Bound for Temptation

by Tess LeSue

  There were other signs too. Fancy painted signs swung from the porch. One said, “We got pie!” and the other read, “Cheap Tarts!” Tom was startled into a laugh. And once he started, he found it hard to stop. He laughed so hard he started to cry.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE DAMN FOOL man was just sitting there. In the middle of the street. Staring at her shop. Why didn’t he come in? He had his hat pulled low, so she couldn’t see his face. Damn it. This wasn’t the plan. She’d always pictured him storming in. Or riding off. Or doing something. Not just sitting there like a bump on a log.

  And now it was starting to snow. It was the perfect sign he should come inside. But the idiot didn’t seem to see it that way. Not even when the snow gusted in flurries on the brisk wind.

  “You should just go out to him,” Calla suggested. She, Anna and Winnie were plastered to the windows, waiting to see what he’d do.

  “Why do I have to do all the work?” Emma grumbled, as she reached for her shawl.

  “Don’t put that on,” Calla complained, snatching it off her. “It ruins the look of your dress!”

  “I’ll freeze without it.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll just shiver a bit. With any luck, he’ll take the hint and sweep you up in his arms.” Calla gave her a shove toward the door. “Go on, hurry up before he rides off.”

  Emma took her advice and stepped out onto the porch, her heart louder than a prairie thunderstorm. Snow was flying through the blue afternoon.

  Oh my, it was good to see him.

  “You’re here,” he said gruffly.

  “So are you.” She tapped her foot. “Are you going to come up here, or are you going to make me shout across the street at you?”

  Silently, he swung down from the saddle. “You got somewhere I can stable my horse?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “You might need your horse yet.”

  He’d definitely be needing it. She planned to take him up to see their house. It wasn’t quite finished yet, but it was private. And she could hardly ravish him here, with everybody looking on.

  He tethered his horses to the hitching post, looking wary. She stood at the top of the porch steps, so she was looking down on him. Her memory hadn’t done him justice. His gaze cut through her like a hot iron through ice.

  “My surname is Palmer,” she said, apropos of nothing. “My middle name is Jane. My mother used to call me Emmy, but no one’s called me that since she died. I don’t mind if you want to call me sugar or honey or just about anything at all.” He looked like he’d just fallen down a gully. Good. He deserved it. “You didn’t ask me my surname,” she said primly. “But I still told you.”

  He took the point and nodded, a touch sadly. “I guess we didn’t talk much, did we? Not about anything important. The important stuff I only know because I heard you talking to the kid.”

  The air got all charged up as they remembered what they had been doing instead of talking.

  “You know a far sight more about me than I know about you,” she said.

  “You know I got a brother.” There was some of his old bite. Good. She liked him biting.

  “I know you got two.” This was more like it. She’d practiced this snap and patter in her dreams.

  “I went down to Magdalena to find you.”

  “What?” That wasn’t in her plan. “You what?”

  “I went to find you. I went to beg forgiveness.” He searched her face. “I went to tell you I love you.”

  Emma felt winded, like a horse had just kicked her in the stomach. She hadn’t planned this. She didn’t know what to do with it.

  I love you. He’d said I love you.

  She’d been expecting a fight . . . or something . . .

  Suddenly, Emma knew what she’d been expecting. And the realization was so painful she had to hold on to the rail.

  She’d thought she’d have to talk him into loving her. That she’d have to convince him. That she’d have to argue and beg and cajole and charm and tease and perform. She’d thought she’d have to earn it.

  She’d never expected him to arrive already convinced.

  She’d spent months fixing everything. Removing his reasons to protest . . . Only, he wasn’t protesting.

  “Goddamn it, Emma. I’ve been sad my whole life. And I didn’t even know it until I met you. I’ve been walking around with a great big hole sucking away inside me, like a tornado. But I ain’t sad when I’m with you. When I’m with you . . .” He struggled to find the words. “When I’m with you, I’m . . . I don’t . . .” He seemed to gather himself up. “I don’t see the darkness. All I see is the stars.”

  “But I was a whore,” she said numbly.

  “I love you. Everything about you, even the hard stuff. I know how much pain it holds for you. I know what it means that you made your fortune the way you did. I’m not going to stand here and say it was easy to hear, or easy to think about, but hell . . . I’m sorry I shamed you for it. I never should have done that, and it’s been eating me up inside. I never want to cause you pain.”

  “But your brother . . .” Her head was spinning. This wasn’t going the way she’d pictured. People didn’t talk like this, not to her.

  “I can’t say I like it,” he said. He climbed the stairs until they were eye to eye. He reached out and touched her cheek gently with his fingertips. It was only as his thumb swiped away a tear that she realized she was crying. “But that was before me. You can’t change the past.”

  “No,” she agreed, “you can’t.”

  “I don’t know that I’d want to, even if I could,” he said. “I reckon you love me as much as I love you. If that’s so, who cares about the past? We got the whole future.”

  “I bought us a house,” she blurted.

  “Us?” His voice shook. “You bought us a house?”

  “Come here.” She took him by the hand and led him out to the corner of the porch. “Look up there.” She pointed. “That place up there?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s ours.”

  “Ours?” He sounded dumbfounded.

  “Yes, you idiot. Ours. You think I’d move to a town like this if it weren’t for you?”

  “I thought you wanted a hacienda like de Gato, but by the sea.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It lost its appeal after I met Two Moon and the boys.” She leaned against the porch railing and watched fluffy snowflakes fall. They were as fat as duck feathers now. “Besides, I think I like it here.”

  “Here.” It finally hit him where she was. “My family . . .”

  She waved a hand. “It’s all worked out. They’ve got standing bread orders.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Don’t think about it now. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “But here? You wanted the ocean.” He sounded uncertain.

  She wasn’t uncertain at all.

  “You said it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen,” he prodded.

  “This is beautiful too,” she said, and she meant it. “You told me once that everywhere has its own beauty. Nowhere’s more beautiful. It’s just different. I think your home is beautiful. The sound of the wind in the forest is like the sound of an inland sea.”

  “Home.” His jaw clenched. He seemed to be in the grip of a strong emotion. “You know, this place never felt entirely like home to me.” He leaned his head forward and pressed his forehead to hers. He only ever did that when he was overcome. “But with you here . . . it does.”

  “It’s going to feel a damn sight more like home once we fix that place up. Right now its draftier than a whore’s drawers.”

  He laughed.

  “But before we do that, I have a plan.”

  He groaned. “Of course you do.”

  “Yes,”
she said happily, “and it’s an excellent one.”

  And when she took him up to the house and showed him what it was, using her mouth and tongue and hands, he had to agree. It was an excellent plan.

  “I love you,” he said, as they lay in each other’s arms in the drafty house, listening to the sound of wind in the trees, like the rush of an inland sea.

  “I know you do,” she said, giving him a pat.

  “And?”

  “And that was all part of my plan.” She gave him a cheeky smile.

  He rolled her over, and she squealed. “You haven’t told me that you love me yet . . .”

  “Haven’t I?”

  He pressed kisses along her collarbones.

  “You ain’t so bad,” she sighed, enjoying the feel of his hot mouth.

  “I bet I can make you scream it,” he threatened, trailing kisses down her body.

  That was a bet Emma was happy to lose. And she did lose it. Over and over and over again.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There’s a gap between fiction and history, and as a novelist, it’s difficult to manage that gap. The stories I tell are larger-than-life and more in the vein of an old screwball comedy or a Technicolor musical than pure history. That comedic tone can be hard to keep when writing about the west, because while the frontier was full of adventure and ideals and freedom, and the hope for a new world where people could build lives for themselves and not be trapped by existing class systems, it was also a place of violence and oppression and theft, particularly the theft of land and the violence against and oppression of the First Nations people. I want to acknowledge the First Nations people of California, where most of Bound for Temptation is set, particularly the Serrano, Miwok and Cahuilla people (the tribes I mention in the book). I would also like to acknowledge the First Nations of Oregon, in particular the Kalapuya of the Willamette Valley, where the Slater brothers settle.

  Turn the page for an excerpt from the first Frontiers of the Heart novel

  BOUND FOR EDEN

  Available now from Jove

  Grady’s Point, Mississippi, 1843

  ALEXANDRA BARRATT WASN’T a violent woman. Most times she couldn’t even crush a house spider. But Silas Grady was no spider. Silas Grady was a blackhearted, lily-livered, weak-kneed swamp rat. If anything, death was too good for him.

  She couldn’t believe the nerve of him, knocking on her door like nothing had happened. He was swaying on his feet and there was still dried blood stuck to his neck.

  “It’s your only hope,” he said thickly. “Marry me, Alex.”

  If Sheriff Deveraux hadn’t been standing right there, she might have forgotten she wasn’t a violent woman and reached for the ax. But Sheriff Deveraux was standing right there.

  “Marry me, Alex. I can keep you safe.”

  “Safe!” White fury licked at her. He was mighty lucky that ax was out of arm’s reach. “And who will keep me safe from you?”

  “Alex—”

  “It’s Miss Barratt to you, and how dare you come here after what you did today?”

  “What I did . . .?” He swayed, confused.

  Alex said a silent prayer. With any luck she could carry this off and get out of here before Gideon showed up. Silas was a lecherous, scheming idiot, but his brother was something much, much worse. “You arrest him,” Alex demanded, turning to the sheriff.

  The fat old man looked startled. He made a gruff harrumphing noise and hiked his pants up. “Now, Miss Barratt, you know I can’t do that.”

  “I know no such thing. Every week since Ma and Pa died I’ve come to you with a complaint about this man.” She pointed a fierce finger at Silas’s face. “He and his brothers have terrorized us. They’ve tried to starve us out. And you’ve done nothing!”

  The sheriff grew red-faced, but didn’t manage more than a mutter. It was all Alex expected from him, bloated excuse for a lawman that he was. “If you won’t do anything, I’ll send for a federal marshal.”

  “Now, really, Miss Barratt, this isn’t the frontier.”

  “It might as well be, for all the law there is around here.” She lifted her nose in the air and tried to look imperious, which wasn’t easy considering her rising panic. She had to get out of here before Gideon came. He’d probably made it home by now and found the mess she’d left . . . Oh glory, the thought was almost her undoing. Gideon was a maniac. Who knew what he’d do to her if he caught her?

  “If you aren’t going to arrest him, I don’t see what choice you leave me.” She kept brazening her way through it. Thank the Lord Silas was still concussed from that blow to the head. If he had half a brain, he’d be demanding that the sheriff arrest her. He had fair cause: over the course of the afternoon she’d knocked him out cold, stolen his brother’s property and assaulted his evil witch of a mother.

  And it was entirely his own fault, she thought, fixing him with a black glare. He flinched and fingered the wound on the back of his head.

  “I’ve told you at least twenty times in no uncertain terms that I won’t marry you,” she snapped at him. “But you won’t take no for an answer, will you? Well, I didn’t say yes when you starved us, and I won’t say yes now. So get off my property! It is still my property, you know.” She turned her black glare on the sheriff, who at least had the good grace to look shamefaced. “If you won’t arrest him, you could at the very least escort him off my land! Trespassing is still illegal, isn’t it?”

  “Come on, Grady,” Sheriff Deveraux mumbled. “You’d best try your luck another day.” He took Silas by the elbow.

  “I’m your last hope,” Silas said miserably. “He won’t hurt you if you’re my wife.”

  “Get out!” The edge of hysteria in her voice was quite real. She slammed the door behind them and yanked up the trapdoor to the root cellar, where her foster siblings were hiding. “Up!” she ordered. “Quick!”

  “Give the gold back,” her foster sister moaned as she struggled up the ladder. “Now, while the sheriff is still here.”

  “Are you mad?” Alex raced through the small house, throwing what precious little they still had into a sheet and tying it into a bundle. She tossed it to her foster brother, who was sitting on the lip of the cellar, looking despondent. “Don’t worry, Adam,” she soothed, running her fingers through his tousled hair.

  “You’re the mad one!” Victoria snapped. “Gideon will kill you if you don’t give that gold back.”

  “He’ll kill me anyway,” Alex said grimly.

  They heard a shot and Victoria screamed. Alex ran for the front window.

  It was too late. Gideon was here. Poor, fat Sheriff Deveraux lay on the squashed dogwood blossoms, slain by Gideon’s shotgun. As Alex watched, Gideon took a swing at Silas with the still-smoking gun. Silas managed to duck, but slipped on the fleshy blossoms and fell on his behind. Gideon kicked him.

  “This is your fault, Spineless,” he snarled. “If you hadn’t kept sniffing after that bitch, none of this would have happened.” The look on his narrow, ferrety face made the hair rise on the back of Alex’s neck. It wasn’t the anger that was frightening, it was the glint of barely suppressed glee. Gideon wasn’t just going to hurt her, he was going to enjoy hurting her.

  He looked up and saw her standing in the window. “Evenin’, Miss Barratt,” he called. Like they were meeting down at the store, or at one of Dyson’s dances. She’d be damned before she’d show him fear. Alex yanked the blind down. It was a relief not to look at him, but a little scrap of cloth wasn’t going to protect her from him. She bolted the door.

  “Well, that ain’t a neighborly way to behave,” he called. God help them, the bastard was enjoying himself already. “Ain’t ya going to ask us in for tea?” He laughed and Victoria started to cry.

  “What are we going to do?” Vicky whined. “We don’t even have a gun.”

  No.
And the ax was still buried in the block out on the porch. Alex grabbed a couple of kitchen knives. They looked puny in her hands. “Here.” She gave one to each of her siblings. “We’ll go out the bedroom window. Go!” She grabbed a fire iron for herself.

  Victoria looked down at the knife in horror. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

  “Be careful,” Adam said. “Ma said to be careful with knives. They cut.”

  Alex closed her eyes. What was she thinking? What good would a knife do Adam? He couldn’t hurt anyone. You were touched by God, Ma used to tell him when the town children had laughed at him and called him names. The Sparrows had taken him in when no one else would have him. You’re one of His special children. He was eighteen now, the same age as Vicky, but he was still a child. He would always be a child, and she had no right asking him to wield a knife.

  “Don’t touch knives,” he said firmly as he looked down at the blade in his hand. “Don’t touch the stove, it burns; don’t touch the fire, it burns.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Last chance to be neighborly, Miss Barratt!”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Alex!” Alex heard the raw terror in her sister’s voice at the exact moment she smelled the smoke. Victoria had opened the bedroom door to reveal a slow rolling cloud of smoke and the lick of orange flames. The bastard had set fire to the house!

  “Oh, little pigs!” Gideon called, his voice bright with laughter. “Open up or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!”

  “We’re going to die!” The knife fell from Victoria’s fingers and clattered to the floor.

  “No, we’re not.” Alex shoved Victoria and Adam toward the ladder to the loft where Adam slept. “Climb,” she snapped. The smoke was rising and they coughed as they scurried upward. As soon as they reached the narrow loft, Alex threw open the window. There was a big old black cherry tree growing close to the house.

  “You can’t expect us to climb down that!” Victoria gasped.