Heaven with a Gun

by Connie Brockway

  “Gilly,” his voice was low and hard, “you are full of shit.”

  His words acted like a prod. She lurched upright, furious and miserable. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I’ve never heard such crap. Give me a little credit. Just a little. I do this for a living, ferret out the grain of honesty in the lies. You haven’t given me anything but lies.”

  “How would you even know?” she demanded. “And so what anyway? So what if they’re lies, each and every one of them? Who cares if Lightning Lil is a whore or a minister’s daughter? Who cares what I am or what I do or why I do it, as long as you get your story and your readers believe it? Who gives a damn?”

  He didn’t touch her. He didn’t have to. The look he gave her felt like a slap, it was so rife with disappointment and disgust. He shook his head.

  “Maybe I do, Gilly. Maybe I do.”

  Before she could frame a retort, he was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  It was late afternoon. Bruised and battered clouds piled up on the horizon, and a cutting wind skittered along the streets, harrying most of the townspeople inside. Jim stalked the abandoned plank walk, cursing himself. Gilly had touched more than his skin last night. Her hand had moved over his flesh and he’d been branded by an urge so powerful, he’d had to clench his fists to keep from hauling her into his arms and taking what she so sweetly offered.

  He hadn’t. Because as much as he’d wanted to expose each creamy inch of her, he wanted even more to expose the mute soul of her, to touch her as deeply, as intimately as a man and a woman can. In short, he’d wanted to make love to her . . . not to have sex with the stranger she insisted on remaining.

  He was falling in love with her.

  The realization brought no surprise, only a frightening sensation of imminent loss that teased him with terrible potential. He found the telegraph office and went inside. Behind the desk, the clerk grinned. “Whoa. I haven’t had this many telegrams in one day never! First Mortie last night, back and forth to New York, and now you.”

  “Mortie’s been pestering his New York friend again?”

  “Yup. About you.” The clerk waggled his brows. “Bein’ very cagey about phrasing his questions too.”

  “You’d think the kid would have better ways of wasting his money.” Jim picked up a pencil and scribbled a note.

  “Oh, and I got a telegram from New York for you too,” the clerk added.

  Just what he needed, his ass hauled over the coals for failing to submit his exclusive interview with the “Outlaw Princess.” He shook his head at the memory of Gilly’s outrageous claim regarding lovers. How did she ever think she was going to pull that one off? He was thirty-six years old and he’d known more experienced women than she’d probably ever meet.

  “Here you are,” the clerk said, handing him the telegram. Sure enough, it was a terse demand for his story, the one he’d promised when he’d first arrived and come up with the great inspiration of how to get an exclusive interview with the notorious Lightning Lil. Maybe he shouldn’t have all but guaranteed his editor that he’d find her. Too damn bad. His editor wasn’t going to get an award-winning, circulation- doubling story from him. At least not one about Lightning Lil.

  He quickly scribbled out message:

  NO LIL. STOP. NO THRILLS. STOP. SORRY I RAISED FALSE HOPES. STOP. PURSUING DIFFERENT STORY. STOP. WILL SEND MORE WHEN I HAVE IT. STOP. HAVING A GOOD TIME. STOP.

  WISH YOU WERE HERE. STOP. JIM.

  The one thing that had kept Gilly safe was her anonymity. If he wrote that story it wouldn’t take the people in Far Enough ten minutes to realize who he’d been calling “Darlin’” for the past week. They’d be the first eyewitnesses to the fact that Lightning Lil had hair the color of polished ashwood, a luscious smile, and a voice like sherbet—rich, cool, and creamy. They’d know she looked twenty and laughed easily, that her eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and that even wearing a cast she moved with liquid grace. She’d be caught inside a week.

  He finished writing his telegram and handed it to the clerk.

  “Boy, howdy,” the man said, perusing the paper. “This is a long one. Pretty near as long as young Mort’s. Not nearly so interesting though.” He dangled the invitation to query hopefully.

  “Oh?” Jim prompted, more out of habit than anything else. After all, there was nothing for him to do but go back to the room and stare at the door that separated him from Gilly. He’d knocked once, just before noon. She’d pled a headache.

  “Fool boy sent for a federal marshal.”

  Jim stopped breathing.

  “Yup. Old Mortie thinks he knows where Lightning Lil is.”

  His heart skipped a beat. “Really? And where’s that?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t tellin’ me. Ain’t gonna share the reward with no one, he says. Needs new typeface, he says. Pleased as a two-peckered dog, that boy is. I say he’s full of crap. But hell, if a U.S. marshal wants to waste his time on Mortie James’s wild-goose chase, fine.”

  “He’s coming here?” Jim asked, his thoughts racing. Gilly had been right after all. The boy was more a reporter than Jim had given him credit for. Damn him.

  “Yup. Be here day after tomorrow.” He finished counting the lines on Jim’s message. “That’ll be two dollars twelve cents, Mr. Coyne.”

  *

  “The stage leaves at five o’clock in the morning.” Jim yanked the last of her dresses from the armoire and flung them on the bed. “We’ll leave at four and head a few miles out of town. I’ll wave the coach down and you’ll get on it. I’ll be back in town before anyone wakes up.”

  “They’ll know.” Her face was as pale as moonlight, and her eyes were black as a starless sky.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’ll just stay in my room for a couple of days. They’ll think what they’ve been thinking all along. That you and I can’t get enough of each other.”

  Now fire bloomed in her cheeks. He ignored it.

  “When the marshal shows up in a few days, I’ll tell him we had a spat and you went back to New York.”

  “Mort knows.”

  “Mort knows nothing,” he ground out, clearing the toiletries, the ivory comb, the lilac water, and the old horse liniment from atop the walnut bureau.

  “I don’t even know this New York friend of his. As far as anyone knows we married just before I left there.”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “What about the stage driver? They’ll question him and find out where I went.”

  She was trying to be brave, but her lips gave her away, trembling delicately when she relaxed her guard. She was afraid for her life, and knowing she had every reason to be afraid pierced his guts with a thousand aching holes.

  God. He’d give up everything to see that she was safe. He was giving up everything. He was giving up her.

  “His route takes him up into Oklahoma. He won’t be back in Far Enough for a couple weeks.”

  She nodded, hobbled over to the bed, and began folding her clothing. He watched her, slowly realizing what he was seeing. He’d forgotten. In his need to find her a sanctuary, he’d forgotten what had led her to him in the first place. Her cast. Where in all the country could she go where she wouldn’t incite speculation with that type of injury? He raked his hair with his hands. “I don’t know where I can send you.”

  She followed his stricken gaze to her cast and paled even further.

  “I’ll come with you,” he suddenly said. “There’s no other way. I’ll leave a message saying that we’ve gone on a second honey—”

  “No!” She shook her head in violent denial. “No. That’ll just make it worse. When people see you’ve gone . . . we’ve gone . . . they’ll start searching. I ... I have a friend I can trust. If I can just make it to Kansas City, I’ll be fine.”

  “If?” he reiterated angrily. “What if you don’t make it to Kansas City?”

  She didn’t back down from his desperation. “Then that’s my problem, Jim. That’s not part of our arrangement. Not
part of the deal. You can’t risk any more for the story—”

  “Screw the story!”

  Gilly bit down on her lower lip. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Why? Because of what it would betray. Damn the woman for being so obstinate.

  “No.” She shook her head. “It was a business arrangement from the beginning. I’ll make it to Kansas City and that’ll be it. I’ll be out of your life forever.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” She kept her gaze on her hands as she folded another skirt to pack. “What did you think, Jim? That after I’d gone, we’d stay pen pals? Just sort of keep up a correspondence? Toward what end? There’s no future in it.”

  “It can’t end here, like this,” he said in a fierce, controlled shout. “There’s too much unfinished business between us.”

  “There is no ‘us.’ And insisting you come with me is only going to get me killed, Jim.” He thought he heard her whisper, “And you,” but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything. Not her, not himself—

  He snarled at the ceiling, a feral expression of frustration. “Damn it to hell. Damn it to hell!”

  “Please. Don’t make me run away,” she pleaded, laying her hands on his forearm. He stared at the long fingers beseechingly plucking his sleeve before jerking away from her.

  “You better finish packing the rest,” he said, pacing from the bedroom. He caught the edge of the door in one big hand, squeezing until his knuckles were white and she thought the wood would splinter under the pressure. “Then get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter Ten

  A storm was waiting out there. Lightning tracery gleamed on the horizon, lighting the black caul of heaven. The air was charged with anticipation and urgency. A surging wind whipped the curtains at the open window into a lace froth, bringing with it the metallic smell of charged air. Gilly shivered, giving up the notion of sleep.

  She wrapped the linen sheet around her shoulders and stood. In a few hours, she’d be gone. If she was very lucky she’d never see him again. Never witness the scorn or hurt in his eyes.

  Jim’s eyes were made for laughing, not anger. They crinkled with the wit and the warmth and savvy only years of living can impart. Life. For a short week she’d tasted what life might have offered. A taste wasn’t enough.

  She lit the lantern, barely conscious of her own movement and, even less, of her intention. She entered the sitting room, overwhelmed by the desire to see him smiling, to steal just this one night from her destiny.

  He lay spread across the fainting couch and the chair he’d placed at the end to add the extra length he needed to fit his body. His shirt was off, carefully draped over a chair, a light blanket twisted low on his hips.

  Her gaze traveled deliberately over him, committing to memory the long cords of sinew in his outstretched arm, his broad chest moving gently with each deep, even breath, the subtle rippling contours in his forearm and belly. Underneath the sheet draped lightly over his thighs and legs, she could tell he was entirely naked. Lightning crackled outside the window, glazed him in a brilliance, limning his sculpted physique with silver gilt.

  She moved closer, extended her hand, and trifled with the light furring on his chest. Perfect. Male. It took a few seconds for her to realize that the even cadence of his breathing had stopped. She raised her eyes to find his own gravely studying her.

  “Smile,” she whispered. “I’ve come to see you smile.”

  He complied slowly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with all an Irishman’s innate charm and tragedy, a rueful, lopsided smile that turned up one corner of his beautiful scarred lips.

  “Now it’s your turn, Gilly. Smile for me, darlin’.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head. Her hair snapped and crackled with electricity in the dry night air, sparking lights in the darkness around her face. She sank down by him, made awkward by her cast. “Make love to me, Jim.”

  In answer, he cupped her shoulders, his hands warm through the linen sheet she wore draped around her. “Much as I want to, I can’t do that.”

  She stared at him, betrayed and confused. It had never occurred to her that he would say no, that he would refuse her. “Is it the love or the making you can’t do?” she asked bitterly.

  Her bitterness didn’t touch him. His smile just grew sadder. “I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

  “Dear Lord, Jim Coyne,” she said on a sob of laughter, “you have our roles reversed. I’m supposed to be the one with maidenly blushes!”

  “You’re not a one-night pleasure, Gilly. Not for me. If we make love tonight, I’ll never get over you. I may not even now. I’ll want this for eternity. But you’re going. ‘No future.’ Remember?”

  “Jim—”

  “You won’t even tell me where you’re going. Oh, yeah . . . Kansas City. Bullshit. You’re planning something else, Gilly. Something you think might get you killed.”

  Or worse, she amended silently, stunned by his perceptiveness.

  “And I’m supposed to spend the night making love to you? And then what? In a week or a month I read your obituary on the back page of some paper? No thanks, Gilly.” The smile had left his beautiful eyes. He looked tired and weary. “I don’t like the role you’ve cast me in, and I don’t want the job.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Give yourself up. I’ll find you a lawyer. The best.”

  She swallowed. “I can’t surrender. I won’t.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “You should understand. You would, if you knew.”

  “But you won’t tell me, will you?”

  “I’ve worked for five years in order to get where I am—”

  “And where the hell is that?” he demanded, heat entering his voice for the first time. “A trunk full of someone else’s dresses? Running like a fox to ground, trying to find a little space, a little time to heal up from a gunshot wound? Begging to share the room of a stranger who, for all you knew, might rape you? Yeah, you’ve come a long way, Gilly.” There was pity in his voice.

  God, he’d seen so much. So much more than she’d realized. And yet there was more. Too much more. Too much to forgive.

  “It’s my choice.”

  “Just like this is mine.” His hands dropped away.

  But it wasn’t his choice. Or hers. It hadn’t been since he’d kissed her on that boardwalk and rekindled warmth and passion in her life. “Just,” her head dipped low, her hair swung over his naked chest, slipping like cool satin across his hot skin, “kiss me good-bye.”

  The sheet fell unheeded from her shoulders. She was naked underneath, and he devoured the sight of her, rapacious with dreams barely realized and already being torn asunder. She raised her good leg over his hip, straddling him, and he couldn’t have moved had the world been ending. She laid her forearms flat against his chest, bracing herself. The movement sent her unbound breasts swinging, soft and heavy, against him, nipples dragging slightly, marking his belly with electricity. His breath caught in a hiss as her hips hovered near his.

  He closed his eyes, arching his neck back, and felt the incredible sensation of her tongue delicately washing over the skin beneath his jaw, as she slowly settled on his lap.

  “You’re going to steal this too?” he managed to pant, experiencing each inch of the sensuous grace with which she flowed along his chest, lying fully on him now, molding her softness to his hardness, meeting his heat with her own fire.

  “Just this night. It’s all I’ll ever have you. It will have to last me for eternity.” She wriggled her hips, rubbing the soft core of her over his swollen manhood.

  “Jim. Please,” she implored. “Give to me. Don’t make me steal.” Her soft plea was his undoing.

  He gripped her hips, pulling her tighter against him, trying desperately to accommodate her injured leg and cast. She gasped, arcing up, the movement exposing her breast to his mouth. He took as much of her as he could in his mouth, drawing deeply on her nipple, tonguing
the silky areola.

  Her breath pulsed in little gasps with each pull of his mouth, and her hips joined the rhythm, inciting him beyond thought to a place where desire held precedence. He let her go and she straightened, arching backward, golden hair streaming down past her hips, brushing his thighs. Her legs spread wide, riding his hips as intimately as a woman can, her cast lying alongside his thigh.

  She reached between them and took him in her hand, stroking the stiff length of him, making him grit his teeth. He lifted her hips, holding her over him, waiting until he felt the velvet-slick lining of her across the swollen head of his shaft. Cushion and plush, she encased the tip of him. He groaned, pushing into her, thrusting past resistance. She gasped once, a little cry of pain, and he stopped. Her head fell forward, her hands splayed on his heaving chest.

  Beneath her palm, his heart beat thick and violent. The little pain fled, leaving in its place the awareness of the size of him stretching inside her, the pulse of his blood heating his smooth satin skin, the strength and potency of his big body. She wanted it. She wanted more. She moved, a deliberate, experimental withdrawal that wrung a throat-strangled sound from him, then settled slowly back onto him again.

  Sensation built on sensation, a coiling of needs, a tightening. She moved again, taking him deeper, and suddenly his hands clamped on her hips and he was moving her, lifting her and settling her, teaching her with the buck of his hips and the thrust of his loins, with hand and tongue, the synchronization of mating. She fell on his tutorial gratefully, straining to find release from the teasing spur of excitation, the lash of anticipation that drove her.

  “Please!”

  He laughed, a harsh sound, and released her hips. With one hand he fondled her breasts and throat, with the other he stroked her face and burnished her open mouth. Instinct made her catch his finger between her lips and do to it what he’d done to her nipple, sucking and nipping its tip. On a growl, he surged up, still joined to her, lifting her as he stood, his hands beneath her buttocks, his chest a furred wall of moisture-cloaked muscle, veins cording beneath its straining surface.