Cecilia And The Stranger

“Same as Watkins,” Beasley added.

“Yes, Watkins,” Jake agreed. Who was Watkins? “Good old Watkins.”

Beasley chuckled anxiously. “There. Now that’s settled...” He held out his hand toward Cecilia. “The key?”

“The key is on the desk,” she said proudly, nodding toward it. Then, impulsively, she glared at Jake and added, “But I wouldn’t trust it to this—this fraud!”

Jake felt the blood drain from his face as her accusation hit its mark. Yet fraud though he was, he hadn’t narrowly escaped death to let his future be snatched away by an ornery little rich girl. He clenched his fists at his sides and prepared to speak in his own defense.

But this time, chiming right in with Beasley’s shout of outrage was a mumbled warning from Buck. “Cici, I’d watch my words...”

“But it’s true!” she cried. “This man isn’t a schoolteacher any more than I’m a...a—”

“Lady?” Jake couldn’t resist drawling.

Her blue eyes flew open in shock. “How dare you!”

“Hey, now...” Buck said, as if he’d never heard a man speak unkindly to a woman before.

“He couldn’t even tell you what college he went to,” Cecilia argued.

“The University of Pennsylvania!” Beasley again cried out in exasperation.

“Like I said,” Jake said, smiling at her smugly.

Cecilia pushed past Buck and came forward menacingly, in spite of Beasley’s ineffectual sputtering. Before setting foot in this little classroom, Jake hadn’t given much thought to the difficulties of assuming another person’s identity. Having spent two years one step ahead of an assassin, he couldn’t imagine much danger in pretending to be a schoolteacher.

He was wrong.

When Cecilia spoke, she punctuated her sharp words by jabbing a slender pointy-nailed finger toward his chest. “I’ll be watching you, Pendergast, and following you like a shadow. You might be able to fool the likes of the Bucks and Beasleys of this town, but you can’t fool me.”

By the time she finished, mere inches separated them. Jake had to give her points for bravery, as well as keen insight. Nevertheless, he smiled. This little performance of hers had Beasley so distressed that the storekeeper would probably stand by him even if it turned out that he was Sam Bass resurrected.

Even so, if he didn’t try to settle this now, this little slip of a woman would try to harass him right out of town. Keeping in mind that he was a mild-mannered schoolteacher, Jake took a slight step forward and looked straight into Cecilia’s eyes.

“If a beautiful flower such as yourself cares to stay close to me, how could I be anything but thrilled at the prospect?”

In a gesture that would have done Uncle Thelmer proud, Jake clasped her hand and gallantly hoisted it to his lips. Letting loose a startled gasp, she attempted to yank it back all the while, so that when he did suddenly let go, the loss of resistance propelled her backward.

“Oh!” she cried, colliding with a desk. Her eyes were wide pools of blue as she stared at him, a furious blush rising in her cheeks. Jake was prepared to be slapped, spat upon or shouted at, but Cecilia remained immobile, for the first time—blessedly—at a loss for words.

Beasley quickly stepped between them. “How nice! Now that you two have settled your little differences, I’m sure that I won’t have to mention your unfriendliness to your father the next time I see him, Cecilia.”

“My father?” Cecilia pivoted toward Beasley.

The man grinned again in that smug way that made Jake’s skin crawl. “Cooperation, you know,” Beasley blustered, “it’s what makes little communities like ours flourish.” He obviously thought he had her over a barrel.

And apparently he did. Cecilia aimed one last glare at Jake, then turned with a flounce and stomped toward the door. Before crossing the threshold, she sent Jake a final warning. “Don’t forget—I’ll be watching. Come on, Buck.” Her companion mumbled something to the two men, then shuffled after her.

When the door closed behind them, Beasley smiled stiffly. “Like I said, a wonderful girl. So...wealthy,” he added, as if this explained exactly what made her wonderful. Most likely to Beasley it did.

“I see.”

Beasley wasted no time in launching into another monologue, this one mostly about the moral standards expected of the schoolteacher by the community. Once he realized Beasley was one of those blowhards who was only interested in the big picture and not in details that might actually prove helpful, Jake only half listened. Instead, through the window he watched Cecilia Summertree’s slim, alluring figure in retreat.

She was beautiful. Strange, Jake thought, that it seemed like years since he’d noticed a woman. Of course, never before had a woman demanded his attention in such a way. But he liked that about her, too. Cecilia Summertree was the most tenacious, forthright woman he’d ever met. He had no doubt that if she set her mind to do something, she’d do it.

Like run him out of town on a rail.

Jake frowned. That woman could mean trouble. Big trouble.

* * *

Cecilia barreled toward Dolly Hudspeth’s boardinghouse as fast as the heat would allow. But it wasn’t only the temperature that caused her to flush red. She couldn’t wait to ensconce herself in the privacy of her spacious room and start plotting her revenge. That slimy hand-kissing Alabama Yankee wasn’t going to get the best of her.

“Cecilia, wait up!”

At the sound of Buck’s voice Cecilia stopped and turned, her arms akimbo. “Buck, why are you following me?”

He came up short a few feet away, his face a mask of confusion. “You told me to.”

That’s right, she did—but then, she hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time. With a limp wave, she attempted to shoo him away. “Well, never mind. Go home. And don’t you dare whisper a word of this to my father!”

A wide smile broke across Buck’s face. It was a handsome face, bronzed from the sun. His hair was colored a light brown and his blue eyes were open and friendly. Too friendly, Cecilia thought. The man hadn’t stopped pestering her since she’d come home from New Orleans in disgrace.

“Don’t you think it’s time you came back to the ranch, Cici?” he asked. “Not much keeping you in town now.”

Not much, Cecilia agreed, except the thinnest thread of civilization, which incidentally meant everything to her, although she couldn’t expect the heathens she was surrounded by to understand. There was no way she was going back to that ranch. She’d go out of her mind with boredom, and the tension there between her and her father was thick enough to cut with a knife. No, thank you. That house had seen too much sadness.

Cecilia had watched her poor delicate mother languish for years on that blasted ranch, fretful and depressed. Not that her father had cared. He’d allowed his wife to return to her people in Memphis for visits to her family, but she’d inevitably come back ahead of schedule, unable to stay away from that mournful place. When she’d finally died of scarlet fever, her parting words to Cecilia had been instructions on where not to live, and Cecilia had taken the advice to heart.

Even so, before Evelyn Summertree’s eyes had closed that last time, she’d been watching out the window, waiting, her eyes scanning the hated barren landscape.

“I’m staying in town,” Cecilia said firmly, fighting against a familiar ache in her heart that came with thoughts of her mother.

Buck ambled closer, one thumb looped at his belt. “Aw, c’mon, Cici. You don’t really believe the man’s not a schoolteacher, do you?”

“Didn’t you hear him call me a beautiful flower? What kind of snake-oil salesman talks like that?”

“But you are,” Buck responded with a grin that made Cecilia puff in exasperation. “Besides, he looked just like a regular fella to me.”

“That’s just the trouble, Buck. Everyone looks nice to you.”

“Especially you, sweetheart.”

She ignored the flirtatious comment. “Besides, he looked too much like a regular fellow—not a teacher. He was staring around the place as if he hadn’t been in a classroom before!”

“Maybe it looked different than the ones up North.”