Lady Lavender. Lynna Banning

the dressmaker, wants to bring customers from Gillette Springs. It’s a two-day ride from Gillette Springs to Smoke River, but when the railroad—”

      “What’re you trying to tell me, Rooney?”

      The older man gulped a swallow of the whiskey at his elbow. “Just that folks are in a sweat. Some of them are gettin’ pretty het up.”

      “Yeah? Who?”

      Rooney’s black eyes slid away from his gaze. “There’s some kinda meetin’ at Whitey’s barbershop. Mostly men—cowpokes and ranchers. Some shopkeepers. And that Spanish guy on your survey crew showed up.”

      “Montez.”

      “That’s the one. Mean-lookin’ son of a gun.”

      “I told Montez to pick up his pay and get out of town.”

      Rooney nodded. “He did pick up his pay.”

      Wash let out a breath of relief.

      “But he didn’t leave town.”

      His spine went rigid. “Where is he now?”

      Rooney shrugged. “Dunno.”

      “The man’s up to no good, I can smell it.”

      Rooney’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.

      The bartender slid a shot glass of whiskey in front of Wash and he downed it in one swallow. “That damned snake laid his hands on Miz Nicolet.”

      Rooney smoothed his beard with his little finger. “Did he, now? What’s that to you?”

      Wash dropped his head onto his clenched fists. He didn’t know the answer to that one. He only knew that when he’d seen Montez manhandling Jeanne on her front porch something had come over him. Something hot and possessive.

      Something he didn’t want to think about.

      “I’m going over to the boardinghouse,” he muttered. “Change my shirt before supper. You coming?”

      Rooney cast an appraising glance over the two empty poker tables in the center of the barroom. “Wouldn’t wanna play a hand of five-card stud, wouldja?”

      “Nope. Rather eat Mrs. Rose’s fried chicken and gravy.”

      His stomach clenched at the memory of Jeanne offering him an omelet. He’d wanted to stay. Forget the omelet—you wanted to kiss her again.

      Rooney was staying at the same boardinghouse, in the room just across the hall from Wash. Mrs. Rose had taken quite a shine to his half-Comanche friend. She always saved the biggest drumstick or the juiciest pork chop or the last dish of peach ice cream for Rooney, who accepted the gestures as if he’d spent his whole life being waited on. Wash knew different. His companion had lived a hardscrabble life. It surprised him how quickly his rough-and-ready friend had adjusted to being fawned over by pretty widows who ran boardinghouses.

      Wash dragged himself off the bar stool and headed for the saloon entrance. He sure wished his mother hadn’t sold the ranch. One of the things that had kept him going the two years he’d spent in that prison hellhole in Richmond was thinking about the ranch near Smoke River. He’d dreamed about running fifty head of cattle and maybe some horses on the rolling seven hundred-acre Halliday Double H spread. There was something special about a place you called Home. Something worth fighting for.