Page 29 of Love’s Silver Bullet

“Mmm … looks like I have my work cut out for me,” Clay said as he bypassed Sheridan to throw his own horseshoes.

No more than me, she thought with a quiet sigh, glancing toward the front porch. Jake stood, hip butted to a post and arms crossed, his face mostly hidden by the shade of his hat except for the sullen bent of his lips.

Sheridan’s stomach did a dizzy cartwheel. The same lips that devoured mine.

Ping!

Her gaze jerked back to the game when Clay interrupted her wool-gathering with a ringer, cancelling hers out. Dash’s groans merged with Uncle Finn’s cheers, exacerbated by Jake’s and Blaze’s whoops and whistles. Lips compressed, Sheridan made up her mind right then and there not to let anything interfere with winning.

Not even the man she was trying to win.

Clay turned and winked as he stepped back with a knowing smile, allowing her the space to throw. Gaze homing in on the stake on the other side, she closed her mind off from anything but winning because she knew when it came to men, she also had her work cut out for her. Her jaw locked in resolve as she sailed the shoe in the air.

Both the one beside her.

And the one scowling up on the porch.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I have to say, Mayor Finn,” Clay Morgan said with a pat of his stomach, “if that was my last meal, I could die a happy man.”

Yeah, me too. Blaze upended his sarsaparilla, wishing this was the dandy’s last meal, at least with Blaze’s family. He clunked his glass back down, not a bit happy that his favorite meal—Angus’s barbecued ribs and Gert’s special mayonnaise potato salad—had been tainted by the presence of Clay Morgan.

Not to mention the absence of his best friend, who’d begged off on the barbecue for other plans in town. He ripped two ribs apart with more force than necessary. Blast it all, Jake, I could have used some support here! Because now the dandy was making headway with Finn and everyone else, apparently, fawning over the blowhard.

Blaze’s brows dug low. But Finn didn’t know that ol’ Clay had more than likely set his sights on Sheridan if Jake’s assessment of the situation was correct. And Jake was seldom wrong when it came to gut feelings, which was one of the reasons Finn trusted him enough to make him second in command at the Silver Lining Ranch. And the biggest reason Blaze trusted him enough to be his best friend.

“Maggie and Sheridan were laughing it up with some fancy cowboy by the latrines,” Jake had told him privately after the Wild West show, “and although I was a fair distance away, they appeared to be enamored by the dandy before I was able to rein them back in.”

The dandy. Ah, yes, the same one that was charming the socks off his family right now. Blaze’s eyes narrowed as he listened to Clay regale the table with various adventures on the road, pretty sure if Finn knew what Blaze knew, Mr. Clay Morgan would be long gone without a lick of Angus’s famous smoky sauce.

“So, you’re a sharpshooter as well as managing the show?” Sheridan asked after Angus’s peach cobbler had been served and scarfed down along with Gert’s homemade ice cream. Her blue eyes were wide with wonder as she stared at the dandy like he’d just descended from heaven.

Black eyes Blaze didn’t trust for a minute settled on his sister with a twinkle that came off part sheepish, part smug. “Well, I’m no Annie Oakley or Frank Butler, ma’am, but as the only boy out of eight girls, Uncle Bill made good and sure I knew how to both ride and shoot when I was knee-high to a pony.”

He winked as he casually rose from his seat at the head of the table. “In fact,” he said, flinging a coin out into the yard and drawing his gun so fast, Blaze barely saw it before the coin shattered mid-air, “part of my job for Uncle Bill is training new hires on how to fine-tune their shooting skills.”

His grin was downright cocky as he sat back down, the ladies clapping so wildly, Blaze had to fight off a roll of his eyes. Confound it, Jake, why aren’t you here to shut this show-off up?

“So …” the dandy continued, “I suppose I know how to shoot well enough with most every kind of weapon there is. Had to,” he said with a wink that flat-out got on Blaze’s nerves, “Uncle Bill insists everyone on the show know how to shoot and ride fairly fancy, male and female.”

“Holy frog spit,” Shaylee shouted, eyes bugged as wide as the gape of her mouth. “How old do you have to be to be in the show?”

“Way older than you, young lady,” Finn interjected with the barest trace of a smile, “and for the umpteenth time, there is nothing holy about frog spit, Shaylee Ann.”

Sheridan’s head swiveled toward Uncle Finn, her expression of surprise making her look far more like the little sister he wanted to protect rather than an eighteen-year-old woman heading off to college by herself. “But, Uncle Finn, Annie Oakley was only fifteen when she won that shooting match against Frank E. Butler,” she defended, “and Lillian Smith joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show as a trick shooter at age fifteen too. Isn’t that right, Clay?”

Clay cuffed the back of his neck, obviously uncomfortable to be dragged into a disagreement between Finn and his nieces. “Well, yesssss, I suppose that is true, Sheridan, but Annie didn’t actually join Buffalo Bill’s show till the age of twenty-four along with her sharpshooter husband, Frank. Not to mention she’d been shooting and trapping since the age of eight to support her siblings and widowed mother while her sisters played with dolls.”

“I hate dolls,” Shaylee announced with a scrunch of her nose, shoveling in the last of her peach cobbler as if to rid the sour taste of dolls from her mouth. Blaze couldn’t help but smile over his little tomboy sister, far more interested in critters than dolls from little on, including her pet tarantula, Annabelle.

“And as far as Lillian goes,” Clay continued, offering both Sheridan and Shaylee a sympathetic smile, “she began shooting at the age of seven and was already competing by the age of ten, so she was pretty good by the time Uncle Bill hired her.”

“Shaylee and I might have been good, too, if Uncle Finn had taught us to shoot in the first place,” Sheridan said with a mock pout, the tease in her tone unable to mask his sister’s dream to be a sharpshooter since she first read about Annie Oakley at the age of twelve. “It’s not fair.”

“Eighteen years old is soon enough for a young lady to learn how to shoot,” Finn said, taking a sip of his coffee.

“But you bought both Blaze and Dash rifles and taught them to shoot when they were only ten and eight,” Sheridan countered.