by Ana Seymour
“So it is Molly you’re sweet on, after all,” she interrupted. “I knew it.”
Parker straightened. “I’m not sweet on anyone…” he began, then stopped and said slowly, “I admire Molly. I’ve never met anyone quite like her. But if there ever was a chance for anything between us, it’s gone now.”
“Because you kissed her sister.”
“Darn right! Imagine how that must make her feel.”
Max nodded her head. She was still smiling. “How?”
“How? Well… terrible. I don’t know.”
“Jealous?” Max suggested.
Parker thought for a minute. “Jealous,” he confirmed with a nod.
“Well, there you have it. Molly Hanks is not a girl to develop a feeling lightly. If she’s still mad at you, pilgrim, I’d say it’s because she was already in up to her stirrups over you before this ever happened. So now she feels betrayed. What it all boils down to is that the lass is more than halfway in love with you.”
Parker stood and walked over to the door to the bath room. “Is this empty?”
Max pushed herself up out of her chair. “Did you hear what I said? The girl’s in love with you.”
Parker closed his eyes. “I don’t think so, Max. And even if that is true, I’m not sure I’m ready to have anyone in love with me. Maybe riding out of here would be the biggest favor I could do her.”
Max’s bosom gave a great heave. “Men! The biggest favor you could do her would be to ride on out to the Lucky Stars and make her understand that you aren’t waltzing around with her sister behind her back and haven’t the least intention of doing so.”
“I told you, she won’t talk about it.”
“Then you do the talking, pilgrim. I’ve never known words to stick in your mouth.”
Parker was silent for a long moment. He didn’t want to admit how good Max’s words were making him feel after three weeks of misery. He reached for the doorknob. “Can I take a bath first?”
Max grinned at him. “On the house,” she said, then added with a wink, “You go on ahead and I’ll bring you a towel in a few minutes.”
Parker hadn’t stopped at the Grizzly Bear after all. The bathwater at Max’s had been scalding hot, but he hadn’t stayed to enjoy a slow cool down. Instead he had dressed quickly and bidden goodbye to Max with a smacking kiss on her plump cheek.
All the way back to the ranch he thought about the conversation they’d had. After three weeks of thinking, how had he missed the fact that Molly’s anger had been out of proportion to the offense unless it had sprung from jealousy?
He knew firsthand what the green-eyed monster could do to a person’s temperament. When he’d first fallen in love with Claire, Parker couldn’t always scrape up the money to buy her time for the evening at Mattie Smith’s brothel, so she’d had to entertain other customers. Mattie had eventually taken pity on the young couple and had allowed them to be together without any money exchanging hands. But up to that point, Parker had spent evenings pacing and cursing and emptying more than his share of bottles of Big Jim Driscoll’s rotgut whiskey.
Of course, he couldn’t imagine that he and Molly would ever have what he had experienced with Claire. And he hadn’t noticed her pacing or cursing or staggering tipsily around the barn when she came for her nightly check. But now that Max had opened his eyes, he could see the signs. Molly, who had for years denied that she could ever be a match for her sisters in attracting a man, had evidently convinced herself that Susannah had won him away from her. Or perhaps she thought that he’d been playing to both sisters at the same time. Whatever the misconception was, he intended to clear it up, if he had to hog-tie her to do it, which might, he reflected with a rueful grin, be a very real possibility.
He’d have to see her alone, which wouldn’t be easy if the past three weeks were any indication. He’d have to create the opportunity, and by the time he’d arrived back at the dark bunkhouse he knew exactly how he was going to do it.
Molly sat as patiently as possible holding up the skein of yarn that Mary Beth was rolling into a ball. It was the third one they’d done and Molly’s arms were beginning to ache, but she didn’t complain. She considered it a kind of penance for how out of sorts she’d been with everyone all day. Parker hadn’t come to Sunday dinner or supper. Smokey had gone out to the bunkhouse to fetch him and had come back to report that he was gone, along with his horse. Molly had had a sudden stab of fear that he had decided to leave without telling them—to head on out to California, in spite of the snow. But Smokey had said that his things were still there and that he was probably just letting off some steam in town like any normal cowpoke on a day off. He didn’t say what they all were thinking—that Parker was hardly any normal cowpoke. And he didn’t speculate on why Parker might have to let off steam after three weeks of frigid treatment from the lady of the house. But Molly had felt her sisters’ reproachful eyes on her. And she had resolved that, while she would never again let the man inside her guard, she would do her best to be civil to him when they all started work again tomorrow.
“That should be enough to make scarves for the entire Seventh Cavalry, Beth,” she told her sister finally, standing and shaking out her skirts.
“It’s enough for tonight,” her sister agreed. “But I’m making a sweater and it takes a lot of yarn.”
“A sweater for who?”
Mary Beth’s hands shook a little as she packed yarn and needles away in her tapestry sewing bag. “I… I haven’t decided yet. I’ve just had a hankering to make a sweater.”
Molly looked sharply at her sister. Was it for Parker? she wondered immediately. Hell’s bells. Were both her sisters besotted with the man? “Fine,” she said wearily. “We’ll wind some more tomorrow night if you need it. But now it’s time to sleep.” She turned toward Smokey, who sat in his usual chair by the fireplace. “Off to bed, Smokey. You’ve been nodding into your beard this past hour or more.”
The old cook stood and yawned. “I’ve been listening to every word.”
“We haven’t been saying anything,” Molly observed.
“Let’s go, Susannah,” Mary Beth said. “Are you coming up, Molly?”
“As soon as I check out in the barn.”
It was a beautiful night. The wintry air seemed to make the starlight sharper and more brilliant. Molly pulled a shawl around her and walked slowly across the yard. Her thoughts were still on Parker’s day-long disappearance. The bunkhouse looked dark and there was no smoke coming up from the little stovepipe chimney. She would be nicer to him tomorrow, she resolved again. It had been wrong for him to kiss her sister, but she had known from the beginning that he was an Eastern charmer, undoubtedly used to regular female conquests. It wasn’t his fault that she’d allowed his kisses to awaken something inside her that she had no business letting into her life.
She pulled open the barn door and went in, taking a deep breath of cold, hay-smelling air. There was something very satisfying about her nightly visits to the barn—the animals tossing their heads in indifferent greeting, the lantern bobbing at her side as she walked, tossing its light around the stalls and wooden beams of the tall ceiling. It was a ritual that made her feel at peace with her world.
“You’re later than usual.”
The voice came from the shadows behind the last stall. Molly jumped, bumping the lantern with her knee and sending it clattering to the ground.
In an instant Parker was by her side, retrieving it. “You’ll set the place on fire,” he chided.
“You scared me out of a year’s growth.”
Parker sent a quick glance along the length of her lean body. “I don’t reckon you’ll miss it any.” She reached her hand for the lantern, but he shook his head and said, “I’ll hold it.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you.” His voice was low with an extra vibration to it that set up one of those flutterings in her middle.
She blinked. In spite of her resol
ution to be nicer to him, the sudden start to her nerves made her voice caustic. “Why?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you.”
The flutters accelerated. “It’s late, Parker. It can wait until morning.”
“No,” he said, taking her elbow. “It can’t.”
He pulled her gently along the row of stalls to the end where the clean hay was piled. He had been waiting for her, she realized at once. His quilts from the bunkhouse were spread out neatly over a patch of hay. She looked at him questioningly.
“Have a seat,” he said with a flourish of the lantern. “It’s a little cold out here, but at least we won’t be interrupted. I would have invited you to the bunkhouse where there’s a stove, but I figured you might refuse to come into the wolf’s own lair. Was I right?”
His eyes on her were intense in the lantern light. His hair curled over the collar of his wool coat. Every inch of her felt the touch of his hand on her arm, but she answered as calmly as possible, “I see no need to talk with you in the bunkhouse or anywhere else—especially not at this time of night. So if you’ll excuse me…”
As she started to pull away, he set the lantern on the ground and said, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
Before she knew what was happening he had lifted her up and laid her down on the blankets. Then he swung himself over her, planting a knee on either side of her, just at her waist. He sat back, his knees keeping most of his weight off her thighs. Their bodies warmed where the shared heat began to build.
“Get off me!” she sputtered, struggling to sit up.
He reached out to her chest with one long arm and held her easily against the ground. “Sorry, boss lady. I can’t do that. Because if I get up, you’ll leave. And you can’t leave until you hear what I have to tell you.” His voice was as calm as if he had been discussing the weather. His hand felt like a branding iron in the middle of her chest.
She gave a huff of surrender. “Talk, then. And make it good, Prescott. Because, I swear, tomorrow I’m turning you off this place. I don’t care if we’re in the middle of the worst blizzard of the decade.”
Parker gave her an infuriating grin. “Well, then, that means we only have tonight to get this settled.”
She glared at him but she stopped squirming, which was a good thing, Parker thought ruefully. He’d never sat on a woman in quite this way. He hadn’t realized it would be so…provocative. They were both fully clothed, but their private parts were nearly touching, as if they were about to make love. The entire lower portion of his anatomy had begun to throb. “Hell,” he said under his breath. He’d come out here to make her listen to his apology, not to seduce her.
“What’s the matter now?” she asked grumpily.
He wondered for an instant if their proximity was doing similar things inside her own body. His experience last summer with Claire had given him a lifetime of knowledge about women. She’d been a prostitute, and she’d taught him a lot about sex and pleasure. But more important, she’d opened herself up to him, shared her feelings and emotions, in a way that he’d never believed possible. Sweet, ethereal Claire. Though they were as different as two humans could be, he had the odd feeling that Claire would have approved of Molly Hanks. She would have applauded her courage. She would have admired her willingness to make her way in a man’s world. In a way, Claire had been forced to do the same thing, and she’d done it with dignity and on her own terms.
He tore his thoughts away from the past. “Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “It’s just a little too cold out here for comfort, so we need to get on with our talk.”
“So, talk.”
“About New Year’s Eve when you thought I was kissing your sister—”
“When you were kissing my sister,” she interrupted. Her small jaw was set and the misery in her eyes resembled Parker’s own those early days with Claire. Max had been right—it was jealousy, and there was nothing that was better at gnawing on your gut from the inside out.
“When I was kissing your sister,” he agreed quietly. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“I’m sure Susannah would be flattered to hear you say that.”
He shifted slightly on her legs. “I imagine Susannah would agree with me.”
Now there was a flare of anger in her blue eyes. “Listen, Parker Prescott, just because we’re three single women living by ourselves doesn’t mean that we’re willing to kiss any man that comes along, like a houseful of joy ladies. If Susannah let you kiss her, it was because she…” She stopped for a minute to swallow. “It was because she’s falling in love with you.”
Parker felt a wave of tenderness. She’d been so tough and so cold for three weeks—why hadn’t he seen that she’d been utterly miserable? Why hadn’t he forced her to speak with him about it the very next day? It would have saved them both a lot of grief. “Susannah’s not falling in love with me,” he said gently. “Susannah’s falling in love with the idea of love. Now that your father’s gone, she’s finally getting a taste of something that is normal and natural for girls your age. Something that most girls discover much younger.”
Molly stopped squirming for a minute as she appeared to give his words some thought. Finally she said with a reluctant touch of humor, “Now you’re calling us old maids.”
“Hardly. But it appears that your father might have been just as happy if you had ended up that way.” He held up a hand as she tried to interrupt. “I’m sure he was a wonderful man, Molly. He certainly raised three great daughters. It’s just hard sometimes for fathers to realize that it’s time for their girls to grow up.”
Hard for brothers, too, he thought, remembering how he had wanted to kill Gabe Hatch when he’d found out he’d slept with Amelia.
Molly’s forehead was knit in thought. “How do you know this about Susannah?”
“By watching her… by hearing her talk, seeing the way she moves. By seeing how she’s blossomed into such an attractive and, yes, flirtatious woman. She’s reaching out for what life has to offer her—especially love.”
“Maybe she’s reaching out for you.”
She seemed to hold a breath as she waited for his answer. He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. I hope not. Because it’s hard for me to even listen to Susannah anymore. I’m too busy trying to keep from mooning after her sister.”
“I haven’t noticed you mooning.” Her smile was faint but unmistakable.
“You haven’t been watching me, then.”
She bit her lip, then said very deliberately, “Yes, tenderfoot, I most assuredly have been watching you.”
She looked up at him as if she had just bet her entire pile of chips on a pair of jacks. Her eyes dared him to believe that her words were some kind of declaration. He reached to touch her hair where it lay spread out in tangled waves. “That makes two of us, boss lady.” His voice had grown husky. “And I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it. But maybe the first thing is to kiss and make up.”
He leaned over her, his hands on either side of her head, and brought his mouth slowly down on hers. He’d meant to be careful, but the instant their lips touched, the chaste caress wasn’t enough. He slid his legs back along hers and gathered her in his arms so that they were lying together, his body pressing her into the soft wool blanket. The ache at his groin made him moan a little as it suddenly seemed that they couldn’t hold each other tightly enough.
He moved his hands to hold her head as his mouth mated with hers, deep and hot, until they were both breathing hard and wanting more. It wasn’t the apology he had intended, he thought between the surges of desire, but he suspected that it would serve the purpose.
She made a sound in the back of her throat and he pulled away, shifting to the side a little to relieve her of his weight. “Are we made up yet?” he asked, nudging the soft skin of her neck with his nose.
She gave a short, throaty laugh. “You’re a hard man to stay angry with, tenderfoot.”
He was hard, peri
od, he thought to himself, moving uncomfortably, but he had no intention of doing anything about it. He hadn’t come out here for a quick tumble in the hay with no thought to the consequences. Molly deserved much more than that, and, however much he wanted her, he wasn’t convinced that he was the man to give her what she needed.
He kissed her lightly. “That’s all I wanted to hear. So we’re made up? You won’t be turning me off the place tomorrow with that .50 caliber Sharps of yours?”
Her cheeks turned pink in the lantern light and she shook her head. “I reckon I never had any intention of doing that. I need you here, Parker.”
The statement was made with her typical directness, but Parker was quite sure that it was not a sentiment she had expressed often in her life. He kissed her forehead, then the bridge of her nose. “Well, you’ve got me,” he told her tenderly. Then he let his head fall back on the blanket and settled her more firmly in his arms. Even under her bulky clothing, he could feel her slender shape mold to his as she nestled contentedly.
They lay peacefully without talking for several minutes. Then Parker felt Molly’s slender hand on his cheek, turning his head toward her. He smiled at her, but didn’t move.
“Parker?” she said, her voice uncharacteristically shy.
“What is it?”
She leaned near him and spoke so low he could hardly hear. “Let’s make up some more.”
It took him just a minute to assimilate the words, then he rolled toward her and sought her mouth. “My pleasure, boss lady,” he whispered back.
Chapter Thirteen
The traditional February thaw came early and lasted through the month. It was as if the weather had decided to emulate the benevolent mood that reigned at the Lucky Stars these days. Molly felt it all around her. Smokey whistled more often as he cooked supper each evening, and he’d taken to riding into town twice a week to spend the evening with Max. Mary Beth was her usual quiet self, but there was often a smile on her lips, and she whizzed through her chores without a word of complaint. Molly herself had moments of feeling as giddy as a schoolgirl. Since her meeting in the barn with Parker, he’d started to act like an honest-to-goodness suitor, opening up doors for her and complimenting her one day on her hair and the next on the tidy way she’d whiplashed a broken hayrack. Twice he’d gone to town and come back with a paper of candy—just for her.
