Wyoming Bride (17 page)

He’d wanted to taste her but hadn’t been sure she would let him. He’d expected resistance, but there had been none, and he’d found a world of sweetness and honey inside her mouth.

Her hands hadn’t been idle. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d caught fire like that from a woman’s touch. But he’d never had a woman want him like that. Never known a woman so greedy for more. Never imagined a woman so full of desire.

He remembered hearing buttons pop and ping off the wooden floor, remembered stripping the shirt down Hannah’s arms and seeing her naked silhouette in the moonlight.

The rest was amazing.

Flint damned himself up one side and down the other. He’d known she was a temptation he should resist. Why hadn’t he?

Logically, he knew his experiences with women had been limited to sitting on the front porch with nice girls when he was fourteen, paying for sex from camp followers during the war, and soliciting soiled doves in some saloon after that. He simply had no experience to compare with what had happened last night.

Would the same thing have happened if it had been Emaline in bed with him? Flint tried to picture her in the same situation and could not. He couldn’t envision Emaline exhibiting such reckless passion.

He remembered Hannah’s luminous eyes in the moonlight, remembered her open arms, willing him to pull her close. Somehow he’d lost his long john trousers and was as naked as she was. After that, all hope was lost.

“Good morning!”

Flint was ripped from his recollection by Emaline’s greeting. He realized he was still holding Hannah in his arms and quickly let go of her and stepped back. He noticed he’d set down his coffee cup at some point and picked it back up again.

“Good morning, Emaline,” Hannah said as the two women gave each other a quick hug.

Flint did a quick comparison of the two of them. One was immaculately turned out, her shiny brown hair tucked neatly into a bun, her dress buttoned to her throat and her wrists, falling all the way to the tips of her black, high-button shoes without a wrinkle.

The other wore scuffed brown shoes that had likely walked a thousand miles, a pair of Ransom’s Levi’s with ragged ends where she’d trimmed the legs to fit her, and one of his own plaid wool shirts that hung nearly to her knees. She’d gathered her blond curls into a single braid that hung down her back, but wisps had escaped to frame her face in a golden halo.

Flint felt the pulse throb in his neck and realized it wasn’t Emaline who was causing the frantic beat of his heart. It was the waif he’d rescued.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the fact that he’d found Hannah, like a lost penny, that made her so attractive to him. Maybe it was the mystery surrounding her during the days before her memory had returned. Maybe it was the desperation he’d felt to find a woman—any woman—so he wouldn’t be alone in the house when Emaline and Ransom returned to live here as a married couple.

Of course, none of those reasons explained why he was
still
attracted to Hannah when Emaline was standing in the same room with her. Standing right beside her, in fact, where the two women couldn’t have been more different than a wolf and a dog.

One was feral, one domesticated. What did it say about him that he preferred the wild one?

It made no sense at all to him that two women who seemed so very different on the surface had become such fast friends. Flint glanced at Ransom over the two women’s heads and saw his brother looked as disconcerted by the women’s congeniality as he was.

“You two are up early,” Ransom said.

“Hannah remembered what happened to her on the trail,” Flint replied.

“Oh, my goodness, Hannah,” Emaline said, giving Hannah another hug. “You remembered? What happened?”

Hannah glanced at Flint, and he saw the pain in her eyes that had caused him to “comfort” her and which had sent him from bed at dawn this morning.

“I’ll tell you everything another time,” she said to Emaline as she crossed back to the table and retrieved her coffee cup. “The long and the short of it is, Flint has agreed to help me find my way back to the wagon where I left my twin sister wounded by an arrow, and from which my youngest sister was kidnapped by Indians.”

“How awful!” Emaline said. “What can we do to help?”

Flint felt his gut clench as Emaline linked her arm through Ransom’s. He didn’t understand his reaction to seeing the two of them together. How could he feel like he would die if Ransom married Emaline, and yet want Hannah with a physical need that was palpable? It didn’t make sense. He was glad to be getting out of here. Maybe a little time away from Emaline and Ransom would help him sort it all out.

He turned to Ransom and said, “It would help if you stay here and keep an eye on things. Someone needs to find those missing cattle, and I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone.”

“You’re taking Hannah with you?” Ransom said, arching a brow in surprise.

“I need to be there to see … whatever there is to see,” Hannah said.

“Are you going dressed like that?” Emaline asked.

Hannah seemed to notice for the first time that she wasn’t dressed like a lady. “If I’m going to be riding horseback, this is probably as good an outfit as any.”

“I have a riding skirt,” Emaline said.

“I’m a lot taller than you,” Hannah said. “This is fine, really.”

Hannah was bigger everywhere, Flint realized. Bigger bosom. Bigger, better-for-childbearing hips. Probably a half foot taller. He’d always felt protective toward Emaline, because she was small and dainty. He realized he felt protective toward Hannah, too, but not because of her size. It was because she needed him.

Of course, Emaline had never needed to be rescued. He’d barely had a chance to get to know her before Ransom had come into the picture and stolen her heart.

He felt a spurt of resentment and shoved it down. It wasn’t Ransom’s fault the girl had fallen in love with him. Flint reminded himself that Ransom had his own problems with Emaline.

Flint remembered he’d told Ransom he would take Emaline with or without sex, but he wondered now if he’d been blowing smoke. He hadn’t made it through one night in bed with a woman he
didn’t
love without having sex. Could he possibly have spent a lifetime wanting a woman he
did
love without having her?

Which made him wonder what Ransom was going to do if Emaline didn’t change her mind. More significantly, what sort of consequences would there be to their beef contract with the army if one of the Creed brothers didn’t marry Emaline Simmons?

Flint took another look at his younger brother and saw the shadows under his eyes. Ransom hadn’t spent an easy night. He met his brother’s gaze and said, “Are you two going to be all right if we leave you here alone?” He turned to Emaline and said, “I guess what I’m really asking is if you’ll be all right all alone at the house while Ransom is out riding fence.”

Emaline glanced toward Ransom before she answered. “I’ll be fine. After all, I’m sure there will be times in the future when it will be necessary for me to be alone at the house. I might as well get used to it now.”

“You’re not afraid?” Hannah asked.

Emaline smiled. “Believe it or not, I’m a good shot. So long as I have a rifle handy, I’ll be fine.”

“I’ve never even held a gun,” Hannah said.

“I’ll teach you what you need to know,” Flint said. “Right now we’d better pack some supplies and get moving. Day’s wasting.”

Ransom took Flint aside and asked, “How far do you want me to go looking for those missing cattle?”

“Stay off Patton’s land,” Flint ordered.

“What if I see signs that that’s where they’ve headed—or been driven?” Ransom asked.

“At least wait until I get back. I shouldn’t be gone more than a few days, a week at most.”

A pained expression crossed Ransom’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Flint asked.

“Nothing you can help with.”

“Try me.”

“I don’t think she’s going to change her mind.”

The words seemed to be wrenched from his brother. Flint had no idea how to comfort him. Especially since he’d acknowledged to himself how much Ransom was being asked to give up.

“I have faith in you, Ransom. You’ve got a few days without another soul around. Spend as much time as you can with her. Be patient. Everything worthwhile is worth waiting for.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ransom said. “You and Hannah seem to be getting along fine.”

“Don’t believe everything you see,” Flint blurted.

Ransom arched a questioning brow.

Flint wasn’t about to tell his little brother how confused he felt, but he had to tell him something. So he said, “Hannah and I are two strangers forced together by circumstance. She still hasn’t agreed to marry me. In the end, you and I may both find ourselves alone.”

Ransom’s lips quirked at the corner. “Well, big brother, at least we’ll still have each other.”

“Take care of yourself while I’m gone,” Flint said. “No heroics over a bunch of stupid cows.”

Ransom scowled. “I don’t need you to take care of me anymore, Flint. I’ll do what I think needs to be done.”

Flint realized he’d raised his younger brother’s hackles. He was used to giving orders and having Ransom follow them without complaint. This defiance was new. And disturbing. Especially since he wasn’t going to be around to come to the rescue if anything went wrong.

“Be smart,” Flint said. “Don’t take any foolish chances.”

“So now I’m a fool?” Ransom shot back.

Flint snorted in disgust. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, unfortunately I do,” Ransom said. “You don’t think I can do anything right on my own.”

Flint put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Look, Ransom, I think—”

Ransom shoved away his attempt at comfort and said, “You’d better get moving. Day’s wasting.”

Flint had a horrible feeling of foreboding. He didn’t want to leave Ransom alone while he went marching off across the prairie on some fruitless journey to find dead bodies that were probably already buried. The mood Ransom was in, he was likely to provoke Ashley Patton for the fun of it. The problem was, Ashley’s hired gunslinger, Sam Tucker, was ready to put a bullet in anyone who looked at him crosswise.

Flint opened his mouth to give his brother another warning to be careful and shut it again. One more word of caution might be the spur that made Ransom do something rash.

He swallowed the warning he’d been about to give and simply said, “I’ll see you when I get back.”

“You ride better than I figured you would,” Flint said grudgingly. “You must have spent a lot of time on horseback.”

Hannah felt a rush of emotion as she remembered all the times she and Hetty had gone riding in Chicago’s Lincoln Park—renamed after the assassinated president—along the shores of Lake Michigan. “My father loved fast horses,” she said. “He owned several Thoroughbreds, and Hetty and I used to sneak away to the stables and ride them.”

Flint frowned. “Stallions?”

Hannah nodded. “And yes, they always wanted to race. And yes, we had to keep them from fighting each other. But oh, how I loved to fly across the grass in the early morning with the wind off the lake in my hair!”

“Your father allowed his daughters to do something that dangerous?”

Hannah laughed, realized what she’d done, and sobered again. “Papa didn’t know. But I’m not sure he would have stopped us even if he’d had an inkling what we were up to. He encouraged us to do all sorts of things that gave Mama a fright.”

“Like what?” Flint asked.

“We’d drive ourselves around Chicago in a fringe-topped buggy pulled by a pair of matched chestnuts, dressed identically, of course.”

“Without a chaperon?”

“We had each other for chaperons,” Hannah said. “Hetty and I were pattern cards of propriety, at least in public. At home we’d race each other up the stairs and slide down the bannister. It used to drive the maids and the butler and Mama crazy.”

“Maids? A butler? Sounds like your father was rich.”

Hannah shrugged. “He owned a bank. It burned down in the Great Chicago Fire, and we lost everything. Our only living relative, Uncle Stephen, put the six of us in the Chicago Institute for Orphaned Children.”

“Sounds like a real nice fellow,” Flint said sarcastically.

“Not a nice man at all,” Hannah said. “Our aunt had passed away, and Uncle Stephen swore he couldn’t raise six kids by himself. Besides, he claimed that he couldn’t afford to take care of us. He was unemployed, you see, because Papa’s bank, where he’d worked, had burned down.”

Her voice turned bitter as she added, “Two years after the fire, he opened a bank of his own.”

“If he was so poor, where did he get the money to build a bank?” Flint asked.

“It does raise some questions, doesn’t it?” Hannah said with a curl of her lip. “Unfortunately, having money made no difference to Uncle Stephen. He didn’t want us. We’ve been forced to fend for ourselves.”

“By becoming brides,” Flint said.

Hannah lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “It’s an honorable solution to the problem of survival.”

“You were lucky you didn’t die on the trail.”