Jake's Angel. Nicole Foster

I’m looking or not,” Isabel said, laughing. “You wouldn’t want me looking too closely at the kind of man I usually see.”

      “And what kind is that? The man you went to help today?”

      For some reason, Isabel felt her face flush. “Don’t start spinning any romantic dreams of him as a potential husband. He’s more the kind to bed all of Elish’s girls in a night, drink down most of his whiskey, shoot up the bar, then throw on his boots and ride out of town, bad leg or not.”

      Esme swallowed the last of her coffee and shoved back from the table. “A dangerous man. Sí, you are right to stay away from that one then.” She said nothing more, but gave Isabel an appraising look.

      Isabel got up quickly and took her bowl to the sink to rinse. “I must go to the shop for a few hours. Will you need help with dinner?”

      “Of course not. Go then, since you are determined to listen to no one but yourself.”

      “I always listen to you, Nana,” Isabel murmured, giving her grandmother a quick kiss on the cheek. “But all I have is enough. I don’t need the complication of another man in my life.”

      Enough. Of course I have enough, Isabel told herself as she let herself into the front room of her house where she kept her shop. Her boys were enough. Esme and her newfound sister Katlyn were enough. Her borders were enough. Her work helping people was enough. The house was more than enough! Besides, if something—or someone—were missing in her life, it—or he—would have to have a lot more to offer than one of Elish Dodd’s reckless wanderers.

      She knew that breed, and she’d had more than enough of them!

      Isabel awoke early the next morning, determined to get to the Silver Rose, pay her obligatory call on Chessie’s wounded outlaw, and be done with him. Especially him. She rose before the boys, washed and dressed quickly, packed their lunch pails, and put a batch of cinnamon-and-raisin biscuits in the oven.

      Just as she closed the heavy cast-iron oven door, Matt followed Nate into the kitchen.

      Katlyn hurried in after them, looking, as usual, unsettled by the early daylight. It was later, fortified by breakfast and copious amounts of cold water, that Katlyn came alive in a burst of restless, infectious energy which often earned her raised eyebrows and disapproving frowns from Whispering Creek’s more staid residents.

      But Katlyn, with a toss of her tumbled red curls and a flash of those lovely blue eyes, managed to charm them all and earn their indulgence for even her most outrageous acts.

      “Oh, coffee,” she breathed in delight as Isabel offered her a mug. She tossed her haphazard pile of books and papers on the kitchen table and sniffed appreciatively at the steaming brew. “Cream and honey, too. You are an angel, Isabel. And you’ve made those wonderful biscuits.”

      Nate rubbed his palm to his stomach. “Yum-my, does that smell good. My stomach’s aching this morning.”

      “You have to save more for me this time,” Matt said, shoving past his brother. “Mama, he always gets more.”

      “That’s ’cause I’m older and bigger.”

      “It’s not fair!”

      Isabel laughed. “Don’t I get a hug and a good-morning kiss?”

      Both boys ran to embrace her, and she hugged them close, cherishing the warmth of the moment.

      “Are you goin’ back to the Silver Rose again today, Mama?” Nate asked as he took his seat at the head of the small table.

      “Yes, I have to check on the man I told you about, the one with the injured leg.”

      “He sounds dark and mysterious to me,” Katlyn said around a mouthful of biscuit. “My kind of man,” she added, laughing when Isabel shook her head and shot her a disapproving look.

      Esme came into the kitchen rubbing at the arthritis knotting her thin hands. “Good morning. I am glad you lit the stove so early, Isabel, there is a chill in the air today.”

      Matt moved from Isabel to Esme. “Mornin’, Nana. It’s not cold, you’re just always cold.”

      “That I am. It is because I am an old woman.”

      “I like you old.”

      Nate rolled his eyes at his brother. “That’s ’cause you never knew her any other way,” Nate interjected. “Mama says Nana was a real beauty when she was a girl. Isn’t that right, Mama?”

      “Of course it is right,” Esme answered for Isabel. “That’s why your Mama is so beautiful. When she takes time to brush her hair and change her dress, that is.”

      Instinctively, Isabel tried to smooth her wayward mass of hair. She realized in her rush to get up and dressed this morning she’d forgotten to braid her hair. Deftly, she twined heavy locks into a long braid and tied it with a bit of ribbon she kept in her apron pocket.

      “Better?”

      Esme answered with an ambiguous shrug.

      Katlyn stifled a giggle, smiling back ruefully at Isabel as she put a hand to her own wayward hair. Though they looked very different—Isabel favoring their father and Katlyn her mother—they both laughed often over their shared inability to ever look neatly polished.

      While the boys and Katlyn devoured the biscuits, Isabel organized her thoughts, deciding what medicines to take to the Silver Rose. She glanced outside, looking over the bunches of herbs, withered and faded by the sun, swinging on the long poles outside her windows. A dozen chimes, made from broken glass, bones, and stones, hung from the eaves and sang odd faraway music in cadence with the wind. The air smelled like pine and wood smoke and the scent of the drying herbs.

      The chimes sang, a lark called, and Isabel suddenly felt fiercely glad to be here. This was her home, her family, and nothing and no one could take them from her.

      Intending to take care of her chore at the Silver Rose before the town was in full swing, she packed up her basket. She then quickly did the dishes, and scurried the boys out the door with her, watching them until they disappeared around the corner on their way to lessons with Katlyn.

      At this time of the morning, there was no one about to care whether she came or went or what business she had at the saloon. Isabel walked straight in the front door. Three cowboys and a man she recognized as a fur trader, drinking Elish’s dubious coffee and laughing with Chessie and Anita over the night’s escapades, barely glanced her way. Elish, unpacking a crate of whiskey bottles, looked up and grinned when the slatted wooden doors swung shut behind her.

      “Well, if it ain’t our angel of mercy. You must be here to tend to our one-legged guest. I hope he’s still livin’. I hate it when they breathe their last in one of our beds.”

      Isabel smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about this one dying. He seems to me the kind of man who’ll live just to spite everyone.”

      “Even you? From the way Chessie tells it, it was even odds whether you was gonna cut out that bullet or his heart.”

      “He wasn’t particularly glad to see me, but he doesn’t have a choice.”

      Isabel climbed the stairs and, at the top, didn’t hesitate in going to the man’s room. She knocked lightly at his door and, getting no reply, pushed it open and went in.

      He lay sprawled out on the narrow bed, half covered by the thin quilt, his clothes in a heap on the floor, one arm flung over his head. He looked asleep but when she moved beside him and laid down her basket, his eyes snapped open and he half rose up. They stared at each other, his wary dark eyes meeting her cool blue ones.

      For a moment, Isabel had the uncomfortable feeling of being stripped bare, from skin to soul. His eyes, she noticed, weren’t brown, but a deep gray, and from the look in them she got the impression he was a man who kept secrets, and who guessed them in others. Nana was right. A dangerous man.

      Several