She didn’t know why he did it, and she wasn’t prepared for either his kiss or the rush of desire coursing through her. Though she meant to push him off, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer until her body was flush against his. Her head reeled from the feel of him, the hardness of his chest, the strength of his arms. His hands were warm where they rested on her waist, and she opened her mouth to take more of his heat.
She was so tired of being cold.
As she took his lower lip between her teeth, she was rewarded with a growl she remembered from long ago. He teased the seam of her lips and opened her up, and the sensation of him exploded against her tongue. It stole what little coherent thought she had left. His kisses always had.
She shouldn’t do this, not with him or anyone else, but that was one more thing she didn’t care about. To hell with propriety. To hell with the anger of the past and the uncertainty of the future. To hell with everything but this moment and this man.
Luke kissed her in the same way he did everything else, passionate and reckless. His hand left her waist and gently stroked her sides, and beneath the flimsy lace of her corset, her nipples tightened. He ran his fingers inside the lip of fabric without touching anything, and as she arched into his hand, the groan escaping her lips was both frustrated and wanting.
She wanted more. She wanted everything.
He sucked gently on her lower lip before breaking the kiss, but his arms still encircled her, his chest flush against Jessie’s. He bent his head. “Is he gone yet?”
“Yeah,” a woman said.
“Well, I’ll be,” another whispered. A round of assents trickled through the room.
Luke flashed Jessie a brief smile, but when he lifted his head, his expression was bland, as if what had just happened meant nothing to him. He turned to Vivian. “Stranger?”
Jessie’s eyes shifted from Luke to Vivian and back, as she tried to make some sense out of what had just happened. She found herself clinging to him and allowed her hands to fall to her sides. She hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t even realized someone had come in after Luke.
“I’ve never seen him before, and he didn’t seem to be interested in what I have to offer.” She gestured to her bosom. “Quite a show you put on there.”
Heat scorched Jessie’s cheeks.
Luke ran his hand through his dark hair. “Couldn’t think of anything else to do without being obvious, and I am in a brothel. Who got her soaked?”
“Not drunk, Bradshaw.” She allowed anger to conceal the hurt she didn’t want to admit she felt.
He frowned. “You’re full as a tick, and I knew it the moment I walked in the door. I can taste the whiskey on you.”
Jessie was just sober enough to be embarrassed.
“She needed something for the pain, and she refused laudanum and opium.” Vivian sounded amused. “So we gave her whiskey. She’s had quite a shock.”
“How much?”
“A couple of jiggers,” Jessie said. “None of your business, anyway.”
“The hell it’s not. I need to know how sober you are before I get you out of here.” He caught her chin and studied her, and her whole body went soft in anticipation of another kiss. “Two ponies and that’s it?”
“Might’ve been a few more than that.”
“You eaten anything today?”
“Just breakfast, which you were kind enough not to poison.”
His thumbs stroking her cheeks, he chuckled.
Jessie didn’t think to suppress her smile in response until after the fact.
“So, not much.” He turned to Vivian. “You got any coffee?”
“Always,” Vivian replied, snapping her fingers. Within a minute, a cup of coffee appeared at Jessie’s elbow.
“Drink it. I have to get you out of here.” She frowned up at him, but his tone brooked not argument.
“Bradshaw, I…”
Luke waved away her words. “Drink. You need to sober up.” To Vivian, he said, “Do you have a room she could stay in for about an hour?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Vivian laughed. “By the hour’s the only way I rent my rooms.”
Luke grinned and put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “We’ll be leaving out the back at dusk, so if I don’t see you, thank you for what you did today. How much do I owe you?”
Vivian threw her arms around Luke’s neck, hugged him tight, and winked at Jessie over his shoulder. “Not a thing. It’s good to have you back, Luke. Don’t be gone so long, you hear?”
“I won’t, if I can help it.” He kissed the top of the madam’s head, and Jessie fought an unreasonable stab of jealousy before she recalled she wasn’t even supposed to like him.
Tears briefly misted the older woman’s eyes, and she put a hand on his chest to push him away. “Go on. Second room on the right.”
As Luke ushered her to the room, his voice lost all the warmth it had held while he spoke with Vivian. “You need a proper dress. Something heavier and several petticoats, a decent pair of stocking and some boots. You’ll freeze to death in that. The damn trains still aren’t running, but I’ll get us into Fort Clark.”
In an instant, it all came crashing back, and she remembered why she needed Luke. “Wait! I have to go home first.”
He waved away her words. “Jess, it’s not safe.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she protested. “I need to go through my father’s papers.”
“Now is not the time. The first priority has to be keeping you safe. I’ll come back for them once I get you out of here.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“No.”
Her hands shook as she clutched his shirt. “I’m not going anywhere with you unless we go to my house first.”
Taking her hands in his, he forced her to release his clothing. “Be reasonable, Jess. You’re not in charge here, I am. If I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here, I’ll do that. Nothing is so important that you need to risk your life to go home, do you understand me? Why are you doing this?”
“Because I don’t think my father died in that mine collapse. And I think I’ve had the key to finding him all along.”
Chapter Six
Dusk was descending when they dismounted in the hills above Jessie’s house. Luke took a pair of segmented mirror binocular telescopes from his saddlebag and crouched behind a cluster of snow-covered rocks. They were nice ones, too, better made and newer than the ones she had. Probably more powerful, too. She could use something like that.
She wondered how she could get her hands on them, if only to discover how they were made.
Luke pointed at the walk up to her house and the area behind her stables. “They’re already in.”
Finally sober, or at least soberish, she cursed herself for the way she’d left that morning—hasty, unthinking of the consequences. Then she’d behaved the very same way in the brothel, when she’d kissed him.
No. He’d kissed her. In a brothel. In front of a bunch of whores.
And she’d kissed him back like it had meant something.
It didn’t matter now. She’d just keep telling herself it was the whiskey, and maybe she’d start believing it.
She flushed all the same.
“I wish I’d been home,” she said finally. “I could have kept them out.”
He shook his head. “If you’d been home, they’d have you, and there’s not much you can do about it now. We could try to fight them, but it’s a fool’s errand. We have no idea how many there are. Let’s go. I’ll come back in a few days.”
Jessie shook her head. “What about Muha? The horses?”
He frowned and raised his binocular telescopes to his eyes. “Muha’s dead. No way to get around that. Probably the horses, too, except for these two. Just in case you came back.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
His breath fogged the air as he stared at her house and the desolate, snow-covered landscape. Though
the weather had cleared earlier in the day, a light snow had begun to fall, and dark clouds hung heavy and thick where they clung to the barren mountain ridges. The wind whistled from the peaks and gusted into Jessie’s narrow valley, carrying with it the groaning of distant crawlers.
Luke scanned the surrounding mountains for a long time. “You’re not being fair.”
“I need to know what I’m dealing with.” She stroked Taba’s neck, and the horse pressed her face into Jessie’s shoulder. “Is that what you’d do?”
He shook his head, but he never took his eyes off what was in front of him. “Muha would protect the house. She’d have to go, for safety’s sake. The horses are just a counter measure to slow your escape should you somehow manage to make it home.”
“So, yes, you would.”
He didn’t look at her. “We’ll find another way in.”
Jessie closed her eyes for a moment, resisting the urge to take Luke’s hand. She told herself that she wanted to take comfort in another human being for a few minutes. Then she reminded herself that seeking comfort from Luke might lead to her seeking something else. She didn’t need that.
“I don’t need access to the house proper,” she said. She might want it, but she didn’t need it. There were too many things like that, right now. “We can get in the back way.”
Luke’s brows drew together. “Back way? Jess, they’re inside.”
With a shake of her head, she gestured to the house. “I doubt they’re in Pop’s study. It’s locked.” When he just stared at her, she realized he had no idea what lay beneath her property. “You don’t know. I always thought for certain Gideon showed you the other exits, the way you’d disappear like a ghost.” Even she was surprised that her voice held no bitterness. She motioned to the mountainside behind her house. “My father took precautions.”
“You’re telling me there’s another way in? One where we won’t be seen?”
Jessie nodded. “We’ll go in directly below Pop’s study.”
“And you won’t try to go for anything else?”
The way he said the words made her think it was a test. If she gave him an answer he didn’t like, he’d turn her around and not bring her back. “You mean, like going after Muha?” Her heart drummed against her ribcage. For almost nine years, that dog had been her constant companion. Before Taba came along last year, her only one.
“Yeah. It’s you or the wolf. I choose you.”
Jessie swallowed against the lump in her throat, as a part of her wished for something that simply wasn’t and could never be. “But she’s the one who loves you,” she whispered.
“This is no time to be flippant. Promise me you won’t go after your dog. She’s dead or as good as dead.” Luke’s tone made it clear he wouldn’t allow her near her house unless she agreed to his terms.
She’d do anything he asked, if it meant she’d get her father back.
“All right. I promise.”
“Well look who finally came to her senses.”
Jessie gritted her teeth and fought back the retort. This was for her father. Luke could say anything he wanted, so long as he helped her out. She didn’t have to like him.
Tying up his horse, he took a bag from the back of his saddle, slung it across his back, and motioned to the mountain. He gave her a small bow, like some sort of European gentleman. Or the way Jessie imagined they’d behave, if she ever met one.
Gentlemen of any sort were a rare breed around here.
“Very well. Lead on, ma’am.”
Removing a lantern from Luke’s saddlebag, she took the lead. She didn’t need to be reminded to stay low. For the first time in her life, she was grateful her father had made her practice escapes from the house, both under the cover of darkness and not. She’d thought him a fool at the time.
Now she used that same training and those same passageways to sneak back into her house.
Jessie smiled at the irony.
She led Luke into a small cave, barely large enough for a person to crawl through, the roof low and icy. It had been months since she’d been down this way, but for a moment, she got lost in the familiarity of it. The darkness. The smell. The dampness of the air, even here in the high desert.
She lit the lamp and pushed through the barriers designed so the tunnel appeared to be a collapsed mineshaft—carefully placed rocks and brittle wooden barricades, obstacles to deter the curious and the greedy. Nearly everyone in town had lost someone in the mines, and most people weren’t curious enough to risk their lives to venture into what appeared to be a shaky, abandoned mineshaft. She thought Luke would object, but he wordlessly followed.
His willingness to do so, despite the obvious danger and his earlier reluctance to take her home, surprised her. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. But then, she didn’t know what to make of him.
They crawled in silence for a few minutes until the cavern opened up. The walls dripped with hot water from nearby springs, which collected in a low spot and trickled in a small creek that traveled down another corridor, then back under the house. She waited for Luke to catch up and pulled the lever to close the trapdoor behind him. For a moment, the darkness and the quiet enveloped them, the only sounds the trickling of water and the faint hissing of thermite.
Behind her, Luke stiffened and placed a hand on her arm, and then the cave lit up, awash with light as the thermite ignited gas lanterns. The damp rock reflected the flickering light, glittering like the stars that had once shone in the sky before the smelters and the crawlers covered the night in pitch.
“Jesus.” Luke blinked several times before standing up. “I had no idea.”
The pride she felt at her father’s accomplishments made her smile. “No one did. Come on.”
At the far end of the cavern was a large vault door, and once they reached it, Luke touched it. Knocked twice. The heavy metal barely made a sound beneath his hands.
“This thing must have cost a fortune. Most of the banks in town don’t have this kind of security on their vaults.”
“This has been here for as long as I can remember. Twenty-five years, I guess. My father built it for my mother.”
The familiar blanket of sadness wrapped around her heart at the thought, so she dropped it, and Luke didn’t question her further. She turned the bright brass wheel to enter the combination.
Metal groaned as she pushed the door open. At the end of the narrow hallway was a ladder leading up to a hatch with a complicated lock. Several doors led to other corridors, but nothing was as well protected as that hatch.
Luke whistled. “How much is down here, Jess?”
She walked down the hall. “I don’t know. A lot. This is where I scavenge most of my materials. Pop had so many little projects he was working on. Stuff not affiliated with the company or the blue silver. Just stuff he was tinkering with. Especially after Gideon… Well, he was down here all the time. This is where he came to escape.”
Luke put a hand on her shoulder. “And what did you do while your father was down here?”
For years, she had pretended it didn’t matter, but it had. It had mattered more than she cared to admit. “This and that. Sometimes he’d let me help him, but most of the time, he was alone. I tinkered with gears and improved the shutters. Built and installed the Gatling gun on the roof. Made that shotgun you admired earlier.”
“The shotgun is a beautiful piece of work. Must have taken a long time to build.”
“Time is the one thing I have in spades.”
He studied her for a moment, reached out, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry, Jess.”
She blinked at his unexpected tenderness and stepped away. “Don’t be.”
He cleared his throat. “All this time, and I never knew.”
“You never needed to. And you never asked.”
If he’d ever asked her, she would have told him. She would have broken her promise to her father and brought him here as Gideon never had.
/>
There had once been a time when she would have done anything for Luke.
Banishing the thought, she climbed the ladder, entered the combination for the hatch, and climbed out into a narrow closet.
Luke followed, closing the hatch behind him, and for a moment, they were alone in a room too small for two people, their bodies nearly as close as they had been in the brothel.
“Christ.” Luke’s voice was rough.
For a moment, she thought he might kiss her, so she leaned around him to open the door. In such a confined space, she couldn’t help but brush against him.
Luke couldn’t have moved faster if the closet were on fire. “Are we where I think we are?”
The surprise in his voice amused her. Her father really was brilliant, with his vaults and his corridors, and his secret passageways. It wasn’t a shock to learn that both sides wanted him and his inventions.
“Pop’s study. Yes we are.”
The room was just as her father had left it. Papers were stacked haphazardly on the large, beaten-up desk, the two broken chairs leaning up against the wall, the books strewn around the room in various corners, as if someone had tossed them there. Gears in various sizes and inventions in several states of completion leaned against the walls in what looked like a jumbled heap, but Jessie knew from experience they were carefully organized according to size, function, and material.
“Have they been down here?” he asked.
Jessie wondered if the concern she heard in his voice was for the papers and whatever invention Hiram had promised the Union, or whether his concern was more immediate and personal.
She ran her fingers along the books lining the wall. “No, it doesn’t look like it. I haven’t been down here except once right after Pop died—disappeared. I never could bring myself to fix it up.”
Luke rifled through a haphazard stack of papers on the desk. “How on Earth was he able to keep any of this straight? I would have sworn they’d already been down here, the way everything’s so…”
“Messy? No, it was always like this. Pop had his own system. Even my mother couldn’t figure it out. Those men upstairs can’t get down here. This is my safe room. It’s designed for times just like these.”
Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) Page 7
