One Bright Morning (27 page)

“
Why the hell did you leave
camp alone?”

Maggie wanted to cover herself, but her arms
were squashed under Jubal’s body. She was still pretty scared. She
hadn’t had a chance to calm down yet and her heart was racing so
fast she thought she might swoon. It was difficult to draw
sufficient breath with which to speak.

“
I wanted to take a bath. I
was dirty,” she stammered.

“
It’s not safe,” Jubal
growled.

“
I’m not that far from
camp,” Maggie offered in an attempt to justify herself.

Even as she said it, she knew she had
probably been at fault. With a heavy heart, she decided that she
was always at fault, just as her aunt used to tell her. She didn’t
want to cause these nice men, who had sworn they would protect her,
any worry on her behalf. Nor did she want to make the job of
protecting her any more difficult than it already was. And her
rustic little bathtub was pretty far away from camp.

Jubal knew it, too. “It’s too damned far to
be safe.”

“
But it was only a
deer.”

“
It might not have been only
a deer.”

“
I—I guess not.”

By now, Maggie was having a real hard time
concentrating on their conversation. Jubal was staring down at her
with those green cat’s eyes of his and making her feel all over
hot. But it wasn’t the same kind of hot that had baked the energy
out of her earlier in the day. This kind of hot was liquid and
searing and it was making her want to do things with Jubal Green
that she knew a proper lady would never want to do with anyone but
her lawful husband.

She could smell the sweaty, hot man of him
and liked it. His weight pressed her into the grassy riverbank and
she felt his male hardness rigid against her. That shocked her
some.

“
You might have been killed,
Mrs. Bright,” Jubal said. His voice was tight.

“
I’m sorry,” Maggie
whispered.

That was the last thing she remembered
saying before Jubal’s arms tightened around her and his lips
lowered to hers.

Jubal’s kiss was hard, inspired in equal
parts by anger, lust, and fear. His anger and fear slowly died the
longer he drank of Maggie’s sweet lips. Desire and relief quickly
drowned those other unworthy emotions.

She tasted like sweet apples and sunshine,
and he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. He dipped his tongue out
to taste of her lips more deeply, and the shimmer of reaction that
swept her body nearly did him in. When he felt her arms wrap around
him, he had a dim thought that they’d better stop this pretty
quick, but he couldn’t quite make himself let her go.

Maggie couldn’t ever remember feeling like
this before. Not even with Kenny. Not ever, even remotely, with
Kenny. She knew she shouldn’t be hugging Jubal back, but she
couldn’t seem to help herself. His body was hot on hers, hot with
sun-heat and her-heat, and the combination was sending her down a
road she’d never traveled before.

She’d never been particularly interested in
Kenny’s body, but she all at once found herself wanting to rip
Jubal Green’s shirt right off his back so she could run her hands
over those muscles she had seen when he’d been so sick, and feel
his hot man’s skin. She wanted to caress those hard thighs that
she’d admired, in spite of herself, when he’d been unconscious. She
remembered they were covered with sun-colored hair. She wanted to
run her fingers over those hairs and find out if they were as wiry
as they looked.

She found herself arching her hips against
his swollen manhood and would have been ashamed if she’d had time
to think about it. She writhed her breasts against him, glorying in
the feel of her sensitive nipples rubbing against the heavy cotton
of his shirt. She had an utterly wanton desire to find out how they
would feel against his hairy chest.

When his tongue began to explore her mouth,
she was surprised. She’d never experienced that particular intimacy
before, and her lips parted a little in alarm. When Jubal’s hot
tongue immediately pressed its advantage and plunged into her
mouth, she forgot her alarm and thrust her own tongue out to meet
his.

Jubal couldn’t believe what he was feeling.
He’d had enough women, God knew, in his checkered career, but he’d
never felt anything akin to the way he felt now, as he lay fully
clothed atop Maggie Bright on the cool banks of Turkey Creek. His
sex was hot and hard as a pistol barrel, and he could feel every,
single, minute inch of Maggie’s body underneath him. Her breasts
were driving him crazy. He had been cupping her face with his
hands, but he moved one of those hands now to feel her breasts.

Oh, my
God
, thought Maggie.

She wasn’t sure she hadn’t said the words
aloud into the open mouth of Jubal Green that still slashed over
hers. She had never even considered the remote possibility that a
man could touch a woman’s breasts like that. She’d never felt
anything so wonderful in her entire life. Kenny had never done
that. She heard funny little, soft, kittenish sounds, and realized
somewhere in her fuddled brain that they were coming from her own
throat.

She knew the low growls and groans of desire
were coming from Jubal.

Maggie was whimpering with unrestrained
desire and Jubal was just about to rip his clothes off and finish
what they had begun when they both became aware of a voice
hollering in the distance.

“
Mrs. Bright! Jubal! Where
are you?”

Jubal slowly withdrew his lips from Maggie’s
and heaved a gut-wrenching groan of frustration. He squeezed his
eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and prayed for strength.

Maggie couldn’t think. She could only stare
up at Jubal with eyes that looked fairly stunned and completely
dazed with passion. She was panting hard.

So was Jubal. With a monumental effort, he
heaved himself off of Maggie’s wonderful body. Her arms fell away
from his shoulders and landed on the riverbank when he stood up
with one jerky movement. When he looked down at her, she was spread
out like a sacrifice. His breath was coming in tortured gasps. His
sex was so hard and throbbed so much that he could hardly walk.

He got annoyed when Maggie didn’t move, but
just lay there and stared up at him as though she didn’t know what
on earth had just happened to her.

“
Get dressed, Mrs. Bright,”
he growled. His voice was harsh and ragged.

Then he cupped his hands around his mouth
and hollered, “We’re here! It’s all right!”

Suddenly Maggie sucked in an enormous
breath. She realized all at once where she was and in what state of
undress, and felt her face heat to a fiery red. She covered her
naked breasts with crossed arms and drew her legs up.

Jubal could only shake his head at her and
resist the urge to carry her off into the trees like a caveman and
make love to her until neither one of them could walk.

“
Get dressed,” he said
again. “They’re looking for us.”

Maggie’s brain finally jerked into gear. She
sat up and grabbed for her fresh camisole in one fluid
movement.

“
I—I’m dirty again. I have
to rinse off,” she whispered. She found her voice didn’t work very
well yet.

Jubal finally tore his eyes away from her.
He passed an agitated hand through his thick hair.

“
Well, hurry it up. I don’t
want Dan and Four Toes to see you like that.”

“
No,” Maggie said with a
wobble in her voice.

She quickly walked a little ways into the
water and threw icy water over herself to wash away the dirt and
grass that clung to her. She looked over her shoulder to find Jubal
staring at her again.

“
Turn around, Mr. Green,”
she directed in a high, strained voice.

Without a word, Jubal turned his back.

Even so, she went back to shore with arms
crossed over her bosom. She dried herself off and donned her clean
camisole and shirtwaist while Jubal continued to stare off into the
trees.

She turned around when she took off her
drawers, thinking that it would be more discreet to do that than to
doff them in front of Jubal, even when his back was turned. She
didn’t see the agonized expression on his face when he peeked over
his shoulder and her smooth pink buttocks, firm and silky as fresh
peaches, were revealed to his hot eyes.

That’s what you get for
looking
, he told himself with furious
frustration.

“
I think I’m ready now,”
Maggie said in a somewhat squeaky voice when she had buttoned her
skirt and pulled on her stockings and shoes.

She carried her dirty clothes with her when
she stumbled back to camp, being pulled along by Jubal Green.

Jubal and Maggie didn’t say another word to
each other until they had been on their way toward El Paso for a
good two or three hours that night.

Maggie pretended to be occupied with keeping
Annie happy. She pointed out curiosities in the dry, dull desert
landscape until it got too dark to see. Then she sang nursery
rhymes to her until the little girl’s yawns became too obvious to
ignore any longer. Then she laid Annie down in the wagon to
sleep.

Although the day had been hellishly hot, the
night was becoming cold. Maggie made sure Annie was well protected
from the elements and fetched her own heavy coat to wear.

She realized Jubal didn’t have anything but
his shirt on and was stabbed all at once by a torrent of
conflicting impulses. She finally decided that, while she might
have made a blazing fool of herself with him this afternoon, that
didn’t negate her responsibility to him as one of God’s
creatures.

“
Would you like me to bring
you your jacket, Mr. Green?” she asked politely.

Jubal, who had been spending the last few
hours trying to pretend Maggie Bright wasn’t sitting next to him,
ripe, womanly, and more desirable than any woman he’d ever known in
his entire life, wished she hadn’t spoken. It was harder to make
himself believe he didn’t want her when she wasn’t being her usual
kind self to him. Maggie was the first woman he’d ever met in his
life who seemed to believe it was natural for people to take care
of one another.

He finally decided he’d been enough of an
ass for one day, and that it would be better to accept Maggie’s
offer gracefully than freeze to death. Already, his wounds were
beginning to ache with the cold. He cleared his throat with some
difficulty.

“
Yes, please,” he said.
“Thank you.”

“
You’re welcome, Mr.
Green.”

Maggie brought him his jacket. She was
obliged to help him on with it, since he had to handle the reins.
That necessitated her leaning over his back to hold the left sleeve
at an appropriate angle for him to slip his arm into it. When she
did that, her breasts pressed against his back, and they each
experienced a few moments of embarrassment. They both pretended not
to notice.

“
Thank you, Mrs. Bright,”
said Jubal.

“
You’re welcome, Mr. Green,”
said Maggie.

They were silent for another few miles.

Maggie was staring up into the sky, wishing
she could see the stars better when Jubal’s voice startled her.

“
I—I’m sorry for—for what
happened back there, Mrs. Bright.”

Maggie sucked in a quick breath and her gaze
dropped to her lap. By the light of the millions of stars, she
could barely make out her hands as they kneaded themselves together
nervously on her skirt. In spite of the full moon, the desert
spread about them like an ocean of blackness.

“
That’s all right, Mr.
Green. It wasn’t your fault.”

“
Yes it was. I shouldn’t
have done that, Mrs. Bright. I’m sorry.”

Maggie turned her head to look at Jubal’s
face. She could barely discern his profile, dark against the darker
background of the night. Even in the blackness, she could tell he
was a handsome man. She sighed, and knew he had heard her when he
flicked a quick glance at her.

“
I—I guess I miss my
husband, Mr. Green,” she confessed. “I don’t know what else could
have got into me. It wasn’t all your fault. It’s all
right.”

Damn
, thought Jubal sourly.
Why does she
have to make it all sound so reasonable
?

It didn’t seem reasonable to Jubal. He’d
never lost control of himself so completely before in his life. He
realized that he actually resented Maggie’s jumbling him together
in a neat little package with her dead husband. He sure as hell was
no Kenny Bright, he told himself. Jubal would no more have taken a
gentle creature like Maggie Bright into the uncivilized wildness of
New Mexico Territory than he would send a sheep out to tame
lions.

The truth of the matter, that the gentle
Maggie Bright had been surviving quite well in the Territory before
he’d been thrust upon her didn’t occur to Jubal to interfere with
his grump. He was a better man than Kenny Bright, and he’d prove it
to Bright’s widow or die trying.

He didn’t respond to Maggie’s comment, and
she was embarrassed. It had cost her a good deal to admit to
desiring a man. Desire was something proper ladies didn’t admit to
anybody, ever, except maybe, once in a great while, to each other.
She had been trying to make Jubal feel a little better about his
boorishness. Besides that, it was the truth. Maggie had been
missing Kenny more and more lately, for some strange reason. At
least, she thought it was Kenny she missed. She wasn’t sure about
that all at once.