Sweetwater Seduction (30 page)
Read Sweetwater Seduction Online
Authors: Joan Johnston
“And go where?”
Hadley's hands framed Bliss's face and he forced her to meet his bitter gaze. “Our future is in Sweetwater. We have to face what happens there and hope for the best.”
“What if—”
“No what ifs,” Hadley said fiercely. “You're mine. That's not going to change. We'll work out the small stuff later.”
His lips came down to possess hers, to lay a claim as ageless as mankind. There would be a time later to deal with his father, and with hers.
Levander Early stood under the porch of the Canyon Creek General Store and watched the hotel window where he had seen Bliss Davis—no, Bliss Westbrook now—standing. That Westbrook boy had bull-sized balls, he'd give him that. The preacher man had been glad to tell Levander all about the marriage when he'd said he was a friend of the family. Imagine making the daughter of your father's worst enemy your wife!
The problem, as Levander saw it, was that this marriage was liable to encourage Oak Westbrook and Big Ben Davis to come to terms. Levander had his work cut out for him if he hoped to do something to destroy any chance of a reconciliation between Oak and Big Ben before those kids made it back to Sweetwater with the news they were hitched.
But how the hell was he going to manage it?
He thought about killing the Westbrook boy, but he knew that was apt to bring on an all-out war. It wasn't his intention to start bullets flying, because there was always the chance that he would accidentally catch one. He was more interested in keeping both sides suspicious of each other. For a brief moment he considered shooting the girl. But women were so scarce in the West that a woman-killer was universally despised by lawman and outlaw alikeot that he'd get caught, but it wasn't worth taking the risk. There had to be another way.
Then it struck him how easy it would be to set fire to one of those shanties the nesters lived in, and blame it on the Association. He smiled grimly. And if he was going to get the most result from his effort, he knew just the shanty he ought to burn down.
“We're married,” Hadley announced with a pleased grin when Miss Devlin opened her door to his vigorous knocks.
“Congratulations to both of you! How was the ceremony?” Miss Devlin asked as she ushered the beaming couple inside.
“It was short,” Bliss said.
“It took forever,” Hadley said.
Miss Devlin laughed, and once they got over their embarrassment, Bliss and Hadley laughed too. “I'm so glad you're back safely. I was beginning to worry about you. What held you up?”
“Uh . . . we took our time coming back,” Hadley said.
From Bliss's coy glance at her new husband and the red stain growing on Hadley's cheeks, not to mention Bliss's slightly swollen lips and the small purple bruise on Hadley's neck, Miss Devlin quickly surmised the reason for their delay in returning from Canyon Creek. She could hardly blame them for their few stolen moments of happiness, but they had nearly jeopardized everything by returning so late.
According to the story Bliss had told her mother, she was spending the day with Miss Devlin to do a special project for school. Miss Devlin knew Persia would come looking for Bliss if she wasn't home by dark. It wasn't far from that now. She didn't want to burst the young couple's bubble any sooner than necessary, so she simply asked, “How does it feel to be Mr. and Mrs. Hadley Westbrook?”
“It's wonderful!” Bliss said.
“It's terrible!” Hadley said.
When he caught sight of the hurt look in Bliss's eyes, Hadley cleared his throat and explained, “I mean, it's great to be married, but it's terrible we can't be together. I don't know how I'm going to stand it.”
Bliss managed a wan smile. Hadley put a protective arm around her and added, “I wondered if you would mind making sure Bliss gets home safely, Miss Devlin. It's getting dark and—”
“Don't worry. It'll be my pleasure.” Miss Devlin found Hadley's concern for his new wife touching, especially since they all knew Bliss had traveled to and from the schoolhouse alone numerous times in the past.
Miss Devlin watched Hadley embrace Bliss, as though he were trying to memorize the way she felt in his arms. He stuck his nose into the curls at her neck a took a deep breath, as though to catch the scent of her hair. Then he gave Bliss a quick, hard kiss and pushed her away from him. “That'll have to hold you, sweetheart. Don't forget what we talked about on the way home.”
“I won't,” Bliss promised.
Hadley touched the brim of his hat in farewell and said in a hoarse voice, “I'll be seeing you, Mrs. Westbrook, Miss Devlin.” Then he was gone.
Miss Devlin thought Bliss was going to cry, but to her surprise the young woman bit her quivering lower lip and waved cheerfully out the window as Hadley headed the rented buggy back toward the livery.
Once Bliss and Miss Devlin were bundled up against the cold, they headed out along the path to the Davis home.
It was cold and windy and the snow clouds that had threatened all day still hung around, creating an ominous sunset. Miss Devlin wasn't looking forward to the dark, frigid walk back home. “Are you planning to tell your mother now about your marriage to Hadley, and about the baby?” she asked Bliss.
“Hadley and I talked a lot about that on the way back from Canyon Creek and we thought . . .” Bliss took a deep breath and plunged forward, as though she had dived into an icy creek and was in a hurry to get to the other side. “We thought maybe we'd wait awhile and see how things go. I mean, the baby hardly shows, and there's a chance, a small one, maybe, but a chance, that things will get settled before we have to say anything.”
“But you—”
“We also thought, I mean, we hoped, that I would be able to keep pretending that I'm working on a school project at your house and that . . . and that . . . Hadley and I could meet there sometimes and . . . and . . .”
Miss Devlin waited to see if Bliss would be able to finish her sentence. When it became clear she would not, Miss Devlin said, “I'm sorry you and Hadley are in such an uncomfortable situation, but—”
“—you aren't going to help us,” Bliss finished.
“I didn't say that. I—”
Bliss took off at a run, with Miss Devlin half a step behind her.
“Bliss, wait! I didn't say you couldn't come—”
Bliss's emotions were running high from the excitement of the day, and she found the frustration of being married, yet separated from her husband more difficult than she had ever imagined. She didn't wait to hear what Miss Devlin had to say, because she didn't think she could handle any more disappointment.
Both Bliss and Miss Devlin stopped abruptly when they saw the bright orange glow beyond the hill where Bliss's home stood.
Bliss gasped. “It's a fire!”
They both started running and didn't stop until they stood at the top of the hill, where they could see the Davis house, engulfed in sheets of flame. Bliss saw the figures of her mother and father outlined in the dusk, racing to and from the well with buckets of water. But their efforts to douse the blaze were clearly a waste of time.
“I don't see Sally!” Bliss cried.
Miss Devlin searched the area around the house to see whether she could spot Bliss's thirteen-year-old sister, but couldn't find her either. “She's probably safe somewhere away from the fire. Let's go see what we can do to help.”
Bliss was already halfway down the hill. “Momma! Papa!” she cried. “Where's Sally?”
Persia Davis turned and, dropping her bucket, opened her arms wide for her daughter. “Oh, my God, Bliss. I was so worried that you might have come home while I was in the barn milking. I thought you might be inside—”
“I'm fine! Where's Sally—”
“She's all right. She ran to the Ives place to get help. I was so afraid—”
“Thank God. If anything had happened—”
“My baby, my baby. You're safe!”
Miss Devlin felt her throat closing with emotion as tears of relief and joy streamed down Persia's face.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Miss Devlin asked.
Persia turned enough so her gaze encompassed both the schoolteacher and her husband's heroic efforts to fight the flames destroying their home. “It's too late for anyone to help now,” she said bitterly. “I guess those ranchers have decided there's to be a war after all.”
“No! Don't say that,” Bliss cried.
“Why not?” Persia demanded. “They're all alike. Brutal. Hard. Unfeeling.”
Bliss moaned and hid her face in her mother's neck.
“It's all right, baby,” Persia crooned. “We'll make them pay for what they've done.”
“Nooooo,” Bliss wailed. “You don't understand. I don't want revenge. I don't want them to pay.”
“What?” Persia shook Bliss hard, snapping her head back and forth, loosing her daughter's hair so it fell across her shoulders in fire-lit golden chestnut waves. “Howsay that, after they burned down your home?”
“You don't know the ranchers did it,” Miss Devlin argued.
Persia sneered. “Oh, no? Ben saw that gunslinger from Texas skulking around here earlier. Then he noticed the fire. You can bet the Association is responsible.”
“I don't think Mr. Kerrigan would do anything like this,” Miss Devlin protested.
“Isn't that what the Association is paying him for? To cause trouble for us?” Her eyes bright with angry tears, Persia demanded, “Give me one good reason why we shouldn't fight fire with fire!”
Bliss's face looked horrible in the flickering light as she turned to face her mother. “Because I married Hadley Westbrook today. Because a rancher's son is the father of my child . . . your grandchild.”
Persia's eyes went wide with shock and her mouth dropped open. She gasped in an attempt to force her lungs to breathe, and the heavy smoke from the fire choked her. Bliss tried to pat her mother on the back, but Persia wrenched herself away from her daughter. “Don't touch me! How could you have done such a thing? What were you thinking?”
“I love Hadley,” Bliss cried. “I—”
“Love!” Persia snarled the word so it sounded like a curse. “You don't know the first thing about love if you could let yourself care for a boy whose father is capable of
that
.” Persia waved a hand at the crumbling cinders, the skeleton of burning timbers that had once been their home. “Oh, my God. I can't believe this is happening.” Persia covered her face with her hands and began to sob, her chest heaving as she gulped air.
Bliss stared at her mother, then turned to the woman who lately had helped her find a way to resolve every dilemma. “Miss Devlin?”
Miss Devlin didn't have any answers at the moment. She wasn't sure what to do now. She was certain Kerrigan couldn't be responsible for the fire that had destroyed the Davis home. She had spent enough time with him to believe him incapable of such a senselessly destructive act.
What concerned her now was what could be done to keep the nesters from retaliating. Maybe Kerrigan would have some idea. Because unless something was done soon to stop these incidents of violence, there would soon be no stopping a bloody range war in Sweetwater.
Chapter 13
Every man is afraid of somethin'.
I
T HAD TAKEN
M
ISS
D
EVLIN SOME TIME TO CONVINCE
Persia that she should wait to convict the ranchers until there was more evidence they were guilty than the mere fact that Ben had sighted the gunslinger a short while before the fire broke out. Miss Devlin had also argued that Bliss's marriage to Hadley, and the coming grandchild, made a powerful case for trying to maintain peace in the valley, despite this recent act of violence.
The Davis family had gone to spend the night at Bevis and Mabel Ives's place. Before she left to head home, Eden had gotten Persia to promise she would keep Bliss's pregnancy and marriage a secret from Big Ben, who might be provoked into doing something rash if he got that startling news right after the catastrophe that had just occurred. Miss Devlin suggested it might be best if Persia confronted Regina at the Sweetwater Ladies Social Club meeting on the morrow to decide how they should handle this latest crisis.
Then Miss Devlin had trudged home in the dark alone. Kerrigan would probably be there when she arrived. Eden realized she was looking forward to having someone with whom to share her feelings of anger and frustration. She had high hopes Kerrigan would be able to suggest some way to cool tempers and stop the violence. She heaved a sigh of disappointment when she spied her darkened house and realized he wasn't there.
Kerrigan had said—promised, warned—he would return, so Eden waited up until nearly midnight to confront him with Big Ben's suspicion that the Association's troubleshooter had set fire to the Davis home. Since Ben had spotted Kerrigan, there was no further need for him to hide at her house. To Eden's dismay and disgust she actually felt a sense of disappointment that he would be moving back into town.
The later Kerrigan was in returning, the more fearful Miss Devlin became that something dreadful had happened to him. Maybe he was lying hurt somewhere. . . .
When she found herself nodding off in her reception chair, she decided enough was enough. She stomped into her bedroom, where everything reminded her of him, from the shaving mug, strop, and razor he had left on her dresser, to the tangled sheets in which he had once slept. Furious with him for being so late, and with herself for worrying about him, she yanked on her nightgown, tucked her hair up into her sleeping cap, turned down the lamp, and curled up in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.
It was just as well he hadn't shown up tonight. She would be better able to handle kicking him out with a good night's sleep.
Assuming I can sleep.
But sleep eluded her.
She had changed the sheets before she lay down, but the taint of the gunslinger remained in her bed. She sniffed once, twice, then realized her pillow smelled distinctly like . . . him. It wasn't a particular scent she could identify, just something musky and male and . . . him. Was it any wonder she couldn't relax? Where was he?
Miss Devlin spent the entire night restlessly tossing, imagining Burke Kerrigan dead somewhere, his vacant eyes staring into the night. She envisioned all the ways he could meet his end: shot by an angry nester, his body broken when his horse stepped into a gopher hole, branded by a vicious rustler with a hot running iron, struck by a rattlesnake. By the time the predawn light beganshadows in her bedroom, she had his scalp hanging from some renegade Sioux's war shield.
The worst of it was, she knew that in all likelihood he was holed up in bed with one of the Soiled Doves at the Dog's Hind Leg. She punched her pillow hard to make a comfortable spot for her head. She was
glad
he hadn't come back. Because now she could face the women of Sweetwater at the Ladies Social Club meeting this afternoon with an absolutely clear conscience, albeit with dark circles under her eyes, knowing she was no longer giving the Association's hired gun sanctuary in her bedroom.
“Howdy there.”
Miss Devlin shot up in bed, clutching the sheets to her chest. It took her only a second to find Kerrigan standing in her bedroom doorway. “Where have you been all night?”
“Doing my job.” He dropped into the rocker beside her bed and leaned back with his eyes closed. He was gray with exhaustion, and winced as his wounded back made contact with the frame of the rocker.
“I waited up for you.” She hadn't meant to admit that, but the words had slipped out.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Nobody's done that for a long time.”
Miss Devlin clenched her fingers around the sheets, fighting the urge to comfort him. She hardened her voice and said, “Did you have a productive evening?”
“I found out the rustlers have moved the cattle they stole from the canyon where I saw them last to somewhere I can't find them.”
“Did they drive them across the Davis spread?”
His brow arched in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“Ben Davis saw you crossing his land . . . just before his place burned down. He thinks you set the fire.”
“Aw, hell.”
“Do you have any idea who did it?”
Kerrigan stared at her for a moment, realizing that she wasn't accusing him along with Big Ben, that she hadn't accepted the farmer's accusation as truth. He felt a tightness in his chest. He hadn't known how much he wanted her trust. He sighed wearily. “What difference does it make who did it? It's bound to heat things up—no pun intended—in Sweetwater. Do you suppose there's any chance Ben Davis will keep quiet about seeing me?”
“He's already told Persia, and Persia told Mabel Ives . . . it'll be all over Sweetwater by tomorrow morning.”
“Aw, hell.”
“You haven't answered my question,” she said quietly.
He sighed again. “Yeah, I have a pretty good idea who did it.”
“Who was it?”
“I'd just as soon not say until I have proof.”
“What happens now?”
“As soon as I've gotten a little rest I need to follow the trail the rustlers left when they moved the stolen cattle and see where it leads.”
“Are you hungry?” She bit her lower lip as soon as she said the words, afraid they held too great a note of concern.
“More tired than hungry,” he said. “You ready to get out of that bed so I can get in?”
Her eyes turned a flinty gray. “There's no reason for you to stay here any more, Kerrigan. It's no longer a secret that you're alive.”
“That may be so,” he said with a wry grin. “But to tell you the honest truth, I don't think I could make it to town. How about that bed?”
Eden knew she should throw him out. Any sane woman would throw him out. What she said was “You can sleep on the sofa.”
He arched a disdainful brow. “How do you plan to explain the man asleep in your parlor if company comes calling?”
“I—” The grim smile on his face told her he knew he had her over a barrel. Her jaw muscles worked furiously as she fought to control her temper. “If you'll kindly leave my bedroom, I can get dressed.”
“How about if I promise to keep my eyes closed?” he said with an exhausted smile, his eyes already closing again.
“Oooooh!” Wrapped in the sheet, Miss Devlin grabbed clean clothes from her wardrobe, shoes, stockings, and her hairbrush, and with everything wadded up in her arms began a regal exit from the room. “The bed's all yours,” she said sarcastically. But as he opened his eyes she tripped over the trailing bedsheet, and would have gone flying if he hadn't caught her.
She hadn't known he could move so fast, tired as he had appeared. But there she was, clasped in his arms, sure as snow in January.
“You all right now?” he asked.
“I'm fine,” she said breathlessly.
“All right,” he said. But he didn't release her. Instead he reached up and pulled the nightcap from her head. A wealth of burnished red hair flooded down over her shoulders and across his hands. His fingers tunneled up underneath the silky stuff and grasped her nape. “I already told you once you shouldn't be wearing that cap
“My hair gets tangled.”
“I like it all mussed up. It looks more touchable.” He touched it. “It's so damn silky, I want to bury myself in it.”
The tension built as his fingers thrust up through her hair and his hand captured her head to draw her closer.
“You look like a woman who needs kissing. Just a sweet good-morning kiss from me to you.” His breath was warm and moist on her face, and in another instant his lips covered hers. A gentle touch of his mouth, a haunting taste, and then it was over.
She stood there with her eyes closed, wanting more.
“And here's the good-night kiss you missed last night.”
This kiss was different. Arousing. Desirous. Demanding. This kiss was a prelude to a long night of loving. She felt her body sway toward his. She dropped the sheet, her clothes, and her shoes as her arms inched around his neck. This kiss promised so much. His tongue came searching for honey, and found it.
Suddenly she was kissing him back, her tongue touching his. The more she tasted, the more she needed. Her body began making insistent demands: touch more, taste more, take more.
Her eyes were closed so she could concentrate on the feelings that fired her body, but she also could feel the winter sunlight on her eyelids. The shadows of evening were long past, and in the cold light of day Miss Devlin forced herself to remember who this was, and why this could never be. Reluctantly she let her hands drop to the gunslinger's chest, where they caressed the muscles beneath his shirt one last time before she pushed against him.
He responded immediately to even that tiny resistance on her part. His eyes were curious, questioning, but still lit with desire. She faced him honestly, meeting his gaze forthrightly as she said, “I enjoyed that. It was . . . nice . . . but it doesn't change anything.”
“It was a hell of a lot more than nice!”
She smiled ruefully. “Yes, I expect you're right about that.”
He stood staring at her as she stooped to gather up the items she had dropped. She turned one last time to look at him before she left the room. “I have to go to church, and then to the Sweetwater Ladies Social Club meeting. When I get back, I expect to find you gone.”
“You're going to have to face your feelings someday,” he said.
“Perhaps. But not today.”
She shivered when he slammed the door behind her. She wanted to make a liar out of him. She wanted to reach out for what she wanted, without being afraid. But the past was too great a spectre to be ignored. If she wasn't careful, she would find herself repeatinher mother's mistake.
It was a miracle she didn't rip anything, she dressed so fast, donning her square-necked, deep green striped polonaise gown for church. She arranged the oval-shaped pouf of double ruffles in back and the draping sides of the pleated skirt, hoping he wouldn't decide to leave the bedroom for some trumped-up reason before she finished. She gathered her hair up in a knitted snood, planning to add a flat-crowned, flat-brimmed green velvet hat. She sat down to take off the heavy wool socks she had slept in so she could put on her stockings and high-button shoes.
Only she was missing one of her white stockings.
It was quiet behind the closed bedroom door. Maybe she could sneak in and get another stocking. He was probably asleep already, as exhausted as he had claimed to be. She inched the door open. He was mostly covered by the quilt. Judging from his bare shoulder, and one leg hanging out at the side, he appeared to be naked under the covers. She examined the tangled pile of clothing he had dropped haphazardly on the braided rug. He was naked all right.
