Cowboy For Hire (33 page)

“I don’t know. I hope so. It would be a shame
for people to go there and build buildings all over it.”

“I should say so.” A sudden fierce longing to
see the Grand Canyon assailed her. She’d never felt much interest
in travel before. It must be that she felt safe with Charlie. If
she went to the Grand Canyon with him, she knew she’d be protected
from all harm.

Somehow, Charlie managed to open the door to
the hotel and push it wide with his back, stall carrying Amy. He’s
proceeded down the hallway for a few yards when he said, “Shoot,
I’m going to have to put you down. I can’t see to read the room
numbers on the doors.”

She laughed. “I’m sure I can walk on my
own.”

“Maybe, but I like carrying you.”

Wasn’t that just the sweetest thing? Amy’s
heart swelled so, it felt as if it might burst from happiness.

The hall was dark, and when he set her gently
on the hall runner, they both had to squint to see the room
numbers. “Um, does that look like a six to you?” she asked at one
point.

Charlie leaned over and peered closely at the
number on the door. “I’m not sure. Do you have your key?”

“Yes, but I’ll be the keys are all the
same.”

He chuckled. “You’re probably right. If we
open the door and it’s not your room, there might be trouble.”

“What a dreadful thought.” She smiled,
though. She couldn’t help it.

“Let’s see if there’s a number on any of the
other doors.” He inched through the darkness to the next door. “I
think this is a four. That’s mine.”

“Well, then, this must be either a two or a
six, don’t you think? Aren’t all the even numbers on one side of
the hall?”

“Beats me. Here, let me try your key. If
somebody’s in there and doesn’t like it, he’ll shoot me first.”

“I certainly hope not!” Nevertheless, Amy
fumbled in her tiny beaded bag until she found her room key. She
handed it to Charlie and watched while he turned it in the loc. The
door opened, and they both peeked inside with some trepidation. Amy
brightened at once. “Oh, look, there’s the bag I brought. This must
be my room.” They entered the room, searching for a lamp. Amy
fumbled over to the bed and discovered a kerosene lamp on the
bedside table. “Do you have a match?”

“Sure.” He dug a sulfur mach out of his
pocket, struck it on the heel of his shoe, and lit the lamp. The
light revealed a pleasant, plan room with a large bed. He sighed
gustily. “Well, here you are. I reckon I’ll have to leave you
now.”

“Do you have to?” Amy really, really didn’t
want him to go away.

“I reckon so.” He appeared surprised at the
question.

Pausing for only a moment to think about
ramifications, Vernon Catesby, and her own sanity, Amy went on
recklessly, “But I don’t want you to go, Charlie.”

She saw his beautiful eyes open wide.

“You, um, don’t?” He swallowed.

She shook her head.

“But … but….”

“We’re going to be married, aren’t we?”

He nodded. It looked to her as if he were
having trouble speaking.

“Well, then, I don’t think it’s improper for
you to stay with me, at least for a little while?”

It was absolutely improper, and Amy knew it.
So did Charlie.

He stayed anyway.

Sixteen

Charlie hadn’t meant to stay with Amy any
longer than it took to get her settled into her room. He knew he
should leave her, untouched and intact, here in her hotel room. He
was a villain not to go.

When she walked up to him and put her arms
around him and began kissing him with all of the passion he’d
always suspected lurked inside her, his resolution faltered. When
she whispered, “Please stay with me tonight, Charlie,” he nearly
fell over dead. When she ran her fingers through his hair, his hat
hit the floor, and when she nipped his earlobe, he was completely
lost.

“Amy, Amy,” he murmured “This is wrong.”

“No, it’s not,” she murmured back. “We’re
going to be married.”

“But we’re not married yet.”

“That’s all right, Charlie. I love you so
much.”

“I love you, too.”

How inadequate those words sounded. And how
delicious was the notion of spending the night with Amy n this cozy
hotel room. He knew it was wrong. He knew he was violating one of
his own firm principles of proper behavior. But he couldn’t seem to
stop himself from continuing.

The sweet, elusive fragrance of Amy’s perfume
floated like an invisible cloud around him, and the feel of her
hands on his body enchanted him, and her lips were like heaven, and
the lure of her body was more than any mortal man could resist. And
Charlie was nothing if not mortal. Every nerve in his body cried
out for her, and his sex was already as hard as it could get and
throbbed for her. Lord, how he wanted her.

And then she said, “Please, Charlie. Please
make love with me. Please teach me how to love you.”

The very last of his resistance floated away
like so much dandelion fluff. He thrust aside any lingering notion
that this wasn’t the right thing to do and devoted his whole energy
to making this experience good for Amy. He already knew it would be
good for him.

“I’ve dreamed of this, Charlie.”

“You have?” He had, too. He didn’t know
ladies had dreams like that. He picked her up and carried her to
the bed.

“Yes. I never thought it would happen. I
always thought I’d have to marry someone I didn’t love and never
experience this sort of thing.”

He sat next to her on the bed, and she
reached for his shirt buttons. He quickly wriggled out of his suit
jacket so she’d have an easier job of it. “This sort of thing?”
Great. His voice was going. He sounded like a sick frog.

“You know—making love with the man of my
dreams.”

He watched her as she maneuvered his buttons
open. “Am I the man of your dreams? Honest?” He shrugged off his
shirt, collar and all, giving a fleeting thought to the collar
studs, but not really much minding if Amy dropped them. They could
get lost forever, for all he cared.

“Honest. Of course you are. Do you think I’d
do this with anyone who wasn’t?”

Actually, it sounded to him as though she’d
planned to do just that, if she’d assumed she’d marry someone she
didn’t love. He didn’t bring it up because he didn’t care about
that at the moment. He was too hot and too hard and too interested
in seeing what she’d do next. “May I take your shoes off, Amy?”
Above all things, he didn’t want to spook her.

“Of course.”

So he got off the bed, knelt before her,
pushed a froth of chiffon and silk aside, lifted one little foot,
and removed the pretty black evening slipper from it. “You’ve even
got beautiful feet,” he murmured.

“Thank you.”

When he glanced up at her, he saw that she
was blushing. Because he still wasn’t sure if she really aimed to
see this thing through, he was gentle when he ran his hand up her
calf. His aim was to reach her garter eventually, but he was going
to take his time in case she got scared. “Your whole body is
beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

She put her hands flat on the bed, bracing
herself. Charlie hoped that wasn’t a precursor to flight. It didn’t
look much like it, but what did he know? Licking his lips,
wondering if it would kill him to stop, he asked cautiously, “Are
you really sure, Amy? Are you positive you want to do this?”

“I’m positive.”

She sounded positive. After another moment’s
hesitation, Charlie decided to take her at her word. If she backed
out, it might kill him, but he’d stop if she asked him to. He loved
her that much. And more. “I’ll, uh, just untie your garter,
then.”

“All right. Only they’re hooks, not the tie
kind.”

Hooks? Good God. Charlie’s hand stilled on
her knee. “Um, I don’t reckon I know what that is, Amy.”

“A hook? Well, it hands from the corset, you
see. Here, I’ll show you.”

And, lithe as a newborn colt, she slid from
the bed and lifted her lovely evening dress. Charlie stared,
astonished. He’d sort of expected that it would take Amy ten or
twenty years to overcome her reservations around him, but he
guessed he’d underestimated her. Thank God, thank God.

“See?” she said. “It’s a newfangled type of
corset. I’ll show you how these things work.”

She did. She unhooked her gray silk stockings
from the garter hook and began rolling the stockings down. Charlie,
worried that she’d take all the fun out of his part in the
enterprise, said, “Here. I’ll do that.”

“All right.” She smiled at him sweetly and
sat on the bed again.

He rolled the first stocking down and went to
the other leg. Her legs were gorgeous. Not that he didn’t already
know that. He’s seen her legs that time when Huxtable had knocked
the costume tent over. He’d never expected to be able to touch
those beautiful legs, though. Or take stockings off them. But he’d
be able to do those things for the rest of his life if she really
planned to marry him. And she must be going to, or she wouldn’t be
allowing him to do these things to her now. His hands were shaking
slightly as he unhooked the other stocking, but it didn’t seem to
matter; he got the job done, then rolled that stocking down, too,
and licked his lips again.

“There,” he said. “All done.”

“What now?” she asked.

“What now?” He looked up and found her gazing
at him with infinite love and amazing trust. He silently vowed that
he’d never violate that trust. He would never, ever, if it was
within his power, do anything to hurt her. “I reckon we have to get
the rest of these clothes out of the way.”

She smiled uncertainly. “So that nothing will
remain between us, you mean?”

He nodded. “Something like that.” He was
uncertain, too.

“Well, then, maybe I should start.” She
looked him straight in the eye as she unfastened the wide velvet
belt at her waist and it fell away.

Catching himself staring rudely, Charlie gave
himself a sharp shake and said, “May I help with anything?” How
polite of him, considering he was offering to aid in her
deflowering.

IF he didn’t stop thinking things like that,
he’d ruin the evening for both of them. So he commanded himself to
pretend that they were already married, that this was the night of
their marriage. This was their wedding night, and they were in
love, and he was going to make it special.

“Help me slip this over my head, please,” she
said, taking him up on his offer with much more aplomb than Charlie
himself could muster.

He did as requested, and heartily approved of
the way Amy looked in her underthings. She was beautiful inside and
out, and he loved her for it.

“Will you unhook this thing in the back,
please? It’s pretty tight. “I’ll try to suck in my tummy, but
you’ll have to pinch a little bit, I fear.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

She’d turned her back to him so that he could
reach her corset hooks. At his last comment, she turned suddenly
and threw her arms around him. He obliged instantly with an embrace
of his own.

“Oh, Charlie. I know you don’t want to hurt
me. That’s what’s so extraordinary about you. You actually care
about how I feel about things.”

Startled, he blurted out, “Of course I do.
What man wouldn’t?”

After kissing him thoroughly—so thoroughly
that Charlie almost forgot he’d vowed to take things slowly and
would have ravished her on the spot if he’d not caught himself in
time—Amy said, “I can think of one or two.” She sounded vaguely
disgruntled about it.

It took him a few moments to catch his
breath, and by that time Amy had turned again. His hands shook as
he unfastened the hooks. He didn’t have to pinch her. “I can’t
believe that,” he gasped when he could.

“You can’t believe what?”

“That any man who got to know you wouldn’t
care how you thought about things.”

“Well, it’s true. That’s one of the reasons I
fell in love with you, Charlie, because you actually seemed to care
about my likes and dislikes and hopes and fears.”

He shook his head, unable to imagine that any
man worth his salt could ignore Amy’s desires. Look at him, for
heaven’s sake, violating one of his most firmly held moral values
and going to bed with her before the wedding. Of course, he was
consulting his own desires in this particular case, too, but
still….

The corset fell away, and Amy stood before
him in her drawers and camisole. She turned to face him and , very
slowly, slipped the camisole over her head. He swallowed hard.

“Lord,” he whispered in awe. “You’re so
beautiful.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you think so.”

“Oh, I do.”

She untied the tapes of her drawers and
pushed them down, then stepped out of them as if stepping from a
mound of snow. Then she stood before him, as naked as the day she
was born, gorgeous perfect—and his. He felt humbled for a
moment.

The moment didn’t last long. “It’ll only take
me a second,” he said in a shaking voice. And he was almost right.
It took him about a second and a half to rid himself of the
remainder of his evening clothes. He flung them anywhere. He didn’t
care; he was in a hurry now.

He slowed down considerably when he realized
Amy was staring at his engorged sex, which was standing at
attention and saluting her smartly. He glanced down at himself and
had to own that such a large, masculine tool must look kind of
alarming to a gently reared virgin. “I’m sorry, Amy. I shouldn’t
have gone so fast. Don’t be scared.”

“Um, I’m not scared.” She sounded scared to
death.

“I’m sure you must be. It’s … strange at
first, I reckon. But don’t forget that people have been doing this
since the Garden of Eden. It’s how the race of man survives.”

“How—how, um, interesting.”

Charlie had never considered himself much of
a martyr, but his next words elevated him in his own mind to the
stature of absolute hero. With leaden hart and throbbing sex, he
asked softly, “Do you want to stop now, Amy?”