Read MB01 - Unending Devotion for Free Online

tracts of pineland and reporting back to him with estimates of the number of pine trees per acre. As soon as his cruisers located valuable land that wasn’t already bought up, he’d make arrangements for McCormick Lumber to purchase it. Soon enough, he’d be busy planning for the new camps.
    He liked Stuart Golden and the Hellers and several other townspeople who had become friends. But there was no sense getting too attached to a small town like Harrison when he wouldn’t be there for long.
    That’s the way the lumber industry worked, the way his dad had run the business for the past twenty years. Through hard work and savvy, Dad had transformed himself from a poor, starving Irish immigrant into a millionaire.
    And he expected nothing less than hard work and savvy from his sons.
    A flash of color along Main Street drew Connell’s attention back to the window.
    Lily Young picked up her skirts and dashed across the street like a schoolboy.
    “That girl is something else,” he mumbled.
    She stopped in front of Johnson’s Hotel. Wrapped in a heavy woolen coat, she stared at the big lettering across the front of the building. Her bright flowery skirt flapped in the wind, as out of place in the dull gray of winter as the girl herself was in the mostly male-populated lumber town.
    She swiped aside a loose curl that slapped at her cheek and then stepped toward the double doors.
    His muscles tightened. She couldn’t possibly intend to go inside. Couldn’t she see that the word Saloon was painted across the large front window, one bright red letter in each square pane?
    There might not be much any of them could do to rid the town of the drinking and whoring that went on, but that didn’t mean he liked it or supported it. And he certainly didn’t think the establishment was the kind of place a decent young lady should enter—not at great peril to herself and her reputation.
    Lily pushed open one of the doors and stepped inside.
    “What? Is she crazy?” He spun from the window and clomped across the room, an anxious spark shooting through his gut like the snap of the crackling birch in the stove.
    Without bothering to close the door of his office, he charged into the hallway and took the steps two at a time, hitting the bottom at full speed. He passed by the open door that led to Stuart’s printing press and headed straight for the front door.
    “Hey, where you going, you lazybones?” Stuart called, stepping into the hallway, wiping his ink-stained hands on a blackened rag.
    Connell didn’t take the time to answer but instead rushed outside, letting the cold morning reawaken him.
    It had taken only two minutes after Lily’s entrance into the Northern Hotel last evening for Jimmy Neil to grab hold of her. Of course, Jimmy would be down working at the loading docks all day and wouldn’t be in any of the taverns to bother her. In fact, Connell doubted there were many men sitting around Johnson’s saloon in the middle of the morning. But all it would take was one—one just like Jimmy—and Lily would be in big trouble.
    Connell started across the street but then stopped abruptly.
    Through the narrow rectangular window of the saloon door, he could see her outline. One of her mittened hands pressed against the glass, almost as if she were prepared to run if need be.
    His breath rose in puffy clouds in front of him.
    “What are you all excited about?” Stuart joined him in the middle of the wide street. He carried his rag in one hand and a pica stick in the other. He glanced around the nearly deserted street as if trying to surmise what was wrong. “We don’t have another accidental fire, do we?”
    Halfway down the street, the charred remains of the new county jail glared from beneath a frosted covering of ice. Several weeks ago, the fire had started in the middle of the night, and by the time the fire bells had awakened the townspeople, they hadn’t had a praying chance to save the place. Built entirely out of