Read Online Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online

that time facedown in the sawdust at the Yellow Garter. He got a prickly sensation at the back of his neck and glanced toward the saloon again. “You know anything about a girl running away from Jake Kingston’s fine establishment?” he asked.
    “If I did,” Dorrie replied, “I wouldn’t tell you.” She frowned. “I thought I saw you riding out of town a little while ago, as a matter of fact. You were mounted on a black gelding with three white stockings.”
    Shay grinned and touched the back of his hand to her forehead, as though testing for a fever. “You’re getting old. Seeing things.”
    “Go to hell,” Dorrie said cheerfully. “I’ll outlive you and Cornie both.”
    “Theodora.” The voice was shrill and female, and it came from inside the store. “I am depending on you to wash that window.”
    Dorrie sighed. “God, I hate that woman,” she said, with no attempt at a moderate tone.
    “Then why do you stay?” Shay was honestly puzzled. Shamus and Rebecca McQuillan had never been rich, but they’d left a thriving business behind, and the only painted house in town, a two-story mail-order structurewith a picket fence around it. It wasn’t as though Dorrie didn’t have choices.
    “Because I won’t give the old biddy the satisfaction of driving me off, that’s why. Go dunk your head in the rain barrel, Cornie. I’m talking to my baby brother.” Dorrie slowly descended to a stage whisper. “I mean to wait her out, Shamus. When she’s toes-up in the Presbyterian cemetery, we’ll sell this place, you and me, and split the takings.”
    Shay kissed Dorrie’s earnest forehead. He hadn’t been interested in the family business before and he wasn’t now; store keeping wasn’t for him. “Don’t wait,” he counseled. “She’ll live another fifty years on sheer meanness alone.”
    Cornelia appeared in the doorway, a stunning woman of nearly fifty, with wide green eyes, hair the color of darkened copper, and a soul the devil wouldn’t have taken in trade for a square acre of sulphur fumes. “What do you want?” she demanded, glaring at Shay. She had resented him as an intruder for as long as he could remember, and he’d long since gotten used to her rancor.
    He touched his hat brim and treated her to the mocking grin he knew she had always despised. “Not a thing,” he said. “I’m a contented man.” It wasn’t true, of course, but the thought that he might actually be happy was clearly enough to gall Cornelia, and that made the lie worth telling.
    “You could come back home any time you wanted, Shamus,” plain, fanciful Dorrie announced, putting a point on each word, for Cornelia’s benefit. She was just a year or two younger than Cornelia; they’d both been nearly grown when Shay was born. “Mama and Papa would want that.”
    In truth, Shay often missed that spacious old house, with its shelves full of precious books, its clean white walls and cool, shining wooden floors. He’d had a small room, under the slant of the roof, with a window thatopened to let in the stars on clear nights, and he had fond memories of lying in bed when the wet weather came, listening to the music the rain made on the shingles. He’d loved Shamus and shy, fretful Rebecca, never dreaming they were mortal until they were gone.
    “Thank you, Dorrie,” he said, “but I’m fine over at the boardinghouse. I’ll be moving along now.”
    “None too soon,” snapped Cornelia.
    Dorrie bent, hoisted the bucket of dirty water and flung it toward her sister. Cornelia leaped back with a gasp and a poisonous look, and just missed getting drenched. Some days, there just wasn’t any luck to be had, no matter how you might beat the bushes trying to scare it up.
    Shay smiled at Dorrie and walked away. Behind him, his sisters flew at each other like two cats with their tails tied together.
    He looked in on the banker next, then moved on to pay a call on Dutch Cooper, over at the livery stable. His presence aroused