Denim and Lace

by Rice, Patricia

  A small smile twitched at the corners of Alice Neely's mouth. "Well, I can see Harriet hasn't fallen as far from the family tree as I thought. Is he even Indian?"

  Sloan shrugged. "Does it make a difference?"

  "No." She held out her hand. "Thank you again, Mr. Talbott. And welcome to the family."

  He took her hand in his. "Call me, Sloan, ma'am. And don't be too hasty about welcoming me anywhere yet. Sam might have an opinion or two on that subject."

  If she did, she wasn't about to express it right now. Her mother looked at her with a curiosity Sam was too tired to face. With resignation, she disentangled herself from Sloan's hold and said, "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm ready for bed."

  And with quiet resolution, she started for the front door.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  "You can have the bed. I'll take the sofa in the other room."

  Sloan stood behind Sam as she surveyed the ruggedly masculine bedroom he had brought her to. The bedposts looked like small trees with the bark still on them. The mattress looked thick and comfortable, though, even covered in bear fur.

  Samantha glanced hastily at the tall wardrobe in one corner, found her trunk beside it, and tried not to look deeply into the rest of the shadows of the room. She'd had only a brief glimpse of the adjoining room, and she didn't have enough courage to turn around and look past Sloan to study it closer. "We can have my bed brought over in the morning," she said quietly, accepting his offer.

  "Only if you want to replace this one. I don't want word getting out that we sleep in separate beds." With that curt remark, he closed the door between them.

  The gesture was symbolic of the days and weeks that followed. Sloan shut her out as completely as if she didn't exist. Sam would get up in the mornings to find he'd gone to the mines or the mill or that he was working on his books and didn't want to be disturbed. She wouldn't see him for the rest of the day, and for that she was grateful. The evenings, when he had to make a show of being around her, were worse.

  Sam didn't possess the disposition to do nothing while Sloan disappeared all day. His bachelor household revolved around him, leaving her on the outside looking in. She could buy anything she wanted at the general store or have Harriet order it for her and charge it to Sloan, but she wasn't much inclined to indulge in fits of shopping or decorating or whatever the women he knew normally did.

  Her new "husband" had a seemingly endless supply of suits and shirts that he sent down the mountain for laundering. He apparently ate whatever the men were cooking wherever he happened to be that day. The two rooms upstairs and the study downstairs didn't require a great deal of cleaning, and Sam declined the opportunity to become the widow's full-time cook and housekeeper. Her mother might run a restaurant, but managing a hotel was more Sam's style than actually operating one. That left her with little choice of occupations.

  She was neither wife nor old maid, fish nor fowl. She didn't need to hunt for food any longer. It was still too cold and dangerous to look for her valley and too early to start a garden. She had no horses or cattle to tend. She helped in the restaurant when required, tried to teach Jack what she could, but she didn't belong in her mother's house any more than she belonged in Sloan's.

  Reaching the conclusion that she would have to make her own home, Sam approached the immense barren hotel kitchen with trepidation. A wife was supposed to cook. She knew that much. She had to have a kitchen to cook in. This place looked more like a barn than any kitchen she'd ever seen, but she would make the most of it. It would at least give her something to do.

  Discovering a dirt floor and an ancient stove were all she had to work with, she almost gave up the task in despair—until she discovered the stacks of floor tiles in a cobwebbed pantry.

  They were gorgeous tiles in a clay red with hand-painted designs of green leaves and yellow suns and blue seas. She fell in love with them immediately, and when she showed them to Bernadette, her sister's eyes lit with feverish delight.

  "We'll need to level the floor and get sand or something to set them in," Sam warned her when Bernadette began to lay the tiles out to make a pattern.

  "Paint. We'll need paint for the walls. Sunny yellow, don't you think?" Bernadette gazed dreamily around at the dismal kitchen.

  Samantha looked at the darkened beams covered with years of grease and cobwebs and grimaced. She couldn't tell for certain which held up the ceiling, the timbers or the grease and cobwebs. "Hot water and soap, first," she admonished.

  "You can grow flowers on the windowsill!" Bernadette exclaimed, running to the windows displaying two-foot thick walls.

  That was the first good thought she'd had all day. Sam smiled and went in search of pails and help.

  Sloan went hunting for her at dark. He stood in the doorway, staring at a scene that could have come straight from Dante's hell. Dirt-blackened creatures scrubbed at ancient walls and crawled through scraped clay and rock. A lantern swaying from a hook in an overhead beam threw a yellow glare over an assortment of mops and hoes and a giant rusted stove only half blackened with stove polish. He couldn't have thought of a more adequate torture chamber if he'd tried.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he made out the figures of Joe and some of his cohorts leveling the dirt floor. One of the filthy creatures swabbing down the walls appeared to be Harriet, who should have been working in the store. She refused to work there now without one of the other women beside her, and since all the women appeared to be in here, he understood her defection. What he didn't understand was what in hell was going on.

  The one figure he had hoped to find didn't appear to be anywhere in this chaos, but Sloan didn't make the mistake of assuming that Sam had nothing to do with this. His patience was rewarded when the door leading into the kitchen garden swung open and his young "wife" appeared wearing denims and an old coat and carrying a tray of flowerpots. She had mud on her face and ground into the knees of her trousers, and her hands were caked with the stuff. And she was smiling ecstatically.

  "I've got them all planted!" she announced to no one in particular. "We'll have enough fresh basil and thyme for the whole town, and a geranium for every window."

  "I hope you planted soap trees in there, too. It looks to me like you'll need a ton of it before you get done." The whole room came to a standstill when Sloan walked into the lantern light. He wondered what gossip was going around to make them all grow silent like that when he approached Samantha. That they didn't act much like newlyweds probably kept people wondering, but he didn't figure either of them would ever behave much like expected in any case. Out of a sudden sense of mischief, Sloan leaned over and kissed Sam's dirty cheek. He almost felt a palpable sigh of relief going up around them.

  "I wondered how long it would take you to find something to do," he murmured against her ear as he took the heavy tray of pots from her.

  "As soon as I can get out to find my valley, there'll be plenty for me to do," she informed him without warmth. "But for now, I'll be happy to get this stove going in here. These seeds need heat."

  He set the tray on the cold stove. "And here all these years I thought stoves were for cooking. Pardon my ignorance."

  All around them people were getting up and cleaning themselves off and making polite excuses before they disappeared into the darkness beyond the kitchen. Sloan didn't much care whether they thought thunderclouds or feather beds were forming in here. This was his time with Samantha, and he wanted them out.

  He knew better than to expect Sam to greet him at the door, wearing the fancy gown he'd given her, holding his favorite drink, and beckoning him to a table covered in his favorite dishes. He didn't expect it of her, and he doubted if such behavior would even occur to the little hoyden. He'd had a woman once who had done all those things, and she had been a lying, traitorous bitch. He was quite content with the honesty of a woman who greeted him in muddy denims and a tray full of flowerpots. He flashed a smile at her wary expression.

&
nbsp; "I take it the restaurant will be closed tonight. What do you propose we eat?"

  She took a step backward to widen the space between them. Sloan took a larger step forward. Another step, and she would have her back against the stove. He wasn't averse to getting a little closer. Now that she'd had time to settle in a little and they'd learned to work around each other without drawing weapons, he thought it might be time to pursue his next course of action. If Sam thought for one minute that he'd forgotten what she was like in bed and wouldn't want a repeat performance, she had more feathers for brains than he believed.

  "The restaurant's open. Mama has stew ready. We've been taking turns keeping it stirred." She edged to the side, realizing he would soon trap her otherwise.

  "Are you going over there looking like that, or would you like a bath?"

  Her eyes widened slightly, but she took his words at face value. "I meant to wash up just as soon as I got those seeds planted. You can go on over and get a table. I'll be there shortly."

  "That pot Joe keeps cooking out back won't have enough hot water in it for a bath. Do you figure this stove still works?" Sloan let her slip away as he regarded the iron monstrosity with a critical eye. It was old and the outer parts looked rusted, but it seemed solid enough. He began to roll up his sleeves.

  "Mama says it will now that Joe's cleaned out the flue. But it will take a lot of wood."

  He could tell she was getting suspicious now, but he ignored her cynical mind. "That's one way of getting rid of all that debris left from the fire. Help me haul some of it in here."

  One thing he could say for Sam, she was always willing to lend a hand. She moved her tray of pots to a windowsill and hurried into the darkness after him.

  They hauled an armload of charred and ruined timbers into the kitchen. While Sloan broke pieces into kindling, Samantha gathered old grape-vines and bits of broken trellis to use for fire-starters. She fed the wood into the fire slowly while Sloan pumped water to fill an enormous kettle he dragged from the pantry.

  "There aren't any curtains in here. You'll have to go upstairs to bathe," he told her matter-of-factly once the fire was blazing and the water heating.

  "You can't carry that thing upstairs," she protested. "We're heating entirely too much water. I'll get a bucket and just take up what I need."

  "You'll go find that bathtub hanging behind the stairs and take it to your room. Let me worry about hauling the water up there."

  Sloan watched her hesitate between rebellion at his peremptory orders and eagerness for a real bathtub. He derived a certain sense of satisfaction from knowing he was learning to read her thoughts from the way she widened her eyes or pursed her lips. Samantha Neely might be an unruly handful, but she didn't have a devious bone in her body. Another woman might have played his obvious sexual desire for her against him to obtain what she wanted. Samantha not only didn't recognize the weapon she wielded, she wouldn't know what to do with it if she did.

  For that reason, Sloan had every intention of giving her what she wanted without her asking. He'd already gotten the description of her valley from the deed, and he had people searching for it. Once the snow cleared, he would take her up there, even though he was quite convinced he owned the land. All he wanted in return was access to her bed, but he didn't mean to tell her that. Samantha tended to be a trifle prickly on that subject.

  With a feeling of accomplishment, he watched her dart off to the bedroom. He had no particular skills in the game of seduction, but he knew what he wanted and he meant to do whatever it took to get it. Sam's scruples on the matter were irrelevant.

  Everyone thought they were married. He would take care of her just as he would take care of a wife, for as long as she consented to be his wife. He couldn't see where a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo would make any difference, and for what it was worth, they'd already had the words said in church. He just needed to make her understand that what they felt for each other were perfectly healthy, normal desires.

  When Sloan carried up the first few buckets, he found Sam standing beside the newly scrubbed bathtub, fully clothed. Her shirt was wet where she had obviously held the tin tub up to clean it out, and he tried not to stare at the shape of firm young breasts outlined by the wet material. That would only make her warier.

  "You can't take a bath with your clothes on," he reminded her. "The water will get cold if you don't hurry. I'll carry up some more."

  She had towels and lavender-scented soaps laid out by the time he returned. Her dirty clothes were lying in a pile by the door. But she had wrapped herself from head to toe in a bulky cotton wrapper that concealed everything. Sloan dumped the buckets of warm water into the tub and stood back to measure the water level with a gauging eye.

  "Two more buckets ought to do it. Hurry up and climb in and I'll be back to help you with your hair."

  "I can wash my own hair, and this is plenty, thank you. You go on over and get something to eat. I'll be right with you." She stood firmly in front of the tub, holding the wrapper closed.

  Sloan smirked as he planted himself in front of her. She couldn't move without falling into the tub or into his arms. He caught the edges of the wrapper and began to pry them from her hands. "You don't seem to understand, Samantha. I want a reward for my efforts. I think I've been exceedingly patient, don't you? Now let's get you out of this thing and into the tub."

  She shivered as his hand slid beneath the robe and brushed her breast. Sloan had difficulty resisting the temptation to search out the sensitive crest to see if she was as aroused as he was. He didn't mean to rush her though. They wouldn't go any further than she wanted. He didn't know if her earlier assurances that they coupled at the right time of the month meant just after or just before her monthly period, so he played with fire if it had been just after. But if it had been just before, he'd given her enough time to recover, and the time would be right. He prayed it was the latter.

  "Don't touch me, Sloan," she muttered, pulling the wrapper closed. "If this is payment for the bath, you can have it. I'll go wash in the creek."

  "The creek's frozen. All I want to do is help you wash your hair. It's not as if I haven't seen you naked before," he reminded her.

  That didn't make her any happier, but she allowed him to push the robe from her shoulders. She kept her breasts covered, however, and he couldn't see more than if she'd been wearing a revealing evening gown. Still, that was more than before. He licked his finger and ran it along the inside of one breast, leaving a moist mark against her skin. He watched her eyes turn from blue to a smoldering gray and knew she burned just as he did.

  "I'll be right back. Climb in before the water gets cold." He removed his hand before it reached her nipple. He knew once he touched her there, there wouldn't be any turning back. He'd see that she had her bath first.

  He was so hard he could barely walk as he descended the back stairs to the kitchen to refill the buckets. He would have to see about installing water pumps inside the house, upstairs and down. Maybe he would even figure out how to install a bathing room. He could easily imagine Samantha coming in hot and dirty from her gardening and gratefully relaxing in a tub of nice sudsy water. And he would be right there to help her out afterward.

  He was going to have to break into his limited supply of condoms. He didn't think he could make it through the next hour without burying himself inside of her, no matter what time of the month it was, and the chances that he would withdraw in time were slim. His control with Sam was nearly nonexistent. Just the memory of her standing there with her robe falling off her shoulders sent steam through his blood. He'd be lucky to get her out of the tub before joining her.

  Engrossed in these thoughts, Sloan never knew what hit him. He didn't hear the shot fired as he hurtled down the stairs. He didn't feel the burning pain. He was only aware of Samantha's high-pitched scream of terror as he hit the ground below.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The shot shattered the sensual warmth surrounding Sam as she sto
od in Sloan's bedroom, contemplating the lavender-scented bath. Actually, she had been contemplating the heat of Sloan's gaze, not the water. She forgot her tingling skin the instant gunfire echoed up the stairway.

  The stairway. Sloan hadn't had time to get all the way down those stairs. He wasn't wearing his gun.

  Grabbing her rifle, Sam raced barefoot into the covered hallway leading to the open back stairs. She had long ago decided a maniac had designed this building, but she could now see its advantages. She was guarded on three sides while anyone standing in the open below was completely exposed. She didn't see Sloan standing there.

  The man she did see was raising his gun to fire again at someone or something just out of her line of sight. She lifted her rifle and took aim without a qualm. The man with the gun wasn't Sloan. That meant his target was.

  The gunman must have heard her just as she pulled the trigger. He turned to fire in her direction a fraction too late. The shot meant to take his hand off ripped through his chest instead.

  Sam blinked and swayed as the inner courtyard below seemed to erupt in activity. She watched Joe run in, guns drawn, just as the gunman crumpled to the ground. Other men from the saloon followed. She tried to force her feet down the stairs, knowing in the back of her mind that there was something down there she couldn't see, but she was numb, inside and out. She had just killed a man. She could tell by the way Joe and the others ignored his body.

  Sloan. Sloan had to be down there. She closed her eyes and tried to stop the dizziness. She clenched the railing and willed her feet to move. She heard Doc Ramsey's shouts. Sloan wouldn't like it if Ramsey tried to treat him. She had to get down there.