Thea Devine Read Online Free PDF Page A

going to take the criticism for either decision, and that person was
not
her mother-in-law.
    But what difference did it make to her, after all? She could sleep in the office if it came to that. Whatever Reese Colleran’s purpose in coming to Colville, she did not have to be a part of it by choice. He would have to fight her every inch of the way—assuming that he and Madame Mother were, somehow, plotting against her. Perhaps, she thought with grim humor, it would be better to have him right underfoot where she could see at all times exactly what he was up to.
    “Perhaps Mother Colleran has a point,” she said grudgingly, and noted immediately that Reese’s pale blue eyes glinted at this reluctant concession.
    “Then I guess you’ve got me,” he said in a faintly caressing drawl.
    His presumption fired her anger. “
I
don’t want you,” she hissed, as much in reaction to having given in as the undercurrent of meaning in his words.
    “But I predict you will,” he said insinuatingly, and his goading words sent her into a spasm of rage that she fought to conceal from him and her mother-in-law. She turned away from them and slowly went back downstairs to the office, mindful as she did so that she had forgotten her apron and wouldn’t be able to accomplish much anyway, dressed as she was.
    Her feeling of contentment utterly evaporated. The room downstairs was noisy and crowded. Nominally, it was the place to be three days prior to the publication of the paper. Jean Vilroy was in the thick of it, taking and laying out advertisements right on the spot. A.J. was to one side, taking notes on something someone was saying.
    “Miz Maggie—” A.J. motioned to her, and she moved quickly to his side. “This here is Dodd, ma’am, come right from the stage posting.”
    “Howdy, ma’am.” Dodd was a small man, unremarkable and unnoticeable with his sandy hair, tanned complexion, and dusty clothes. He was someone’s cowhand somewhere, Maggie surmised, and he picked up a quick two bits here and there by nosing around for information he thought A.J. might be able to use.
    The news today she had already conjectured, but A.J.’s gloomy expression confirmed it. “They’ve come,” she said, a statement of fact, neither bad news nor good.
    “Stage just arrived up from Denver,” Dodd elaborated. “There’s three of ’em, and all the equipment, and they’re stayin’ by the hotel, ma’am; names are Bollar, MacNeil and Wayne, railroad men, by the look of ’em, with money to spend to get the job done.”
    “I see,” she said neutrally. There wasn’t anything to be said. She could not have stopped them with her words. There were land barons whose interest went beyond the good of the community; they would not be stopped.
    Ironically, she was one of them, a fact that continually burdened her. For a signature on a piece of paper, she and all the rest of them could retire with untold wealth and do whatever they wanted to do. She could leave Colville; buy a house in the big city; travel; buy a husband, come to that, if she were in the market for one; buy a business; anything …
    It pleased her instead to hold onto the Colleran land with two tight fists and an immovable stance about the coming of Denver North. The anomaly of it infuriated the Harold Danforths of the town, a fact that made her feel even more powerful.
    In this matter, “what Frank would have wanted,” which everyone, from her mother-in-law on down, tried to convince her
was
the northward linkage of the railroadline to Cheyenne, left her cold, and no one could understand why she wouldn’t want to comply with what her deceased husband would have done had he been alive.
    But she knew. Frank had bought the town, and everyone revered him and thought he had their best interests at heart, when actually Frank had had his own best interests centermost all the time. But who would have believed it?
    “I expect that’s that,” A.J. said, his gentle voice