Kissing Comfort Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JO GOODMAN

  “Jo Goodman hooks you and keeps you glued to the pages.”

  —Kat Martin, New York Times bestselling author

  “A perfect treat for readers who enjoy smart, sensual love stories a la Amanda Quick.”

  —Booklist

  “Jo Goodman is a master of her craft, and it’s easy to see why she is a bestseller. She has the rare talent to put you in the hearts and minds of her characters . . . If you see her name on a book, it’s a guaranteed good read!”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “Goodman has a real flair for writing romantic tension and sexy love scenes . . . Fans of historical and western romances will also appreciate Goodman’s witty dialogue, first-rate narrative prose, and clever plotting.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Goodman’s . . . prose is rich and luscious.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Delightful and exciting . . . Goodman holds the suspense as well as the surprises and never lets up on the passion.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “For the pure joy of reading a romance, this book comes close

  to being some kind of perfection.”

  —Dear Author

  “Exquisitely written. Rich in detail, the characters are passionately drawn . . . An excellent read.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “Goodman is a thoughtful and intelligent writer who can make her characters live and breathe on the page.”

  —All About Romance

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  KISSING COMFORT

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / September 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Joanne Dobrzanski.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

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  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54985-8

  BERKLEY SENSATION®

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY SENSATION® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  For Yvonne, for everything

  Prologue

  October 1850

  Sierra Nevada Foothills

  They were still miles away when they noticed the buzzards circling. Newton Prescott pulled up his mare, tipped the brim of his hat back a notch, and glanced sideways at his companion. Tucker Jones met the glance, the right side of his mouth already turning down at the corner, foreshadowing his scowl.

  “What d’you think?” Newt asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Newt reasoned that was probably true. Tucker had an unnatural sense for when events were going to take a turn. It would have been helpful if Tuck knew whether the turn was right or left, up or down, good or bad, but that kind of foresight didn’t accompany his gift, at least not that he’d ever shared. Newt was inclined to believe that Tucker Jones always knew a bit more than he let on, but had decided a long time ago that it was a burden best shouldered alone.

  Newt watched one of the carrion feeders swoop low and disappear from sight, only to reappear as if shot from a cannon. “Something scared him off.”

  “Something ain’t properly dead yet.”

  Nodding, Newt replaced his hat at the proper angle and blocked the red-orange glow of the lowering sun. “What’s your pleasure, Tuck? Circle around or advance?”

  “I reckon circling makes us no better than the buzzards.”

  “True enough.”

  They rode on in silence. It suited them. Newton Prescott possessed no unnatural senses, but he had a head for facts and figures. He knew about probability and the odds of drawing an inside straight, and right now it was a good bet that he and Tuck were going to be flush with trouble.

  They’d known about the wagon train eight days ago. Tuck had pointed out the tracks as they came across the emigrant trail from the north. It was a small party, five, maybe six wagons, some cattle, and a few spare horses. There were women in the group. Newton had recognized the way certain footprints were misshapen by the drag of skirts along the ground. They reckoned there might have been as many as twenty people in the party, but judging from the way the wagon tracks often strayed from the route, no one in the group knew how to read the trail or had a good head for their destination.

  It was reasonable to assume this party had been separated from the main group, cut out, perhaps, for differences with the wagon master, or left behind because of illness or bad blood or by choice. Newton arrived at sixteen possibilities for the separation, and Tuck didn’t have an opinion about any of them. Newt was curious. Tucker Jones was not.

  They’d discussed catching up with the train, maybe offering their services as guides to San Francisco—because Newt had figured the chances of that being their destination as near ninety-six percent—but neither of them had called for a vote, so it just remained a discussion. As
a consequence of this decision not to decide, they spent two nights a few miles from Beattie’s Trading Post near the Nevada-California border to make certain they missed the train entirely.

  But here they were anyway, advancing on what was surely the same party they’d spied evidence of better than a week ago. Newton thought the tracks had probably stopped cold for one of the settlers since he and Tuck had first seen them. That was the story the buzzards seemed to be telling.

  The problem was, the buzzards didn’t know how to count. Newt and Tuck did. They made it to be seventeen souls; eighteen when they got in a little closer and saw a woman lying on her side with an arm and shoulder hunched protectively around her dead child. Leastways, they supposed it was her child. There was no way of knowing for sure, but the fact that there was only a single bullet wound suggested it was a mother’s selfless love that kept them joined in life and death.

  Newt tied his kerchief around the lower half of his face as the odor of putrefying flesh assaulted his senses, carried as it was on the back of a gentle evening breeze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tuck jerk up on the blue-and-white kerchief around his neck until it covered his mouth and nose.

  They would be gravediggers now, Newt supposed, even if they looked like they meant to hold up a stage.

  It took better than four hours to bury the dead. They struck at the hard ground with shovels and picks they took from the wagons. The tools that had been purchased to mine for gold in the California hills were put to practical use, one that didn’t account for a man’s dreams. They buried the mother and her child together and dug separate plots for everyone else. They covered the shallow mounds of dirt with rocks to keep predators from dragging bodies from the graves.

  Newton found a Bible among the ransacked treasures, and he opened it at random to read a short passage over each grave after the last stone was set in place. Tuck listened, but he didn’t bow his head, and he didn’t offer any words of his own. He always waited for Newt to finish before he hefted the shovel he’d been leaning against and struck the ground again.

  They finished by the light from half a dozen lanterns. Newton closed the Bible and slipped it under his arm. Tuck pitched the shovel as hard as he could. It clattered against a wagon wheel. He dropped to his haunches and set his hands on his knees. It wasn’t the physical labor that left them tired and aching; it was the nature of the labor. They’d discarded the kerchiefs hours earlier, having gotten used to the stench, and took them out now to mop their brows. Their shirts were damp with sweat, and the cool night air raised the unnatural, bone-deep chill to the surface of their skin.

  Tuck looked up at the sky. It was a clear night, hardly a cloud. The stars hadn’t strayed from their familiar pattern, and Tuck found solace in that. He always took calm where he could find it.

  He put his hands at the small of his back and rose. Tall and rangy, he unfolded slowly, grimacing slightly as he felt the pull of muscle across his shoulders. “I guess we both know what happened here,” he said finally.

  “I guess we do.” Newt carried the Bible over to the wagon where he’d found it and put it inside. “The question in my mind is now that we’ve buried the dead, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Two of us. I make it to be five of them. Could be six.”

  “Six,” said Newton. He’d looked over the tracks, same as Tucker, but he’d been a bit a longer at it. “That’d give us three men apiece. Not bad odds. Just about even, I’d say.”

  That raised Tuck’s smile. “Folks are always saying how you got a head for numbers, but I don’t get how they figure that.”

  Newt shrugged. He was half a head shorter than his friend, with shoulders half again as broad. He used the kerchief to swipe at his throat before he stuffed one corner into the waistband of his trousers. “They probably have two days on us, wouldn’t you say?”

  “About that.”

  “They went northwest.”

  “It looked to me like they rode out in pairs. Real precise they were. Probably couldn’t help themselves.”

  Newton had seen that, too. “Soldiering leaves it’s own kind of mark on a man, I reckon. They took all the horses. I suppose they mean to sell them.” He looked to where a couple of cows still grazed on the hillside not far from the center of the attack. “What I can’t figure is why they killed everyone.”

  “Ain’t there a saying that dead men tell no tales?”

  Newt nodded slowly, rubbed his chin. “They must have come from the same direction they left. They weren’t following the train. They were waiting on it.”

  “I had the same thought. You come across a strongbox anywhere when you were poking around?”

  “Didn’t see one.”

  Tucker Jones grunted softly. “Neither did I. These people don’t seem to have much in the way of valuables left.”

  “There’re all kinds of buzzards.”

  Tucker grunted. “Can’t sleep here,” he said. “I don’t mind saying so.”

  “One of us had to say it.” Newton whistled softly for his horse. The mare had meandered to an outcropping of rocks and was snuffling between two boulders and scratching at the ground. “You take care of the lanterns while I get Dulcie before she gets herself stuck.”

  For the rest of their lives they would disagree about who heard the hollow cry first, but they sprinted toward the source of the sound and reached the outcropping at the same time.

  Newton grabbed Dulcinea’s reins and pulled her away while Tucker pressed his face against a narrow crevice in the rocks.

  “What do you see?” Newt asked, quieting Dulcie.

  “Shh. Can’t see anything.” Tuck turned his head and gave the opening his ear. At first he was met with silence, but he knew something about patience, and he counted out twenty-two long seconds in his mind before he heard the sharp release of a breath held too long. He straightened. “I need one of those lanterns.”

  While Tuck was retrieving it, Newt bent over the crevice and put his head in the same position. “Did you hear something?” he called after Tuck. “I don’t hear it now.”

  “That’s because you’re talking.”

  Newt gave way a few inches to let Tuck dangle the lantern over the crevice. Both men tried to peer in. They bumped heads, swore softly, and it was Newton that gave way, but not before he glimpsed a pair of dark, expressionless eyes staring back at him. “Mother of God,” he said under his breath. “That’s a child. Is he alive?”

  Tuck watched the pupils constrict in response to the light. “Alive.”

  “How’d he get in there?”

  “A better question is how are we going to get him out.”

  True enough. Newt went in search of a crowbar while Tuck kept the lantern light above the child’s upturned face.

  “Dulcie must have startled him,” Tuck said when Newt returned. “I think he was sleeping. He’s got some of the sandman’s grit about his eyes.”

  “What do you know about the sandman?”

  Tuck shrugged and pointed to where Newton should set the crowbar. He explained to the child what they were going to do, but there was no reaction. Other than the soft cry when Dulcie surprised him, he hadn’t made a sound. Other than blinking, he hadn’t twitched.

  “He puts me in mind of Lieutenant Carmichael,” Tuck said, setting the lantern down. “Remember?”

  “Monterrey,” Newt said. “I remember. It’s only been four years and a bit. That was the battle that struck him dumb. He was never right after his brother was killed. Are you saying that’s what happened to this little fellow?”

  “I’m just sayin’, is all.” Tuck helped Newt apply weight to the crowbar. “Just sayin’.”

  Both men grunted as the boulder shifted. Newt held it in place long enough for Tuck to reach inside the widened crevice and extract the child. As soon as Newt let go, the precarious arrangement of rocks began to slide. Tuck jumped out of the way of a boulder that would have rolled over his feet if he hadn’t been alert to the danger. The
lantern was crushed and the light extinguished.

  Newt caught Dulcie’s reins before the mare strayed too far. He led her across the loose rock to follow Tucker back to the wagons. He hitched Dulcie to the first wagon he came to while Tuck plucked another lantern from the ground and carried it and the child well past the freshly dug graves, the overturned and scattered belongings, and the eerily silent covered wagons.

  It was anyone’s nightmare.

  Still shaking his head, Newt came to stand beside Tucker. His friend was on his knees in front of the child and looking about as helpless as Newt felt. The child they’d both assumed was a boy was wearing a red-and-white gingham dress.

  “He’s a girl,” Newt said.

  “I’m not disputing it.”

  “Does she have name?”

  “Of course she has name. She’s just not saying what it is, is all.”

  “We need to call her something.”

  “We’ll come to that by and by.”

  “Has she said anything at all?” asked Newt.

  “Not a word.”

  Newt also dropped to his knees. While Tuck was still a little taller than the girl in this same position, Newt met her at eye level. “How old are you?”

  The child blinked but remained silent. She stared back without defiance or interest, not so much seeing him as seeing through him. It occurred to Newt that she was an empty vessel. Soulless. Her hair was as black as her eyes; pulled back from her forehead to make a tight braid that was coiled at the nape of her neck. Bits of dried blood dotted a scrape on her cheek, and there was a bruise just beside her right eye. The rocks were to blame, no doubt. She was just a wisp of a thing, skinny more than slender, all of her fragile boned, yet somehow still steady on her feet. The shoulder seam in her dress had a small tear, and her black leather boots were scuffed and layered with dust. Perhaps someone had hidden her away among the rocks for safety, but Newt was inclined to believe she’d found her own way there. She hadn’t understood those boulders could become a tomb. She would have died under them if Dulcie hadn’t come across her.