20

Ginny stood in the kitchen laboring over a baked summer squash dish with fried onions and bread crumbs.

“Hi, honey.” Uncle Zak walked in the door, uncharacteristically late.

She’d finished secretarial work hours ago, and now all that was left to do was wait for the last ballots to be cast.

Grabbing two worn towels, she opened the oven door and leaned over to check the squash dish. A glorious smell rose from the perfectly browned top of the casserole. “Where’s, Cal?” She stood up, summer squash in hand.

“I sent him back to the boarding house. The Silverman gang’s safely behind bars, so there’s really no more need for an extra gun in the house.”

She set the squash down on the cast iron stove top. “Oh.”

For some reason, she felt…well, definitely not happy. After she won the election, she’d probably never see Cal again. Never argue in the sheriff’s office again, play chess at the dining room table, or feel his arms close around her waist as his lips moved against hers.

Not that she’d miss that! No, the next man she would kiss was Peter Foote on their wedding day. But Cal was very good with Fluffy. The cat hadn’t screamed for a week after that Irish ballad. Maybe nightmares were good for Fluffy. That’s why she’d miss Cal—for her valiant watch-cat’s sake.

Setting down the towels, Ginny took a spatula to the beef slabs on the griddle.

Uncle Zak rested a hand on the stove top. “The election results are in.”

Her spatula hit the ground with a clatter. “So soon!” Usually Mr. Clinton waited until nightfall to tally votes.

She had a lot to do to get ready for the sheriff’s office. For one, she needed a gun belt. She’d also like to practice on that mounted shooting Cal taught her. And she really needed more information on gangs and big city law enforcement. Maybe Cal still had some books from his academy she could borrow. Of course, Gilman was just a small town, but with the silver mine, crime would only become more prevalent and the sheriff’s office an even more necessary force.

She should really have some deputies. Rounding up a posse from volunteers hadn’t worked so well this last time. Half the posse couldn’t even shoot straight. What she needed were regular deputies who trained for their job. Wait a minute. This was becoming quite a list. It could take months, and she had a detective agency to build, too.

Picking up the spatula off the floor, she cleaned it on the back of a tea towel. Oh well, she could do work on the job as sheriff. Easier to direct a moving cart or however that saying went. If she won…

She clenched the dish towel and her heart pounded as she gazed at Uncle Zak.

“Who—?” She gulped. This was the position she’d desired for as long as she could remember. One more moment decided the dream. “Who won?”

“That’s the great thing.” Uncle Zak smiled at her.

She held her breath. She couldn’t help it, no matter how unlawman-like the action might be.

“Cal won and agreed to stay on as sheriff. The chance of getting someone with his experience and training on the salary Gilman pays is one in a hundred. I can’t say how thrilled I am that…”

Uncle Zak’s voice died out to the sound of the pounding of her own heart. She hadn’t won. Ginny swallowed hard. The squash sent a succulent smell wafting up as if to cheer her, but that really didn’t help. She hadn’t won. Strange how years of dreams could end in such a matter-of-fact way.

And Cal was staying? Since when had he wanted to stay? He’d told her he hated Gilman. Even Uncle Zak had said that Cal had better opportunities in Texas. Why, then?

The beef sizzled. On the counter, Fluffy leaned over her tea towel and licked the beef spatula. Tossing the spatula into the sink and grabbing a cooking fork from the counter, Ginny sunk it into the beef.

“How many votes did he win by?” Maybe if she’d worked harder or visited those houses last night, she’d have won.

“Almost unanimous. Just one dissenter.”

“Unanimous! Only one person voted for me?”

Uncle Zak scratched behind the back of his neck. “The dissenting vote actually went to a miner.”

“But I’ve been training at the sheriff’s office for years. And with your endorsement how could the townsfolk reject me.” Tears formed in Ginny’s eyes.

“I may have sort of endorsed Cal…” Uncle Zak rubbed one hand across the other, sweat glistening on his palms.

“Uncle Zak!”

He shifted his feet on the floorboards. “I told you it wasn’t a job for a woman, and Cal had the experience.”

Fine, Cal had stolen her job with her uncle’s help. Ginny crossed her arms across her chest, tugging her apron down. She didn’t much need that sheriff position anyhow. She had a detective agency, soon to be the finest detective agency in the state, with some of the keenest brains in the country just ready to be hired on. For its first credential, the agency could put down solving the Silverman gang case and arresting Bloody Joe.

The sheriff’s office had chased down empty mountains for gang members and harassed Mr. Clinton while her detective agency-in-the-making solved the plum preserves case and connected the key gang spy in town to the Silverman gang.

If the lawmen had listened to the detective agency first off, Widow Sullivan could have been behind bars on day one and forced, under harrowing duress, to confess the whereabouts of the gang hideout. Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t gotten the sheriff position.

The Gilman sheriff would serve well enough to round up town drunks and scare local cowhands into not disturbing the peace at night. But who wanted to be part of a second-rate team, when the real brains of the operation were solving crimes in the humble interior of back rooms?

That reminded her, she still hadn’t found an office for the detective agency.

“Are you feeling all right, Ginny? You’ve been standing with that fork in the beef for the last five minutes.” Uncle Zak touched her shoulder, a perplexed look on his face.

She nodded. “Quite fine.”

He squeezed her shoulders in a small hug. “That’s good. What do you think about Cal staying in town?”

Tilting her chin up, she gave him a calculating glance. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing. I just thought that…”

If Uncle Zak wasn’t brave enough to come out and say exactly what was on his mind, she certainly wouldn’t help him. Even though she’d decided the detective agency would be more useful in solving crimes than the sheriff position, that didn’t mean she was forgiving Uncle Zak just yet.

Sure, Cal had some credentials she didn’t, but he was three or four years older. Probably at her age, he’d been much less qualified than her.

“I wondered if you cared for him at all.” Uncle Zak’s smile carried a hopeful edge to it.

“Cal?” Uncle Zak deserved a lofty stare, and she gave it to him as soon as the startled expression had slipped from her face. “After he stole the sheriff position from me with your help?”

Uncle Zak’s face fell and a twinge of guilt pinched her.

“I made your favorite dessert,” she said. Uncle Zak just nodded. He didn’t even smile. Now she really felt guilty. She plopped the mashed potatoes on two plates.

Yesterday there had been three plates. Between scooping squash next to the mashed potatoes, she pondered Uncle Zak’s question. Did she care for Cal Westwood?

~*~

Ring in pocket, check. Cal took a deep breath. Sheriff Thompson gone for the afternoon and not coming back to clean out his desk until tomorrow, as he’d made quite a note of telling Cal before leaving, check.

Ginny inside the building, yes, he could see her through the doorway, her head bent over a stack of paperwork. It felt strange sitting at Sheriff Thompson’s desk inside the main office. As far as Cal had advanced in the gang division, it was a large enough operation he’d always had several men over him. He looked back to where Ginny sat.

The pugnacity to propose to the beautiful young woman who’d tried to get him thrown out of town, shed buckets of tears at the very thought of attending a picnic with him, and had thrown confections in his face? All right, maybe he needed a little more of that.

He gripped the lip of the desk. Then, one more deep breath and he walked into the entrance way. “Ginny?”

“Yes.” She looked up, not even putting down the pen she drew across the page.

He fiddled with the new star on his vest that Sheriff Thompson had given him just this morning. “I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Anything to do with you stealing that sheriff position out from under my nose?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Stealing?”

Folding her arms across her chest, she directed a lofty stare at him. “I’ve been preparing to be sheriff of Gilman for years. I would have won the election if you hadn’t come along with all your legal knowledge and Texas Ranger training.”

“But you’re a girl.” The second the words slipped out of his mouth, he knew it was the absolute wrong thing to say

“Are you stuck in some mindset from the sixth century? It’s the eighteen-hundreds. Women are moving up, doing things.” Not that any woman had become a sheriff yet, but towns ought to allow female sheriffs.

In other words, by taking this sheriff position, he’d just done the one thing least likely to incline her to listen favorably to his suit. It would have been better timed, and a heap easier to just go back to Houston. He could have proposed to Ginny and got a yay or a nay and still kept his coveted slot on the Houston detective force.

Now he’d be stuck in this town, not only dealing with Mrs. Clinton’s moods, but seeing Ginny every day and not having her. Maybe even have to watch her accept the vapid wooing of Peter Foote.

“…and so, I’m sure someday soon there will be a female sheriff in the West.” Ginny slapped her notebook to the next page and seized up a pen. “When it happens—”

No one said Cal Westwood went down without a fight. She could reject him all she wanted, but he at least demanded the opportunity for that. “Save that monologue for later and—” He paused. One should be polite when asking a girl to spend the rest of her life with you. “Please save that monologue for later. I’ve something to ask you.”

Pen in hand, Ginny tipped her desk chair onto its back legs and leaned back. Her dress rode up with the motion, revealing the white of pantaloons and the delicate leather of her high-topped boots. “Shoot.”

Shoot? Cal wiped a sweaty hand on his already sweaty sleeve. If there was any shooting going on today it would probably be in his direction.

“Go on.” She twirled her pen between thumb and forefinger.

“Will you marry me, Ginny?”

Pen, paper, and a pack of notebooks three feet away hit the floor as her chair came crashing down to an upright position. “Marry? As in husband, wife, rings, and ’til death do us part?’” Her voice quavered.

Cal shifted his stance. “Yes.”

The uncertainty in her eyes disappeared, and she scooted her chair closer to the desk. Resting both elbows on the desktop, she plopped her chin on her hands and gazed at him through narrow eyelids. “Why should I marry you, Cal Westwood?”

His teeth cut his lip as they pressed down. “Because I love you?” He wasn’t sure that was the answer she was looking for.

Chin still in her hands, she shook her head, bobbing that pinned-up brown hair that he’d dearly like to see down. “Naw. Not a good enough reason. There’s a lot that goes into a marriage: merging of resources, combining domestic expectations, planning future goals, arranging the survival of the human race until the next generation. Why, you could lose the sheriff election next year and end up mucking horse stalls to make ends meet. One needs a pretty good reason to spend sixty years with a horse-stall mucker.”

She paused long enough for a breath, but not long enough for him to collect his scattering thoughts.

“Any other suggestions?”

“Uh…” This was worse than that Interrogation Techniques class where an ex-confederate sergeant had vented his states’ rights insecurities. “Because I’d be miserable without you?”

Her green eyes got a sparkle to them as she shook her head again. “The scripture says rejoice always, and there is no proviso to exclude men who have lost their one true love, so I’m afraid you’d have no choice but to be happy.”

“I never said you were my one true love—” he started, feeling lightheaded.

She made it sound like a dime novel.

“You see,” Ginny said. “You’re not even sure you do want me.” She grinned triumphantly.

Was she serious or joshing him?

“Now rationally—”

“If I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry you, Ginny Thompson, I sure wouldn’t be asking.”

She moved her pretty shoulders in an exasperating shrug. “You’re Gilman’s sheriff now. You’re stuck in a rather small selection pool of eligible women. Maybe I just topped the list.”

Rapid protests rose to his tongue.

“Of course, I know everyone in town, so I could easily help you identify more women of a suitable age.”

All right, he was done here. “I don’t need a matchmaker. I need an answer. Will you marry me or won’t you?”

She screwed her mouth up. “That depends.”

“On what?” Proposal or not, his voice went from understanding to clipped.

“On…” Her voice faltered and she fidgeted in the chair.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he waited.

“If…” She toyed with the paper in front of her, pulling it forward, pushing it away, turning it.

He brought his hands out of his pockets and inclined his head just a tad as he looked at her. “If?”

“I don’t know. I just—” Neglecting the papers all together, she twisted her fingers around each other. The neck of her dress cut down, exposing the white of her throat. Her collarbone slipped under the fabric, leading to the curve of perfect shoulders.

He slid the ring box out of his pocket and got down on one knee. “Virginia Thompson will you do me the honor of—”

“Please get off your knees. As in right now. Immediately. Please.” Her voice held a note of desperation.

That was his answer? Not even a chance for the future? And why was he doing all this thinking still on his knees? “You hate me that much? I didn’t know about the sheriff aspirations I swear, or—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just if you stay on your knees any longer, Cherry’s going to make me marry you, and I’d really prefer to make up my own mind about it.”

He stood. “What?”

“Long story, you wouldn’t want to know.” Ginny chewed her lip. “I think—”

“Yes?”

She took one deep breath, swelling the bodice of her dress and let it out slowly before plunging into the words ahead. “I think I will marry you.”

“You will?”

Standing up, she looked at him, moved a step closer, and then, sitting down on the desk edge on his side, she nodded firmly. “Yes.”

She was really going to marry him? A smile rose to his mouth almost as fast as he reached her. His hands went around her waist. “I’ll love you forever and we’ll be amazingly happy.”

She smiled at him.

Shoving his hand into his pocket, he fumbled for the jewel box again. Do you want me to kneel to do this, or can we move forward?”

“You can neglect kneeling,” she started.

No need for more encouragement, he slipped the small diamond on her ring finger.

“I told Cherry you wouldn’t, you know. She didn’t believe me.” Tilting her chin up, Ginny studied him with a strange mixture of happiness and bafflement. “Maybe I should have asked you to kneel. More romantic that way as a story to tell our grandchildren.”

Ignoring her words, he leaned forward toward the adorable mouth that spoke them.

She jerked her hand up so fast that half her hair fell out of its pins. “You know you can’t do that. It was only all right on the mountains because our lives were in danger.”

He backed up an inch. “Do what?”

“Kiss me.” A horrified expression sat on her pretty mouth and cheeks.

“Why ever not?”

“Charles, third grade. Remember?” Her green eyes held a depth of solemnity he didn’t know she was capable of.

He stepped in closer. “I just asked you to marry me. I think your uncle will understand.”

“That’s what Charles thought, too.”

He brushed her cheek, stroking away fallen wisps of hair. “Are you afraid to?”

Outrage swept over her face, complemented by a good portion of utter disdain. Her hands dug into her hips. “I most certainly am not.”

His hands still on her shoulders, he fixed a penetrating gaze on her.

Her green eyes were unblinking, radiating supreme confidence in the high ground of her position.

One moment of hesitation, and he pulled her to him. He had one hand around her waist, the other touching that beautiful hair as he dipped her back. He found her mouth, those kissable pink lips now touching him as he kissed her.

As he pulled back, a gasp escaped her lips, her breathlessness visible by the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “You shouldn’t have kissed me without asking.” Indignation on her face, she paused as if contemplating her next action. Suddenly, a mass of warm calico hit him. Her arms wrapped around his neck as she jumped into his arms. His hands shot forward to catch her.

Her elbow resting on his shoulder as he supported her, she brushed the fingers of one hand down across his face, catching on the areas that hadn’t come all the way off when he shaved this morning.

She bent her neck and swept her lips against his. Pausing there, she pressed in closer, burying her kiss deep.

She broke the kiss and letting go of his neck, slid down.

Frozen in an open position, his eyes tried to take in the sight before him as his brain chugged through processing with all the success of a wagon in a mud pit.

“And that’s for kissing so amazingly. I never knew a kiss would be like that. I hope you haven’t had too much practice.” A heavenly smile brightened her lips as her eyes sparkled.

He found her waist, pulling her close again as he touched the silk of her hair with his other hand.

Her hand brushed his, sunshine in her raised gaze. Then she jumped. “Oh, I completely forgot. I have to meet Cherry at the general store. We’re looking at one of the back rooms for our detective office.”

“Your detective what?”

“Oh, the detective agency we’re launching. Cherry’s really quite good at figuring things. You and Uncle Zak would have completely missed the plum preserve case and Widow Sullivan’s connection to the gang if it wasn’t for Cherry.” Ginny moved her hands to the back of her head and began tidying up fallen strands of hair.

His foot moved back on the wooden board he stood on. “You sure you have time for a secretary’s job and a detective agency? Then when we get married, will you still work or—”

“Oh, I’m resigning from the secretary position. I mean it was nice and all with Uncle Zak, but any law enforcement establishment that completely disregards the plum preserve case isn’t entirely competent. Details are what solving cases is all about, so it’s clearly high time we had a new force in this town.”

Cal stared at her. “Just how big is this detective agency going to get?”

“Huge, most likely. We’re hoping to take on Denver cases by next spring.” Her hair now neatly in place, Ginny started scooping up scattered papers.

He shifted his fee. “What about when we have children?”

She jerked her head up. “That’s right, no general store aisles.” She pursed her lips.

Again, he stared at her. “General store what?”

“I suppose we’ll just have to fight over who gets their help on cases. You can have the brawnier, more stupid ones. All they need to do is shoot and ride horses to work in the sheriff’s office, you know. I’ll need the intelligent ones for the case-solving at the agency.”

He felt his mouth gape. There had been a time once when he imagined an orderly life. He’d move up the ranks in the Houston gang division, one promotion a year, just on schedule. One of those years, he’d find a nice, church-going woman to marry. Come home every night to a little clapboard house, listen to the breeze play through the shrubs outside as he and the wife nestled close, and the family dog barked at a squirrel.

“I’ve got to go. Thanks for the ring. It’s very pretty.” Ginny sailed toward the door. Almost there, she turned and walked back to him. “I love you, too.” She leaned up and pressed her pink lips to his mouth, just a peck, and then she left.

And now he had a fiancée. He shook his head as he moved back to the office. But even amidst the cloudy fog of his own thoughts, he couldn’t keep a smile from breaking through. Ginny Thompson was going to be his wife. The next fifty years, if he managed to survive them, were shaping up to be the best of his life.