Sweetwater Seduction (10 page)

The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that if he went about it the right way, a proper seduction would be good for Miss Devlin. Once he convinced her to leave off all those educated airs, and the barbed words that stung worse than a red ant bite that she used to keep a man away, she would find herself with more suitors than she could handle.

Which reminded him that Felton had a prior claim to the lady.

Kerrigan took off his hat and forked a hand through his black hair. It wouldn't be the first time he and Felton had gone after the same woman. He remembered a time down in Laredo . . . Kerrigan chuckled when he thought how Felton had won the girl with a half pound of chocolates in a heart-shaped box. Then there was the time in Lubbock . . . A hair ribbon had done the trick for Kerrigan that time. Of course, this was the first time either of them had had a notion of marrying the woman in question. But he hardly thought Miss Devlin was going to succumb to a box of chocolates or a pink hair ribbon. With her it was going to take . . .

Kerrigan tilted his face up and scratched the itchy growth of whiskers under his chin. Just what would it take to coax Miss Devlin to let down her fences? He was going to have to find out why she had put them up in the first place. Had some man hurt her in the past? She seemed too ignorant of her reaction to him for that to be the case. But he could be wrong. He had to admit his curiosity was piqued. He was looking forward to the challenge of finding out why Miss Devlin had shunned the male of the species for long enough to become an old maid.

Kerrigan grinned, creating two deep slashes on either side of his mouth. He had to hand it to Miss Devlin. Her bold plan to have the wives withhold sex from their husbands in order to force peace was a masterpiece of deviltry. Such genius deserved a compliment. Accordingly, he turned his horse in the direction of the schoolmarm's home. There was no time like the present to begin the seduction of Miss Devlin.

M
ISS
D
EVLIN FELT LIKE THE LOSER IN A GREASED-PIG
contest—worn out, frustrated, and darned foolish. And she had no one to blame but herself.

Her students had picked up on the tension between their parents caused by the silent sexual warfare she had instigated, and today they had been even more irascible than usual. For reasons she chose not to examine too closely, her own mood had been little better. She couldn't seem to keep her mind on teaching. The school day had started out badly and gone steadily downhill.

Sally Davis had dipped Henry Westbrook's blond braids in an inkwell. The twins, Glynne and Gerald Falkner, had put a frog in Emmaline Carson's lunch box. Wade Ives had tripped Daniel Wyatt so he fell into a pile of horse flop. Things were decidedly out of control. At thirty minutes before the school day officially ended, Miss Devlin was at the end of her rope.

She checked the top button of her dress to make sure it was secure, shoved a straggling curl out of her face (not even her hair was cooperating today), and said in a carefully controlled voice, “Please take out your
McGuffey's Readers
.”

“Somebody stole my book,” Felicity Falkner complained.

Miss Devlin's gaze shifted to the guilty face of the freckle-nosed girl sitting next to Felicity. “Enid, do you have any idea where Felicity's book might be?”

“No, Miss Devlin.”

“Then I guess you and Felicity will have to share a book.”

“But Miss Devlin—”

“Don't say another word!” The sharpness of Miss Devlin's voice surprised her as much as it did her students.

“But Miss Devlin—”

“I said—” Miss Devlin shut her mouth abruptly when she followed Enid's pointing finger to the door of the schoolhouse and found herself staring into the questioning eyes of the gunslinger from Texas. It was the final straw.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“I came to see you.”

“We were going to read from our
McGuffey's
,” she said, struggling to rein her flaring temper. “Perhaps you would like to join us?”

The gunslinger grinned as he walked past her and slipped onto a bench at the back of the room. “Be glad to.”

Nettled that the gunslinger had accepted her sarcastic offer, Miss Devlin turned her attention back to the class—in time to catch Keefe Wyatt throwing a punch at Jett Ives. Jett was quick to return the insult. The boys launched themselves at one another and a free-for-all erupted in the middle of the schoolroom floor.

“Keefe! Jett! Stop that this instant!”

Neither boy had a chance to react to her command before they were each grabbed by their collars and hauled onto their feet—their toes, to be exact. Each boy hung like a sack of potatoes from one of Burke Kerrigan's powerful hands.

“You want to kill each other?” he said in a quiet voice. “I can give you a hand with that.”

The gunslinger dropped the two gangly teens, who barely managed to stand on their shaky legs.

“Here.” He handed one of the startled youths his Colt .45 and the other a small pearl-handled derringer from his boot.

“Now,” Kerrigan drawled, “all you have to do is cock your gun and pull the trigger. Don't worry,” he said to Jett, who held the smaller gun. “That derringer'll do the job at this distance. Now you two can settle your differences once and for all.”

Both boys were white-faced, but with all their friends looking on, neither wanted to be the one to cry quits.

Keefe cocked his gun.

Jett cocked his.

Miss Devlin was shocked to her core. This couldn't be happening in her schoolroom. “This has gone far enough. I want you both to—”

“Be still.” The gunslinger's quiet command startled Miss Devlin into silence. He never took his eyes off the two boys and kept up an easy banter. “You see, boys, when a man makes up his mind to do a thing, he should do it. The fellow who straddles the fence just gets a sore—” He stopped, as though suddenly aware of all the eager young ears listening, and finished “—tailbone.”

A film of perspiration had built on Keefe's brow. Jett swallowed so hard his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. Neither boy's hands were steady. The tension built until it seemed like the room and everything in it might explode.

Miss Devlin's heart was in her throat, her pulse pounding in her temple. One—or both—of these innocent young boys was going to die. And that gunslinger was to blame. She balled her trembling hands into fighting fists. Burke Kerrigan would pay for this. She wouldn't let him get away with murder—for that's what this was, even though he might not be the one pulling the trigger. He was a man of violence. He didn't belong here. She should never have invited him to stay“I guess you don't want to kill each other as much as you thought,” Kerrigan said in a calm voice. “Real easy, now, let your hands drop to your sides. Slow and easy. Let 'em go.”

For a moment it seemed they wouldn't comply. But ever so slowly Keefe's hand dropped to his side. Jett's hand wobbled as he lowered it.

Kerrigan quickly retrieved his weapons, uncocking them, holstering one and slipping the other into his boot in a surprisingly graceful motion.

Then all hell broke loose.

“You idiot! You crazy lunatic! How dare you give guns to children? You asinine—”

“Hadn't you better send these kids out of here before you get wound up and say any more?”

The grim smile on Kerrigan's face brought Miss Devlin back to her surroundings, and she realized she was nose to nose with the gunslinger, her hands holding fistfuls of his dark wool shirt. She turned to find fifteen wide-eyed pupils staring at her.

“School is dismissed.”

When no one moved, Miss Devlin whirled, her pleated skirt flaring, and put her fists on her hips. “I said school is dismissed!”

“I'll be glad to stay if you think—” Keefe began.

“I'll stay if you—” Jett interrupted.

Keefe and Jett glared at each other until they realized what they were doing, then turned sheepish faces toward Miss Devlin.

“We'll
both
stay if you think you need us,” Keefe said, warily eyeing the gunslinger.

“I'll be perfectly fine,” Miss Devlin assured them. “Right now I want some privacy to speak with Mr. Kerrigan.”

Reluctantly the boys trailed out of the room at the tail end of the departing pupils.

Miss Devlin slowly turned back to face the gunslinger. “I don't know what you were trying to prove, but you chose a deadly way of making your point.”

“In a few years, those boys'll be grown. Better to let them see now what it means to consider killing a man.”

“What if one of them had shot the other?” Miss Devlin demanded in exasperation.

“They didn't.”

“No thanks to you! Violence isn't always the answer, Mr. Kerrigan. Might isn't always right.”

“It'll do till the next best thing comes along.”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Because I know what it means to turn the other cheek,” he retorted. “I tried doing things the peaceable way once upon a time. I learned pretty damn quick that might may not always be right, but it goes a long way toward setting things square.”

“But violence—”

“—isn't always the answer. I heard you, Miss Devlin.” He paused and said, “Sometimes it's the only answer.”

Miss Devlin paled. “I . . . I refuse to believe that.” Violence only led to more violence. She had learned that lesson from her father, and she had never forgotten it. “Violence never solves anything, Mr. Kerrigan.”

The gunslinger snorted his disdain. “Then why did you suggest that outlandish plan to the rancher and nester wives?”

“But my plan doesn't involve violence,” she protested.

“Like hell it doesn't!”

“I don't understand what you mean.”

The gunslinger smirked. “Of course you don't. A spinster lady like yourself wouldn't know the danger of playing with that kind of fire.”

His eyes took a lazy tour of her face and form, lingering at last on her mouth. Miss Devlin was uncomfortable with the growing ardor in his gaze as his lids lowered over his dark eyes. She thought he might be mocking her again, but she hadn't enough experience with this sort of thing to know for sure.

“If you have something to say, Mr. Kerrigan, why don't you come out and say it?”

“Sex can be a powerful weapon.”

“What?” Miss Devlin flushed. She should have expected a scoundrel like him to use
that
word in mixed company.

“At least, you've turned it into one, the way you've got wives making demands in exchange for their favors. Frightening when you think about it. . . .”

He let his voice trail off, leaving Eden to contemplate the enormity of his accusation. “I only wanted to offer a peaceful solution—”

“You call dallying with the bedroom affairs between husbands and wives
peaceful
?” he asked incredulously. “Where did you ever get a crazy idea like that?”

“I . . . I just thought—”

“—a thought based on ignorance. You, of all people, should know the importance of making educated decisionMiss Devlin. I could give you a lesson—”