Only Love o-4

by Elizabeth Lowell

  With quick steps Shannon went down the wooden stairs from the attic loft where she had slept. She hurried through the house to the kitchen.

  Willow was working over the wood stove, frying bacon and making biscuits and stirring a pot of stewed fruit. Her hair was heaped in gleaming golden coils on her head. If the sunlight color of Willow’s hair hadn’t told Shannon that this was Whip’s sister, the catlike tilt of her wide hazel eyes would have.

  «Good morning, Mrs. Black,» Shannon said.

  Willow turned and smiled. «Call me Willow, please. It’s the western way to be informal.»

  «Willow,» Shannon repeated, smiling in return. «Then you must call me Shannon.»

  «That’s a pretty name,» Willow said. «Has the West given you a nickname yet?»

  Shannon didn’t think honey girl qualified as a nickname. And even if it did, she wasn’t about to mention it to Whip’s little sister.

  «Not yet,» Shannon said.

  Then she smiled slightly, looking at the pronounced curve of Willow’s pregnancy pressing against her dress.

  «It beats me how Whip can call you Willy,» Shannon said.

  «Whip?» Willow frowned, then smiled. «Oh, you mean Rafe.»

  «Tall, wide-shouldered, sun-haired, handsome as a fallen angel and thickheaded as a Missouri mule?»

  Willow snickered. «That’s Rafe. He calls me Willy because I used to follow my brothers around like a tomboy.»

  «How many brothers do you have?»

  «Five. Matt lives less than a day’s ride from here with his wife, Eve.»

  «Matt?» Shannon asked.

  «You’ve probably heard him called Reno. That’s the name the West gave him. Half the time I call him that, myself, just like I’m getting used to thinking of Rafe as Whip.»

  «Silent John mentioned Reno by that name,» Shannon said. Then quickly, wanting to avoid the complex subject of the man who hadn’t been quite her husband and was no longer alive in any case, Shannon asked, «Where are the other Moran brothers?»

  «Scattered all over the world from Scotland to Burma to the Amazon jungle, last I heard. But that was years ago. They could be anywhere now.»

  «The yondering streak must run wide and deep in your family.»

  The haunted tone of Shannon’s voice made Willow turn and look over her shoulder. A glance told Willow that her first impression of Shannon had been correct. The slender, edgy girl with the spectacular sapphire eyes was more than a little taken by Rafael «Whip» Moran.

  «Yes, I suppose so,» Willow said, turning back to the stove. «Even if we had been stay-at-homes, the war would have scattered us to the winds. There was no home to come back to.»

  «Yes,» Shannon said simply.

  «Sometimes I hear the gentle rhythms of the South in your voice,» Willow said as she sifted flour.

  «Virginia,» Shannon said, «a long, long time ago.»

  «Is that why you came west? Did the war take your home from you?»

  In another person the question would have been prying. But Willow’s voice and gentle hazel eyes made it clear that sympathy rather than curiosity lay beneath the question.

  Shannon closed her eyes for an instant, wondering how to tell this gentle Southern lady about the hell on earth that Shannon’s life had been before Silent John had come and taken her to Colorado Territory.

  «Never mind,» Willow said quickly. «I didn’t mean to pry. Would you like a cup of coffee, or do you prefer tea?»

  «Do you really have tea?»

  The wistful question told Willow a great deal.

  «We always have tea. Jessi — Wolfe Lonetree’s wife — was raised in Scotland and England. So was Wolfe, partly.»

  «Wolfe.» Shannon frowned. «Whip has mentioned him.»

  «Not surprising. Rafe earned the nickname Whip the day some Canyon City toughs were talking indecently to Jessi because she married a man who is half Indian.»

  A vivid memory came to Shannon — the blurring speed of Whip’s wrist, the harsh crack of the bullwhip, and the bright blood on Beau Culpepper’s dirty mouth.

  «That’s how I met Whip,» Shannon said.

  Willow made an encouraging sound as she bent to remove a pan of biscuits from the oven. Though Willow hadn’t asked, she was very interested in how her brother had come to be in the company of the wife — or, according to Whip, thewidow — of one of the most notorious man-hunters in the West.

  «Some no-account claim jumpers name of Culpepper were in Holler Creek at the mercantile when I came in to buy supplies,» Shannon said. «The Culpeppers started talking about me. I didn’t like the vile things they were saying, but…» She shrugged.

  «You were alone?» Willow asked as she deftly transferred biscuits to a napkin-lined basket.

  «Yes,» Shannon said. «I tried to keep Whip from mixing in. I was afraid he would get hurt, four armed men to his one, and Whip wasn’t even carrying a gun. The Culpepper boys have an ugly reputation around Echo Basin.»

  Willow’s breath caught at the thought of her beloved brother taking on four men.

  «The Culpeppers kept on talking filth,» Shannon said. «Then suddenly there was a sound like a shot and blood was on Beau’s mouth and another sharp sound and another and Culpeppers were jumping and yelling like they had kicked over a hive of wasps. By the time I realized it was the bullwhip, the fight was nearly over.»

  Willow wiped her hands on her apron and let out a long breath.

  «I’ve seen my brother do some fancy tricks with that bullwhip of his, but four armed men at once…» Willow said, shaking her head.

  «They didn’t expect it,» Whip said from beyond the doorway. «That made it a whole lot easier.»

  Shannon spun around.

  Behind Whip loomed Caleb Black.

  «Don’t do a damn fool thing like that again,» Caleb advised dryly.

  «I didn’t exactlyplanon doing it the first time,» Whip retorted.

  Caleb gave a crack of laughter, walked into the kitchen, and touched Willow’s hair with a gentleness that astonished Shannon.

  «How’s my favorite girl?» he asked softly.

  «Getting big enough to be two of your favorite girls.»

  Smiling, Caleb bent down and said something that only Willow could hear. The sudden pink on her cheeks and the smile on her generous mouth spoke eloquently of a woman who was well pleased with her man, and he with her.

  «Is that biscuits I smell?» Whip asked.

  «Nope,» Caleb said quickly. «It’s your imagination.»

  «Huh. Likely story.»

  Caleb picked up the basket of biscuits and pretended to conceal it beneath his work jacket.

  Smiling, Whip held out his left hand. On his palm were two steaming biscuits.

  Shannon made a startled sound. She hadn’t even noticed Whip reaching for the biscuits, yet there they were in his hand.

  «Thought you might feel that way,» Whip said, «so I helped myself while you were whispering sweet nothings in my baby sister’s ear.»

  Willow rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  «You two,» she said in mock disgust. «A body would think I made only one biscuit at a time and divided it crumb by crumb among all the help.»

  «I’ve been meaning to talk with you about that,» Caleb said, bending down. «Among other things…»

  Shannon blinked and tried not to stare. She was almost certain she had seen Caleb’s lips skim across Willow’s ear.

  «Shoo,» Willow said, laughing and pushing on her husband’s broad back. «If you keep distracting me, I’ll burn the bacon and put too much salt in the biscuit mix.»

  «You heard her,» Whip said, grabbing Caleb’s arm. «Move, man. You don’t want to interfere with Willy’s biscuits.»

  Laughing, struggling just enough to make Whip work a little, Caleb allowed himself to be led from the kitchen. Shannon watched them go with a look of wonder on her face.

  «You look like somebody just hit you with a board,» Willow said, trying not to sm
ile.

  «I feel like someone did,» Shannon admitted. «Whip is so…different here. I mean, he smiled and sometimes laughed and such back in Echo Basin, but not like this. Not…playful.»

  «Whip knows that as long as he’s here, he won’t have to guard his back or his words or anything else. We’re his family.»

  Shannon hoped her yearning didn’t show, but she was afraid it did.

  «Home for a yondering man,» she whispered.

  «That’s my brother,» Willow agreed, measuring out the salt. «A fiddlefoot and a wanderer. He’s been like that since I was knee-high to a racing mule.»

  A child’s fretful cry came to the kitchen. Willow looked at the flour and at the oven. Then she sighed, washed her hands in a basin, and wiped them on her apron.

  «Excuse me,» Willow said. «Ethan doesn’t have his father’s patience. If I don’t fetch him out of that crib and nurse him, he’ll yell down the house.»

  «Go ahead. I’ll finish the biscuits for you. Have the hands eaten?»

  «Pig Iron’s wife cooks for them lately.»

  «Then we’ll need four more pans of biscuits, right?»

  Willow’s honey-colored eyebrows rose. «How did you know?»

  «Whip is good for two pans all by himself.»

  «So is Caleb.»

  Shannon smiled slightly. «Yes, I figured that from the size of him. Which leaves one batch of biscuits for us.»

  «If we’re quick enough,» Willow said, her voice dry.

  «I’ll stand over them with a loaded shotgun.»

  «The men?»

  «The biscuits. The men are big enough to look out for themselves.»

  Laughing, Willow went to her son, whose cries were getting louder with each moment.

  By the time everyone sat down to breakfast, Ethan had been fed, bathed, and dressed in clothes Willow had made for him. He sat next to Willow in a highchair that Caleb had carved from an old fir tree. Shannon sat on the child’s other side.

  The habits learned while tending to her stepcousins quickly came back to Shannon. When Ethan became fretful for his mother’s attention, Shannon gave him a bit of biscuit to mangle or a sip of warm milk from the small cup in front of him. Sometimes she dipped a spoon in the stewed fruit and let him lick the naturally sweet juices.

  The kitchen was warm and rich with the scent of food. Small dishes of jam studded the wooden table like rubies. Whip had brought in bright yellow wildflowers and put them in a canning jar in the center of the table. Blue-and-white-checked napkins wrapped the biscuits and covered the laps of everyone but Ethan. The mugs for coffee and tea were a thick, cream-colored ceramic that held heat for a long time. The plates were of the same creamy ceramic, glazed to a high sheen. The knives and spoons and forks were all made from the same plain metal whose patina came from daily use and vigorous scrubbing.

  «Shannon? Aren’t you hungry?» Whip asked.

  She started and looked at her plate. It was empty. Whip was patiently holding a basket of biscuits out to her.

  «I was just trying to remember the last time I saw a matched set of dishes and flatware and napkins,» Shannon said. «It all looks so pretty I almost hate to eat.»

  «Eat anyway. You’re too thin.»

  «I’ve done nothing but eat ever since you showed up,» she muttered.

  «Good thing, too. When I first saw you, you were skinnier than a bitch nursing twelve pups.»

  «How could you tell?» she challenged. «I was wearing a man’s jacket and trousers!»

  «I could tell.»

  The raking, sideways look Whip gave Shannon ended the argument by stopping her breath in her throat. The silver smoldering of his eyes told her that his hunger for her hadn’t abated one bit.

  Caleb looked down at his plate, hiding his amusement. Clearly Whip had a powerful male interest in Shannon. It was equally clear that Whip hadn’t bedded the slender girl who might or might not be a widow. They lacked the ease with one another that lovers enjoyed.

  But they certainly didn’t lack the fire. The air fairly burned when Whip watched Shannon with hungry silver eyes. It was the same when she looked at him, a hunger that was almost tangible.

  Whip had told Caleb that he believed Silent John was dead. Shannon hadn’t spoken of her missing husband at all.

  Caleb hoped it wasn’t lack of proof of Silent John’s death that was keeping Whip and Shannon from the affair each plainly wanted. Many a man had died in the West with no one to know of his passing but God — particularly when the man was a loner and man-hunter like Silent John.

  «Whip tells me you have a cabin up above Echo Basin,» Caleb said.

  «Yes, on the north fork of Avalanche Creek,» Shannon said.

  «I remember chasing Reno through there a few years back,» Caleb said. «Pretty place, once you get used to the altitude.»

  Shannon smiled. «That’s all I remember about the first month or two I lived there, being breathless and feeling like I was carrying a fifty-pound sack of flour around on my back.»

  «Hard to grow much food up there,» Caleb said.

  «It’s worse than hard,» she said. «Sometimes there are only six weeks from the last frost of spring to the first frost of winter.»

  «It must be lonely for you, being the only woman,» Willow said.

  Shannon hesitated, then continued spreading bright red jam on a biscuit.

  «To be lonely,» Shannon said slowly, «you have to have someone to miss. I didn’t leave behind anyone I cared about when I came west.»

  «But you spend so much of your time alone,» Willow said.

  «I have Prettyface.»

  «Prettyface?» Willow asked.

  «The biggest, meanest, ugliest quarter-breed wolf you’ve ever seen,» Whip said dryly. «He was still healing up from indigestion, so we left him with the shaman.»

  Caleb snickered, for Whip had told him about the Culpeppers.

  «Indigestion, huh?» Caleb asked mildly. «Is that what you call it?»

  «Yeah,» Whip said. «The Culpepper he tried to eat would have gagged a skunk.»

  «Honestly, Rafael,» Willow said. «How can you make a joke out of it? They had you at gunpoint!»

  «Not when I jumped them. They were no more expecting my Chinese fighting tricks than they had expected the bullwhip.»

  Shannon made an odd sound. «If you had seen Whip move, you wouldn’t have worried about him. He had them down and out cold before I could blink.»

  «All the same, big brother,» Willow muttered, «one of these days you’re going to bite off more than you can chew all by yourself.»

  «He already did,» Shannon said, «in a place called Grizzly Meadow.»

  Caleb turned swiftly toward Shannon. His uncanny speed had been one of the first things she had noticed about him. She had thought no man could be quicker with his hands than Whip, but she no longer doubted that Caleb was faster.

  «What happened?» Caleb asked Shannon.

  «Whip took on a grizzly with a bullwhip.»

  Caleb turned on Whip. «A grizzly? Judas Priest! I thought you had better sense!»

  «It wasn’t exactly my idea,» Whip said wryly. «I was having a bath quiet as you please, and then Prettyface went on the warpath and I turned around and there that damned bear was reared up on his hind legs. All I had was the bullwhip, so I used it.»

  «You drove off a grizzly with a bullwhip?» Caleb asked, astonished.

  «No. Shannon came running up and shoved her rusty old shotgun —»

  «My shotgun is cleaner than your bullwhip,» Shannon cut in.

  «— up against the grizzly’s heart and let him have it with both barrels,» Whip said, ignoring her interruption. «Killed him deader than a stone.»

  Caleb looked back at Shannon with new interest in his odd, whiskey-colored eyes.

  «That took a lot of courage,» Caleb said.

  «Courage?» Shannon asked, and laughed curtly. «I was plain scared, but I’m such a bad shot I knew I had to get in close to do anyt
hing useful. Just wounding the grizzly would have been the death of us all.»

  «So you ran right up and blew that grizzly to kingdom come,» Caleb said, watching her with unblinking amber eyes.

  Shannon looked at Caleb rather warily.

  «Are you going to yell at me too?» she asked.

  Caleb smiled, making his black mustache shift and gleam in the lantern light.

  It struck Shannon that in a dark, hard kind of way, Caleb was every bit as good-looking as Whip.

  «Is that what Whip did?» Caleb asked. «Yell at you?»

  «Yes.»

  «No,» Whip said simultaneously. «I merely pointed out that Shannon was a triple-dyed idiot for racing in where she had no business and nearly getting herself killed. Prettyface and I about had that grizzly on the run.»

  Caleb snorted. «Did the grizzly know it?»

  Whip shot his friend a hard look and then concentrated on demolishing the pile of biscuits on his plate. It still bothered him that Shannon had risked her life for him and never once had hinted that he owed her anything for it. Not even so much as a thank-you or a hug.

  Instead of thanking her, he had yelled at her. That bothered him, too.

  No surprise there, Whip thought sardonically. Everything about that girl bothers me.

  «If my brother doesn’t have the manners to thank you,» Willow said, «I do. You’re welcome to come to our ranch anytime, and to stay for as long as you like.»

  «Amen,» Caleb said. «Much as I hate to admit it, I’d miss the sound of Whip’s flute calling up the dawn when he comes visiting.»

  «And just who accused me of stampeding the cattle with my ‘spirit pipes’?» Whip asked instantly, grateful for the change of subject.

  «Must have been Wolfe,» Caleb said.

  «Huh,» was all Whip said.

  Shannon hid her smile. She also tried to hide her longing as she glanced sideways at Whip. She doubted that she was successful.

  She had quickly learned that not much got past Caleb’s amber eyes.

  After everyone had eaten, Caleb and Whip went out to check on the ranch animals. Willow went about her chores, which Shannon insisted on doing alongside her.