuckle sounded, dark, tempting, and amused. “Let’s see...For the record, Harrison and Rachel Taylor are my parents. I’ve got a sister and a brother, too. I asked you to marry me. After telling me you weren’t good enough and told me to never come around again you ran off that night.” The amusement faded and a hard edge entered the words. “That proof enough, Shannon?”
She still hesitated. “Who did you ask for permission to marry me?”
“Shannon, if you open the door, you’ll see it’s me.” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Open the door.”
“If you ain’t gonna prove to me who you are, go away.” She swallowed the sudden fear rising in her chest. “I got a gun, and I know how to use it. Go away, Mr. Taylor, if that’s who you really are.”
A soft thud sounded against the door, as if he had hit it with as little force as possible. “I didn’t ask for permission to marry you, because I told you no man had the right to think of you as property. I did ask for Judge Adams’s blessing. His wife, Alli, had twins the night you left.”
Twins? She hadn’t known. She had fled into the night with the first gusty cry of a newborn.
“Open the door, Shannon. In the past thirty-six hours, I’ve ridden through hell itself. I’ve been on two different stagecoaches, a train, almost got into a fist fight downstairs with some drunk…” The edge to his voice vanished, replaced with a softer tone. “You sent for me. I’m here.”
Her hand shook when she shoved the key into the lock and twisted it. She swung the door open, the revolver held ready if she was wrong and it wasn’t Josh. The soft thud she had heard must have been his head dropping to the door, because he stood leaning into where the door was.
He slowly raised his head. His gaze swept over her, lingering on the revolver she held in a less than steady hand, and finally settling on her face.
The nineteen-year-old boy she remembered was gone, replaced with a broad-shouldered man. Her throat tightened around a sudden, inexplicable lump. Her lungs refused to work, and her mouth was suddenly as dry as the grass in August. Without a word, she stepped back, gesturing for him to come in.
He looked her up and down again. She glanced at the floor between them, conscious of the faded day dress she wore. With an effort, she forced herself to look up and met his eyes, then took another step away from the open doorway.
“Do you really need that with me?” He gestured toward the revolver, even as he walked into the room. He caught the edge of the door, giving it a gentle push to close it.
“No, I don’t suppose that I do.” Shannon set the weapon on the small table near the worn-out settee. The heavily curtained windows on the other side of the room drew her attention. Look anywhere but at him, because if she looked at him, she would be staring. Still, she couldn’t take her sight off him, and she turned to him. “I have to be careful.”
He levered a brow up in minute degrees and he tilted his head. “Care to explain your telegram?”
Before she could answer, the bedroom door slowly swung open, revealing Rachel Anne clutching her ragdoll. Shannon leaped across the room, putting herself between Josh and her daughter. She bent to the child, turning her around and back into the bedroom. “Go to bed.”
Once Rachel Anne climbed into the bed again, Shannon pulled the door closed. She sucked in a steadying breath before she turned around. Surely, he couldn’t have seen much in the fleeting moments before she put herself between him and Rachel Anne. He certainly couldn’t have seen the similarities between her daughter and his own mother—the vibrant russet colored hair, the elfin features to her face…
His rigid stance, clenched jaw, and narrowed eyes destroyed that hope. “Instead of explaining your telegram, you can start by explaining her.” The sharp, cutting edge returned to his voice. “Did you know when you left?”
“Keep your voice down.” Shannon moved away from the closed door. “My daughter will never be anything I have to explain to anyone.”
Josh moved a step closer to her, his words low and harsh. “You want my help for whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, you’ll explain her to me.”
The room was suddenly too small, too close. The air felt as if it was thick as molasses and impossible to drag into her lungs. To give herself a moment to gather her thoughts, Shannon poured a glass of water. Even that was hard to move past the gigantic lump in her throat. “You grew up on a ranch. You know how babies are made.”
He snagged her upper arm, jerking her closer to him. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Panic overrode her senses for a moment. She swung the heavy crystal glass back but stopped short of hitting him. Water splashed over her shoulder, down her back, and pattered on the floor.
His eyes darkened further though he never shifted his sight from her face. “Put it down, Shannon.”
“Let go of my arm.” She forced a levelness to her voice, hoping to belie the quaking in her belly and the shuddering seizing her chest.
Josh released her arm but didn’t move further away. With deliberate movements to hide how much her hand shook, she lowered the glass onto the table. The silence between them grew with each beat of her heart. She had to put some space between them. The old settee would have to suffice, and she let herself sink into the uncomfortable seat, managing to avoid the spring that often jabbed her in the back.
Movement drew her attention back to him. He unbuttoned the form-fitting frock coat, revealing a badge pinned to his vest and a heavy revolver tucked into a holster under his arm. Without a word, he shrugged out of the coat and draped it across the back of the only other chair in the room. Neither of them broke the strained quiet as he eased himself into the ladderback chair, folded his arms across his chest, and crossed his ankle over his knee.
The width of the room between them did little to reduce how imposing he had become in the past five years. The slender, rangy youth was gone. The hinted at squared jaw was now chiseled and strong. His dark brown hair had deepened to almost black and the soft waves were gone. The width of his shoulders surprised her. There was a cagy tautness to his mannerisms and bearing that would discourage most from trying him.
Loud shouting with a subsequent crash from the saloon on the first floor startled her. She glanced at the door. It wasn’t locked. She rose, then sank back into the settee and into the offending spring with the unspoken order when he said, “No one is coming in.”
Shannon shifted away from the jabbing spring and looked across the seeming chasm looming between them. “You’ve changed.”
His brow jacked up and he added a slight head tilt. “So have you. You don’t want to tell me about her, so why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”
Sending him a telegram with a plea for help had been her only remaining option. She didn’t know how much she could tell him without placing him in the same danger she found herself. She searched his features, looking for the warmth she remembered in his expression. He had changed and she wasn’t sure it was a good change. There was a cool distance to him, as if he kept the world completely at arm’s length, as she had once done.
“I’m in trouble, Josh.”
He didn’t move, and the distance didn’t alter. “I assumed as much from your cryptic telegram. What kind of trouble?”
Shannon twisted her head over her shoulder, reassuring herself the door to the bedroom was closed. When she brought her sight back to Josh, the cool distance had become glacial. Whether or not she wanted to discuss Rachel Anne with him, she would have to talk about her daughter at some time in the near future. Not now, though. “There’s a man who’s trying to kill me.”
His brow lifted again, higher than the last time. “Why?”
“I saw a man murdered.” Shannon closed her eyes, trying to push away the memory of that heated argument and the subsequent single gunshot, watching George Davidson’s lifeless body crumble to the floor, and the horror flooding her with the emotionless, icy cold callousness in Robert Rhodes as he stepped over Davidson’s body.
“Were you the only witness?”
“I don’t think he knows I saw…” The shouting from downstairs began again, and she trailed off.
These shouts sounded different. Panicked. Glass shattered in the sitting room and something wet and heavy thumped against the closed, heavy curtains. Before she could register fully what was happening, flames erupted up the curtains.