Page 101 of Love’s Silver Bullet

“Most, I’ll wager,” she quipped with a chuckle, wondering for the very first time if she could ever fall in love with a dear friend like Gray.

His smile was smug as he adjusted the lay of his vest. “Most maybe, but definitely not all as you have so aptly shown.”

His words tugged on her heart as firmly as he tugged on his vest, curving her lips into a gentle smile. “Only because I fell in love with a stubborn man back home first, Gray Carmody, or I suspect I’d be as hog-tied as all the other women you dazzle with your charm.”

He leveled a taut finger, eyes squinted in a mock glare despite the playful smile that hovered on his lips. “Exactly, Miss Donovan, so I want you to make it perfectly clear to that blind dolt that if he doesn’t marry you first, I am next in line with a bona fide offer, understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a sassy salute, teasing him right back.

The humor in his manner faded as he searched her eyes with true affection, his voice sobering into a husky whisper. “I’m not joking, Sheridan,” he said quietly, and I want you to make good and sure he knows that, my friend, that I’ve flat-out asked you to marry me, all right? Because if I can’t secure the love that I want for myself,” he arched a dark brow, the jest in his tone at odds with the sobriety in his eyes, “I at least want to help secure it for you.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Hands plunged in his pockets and head down, Jake paced back and forth on the empty train-station platform rehearsing what he wanted to say to Sheridan when she arrived home for Christmas. Others waited inside the train station since the day was bitter cold, but you sure couldn’t tell by him, not with sweat ringing his collar and hands damp with the memory of the last time he’d seen her.

“What do you want from me, Jake?” Her voice had been a hoarse whisper, lips swollen and wet from the kisses they’d shared.

“I want you to wait.”

He halted mid-pace, gaze trailing into a bleak and guilty stare while snow flurries swirled around. “It’s time to tell her the truth,” he had argued with Blaze and Dash just last week, determined not to lead Sheridan on anymore. To tell her there was no hope for a marriage between them, and then finally tell her why.

A shiver rattled through his body that had nothing to do with the frigid temperatures. He almost wished he’d just spilled it all in one of the many letters they’d written back and forth like Sheridan repeatedly begged him to do. But he just couldn’t put pen to paper with awful memories like that. It was bad enough that they were gouged into the walls of his mind.

“Afternoon, Marshal,” Earl Holly said, jolting Jake from his thoughts. Face ruddy from the cold, Virginia City’s station master for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad peeked out of the station door with a near-toothless smile. “Just got word the train’s running a little late—’bout ten minutes or so. You may want to wait inside where it’s warm like everybody else, or you’re liable to catch your death out there, cold as it is.”

Jake’s smile went flat. Catch his death. Pretty much already did that way back when, before he’d ever come to the Silver Lining Ranch. The demise of everything he held dear.

His family.

His dreams.

His hope for a future.

“No, thanks, Earl, I’m not really all that cold. Got a lot on my mind, so I’m just walking it out.”

“Still worried about that no-good Sikeston fellow?”

Jake smiled, Slick Sikeston the least of his worries. He’d thrown the notorious gunslinger into a cell when he stirred up trouble at the Bucket of Blood Saloon last week, shooting up the place and nicking a few patrons in a drunken brawl.

A mean-mouthed lowlife with a trigger-happy reputation, ol’ Red didn’t take kindly to Jake’s locking him up for a full week, swearing he’d get even. “Nope. I doubt we’ll see Sikeston anytime soon. Threatened to throw his ugly mug back into the clink if he stepped one foot in Virginia City again.”

“Whoo-eeee! I’ll tell you what, Jake, the town’s feeling a whole lot safer with you behind that badge, son. Poor old Cyrus was tough enough, I suppose, but everyone could see he was startin’ to wear out when it came to these young pups like Sikeston, just itching to strut their stuff.” He winked. “’Course it sure don’t hurt you’re the Nevada State Shootout champ, I’m guessin’.”

“Thanks, Earl. All that gun practice at the Silver Lining Ranch paid off, I guess,” he said with an awkward cuff of his neck, “but now that I’m wearing a badge, I’d like to play down that title since there are too many gunslingers out there looking to prove they’re better than me.”

Earl’s laughter puffed into the cool December air. “No doubt about that, son, so you stay safe, you hear?”

“Exactly what I’m trying to do, Earl,” he said with a polite tip of his hat before the old stationmaster clicked the door closed.

Safe.

For both Sheridan and me.

Ten minutes later on the money, a faraway whistle pierced the air as Jake looked up, steam billowing into the sky like angry thunderclouds. He grunted, wondering if it portended a storm in his friendship with Sheridan as well. He hoped not, but he wouldn’t blame her if it did.

Chugging away, the train grew from a dot on the horizon to a shuddering mass of steel belching smoke as acrid as the taste of regret in his mouth. Its whistle shrieked as it bore down on the station, the smell of smoke and coal wrinkling his nose.

Both the train and Jake’s pulse screeched to a stop at the exact same time, and when the passenger door squealed open with a loud clank, his breathing did too.