Callie moved closer to Joe. “What did you decide, Joe?” She had a condescending tone, and her way of speaking probably wouldn’t sit well with the injured party if he indeed felt better than the hour before.
True pain existed in his face. He tried to sit up and face Richard. When the effort failed, he collapsed against the mattress. “I decided you and Richard would be better off without me. Is that about right, Richard?”
He didn’t acknowledge Joe. He refused to respond one way or the other. He questioned his motives for his way of thinking, too. He wondered if he didn’t reply because he happened to side with Joe, or if he couldn’t rightly remember the straight of things.
“Since you’re so big on making decisions and running off at the mouth when you shouldn’t, who shot you and why?” Callie asked, slapping her palm against the small of her back.
Joe attempted sitting again. The sudden move didn’t come without guttural growls and a little blood spilling from the bandages, not to mention his head rolling all over the place. He looked drunk, injured, and above all else, mad as hell. “You know who, and you can guess why.”
Chapter Four
Six weeks later
Joe watched her walk across the street from the livery stable. A few men gathered around the entrance of the barn. He saw them poking each other and didn’t have to wonder what they were talking about. They stood there for one purpose…to watch Callie wiggle her way over to the hotel after she tended to business.
If Joe cared to guess, the word was out. Since they didn’t whistle or grab at her, somebody around town did them all a favor. They spread the news and avoided disturbances. Callie belonged to them, and everyone in Tucson understood she was a marked gal, a taken woman.
Joe revisited the ideas he once harbored as a young man. Callie sure had been a pretty little thing then and still to the day looked very much the same. Joe loved her, God he loved her, but they’d made their decisions and stuck by them, and as a result, still chose the more complicated life.
A few minutes later the door swung open, and Richard walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed. Little Joe narrowed his gaze and really gave him a good gander.
Joe had developing plans for Richard and Callie, too. He felt quite nice with the new day and was up for a little fun. Fact was, he was ready to raise some hell and make a little racket. Since he had coerced death and then somehow dodged its damning consequences when he had been too afraid to face his own demise, Little Joe had missed out on some mighty fine fucking.
He wondered if Callie and Richard had enjoyed one another. He licked his lower lip and fought the temptation to ask. Richard didn’t pester him with questions, and Joe appreciated the courtesy. What he shared with Richard was precious, but what he had with Callie resembled love. If Richard and Callie had had relations while he had been out like a light, he might have a slight problem accepting their impatience, even if he understood the needs of a man.
“What?” Richard asked. “Something on your mind?”
Joe smirked and then pointed to the window. “You’re sitting on a bed with a man who is now well-known for working it both ways. Those people over yonder can look up here and see us.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Richard still refused to pry. Joe was glad. It wasn’t like Richard didn’t know why Joe had been shot. The whole truth would only hurt him. While a gun had been fired with the intent to kill, the reasons behind the actions spiked Joe’s pain. The man who pulled the trigger had multiple motives, and good ones, as much as Joe hated to acknowledge them.
“Since when do you care what people think?”
Joe carefully considered his reply. “I was shot. I don’t want the same for you.”
“You were boogered up because you had your dick where it shouldn’t have been.” He stood up, walked over to the window, and tugged the wooden panel forward and up. He stuck his head outside and waved to Callie. “Get your sweet bottom up here, woman.”
“Nice, that’ll work,” Joe said.
Richard slammed down the window and drew the shades. “Yeah, maybe for those cowboys across the street, but the little gal headed here right now might have something to say about the outburst.”
A few seconds later, Callie stormed into the room. “What do you think you’re doing?” Her hands were on her hips, and she quickly set her jaw.
“I was trying to please Joe here. He said people below would start gandering a guess—an accurate one—if they saw me sitting here with him.”
“Since when do we care what people think?” she asked, staring at Joe.
“That question has already been asked.” Little Joe rubbed his two-week-old beard.“I care what people think about you and Richard.”
Callie folded her arms across her breasts. “Oh yeah? Since when? You never did before. Your attitude is one of the very reasons we played our games. Every town we’ve been in, there’s a record. Someone was always left behind to tell their tall tales of what happened in my rented rooms. Walls are thin, Joe. That’s how come they talk and spread so much gossip.”
“Callie,” Richard warned. “It don’t matter now what anyone thought. We ain’t there anymore, and you ain’t either.”
“Yeah, but when I went back to Tombstone, it took me nearly a year to get those folks to believe the two of you didn’t screw each other but instead took turns with me.”
“Is that why your doctor friend didn’t like us much?” Richard asked.
“No,” she replied too quickly. “He knew the truth about you two.”
“He what?” Joe asked, faking the shock of betrayal and trying to change his expression in an instant before clenching his fists. It was all an act.
Richard didn’t look at all surprised. He had the unique ability to walk away and turn the other cheek. He didn’t particularly like confrontations, and since most of the time he killed those who pissed him off, he turned his back and separated himself from the brewing fury.
Little Joe watched his every move now, afraid for Callie but equally hurt for Richard, never mind his own feelings.
“Did it ever occur to you that he didn’t want anyone to know about us?” Joe asked.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me. I didn’t think either of you would ever come back. If you’d stayed away, then you wouldn’t be standing here right now asking questions you shouldn’t be asking.”
“It’s my fault you wagged your damn tongue, I reckon?”
“Little Joe, I think it’s a good time for you to hush up and not ask any other questions. I don’t want to hurt you or anger Richard.”
“That doctor friend of yours,” Little Joe began, dead set against pulling in his horns, “what does he mean to you?”
Callie acted like she thought long and hard about the best way to answer. “He’s good with his tongue,” she finally admitted.
The hair on Joe’s balls twitched. She still knew how to make his senses come alive in all the right places.
“A good tongue.” He processed her confession. No doubt it was a worthless, made-to-order reply. “A real good one, or average to almost no count but serves the purpose when a woman’s needs come up?”
Callie grinned. “I do believe you’re jealous.”
“Terribly,” he admitted.
“Wasn’t too smart of you telling him about us, Callie,” Richard finally said.
Little Joe tossed his holster on the dresser. He’d had it on the bed earlier, loading his gun. “No, she ain’t a woman with a brain for much outside of fucking.”
Richard turned around and looked at Joe. “Is that what you think of me, too?”
Callie shifted her gaze from one man to the other. If she had to guess, there was only one man Richard feared, one cowboy Joe would hate to go up against. They stared down at their own worst potential enemy.
Callie held fast to a sudden thought. She wondered if their past relationship held them together in the first place. If they weren’t lovers, they sure couldn’t
be friends after what they’d shared.
Little Joe stared at Richard’s cock. “How long has it been since you’ve fucked somebody, Richard?”
He looked the other way.
“Come on now, answer me,” Little Joe probed. “How long has it been since you sank your pretty pecker pole inside another man’s ass?”
“What makes you think I ain’t had any pussy?”
Callie shifted uncomfortably. “I would hope not,” she said quietly. Joe studied her reaction, and she wondered what he was thinking.
“Would it bother you if he had relations with a woman, Callie?” Little Joe asked.
Richard apparently awaited a full-blown confession, too. His expression softened, and Callie knew in an instant they both saw through her façade. It would crush her if Richard had been with another woman.
“I wouldn’t have the right to hold a grudge,” she said. “And I got a right mind to remind you of something, too. I never once told you not to have sex with a woman.”
“Hell, baby,” Little Joe sang, showing off a hint of his notable arrogance. “It wouldn’t have done you a bit of good to tell me anything, and you ought to know it.”
“You’re still a cocky ass, Little Joe,” Richard told him. “You don’t have a right to talk to Callie like you do.”
“Maybe you’re correct there.” He looked around them then. It was as if he saw their surroundings for the first time since they’d been there. The old dresser in the far corner had a mirror propped up against the wall at an angle. The oval wood surrounding the looking glass needed a good polish, but the mirror served a purpose.
Since Callie had worked there once before, she knew why the owners kept the whore’s rooms set up a certain way. The mirrors provided anyone in the bed a good look at themselves. Men paying for sex loved those mirrors. Shoot, truth told, she liked them, too.
Outside of the large mirror, everything else was plain. There was a basin in the corner right next to an old wooden high-back chair and two blankets strewn over the seat. The dresser itself had three drawers that were real stubborn when a person tried to open them. If Callie had known they were planning on staying longer than a day or two, she might have used them to divide up their things. Instead, the men lived out of their saddlebags, and she kept her clothes in a small leather bag shoved under the bed.
She had deserted most of her other belongings. She’d left them in Tombstone. She imagined by now someone had stored them for her. Doc Scott probably took it to task.
“Got anything to tell me?” Joe asked Richard. Then he studied Callie and asked, “Do either of you have anything you need to get off a heavy chest?”
Callie was confused. “No, I don’t reckon we do, but you, aren’t you a different story?”
Richard grunted. “He fucked the wrong somebody. That’s what got him in the mess he’s in, ain’t that right, Joe?”
She watched Richard. His mood shifted with the sun. Joe wouldn’t care to tell him what he wanted to know. Then he’d expect him to move the hell on and put aside any kind of sudden disappointment a confession might bring.
“I had a few things going on. A couple of young fellows.” He shrugged. “Didn’t mean anything.”
“Did you fuck ’em or not, Little Joe?”
“Yeah, but shit, Callie, you don’t have a right to say anything.”
“I don’t, but…” She glanced at Richard and then continued to scold Little Joe. “If you were messing with some young fellows, then I imagine the act meant something to you. If not, what the hell were you thinking?”
“How old were they?” Richard asked, balling his fists and keeping them clenched at his sides.
Little Joe looked peculiar then. He acted like Richard asked him for information he didn’t want to provide. Richard was a good twenty years older than Callie and Joe, so maybe that was what bothered him and threatened him. He never discussed much about age, and whenever they brought up the differences in years, the mention was an outright sensitive subject.
“In their twenties, about my age,” he said.
Pain seeped into Richard’s eyes. “I see,” Richard said. His nose twitched. His eyes watered. He walked over to the door and placed his hand on the center panel. “Ya’ll hungry?”
“Nary a bit,” Joe said, smiling. “I had some better plans cooked up.”
Richard didn’t turn around. “I’ll be back. I have to think about those ideas of yours before I participate in them. I may not be interested anymore, Joe.”
“Ah now, Richard.” Callie walked over to him, but he held up his hand before she touched him.
“I’ll be back before long,” he stated flatly. “Joe, I don’t want talk of this kind of thing when I get back, ya hear?”
He didn’t say anything, so Richard turned around and stared at him. “Did you understand?”
Little Joe narrowed his eyes. Richard took one heavy step in his direction.
“I heard you. Go throw your field fit and hurry back. Me and Callie will sit here and wait on you.”
Chapter Five
Joe watched Richard until he was over the hillside. He had it pegged about right. Richard was going to take a long walk, find a private place to throw his tantrum, and then head back when he had his temper in check. Much as Joe hated it, Richard was hurt and angry.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong, Joe?” Callie asked. “Upset because you’re missing out on that angry sex you like so much?”
“I’ll still get some of his fury when he gets back,” he said with a lopsided smile. “I always do.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Might be that Richard’s tired of your immature games, too. Ever caught yourself a’wondering about that?”
“No. Can’t say that I have.” He motioned for her, crooking his finger back and forth. “Wanna wrap your mouth around something for me?”
“No,” she replied with sassy lips and a pucker to boot.
“I could make ya.”
“And I’d never forgive you any more than you’ve been able to forgive yourself for hurting Richard.”
“Don’t judge me, please. You don’t know what it was like, Callie.”
“I understand you probably didn’t carry on with your foolishness just to hurt Richard, but you did all the same.”
Joe gently touched her elbow. “What about you? Did I hurt you?”
“I’m different.”
“How?” he asked.
“I don’t particularly care for you sleeping with women, Joe.”
“But?” he probed.
“We ain’t been together in a couple of years. I suspected you’d see one or two and maybe even get attached to someone.”
“Like you did to your doctor friend?”
“I’m in the sex business, Joe.”
He rubbed his chin. “Ah, I didn’t know. How come you never told me before?”
“Smart-ass, Nancy boy,” she snapped, sitting next to him. He picked up her wrist and laced his fingers through hers.
“Good one,” he said, chuckling. “Sort of true, too, huh?”
“I reckon so,” she said. “It’s the reason you almost went and got yourself killed. You made it with one of those men—your kind—and his partner, or maybe the lot of ’em, if he had a gang of fellas riding with him, shot you up and left you to die. Is that about right?”
“Can I tell you what really happened?”
“If that’s what you want to do,” she said, eyeing their entwined fingers.
Little Joe looked like a little boy when he grinned then. His wicked smile was part of the reason Callie loved him. She still remembered her childhood friend, the one who ran with her through the open prairies when her stepfather stood on their tiny front porch screaming for her.
Little Joe used to hold his palm over her mouth, and sometimes he even pinned her body to the ground, realizing she always wanted to run home. She was a good girl. The kind of kid that liked to mind her parents, but more often than not,
their discipline came at a price. Joe protected her from her stepfather’s wrath. Maybe even saved her life more than once, because when the man was mean, he was mean all over, and Callie generally took a few harsh beatings.
Joe tucked her in the hook of his arm and leaned back on the bed. He kissed the top of her head. “This won’t bother you to hear about the details, right?”
“I’m ready when you are,” she assured him.
At times, she wanted to tell him her stories, too. She stopped herself because to tell him things, to talk about her sexual experiences with other men, she risked those men and the lives they might want to lead without a Little Joe meeting.
Joe’s legs fell open, and he squeezed her body tight against his, clutching her torso to his side. “I must’ve been riding for a couple of days. I heard you were in Colorado, so I tried to find you in a few of the mining towns. Somebody said they saw Richard in Forest City, and a few days later, I heard you were near there, too, so I headed to the mountains. Anyhow, I met up with some boys headed the same way.
“They were riding out in hopes of finding gold or silver, maybe both. You know me, I half pay attention.”
She crooked her head and listened. Truth told, Joe did the opposite when he met up with strangers on a lonely trail because Joe was suspicious of everyone. Since he was, he hung on every word spoken around him, trying to make sure to read between the lines. Joe didn’t like surprises. At least, he didn’t before he met up with his new friends.
“Anyhow, they were setting up camp, told me they planned to stay three, maybe four days, and invited me to roll out my blanket and make myself at home.”
She rolled his shirt over his stomach and started tickling his belly. When he squirmed under her touch, she stopped, and he immediately covered her hand with his. “Now, remember, I’m still a man, Callie, and this kind of business will stop the story right here and now.”
Giggling, she let him have her hand. He brought her fingertips to his lips before he kissed her palm. Reluctantly, he finally continued. “So you see…wait a second. Where was I?”
Men of a Different Sort Page 3
