Buch lesen: «Forever And A Day»

Chapter One

Race Logan’s daughter yanked on the heavy bank door as if she meant to tear it off its hinges. Warm noon air gusted into the lobby with her, riffling papers and the top page of the tearaway calendar on the wall. The elderly teller glanced over the rims of his glasses—first at the date, then at the high hands of the regulator clock and finally at the young woman who stood there tugging off her gloves.

He plucked off his spectacles, put them on again and gulped. “Miss Honey!”

“Hello, Kenneth.” By now she had whisked her porkpie hat from her head and was stabbing the pins back into the velveteen confection.

“Aren’t you...shouldn’t you be...?” Kenneth Crane crooked a finger under his tight collar to make room for his Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard and loud. “I thought you were east...at school.”

Honey Logan sniffed in reply, an eloquent proclamation that not only was she no longer east, but she was very much here and intended to remain.

“Y-your father’s not here,” the teller stammered. “Actually no one is supposed to be here this afternoon. Only...only me.” His eyes sought the calendar once more, then jerked to the clock. “You see, Miss Honey, any minute now we’re expecting...we’re going to be...”

“Just go on with whatever you were doing, Kenneth,” Honey snapped as she moved toward the paneled oak door that separated the president’s office from the lobby of the bank. If the fussy old teller tried to stop her, she was prepared to jab him with a hat pin.

“But, Miss Honey...”

She slammed the door on his protest. For a minute Honey leaned against the smooth oak surface, breathing in the familiar fragrance of the dim, cool office, letting it fill her senses. Leather. Her father’s Cuban cigars. The pungent, clean scent of ink. Or was it money? She’d never been entirely sure.

Her gaze lit on the vacant swivel chair behind the massive oak desk. Its tufted leather bore the impression of Race Logan’s wide shoulders. “Daddy, I’m back,” she whispered. “And I’m staying, whether you like it or not.”

She tossed her hat onto the horsehair sofa, then crossed the room and plopped into her father’s chair, kicking it into a spin that ended abruptly when her foot collided with the safe.

Staring at the huge black vault with its embossed faceplate and brass combination lock, Honey remembered the day it had arrived on the back of a mule-drawn wagon. Was it ten years ago? Eleven? It seemed like yesterday, but she couldn’t have been more than nine or ten then. She remembered how the sun had blazed on the gilt letters—Logan Savings and Loan. Most of all, she recalled the way her fingers had itched to turn the big brass dial and the way her heart had swelled with pride to see her name—Logan—in such bold, beautiful letters. So beautiful. So important. So...responsible.

For the past few months she’d been toying with the notion of changing her name, and the sight of the imposing vault convinced her now. She was indeed going to take back the name with which she’d been christened—in memory of her mother’s first husband, Ned Cassidy, who had died the day she was born. It was a name as sober and imposing as the iron safe before her. “Edwina.” She said it softly, savoring the feel of it on her tongue. Just heavy enough. Like oatmeal or one of her mother’s Christmas fruitcakes, neither of which she particularly cared for, but the name had a gravity that was infinitely appealing.

“Honey.” She had Race Logan to thank for that. He couldn’t abide anything that smacked of the Cassidys, back then or now, and when he’d come back from the war to discover he had a daughter who had a Cassidy name, he’d tricked her into naming herself by asking “What’s your name, honey?” She’d given the obvious and parrotlike response and had been Honey Logan ever since. Well, if she’d named herself once, she thought, she could certainly do it again.

She swung the chair full circle and gazed thoughtfully at the desk top. Her father’s distinct, almost stern penmanship covered an assortment of papers there. The little oval tintype of her mother gazed calmly from its place beside the crystal inkwell.

They were going to kill her. For the first time since her abrupt and unannounced departure from Miss Haven’s Academy in St. Louis several days ago, Honey felt her courage wavering. She swallowed in the hope of drowning the butterflies that were beginning to flutter in her stomach. Bankers didn’t suffer from butterflies, she reminded herself. Bankers didn’t succumb to doubt and dread. They were tough and strong. Like her father.

She glanced at the gold lettering on the safe again. Bankers were, above all, responsible. And that was exactly what she intended to be. Unless, of course, her father killed her before she got the chance.

Heaven knew Race Logan was capable of it. And although her father didn’t say much about that aspect of his life, Honey had listened to her Uncle Isaac spin stories over the years about her father’s legendary exploits as a wagon master on the Santa Fe Trail. The moral of most of those stories, however, wasn’t about murder. It was about hard work and responsibility.

Honey had taken those tales to heart. There was nothing she wanted more than to follow Race Logan’s example. But while she craved responsibility, her father merely wanted her to be safe and secure—preferably in his own house, on a high shelf in a glass box whose key rested comfortably in his vest pocket. Having just spent the past two years in a glass box called a finishing school, Honey had decided she was indeed finished—with glass boxes.

But how in the world was she going to convince her father? The mere mention of the word responsibility now was guaranteed to bring a dark scowl to his handsome face and his voice would surely thunder like God Almighty’s when he proclaimed, “Don’t talk to me about responsibility, young lady. Not after you walked out of school the way you did.”

Well, she hadn’t walked out, Honey thought now. Not exactly. It had been more like storming out. She hadn’t wanted to attend Miss Haven’s Academy in the first place, but her father had insisted. Then, after nearly two years of trying to please him by applying herself diligently to the study of music and literature and the domestic arts, Honey had had enough of arias and sonnets and delicate stitchery. She yearned to accomplish more.

Longing to follow in her father’s footsteps, she had at last approached the academy’s directress about her wish to pursue a new and individualized curriculum. But after Miss Euphonia Haven’s palpitations subsided, the woman had sniffed indignantly and had informed Honey in no uncertain terms that the study of higher mathematics and finance was unsuitable for young ladies. So Honey had packed her trunks and taken the first train home. Unsuitable! She’d show them unsuitable!

This was her rightful place. Honey shifted in the big leather chair, aware of the way the back and seat had been molded by her father’s solid frame and how the leather on the arms had been nearly worn away by his sleeves. She was, after all, his eldest child. Didn’t she deserve the opportunity to be his heir? Surely she could convince him.

If not, perhaps her mother could. Tiny Kate Logan had gone toe-to-toe with her strapping husband more than a few times over the years on her daughter’s behalf. Honey smiled wistfully now, remembering the last time her mother had come to her rescue by engaging her father in an all-out bidding war for a supper basket he was determined to keep from any and all of his daughter’s young suitors. Although her mother had won, Honey hadn’t enjoyed the fruits of the supper basket or the victory all that much. The beau in question had turned out to be little more than a fawning fool. The first of many.

On the other hand, her mother might not help. Not long after that bidding war and giving birth to her fifth child, Kate Logan had announced her unconditional withdrawal from the fray.

“I’m tired of being in the middle all the time,” her mother had said. “You look like him, you think like him, and sometimes you’re even more bullheaded. You two Logans can butt heads for a while without me between you. I swear, Honey, you and your daddy have just plain worn me down.” True to her word, Kate had even abstained from the battle over finishing school, leaving Honey to lose it on her own.

But she wasn’t going to lose anymore. She was here, her fanny planted firmly in Race Logan’s big chair, and here she was going to stay.

Holy hellfire! Couldn’t anybody see that she was bright and eager and willing to work hard to prove herself? Didn’t anybody understand that she needed to prove she could be a trustworthy human being?

Apparently not, Honey thought glumly. She was just going to have to show them. And that was why she had come directly to the bank after getting off the train. She planned to be here—in the bank—working—when her father returned from his noon meal. She was going to show him what a valuable asset his daughter was—how diligent she could be—how trustworthy and, dammit, just how responsible.

Yanking open the bottom desk drawer, intending to stow her gloves there, Honey found herself gawking instead.

“What in the world...?” she murmured at the sight of chains and an odd metal contraption, which she lifted, cautiously, by one end. Wrist cuffs! How odd. Now why would her father have a pair of wrist cuffs in his desk drawer?

Curious, she fit the circlet of steel around her wrist and stared at it while a shiver rippled the length of her spine. What a horrible, ugly thing it was. A bracelet for a desperado. Jewelry for a thief.

A sharp rap sounded on the door just then. Honey jerked upright, and the cuff clicked closed.

“Miss Honey,” Kenneth Crane called through the door. “I must speak with you. Now.”

“I’ll be right out.” Honey tugged at the steel bracelet. Damn! All she needed now was for Kenneth to see what a fool thing she’d done. He’d promptly tell her father, and then she’d be lucky if Race Logan didn’t clamp the other half of the wrist cuffs to a doddering old dueña, a chaperon who would never let Honey out of her sight. Or worse, to his own thick wrist.

She tried unsuccessfully to slide the steel over her hand.

“Miss Honey,” the teller called again, rapping once more for emphasis.

“Just one confounded minute, Kenneth.”

Honey could hear his footsteps retreating to his post behind the teller’s window as she glared at the shackle on her right wrist. If looks alone could melt steel, the metal would have dissolved right then. But it didn’t. She was stuck and she knew it. Like a rat in a trap.

As she rose from the swivel chair, the empty cuff clanked against the desk. “Damnation!” she muttered. She’d just have to keep her hand behind her back until she could find somebody with a hacksaw to get her out of this fool thing. Maybe she could bribe her brother, Zack, to... No. Zack could keep a secret about as well as a parrot, and nothing would delight him more than seeing his trouble-prone sister cuffed like a common thief. She’d just have to seek elsewhere for help. In the meantime, though, she was going to carry on with her plan to be right here, hard at work, when her father returned from lunch.

The lobby was still empty, thank heaven, when she sidled up behind Kenneth, her right hand concealed in the pocket of her skirt, her lips forcing a cheerful grin.

“I’ll help you count those greenbacks, Kenneth.”

The elderly teller spun around at the sound of her voice. He threw up his hands helplessly, and suddenly greenbacks were everywhere—sliding off the counter, slithering along the floor, settling under Honey’s skirts.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought. The man was as skittish as a colt in a storm. He had just tossed about a thousand dollars like a handful of confetti, but if her father walked in now, Honey knew very well just who would get the blame.

“Get a grip on yourself, Kenneth,” she snapped, crooking her knees and lowering herself to the floor to gather as much currency as she could one-handed.

The aged teller seemed to melt beside her. “You...you’re not supposed to be here, Miss Honey. Please. Nobody else is supposed to be...”

Boot heels clomped on the opposite side of the counter, followed by the distinct sound of iron clearing leather. And then a deep, whiskey-rich drawl.

“The name’s Summerfield.”

What little color remained in Kenneth Crane’s face drained away. His Adam’s apple somersaulted in his throat as he mumbled something unintelligible, then crumpled into a dead faint on the floor beside Honey’s knees.

* * *

“Gideon Summerfield?” she exclaimed.

Gideon contemplated the pretty face that had bobbed up from behind the counter like a windflower after a warm spring rain. The blue-green eyes that bloomed big and round with surprise. The moist petaled lips that forgot to close completely after speech. The dark tendrils of hair that framed her face, then spilled over her shoulders and couldn’t quite conceal a breathless, ample bosom.

After five years in prison, the sight of a female—pretty or otherwise—windflower or weed—was enough to snap every nerve in his body. And the sight of this particular female jolted him like white-hot lightning. For a dizzying second, he didn’t know where he was...or why.

“The Gideon Summerfield?” The blue-green eyes blinked and the petaled lips quivered.

He wrenched himself from the empty-headed bewilderment. For crissake! If he wasn’t careful, Gideon thought, he’d be on his way back to Jefferson City in leg irons and steel bracelets. No woman in the world was worth that.

“That’s right, sweetheart. And now that you know who, let’s move on to why.” He leaned against the counter, edging the barrel of his pistol between the brass bars. “Hand it over.”

Honey wasn’t sure which terrified her more—the Colt or the deadly, gunmetal gray of the eyes that were narrowed on her face. Gideon Summerfield! If what she had read in the papers was true, this man wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Frank and Jesse James. Cole Younger. Gideon Summerfield. Dwight Samuel. The names rolled through her mind like a funeral march. They were cold-blooded killers, all.

Her knees were knocking together beneath the counter as Honey raised her hand, still clutching some of the bills she had gathered from the floor. “Here.” She shoved them beneath the brass grille. “Take these.”

The gunmetal gaze dipped to the crumpled banknotes, then swung back to Honey’s face. A tiny grin played at the corners of his mouth as Gideon Summerfield tipped back the brim of his hat with the muzzle of his gun.

“Must be all of twenty dollars there,” he drawled.

That amused expression only chilled her more. “Just...just take it and get out. I won’t scream. I promise. I won’t even tell anyone you were here.”

His grin flashed wider. “Hard to make a living robbing banks at twenty bucks a throw, wouldn’t you say?”

She stood there just staring at him now, her turquoise eyes big and bright with fear, her lips pressed together to still the trembling, her chin tilted that defiant little notch.

Something twisted in Gideon Summerfield’s gut then. What the hell kind of a man was Race Logan to leave a windflower to face this situation alone? The girl was terrified, and rightly so with the cold barrel of a Colt pointed at her young heart. Logan no doubt had figured a defenseless flower would cause the least trouble, provoke the least amount of violence from the jailbird. But, dammit, didn’t the banker have any inkling how frightened this little teller would be? Didn’t he care?

Gideon cursed himself for his own misguided sympathy. What good would it do anyway? Most likely just land him back in a dank five-by-eight cell in Missouri. Hell, the little bank clerk would survive this fine, even wind up with a doozy of a tale to tell her grandchildren one day.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said brusquely. “Let’s just get this over with. Hand over the money.”

“No.”

He stared at her in disbelief, not certain he had heard her right. “This isn’t a Presbyterian social, darlin’. I wasn’t asking you to dance. I said hand over the money.”

Her chin came up another notch. “No.”

“You’re playing this out for all it’s worth, aren’t you, sweetheart?” He thumbed back the hammer of his gun as his eyes narrowed to steely slits. “The money. Now.”

Honey was about to tell him no again when Kenneth Crane rose shakily behind her.

“I—I’ll get it for you,” he stammered.

“Much obliged.” Gideon’s eyes remained on the windflower, whose pretty face had puckered indignantly at the old man’s words. There was as much fire in her eyes now as fear.

“Kenneth, don’t you dare...” she began, then fell silent when the tip of Gideon’s pistol touched her chin.

His words were directed to the teller, who was heading for the paneled oak door of the office, but his gaze skewered Honey. “I appreciate your compliance, mister. I’ll appreciate your speed even more.”

“Kenneth!” Honey wailed.

“Shh. Hush up, sweetheart. It’ll all be over within a minute or two. Nobody’ll blame you for this.”

Honey glared at him. “A lot you know, you... you...”

His lips quirked into another grin and one eyebrow lifted rakishly. “Thief?”

“No-good, degenerate snake!”

Gideon Summerfield laughed out loud. “Plenty of folks would agree with you, darlin’, but none of them would have the vinegar to say it to my face.” Gray eyes skimmed her face, her throat, the lace frills on the bodice of her dress. “Vinegar,” he murmured huskily, “and lace and honey. Sweet, warm honey.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

His gaze jerked up to her face and the remnants of his smile disappeared. “You should be,” he ground out from between clenched teeth, thinking if she had even a glimmer of the fire blazing in him right now this little girl would run screaming from the bank, whether he held a gun on her or not.

“Well, I’m not.” What she feared right now was facing her father’s rage when he discovered his bank had been robbed while his daughter was in it. If she had ever hoped to impress him with her responsibility, this incident would dash those hopes irreparably. He’d never let her even visit the bank again, much less work in it.

Damnation! She wanted to reach across the counter and just choke this desperado for the way he was messing up her plans and her life. Her hands clenched into fists at the thought, and then Honey realized she was still wearing half of the wrist cuffs. The legal half. Jewelry for a thief. Now, if only...

Kenneth Crane came out of the office, lugging a large canvas bag by its leather handles. “Here...here it is,” he said as he shuffled toward Summerfield on the public side of the counter.

Ignoring the gun, Honey scurried around the counter. Then, just as Gideon Summerfield extended his hand for the bag, Honey reached out and clamped the empty cuff around his wrist. At the sound of the click, her eyes blazed victoriously and her mouth settled into a smug line.

“Oh, Lord,” breathed Kenneth Crane, appearing to wither inside his suit.

Honey flicked the teller a disdainful look. She had expected that from the fainthearted wretch. From Gideon Summerfield, on the other hand, she expected curses and a battle royal with fists and fingernails and feet. She stiffened her body in preparation.

He did curse—a soft, almost whispered expletive that seemed more prayer than oath—and then he shook his head just before his free arm circled Honey and he hoisted her onto his hip.

“Put me down,” she shrieked. “Kenneth, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there gawking. Do something.”

“Oh, Lord,” the teller moaned. “I don’t know what to do.”

It was Gideon Summerfield who answered him with a growl. “I’ll tell you what to do, fella. You tell your boss to be a whole lot more careful about who he invites to his parties.”

Then, with the money bag in one hand and a flailing Honey in the other, he walked out the door.