“Oh?” She glanced outside before looking back. “Does that mean I can try to sweet-talk him into a dinner date then?”
A dinner date?
The girl started laughing before she could respond and said, “I can tell by the look on your face the answer is no. I’m Callie, by the way.”
The girl held her hand out in a formal greeting, and she shook it, saying, “I’m Daisy.”
“Nice to meet you, Daisy.” Callie grinned with a bit of mischief shining in her eyes. “Want to go find some trouble to get into?”
Chapter 6
Liam was still talking, but Clay didn’t hear a word he was saying. His attention was on Daisy and the girl, Callie, who had ushered her inside the barn when the shooting down at the saloon had started. He’d only had a brief conversation with her, explaining that Daisy couldn't hear but could read her lips, and she’d acted as if encountering a deaf person was an everyday occurrence. Clay liked her for that reason alone.
The few short minutes he'd spoken to her told him she had a bubbly personality that was hard to ignore. There were a few people he’d run across over the years like her, and they were always looking for something to entertain them. They were also street smart, which is why he said nothing when she and Daisy exited the barn and started down the sidewalk.
“What’s the story with you two?”
It took a few moments before Clay realized Liam had asked him a question. He turned away from Daisy and the girl Callie and went back to hitching up the wagon. “No story,” he said, answering him. “I was just escorting Daisy here to catch the train, but bandits overtook our stagecoach, so we had to walk, and she missed it.”
“Yeah, you told me all of that yesterday when you asked if I had any jobs for you.” Liam grinned and nodded his head in the direction Daisy and Callie had gone. “But I can tell by the way you treat her and talk to her that your being here is more than just a job escorting her to the train station.”
“It's not a job. I volunteered to bring her.”
“Exactly.”
The smile on Liam’s face told him the old man already knew what most people did not. That he was in love with Daisy Campbell, and she didn’t even know it.
“Are you ever going to tell her how you feel?”
He shrugged and pulled the cinch tighter. “Maybe. Someday.”
“Why not now?”
He looked up and met Liam's gaze. “Because she’s going away to Boston for an entire year.”
“So?”
“So, she may meet someone there.”
“Someone not you.”
“Yes.”
Liam grinned. “You’re doing this all wrong, lad. Let her know how you feel, and when she comes back, marry her.”
“And if she meets someone while she’s there? Someone…”
Liam said, “Someone…like what?” when he stopped talking.
Clay grabbed the reins and tossed them over the front of the wagon, and sighed. “Someone who has a proper job.” He looked up. “Someone who has a family. Money enough to provide for her.” Shrugging, he walked to the horse's head and ran a hand down the side of its neck. “Someone better than a drifter that’s never called one place home for more than a few months.”
“I see,” Liam said. “Someone good enough for her.”
He didn’t reply, but he was sure his silence was answer enough. Liam shook his head and rounded the front of the horses. “I can tell you from experience that a woman sees things differently than men do. My Katie lived in a tiny one-room house with me back in Ireland and never complained. She tended to it and kept it up like it was a castle fit for a king and was proud of it to her dying breath. Don’t assume Daisy wouldn’t do the same.”
Liam left him there with the horses, and he searched the sidewalk for Daisy and Callie. He didn’t see them, but with so many people out and about, he didn’t think he would. His thoughts went back to what Liam had said. Was the old man right? Would Daisy accept him even though he had nothing?
He’d been in Silver Falls long enough to have courted and already married Daisy, but he’d never so much as made his intentions known. He was sure the people who lived there knew he was sweet on her. Violet did. She’d never said as much, but when she’d asked him to escort Daisy here, and he’d tried not to grin like a loon while saying, Yes, she’d given him a wink and told him not to waste the chance, which meant she knew how he felt about her sister.
