Outlaw Moon

by Charlotte Hubbard

  Her body molded to his, eager and soft and so enticingly warm that he clung to her like a man about to drown. Amber felt like molten silk. She came alive beneath his inquisitive fingers, moaning with a keen desperation that matched his own as she rubbed against him. Jack reminded himself that this was a night to bank his fire and savor the woman in his arms for as long as he could stay awake, yet he knew their coming together would cause immediate combustion. Of course, with a little luck, their first coupling would be a prelude to an infinitely slower, sweeter—

  They froze and sucked in their breath.

  Olga was ascending the stairs, her weight causing the warped wood’s anguished cries to echo throughout the house. It was almost funny to be so self-conscious of the suggestive noises they themselves were making, yet it occurred to both of them that the couple down the short hallway would hear every shifting of their bodies . . . every stifled gasp and rhythmic thrust.

  Holding their breath, they followed each heavy footstep toward Karl’s room. Jack could feel his woman shaking with the giggle she was holding inside—a giggle that made her quake like an aspen when they heard the old goat’s mutterings.

  “Get in here and spread your legs, dammit . . . beats all we gotta have company dammit before you sleep with me ... saw you watching that black-haired outlaw, and dammit he ain’t gettin’ no part of. ...”

  Rafferty swore. “We’re in Olga’s bed. Had I known—”

  “How the hell did he see her watching you, unless . . . ?”

  Like balloons with slow leaks, they sank against each other. Somebody squealed like a stuck pig. Moments later there came the slapping of flesh against flesh, and more guttural noises that Rafferty didn’t care to identify. “Jesus,” he mumbled, “I’ve been in brothels where the sounds had a way of encouraging a man, but this.

  “Let’s ignore it,” Amber whispered. “They can’t keep going forever, and after they fall asleep, we can . . .”

  But an amazing length of time passed, producing squawks and obscene exclamations that made them cringe, all thoughts of their own passion lost. When Karl called out a particularly lewd announcement about where and how he was going to stick it, Rafferty felt Amber shudder against him and he pulled her closer beneath the covers.

  “Never thought I’d be disgusted by a man venting his . . . well, it’s obvious the old bugger’s doing this for our benefit,” he said as he absently kissed her hair. “I—I’m sorry. I was so ready to make love, and now—”

  “Never mind. Talk to me, Jack,” she said quietly. “Sure as hell can’t sleep with all that racket, and I really don’t want to hear what’s going on over there.”

  Rafferty settled deeper into the sagging center of the mattress, desperately wishing for satisfaction yet knowing neither of them could recapture their tender yearnings. What could he talk about? It hardly seemed the time to discuss spelling and phonetics, and second-guessing about the odd goings-on at this dilapidated farm would only upset Amber until she’d get no rest at all. Jack thought perhaps—

  “Tell me about your mother, your family. Tell me how you decided to study the law, when livestock’s your natural passion.”

  “Ah. Good idea.”

  He stroked the long, rough waves that fell around her shoulders, wondering where to begin. His story was straightforward enough, until these past several months ... yet the gentle fingers caressing his chest reminded him that Amber would intuitively understand him as no one else could. “Well, I think I mentioned that my four younger brothers didn’t survive. It was cholera. They dropped like dominoes, despite Ma’s best efforts, all within a week of each other. The baby was only six months old, so it’s a wonder Ma herself didn’t succumb.”

  “Oh my God.” Amber clung to him in her sadness, unable to imagine the poor woman’s grief. “How old were you?”

  “Not quite eight. Always wondered, even at that age, why I was spared,” he continued in a faraway voice. “We lived on a farm, and as Pa watched all his future hands being lowered into the ground in pine boxes, he lost all interest in working the place he’d intended to pass along to us. So we moved to town. He took a job in a shoe factory, on the north side of Kansas City.”

  She heard the tightening of his voice, even after all these years, and wondered how far she could go without treading on painful territory. “I...I take it he wasn’t happy there.”

  “He wouldn’t have been satisfied no matter where he transplanted himself. Ma was so numb she could only go through the motions for a while. Until she realized I was doing quite well at my new school.”

  Jack paused to let Olga finish an outburst of impassioned vulgarities before he went on. Even in the darkness, he knew Amber was hanging on every word, wanting to know about him and his past—wanting him to trust her with it. “Naturally, they had all their hopes pinned on me, and when Pa learned of an opening in the factory attorney’s office, for a clerk and a messenger, I was on my way to studying the law.”

  She cleared her throat quietly. “Is that what you’d dreamed of doing?”

  “At ten, I could only see the light and pride in their eyes when Mr. Ellerby commended my good work,” he replied with a wistful sigh. “I so wanted to please them. And from that point on, they stashed away every spare penny to send me to law school ... I was working my way into being Ellerby’s partner and heir apparent by then, and I didn’t consider any other course. I owed them—all three of them—for the success I couldn’t possibly have attained had I remained in the country.”

  It was food for thought, to consider how her own life might’ve been different had her benefactor acted as generously as Mr. Ellerby . . . had she been born a son, to a man who’d sired only daughters. But Amber was too fascinated by Rafferty’s story to dwell on her own. “So you graduated, and became Ellerby’s partner?”

  “Yeah. And Matthew wasn’t so old but what practicing in the West sounded more exciting than tending to shoe factory business, and drawing up divorces between bored wives and their philandering millionaire husbands.”

  “So he opened an office in Dodge?”

  Jack had to smile. Amber hadn’t forgotten a single thing he’d ever told her. “I went on ahead, to establish a practice while Ellerby found a trustworthy colleague to assume his Kansas City clientele.”

  Amber thought back for a moment, scowling in the darkness. “If he was there with you when you supposedly murdered that whore, how’d you keep that crime from your mother? Surely Ellerby would’ve written to her—would’ve defended your motives for—”

  He was chuckling into her hair, delighting in the way her mind hopped so nimbly from one circumstance to the next. “Poor Matthew never made it to Dodge, honey. One of those philandering husbands stormed into the office and shot him, the day he was turning the keys over to his successor.”

  Her eyes flew open. Jack was a solid, dark shadow in her arms, enveloped with her in the paler gray cocoon of the room, and she realized that only the soothing sounds of their breathing now broke the twilight silence. “So you were all set up in a new office, and on your own in Dodge City?” she whispered.

  Rafferty hugged her, chuckling. “On my own, and eager to make up for lost time,” he said in a husky voice. “I’d had my fill of school, Amber, and I took to the ladies like a man newly freed from a monastery. By then Pa was gone, so I was sending Ma money every week and building up a respectable law practice. But my nights belonged to me . . . and to whoever I happened to be sharing a bed with.”

  He paused for a moment. “I hope that doesn’t make you feel bad, honey. Some women’d rather not hear about a man’s past—”

  “It’s all right. Even if you steered clear of the ladies, they’d be after you anyway,” she confided. “I’d be more concerned if you weren’t interested in women.”

  Jack placed a resounding kiss on her cheek, and then realized that the couple across the hall was finally silent. “I suppose you want to hear about that whore, and how I came to stab her.”

&n
bsp; “That’s why I started this conversation.”

  Letting out a sigh, he realized it was time to reveal the truth to this woman—because she had the right to know about his darkest hour. And because Amber LaBelle’s unique insights might provide an angle to his perplexing predicament that he hadn’t thought of before. She seemed so sure of his innocence . . . he had to risk her rejection by presenting the facts as he knew them, in order for both of them to be honest about the feelings they shared.

  “Even though the cattle drives were history, even though Dodge was a comparatively tame town by then,” he began in a pensive tone, “there were still plenty of loose women to be had. I courted a few respectable girls as well, understand, but something about the doves made me, well . . . sympathetic, I guess. They were alone in a world that pretty much forced them to whore if they couldn’t be school marms or shopkeepers, and the stories they told broke my heart, at times. They treated me special because I listened to them. Saw them as real people, instead of just convenient outlets who had no feelings.

  Amber had no trouble at all believing that Jack Rafferty was this sort of man, even in his wilder days. “What was her name?” she persisted.

  “Bitsy Sisser ... a man can’t miss ’er,” he added with a rueful chuckle. “She had red hair and shiny eyes and the softest skin . . . but most men didn’t notice those things because she outweighed most of us by several pounds. The joke of the day was that if you let Bitsy fall asleep on you, you’d wake up dead—or at least so damn flat you’d never move again.”

  “But you didn’t see her that way?”

  “Nope. She was lonely, just like me,” he replied wistfully. “A lot of men don’t trust lawyers, and a lot of women batted their eyes because I was one of the more eligible catches in town. But Bitsy was different. I was sincerely sorry that she’d never find a decent husband—that she’d probably drink herself to death, or take an overdose of laudanum when she got too old to keep the customers coming. So to speak.”

  “And?”

  Jack felt the pent-up anguish of the past year tightening his throat. He’d never wanted to believe what happened on that fateful night, but the stories in the paper left little doubt that he was responsible for the murder and mayhem that changed his life. And ended Bitsy’s.

  “I’d won a particularly challenging case that day, with a brilliant defense that assured my client of land and water rights the railroad had stolen away from his ranch,” he continued in a hushed voice. “Got quite a bonus for my efforts, too. I wasn’t much of a drinker—my friends teased that I was a teetotaler—but when I went to see Bitsy that night, I’d already celebrated with one bottle and I took a new one up to her room. It was a wonder I could even drop my pants, drunk as I was, but I didn’t stop there. I . . . I asked her to marry me, and before I could blink, she accepted.”

  Amber was laying alongside him, no doubt wondering if he’d ever do the respectable thing and propose to her. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to press on, to show her the real Jack Rafferty so she’d know what sort of madman she was hitching up with if she said yes.

  “Bitsy was so excited she got up to spread the word among her friends,” he went on. Then he cleared his throat, hoping Amber would understand the duplicity his liquor had led him into. “I stepped onto her little balcony for some air while she was gone. And a few moments later, the girl in the adjoining room came out to congratulate me and . . . offer me a private bachelor party, you might say. Karie was one of my other favorites—reminded me I was still a free man. But of course, Bitsy wasn’t quite so liberal-minded when she found me passed out in her bed with another woman.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “That’s what I said,” Jack recalled with a bitter laugh. “Karie was smart enough to get the hell out—warned me about the knife Bitsy kept under the mattress. Meanwhile Bitsy had grabbed a pillow and she was straddling me, trying to beat me and suffocate me and let me know exactly how upset she was.

  “A woman that size can do some damage. I ... I really don’t understand how I kept breathing or had the strength to grope for that knife before she got to it. But next thing I knew there was blood everywhere, and Bitsy fell beside me with its handle sticking out of her chest. Scared the bejesus out of me. I dashed out to the balcony, somehow hit the ground running, and I haven’t stopped since.”

  Amber let out a long sigh, puzzling over what Rafferty had told her. “Sounds like self-defense to me. And surely Karie would’ve told the sheriff that much, in your behalf.”

  “Maybe. But I was too drunk to think past the scandal I’d caused, too upset that I’d killed someone—a woman—with no more hesitation than I’d have about shooting a rabid dog. I couldn’t face the ladies at the whorehouse, much less my clients or myself, so I left town without a backward glance.”

  As her hand tightened on his chest in sympathy, his runaway heartbeat attested to the grief and guilt that still plagued him. “And you’re sure she died? Perhaps, in your panic, you only assumed—”

  “Saw the obituary, a few days later when I happened upon a Dodge newspaper,” he said. “It told how the girls got up a fund for the special casket it took to bury her, because the undertaker was threatening to just drop her into the ground rather than incur the extra expense of a bigger coffin. Nunn wasn’t known for his charity. And of course there were the Wanted posters, though I didn’t see those for a while. Too busy holing up, you know.”

  The woman in his arms was snuggling against him, as though settling herself to go to sleep. “I still think there’s something you’ve missed—some catch to this,” she mumbled between yawns.

  “Even though I’ve admitted the knife was in my hand before it landed in Bitsy’s chest?”

  “Yes. Let’s get some rest now, Rafferty. But even after I’ve slept on this, I promise I’ll still love you.”

  Her words, mumbled with the dreamlike quality of falling rain, struck him like lightning. He clutched her close, suddenly filled with gratitude and relief. Cupping her jaw, Jack kissed her desperately in the darkness. “I love you, too, honey. God, I hope you won’t be sorry, when this is all over.”

  “Not a chance. You’re stuck with me,” Amber replied with a throaty laugh. She turned to face the other way, bending her knees over his and planting her soft little bottom against his crotch. Within the next two breaths, she fell asleep.

  Rafferty stared into the shadows, overjoyed yet overwhelmed. He had to do right by her now. There was no turning back from the sentiments that bound their hearts and lives together, come what may, and it was his responsibility to see that her future was the happy one she so richly deserved.

  He prayed to God for a miracle. He prayed that his woman’s instincts were correct, and that they’d prove him out before the detective on his tail put a premature end to their new life together. It was more than he had a right to expect, given his circumstances, but with Amber in his arms, trusting him implicitly, he figured he’d better at least ask for divine assistance.

  * * *

  He was awakened from a deep sleep by Amber’s startled shriek, to find two rifle barrels aimed at their heads. It wasn’t even light yet, but he could see that Karl and Olga were intent on making their point, with no room for argument.

  “Get your asses outta that bed, dammit, and get out,” their host said in a voice that rattled viciously in his throat. “Olga here’s smarter than she looks. Pointed out that ya prob’ly got the law followin’ ya, and that’s the last kind we need snoopin’ around here.”

  “But I—”

  “No buts,” Olga spat. “You know them homesteaders Karl was tellin’ you about?”

  Amber nodded—or perhaps her head was shaking with a fear like she’d never known.

  “Well, they was really th’ original owners of this place, ’til we convinced ’em we needed it more’n they did, about five years ago,” she boasted with a chuckle. “That’s who’s buried out back. So if you don’t want to end up beside ’em, you’l
l get the hell out ’fore trouble comes after you.”

  With a quick glance at Amber, Rafferty began to ease out from under the covers. “We’ll be needing our horses—”

  “And dammit, I’m good as my word,” the old codger grumbled. “Take your gray and that bay I traded ya, dammit, and get your butts on the road. That white mare’s mine, though.”

  “And since you won’t be herdin’ any sheep, I’m keepin’ your dog, too,” the blocky blonde chimed in with a cackle. “Don’t try to find ’er. Just get movin’. Now.”

  Amber swallowed her panic to protest, but Jack quieted her with a warning squeeze to her elbow. “Yes, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “And we’d appreciate it if you never saw us, should anybody ask.”

  “Get gone,” Karl repeated.

  And the cocking of the two rifles was all the convincing they needed.

  Chapter 20

  Fifteen minutes later Rafferty was galloping down the lane and then across open pastureland, with Amber following close behind. The sun was a pale pink shadow in the distance. The rough, crystallized grass crackled beneath them, and Smoke’s breath flew back in white wisps as they raced across the rugged, untilled terrain. All he knew was that the nearest town was north and east. They had to get there, because Karl held them at gunpoint all the way to the barn—hardly the situation in which to ask for food and supplies.

  And they had to stop so Maudie could catch up.

  Hearing Amber’s distressed whimpers, he headed for the nearest clump of trees and reined his horse to a halt behind the cover of frosty-white birches and firs. The bay was protesting this sudden run, probably after weeks of milling around the barnyard unridden, and the gelding needed a firm hand if they were to make this ride with Amber in one piece.

  He swung down from Smoke and then grabbed the bridle of Amber’s mount before it could charge under a low-hanging branch to knock her off. “Whoa, boy!” he crooned as he gripped the stiff leather. “Hop down, honey. I’ll trade you horses for a while. This one’s a little skittish.”