The Lover (19 page)

“You didn't even have a decent pair of gloves.”

That struck her like a blow.

“Oh? So those were a
pity
purchase? They were. Isn't that right, Eagle Jack?” She leaped off the bed and rushed toward her reticule where it sat in the armoire. “Well, I'll just give them right back to you,” she cried. “I don't accept pity from anyone.”

To her dismay, her voice broke on the last word.

“Now, hold on,” he said, in his authoritative voice that cracked like a whip. “That's not true and you know it.”

She whirled to face him.

“I didn't know enough about your situation to pity you, then,” he said. “I bought the gloves that very first day, remember? They were nothing but a little thank-you for getting me out of that jail.”

That eased her pain a little. A very little.

“You knew I thought you were a man like any other who'd have to hire out as a trail boss. You didn't tell me one thing about yourself but you went ahead and made love with me and I didn't know who you were.”

He crossed the space between them in two strides and stood over her.

“What are you
talking
about? Of course you
knew who I was. The Sixes and Sevens isn't
me
. My family isn't
me
.”

She stood up to face him.

“You listened to me bare my soul and tell you things about my past and my family that I've never talked about to a living soul,” she said.

“I appreciate your trust in me,” he said.

Her heart broke in two but she kept her voice steady. “Yes,” she said, “I trusted you. But you didn't trust me. You thought if I knew you were a man of substance I'd be after you to marry me. You thought I was a gold-digger, didn't you?”

Genuine shock showed in his eyes but she wouldn't let herself believe it.

“No! That never even occurred to me. I know you, Susanna.”

He reached out and brushed her hair back from her face, the way he liked to do.

She pulled away.

“Maybe not as well as you think, Eagle Jack.”

This time she was the one who walked to the window, the one who looked down on Texas Street as dusk fell over Abilene.

“Eagle Jack,” she said, turning to face him. “You've always said I'm a straight-talking woman. Well, here's what I want to tell you. I will never—I can't, I
cannot
—trust my life over into any man's hands, ever again.”

He listened, his head cocked to one side, his
eyes consuming her as he stood there beside the bed.

“So I want you to leave now and never see me again.”

“
Why
? I'm not
asking
you to trust your life to me, Susanna.” He spoke softly in his low, rich voice. It vibrated in the dimness of the room and reached out to touch her skin. “Remember? I'm not the marryin' kind. I'm scared of settlin' down. So there's no reason in the world we can't be friends…and lovers.”

“Yes, there is.”

“What is it?”

“I love you, Eagle Jack.”

She couldn't bear to look at him another instant or she'd run and throw her arms around him, even while she was telling him to get out. She turned her back on him and stared, unseeing, out into the coming night.

For a long while, there was no sound except his breathing, and hers. Faint, faint sounds that could barely be heard.

Then came the click of his heels against the floor. And his voice from the door.

“Don't worry about your lock being broken,” he said, his tone gentle as a new rain. “I'll leave my door open and keep watch. I won't sleep tonight.”

 

Eagle Jack lay propped up on all the pillows the Drovers Cottage had furnished him, with one
booted heel planted in the coverlet and the other leg crossed over his knee. He was smoking and staring out at the stars over Abilene. He had his shirt off so he could feel the cool breeze from the open window and his jeans and boots on, in case Susanna should need him.

To keep his mind from wandering across the hall into her room, he pondered how a night could be so long and so short at the same time. Staying in here alone, with every nerve in his body wide awake, made every second crawl by and last for an hour. But knowing that this was the last night he'd ever spend anywhere near Susanna—even simply knowing where she was and how she was—made every second of it fly by on wings.

It was true that she could not ever trust another man enough to live with him. Hadn't she told him that a dozen times or more in those very words?

That son of a bitch she'd been married to, that Everett, had soured her on men. And she hadn't trusted any of the several people who had…not brought her up…he should say who had given her shelter while she raised herself. A rotten bunch if there ever was one.

But why did he care? Because she was his friend and a damn fine woman.

I love you, Eagle Jack
.

He still couldn't believe she'd said that. It brought a glow to his heart every time he thought of it.

He would never forget exactly how her voice sounded when she said it, either.

It would be a nice memory. It was an honor.

But he didn't love her back, he truly didn't. He really liked her, he enjoyed being with her, he admired her, and he respected her more than any woman he'd ever known except for his mother.

There was more to her—more interesting facets, more courage, more ingenuity, more stamina—than there'd been to any other woman he'd ever courted or dallied with. Yes, Susanna Copeland was a very, very special woman.

But he didn't love her.

He couldn't afford to love her. He was not going to love any woman because it would cost him his whole way of life—his wanderings at will, his adventures, all the new women who might cross his path.

She deserved a man who would love her and be her husband. A man who would settle down and live with her for the rest of her life.

So he could not let himself love her.

He couldn't settle down, he wasn't that kind of man.

 

Susanna left her room an hour after dawn because she could not stay within its four walls for one moment longer. Evidently Eagle Jack had been true to his word—which she had never doubted—and left his door open so he could
guard hers. It was standing open now but she caught no glimpse of him. Only the sight of his rumpled bed stabbed her in the heart.

She shifted her reticule straps higher onto her shoulder and changed her small traveling bag to the other hand. These were all she would need for the trip home and she could leave them at the station until time for her train.

Downstairs, at the desk, the clerk found a boy to take her bags to the station and another to carry a note out to the herd to Maynell. May and Jimbo were completely capable of bringing the Slanted S equipment back to Texas with no instructions at all. But Susanna wanted to reach out to her only friend, Maynell, this morning because she'd never felt so alone in her life.

She'd love to see May and talk to her for a minute, but there was not time enough to ride out to the herd and back and still catch the ten o'clock train. Besides, the herd might be exactly where Eagle Jack was at this moment.

When she had written the note and dispatched it, she walked to the little café beside Ingersoll's Mercantile for a bite of breakfast. Eagle Jack might be in the Drovers Cottage restaurant, and besides, she had to get away from that entire establishment. If she trailed a herd to Abilene the next year, she would have to take a room someplace else, for the Drovers Cottage would always hold memories of Eagle Jack.

She looked around the little café while she waited for her food. It, too, held memories of Eagle Jack, although she had never been in it before, much less with him.

Resolutely, she reached into her reticule, took out her pencil and paper, and began to list her debts. She would turn her thoughts to home, to returning to and keeping the only home she'd ever known, and she would banish all thoughts of Eagle Jack.

Hadn't she spent her whole lifetime perfecting the art of banishing unwanted thoughts? She made out her list and totaled it, added in her mortgage, subtracted the sum from the amount on Mr. Patterson's bank draft. What was left of her Molly winnings after she'd paid Eagle Jack back for the stake he'd loaned her, his advancing the men their salaries, and his own salary as trail boss had dented it, but she still had money left to live on.

Heaving a great sigh of relief, she put the paper aside and ate her breakfast. She would've predicted that she couldn't eat a bite because the terrible emptiness in her called, not for food, but for Eagle Jack. Just the sight of him.

Or the scent of him. Or the sound or the touch of him.

She did eat, though, because she had spent a lifetime perfecting the art of pushing worries aside so she could eat and sleep to keep up her
strength. Well, she intended to keep it up this time, too. She would survive.

At least now she knew what it was like to love someone.

At least now she had many, many good memories to warm her heart through the winter to come.

Once she'd finished eating, she paid for the meal and walked briskly to the bank. She was a business woman, she was a rancher and a cattle-woman, and she intended to build up her ranch.

She kept that her focus as she took care of all her business and walked down the wooden sidewalk, across the dusty street, and underneath the portico of the train station. Just beyond it, on the south side of Texas Street, two cowboys caught her eye. They looked familiar and her mind crazily jumped toward Eagle Jack, even while she knew he wasn't one of them. It was Nat and Marvin, sitting their horses, idly talking as if they were waiting for someone or for something to happen.

She turned away, hoping they hadn't noticed her. She simply didn't have the heart to talk to anyone. She didn't have the heart even to look at them because they made her think so sensually of the weeks just past. The weeks of riding by Eagle Jack's side, laughing at his jokes, smiling at him, and soaking in the sunshine of his smiles that warmed her so.

Susanna sat down on an outside bench facing the tracks and tried to think about going home. About what it would be like when she drove up to Brushy Creek in a rented buggy.

But, instead, she thought about Eagle Jack. He had started on his adventurous, lone trip back to Texas. He was gone. He and Molly would be running races with every fast horse they came across. And Susanna wouldn't be there.

Eagle Jack was gone.

She sat on the bench in a heap of misery until she heard the faraway whistle of her train. A cold thought hit her: she hadn't yet bought a ticket. She could sit around here right at the depot and miss her train. So she forced herself to her feet, went inside for the ticket, collected her other bag, and walked back out to stand beside the tracks.

She wouldn't sit down again. What if she sat down again and couldn't get up? She felt as weak as a newborn kitten that suddenly found itself in a cold new world.

The train pulled in, blowing its whistle and puffing steam. It slowed and slowed some more, and the brakes squealed against the tracks. The car with the conductor on the steps stopped right in front of her.

He must have seen her distress in her face, or she must have been very pale and looking ill, because he insisted on helping her up the steps be
fore the departing passengers could come down them. He came down to the ground and took her arm as if she were a very sick and frail woman, and then, with his loud, mellifluous voice filled with concern, asked everyone to please wait for the lady to board.

The passengers leaving this car were three men—from the East, judging by their dress—probably cattle buyers or agents, and they also must have thought she was ill. All of them looked at her sympathetically and one of them insisted on taking her bags and helping her down the aisle to an empty seat only halfway back in the car.

And then they were gone and her bags were stowed in the rack above her and the seat beside her was empty. She was sitting alone, looking out the window. Looking out at Abilene.

Abilene. The town that had been her goal for months and months, ever since she'd decided to make a trail drive.

Abilene. Where she'd just spent the hardest night she'd ever seen.

Finally, after what seemed an age, the conductor came aboard again and the train began to huff and puff, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Susanna's heart began to beat in the same rhythm.

I will survive. I will survive.

Silently, she chanted the words that had been her litany since childhood. She had survived so
many hard blows, she would survive the loss of Eagle Jack.

What was she talking about? She
was
loco. He'd never been hers to begin with.

A person couldn't lose what she'd never had.

The tears she'd been holding back all night and all day rushed her then, spilling from her eyes in a flood. She dropped her face into her hands, fighting them and losing the battle.

A rustle of excitement swept through the car.

“Somebody's trying to catch the train!”

“Conductor! Tell the engineer.”

“Yeah, tell him to slow it down. Give the man a chance!”

“Ooooh,” a woman screamed, “look at him go!”

Susanna lifted her head and looked out. The sight she saw stopped her tears that instant.

Eagle Jack, riding Molly, was racing alongside the train.

People began to open windows all over the car so they could yell encouragement.

“Go, go, you're gaining ground!”

“You can do it, why that little horse can fly!”

He truly was gaining on the train.

Joy and fear warred in her heart. It was racketing out of her chest and she didn't know what to do.

There was nothing she
could
do.