A wry smile twisted Branch’s lips. “My word as a Texian, John Gallagher.”
He nodded. “Accepted.”
“This is all absurd, but if it makes you feel better, then splendid,” Katie said, rising from the pew and going to her father. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his chest. “I love you, Da. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“Are you sure, Mary Kathleen?”
“Yes, Da. I’m sure.”
His chest expanded and he slid his arms around her, holding her fiercely, protectively. A deep, abiding love flowed between them. So full of emotion was he, that when he framed her shoulders with his arms and opened his mouth to speak, he choked on his words.
With his eyes like windows to his soul, he swallowed hard and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Very well, then.” Tears ran in rivulets from his eyes as he added, “I love you, my daughter. I shall love you throughout eternity. Have a happy life, colleen.”
“Come now, we must hurry,” Shaddoe said, his voice gruff with emotion. “I have our horses hidden in the forest near the old Cherokee trail that leads west. Few around here know of it, and we should be safe enough if we waste no more time.” He nodded to Branch. “For the vaccine I am in your debt, Kincaid. Watch over Kathleen for those of us who love her.”
“I will.”
Katie kissed both Daniel’s and Keeper’s cheeks and Shaddoe’s lips. “Until next time?” she asked him shakily. “Next time.”
She hugged her father, her eyes streaming with tears. “God go with you all.”
A BARN owl hooted in the distance as Branch led a silent Katie toward the Widow Craig’s rooming house. They kept to the shadows, hoping to avoid contact with anyone who might challenge her presence on Nacogdoches streets that particular night. The last thing Katie Starr needed right now were questions.
They reached the boardinghouse and he climbed the first porch step when Katie abruptly halted. “No. I want to go home.”
Hell, he thought, she looks downright pitiful. “Darlin’, we both need some sleep. I’ll take you home in the morning, I promise. But right now there’s a nice soft feather mattress waiting for us upstairs.”
She shook her head. “I want to go home now.”
“Aw, Kate, be sensible. Neither one of us has enough energy to stay atop a horse for ten minutes, let alone make a three-hour ride. Let’s just get a few hours’ shuteye and then we can head out. We need to talk to Martha anyway.” He tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “You liked that idea, didn’t you, her moving in with you?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, honey. Let’s go up.”
She heaved a soul-weary sigh. “All right. I need to visit the necessary first. I’ll meet you upstairs. Which room?”
“Third on the right” He watched her make a slow trek around the corner of the house before entering the building. She had him worried. He’d never seen her like this. What had happened to the spirit she’d shown in the church, the spunk so much a part of her nature? Maybe she did need a few questions tonight. Maybe he could rile her out of her blue mood. Quietly, he walked to his room, where he hung his hat on a brass wall hook and kicked off his boots.
He sat on the bed and waited for her. Twenty minutes later he yanked his boots back on. Obviously, the stubborn little witch had given him the slip.
Hurriedly he saddled Striker and headed out of town. He caught up with her at the bridge across La Nanna Creek. In the dark of the moonless night, she was a ghostly specter when he spotted her perched on the bridge’s railing staring down into the water. “Don’t do it, Kate!”
Calmly, she looked at him. “Do what?” Then as he approached her with obvious caution she gave a hollow laugh. “Really, Deputy, do you fear for my sanity?”
He knew then that she didn’t plan on jumping. Tension melted from his body, and he put his hands to her waist and lifted her down. “No, I was worrying you’d jump before I had the chance to push you in. What do you think you’re doing, Sprite, sneaking off like that?”
She gazed up at the sky. “Thinking. Remembering. This is harder than I imagined. I prepared myself for Daniel leaving, but Da… I didn’t expect to lose him too. I can’t go inside tonight, Branch. They’re out there somewhere, beneath the stars. It makes me feel closer to them.”
His voice was a low, soft rumble. “Come on, honey. We’re out in the open here. Let’s find a spot to rest.”
Docilely, she allowed him to lead her along the creek bank until they rounded a bend out of sight of the town. Branch hobbled Striker, then made a makeshift bed with his saddle and a blanket from his pack and pulled Katie down beside him. He tucked her close, his mind on her comfort in the chilly night air rather than the fact that he finally had Katie Starr where he’d wanted her for so long. “Sleep now, Sprite. We’ll sort this all out in the morning.”
He was already half-asleep when she said in a wistful voice, “After my mama died, I remember looking at the night sky. Da told me the stars were distant suns, but I knew better. The sky was really a length of black velvet God had wrapped around heaven. The stars were pinpricks He’d made in the cloth to give us a glimpse into the brilliance of His Glory.”
Branch opened his eyes and gazed at the sky. He gently touched her cheek and she smiled against his hand. “I used to stare so hard, thinking I might catch sight of Mama. I haven’t yet. Now I look for Steven and Mary Margaret too.” Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Do you think I should look for Da and Daniel now? Shaddoe, too?”
He had to clear his throat to get the words past the lump hanging there. “No, darlin’, they’ve headed north, not up. They’ll be fine, trust me.”
She snuggled closer. “I do. You will take me home, Branch, tomorrow?”
“Trust me.” He felt her body relax into sleep, and he smiled. She trusted him.
As he drifted off, he knew a twinge of guilt at the blanket of contentment that cloaked him. She’d been through a helluva lot tonight, and she was hurting deeply. He shouldn’t be feeling good. But she slept in his arms and it felt so damned right.
When he awoke, she’d gone missing again.
“Sonofabitch.” He didn’t know how long he had slept; the sky was still dark, but the air had that feel of being near dawn. He sat up and rubbed his hand over his face, then twisted his torso, wincing at the cramped and aching muscles. “Damn, but the woman’s nothing but trouble.” He hurried to the creek, where he knelt and splashed water on his face to brush the cobwebs from his mind. How far could she have gotten?
Something rustled in the bushes. Noiselessly Branch rose to his feet and stepped to the brush. He pushed aside a willow and peered into the darkness. Spatters of white lay in a circle around a twisting, squirming shadow.
Katie couldn’t get her corset off. Mrs. Sterne had laced her tight as the bark on a bois d’arc tree, and she couldn’t get loose. She had slept for maybe an hour before the lack of circulation woke her up. As the night’s events rushed back to her, a restlessness had filled her soul and she left Branch’s side, needing to walk or run—or scream. She had settled on the idea of swimming in the cold running water of La Nanna Creek.
She had stripped off Mrs. Sterne’s now ruined ball gown and then the ten petticoats she wore beneath it. But when it came to removing the corset, Katie was stuck.
The restlessness inside her transformed into fury. She bent and twisted and turned to no avail. She couldn’t manage the laces. When she heard Branch’s muttered, “My Lord,” she whirled on him and snapped. “Don’t just stand there, Kincaid, get me out of my clothes!”
He had her free of her stays in two minutes. Inhaling her first deep breath in hours, she said, “Gracious, you’re good at that.”
“Mental practice.” She felt his gaze upon her, moving slowly up and down as though he inspected every single stitch on her chemise and pantalets. She knew he wasn’t thinking of her sewing skills, and suddenly she was glad. The restlessness within her alter
ed, what had been a hum in her blood became a reckless, pounding pulse. Katie wanted to forget, to feel alive.
Katie wanted Branch Kincaid.
She reached for him, grabbed a fistful of linen shirt at his chest, and pulled him to her. The black of the night hid his expression, but she could sense his wariness. An exultation filled her; the roles were altered, the hunted became the hunter.
The hunter became her prey.
“Kate,” he rasped as she skimmed her hands over the rippling muscles of his back, then lower to the curve of his taut buttocks. She arched against him, sensuously rubbing her breasts against his midriff, her softness against his steel. He cursed a breathless, “Dammit, Sprite,” and she dragged his lips down to hers.
The wildness streaked through her, burying all thought, all emotion, all reality—everything but hot, swamping sensation. She took from him, devoured his mouth, his tongue, his resistance. She pulled him over to where their blanket lay, and they sank to the ground together.
Impatient, she stripped off her chemise and wiggled from her pantalets. She wanted—no she needed—naked skin against skin. Proof she was not alone. Oh, God, she was so alone. Her fingers worked feverishly at his trousers until he sprang free and she lay atop him, pressing, seeking. “Slow down, honey. Wait.” He put his hands at her waist and tried to lift her away. “Kate, this isn’t… we ought to… not like this.”
She was having none of it. Why was he talking? She wanted sensation, not words. Words required thought. She would not think. Only feel.
Desperate to resist his tender caress, his murmured endearment, she closed her fist around him. His low groan, his heart drumming fast against her cheek, the surge of his pelvis, told her she had won.
She took him. Mindlessly, passionately. A body pursuing pleasure alone. A mind on a quest for escape. She feasted on his flesh, needing his heat to fill the cold, aching emptiness within her. She wrung from him his desire and in doing so lost herself to the savage, frenzied place where bursts of pleasure exploded into wave after wave of numbing satisfaction.
BRANCH LAY as still as a dead man. Maybe he was a dead man, maybe that explained what had just happened. He’d died and gone to heaven. Or was this hell? He felt like hell.
She had collapsed atop him, and he could feel the slowing hammer of her heart. She was as light as a well baked biscuit and as warm against him as a tin cup filled with steaming coffee. Except that Katie Starr wasn’t coffee-hot inside. She was cold—bitter, icy, vacant.
Not a single word had crossed her lips. They’d been joined in the most elemental way, yet he’d never felt so alone. Where had she gone? Who was she with? A man had his pride, after all.
Still, why should it bother him? he wondered. Could he honestly say he’d never done the same thing himself when he was with a woman? So what did it matter who she’d loved when she’d climbed on him? Raw, instinctive sex, that’s what had happened here. Good sex. Empty sex.
It wasn’t what he wanted with Katie Starr.
She rolled off him and onto her back. The silence dragged. He licked his lips and tasted blood, hers or his, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The night breeze swept across them, drying the sheen of sweat from his naked body and chilling him.
She sounded a million miles away when she spoke. “My mama taught me to find the constellations. Many’s the night we’d spread a blanket over grass and lie back and stare at the sky. I’d find Orion and Leo, Aries. But I had more fun making up ones of my own. Like seeing pictures in clouds only at night. My sky stories, Da would call them.”
Branch glared at the sky. Stars? She finally speaks and she talks about stars?
“Shaddoe told me one about the Milky Way,” she continued, pointing a finger toward the dusty band of white above them. “The Cherokees call it Gil’ LiUtsun’ Stanun’yi, ‘where the dog ran.’ It’s a very old story about a giant dog with a silvery coat who stole grain from The People. They set a trap for him and scared him so badly that he jumped into the sky, and the meal he’d been eating poured from his mouth and made a white trail across the sky. The Milky Way.”
Branch yanked at a clump of grass beneath his hand. The Indian. She was thinking about the damned Indian!
He figured he had near to an hour before sunrise. Plenty of time to take her to those stars she was yammering about. Only this time, she’d damn well know who rode along with her. “Sprite,” he said, his voice a raspy drawl, “I know a little bit about the heavens myself. For instance, a star is a luminous body. Luminous means emitting a steady, glowing light. Light means heat. Therefore, a star is a heated body. You’re a Starr, Katie.” He moved over her, not touching, but blocking her view of the sky. He blew a gentle breath across her breasts. “Tell me, are you hot?”
Her body tensed beneath him. “Branch, leave me alone.”
“That’s good. The lady knows the man. Say it again, Kate.” There was only the sound of the creek burbling against its rocks, a cricket chirping in the brush, his own heavy breaths. He lowered his hips, nudging her. “Who am I?”
“Branch,” her voice trembled, “I’m sorry, I went a little crazy, I know.”
“I’m a man, Kate. I’m your friend. I’m not a stud horse.” He bent his lips to her breast and he laved her nipple with his tongue. She gasped a moan as he locked his mouth around her and suckled.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she breathed. “It’s not me. I just felt so alone.”
He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, his gaze as angry as his touch along her inner thigh was gentle. “Were you alone, Kate?”
She shook her head.
“Who else was there?”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “You, Branch.”
Lord, this was a celestial lesson he taught her. His fingers found the hidden, satiny folds of her womanhood. “Who’s with you now?”
“Damn you, Branch Kincaid.”
That sounded more like his Sprite. A rush of raw, aching need consumed him. He wanted nothing more than to bury himself in this woman, to fill her with himself until he drove all thought of any other from her mind. But more than that, he wanted it to be right for both of them. “You didn’t allow me inside before. Why Sprite?”
She nipped at his neck. “I took you inside. How can you say that?”
He kissed first one temple and then the other. “In here, baby. You shut me out here. I didn’t like it, Kate, it’s wrong that way.”
Her hands roamed across his chest, bringing fire in their wake. “I’m scared. I’ve lost them all. I needed. I simply needed.”
He slipped a finger into her velvet sheath, and she tightened around him, welcoming him. “And now? What do you need right now, Kate Starr?”
She traced a finger across his mouth and said in a throaty whisper, “You, Branch Kincaid, I need you.”
That was what he wanted. He crushed her lips with his, exultant in the wash of wet heat against his hand, triumphant in the sweet taste of desire in her mouth. He gently released her and rose poised above her. “Ah, my sugary Sprite, I need you too.”
This time they rode to the stars together.
WITH THE first touch of sun the willows began to whisper in the breath of the morning wind. Titmice called, and a chittering kinglet jumped from spring-green bough to winter-dead twigs, alternately hiding and flashing his scarlet crown.
Branch watched while the world awoke, cradling Katie in his arms as she slept. So much had happened between sunset and sunrise, he wondered what new surprises the next twelve hours might bring. Probably nothing good, he told himself. By noon the whole town would know that John Gallagher and his boy had fled the county after teaming up with an Indian to steal medicines from Doc May fair. How would that affect Katie?
And what about his own situation? As prickly as Strickland was about duty, Branch would have to talk pretty fast to avoid losing his job if the sheriff happened to learn that his deputy disobeyed orders and stayed in town overnight.
&nbs
p; I’d best have my story ready in case I need it, Branch thought, tucking Katie tight against him. He wasn’t ready to quit Nacogdoches yet. The secrets surrounding his brother’s death had been buried for going on two years, and it’d take longer than a couple of months to dig them up.
But dig them up he would. He’d get back to work as soon as he took care of his promise to John Gallagher about looking after Katie. Branch grimaced at the thought; he’d made a head start on that one, and somehow he didn’t think it was exactly what John Gallagher had in mind. The corners of his mouth lifted in a grin as memories of the previous night flooded back.
More than likely, Katie would be embarrassed when she woke up naked in his arms, and that meant she’d be meaner than eight acres of snakes. Maybe I ought to distract her, he thought. Kind of ease her into the day.
This time he’d start at her neck. He’d noticed sometime during the night that her breath caught every time he nibbled that spot beneath her ear. He eased away from her so as to get the right angle. The sun’s warmth touched the skin exposed as the blanket slid to their waists.
She’d moaned but a single time when the shout rang out. “Halt! Sinners defile this place of God’s redemption!”
Reverend T. Barton Howell, founder and sole spiritual leader of the Church of God’s Graceful Humanity stood at creek’s edge, outrage turning his bulbous nose a bright red. Behind him, in various states of offense, gathered his flock, the majority of whom were women, assembled at the creek to witness the baptism of its newest members, Abigail and Luella Racine, president and secretary of the Nacogdoches Ladies’ Society.
Branch looked at Katie. She sat with the blanket clutched to her chest, her eyes as round as a wagon wheel, her skin bled white. From her throat came a mewling like a newborn kitten’s.
“Looks like we might have a little problem here,” he said, taking a bead on his britches lying a good ten feet away. Miz Starr had quite an arm. With casual nonchalance he rose to his feet and strode across the grass to his pants amid squeals of horror and the flurry of feminine feet. Easing the trousers up over his hips, he noticed Miss Abigail and Miss Luella exchange an approving look. He winked at them and turned to gather Katie’s underwear.
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