Jodi Thomas (34 page)

He silenced her with a deep kiss that left him starved for more. Awkwardly he pulled off her gown and lowered his body against hers. The silk of her skin against his made his heart pound so hard he was sure he bruised his ribs from the inside.

Slowly, as he’d longed to do, he moved down her body, kissing, touching, tasting. She was shy at first, pulling the covers, trying to move away. When she hesitated, he returned to her lips and kissed her until her body grew warm and needy for his caress. Then he continued his journey of discovery. He listened to her every sigh, noticed her every move as he learned to please her.

When there was no more resistance, no more hesitation, no more shyness, he parted her legs and came home to his wife.

She arched her back and cried out, then wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and held on as they rode passion’s journey together.

When he collapsed on top of her, neither had enough energy to speak. Carter lay drowning in the wonderful way her nearness surrounded him so completely. He didn’t know or care where he was. He raised slightly and pushed her damp hair from her face, wishing that he’d left the light on so he could see her now.

“Carter?” She stretched beneath him. “Do you think we did it right?”

He smiled. “I’m not sure. We may have to try again.” He rolled from her and pulled the covers over them both, then slid his hand beneath the quilts and spread his fingers wide over her abdomen.

For a while she lay perfectly still, absorbing the feel of his hand moving in slow motion over her. Sometimes he just felt her, sometimes his fingers moved in sign.

“Talk to me, Carter,” she finally whispered.

He trailed his fingers between her breasts. “I like the way you feel.”

“Good,” she answered, running her hand along his rib cage. “I like the way you feel, also.”

“I’ve missed you by my side.” He kissed her gently, knowing she was waiting for him to tell her more. “I want you next to me.”

“For all my life,” she answered, knowing it may have taken her a month, but with her words she’d just sealed her wedding vows. “I’ll be your wife.”

They made love again, slower this time, joining both bodies and hearts. When they collapsed in each other’s arms, Bailee was too exhausted to move. She drifted into a perfect sleep. Safe and warm and home.

Carter moved his hand against hers.

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

And felt him answer, “Forever.”

D
EAR FATHER. BAILEE STARTED THE LETTER FOR THE fifth time. “I can’t write him again. I just can’t,” she mumbled. She had little hope her father would reply to this letter when he hadn’t answered the other two she’d sent.

Carter looked up from the wooden chest he’d been building and tried to decide if she was talking to him or herself again. With a winter storm threatening, he chose to move his latest project into the living area so that he didn’t have to keep fighting the icy wind crossing to the bunkhouse.

The thought of getting snowed in made him smile. He had plenty of firewood, food, and Bailee.

She stared at him and wrinkled her brow.

Before he could think of an answer to her comment, the apple tumbled off the shelf by the door. Bailee no longer panicked at the signal. In the months since Zeb Whitaker went to prison, folks had started stopping by. The sheriff, Lacy, when the roads were clear, the neighbors. At first Carter had stood on the porch as if on guard, but finally he’d welcomed them in for short visits. Come in for coffee, he’d say, always making her smile.

Now, out of habit, Carter reached for his rifle and walked to the door.

Bailee picked up the apple and began cleaning up the writing supplies. She knew the letter would wait another day, another week. Even when mailed, it would probably be like the others, never read or answered. With each day her father was proving he’d meant what he had said when he told her she was dead to him. She could almost picture him tossing the unopened letter in the wastebasket as he entered his house.

“Carter!” came a shout over the wind. “Put down that rifle you got pointed at my heart and unlock the door.”

“Sheriff Riley,” Bailee said unnecessarily as Carter unbolted the door.

She grabbed her shawl and followed him to the porch.

“Welcome,” Carter managed to say as he held the sheriff’s mount.

“Come in, Sheriff,” Bailee added. “We’ve hot coffee.”

“I’ve no time, thank you.” Riley was bundled up in a mixture of wool and hides. “I’m just passing by on my way home. Lacy asked me to drop off your mail if I made it out this way.” He handed Carter a packet. “I’ll stop in come spring and visit. Right now I just want to make it back to town before the snow hits.”

He stared at Bailee for one last second. “Still want to be married to this man? I haven’t had time to mail the license to Austin, but I will soon as I get back.”

Bailee grinned. “I’m his wife for life, Riley. You can stop asking.”

The sheriff nodded. “Take care of her, Carter.”

Carter moved close to Bailee and waved the old man on his way. She may have taught him to tolerate company, but his favorite time was always when they left.

While she hung up her shawl, Carter slit the twine on the bundle of letters. It had been almost a month since he’d traveled to town to pick up the mail. Flyers, a note from a bookstore, a letter from Piper’s father, and one letter addressed to Bailee Grace Moore McCoy.

Carter handed it to her without a word. For a while he didn’t think she planned to open it. She just stared at the bold handwriting.

“It’s from my father,” Bailee finally whispered. Slowly she opened the envelope as if unwrapping a package and read the single sheet of paper.

Carter watched her out of the comer of his eye as he went back to his work.

She must have read the note ten times before she finally crossed the room and knelt in front of him. “My father wants me to come home.”

He fought for control. He wasn’t sure his heart would beat if she left, but he didn’t know how to tell her how much he loved her. “Will you go?” he asked without meeting her eyes.

Bailee laughed as if he’d said something funny. “No, dear. I am home.”

Turn the page for a preview of Jodi Thomas’s romance telling Sarah’s story

WHEN A TEXAN GAMBLES

 

Available now from Jove Books

 

SAM GATLIN REMOVED HIS RAIN-SOAKED SHIRT THEN folded his trousers neatly over the chair before he turned and noticed his new wife had slipped from the bed. She’d disappeared, along with one of the Colts from the holster he’d hung on the rusty bedpost moments before.

The pale lightning of a dying storm blinked in the small room offering him enough light to see. Far away thunder only echoed, barely a rumble through the night as it blended with the tinny piano music of the bar across the street.

He was bone tired, so cold he would never get warm and now, he had lost the woman he just married. She couldn’t have gone far, not in these cramped quarters. He stood between where he had set her atop the covers and the door leading into the hotel’s hallway.

She was either under the bed, or folded into one of the dresser drawers.

It was little comfort to discover his new bride might be insane as well as armed. But bad luck had been running a blue streak through his life lately, so he did not bother to be surprised by the possibility.

He knelt on one knee and stared into the shadows beneath the iron railing of the bed frame.

“Now look, miss ...” he began, knowing she was no longer a
miss
but forgetting the name the sheriff used several hours ago when Sam paid her fine, got her out of jail, and married her. “There’s no need for you to hide.”

You would think she’d have the good sense to be grateful that he coughed up the money to save her from a life behind bars. But she hadn’t said a word since they left Cedar Point. He might as well have bought a china doll for all the company she had been on the trip.

The barrel of his Colt poked out from under the bed.

“It’s been a long night,” he mumbled without moving. They’d driven through the worst storm he had seen in years in a flimsy rented buggy. “I’d like to get some sleep in the few hours we have left before dawn.”

No answer.

“Lady.”
Lady
didn’t sound right. A man can’t go around calling his bride
lady.
Sam straightened his large frame hating the way his body always ached when he had to jam himself into a buggy. Man was meant to ride on a horse, not behind one. If he had been alone today, he would have braved the weather on horseback. But his new bride looked so weak a dozen raindrops would have probably drowned her.

Sam decided to take the direct approach. “Get out from under that bed, lady. The sheriff said you’ve been married before. You should know by now what’s expected on a wedding night. Stop this foolishness and climb under those covers.”

The barrel pointed at his heart. It occurred to Sam how her first husband might have met his end.

She had looked like an angel when she’d stepped up and pulled his name from a hat back in Cedar Point. He’d won. A bride for the price of her fine. He thought it fair when he read about the wife lottery. Three young women had confessed to a murder, but the sheriff hadn’t found the body they’d admitted to killing. So, in the name of justice and because the county couldn’t afford to hold them indefinitely, Sheriff Riley held a lottery.

“I’m not goin’ to hurt you.” Sam tried to sound kind, but kindness was not something he wore easily. “I’ve never hurt a woman in my life,” he added, then decided that didn’t make him sound much better.

He thought he heard her sniffle. If she didn’t show some sense they would both catch pneumonia. The room offered little warmth, only a block from the icy wind. The owner downstairs laughed when Sam asked if the room had a fireplace or a tub.

“Come out and tell me what’s the matter,” Sam said like he wasn’t too tired to care. He already knew the problem. The lady figured out she truly married him and would have to look at him every day for the rest of her life. All six-feet-three, two hundred pounds of him. And if his size didn’t frighten her, wait until she found out what he did for a living.

He pulled his wet shirt back on hoping to cover a few of the scars across his chest before she noticed them.

“You are not going to touch me,” came a whisper from beneath the bed.

“Well, of course I’m going to touch you. That’s what husbands and wives do. They touch each other. Everyone knows that, lady.” Maybe she was simple-minded. Sam remembered old man Harris’s daughters who’d grown up down the road from him. They were all fine looking girls, who developed early and fully, but there wasn’t a complete brain among them. Their pa’s only hope of getting them married off was to encourage it while the girls were too young and shy to say more than a few words.

Sam hadn’t thought about his bride being turned that way when he decided to marry. He just thought about how much she looked like an angel with her pale blond hair and light-blue eyes, and how loneliness trailed behind him like a heavy shadow. It had been so long since he’d said more than a few words to anyone, or ate a meal across from another person. He wasn’t sure he knew how to act. Half the people in Texas thought him the devil, so why not marry an angel?

He tried again. “Look, miss, if you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t for tonight. I give you my word. Come on out from under the bed.” He thought of adding that he wasn’t all that interested in anything but sleep, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

She didn’t move.

“You could keep the Colt if you like. Just for tonight, of course.”

The shadow shifted. “What’s my name?”

He’d been afraid she might ask that question at some point. “Mrs. Sam Gatlin.” He smiled, proud of himself.

“My first name?”

He didn’t answer. There was nothing he could say that would hide the fact he’d been only half-listening to the sheriff who married them. That he had been staring at her and that had taken most of his attention.

Sam walked over to the chair and started putting on his trousers since it didn’t look like they would be crawling beneath the covers anytime soon.

The wet wool had grown cold and stiff. He tossed his trousers back over the chair and grabbed one of the blankets from the bed.

Sam wrapped it around his waist. The barrel of the Colt shook. He guessed she was as cold as he. “Come on out, Mrs. Gatlin, and get under the covers. I won’t come near you if that’s what you want.” His new bride made no sense. Why would she marry him and leave town with him if she didn’t plan to be his wife? She acted like he had abducted her and forced her here.

As he pulled the blanket up over his shoulders, she slipped out from beneath the far side of the bed.

“Sarah,” she said. “My name’s Sarah and I won’t hesitate to kill you if you come closer, Mr. Gatlin.”

Sam sat down on the chair and folded his arms, locking the ends of the blanket around him. “You’ve killed before, have you?”

“That’s right.” She lifted her chin. “A man we met on the way to Cedar Point.” She took a deep breath as though she’d said what she was about to say one too many times in this lifetime. “Because we were three women, Zeb Whitaker tried to steal our wagon and take my friend Lacy away with him. We all three clubbed him with a board Bailee brought to Texas for protection. So, we all killed him.”

The angel lady fascinated Sam with her sunshine hair and her soft southern voice. She was so beautiful, even now, damp and tired and barely able to stand while she confessed. He found it hard to believe such a creature could swing a board hard enough to hurt anyone.

“Why didn’t you shoot him?” he said more to keep her talking than out of interest.