Dara Rose felt a small, peculiar shift in a place behind her heart.
“I just wanted to say,” the man began awkwardly, inclining his head toward the house, “that there’s no need for you and the kids to clear out right away. I spent last night at the hotel, but there’s a cot and a stove at the jail house, and that will suit me fine for now.”
Dara Rose’s throat tightened, and the backs of her eyes burned. She didn’t quite dare to believe her own ears. “But you’re entitled to live here,” she reminded him, and then could have nipped off her tongue. “And surely your wife wouldn’t want to set up housekeeping in a—”
In that instant, the awkwardness was gone. The marshal’s mouth slanted in a grin, and mischief sparkled in his eyes. They were the color of new denim, those eyes.
“I don’t have a wife,” he said simply. “Not yet, any how.”
That grin. It did something unnerving to Dara Rose’s insides.
Her heartbeat quickened inexplicably, nearly racing, then fairly lurched to a stop. Did Clay McKettrick expect something in return for his kindness? If he was looking for favors, he was going to be disappointed, because she wasn’t that kind of woman.
Not anymore.
“It’s almost Christmas,” Clay said, assessing the sky briefly before meeting her gaze again.
Confused, Dara Rose squinted up at him. Christmas was important to Edrina and Harriet, as it was to most children, but it was the least of her own concerns.
“Do you need spectacles?” Clay asked.
Taken aback by the question, Dara Rose opened her mouth to speak, found herself at a complete loss for words and pressed her lips together. Then she shook her head.
Clay McKettrick chuckled and reached for the egg basket.
It wasn’t heavy, and the contents were precious, but Dara Rose offered no resistance. She let him take it.
“Where did Edrina learn to ride a horse?” he asked.
They were moving now, heading slowly toward the house, as though it were the least bit proper for the two of them to be behind closed doors together.
Dara Rose blinked, feeling as muddled as if he’d spoken to her in a foreign language instead of plain English. “I beg your pardon?”
They stepped into the small kitchen, with its slanted wall and iron cookstove, Dara Rose in the lead, and the marshal set the basket of eggs on the table, which was comprised of two barrels with a board nailed across their tops.
“Edrina was there to meet Outlaw and me when we got off the train yesterday,” Clay explained quietly, keeping his distance and folding his arms loosely across his chest. “The child has a way with horses.”
Dara Rose heard the girls stirring in the tiny room the three of them shared, just off the kitchen, and such a rush of love for her babies came over her that she almost teared up. “Yes,” she said. “Parnell—my husband—kept a strawberry roan named Gawain. Edrina’s been quite at home in the saddle since she was a tiny thing.”
“What happened to him?” Clay asked.
“Parnell?” Dara Rose asked stupidly, feeling her cheeks go crimson.
“I know what happened to your husband, ma’am,” Clay said quietly. “I was asking about the horse.”
Dara Rose felt dazed, but she straightened her spine and looked Clay McKettrick in the eye. “We had to sell Gawain after my husband died,” she said. It was the simple truth, and almost as much of a sore spot as Parnell’s death. They’d all loved the gelding, but Ezra Maddox had offered a good price for him, and Dara Rose had needed the money for food and firewood and kerosene for the lamps.
Edrina, already mourning the man she’d believed to be her father, had cried for days.
“I see,” Clay said gravely, a bright smile breaking over his handsome face like a sunrise as Edrina and Harriet hopped into the room and hurried to stand by the stove, wearing their calico dresses but no shoes or stockings.
“Do we have to go live in the poorhouse now?” Harriet asked, groping for Edrina’s hand, finding it and evidently forgetting that the floor was cold enough to sting her bare feet. In the dead of winter, the planks sometimes frosted over.
To Dara Rose’s surprise, Clay crouched, putting him self nearly at eye level with both children. He kept his balance easily, still holding his hat, and when his coat opened a ways, she caught an ominous glimpse of the gun belt buckled around his lean hips.
“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he said, very solemnly.
Edrina’s eyes widened. Her unbrushed curls rioted around her face, like gold in motion, and her bow-shaped lips formed a smile. “Really and truly?” she asked. “We can stay here?”
Clay nodded.
“But where will you live?” Harriet wanted to know. Like her sister, she was astute and well-spoken. Dara Rose had never used baby talk with her girls, and she’d been reading aloud to them since before they were born.
“I’ll be fine over at the jailhouse, at least until spring,” Clay replied, rising once again to his full height. He was tall, this man from the Arizona Territory, broad through the shoulders and thick in the chest, but the impression he gave was of leanness and agility. He was probably fast with that pistol he carried, Dara Rose thought, and was disturbed by the knowledge.
It was the twentieth century, after all, and the West was no longer wild. Hardly anyone, save sheriffs and marshals, carried a firearm.
“I’m going to school today,” Edrina announced happily, “and I plan on staying until Miss Krenshaw rings the bell at three o’clock, too.”
Clay crooked a smile, but his gaze, Dara Rose discovered, had found its way back to her. “That’s good,” he said.
“Why don’t you stay for breakfast?” Edrina asked the man wearing her father’s badge pinned to his coat.
“Edrina,” Dara Rose almost whispered, embarrassed.
“I’ve already eaten,” Clay replied. “Had the ham and egg special in the hotel dining room before Mayor Ponder swore me in.”
“Oh,” Edrina said, clearly disappointed.
“That’s a fine horse, mister,” Harriet chimed in, her head tipped way back so she could look up into Clay’s recently shaven face.
Dara Rose was still trying to bring the newest blush in her cheeks under control, and she could only manage that by avoiding Clay McKettrick’s eyes.
“Yes, indeed,” Clay answered the child. “His name’s Outlaw, but you can’t go by that. He’s a good old cay use.”
“I got to ride him yesterday, down by the railroad tracks,” Edrina boasted. Then her face fell a little. “Sort of.”
“If it’s all right with your mother,” Clay offered, “and you go to school like you ought to, you can ride Outlaw again.”
“Me, too?” Harriet asked, breathless with excitement at the prospect.
Clay caught Dara Rose’s gaze again. “That’s your mother’s decision to make, not mine,” he said, so at home in his own skin that she wondered what kind of life he’d led, before his arrival in Blue River. An easy one, most likely.
But something in his eyes refuted that.
“We’ll see,” Dara Rose said.
Both girls groaned, wanting a “yes” instead of a “maybe.”
“I’d best be getting on with