Without Words (26 page)

He left her mouth to kiss her eyelids, her temples. The hard length of his arousal pressed against her stomach, distinct through his clothes and hers. She rested her forehead on his shoulder and trembled. He would lay her down here in the shade, and she would welcome him eagerly. His body would be as different from what she had known or imagined as his kiss.

That’s not what he did. Bret straightened and cupped her face in his hands, his eyes hooded, his features softened. “What do you say we make this a real marriage?”

His voice pulled her out of the desire-induced trance. Her mind reengaged at least enough to make her hesitate.

“Hassie?”

She had to pull away enough to use her hands. “I need to think.”

“You need....”

Whatever she expected it wasn’t the short, hard bark of laughter he gave or the way he shook his head. “God knows that’s fair. I thought about it enough. You think while I cool off in the creek again.”

She couldn’t think. Not yet. The surprise of it left her mind blank, and her body was still shaky with the sensations the Kiss had aroused. Or was it the Kisses.

When Bret returned, hair still dripping and turning his blue shirt dark at the neck and shoulders, she took her turn in the creek again. She sank down, dress and all, letting the cold water erase the effects of running in the hot sun and wanting a man more than she had thought possible. The water ran over her skin like a whisper of what could be and didn’t cool the internal heat, but intensified it, made her want to catch Bret all over again and do things differently this time.

Lingering wouldn’t help anything. He wanted to couple with her and wanted a yes answer, and she wanted that too. Even if she wouldn’t really like it when it happened, she would like being held and touched and touching. And more kisses like that. She’d definitely like more kisses like the Kiss.

Yet somewhere in the back of her mind Belle’s warnings had embedded themselves like tiny poisonous thorns. At least Bret wasn’t claiming an attack of sudden undying love. Hassie was glad of that. She didn’t want him to lie, and he was fond of her. Learning signs had been a way to pass boring hours stuck together in a hotel room, but he could have headed for a saloon. He didn’t have to make the effort no one else ever had, and he didn’t have to keep at it.

In Werver his fury had been mostly because the Restons had lied to him and what they did was wrong and left him burdened with her again, but his anger at the Quentin boy and his friends had been different. He’d been angry then that she was hurt and frightened and could have been hurt worse.

Still, marrying could mean a child. She hadn’t conceived in almost six years of marriage to Cyrus, but Cyrus had never had much interest in her that way. She could count on her fingers the number of times he had coupled with her in the first year, and the last years there had been nothing other than an occasional groping hand in the night. Bret was young and healthy. It would be different.

She shivered and left the water, dried off, and dressed in her trail clothes again. The green dress could dry held in her hand as she rode.

The horses still grazed some distance away, hobbled and unsaddled. Bret waited for her where they’d sat in the shade earlier. She pulled the slate from her saddlebags and went to join him.

“What will happen if I say no?”

One side of his mouth lifted in the familiar cynical smile. “You mean will I leave you standing in the street in some town without a penny or beat you into submission?”

Neither possibility had crossed her mind, and she didn’t take them seriously now.
“No, I mean....”
She hesitated then finished the question that had cost her sleep and worried at her for months.
“...will you come get me next spring? Will you let me come with you again next year?”

He looked so surprised she could tell he’d never considered it before.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “When I started doing this, I never meant it to last this long. I wanted to quit last year, but my father talked me out of it. Gabe said some things that—if what he said is true, this will be the last year. If Gabe’s wrong and I have to come back out again, yes. You may have to stave off some seduction attempts, but if you want to risk it, sure.”

“Where will you take me for the winter?”

“I don’t know. You don’t want to go back to Gabe and Belle’s, do you?”

She shook her head.

“The closest town to the Sterling farm is a decent size. You could stay at the boarding house there, or maybe we could even find a house to rent.” He looked away, his voice falling. “You know I can’t take you home the way things are.”

“Belle told me about your family. They would never accept someone like me. I know you can’t take me to your home.”

“They wouldn’t accept any woman I brought home if I wasn’t married to her, and if we are married, they’ll expect us to share a bed.”

“Even married, they would not accept me.”

He lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his damp hair, avoiding her eyes for a moment longer before looking directly at her. “Belle exaggerates, although I suppose I’m lucky when I got back from the war they didn’t slam the door in my face the way your mother’s family did to her. The fact is as long as they’re letting me in, they’ll let my wife in with me.”

Letting her in would not be the same thing as accepting her. Hassie didn’t point that out.
“The war has been over for more than six years.”

“For some people it will never be over,” he said grimly.

They sat quietly for a few moments.

“That’s it?” he said finally. “You’re not going to ask me what if you say yes?”

She shook her head and got to her feet. What he’d already said had changed all her assumptions. Now she had a lot more to think about.

B
ROWNIE COULD KEEP
up well enough that Hassie sometimes rode beside Bret these days when crossing open land or on wide trails, but she followed him now, studying his back. His very nice back. He didn’t go to the lengths she did to stay hidden when bathing in a creek, so she had seen that back uncovered, the dip along his spine, the muscles on either side.

For that matter, being uncomfortably honest with herself, she’d seen all of him one time or another and wouldn’t mind better, longer looks. No, what he wanted wasn’t the problem because she wanted that too.

The problem was the way life never seemed to work out the way she expected. In spite of the great lengths she had taken avoiding the Grimes boys’ seduction attempts, she had ended up with an enraged Ned Grimes screaming at her, accusing her of trying to seduce his son into marriage.

Marrying an old man famous for miles around for his home-brewed corn whiskey should have meant an unexciting but secure life. Instead it led to frightening moments when his customers caught her alone, semi-starvation, and watching her husband’s thieving, murdering son killed before her eyes.

She had taken a position as a maid in a hotel and ended up running for her life, if not literally then as good as.

And of course she had followed an icy-eyed killer into the wilds and ended up gloriously happy and in love with him. Now Bret had agreed to her most cherished hope and said she could go with him as he trailed outlaws again next year. Except he probably wouldn’t be doing it next year.

The more she thought about it, the less sure she was it mattered. Sooner or later he would give up bounty hunting. Had she really thought he would just keep doing the same thing year after year while the two of them grew old and gray? She smiled at the thought.

Living in the town near his home would mean seeing him sometimes, knowing about his life, watching when he married someone else because surely he would marry sooner or later and have a family of his own. She couldn’t bear the thought.

Saying yes would mean going home with him and living with his family. Thinking about the Sterling family always brought back not just Belle’s words but memories of going to see her mother’s parents in the big brick house in Philadelphia.

Of all her memories of her life in the city, the one Hassie would most like to have dim with time was the one of the visit to her grandparents. She’d like to forget that even more than the day she fell on the wire, because the memory included Mama’s pain and hurt more.

She remembered the man in the black suit answering the door and the look on his face, the way he had held her in the hall by the shoulders when Mama rushed by.

Even though no words of the distant shouting had been clear, she still remembered the sound and the fear that made her try to twist away from the man. Tears had run down Mama’s face as she hurried back to the hall and took Hassie by the hand.

“Thank you, John,” Mama had said as she took Hassie’s hand and led her away.

“I’m sorry Miss Julia,” he had replied, tears on his face too. That was the first time Hassie realized men could cry.

And the door had closed behind them, so solid, so permanent.

She brushed tears from under her own eyes now, remembering. Bret’s family wouldn’t be like her grandparents. They didn’t slam the door in his face when he came home from the war. But now they were only angry that he had fought for the Union. He hadn’t yet brought home the daughter of an Irish immigrant.

If they started a baby, and if he did leave Missouri and hunt men again next year, she would have to stay alone with those people. If the fact she never conceived with Cyrus meant she couldn’t have a baby with Bret either, it would make him unhappy. Had he thought of that? Probably not. According to Mama, when men got randy they stopped thinking.

That’s not what he said, though. He said it was right for her to think about his proposal because he had thought about it a lot. He didn’t love her, so he must have thought about it more than he would have if he did.

Her hand spread over her stomach, but the gesture was only habit. Her stomach had not burned and writhed for months, and it was fine now, not as good as this morning, but fine.

She gigged Brownie a little and made her jog up beside Jasper. In the end there really was only one answer.

W
HEN
B
RET HAD
asked Mary to marry him all those years ago, she had clapped her hands, declared she might faint, said yes at least three times, and allowed a more thorough kiss than ever before. Of course Bret had to admit that hadn’t worked out too well in the end, so Hassie’s more subdued approach might bode well for the future.

Except subdued was too exciting a word to use to describe her reaction. After another day baking in the sun, she still hadn’t said—written, signed—another word on the subject.

Pretending he’d never asked was probably her idea of an easy way to say no. She’d take up her independent life in Missouri with nine hundred and fifty dollars in the bank and wait for some man to come along who had some magical something that made her want to marry him.

What kind of magic she needed was beyond him. If that kiss hadn’t affected her the way it had him, she was one hell of an actress, and he still felt vaguely unsettled over it. A kiss was just a kiss, not a life-changing event. So why did he have an uneasy feeling his life had changed back there by the creek?

Worse, if Gabe was wrong about what was going on back in Missouri, Bret might need to spend another year of his life hunting men and doing it with Hassie along torturing him every mile of the way. That’s what she wanted. Hands off. Follow around. Torture.

She’d better be getting good at keeping that list of expenses because if that’s how it worked out next year, she could use her new fortune to pay her own way. Every penny.

Except maybe meals. Making her pay for her own meals would be pretty low. And a nickel here and there for meat scraps for Gunner wasn’t worth writing down. Dividing the cost of supplies was too hard-fisted to consider.

Another small Colorado town hove into sight. The last one hadn’t had a hotel, and the last three hadn’t yielded a scrap of useful information. Bret was ready to head back to Kansas, where the cow towns would be booming this time of year and a few wanted men would be mixing in with the drovers.

This place did have a hotel. Bret had one hand reaching for the front door when Hassie touched his arm.

“Only one room here,” she signed.

It took him a moment. “That means yes.”

“Yes.”

She wasn’t jumping up and down, clapping her hands, or declaring she might faint with joy, but she was smiling the real smile.

He opened the door with a flourish. “After you, Mrs. Sterling.”

A
LONE IN THE
hotel room, Hassie sped through her usual nightly routine. Water splashed over the sides of the basin as she hastily scrubbed and rinsed. Her teeth got more careful attention, just in case he repeated the Kiss.

She brushed her hair only enough to be sure it hung down her back without tangles. No hundred strokes tonight. She pulled her nightgown on, folded her trail clothes on the room’s only chair with trembling hands, and hurried into bed. The sunset hadn’t completely faded, but the light was failing fast.

A hotel employee would light the lamps in the hall soon. Should she light the one beside the bed? The one on the wall by the washstand? Bret carried matches. Still. A wife should make things easier, not more difficult.

She hopped up, fumbled for matches, and lit the bedside lamp, turning the wick low. When footsteps sounded in the hall, she dove back in bed, heart banging in her chest. Whoever it was walked on by, opened and closed a door further from the stairs.

The last of the light outside disappeared. By lamplight the room was shadowy, a little spooky even. Where could Bret be? Had he changed his mind and taken a room of his own?

If so, it was her fault. She should have said yes the day he asked. All her agonizing hadn’t changed her answer. She wanted to belong to him, have him belong to her. She wanted him to touch her more, wanted to touch him.