Lucky Penny Read Online Free PDF Page B

be fair as well.”
    Caitlin sighed, caught hold of Little Ace’s hand, and smiled in farewell. “You can drink some coffee, but don’t you dare eat any of those cookies from Roxie’s that David keeps in a tin,” she said over her shoulder as she started across the street. “You promised me lunch at her place, and I mean to hold you to it.”
    Ace grinned and shook his head. To David, he murmured, “Is it my imagination, or is my wife getting headstrong and bossy?”
    David laughed. “Now, there’s a question I wouldn’t touch with the tip of a long-barrel rifle.”
    “No, truly. If a problem’s developing, maybe I should get a handle on it.”
    David stifled a chuckle. Ace worshiped Caitlin and catered to her every whim. Only her sweet nature saved her from being spoiled and impossible to please.
    “What’s so funny?” Ace asked.
    David held up his hands. “Nothing! She’s one of the dearest people I know. If she’s getting a little headstrong and bossy, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.”
    Ace bent to scratch Sam behind the ears. “So you
do
think she’s bossy.”
    “I don’t think any such thing. Didn’t you just hear me say how dear I think she is? Damn it, Ace. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
    Ace straightened from petting the dog. Though David wasn’t considered by most people to be a man of diminutive stature, he’d always felt short because Ace, who was actually only his half brother, was so blooming tall. In some parts of the country, there were full-grown trees that hit him below the chin. Big, muscular, and as solid as a chunk of rock—that was Ace. It was mind-boggling to realize that a tiny woman like Caitlin had not only brought the infamous Ace Keegan to his knees but now ruled his every thought, word, and gesture. A tear in her eye filled Ace with panic.
    Slapping his brother on the shoulder, David led the way into his office. Sam danced to enter first and find his favored spot behind the stove. As David removed his hat and made to toss it at the hook on the wall, he stopped dead, remembering the mail on his desk. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach.
    Ace glanced at the mound of envelopes and took his usual place in the chair across from David’s. Rocking back, he crossed his ankles and arms, the very picture of nonchalance except for the tic of his jaw muscle.
    “So,” Ace said, still aiming for a cavalier manner, “that’s a heap of mail from someone named Paxton. Do we have a chatty relative I’m not yet aware of?”
    After taking a seat, David slumped his shoulders and looked Ace in the eye. Since Joseph Paxton Sr.’s death, when David had been knee-high to a grasshopper, Ace had been the only father he’d ever known, stern and demanding in many ways, but also David’s best friend. He could have more easily cut off his right arm than lie to him. Family honor was a bitch sometimes.
    “All these letters arrived this morning,” David replied. “The Denver postmaster has been saving them for about six years. They’re written by a gal named Brianna Paxton to her husband, David Paxton, who apparently married her, got her with child, and then abandoned her to find his fortune in Denver.”
    “Well, little brother, that counts you out. You’ve never been a gold chaser, and I didn’t raise you to be a spineless pollywog that leaves a pregnant woman to fend for herself.”
    Oh, how David yearned to leave it there, to just laugh and say, “You are so damned right.” Instead his scalp prickled, and his lungs ached as if he’d run three miles. “In my younger years, I wasn’t exactly an angel, Ace. When I went to Denver alone, I did plenty of honey dipping, and I was usually too far gone into a bottle to think about consequences.”
    There,
David thought.
I’ve said it.
And with the utterance, he felt sort of nauseated.
    Ace rubbed beside his nose. “You ever get so drunk youhad loss of memory? I’ve been there, waking up with no recollection of the previous