Sweetwater Seduction

by Johnston, Joan

  “I'll kill you!” he had raged, trying ineffectually to push himself upright.

  She had been able to subdue him easily, but she had been more careful after that. There were moments when she thought he was lucid. One night he had woken and asked, “What time is it?”

  “Nearly morning,” she had answered.

  “I have to leave,” he said.

  “You're not going anywhere,” she'd replied, leaning over him, speaking into his ear and gently pressing him back down against the bed.

  “I'm going to kill them all.”

  A chill had gone down her spine. “Who?”

  “Every damn one of those murdering bastards who massacred my family.”

  Then she had realized he wasn't lucid after all. It was the fever talking. She knew she ought to find a way to make him stop. He wouldn't want her to know these things about him. But there wasn't much she could do outside of gagging him or leaving the room, and she wasn't willing to face the consequences if she tried either.

  “I didn't even have a goddamn gun in the house,” he raved. “I thought I was through killing. But it never ends, does it?” he said in a despairing voice. “I'll make them pay, Colby, for what they did to you and Susanna. And Elizabeth . . . Oh, God, not Elizabeth, too! Please, no. God, no.”

  She watched helplessly as the tears squeezed from his closed eyes. She couldn't bear his pain. There was nothing she could do except murmur, “Wake up, Kerrigan. It's only a bad dream. Wake up.”

  As abruptly as the tears had begun, they stopped, and there was a look of such savage exultation on his face that it frightened her.

  “Burn in hell, you bastards! I only wish you were all alive so I could kill you again.” His face contorted, and he said in an agonized voice, “Nothing is going to bring my family back. Even killing you won't bring them back, God damn you!”

  Suddenly her hand reached out to touch his face. “It's all right, Kerrigan. It's all right.”

  His hand grasped hers and pulled it to his mouth. She shuddered when his lips pressed into her palm.

  He murmured, “Love you. Love you so much.”

  She jerked her hand away and stood up, backing away from the bed. He was out of his head. He didn't know what he was saying. Who was it he loved? She felt a horrible wrenching inside her. The tears came before she could stop them. She knew she was only crying because she was exhausted and her defenses were down and she felt sorry for him. It had nothing to do with discovering that she was beginning to care for a man who was much too much like her father. A man who had killed other men. A man who obviously loved someone else.

  After that, when she sponged Kerrigan down, she kept her touch as impersonal as she could. When he recovered, he would be his same rude, irascible self, and she would cease to feel sympathy for him. And he would recover. She would not let him die.

  On Wednesday, Sheriff Reeves came to see her after school. Instead of offering him a cup of coffee and a seat, she asked, “What brings you here?”

  It was obvious he expected a better welcome, but she was feeling limp as a neck-wrung rooster, and that was the most hospitality she could muster.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  Eden's hand rose to her jaw, where Kerrigan's fist had left a bruise that was past the purple stage and starting to yellow. She gave him the excuse she had given her pupils when they first saw the mark. “Ran into the kitchen door.”

  Since Felton had had experience with the swinging door himself, he was able to grin and quip ruefully, “You ought to get rid of that

  Eden found herself smiling back. “I suppose you're right.”

  “Are . . . are you sure you're okay?” Felton asked. “You look a little tired.”

  His concern touched her, and she felt awful for having been so rude to him when he arrived. “I'm fine, really. It's just that . . . the children have been a bit unruly at school.”

  “Guess everybody's tense now that more cattle have turned up missing from the Solid Diamond.”

  “Is it ever going to end?”

  Felton knew what she was asking. He forked a hand through his blond hair, leaving it disheveled. “I wish I knew. Kerrigan was supposed to help by finding the rustlers, but nobody's seen hide nor hair of him for days.”

  Eden stiffened.

  Felton noticed. He tried to make his voice sound casual as he asked, “Has he come by to visit you?”

  “What makes you think he'd come here?” Eden quickly added in a more conciliatory voice, “I mean, I hardly know the man.”

  “He showed up for dinner here,” Felton said flatly.

  “Not because I invited him,” Eden retorted, bristling.

  Felton's lips pursed. “The gossip about you and that gunslinger was flying thick and fast last week—”

  “You should know better than to listen to gossip, Felton. You'll end up chasing after twelve-pound steaks.”

  He turned his hat in his hands for a moment, refusing to meet her challenging gray eyes. “All right, Miss Devlin. If you say you haven't seen Kerrigan, I'll take your word on it. But it's beginning to look like he's in some kind of trouble.” He turned to leave, but stopped and said, “If you hear anything, anything at all, be sure and let me know. I'd like to help him if I can.”

  At that moment, Miss Devlin was sorely tempted to confide in Felton. Despite Kerrigan's request for secrecy, she could see no reason why she couldn't tell the sheriff that the Association's hired gun was alive. Except, there was no way Felton would understand why she had agreed to keep Kerrigan's presence in her home a secret.

  And although there was certainly no reason for it, she felt sure Felton was jealous of Kerrigan. No telling what her suitor would think if he learned she had kept a man he considered his rival in her bed for the past week. Better to let things be. It wouldn't be long before Kerrigan was back on his feet and could make his own explanations to the sheriff—ones that wouldn't involve her.

  She opened the do Felton and said, “If I see Kerrigan I'll let him know you're looking for him. Good-bye, Felton.”

  Eden watched regretfully as the sheriff rode away. She had just committed herself to caring for the gunslinger on her own until he was back on his feet.

  It was a responsibility that wore on her. She tended to Kerrigan's needs before she left for school, raced back during lunch to check on him, then came directly home at the end of the day. Haggard didn't begin to describe how she looked by the end of the week. Exhausted didn't begin to describe how she felt.

  She was irritable with the children and, discomfited by her short temper, they were even more fractious. When Bliss finally asked on Friday if Miss Devlin was all right, she merely replied, “I'm worn to a frazzle worrying, that's all.”

  “Don't worry about me and Hadley,” Bliss said, mistakenly assuming she was the source of Miss Devlin's concern. “We have everything all worked out. We're going to Canyon Creek next Saturday. We'll be married by noon and back before suppertime. Of course, we'll need you to provide an alibi for where I'll supposedly be all day—if that's all right?”

  Although she had reservations, Miss Devlin said, “I suppose so. If you're sure—”

  “That's wonderful! Hadley and I will come see you when we get back, so it won't exactly be a lie when I say I've been with you.”

  Miss Devlin couldn't make herself think that far ahead right now. She was too worried about Kerrigan. He wasn't getting any better, but he hadn't gotten any worse either. After a week of listening to his feverish ramblings, she knew more about him than she wanted to know.

  To make things worse, there was one more clue to Kerrigan's past that had totally intrigued her when she discovered it—the watch Mr. Gold had adjusted for hi
m.

  Eden had found the gold pocket watch in Kerrigan's shirt pocket when she emptied it before disposing of the ruined shirt. She hadn't been able to resist looking inside the back of the watch to see the handsome couple the jeweler had mentioned.

  One picture was of a much younger Kerrigan. The other was of a stunningly beautiful young woman, beautiful enough that Eden was stung by a totally new emotion—envy. If that was the kind of woman Kerrigan admired, there was no way he would ever be attracted to a woman as plain as Eden—not that she wanted him to be, of course.

  Miss Devlin was convinced the picture had to be the woman Kerrigan loved. She wanted to know more about the woman. Who was she? What was her relationship to Kerrigan? Eden promised herself that when the gunslinger recovered from his fever, she would find out.

  When Eden got home from school on Friday, she didn't bother to knock at her bedroom door, just shoved it open and stepped inside—to find a naked man sitting up in bed glaring fiercely at her.

  “Where the hell are my pants!”

  Chapter 10

  When a woman starts draggin' a loop,

  there's always some man willin' to step in.

  “I'M NAKED AS A PLUCKED CHICKEN.”

  “

  Yes, you are, Mr. Kerrigan.” Miss Devlin felt the blush rising despite her best efforts to prevent it. His eyes narrowed. “How long have I been here?”

  “About a week.”

  Kerrigan groaned in disbelief, then groaned again as he tried to get up. “I have to get moving. Those bushwhacking rustlers probably—”

  She watched him grit his teeth as the pain took hold. She reached over to help cover him up again and he shoved her hand away, gasping as the sudden movement caused the pain to grab him again.

  “What the hell did you do to me? I'm weak as a baby.”

  She could sympathize with his feelings of helplessness, but it wasn't her fault, and she wasn't about to take the blame. “You're lucky to be alive! You can hardly expect to be up and around in a matter of days with the kind of wound you had. Which is why you have no need of your pants, Mr. Kerrigan.”

  “We'll see about that,” he muttered.

  “Look, I'm not any happier to be stuck with you than you are to be here,” she said with asperity. “But you'll get well a lot quicker if you cooperate and do as I say.”

  He shook his head in disgust, but her reasonable appeal must have had some effect on him because he asked, “What do I have to do?”

  “Stay in bed and give your body a chance to heal. Are you hungry?”

  Miss Devlin watched, fascinated, as he scratched his stomach. “I guess I am.”

  “Supper should be ready soon.” She rose, wondering how she had let herself get roped into this situation, and headed out of the room.

  “Hey! Wait a minute. What—”

  She didn't give him a chance to argue, closing the door quietly but firmly after her. When she reached the kitchen, she sat down at the table and took a deep breath. It was going to be infinitely more difficult to nurse Kerrigan now that he was on the road to recovery. She thought she had gotten over her embarrassment at seeing—and touchin—his naked body over the past week. She had anticipated having no problem dealing with Kerrigan's nakedness when he awoke from his fever.

  But bathing the limp form of an unconscious man was a far cry from watching the ripple and flex of muscles moving under his skin as he scratched and stretched. She liked what she saw. She wanted to touch. And that she absolutely, positively, could not do.

  What worried her even more was the fear that he would somehow discern her need and take advantage of her, as he had with the buttons on his Levi's. He was a scoundrel, no doubt about it. She would have to be constantly on guard against him—and her own feelings—from now on.

  By taking his time, Kerrigan was able to inch his legs over the edge of the bed. But there was no getting around it. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. He leaned his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands. Even that little bit of movement stretched the skin on his back and let him know he had been shot.

  He thought back to the ambush to see if he could remember and recognize any of the voices he had heard. Nothing. Then he recalled the unusual roweled spur. Where had he seen it before? Montana. Levander Early had worn Mexican spurs with that distinctive etching of longhorns in the center of the rowel.

  Kerrigan's brow furrowed. He should have suspected Levander sooner, but had given him the benefit of the doubt. If he had trusted his instincts he'd have spent some time following the farmer-rustler around. Well, he owed Levander for a bullet in Montana. Now he owed him for a round of buckshot as well. This time he would make sure he didn't leave the job half done.

  What Kerrigan needed now was proof. He had to catch Levander and his gang with the rustled cattle, or find some other way to tie him to the rustling. It was a big help, though, to know where to look when things started happening.

  It was frustrating not to be able to go after the rustlers right now. But he did have an alternative. He rubbed his hand against the itchy week's growth of black beard on his face. Normally he worked alone, preferring that to trusting the local law, because more often than not, the local law was in somebody's pocket.

  But he knew Sheriff Reeves, and Felton would do to ride the river with. It would be better to involve Felton than to take the chance of having more cattle rustled while he was flat on his back or—to be more precise, in light of his wound—his stomach. He gingerly settled himself back with a pillow between himself and the carved headboard of the bed.

  A knock on the bedroom door was followed shortly by the appearance of Miss Devlin with a tray of food.

  “I think I could eat a horse, saddle and all,” he said with a welcoming grin.

  “You'll have to settle for beef stew,” she said, arranging the tray on his lap.

  “This wasn't how I expected to have my first dinner with you,” he said as he tried to catch her gaze.

  “If you're smart, you won't remind me about that,” she murmured, keeping her eyes carefully lowered.

  “Not your best day, huh?”

  “Not by half.”

  When she started to leave, he said, “Stay a minute. I need to ask a favor.”

  Miss Devlin debated the wisdom of hanging around when he might bring up other embarrassing questions she was certain he wanted to ask, but she was curious enough to stay, settling into the rocker beside her bed. Instead of telling her what he wanted, he ate, savoring each bite as if it were ambrosia.

  Kerrigan might have been hungry, but his stomach had shrunk so much that he had swallowed no more than a few bites before he was forced to set down his fork. He looked ruefully at the nearly full bowl before him. The stew was too salty, and the carrots were still raw, but he appreciated her efforts, so he said, “You're a fine cook, Miss Devlin. I'm sorry I can't do your supper justice.”

  “There's no need to lie, Mr. Kerrigan. I oversalted the stew and the carrots are raw. I can only excuse myself by saying I got distracted by some papers I was grading.”

  His lips quirked. “You believe in calling a spade a spade, don't you?”

  “I'm well aware of my shortcomings, if that's what you mean.”

  “You're awful hard on yourself. I've found more in you to admire than not.”

  Eden arched a brow. There he was, saying nice things to her again. If he kept that up, she might have to start revising her low opinion of him.

  “Of course,” he added, “that's not to say you couldn't stand some improvement.”

  Miss Devlin's lips pressed flat. She might have known he would spoil it. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, for one thing, you could smile a little more.”

  “I see nothing to smile about so long as the ranchers and nesters in t
his valley are at one another's throats. I've done everything I can—”

  “It's not your fight,” he said in a harsh voice. “Stay out of it.”

  Eden rose to confront him, fists on hips. “Since when do you tell me what to do?”

  “Since I know more about this kind of fight than you do. I've seen how ugly things can get. I'm warning you, for your own good, stay out of it.”

  “Of all the impertinent, audaciohubristic—”

  Kerrigan burst out laughing. He managed to control himself long enough to chortle, “Hubristic?”

  Eden's chin jutted. “It means having exaggerated pride or self-confi—”