Kissing Comfort Read Free

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.
    â€œMaybe some water,” Newt said finally. “A little food. That might help.” He started to rise and noticed for the first time that she was clutching something in her right hand. It looked like a tin. Slim and rectangular, slightly longer than the small fist she made around it, the side that he could see was painted red and white like her dress. “What’s that in her hand?”
    â€œI’ve been wondering myself.”
    â€œHave you asked her for it?”
    â€œShe’s got no reason to give it to me. Way I figure, it’s all she has in the world, so I’m lettin’ her keep it.”
    â€œSomehow looks familiar to me,” said Newt. “Could be I’ve had a tin like that myself.” He finished straightening and it came to him. He snapped his fingers above Tuck’s head. “Dr. Eli Kennedy’s Comfort Lozenges. That’d be the peppermint she has. Spearmint comes in a green-and-white tin.”
    â€œWell, she can keep them,” said Tuck. “In fact, she can keep the name, too.”
    â€œEli? Now that makes no sense.”
    Looking up, Tuck gave Newton a withering glance. “Not Eli. We’ll call her Comfort until she tells us different. Comfort Kennedy.”
    Newton thought about it, shrugged. “It’ll do, I suppose. It’s bound to be a puzzle trying to figure out who she is. Could be there will be kin back East; someone who will want to know what happened.”
    â€œWater first. Like you said. Get the jerky out of my bag.”
    Newt started to walk away, stopped, and then turned on his heel. “You’re not thinking about keeping her, are you? We don’t know anything about raising a baby. What are we going to do with her while we’re prospecting?”
    â€œA fool can see she’s not a baby, and we can’t leave her behind.”
    â€œWe can take her back to the trading post.”
    â€œAnd leave her with strangers? That doesn’t set right with me.”
    â€œ We’re strangers.”
    â€œBut we can trust us,” Tuck said practically. “Name someone else you can say that about.”
    Newt couldn’t. “She’s a girl. ”
    â€œSo? You told me you grew up with four sisters.”
    â€œYou’re making my point.”
    â€œIt’s only until we can find her kin.”
    â€œ If there’s kin.”
    â€œYou said yourself there’s bound to be kin.”
    Caught, Newt’s mouth snapped shut.
    Tuck arched an eyebrow. “Too late to take it back. Get her something to eat, and then you can nose around for clues. In the meantime, Comfort and me are going to sit right here quiet as snowfall and contemplate the stars. Seems like she needs a little peace. I know I do.”
    â€œThis is the plumb dumbest notion you ever took into your head, Tucker Jones, and I haven’t forgotten the time you drank half a bottle of tequila and proposed to that Mexican whore in Vera Cruz.”
    â€œTrue enough,” said Tuck. “But I wasn’t the one who married her.”

Chapter One
    June 1870
    San Francisco
    Â 
    Except for the fact that the guest of honor had failed to make an appearance, everyone who’d gathered to celebrate his birthday agreed he was missing a splendid affair.
    Comfort Elizabeth Kennedy stood with her back to the granite balustrade on the portico and surveyed the activity in the grand salon. She’d closed the French doors behind her when she made her escape to the portico, but she didn’t have to strain overmuch to hear the lilting melodies of the stringed orchestra or the titter and tattle of so many voices rising and falling in concert with the music. Woman