Luke nudged his hat back and grinned to the others. “Let’s go before Timothy here kicks the fence down. He’s the fancy artist in this group, but even they need to be able to shoot, right, Tim-bo?”
A big white grin answered him.
Emily floated across his mind. She knew her kids, and this one needed stroking, she’d said. “They don’t have older brothers or fathers for examples – good or bad.” Then she’d folded her arms and added in a prissy little voice, “Like it or not, Luke Sullivan, you’re it. They idolize you and want to be like you when they grow up.”
He wished for the hundredth time she hadn’t told him that.
He waved to Scully, then picked up the old Springfield rifle he’d brought from the house and started off. The little group trailed after him down the grassy slope behind the smithy and into an open field beyond.
He’d been taught to handle guns when he was there, had spent a part of every day practicing, with bullets and without. And he probably was alive because of it.
Patiently, Luke showed them how to reload, to lift the trapdoor quickly, and shove in the big lead-tipped shells. He spent the morning pitching bottles and cans into the air. Deliberate shooting would teach them to shoot the wrong way, he told them, because if they needed to use a gun, most likely it would be at a moving target.
“My arms are tired. It’s too heavy. I ain’t big enough to hold it up,” Timothy said. Disappointment spread across his face when the old Springfield’s long barrel nosed out of his arms and down to the dirt again. The other boys laughed.
“It’s heavy for me, too,” Luke said. The laughter trailed off. “But if you need it and you’re scared enough, I guarantee you’ll find a way. Aim is what counts, Tim, not size, not strength. What makes a man is what’s in here and here.” He tapped Tim’s forehead, then the boy’s chest with the words.
Taking him by the shoulder, Luke led him to a fence a few yards away and rested the barrel on a rail to take some of the weight. He had Tim hold the gun and picked up a can to throw again. “Now shoot.”
An hour later, Luke laid the rifle aside and pulled the Colt from his holster. Instantly five pairs of young male eyes gleamed.
All week he’d debated with himself about whether or not to show them how to draw. He decided he had to. No point in knowing how to use a gun at all, he thought, if you couldn’t use it in a hurry. He showed them how to load and to punch out the hulls, then drummed it into them to carry it with the hammer on an empty chamber. “Remember, when you load: five chambers can have shells; one stays empty. Check it every time you load. Otherwise, if you stumble or bang into something, you’ll shoot yourself in the leg.”
Luke pointed. “John, get that board over there and pound it in the ground.” He unbuckled his holster and passed it around, letting each boy put it on and take it off several times. “Most men wear a gun high. I wear mine low, almost on my leg, but that’s a personal thing. You’ve got to find what’s best for you. A lot depends on how long your arms are.” He reclaimed the Colt, loaded it, and buckled it back on his hip.
Spinning around, he fired in rapid succession, his left hand fanning the hammer back, blasting the board to splinters. Five small jaws dropped. An instant’s silence, then a chorus of voices.
Wide-eyed, John breathed, “Why, I never even saw you draw.”
“Who taught you?”
“How’d you do that?”
Luke smiled. “Practice. Any man can shoot one of these things. Getting it out before the other man does is what makes the difference. I used to practice for hours with an empty gun.” He didn’t tell them he still did – every morning of his life, up in his room.
On the way back to the house, Timothy sidled closer and looked up at him, the small face filled with open admiration. “You ever been in a gunfight, Mr. Luke?” he asked, his eyes bright. “I mean a real one?”
“He wants to be like you when he grows up,” Emily had said.
Luke tweaked the freckled little nose. In this case, truth was definitely not needed. “Nope. Never have, never want to be.”
While one of the children said grace at dinner that night, Luke gazed over at Emily’s bowed head. From where he sat, he could see the umber fringe of eyelashes brushing her cheeks and five small freckles across the bridge of her nose. Sunlight streaming through the window behind her caught her hair, shimmering it from dark copper to pale gold. If this feud with Axel turned into a full-blown range war, what would happen to her if he wasn’t around?
His concern for her grew all through dinner. She couldn’t defend herself. Axel would drag her back to his ranch, whether she wanted to go or not.
As soon as they finished eating, Luke took his plate and followed her into the kitchen. Emily stood at a table by a window, scraping and slipping plates into a dishpan. Her small hands flew competently in and out of the water as dainty as a butter-fly. And pretty enough for three women, with some left over, he thought.
Leaning against the oversized black iron stove, Luke folded his arms and looked at her. “Can you shoot a gun?”
Emily slung water off her hands and turned to face him. “I’ve never held one in my life, and I don’t plan to, either. Guns are for men.” She dunked a washed plate into a pan of rinse water and stacked it for drying. Without a word she nodded at the pile of wet dishes and tossed a dish towel to him.
He threw it back to her. “Doing dishes is for women. When you learn to shoot, I’ll dry dishes. Finish up in here and come outside with me. It’s time you learned.”
Eyes flashing, she looked up from the cup she was washing. “Is that an order?”
“No, ma’am, just consider it a stern request.”
Face pinched, she smacked the cup down so hard the handle broke off. He pressed his lips together and decided to leave before she threw the rest of it at him.
As he strolled through the back door, she called out, “And any man who walks like that wears his pants too tight.”
Shoulders shaking with laughter, he pulled the door closed. This butterfly had teeth!
An hour later, in a field behind the house, Emily blurted, “I’m afraid of guns.”
“All guns or just my guns?” Luke slid a shell into place and snapped the breech shut.
She blinked at him. “Both, maybe.”
“You still afraid of me?” He thrust the rifle at her.
She hesitated. “Not anymore.”
He let his breath out slowly. “Good, I’m glad of that. Now stop talking and shoot the thing.”
She took the rifle from him and raised it. The wood stock was heavy, and her arms trembled with the weight of it. Grimly, she pulled the hammer back and jerked the trigger. The gun roared, staggering her backward with the impact. The bullet whistled into the sky.
He smirked. “Just great, if your target’s on a roof.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. “You stop poking fun at me!”
He sighed, feeling guilty again. Everything he tried to do right for her, he did all wrong. Moving behind her, he reached both arms around her and covered her hands with his. He lifted the gun into place, flattened his thumb on hers, and cocked the hammer back. All at once he felt massive. He’d forgotten how small she was. The gun was too heavy for her.
“I’ll hold it; you aim it,” he said, and adjusted the rifle butt more comfortably into the hollow of her shoulder. He leaned forward, steadying her, his cheek flattened against hers as she aimed at a tree in the distance.
A strand of soft coppery hair blew across his mouth, filling his nostrils with a cloud of scents – sunshine and soap. As he pulled it off his lips, he made the mistake of looking into her eyes, and the kick of attraction nearly took his breath away. Her pupils had gone wide and dark, and for the first time, he saw tiny flecks of gold deep down in the green around them.
Pretty.
When his gaze slid to her lips, he swallowed. Unaccountably, his mouth had gone as dry as flour.
Her lips were just inches away.
“I wa
nt to kiss you,” he said softly.
“I’d rather you didn’t. You’ll just laugh at me.”
“Why would I laugh at you?”
“Because I grew up with all girls and” – she jerked away – “and I don’t know how.” Her voice caught.
Something soft and warm curled in his chest. He put his hand on her cheek and turned her face to him. “I’ll show you.”
Slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers. Not wanting to startle her, he kissed the corners of her mouth, first one side and then the other. He grazed his lips back and forth over hers. Her mouth was soft and warm and yielded under his. When her eyelids fluttered closed, he cradled the back of her head and kissed her full on the mouth. Hesitantly, lightly, she pressed her lips to his. He made a thick, pleased sound in his throat and gathered her into his arms. Even as he told himself not to, he closed his eyes. And then he really kissed her.
Not a good idea.
Though he didn’t want to, he raised his face. Softly, he cleared his throat, reminding himself it was just a kiss. Nothing more. But his stomach had turned to air.
She looked dazed, her eyes huge, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, relieved his voice was steady.
“Is that all there is to it?”
He grinned. “Pretty much, with a few variations.”
She drew a small shaky breath and sat back. Her cheeks were splotched with pink, and her hand trembled under his on the rifle. “You’re a good teacher,” she said quietly.
Though he knew she meant it as a compliment, it made him feel old and experienced and somehow not very nice. Yet a band of pleasure tightened his chest and set his heart racing again. He was the first. She’d never kissed a man before. He grinned to himself, still trying to wrap his brain around that.
He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe. That was all he’d intended with this shooting lesson. Nothing more, he told himself. He hauled his thoughts away from how good she’d felt in his arms. How right she felt.
He straightened his shoulders and forced himself to concentrate. Something odd was stirring around inside his head. Feeling a little short of breath, he forced himself to explain how to sight the gun.
He liked her. A lot.
“Line up the target with that metal tip at the end of the barrel.” He covered the small hand under his and supported the rifle for her. His cheek brushed hers again.
He screwed his eyes shut. He wanted to kiss her again.
“Pull the trigger, Emily,” he growled.
But the husky change he heard in his own voice wasn’t lost on her, either. She became very quiet and did everything he told her to. And wasn’t that a switch?
Emily was ready to drop from exhaustion. Luke kept her out there until she could load the gun, get the rifle up into position, and fire. Only then did they start for home.
On the way back, they cut across a muddy field and down a sloping hill through a grove of cottonwoods. “How’s your shoulder?” he called to her.
“What shoulder? If I have one, I can’t feel it. My whole arm’s numb.”
He only nodded, and the sharp retort she expected didn’t come. He was different this afternoon. Nice. Once, he’d spread the strands of a barbed wire fence apart for her. As she climbed through, her skirt caught on one of the kinks of wire. Twisting around, she bent over to work it loose. From the expression on his face, Luke Sullivan was getting a good long look at knee-length ruffled drawers and two legs in heavy black stockings.
Facts lined up and marched out of her mind. Frosty, coldhearted, cold-blooded Luke Sullivan was grinning like a schoolboy. This tough-talking gunslinger holding the fence apart confused her like a Chinese puzzle, and now the pieces of the puzzle were snapping into place. A lot of things were beginning to make sense this afternoon.
He liked looking at her legs.
Her face on fire, she yanked her skirt free. Her stomach churned. She was playing a dangerous game, unsure how to handle this situation, how to handle this man.
She sent a look sideways at him. He had a nice square jaw and was certainly attractive for a gunfighter. Well, not really a gunfighter, but almost. And despite who he was and what he did, his chin was downright cute, with a Y-shaped cleft so deep it folded in on itself. Unbidden, the thought slipped to the front of her mind and hung there. She imagined her fingernail tracing the tiny trench, probing it, even kissing it. Heat slid down her neck.
She smoothed her skirt and wheeled around. Quickly, she started walking away from him.
Luke dumped his hat on the back of his head and loped along beside her. “I’ve been thinking about what you said a while ago,” he said coolly. “Out here, you need to be able to protect yourself. I did not teach you to shoot to be mean.”
Emily’s lips curved faintly. She’d figured that out for herself.
“I don’t know anything about guns,” she said, lowering her eyes. “My arm hurts because your old rifle is so heavy.”
He stopped dead still, the rifle crooked in his arm. Though he didn’t answer right away, she could tell he was considering what she’d said.
Hesitantly, as if she were fishing – which she’d never done in her life – she mentally cast a silken feminine line far out into uncharted waters. Hoping she wasn’t misreading him, she said, “Maybe tomorrow you should show me how to shoot your Colt instead.”
In a flash, the wiliest, craftiest game fish in the river – twenty-six years old and two hundred pounds – shot to the surface and swallowed the bait, the hook, the rod, and swam off with the line.
“Good idea, Emmy. How’s tomorrow, right after dinner?”
CHAPTER
10
New Hope had settled down for the night, the children cleaned up, prayers heard, and sent off to bed. Emily, hemming a dress, sat in the parlor with Molly and Luke.
A few feet away, Luke lounged in a wing-back chair, reading a newspaper. In blue Levi’s and a soft flannel shirt, boots off, he’d propped his socked feet on a footstool.
Emily bit off a length of thread, happy that she and Luke had stopped squabbling every time they got within spitting distance. Ever since the shooting lessons, he seemed to be observing a kind of truce. She was, too.
Funny what a couple of kisses could do.
Earlier that evening, like every other evening for the past week, they’d gone for a walk after supper. Twice he took her to one of the fields and let her practice shooting his revolver. The last two evenings, however, he’d steered her over to the corral. He insisted she learn to ride, something she rebelled at every time he took her to the barn. She was afraid of horses, and he knew it, so he’d lift her onto Sheba, a gentle old mare, and have her sit there to get used to the feel of the animal under her.
But not Bugle. She wouldn’t go near Bugle.
“He growls at me,” she said.
Luke fought a smile and lost. “Horses don’t growl.”
“He does. And it’s not funny.”
In the parlor, she looked across at Luke. Dark head bowed, he was deeply engrossed in what he was reading. Lightly, she ran her fingers over her lips, remembering the pressure of his lips on hers, how firm his mouth was.
She glanced down, putting up the hem of a dress she’d made for church, this one plain blue with bone buttons down the front and a soft belt. Every time Molly went to Repton, she brought back several yards of fabric for her. Slowly, Emily was putting a wardrobe together.
“Where’d you learn to sew dresses?” Luke glanced over the top of his newspaper at her.
“Chicago. They taught us to sew and cook and keep house – ‘domestic science,’ they call it.” She shook the dress out and smoothed the silky blue folds across her lap. She grinned as she said, “I also became quite good at sewing boy’s underwear. Would you like me to – ?”
With a quick “No, thanks,” Luke ducked behind the paper.
Molly’s lips twitched. She glanced up from her darning.
>
Smiling, she shook her finger at Emily. Emily grinned back. She and Molly had forged a friendship.
“There’s an article here about railroad rights-of-way,” Luke said slowly. “Reminds me of what Jupiter Jackson said about New Hope’s boundaries.” He lowered the paper and looked over at Molly. “He says New Hope is bigger than we think.”
“Oh, there’s always been talk,” she said, “but it was way before I came. The truth’s been exaggerated, I expect. Long time ago, a French fur trader named Olivier owned everything from the Wyoming line to Billings. It was a land grant from before Napoleon – that’s how far back it goes.”
Molly worked the needle through the fabric, shaking her head. “Olivier returned to France. Story I heard said the Cheyenne captured him and some traveling preacher saved him. Olivier left these parts in a hurry. Before he did, he deeded a large tract of land for a children’s house of refuge – N ew Hope, now – to be run by the preacher. The rest he sold to the U.S. government for pennies an acre. The government bought it and turned it into a reservation for the Crows.”
Luke’s forehead folded into f ive straight horizontal lines.
“Count them,” Molly had once told her. “You can always tell what he’s feeling. The more lines, the more bothered he is.”
“Jupiter says he remembers when New Hope’s range ran all the way from the White Dog River to the Yellowstone,” he said.
Molly shook her head. “He’s an old man, Luke.”
“But you said yourself the deed’s messed up, that a piece of New Hope really belongs to the Crows.”
Emily did a quick forehead line count. One more. Six wrinkles.
Molly nodded. “It does, but the stretch from Pryor Creek to Billings was never ours. I’ve always been told New Hope’s line ends at Pryor Creek. It’s another ten miles from there to Billings. From Pryor Creek to the Yellowstone is all open range. Goodness, that can’t be ours.”
“Who said?”
“Everybody.” She slipped a darning egg into another black stocking belonging to one of the girls. With tiny, deliberate stitches she outlined the hole, her mouth set. Jabbing the needle into the stocking, she set it aside and looked over at Luke. “Half a dozen people over the years, including Bart. Since he was here before me and on New Hope’s board, I accepted his word.”
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