“I promised Mrs. Myrick—” Zanna began.
“Don’t fret,” Delta broke in. “I’ll be back before Mama Rachael finishes her ti’ game.”
“If that gambler returns in time to play with those little old ladies.” Zanna mused. “I haven’t seen sign of him all day.”
“He rode out toward Cave-in-Rock earlier,” Nat furnished, a satisfied smirk on his face.
Delta thought about that later. It vexed her to hear Nat express the same sentiments about Brett Reall that she felt, even though her feelings and Nat’s were worlds apart. She worried that her suspicions might be true; Nat gloated that his were.
The nag she rented at the livery was surely the most ancient horse in all Cairo, she decided, when she couldn’t get it to travel faster than a trot.
“He’s all I got, ma’am,” the hostler had told her. “Seems like ever’body an’ his dog wanted a horse today.”
At her request he had pointed her northeast toward the site of the old stagecoach station. She hadn’t told city-bred Zanna the entire truth about her little journey. The postmaster had said she might find a docile old man who had been a member of the Cave-in-Rock Gang living in the old stage station. He claimed the oldtimer loved to talk about his experiences. This was an interview subject she couldn’t pass up. Hollis would love it. And he would be impressed with her expertise in arranging it.
Although she had set out with more trepidation than she admitted even to herself, she found the way easily enough. A couple of miles out of town the road forked, then a few more miles it forked again. Two turns going, two turns coming. She hadn’t been raised with six brothers for nothing. Why she could remember going hunting with Kale when she was still a small child.
She smiled. Kale never complained about taking her, even though her short little legs must have slowed him down. Kale had been her favorite brother when they were growing up, partly, she knew, because he always paid attention to her. At home they roughhoused so much Benjamin was always on them about it.
The eldest of the brothers, Benjamin had raised the entire passel of kids after their mother lost her mind. Benjamin had wanted her to turn out a lady. And thanks to Ginny, she had.
The old stage station was built with mud-chinked logs set against the side of a slight rise, exactly where the postmaster had said she’d find it. The place appeared deserted.
Drawing up outside the front door, she dismounted and hitched her horse to an ancient post. Hoofprints in dried mud showed where other animals had been tethered, but she didn’t see any signs of recent use.
Digging her pad and pencil from the saddlebag, she stepped up to the scarred wooden door. When no one answered her knock, she pushed and the door swung open.
Suddenly above the creaking hinges, she heard the metallic clicking of several gun hammers being cocked. Her feet froze on the threshold, her hand still touching the rough wood of the door. Drawing a deep breath, she called out. “Mr. Felton?”
“God’s bones, Delta! Hold your fire, men.”
Chapter Six
Brett’s voice knocked the breath from Delta’s lungs as surely as if he had backhanded her across the face. He followed his words out of the dusty darkness of the cabin, grabbed her by the shoulders, and dragged her into the room. “Who’s with you?”
Her mouth felt as dry as the logs in the old house. “No one.”
“You rode out here alone?” She nodded.
His grip on her shoulders tightened. She expected him to shake her, but he didn’t. Light filtered through years of layered dirt on the single window pane. She coughed against the dust.
“You expect me to believe you were brave enough to ride out here all by yourself? You, who are so afraid of me you can’t even—” Abruptly he clamped his jaws together. Releasing her, he changed the subject. “Check around,” he called over his shoulder.
She heard bootsteps, saw shadows in her peripheral vision. Her eyes remained fixed on Brett. Her heart thrummed with the meaning of finding him here in the nest of an old outlaw.
Fury simmered in his eyes. “I don’t need to ask why you’ve come. You’re spying on me again.”
She found her voice, and her anger. Jerking her shoulders to free them, she stood her ground. “I certainly am not spying on you. I had no idea you were here. I came to interview a … a former outlaw.”
“What does that mean?”
She glared at him, feeling tears spring to her eyes. It was true, what she had suspected, what Nat claimed. Brett Reall was an outlaw, and she suddenly realized how desperately she had hoped he wasn’t.
“Why don’t you stay out of my life?” she cried.
“Me? You’re the one who rode all the way out here to spy on me. Why the hell don’t you stay out of my life?”
Suddenly her nightmare returned, as clear in her head as if it were a melodrama performed on stage. She saw him on the pirate ship, with his cutlass, in her arms. She felt his lips on hers, his hands on her bare skin, his body-hot and passionate beside hers, inside—
Tears rushed to her eyes. “I wish I could.”
Seconds turned into ages while they plumbed the depths of each other’s eyes. Brett wanted to protest the truth of her statement, to argue that she could stay out of his life if she wanted to. That she was nothing but a snooping journalist.
But he knew better. They were drawn to each other. By some inexplicable force, for some unfathomable reason, they were being drawn together. His gut clenched in a knot of fear. Every time he was with her he risked discovery. At the moment he was in no position to probe the reasons or interpret the meaning of it all. If he made it to Louisiana a free man, perhaps he could enlist the aid of his mother to exorcise this beautiful demon from his life. Perhaps, if he believed in such things. But for now—
Pierre stepped through the threshold. “Gabriel’s bringing in that actor.”
The knot in Brett’s gut turned to stone. Fury built inside him as he tore his attention from Delta. Beyond Pierre’s bulk, he glared at the Princess Players’ leading man.
Brett turned back to Delta. “What the hell game are you playing?”
“He didn’t come with me,” she insisted.
“He wasn’t with her, non,” Gabriel agreed, stepping to the doorway. In one hand he held the rope by which he had bound Nat’s hands. “He was followin’ her.”
Brett studied the belligerent young actor, then returned his attention to Gabriel. “You’re the one I told to follow her,” he stormed.
“I was, my frien’, but this fellow showed signs of strikin’ out on his own. I didn’t figure you’d want him hanging ’round.”
“You had me followed?” Delta demanded. “Why?”
Brett swung his head around at Delta’s question. Her blue eyes danced like a fighter in the ring. Her cheeks were flushed with anger. Strands of hair had escaped the coil at her nape, and a few clung to her neck and face. One strand stuck to her lips.
He lifted a hand to brush it away, then clenched his fingers into a fist and dropped it to his side. She wasn’t afraid of him at this moment, he noticed, only mad—fighting mad, like a riled gater in a Louisiana bayou.
“Why?” she repeated.
He cocked his head, squinting at her through narrowed eyes. “Because I figured you’d try to follow me. From the looks of—”
“Then your guilty conscience led you astray, M’sieur Reall.”
“Guilty? Of what am I guilty? Of not wanting some meddling journalist sniffing into my private life? Of not wanting to see myself spread all over the newspapers for folks to gawk at over morning coffee? I’m a private man, m’moiselle. Last time I heard we had laws to protect a man against invasion of privacy.”
Suddenly she smiled, not a spontaneous smile of joy, however, but a self-satisfied smirk. “Perhaps I was wrong,” she purred. “It must have been your arrogance that led you to believe I was following you. I came out here to interview a Mr. Felton.”
Brett held her stare while the words s
ank in. Wint Felton or himself, what difference? It all boiled down to meddling in his affairs.
“Let’s get going,” he barked. “Gabriel, take that actor back to town, and don’t let him out of your sight until you get there.” He turned to Pierre. “Finish up here. I’ll escort the lady.”
When he tugged on Delta’s arm, she jerked away. “I made it out here by myself, and I can find my own way back.”
“I wouldn’t hear of it,” he hissed, nudging her out the door.
Outside, Gabriel helped Nat into the saddle, then tied the actor’s hands to the pommel. Nat cast her a silent plea just before Gabriel, taking up Nat’s reins, led the actor away from the cabin.
Still grasping Delta by the arm, Brett unhitched her mount with his free hand and led it around to the back of the cabin where other saddled horses were hitched. Before he could help her into the saddle, however, she attempted to replace her notebook inside her saddlebag.
Suddenly curious he took it from her hand. Thumbing through the pages, he stopped at the last entry, studying it with pursed lips, striving to make sense of the situation. Finally, he looked back into Delta’s eyes. “Wint Felton?”
She nodded, defiance shining like the morning star from her blue eyes.
Inside him relief began to ease the knot of fear and anger. He knew he should resist the growing desire to trust her, to—God’s bones! What was this woman doing to him?
Reaching for her, he crooked an elbow around her neck and drew her face to his. The moment their lips touched, he felt her resistance began to fade. She moved tentatively into his arms, her fingers grasping his shirt for support.
With an audible groan he pulled her tightly against his body, laving her face with kisses. At length, her arms crept up his chest. Desire like wildfire ignited and spread down his body when her fingers touched the skin at the back of his neck. Reflexively, hungrily he deepened his kiss and she responded, leaving him weak and wondering at his own sanity.
What kind of magic did this woman spin that made her so irresistible? Black magic, he was certain. For no other kind had touched his life in ten long years. Delta Jarrett could bring him no good. Not in the long run.
But for now she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The sweetest, the most desirable. Her skin tasted slightly of salt and of violets. The soft mounds of her body meshed against his hard, hungering frame in a way that aroused a carnal ache deep in his groin. He swept a palm down her back and cupped her padded hips hard against his own, showering him with both ecstasy and pain.
Again and again his tongue pillaged her sweetness. The ache in his lower extremities became acute, throbbing in rhythm to his plundering kisses.
As suddenly as a roll of thunder announces a summer shower, the squawking hinge on the cabin door reminded him they were not alone on some deserted island in the bayou. Lifting his lips, he traced his hands back up her frame, absorbing every nuance of her tormenting shape. He felt her shallow breath against his skin, saw her begging eyes. He cupped her breasts, one in each palm, and watched the fire in her eyes deepen to a hot blue flame.
“You were right to be afraid of me, chère,” he whispered, kissing her lips, her eyes, her face. “I want to make love with you worse than I’ve wanted anything in my grown life.”
Although her brain struggled to revive her earlier fear of this man—this pirate, this outlaw—Delta’s body felt so wonderfully alive beneath his touch, beneath his gaze, that all she wanted was to remain in his arms forever.
You already have, she thought, as his lips claimed hers for one last demanding, promising invasion. Every night in my dreams. But somehow she knew that making love to Brett Reall in the flesh would be a thousand times more exciting than their nocturnal coupling in her dreams.
Then his mood changed abruptly, as she had come to expect. He turned her toward the cabin with a gentle hand at the nape of her neck. “Come,” he said in a voice so husky he could have been inviting her to his bed. “If you want to get that interview before we head back to town, we’d best get started.”
Astonished by this turn of events, she let him lead her around the corner of the cabin where, after sending Pierre back to town, he called forth a scruffy old man who tottered down the rickety steps with the aid of a crude cane. Wint Felton’s sparse white hair dragged his shoulders, making up in length what it lacked in bulk.
“Wint, meet M’moiselle Jarrett. She wants to ask you some questions about—” Brett turned amused eyes on Delta. “Hell, let her tell you what she wants. She writes for the newspaper.”
While the old outlaw settled himself on the top step, Brett guided Delta to a seat below him. After which, he moved opposite her, sitting on his heels at the edge of the steps. He pulled off a stem of grass and stuck it in his mouth, his eyes teasing Delta all the while. “Ask him whatever you like. If he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll make one up.”
Delta sat, momentarily silenced by the alacrity with which Brett had switched from romance to business. While her body still thrilled from his caressing hands, he had set aside the thing he professed to want worse than anything in his grown life—as if they had suddenly come to a fork in the road, and he had chosen the unexpected path. But the way his eyes played over her lips, the rapid throb of the vein in his neck gave him away.
Disconcerted by the knowledge that she had such an effect on this man—and he on her—she studiously opened her notepad, striving to focus on the interview at hand.
Ask whatever you like, he had said. Had he intended to issue such a bold invitation? Fighting back the urge to jump up and run away from the very opportunity she had been seeking, she chanced a look at Brett. “Anything?”
The vertical cleft between his eyes deepened as her challenged registered. He cocked an eyebrow. “Anything,” he agreed.
With pencil poised she turned to Wint Felton. “I’m preparing articles for the St. Louis Sun. The postmaster in Cairo said you might be willing to relate some of your experiences on the river … ah, and with the Cave-in-Rock gang.” When she mentioned the gang, her attention shifted to Brett, who still stared at her. His thoughts were unreadable.
The old man’s flaccid features took form. He hooked a thumb around each of his suspenders and cast her a sagacious glance before staring off into space somewhere in the region of the hitching rail. “He be right.”
Delta waited, but no elucidation followed. As an interview subject, she hoped he would improve soon. “You were a member of that gang?”
“Yep.”
“Could you describe your most daring adventure?”
“Was all of ’em darin’ in them days, lady,” the old man replied. Delta held her tongue, while he spat off the side of the porch, then turned his attention back to the hitching rail.
Brett came to the rescue. “Tell her about that keel-boat affair back in twenty-two, Wint.”
Without changing expression, the old outlaw resettled his wad of tobacco in the opposite cheek. This time when he glanced at Delta, she could tell the dam had been breached. His memories gushed forth and an hour later were still flowing strong.
At the beginning Delta wrote swiftly, recording the ever-changing number and names of men in the gang, their feats in robbing the ships that plied the Ohio and the Mississippi, the cargo they stole, the fights they engaged in. She tried to capture his phraseology, which she knew would lend authenticity to the article.
According to Wint, one gang member had muscles enough to “t’ar the hide off a wildcat,” another could “out-sw’ar the devil,” and still another could “sear the bark off a Injun at fifty yards just by smilin’ at him.”
“Then thar’s ol’ Swifty Reynolds,” Wint added. “He weren’t no member of the group, min’ you, but he was a man to reckon with. I seen the time he cordelled a flatboat loaded with booty over ever’ snag, sawyer, and sandbar from Natchez to Memphis, single-hand’. Outrunnin’ the law, o’ course.”
“That’s keelboat talk,” Brett explained. “Cord
elling was the way keelboatmen got their boats back upstream after selling their goods in New Orleans. Six or eight men worked along the shore, physically pulling the boat upcurrent by means of a stout rope.”
Delta studied the old man’s withered form. “That’s why keelboatmen were known for their muscles,” she mused.
Brett nodded. “Wint here was one of the best.”
As Wint continued, Delta became so engrossed in the tales the old man spun one after the other that she forgot to write them down. Brett kept the monologue running, prompting from time to time as each story ran its course.
“Tell her about Mike Fink.”
“Tell her about Bill McCoy.”
Finally, when the sun had begun to sink in the sky and the old man seemed fairly spent, Brett called a halt with, “If you’ve got enough information, Delta, maybe we should mosey on back to town. Wouldn’t want to keep you out after dark.”
Her eyes had been on her notebook when he made the statement, and she kept them there. After his earlier confession concerning how badly he wanted to make love to her, she dared not think what being out after dark with him could mean.
Girding her courage, she responded with what she had been planning from the beginning, “I have a couple more questions.” Started thus, however, she hesitated to continue. Like plucking a seedling from the soil that nurtured it, would her questions destroy this fledgling relationship she felt growing between them?
At length she knew she must seek answers, even though they most likely would be answers she did not want to hear. She focused her attention on Wint Felton. “How long have you known M’sieur Reall?”
Across from her Brett chuckled, but she resisted the temptation to look at him.
“You mean, ah— him?” Wint questioned.
Delta nodded, finally chancing a glance at Brett, who still sat on his boot heels, still chewed on the same stem of grass. A bemused look creased his lips. Studying those lips a lump rose in her throat.
Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three Page 10
