“Oh, Ellie.” Lorelei laughed then leaned across the table for a better view. “Let me help.”
Kate had always tried to put a damper on Ellie’s escapades. Nathan was content to sit on the sidelines and enjoy whatever scene she’d caused. As a child, her brother, Sean, had always been in the thick of things with her, but eventually he became too sensible to be involved in any excitement she might cause. Then he’d married Lorelei. Ellie’s world had not been the same since. She finally had a partner in crime.
Lorelei scooted her chair closer. Ellie glanced up at Kate’s exasperated sigh. She didn’t buy that for a moment. Kate’s eyes were filled with just as much laughter as Lettie’s. Ellie picked up the pencil and got back to work. Kate covered her grin by taking another sip of water. “Ellie does seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to detecting romance.”
Ellie glanced at Lettie. The woman was responsible for Ellie’s “sixth sense” and didn’t even know it. Lettie told her at a young age that it didn’t always matter so much what a person said as what a person didn’t say. For that reason, Ellie had spent her life picking up on the little clues no one else noticed. Like the way Maddie’s tone of voice changed when she asked for Jeff Bridger’s order, and the way his nervous fingers straightened his collar while he gave it.
She added Maddie’s initials to Jeff’s name before handing it to Lorelei. “Now, tell me who is left without initials by his name. I’m going to ask you to mark off the men I could not possibly see myself with. Hopefully, we’ll find a winner.”
“Christian Johansen.”
Ellie shook her head. The young man had been her good friend for years, but she couldn’t imagine him as anything more.
“Rhett Granger.” Lorelei glanced up. “He’s handsome.”
“I thought I marked him off. He’s taken.”
Lorelei leaned toward her. “Taken by whom?”
“Never mind that.” She leaned back to give the women a knowing glance. “Just mark my words.”
“Donovan Turner.”
Ellie froze. Her gaze shot to Lorelei’s mirth-filled eyes and she frowned. “Lorelei O’Brien, that man was not allowed on my list. He gives me the willies. Who’s left?”
Lorelei exchanged a glance with Kate. “No one.”
“What? How is that possible?”
Kate leaned over to look at the list. “Everyone else has initials. Some have question marks by them, though. What do those mean?”
Ellie frowned. “It means I’m sure of what the man thinks, or the woman, but not both. I suppose those are still possibilities—until I find out for sure if they’re really taken. But there’s really no one else without initials?”
Kate shook her head. “You paired off every decent man on the list.”
Ellie sat in stunned silence. “I’m going to be a spinster.”
“Don’t say that.” Lorelei sounded horrified.
She buried her face in her hands. “Why not? It’s true.”
“What’s true, Ellie?” Maddie sidled up to the table with their plates.
Ellie spread her fingers to peer up at Maddie. “I’m going to die a decrepit old maid.”
Maddie laughed. “Don’t be silly.”
Ellie straightened abruptly and nearly managed to bump her head on the plate Maddie was setting in front of her. She met the woman’s dark brown eyes adamantly. “It isn’t silly. It isn’t silly at all. I went through every bachelor in town and I’m pretty sure that none of them work.”
“You did what?” The woman backed away as if afraid to find out the answer.
“I think you should try again,” Lettie said as Kate handed her the list. “Something as serious as this should not be taken lightly or composed hastily. Give yourself time to think about it.”
“Ms. Lettie is right,” Kate said, though Ellie had a feeling her sister was just trying to make her feel better about not finding a match. “Maybe you made a mistake.”
“You left someone off.”
Ellie frowned at Lettie. “I did? I thought I listed every decent, God-fearing man in town.”
“That’s why.” The woman nodded as if the mysteries of the world had been explained to her, while eyeing her thoughtfully. “I don’t know why I never thought of it before.”
“Thought of what?” Lorelei asked as everyone seemed to lean forward in anticipation.
Lettie exchanged a meaningful look with Kate. At first, Kate’s brow furrowed, then slowly the illuminating light of intuition seemed to fill her eyes. “You mean...?”
Lettie nodded.
Kate’s eyes widened, then she stared at Ellie before sitting back in her chair. “Hmm.”
Ellie exchanged a confused glance with Lorelei. “Who is it?”
A slow smile lifted Kate’s lips. “This could be good. This could be very good.”
* * *
It was always good to get letters from home. Lawson glanced at Nathan Rutledge’s letter then turned to the one from the woman he called Mother. Reaching his room in the boarding house, he tugged off his dirty boots, threw his Stetson on his desk and fell back onto his bed, allowing himself to give in to exhaustion for just a moment before opening his mail.
It had been a long, hard year filled with dangerous work and too many secrets. As a Texas Ranger, he’d rounded up more than his fair share of outlaws, and he tried to find some satisfaction in that. But this near-vagabond existence was too much like the life he’d left behind when he’d stumbled into Peppin, Texas, abandoned and alone with nowhere to go until the O’Brien family took him in. A few months later, when he was fourteen, Doc and Lettie Williams adopted him. They’d been the parents he’d always dreamed of. His life in Peppin had been so good that he’d nearly forgotten about the past. Here...he seemed to run across it every day in the smell of liquor, the haunted eyes of the saloon girls, the solitude and the need to be on constant alert.
His commanding officer in the Rangers constantly told him not to lose the chip on his shoulder. “That’s what makes you stand out from the other Rangers. That’s what makes you tough. That’s what enables you to get your man. Never lose that chip.”
Lawson wasn’t stupid enough to believe him. God was the one enabling him to catch those criminals. As for the chip on his shoulder—well, he reckoned he’d picked it up sometime between being abandoned and wandering into Peppin. Unfortunately, it didn’t keep the harshness of this life from wearing away at him, day by day.
Time for a distraction. He tore open the letter from his parents first. It was a thick one so it ought to be good. He lifted the letter above his head just high enough for it to catch the sunlight shining through the window behind him. The room was so silent that he decided to read it out loud: “‘Dear Lawson, You really should come home.’”
He sat up in concern and pulled the letter closer. “‘Now, don’t get all excited. Everyone here is fine. Your pa and I just miss you like crazy. We haven’t seen you in more than a year. You haven’t come home for any of the holidays. I know you work hard and what you do is important. This isn’t to make you feel guilty. This is just to tell you that we love you and we want to see you. Surely you can apply for a leave of absence. Just a few weeks of your company—that’s all I ask. Now, I’ve said my piece so I won’t mention it again.’”
She kept her promise and went on to talk about some of the things Lawson had mentioned in his last letter, but he kept going back to that first paragraph. She was