by Mary McBride
“Go ahead. Send it.” Gideon shrugged, turned on his heel and stalked toward the door as the telegraph key began its nervous tapping.
“I’ll be watching you, Summerfield,” Charlie Buck called to him.
“That’s what I figured,” Gideon said. He walked out the door and slammed it behind him.
He muttered and cursed himself as he stormed into the hotel lobby, then pushed through the batwing doors into the saloon. The bartender immediately put a bottle of rye on the bar, and Gideon poured himself one quick shot and then another.
Damn! Where had his head been this morning? He could easily have bushwhacked the half-breed, leaving Dwight none the wiser about the ransom note. But, he thought dolefully, his head had been somewhere in the clouds and his eyes had been on Honey Logan’s pretty face and his heart had been unraveling like a ball of twine in a litter of kittens.
Gideon cursed again.
The barman leaned forward on his elbows. “That rye’s not the best, Mr. Summerfield, but I’ve got some that’s worse.”
“It’s fine.” Gideon poured another glass. After he drank it he slapped a coin on the bar. “I’ll just take the bottle,” he said, turning and walking back through the saloon doors.
He climbed the stairs slowly, ignoring the half-breed, who was seated in the lobby now with his bowler hat tilted to one side and his rifle across his knees, watching out for Dwight Samuel’s greedy interests. Well, hell, Gideon thought. Honey didn’t have to know that Charlie Buck had followed them. He’d just keep her in the room till tomorrow.
The ransom demand had been sent. And tomorrow Race Logan would come, but whether it would be with ten thousand dollars or half a dozen hired guns, Gideon had no idea. All he knew was that he couldn’t let Logan’s daughter out of his sight now, especially with Charlie Buck sour-faced and rigid as a cigar store Indian in the lobby. And Gideon also knew he wasn’t looking forward to sharing a small hotel room with Miss Honey Logan for the next twenty-four hours.
Clutching the bottle in one hand, his other gripping the wooden banister, he recalled her words earlier in the day when she had proclaimed that she loved him. Fool that he was, he thought now, his heart had drummed at the sound of the words. He had felt like a pup, wagging his tail, rolling over to get its belly rubbed.
Gideon scowled. Love. That wasn’t what she meant. Maybe if she were still Edwina Cassidy, bank teller, working girl, he might have believed her. But Honey Logan was a rich girl in the midst of an adventure. He was probably the first man she’d ever been alone with. Lord knew she’d hardly ever been kissed before. And, healthy female that she was, the situation was stirring up things inside her. Feelings and desires she’d never felt before. What she said and what she meant were two entirely different things. She wanted him, sure, but her breeding and her fine education made her clothe those naked, indelicate desires in the finery of love.
Loved him! Hell, even Cora had never said she loved him, and her subsequent behavior had proved that to be all too true.
At the top of the stairs, Gideon stumbled. The bottle thunked against the wall, and he grasped the banister to keep from pitching backward down the stairs. He told himself it was the three quick shots of rye, that it had nothing to do with heartstrings or the fact that just thinking about Honey Logan made him dizzy with desire and regret.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. All he had to do was get through the next twenty-four hours. This would conclude one of two ways—Honey would either be ransomed from him quietly or wrenched away at gunpoint. All he had to do was keep her safe until then. That was the easy part. The hard part would be keeping himself safe from her.
Gideon turned the knob, and when the door gave easily, he charged into the room.
“I told you to keep the goddamn door locked,” he bellowed.
Honey grabbed for the bath sheet on the foot of the bed at the same time as she slid down neck-deep in the metal washtub.
Gideon just stood there looking at her. The anger that had blazed in his eyes seemed to alter as she watched. They turned a soft and hazy ash gray, a shade that set the butterflies skittering in her stomach again.
“I’m...I’m almost through,” she told him. “The water’s still warm, Gideon, and I haven’t dirtied it up so much that you couldn’t have a wash yourself. If...if you wanted to, that is.”
He blinked and the gray haze dissipated. “I told you to lock the door, Honey,” he said gruffly. “You’re damn lucky it was me who walked in and not some dirty prospector looking for a good time.”
She shifted in the tub, sloshing water over the side. “Well, I don’t think I’m so confounded lucky, Gideon, to be walked in on by somebody in such a foul mood. At least some dirty prospector might have a kind word to say to me.” She sent a spray of water in his direction.
Gideon released his breath in a low growl as he walked toward the bed. He unbuckled his gun belt, slung it on the bedpost, then slung himself down on the mattress. After sighing roughly he didn’t say a word.
Honey arched another spray of bathwater in his direction. “Why are you always so put out with me, Gideon?”
“You didn’t do what I told you. You didn’t lock the damn door.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot. After the boy from downstairs poured all that wonderful, steaming water into the tub, I couldn’t think of anything but jumping out of my clothes and into my bath.”
Gideon merely grunted in reply, reaching up to punch the pillows beneath his head. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and settled his hat over his face. He could hear her swishing around in the water, and then the distinct sounds of a wet body rising out of a tub and the rustle of dry fabric against damp skin. If anybody had told him back in prison a few weeks ago that he’d be in this situation and not even be tempted to peek, Gideon would have laughed and called the fella six kinds of fool.
But he wasn’t tempted now. Just listening to her was enough to start his bloodstream rushing south. He didn’t need to ache worse than he already was. The way he was feeling right now, he thought, he’d be lucky if he could even talk much less walk by tomorrow afternoon.
The mattress shifted then and he edged up his hat an inch to see Honey—her pale skin still glistening and damp—sitting quietly beside him. She was clutching the towel around her, but it dipped in back to reveal a length of spine that was as beautiful and as delicate as a rope of pearls.
“Did you send that wire to my father?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, inquisitive, without a trace of anger.
“Yes, ma’am,” Gideon said, trying to sound stern and decisive despite the pummeling his heart was giving his rib cage just from her very nearness.
She sighed. “I suppose that means he’ll be here sometime tomorrow.”
“I expect so.”
She turned to him then, crooking one long, bare leg up on the mattress. Her eyes were huge, soft, sad. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Then we don’t have much time, do we? To be together, I mean.”
Gideon couldn’t help himself. He lifted his hand to push a damp strand of hair from her shoulder. Then he traced his finger across her cheek. “It’s just as well, bright eyes,” he said softly.
“I meant what I said this morning, Gideon. About loving you.”
His hand gently cradled her cheek now. The warmth of her skin made his palm tingle. “You’ve got feelings for me, Ed, honey. Stirrings inside that you’ve probably never had a chance—”
She cut him off with a snort and a toss of her head. “I’m twenty years old, Gideon. I believe I know the difference between what my heart tells me and what the rest of my body is fairly screaming.” She drew in her lower lip then, as if trying to suppress the warm flush that was dappling her cheeks.
“Ed, honey, you shouldn’t—”
“Don’t you tell me what I should or shouldn’t feel,” she snapped. “I can love you if I want to, dammit. And I love you, Gideon Summerfield. With all my heart and all my soul. I love you.” Her eyes flooded with
tears and she took an angry, backhanded swipe at them.
He wanted to run out of the room and get as far away as fast as he could. And he wanted to hold her close, closer than his own hard-pounding heart, and never let her go. Between those two extremes, Gideon was nearly paralyzed.
She lifted a tear-dampened hand to touch his cheek, whispering “It’s all right. I don’t expect you to love me back.”
Gideon could hardly breathe now for emotions churning in him and the unspoken words that were nearly choking him. This was crazy. It wasn’t meant to be. Ever. Yet there she was—loving him. Truly loving him. He could see it in her eyes. And here he was, about to blubber like a baby, about to blurt out that he loved her, too.
He reached up and drew her against him, feeling her tears dampening his shoulder. He stroked her hair then. “Don’t, Honey. Don’t cry. Hell, darlin’, I can’t give you anything except my love. And that’s a worthless commodity if ever there was one.”
She sniffed as she lifted her head from his shoulder. “Are you saying you love me?”
He rolled his eyes in exasperation and clenched his teeth, but she persisted.
“Gideon, is that what you’re saying?” Turquoise eyes honed in on his now. Her pretty mouth twitched in a taunting grin. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
“I wish I could,” he said somberly.
“You wish you didn’t love me?”
“Yeah, bright eyes. I wish I didn’t love you.”
Nestling into his shoulder again, she breathed, “But I’m so glad you do.”
As Gideon held her close, he stared at the ceiling, thinking she wouldn’t be so glad or so in love tomorrow when her father showed up with her ransom.
* * *
Kate was playing a game of ringtoss with three-year-old Neely when the boy from the telegraph office came through the gate in the adobe wall. She straightened up from gathering one of her son’s wild pitches, brushed the hair from her temples and greeted the gray-uniformed messenger.
“I got a wire for Mr. Race Logan,” the boy said, looking beyond Kate toward the front door.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Logan.”
“I’m to give it to the mister,” he said, moving to step around her.
Though he was nearly as tall as she was, Kate caught him by the collar. “The mister is taking a siesta, young man, and if you disturb his sleep, the missus is going to make sure this is the last message you ever deliver.” She snatched the paper out of his hand.
Grumbling as he straightened his jacket, the boy then stomped back to the gate. He turned, though, before he was out on the street, and he shook his fist at Kate and called, “I guess I know about you, Mrs. Logan. I guess what people say is right. You ain’t no real lady. You’re...”
Kate launched the hard rope ring toward his head, and the boy ducked through the wall and disappeared. As her son laughed and charged across the courtyard to retrieve the ring, Kate read the telegram.
Her hands trembled as she folded the message from Cerrillos and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. Then she collared little Neely, deposited him in the kitchen with the cook and proceeded to Isaac’s room.
Kate’s voice was an urgent whisper. “Isaac, I need your help.”
The black man opened a single eye. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh is right,” Kate mattered, fishing in the depths of her skirt for the telegram, perusing it once more. “That Summerfield man wants ten thousand dollars in exchange for Honey’s life.”
Elbowing up, Isaac took the message from her. As he read it, his grizzled eyebrows drew together and his forehead furrowed. “Horace know about this?” he asked when he had finished.
Kate shook her head. “No, and he’s not going to if I can help it. That’s why I need your help.”
“You could get in a heap of trouble, Miz Kate, taking this on all by your lonesome. Horace’ll go right through the roof.”
“I’d rather have him going through the roof alive than lying dead in Cerrillos, Isaac,” Kate snapped. “I want my daughter back safe and sound. If handing ten thousand to that...that greedy, thieving varmint will accomplish it, then that’s what I intend to do. I’ll take the morning train tomorrow. That ought to get me to Honey by noon, at least.”
“Well, that’s the getting there. How ‘bout what you’re taking? You just gonna pull all that money out of the air?”
“I wish I could.” She sighed. “I’m going to the bank right now while Race is sleeping, and I’m taking whatever I can find in the safe. There’s some currency. I believe there’s some gold as well.”
The old man shook his head. “I figured that criminal wrong, Miz Kate, thinking he was keeping Miz Honey purely out of affection for her.”
“I guess we both figured wrong.” Kate stood up, once again stuffing the telegram in her pocket. “I’m depending on you to keep my secret and to do whatever you have to to keep Race here after I’m gone.” She paused, taking the old man’s hand in hers. “You’ve never let me down before, Isaac.”
“I ain’t about to start now, Miz Kate,” he said.
* * *
Gideon shifted in the washtub, seeking a more comfortable position. It was like trying to take a bath in a thimble, he thought, with his long legs draped over the end of the tub and his elbows either poking him or cracking against the metal rim whenever he moved. A bath had seemed like a good idea earlier, but not only was the washtub smaller than it looked, the water wasn’t as cold as Gideon had hoped it would be when he had undressed with his back to Honey a while ago. In fact, the condition he had attempted to hide from her was no better now than it had been before. He was still hard as a smithy’s hammer, he thought grimly, and Honey’s ravishing, sheet-draped pose on the bed wasn’t helping his situation one little bit.
He sighed and squeezed the washrag above his head, letting the cool water run through his hair and trickle over his face.
“Gideon,” Honey said from the bed, “you never did answer my question about what you’d be doing if it hadn’t been for the war.”
There she went again, asking those wide-eyed, curious questions about his yesterdays. But the question hit him differently now that he knew her interest was genuine, prompted by affection rather than guile. For the first time in his life, Gideon found he actually wanted to share his memories.
“I guess I’d be farming,” he replied. “More than likely anyway. It’s what my father did before he died. I guess it’s what I always assumed I’d do. Till I was ten anyway.”
She shifted so her head was at the foot of the bed. Lying on her stomach, she propped her chin on her hands. “What did he farm?”
“Hogs mostly. We had a few acres of corn.” Gideon tilted his head back onto the rim of the tub and closed his eyes. “Lord, how I loved that corn.”
“To eat, you mean?”
He shook his head. “That, too. But I remember I used to stand in the field with cornstalks taller than I was on all sides of me. Just stand there in all that green, feeling the sun on my face and listening to the wind. The wind makes a peculiar sound moving through a cornfield. It sounds almost alive. Like a big green animal twisting and shouldering its way to where it wants to go.”
Honey shivered. “Sounds scary.”
“No. Not scary. It was...” He paused, his eyes still closed, searching for a word, finding it deep in his heart. “It was holy. Made me feel more religious than any church I was ever in.”
“Would you try farming now? I mean, if you could?”
Gideon opened one eye, riveting her with his gaze. “What do you think, bright eyes? Kind of hard to farm when you’re on the run, don’t you imagine?”
She sat up, crossing her legs and readjusting the bath sheet around her. “So stop running.”
Something between a laugh and a curse escaped his lips, then he closed his eyes again.
“I’m serious, Gideon,” she insisted, scooting closer to the foot of the bed.
“Ed...” he
growled.
“Listen to me for just one minute, will you? Gideon, I have property back in Kansas that was left to me by my grandparents. A couple hundred acres, I guess. To tell you the truth, I never paid much attention to it before. It’s being farmed by tenants now. But there’s no reason why you couldn’t take on some of it. Or all of it for that matter.”
He was silent a moment—deeply touched by her offer. She meant it, by God. This beautiful woman would do that for him. And a part of him yearned to say yes, ached to go back to the life that was wrenched away from him when he was a child. It would be, Gideon thought, like getting a chance to live his life all over again. This time as it was meant to be.
“Gideon? Did you hear me?”
All he could do was stare into the tepid bathwater and nod. He was afraid to speak. He couldn’t bear hearing himself saying no.
Then Honey reached down from the bed and brushed the damp hair from his forehead. “Gideon Summerfield,” she whispered, “did you hear me asking you to marry me and take me to Kansas?”
Chapter Fifteen
The late-afternoon sun cut a golden swath across the room, and where Honey’s fingers threaded through Gideon’s hair, the rich light picked out a few silver strands among the cool, damp locks. Cinnamon, she thought. Delicious cinnamon shot through with sugar. He sat silently, eyes closed and head tilted back, as if mesmerized by her touch.
She remembered once seeing her Uncle Isaac stroking a wounded mountain cat to calm it. The animal’s eyes had closed with a strange mixture of fear and pleasure, and it had made a low, guttural sound somewhere between a purr and a hiss as its tawny pelt had rippled beneath Isaac’s hands. Gideon was like that now, she thought. A wild thing just gentled for a moment. Not tame. No. Far from tame. But gentled all the same.
Honey had felt vague stirrings earlier when she had watched Gideon undress. Her attention was drawn first to the bruised, torn flesh at his side, but then her eyes roved over the powerful muscles of his shoulders, the hard planes of his backside and the long sleek cords of his legs. Those stirrings had increased when she glimpsed the desire he was making such an effort to conceal. More than mere stirrings now, they seemed to tighten, whirling like a cyclone, a storm centered deep and low inside her.
