Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller

stranger at the pool table smiled, leaning on his cue stick now, both hands clasping it like a pole he meant to climb. The piano jangled to a discordant, echoing stop, and the cowboy who’d wanted to dance stood unsteadily, but still.
    Aislinn took a step backward, and Shay advanced.
    “I guess this was a reckless thing to do,” she said, with a hard swallow.
    That statement brought a nervous laugh from the assembly of revelers, prostitutes and general ne’er-do-wells, and Aislinn, while still painfully conscious of her blunder, was also indignant. She felt hot color pulsing beneath the flesh of her face. She’d come here on a heroic mission, after all, however misguided, and she deserved some understanding.
    Reaching her at last, Shay snatched the derringer out of her hand and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He bore little resemblance, at least in manner, to the man who had kissed her so thoroughly on the hotel veranda, that very evening. His voice was low, pitched for her earsalone, as hard and as burning cold as a pump handle in a prairie blizzard. “You’re under arrest,” he said.
    That was just about the last thing Aislinn had expected him to say. She stood there, her vocal cords paralyzed, while he strode over to Billy Kyle, bent down to take him by the hair. “You wait here for me, Billy. You hear?”
    Adam’s apple bobbing, a muscle jumping in his cheek, Billy looked as though he’d sooner spit on Shay than draw his next breath, but after a long and awkward moment, he nodded. Not that he could have gone far, cuffed to that foot rail the way he was.
    Shay straightened then and, sparing not so much as a look for anyone else, returned to Aislinn, took her firmly by the arm and propelled her across the floor, with its disgusting clumps, toward the doors. The moment they gained the sidewalk, a roar of laughter arose inside.
    Aislinn closed her eyes tightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    Shay headed for the street with barely a pause, dragging her along behind him. She didn’t need to be told that he was too furious to speak.
    “I think you’re being unreasonable about this,” she pointed out breathlessly. She was in good shape, but he was walking so fast that she had to take three steps for every one of his. “It should be obvious that I was merely trying to help.”
    They were not going toward the hotel, as Aislinn had expected, but toward the jailhouse. Apparently, he’d meant what he said, about her being under arrest. She couldn’t believe he was serious.
    “What, precisely, is my crime? You can’t just throw me in jail because you want to, you know. I have rights!”
    Shay hooked an arm around her waist and hoisted her off her feet, carrying her against his side like a rug loosely rolled. When they reached the door to the jail, he kicked it open, a gesture Aislinn thought was a bit excessive, not to mention hard on the nerves. It wasn’t as though she’d robbed a bank, after all.
    “I demand that you answer me!” she cried.
    He carried her across his small office and into a cell, flinging her down onto the narrow cot inside. It didn’t seem odd to her, in the chaos of the moment, that there were lamps burning here and there, spilling unsteady light over the rough board floors. “You can demand all you want,” he growled. “Course, there won’t be anybody around to listen to you.” He went out before she could scramble off the cot, slammed the cell door, and locked it with a heavy key.
    Aislinn rushed after him, arriving too late, clasping the bars in both hands. “Wait!” she called, to his retreating back. “You can’t leave me here like this … I haven’t broken any laws!”
    Shay turned on his heel and glared at her. He’d left his hat behind at the Yellow Garter, and his bright hair was mussed in a way that, despite her angry frustration, made her want to comb it with her fingers. “Get a lawyer, then!” he yelled, jabbing a finger at her. “Sue me!”
    She sagged against