“Last night.”
He blinked in a false effort to hear her better.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you how I felt—”
“No, Pris—”
“It was…” Her voice was softly seductive, and he knew he couldn’t discuss their night in the wickiup and remain sane.
“Priscilla, we can’t talk about last night.”
“But Will, I—”
“Priscilla—”
“Maybe it’d be easier if you called me Jake.”
“Lordy! Priscilla…Jake…it doesn’t matter what I call you, we can’t talk about it.”
“It was my first time, Will. I need to talk about it.”
Sighing, he rolled his head away, stared into the star-studded sky, feeling like a lummox. Had he gone from lover to father in one fell swoop? But damnit, he had taken her innocence, knowing things could never work out between them. Didn’t he owe her something—consolation, at least? Wasn’t she entitled to something from him? If no more than a sympathetic ear?
He rose on an elbow and looked at her across the narrow space. He’d thought her closer, somehow, and when he found her further away, he was gripped by an irrepressible need to pull her close—to hold her and comfort her, he told himself.
Just in time, he resisted. “Shoot, cowboy. I’ll listen.” But don’t ask me to say I’m sorry, he thought, surprising himself.
“Well, it was…wonderful.”
His heart lodged in his throat. Thankfully, for anything he might have been tempted to reply would’ve gotten him—both of them—in deep trouble.
“But, well…”
“But what?”
“Well, I was…not exactly frightened…but, I mean, I know it would have been more wonderful if it hadn’t been the first time. I mean, if I’d known what was going on, I could have…I mean, I could have helped you enjoy it more.”
Air whooshed from Will’s lungs, leaving him breathless and a little dizzy. “There’s no way I could have enjoyed it more.”
“Oh, I’m sure there is. I’ve thought about it all day, and if we could try it again—”
“No.”
“If we could try it again, I’d—”
“No!”
“Just once more.”
“NO!”
“I just thought—”
“Well, stop thinking.”
“I can’t. It’s all I can think about.”
Will groaned.
“All day. That’s all. If we could do it again, I’d be able to enjoy it, too.”
“I thought you said—”
“I did. I enjoyed it…more than anything I’ve ever done. It was better than learning to ride a horse, or learning to shoot, even better than the first time Pa let me help mark calves.”
Somewhere in her tirade, Will flopped to his back and covered his face with an arm to hide the grin he couldn’t keep from his lips. “That’s pretty stiff competition, cowboy. I’m glad I managed to pull out ahead.”
“Oh, you were more than ahead. But I guess it’s like learning anything else, once you get the hang of it, you get better and bet—”
“Pris…cil…la.” By the time the warning left his lips, Will had levered himself eye to eye with her again. “I told you, there’s no future for us.”
“And I told you I’m going to marry Red Avery.”
Even though she’d said the same thing earlier, the idea stunned Will. Without realizing it, he sat up on the bedroll. He looked her square in the face. “That simple-minded, overeducated archaeologist? Why, he’s the most worthless thing I’ve ever seen on a ranch. If he’s half as worthless on a…in other ways—”
“That’s why I need you tonight, Will.” She had risen to her knees and held the blanket tightly beneath her chin. She seemed closer, somehow. “What if he is? I’ll be condemned to a life of—”
“There’re other solutions. Did it ever occur to you not to marry him?” His words were spoken hastily. His eyes bore into hers. But she just smiled.
“Well, I have to marry someone, Will.”
He glared at her.
“And since you won’t have me, you could at least help me…” Her words drifted off. “Please.”
“No. It’s out of the question. No. After we get to the ranch, it’s all over—”
“I understand.”
“There’s no future for us—”
“All I’m asking is for tonight.”
Their gazes locked. He couldn’t see the blue of her eyes; they looked black as a midnight sky. But her teeth glistened in the moonlight, and he knew the smile. The smile that had captivated him from the very first day he’d met her. The smile that he knew was designed to get her any damn thing she wanted.
Not that she was cunning or deceitful. Not Priscilla. Like she’d said of her father, she was forthright and honest. For in the end wasn’t she asking of him the very thing he thought he couldn’t live without?
“No strings?” he whispered.
She shook her head.
“No future?”
“No future.”
“No tears or heartache?”
She stared at him a long time before replying, and he thought he saw her smile waver. “Why would my heart ache, Will, when you’ve given me so much joy?”
Why, indeed? For the same reason his would. For a past that had haunted him for twenty-three years, a past that she, by a stroke of very bad luck, happened to share. There would be heartache, no question about it.
But wouldn’t there be anyway? They might as well take something good away from this miserable experience. Not good, wonderful.
“If you’re sure…”
Before the words left his mouth, she had scrambled out of her bedroll and into his. She snuggled against him, nude as the day she was born. His hands touched her soft skin gingerly, as though to really touch her would hurt.
But at that moment he wasn’t sure which one of them he was more worried about hurting, Priscilla or himself.
“You’re sleeping in all your clothes,” she accused. Her hands were already busy working his shirt up his chest.
“Protection,” he mumbled.
The shirt cleared his head. He flung it aside, while her hands nestled in his chest hair and her fingers began to work magic with his dwindling reticence.
“Protection?” she was asking. “The Haskels are far behind. And regardless of what you thought the outcome would be, we escaped Victorio’s ranchería unscathed.”
Her fingers touched the top button on his britches the same time his did. He squeezed them, loving her, knowing he shouldn’t, couldn’t.
“Unscathed?” No, he thought, they hadn’t escaped unscathed, certainly not Priscilla. Together they unbuttoned the fly. “It appears to me we did a lot of damage.”
“Damage?” She snuggled against him, while he kicked his britches off his ankles. Her arms went around his trunk, she held him, caressed his back. He felt her breasts burrow into his chest, felt her legs twine around his, her curly patch of hair rubbed against his abdomen just above his own. He felt her throb against him, felt himself probe for relief, for satisfaction, for love. He snuggled his face in her hair and knew he was in heaven.
“Thank you for agreeing, Will,” she was saying. Her hands found his hips, rested there, cupping his hipbones in her palms. “There’s so much I want to know, to do, and last night I was too shy…”
Will nudged her face up, covered her lips with a wet suckling kiss. “You, shy, Miss Priss?”
“Well, it was my first time, and…there’re so many things I want to know.” While she spoke, her hands traveled around in front of him, settled below his ribs, in the hollow above his stomach.
“Like what?” Drawing her back, Will kissed traces down her neck, across her chest. His hands found her breasts. He lifted them, fondled them, stroked their nipples with his thumbs.
She shuddered. “Like this.” Her voice wisped out.
“What?” He took a nipple in
his mouth; she arched against him.
“This. How does my body know to do things I never even imagined…I’d be doing?”
He groaned, delighted by her breathless prattle, aroused by her open, free nature. Sliding a hand down her abdomen, he found her wet. His fingers slipped back and forth. “How ’bout this? You’re wet…and…ready…”
“Oh, yes, I am. Isn’t that…” Her hands moved. She found his arousal, held it. Squeezed it. “…the most amazing thing?”
He felt himself expand in her hands. “Amazing…” His lips nibbled their way up her chest. From below, his fingers slipped inside her. She wrapped a leg around his hip, opening…for him.
“Oh, Will, I never knew anything in the world could be so wonderful.”
He shifted her to her back, moved over her, fitting his length upon her own, gently, barely touching. She wriggled beneath him.
“But you knew, didn’t you?”
He kissed her face, letting her prattle, loving it, recording it.
“You’ve done this so much, it must be—”
“What?” He drew his face back, frowned at her.
“You’ve done this—”
The idea was ludicrous. “I’ve never done this.”
“But—”
“Not this. The motions, some of them. But not this. Nothing…has ever been…like this.” While he spoke, he guided his arousal into her, sank deep, feeling himself throb against the walls of her body.
“We fit. Isn’t that amazing?”
“That’s the way we were made, love.”
“I know, but—” She stopped suddenly. Her voice changed. “Do you mind that I’m so curious?”
He started moving. She lifted her hips to meet him. “Mind? Lordy, Priscilla, there’s nothing about you that I mind. Nothing I would change. Nothing.” Except that you’re Charlie McCain’s daughter. Which, was, after all, the only thing that really mattered.
He kissed her then; stopping her words, loving her and damning himself for it. She wrapped her legs around him, riding to the crest, thrust for thrust, like she knew what she was doing, he thought. And she did. Lordy, did she ever.
The end came soon, too soon. The moment she cried his name, he emptied himself into her. They lay together, clutching each other, spent, empty. But instead of the elation that should have filled the void, distress rushed in.
“Oh, Will, isn’t it the most wonderful thing? A miracle?”
“Humm…The Man Upstairs planned it that way.”
She held him tight, pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder and mumbled. “He made you just for me, Will Radnor.”
Will’s arms tightened, holding her as if it were the last time. “No, Priscilla, He made you just for me.” And that was the cruelest trick of all.
The following day was idyllic by any standards. Will rode beside her, companionably, pretending for Priscilla’s sake, that the road they followed was a straight path to happiness. Although such a thing was impossible, he was able, with effort, to block out the trouble that awaited them at the end of the trail.
In genuine friendship and affection, they merged themselves with the summer landscape, with the spacious sky overhead, with the towering mountains that rose around them, with the song of bird and the scent of pine and the feel of soft, dry air.
“Oh, Will,” she said once, “we are the very best of friends. I knew we would be.”
He grinned at her, trying valiantly to hide the love and desire that welled inside him. “Tell me, how do you figure that, cowboy? If I recall correctly we spent the first part of our relationship at each other’s throats.”
She laughed, sending music and magic soaring through his senses. “You give as good as you take, Will Radnor.” After a while, she added, “We have so much in common. That’s a startling fact, you being a greenhorn and all.”
He grunted. “Just how long is the sentence for being a greenhorn?”
She glanced at him, opened her mouth to respond, then stopped. It was as if the sky had dimmed. Will recalled experiencing such a feeling once before. But this time her smile returned, radiant as ever. She laughed.
“I guess forever. If you were to come back from Philadelphia, you’d just have to start all over.”
He turned away, stared down the trail that wound through the forested mountains ahead of them. “Then I don’t guess it’d pay a man to return.”
“Jessie! What happened?” Kate rushed to the hitching rail where Jessie Laredo sat slumped in her saddle.
Charlie hobbled after her, eyes and rifle trained on the foothills in the distance. “Careful, sweetheart. Those hills are crawlin’ with Haskels.”
Kate reached Jessie. “Let me help you.”
Charlie joined them, saying, “Hell, Jess, I’m surprised Oscar let you through.”
“…had to warn you, Charlie.” But it was Kate whose eyes she sought. “And to tell you…Priscilla’s all right.”
“Priscilla,” Kate sighed. “Thank God.” When Jessie wavered, Kate reached for her. “Let’s get you in the house, then you can tell us all about it.”
By this time Charlie had seen Jessie’s battered face. “Crockett!” He waved his walking stick in the direction of the barn. “Come help Kate get Jessie to the house.”
Jessie practically fell from the saddle into Titus Crockett’s arms. With Kate hurrying ahead and Charlie hobbling behind, Crockett carried her up the steps and into the cool interior of the house.
“Take her to the first bedroom on the right,” Kate instructed. “I’ll find the medicine kit.”
By the time Kate returned, Crockett had stretched Jessie out on the four-poster. Charlie was sitting beside her, while Jessie tried to talk.
Kate immediately started to bathe the woman’s battered face. “I’ll be as tender as I can, Jessie.”
“She says Newt did this.”
“Oh, dear, no.” Kate stared in horror.
“She helped those dadburnt kids break Joaquín out of jail, an’ this’s what she got for it.”
Kate’s hand stilled on Jessie’s face.
“I had to, Kate. Newt and his brother were fixin’ to lynch Joaquín.”
“Will said he’d think of something, damn his hide.”
“It was Priscilla’s idea, Charlie. You know your daughter. Once she gets a bee in her bonnet—”
Charlie huffed and puffed. Kate muttered, “I know…I know…”
“For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a better way,” Jessie said. “Neither could Will—”
“Priscilla’s with Will Radnor?” Kate’s voice quivered.
In halting words, Jessie explained how she had tricked Newt, how Will set the stage, and how he and Priscilla set out with Joaquín for Victorio’s ranchería. “Between them, Will and Priscilla are more than a match for Oscar’s bunch.”
“What’d’ya mean?” Charlie barked. “Oscar’s scum are camped on my doorstep. Long as those kids…”
“Not all the Haskel guns are trained on Spanish Creek.” Jessie gingerly touched her swollen cheek. “Newt took great pleasure in telling me that they’d sent men after Priscilla. I’m sure that’s the reason they let me get through. They wanted you to know.”
Charlie’s walking stick clattered to the tile floor. His face went white; Kate sat so still Jessie thought she might collapse. “Will’s a good man,” Jessie insisted. “He’ll take care of her.”
“Humph!” Retrieving his walking stick, Charlie rose with more agility than Jessie had seen in him since the shooting. He clomped to the window.
“I don’t know what you have against Will Radnor, Charlie. He’s a fine young man. Priscilla could do a lot worse. And it’s plain to see they’re smitten—”
“My daughter is not smitten with a Radnor,” Charlie barked.
“Nothing can come of it, Jessie,” Kate said. “It’s a terrible situation. But if he can protect her, get her home safely…” Kate closed her eyes as if in prayer. “Right now, that’s all I ask.”<
br />
A fist jammed in his pocket, Charlie glared morosely out the window. Jessie watched him. Then she recalled the telegram.
“Has Bart arrived yet?”
Kate’s eyes flew to Jessie. Charlie turned from the window like he’d been blown around by an angry wind. They responded in unison.
“Bart?”
“Bart Ellisor,” Jessie said. “It was Priscilla’s idea to contact him. She wasn’t about to go off and leave Spanish Creek undefended. She remembered you saying that Bart had promised to come to your aid any time you called. I nosed around Newt’s office, found a recent poster, and telegraphed a personal advertisement to the Tucson Gazette.” She smiled, then winced when pain shot from her jaw in every direction. “It worked. I received a telegram from him two days ago saying he was on his way.”
“Bart?”
Charlie hobbled to Kate’s side. He pulled her head against his hip and stroked her hair. “Don’t think about it, sweetheart. We have plenty else to worry over right now.”
Jessie looked from Charlie’s stricken face, to Kate’s, which was white as newfallen snow. A tremor of foreboding crept up her pain-wracked neck. What had she done, sending for Bart Ellisor? Priscilla had thought her parents would welcome Bart’s help. To Jessie’s mind, they should. But now…
“First things first,” Charlie was saying. “Until I get Priscilla back—”
“What’re you saying?” Kate’s voice betrayed her anxiety.
“Hell, sweetheart, I can’t let her fend for herself with the Haskels on her trail.”
“Will Radnor is—”
“That’s another thing has me worried. What if this is Will’s way of getting to me?”
“Oh, no.”
“Will?” Jessie searched each troubled face.
“Crockett!” Charlie barked. “Get in here an’ let’s talk about how you’re gonna defend these women while I’m gone.”
Jessie watched Kate’s shoulders slump. She seemed to age before their very eyes. Jessie felt her own strength ebb. “You can’t go after them, Charlie. That’s what they’re countin’ on.”
“She’s my daughter, Jess.” He tightened his hold on Kate. “Our daughter. I’d face the old devil himself to protect her.”
Twelve
Reluctant Enemies Page 22
