Case pounded the last wooden plug into the wall with enough force to rattle the globes of the lamps. He’d spent the past half hour patching the bullet holes in the foyer walls, figuring it was better to vent his frustration with the hammer rather than his fists.
Just before dawn, he’d been jerked out of bed by a loud and rowdy brawl between two miners. They’d broken two chairs and a mirror before he’d managed to separate them, rouse the sheriff to haul them off to the jail, and finally break up the guests that had gathered to watch the ruckus.
It was then he discovered his missing songbird.
She hadn’t slept in her room last night, and no one seemed to know where she’d gone. Case had an idea and he didn’t like it.
Jack Dakota had a room at one of the boardinghouses. Case remembered Jack’s invitation to Katlyn after her performance and wondered if she’d accepted it after he’d left her alone.
It irritated him to imagine her with Jack and at the same time, he was angry with himself for thinking it mattered. He had hired her to sing. How she spent her time otherwise, or whom she spent it with, had nothing to do with him.
The front door swung open a few inches and Case turned, the hammer still raised in his hand.
Katlyn slipped inside, her shawl pulled up around her and her hair loose and tumbled. She glanced over her shoulder before carefully closing the door, not seeing him until she started to head for the staircase.
“Oh!” Her hand flew to her mouth. She stopped, staring at him with wide eyes.
She looked the perfect picture of guilt. Case deliberately turned back to the wall and slammed the plug one more time for good measure before saying smoothly, “Have a pleasant night, Miss McLain?”
“And what is that supposed to mean, Mr. Durham?”
The bristle in her voice turned Case around again. She had thrown her shawl back and stood with her arms folded. Case already recognized that defiant cant of her chin that betrayed her lightning temper.
“It means, I hope you had a pleasant night,” Case said, starting down the ladder. “You didn’t sleep in your room.”
“I didn’t realize I was required to. It’s not your business, but I spent the night at Mrs. Donaldson’s boardinghouse with my—companion. I told you, she’s ill, and I stayed so late last night, it seemed foolish to come back here. Especially considering I never know who I’m going to run into in your foyer,” Katlyn couldn’t resist adding.
Case scowled. He strode over to the front desk, jamming his hammer with unnecessary force into the toolbox he’d laid there. “None of the staff is required to stay here, particularly you and Dakota.”
“Jack? What has Jack got to do—” Katlyn stared at him a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, you thought—you thought Jack and I—”
Her annoyance evaporated as if it had never been. She’d been afraid Case had been baiting her in an attempt to ferret out her secrets, when all along he was irritated because he thought she’d been dallying with Jack.
“You seem to find that amusing,” Case said coolly. He leaned back against the desk, lighting up a cheroot and taking a long pull on it before returning to a study of her.
“It’s more than that, it’s crazy.” Katlyn tried to not stare at him in return. Although he exuded that familiar polished command, something had roughed his armor this morning. Slightly rumpled, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hair ruffled, as when he’d dealt with the drunkard, he seemed more dangerous to her than the astute businessman ever did.
Dangerous in a way she didn’t want to consider too closely.
“I like Jack, but that’s as far as it goes,” she said, more to distract herself than to answer him. “He’s too much like my father and every other gambler I’ve ever met. Risk-taking infects them and they never recover. How could you ever trust a man like that?”
To Katlyn’s surprise, Case’s expression suddenly sobered. “Trust is more important than anything, I agree.” He looked at her a moment then added with a twist of a smile, “Although, somehow, I can’t picture you being satisfied with someone nice and tame.”
“Oh, well…” Katlyn shrugged. She started moving around the foyer, touching a chair here, a curtain there. “I thought I would be, once.”
She glanced up at him quickly, smiling at his raised brow. “I was engaged to a rancher before I came here.”
“I suppose compared to the riverboats, ranch life hardly offered the same excitement,” Case said.
The edge to his voice didn’t escape Katlyn but she only shook her head, her expression thoughtful. “No, it wasn’t that. It was…the challenge.”
She stopped near him at the desk and leaned her back against it, like him. Case watched her impatiently push a few unruly curls behind her ear, her tongue darting over her lips as she struggled to put her feelings to words. This morning, the gestures seemed to him both young and endearing.
“Marriage should be about building a life together, sharing the adventure, good and bad. But he needed me to always be waiting, to help him build the life he wanted, not to share in deciding what that life might be. I just wanted more.”
She felt the weight of his perceptive gaze, piercing the confidence and bravado she’d managed easily with her former fiancé. Case had a way of making her feel exposed, vulnerable to her emotions, her insecurities. Vulnerable to him.
“Didn’t you have all of those things with your wife?” Katlyn said, turning to him impulsively. “It must be so difficult now, raising your daughter alone. My sister was widowed once and I know how hard it was for her, being alone with two sons to raise.”
Case looked away from her, taking a hard draw on his cheroot. “I’m not a widower. I just don’t have a wife anymore.”
“You—” Katlyn stopped, not understanding his words or his abrupt coldness.
“She didn’t die. But she might as well have,” Case said, the words falling hard between them. He ground out the cheroot with a vicious twist of his hand. “I married her thinking she was what I needed. She wasn’t. It was all a lie, from beginning to end. She deceived me into believing she was exactly what she appeared to be.”
“I—I’m sorry. No one should be hurt like that.”
“I survived. And it won’t happen again. With anyone. I’ll never take a chance on allowing my daughter to suffer hurt again.”
Katlyn abruptly turned away. She knew if she didn’t, he would see everything she felt mirrored on her face.
She hated this deception, hated being torn between living a lie for her mother’s sake and wanting to be honest about herself. She searched for something, anything to distract him.
“Have you decided to redecorate?” she asked a bit too suddenly, to divert both herself and Case from the painful topic of truth.
Case eyed her questioningly. He didn’t know what possessed him to confide in her like that except
