Her glare turned cold and she crossed the room to where his saddlebag sat. There, she pulled out the leather packet that held the divorce papers. After lifting them out of the flapped opening, she held them out to him. “I signed your papers.”
The hostility in her tone wasn’t the only reason his insides turned hard. He shouldn’t be surprised, not again, since day one Clara had been uprooting his plans, and that, too, had to end. Blake grabbed her wrist. “It’s not just signed papers I want.”
“What more is there?” she hissed, tugging at his hold.
“I want to know why you left,” he replied just as hotly. “I want to know—”
“Shush up,” she ordered. “You’ll wake the house.”
“I don’t care,” he growled so low vibrations rumbled in his stomach. “You owe me some answers, Clara, and I want them.”
“What about what I wanted?” she asked tersely.
Blake went rigid. “What more could you have wanted? You had a beautiful home, clothes, food.”
“Life’s necessities,” she said flippantly, still trying to break his hold. “Niceties that don’t mean squat.”
“Oh, and this place does?” he challenged. “A run-down farm in the middle of nowhere.”
“My brother has worked hard for all he has,” she answered with fury. “Because he loves his family.”
Rage boiled inside Blake. He’d loved two women, and they’d both thrown it back in his face. He’d learned years ago his mother didn’t want him in her life, but Clara—he couldn’t take her rejection as easily as he’d thought he could. “I loved you,” he rasped. “I loved you so damn much I was dizzy half the time.”
“No you didn’t,” she retorted.
He’d hated admitting such a thing before the words were out, and having her deny it was more than he could take. As a lawyer, he usually fought with words, but this time, he used action and pulled her onto the bed. She struggled, but not hard, especially not once his mouth found hers.
His hold on Clara never slackened. Not even when a splattering of guilt, or shame, or perhaps remorse tried to rise up. He shouldn’t do this, but he should never have married her, either. She deserved a husband she could be proud to be married to, proud to carry his last name and bear his children. Not a bastard. He didn’t know who his father was. Had no idea where his last name had come from. If his mother did, she’d go to her grave with that information. As would most madams.
Anger was seeping into his veins now. He’d left all this—the woman he was holding, kissing, then his new bride—to go to Springfield and defend before a court of law one of his mother’s customers—one of the many clients she’d sent his way over the years. A woman who would go to her grave without ever telling a soul he was her son.
It was the way it had to be, she’d always said. No one could know Iris Wentworth had a son. Her business—the same one that had financed his education—catered to the wealthiest of the wealthy, the famous and well-known, and guaranteed men didn’t need to worry there might be an outcome of visiting the manor on the hill. A child had never been conceived inside her house, or so his mother claimed.
He’d questioned it all before—not his mother or her promises—but if he could jeopardize Clara, her innocence and virtue. If she’d leave him when she learned the truth.
Blake tore his mouth from Clara’s, furious his mother could haunt him at the worst possible times, and questioning if that was the reason Clara had left him.
She was staring at him, her breasts rising and falling with each ragged breath. Their gazes locked, and that’s when he thought of nothing but the want her eyes held. She’d always been able to make him do that—forget everything. And he’d loved her for it. Still did.
When they came together that time, it was by mutual agreement, and as desperate as he’d ever known. Their tongues created a battle, a fierce yet welcoming and exciting clash that heated the very air. Having experienced her wonder before and dreamed of doing it all again, Blake’s mind raced forward, flashing visions of things to come, of feasting on other parts of her glorious body.
He was a lawyer, calculated his moves, planned for the outcome, but all of his normal discipline was gone. It was the fever. For he was feverish. Not from being shot and not the kind people died from. Or maybe they did. He might. He’d never wanted her this badly, needed her this strongly.
They were whispering to each other, between and through kisses, little words of pleasure that increased the excitement of what they were doing, what was to come, and propelling him toward another breaking point. One he could no longer deny.
Blake had no idea if he disposed of her dress or if she did, but when her breasts, glowing in the moonlight, appeared before him, he feasted like a man long starved. She was straddling him, and he cupped the glorious mounds with both hands, held them firmly as he sucked on one pebble-hard tip and then the other.
The way she whispered his name, over and over, had his burning ache growing tenfold, and when she lifted her hips, he grasped her waist and pulled her forward until her very center was directly before his face.
He licked her first, teasing her with the tip of his tongue, thrilled at how she attempted to muffle a pleasure-filled moan. Blake tasted her with slow even strokes that provided as much pleasure as they offered, biding his time until the precise moment he claimed her completely with his mouth. He held her thighs firmly in place with both hands and indulged them both with consuming gratification.
She was close to completion and, though he didn’t want to, Blake let her loose when she begged, and he almost lost his last bits of control when she positioned herself over him.
Clara knew it, too, how close he was. Her smile said so as she slowly lowered herself.
Her heat and warmth, velvet soft and slick, gradually encompassed the length of him with a taunting pleasure that had him taking her mouth in another ravishing and somewhat frantic kiss.
She set the pace, a rhythm that joined them completely and set a colossal storm into motion. He loved how gallant and commanding she was, always had, and held her hips, guided her up and down, giving in completely to the wondrous sensations. There was a limit to how long he could last, and he stretched it, prolonging their union, enjoying her boldness even as the thrill of having her again, after so long, had his pinnacle approaching at record speed. Hers was, too. She was arching her back, grasping his shoulders with a firm hold, and he cherished her all the more for how fully she displayed her pleasure.
When she threw back her head, groaned his name in that husky way he adored, Blake tightened his hold on her hips, kept her locked against him as her body shuddered, and sent his over the edge. Her name tore itself from his throat as the epitome of releases sent a shock wave through his body. Rocking him beyond anticipation.
She slumped forward and he caught her, held her warm and heaving body by wrapping both arms all the way around her back and keeping her locked with him as long as possible. Eventually their breathing slowed, both his and hers, and when she lifted her face, a slow smile tilted her lips and her eyes shimmered brightly. He kissed her again, slow and languid this time, just savoring in the connection.
Afterward, she slid off him, but just barely, keeping one leg twisted with his as she ran the tip of one fingertip idly over his chest.
Blake sensed her thoughts, knew she was contemplating what had just happened. Their argument wasn’t over, nothing had been settled, but for all the things he’d faced in his l
ife, he couldn’t hear she regretted their union. Not right now.
“Go to sleep, Clara,” he whispered, kissing her head.
He held no regrets for their actions, but was grieving the fact he had the answers he needed. It hadn’t been what he’d done. It had been what he hadn’t done. He hadn’t loved Clara with the caliber she’d deserved. Not knowing how was his only excuse. A pitiful one at that. In some ways he’d taken love for granted, that it would prevail, but nothing could succeed through the barriers he’d put up. He wasn’t who she thought he was. Not completely. He’d lived with it his entire life, and never once considered telling another soul, but if he deserved answers, she did, too. Even though it would prove to be what she couldn’t tolerate. Why she’d left.
At some point Blake must have dozed off, because when he opened his eyes, sunlight was attempting to peek in the window. He reached over to tug Clara close, for just a bit longer, and panicked when the bed beside him was empty.
Chapter Five
The sky had gone from gray to pink to orange as the sun crested higher with each minute Clara had stood in the barn doorway, not really watching the sunrise, but not looking away, either.
“You’re up early.”
She gave a single head nod when William sauntered near, carrying the milk pail.
“How’s Blake?”
“Sleeping.”
“How are you?”
Unable to answer, for she truly didn’t know, she shook her head and shrugged.
William wrapped an arm around her shoulders, spun her about. “You can talk while I milk.”
“What if I don’t have anything to say?”
He grinned. “Then I’d want to know where my sister went.”
Clara was thankful for that, how he made her grin when she had nothing to smile about. He gestured toward one stool as he took the other and set it down near Belle, patting the cow’s pointed hips after he’d set down the pail.
“I was wrong, William,” she said as her throat burned.
He didn’t look her way, just started milking. “How so?”
The steady swish-swish of milk hitting the pail, pinging loudly against the quiet morning, was comforting, normal, and she wished she didn’t have to interrupt it. Almost. The pressure inside her was too strong not to let out. “I should never have left,” she finally said. “Never went to meet Oscar. Never...” The rest plugged her throat as if she’d eaten wild berries.
“Never married Blake?”
“Yeah. Never married Blake.”
“Why?”
“I had everything I needed right here.”
He looked at her intently. “Did you?”
There was no question he was referring to Blake. “He has no idea who I am. Not really.” The blame inside her was heavy and ugly. “I didn’t deserve to inherit Oscar’s fortune, either.”
“You were his granddaughter.”
Guilt wormed its way into disgust. “Whom he’d never met. Only knew the last few months of his life. He was already so sick and frail anyone could have claimed to be his granddaughter.”
William didn’t slow in his milking. “You weren’t claiming. You were his granddaughter. Are his granddaughter.”
“He never knew the truth, either.” She’d tried to tell Oscar—about her father—but he wouldn’t listen. Instead, he’d insisted he’d waited for years to meet her, spoil her. From the moment she’d arrived, he’d lavished her with clothes and shoes and expensive things she’d never dreamed of owning like pearl-studded hairpins and hats with real flowers. How she’d accepted everything so readily, so selfishly, was eating away at her stomach. Had been for months.
“When he hired a lawyer to put everything in my name, I asked if the lawyer could meet me in the park by the lake so I could tell him that Oscar and I had only been acquainted a short time and that maybe there was someone else he needed to leave his holdings to, but when that lawyer turned out to be Blake, I clammed up. I didn’t want him to know the truth, and then...” Her mind was going in several directions, one being what had happened last night. As beautiful and wonderful as coupling with Blake had been, it had compounded everything. Living without him would be impossible, yet, she knew she had to tell him the truth.
“And then?” William asked, done milking and simply watching her.
She sighed. “It was a whirlwind. Oscar was so happy that Blake was interested in me. He’s a very prominent lawyer. His clients are rich and well-known. He deals mainly in financial issues, not criminal cases. Oscar said he’d make a fine husband and encouraged me to see him.”
“You didn’t want to?”
“No, I mean yes, I did. Very much, but I—” She huffed out the heaviness once again filling her chest. “I saw him, married him as Oscar’s granddaughter. I never told him about you—” she waved a hand “—or any of this. I never told him who Clara Johnson really is.”
“Is that why you left?”
She’d known the truth for months, but was only able to admit it now. “Yes. We’d been at a garden party. They’re unbelievable. Everyone is dressed in finery and playing outdoors. Croquet and other yard games and eating little sandwiches and drinking glasses of wine and Port. You have to see it to believe it.”
“What happened?” He shifted, rested both hands on his knees. “At this garden party?”
“There was a trial everyone was talking about—a bank robbery—and one of the other men asked Blake why he wasn’t representing one of the robbers. Blake said he’d been asked and offered a large amount of money, but that he wouldn’t defend a known felon. Other people asked him more questions.” Her stomach was gurgling, and she had to press a hand against the commotion in order to go on. “One of the robbers had claimed he’d turned the others in, was working with the authorities, but got arrested with the rest of them. Blake said the man was lying, and by turning on those he rode with made the man less trustworthy, more of a criminal, than the others.”
“And you think that’s how he’d see you,” William said, clearly understanding how she felt.
“It’s who I am. An outlaw’s daughter. The one who turned in her father.”
William nodded. “So you left him?”
She shook her head. “Not right away. I asked him things. Like if the person was really innocent, would he defend them then, things to see how he really felt.”
“And?”
She stood, walked toward the doorway so she could see the house. “He said I didn’t need to worry about it. That he didn’t defend criminals and never would. That he hadn’t become a lawyer just to find ways for guilty people to sound innocent.”
“When did you leave?”
“A week or so later he had to go to Springfield for a trial about some land, and after he’d left the house I’d noticed he’d left his cuff links behind. I took them to the train station to give them to him, but when I got there...” The image was back, of Blake embracing the woman he’d hugged the day before in the park across the road from their house. The big, beautiful house he’d moved her into following their wedding—where she’d always felt just a touch out of place. The home was too lavish and plush for the likes of her. But the other woman, with her aristocratic stance and expensive clothes, would fit in perfectly.
“When you got there?”
Her fears—that she had more of her father in her than she’d realized—had manifested. She couldn’t tell William about them, but she could admit, “When I got
there I realized it might be my only chance to leave. So I went home, packed up a few things and left.”
“Without saying a word?”
She shook her head, but then nodded, confused as to which was right.
“How’d he find you?”
“I don’t know.” She spun around, fought against the sting in her eyes. “I don’t know how much he knows, either.”
William sighed. “Any number of people could have told him, depending where he stopped, what he asked.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
It was tempting, but she shook her head. “No, it’s something I have to do. He’ll leave for good then.”
* * *
Blake, unable to find any of his clothes, had wrapped himself in the bedcovering and made it as far as the kitchen before the older woman had stopped him. To her credit, she’d let him use the outhouse, but wearing nothing but a sheet and with Mrs. Sinclair on his heels, he hadn’t been able to search the barn for Clara, which is where she was. That’s what Mrs. Sinclair had said before she’d ordered him back into the bedroom.
Now the woman was standing beside the bed, staring at his wounds. He was staring at them, too.
“That’s it?” he asked.
She nodded, wadding the bandages into a ball. “That’s it.”
“It looks more like a rash than bullet holes.”
“I’ve seen worse, that’s for sure.”
She’d made similar comments yesterday and Blake was curious, but hadn’t questioned her then and wouldn’t now, either. He had more important things to see to. “You said my clothes had been laundered?”
“Yep, I stitched up your drawers, too.” The woman paused at the doorway. “Suppose you’ll be heading back to Chicago soon, taking Clara with you.”
“She’s my wife.” The statement rolled easily off his tongue, even though he sincerely doubted if he could convince Clara to give him another try at being a husband. One she could live with.
His Wild West Wife Page 4
