He took a step back, straightening his coat. “Veronica, you have to stop doing that.”
Her bottom lip jutted out into a pout. The glint in her eyes told him it was all for show. “But I missed you.” She took a step toward him, and he took another one back.
He’d been riding hard all day to get here. The trip from Butte had been brutal and cold, and the snow had forced him to stop along the way. Luckily, the small town he’d found himself in had a boarding house that had served him a hot meal, along with giving him a room and shelter for the horse Liam let him borrow.
His thoughts had been on Daisy the entire ride. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and the past four weeks had been as close to torture as he ever wanted to get. Having Veronica throw herself at him the moment his feet hit the ground had made the bone-tired weariness even worse, and now he had to do the one thing he’d been trying to avoid since she got to town and took an interest in him. He had to break her heart.
“Veronica, I—”
“—Yes?”
She interrupted him before he could even get a sentence out. She was bouncing on her heels, with that wide smile still in place. He blew out a tired breath and rubbed the back of his neck before looking up at her. Sometimes it hurt less if you were just blunt with some people, and he had a feeling Veronica was one of them.
“Veronica, whatever you think is going on between us, isn’t.” Her smile faltered before she laughed. When she opened her mouth to speak, he talked over her and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t…” Damn, why was this so hard?
“You don’t what?” she said when he didn’t say anything else. Her smile was gone now, the shine he’d seen in her eyes earlier gone as well.
He met her gaze, making sure he had her full attention. “Veronica, I don’t want you to keep thinking anything is ever going to happen between the two of us because it isn’t. My heart belongs to Daisy.”
“Daisy?” she sputtered indignantly. “That deaf and dumb girl?”
The small amount of pity he’d felt at having to tell her there would be nothing between them vanished in an instant. “Daisy is not dumb.”
“But she’s deaf.”
“She is, and it’s one of the many things I love about her.”
Veronica’s face turned a blistering shade of red, her lips held so tight together they were nothing but a harsh, white line across her face. A muscle in her cheek ticked as she clenched her jaw, and the fire in her eyes should have killed him where he stood.
She turned on her heel and huffed out of the stable without a word. He exhaled the breath he’d been holding. “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.” He saw to his horse, bedding him down for the night before exiting and turning toward Daisy’s house. His steps faltered when he got to the sidewalk.
A glance down at himself made him grimace. He’d been riding hard for two days to reach Daisy, and he probably smelled like it. There was mud on his boots and his pant legs, and he hadn’t shaved in over a week. He ran a hand over the whiskers on his face. He didn’t want her to see him like this. He loved her and was desperate for even a small glimpse of her, but she deserved more than a saddle bum who stank of horses and sweat.
Giving the Campbell house one last hard stare, he turned on his heel and headed to the jail, to the little room behind it he’d been calling home since Josiah and Violet were married. Seeing Daisy could wait one more night. He needed a bath and a shave, and come first thing tomorrow, he’d ask her to marry him.
Chapter 14
The sun was shining, the bright rays glaring off the snow that was on the ground. Clay squinted as he hurried down the street toward Daisy’s house. It was nearly noon, and he was shocked he’d slept so long, but truth be known, he was bone tired, even now. The trip from Butte was brutal in the snow.
The Campbell house was just as he remembered it, the stairs to the porch creaking when he stepped on them. Ewan was the first person he heard when he stopped in front of the door, his loud laughter echoing through the halls.
He knocked and waited, shoving his hands into his coat pockets as nervousness had him fidgeting. Through the glass panel in the door, he could see inside the house, and he saw Violet step out of a doorway. She grinned when she saw him. Her smile never faltered as she hurried down the hall, flinging it open wide when she reached it.
“It’s about time you got here,” she said. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to go all the way to Butte and drag you back home myself.”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, ma’am. I had to wait until Liam could move around on his own before running off.”
“I assumed as much,” she said, grabbing his arm and dragging him into the house. “Get in here before we all catch a cold.”
The moment the door shut behind him, Violet said, “Take off your coat. You won’t need it in here. Gramps has it so hot, you’ll be sweating in less than five minutes.”
Violet hung his coat and hat up on a tall rack by the door as he glanced around the house. As long as he’d lived in Silver Falls, he’d never been inside the Campbells’ home. He’d stared at it so many times from various spots in town, he could probably rebuild it, board by board, so his first impression of the inside left him speechless.
The interior was nicer than he had expected. Where most farmhouses were rustic and looked lived in, the Campbells’ two-story home was richly decorated. The walls were painted white, and lace curtains hung at every window. Bright rugs lay across the wooden floors; the furnishings were expensive.
The confidence he’d had when he walked over here diminished somewhat, looking at it. Would Daisy be willing to trade all of this for a modest cabin on the outskirts of town? Lewis’s old house was a perfectly fine home. It had everything a person could need, but the bare wood walls were—well, bare. Nothing hung on them. They weren’t painted a bright, cheery color, and the floors were devoid of finely woven rugs. It was nothing like this. Daisy would be giving up a lot if she came back to Butte with him. Looking at the home she lived in, he wondered if she even would.
“Let me go get Daisy,” Violet told him, turning to hurry up the stairs.
