by Jo Goodman
“I don’t suppose any father hopes his son will grow up to be a gunslinger.”
“At least not a bad one.”
Raine returned the letter so he could put it away. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your family?”
“Six months.”
“Are you welcomed?”
“Like the prodigal son. That lasts until we have our first Sunday dinner together. I can’t stay long after that.”
“Do they know you’re a good man?”
He smiled a little. “I think so. My parents simply want me to be a better one.”
Raine nodded slowly. There was an ache behind her eyes that she recognized as the press of tears. She did not want to think about why it was there. She closed the folder. “I’ll put this in the hotel safe, if you don’t object.”
She slid the folder under the nightstand to put it out of the way and picked up one of the Nat Church novels. She thumbed the pages. “Did you know there were books in the crate before you opened it?”
“No. I kept my request simple. I didn’t have much time. This was his idea, and a good one as it happens. Even if Dan Sugar shows any curiosity about our certificate—which I doubt—there’ll be nothing to suggest that we only took delivery of it this morning. An envelope might have got him thinking. But Nat Church novels?”
“You could have told me about it once we left the station.”
“I thought you understood. I was trying to figure out what the burr was under your bustle. I didn’t understand until you asked about the proof of marriage.”
“And you still didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t remember you giving me a lot of room for explanation, but even if you had, it’s possible I was feeling a touch bristly by then and took some satisfaction in keeping it to myself.”
It was his honesty that undid her, and that he offered it a shade grudgingly made the admission that much sweeter. Raine did not want her heart to turn over. She did not want it to jump. It tumbled and fluttered anyway.
She had never been in love, had given little thought to it in any serious way, and she wasn’t ready to claim that what she felt now was that emotion. She was confident it was a new experience, identifiable as kin to the love she had for Adam and Ellen, for her mother, yet distinguishable from it as well. This feeling was more acute, intense in a way that was both splendid and uncomfortable. Once her heart stopped its frantic beat, she felt her skin flush hot and her breath lodge in her throat, but when she could breathe again, she merely felt warm all over.
“Are you all right?”
Raine realized she was the subject of Kellen’s scrutiny. Not liking it, she scowled at him.
He smirked.
Her eyes were drawn to his beautiful mouth. The smirk did not detract from it at all. Still worse from her perspective, there was a tiny crescent of a dimple at the left corner of his lips. She had never noticed it before. She was not particularly happy about noticing it now, but she was aroused.
Raine pushed the crate out of the way as she came up on her knees. Slipping her hands around his neck, she kissed him full on the mouth, erasing the smirk, the dimple, and all hint of amusement. It was not a long kiss, but it was a heady one, and when she drew back, she was satisfied to see that his darkening eyes were vaguely unfocused.
She couldn’t help herself. She smirked.
Raine didn’t think about fending him off. She let him topple her back on the floor, let him stretch out beside her and pin her down with one of his legs. His face hovered over hers. She did not turn away from his study. The movement of his eyes across her face was like the graze of his fingertips against her skin. He touched her cheeks, her temples, the bridge of her nose. His eyes lingered on her chin, then her bottom lip, and when her lips parted, they lingered on the space between them. It was as if he willed her tongue to appear because she couldn’t think of any reason why she chose that moment to wet her lips, but she heard the sharp intake of his breath when she did.
“You’re going to kiss me, aren’t you?” The huskiness of her voice made it almost unrecognizable to her. “I want you to.”
“Something we agree on. But first…” He fiddled with the pins and combs in her hair and ignored her when she batted at his hands. “There’s nothing I’m doing that can’t be repaired. And this…” He lifted her head just enough to loosen the coil. He separated her hair with his fingertips, carefully combing through the strands. “It’s like wading through a pool of fire.”
“It is?”
He nodded. “Liquid to the touch. Brilliant to the eyes.”
She stared up at him, said nothing.
“I think I better kiss you now.”
Raine pressed her lips together, but she nodded. If he didn’t, she would burst into flame. She might do exactly that anyway. When his mouth covered hers, Raine’s body lifted, arched. His touch was electric, and the current made her limbs seize, not painfully, but wonderfully. If she had been standing, she would have been in his arms, her breasts flush to his chest, and her heels would have been raised off the floor. She might have even sparkled.
The fancy struck her, and she smiled into the kiss and wondered if he could feel the shape of it on her lips. She knew everything about the shape of his mouth now. She knew that the wry twist thinned the right side and that the smirk lifted the left. She knew the exact distance he thrust out his lower lip when he released a long-held breath. She had intimate knowledge of his mouth against the hollow beneath her ear and at her throat. She had watched it sip her skin, her nipples, and make a damp trail across her collarbone. When he kissed her, she felt as if he was teasing her with the secrets he guarded. Eventually she would know them all.
Raine felt herself being taken from want to need. Her mouth clung to his. She matched the slant of his kiss, the hunger that drove it harder. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his vest and pulled at his shirt. She slipped her hands under his trousers and unfastened the overlap of his drawers. She pushed. He tugged. Her skirt rode up her legs. His knee urged it higher. She guided him to the crushed, uncomfortable bustle at her back. He pushed her hands out of the way to get at the ribbons, and when she was finally free of the damnable contraption, they both shoved it hard under the bed. Laughing, she lifted her bottom when his fingers scrabbled under her petticoats to remove her cotton drawers. She stopped laughing when he spread her legs and jerked her close.
She watched him steadily. Waited for him. And knew before he did when he would come to her.
“Ah!” Her sharp cry made her press her knuckles against her mouth. She did not want him to draw back, to ask if he was hurting her. She was tender, but her body remembered him, welcomed him, and the warm pleasure of being joined to him made the tenderness insignificant.
He didn’t ask, but she felt the cadence change from the frenzy of the first thrusts to something slow and deep and powerful. Sometimes he held himself back to kiss her, and the kiss was exactly the same, slow and deep and powerful.
Her hands slid under his shirt. She rubbed his back, ran her palms across the muscles bunching in his shoulders. His skin was warm, and she had a memory of it being warmer still when she slept in the cradle of his body.
She found the dimples at the base of his spine. Her fingers spread out from there, clutching his taut buttocks, leaving the imprint of her nails like a brand. She raised her face, brushed her mouth against his when he dipped his head.
In the late morning light, she could see his face as she had not been able to the night before. Without the soft glow of the oil lamp, the edges of his features seemed sharper, less likely to yield. His eyebrows were dark slashes, his nose, a blade. His jaw had the hard line of a granite block, and the wintry blue-gray color of his eyes lent him the watchful, perceptive gaze of a predator.
“Mmm.” The sound did not part her lips, but it was perfectly audible. She started to cover her mouth again. He nudged her hand out of the way, and the next thing she said was his name. “Kellen.”
“Yes,” he said. “Raine.”
Somehow he made her name sound raw, primal. It moved her. Pleasure had already wound her as tight as the string on a child’s top, and when he said her name like that, it was as if he’d pulled the cord.
She spun and spun, and as dizzy as he made her, she never lost sight of him. She flung her arms wide. Her hands balled into fists. She gave herself up to pleasure and to him and then made certain he could do the same.
She matched him measure for measure, letting him use her body as a cradle this time, and when she felt him still, she contracted all around him, his shoulders, his back, his thighs, his cock, making surrender his only choice. The sharp, shallow thrusts that he couldn’t restrain spilled his seed into her.
He landed on considerably softer ground than she did.
Raine nudged Kellen’s shoulders. She didn’t mind his weight as much as she minded the steel cage of her corset. “A little breathing room,” she whispered.
Nodding, he eased out of her and rolled onto his back. He trapped Raine’s arm under his neck. “Sorry.” He lifted his head, and she freed her arm. While she began to straighten her clothes, he looked longingly at the bed. “How did we not get that far?”
Raine glanced at him, saw the direction of his gaze, and realized what he was asking. She chose to believe the question was rhetorical and therefore better left alone.
Kellen tugged and tucked his drawers, trousers, and shirt before he sat up to button his vest. He ran his hand through his hair, making furrows where she had ruffled it. Raine was still lying down, her eyes closed, the corners of her mouth turned up a mere fraction of a degree.
“You look indecently pleased with yourself.”
“Not so virtuous, am I?” When Raine didn’t hear Kellen chuckle, she opened her eyes. “You’re working up to saying something I don’t want to hear. I can tell.”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“All right.”
Raine closed her eyes again, but the smile that was hardly there disappeared entirely. “I know you’ll be moving on,” she said when the silence became unbearable. “You’ll realize that I don’t need you, and you’ll go. That’s the promise you made to me, and I take you for a man of your word. If you weren’t more decent than you like to let on, you wouldn’t be thinking about whether or not I’m getting all twisted up with feelings for you. You’d just be gone one day. That’s what you usually do, isn’t it?”
“Do you want me to talk now?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Yes. It’s what I usually do. I haven’t had to answer to anyone for a long time.”
“You don’t have to answer to me.” She stole a glance at him. “I don’t want the responsibility.”
“A child might change your mind.”
Raine blew out a frustrated breath as she sat up. “You said it.”
“That’s what you didn’t want to hear?”
She started to rise, but Kellen caught her wrist and pulled her back down. “What?”
“I don’t have any bastards, Raine.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.”
“I don’t have any bastards,” he repeated. “It’s not because I’m decent; it’s because I’m careful. Or I was. Until now.”
“I won’t expect anything from you.”
“Christ, Raine, you don’t understand at all. I expect something from myself.”
Raine jerked her wrist out of his hand. “I am not trying to make this hard for you. I am trying to make it easy.”
“Stop trying. I’m not interested in what you think I want to hear. I’m interested in what you think.” He began collecting the scattered copies of Nat Church and the Chinese Box and returning them to the crate. Raine handed him one that was under her skirt. He took it, grumbled a thank-you, and tossed it with the others.
Raine got to her feet. This time Kellen did not stop her. She carefully stepped over the novels and around him and went to the bathing room, where she shut the door. When she came out, he was gone.
Because of Scott Pennway’s death, the saloon was crowded, but the crowd was subdued. Raine had all three of her girls working the floor while she tended bar. Walt came and went, restocking the liquor, sweeping up outside, tapping a new keg. He kept himself busy with small tasks because it was just what he did. It seemed to Raine that it was especially important tonight that each one of them do just what they always did. Routine was a comfort. Veering outside of it was not.
There was talk at the bar about Scott’s death, some discussion about whether Annie and the children would stay in Bitter Springs or go to Denver, where she had family. Raine did not contribute to the conversation. She caught Ted Rush telling Jessop Davis that he’d gone head over bucket down his own steps one night on the way to the necessary. When he got to the part of how it could have been him sprawled in the backyard with his neck broke, Raine moved as far away as she could. It wasn’t long before she observed Jessop doing the same.
What was missing from all the exchanges she heard or overheard was speculation that what happened to Scott Pennway wasn’t an accident. Ever since she had been made aware that the jury from Ellen’s trial came together in her saloon, Raine had taken to making a mental note of their presence. With the exception of Matthew Sharp, who stayed away for religious reasons, everyone else was part of the assembly. It made the absence of John Hood, Hank Thompson, and now Scott Pennway more pronounced. She imagined that the others had taken notice of it as well. Perhaps none of them saw the point of debating accident versus murder when their numbers were dwindling and a killer might be buying them their next drink.
Someone asked Sue to play, and Raine nodded her approval. She hoped the girl chose something counter to the mood of the room. These men craved a lively tune, not a dirge. So did she. Raine held her breath, waiting to hear what Sue would play, and when the first nimble notes of an old English melody were struck, she finally smiled.
“Good to see,” Walt said as he approached carrying a case of ginger beer. He put the case under the bar and left without explaining himself.
It wasn’t until he was gone that Raine realized he had been commenting on her smile. She supposed it was the first genuine smile she had indulged in all evening.
With the introduction of music, the talk was livelier, the laughter more vigorous, and the occasional argument showed real spirit. The noise had just reached the barely tolerable level when Eli and Clay Burdick walked into the Pennyroyal.
It was not that anyone ceased what he was doing. Charlie Patterson kept on singing, though his voice veered off-key and there was noticeably less gusto when he got to the refrain. Sue played, but her fingers were not as deft as they had been a few measures earlier. Ted Rush continued telling his story to Richard Allen, but no longer so loud that it could be heard by men on the other side of him. The Davis brothers kept on arguing but used more gestures and finger-pointing than words. Even Mr. Petit and Mr. Reasoner, who had little contact with the Burdicks, took their cue from everyone else and changed the tenor of their laughter to something less ribald and more restrained. The men who had gathered to hear their stories did the same. Mr. Jones held court at one table where there was considerable interest in water rights and irrigation, but he let everyone else do the talking when Eli and Clay passed by.
Raine watched Kellen to see what he would do. There had been the occasional companion at his table. Dr. Kent had wandered in and sat with him for a time. They mostly sat in silence, exchanging only a few words, and when the doctor finished his drink, he left. Ted Rush occupied a seat at Kellen’s side long enough to relate his own close encounter with the grim reaper on account of a fall. As soon as he left, Kellen caught the attention of Cecilia and asked for a whiskey.
Now he was alone, and Raine believed it was purposeful. She saw him raise his hand and wave the Burdicks over. The man did not know how to wait for troubl
e. He invited it.
Eli slid into the chair beside Kellen. He shooed Renee and Cecilia as the girls closed in on him.
“Hey,” said Clay, watching the girls go. “I want a drink.”
“Lorrainey will bring it,” Eli told him. “Lorrainey! Two whiskeys.” He looked at Kellen’s empty glass. “You want another?”
“I could use one.”
Eli added another finger to the two he had up. “Three whiskeys. Bring them yourself.”
“Why do you do that?” Kellen asked.
“Do what?”
He pointed to Raine. “Pull her away from the bar to serve you when there are girls who could do it just as well.”
Eli grinned. “I like to watch her walk. You ever notice how she walks?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
Clay’s lip curled. “Like the ground ain’t good enough for her feet.”
“He means she kinda floats,” Eli said.
“That’s what you say. I say the Widder Berry walks like she thinks she’s better than everyone else.”
“Maybe she is,” Kellen said mildly.
Clay’s expression turned dark, but Eli laughed. “Damn, but you could be right about that.” He jerked his thumb at Clay. “My brother’s not real partial to Lorrainey after the trouble she caused us, but I never figured there was sense in holdin’ on to a grudge like it was a bronco you were trying to bust.”
Clay shoved his chair back and stood. He grabbed one of the whiskey glasses from Raine’s hand before she could set them down. “I’m goin’ to talk to the photographer fellow that’s been nosin’ around the spread and takin’ his fool pictures.” He jabbed a finger in Mr. Petit’s direction. “That’s him, ain’t it, Lorraine?”
“He’s a photographer, yes. I don’t know whether or not he’s been on your property.”
“Now why don’t I believe you?” With that parting shot, he turned his back on all of them.
Eli watched him go. “Miserable cuss. Always has been.” He smiled at Raine, but it was more leering grin than greeting. “Doesn’t share my disposition or my affections.”
