Esme snorted. “Grandma Anne is a bit of a revisionist when it comes to family history. I bet she didn’t tell you this house was once a brothel or that this attic was the very room where my great-great grandmother lost her virginity to that notoriously wicked outlaw, Billy Darling.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Your grandmother was a hooker?”

“Of course not. Billy Darling ended up being my grandfather. We Darlings don’t have skeletons in our closet. We have gunslingers.” She spun around to nutter her eyelashes at him. “I should warn you, sir, that the women in my family have always had a weakness for outlaws.”

Dix immediately turned serious. “Did I ever tell you about my time in prison?”

She squinted up at him. “You’re pulling my leg. Felons aren’t eligible for the police academy.”

“I never said I was a felon. I egged the mayor’s house on Halloween when I was thirteen and spent three hours in the county lockup.”

“Oooooh,” she crooned, pursing her lips in an inviting pout. “You were a very bad boy. I may just have to take you in.”

Growling beneath his breath, Dix leaned forward. Before their lips could touch, Esme whirled around and scampered deeper into the attic. She might have enjoyed the last laugh if her flashlight hadn’t chosen that moment to flicker and go out.

“Dix?” she whispered on a quavering note.

“I’m right here, sweetheart,” he replied, the touch of his hand on her shoulder calming her fears.

Frowning, Esme tapped the Maglite against her thigh. “That’s weird. I’ve never had it do that before.”

“Hang on just a sec.”

Hunching his broad shoulders to squeeze them beneath the eaves, Dix tore one of the rotting slats off the window, letting in a golden stream of sunshine.

Crouched in the farthest reaches of the attic was a lone leather trunk. With the dust motes drifting around it in a sparkling cascade, there was something almost magical about the sight. Esme’s breath caught in childlike wonder.

She sank down cross-legged on the floor in front of the trunk, so enchanted by her discovery that she forgot all about the dust and the spiders and the occasional squeak coming from the corners. Dix squatted behind her, peering over her shoulder.

As she reached to lift the lid, she was surprised to realize her hands, legendary around the precinct for their steadiness, were trembling.

A crumpled gown, carefully folded, but poorly preserved, was the first thing she saw.

“A wedding dress,” she whispered, stroking the fragile fabric.

The ivory silk shattered at her touch, but the veil was still strong enough to endure being picked up and gently draped over her hair. A faint aroma, sweet and strangely familiar, drifted to her nose. The creamy lace fluttered around her face like angel wings.

Realizing how ridiculous she must look, Esmerelda snatched it off, shooting Dix a sheepish glance. “It doesn’t quite match my uniform, does it?”

“Oh, I thought it looked just fine,” he said softly. The sober look in his eyes made her feel shy.

Hoping to hide her blush, she delved back into the trunk. “Oh, look, here’s an autobiography by my illustrious ancestor, Bartholomew Fine III. He started out writing pulp fiction and ended up winning the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1918.” She idly flipped through the yellowed pages, then tossed the book aside. “You won’t find any scandals there. According to family lore, he was dull as dishwater. Never so much as cheated on his income tax.”

“What’s that?” Dix asked, reaching around to grab a thin volume bound in orange cloth. He held it up to the light, intoning in a mock baritone,“ William Darling, Legendary Lawman, by Mr. Bartholomew Fine. This grandfather of yours doesn’t sound like much of an outlaw to me,” he scoffed with an endearing hint of male envy.

“Oh, no? Then how do you explain this?”

Esmerelda unfurled the Wanted poster with a flourish. A steely-eyed desperado squinted back at them in the mug shot from hell.

Dix recoiled, looking genuinely spooked.

“What is it?”

He shuddered. “I’ve seen that exact same look on your face when you’ve got PMS.”

She rolled the poster back up and glared at him. “It’s a very romantic story. He gave up his life of villainy for the love of a good woman. My great-uncle Virgil, who considers himself the official historian of the family, swore that Billy Darling was so in love with my grandmother that he took a job in a Wild West show and followed her all the way to London.”

Esmerelda shuffled through a stack of quaintly illustrated handbills for Sheriff Andrew McGuire’s Wild West Extravaganza that promised Noble Lawmen, Wild Horses, Dastardly Outlaws, and Savage Red Men to those bold enough to purchase tickets.

“Would you follow me all the way to London, Dix?”

“Only if you promised to use those shiny new handcuffs of yours on me.”

“In your dreams, Detective,” she retorted, throwing him a laughing glance.

“Every night, sweetheart,” he promised, the smoky heat in his eyes sending a shiver of desire through her.

Esme discovered a locket’s silver chain coiled beneath the crumbling handbills. She gently unlatched it to find a sepia-toned miniature of a somber-eyed little girl holding a laughing baby. Beneath the locket was another ancient photograph—this one of a woman wearing the very wedding gown Esme had found when she opened the trunk. The bride stood sideways to show off the elaborate train. An enigmatic smile played around her prim lips.

“Who’s the babe?” Dix quipped, squinting over her shoulder.

“It must be my namesake,” Esme murmured. “My great-great-grandma Esmerelda. She was some kind of royalty, you know—a countess or a princess or something.” She stole a quick look at the dates inscribed on the back, then sighed dreamily. “Isn’t it strange to think that I’m exactly the same age she was when she met the man she was destined to spend the rest of her life with?”

“Not that strange,” Dix replied, awkwardly clearing his throat.

The next photograph, another wedding picture, gave them their first real glimpse of a clean-shaven Billy Darling. He was standing stiffly next to his bride, her arm tucked formally through his. He might have been dressed like Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but the twinkle in his eyes was pure Newman.

Dix pointed. “Who’s the older couple standing beside them? The woman with the stern jaw and the guy with the Buffalo Bill hair and Custer mustache?”

“That would be Esmerelda’s Aunt Anne, and the aforementioned”—she waved a handbill in the air—“Sheriff Andrew McGuire. They were married along with Billy and Esmerelda at a double wedding held at Esmerelda’s grandfather’s London estate. According to Great-uncle Virgil, the wedding was quite the event of the social season, especially after Billy’s brothers, the infamous Darling gang, drank a little too much champagne, rode their horses into the ballroom, and shot down the crystal chandelier.”

Dix chuckled. “Sounds like a definite drunk and disorderly to me.”

The next photograph was of Billy and Esmerelda alone. Instead of glaring balefully at the photographer, as was obviously the fashion of the day, they gazed at each other with such yearning tenderness that Esme felt a curious catch in her throat.

She sniffled. “I’m not usually so sentimental. There’s just something about the way they’re looking at each other. You just know they’ll never argue about whose turn it is to take out the trash or cheat on each other or get divorced. And they didn’t.” Her voice softened, betraying a note of awe. “Great-uncle Virgil said they were married for sixty-seven years. Just think—if they hadn’t gotten married and had five children, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“Neither would I,” Dix murmured, brushing a tear from her cheek.

She shot him a fierce glare. “If you tell any of the guys down at the station you saw me cry, this will be your last Thanksgiving dinner at the Darling house. Come to think of it, it’ll probably be your last Thanksgiving dinner anywhere.”

He patted her shoulder. “You can blackmail me by threatening to tell them I always break down when Linus reads the Christmas story during A Charlie Broom Christmas‘.”

Esmerelda felt a pang of regret when she realized they’d nearly reached the bottom of the trunk. A single faded photograph remained, more fragile than the rest, as if it had been lovingly handled many times throughout the years. This one was a more candid shot of Billy taken outside a window with the words Sheriff’s Office stenciled on the glass.

A tin star was pinned to his vest and he was grinning openly, his thumbs hooked in the gunbelt draped around his lean hips. He wasn’t looking directly at the camera, but at someone who stood just to the left of the photographer. From the loving heat in his eyes, Esme knew exactly who that someone was. She sighed, imagining what it must have felt like to be that woman.

“He sure was a good-looking man. I can see why my grandmother was willing to give up everything for him.”

“Stop lusting after your own grandpa. You’re making me jealous.”

“Why, Dix, I didn’t know you cared.”

If she had caught the look he gave her in that moment, she would have known just how much.

But she’d gone back to gazing dreamily at the picture… at the lazy smile crooking Billy’s lips… the devilish spark in his long-lashed eyes…

Esme recoiled, blinking frantically. Shaken, she glanced over her shoulder at Dix. “I would have almost sworn he winked at me. Did you see…?”

“No, I most certainly did not,” Dix said, but his face was nearly as white as hers.

Esme slowly turned the picture over, her hands beginning to tremble again. Inscribed across the back of the photograph, in a woman’s elegant script, were two words. The ink might have faded, but the sentiment would surely endure forever.

Dix’s strong, warm arms went around her. He rested his cheek against hers as they whispered in unison, “My Darling.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author TERESA MEDEIROS was recently chosen one of the Top Ten Favorite Romance Authors by Affaire de Coeur magazine and won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Historical Love and Laughter. A former Army brat and registered nurse, she wrote her first novel at the age of twenty-one and has since gone on to win the hearts of critics and readers alike. The author of thirteen novels, Teresa makes her home in Kentucky with her husband and two cats. Readers can visit her website at www.teresamedeiros.com.