Her Bodyguard (7 page)

“Two more minutes,” Luke warned.

Kat shifted anxiously in her seat. “Rory, you’re making me nervous.”

“I’m rather nervous myself,” he murmured. “The idea of returning…” His voice trailed off.

“Returning?” Kat’s eyes rounded. “Returning where? You’re not leaving Fort Worth, are you? You’re not leaving me?”

Rory hesitated, fixed on the uneasy young woman. Following a long moment of silence, he slowly began to speak. “My situation has grown complicated, love. I am pursued by forces difficult to resist.”

Kat turned to Luke. “Him? Rory, are you tangled up with outlaws?”

Rory’s mouth twisted. “Am I tangled up with outlaws?” he repeated, walking toward Luke, tapping the cane against the floor as he approached. “Now there’s a question. What does the infamous outlaw Luke Garrett want with the likes of me?”

Noting the faint edge in Rory’s voice, Luke went on guard. He straightened, flexed his fingers, watched the other man closely, paying special attention to the cane, a potential weapon. Not that he honestly believed Rory would resort to violence. That wasn’t his way. He’d lie, sneak, cheat and steal, but unless he’d changed dramatically in recent months, he avoided physical confrontation like the plague.

“The answer is simple, my lovely Kat.” Rory swung the cane slowly back and forth. “Luke Garrett wants to send me…”

Just being cautious, Luke reached to grab the end of the cane. Before he had a grip on the stick, Rory let go and the cane dropped to the ground. Luke bent to pick it up.

He never saw the whiskey bottle until it crashed against his head.

“Rory!” Kat squealed.

Magician’s sleight-of-hand, Luke thought as his world went fuzzy and he dropped to his knees.
I should have remembered
.

As if through a mist, he saw the young woman shove to her feet, her elbow brushing one of the candlesticks as she rose and rushed toward him. The burning candle teetered, fell to the ground, then rolled beneath the chaise. Luke tried to warn her and Rory, but his mouth didn’t seem to want to work.

Everything went black.

MARI BLENDED sugar and cocoa and cream for a living. She’d developed her own personal recipes for her chocolates’ cream fillings, using her Aunt Claire’s special flavoring, Magic, in many of them. She considered candy-making part science, part art. Baking oatmeal cookies was pure comfort.

After the scene with Kat, she’d fled the Texas Spring Palace for her shop. There she fired up her oven, pulled out the butter, sugar and flour, and went to work. Blending the thick, heavy cookie dough with her favorite wooden spoon was just the physical work she needed.

“Frigid,” she grumbled. “The next time I see Alexander Simpson I’ll teach him a whole new definition of the Curse of Clan McBride. Spreading such nonsense to his friends. How dare he!”

It hurt. It hurt to know that she was being talked about in such a personal manner. It hurt to know that the good reputation she’d worked so hard to establish was being tarnished by ugly accusations. It hurt that the man she’d loved and intended to spend her life with, raise a family with, would do such a thing. It hurt that her sister would believe him.

“She’s supposed to be on my side. She’s supposed to stand up for me. That’s what family does. That’s what the McBrides do.”

That’s what the McBrides used to do. Ever since Casey’s death, it seemed as if the family was falling apart. Emma was difficult to reach. Even tonight, dressed in yellow and out in public and obviously making an effort, grief wrapped Emma like a shroud and insulated her, isolated her, from her loved ones.

Mari missed her.

“Kat’s another story,” Mari muttered, giving her wooden spoon a whack against the side of the bowl. At the moment, she’d like to see her youngest sister take an extended trip somewhere far away. She could go visit their cousins, the Rosses, in Scotland. She could stay through the winter, a bitter cold Highland winter. “Maybe that would cool her lust-fevered blood.”

Thinking along those lines, Kat would probably recommend Mari head for the Sahara Desert.

“I don’t need a desert sun to warm me up.” Hadn’t her blood run plenty hot this very night while dancing with Luke Garrett?

Luke Garrett. She wondered how he and Rory Kelly had crossed paths in the past. Something to do with money, she’d bet. A robbery? One of those legendary high-stakes poker games they have down in San Antonio? Maybe Rory once worked for Luke. She couldn’t imagine it being the other way around.

If not money, then a woman. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a woman deserting Rory for the likes of Luke. Maybe she shouldn’t have left Kat alone with the two men. She’d jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Mari wondered what it’d be like to play with that kind of fire. She wondered if Luke Garrett would tell all his outlaw friends that she was a cold fish. She wondered if he and all his outlaw friends had already heard that about her. Could she be as infamous in her own way as Luke Garrett was in his?

“How humiliating.”

Eyeing the cookie dough in her bowl, Mari imagined hearing the tinkle of her door chimes. She’d glance up to see Alexander Simpson walk into her shop, a penitent look on his face. She’d pick up the bowl—no, just scoop up a big wad of dough—and send it flying. It’d splat against his face in gooey, gummy wads. He’d drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness. He’d tell her—

The fantasy dissolved when a thundering explosion rattled her shop windows. “What…?” she murmured, reaching for a damp towel to wipe her hands as she moved from behind her worktable, pausing just long enough to turn off her oven before hurrying to the front of her shop. Outside, alarm filled the faces of the people spilling into the street and the fading light of evening and rushing south.

South? What could have exploded to the south? Her first thought had been the meatpacking plant, but that was on the north end of town.

She smelled burning wood the moment she stepped outside. Fire bells clanged their way down Main Street and, hearing them, Mari experienced her first glimmer of true fear. The Texas Spring Palace stood on the south end of town.

She joined the flood of people making their way down the street and almost against her will, tuned into the conversations taking place around her.

Train wreck…boiler explosion…whorehouse in Hell’s Half Acre. The Palace. The Spring Palace. Gotta be the Texas Spring Palace
.

A cowboy exited the dry-goods store saying, “Heard they expected a big crowd there tonight. Hope some folks got out of there alive.”

Mari heart shot up to lodge in her throat as she broke into a run.
No. No. No. My family. Oh, God. Please
.

It took forever to reach the end of the street, and yet, she arrived far too soon. Bracing herself, she looked left. Her blood ran cold and terror froze her footsteps.

Fire engulfed the Texas Spring Palace. Black smoke billowed into the sky. Flames danced everywhere she looked. The roof of the west wing collapsed even as the east wing’s walls disappeared behind a wall of red and yellow fire. Fingers of flame clawed across the huge dome. The northwest cupola teetered, then fell with a groan.

It was the sounds that finally penetrated Mari’s horror. The cracks and crashes, the clanging of fire bells. The screams. Oh, God, the screams.

As she watched, a woman dropped a child from a second-story window into willing arms waiting below. Then, she made the leap herself.

The huge crowd outside the building gave her hope. The Spring Palace had many exits, something her architect father had noted with approval. People had escaped. Surely her family had escaped.

Please, God, let my family have escaped
.

How could she know? The scene was chaotic. People rushed away from the building, toward the building, from one side to the other. Husbands called for wives, mothers for children. Children cried for their mommies and daddies and broke Mari’s heart.

She stopped beside a boy of five or six who sat sobbing on the ground. He had sandy hair and big, teary brown eyes and a trembling mouth that revealed two missing front teeth. He wore a cute little fringed leather jacket with the Lone Star flag embroidered across the back. Kneeling beside him, she asked, “Can I help you?”

“I can’t find Pa.”

“Were you inside the Spring Palace?”

“Uh-huh. We was in the farmin’ section lookin’ at plows and there was a big boom and Pa hauled me out but then he stopped to help somebody and I don’t know what happened. He was right there and then he was gone. I’m scared, lady.”

“I know, honey. What’s your name?”

“Billy. Billy Waddell.”

“Billy is a good name. One of my brothers is named Billy. He is ten years old and I’m looking for him. How about you and I look together?”

“Okay,” he replied, sniffing as he climbed to his feet.

“Let’s get you up where you can see.” Mari scooped him up into her arms. “What does your father look like?”

“He’s big and he has black hair.”

“What was he wearing tonight?”

“His good boots.”

Obviously, she needed to take a different tack. Chances were, given the chance, Billy’s father would spy him before Billy spied his father. She’d find a prominent spot and wait and…

“Wait. That’s it.” She smiled as a childhood memory provided plan. “When I was young like you, my papa told me and my sisters that if we ever became separated in a crowd, we should look for the tallest thing around and go stand by it. Has your papa ever told you anything like that?”

“No.”

“Let’s try it for a bit, anyway, shall we?” While she’d continually scanned the area for familiar faces, now she shifted her attention to locating a tall, safely located landmark. There, the flagpoles in the park across the street from the Spring Palace. If members of the McBride family remembered Trace McBride’s instructions, that’s where they’d go. “In fact, I have an idea. You keep a sharp eye out for your daddy, now.”

Mari threaded her way through the panicked crowd toward the park. She was halfway there when, with a loud crackle and roar, the dome of the Texas Spring Palace collapsed. Little Billy Waddle began to cry. “I want my daddy.”

“I know just how you feel.”

Anxiously, she scanned the park area. Of the seven other members of her family in attendance at the Texas Spring Palace tonight, surely someone recalled Papa’s instructions. Surely, someone would be there. Someone would be…

“Mama!”

Jenny McBride whirled around at the sound of her daughter’s voice. Joy lit her face as she spread her arms wide. “Mari! Thank God.”

Tears spilled from both women’s eyes as they embraced. “What about the others, Mama? Where are the others?”

“Isn’t Billy with you?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Jenny drew back, a wobble in both her voice and her forced smile. “Emma took Tom and Bobby home. Your papa is looking for you and Billy and Kat. I’m sure he’ll arrive with them in tow any moment. And who is this handsome fellow?”

Kat and Billy. Mari’s troubled focus shifted toward the burning building. She swallowed hard, then summoned a casual tone to say, “This is Billy Waddell. He got separated from his father in the crowd, and he’s going to wait with us until his papa finds him.” To the boy, she said, “Once when my brothers were younger they stole a lady’s petticoat off the clothesline and ran it up the flagpole outside the county courthouse. Everyone in town saw it. I’ll bet if we send your jacket up this one, your papa will find you real quick.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Jenny agreed as a shifting wind brought a cloud of gray smoke billowing over them. They coughed, and their eyes stung. They shifted position as little Billy said, “That stinks like the dump.”

The smell was bitter and acrid and awful—the aroma of destruction. Mari thought she’d remember this stench all her life.

The pulley on the flagpole squeaked as Jenny lowered the Lone Star banner while Mari helped the boy take off his jacket. Jenny produced a pair of safety pins from the hem of her skirt, frowned and said, “I think we’ll need another. Hand me one of yours.”

A seamstress, Jenny had taught her girls always to be prepared. Mari turned up the hem of her dress and removed one of her extra pins.

They secured the distinctive jacket through the grommets in the Lone Star flag and ran both objects up the pole. To give him a better view of the crowd, they lifted Billy to sit at one corner of the pole’s square granite base. While he watched for his father, Jenny and Mari leaned against the base and continued their own vigil. “What happened, Mama?” Mari asked. “What started the fire?”

“I don’t know. Your father and I were dancing when the band director abruptly halted the music and announced the building was being evacuated due to a fire in the southeast wing.

The southeast wing? Mari’s heart climbed to her throat. Oh, God.

“There was a stir,” Jenny continued, “a few panicky people, but for the most part, the crowd moved in an orderly manner. I was in a terror over you children, of course. The boys were supposed to be in the next room, the Texas History exhibit, but I knew better than to believe they’d actually be where they said they’d be. We had headed that way when Emma found us and told us she’d seen the two younger boys run outside. That’s when the boiler exploded and knocked us all to the ground. What about you, Mari? Where were you?”

“I’d left,” Mari replied. “I was at the store making a batch of cookies when I heard the explosion.”

“Cookies? You left a dress ball early to go make cookies? Oh, dear.” Jenny touched her daughter’s arm. “What happened, honey? Did that rat-bounder Alexander Simpson say something to you? I saw him here tonight. You know, I do believe his hairline is beginning to recede.”

Mari offered a weak smile. Jenny McBride’s mother antenna quivered even in the middle of a crisis. “Alex Simpson isn’t worth the cost of cookie dough, Mama. Don’t fret, I…oh, look. I’ll bet that is Billy’s—”

“Daddy!” the little boy cried.

The reunion of father and son brought tears to both McBride women’s eyes. Billy’s grateful father, a butcher, promised them free beef for the rest of their lives. Watching the two depart, Jenny sighed and said, “It seems just yesterday my Billy was that age.”