Jess sputtered and took a step back, glancing nervously over at Val. “I’m not his woman.”
Val smirked at her uneasiness and Samuel actually blushed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was under the assumption you were in a courtship.”
“We are,” Val said at the same time Jess said they weren’t.
Samuel’s eyes darted from one face to the other before he ran his tongue over his teeth and grinned. “It appears you’ve got bigger problems than me, Val. I shall leave you to it. I thank you both for this tiny adventure, and you shall see your retraction in the morning.”
Jess smiled as her head shook. “So, there is a decent human being inside you after all, Samuel,” she said. “Perhaps I should have reserved my judgment until I’d actually spoken with you myself.”
Samuel’s laugh was good-natured and completely un-piqued. “A word of advice to you ma’am. Never believe anything you hear...” his eyebrow rose as he grinned, “or read.” They all laughed. “Trust only your eyes, God…” he sniffed the air, inhaling in approval, “and your stomach. Now, speaking of which, there is a roasting pig that requires my attention. Good night.”
He wandered off, and Val couldn’t help but chuckle. The man always seemed two steps ahead of everyone and everything, as if he were the architect of it all. He held his arm out for Jess again and she stepped away from him. He tilted his head to study her features. She was flushed as she planted her fists on her hips.
“Val,” she said, her jaw clenched. “You and I are not in a courtship.”
“Yes, we are,” he answered. “You’re just fighting the inevitable.”
Her eyes closed and she took a deep breath before locking her gaze to his. “You and I are friends, Val.”
“Mm hmm,” he said as his gaze slid to the pout of her mouth.
“Only friends,” she emphasized.
“Mm hmm.”
He heard the hard huff of her breath. “Why do I get the distinct impression you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying?”
“Because I’m not,” he said with a grin. “I’m looking at your lips, remembering how they taste.”
She grunted in frustration and marched away from him. He followed close behind, fighting chuckles the entire way.
Chapter 22
It was the warmest night he could remember in months. Spring was surely on their doorsteps. There was not a cloud in the sky and the stars seemed close enough to grab. The aromas of barbequed hogs and smoked poultry mingled with those of cherry pie, peach cobbler, and candied apples. The dance floor was crowded and the band played with gusto from the wooden platform above it.
Marlena had never shined or spoken so much, Val thought. Once the girl had been given license to speak, that was all she ever did. Every stall or booth offered something to tempt the young lady, from a beautiful bonnet rimmed with lavender, to a woman telling fortunes from the lines of a palm. She spent her money liberally and filled a basket full of goods before expiring the last of her earnings on a candied apple. He smirked as he thought of a coming surprise that would send the girl reeling.
Jess stayed stiff and sullen beside him, her only smiles reserved for Marlena. Other than that, she walked along with her hands clasped behind her back and her face fixed forward, determined to ignore him. He frowned as he stared at the peacock blue hat tied around her neck. He knew why she wore those hats, but also hated that she felt the need to hide.
The five of them found a vacant table and benches near the dance floor and decided to take a rest next to a table occupied by Juliet, a host of her girls, and Dalton. Val shook hands with the man.
“Glad to see you getting a night off,” Val said and Dalton laughed.
“Oh, his job’s not so unbearable,” Juliet said. “He may not get every night off, but at least he gets off every night.”
The women laughed and Val caught the disapproving shake of Jess’s head at the jest. He also noticed the bright blush creeping into Dalton’s cheeks, who turned a remorseful gaze onto Jess, Ellie and Sadie.
“My apologies, ladies,” Dalton said, then smiled at Marlena. “You, too, Little Miss.”
Marlena grinned, speechless for the first time in the evening, but Val knew she was in for the wallop of her life when the band quieted and the mayor took to the platform. He held his hands out to silence the applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called. “Welcome! Welcome to the spring festival! Don’t indulge too much tonight. We have a rodeo tomorrow that needs spectators.” The crowd laughed. “Tonight, we have a special surprise, a gem you’d have to pay handsomely to see anywhere else. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in our city and soon to be gracing the stage of our own Piper’s Opera House, please put your hands together for Miss Sarah Jeanne, The Opera Queen!”
Val glanced at Marlena while he applauded. The girl had gone white, her eyes as wide as saucers. Her candied apple hung in the air, forgotten. He couldn’t help but laugh at the star struck and unwavering expression.
Sarah Jeanne thanked the mayor and the people of the city before she afforded the crowd a song. Her shiny white hair and narrow green eyes scanned the faces while she sang of love, loss and beauty. Her voice was rich and projected with perfect pitch out over the crowd, leaving no doubt in any mind as to the merit of her title. When the song ended, Marlena leapt to her feet and whooped while her hands banged excitedly together. Tiny teardrops slid over her cheeks. He was quite certain this night would be remembered as one of the girl’s favorites.
When the star left the stage, the band resumed their places and struck up another fast-beat song. Marlena settled back into her chair and rested her chin on her hands as she wistfully watched the dancers twirl around the floor. Before long, Dalton asked her to dance and she leapt up with giddiness. Ellie and Sandy soon joined the crowd and spun as wide as their smiles. Jess hadn’t spoken two words to Val since they left Samuel, and he knew she was determined to upset his intentions, but he had a plan.
When the song ended, Sandy returned to their table and invited Jess onto the floor. She flashed her first smile of the festival and took his hand. Val rubbed his bottom lip with a thumb as he watched her spin and dance with the man. As they twirled around the floor, he went to the flanks and waited for them to shuffle near. He and Sandy exchanged a nod and Val swept into his place without much effort, grabbing her hands as Sandy made his departure from the floor without a backward glance.
Jess’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head. “That’s the last time I accept a dance invitation from Sandy. I will be sure to warn Ellie about the snake she’s marrying.”
Val chuckled. “How else would I get you on the dance floor?”
“You could have asked.”
He snorted. “You and I both know you would have rejected me.”
“Damn right.” She tilted her head as she considered. “Although, rejection seems only to spur you on. Perhaps I should start accepting your offers and take away the excitement of the chase from you. Then, maybe you’ll lose interest.”
“That is a very primitive idea,” he said as he led them in a waltz around the floor. “You might have actually offended me with that statement. My interest is based on more than your ambivalence.”
She stared hard into his eyes. “Is it based on more than my throat, Val?”
His smile faded and he frowned. “You know it is.”
“Do I?” Her look was skeptical. “All I know is you went from being unable to stand my presence to trying to kiss me at every opportunity. The turning point? That morning by the spring. I see nothing more to entice you than your need to fix something you see as broken. Tell me, if you had never seen my scar, would you feel the same way you do now?”
He could feel his anger simmering at her insinuations, but forced himself to remain calm, knowing he couldn’t respond to her doubts with anger. “I don’t know, Jess. It depends on whether you would have let me in or not. I had a hard time tolerating Collette, it
’s true. But Jessica pulled me in from the beginning.” She looked away and he spoke again. “And the same can be said of you, Mademoiselle. You went from hating me to willingly accepting my kisses. Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t feel what’s simmering between us.”
Her face snapped to his, and he thought he detected a hint of panic before she relaxed and chuckled. “Oh, c’mon, Val. You and I both know this little flirtation we keep indulging in is fun, but fruitless.”
He frowned. “Why? Why must it be fruitless?”
She stopped dancing and stood in the center of the floor, pinning his feet to it with her hard stare. Her hands pulled from his and rested at her sides.
“I have spent the last three years of my life putting myself back together, making myself believe what happened to me was not my fault and it wasn’t something I deserved. I didn’t go through all of that just to have some miner come tapping at my glass walls with his pike.”
Val reached out and gently grasped her arms in his palms. “I’m not going to break you, Jessie. Why do you condemn me for his crimes?”
“I’m not condemning you,” she said softly. “I’m preserving me.”
He wetted his lips and almost couldn’t believe the words spilling from his mouth, couldn’t believe the plea in his voice. “Let me preserve you.”
Her forehead scrunched and she shook her head. “Do you even hear yourself, Val? Preserve me? Preserve me how? By bedding me? That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? And then what happens? I am miraculously healed and you are what? Another woman deeper into your list of transgressions? Listen to me carefully, Valentine Kelly. I do not need fixing. I’m as put together as I ever will be. I don’t need you or any other man to heal me.”
She turned to leave but he grabbed her, spinning her to face him. “It’s not like that. I don’t have designs other than to go with what I feel, and what I feel is I want to be near you. I want to know more of you. Yes, that includes physically, but not just. I want to know your childhood, about the life that led you here. I want to know where you see yourself in ten years, what you dream about at night – the good and the bad.”
Her eyes began to shine and he felt his heart sink into his stomach. The last thing he wanted was to make her cry. He reached a hand out to cup her cheek and she recoiled, bumping into a whirling pair of dancers, who bumped her back into Val’s arms. Her lips were pressed tightly together.
“Stop it, Val,” she breathed, barely loud enough for him to understand her words. “Damn it, Valentine Kelly. Just stop it!”
She ran from the dance floor, grabbing Marlena from the table and whisking her away from the festival, leaving Val to feel like the lowest sort of vermin. Everything she said scrolled through his gut with a burning ache. What did he want from her? Their attraction was intense, and his words to her were true, but all to what end? He was not the marrying kind, and he’d bet anything she wasn’t either anymore, not after embracing her life of independence. Nor was she the sort of woman to entice into an affair.
The festive mood fled him completely to realize she was right in everything she’d said. He had no business tempting her if his intentions didn’t go beyond physical. The self-loathing he felt settled in his bones and made him sweat on his walk back to the boarding house. He didn’t want to hurt or disrespect her. He cared too much for her to do that, but he was not the man to give her what she deserved.
His only thoughts had been to make her feel beautiful, but as he walked through the darkened streets of Virginia City, the realization hit him with the force of a gale. She didn’t doubt her beauty. In fact, she was full of confidence, in her beauty, in her skills as a seamstress, her talents with gun and whip, her knowledge of bookkeeping.
Suddenly, he could understand, and relate, to the depth of her ire toward him. He had treated her like something she’d fought hard not to be. A victim.
“What’s going on between you and Val?” Marlena asked as Jess slammed the shop door behind them and turned the lock. “Everyone was watching you two fight on the dance floor. You’re lucky the music was louder than your voices. You would have blown our cover for sure.”
“Oh, now you’re worried about blowing our cover?” Jess drawled as she paced toward the back rooms.
“Actually, right now, I’m more worried about you than our cover. What’s the matter?” Marlena trailed her sister into the sitting room and dropped her basket of goods on the floor by the couch.
Jess’s brain was pounding with thoughts and words, none of which made it to her mouth. She was furious. Furious with Val. Furious with Grant. Furious with herself and the war between her mind and body. Furious with her sentimental woman’s heart. Control was her lifeblood since they left New Mexico, and she felt it slipping away from her a little more each day.
She now wished Val had never seen her scar; that she’d woken in the cave that morning and rode away without looking back. He would have seen her as selfish and given up on their acquaintance. Instead, he wanted to tend to her bruising, as he had called it. Lord, she could slap him a thousand times and still not get over the insult.
She wasn’t broken or wounded or bruised. Not anymore. Seeing his pity-driven pursuit of her gave birth to a new level of rage. Was she beholden to him now that he had awoken her long-dormant sexual desires? Should she bow to him in supplication, lay bare before him in offering for his patronizing benevolence?
“Jess, what’s wrong? What did Val say to you?” Marlena asked as she lit lamps around the room.
Jess ripped off her hat and threw it across the room. “He said he wants to be near me always and know more of me.”
Marlena’s eyes widened and her face brightened with pure joy. “As in, he wants to court you?”
“No,” she snapped, before her voice softened with exhaustion. “Yes…I don’t know.” She couldn’t explain the deeper, carnal implications of hers and Val’s conversation, couldn’t make a young girl understand the fire that sparked between a man and woman whose bodies longed for each other.
“But I don’t understand,” Marlena said with a troubled brow. “Don’t you like Val?”
Jess stared at her sister and felt her nostrils flare before the tears came. She fell to the couch and wept into her hands. There, in that one simple question laid the crux of it all. She did like Val, and that was the problem.
Chapter 23
Val took a seat beside Morgan, Lila and Dr. Cameron in the wooden stands around the arena. Lila kept her hands clasped in her lap in an effort to hide the slight bulge of her belly. Every now and then, her hazel eyes darted to the spectators around them to see if they noticed her condition. Morgan finally put an arm around her and pulled her into an embrace.
“Lila,” he said. “No one is looking at your belly, and even if they are, you’re not the first pregnant woman to come out in public.”
She relaxed and gave him a sheepish grin, tucking loose strands of her light brown hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry. I’m still not used to everything out west. Back home, pregnant women locked themselves in their homes once their bellies rounded. We wouldn’t see them for months until they’d emerge with a bundle in a buggy. When I was a child I used to ask my father where those babies came from.”
Argyle leaned forward with a wide grin. “I’d tell her I delivered them, and then she’d say, ‘From where?’”
They all laughed. The stands were filling fast, and Val’s eyes moved in a constant scan for Jess and Marlena, though he didn’t really expect to see them. After their heated exchange on the dance floor, he didn’t think Jess would be in any hurry to cross paths with him again. He spied Ellie and Sandy and waved. They joined the group, Ellie squealing with delight as her hands flew excitedly to Lila’s belly.
“Land sakes, darlin’! I had no idea,” she said. “When are you due?”
“In three months,” Lila answered meekly. “If all goes well.”
“It will, Lila,” Argyle soothed.
She smiled. “I ha
ve a lot of good hands around to help me. Speaking of which, do any of you know whether Collette will be out here today? I desperately need to see her.”
For some reason Val couldn’t understand, all eyes turned to him for an answer. “Uh…I don’t think we will see her out here.”
“And why voodn’t I be here, Valentine Kelly?” she called from behind in her French accent. “I have every intention of watching Achilles send you somersaulting through za sagebrush.”
“Lord, I hope not,” Lila said as she went to Jess for an embrace. “I know from personal experience it’s not pleasant.”
“Lila! You are positively radiant.” The friends smiled at one another.
“And you are even more beautiful than I last saw you, and Helene!” Lila hugged the girl fiercely. “You little beauty. My goodness, you have done a lot of growing up in a short time.”
Val studied the dress Jess had on. It was new, a deep emerald fabric with lacy white sleeves draped at the elbow. The neckline was square and low, exposing a soft, pale mound of cleavage. He had hoped to find her throat bare, but it was hidden by a green lace that attached a gaudy hat to it. Her eyes were fiery as they bore into his, and he grinned. She was not a coward, this one.
“Achilles will take it easy on me,” Val said. “We’ve become friends.”
“Ha!” Jess barked. “His loyalty to me trumps his friendship vith you.”
“They aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Zey are if I tell him to throw you all za way to Carson City,” she said and their group of friends laughed.
“And how will you tell him to do that?”
She smirked. “With my spurs and thighs, of course.”
Desert Sunrise (Love in the Sierras Book 2) Page 15
