A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [41]
“That son of a—” Clay ground out, before catching himself.
Dara Rose felt tears burning behind her eyes again, and she was determined not to disgrace herself by shedding them. “I have ten dollars,” she said, like someone talking in their sleep. “And I’ve saved some of the egg money. It won’t take us far, but it’s enough to leave town.”
“Where would you go?” Clay immediately asked.
“I don’t know,” Dara Rose replied honestly. “Somewhere.”
“The town isn’t going to sell this house,” Clay said.
“Of course they are,” Dara Rose argued, though not with any spirit.
“I’m the marshal,” Clay told her, “and under the terms of our agreement, I’m entitled to living quarters. It just so happens that I’ve decided I’d rather live here than in the jailhouse.”
Dara Rose’s jaw dropped, and it took her a moment to recover. A long moment. “But, we couldn’t… Where would the children and I—?”
Clay hooked a finger under her chin. “Right here,” he said. “You and Edrina and Harriet could live right here, with me—if you and I were married.”
Dara Rose nearly choked. “Married?”
“It wouldn’t do for us to live under the same roof other wise,” Clay said reasonably.
“But, we’re nearly total strangers—”
“For now,” Clay went on, when her words fell away, “it would be a private arrangement. All business. I won’t press you to bed down with me, Dara Rose. This place is too small for such shenanigans, anyhow, with the girls around.”
Dara Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was Parnell, all over again. Clay was offering a marriage that wasn’t a marriage, offering shelter and safety and respectability. But unless she wanted to send her children away and move in with Ezra Maddox, she couldn’t afford to refuse.
“Why?” she asked, barely breathing the word. “Why would you want to do this, Clay McKettrick?”
He smiled at her. Tucked a tendril of hair behind her right ear, where it had escaped its pins. “I want a wife,” he said, as though that explained everything, instead of raising dozens, if not hundreds, of new questions.
“But you said the marriage wouldn’t be real.”
“It won’t be, at first,” Clay told her. Where did he get all that certainty, all that confidence? All that audacity? “But maybe, with time…”
“What if nothing changes?” Dara Rose broke in, feeling almost as though she needed to shout to be heard over the thrumming of her heartbeat, though of course she didn’t shout, because the children would have heard.
“Then there’ll be no harm done,” Clay said. “We’ll have the marriage annulled, I’ll set you and the girls up in decent circumstances somewhere far from Blue River, and we’ll go our separate ways.”
No harm done? He spoke so blithely.
Was the man insane?
Possibly, Dara Rose decided. But he was also an infinitely better bet than Ezra Maddox.
Chapter 7
By the following morning, Sawyer was long gone and the snow had turned to mud so deep that folks had had to lay weathered boards and old doors in the street, just to get from one side to the other without sinking to their knees in the muck. Hardly anybody rode a horse or drove a wagon through town or along the side roads, either, but the sun shone like the herald of an early spring, and the breezes were almost balmy.
Clay considered all this as he stood in his small room at the jailhouse, stooping a little to peer at himself in the cracked shaving mirror fixed to the wall. He’d washed up and shaved, and then shaken out and put on the only suit he’d brought to Blue River—the getup consisted of a black woolen coat fitted at the waist, matching trousers, his best white shirt, starched and pressed for him at the Chinese laundry before he left Indian Rock, a brown brocade vest and a string tie.
He hated ties.