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Laura Lee Quinn, very soon to be Laura Lee Creed

      The flower-scented paper fluttered to Juliette’s feet, covering the stocking-clad toes of one foot. She stared at the letter for a long moment then reached for the hatbox.

      What on earth? A gift? Of money? Juliette could scarcely believe it. No doubt she had been more tired than she knew—had climbed the stairs huddled under her covers and fallen asleep in spite of her cold feet. Clearly this had to be a lovely dream that she was about to wake from. Before she did, though, she ought to open the lid of the hatbox and see how much money was in it. No doubt she would jerk back to reality before she discovered that, but—

      She lifted the lid, blinked hard at what was inside then closed it again. She didn’t dare to touch the cash because dream money always vanished before one’s eyes. It tended to turn into carrots or a ball of yarn or one of the many things dream objects transformed into. And here she would sit, wondering how to pay the mortgage, same as she did every month.

      Tucking the hatbox under her arm, she went upstairs, got into bed and curled herself around the pretty yellow gift.

      If it was still there when she awoke in the morning, she would believe it. But not until then. Not until sunlight shone on the treasure inside and it did not vanish like dreams mostly did.

      * * *

      Dawn came and the money in the hatbox proved to be as real as the slush Juliette swept off the porch in front of her restaurant.

      Everything about the day was as normal as peas, except that she had more money than she could have ever imagined.

      True to form, her father-in-law complained that the babies were fussing and that he was hungry. Levi Silver sat at his customary table, eating his breakfast of eggs and bacon cooked to a crisp.

      Cold seeped through her boots while she swept, same as it always did, but this morning she barely felt it. Her mind was so full of possibilities for the future of her family that she didn’t give the ordinary tasks of the morning a thought. She went through them by rote, her mind flitting among the clouds.

      With her newly come tidy little fortune, she could leave Beaumont Spur along with so many others.

      Or she could stay in the place she loved. Even in the state it had fallen to, this was home, the place the roots of her heart grew deep. She could build a beautiful home at the edge of town where life would be more peaceful. She could stay home all day long just watching her babies grow.

      Gazing at the mountain range that circled Beaumont Spur like a snowy crown, she knew it would be a difficult thing to leave the place where her dreams and her family members were buried. Perhaps she would not be able to, even if it might be for the best.

      The way things seemed now, she wondered if Beaumont Spur even had a future.

      She would not want to invest her heart and her money in a place that was doomed to fail.

      Her money? The idea was still fresh enough to not seem real.

      Who would have imagined that a gang of scruffy outlaws would be worth so much?

      Until this morning, Juliette Lindor would not have believed it.

      The sound of a hammer on wood cut the quiet morning. Juliette looked up suddenly to see Mrs. Elvira Pugley pounding the tool on the front door of The Fickle Dog Saloon.

      “Ephraim Culverson, your saloon is ruining my hotel!” she shouted.

      After a few moments of incessant hammering, the door was flung open and the owner of the saloon burst onto the boardwalk wearing a knee-length nightshirt and a pair of argyle socks. Even with one big toe poking out of the tip of the sock, the man looked formidable.

      “Stop your bleating, woman!” Ephraim’s bellow had always been loud enough to shake windows. This morning, having no doubt been awoken after a night of debauchery, it was even louder.

      “I demand that you keep your fleas on your own side of the wall. Folks are complaining all day and night!” Elvira Pugley was as hot-tempered as her neighbor.

      “My fleas be damned!” Ephraim Culverson snatched the hammer from her hand and pitched it halfway across the road. “It’s your fat, hairy rats carrying them to my place.”

      “Of all the insulting—I’m not the one who named my business The Fickle Dog. Dogs have fleas.”

      “No more than rodents do!”

      Juliette was pretty sure her windows rattled, but she shrugged and continued to sweep. This was not the first time the saloon owner and the hotel owner had erupted in a battle of words.

      No doubt both places had fleas borne by rats. She didn’t care much who’d had them first, so long as the vermin kept to their own side of the road.

      “I’ve a mind to sell the hotel rather than spend another day next door to you.”

      She had? For how much?

      “Sure would suit me not to hear you hammering on my door in the wee hours.”

      To Mr. Culverson the wee hours were what others would call eleven in the morning.

      Did she dare make an offer for the hotel?

      If the saloon owner considered Mrs. Pugley a bothersome neighbor, well, Juliette would be worse. Not as loud, perhaps, but more persistent in the quest for cleanliness.

      But to restore the hotel and hopefully attract a more family-oriented sort of person to Beaumont Spur, to make the ones who were leaving reconsider? The possibility niggled around in her mind until it turned into downright temptation.

      “I just might take the train out of this town before that no-good, thieving, arsonist, taker-of-innocence son of yours comes back to town, and I hear he is.”

      At the mention of Trea, Juliette stopped sweeping, leaned for a moment against the broom handle.

      The last thing she expected was for her heart to kick at the mention of that long-absent boy.

      Maybe he was going to come back to town and be his father’s pride and joy—but he had never been that, not really.

      He would have needed a blacker soul in order for his father to be proud of him.

      For all that Trea acted like the town’s black sheep, Juliette saw someone different.

      She saw a boy with a decent heart looking for acceptance from people who would never respect him. And mostly because of his bully of a father.

      That boy had sought affection in whatever way he could.

      Just now her heart reacted to the mention of him the same way it had so many years ago, with a thump, then a yearning. She could not deny that she had been in childish adoration of him.

      Over the years she’d often wondered about him, remembered the mischievous glint in his warm brown eyes, the hurt and rejection caused by those whose approval he so desperately wanted.

      Of course, he would never have gotten it. The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree she’d heard time and again in reference to Trea.

      How many times had she wanted to shout that trees and their nuts were a far different thing than human beings and their children?

      It was her long-held opinion that a child should not have to bear the sins of the father. It had been shocking to her to discover that, in the opinion of most folks, they did.

      Most especially when the acorn, the product of a sinful man, was named Trea Culverson.

      “You better take that train, Elvira. I aim to promote my son to head man around here, right under me. Don’t reckon you’ll like having my young hellion to answer to.”

      The argument over Trea and fleas continued for another five minutes before the combatants went back inside their own places of business.

      It wouldn’t be long before they were back at

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