Wildwood. Lynna Banning

letter had come. This time it was from a Dr. Rufus Bartel. Her father was dead.

      She glanced down to find her hands gripping the press lever. A thread of pain encircled her heart. Oh, Papa. Papa! I’m here now. I’ll run your newspaper. I’ll make it the best newspaper in Oregon. She shut her eyes tight.

      A low cough behind her made her jump.

      “Seems to me, Miss Whittaker, you ought to nail down some lodgings for tonight.”

      Jessamyn gasped. She’d forgotten all about Mr. Kearney. “Nail…what? Oh, you mean register at the hotel. I will, after I’m finished here.”

      “The good hotel fills up fast on Saturday,” Ben offered.

      “Then I’ll stay at the other one.”

      “I don’t think so, ma’am,” he said in a quiet voice.

      Turning her full attention on the man at her elbow, she folded her arms across her midsection. “Why not?”

      “The only women who frequent that place are fancy ladies.”

      “Fancy ladies?”

      Ben hesitated. “That’s what we call ‘em out here. Calico queens. That or—” he hesitated a split second “—soiled doves.”

      Jessamyn blinked. “Doves? Oh, you mean wh—”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Ben said quickly. “So, you’d better hustle your bu…uh…baggage over to Dixon House, on the other side of the street.” He gestured over his shoulder with his left thumb.

      “Other side of the street,” she echoed. Her voice trailed off as she studied the man who stood before her. Blue denim trousers outlined slim hips and the longest legs she’d ever seen. A fringed buckskin vest hung loose over a crisp dark blue canvas shirt with silvery buttons that marched up the expanse of his chest and ended at the closed collar.

      Her gaze flicked down to the polished black boots and the jingly spurs, then moved back to his broad shoulders. Slowly her brain registered something she hadn’t noticed before. A purple scar ran from beneath one ear across his throat and disappeared inside his shirt collar.

      She caught her breath. “You were wounded in the war, weren’t you?” she blurted without thinking. “The War of the Rebellion, I mean.”

      The question hung in the lengthening silence.

      The fine mouth tightened. “We call it the War Between the States. Yes, ma’am. Now, about your baggage—”

      “The War Between… Oh!” Of course. He must be a Southerner! Her reporter’s curiosity battled with Miss Bennett’s lessons on propriety. Curiosity won.

      “Mr. Kearney, would you tell me about your battle experiences? As a reporter, I mean?”

      His entire body stiffened, then visibly relaxed, limb by limb, as if given orders to do so. “Won’t be time between now and the morning stage, Miss Whittaker,” he said, his voice low and rough.

      “Morning stage?”

      “Seven o’clock. I’ll ask Tom at the hotel to load up your trunks for you. That way you can enjoy your breakfast before you—”

      “Mr. Kearney, I most certainly did not come all the way out here just to pay a ten-minute call and go back to Boston in the morning. I came to Wildwood Valley because my father asked me to.”

      “Your father is dead, Miss Whittaker.”

      Jessamyn’s heart squeezed. “I know. He left me sole owner of the—”

      “Thad Whittaker was shot in the back.”

       “Wildwood Ti—What did you say?”

      “Your father was shot to death. Doc Bartel said he’d write you.”

      Jessamyn felt the floor tilt under her buttoned shoes. “He did write. He just didn’t tell me… Shot? You mean with a gun? Oh, my Lord!”

      Ben swore under his breath.

      Jessamyn clenched her jaw tight for a moment before she could trust herself to speak.

      “Who would do such a thing?”

      “Don’t know yet. So you see, ma’am, you’d best—”

      She drew herself up to her full height and fisted her hands on her hips. The top of her head came just to his chin. “Do you honestly think I could leave? Especially now that I know my father was… Are you sure he was shot?”

      “I’m sure. Happened right in front of my office. So you see—”

      Jessamyn bristled. “Oh, I see, all right, Mr. Kearney. You think I’m going to turn tail and run, is that it? Just because my father…”

      Her voice broke. She struggled to take deep, even breaths. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Kearney. Papa…my father wanted me to come out here. I know he’d want me to run his newspaper. Surely you don’t think for one minute I’m going to let him down?”

      Ben sighed. “Give it up, ma’am. The living don’t owe the dead a thing.” He growled the words into an uneasy silence.

      “Give up?” Jessamyn heard her voice rise to an unladylike pitch. “Give up?” she repeated in a lower tone. “A Whittaker, Mr. Kearney, never gives up. Never!”

      Shaking, she clenched and unclenched her hands, then wrapped both arms tightly across her chest.

      “God almighty,” Ben swore. “You sound just like him! Stubborn as a mule.”

      Jessamyn flinched.. “Stubborn? Because I want to stay and finish something my father started? You haven’t begun to see ‘stubborn’ yet, Mr. Kearney.”

      Ben raised one dark eyebrow. “Yep, just like him,” he said softly.

      Jessamyn flashed a look at him, opened her mouth to reply and stopped short. The sheriff’s smoky blue eyes shone with tears.

      “Thad was a good man, Miss Whittaker,” Ben said in a quiet voice. “And a good friend. But he was so damned in love with Goliath there—” he gestured at the iron printing press “—he figured he was Moses on the mountain.”

      “You mean he was a good newspaper editor,” Jessamyn translated. Good heavens, couldn’t they speak the king’s English out here? She had to interpret practically everything the man said.

      “The best,” Ben grumbled. “That’s what got him killed.”

      Jessamyn gasped. “Oh! Do you really think that?”

      “Wish I didn’t,” Ben muttered. “Sure as hell wish I didn’t.”

      “Well, Mr. Kearney, if you are the sheriff, as you say, what are you doing about my father’s murder?”

      Ben sighed.. “Everything I can think of, Miss Whittaker. Every damn thing I can think of. And I don’t need some nosy newspaper lady in my way.”

      “I won’t be,” she snapped.

      Ben sent her a steady look. “I don’t want you thinking you have any say about my methods, either.”

      “I wasn’t,” she retorted.

      “And,” Ben continued, pronouncing each syllable with deliberate emphasis, “I’ll brook no comments from you, or your newspaper, until my investigation’s over.”

      “I wouldn’t think of it!” she lied.

      “May take months,” Ben warned.

      She met his hard-eyed gaze with one of her own. Sheriff Ben whatever his name was—Kearney—gave orders like an army officer. “You have my word as a Whittaker.”

      “That,” Ben muttered, “is just what I’m afraid of.”