A few scars certainly won’t take away from that handsome face, Audra thought, setting the tray on a little table near the bed. “It’s about time you got yourself back to this house to stay. You lost a lot of blood. You shouldn’t have gone back out there.”
“I wanted to make sure everybody stuck to the instructions and that the wounded outlaws were well guarded. We’ll take them to Fort Riley tomorrow morning.”
“We? You should stay here and rest.”
He looked at her, just then realizing they were alone. Elijah planned to spend the night standing guard at the barriers. Toosie had taken Joey to Wilena’s house, insisting that Lee stay the night at their house because of his wound. He could have her and Elijah’s bed. Besides, she had told them, since she was so close to delivery, she wanted to be near Wilena, an experienced midwife who had delivered plenty of her own children. Lee was beginning to wonder if this was just Toosie’s flimsy excuse to find a way to leave him and Audra alone together.
Maybe he should tell Audra the truth now and get it over with. He should tell her before something happened that would make her hate him even more if he waited. Still, he could see by her eyes she was thinking the same thing he was. They were alone…and would be all night.
“It’s only a flesh wound,” he spoke up. “I’m not dying, Audra.” He grinned. “You did a hell of a job out there yourself.”
She sat down on the bed. “Don’t think I wasn’t scared. A bullet whizzed right past me.” She looked him over, stirred by his open shirt, the way his denim pants fit his hips, the drying wound on his cheek that showed his courage and his devotion to helping her and the citizens of Brennan. Yes, she still loved her Yankee man. “I got a taste of what it must have been like for you, being constantly shot at, guns and cannons exploding all around you. Does your leg still hurt you?”
He picked up the bottle of whiskey and took a swallow. “Sometimes.” He stared at the bottle for a moment. “I, uh, I got hooked on this stuff pretty bad for a long time,” he added, “after Baton Rouge. Something else happened, Audra, something that—”
“Lee,” she interrupted, unable to resist any longer the fire that was fast consuming old hatreds and resentments, leaving only the embers of love. “I might as well say it. After realizing today that you could have been killed, taken from me again in one swift second, I knew that I still loved you.”
He just stared at her a moment, wrestling with his conscience. God, he wanted her again. If the only way to have her one more time was to wait and not tell her about Joey…yet…How could he turn away from that look in those exotic green eyes? He had never been able to resist her, but this time was different. He had killed her brother. She should know. “Audra—”
“Do you still love me, Lee?” Audra was surprised to see his eyes actually tear. He came closer.
“You know that I do. I didn’t come here out of just friendship. I came here because I never once stopped loving you or thinking about you. All those years of not knowing what happened to you, if you were alive or dead, hurt, in need, just about drove me crazy.”
Her heart ached with the wonderful freedom of letting go of her feelings and admitting to them. “It was the same for me,” she answered, rising to face him. “I kept saying I hated you and never wanted to see you again, but deep inside…” Her own eyes teared. “Lee, the war is over. I want it to be over between us, too. We can start new. We can erase all the hurt and the ugliness. We belong together.”
He watched her eyes, the house silent now, except for the ticking of a mantel clock in the main room just beyond the bedroom door. This was Audra, his sweet, sweet Audra, changed, matured, her magnificent voice gone; but she was more beautiful than ever, beautiful in spirit as well as in face and form. How many nights had he dreamed about finding her, holding her once more, tasting her sweetness again? How could he tell her? He argued with himself that it didn’t matter anymore. She never needed to know. Maybe he could find a way to live with the guilt. He would do anything to have her back in his arms. “Audra—” Again the words would not come.
She touched his shirt, moved her hand to unbutton the rest of it. She opened it, resting her face against his chest. “I want to go back, Lee,” she said softly. “I want to remember, to find what we had once before. I could never love anyone else as I loved you, still love you.”
He trembled, a battle raging inside him. His love for her won out, and he grasped her hair, which tonight hung loose and full the way he liked it. She raised her mouth, and he leaned down and met her lips in a savage kiss that told both of them what had to be. Above all else, no matter what happened after he told her, he had to have her one more time; and he convinced himself she would want it this way, too. He groaned with ecstasy, running his tongue deep. He had not had a woman since his injury and long rehabilitation, and his body was on fire for her.
Once they realized what they both needed and wanted, there was no going back. He picked her up and laid her on the bed, moving on top of her, not even bothering to take down the covers and remove his boots. Right now neither of them even wanted to bother with the preliminaries. This was his Audra, his precious, precious Audra, whom he had loved for eight years. For the last five he had been denied this, had only been able to dream about it. She needed this as badly as he did, for it had been the same for her, five years of neglecting womanly needs. He had to be inside of her, and she needed to feel him inside of her. That was all that mattered now. Nothing else mattered. Nothing!
In moments he had pulled her bloomers off and entered her. They shared a wild, hot, grasping coupling, both of them still clothed. She drove him crazy when she moved her tongue into his mouth, her nails digging into his shoulders, arching her hips up to him in desperate desire. He rammed himself deep, felt his life spill into her, kept right on kissing her while almost instantly he swelled inside of her again. He literally tore at her dress then, and she helped him get it open so that he could draw a taut nipple into his mouth, taste of her sweet fruits again, while he felt himself growing hard and hot once more. He buried himself deep, needing, wanting, glorying in the way she cried out his name in her own spastic orgasm. They were both on fire, and the only way to consume the flames was to do this over and over until they were both weak and breathless.
Again his life surged into her. He took a moment to gather his breath, moved off her just long enough to close the bedroom door and undress. She watched him quietly, saying nothing. It was all in those green eyes. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, and what he needed to tell her would have to wait, no matter how much she was going to hate him for it.
Audra drank in all that was man about him. She wanted him so badly she thought she might pass out from the utter ecstasy of being a woman again after so long. Who else could she have allowed to awaken old, buried needs but Lee Jeffreys?
He moved to the basin stand at the side of the room and poured fresh water into the pan. “Come here,” he told her.
Audra obeyed, and he began removing her clothes until she, too, stood there naked. He handed her a clean rag from under the stand, and they each washed themselves, studying each other’s nakedness, relishing the building desire that had still not been quenched. Audra shivered when his blue eyes raked over her, yet for one quick moment she again noticed that terrible, haunted look.
“Remember that I love you, Audra. Remember that above all else. I love you more than my own life.”
She touched his face. “I know that.”
He picked her up in his arms and carried her back to the bed, setting her on her feet to pull away the covers. He met her mouth in another delicious kiss, laid her back, both of them squirming farther onto the bed, naked skin touching. He fondled her breast, arousing her nipple with his thumb, and in the next moment he was inside her again. She arched up to him in glorious abandon, relishing the moment, because this time it didn’t have to end. This time he wasn’t going to leave her the next day. This time was forever. At last Lee Jeffreys was in her
arms to stay. There was no war to tear them apart, no husband in the way, no drastically different way of life to interfere. They were free! Free of the past, free of the ugly memories, free of the awful mistakes they had made. God had brought him to her. He would surely never take him away from her again.
35
Audra stirred awake to see Lee standing at the bedroom window, quietly smoking a thin cigar. She watched the smoke float lazily upward on a shaft of morning sunlight. He wore his denim pants, but he was still shirtless. She studied him quietly for a moment, his provocative, masculine frame, the hard lines of this man who had been her first love, her only love. No man could make her feel the way Lee Jeffreys could. No other man could bring out the almost painful passion she had felt last night. She ached, and she was tired, but it was a pleasant kind of tired, and it felt so good to love again, to be a woman again.
“Lee Jeffreys,” she spoke up, “I was planning on waking up in your arms and being able to lie there for once without one of us having to run off.” She smiled and stretched. “Come back to bed.” A little voice told her not to be too happy too soon when he looked at her with that terrible sadness in his eyes again. Why did he look that way? He should be a very happy man this morning.
“Toosie and Elijah could come back anytime,” he said quietly.
“Do you really think they don’t know what happened last night?” she joked, trying to get him to smile. She snuggled deeper into the covers. “And how can you stand there without a shirt? It’s cold this morning. Come back to bed and I’ll warm you up.” There it was again—that terrible grief in his eyes. Alarm began to move through her blood. For once they had been able to make love with the knowledge that there was no reason for either of them to run away the next day. For once they had found true happiness…hadn’t they? “What’s wrong, Lee?” She sat up.
He kept the cigar in his mouth and pulled on his shirt. “I’m not sure what Toosie thinks we’re doing. Maybe she thinks you’ve killed me and she’s afraid to come home and find out.”
Audra laughed nervously. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Lee buttoned his shirt. “I told her something when I first came here, something I’ve never had the courage to tell you.” He pushed open the window and threw the cigar outside, then pulled the window shut again and latched it. “She might have told you herself if I had let her, but we both knew it was up to me. I should have done it last night, before we made love.” He unbuttoned his pants and tucked in the shirt. “But I have a weakness when I get close to you. Every time I get near you, I do stupid things, things that I know damn well are going to hurt you, but I do them anyway.” He buttoned his pants and walked closer to the bed.
Audra noticed he also already had his boots on. “You’re confusing me. Are you telling me again that we can’t be together after all? Is there another woman?”
He laughed bitterly. “I wish it was only that.”
Her heart began to pound with dread. “Lee, don’t do this. We’ve just found each other again. This time is for good. This time was supposed to be forever. There is nothing left to come between us.”
He closed his eyes and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Not on my part there isn’t.” He bent one leg and moved it up on the bed, facing her. “Audra, I meant everything I said last night. I love you more than my own life, and I’m telling you right now that if you’ll have me, I want to get married and never be apart again. I want to move to Denver, start my own law practice there, find a specialist for you. I want you to be my wife, to give you a beautiful home and beautiful clothes and the kind of life you were born to. I want children, as many as we can have. I want to be the kind of father I never had, the kind you never really had. I want to share a family with you, and maybe after a while, when the transcontinental railroad is finished, we could take some time off to go back east and visit Maple Shadows, get back what we lost there. I want everything for us, for you. You have to believe how much I love you.”
“Of course I believe you. Why are you talking this way? You know I want all the same things. I want to put the past behind us, Lee. This even helps me accept Joey’s death, because he loved you so much. He would have wanted us to be together.” There! There was that awful tragedy in his eyes again! “Lee, something has been eating at you ever since you first came here. I have always had the feeling you were holding back, that you didn’t tell me everything about the war. Does it have to do with Joey? Did you see him, maybe in a Union prison?”
“My God,” he groaned. He closed his eyes again, turning away and putting his head in his hands. “I’m such a goddamn fool. I should have told you last night. I tried to tell you, but you kept interrupting, and the next thing I knew we were kissing…” He rubbed at his thick, dark hair. “All I could think of was being able to hold you and make love to you once more…just once more…before you told me to get out of your life forever.”
“Why would I do that, Lee?” She noticed he seemed to be trembling, and she was surprised to realize the man was actually afraid to tell her whatever it was he had to tell her. “Lee, I love you. I have forgiven the past. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
He kept his head in his hands, sitting there quietly a few seconds before finally speaking. “You got a letter, Audra, from a private named Larry Jones, telling you about Joey’s death.”
The dread deep in her soul grew deeper. “Yes. How did you know? I never told you his name.”
Lee kept rubbing nervously at his hair. “Maybe I thought using a name with my initials would somehow get through to you. I wrote that letter, Audra.”
Her mind whirled with confusion. “You?” She tried to put it together, but it didn’t make sense. “How? Why? If you knew something about Joey’s death, why didn’t you admit who you were when you wrote the letter?”
The room hung silent for several long seconds. “I killed him, Audra. I killed your brother. It was really…more an accident than anything else.”
She just stared at him in shock. “What?”
“I was riding with Sherman then. We had just taken Atlanta. I was sitting on my horse on a rise, watching the city burn, thinking what a ridiculous waste it was, what a waste the whole war was. Below me some Union soldiers were herding along several Confederate prisoners. Some of them broke loose.” He swallowed before continuing, still holding his head in his hands, but his hands were shaking. “Two of the prisoners headed my way. One had stolen a rifle from a Union soldier. He intended to shoot me with it, so I shot first. He went down, but by then the second one was there, grabbing for my rifle.”
Audra listened in horror as he told the rest of it through broken sobs. “He just kept…pulling at the gun, not even looking up at my face. My hand was still on the trigger, and I had already…cocked it a second time. It went off. I’ll never forget his eyes then. In that one…quick moment…we recognized each other. He spoke my name before he fell…” He rose from the bed, wiping at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “His hair was shoulder length…and he’d grown a beard and he was ragged and dirty. I didn’t realize…who he was until it was…too late. If I had known…I could have had him freed…sent him home where he belonged! I had the authority…if I had just…known he was among those prisoners…if I had just recognized him sooner…”
He took a deep breath, walking back over to the window. “Do you want to know what he said? He said, ‘What a hell of a way to meet again.’” He breathed deeply to stay in control of his emotions. “What a hell of a way to meet again! Yes, wasn’t it!” He turned to face Audra. “He was typical Joey even to the end. He told me to take care of you for him. He made me promise. He said you’d still love me, even after you knew. He wanted us to be together, Audra, more than anything in the world. He wanted you to be happy. And do you want to know his very last words?” God, how he hated the look on her face, so much sorrow. He had awakened a painful grief, but it was done now. “He said, ‘I forgive you.’ I forgive you! He said it wasn’t my fault.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath, watching her just sit staring at her lap. Why didn’t she say something? Scream at him? Beat on him? “I…held him in my arms,” he told her, his voice a little calmer. “I begged him to hang on…but being shot at such close range, I knew in my gut he wasn’t going to live. It might sound strange coming from the man who killed him…but at least he died in the arms of someone…he loved…someone who cared. And you know damn well how much I loved that boy, Audra! You know I never would have let it happen if I had known. I wish I would have let him have the goddamn rifle and let him shoot me with it! And don’t think I didn’t consider doing that myself! For weeks after that I came close to putting a gun to my own head!”
She finally looked up at him, but he could not quite read those tear-filled green eyes. She turned away again, still speechless.
“I dug his grave myself,” he told her. “I prayed over him, put a cross at his grave. I stayed there with him all night, drank all night until I finally passed out beside the grave. I never stopped drinking after that. If not for being injured and in a coma for so long, I would have drunk myself into my own grave by now. Once I recovered, I knew I had to stay off the whiskey so that I could stay strong and clear-headed when I came to find you. I learned that whiskey only dulls the pain, Audra. It doesn’t make it go away. And I guarantee you the pain I have suffered ever since then has been worse that any I could have suffered from a physical wound. The war…wounds people in more ways than just physically.”
Tender Betrayal Page 49
