Finding Kitty, Ch. 1 "Lost & Found"

This fic is an ATC for “Daddy-O”, “Kitty Lost” and “Kitty Caught”, episodes written by John Meston.  It is vastly unrealistic, but please just sit back and enjoy the dramatic license I employed liberally throughout.  Thanks to singerme for suggesting this ATC and beta reading along the way.

“Bet you haven’t learned a thing...” Matt had cocked his head and remarked flippantly to Kitty with an irritating smirk when he’d at long last located her, wretched and abandoned by dude James Rackmil on the lone, desolate prairie.  Funny how, ordinarily, she would’ve found Matt’s crooked little grin charming and irresistible, but not today.   After the initial overwhelming relief that she’d finally been rescued had passed, Kitty was beginning to feel rather put out with everyone involved, especially Matt Dillon.

That man...he was so vexing sometimes!  She was exhausted and ravenous after the interminable night, itchy from her foray into the brush hiding from the natives, and mad as blue blazes to boot.  She was furious with Rackmil for taking off with their only horse and leaving her to the Indians.  She was perturbed at herself for ill-advisedly attempting to make an oblivious Matt Dillon jealous with a moonlight drive alongside a good-looking city slicker.  But she was exasperated beyond all reason at Matt himself because, after all the uproar, he was still laughing and joking, apparently completely unconcerned about the whole business!  Not a blasted hint of jealousy in sight!  Oh...that man!

Kitty knew very well he thought she was attractive.  She could tell just by the way he looked at her sometimes.  She’d be standing at the crowded bar of the Long Branch, chatting with a lonesome, freshly-scrubbed trail hand, bolstering his confidence  by laughing at his feeble jokes and stroking his male ego until he’d worked up the courage to ask her to go upstairs with him.  A girl had to make a living somehow. 

She would think that she’d just about closed the deal with her shy young customer, and then she’d sense it.  Matt Dillon’s gaze was palpable from across the rowdy, hazy, smoke-filled saloon.  She could feel his eyes on her.  It was always the same.  Turning slowly, she’d give a little involuntary shiver as she spotted him watching her from the doorway, an inscrutable expression on his handsome face.  Just quietly looking.  Then his eyes would light up at her return gaze, and she’d smile knowingly at him and politely but quickly abandon her unfortunate cowhand at the bar to meet Dodge City’s marshal halfway across the floor. 

“Hello, Kitty.  You sure look pretty tonight,” he’d say in a low, soft drawl, tipping his hat further back on his head with a long index finger.  His intense clear blue eyes framed by thick, inky lashes would sweep over her figure and make her flush with pleasure at his open admiration.   She’d thrill with the desire to have those soft lashes brush delicately like a butterfly’s wings over her cheek as they had one evening when he’d gotten very close to whisper in her ear.  She’d never forgotten that feeling. 

Then he’d respectfully pull out a chair for her at a nearby table, and they’d sit and talk about their day, sharing amusing stories and troublesome worries and sometimes secrets, things they wouldn’t have shared with anyone else.   Matt Dillon was her dearest friend.  Indeed, she was closer to him that anyone alive since she had no family of which to speak.  They’d very quickly become attached after her damp, gloomy, utterly inauspicious arrival in Dodge a couple of years ago after she’d felt a connection with the big man eating breakfast across from her in the café and decided to stay awhile. 

Yes, she was aware that Matt Dillon thought her attractive and considered her a friend as well, but, unfortunately, that’s as far as it went.  Even after she’d purchased half-interest in the Long Branch and was no longer forced to take men upstairs to share her bed for money, he still hadn’t shown any inclination toward furthering their already close relationship.  It’d been weeks now since she’d become partners with Bill Pence, and she was despairing that Matt Dillon truly had no interest in her in that way.  She got a sick feeling in her stomach when she thought, perhaps she wasn’t good enough for him. 

That nagging thought ate at her, nibbling away at her hopes, and she tried in vain to push it away.  She was good enough to be his friend, wasn’t she?  He’d never once acted ashamed to be with her.  But as the weeks passed and still Matt treated her as nothing but a confidante, the realization that he truly might not be interested in her stung deeply.  She might be fit company for a friend, but maybe she just wasn’t quite good enough to be his girl. 

Then she’d decided that perhaps Matt didn’t realize their potential, that maybe he needed a tiny nudge in the right direction.  So on a whim, a ridiculous idea in afterthought, she’d agreed to go riding around the deserted prairie way after dark with a complete stranger, hoping to spark some jealousy in Matt Dillon.  Ha.  Afterwards, Matt had even taken Rackmil’s side, defending him against Kitty’s outrage at being left behind to the Indians.  But Kitty had managed to swallow her anger, ceasing her indignant rant and smiling sweetly.  She’d even apologized to the fancy pants city boy. 

Matt had joked that she sure had a temper.  Well, Katie bar the door, she felt like she could sure enough explode right now.  But she was holding it all together, trying to save face after this disaster of a plan, an ill-fated, hare-brained idea for sure.   But Matt was enjoying himself entirely too much, even inviting Rackmil to eat dinner with them, of all things. 

Well, she’d have dinner with them all right.  Marshal Matt Dillon might not give her a thought beyond a pretty face to look at while he unburdened himself of all his problems.  But she’d show him that she didn’t care one whit.  Tonight at dinner those two big lugs would see who ended up having the last laugh.

tbc

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