It seemed to her that she’d been staring into the starry sky for quite a while when she became aware of Jack’s voice, a purry whisper in the night.
“Lord above, Phoebe, you’re really something. You know that?”
She didn’t know that, but she was pleased to hear him tell her so.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she held a faint recollection that gentlemen needed reassurance about certain matters as much as ladies did. She couldn’t remember who’d told her so, or why, or when, but she said, “So are you, Mr. Jack Valentine.”
It looked to her as though Jack’s head was a little too heavy for him to lift. He just turned it on the cushion of her breasts so he could see her face. She became embarrassed under his scrutiny.
Then he did lift his head, as though he were surprised about something. She was appalled when he got up onto his knees and his entire large, male, and very naked body was revealed. She swallowed hard and tried not to shut her eyes. Mercy sakes.
“You’ve got freckles,” he announced, as though the matter were one of the more important scientific discoveries of the decade.
Faintly irritated that he should have broken this delicious spell for such an inane purpose, Phoebe snapped, “Well, you didn’t like the stupid veil.” She stuck her tongue out at Jack, then couldn’t believe what she’d done.
His grin slashed across his face and made her gasp. Lord above. Small wonder they called him Black Jack. Carrie was right about those beautiful white teeth in that tanned face of his. He looked like the devil himself, sent to earth to tempt weak-willed sinners like her. And his laugh. If that wasn’t a devil’s laugh, she just didn’t know what it was.
She gasped again when he scooted up right next to her, gathered her in his arms and whispered in her ear, “I hated that damned veil. And I love your freckles.”
Then he settled beside her, holding her close. He nuzzled her neck and she was afraid she’d swoon. Lord, she had no idea how wonderful a man could make a woman feel.
“Did I hurt you, Phoebe? When—you know.”
“No.” Hurt her? Glory, he’d made her feel things she didn’t even know existed. Wonderful things. Marvelous things. Things so grand it was no wonder people considered them sinful.
“You made me feel good, Phoebe.” Jack’s hand made little circles on her shoulder and her entire insides fluttered up like a swarm of bats at sunset.
“You made me feel good, too, Jack,” she confessed, her face hot as blazes.
“Good.” He nuzzled her hard. “I wanted to make you feel good.”
“Well, you did.”
“Lord, Phoebe, you’re really something. Really, really something.”
Her tumbling thoughts led her to a memory that felt nearly ancient by this time. “Is . . . is this what that horrid Mr. Basteau wanted to do to me, Jack?” It didn’t seem possible. Basteau had been such a dreadful person to have harbored thoughts of this precious nature.
Jack nibbled her earlobe for a second or two. Phoebe had the impression he was thinking about his answer.
“No, Phoebe,” he finally told her. “What we did was beautiful. What Yves Basteau wanted to do was nothing at all akin to what we just shared. What he wanted to do was dirty and mean. He wanted to force you. He would have raped you; taken your virginity.”
“But you didn’t do that.” For the first time this evening, Phoebe realized how greatly Jack had restrained himself. She felt vaguely disappointed.
“No. I’d never do that to you, Phoebe.”
His words were gentle, and Phoebe guessed he had no idea how they pricked at her. She wondered if he wanted her to thank him.
“I’d never hurt you. Never do anything you didn’t want me to. I care for you too much for that.”
Well, it wasn’t a declaration of undying love, but was something anyway. Since Phoebe knew better than anybody that she was unworthy of a man’s love—even though she couldn’t quite give up hoping—she guessed she could say, “Thank you.” It came out a little weak.
They were both quiet for a few minutes. Jack continued to hold her; she wanted him never to let her go.
“May I sleep with you tonight, Phoebe?” He asked the question as though he had no right. Phoebe smiled.
Suddenly decades worth of proprietary rules reared up in Phoebe’s brain. She shoved them back and shut the door on them.
“I fixed it up so Bill and Sarah can’t see us,” Jack continued.
Her yawn took Phoebe by surprise. It made Jack grin.
“All right,” she said. “You wore me out, Jack Valentine.” She was pleased with how sassy she sounded. Lordy, it felt good to let her hair down and be a woman for once. She’d been a protector and a teacher and a nurse and an aunt and a provider and a farmer for half her life. But she’d never had a chance to be a woman. Until now.
“You wore me out too, Phoebe.”
Jack got up, being careful not to jar his sore arm any more than it had already been jarred. He was chuckling when he picked up his trousers.
Because it was true and because she felt like teasing him some more, Phoebe said, “You’re a purely fetching sight, Mr. Jack Valentine.”
Phoebe had never considered what he might look like naked, but she approved wholeheartedly. His chest was broad, his belly lean and corded, his arms thick with muscle as were his legs; those long, long, hairy legs. She sighed.
He paused, surprised, and looked at her. She realized she hadn’t made a move to cover her bare bosom and was embarrassed when he seemed to devour her with his gaze. Then she guessed it was all right. He didn’t seem to object to the sight of her unclad any more than she objected to the sight of him naked.
“You’re a fetching sight, too, Phoebe. About the most fetching sight I’ve ever seen.”
She realized his manly thing was getting hard again, and couldn’t suppress a giggle. “Why, Jack Valentine, I do declare, you’re just never satisfied.”
He noticed where her gaze had fastened itself and smiled. “You make me hard, Phoebe. It’s a sad fact.” He shook his head in mock dismay and finished buttoning his trousers. The buttons didn’t want to meet over his bulge, but he managed.
Then he helped her dress. Since there was a big sticky spot on the blanket, he wiped it off as best he could, turned the blanket over, and lay down beside her.
Phoebe snuggled up against him and sighed. This was about the most peaceful she’d felt since—since—well, since she couldn’t even remember when.
# # #
Phoebe awoke the next morning to the sound of far away gunfire. The faint noise jerked her eyes open, old terrors roaring through her brain like yesterday’s wildfire. It only took a moment, though, for her to relax.
She’d never felt better in her life. Muscles she hadn’t known she had protested from the unusual activities she’d performed with Jack. Her back ached from lying on the hard ground with nothing but a blanket between it and the sod, and she was bruised from head to toe from her wild wagon ride. But she felt wonderful. Phoebe sighed and snuggled down into the blanket.
A strong, hairy arm encircled her. There was a long, hard, warm body at her back, curled around her as if to protect her from the vicissitudes of life. And, even though Phoebe knew it was too late for that, she appreciated its being there.
“‘Morning, Phoebe.”
She appreciated that, too: the low, rusty, early-morning grumble in her ear.
“Good morning.” She could hear the smile in her voice, and was sure Jack could, too.
He held her for another minute or two, as though he didn’t want to let her go, then groaned and rolled onto his back.
“Guess I’d better get up. I hear Antelope out there hunting already.”
“That who it is?”
“I recognize the sound of his rifle.”
She rolled her head so she could look at him. “Really? You can recognize the sound of different guns being fired?”
“Sure.”
“My goodness.�
�
He grinned, and her heart almost stopped. “It’s sort of like recognizing the different voices of your children.”
After her heart started beating again, she murmured, “Guess I wouldn’t know about that.”
“You will. Someday.”
Phoebe’s newly started heart lurched and plunged, but she didn’t disabuse him of his faulty notion.
Jack surged to his feet and gave a stretch that made Phoebe’s eyes go round. He hadn’t donned his shirt and the muscles on his belly rippled. His trousers slid a little with his stretch and his provoking black chest hair seemed to point directly to his masculine tool, hidden from her eyes now, but which absolutely fascinated Phoebe. It made an enormous bulge, and she wondered if it was always like that or if he was in a bedding mood again. She had to swallow hard.
In an effort to calm herself, she sat up. “Is your arm better this morning? Do you still need the sling Pete made for you.”
Jack flexed his muscles, testing for pain. Phoebe watched, fascinated. He squeezed his hurt arm with the fingers of his other hand, and she wanted to do that, too. At last, he said, “It’s a little sore, but it’s much better this morning. I should be able to be useful today, even though there’s not much to do until we can fix the wagon.”
“Really?”
With a shrug, Jack said, “Really.”
Phoebe digested that information, then grinned. “Well, in that case, Mr. Valentine, I don’t plan to move from this spot. I’ll let Sarah tend to William, Antelope do the hunting, and I’ll just stay here. It will be a pure luxury to loll around all day and do nothing.”
His grin nearly made her salivate. “Luxury? You’ve got a mighty stingy notion of luxury if this is it. And call me Jack.”
His voice went soft on the command, and any remaining barriers surrounding Phoebe’s heart melted into slush. What has the world come to, she thought with something akin to dismay, when a Honeycutt lady can lose her heart to a damned Yankee? But she had. She knew she had.
Then he took two gigantic strides and knelt beside her. “Is there anything you need, Phoebe?” He picked her hand up and pressed it between his callused palms.
All she could do was shake her head; she couldn’t get her tongue to work. When he bent to kiss her, she was afraid she’d swoon.
“Aunt Phoebe!”
Little Sarah’s shocked exclamation jerked Jack upright in a second, and he dropped Phoebe’s hand as though it had suddenly caught fire.
Phoebe uttered a little squeak of embarrassment and sat up straighter.
“Jack! Was you kissin’ Aunt Phoebe?” There was more than a hint of titillation in Sarah’s voice.
“I wasn’t kissing her, Sarah.” Jack sounded mortally flustered, a fact Phoebe found remarkable. She’d assumed him to be impervious to embarrassment. “And she wasn’t kissing me. She was—she was just checking on my arm.”
Sarah, Phoebe realized, had a way about her that was entirely too knowing for an eight-year-old. She said, “Uh-huh,” wisely and grinned.
Phoebe stood up and busied herself with tidying the bedroll. “What is it you need, Sarah, darlin’?”
Sarah evidently decided her errand was more fascinating than the strange behavior of the adults in her life. “Well, I just wanted to let you know that William’s feelin’ better but he’s bein’ muley about takin’ his medicine.”
“Well, Sarah, dear, you just tell him for me that he’d better take it without fussing or I’ll come over there and deal with him, and then he’ll be in big trouble.”
Sarah grinned from ear to ear and turned to run back to her brother, and Phoebe realized for the first time that those pert little ears were fluffy with strands of unbrushed hair which had struggled out of their braids overnight. The braids themselves looked about as fuzzy as Phoebe’d ever seen them, too.
“Goodness gracious.”
“What’s the matter, Phoebe?”
Jack sounded so concerned that the puddle of slush her heart had become steamed a little bit.
“Just thinkin’ about that child’s hair. I’d better get the brush.”
“That child” strode over again at that precise moment, full of purpose, her face speaking eloquently of vexation and sisterly self-righteousness. She parked herself right in front of Phoebe and planted her hands on her hips in perfect imitation, Phoebe was afraid, of herself in a prissy snit.
“William says he wants for you to take over his nursin’, Aunt Phoebe. Says not even you are meddlesome as me.”
The way she said it, all grumpy and prim, made Jack erupt into chuckles of glee. Even Phoebe was hard-pressed to suppress her grin of appreciation. She was surprised when Jack responded to Sarah.
“You tell that troublesome boy I’ll take over his nursing if he doesn’t take his medicine, and then he’ll be good and sorry. Tell him as to how my mama always told me a good smack on the rear end used to clear whatever ailed me right up.”
Sarah’s grin grew so wide it looked as though it might split her face in two. “I’ll tell him all right, Jack.” And she darted off to issue his dire warning to her suffering patient.
“And then come back here so I can brush your hair!” he hollered after her. The look she shot him over her shoulder was not quite as happy as it had been, and he chuckled again.
“You’re going to fix her hair?” Phoebe began to laugh.
“Well, I reckon. Why not? And then I’m going to brush yours.”
She gave him a grin that felt provocative and guessed her behavior was shocking. Brazen, even. But she couldn’t quite make herself care. Somehow, knowing they were cut off from the bulk of humanity, stranded on the banks of the Pecos River with a broken-legged wagon and without anything to do about it, made the usual cares of her life seem to fade. For the first time since she could remember, there was absolutely nothing for her to do, and she liked the idea. She heaved a big sigh and leaned back against her bedroll.
Jack lifted a brow. “Was that a happy sigh or a mournful one?”
She peered up at him. He was just handsome as sin, running a hand through those black locks of his, his mustache as wicked as it could be. Wistfulness invaded her heart. In all her born days, she never expected herself to do something like she’d done last night.
“It was a happy sigh, and I’ll warrant you think I’m about the most brazen hussy this side of the devil.”
The idea he might think of her so only moderately unnerved her. Shaking her head in amazement, Phoebe wondered if her modesty and virtue would come back for a visit once they had extricated themselves from this pickle. She hoped not.
Jack stood there, legs braced, arms akimbo, and simply gazed at her for so long she began to have palpitations. Lord have mercy, the man was beautiful.
“There’s not a brazen bone in your body, Miss Phoebe Honeycutt,” he said softly, thereby causing her palpitations to curl up into tight little balls and slam around inside her breast so hard they hurt. “You’re a lovely young woman who’s had to endure too much unhappiness in her life.”
Suddenly, he was beside her again. “You’re a lovely woman, Phoebe. Not a slave to duty or a burdensome aunt, but a woman. If I helped you feel like a woman last night, I can only say, ‘Thank God.’ You made me feel like a man. I swear to God, you did.”
Phoebe stared into Jack’s heavenly blue eyes for several seconds. She didn’t dare say what she was thinking: that it must be easy for him to feel like a man since he was such a spectacular example of the sex. Nor did she feel free to tell him the real miracle of last night was that he’d managed to make her feel like a woman, a petal-soft, valuable member of the female gender, as unlike what she really was as ice was from fire.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
And then Sarah was back again, and Jack brushed her hair. And then he brushed Phoebe’s hair. He was, Phoebe realized, more gentle with her than he had been with her niece.
Chapter Twelve
Jack wasn’t positive, but he had a si
nking feeling last night had been a horrible mistake. He nearly drowned himself in the cold Pecos water in an effort to cool himself down, even as he scalded himself with hot words of censure.
He was even assailed by a craven, though momentary, urge to flee. The despicable urge didn’t unsettle him nearly as much as the one that followed hot on its heels, when he was blindsided by an almost overwhelming desire to march straight back to Phoebe Honeycutt’s side and demand she abandon her idiotic notion of supporting herself and her kin in Santa Fe and to come with him to San Francisco.
Get a grip on yourself, man, Jack lectured himself sternly. Get a damned grip.
So he got a grip and didn’t do anything irrevocably foolish. He still felt uncomfortable about last night’s behavior, though. What’s worse, he felt as though he’d taken awful advantage of a woman who’d already suffered enough. He’d never done anything like that before and didn’t admire himself for it.
The fact remained, however, no matter how he tried to avoid it, that he couldn’t have done anything else under the circumstances. He’d had women from New York to Virginia; known Yankee prudes and hordes of simpering southern belles. He’d felt no more than powerful lust—perhaps mild affection, in the case of one pretty New Englander—for any of them. The attraction he felt toward Miss Phoebe Honeycutt was stronger than anything he’d ever experienced. It would have taken a stronger man than he to fight it last night. The knowledge disturbed him more than he liked to admit.
Jack was in a grumpy mood when he surveyed the wagon. Even though he didn’t figure there was much to be done, he had Antelope help him take the wheel off so he could inspect it and mend it if it could be mended.
“The frame’s bent all to hell,” the phlegmatic Antelope observed.
“Sure is.” Jack squatted on his haunches and shook his head. “And the spokes are broken, too.”
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