Early morning light peeked from the inch or two between the curtains and caressed Rachel’s sleeping form. All but the top half of her head was hidden beneath the blankets, as if she’d wrapped herself up in a cocoon. Her thick braid streamed behind her, stark against the white pillow. Her deep, even breathing told him she’d finally found peace in sleep.
A strange sense of contentment warmed him. Despite turning down her proposition the night before, his need had not abated. It went beyond the physical and reached somewhere deeper, into the marrow of his bones and somewhere even deeper than that.
His heart lurched. He tried to beat back the fear of what would happen when she discovered the truth about him. And she would. He would tell her eventually, whether he intended to or not. She had a way of getting things out of him that he had every intention of keeping to himself.
He wondered sometimes if he had lost his mind. He’d known this woman all of two weeks, but somehow it had been enough. He cared. Too much. There was no way he could turn his back on her now and ride out of town with a clean conscience. But staying permanently was not an option, either.
Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. They burned from lack of sleep. He’d been stuck in some no-win situations before, but this one topped them all.
During the darkest hours of the night he’d come to the conclusion that he had to start extricating himself from the tangled mess he’d woven. This morning he would go down to the bank and make arrangements to pay off Rachel’s debt to Kirkpatrick. She would hate him for taking such liberties without discussing it with her, but he knew she’d only refuse his help. But there was no way he could leave Salvation Falls knowing Kirkpatrick had any hold over her.
Once the payment came through, then he could start removing himself in other ways. He took one last look at Rachel sleeping quietly in the bed. The pull to join her, to take her up on last night’s proposition nearly floored him. He turned swiftly and left the room, knowing the second part of his plan would be much more difficult to execute.
The bank manager was not eager to let him in so early, but his incessant pounding wore the man down. He was even more reluctant to process his payment of the debt, however, and it didn’t take long for Caleb to realize whose pocket the man lived in. He didn’t doubt the manager’s next stop would be wherever Kirkpatrick had holed himself up for the evening to inform him of recent developments.
As Caleb left the bank and made his way back to the hotel, he knew he had to tell Rachel immediately. If not, she might find out from someone else, and given her aversion to his help in this regard, he didn’t want to add any fuel to the fire.
Chapter Fifteen
“You see, the thing is,” Sheriff Donovan said, glancing out the window down into the alley below, “I had a man in Laramie ask around about you.”
“That a fact.”
Caleb dried his face with a towel and tossed it onto the bureau next to the wash basin. The sheriff had shown up a few moments earlier, looking for Rachel as well, but they were both to be disappointed. When Caleb arrived back from the bank, Cletus informed him that she’d set out a quarter of an hour earlier. He assumed she’d gone to check on Len, but before he could leave, the sheriff arrived and decided to speak with him, instead. He wished Donovan would say his piece and get on with it. He needed to find Rachel to let her know what he’d done.
“Turns out there wasn’t a hotel in the whole town with a man registered by the name Caleb Beckett. Not one. What do you make of that?”
Caleb shrugged and struggled to control his urge to run away. He didn’t want the sheriff poking around in his past.
“I reckon that means I didn’t sleep in a hotel.”
“Odd, don’t you think. You were there how long?”
Caleb wavered between the truth and a lie. He decided to keep with the truth. It would be easier to keep it straight in the end. And he had enough strikes against him at the moment without adding anything else to the mix.
“About a week.”
Donovan nodded and lifted a quizzical dark eyebrow. “And you what? Bunked out in the livery? Slept with your horse?”
“Never been one for hotels.” Not exactly a lie, albeit not the actual truth the sheriff was fishing for.
The sheriff’s gaze skimmed over the bed with its unwrinkled blankets before returning his attention to Caleb.
“You’re in one now.”
“Didn’t want to leave Mrs. Sutter alone, not with Kirkpatrick harassing her.”
The sheriff stiffened. “I heard there’d been trouble. What’s he been doing?”
“Guess that’s up to her to say if she wants to tell you.” There was no reason to bring Donovan into the fold. There was nothing he could do. The sheriff was bound by the law, and Kirkpatrick made a fine practice of dancing inside its boundaries, or ensuring that, when he stepped outside of them, it never came back to roost at his door.