"Just so we're clear, Cassidy," the marshal ground out. "I'll be watching you. And that smart-mouthed kid, too."
With a terse nod, Sid turned on his heel and strode into the night.
Cass was so angry, his limbs were shaking.
Baron's beefy hand squeezed his shoulder, half in sympathy, half in reproach. "Simmer town, hotshot. That tongue of yours is going to dig your grave."
"Collie's a good kid!"
"I know, son. But somewhere in town, the boy made an enemy. Maybe even Sterne."
"Sterne?"
"Sure. Everyone knows Sid's in Sterne's back pocket. Sid even admitted it. After he found the corpse, he called in the Rangers. When a body's found outside the city limits, the proper procedure is to call in the county sheriff." Grimly, Baron shook his head. "Looks like Sterne found a new way to make things personal between you and him."
Cass was seeing red at that point.
The crowd rippled and parted near the pavilion. Applause swept through the seated members of the audience, who quickly climbed to their feet. Whoops and hollers erupted as the clapping grew louder, rushing like wildfire from couple to couple. Sterne strolled onto the grounds with a stunning, brandy-eyed redhead on his arm.
Sadie.
Cass's heart kicked hard.
Her luscious figure was sheathed in a sleeveless evening gown of breezy, ivory silk. A daring scoop revealed the abundance of freckles on her back, and a golden bow rode flirtatiously above her bustle. A gauzy shawl of matching gold drooped from her shoulders and fluttered over her elbow-length gloves.
Cass was pretty sure he ground his teeth hard enough to crack one.
Baron also noticed the couple. He hiked a bushy eyebrow as Sterne bowed formally, kissing Sadie's knuckles. She laughed at something the ex-Ranger said before she finally—and much too slowly, in Cass's opinion—withdrew her hand from his fist. Patting his craggy cheek, she raised her skirts above velvet shoes and sauntered behind the scarlet curtains of the stage.
Some tenderfoot in swallowtails approached Sterne, slapped his back, and raised his champagne toward Sadie's ass.
By that time, Cass was ready to shoot something.
"Easy, son." Baron handed him a glass. "No need to rush things." An unpleasant little smile curved the senator's lips. "There are plenty of ways to skin a cat."
* * *
Behind the curtains of the stage, Sadie paced like a caged tiger in the early evening shadows, waiting for her musical cue. Beyond the Grecian columns from which the velvet had been strung, she could see the evening star rising against the backdrop of purple-blue dusk.
Unfortunately, no breeze found its way between the columns. The dust of a parched, Texas landscape had invaded everything, including her sinuses. Despite the cooling plunge of her gown's back, her skin glistened with perspiration.
Or maybe it was the charade of being Rex's lover that had her sweating out this performance. Even the thought of Wilma and Jazi in the audience, cheering her on for moral support, couldn't ground the butterflies in Sadie's stomach.
Her breath hitched as a stringed quartet began playing the first, yearning strains of her introduction. The tender sighing of the cello haunted her. Cellos were considered the instrument most like the human voice, and Destiny was a lament. The lyrics had been inspired four years ago by her estrangement from Cass. Sadie had never intended to sing Destiny for an audience. However, she had suffered a sentimental bout of lunacy last night, and she'd dragged out the sheet music, reviewing it over a shot of tequila.
All right, over four shots of tequila.
Maybe that was why the song had somehow found its way into her music folder. She'd been none the wiser until dress rehearsal that afternoon, when she'd handed her folder to her accompanist. Curious about the title, the pianist had tugged Destiny from her stack of compositions. The next thing she'd known, Maestro Lundgren had directed her to "sing the love song."
"But it still needs work," she'd protested in rising panic. She'd been planning to sing Habanera, which, in part, compared love to a gypsy child, who had never known the law. Sadie had always related to that message. "I prepared a selection from Carmen. Habanera is better suited—"
"I shall decide which music is suitable for tonight's event," the Yankee had interrupted in his testy tenor. "Bizet is passé. Every mezzo-soprano in every two-bit musicale screeches Habanera. Fresh. That's what's needed if a singer of your caliber is expected to pull off a gala performance."
Sadie supposed she should be flattered that a conductor from New York's vaunted Academy of Music had arranged her simple tune for stringed accompaniment.
But Destiny had been torn from her heart, a catharsis for an old flame that was dying. She quailed to think of parading her pain before dozens of snooty matrons and their bored husbands, who would sit in judgment, sneering up at her through the footlights as she struggled to sing through tears.
"You will sing tonight," Wilma had counseled her firmly, "because your love is for music. You will take the stage, because that is your mission. The performance will cost three minutes of your life. That is a small price, chere, for ending the career of a monster."
The cellist began bowing her musical cue. Sadie squeezed her eyes closed, seeking comfort by reaching for Daddy's button. But of course, the familiar warmth of that battered brass wasn't resting over her heart.
That's another payback I owe you, Cass.
She gulped a fortifying breath. She couldn't remember the last time her stomach had churned before a performance. Hell, she'd jumped out of a burning building, hadn't she? Stage fright should be nothing compared with that.
It's now or never.
She muttered a prayer and forced her feet forward. Pasting on a luscious smile, she sauntered into the blinding haze of gaslights at the front of the stage. The crowd hushed. She dragged her gaze from Cass, sitting arms akimbo at Baron's side in the front row. Rex was standing in the aisle, stage right, as they'd planned. She let her smile drip honey and begged God with all her heart that the vocal seduction she was about to perform wouldn't destroy her friendship with Rex—or worse, get him killed.
Taking the conductor's cue, she began to sing:
"Leave your cares, far from sight.
Heat the chill; burn the night.
Hold me close, let love start;
Touch my soul, free my heart.
"Deep in dreams, every night,
Yearn for you; feels so right.
Don't you know? Can't you see?
Why you're mine, destined be?
"Suns may rise, stars may fail.
Worlds collide; love prevails.
Through all time, you and me,
Heart to heart, destiny.
"Never doubt, you're my man,
Through God's vast, Master Plan.
Always yours, I shall be.
Born for you, destiny."
Cass could scarcely breathe as the last, haunting strains of Sadie's song faded beneath the stars. Wildflowers started sailing over the footlights. Tear-streaked matrons and whiskered Old Farts surged to their feet. In tribute to Sadie's performance, hotel promoters were hurling yellow-rose bouquets onto the impressive little garden growing at her ankles.
But the only roses Sadie deigned to catch were the dozen blood-red blossoms thrown by Sterne.
The applause was deafening.
"Cass?" Poppy was watching him speculatively from Baron's other side. "Are you all right?"
Cass barely heard her as he watched Sadie blow kisses to the grinning Sterne. A crushing weight had settled over his heart. Her lyrics kept reverberating in his skull: "Never doubt you're my man, through God's vast master plan..."
No! Sadie wrote those lyrics about me, by God. She always writes her love songs about me!