A Cowboy's Heart. Liz Ireland

but the minute his bleary eyes had opened this morning, he’d started thinking about that kiss again, and how surprisingly soft and warm Paulie had felt in his arms. And then he’d remembered that Paulie belonged to Trip. He’d ridden out and had been unable to think about anything else. Night Bird could have jumped on the back of the horse with him and he wouldn’t have known it.

      He was determined not to give Trip and Paulie—or that kiss—another thought.

      He rode on for a few minutes, trying to concentrate on the landscape around him. Scrubby hills surrounded them, providing perfect hiding places for bandits.

      Will sighed, unconsciously giving up his internal struggle. He just couldn’t even begin to guess why a sensible man like Trip Peabody would choose an ill-tempered waif like Paulie Johnson to sacrifice his long-held bachelorhood to! It didn’t make sense. Especially when everyone had always thought he would marry Tessie Hale.

      Tessie Hale... Now there was a woman! Tessie was tall, pretty and even-tempered. Sure, she was a little long in the tooth—seasoned, you might say—but so was Trip. And she was a widow, which was about the perfect thing for a woman to be, when it came to a man’s choosing a mate. It meant that she’d already had some measure of matrimonial success. Will frowned. Or maybe it just meant that she’d nagged her husband into an early grave.

      Paulie’s laughter startled him out of his thoughts. “Trip, you chucklehead!”

      Her voice travelled forward, a husky whisper on the light dry breeze. There was something soothing and friendly about the teasing sound. He remembered now that sometimes when he was going up to Kansas, he’d think back on his silly conversations with Paulie. Paulie could chatter on for hours about nothing and still manage to be entertaining. Now that he considered it, he couldn’t remember thinking back on a single conversation he’d had with Mary Ann while he was on his way to Kansas. Maybe that was why he’d written Mary Ann that damn letter—the epistle that had seemed to cause the whole world to turn topsy-turvy.

      If so, that was a fool reason. It was ridiculous to compare Paulie and Mary Ann anyway—like comparing a fig to a daisy.

      He couldn’t help glancing back at her. At just that moment, she tossed her head back, laughing at something Trip had said. Or maybe she was laughing at one of her own jokes. Even from this distance, he could almost see her eyes sparkling with humor. Her head was tilted as it always did when she found something particularly funny.

      He quickly turned back, sighed again, and shook his head, clearing it. Trip Peabody? It just didn’t make sense. But neither sometimes did his wanting to honor the pledge he’d made Mary Ann’s father. Especially now that she was married to Oat. But he felt it just the same, and maybe it was that feeling of being bound to someone against all reason that had brought Paulie and Trip together. If so, be knew he couldn’t talk her out of it.

      Not that he wanted to, he assured himself for the millionth time. It was none of his business who Paulie Johnson set her heart on.

      Galloping hoofbeats closed in on him, and he didn’t have to turn around to guess whose horse they belonged to.

      “Look, Will!” Paulie cried with more enthusiasm than he would have thought any one of them would have the energy to muster. “There’s the saloon!”

      “You’d think you’d never seen one before,” he said, making fun of her excitement over a mere wooden building—one he apparently would have missed, his mind was so preoccupied.

      Sure enough, there it stood on the horizon, looking sturdy, almost fortresslike on the bare arid land surrounding it. A horse was tethered out front, and a pair of men sat on the porch. They were dwarfed by a brand-new sign running the length of the saloon’s roof that read The Law West of the Pecos.

      “Roy Bean sure seems to take his job seriously,” Paulie said.

      “His job, his liquor and his woman,” Will agreed.

      “Woman?” Paulie looked at him in some confusion. “I didn’t know he was married.”

      Will smiled. “Married to an idea, you might say.”

      She didn’t look like he had clarified the situation for her any, so he simply rode on, deciding it was best to let her discover for herself Roy Bean’s odd fascination with Lily Langtry, a woman he’d never met—and probably never would, considering that famous English actresses didn’t make it around to South Texas very often. Oat and Trip caught up with Will and Paulie in the final stretch, both men looking very excited to be within spitting distance of the inside of a building again. A building with liquor in it, too.

      “Think I might have me a sarsaparilla,” Oat said, looking about as animated as Will had seen him.

      “Me, I’m gonna have a whiskey.” Trip almost licked his lips. “Seems like forever since we’ve had that, hey, Paulie?”

      The two looked at each other and smiled—an exchange Will tried to glean for any kernel of meaning. But of course the intent, if not the meaning itself, was clear. From this peculiar couple, a shared grin was the equivalent of a lovey-dovey simper from a more traditional pair of lovers.

      “It seems forever since I’ve sold any, I know that,” Paulie agreed. “But you never did care about sellin’ so much as drinkin’, Trip.”

      Will winced. Hearing them talk about the mundane goings-on at that saloon of theirs, he felt as if he were listening in on the most intimate of conversations. Oat didn’t look the slightest bit uncomfortable...but perhaps he just didn’t know the truth. Yet. The way Paulie and Trip were carrying on, everyone was bound to start suspecting sooner or later.

      “What about you, Will?” Paulie asked. She reached over and nudged him in the arm—at her merest touch, he nearly shot right out of his saddle.

      “Good grief!” Trip exclaimed. “From the way you reacted, Will, anyone would have thought she’d poked you with a bolt of lightning!”

      Will shook his head to clear it. “What were you asking, Paulie?”

      “I asked, what’s your poison going to be?”

      “I’m not here to socialize,” he said tightly. “I’m here for answers.”

      He spurred his horse and rode on, loping into Vinegaroon just ahead of the others. He needed to put some distance between himself and Paulie and Trip. Their relationship was just none of his business. He needed to get a hold of himself.

      Roy Bean, a tough wiry old cuss if ever there was one, pushed out of his chair and leaned against the porch railing, looking bemused by the approaching party. “Well, if it ain’t Will Brockett!” he said in his signature terse, wry voice. He tugged at his handlebar mustache. “I heard you’d gotten back from Kansas, Will, but I wasn’t expecting you to come callin’ so soon.”

      Will dismounted and tethered Ferdinand at the post in front of saloon. “I just came by to—”

      “Well, well!” Roy cried, too focused on the company Will was keeping to care about why he had come around. “This is a ragtag band you got riding drag! Oat, Trip Peabody and some whippersnapper I ain’t never seen before.”

      Before Will could make introductions, Paulie was off her horse.

      “I’m Paulie Johnson, from Possum Trot,” she said excitedly, pumping Roy’s hand a mile a minute. A while back she had seemed reluctant to meet Roy, but now she was greeting him as though he were her long-lost uncle.

      “Johnson?” he asked, his beady eyes sparking with interest. “That girl that runs the Dry Wallow?”

      Will folded his arms and felt the corners of his lips tug into a frown. Paulie, apparently, could charm men more ably than he had ever given her credit for. At least rough types who hung around saloons.

      “I imagine you folks want to come on in and wet your whistle,” Roy said. “I was just about to set myself down to lunch.”

      Paulie practically licked