She watched him silently, imagining he must have taken a few good punches to feel so sore. Yet at least he was home, thank God.
Sighing softly, she went to the door and looked outside, hoping that David was feeling better and that he’d be going home soon with Joshua.
She couldn’t deny she would have liked to see him tonight, more than she would have imagined—but in the next instant Ingrid chided herself, knowing such feelings were folly.
If Joshua had wanted to see her, too, he would have brought Andreas home just as he’d said he would do. She was nothing more than a regular citizen of the town to him, not special at all, Joshua just doing his duty by her—and certainly no more in the market for a wife than she was for a husband!
“Good night, Sheriff Logan, wherever you are,” she said through the wire mesh of the screen, the street so dark now that she couldn’t see much further than the plank sidewalk. Oddly, she thought she heard the low nickering of a horse, which made her shiver after the lewd looks she’d seen from Joshua’s prisoners earlier that day.
With such ruffians frequenting the town’s saloon, it wasn’t wise to take any chances. She quickly shut the front door and secured the bolt, saying a prayer for Joshua and his deputies’ safety as they patrolled the streets.
* * *
“Good girl,” Joshua murmured to himself as he nudged Blaze into a walk past Ingrid’s house. He’d followed Andreas at a distance, wanting to make sure he got home safely, and the infirmary was only a couple streets over anyway. Yet when Ingrid had lingered in the doorway, her slender figure silhouetted in the lamplight from inside the house, he’d sat there wondering if he would have to make his presence known after all to get her to shut the front door.
He didn’t anticipate any trouble, his prisoners still locked up in their cells and a bit less surly now that their stomachs were filled with grilled steak and all the fixings. Nothing like gnawing bellies to make men sign a confession, Andreas cleared from any wrongdoing even though he’d admitted to Joshua that he’d swung first.
He was an outsider here and would be treated like one for a while until folks got to know him better, no matter Caleb Walker was his family’s benefactor. Yet the Sutherland brothers and their men taunting him for being a dumb Northerner and for his size had gone beyond the pale, the pounding they’d gotten well-deserved.
Paying for the damages to the saloon, though, wouldn’t make the third brother, Cormac, the eldest and meanest Sutherland, very happy. Joshua didn’t expect a visit from him tonight, but he would come looking for his brothers soon when they didn’t show back up at their rundown ranch some thirty miles away. Considering Joshua intended to keep them locked up in jail for two weeks to dissuade them from picking more fights…
“Good night to you, too, Ingrid Hagen,” he murmured, her house behind him now as he turned onto a side street. He’d heard the pique in her voice, which had made him wonder if she’d been displeased that he hadn’t accompanied her brother home. Either that, or maybe she simply would have liked to see him—
“Don’t go there, Logan,” Joshua said under his breath. He tried to turn his thoughts to Davy, but he couldn’t get the image of Ingrid standing at the door with her long blond hair shining in the lamplight out of his mind.
Chapter 5
“Ingrid, why do you keep looking behind you?” whispered Kari, making Ingrid blush with chagrin.
As the Sunday service’s final hymn rang from the church rafters, she had reassured herself again that Joshua and his daughter, Emily, still sat near the back, Ingrid anxious to speak to him. Yet she hadn’t realized her quick glances had been so obvious—and to all people, her inquisitive sister.
“It’s nothing, truly,” Ingrid whispered back, though Kari, seated between her husband, Seth, and Ingrid, glanced over her shoulder, too.
“He’s getting up, yes, there he goes!”
Ingrid’s soft gasp made Kari cover her smile with her hand, and Ingrid realized then as her face grew even warmer that her sister was teasing her.
One glance told her that Joshua and Emily remained seated in their pew. Grateful when the hymn ended, everyone rising for the benediction, Ingrid closed her eyes and tried to calm herself.
It was a small thing, really, and no reason for her heart to be beating so fast.
All she wanted to do was tell Joshua that she intended to visit David after school each day to catch him up on his lessons, not wanting him to get too far behind while he convalesced at home. She hadn’t seen Joshua since the jailhouse four days ago, and she had no intention of going back there. How else was she to make him aware of her plan?
“Don’t worry, he won’t leave before you get to see him,” Kari whispered again as their snowy-haired minister, Reverend James Thomas, walked down the center aisle, the service ended. “Your knight in shining armor knows that everyone files out starting with the first pew to the last.”
Knight in shining armor? Wholly flustered now, Ingrid didn’t have a chance to whisper a retort as Caleb led the way out of the front pew, followed by Anita and Andreas, then Seth and Kari and herself. She ducked her head and hurried after her family, Ingrid almost to the back of the church when she finally looked up.
Straight into Joshua’s steel gray eyes, her heart in her throat as he nodded in greeting.
“Good morning, Miss Hagen,” piped up Emily, holding onto her father’s hand and smiling brightly, both of them dressed in their Sunday best. “Davy’s coming home today!”
“That’s wonderful, Emily,” Ingrid said with all sincerity as she paused at their pew, amazed that she’d found her voice to speak. Whatever was the matter with her? It had only been four days—and why did Joshua have to look so handsome? “I’ll see you in school tomorrow, yes?”
Emily bobbed her head, and then let go of her father’s hand to dart through the people filing past them and run outside. Only then did Ingrid realize her family had gone on without her, and that she blocked part of the aisle, parishioners looking at her curiously.
“Oh, dear, pardon me—”
“Maybe it’s best we follow Emily,” Joshua suggested, not waiting for Ingrid to answer but looping his arm through hers. Then they were walking together outside into the brilliant sunshine, Joshua stopping with her first to greet Reverend Thomas and then steering her toward where her family had gathered near a line of carriages and buckboard wagons.
