High-Riding Heroes

by Joey Light

  Despite the fact that Victoria and Wes found a delightful little French coffee shop right there in the mall, he gave in to his daughter’s preference for fast food. Katie feasted on the burgers and fries while Wes and Victoria shared bits of chicken and a large chocolate shake.

  They talked of silly things and made jokes for Katie. Wes noticed that Victoria kept her eyes from lingering on his for too long.

  They decided, after prodding from Katie, who was getting spoiled rotten in one day, to go to a movie. The usher commented on the “lovely family” as they made their way down the aisle, arms laden with popcorn, greasy with butter and gritty with salt, balancing huge cups of cola.

  Katie sat between them, proud as a peacock with two tails, and looked from her dad to Victoria and back again. Even she didn’t miss the fact that halfway through the movie Wes slid his arm over Katie’s chair to toy with the sleeve of Victoria’s blouse. Wes wanted to talk to her. To hear the soothing tones of her voice. Wanted to see the light come back in her eyes. He waited.

  Sometime during the day, Wes had acquired a bag. It was getting dark and Katie was half asleep as she walked when Victoria noticed it. “Didn’t Katie get enough? You had to stop and get her more.”

  “This is for you, but you can’t have it yet. Are you two riding in the back of the truck on the way home, too?”

  “No. We haven’t got the strength to hold on, and when you get home, Katie and I might have flown off with the wind and you wouldn’t even know it in time to look for us. We’d be carried off to the Land of Lost Boys and never be seen again.”

  Katie laughed and crawled up in Victoria’s lap. She was asleep before Wes made his first right turn out of town.

  “So, what’s in the bag?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he answered smugly.

  “I would.” She smiled into his lazy eyes.

  “Later. Did you enjoy the day?”

  “Yes. You accomplished what you set out to do. I didn’t think of…all day. Hardly. It was sweet of you.”

  He grunted. “I never thought of myself as sweet. I don’t think I like that.”

  “Wes. I…I don’t blame you. I said some pretty mean things to you yesterday but…”

  He patted her shoulder and let his fingers slide down her arm to twine with hers. “Let’s not talk about it. What’s done is done. Whoever… Whatever happened to cause that tragedy…we might never know. It’s over. It’s part of the risk you take any time you deal with horses.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. Arriving in Glory Town, they decided Katie should stay in Victoria’s room for the night since she was already soundly sleeping. “Where are you going to sleep?” Wes asked slyly.

  “The bed is big enough for both of us,” she answered smiling.

  “Mine?” he teased.

  “No, mine, for us girls.”

  Turning the bed covers down, Victoria laid Katie down and tucked her in, clothes and all. When she turned, she slammed into Wes, a solid barricade of cowboy. He corralled her in his arms, and before she had time to think, his mouth crushed hers. A deep, dark kiss. One that didn’t ask but demanded. One that didn’t hide the fact that he wanted her and wanted her now.

  Sinking against him, her body relaxed. She knew she was melding to him like hot candle wax, but didn’t try to stop it. Magic. Sorcery. Necromancy. His hands, his mouth worked her away into a world of hallucinations and sleight of hand. Nothing was defined. Nothing was as she’d seen it before. Absolutely nothing was as she’d known it before. Together they seemed to disappear…away into a glowing darkness, lit by embers, filled with heat and haze.

  He reared his head, reveling in the passion he saw in her heavy-lidded eyes. Needing to taste her again, he trailed his lips up her throat, behind her ear, and across her cheek, only to slam into her mouth again, tongue seeking tongue, teeth grinding teeth.

  Sweetness and fire. He had never guessed the whole of it. His stomach muscles coiled and knotted as his arm banded around her waist, one hand cupping the back of her head.

  Where had the depth of this emotion come from? As it tore at his doubts, it built his knowledge. They were meant to be together this way and every other way. Fate had seen to it that they both knew what they didn’t want before they tasted what they did.

  She was liquid nitro in his arms, sliding like mercury through every pore in his body. He could never be the same again. Never be without her. She had slipped into his system and could never be washed away. He would never let that happen. Branded. Scorched. Wes called on all his control not to take her to the floor right now.

  Pulling her trapped arms free, she wound them around his neck and stood on her tiptoes for more contact. His body was hard and strong and she felt his heart pound against hers. Wild. Out of control. Or was it very much in control, guiding and seeking, affixing and finding? Her breath gone, she pulled away from the kiss.

  His eyes sparkled darkly in the dimly lit room. There was naked passion in his eyes. He wanted her. She couldn’t mistake that. Was it because it was a good and natural thing to happen between a man and a woman if they cared enough about each other? No, she judged a man like him didn’t take such things lightly. And she wanted him. She couldn’t deny it. Body, mind, and soul, she ached for him. The old doubt niggled its way into her brain and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She hated the doubt. Despised her reluctance to simply accept things and say yes. Yes. This is what I want. This man is who I want to spend the rest of my life with. It was right there. Under her palms, waiting.

  His lips were in her hair, at her temple, and trailing down. He rubbed his mouth against hers and then left it, wanting more to kiss the pulse point at her throat.

  He pushed her blouse aside and moved his warm, moist, seeking mouth over her collarbone and down.

  Her breath snagged and she became all too aware that this was going to go too far with a child asleep close by. Remembering well what it was like to make love with this man, she gently pushed him away and rested her forehead on his chest.

  “Make love with me, Victoria. Come to my room.”

  His voice was husky and low. He brought his fingers up under her chin and forced her to look at him. What he saw there disturbed him. “You still don’t trust, do you? You or me?”

  “Either. I can’t think clearly when you’re kissing me. The other night…it was beautiful and it made me want to spend every waking hour with you. You do things to me, Wes. You make me feel…I’ve never felt this way before but…”

  He blew out his breath and moved away, pulling her toward the door and away from his sleeping daughter, afraid they would wake her, and he didn’t want anything to stop their conversation. “I’ve been looking for something in my life. Until now I couldn’t identify it. Right now I’m holding it in my arms.” He pulled her back into the circle of them and held her there.

  “I…”

  He put his fingers to her lips. “Shhhh. Don’t talk. Just listen. Really listen to my words. I’ve been mixed up. Off track for so long, it just hit me all of a sudden from out of nowhere. I do love you, Victoria. I can wait for you to realize it’s the same with you. But not for long. Do you understand? Not for long.”

  “I’ve been wrong before, Wes. I’m scared of making the wrong decision. Making love isn’t all there is to a relationship. I don’t know that I can go on without you if anything goes wrong. Men and women make love all the time without cementing promises. I won’t have it handed back politely.

  I won’t love anyone who won’t love me back. Totally and without question.”

  “You got it.” His mouth touched hers once more, only lightly this time, only hinting of what would be. “I feel the same. I gave my love once but it was never handed back politely. It was ripped from my chest and thrown in my face. I have a hard time with pride, Victoria. Like I said before, I won’t ask again. You’ll come to me all on your own. It has to be your decision. All or nothing. But if I don’t like your decision, we
ll then the rules might change. Sometimes you can’t see what’s in front of your face unless someone opens your eyes.”

  She wormed her way out of his arms before there would be no turning back. Instantly, she felt the emptiness, the cold incompleteness come back. Like pieces of the same puzzle turned sideways, they eyed each other. Only their hands touched.

  She wanted more than anything to take his hand and guide him down the hall. But something stopped her. She hated it, but something made it impossible for her to tell him that she was afraid. Afraid of not knowing herself. Afraid of not knowing him. Always too cautious in life, she was only now learning to spread her wings and fly. She didn’t want to fly blindly into the side of a mountain and die.

  “If only I could be sure…” Her words sounded stupid even to her ear.

  “I’ll see to it you’re sure. One way or another, lady, I’ll see to it.”

  A charge ran through her body. She knew he meant what he said. She knew he could melt her and seduce her to the point of no return. She remembered, all too well, how willingly she had gone with him before. Into that beautiful place only lovers go. Lovers. A smile curled her lips. She was grateful he wasn’t pushing her. He placed a very conservative kiss on her cheek and left her standing there.

  It was only nine o’clock. After taking a cooling walk, Wes headed over to the jailhouse to talk to Buck. Tomorrow was the first bank robbery that had been practiced over and over. A few last details and it would be all set. He had already measured the change in the men. He had his fingers crossed that all went well in the morning. It would add to their self-respect and be the first real step toward the completion of their education.

  Not able to sleep, Victoria slipped out of bed and into the new sundress, deciding to see if Wes was still at the jailhouse jabbering with Buck. It would please him to see her wearing the dress his daughter had picked out for her. And she wanted to please him in some way. Plus, she felt an irrepressible urge to be around him. Only near him. To look, to savor.

  “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’” piped softly and twined into the background from carefully concealed speakers. During the gunfights they blared the legends and increased the suspense and tension. While the stage was being robbed, the speaker touted the lawlessness of yesteryear. Tonight the sound simply took Victoria back a century into a beautiful world. She smiled and took a good look at the sky, crowded with bright, twinkling stars, and thought of all the women in years gone by, buried now beneath the grass, who looked at this same sky and felt love.

  Going the back way because the dress was certainly not period costume, she approached the jailhouse from the back. Upon hearing the men’s voices, she slowed down to sneak up on them. When she heard words that turned her blood to icicles and her mind to fire, she froze.

  “Buck, I’m serious. She can’t ever find out under what circumstance I took this job. She doesn’t trust anyone now and she never will again if she hears the truth.”

  Buck snorted and poured himself another drink. “Wes, that’s bull. Victoria knows me. She’d understand that at first it was just a job to you.

  One I sorta twisted your arm to make you take. Didn’t even tell you my new stubborn Eastern partner was a woman. Just to discourage that partner and send him packing.” He laughed. Buck laughed. She couldn’t believe it.

  Her skin prickled. The hair at the base of her neck stood on end. Air, there seemed to be none, trapped itself in her lungs and refused to budge. Her brain buzzed from the lack of it. Backing up, she never heard Wes’s next words. She didn’t want to. Enough was enough. So it was all a hoax. A cruel trap they had all fallen into. A cold, penetrating wave of reality washed over her heart and nearly stopped it. Vicious emotions tangled and began a slow weave of disbelief through her. She doubled over as pain racked her body and her mind.

  A clean cut with a knife, a blow from a weapon. Nothing. Nothing could compare to the wrenching actuality of his words. Just when she was opening up, inviting… Double-crossed. Sold out. Deceived. Hoodwinked. And by J. Weston Cooper. The man she imagined herself in love with. Just her rotten luck. Or was it just the way life is? All the rest, all the good stuff was just made of fairy tales. Buck. She could believe it of him…almost expect it. It never left her mind that he had to feel cheated finding out that the other half of Glory Town was hers, not his. But Wes? When she was on the verge of letting the walls down and believing? Trusting?

  As she ran the back way to the hotel, her mind tumbled like leaves in the wind. A sham. All of this was a sham. But how could it be? It couldn’t be. But she heard it clear as day. They were in on a plot, together, to get her to go home. Was killing her horse part of the plan? No, not even Wes could be so cruel. Did he set out to make her look foolish with the guns and riding? Was wooing her and making her feel things for him a way of getting her off guard? That didn’t make any sense. Nothing did. Running, she didn’t see the man making his way toward the back lot and plowed right into him.

  She sent him sprawling and tumbled on top of him. Nick, not believing his luck when he realized who was in his arms, smiled. “All you had to do was holler. I would have stopped. You didn’t have to snowball me.” Then he saw her and something snapped inside him. That same something that had been stretched tight since the first day he’d seen her. “Vic. What’s wrong?”

  He could see the tears she didn’t even know she was shedding glisten on her cheeks in the shadows. Something in his heart turned cold. Like a stone, it weighed heavy in his chest. Standing, he offered her his hand.

  Disoriented, Victoria looked up at the man from her seat on the ground. Cool air returned to her lungs and she let him help her up. “I guess yesterday’s events just got to me, Nick. Sorry I knocked you down.”

  “Well, I’m not. Come on back to my trailer with me. I have some whiskey. It’ll brace you up real good. Come on.”

  “I can’t. Katie is asleep in my room. I’m afraid to be gone too long. She might wake up and look for me.”

  He took her hand. “The dining room then. You’ll be right there. It’s the least you can do after throwing me to the ground like a bull steer.”

  Suddenly, like a wave of water building and crashing to the shore, she didn’t want his hands on her. She didn’t want his support, his friendliness, or his help. A sob tore from her throat. Claustrophobia set in and she thrashed about searching for air.

  Nick didn’t back away. Catching her arms and pinning them to her sides, he forced her to calm down, to listen to the soothing sounds coming from his throat. She fought him. He held tight. Finally, breathless and weak, she slumped against him.

  They stayed like that for a measured period of time.

  She fragile and shaky, wavering. He strong, stalwart, and staunch. He stroked her hair and kept talking to her.

  His words floated to the back of her mind as fragments of Wes’s words crowded in the forefront. “If she hears the truth. Can’t ever find out.” And Buck’s “Discourage the partner. Send him packing.”

  Wes had, just a little while before that, held her in his arms and professed to love her. And she had wanted to believe him. Oh, how she had tried to believe him. It was too much to think about. Too much to deal with. She wanted relief and this man who kept her bound tightly to him was offering it to her.

  Trying to clear her mind, she let him keep his arm around her shoulder to guide her. How much was a woman supposed to take in one forty-eight-hour period? It was funny, terribly funny, how all her excitement and exhilaration of the past weeks could turn to exasperation and desperation. Her mind swam. She needed the arms of a friend, badly. But she didn’t have any. Not here. Not in this godforsaken Wild West town that she had come to love and think of as her own. It was too much. Too damned much.

  Nick led her to a back table and got her settled in a chair. Then he returned with two whiskeys and the rest of the bottle.

  She sipped hers and then gulped it. Pouring more, she looked at it and knocked it back. What the heck?
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br />   “Easy there now, girl. You’ll end up getting drunk.”

  “I don’t care. Maybe that’s what I need.”

  “Maybe what you need is Nick.” He reached across the table and lifted a curl, tucking it behind her ear.

  She recognized it right away. Nick was being seductive. What the hell was this? A full conspiracy? Was the whole darn reenactment team in on Buck’s special little payroll? Get rid of the Easterner. Get rid of the woman any way you have to. Though her head was spinning, Victoria stood up and glared at Nick.

  Though it was Wes she wanted to punch, she got very close to Nick’s face and whispered, “Leave me alone. Go away. You’re all the same. You’re all hoping I’ll go back…”

  He grabbed her wrist and stood up, coming around to haul her to him. “No. You belong here. You light up this town. Before you came it was dark, so dark sometimes I couldn’t see. But now, now that you’re here…you’re never going to leave.”

  Victoria looked at Nick. For the first time, she really studied the way he looked at her. His eyes were dark and nearly desperate, and dangerous. Spinning out of his grasp, liquor woozy, she headed for the stairs. Crazy. She had crossed the line. She’d gone around the bend and didn’t even know it till now. That’s the only answer. As she climbed the stairs, she fought to think clearly but sense evaded her. Only slashes of pictures darted across her mind. Only fragments of sentences typed their way across her brain like newspaper headlines. She laughed. What was next? A straitjacket? A room with rubber walls and attendants with no ears and huge bald heads that shone in the light or something equally bizarre? You have just entered the Twilight Zone…

  Waking up was very painful. Her head throbbed. Her eyes felt swollen and tight. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth all night. The fact that a fat little hand was poking her, prodding her to wake up didn’t clear the cobwebs for several seconds.