Scandal at the Cahill Saloon Read online

  Lenna Cahill: guardian angel or scarlet woman?

  Leanna Cahill, once the pretty, spoiled darling of Cahill Crossing, is coming home to a very different sort of welcome. As an unwed, single mother with a band of former ladies-of-the-night in tow, her reputation is in tatters!

  Cleve Holden, itinerant gambler and inveterate charmer, seems intent on seducing Leanna. But he has come to town for one reason and one reason only: to take back his abandoned nephew from the scarlet woman pretending to be his mother....

  Cahill Cowboys

  Texas’s Finest

  In the heart of America’s Wild West,

  only one family matters—the legendary Cahills.

  Once a dynasty to be reckoned with,

  their name has been dragged through the cattle-worn mud, and their family torn apart.

  Now the three Cahill cowboys

  and their scandalous sister reunite.

  With a past as dark as the Texas night sky, it’s

  time for the family to heal their hearts and seek justice….

  CHRISTMAS AT CAHILL CROSSING

  by Carol Finch—October 2011

  THE LONE RANCHER

  by Carol Finch—November 2011

  THE MARSHAL AND MISS MERRITT

  Debra Cowan—December 2011

  SCANDAL AT THE CAHILL SALOON

  Carol Arens—January 2012

  THE LAST CAHILL COWBOY

  Jenna Kernan—February 2012

  Author Note

  Welcome back to Cahill Crossing!

  I am pleased to present my debut novel, Scandal at the Cahill Saloon. I hope you find the same enjoyment in reading it that I did in writing it.

  In The Lone Rancher, Carol Finch presented us to Quin Cahill, the oldest Cahill brother and a man determined to hold the 4C ranch and the Cahill legacy together. In The Marshal and Miss Merritt, Debra Cowan gave us Bowie Cahill, the second-born son, a lawman determined to bring whoever is responsible for their parents’ deaths to justice.

  In Scandal at the Cahill Saloon, book number three of the Cahill Cowboys series, I introduce Leanna Cahill, the youngest child and only sister. Come with me and discover how Leanna goes from being the spoiled darling of the family to a woman with the strength to defy a town and to help women who society deems ruined. Be there when she finds her hero in gambler Cleve Holden. Together, they will continue the quest to discover who murdered Earl and Ruby Cahill. Travel with them while they tumble into love and while they help fallen women find a better life.

  Working on this project with Carol Finch, Debra Cowan and Jenna Kernan has been a fabulous experience. A dream come true, really, for a newly published author. Occasionally I need a pinch to be sure this has really happened.

  Find out why the Cahills are Texas’s Finest in The Last Cahill Cowboy by Jenna Kernan, the final book of the series.

  Thank you and enjoy,

  Carol

  Carol Arens

  Scandal at the Cahill Saloon

  CAROL ARENS

  While in the third grade, Carol Arens’s teacher noted that she ought to spend less time daydreaming and more time on her sums. Today, Carol spends as little time on sums as possible. Daydreaming plots and characters is still far more interesting to her.

  As a young girl, she read books by the dozens. She dreamed that one day she would write a book of her own. A few years later, Carol set her sights on a new dream. She wanted to be the mother of four children. She was blessed with a son, then three daughters. While raising them, she never forgot her goal of becoming a writer. When her last child went to high school, she purchased a big old clunky word processor and began to type out a story.

  She joined Romance Writers of America, where she met generous authors who taught her the craft of writing a romance novel. With the knowledge she gained, she sold her first book and saw her lifelong dream come true.

  Today, Carol lives with her real-life hero and husband, Rick, in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves with all her children and a growing number of perfect and delightful grandchildren living only a few miles from her front door.

  When she is not writing, reading or playing with her grandchildren, Carol loves making trips to the local nursery. She delights in scanning the rows of flowers, envisioning which pretty plants will best brighten her garden.

  She enjoys hearing from readers and invites you to contact her at [email protected].

  Scandal at the Cahill Saloon is Carol Arens’s debut novel!

  To my mother, Catherine Ebert, who snuggled me in one arm, my baby sister in the other, and read books to us.

  And

  To my father, Glenn Ebert, who was my first hero.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prologue

  Central Texas, early 1880s

  Leanna Cahill closed the front door on the most awful hour of her life. Folks from neighboring ranches would soon be showing up with food, wanting to tell stories about Mama and Papa and trying to console the family’s grief.

  She wanted none of that. No amount of food or socializing could ease a whit of the emptiness she felt. The one and only thing she wanted was to drag herself upstairs and never come down.

  Apparently, her oldest brother, Quin, had other plans.

  “All right, Ma and Pa are gone, but they’ve left a legacy for us.”

  The signs of Quin winding up to a speech were all there. Leanna sat down on the couch in a flounce of black silk.

  “We need to step up and run this ranch as a family, because that’s what they would want. Pa talked about expansion and that’s what I’m aiming for. We’ll pour the profits from the ranch and the town rents back into the 4C. Bowie, your place is here now, with your family. I’m assigning you the raising, breeding, training and sale of the horses.”

  “I have a job, in case you’ve forgotten, brother.”

  What had gotten into Quin? He knew how set on law enforcement Bowie was. Leanna rubbed her puffy eyes. Sorrow weighed her down with the effect of a sedative. As soon as she could, she’d escape upstairs.

  “You’ll oversee the livestock and the hired hands, plus the daily running of the ranch operation,” Quin continued as though Bowie hadn’t even spoken.

  “Annie, you’ll be in charge of the household. Meals, staff, and supplies…everything that Ma did.”

  Since Quin was grieving, too, Leanna would allow for the fact that he might not be thinking straight. If, later on, the boys wanted to throw a party at the 4C she had the skills to play hostess. And really, Mama wouldn’t exactly be proud of her domestic skills. She’d laugh a seam open in her brand-new heavenly gown if she looked down and saw her only daughter in charge of chores.

  Mama left some big shoes to fill. Leanna would be lost in them.

  “Chance,” Quin went on, apparently unaware of the rising resentment in the room. “You’ll be second in command, working under me.”

  “So, I’m your hired hand?” Chance shoved his hands in the pockets of his suit pants and rocked back on his heels.

  That would never work. Quin had to know that.

  “Now, just hold on.” Bowie stood beside her, his knee propped against the arm of the couch.
/>   He didn’t have time for Quin’s job assignment and he told him so.

  “Why do you have to go and change everything, Quin?” she asked. “We haven’t even dried our tears yet. I need to go upstairs and bawl my eyes out, not go fix you something to eat. I don’t want to be your housekeeper any more than Bowie or Chance want to be your hired hands.” Leanna stood. She plucked at a wrinkle in her skirt. “Don’t think I’m going to order the staff to get your supper, either. You can drag them from their grieving and order them yourself. Honestly, Quin, I’d rather move out on my own than let you take advantage of me.”

  “This isn’t about what you want, Annie. It’s about what’s best for the 4C. We are a family and we stick together.”

  Quin didn’t see it but his attitude was about to tear the family apart.

  Bowie’s scowl deepened by the second. Quin went on and on about duty and how Bowie should give up his calling since it was an unworthy one, anyway. A tick pulsed in Bowie’s cheek, never a good sign.

  Chance paced the room like Quin had shut him up in a cage.

  “I’m a lawman,” Bowie stated. “I’m not quitting my job to come back here and be your errand boy.”

  “Man up and do your part,” Quin gritted out between his teeth.

  Bowie shoved Quin against the wall. A bowl from Mama’s wedding set fell on the floor and shattered. Leanna felt it slice her heart.

  Quin shoved back at Bowie. He tumbled backward over the big leather chair that Papa sat in every night.

  Bowie scrambled to his feet. “Go to hell and take your orders with you!”

  Leanna stepped between them. She felt like she might be sick.

  “Stop it!” She latched on to Bowie’s flexing arm, then Quin’s. “What do you suppose Mama and Papa would think of us? Can’t this wait until—”

  “Stay out of this, Annie,” Quin ordered, then he railed at Bowie again, making all kinds of accusations.

  Chance stepped away from the fireplace where he had stopped his pacing to watch the set-to between his brothers.

  “We all have our dreams and they aren’t the same as yours, Quin.” Chance marched over to stand nose to nose with Bowie and Quin. “You aren’t Pa and you never will be.”

  “We are doing what is best for the 4C,” Quin enunciated slowly. He glared at his brothers, clearly daring them to say otherwise.

  “Life has got other things for me,” Chance declared, throwing back the challenge.

  “Brother—” Bowie held Quin’s gaze without flinching “—I don’t answer to you anymore.”

  The three men Leanna loved most in the world were half a second from ripping the family apart. In the heat of grief and anger they could do and say things that might never be healed.

  She stepped into the middle of the circle. Anger pulsing from each one of them struck her like a physical blow.

  “No one made you ruler over us all, Quin!” she shouted, and hoped her desperation penetrated the violence ready to erupt.

  It didn’t. It only added fuel.

  “Grow up,” Quin growled at her. “You’re not fit for anything other than looking pretty and playing games.”

  Bowie and Chance lurched into motion at the same time.

  She said the one and only thing left to say. She uttered it barely above a whisper but it echoed like a gunshot. “I say we sell the ranch and each take our share.”

  Chance froze, his shocked gaze locking on her.

  Bowie’s head jerked toward her.

  “Have you lost your damned mind?” Quin gasped.

  Chances are, she had, but who in this room hadn’t?

  Quin was crazy with guilt, so were Bowie and Chance, for not having been with Mama and Papa that day. One of them should have been driving the wagon because of Papa’s injured hand. His hand had to be the reason he lost control of the wagon. Any one of her brothers could have prevented that.

  She tried not to judge them, but she couldn’t…quite, even though her sin was just as great. At least her brothers hadn’t done anything intentionally.

  Leanna had been in control of every hateful word she had spoken to her mother when she and Papa had ridden away in the wagon that awful day. What kind of spoiled, shallow girl called her mother a… It hurt too much to bring up the word but it burned into her brain and seared her heart.

  And all because Mama had said no to a new dress.

  It had seemed so important at the time, to go to Wolf Grove with her parents and buy the prettiest gown in the dress shop for the family portrait.

  If only she could throw herself into any one of her brothers’ arms and let him make it all better.

  Nothing would make this better, though, and she knew it. She probably did need to go her own way in order to heal and grow.

  “Ma and Pa are buried on this land, you spoiled brat,” Quin said in a soft, steel-laced tone.

  Every one of them knew what that tone of voice meant. Quin had reached his limit.

  Even though selling the ranch was the last thing she really wanted, Quin was right: she was a spoiled brat.

  Now she had to get away, to show herself and Mama that she could make it on her own.

  As it turned out, leaving wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. Quin, facing a mutiny, had given in to his temper and kicked them out. They each took only what they were wearing and their favorite horse.

  Not a blessed one of them tried to get their oldest sibling to change his mind.

  So Leanna rode away in a black silk gown on her black horse, Fey.

  A hundred yards from the house, she kissed Bowie’s cheek. After he rode away she kissed Chance’s and gave him a hug. She promised to let both brothers know where she settled.

  There wouldn’t be much more communication than that, though. She needed to stand alone if she was to become a person she respected. She turned to look back at the house.

  Quin stood on the porch alone. She wept then, for Bowie and Chance and even herself. Most of all she wept for Quin. All he’d wanted was to keep things the same and they had turned on him. He couldn’t understand that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Well, she couldn’t turn back now, even if she wanted to.

  “Let’s hurry, Fey.”

  Clouds spread across the sky. A storm was coming.

  Chapter One

  August 1882

  Leanna Cahill figured the good folks of Cahill Crossing might have forgiven her the sin of bearing a child out of wedlock were it not for the fact that she was managing quite nicely.

  Indeed, had it not been for the tidy sum of cash that she had accumulated during her stay in Deadwood, they might have considered her afflicted and therefore worthy of their benevolence.

  Bless their shriveled little hearts.

  Coming home today for the first time in two years, she had no intention of being ashamed of either her child, her abundant funds…or the way she had come by them.

  She lifted her chin and tweaked her best hat to shade her eyes from the glare of heat rising from the road in simmering waves. She tugged the brim of a tiny Stetson over her son’s eyes, then hugged him close to her in the saddle.

  The satin border of her gown, lying neatly across her horse’s rump, winked purple flecks at the sky with the shifting of the animal’s gait.

  She could have crept into town, hiding in the shadows as though she were ashamed. Crawling on her knees, sackcloth and ashes style, might have made people look more kindly at her.

  The plain fact was, she wasn’t ashamed. Why should she be? The fifteen-month-old child snuggling into her, with his little boot-clad legs too short to even dangle over the horse’s withers, was perfection.

  He was as worthy as any Cahill had ever been. Anyone who tried to say otherwise would answer to her. Even her own brothers if it came to that, but it was her daily prayer that they would not hold the sins of little Cabe’s parents against him.

  Her dearest hope was to reunite with her brothers. It might not be possible; they h
ad parted with hateful words and bitter accusations. Guilt and blame had torn them apart. It wasn’t only their parents that had died that day two years ago; the whole family had been destroyed.

  To add to the tragedy, it had taken Quin’s telegram, with the awful news that Mama and Papa had not died by accident, to bring the family back to Cahill Crossing.

  It made her sick, knowing that murder had been what finally brought her home. Not her bone-deep love for her brothers or even family loyalty…but murder. If it weren’t for sly glances peering at her from every direction, she might dissolve in bitter tears for everyone to see.

  Now, for good or ill, here she was. The ties of home wrapped her up. If she let everything about her fade to quiet, she could almost feel Mama’s arms about her.

  Even though she would have to be careful where Cabe was concerned, he deserved to be home with his family. Thankfully, he was too young to understand what folks whispered about his mama.

  Just up the street a man and a woman strolled along the boardwalk. They didn’t scowl at her, most likely because they were caught up in admiring the infant the woman cuddled close to her breast.

  Leanna grinned, disguising her pain because she couldn’t give her child that happy picture. She hugged his warm, solid little body closer.

  She would be enough for him. Whatever his future held, she would be enough.

  And he did have uncles. Now that she was home she would do her best to heal the rift with them and give Cabe the family he ought to have had all along.

  In spite of the scorn she was enduring at the moment, she was glad that she had come home. With time, her brothers would come to love her boy as much as she did. In the end, family was everything.

  Leanna glanced backward at the buckboard trailing fifteen feet behind. She waved. “Chins up, ladies, smiles bright!”

  While her brothers might accept her child, she had doubts that they would be so welcoming of the four reforming prostitutes coming home with her.

  At first sight, they did present quite a vision. While the ladies had determined to reform their behavior, their resolutions hadn’t quite reached their manner of dress. Their gowns were proper enough to cover newly respectable bosoms, but feathers and gaudy be-bobs announced their former professions.