Cinnamon and Roses Read Free Page B

see what Papa does. It must be big and important if he asked you to come out here to help him.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “Most of all,” she sniffed, “I want to be where my family is."
    Caleb looked at Holbrook, whose own eyes had clouded. He wanted to argue with Megan that Leavenworth was no place for a gently reared girl like her, but he knew it would do no good. And besides that, several people had started to gather, listening to Megan's theatrical speech.
    Caleb put a gentle hand on Megan's arm and led her into the Adams Express office. When they were all inside the back office, away from curious onlookers, he turned to his sister once more. A smile lit her face, and he knew she was thinking she'd won the battle.
    "This isn't over, Megan. We'll discuss it further when we get home tonight.” She nodded, but Caleb could tell she wasn't concerned. It was difficult for. Caleb to admit he really had no intention of making Megan go back to
New York
. Oh, he would argue with her, try to convince her that it was best, but he knew Megan would stick to her convictions. He was counting on it. Neither he nor his father could bear to send her away if this was truly where she wanted to live. She might be young, but Megan knew what she wanted; she always had. And once she set her heart on something, she went after it with a passion few people possessed.
    Caleb shook his head and gestured for Megan to have a seat until the office closed.

    It was just getting dark outside when Rebecca dropped a cinnamon stick into the teapot, removed it from the stove, and carried it to the kitchen table. She let it steep while she brought lamps to set around the rocking chair she usually sat in to sew. She had a lot of work to do before the Wednesday Group came to call.
    With all the lamps lit, the area around her chair was quite bright. She brought the tea and a cup and saucer to the table beside the rocker and sat down, putting on her spectacles and picking up the pink calico dress she was trying to finish for Anabelle Archer.
    Outside, the noises of the town crept through her closed windows. Friday and Saturday nights were Leavenworth's busiest, and Rebecca's most unsettling. The playful—and sometimes not so playful—gunfire, the tinny music filtering out of the Dog Tick Saloon, the raucous laughter of drunken cowboys and the girls they hired for an hour or the night all made Rebecca sickly uncomfortable. That was why, even on the hottest of evenings, like tonight, Rebecca kept all her doors and windows closed.
    Memories, that's all they are, Rebecca tried to tell herself. But it didn't matter. They were bad memories, things she couldn't seem to forget, things she had a hard time putting behind her.
    A woman's scream ripped through the air. Rebecca jumped, stabbing herself with her needle. She stuck the bleeding finger into her mouth, cursing silently before pushing the spectacles back up the bridge of her nose with the back of her wrist. A series of shorter, more frantic screams followed, taking Rebecca back to a night long ago. A night she would give anything to forget.
    She had been only ten years old, desperately trying to fall asleep on the small, hard cot that passed as her bed, but the noise was too loud, too distracting, as usual. Her bedroom was nothing more than a back storage room in the Scarlet Garter, the most prosperous whorehouse in Kansas City.
    Rebecca had just turned over, hoping a new position might help, when the first scream tore through the darkness. She sat up straight, tilting her head to hear better . She heard it again and knew it was her mother. Jumping out of bed, still dressed in the shirt and trousers she always wore, she ran out of the room toward the screams.
    She came to a halt at the corner of the hallway when she saw a crowd of onlookers gathering. Slowly, on her hands and knees, she crawled forward, slipping between pairs of booted and bare feet. She got to the doorway and peered around its edge.
    The