Thunder on the Plains (22 page)

Sunny put her head back. “Oh, I needed a night away from things, Blaine. Thank you again.”

He leaned closer. “There are a lot of things you need that you neglect to let yourself enjoy, Sunny.”

“Oh? Like what?”

Before she could protest, he put a hand to the side of her face and covered her mouth with his own, giving her his most provocative kiss, one that usually made other women putty in his hands. He felt her soften, moved his hand over her neck, traced his fingers toward her breasts. The kiss deepened when he moved a hand over a breast, but Sunny quickly grasped the hand and pulled it away. She turned away from the kiss, and he continued to kiss her cheek and neck, trembling with the want of her.

“Don't do this to me, Sunny. I've wanted you since that first day I saw you at Durant's meeting last fall. We've done a lot of things together, and our dates aren't even chaperoned anymore. There must be a reason you wanted us to be alone.”

She sighed, pulling away slightly, watching out the window for a moment as the coach clattered over brick streets lit with gaslights. “Blaine, part of me wants to be a woman. I'm twenty years old. Most women my age are already married and having babies.”

“And
you
should be too.” He pulled her closer, kissing her again. How she wished she could feel that special rush of desire she had felt only once in her life, with a man she could not have. Why couldn't she feel that around Blaine? She had to admit she was attracted to him, but always there was that fear of what men really wanted from her, a round in bed and a chance at her fortune. Vi had heard the rumors of Blaine's womanizing, but then, as far as she knew he had been true to her since he first started courting her. Nearly every day he sent flowers or other gifts. It was almost too much.

She put her hands to his chest and turned her face away again. “Blaine, I don't think we should see so much of each other. I have so many things to think about, so much to do. I…I sort of promised myself that I wouldn't get involved with anyone until my feet were solidly on the ground with Landers Enterprises, and until the railroad becomes a reality. I don't have time for anything serious, and I can't trust my own decisions right now.”

He sighed deeply, taking her hand. “Sunny, you're a beautiful woman with so much to give. You'd make a wonderful wife and mother. I'm not—well, I'm not actually proposing this minute, and I'll admit I've had my share of women; but dammit, I've never wanted one quite like I want you. I've never come this close to wanting to marry. You're everything a man could want. And how are we going to know how things might be between us—” He pulled her closer. “Sexually,” he continued in a near whisper, “if we don't do a little exploring, experimenting. Jesus, Sunny, let go of the sexual woman inside the businesswoman and just be female for once. You just might like it.”

His words and touch made the thought so tempting. He searched her mouth again, his lips trailing over her neck, down to her breasts. She felt only curiosity and a desire not to hurt his feelings, but she did not feel the passion she was sure she should feel. She touched his hair, and suddenly imagined that it was Colt Travis doing this to her. The thought startled her so that she gasped and pushed him away again. “Blaine, don't.”

He scowled, moving into his own corner of the seat, saying nothing for several long seconds. Sunny blinked back tears, wondering if the pressures of her business life were ruining her own femininity, her ability to love and want and—She shivered when she realized what had made her push him away. Why on earth had she thought of Colt? She hadn't heard from him since that last letter in December, telling her not to write anymore because he didn't know where he would be. He was a man from another world whom she hadn't seen in five years and would very likely never see again. Was she throwing away the best years of her life?

“I'm sorry, Blaine. You deserve better. I'm just not ready.” She felt the sudden ache to her throat. “You have to understand that other women…other women don't have the responsibilities I have. They have more time to socialize and go to parties and think about their personal lives.”

“Is there someone else?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She looked out the window again, thinking of Colt. “No, of course not. That's a silly question. You know yourself I hardly have time to see
you
as often as you would like.”

“As
I
would like? What about you? Do you see me just because it's what
I
want? God, woman, don't patronize me.”

Sunny blinked back tears. “It isn't that way. I do like being with you, Blaine. I guess I'm just not as mature a woman that way as you need.” She thought then how he had said only that he wanted and needed her, not that he loved her. Perhaps that was the problem. Until she heard those words, she could not be sure.

The carriage rolled up in front of her home, and Blaine got out his side, slamming the door. He came around and opened her door, helping her down, his grip on her arm a little tighter than necessary as he walked her to the huge double oak doors of the mansion.

“I have to go back to New York for a few weeks,” he told her. “Maybe we'll see each other in Washington. You
will
be there for the vote, won't you?”

“Of course I will.” She put her hands to the satin lapels of his wool overcoat. “Blaine, don't be angry, please. Maybe it's good that you'll be gone for a while. I need time to think about things, and I just can't bring myself to get involved until the railroad bill is passed. Give me at least that much.”

He shook his head. “
I
don't need any more time to know what I want.” He let out a short sarcastic laugh. “You do know how to get back at a man, don't you?”

“Get back at him?”

“Is this your way of paying me back for insulting you that first day?”

She smiled. “I would love to be mean and say yes.” She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “No, Blaine. I forgot about that after that first dinner.” The brisk wind blew her cape wildly, and she stepped back to grab hold of it. Blaine stared at her a moment, as though he didn't believe her.

“You ever get any more letters from that half-breed scout you told me about?” he asked.

Sunny felt a flush to her cheeks at the unexpected question. “No. Not since December. I don't even know where he is.”

A strange look came into his eyes as his gaze moved over her in that way he had of making her feel naked. “Do me a favor. If he writes you again, don't answer.”

Her eyebrows arched in surprise, mixed with anger. “Why!”

“I just don't think it's a good idea, that's all. A woman shouldn't be corresponding like close friends with some man when she's serious about another. It doesn't look good and it isn't proper, especially a woman of your station writing to a worthless drifter. Leave it alone, Sunny.” He turned and went down the steps, getting into the carriage. “I'll see you in Washington,” he called out to her.

“Maybe,” Sunny muttered, still angry. She stood on the portico and watched the carriage clatter away. She shivered, not sure if it was from the wind or from Blaine's warning. How dare he give her orders as to whom she could choose for friends! In spite of the cold she walked around the house to the backyard and to steps that led down the steep sandy bank to the lake below. The blustery wind tore at her, and she listened to the waves crashing to shore, wondering what Colt would think of Lake Michigan.

She closed her eyes then, realizing that again she had allowed Colt to come into her thoughts. As much as it angered her to be told what to do, she wondered if perhaps Blaine was right in telling her she shouldn't answer him if he wrote again.

She touched her breast where Blaine had caressed it with his lips. Part of her had wanted him to do that and more. It wasn't that she didn't have the same desires as any woman; it was just that she had never done such things before…and she wasn't sure she wanted Blaine to be the one to enjoy her favors.

She felt a mist of cold rain then and turned to hurry back to the house. She decided she was better off for the time being not getting involved with any man. If the railroad bill passed the House and Senate and was signed by Lincoln, then the
real
work would have just begun. She would be busier than ever. It wouldn't be long now before they would all know if the Union Pacific was going to become a reality, and at this time in her life, that was more important than worrying about hurting Blaine O'Brien's feelings, although there were times when she wondered if he had any feelings at all.

Colt reached over and pulled the letter from the pocket of his buckskin shirt, lying back in the bed and opening it to reread it for the tenth time. He strained to see by the light of a nearby oil lamp that the prostitute lying next to him had turned down so she could sleep. He smoked quietly, wondering how much had changed since Sunny had written the letter seven months ago.

He missed hearing from her, missed the unusual friendship he had developed with her through their letters. He supposed it was best to end it after all, considering that their paths would never cross again. Even if they did, where would he fit into her life, or she into his? Still, he could not help wondering if she was still all right. Anything could happen on her many trips to New York and Washington, with the damn war escalating the way it was.

This
is
an
exciting
but
also
frightening
time
, he read again, always trying to picture how she might look, sitting at a desk, slender fingers creating the lovely handwriting.
As
I
begin
this
letter, I am sitting in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., where I have come to again discuss the railroad with senators and congressmen. It is not easy to get their attention. Everyone here is, of course, afraid of a Confederate attack. The train I rode on to come here was packed with volunteers for the Union Army, and when I arrived in Washington, the city was a rush of thousands more volunteers, men from New York, Vermont, Ohio, Michigan, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, nearly every northern state. Never have I seen such movement and chaos, even in my own big city of Chicago. The capital is in a state of near panic, main thoroughfares guarded, common citizens who live on the borders of Virginia and Maryland flooding in for protection. Troops guard the Potomac and the James rivers, and it is rumored there will be a Union campaign to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which is very close to Washington.

I
have
never
seen
such
a
mess—people tenting in the streets, a shortage of water and a lack of sanitary conditions. It is times like this that I like to daydream about being out there where you are, where it is quiet, and a person can go for miles without seeing another human being.

Colt smiled at the remark, sometimes feeling like she was sitting right next to him telling him these things. He remembered how she used to love to write in her daily journal, wondered if she still did that.

In
spite
of
the
mass
of
soldiers
to
guard
our
own
capital
and
president, I wonder about our Union leadership. We have suffered two major defeats, at Manassas, Virginia, and at Leesburg, Virginia, where the ghastly number of nineteen hundred Union soldiers died. We do at last have a blockade set up around southern ports, and recently the Union fleet captured two Confederate forts on Port Royal Sound in South Carolina, so we are now able to attack from the coast.

It
seems
strange
to
talk
about
this
awful
war, our own people fighting against each other. This is the saddest, most hideous kind of war. My sister-in-law Vi has volunteered to work at a big hospital in Chicago, where some of the more seriously injured Union soldiers have been brought, as well as injured but captured Rebels whose wounds are to be treated before they are sent to our Union prison at Rock Island. I have helped out occasionally at the hospital, but I am afraid I do not have the constitution for it that Vi has.

In
the
meantime, I pray that none of the trains I take on my own trips are attacked by Rebels, a constant danger. Still, I feel compelled to continue my own work for the railroad in spite of what is happening. I refuse to let the issue be forgotten because of the war, and a bill has finally been introduced that might be voted on next spring.

Colt sighed, refolding the letter before finishing it. It was dated late October 1861. Now here it was almost June of '62, and the war was apparently in full explosion. He had read in an Omaha newspaper about terrible casualties in a conflict called the Battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee. Nearly twenty-five thousand men had been killed and wounded. The numbers that were being printed in the newspapers were staggering, and sometimes Colt wondered how there could be that many men in the entire country, to lose so many in one battle and still be able to carry on the war.

Brother
against
brother
, the headlines had read. What kind of hell was taking place back east? He was feeling more and more uneasy about it, wondering if it was right for him to be sitting in bed with a whore in Omaha while men his age were fighting and dying to save the Union. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there couldn't be a much better way for someone like him to pass his time—excitement, danger, certainly no time to think about the graves he had left back in Colorado. War was the perfect answer for a man who didn't give a damn if he lived or died.

He had hoped that the Homestead Act President Lincoln had recently signed would mean some kind of work for him, but people were just beginning to trickle in. It was predicted they would soon start arriving by the thousands, but rather than whole wagon trains to lead to Oregon and California, it was already obvious they would come in more individual groups, one to three wagons at a time, with no need for a guide because they didn't intend to go much farther. They were being aided by land speculators, sinfully cheated by some, Colt suspected. At any rate, the new Homestead Act had not provided the kind of work he was looking for.

Actually, he considered the act as nothing more than another thorn in the side of the Indian. A new flow of settlers would begin arriving, many of them deciding to homestead on lands the government had promised would forever belong to the Indians. So much for the white man's promises.

He figured Sunny was thrilled about the new settlement act. The more people who came out here to live, the more need there would be for a railroad. There were times when he wanted to hate her for being part of a system that was changing the West as he had once known it, but he knew that what was happening was inevitable. If not Sunny and her cohorts, then someone else. It was going to happen simply because progress and settlement were so much a part of the white culture, and he couldn't hold himself blameless. After all, he had led many a wagon train himself.

He laid the letter back on the night table next to him, then snuffed out the cigarette, turning to the young woman stretched out naked beside him. Her name was Billie White, short for Belinda, and she was about LeeAnn's age, with LeeAnn's coloring and small build. Still, she was not LeeAnn, no matter how hard he tried to imagine that she was.

He was lonely and he had a need. It was as simple as that. He had met Billie in the tavern downstairs, and he had stayed with her every night for the past three nights, taking out his pent-up frustrations on her, even crying on her shoulder one night. Wild as she was, she had a heart and a good ear, and he thought how under other circumstances, a man could love her for his own. But this one belonged to any man with the right amount of money, although when a man was with her, she treated him as if he were the only one in her life.

“Wake up, Billie,” he said softly, moving between her legs again.

“Oh, you're mean,” she groaned. “I'm sleepy, Colt.”

“And that's my money lying on your night table.”

He wondered how someone so young and pretty had ended up selling herself to lonely men, but he had not asked questions. Most whores didn't want to talk about why they did what they did, the same as he didn't always want to talk about why he was there in the first place.

He pushed himself deep inside her, and she responded with the exotic precision of a woman who knew all the ways there were to please a man. Still, it was not as satisfying as lying with a woman who truly loved him, a woman who wanted to give him children, a woman he in turn loved more than his own life. What a difference there was between having sex and making love. There was a physical relief in this, but no emotional joy. He took her almost violently, angry that she was not LeeAnn.

He rose to his knees and stared down at her small breasts, their pink nipples taut from the sudden arousal. He deliberately took a long, hard look at her nakedness, wanting simply to get rid of the strong physical needs that months of being without a woman had left him with. He would get this out of his system, but it wouldn't make the loneliness go away. It wouldn't bring back LeeAnn or Ethan. It would simply tide him over for a while as far as his natural needs were concerned.

He grasped her slim hips, and she gasped his name and arched up to him in an exquisite gyrating motion. He rammed himself hard into her, wanting it to last as long as possible. He moved with such energy that he began to perspire, letting go of her hips then and bending down to taste each nipple. He grabbed her hair then, and buried his face against her neck, his broad shoulders hovering over her. He felt her fingers lightly caress his own nipple, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. With one final thrust his life spilled into her once more, life that would never come to fruition. The scar across her belly was proof she would never have children. He had not asked how or why she had come to have the operation, satisfied that it was simply an added convenience that left both her and her customers less to worry about.

Colt shuddered a last sigh and rolled away from her. Billie lay spent and panting, looking like a wilted flower. “You could have been a little more gentle,” she complained, “especially after waking me up like that.”

Colt rubbed his face and sat up. “Sorry.” He got up and walked to a washstand, pouring water from a pitcher into a bowl. He soaped up a rag and began washing his privates. “You'd better be as clean as you say you are.”

“That's part of the high price. I don't sleep with just any bum who comes in here, you know. I'm careful. Hurry up and wash so I can wash too.”

Colt finished, turning to see her sitting with a towel between her legs but otherwise completely naked. She was smoking a thin cigar, her dark brown hair in a tangle. He studied her a moment, thinking how, if she didn't wear all that paint and would dress like a decent woman, she could be anybody's proper, churchgoing and quite pretty daughter.

Her sultry eyes fell to his privates as he walked back over to the bed. “You sure are hung,” she commented. “You going to stay in Omaha? I wouldn't mind being your favorite—you know, reserving myself for you and not taking any other customers? I'd be willing.” She licked at her lips. “Something as good-looking and built like you doesn't come along very often.”

He smiled almost bashfully. “I guess that's supposed to be a compliment.” He reached over and took his long johns from where they hung on a post of the brass bed. “I don't know what the hell I'm going to do right now. I'm thinking I ought to be doing something about the war. I took a room in Denver for a couple of days when I was there. Somebody had left a book there called
Uncle
Tom's Cabin
. I was bored as hell, so I read it. It was about slavery. Gave me the shivers. Between that and not feeling right about the country being all torn up like it is—” He shrugged. “Just seems like a man with no family and no responsibilities ought to do his part.” He pulled on the long johns and sat on the edge of the bed, taking a cigarette paper and his pouch of tobacco from the night table and rolling himself another cigarette.

“War has to be awful ugly, Colt, especially a civil war. I read the papers too, you know. I read about those thousands of men killed and wounded at Shiloh. I had a customer not long ago who said he was a volunteer medic for the Union. He was at Shiloh, and he deserted—said what he saw made him so sick he couldn't look at it anymore—men screaming, dying of awful infections, getting their legs or arms cut off. You ought to stay right here.”

Colt rose, bending over the oil lamp and lighting his cigarette, then walking to a window, watching the activity in the dimly lit street below. He was still surprised how much Omaha had grown since he brought Sunny here five years ago. “Somebody has to do it, Billie. Might as well be men like me who won't be missed if they're killed.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “
I'd
miss you.”

He looked over at her and snickered. “Only until somebody hung bigger came along.”

She smiled seductively. “They don't come any bigger.”

He laughed lightly and shook his head, looking out the window again to see a gang of five men ride up to the front of the tavern just below, apparently in quite a hurry. They stormed inside, and Colt could hear a commotion downstairs. He frowned, hurrying over to open the door to Billie's room.

“What is it, Colt?”

He put up his hand for her to be quiet and walked farther out onto the balcony, still in his underwear. Billie listened intently to men shouting in the tavern below. Colt looked over the railing at the intruders, who were brandishing guns and yelling threateningly at the tavern patrons.

“We saw that black bugger run in this direction,” one of them was bellowing. “There's laws against hiding fugitive slaves!”

“Why don't you go back south where you belong and fight with them that's dying so you can
keep
your damn slaves,” someone grumbled. “We haven't seen any runaways in here, and we don't have no use for anybody that would use humans like damn mules.”