A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [35]
“I was catching up on my shut-eye,” Sawyer replied affably, grinning that cocky grin that sometimes made Clay want to backhand his cousin, “until you came banging through the door and disturbed me.”
Clay lit the other lantern, the one that stood on the bookcase, and then went to the stove to build up the fire. The last time he’d seen his cousin and one-time best friend, they’d had words, not just about Annabel, but about a few other things, too.
“You’re a long way from home, cousin,” Clay finally remarked.
“So are you,” Sawyer answered, perching on the edge of Clay’s desk now, with his arms folded. The youngest son of Clay’s uncle Kade, and aunt Mandy, Sawyer had the fair hair and dark blue eyes that ran in intergenerational streaks through the McKettrick bloodline.
Clay shut the stove door with a clang and rustled up some leftovers for Chester, who seemed to have decided that the surprise visitor made acceptable company.
Which just went to show what a dog knew about anything, Clay thought glumly. Most of them liked everybody, and Chester was no exception.
“I’m going to ask you once more,” Clay said evenly, “just once, what you’re doing here, and if I don’t get a clear answer, I swear I’ll toss you behind bars on a trespassing charge.”
Sawyer chuckled. “I’m just passing through,” he said. “Since I was in your neck of the woods, I decided to board my horse in San Antonio and take the train to Blue River, see how you’re faring and all.”
“I’m faring just fine,” Clay responded, “so you can get on tomorrow’s train, if it makes it through, and go right back to San Antonio.”
Sawyer strolled to the window, in no evident hurry to get there. He had the born horseman’s rolling, easy stride. “Good thing I didn’t bring the horse,” he said, as though Clay hadn’t as good as told him, straight out, that he wasn’t welcome. “We’d probably be out there in the blizzard someplace, freezing to death.” A visible shudder moved through his lean, agile form, but he didn’t turn around. “Like I said, nothing anybody ever told me about Texas prepared me for ass-deep snow.”
Clay ladled water into the coffeepot, a dented metal receptacle coated with blue enamel, and set it on top of the potbellied stove. Then he commenced to spoon ground coffee beans into it, along with a pinch of salt to make the grounds settle after the stuff brewed. “That’s the thing about weather,” he said, at considerable length. “It’s unpredictable.”
Sawyer finally turned around, but he lingered at the window, frost-coated and all but opaque behind him. “Annabel Carson got married soon after you left,” he said, gruffly and with care.
“Not to you, it appears,” Clay said, turning his back to the stove and absorbing the heat.
Sawyer made a sound that might have been a chuckle, though it contained no noticeable amusement. “Not to me,” he confirmed. “She got hitched to Whit Taggard, over near Stone Creek. You know, that banker in his fifties, with more money than one man ever ought to have? She swears it’s a love match.”
“You came all the way to Blue River to tell me that?” Clay asked, strangely unmoved by news that probably would have devastated him not so long ago. Chester had finished his meal of leftovers from the hotel dining room and gone to curl up on his blanket. The wind howled and hissed under the eaves, as if it were fixing to raise the roof right off that old jailhouse and carry it next door, if not farther.
“No,” Sawyer said. “I came all the way to Blue River because your mama’s been worried about you, and I love my aunt Chloe.”
Clay sighed. “I already sent Ma and Pa a wire,” he said, mildly exasperated. “They know I’m fine.”
“Your saying it and their knowing it for sure are two different things, Clay,” Sawyer went on, his tone reasonable and quiet, as if he were calming a jittery horse or a cow mired in deep mud and struggling against the ropes meant to pull it onto dry ground. “It’s not every day a man picks up and leaves the place and the people he’s known all