An Inescapable Attraction

by Sydney Jane Baily

  "And hold this." He held out his spare revolver, offering her the handle.

  He must have made his point because she took the gun and did what he said, wordlessly and fast. He peered out the window once again. All three of the men were looking up at him now, having caught sight of movement in the room, though they hadn't drawn their weapons. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  "Mr. Sanborn?" It was Mr. Grindel. "Some men are here to see your wife."

  He heard Ellie gasp behind him at the same time as he tried to wrap his brain around the fact that they were here for her and not him.

  What in blue blazes had she done?

  "She's not up for visitors yet. You know that, Mr. Grindel," Thaddeus said, stalling for as long as he could. If they were looking for Ellie, then they weren't looking for a married lady; they doubtless wanted merely to see her, to determine either way if she was the woman they sought. And from personal experience, Thaddeus knew no one could ever forget Ellie's angelic face once they'd seen it.

  With no time to disguise her, he had no choice but to keep her out of sight.

  His gaze darted around the room as if an escape were possible. What had he been thinking, taking a room on the second floor with no second door and no back window? He'd broken every one of his failsafe rules because of his distraction over Ellie's health.

  A fist pounded unexpectedly on the door, perhaps someone's version of a knock, and his pulse kicked. Undoubtedly, the hand didn't belong to Mr. or Mrs. Grindel. He glanced at Ellie, who stared at him, her face chalk white. What the devil had she gotten herself into?

  Adjusting his grip on his gun, Thaddeus considered shooting through the door, except the chance that he'd hit his host was too great. Instead, he took a fortifying breath, aimed his revolver chest high, and yanked the door open, hoping to catch off guard whoever was on the other side.

  It worked—both Mr. Grindel and the large man he was with took a hurried step back.

  Mr. Grindel spoke first. "Now, Mr. Sanborn, there's no need for—"

  "You!" blurted the man who unfortunately was no stranger.

  "Bart," Thaddeus said, more puzzled than ever. How did Ellie know Blackheart Bart or his cohorts downstairs in the street? And of course, now they had his real name, not the alias he'd been using when last he was gambling in Hamilton on Bart's employer's riverboat. This was getting worse and worse.

  Bart's face registered his surprise, which Thaddeus instantly decided to use to his advantage.

  "What do you want with me?" he demanded.

  "Nothing," Bart said. "We're looking for a woman."

  "Not my wife." He scowled as though this was merely a nuisance.

  Bart paused, then tried to peer past Thaddeus and into the room. "I didn't know you had one."

  Thaddeus bristled, drew himself up taller, and set his feet apart to fill the doorway. "That's my business, not yours."

  "You gonna lower that weapon?" Bart asked, not backing away.

  "You gonna keep pounding on my door?" Thaddeus asked, pointing the revolver at the man's broad chest.

  Bart looked at him a long time, and then he shrugged.

  "Nah, I'm not here for you, Mr. Sanborn."

  He turned and walked down the hallway to the top of the stairs, before looking back.

  "Not yet anyways." His smile was a sneer of contempt. But all Thaddeus could think was that Bart's boss obviously didn't yet know what Thaddeus had in his well-worn leather bag, or Jack Stoddard's men would have come at him with guns raised, no questions asked.

  He looked at Mr. Grindel, still standing in the hall, staring as Thaddeus lowered his weapon.

  "Sorry for the disturbance," Thaddeus said to the old man, expecting him to say they had to get out. But Mr. Grindel merely nodded, giving him another long look before turning away.

  When Thaddeus closed the door and turned around, Ellie stood up slowly. Their gazes locked, and suddenly, she hurtled herself into his arms, laying her head on his chest and holding on tightly. Grasping his shirt with her left hand, unknowingly she pressed the gun she still held into his other side.

  Nervously, he eased the weapon out of her grasp and laid it gently on the chair along with his own. It took him another moment to close his arms around her, so stunned was he by having her pressed closely against him.

  He patted her back, feeling awkward. If she was crying, he would make soothing noises, but she wasn't. She was dead silent, still as a statue. Then he felt a little tremor that began in her fingers where she clutched him; it spread throughout her body until he could feel it under his hands where they rested on her back.

  Heat shot through him, and he felt himself growing hard. He hoped to hell she couldn't feel him through her skirts, but he angled his hips away, all the same.

  Over his thudding heart and hers, he heard the men talking and then their horses' hooves as they rode away. Only then did he relax. Ellie must have heard them leave, too. Lifting her head, she glanced toward the window and then up at Thaddeus.

  Having her so close against him, her arms around his waist, he couldn't think clearly. He'd been sleeping beside this woman, trying desperately not to touch her, night after night. Now, she'd gone and thrown herself at him. He was no saint.

  He moved his hands up to cup her face and lowered his head, seeing her crystalline eyes close and her eyelashes fan her cheeks at the last moment before he touched his lips to hers.

  They'd kissed before, when they were teens, and for a moment, it was as if no time had passed. They could be standing behind Drake's barn in Spring City with the blazing sun on their heads and all around him, the smell of grass and wildflowers and Ellie's hair.

  Her soft lips felt like warm satin under his, and he kissed them lightly at first. However, as the ache in his groin persisted and as she opened to him, he deepened the kiss, nibbling on her lower lip before slanting his mouth and fitting it tightly against hers.

  He heard her moan, a throaty purring sound, and felt her fingers move from his waist to his chest where she clasped his shirt. It was his undoing. Next thing he knew, he'd slipped his tongue into her mouth to dance with hers. Her tongue flicked against his in response.

  A groan slipped out of him, and he lowered his hands to her hips, pulling her against him so she could feel what she was doing to him—what she'd always done to him.

  Effortlessly, he backed her up until they fell headlong onto the bed. Still locked in an embrace, he slid his leg between hers, trapping her skirts, and pressed his thigh against the warm mound between her legs.

  From her lips, he kissed along her jawline and down her neck, as she arched back to expose herself, smooth and porcelain-white. Nipping at the skin at the hollowed base of her throat, he ran out of bare skin at the neckline of her gown. All his lust-filled brain could think of was undressing her, fervently, rapidly, so at last he could look his fill of her naked body.

  As he reached down for her skirts, she spoke.

  "Thaddeus," she breathed out his name, and her soft, sexy voice stopped him cold, frozen from head to toe. She was not one of his whorehouse harlots. She was Ellie, his childhood dream, whom he'd just tumbled onto her back.

  Goddamnit! He was not going to take her for a quick roll then get up and leave.

  He scrambled off her and leaped from the bed as if he'd been hit by a bucket of cold water. He wanted to punch someone, mostly himself. He wanted his throbbing erection to go down, though probably he needed actual cold water for that to happen anytime soon.

  She sat up, breathing hard, and immediately looked away from him. He had no idea what she was thinking.

  "I'm sorry, Ellie. I got carried away."

  She shrugged. "I guess we both did. It was easy to do."

  She sounded sad. What the hell? He'd expected her to be angry at him.

  With his heart still racing and a rush of heat surging through his body, Thaddeus knew he had to get out of the room or he was going to do something he shouldn't, something he'd regret as soon a
s he jumped the next train, maybe never to see her again.

  "I've got to get going. Those men were after you, but next time, it could as easily be me."

  Her head snapped around and her eyes fixed on him. "Why?"

  Trying to ignore the reddish swell to her lips from being kissed, he dodged her question with a statement that he hoped was untrue.

  "You know Stoddard, apparently, if Blackheart Bart is after you."

  She nodded. "I do." Her voice was scarcely above a whisper.

  He shook his head. Foolish woman! Jack Stoddard was not someone she ought to know. He wished he'd never laid eyes on the man some days, but you couldn't make a living in gambling, particularly faro and poker, and not encounter him.

  In Thaddeus's case, he had done a little more than encounter him. He'd beaten the man fair and square, and then—well, he'd collected his debt somewhat surreptitiously when Stoddard hadn't been forthcoming with what he owed.

  "I know him, too," he admitted, "and he may not be thinking too kindly of me at the moment, and it's only going to get worse. Blackheart Bart was on his best behavior today, but he'd as soon skin a man as look at him, if he's been paid to do it."

  "I don't know much about this Blackheart fellow," she said. "But I know Jack Stoddard. He's a persistent man, a ruthless man, and a cheat, though he'd undoubtedly go to his grave denying it. I guess that makes him a godless man, too, and a flannel-mouthed liar. You know, my father was ruthless in his day, but he was as honest as the day is long."

  Thaddeus didn't think it was time for a stroll down memory lane about Elijah Prentice.

  "How do you know so much about Stoddard?" he pressed her.

  She sighed. "Regrettably, I've gotten myself entangled with him."

  Her delicate confession unleashed all kinds of unpleasant mental images.

  "Entangled?"

  "Hm," she murmured, more interested all of a sudden in smoothing her rumpled skirt under her fingers than in talking to him.

  "Ellie, what are you trying to tell me without telling me?" he asked through his teeth.

  She hesitated, patting at her hair that was in utter disarray after their roll on the bed. Then she sighed again.

  "I'm... married."

  Her words knocked him back a step. It wasn't at all the response he was expecting. An image of his tall, handsome friend Riley shot into his brain, and then he dismissed it. He narrowed his eyes and waited.

  She glanced at him and then hurriedly away.

  Softly, she spoke, seemingly to the flowered wallpaper, "I don't think it's Blackheart Bart you should concern yourself with. It's my husband."

  Her husband! What husband? He had a bad feeling.

  "Just tell me you're not married to—"

  "Stoddard."

  The blood drained from his face; it was an odd sensation.

  "Jack Stoddard? You married Stoddard? You are Mrs. Jack goddamned Stoddard?"

  She nodded, looking even more miserable than he felt, if that were possible.

  "I see." He ought to grab his bag and hightail it out of there right then.

  "You love him?" Why had he asked her that? How could that conceivably matter now?

  Her face collapsed in disgust.

  "Of course not."

  That was a relief, he supposed. If Ellie had switched her affections from upstanding Riley to shifty Stoddard, who was twenty years older than either of them, shrewd and dishonest, and round as a huckleberry to boot, then he'd be disappointed as all get out.

  "Ellie, I have a bag of foreign coins in this room that some may say don't belong to me and a deed to land with someone else's name on it, and now I find out I'm pretending to be the husband of the wife of another man, a man who happens to be a cold-blooded killer. Can this get any worse?"

  "I ran away from him."

  It could.

  "He's going to think I helped you," he realized, his voice growing hoarse.

  She nodded again. "You told Bart I'm your wife. When they find out the woman in this room was me, then, yes, you'll look rather culpable, I'd imagine."

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she appeared so unlike the image of the ever-spunky Ellie that he kept in his mind's eye—the sassy girl who was always in control of any situation—that his anger and jealousy dissipated.

  "I'm gonna get myself killed," he muttered aloud.

  She paled, shaking her head.

  "No, he won't kill you in a jealous rage," she said reassuringly. "He doesn't want me that way."

  "What are you saying?" Thaddeus couldn't imagine any man not wanting her.

  "I mean, he might offhandedly be attracted to me, but that's not why we married."

  Thaddeus collapsed into the chair he'd previously occupied and ran a hand over his forehead.

  "Why did you?"

  She stood up and then abruptly sat down again. The room was too small for pacing. "I lost a bet."

  "A bet?"

  She nodded. "I was on the North Missouri Railroad, between Hudson and St. Louis. Jack had a whole Pullman to himself. Can you imagine? Naturally, I had to see who he was."

  She flashed him a rueful smile. "You know me, I marched straight in. Next thing I knew, we were playing a friendly game of cards."

  "A friendly game of cards?" Thaddeus couldn't believe anyone would sit down willingly with Stoddard, especially when trapped on a train.

  "I may have been a bit too arrogant concerning my gaming abilities."

  "You, arrogant?" He didn't smile at his little joke. Neither did she. She pursed her lips.

  "Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?" she asked.

  He leaned his head against the high back of the chair and closed his eyes.

  "Go on. Tell me why Eliza Prentice, a good girl from small town Colorado, believed she could take on Jack Stoddard."

  She narrowed her eyes at his words. "For your information, I've had more than a little luck at cards. And I've been tutored by Kelly Morgan."

  "I know Kelly," he said.

  "I know you do."

  When she didn't say more, he opened his eyes and looked at her.

  "Why would Kelly help you?" he asked, remembering the older man as a little standoffish.

  "I told him I knew you. That seemed to be enough."

  She blushed a little, and he had to wonder what she'd actually told Kelly, who was the smartest, most ill-fortuned gambler on the West Coast. No one could be more likely to succeed and yet always lose. What a fine teacher she'd chosen!

  "So, on the strength of your extensive learning from Kelly," he couldn't help rolling his eyes, "you challenged Jack Stoddard?"

  "You make it sound like it was a duel."

  "Darlin', if you're married to him, I'd say it was a helluva lot more like a duel than a friendly card game. The stakes were damn high, don't you think?"

  "Well, yes." She arranged her dress. "Anyway, he cheated."

  Stoddard had been accused of it before, though no one had ever caught him at it.

  "How do you know he cheated? Maybe he was simply better than you, or luckier."

  She bristled. "I know for sure because I had the fourth ace up my sleeve, but he had one, too. I'd palmed mine from the deck, so where'd he get his?"

  Thaddeus's mouth hung open at her words, but she continued.

  "I couldn't produce my ace after he showed me his hand because then he would have shot me, so I had to marry him—only because I didn't have the money to cover the pot. He let me play on credit, you see."

  Ellie crossed her arms, plainly annoyed at having been out-foxed.

  When he remained seated, stock still, apparently gobsmacked, she prompted, "Say something, for goodness sake."

  "How much money do you owe him?" His own voice, strangled by disbelief, sounded like a stranger's.

  "The good news is that he agreed to divorce me if I pay him back."

  "How much?" Thaddeus repeated.

  "With interest, of course. That's the catch," she added, blowing her hair up
off her brow with a twist of her lips and a hard puff. "But the other good news is, as I said, that we haven't consummated our marriage. He was far more interested in my family than in my person. When he checked into my background, he realized that my father owned just about the whole town of Spring."

  She was babbling and stalling.

  "How much?" He felt his temperature rising along with his temper.

  "Ten thousand dollars," she admitted.

  Shit! Good thing he was sitting down. Thaddeus was sure he'd have fallen if he hadn't been. Where in the hell was he going to get ten thousand dollars? Wait, why was he thinking he had to get it in the first place?

  He sprang from the chair. "I'll be seeing you around, Ellie. Let me know if you're ever in... anywhere except here. We'll catch up then."

  "You're leaving me here?"

  "Yup."

  "Are you serious, Thaddeus?" It was her turn to look flummoxed.

  "Yup." Deadly serious, at that. He had no desire to be swinging at the end of a rope or catching a bullet between his eyes for any number of infractions that had already occurred or were going to occur before this was over. The least of which was that he seemed to have absconded with Stoddard's wife and was holed up in a hotel, pretending to be her husband. He had to get out of there and fast.

  "I see," she said.

  Was it his imagination or did she collect herself, as though she were the shattered pieces of a broken vase that somehow, before his eyes, glued themselves back together? For certainly, she seemed to straighten her spine and grow an inch taller; her eyes shone more brightly, her chin tilted at an angle, and her lips even reddened, unless his eyes were deceiving him. Regal was the word that came to mind, as though she were some monarch on a European throne.

  "You'd better be going, then, Thaddeus, before Bart comes back for either one of us. You'd best leave anyway, for I can't stand to have you in my sight one second longer."

  Yes, she was sounding more imperial by the moment—as though the Queen of England had arrived in upstate Illinois.

  "Oh, I'm going, darlin'."

  He reached for his gun belt and strapped it on while she watched him. Then he gathered his bag and stuffed the other gun inside.

  "You have a heap of trouble here, Ellie. But knowing you, you have a plan to get out of it. Your fever's abated, you're strong enough to travel or will be by morning with more food in you. You can get back on another train and head northeast the way you were when I got in your boxcar. Go far enough and Stoddard will never find you. You can disappear."