by Sarah Hegger
“I’m sure Jake is looking for you.” He winced as she caught the edges of his wound together. “But I knew what I was taking on when I agreed to help you.”
She should have spoken to him that morning. As she pushed the needle through his flesh, she winced. “I came to your room that morning to tell you I was going, but you were busy.”
“Busy?” He grunted and gripped the chairback until his knuckles whitened.
“I heard a woman in your room, and I didn’t want to intrude.”
Cole cocked his head. “Woman?” And then he nodded. “That must have been Bridget.”
Pure, green jealousy gripped her, and Ellie took the next few stitches with it heating her blood. “I see.”
Cole snorted. “I can tell by that tone that you don’t see.”
“Then tell me.” She eased up on the last stitch, snipped off the thread and went to work on the second wound. Neat stitches now held one wound together and she took a moment to admire her work.
“I won Bridget in a poker game.” He yelled as she jabbed the needle a tad too hard.
“What?” Ellie glared at the back of his head.
“Jesus, Ellie, take it easy back there. It wasn’t my idea.” He took a deep breath. “I kind of ended up being responsible for her.” He tensed. “But not in the way you’re thinking. I haven’t touched her, and neither will I.”
Ellie found that hard to believe. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, she is.” Cole chuckled. “And in a couple of days, you’ll understand exactly why I’ll never touch her.”
Ellie finished the last wound in silence. She cleaned away any additional blood and smeared more liniment over the sewn wounds. In the doctoring trunk, she found some cloth and tore it into strips.
“Lift your arms.” She nudged Cole’s arm up and he complied. Getting him all wrapped up meant putting her arms all the way round him and getting close enough to Cole to feel the heat of his skin. Trying to keep her mind on the job, she wrapped the bandages all the way around his middle. Moving to his front, she tied the ends of the bandages and snipped off the excess. Not a bad job, all things considered.
Cole dropped his arms and caged her to him. “Ellie?”
“Yeah.”
He searched her face. “Are you really okay? Nothing…terrible…happened to you?”
“No.” And then she caught his full meaning. “No. Nothing like that. Pa’s good with abduction, but he don’t hold with forcing a woman.”
Cole let out a breath. “Okay. I still want to kill him, but a bit less now.”
His strange whisky colored eyes gleamed at her. Eyes that Ellie had doubted she’d see again. Without thinking any further, she rolled to her toes and kissed him. A gentle touch of her lips to his, an affirmation of them both here and alive.
Cole made a soft sound of approval and his arms tightened around her. He brought his mouth back to hers for a longer press of their lips.
Relief, joy, longing, fear and about two hundred other emotions coming and going so fast she couldn’t name them roared through Ellie, and she deepened the kiss.
Cole opened his mouth over hers and touched his tongue to her bottom lip.
Opening for him, Ellie abandoned herself to the taste and feel of him. She’d made up her mind she would never see him again, let alone touch and kiss him. Giving in to the craving for him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with everything she had.
Cole winced and broke the kiss. “Sugar, your timing is truly horrible.”
His timing needed some work as well. He had no business kissing Ellie and letting her get ideas. Cole let her help him into a shirt of Isaac’s.
Holding his shirt up, she winced. “I can see what I can do, but I don’t think I can get those blood stains out.”
“Not to worry.” Isaac’s shirt was soft from frequent washing and smelled of sun and earth. “I didn’t even know you could wash shirts.”
“Anyone can wash a shirt.” She snorted and laughed. “When he was still alive, I used to wash for Pa and the boys.”
And her pecker-head brothers had repaid her by trying to sell her virginity to the highest bidder, which was another reason his timing was off.
As tempted as he was, Ellie was not for him. He needed to get her back to Denver and set her up in a business of her own. At first, he’d thought to help her open a brothel, but now he’d make sure she didn’t.
Ellie put a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t suppose you brought clean clothes.”
“Actually, I did.” He eased back to his feet. His back felt stiff and bruised and he thanked God Pa had not gotten a better angle on his knife thrust. “I left our horses about a mile down the mountain.”
“I’ll send Isaac to pick them up.” She took a lump of sickly white dough out of a covered basin and slapped it on the table.
“I brought your carpetbag as well.”
She looked up and blinked at him and for a horrible second, he thought she would cry. “You did?”
“Of course I did.” And he felt ridiculously proud of himself for toting a bag. “I wouldn’t leave it behind.”
“Did it cost you money to get it?” Her face creased into a worried frown. “You need to let me know how much it set you back, and also for the hotels and trains and horses.” She sighed and looked at him with those big, big eyes. “I’m sorry, Cole. I never meant to cause you so much trouble.”
“I’m glad you did.” And he meant it. As a last trip out west, this one was perfect. He could have done without the two holes in his back, but this adventure had him feeling alive again, like he had all those years ago when he’d first stumbled off the stage in Montana City with a gut load of bitter regret and a pack of cards.
Back then he’d been fighting to survive, learning as he went. This adventure with Ellie felt the same. It would be the perfect memory for when he was back in New York, maybe settled next to the fire with Victoria.
Which brought him to reason three, and the clincher, for why he shouldn’t be kissing Ellie. His heart was not available and hadn’t been since he’d left New York under a massive cloud all those years ago. He’d been engaged to Victoria and counting the days to marrying her. Of course she’d broken the engagement after his father had thrown him out, and he really couldn’t blame her, but in his heart, he was still engaged.
Ellie pounded her dough into the table. “I’m so glad you brought my clothes, to be honest.” She grinned at him. “It’s a bit drafty on the days I wash my drawers.”
Cole laughed but it sounded strained because it was. His imagination and flown under Ellie’s skirts, hoping to find this a drafty day. That also needed to stop. He liked Ellie too much to trifle with her.
Away from the Four Kings, she looked different too. Without powder and paint and her hair in a simple braid down her back, she looked like the innocent she was. He’d liked Sugar Ellie in the Four Kings just fine, but he liked this version of her too.
“Ellie? Cole?” Bridget knocked on the door.
Ellie went and opened it. “Come in.”
“Hello, Ellie.” Bridget beamed at her. “I’m awful glad we found you.”
Ellie smiled back, and beautiful as Bridget was, it was Ellie’s smile that held the magic for him. “I’m awful glad you found me too.”
Hat brim clenched in his hands, Isaac stood behind Bridget and cleared his throat. “How’s your…um…back?”
“Ellie fixed me right up.” Cole resisted the urge to mess with him.
“Isaac says he can help me bring the horses from down the hill,” Bridget said.
Isaac stared at Bridget as if afraid she would vanish if he took his eyes off her. Cole sure hoped Ellie hadn’t formed any sort of attachment to Isaac because it looked like she’d lost her swain.
Ellie smiled at them. “I was about to come and ask you about that.”
“I can show you the way.” Bridget smil
ed up at Isaac.
Isaac grinned back. “Okay.”
And they stood there, grinning and staring.
“Now would be a good time,” Ellie said, but laughter lurked in her eyes. After the door shut behind them, she turned to him. “Does that happen often with her?”
“Oh, yeah.” He had to laugh.
Her expression turned wistful. “She’s very lovely.”
“That she is.” Cole flexed his arm to see how much movement he had. “It wears off fast.”
“I don’t see how.” Ellie punched her dough.
Cole would let her find out for herself. Like their guide who had abandoned them after their first day, swearing he’d shoot her if he had to hear her say one more thing. They would have been here earlier if he hadn’t abandoned them with some questionable instructions.
“Ellie.” He stood on the other side of the table. “When we get you to Denver, what would you like to do?”
“Do?” She tilted her head. “I can tell you what I don’t want to do.”
She was so emphatic it made him smile. “Run a cathouse?”
“You got it.” Then she sighed and put her dough back in the basin. “I miss my girls, though. I worry about them. Minnie and Jake see them only for the money they can make. They’re people, though, and they need caring for more than most.” She covered the basin with a cloth. “I don’t miss their fights, however. It’s high noon any time of the day in a cathouse.”
She put the dough on a shelf above the stove. Even in her worn and dirty dress, she made that movement elegant and graceful. Maybe in a different world she could have been a dancer or an actress.
“You have the chance to start again.” He eased his leg back over the chair and straddled it. “This is your new beginning.”
The smile she gave him was like sun on a cloudy day. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Yeah?” He’d pay good money to keep that look on her face.
“I want to open a dress shop,” she said. “Not for rich women, there are enough of those, but for girls like me and Bridget. Ordinary women who would like something nice to wear.”
That surprised him. “You know how to make dresses.”
“I do.” She laughed and pointed at him. “You don’t believe me but who do you think made all the dresses in the Four Kings.”
Cole shrugged. “I never gave it much thought.”
“Nobody did.” She shrugged. “Pearl used to help me, but I loved doing it. Dreaming them up and planning how to sew them. What fabrics to use to keep the cost down.” Dropping her head, she looked endearingly young and vulnerable. “I’d like to do that again. And Sugar Ellie is going to disappear forever, and in her place will be the respectable Widow Pierce.”
Cole had to laugh. She had gumption. A whore to a widow and all without once having man in her bed.
Chapter Seventeen
Cole didn’t care how much his back hurt, he was leaving and taking Bridget and Ellie with him. Pete, all things considered, wasn’t a bad sort, and Cole rather liked Isaac. In his early days he’d shot men like Pete for doing a whole helluva lot less, but with age came the sort of maturity that meant you didn’t need to leave the undertaker with a new client every time someone crossed you.
Pigeon Pete, or plain old Pete as he insisted on being called—and who could blame him—gave up Ellie without a fight. Bridget was another matter altogether.
They were both outside, Cole perched on a log, still feeling beat up and laid to waste.
“My boy’s powerful taken with her.” Pete tested his axe edge with his thumb. “And seeing as you’re all set on taking his first bride away, stands to reason you leave the other one here.”
Behind Pete’s back, Ellie hung washing on a makeshift line Isaac had tied between two trees. Over his shirt, she stared at him and shook her head. In the couple of days they’d been there, Ellie had gotten to know Bridget better, and was dead set against her being left behind. Bridget, according to Ellie, didn’t always know her own mind, and tended to make impulsive decisions. Ellie didn’t want one more man taking advantage of Bridget. For good reason, Ellie did not trust Pete further than she could toss him.
It wasn’t like Cole intended to leave Bridget behind, but he hadn’t given it that much thought. Bridget did seem happy with the cabin, and Isaac was about as smitten as a man could get. Then again, Bridget had giggled and followed him out of that saloon she’d being working in without asking a single question, and Isaac was a young man in dire need of a woman.
“Can’t do that.” Cole shook his head. “Bridget is my niece, and my sister would never forgive me for leaving her behind.”
Pete snorted. Not a total believer in their familial connection. “Woulda thought you’d like her off your hands. Another mouth to feed and all.”
“Now, Pete.” Cole rolled a double eagle over his knuckles. Pete had his axe, but money trumped blade every time. “Look at the girl. It’s not going to be difficult to find someone to take her off my hands.”
“Until she opens her mouth.” Pete snorted, but his gaze stayed on the double eagle. “I never did hear something talk quite that much, and about nothing and all.”
Pete had a point, so Cole offered him something he might want more than a wife for Isaac. “How about a mule?”
Ellie shot Cole a startled glance.
“A mule is even more use than a woman.” Cole added some extra incentive for Pete.
The glance Ellie shot him that time could see him buried six feet under. She snapped a pair of pants and Cole feared for his neck. For a tiny thing, she had some power packed into that arm.
At the mention of mules, a crafty look slid over Pete’s face. “But you got two women.” He propped a log and split it in two. “Don’t see how’s that’s fair.”
“Mule works twice as hard as a woman.” Cole didn’t have the balls to see how Ellie took that one. “Mule’s at least twice as strong as well.”
Pete sneered. “But I got both women here, and you don’t got no mule.”
“I’ve got money for a mule.” Cole didn’t like to threaten, but his back hurt like hell and he didn’t want to drag negotiations out. “And I’m leaving here with Ellie and Bridget. Only thing you get to decide is if you’re going to stand in my way or not.”
“You threatenin’ me, Whiskey?”
Good, Pete had heard of him. “Do I need to?”
Pete scratched his beard, and Cole didn’t want to think what he had stashed away in all those whiskers. “You give me enough to buy me four mules, and we part as friends.”
“Enough for two mules, and your son gets to keep his knees.”
Anger and fear flashed through Pete’s eyes. “Three mules, and I don’t bash your brains in.”
“Two mules, and I don’t gut shoot you and then your boy.”
Clean laundry hanging limp in her hand, Ellie gaped at him. But Cole knew a bully when he saw one, and he’d handled tougher customers and better bluffers than Pigeon Pete.
“I’m gonna have to stick on three.” Pete went mining in his beard again with his dirty, cracked fingernails. He propped another log for splitting.
“I could decrease the offer to one mule.” Cole snapped his fingers. “Or better yet, none, considering you abducted one woman, stabbed me in the back and are threatening to try to keep us here.”
“Nobody’s stopping you from going.” Pete huffed but he was folding and they both knew it. “Alls I want is them gals. My boy got a hankering for the pretty one. Got me thinking I might like to keep the little ’un. She’s mighty handy to have around.”
Ellie squeaked and went back to her laundry, furiously pegging things to her line.
“Now we both know two things, Pete.” Cole eased to his feet and stretched the sore muscles of his back. “Ellie isn’t my sister, and I sure as hell didn’t come all this way to leave without her.”
“Ha!” Pete jabbed a finger at him. “I knew she weren’t no sister of yorn. Don’t
look nothing like each other.”
“Ellie is my woman.” A primal surge shot through him as he spoke. Cole tucked it in his sack of crap he didn’t want to think about now. “And I’m leaving with her. Bridget is…my responsibility, and I’m leaving with her too. That’s the way my woman wants it, and that’s how it’s gonna be. You getting this, Pete?”
Pete growled and kicked at the splitting stump. “All right, two mules but it ain’t right.”
Cole handed him half the money. “You get the rest tomorrow.”
“Why not now?” Pete glared at him.
“Because I don’t trust you.” Cole made his way back to the cabin. His injuries slowed his pace. It was going to be hell sitting a horse with his back, but he’d done worse. He had once ridden two days with a bullet in his thigh from a sore loser with bad aim.
“Your woman, am I?” Ellie fell into step with him.
He barely stopped his grin in time. “Yup.”
“Well, then it’s only right I tell you that your woman might not be able to work as hard as a mule, but she sure as shit can kick your ass even harder.”
Two days later, he and Bridget and Ellie were packed and their horses waiting. When they’d come looking for Ellie, he’d had the foresight to bring a horse for Ellie.
The same Ellie who had stubbornly—like a mule—insisted he rest his back two more days before he traveled. Ellie packed a ton of determination in that tiny frame.
Pete, once their price was agreed, turned into an almost congenial host. It didn’t cost him any trouble with Ellie and Bridget doing the work. If Ellie’s domestic skills had surprised him, Bridget was a revelation. She took to it right away, happy to let Ellie teach her everything she knew.
They learned over those two days that Bridget’s mother had died when she was little, and her father had sold her to a brothel when she was thirteen. There were some men in this world Cole would like to rip apart with his bare hands. Jake was one of them, and Bridget’s father ran a close second place. Men like that didn’t deserve the women entrusted to their care, and Cole didn’t believe they deserved to use up any more space and air.
