the plates down beside the washbasin. “It’s Sim.”
Miriam exchanged startled glances with Tally. “Sim,” she repeated. “Simeon.”
“No one calls me that, either,” he said. Somehow he insinuated himself next to Tally without seeming to have moved across the room. He drew her out the door and onto the porch. A breeze had risen to drive away the day’s heat, and Tally turned her face into the wind’s caress.
Sim pulled a rolled cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and contemplated it as if it were a rival to be defeated. “I meant what I said in there,” he said.
“About the rustlers? I never doubted it.”
He cast her a sideways glance. “No questions? No suspicions?”
She leaned against the house’s cool adobe wall. “Elijah may be right. I’m not ignorant, Sim. I never dismissed the possibility that you’ve walked on both sides of the law.”
Sim dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot. “Some men might take offense at that implication.”
“Do you?”
“Do I look angry?”
She wasn’t about to admit how difficult it was to read the expressions on his face. “Then Elijah has reason for his concern.”
“You still want me here?”
“Everyone deserves a chance to make a new life. A better life.” She met his eyes. “Isn’t that what you want, Sim?”
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