The Bourbon Thief(49)

“Why’d you do it, man?” Levi asked the picture. “You look pretty damn happy. What happened?”

Levi wasn’t glad Nash was dead, but he was glad no one was around to answer that question. With the Maddox family involved, maybe Levi didn’t want to know.

Levi considered burning the picture but thought better of it. There were two men in the photograph, and while one of them was dead and gone, the other might be alive and he might want this picture someday. Levi found a flat tin cigar box full of ballpoint pens and stuck the picture in there, facedown. Whoever the man in the picture was, he was important to Nash, but there was no need for Tamara to see it.

His inspections over, Levi walked to the front porch and opened the door.

“No wolves,” he said. “Only one spider and he and I signed a peace treaty. You want to come in?”

Tamara gave him a wan smile. She came toward him and put her arms around him, which was unexpected.

“Thank you,” she said, and he slowly returned the embrace. Since she already had her arms around him, he lifted her off her feet playfully, swinging her over the threshold.

“The house looks good,” Levi said. “No electricity. Probably needs a new fuse. I’ll have to run into town tomorrow and get some stuff.”

“Mr. Berry said the place blows fuses a lot. Storm surges and bad lines or something.”

“We’ll be fine with the lantern for one night. But watch your step on the stairs. Bedrooms are upstairs. Bathroom downstairs.” Levi left her with the lantern and brought in the bags and duffel from the porch. The downstairs was pitch-black now. Levi saw only a slant of light sliding down the steps. Dammit. He’d meant to warn her before she went upstairs.

He hurried up the stairs and found her in the girl’s room—her room, or the room that ought to have been her room had fate hung a left instead of a right. It hadn’t taken her long to realize the room’s purpose. She sat on the bare mattress by the window, her fingertips stretched out and touching the nose of the horse statue.

The lantern sat at her feet and in the soft shaking light, with her feet barely grazing the floor in a room made for a child, she looked like a little girl. She had a little girl’s tears on her cheeks and a little girl’s heartache in her voice when she said his name.

Levi stood in front of her and Tamara leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him.

“He was going to bring me here?” Tamara asked.

“I guess he was.”

“Why didn’t he do it?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, the term of endearment coming out before he could stop it. “Something happened and he couldn’t go on. But he must have loved you a lot to put this place together for you.”

“I wasn’t even his daughter.”

“But he loved you all the same.”

She pulled back and looked around. Levi handed her his handkerchief and she wiped at her face.

Then she laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“I haven’t read any of those books since I was ten. And I hate the color pink.”

Levi laughed, too.

“You can take the other room,” Levi said. “It’s blue. I’ll take your pink room. I think it suits me.” He grabbed the pink cowgirl hat off the doorknob and pushed it on his head. “My color, right?”

“You look like the Mad Hatter,” Tamara said. She stood up and took the hat off his head and pushed it down on her own. “I’ll sleep here. Daddy made this room for me, after all.”

“Come on, Alice.” He took the hat off her and tossed it on the dresser. “It’s been a long day. Let’s get ready for bed.”

Both bedrooms also had oil lanterns in them. Levi lit every lantern and candle he could find in the house until every room but the kitchen and office glowed with soft firelight. Tamara declared it her job to make up the beds and unpack their things—she was clearly doing her best to act like a wife. She shooed him away while she made the beds. Sore from the drive and his run-in with Kentucky’s finest yesterday, he ran a hot bath, took some Tylenol for his bruised side and soaked himself until the water turned cool.

He pulled on his jeans and dunked his sweat-soaked white T-shirt in the bathwater to rinse it out. He hung it and his towel over the towel bar to dry. He hadn’t wanted to put on his dirty jeans, which he’d been wearing since last night, but he also didn’t want to walk around the house naked or in nothing but a towel. Wife or not, Tamara didn’t need to see that. She was a virgin, seventeen, sheltered as a nun, and he planned on keeping her that way until she grew up a little.

On his way up to bed, Levi blew out the lantern downstairs and walked upstairs to the blue room.

When he opened the door, he found Tamara under the covers.

“Rotten, didn’t you say you were sleeping in the pink room?”

“I forgot how much I hate pink,” she said from the bed.

“Fine. Good night.”

He turned to leave her, but Tamara said his name again.

When Levi turned back around, Tamara had sat up in bed. The lantern was on the bedside table, and although she’d taken out her braid and her long brick red hair covered her, he could see she was naked.

“Tamara, we’re not doing this,” he said, shaking his head. He should have known.