Cash (The Rock Creek Six Book 6)

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “Is that why you smiled so brilliantly?” Cash interrupted caustically. “The blissful bride, with flowers and a wedding ring and a smile bright enough to light up the night sky.”

  Nadine looked deep into his eyes. She didn’t know what he’d seen, but he believed what he said. Even after all these years, she wanted him to know the truth. It was important that he know. “I didn’t smile on my wedding day. I cried like my heart was broken, because it was. I didn’t smile for a very long time.”

  “I saw you with my own eyes,” he whispered darkly. “Why should I believe you now?”

  “Because I never lied to you, and I never will.”

  His hand settled familiarly at her hip. “So I can ask any question I want and be assured of a true answer.”

  “Yes.” Her heart hammered.

  His hand stroked her hip. “Did you ever love me?”

  “Yes,” she answered quickly.

  “If I had shown myself to you that day, would you have left your husband and your father and come with me?”

  Again, there was no hesitation in her answer. “Yes.”

  His body settled more snugly to hers. A hand rose to stroke her hair. “Do you still love me?”

  She swallowed hard. His question stole her breath away, and while he waited for an answer, he touched her. Fingers through her hair, a hand at her waist. “No,” she finally whispered. Heaven help her, she could not love him!

  He didn’t seem at all disturbed at her answer. “Do you want me?”

  “No.”

  He actually smiled, but his eyes did not meet hers. “Liar,” he whispered.

  “I am not...”

  “Your body is shaking.”

  “You’re scaring me, of course I’m shaking.”

  “That’s not fear I feel,” he argued lightly. “Are you lying? Or do you just not know what to make of... this.”

  “I came here to talk about JD...”

  “We could’ve talked about JD tonight.”

  “I didn’t know if you would come to my room again or not.” She tried to push against his body with hers, but it didn’t do any good. “And I didn’t want to wait.”

  Cash lowered his head and kissed the side of her neck. “I’ve never been very good at waiting, either,” he whispered against her neck, his voice low and warm. “But don’t worry,” he added as he moved his lips to the other side of her neck. “I won’t ever do anything you don’t want, and I won’t make love to you until you ask.”

  Just a few days ago, she would have sworn that he was in for a very long wait, but right now... something was happening and she didn’t understand. She understood only that the weight of Cash’s body and the warmth of his mouth were different from anything she’d ever known, and they made her want... something more. It was that wanting that scared her, she realized. More than any threat from the man Daniel Cash had become, it was her own response that frightened her.

  “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “That’s very gentlemanly of you, I suppose.”

  “Gentlemanly,” he muttered. “I’m trying to be nice, and you insult me.”

  “This is your idea of nice?”

  “Sweetheart, this is as close as I get to nice.” He kissed her one last time and raked his body against hers as he left the bed.

  He was gone; she had no reason to be afraid, and still she trembled.

  * * *

  JD slunk down the third-floor hallway, Teddy at his back. “If I had something to hide in this hotel, I’d find a safe place on the top floor,” he whispered. “It might be under a floorboard, or in the wall, or even in a secret compartment in a piece of furniture.”

  “A secret compartment?” Teddy asked skeptically.

  “Sure,” JD hissed. “If I had gold to hide, I’d definitely have a secret compartment.”

  “Why are you whispering?” Teddy asked. “No one’s up here but us.”

  JD cast a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder. Teddy didn’t know anything about treasure hunting.

  At the far end of the hallway, JD came to a halt and turned around slowly. “We’ll start here,” he said, “work our way across the third floor, and then, if we don’t find anything, we’ll move down to the second floor.”

  “Okay.”

  JD tapped a knuckle against the wall, listening for a telltale echo. The wall seemed solid enough.

  Teddy got down on his knees and tested floorboards, searching for a loose plank as JD worked his way down the hall. He kept his ear close to the wall, listening intently as he crept along the hallway. He continued this systematic search until his progress was impeded by a very tall, very wide, very unhappy man.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the man growled.

  “Uncle Jed,” Teddy said, jumping to his feet and dusting off his trousers. “We were just—”

  JD stepped between Teddy and his uncle. “None of your business,” he interrupted.

  Teddy muttered a low “uh-oh.”

  This was Jed Rourke, JD thought with just a little seedling of respect and fear. He’d seen him from a distance, but up close he was rough-looking and hairy and... big. He could get a crick in his neck looking up at the man.

  But JD wasn’t afraid. Gunfighters had to be fearless. “We’re not doing anything important,” he said calmly and sternly. There was no hint, in his steady voice, that his heart was about to pound through his chest. “So get lost, old man.”

  Jed Rourke leaned down slowly, placing his face close to JD’s. A muscle in his beard-roughened cheek twitched. “You’re a mouthy kid. You belong to the new doctor?”

  “I don’t belong to her,” JD said tersely. “But she is my mother.”

  “Then I won’t kill you,” the hairy man said in a low growl.

  JD straightened his spine. “Are you calling me out?”

  The big man straightened, a look of horror on his face. “Of course not. You’re just a kid.”

  “I might be just a kid, but I could take you on if I had to.” Jed Rourke might be big and tough, but he was also old. Over thirty, for sure.

  The old man tried to step around JD, but JD was quick. He placed himself in Rourke’s path, eyes lifted challengingly.

  With a sigh the big man reached out and placed his hands under JD’s arms.

  “Hey!” JD shouted as Rourke lifted him, swung him around, and deposited him where he was out of the way.

  Rourke glared down at Teddy. “What are y’all doing?”

  “Looking for the gold.”

  “Okay,” Rourke said, not at all concerned by the news. “Do it quietly, you hear? Hannah sent me up here to look for a wayward woodpecker.”

  “JD was tapping on the wall,” Teddy explained.

  Rourke glanced back to JD and grinned. “So you’re the little woodpecker.”

  JD narrowed his eyes in a glare he hoped would be threatening. Rourke did not appear to be at all moved.

  “Tear up Eden’s hotel and she will have your hide.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Teddy promised.

  Jed stepped around JD. “A word of advice, little woodpecker. Grow a couple of feet before you go around running that mouth of yours. It’s going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

  JD glared at the man who didn’t bother to so much as glance back. When he was ready to start his new career, Jed Rourke would be the first man he called out, no matter what Cash said.

  * * *

  It was late when he walked into the dimly lit lobby of the Paradise Hotel. There would be no children running around at this hour, and Eden, who usually started her day early, was probably already in bed. Which meant Sullivan would be in bed, too.

  If he wanted people to think he was sleeping with Nadine, why hadn’t he come earlier, when there would be plenty of witnesses?

  The place was not deserted, though. Cash heard lowered voices from the dining room, and stopped in the entrance to peek inside. Sullivan and Reese sat at a table near the middle of the room. Quiet as he was, he
didn’t surprise the two men. It wasn’t easy to surprise Rock Creek’s sheriff. Sullivan nodded and waved Cash into the room.

  “What’s going on?” Cash asked as he ambled toward the table.

  “One of my students who lives outside town reported that her father saw an Indian the other day.”

  “Just one?” Cash asked, pulling out a chair and spinning it around to straddle the seat.

  “Yeah,” Sullivan answered. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more waiting over the next hill.”

  “Think this Indian might be one of our old friends?” Cash leaned slightly forward.

  “After a year that’s unlikely,” Reese said, but Cash could tell he had considered the possibility.

  Those renegades had staked four of them, the three sitting at this table and Rico, to the ground. Only the appearance of Nate, a man the Indians thought was a crazy warrior, had saved them from being scalped.

  “What are we going to do?” Cash asked.

  “Renegades have always stayed away from town,” Sullivan said. “But we’re going to add a nightly patrol anyway.”

  “We’ll take turns riding the perimeter, once in the morning and once at night, for a while,” Reese said. “If we see anything, we’ll up the patrols.”

  “One-man patrols or two?”

  “One, for now.”

  “Count me in,” Cash said with a smile. He was always ready for a little action, and something like this might actually take his mind off Nadine for a while.

  Reese set all-knowing eyes on Cash. “What are you doing here?”

  Cash gave his former captain a wide smile. “I have a lady friend.”

  “Don’t you always?” Sullivan muttered.

  “Upstairs,” Cash added.

  “I think I heard something about that.” Reese remained calm, casual, but Cash could only imagine what Mary had told her husband about Nadine. Did the entire town know that he’d been caught sneaking out of the hotel at dawn that morning? No, not the whole town, just the ones who counted most.

  “Should I take the first patrol?” Cash offered.

  “No,” Reese said. “Sullivan and I have tonight and tomorrow morning covered. You can take tomorrow night,” he added. “Since we know your idea of a morning patrol would be riding the perimeter at noon.”

  “I’ll be going, then.” Cash stood and returned his chair to its proper place. “Tomorrow night, Captain.”

  Reese looked a little uncomfortable with the designation of leader, as he always had. Still, it’s who he was and would always be.

  Cash turned around and headed for the lobby and the stairway. Why was the prospect of facing Nadine tonight and not touching her more frightening that the idea of running into those renegades again?

  Chapter 8

  He didn’t kiss her, not tonight. Cash stood by the window that overlooked the garden and stared into utter darkness.

  If he could go back and do things differently, he would, but there was no going back. The past fourteen years could not be undone. He wished he didn’t know that Nadine had thought him dead when she’d married Ellington. He wished he didn’t know she had married a man she didn’t love because she was carrying the child they had made on their one and only night together.

  If he didn’t know, he could put the past back where it belonged. He wouldn’t be plagued with these annoying what-ifs.

  Tonight she had been prepared for his arrival. Instead of wearing a nightgown and a thin wrapper, she still wore her clothes. A plain linen blouse, a blue calico skirt, those sensible boots. She hadn’t even taken her hair down. Did she think that if she kept herself all tied up and proper he wouldn’t want her? Foolish woman.

  “Is JD safe sleeping in the saloon?” Nadine asked nervously.

  Cash turned around to watch her fidget. “Of course he’s safe.” Did she think he would leave the kid there if he weren’t safe? “He falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, and everyone knows better than to go upstairs. Evan makes sure of that.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like him,” she said softly.

  “Evan?”

  “He... he smirked at me when I stopped by the saloon this afternoon, and when I left he snorted and laughed!”

  Of course Evan had snorted when he’d seen Nadine. When she’d left his room, her silky hair had been tousled, her blouse hung slightly askew, and her face had blushed a pretty pink. He had barely touched her, and still she’d left his room looking well-tumbled. And like everyone else in this town, Evan knew Nadine Ellington was not the kind of woman who normally made trips to Daniel Cash’s room.

  She’d reshaped her hair and straightened her blouse, and looked as strait-laced and prim as ever. And he wanted her in a way he’d never wanted anything else.

  Best to move the conversation in a direction that would take his mind off what he so foolishly wanted. “Where will you go when you leave here?” he asked. “Back to Marianna?”

  She looked at the tips of her boots. “I suppose. I don’t have much of a practice left, since Marianna now has a real doctor, but... it’s home, I guess.”

  That “I guess” was so uncertain.

  Nadine lifted her head and looked him square in the eye. Ah, she might be afraid, but she could be strong when she needed to be. “I won’t leave until Hannah has her baby. Or babies.”

  “Babies?” Cash asked with a lift of his eyebrows.

  She told him about her suspicion that Hannah was going to have twins, and that she’d ordered the very pregnant woman to bed.

  “That’s why I haven’t seen Jed in a couple of days.” So much for planning a wedding. If Hannah was confined to bed, she definitely wasn’t going to drag herself to the river’s edge for a second ceremony she’d never wanted in the first place.

  “He’s staying with her,” Nadine said. “He’s very worried,” she added softly.

  “I know,” Cash whispered, turning to look down on the garden at night once more. Behind him, Nadine took slow, deep breaths he felt to his bones.

  “Didn’t you ever want that?” she whispered. “A wife, a family.”

  “No.”

  “I see.” She sounded vaguely disappointed.

  “I suppose I might have taken that route,” he added. “Years ago. It’s too late now.”

  “Why is it too late?”

  Was she going to make him say it out loud? That no one he took into his life would ever be safe. That even if he did want such normal things, they were not for him. And, by God, he did not want anything so drab and ordinary as a family that would tie him down.

  “A man can’t go back and undo the things he’s done.”

  “You could go somewhere where no one knows you,” she suggested softly. “Shave off the beard, change your name, start a whole new—”

  “Maybe I can get a job sweeping the general store in some little backwater town,” he snapped. “I’ll change my name to Bob Smith and marry a farmer’s daughter and pray every day that no one who knows my face rides into town.”

  He heard her coming. Surely she wouldn’t make this worse by touching him. He had so little control where Nadine was concerned.

  His eyes closed when she laid her hand against his back. A hand so gentle it reached through and grabbed his heart. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  With a stony expression in place, he turned and looked down into her dreamy green eyes. He knew how to scare her away, how to yank her notions of saving him right out of her tender heart.

  “Maybe I’m perfectly happy with my life as it stands,” he whispered. “I have my own place, money, and there are plenty of women out there who like to brag that they’ve slept with Daniel Cash.”

  She flinched, as he had known she would.

  “Maybe in the beginning they like the reputation more than the man, but by the time I’m finished with them...”

  “I really don’t need the details,” she said primly.

  “Maybe you do.” He gripped her chin so she
couldn’t look away. “I’m a better lover now than I was when I screwed you. That shouldn’t be a surprise. What do you expect of a couple of virgins?”

  “Cash, don’t...”

  “I’m older now. Wiser. Slower,” he whispered darkly. “Maybe I owe you one good lay for old time’s sake, something to make up for my inexperience the first round.”

  She should be angry right now. She should lift her hand and slap him again. But the eyes she laid on him remained soft and tender. “You can’t scare me,” she whispered.

  “I thought you said this afternoon that I did frighten you. Make up your mind, Mrs. Ellington.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said in a low, breathy whisper. “I’m afraid of the way you make me feel.”

  It was a tough admission for her to make. She was so open, he saw the pain on her face, the hurt and indecision that flickered there.

  He lowered his face until his lips were almost on hers. “Don’t feel anything for me,” he whispered.

  “What if I can’t help it?”

  He had started this trying to scare her, but the ploy wasn’t working. In fact, he could not have failed more miserably. She wasn’t scared, but he sure as hell was. Nothing frightened him anymore. Nothing. It was hard to scare a man who didn’t have anything to lose.

  His mouth touched hers, his hands rose up to remove the pins from her hair. The warm dark strands fell—over her shoulders, down her back—and he threaded his fingers through those strands with an aching hunger.

  Her body molded against his, and he felt her response to the lingering kiss. She quivered, her lips parted, and her hands... reached. Pale, delicate fingers danced over his back. She drew him in closer, deeper, with every tender second that passed.

  Knowing he had no choice, he took his mouth from hers. God, he couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t dance to the edge of something he wanted more than anything and then walk away with a smile on his face.

  In the low light he could see, too well, the hunger in Nadine’s eyes. The trepidation and the curiosity and the love. At least, he could fool himself into thinking that it was love.

  He dropped his hands, but Nadine held on. “Make love to me, Cash,” she whispered.