Zeke Halsey patted the pocket on his vest. The tintype his new sister-in-law, Darcy, found while kidnapped by outlaws resided close to his heart. How the likeness of his parents ended up in a pile of loot in the outlaw’s hideout had all the Halsey brothers perplexed.
He took the stairs of the boarding house in McEwen two at a time. He hadn’t laid his eyes on Maeve Loman the pretty, prickly school marm since his youngest brother Gil showed up at the family mine with a woman dressed like a boy and her brother.
After witnessing his baby brother marry Darcy, Zeke was more determined than ever to get Maeve to come around to his thinking. He planned to start by showing her he came from good stock and put one more reason for her to reject his marriage proposal behind them.
Maeve met him at the door.
He stared taking in her perfection. Her black hair glimmered like a raven’s wing in the sunlight.
Her delicious pink lips, he hadn’t sampled near enough, fluttered a moment before straightening into a firm line. She’d wanted to give him a welcoming smile and thought about it. That was the problem with Maeve, she thought too darn much.
“I brought something for you to see,” he said, removing his hat and following her swaying backside into the parlor.
She sat primly on the wooden chair and gazed up at him. “What did you bring?”
He sat, placing his hat on his knee and reached for his vest pocket. Panic widened her dark blue eyes.
When he slipped the tintype out, relief relaxed her pretty features. She’d thought he was going to propose, again. He grinned. One of these days he was going to ask her to marry him, and she wouldn’t be able to avoid answering.
“It’s a tintype of my parents. We’d thought it was lost, but Darcy, the girl who married Gil, found it.”
She took the tintype and stared at it before running her finger over the faces. Her brow furrowed, and she looked up at him. “These can’t be your parents.”
“Why can’t they be my folks? Because they’re too pretty?” Zeke watched her continue to stare at the tintype in her shaking hands. The lacy curtain in the window behind Maeve framed her form, giving her a fragile appearance.
“No. Pa said that man was his brother.”
Zeke jerked his attention from Maeve’s comely attributes back to her angular face and wide eyes. He nearly choked from her contorted expression. Memories of all the times he’d stolen a kiss and been tempted to do more drifted in his thoughts. The idea they could be kin, and something else he couldn’t place, didn’t set well with her. He saw it in her troubled, blue eyes.
“That can’t be.” He bolted out of the sturdy, yet comfortable chair, he favored when visiting and crossed the room in two strides. Zeke stared down at the picture of his parents. “My pa didn’t have any brothers, or sisters, for that matter. They all died on the way out west. Only him and an uncle survived the trip.”
Her steely stare glimmered with unshed tears. “My pa had this tintype. It sat on our mantel. He’d look at it and tell stories of how he and his brother,” she placed a finger gently on his father’s likeness, “this man, played jokes.”
The anguish and longing in her eyes said she wasn’t making it up, but his head and heart knew she had to be.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and roughly pulled her to her feet.
She jerked her hand from his and glared at him. Her odd habit of curling and uncurling her fingers right about holster height caught his attention. She only did that when she was annoyed or distraught.
