by Lisa Plumley
“Don’t you see?” Amy cried, the words muffled and tear-choked. “Ellen didn’t trust you too much.” She raised her face to his, her eyes begging him to listen. “She believed in you too little.”
“No!” It was an anguished cry, a denial of something Mason couldn’t believe. Beneath his hands Amy moved closer and closer, and everything in him knew he should push her away.
“You gave her so much,” she said, squeezing his shoulders as she tried to make him hear her. “A home, a child to love…your love. How could you have known she’d leave all that behind?”
Her hands roved higher, stroking his jaw, his cheek. Mason closed his eyes against her touch, tried to steel himself against believing her.
“You couldn’t have known,” she went on. “You couldn’t.”
He swallowed hard, dared to open his eyes and meet her gaze. It shimmered with tears, wavered and leapt—or did his own tears only make it seem that way? His weakness shamed him. The last thing he wanted was her pity.
“I should have known,” he said, clenching his jaw as he stared past her. “All the signs were there, after—”
“After!” Amy cried, her fingers gouging into his shoulders. “Afterward you knew, but who could have known before?”
“The laudanum—”
“Every household keeps it on hand. I did, back home.”
Through her tears, she smiled faintly at him. “Forgive yourself, Mason. For your own sake. For your son’s. This is tearing you apart, and I—”
“It cost me my son.” His eyes burned. Mason swallowed hard, but the ache in his throat wouldn’t quit. If he never did anything else, he’d get Ben back. This time, he’d keep him safe. Keep him loved.
“You’ll find him,” Amy said.
Her arms hugged his neck, and she touched her forehead to his. He wanted to close his eyes again, to hide his damned weak tears. Something in the way she looked at him wouldn’t let him.
“You found me, didn’t you?” she asked. “If not for you, who knows what would’ve happened to me after the stagecoach drove away?” She smiled, softly. “You saved me, Mason. Over and over again. I know you can save Ben, too.”
“But Ellen—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Amy said, stroking his hair back from his temples.
Her touch felt warm. Good.
“How anyone could think so is more than I can understand. You weren’t even home when it happened.”
She straightened, smoothed her hands down his chest. Her fingertips whispered over the wiry, dark hairs there, then fluttered across his ribcage to wrap around his waist.
“Poor little Ben,” she murmured, frowning as she laid her cheek against his chest. “I was so young when I lost my mother, I only barely remember her. But this—oh, Mason, it must’ve been so sad for him….”
Her words whispered away, lost in the darkness cast around them by the barely lit lantern. She hugged him tighter, fiercely, like she could push her belief in him straight through his chest and force him to listen. More than anything she’d said, Amy’s willingness to hold him close spoke truly. Mason’s breath eased, and the tightness in his chest slowly lessened. Her trust in him was like a balm for his soul, no matter how he tried to resist it.
She wavered against him and blinked. Too weary, he supposed, to stand any longer. Still her arms around his middle didn’t loosen.
“Curly Top,” he murmured, steadying her, “you’ve been too long on the road and too long without sleep for all this.”
“I want to help you.”
She scooted closer. Her underclothes brushed his pants legs, and the frilly lace edge of her borrowed white underdrawers against his knee reminded Mason of exactly how little she had on.
“I want to help you find Ben.”
“Tomorrow.”
Mason hefted her into his arms. No complaints about letting her walk came from her lips, no squeals of protest or panted demands amidst her struggles that she put him down. Instead, Amy laid her head on his shoulder and smiled as he carried her to the bed.
“I hope he likes me,” she said as he laid her onto the rumpled quilts.
“Ben?” An image of his boy’s face, round and sun-browned beneath his stubborn dark hair, rose in his mind. Damn, but missing him hurt.
“Yes.” Amy slid across the sheets, then sat up and pulled the quilts hip-high, bunching the thick patchwork fabric in her lap. “Is he like you?”
Wiping tears from his eyes for the last time, Mason smiled and willed himself to give her something easy to sleep on. His troubles with Ellen and Ben and the Sharpe brothers were just that—his. Not hers. Once he’d gotten Ben and headed for the Mexican border as he’d planned, Amy’s life would go on without them.
“Except for the haircut,” he said, rubbing the rough-shorn hairs sticking up from his scalp.
She smiled, sniffling. “You should’ve let me finish.”
Finish…finish tempting him, finish testing every bit of damned resolve he had in his body. At the memory of their closeness on the rock at sunset, Mason’s mood sobered. The way he wanted this woman was a danger to them both.
“No.” He turned, fists clenched, making ready to leave her for the night. Maybe tomorrow he’d ask Manuel to take her to Tucson himself. Without an outlaw by her side, Miss Twirly Curls would probably be safer, anyway.
“Mason—”
“I asked Manuel to return the wagon we took from Maricopa Wells,” he said. “And explain to the station master that I forced you to come with me. The gun and the way I dragged you out of there ought to be proof enough of that.”
He winced, remembering the bruises he’d left on her throat, then made himself go on. “The only reason they locked you up in the first place was because you were with me. Manuel’s already left, hours ago. He’ll set it straight and you’ll have your life back again.”
Amy rose on her knees, and the quilts fell away. “You’re not leaving now, are you? After all we’ve said, I—”
“All the more reason to leave.”
Mason squinted toward her, wishing he could remember her this way. Just a pretty woman who wanted his company for the night. Hell, if he was better at pretending, in that moment he could’ve convinced himself they might really be together. Convinced himself he could love someone again—be loved in return.
Damned fool dreams. Pretty words and hoping, that’s what love had turned out to be. Bitter in the end.
Confessing it all left him raw and exposed. Surely something begun like this would have to end bad. Frowning, Mason scooped up his shirt from the chair and slid it over his shoulders.
“It won’t take long to get to Tucson tomorrow,” he said. “I asked Juana to wire ahead, find out if that damned stagecoach took your bags of books all the way to the Wells Fargo station in the city. She ought to know by morning.”
Amy blinked at him. “I guess you’ve got this all planned,” she whispered. She stared down at the quilt, her fingers plucking at the edges of a dark calico square. “How to get rid of me, I mean.”
Her voice held an edge that spoke of pain, but her bearing was one hundred percent proud lady. Whatever pain she felt, Amelia O’Malley was too proud to show it to the man who’d caused it. Even half-sunken into the soft feather mattress and blankets, she somehow managed to keep her spine straight and her chin lifted.
Hell. Why did she always turn gritty on him just when he least expected it?
Rubbing his sandpapery jaw, Mason stepped closer. “Curly Top—”
“It’s all right.” She raised her over-bright gaze to his and squared her jaw. “I have work to do, anyway. Books to be delivered. I almost forgot, what with everything that’s been happening. But my father and brothers are counting on me.”
Counting on her to get back to the States and work her fingers to the bone caring for them, Mason thought, taking a step closer to the bed. If all she’d told him about her family was true, he doubted they’d rely on her to conduct business. But it was too
late to argue, and in a few days her book orders wouldn’t matter to him anyway. More, he didn’t want to hurt her by pointing out any of that.
“The future of J.G. O’Malley & Sons rests on my shoulders,” Amy was saying. She lifted them higher, as though to resume her duty, and her face took on a determined cast. “It’s high time I paid attention to a matter I can do something about,” she added, giving him a meaningful glance.
Her chin wobbled crazily for an instant, then her lower lip trembled. She bit down on it, trying to hide its unsteadiness. “Instead of a stubborn, set-in-his-ways man who wouldn’t know how to accept help if it sat on his head like a two-ton ostrich and refused to b—budge.”
She flopped onto the mattress, searched rapidly for the corner of the quilt, and then yanked it over her head. Beneath it, Mason saw her turn onto her side. The inviting curve of her backside and hip rounded the quilt into the most alluring gown he’d ever seen.
“Goodnight,” she muttered from beneath the heavy covers.
He sighed, biting back a smile. This woman exasperated him, pestered him—demanded things Mason had no intention of ever handing over. Like trust. Like agreeing to let her ‘help’ him in whatever harebrained, naïve manner she had in mind.
Yet still she drew him.
He stepped closer. “What you’re saying, then,” he drawled, keeping his eyes on the bumpy shape in the middle of the bed, “is that help is really a two-ton ostrich?”
She didn’t move. The quilt raised and lowered slightly with her breathing, but that was the only sound. Mason stepped closer, and his heart lightened with every inch he came nearer to her.
“No wonder I never recognized it.”
He shucked his boots, dropping them onto the rag rug that covered the clean-swept, packed earth floor. He’d told her everything about his past, Mason realized as he paused beside the bed. Everything. And still she hadn’t turned away from him.
Forgive yourself, Mason. For your own sake. For your son’s.
Her words had made her forgiveness understood.
Hope niggled at him, pestered him. He hadn’t felt so blamed confused since the night Ben was born—half of him despairing it would be the end of his wife, the other half overjoyed at the arrival of his child.
Mason bent his knee onto the mattress and lifted a corner of the quilt covering her. “You don’t look like a two-ton ostrich to me,” he told Amy as he peered beneath at her shadowy figure. “but you sure as hell refuse to budge. Move over.”
Chapter Eighteen
Amelia, half-suffocated beneath the heavy quilts, listened in amazement. When she could remain silent no longer, she folded them back at the top and stuck her head out. Cooler air rushed at her, tasting unbelievably fresh.
“Are you actually making a joke?” she demanded of Mason, staring at him suspiciously.
His weight made the mattress yawn to her left like a boat sinking underwater. She rolled over to get a better look at him and just kept right on rolling until his knee stopped her descent. It pressed against her hip, pinning her in place with nowhere to look except up at Mason.
So she did. Beginning at his bent knee, Amelia’s gaze traveled the length of his trouser-clad thigh, skimmed over the wrinkled creases leading to his pants buttons, and wound up at the place where his chest hair tapered and disappeared beneath those buttons. Feeling her cheeks heat, she boldly followed that brown sprinkling of hair upward where it swirled across the broad, flat muscles of his chest, just barely visible between the opened ends of his shirt.
He was a beautifully made man. Whatever work he did all day on his farm near the Gila River certainly had benefited him, Amelia thought, letting her gaze wander across his shoulders and then down the length of his arms. She remembered the cherished feeling of being held in those arms, and knew that however piqued he might make her, Mason was the man she truly loved. No one had ever made her feel more special, more desired.
“Yes,” he said, and even though she wasn’t looking at his face, Amelia heard the smile in his voice.
Yes what? she thought, trying desperately to remember the course of their conversation. No one had ever made her feel more scatterbrained, either.
“But a two-ton ostrich begs for a joke the same way your lips beg for a kiss,” he added, propping his hand just to the left of her head atop the lofty goose down pillow. “I couldn’t resist.”
He meant her remark about how he didn’t ever want help. Feeling justified in her comment after having practically ambushed him with kisses just to get him to talk to her, Amelia said nothing. Undaunted, he only nudged her sideways a bit with his knee and settled further onto the bed.
The motion brought him closer, close enough that his chest almost brushed hers. Suddenly, the quilt between them felt like an absolute necessity. Amelia clutched the top edge of it, feeling the smooth stitched fabric soothe her fingertips. If only it soothed her breathing as well—her breath came subtly faster the nearer Mason came, and there wasn’t the least thing she could do about it.
“Curly Top,” he said, brushing his free hand across the tops of her knuckles along the quilt edge, “I need your help.”
Back and forth, back and forth, his palm gently brushed over her knuckles. The rhythmic motion stole her attention, made answering him twice as difficult.
“Wh—why should you want my help now? You’ve tol—told me enough times that I can’t help you with anything,” she finally managed to say, and it was hard, so hard, to keep the hurt out of her voice.
It was true enough. She’d offered to help him at every turn, to comfort him at least. Only a little while ago, he’d refused her at the very moment he’d needed her most.
His fingers lifted to her cheek, followed its curve warmly upward to the hollow of her temple. The care in his touch made her heart lurch, then beat faster.
“This is something only you can help me with,” Mason said. With no warning at all, he raised his knee, braced his hand on the mattress beside her, and an instant later he was straddling her.
“Mason!” Shocked and surely red-faced, Amelia slapped her hands onto the mattress and tried to push herself back and away from him. She only succeeded in raising her torso partway—the rest of her was still trapped beneath Mason’s strong, solid thighs.
Although it didn’t hurt, she was well and truly pinned beneath him, and his body sent warmth searing straight through the quilt as easily as if it were nothing at all. She balanced herself on her elbows and stared up at him.
As though she’d never spoken, he went on: “Seems to me we were in just about this same position a little while ago.” His gaze darted to each of her elbows, then higher. “Except I’m pretty sure your hands weren’t plastered down there before.”
He frowned, as though he were trying to remember and couldn’t. Amelia recalled their earlier, intimate position well enough that her heart starting beating faster at the memory alone. Did she dare risk herself again, though? Mason Kincaid was a hard man to know and an even harder man to help. Maybe there really was nothing she could do for him.
“I do recall you saying something about comfort,” he murmured.
His hands touched her bare shoulders, smoothed lower to stroke her upper arms in a wordless urging that she begin again what had started between them before. His work-roughened palms rasped faintly over her skin, reminding her of all that was different between them…of all that might still be.
“Please,” Mason whispered hoarsely, and his eyes echoed his plea in their soft shadowed brown depths.
He wanted her still, Amelia realized. But the decision to take things further between them was hers to make.
She could no more refuse him than she could leave him alone in his pain. The past had been cruel to Mason, had taken away the people he cared about and the life he’d known before. It was more than a good man should be made to suffer. Especially alone.
Especially when he was the man she loved.
Amelia raised her arms and pushed down the q
uilt separating them, smiling as she opened herself to him. “Yes,” she whispered, closing her eyes as she drew him closer. “Yes.”
His lips touched hers, and it was like a homecoming. Mason kissed her, and her whole body trembled at their union. Deftly, he opened her mouth to him, teasing, touching, slipping his tongue inside to meld with hers. Joyously, she accepted his kiss and gave all she could in return, arching to meet him, pulling him closer.
Inexplicable tears prickled beneath Amelia’s closed eyelids, joining with a rush of new sensation as Mason kissed her anew. Slowly, softly, his lips touched hers and then retreated, slid luxuriously from one corner of her mouth to the next, only to leave her crying out for more when next he kissed her jaw and neck instead.
This was what loving meant. This care, so new to her, and this joining, so right between them. Tongue-sweet and thrilling, his kisses went on and on, now returning to her mouth, now gently nipping the side of her neck. Amelia clutched his head in her hands, trying to guide him where she needed him, and still he tortured her with slow kisses she yearned for but could never predict.
Rising slightly, Mason pushed the quilt away completely, then straddled her again. Before she could react to their renewed closeness, he swept her hair from her forehead, gazing at her, and any thoughts of protest she might have entertained flew straight out of her head as though coaxed from it by his skillful, loving fingers.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and his smile was the most endearing she’d ever beheld.
“Thank you for what?”
“For knowing when not to listen to me.”
His lips curved into hers, still smiling as he kissed her, and she wanted to smile, too, both at his jest and at the new lightness in his bearing. Mason’s shoulders moved against the dark with an ease she’d never sensed in him, as though a great weight had been magically lifted away. Had she truly helped him, after all?
“Thank God for stubborn women,” he added, pressing kisses to her temple, her cheek…her mouth. Distracting her.
