Wild Fire (Wild State) (2 page)

There was flour on her cheeks, her hands, her apron. Strands of hair stuck damply to her neck and temples, and she knew her face was flushed, splotchy pink beneath the abundance of freckles. Not to mention the eyes red-rimmed from thwarted tears.
Pretty
was pushing it.
 

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she answered with a smile of her own. The dirty man in her doorway reminded her of the gunslinger she’d first met, and she felt a blush creep up her throat and burn the tips of her ears as she remembered their week of intense courtship. “Except in my kitchen, looking like that.” Brushing her hands on her apron, she sauntered over to stand in front of him, taking in his appearance. “Did you
roll
in the ashes after you finished evacuating Tucker’s farm?” She plucked at his shirtsleeve and made a
tsk
-ing sound.
 

“Are you saying I’m too dirty for you?”
 

That rough-and-tumble Southern drawl had an immediate effect, sensual awareness shivering down her spine. “You should have stopped at the pond before coming inside.”

One big hand snaked around to palm the small of her back. “I was hoping you’d take a dip with me.” Striking pale eyes the color of Chinese jade gleamed down at her as he pulled her body into his. “Oh, look. Now you’re all dirty, too,” he murmured without a trace of regret.

She squirmed against him, unable to decide if she wanted to be closer to Del’s firm, muscled frame or if she ought to back away. Every time he flirted with her, every time they were intimate now, she was torn by conflicting needs—those of her heart and those of her mind.

Her heart needed Delaney. His touch, his lips, his body. His gravelly voice in her ear. His arms around her as they fell asleep, and as they awoke each morning. She needed the boyish grins and the gray in his beard and the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t aware.

Her mind needed the safety that only distance could provide.

Eventually he was going to realize she wasn’t getting pregnant. He was going to wonder why, and she wouldn’t have an answer for him.

Without meaning to, she stiffened when he bent to kiss her neck, but if he noticed, he didn’t show any sign of it. It was a bad habit she’d developed, holding a part of herself away from him, but until she knew
why
she wasn’t getting pregnant, she couldn’t seem to relax.
 

They made love all the time. Del’s masculinity most certainly wasn’t in question. When she’d finally given in and asked Doc Browne to examine her—because what if there was something wrong with her body?—he had assured her that not only was she perfectly healthy, but it was perfectly normal for pregnancy not to take in the first year of marriage.
 

After the visit to Red Creek’s physician, however, her most secret, niggling fear had managed to wiggle out of the chains she’d locked around it.
 

What if this was her punishment?
What if she was being punished for her past misdeeds?

Ordering herself to soften in Del’s hold for now, she allowed him to lead her out of the kitchen, down the porch steps, and across the yard toward the trees, behind which lay their pond.
 

Because it wasn’t his fault she was breaking inside. It was hers.

TWO

T
he morning sunlight turned her hair to flame.

Del’s chest grew tight as he watched her come awake next to him in the bed, tighter still when her lashes fluttered open and she smiled up at him, sleepy and warm. His.

She was always softer in the mornings, happiness lambent in her veins as she slowly reached toward wakefulness. He liked her like this—there was none of the cold, none of the standoffishness that so often characterized their interactions nowadays.

Sometime soon he was going to discover what plagued his wife. For now, though, he planned to take full advantage of the pleasure he knew he could give her, give them both. “Mornin’.”

“Mmm.” She nuzzled into his shoulder, breath heating bare skin. Her fingers dug into his ribs as she wrapped her body around his in that way he loved—as though she couldn’t get enough of him, of his body, of his touch.

He’d woken hard, but now he ached. “Moira.” His hand slid over her hip to grip her thigh, and he tugged her into straddling him.

Rich auburn hair fell in a curtain around her sweet face, her fair skin flushed beneath the cinnamon freckles dusting her features. Her knees squeezed his naked hips as he fisted the hem of her nightgown and drew the linen shift over her head.
 

Her hands found purchase on his chest, and she rocked against him. “Del.”
 

Hearing his name in that husky, lilting voice did things to him—
such
things. His back bowed off the mattress as he grabbed her thighs, stroking his roughened palms over soft, trembling flesh until he held her hips. “You want me?”

“Yes.” She breathed the word, and every nerve in his body blazed to sensual life.
 

“You want me inside you?” His cock found her center, wet and ready, and when she tensed ever so slightly, he ignored it. “Because I do. I want to be inside you forever, honey. Take me in.” He groaned at the intimate feel of her riding his length. “God, Moira.”

At that moment, someone knocking on the door off the kitchen penetrated the haze of lust that fogged his brain.

A shudder rippled through her, and he tightened his hold. “Ignore it.”

“Del—”

“Whoever it is, they’ll go away if we don’t answer.” Writhing beneath her, nudging her slick entrance and needing to be inside her, he slipped a hand to the small of her back, urging her to move on him. “Honey, I need you to take me.”

“I…I can’t. The door—”

“Fuck the door.” His hand skated up her spine, under the cool fall of her hair to curve around her nape. He pulled her down, stealing a kiss, then another. His lips dragged against hers, teasing her open until she moaned into his mouth.
 

The knocking continued, and she tore herself away, tumbling to lie next to him in the bed. He immediately missed her heat. “Moira—”

“We can’t ignore the door.”

Growling in frustration, he stared at the ceiling’s exposed beams, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You were lookin’ for an excuse to stop, anyway.” These days, seducing his wife took every ounce of his concentration, not to mention more skill than he likely possessed. Even when he had her moaning, wet and wanting, she still managed to find a way to deny them both of intimacy—true intimacy that was not simply the meeting and melding of bodies.
 

Moira had created a gulf between them, starting in their bed and seeping into their daily lives. The events of the night before stood starkly in his mind—how she’d stiffened when he kissed her neck, the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes when he asked about her day after they’d taken their dip in the pond. How her shoulders had hunched against him when he curled his body around hers beneath the quilt.
 

He had no idea how to bridge that chasm, nor what had caused it. He only knew he missed his wife. He missed his lover. “You need to tell me what’s wrong.” When she sighed, he snared her wrist and tugged her so that she sprawled over him, legs tangling, hips brushing. “Don’t try to tell me things are fine. Things
aren’t
fine, Moira. And I will let whoever’s out there keep pounding on our door until you give me an answer.”
 

Her fingers splayed over his chest, but she remained stubbornly silent.

He turned his head to look at her, frowning as he traced the line of her jaw, skin soft and delicate under his callused fingertips. “You tell me, Moira. You tell me so I can fix it.”

She exhaled on a shaky breath. “I feel broken inside, Delaney. I wish I didn’t, for your sake, but I do.” Her voice cracked, and her gaze focused on where her hand rested atop his chest. “You deserve so much better than me.”

His heart stuttered beneath her palm, but finally,
finally
, they were getting somewhere. They were talking. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” Tears welled in eyes so pure a blue it hurt to look. “I’m saying I don’t know how to do…this.”

Breathe. He needed to remember to breathe. “What…what do you mean,
this
?”

Obvious pain made her expression tight, sorrowful. “Del, I—”

“
Crawford!
” His deputy’s voice cut through the heavy moment like a blade, and Del growled, tearing himself from his wife and the devastation she’d wrought within his chest.
 

If John had been reduced to shouting, Del couldn’t ignore him.
 

He purposefully didn’t look at her as she slipped from the bed, keeping his back turned as he tugged on trousers and a shirt. He heard her locating the nightgown he’d removed from her scant minutes earlier, and with every soft
shush
of fabric against her skin, his tension increased.
 

When he risked a glance, he immediately regretted it. Dark red hair, curled and tangled from his hands, tumbled down her back, and the need to touch, pet, soothe—and maybe shake her, just a little, until sense returned and she retracted her damning “this”—suddenly overwhelmed him.
 

So he exited the bedroom, following the sound of knocking through to the kitchen, masking his emotions with a cold emptiness he hadn’t felt since before meeting Moira. By the time he opened the door, he felt slightly more in control.
 

But only slightly.

John White Horse stood framed in the early morning light. “The fires will be here by nightfall.” His dark gaze flicked to where Moira was seating herself at the table, blue shawl wrapped protectively around her shoulders, before he turned his attention again to Del. “The settlement will go first, then the homesteads east of here. Then you. The winds will bring it right to you.”

Behind him, Moira sucked in an audible breath.

Del said nothing, but he felt that inhalation of hers to his toes.

The younger man continued, “We need to evacuate the mining settlement. It will be ash by midday.”

Del scowled. “You sound like a doomsday oracle. Keep the Book of Revelation talk to yourself, will you?”
 

For the first time since Del answered the door, Moira spoke. “Does Mrs. Matthews know?”

Both men shifted to stare blankly at her.

Moira tapped her fingers on the table but didn’t look up at them. “She owns the land, yes?” The Irish was starting to bleed through, a sure sign of her agitation. “There’s no chance she’ll want responsibility for rebuilding the miners’ quarters or to pay wages for the days they can’t work due to the fire.”

Del began to see where his wife was heading with this.

Her fingers kept tapping. “Not to mention what will happen if it hits the actual mine. The explosives could detonate. The sites could be ruined or closed down entirely.”

If Lucia Matthews retained her holdings through the disaster, her shares would be useless, except for the minerals living within the land itself—and Del suspected that wasn’t her plan at all. The widow wanted the town and its people to suffer, but she wouldn’t wish to beggar herself in the process.
 

Should she sell
today
, however, before the fires hit the settlement, perhaps they could avoid any suffering beyond that caused by the fire. “John, I need you to ride to Denver and find Marshal Hood.” Del began pulling on the dirty boots he’d left by the kitchen door last night, after coaxing Moira to take a dip in the pond and playfully wash the ash from his sweaty skin. “He’ll know if there’s a chance someone might want the widow’s shares, and if there is—” He speared John with a grim look. “If there is, Hood needs to make that happen. Today.”
 

John nodded solemnly. “I will return as soon as possible.” With a respectful tilt of his head to Moira, the Cheyenne disappeared through the door.

“What happens if the buyer isn’t any better than Lucia?” Moira asked quietly into the silence that had fallen. “What if he lets the mine sit and the miners starve after the fires are over?”

“You heard that saying, about the devil you know?” He leaned into the washroom off the kitchen to snare the pair of braces that had been hung to dry the night before. Quickly tucking in his shirt, he drew the braces over his shoulders. The Remington and its holster were next. “I think we’re probably better off with the devil we don’t. At least then there’s a chance the mine might stay open, when this is over.”

Red Creek needed its mine and its miners. Ore mining had drawn the town’s first settlers nearly two decades ago, and bit by bit commerce and more families had followed. Jacob Matthews had held four-fifths of the mining shares and, in doing so, had held terrible sway over the town.

Lucia Matthews may have been willing to let Red Creek burn for what happened to her husband, but Del wasn’t. “I’m gonna head to the settlement.” After it was evacuated, he’d take some men to the mine to secure the explosives. Moira had been right to point out that deadly risk.
 

She stood abruptly. “They’ll need somewhere to go. Send them to the boardinghouse first, then to the saloon. If we can’t house them after that, I will…I will come up with something.” For the first time since leaving the bedroom, she met his gaze. Blue fire snapped and crackled in those eyes, and an answering burn seared his chest.
 

He opened his mouth, intending to give her words of reassuring confidence, but his throat clamped shut.
 

I feel broken inside
.

I don’t how to do this
.
 

The ice within him splintered painfully, and he grabbed his hat from the hook next to the door and left.
 

***

M
oira finished arranging bed linens at the foot of a cot, one of several that had been set up to house the fire’s refugees in the upper level of the Ruby Saloon. The usual occupants of those second-story rooms—the whores who made their living serving Red Creek’s lonely males—had graciously agreed to bunk together, leaving half the quarters available for the now-displaced miners trekking in from the soon-to-be ravaged settlement.