Her brother didn’t bother to hug her, just strode up to Cain and got right in his face.
“I’m not having any more of this, Barrett. Everything that’s happened to Jenny has been your fault. You’re just using her, and everyone knows it. I want you out of her life once and for all.”
“Dylan! What on earth is wrong with you?”
Cain didn’t budge. “You realize you’re insulting your sister. Obviously, my opinion of Jenny is much higher than yours. Your sister is no fool. If I was using her, she would have ended our relationship a long time ago. You’re her brother, but I won’t tolerate your attitude. Jenny doesn’t deserve it.”
Dylan just stared.
Jenny tried to get between them. “Dylan, for heaven’s sake, this is none of your business.”
Her brother’s look turned hard. “You were kidnapped! You could have been killed! You know Barrett’s reputation. You’re smart enough to know what he wants from you!”
Cain eased Jenny out of the way and moved even closer to Dylan, forcing him back a step. Cain’s jaw looked as hard as steel.
“For your information, Dylan, I’m in love with your sister, and I’m going to ask her to marry me. I have no idea what her answer will be. Whatever it is, Jenny’s right—it’s none of your business.”
Dylan flashed a surprised look at Jenny, then glanced back at Cain. His dark frown relaxed. Little by little, a wide grin spread over his face.
“Sorry. I guess I can be a little overprotective when it comes to my little sister.”
The tension in Cain’s powerful shoulders eased. He smiled. “That’s a good thing, I guess. As long as you remember we both love her.”
Dylan’s smile broadened. He stuck out his hand. “I hope she says yes.”
Cain gripped his hand. “So do I.”
Jenny felt a stinging behind her eyes.
“I’m hoping those are happy tears, or I’m in big trouble,” Cain said.
Jenny turned and went into his arms. “I love you so much.”
Cain kissed her. “I refuse to ask you in here. We’re going somewhere romantic. I was thinking Sedona. Maybe we could leave tomorrow, spend the night, maybe two.”
Jenny just nodded. She wanted to say yes right then and there, but she could see Cain wanted to do it right, do it his way.
Inwardly, she grinned. Nothing new there.
“Sedona sounds perfect,” she said.
It was an hour before Dylan and Summer slipped away. They would be spending the night in a room upstairs in the old wing. Dylan always stayed at the hotel whenever he was in town. Lately, he’d been showing up more and more often.
Jenny thought of Summer and smiled.
With the cold weather moving in, there were plenty of rooms. Jenny was still not certain what was happening in the new section, so she’d kept those rooms unrented.
She needed to talk to Cleo—and soon.
* * *
The afternoon was sliding into dusk by the time there was a lull in business and Jenny sank into a chair next to Cain, where he sat behind his laptop at one of the tables.
“You were going to tell me what you found out at the library,” Cain said, closing the computer down.
“It’s about this article I read.” She went on to tell him about the woman who had been staying upstairs at the hotel. “It happened in March of 1921, right here in the saloon, which was then a café.”
She told Cain how the woman had been so jealous of her husband that she had come down to the café during breakfast and, believing her husband was having an affair with the town’s pretty schoolteacher, threw carbolic acid into the teacher’s face.
