MARRIAGE, OUTLAW STYLE

by Cindy Gerard

  Brows furrowed, she picked up the rusted skeleton key, studied it by the sunlight pouring in through the loft's cathedral window. She eased up on an elbow, looked from the key to the book. Picked up the book again. Slowly she opened it and discovered that the pages in the center had been cut out in exactly the shape of the key.

  She touched the key again, her curiosity momentarily overshadowing her dark mood. Why would someone hide this key in this book? What did the key open?

  It was in the midst of those tumbling questions that a story that Emma had told her came back with a rush and a little tingle of excitement.

  A few minutes later she burst out the cabin door. The sun was welcome and high. The skies had cleared to a bachelor-button blue that showcased whipped cream clouds and the jagged mountain peaks.

  With the key tucked securely in her pocket and her head full of a need to concentrate on something other than her stupid, pathetic heart, she headed for the river.

  * * *

  Love, Clay concluded after walking around for the better part of an hour, was for fools. That would explain, he admitted grimly, why he'd fall into it armpit deep.

  As he headed back toward the cabin, he came to another conclusion. When love was one-sided, it was also for losers. Since he never played to lose and since there was no winning in this particular game, he made another decision. If he could fall in love with Maddie Brannigan, he could, by God, fall out of it.

  The sooner, the better. As hard as it was to admit, he didn't think he could live with this aching sense of loss for very long.

  Starting now, he was getting over her. Starting now, his heart wouldn't feel like it was being squeezed by a punishing fist at just the sight of her. Yet when he rounded the back of the cabin, saw her limping down the cabin steps, and felt that squeeze as acutely as a physical touch, he accepted that getting over her might not be quite as simple as he wanted it to be.

  He stopped where he stood, partially hidden by the cover of the forest, watching her, aching for her, and wondered what the hell the fool woman was up to now.

  When she made a beeline for the river, he scratched his head, frowned and then stalked after her—not because he couldn't stay away from her. He could have done that if he'd wanted to. He could have just watched her walk away, not moved at all by the way the sunlight glanced off her springy curls. Not affected in the least by her comical little gait as she limped along favoring her knee.

  And he didn't stall a twinge of sympathy for her poor bruised knee. What he did manage was to curse her wardrobe and wonder why there couldn't ever be any middle ground with her. Either she wore those ugly, baggy sweaters and long, flowing skirts that hid her sweet, delectable figure, or her tidy little butt was encased in short shorts or snug jeans that showcased every sassy curve.

  Like now. Hers isn't the only sexy behind in Jackson Hole, he assured himself grumpily as he kept on her trail and willed himself not to think about peeling those damn jeans off her and dragging her back to the cabin and to bed.

  He told himself he could turn around and head back anytime he chose to. He promised himself that the only reason he was following her was because he was curious about what she was up to.

  By the time she reached the river and it became apparent she wasn't going to slow down as she followed its snaking path north, he didn't have to work so hard on the convincing part. By now be really was curious—and a little concerned. The woman tempted trouble wherever she went, and he sure as the world wasn't up for another rescue from the edge of a cliff.

  Enough was enough. He trotted to catch up with her. "Maddie!"

  His yell startled her into stopping.

  She spun around, her black eyes wide, her hand pressed to her heart.

  Her shoulders sagged in relief when she saw it was him. Her voice, when she found it, sounded breathless and airy. "You scared the begezes out of me."

  "What the hell are you up to?" he demanded brusquely when he reached her side.

  Her chin lifted. "Treasure hunting."

  He scowled, tilted his head, and when comprehension dawned, worked really hard on a condescending snort. "So you found out about the gold, did you?"

  "Yeah," she said, and started marching again. "I found out about the gold."

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  Maddie couldn't do it. She couldn't stand there beside him, his blue eyes boring into hers, his big body just inches away, and not hurt from wanting to touch him.

  She couldn't stop the hurt but she could do her damnedest to keep him from seeing it. Head down, determined to concentrate on her mission, she started walking again. "Emma told me about it."

  It didn't surprise her when he fell into step beside her. She just wished it didn't kick her heart into the Wyoming equivalent of a Texas two-step.

  "And what, exactly, did she tell you?"

  He wasn't going away. Deal with it, she told herself and kept right on walking. "Word for word or just the outline?"

  "Oh, by all means, let's hear the whole story—see how much it's grown in the telling."

  She had no doubt he knew the story inside out, upside down and backward. But because it was easier to talk than endure the memories the silence courted, she obliged him.

  "According to Emma, who got her information from Garrett, your ancestors, Frank and Jesse James, hid out in this valley after they'd robbed a train in Arkansas and made off with a fortune in gold. They'd settled here, at this bend of the Wind River, thinking they were safe, when a posse tracked them down several months later. Taken by surprise, they lit out in a hurry and left their loot behind. Right so far?"

  He tucked his hands in his hip pockets and kept pace beside her. "As right as a tall tale can be."

  His comment surprised her. "You mean you don't believe the story?"

  He shrugged. "As a kid I believed every word. Dad used to love to tell it and speculate about where the gold was hidden. I suspect, though, that what he was really doing was getting us boys out of his hair for a while—sending us on a wild-goose chase so he could spend some quiet time with Mom."

  He paused, smiled, remembering. "It worked, too. We used to spend hours combing the valley, the foothills, the riverbanks."

  "But never finding," she concluded, remembering him as a boy, tall and gangly back then, his quick grin reckless and ornery.

  "You can't find what's not there."

  "Are you forgetting the gold coin Emma and Garrett found in the river this summer?"

  Clay had almost forgotten about that. And while he discounted the tale of the chestful of gold as folklore, in truth, he did find it more than coincidental that they'd found the old coin in this very area—in fact, in the very bend of the river they'd just reached.

  "A lot of settlers crossed the river here," he said, willing to explain it away. "Could have dropped out of any number of pockets."

  "Just like the old gun handle and the rusted hinge that could have come from a lock box?" she added referring to the boxful of "treasures" the brothers had found as boys and had pinned their hopes on.

  "Just like," he said, disputing the challenge in her voice.

  "So what you're saying," she said slowly, speculatively, "is that Clay James, the boy, was a dreamer but that Clay James the man is a skeptic."

  He rolled his shoulders. Squinted into the warmth of the sun. He'd sure been dreaming when he'd hoped her feelings for him ran as deep as his did for her. She'd given him more than enough reason to be a skeptic.

  "The man is a realist," he said finally. "Hidden treasure, Spider-Man and mermaids were a part of my misspent youth," he finished with a smile meant to convince them both that he had no emotional investment in the gold or in her.

  "Well, I hope I never become that cynical," she stated resolutely. "Or that skeptical."

  Or that grounded, he added silently, and tried to count himself lucky again. Everything she'd said so far fit his perception of her. She was a dreamer. It went with her artis
t's soul. And it was just one more reason why he was better off without this little gypsy messing up his neat and tidy life.

  "What about the shell casing?" she continued, unwilling to give it up. "The one with the note inside?"

  Explain that, her raised chin and determined look seemed to say. Evidently Emma had been thorough in relating the details.

  Again he had to admit that the shell, too, was a puzzle. During Garrett and Emma's stay at the cabin this past summer, Emma had noticed an old tintype of Frank James that had been passed down generation after generation. In the picture Frank wore a leather thong around his neck. Attached to the thong was a spent shell casing. The casing looked similar to one that the boys had found years ago and kept in their special cache of mementos along with the gun handle and rusted binge.

  When Garrett and Emma had hunted up that shell and cracked it open, they'd found a tiny roll of brittle paper inside. On the paper were letters that Emma was certain were clues to the location of the gold.

  "Can't explain that away, can you?" Maddie said, nudging him back to the moment.

  Again he shrugged. "I opt for Garrett's theory. The letters could have been anything from a grocery list to an address. Or they could have been of no significance at all. And it's a real stretch to assume it was the same shell Frank wore around his neck."

  "You have no sense of adventure," she insisted gravely. "And for whatever reasons, you're looking past the obvious."

  He would liked to enjoy the look on her face. The way she was warming to the challenge of proving him wrong, playing out the fantasy, building on her beliefs. But that would have been indulging. He couldn't afford to indulge. Not in her.

  "I think Emma's explanation fits perfectly. The letters, though old and faded, clearly said 'WISKY ROC.' Whisky Rock," she restated emphatically when he didn't say anything. "Just like that rock over there."

  His gaze followed hers to the bank of the river and the boulder that had held so much significance to Emma and now, apparently, to Maddie, too.

  The rock was big and brown and without employing too much imagination, it did resemble a whisky bottle lying on its side.

  "Emma was right," she continued. "The note and that rock are tied to the gold."

  "The only thing significant about that rock is that all three of us boys carved our initials on its side." He walked over to the boulder, ran a fingertip along the artless C.J. scratched between Garrett's and Jesse's initials.

  "And I suppose there's no meaning to this, either?" More than a trace of smugness colored her tone when she produced a rusty key and held it out for him to inspect

  He frowned and, careful not to touch her, lifted the key from her palm. He turned it to the sunlight. "Where'd you come up with this?"

  When she told him, he rubbed his chin, sniffed. "What's the matter, Clayton? This little turn got you stumped?"

  "Puzzled," he admitted. "You say it was an old volume on the James Gang?"

  She rattled off the date on the author's note and then added the clincher. "By my calculations the book was printed just before Frank and Jesse's last big robbery. The one where they stole that gold shipment."

  "And you've decided that book belonged to Frank or Jesse?"

  "More than one infamous character has collected scrap-books or memorabilia about their lives."

  He still wasn't buying it. "It still wouldn't explain why it turned up here. Or what that key opens."

  "I can't explain how the book ended up in your cabin, either," she admitted. "That part's got me stumped. But I'd bet my mother's pearls that it opens a strongbox full of gold."

  He snorted and settled a hip on the part of the rock that looked like the bottle's neck. "You don't lack for imagination, I'll give you that."

  When she didn't reply with a smart, snippy remark, he finally granted himself license to indulge in one thing he'd been trying to avoid. He looked at her. At her wild curls, her sensual mouth, those sultry, brown eyes—and the look of discovery bursting over her face like a sunrise.

  "What?" He stood slowly, reacting to her sudden, building excitement. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

  "No ghost." Her voice was breathless with anticipation. "But maybe a ticket to the gold. Look." She pointed to the boulder.

  He didn't see anything and said as much.

  "No, no. Really look," she insisted when he wrinkled up his brow and scowled. "The rock. Whisky Rock. There's more than your initials carved in the stone. Here. And here," she cried, outlining a fainter, paler etching directly underneath the ones they had made as boys.

  "You probably never noticed it because all you saw was your initials. Can you see it now? There's a five and a zero. And here, see it? It's an S. Fifty S," she concluded breathlessly and got down on her knees to trace the remaining scratches with her fingers.

  Clay couldn't do anything but watch her, captivated by her excitement and her energy and at the same time dubious of her supposed discovery.

  "Thirty E," she announced, deciphering a second set of scratchings and quickly moved on to the last. "Fifteen S." Her brow pinched in thought and then decision. "Fifty S, Thirty E, Fifteen S. Oh, my God. Directions. Clay—they carved directions in the boulder! Directions to where they hid the gold. Fifty S is fifty paces south, Thirty E is thirty paces east, Fifteen S, fifteen paces south again."

  She scrambled to her feet. "It's a map. Frank and Jesse left a map so that when they came back here, they could remember where they hid the gold. Only they never made it back.

  "But we did," she cried, her dark eyes flashing as she literally bounced in place, all energy and expectation. Like she looked when they made love, he thought as a shaft of desire speared through him.

  "All we have to do is follow them, find the gold and take it home.

  "Why are you just standing there?" she demanded with an impatient flap of her hands. "Why aren't you excited?"

  He was excited all right. Only it wasn't for the same reasons she was all riled up. She excited him. The childlike way she embraced her wild-hare conclusions. The womanly way she filled out her shirt and jeans. And woven through it all was the memory of her beneath him, surrounding him, sighing for him, only him, when she shattered like glass in his arms.

  The wanting to take her here, again, in the sunlight, with the mountains as witness and the sky as silent counsel, had him stuffing his fists in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. He'd fought stronger urges in his life. Surely he had. Right now he couldn't remember when—and he'd never staged a battle this important with so little heart in it. Just like he'd never won a fight that held such a small sense of victory.

  "Why aren't you excited?" she repeated, demanding he join in on the action and the adventure.

  He shook his head to clear it of thoughts of her. "Because you've put three and three together and come up with a whopping one hundred, that's why," he said with as much calm in his voice as he could level. "Because a musty old piece of paper tucked, in a shell casing and a few scratches on a boulder don't a treasure map make."

  An adamant shake of her head told him she wasn't going to let him douse her fire. "Well, Mr. 'Mired in Absolutes,' who's to say I'm any more wrong than you are right? Who's to say three and three doesn't add up to one hundred in this case? Or one thousand? Or a hundred thousand?

  "Are you afraid, Clayton?" she asked after a moment. "Are you afraid to take a chance? To have a little fun? To color outside the lines for just once in your life and see if maybe, just maybe there really might be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow?"

  He tightened his lips into a grim, hard line and when he couldn't hold it in the face of her feisty little challenge, he let a crooked grin take over. "Why, if I didn't know better, Matilda, I'd swear you just issued a dare."

  "You're darn right I did. There's a chest of gold out there somewhere, and I'm of a solid mind to find it. Are you with me or do I go it alone?"

  Because he was slowly coming to realize he'd have a hard time denying her a
nything and because the prospect of her sassy stubborn self traipsing around the valley alone threatened a major heart attack, he gave her the only answer he could.

  "Oh, I'm with you, hotshot I wouldn't have it any other way."

  * * *

  "We found it. Oh. My. God. We actually found it."

  Maddie's voice was barely a whisper as, she and Clay gazed at the aged, locked strongbox they'd just unearthed from beneath a pile of rocks.

  They knelt side by side on the damp, dank, dirt floor of a cave they'd discovered less than fifteen minutes ago. The entrance had been all but obscured by dense undergrowth and carefully positioned boulders.

  It was the afternoon of the sixth day—a grueling twenty-four hours after Maddie had deciphered the etchings on Whisky Rock. Several false starts and dead ends had left Maddie with a sprained ankle to go with her bruised knee and another scratch on her cheek to go with her black-and-blue temple.

  Clay hadn't fared much better. Thanks to Maddie's elbow accidentally connecting with his eye when he'd caught her in a near fall, a beefsteak the size of Texas couldn't have helped his shiner. His right eye was practically swollen shut to the complement of black, blue, purple and a hit of murky green.

  At the moment neither of them were conscious of their cuts and contusions as they stared in stunned awe at their find.

  While they'd been in agreement that Whisky Rock was their starting place, it was Clay who had finally concluded that they needed to mark their pace from the bottom of the bottle, not the top. And now it was Clay, who'd merely been humoring her, who ate a little humble pie.

  "We didn't do it," he said generously. "You did. I was only tagging along to make sure you didn't get yourself killed."

  "It doesn't matter," she insisted as she latched on to one of the strongbox's handles and tugged. "Let's get it out into the light and get it open."

  It was no easy feat. The box was approximately two feet long and a foot high and deep. And it weighed a small ton. When they finally managed to drag it out of the cave, Maddie plopped down tiredly on her rump and just marveled at it.