The fox was sniffing around the chickens again, and the foreman of Paradise didn’t like it one bit. He was briefly tempted to insert himself between predator and prey, but then—seeing the redhead’s slick smile and her long red claws—Shad decided he wasn’t exactly sure which was which. Anyway, he was in no mood to tangle with another Kingsland sister right now, so he yanked down the brim of his hat and glared at Miss Libby.
She looked like a dove this morning in her prim, dull-colored clothes. Except for the damn hat. Even that, though, paled in comparison to her sister’s. Lord, what a pair. He’d be glad when this day was over.
He was glad last night was over, that was for sure. It had been one of the worst nights of his life, sitting in a corner of the cramped coach, wet with sweat and shivering like a newborn calf, unable to shake off the dream that had seemed so real, unable to wake from the nightmare that had driven him from home twenty years ago.
If he’d slept even a wink, Shad wasn’t sure. His eyes felt like he’d spent the whole night riding drag in a dust storm. He hadn’t spent it upstairs at the Steamboat. That he knew for certain. Not with Rosa, or Nona or—dammit—Carmela.
And it was all Miss Libby’s fault. Miss Libby, who looked this morning as if she’d spent a prim and dreamless night between starched sheets. With her damn hat on.
He dragged his gaze to the kid who was standing close beside her. At least she didn’t dress him in fancy little French suits and pointy-toed shoes. Just the opposite, in fact. The youngster had a slightly unkempt look about him, especially the tousled hair that fell across his forehead. He would have expected Miss Libby’s boy to look polished, from his slicked-down hair to his spit-shined brogans.
Shad sighed. He didn’t know why that surprised him. Nothing a lady did should ever surprise him. They were never what they seemed, those finespoken, delicate, devious creatures. They could be all thin lipped, cool and demure one minute, then the next they were hot as whores. He liked whores better. They were honest. A man knew where he stood, or lay as the case may be.
Or didn’t lie, as was the case with him. But not for long. Six or seven hours by coach to Paradise, provided he could hustle these ladies along. Here’re your daughters, Amos. Then five or six hours back to Corpus on a fast horse. Back to Rosa, Nona and—Shad sighed again—Carmela.
Libby tapped a foot on the sidewalk. Their luggage was loaded now—most of it strapped to the top of the coach—but Shula was still batting her eyes and playing flame to that burly behemoth, Hoyt Backus.
She had expected any second that Shadrach Jones would be wrenching Shula away from her father’s former partner as he had done with her the night before, but the man was still slouched against the coach, apparently unconcerned. Possibly asleep for all she could see of his eyes beneath the low brim of his hat. His mouth she saw quite plainly, and that had a lazy slant to it, which brought to mind his kiss. Which set off the butterflies in Libby’s stomach once again.
“Why are we all just standing around here when the coach is ready to go?” she said with more than a little irritation, directing her gaze toward her sister. “Shula? I said…”
The redhead waved her off, continuing her animated conversation with Backus.
“Shula!” Libby snapped.
“Oh, all right, Libby. For heaven’s sake. Did you check inside the lobby to see that all of our bags were put outside?”
“No, I didn’t,” Libby said. She didn’t intend to,
either. Let Shula do without one or two of the twenty outfits she had brought.
“I’ll go,” Andy offered.
Libby instinctively reached out to stop her but then drew back. It was the first time since they’d left Saint Louis that Andy had seemed willing to be more than a few feet away from her. Taking that for a healthy sign, Libby nodded her assent. “Come right back, though,” she cautioned the child. With any other nine-year-old she might have added a warning not to speak to strangers, but considering that Andy hardly spoke to friends, she didn’t think it necessary.
She had barely turned toward the street, intending to tell her sister to stop her infernal chattering and get into the coach, when Andy was suddenly back, clinging to her skirt.
“I saw him,” the little girl sobbed. “I saw my papa. Don’t let him take me, Miss Libby.”
Libby knelt down and took the child into her arms. “Hush, now, Andy. Shh. You’re getting all worked up over nothing, honey.”
“I saw him.”
Shula’s perfume swirled around them. “What in the world’s going on, Libby? What in heaven’s name are you doing down on that dirty sidewalk?”
“Andy says she saw her father.” Libby’s worried eyes flicked up to her sister. “Just now. In the lobby.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Shula said with a snort.
Glancing toward the hotel’s front door now, Libby frowned. It wasn’t possible, was it? As far as she knew, John Rowan didn’t have the wherewithall to buy a ticket to the Saint Louis levee on a horse-drawn tram much less one all the way to Texas.
“I’m sure it was just somebody who resembled your father,” she told the little girl as she brushed hair from her forehead. “Your eyes were probably just playing tricks on you.”
“Little wonder, with all that hair falling over them,” Shula said. “Well, it’s time to go to Paradise. Libby, if you’d get up off the sidewalk, we could be on our way.”
Libby closed her eyes, seething as her sister flounced off to bid farewell to Hoyt Backus. She struggled up.
“Ma’am.”
A hand gripped her arm and suddenly Libby was on her feet, standing in the shadow of Shadrach Jones. His dark eyes scanned her face then lowered to Andy.
“Everything all right with your boy now?” he asked.
Libby blinked. “With my…?” He meant Andy, of course. And if she even began to explain, Libby realized, they’d be standing here till the sun came up tomorrow. “Everything’s fine now, Mr. Jones. Shall we go?”
A moment later his hands were on her again. He was lifting her like a piece of baggage into the coach.
“Up you go, sonny.”
The cowboy lofted Andy like a feather, before the child could even squeak. He followed then, and the roomy coach seemed suddenly small. Libby’s breath was failing her again, so she fussed with her gloves and her skirt before settling back with a sigh.
Shula’s head poked in the door. “Well, this won’t do at all, Mr. Jones.”
“Ma’am?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to move. I can’t ride backward. It makes me deathly ill. Tell him, Libby.”
Libby didn’t say a word. She was listening to the blood boiling in Shadrach Jones’s veins. Or was it her own? There was a brief moment of hard-bitten silence then, after which they all got up and exchanged seats.
Halfway to Paradise, Shad found himself praying—something he hadn’t done since he’d lived under the roof of his adoptive father, the Reverend Jones. Dear Lord, deliver me. From redheads who couldn’t ride backwards, couldn’t tolerate heat or dust or apparently silence. From the mute little boy who was stabbing him with his eyes whenever he thought Shad wasn’t looking. From the prim and quiet Miss Libby directly across from him.
He would have ridden on top with Eb, but he thought he could catch a few much needed winks inside the coach. Every time he drifted off, though, he’d jerk awake to another complaint from Miss Shula, to the boy’s gaze slicing away, to his boot heels hooked in Miss Libby’s dove-colored skirt.
When Eb pulled the horses up at