Testing the Lawman's Honor

“You think I don’t know that?” Spencer asked, his nerves eating at his skin.

Cord shook his head. “Spen—”

“I know what I’m doing,” Spencer interrupted. He stepped around Otis. “You just keep those girls from going home this afternoon.”

He left the office heading for the bank with his guts flipping as if he’d just swallowed a pot full of live minnows. Truth was, he’d rather go up against a gang of train robbers than Della, but it was time to face the facts…and the past.

Chapter Two

Della waved goodbye to Florie and pulled the screen door on the back porch closed. She’d told her friend she’d be just fine. And she would be. As soon as she came up with a plan.

First things first, she had to reread that letter—now that she could think. A thorough search of the room left her empty-handed. Scanning it a final time, Della concluded Cord must have taken it. Or his deputy. Wonderful, now she’d have to face him again. As if her life wasn’t in enough of a shambles.

She moved into the kitchen, but that didn’t stop her from recalling the night Spencer had told her not to marry Isaac, and closing her eyes only brought the memory closer.

Spencer, young and handsome, and twirling his hat between his hands, had stood on the front porch when she’d opened the door. It hadn’t been unusual for him to stop by the boardinghouse—he visited Otis regularly—but she’d been the only one home that night and he’d asked to speak with her. They’d taken a walk together and eventually stopped near the big pine in the backyard.

Della’s heart started beating as fast as it had that night.

He told her about the cows in Texas, how it would take him months to drive them back to Kansas, and said he wanted her to know that if she needed anything, all she had to do was go see Trig.

She’d lived in El Dorado for over two years by then, and in all that time—and to her great disappointment—Spencer had never shown an interest in her. Leastwise not the type of interest she’d dreamed of. Hope had stirred inside her, along with confusion.

“Why are you telling me this?” she’d asked.

He shrugged. “I just wanted you to know.”

She’d spun around, no longer able to look at him. “But why now?”

Spencer had grabbed her arm, pulling her back around to face him. “What’s happened?”

Emotions had erupted inside her when she’d whispered, “I’m marrying Isaac tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“We’ve been planning it for weeks,” she told him.

“Don’t marry him, Della,” he’d said.

“I have to, I promised,” she’d attempted to explain, but he’d interrupted her.

“Don’t do it, Della.”

She’d sought for the reason she was marrying Isaac, and had voiced the one she wanted to believe. “Isaac and I love each other, Spencer, and we are going to have a wonderful life together.”

Della’s heart started to race, remembering what happened next. Spencer had pulled her close and kissed her. Hard and long. It had been exhilarating; the most wonderful moment of her life. But when he let her go, and asked, “Do you, Della? Do you love Isaac?” she’d known she hadn’t. Isaac’s kisses had never touched her the way Spencer’s had.

Anger flared inside her now as hot as it had then. Della ripped her eyes open. Twirling, she paced the kitchen. Just when she’d thought her past was over, that she’d have a home again, and a family, Spencer’s kiss had told her it was a lie—that it was not what she really wanted. And then he’d left. To go chase his cows.

Della grasped the edge of the table. She’d married Isaac the next day. Said her vows through tears she couldn’t control. Finally, after years of moving from place to place, she thought a home and marriage would secure her. Give her the stability she longed for. Believed marriage to Isaac would provide that. But it hadn’t.

She pressed a hand to her head. And now he was dead.

Guilt washed over her. She’d tried. Tried to love Isaac, but it was hard to love someone who was never there. He was home more the first couple of years, and things weren’t so bad. The births of Anna and Elsie, less than ten months apart, were her true joys, and Ester, her mother-in-law, had been there.

Ester had been good to her and Otis. Had given them jobs right after they’d arrived in town. Della had been there two years, washing, cooking and helping Ester run the boardinghouse on the edge of town, when Isaac came home from being out east. Ester had talked about him nonstop, how he was attending school and would soon return to Kansas as a lawyer.

But when he returned, Isaac claimed the school had duped him out of his diploma. That they’d taken all the money his mother had sent over the years and then sent him home empty-handed.

That’s how it had always been for Isaac. Someone else was to blame for everything that happened. She could almost hear him now, claiming how he hadn’t lost the house, the other man had cheated at the poker game. For a moment her mind went to his death, and she wondered how it had happened. Was he shot? Hanged?

Oh, goodness, she’d have to tell the girls. Though they barely remembered him, and rarely spoke of him, he was their father.

Della shivered, as if a ghost had walked over her grave. She was no better than Isaac. She, too, blamed others for the deficiencies in her life. There and then, she sat at the kitchen table to say a prayer for her dead husband. She cried for him as well, and for herself. For the mistakes she couldn’t right.

It may have been minutes, or it may have been an hour, when the knock on the front door made her lift her head. She wiped both eyes with the back of one hand and rose, but paused in the kitchen doorway. What if it was the man who’d won her home? She bit her bottom lip, trying to remember his name.

Wes…Westen…Westmeier. That was it. Perhaps she could convince him to let her stay on as his housekeeper, or better yet, manage the boardinghouse for him. Surely he had other homes if he was just now claiming the debt?

Chin held high and braced with a sliver of optimism, she walked through the front room. Her fingers trembled, but she gripped the knob and pulled open the door.

For the second time today, her knees buckled. This time she didn’t go down; the stability of the heavy door held her up.

“Hello, Della.”

She leaned harder against the frame. His hat was in his hand, exposing his head of silky black hair. “Spencer.”

“We need to talk.”