One Wore Blue by Heather Graham Page A

Lacey’s embroidered napkins before them.
    “What’s going to happen in the morning?” she asked stubbornly.
    “They’ll ask John Brown to surrender,” Jesse answered flatly.
    “And if he doesn’t?”
    Jesse shrugged, cutting pieces of pie as she stood over him. “We’ll storm the firehouse, I imagine.”
    “And there’s no danger in that? The both of you? You’ve really no right to risk both your lives that way. I’m telling you—”
    “And I told you not to leave the house today,” Jesse interrupted suddenly, waving the pie spade before her nose.
    “The whole town was out on the streets, Jesse,” she told him.
    “The whole town,” Daniel laughed, “including Doc Whalen. He told me that you were out on the street, and he’d heard tell Jesse had already gotten his hands on you.”
    Kiernan quickly lowered her eyes. “Indeed, he had,” she said sweetly.
    “Whalen’s suggestion, so I heard,” Jesse murmured, “was that you should be trussed like a turkey over a shoulder and taken to a woodshed. I wasn’t nearly as crude.”
    “You were barely short of it!” Kiernan responded quickly.
    Jesse raised a brow to her, and she felt a hot flush rise over her body.
    “Do I detect a note of tension here?” Daniel asked.
    “No!” Jesse and Kiernan snapped simultaneously.
    “Oh, excuse me!” Daniel said, and grinned.
    “I wasn’t at all crude,” Jesse said.
    Kiernan leaped up to see how the coffee was doing, but she suddenly felt a clamp of steel upon her arm.
    “This time,” he told her softly.
    “This time?” She arched a brow. Storms were brewing between them, she could feel it. She felt tension hot and sweet on the air. She wanted to do battle with him. She wanted to argue and fight—
    And touch him.
    “Hey! The coffee is boiling over!” Daniel cried out. Jesse’s eyes still burned into hers. He released her wrist slowly, and she tore her gaze from his at last and hurried to salvage the coffee.
    Daniel started talking and he kept talking, eating his pie with relish.
    Kiernan and Jesse drank their coffee, listened, and watched each other warily. Thankfully, Daniel didn’t seem to need much help with the conversation.
    Jesse stood up suddenly. “We’ve got to get back,” he said.
    Daniel nodded regretfully. “Yes.” He stood up and pulled Kiernan to her feet and kissed her cheek then hugged hertightly again. “Tomorrow, Kiernan, please stay in until it’s all over!” he begged her.
    “She’ll stay in,” Jesse said with an edge. “I can guarantee it.”
    “Oh?” Kiernan said sweetly.
    “Yes. Because I’ll be around tomorrow. And I will see to it, even if I have to carry you around like a sack of potatoes.”
    “Sir, your gallantry is overwhelming!” Kiernan drawled.
    “I call it as I see it,” Jesse told her.
    “I can’t imagine your being so cavalier if my father were here!”
    He arched a dark brow and grinned. “Kiernan, I would be the same no matter who was here, and you know it.” He paused a second, his grin spreading. “Including the saintly Anthony!” He turned around, heading out. Daniel grinned and followed him. Kiernan hurried along the hall behind them to the rear door.
    “Please take care!” she urged Daniel on the back porch. Their horses were tethered in back beneath a tree by the uphill trail, sheltered by the cliffs.
    He paused. “I promise.”
    Jesse reached his horse and mounted smoothly. The roan trotted over to the steps, and he smiled down to her. “Am I to take care, too, Miss Mackay?”
    “Of course, Jesse,” she said coolly. “I’d be deeply grieved to see anything happen to you. For Christa’s sake.”
    “Only for Christa’s sake?”
    “You
are
a good neighbor,” she said sweetly.
    He laughed and dipped low from the horse’s back to find her hand.
    He kissed it lightly. “How very sweet and honorable, Miss Mackay!” He freed her hand. “Now, please make sure that you keep your very sweet and honorable derriere indoors