Kendrick: Outlaw's Bride Part 16

"You liked it."

"I didn't! I hardly know you."

Boyd showed her a cheeky grin. "But you like me."

Hoisted on her own petard. Patch was feeling her lack of sophistication in worldly matters. Boyd was Ethan's age, and it seemed he had learned a few tricks in the ten or twelve years he had on her. But Patch knew the time to stop this flirtation was now, before Boyd's feelings got engaged.

Whether Ethan wished it or not, she would have to tell Boyd the truth.

Patch saw lights in the distance that signaled they were nearing the Double Diamond. If she was going to say something, she had to do it now.

"I can't get involved with you because I'm already in love with another man."

Boyd didn't look at her, but she saw a muscle tighten in his jaw.

"Ethan," he said flatly.

Patch said, "Yes."

"Ethan can't-won't-marry you."

"I won't argue with you about this, Boyd. I can't change how I feel."

It didn't happen right away, but she saw the tension ease out of him.

"Ethan's a lucky man," he said at last.

"I wish you'd tell him that," she replied with a wry laugh.

"All right, I will."

"No, don't!" She put a hand over Boyd's and removed it when she felt him flinch.

"Why not?"

Patch laughed to relieve her nervous tension. "I want him to figure it out for himself."

Patch had half expected Ethan to be waiting up for her, but there was no sign of him on the porch when they arrived at the ranch house. She got down on her own, unwilling to give Boyd the opportunity to touch her, afraid he might take liberties again that would cause another confrontation. This time she would slap him!

"I'll unharness the buggy and take care of your horse before I leave," Boyd said.

"Thanks." Patch fled into the house before he could say more.

Ethan wasn't waiting on the porch for Patch because he was waiting in the barn for Boyd. He was sitting on a bale of hay just outside the circle of light created by a lantern hung on the end of an empty stall.

"How did it go?" he said as Boyd led the tired horse into the barn.

Though startled, Boyd quickly recovered his composure. "I couldn't figure out why you weren't waiting on the porch for her. I would have been, if she were my girl."

"Patch is not my girl."

"She thinks she is." Boyd walked Patch's gelding into the empty stall, found a brush, and began currying the animal's sweat-flecked hide.

Ethan stayed in the dark. It was easier to speak to Boyd when he didn't have to worry about his friend reading the brittle emotions on his face. "Patch believes my name will be cleared. She thinks we have a future."

"What do you think?"

"I think she's dreaming."

"Why not tell her so?"

"Don't you think I've tried? She was stubborn and willful as a kid, and she hasn't changed a whit! She doesn't know when to give up."

"Then you give up. Sell out, take your mother and sister and go away. Leave Patch behind."

Ethan's heart skipped a beat. It wasn't the loss of the Double Diamond that crossed his mind. It was the thought of a lifetime without Patch that left him feeling bereft. "I can't."

Boyd threw the brush down in the hayrack in disgust. He found his horse in another stall and tightened the cinch on the saddle. "Patricia deserves a chance to be happy. Speaking frankly, I think she'd be happier with me than with you."

"Maybe so. But I'm not giving her up. Not yet."

Boyd led his horse to the barn door and mounted up. "You're my friend, Ethan. So here's a little friendly advice. Do yourself a favor. Leave Oakville while you still can."

"And Patch?"

"She won't miss you. I plan to make her my wife."

Frank grasped the naked flanks of the woman beneath him and thrust himself deeper inside her. He withdrew and thrust again. His air-starved lungs, his sweat-streaked body, his pounding heart gave mute testimony to his labor. There was pleasure to be had from the exquisite friction of flesh against slick flesh as he drove himself toward satisfaction. His fingers tightened as he felt the woman struggle for freedom beneath him.

"Don't move," he said through gritted teeth. "Don't move."

She stilled, and he continued his plunder of her body. He kept his eyes closed, squeezed tight, and used his imagination to remake her features into the ones beloved to him. He imagined her with dark eyes alight with desire, her lips full from being bitten in pa.s.sion, her nostrils flared to catch the scents of lovemaking thick in the air between them. He heard his name whispered by her voice, heard her begging him to fill her full with himself.

He sat up and pulled the woman's legs over his thighs. He slipped his hands under her b.u.t.tocks and levered her body closer to his. And thrust again. Harder. Deeper. Faster. Wet sounds. Slapping flesh. Harsh breathing. His body drove him to find surcease from the endless craving for one particular woman. He felt as though he would die of wanting. Die of needing. Finally, his body demanded release from its torment. As he spilled his seed, he cried, "Merielle!"

His body slumped forward, drained of its essence. Exhausted. Finished.

Frank wished he could be swallowed up in a void so he wouldn't have to face what happened next. He heard the woman take a breath to speak and tightened his fingers to keep her silent. After so many years, she knew what he wanted. Sometimes she gave him the peace he needed. Sometimes she forced reality back too soon.

"Frank? I've got another customer waiting downstairs."

Frank's breath shuddered out of him. He opened his eyes. The room was dark. But not completely. Harsh yellow light seeped in under the door and up through cracks in the floor along with the noise of the piano from the saloon downstairs. "All right, Jewell. Give me a minute to get my pants on."

Frank liked the dark. It helped the illusion last longer. He didn't want to see Jewell's kohl-blackened eyes and rouged cheeks, her plump, middle-aged body. He didn't want to see the starkness of the room where she did business. He rid himself of the condom Jewell made all her customers wear and left it in the bra.s.s spittoon beside the bed.

Jewell had risen and crossed to a dry sink, where she kept water in a pitcher for washing. He heard her wet a washcloth and wring it out in the bowl. He knew she was wiping away all traces of him, of his saliva and sweat and s.e.m.e.n, before her next customer came. It was one of the things he appreciated about Jewell. She was clean.

"How is Merielle?"

It was a question Jewell always asked. She knew, as well as anyone, that Frank had always loved the other woman. She knew, better than anyone, just how much.

"I tried talking to her about what happened all those years ago," Frank said.

Jewell sank down onto a bench beside the dry sink. "My, my. What happened?"

"Nothing. Except maybe I scared her."

"How'd you do that?"

"By kissing her," Frank admitted in a taut voice.

"She didn't like it?"

"I think she did, at first. Then she pushed me away."

"So what she's feeling toward you now maybe is at odds with what she remembers happening to her a long time ago?"

Frank frowned. "I never thought of it like that."

"Are you going to kiss her again?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because she didn't like it."

Jewell shook her head. "I think maybe you ought to kiss her some more and see what happens. What have you got to lose?"

"She might not want me around anymore."

Jewell laughed. "That girl adores you. You'd have to do something pretty terrible for her to send you packing." Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. "And I'm telling you, Frank, there isn't a woman alive who wouldn't enjoy your kisses."

Frank felt embarra.s.sed by the s.e.xual compliment. He turned his back on Jewell and pulled on his long underwear.

"I haven't seen Ethan in a while," Jewell remarked.

Frank pulled on his jeans over his long johns. "He's been busy."

Jewell laughed, a husky, throaty sound. "Busy with a long-legged blonde, the way I hear it."

"Miz Kendrick is a lady, Jewell."

"A lady's got all the same equipment as a woman, last I heard," Jewell replied.

Frank took some money from his pocket and laid it on the table beside the bed. He reclaimed his shirt from the standing mirror he had thrown it over. He had caught sight of himself in bed with Jewell once, and ever since had made sure the mirror was covered. He slipped on his shirt and began b.u.t.toning it. "I think she means to marry Ethan."

"Question is whether Ethan means to marry her," Jewell said. "Or whether he'll get the chance. Saw a man come into the Silver Buckle tonight looked like trouble for Ethan."

"Gunfighter?"

"Think so. Mean, hard-looking son of a b.i.t.c.h. Gonna find out just how hard in a few minutes," she said with a grin.

"He your next customer?"

"Uh-huh. Do me a favor, will you? Ask him to come on up."

Frank stomped his feet to make sure his heels were down in his boots. "Sure. And Jewell?"

"Yes, Frank?"

"Be careful."

"You know me, Frank. I'm always careful."

Once downstairs, Frank searched the bar for the stranger he knew he would find. The gunman was tall and lean. He looked tough as hobnails. His spurred boot was hooked over the footrail, but he wasn't leaning on the bar. He kept his body free, ready to react. Frank met the man's eyes and had the feeling he was seeing death-cold, icy gray orbs that bore no human emotion.

Frank crossed the room quickly, not wanting to give the stranger time to worry that he was looking for a fight. "Jewell says she's ready for you."

Frank felt a chill go down his spine when the stranger said, "I recognize you."

Frank shifted uneasily. "Don't remember us crossing paths before."

"I was here in town a long time ago. Just a kid, really. Came through with my ma. She was looking for work. Didn't find any, so we kept moving. But I remember you."

Frank stood there, waiting to see if he had somehow, in his misspent youth, offended this menacing stranger.

The gunfighter smiled. "You were walking with a black-haired girl in pigtails, and you were both eating off the same apple. She told you not to get near me, because I had sores on my feet and you'd probably catch some horrible disease from me and die.

"But you weren't afraid. You said you'd talk to anybody you pleased."

Frank searched for the incident in his memory. And found it. It was the contrast between the boy and the man that had caused his lapse. "Gloria Violet," he murmured.

"So you remember my mother."

Frank stared at the gunfighter. He remembered now what had drawn him to the barefoot boy. Pity. He had felt sorry for the tall, skinny kid whose mother couldn't even get work as a wh.o.r.e at the Silver Buckle Saloon.

Frank made the mistake of letting the pity he had felt then back into his eyes.

The gunfighter's face hardened like granite. "Name's Calloway. I never forget a friend. Or forgive an enemy." Then the man was gone.

Frank turned to the bartender and asked for a rye. He drank it down when it came and asked for another. The second one he nursed, because he wasn't ready to go back to the Tumbling Tand play cards in the bunkhouse with the hands. It was getting harder and harder to pretend that he wouldn't rather be in a home of his own with a wife and some kids playing at his feet.

Frank lost himself in the noise of the saloon, the clink of gla.s.s, the rise and fall of conversation, the piano tinkling out "Oh! Susannah!" over and over and Harvey missing the same note each time in the refrain. He was on his fourth rye when Calloway came back down the stairs.

The gunfighter headed straight for Frank. "Jewell told me you work for Jefferson Trahern."

"I'm his foreman," Frank said.