Lily (Wildflowers Of Montana Book 5) (6 page)

I told her she should go back to her family and the Lenox ranch, but she refused. She’d decided to remain in Butte with Dr. Bower since it was less than two weeks. But now, knowing she probably hated me, I was sure there would be four very angry brothers-in-law waiting for my return. A doctor with a scalpel would be the least of my concerns. Shit, one of her brothers-in-law
was
a doctor.

We were around a hastily made fire beneath a cottonwood at the bank of the Jefferson River. The breeze was strong enough where the smoke was taken away, allowing us to be fairly undetected. Indians, and a tracker like me, could easily pick up the scent from the fire a mile away, but I assumed the Indians were smart enough to stay away from this gang. The air was warm, hot even, after a string of chilly nights. Summer in the territory didn’t guarantee good weather, but at least it hadn’t rained except for one afternoon storm. Still, I was tired and irritated as fuck with these men.

“Get yer head out of your ass and find out the routine of the bank.”

Benson’s voice, rough from smoking and a hard life, grated on my every nerve, especially when he liked to make demands on me. I was doing everything in my control not to shoot him in the back as he took a piss. Why the colonel didn’t just have someone follow me and arrest him, I had no idea. The men’s plan had been good—catch Benson red-handed committing a crime so there’d be no chance of him escaping a guilty verdict—but after two weeks with them, I was thinking that wasn’t necessary. I had enough evidence personally to sway any judge in the territory. But where was the cavalry?

Unfortunately, the copper kings were sitting in their plush mansions waiting for word of the time and place of the next robbery. Only when I gave word would the colonel ready his men. Only after the robbery was complete and Benson captured would I be free to go back to Lily, if she’d still have me. I’d been gone too long, the cover too deep. My fear that she’d slam the door in my face, or Dr. Bower or the doctor brother-in-law swinging a scalpel at me and trying to flay me alive, had me edgy and irritable.

I bit the side of my tongue to keep from breaking my cover. Since we were focusing on the town of Bozeman, the bank on the edge of town for their—our—next heist, I was edgy and eager to end it all.

“Get Morgan on this shit,” I countered, settling back on the ground, resting my head against my saddle. Pushing my hat down over my eyes, I hoped to shut out more than just the sun. I couldn’t just go along with whatever he said. While Benson was ruthless—I feared for my life every night when I closed my eyes—
I
was the one who’d robbed a train. Benson stuck with banks. I had clout, outlaw clout, and I couldn’t forget it. He was expecting an asshole with a chip on his shoulder the size of the Montana Territory and I was going to give it to him. Anything less and I’d be gunned down for an imposter.

Benson had two cohorts, Morgan and Crumb. They were big and bumbling, more muscles than brains, which made them dangerous. They had guns and knew how to use them. Morgan also had a penchant for the knife he kept in a sheath on his hip. He liked cleaning his nails with it.

“We should all go in and check out the town,” Benson countered. I heard the scrape of his knife across a piece of kindling. He’d taken to whittling in these quieter times, and the sound offered a constant reminder that he was armed and dangerous. “‘Sides, my nuts are going to fall off if I don’t get myself a woman.”

Morgan and Crumb both chuckled at Benson’s words. I thought of Lily, her perfect pink nipples, the sounds she made when she was close to coming, the feel of her milking my cock when she did come had me shifting my hard cock in my pants. That I didn’t have to fake.

“Fine. We all go,” Benson grumbled. “Pike, you’ve been to Bozeman before.”

The name I went by was Eli Pike. I was used to it now, but that only meant I had been around these bastards too long.

“Six months ago,” I told them, not moving the hat from my face. “Colder than a preacher’s wife’s pussy.”

Inwardly I groaned at my sick joke, which I knew would make the others laugh.

“Three days. We’ll spend three days learning, then we’ll pull out the guns.”

Three
days. Jesus, how much longer could this take? I was ready to rip my hair out with impatience. Didn’t they know I had a feisty woman waiting for me? I didn’t need a woman in Bozeman, I had one in Butte. Shit. Three days. This could all be over in that time, but so could my chances with Lily. Until then, I had to hold onto hope that she’d still want me.

CHAPTER SIX

LILY

I’d lain in the hotel bed for two hours, thinking at first Jack had gone to get some breakfast for us. Perhaps to talk with the man at the front desk. A bath even. But then the realization that he truly wasn’t coming back settled over me. I’d been on my own for so long that I shouldn’t have felt so lost, so lonely after knowing Jack for just two days. It was as if I were a miner who’d lost a limb in a collapse. The memory of the missing arm or leg was there and there was a tingly sensation where it had been.

Strangely, I felt the same way. The memory of Jack was so powerful it sucked the breath from my lungs. I did have proof he’d been there: the tingly soreness deep inside me and his dried seed coating my thighs. None of that brought him back, though, so I’d gone back to the house and picked up my life right where I’d left off, buying bandages, selecting the cuts of steak Dr. Bower enjoyed for dinner, even retrieving larger items directly from the train. I was more than an apprentice to him. I was his housekeeper—since Mrs. Reading was barely part-time—maid, hostess and manservant. The one thing I wanted to do with him—tend to patients—was now barred to me. Permanently.

I’d asked Dr. Bower after Jack left about it. “Why do you refuse my help when you make calls?”

I’d just served him his rare roast beef and I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a gag from the smell. Odd, but there was something off about the meat this week. Since he hadn’t gotten sick, I didn’t worry.

Dr. Bower looked up from his plate, fork and knife in hand like surgical instruments. “I thought I’d been clear about that.”

He was in his late forties, a devoted bachelor ever since his wife died over ten years ago. He’d never sought out any specific woman in town, although now that I knew the baser needs of a man—Jack seemed to be especially virile—I didn’t doubt he met with a woman or two in secret. That was well and good with me.

“You made it clear I was not to come,” I countered, sitting across from him at the table and spreading my napkin in my lap with crisp precision.

He speared me with his clear, dark gaze. “A miner made a comment about you and I refuse to subject you to him, or anyone like him. The mines are not safe for you anymore.”

I wondered as to the comment, but didn’t ask. Whatever it was, it set Dr. Bower off enough to ban me from something I’d been trained to do. While I wasn’t a doctor by any means, he’d been training me as a doctor’s assistant. I was reassured in knowing that he wanted to keep me safe and that his banishment of sorts was out of fatherly protection.

“There must be some cases that you deem safe.” I speared a chunk of steamed potato with my fork.

“If I am to be honest, Lily, I would rather see you married,” he said, taking a bite of his beef.

I hadn’t told him about marrying Jack. He hadn’t been in town when we wed and wouldn’t be too keen on me being so… spirited about something such as this. He’d see me as impulsive and flippant and even flighty and never allow me on any cases. While I felt as if I were different now that I was a married woman—my body still ached from Jack’s attentions—Dr. Bower didn’t comment. I had to assume it wasn’t obvious I’d been deflowered and ravaged, or legally married. I’d put my ring on my right hand, switching it from my left, but he had yet to notice. He was so wrapped up in his own world that I doubted he would.

I couldn’t tell him about Jack now because how could I answer any question he had? I didn’t know where he was. I only knew that he was Pinkerton and that he was off on a case. I didn’t know when he’d be back. He had said two weeks at the most that he’d be gone. I could survive that long without him. Couldn’t I? My body craved his. He’d taught me enough about fucking that I wanted it. More. All the time. With Jack. I inwardly groaned. It was going to be a long two weeks.

I found an outlet to my sour mood with a sharp knife and a side of beef or a lamb in the butcher’s back room. It didn’t help all that much, for I only felt more alienated from the ladies at church, as I did not divulge that I’d been married. What could I tell them? Yes, I married a man I just met and now he left me.
That
would only add tinder to the fire of the gossipmongers. Because of this, I kept Jack to myself.
I
kept to myself. I clenched my fist and felt my ring press into my skin, remembering. Remembering that I
did
belong to someone.

All I could do now was wait for that someone’s return.

***

A week later, I walked by a boy on the street who was busking the newspaper. While I never usually paid it much mind, I stopped in my tracks when I heard his loud pronouncement. “Pike’s done it again! Villain robs the train! Murder and mayhem!”

I’d heard about outlaws before. Living in the Montana Territory meant wild behavior. Deadly behavior. But that had always been people I didn’t know, faces drawn on wanted posters I never recognized. The man on the front page of the newspaper, though, wasn’t a stranger. No, he wasn’t a stranger at all, but my husband.

All at once, I was hot all over. Little black dots floated over and around Jack’s likeness. My heart had jumped into my throat and I swear it skipped a beat. No, it had stopped entirely. Blindly, I stumbled over to a lamppost and gripped it with cold fingers. Jack had robbed a train? Glancing down at the paper, I waited for the words on the page to become clear, but I realized the tears in my eyes made everything blurry.

Wiping at them with the back of my hand, I fumbled for a coin for the boy and took the paper, careful to fold it so Jack’s picture didn’t show as it stuck out of my basket. Taking a deep breath, then another, I pulled myself together. I dashed home, afraid to read the article on the street. Dr. Bower wasn’t there, thankfully, so I was able to take the stairs two at a time—a difficult feat with a long skirt—and close the door behind me with an unladylike slam. I was breathing hard as I read the article word for word.

Outlaw Eli Pike, well known for his daring and deadly escapades in Colorado and Kansas, has moved into the Montana Territory. It seems he was drawn to the richest city in the world and the strongbox on the train from Bozeman. The risky crime was committed just as the train reached the peak of Homestake Pass, where it inevitably was at its slowest speed. A cunning move, Pike did not even stop the train, only boarded it and at gunpoint, held up the guards escorting the large quantity of money. While the exact amount is unknown, it has been made public that it was the property owner of the local newspaper owner (this author’s own boss). Needless to say we are all eager to discover whether our jobs are in good standing or that you will read another account of this man’s crimes if the paper were to fold.

I rolled my eyes at the journalist’s witty prose. It would take more than a train robbery to shut down the newspaper.

Thievery is not the man’s only crime, for a train engineer, a Mr. Ralph Baker, was killed in a brief flurry of gunfire before Pike escaped, strongbox in tow. As new information surfaces, this reporter will keep you advised.

Above all that damning text was a very distinct likeness of Jack, right down to the little nick in his right eyebrow. I felt sick then, thinking of Jack and how he’d lied. Dropping onto the edge of my bed, I sat there, stunned. He’d saved me—that hadn’t been faked—but everything after? Was it a ploy to gain my good graces? Why? What did I have that he wanted? I had no money. I wasn’t interesting. He’d even called me prickly. Why would he even concern himself with
me
? Was I just a conquest to him?

I shook my head. He’d married me. Covering my mouth with my fingers, I realized perhaps that was the most spectacular conquest of all.

Between my thighs, I no longer felt the soreness of our one night together, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten. I lay in bed at night, my empty, cold bed, and relived every moment. Every caress, every deep plunge of his cock inside me.

He
had
used me! I had been so naive, so awestruck by a man as captivating and handsome that I’d fallen easily into his snare. One day. It only took him one day to get me into bed. And the things we’d done! I covered my heated cheeks with my hands. Oh, God, he’d directed me to my knees and I’d put his cock in my mouth. I’d
wanted
it.

Realizing I was spinning his gold ring about my finger, I growled at it and tugged it off. I blindly tossed it across the room where it pinged off the wall to roll across the floor and under the bed below me.

I’d thought the men Dr. Bower had brought home were uninspiring, unattractive, duds even. But they seemed normal now in comparison to Jack. God, he must be laughing his head off wherever he was. He’d fucked me and left me. A virgin conquest!

He’d said he had to work, that he had a job to do and would come back after about a week. Was this the job? Robbing a train? No wonder he couldn’t tell me anything about it. Had he been afraid I’d run to the police with the information? Had he been afraid he’d have to murder me, too, if I knew the truth? Now, when—if—he came back for me, I was truly caught. I knew what he was, knew what he’d done and I was legally married to him.

I started crying then, tipping over onto my side, the newspaper crunching beneath me. I was ruined. Not just because I was no longer a virgin, but he’d ruined me for all other men. I couldn’t go back to the ranch now. Surely Chance and Ethan and the other men would track Jack down better than any Pinkerton and shoot him. I wanted a chance to do that for myself.