Reese

by Lori Handeland

  “I am. Your voice sounds like Virginia, only more. When I close my eyes and listen to you speak”—she closed her eyes and took a deep breath—“I can smell the trees. I can almost hear the rain. Sometimes when it would snow, just a bit, on the magnolia blossoms they resembled sugarcoated candy flowers. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful—not before or since.”

  Reese had seen something more beautiful. As good memories trickled over her face, he found himself caught up in watching her. She had the most amazing skin—pale and perfect though not white like that sugar, but with a tint of color, peach, perhaps, definitely not rose—and those freckles across her nose; he wanted to taste them with his tongue.

  “I love Rock Creek.” He started and yanked his gaze back to her eyes. She still had them closed. “But sometimes I miss green grass, cool winds, a real spring. The smells and sounds of Virginia are so much different than here.”

  Her chest rose and fell as if she were trying to capture a scent of grass and wind rather than tumbleweeds and dust, causing his attention to lower from her closed eyes.

  For a thin woman she had an ample breast. He could probably span her waist with his hands, yet still run his thumbs along the ripe swell of—

  Well, hell, he was having problems with his pants again.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said.

  Her eyes snapped open, and her cheeks flushed. Definitely peach. What had she been thinking of besides rain and magnolia trees?

  Reese turned and adjusted his shirt. He didn’t want to know.

  *

  Rico had the day free. However there was nothing to do in Rock Creek but watch the dust fly and listen to Miss McKendrick shoot. From the number of shots being fired, she was muy mala with a gun.

  The day began to improve when someone started to follow him long about midday. That someone was pretty good too, but not good enough to be Sullivan. Sinclair Sullivan had seen Rico’s gift the moment they’d met.

  Rico had been fifteen, and Sullivan… Who knew how old Sullivan was. Sometimes when Rico stared into his friend’s eyes, he saw a soul nearly as ancient as his own.

  Sullivan had taken Rico under his wing and taught him everything he knew about quiet and deadly. As a result, only Sullivan ever sneaked up on Rico, which suited Rico just fine. He did not enjoy surprises. This was why he always made sure he was the one doing the surprising.

  The footfalls behind him were so light as to be nearly indistinguishable, and if he leaned against a building as if to light a cigarette, by the time he turned just so, the follower was always gone.

  If he’d been a superstitious man, Rico might think ghosts haunted him—and after all these years. But Rico was not a man who believed in ghosts—or anything much at all beyond the power of steel and the loyalty of five men. So he kept walking, waiting for his stalker to make a mistake. They always did.

  There wasn’t a helluva lot of town to wander through and no dark alleyways, since there was only a street and a half to comprise all of Rock Creek. But an hour after he’d first heard the shuffle behind him, another came, much closer, and Rico spun, grabbing a swatch of pale yellow before it disappeared around the corner of the last building on Main Street.

  He yanked, and the little girl from Miss McKendrick’s class popped out, surprising him—a man who was never surprised.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” She shrugged and tugged her dress from his fingers. “Won’t you get into trouble?”

  She shook her head, making her brown braids fly. She had big brown eyes too, and they were focused on Rico with utter adoration. No one had looked at him like that since…

  A chill ran over him. Ghosts were not real. Just because this child looked very much like his little sister meant nothing. Anna had become an angel when she near this child’s age, but that had been over ten years ago. Or at least he thought Anna was an angel; he had left before he had to watch her die.

  This girl, however, was very much alive. For the moment. She needed to stop following desperate, knife-wielding men.

  Rico went onto one knee so he could talk with her face-to-face. She smiled, climbed upon his other knee, and put her arms around his neck. Rico froze.

  She smelled just like Anna—a combination of soap and sweetness that only small, fragile females possessed.

  “What are you doing?”

  She kissed him on the cheek. Rico swallowed the fiery lump that had appeared in his throat, put her off his knee, and stood. She latched onto his leg. He sighed. “What’s your name?”

  “Carrie.”

  “That’s right—”

  “Of course it’s right.” She sniffed with all the outrage of six going on twenty. “I know my name.”

  “You shouldn’t follow people. That’s spying.”

  She let go of his leg, but not before giving him a quick squeeze, reminiscent of a hug, if he wasn’t mistaken. “But I’m very good at it. Everyone says so. I heard you were too, so I thought I’d see just how good I was. And I was good, wasn’t I?”

  “You shouldn’t follow men like me. You’ll get into trouble.”

  “No, I won’t. No one cares what I do. Except Miss McKendrick. She won’t notice if I’m gone a day, but I’ll have to go to school tomorrow or she’ll show up at my house. She did last time, and Granddad was mad.”

  “You live with your granddad?”

  “Uh-huh. On account of Daddy died at Fredericksburg and Mama ran off with a damn tinker.”

  Rico blinked at the profanity coming out of that sweet bowed mouth. “You should not swear.”

  “No one cares except—”

  “Miss McKendrick,” Rico finished. “Well, if your granddad was mad that you weren’t in school, then he cares about you.”

  “Nah, he was just mad ‘cause it looked bad for the teacher to come. He gets upset when things look bad. Like Mama runnin’ off. That was real bad.”

  “You need to go back to school. Someone’s going to notice you’re wandering about town.”

  “Probably not. I sneak almost as good as you.”

  “Almost,” he agreed. “Shall I return you to school?”

  Her eyes went wide. “You’d do that?”

  “Certainly, senorita.”

  She grabbed his hand and held on tight. Carrie grinned wide enough for him to see her missing front teeth. Anna had been missing the same two teeth the last time he’d seen her.

  Rico’s heart did a funny flip-flop and was lost to the angel in pigtails.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, and the next, Mary met Reese at dawn and walked to the hay bales. No one else came, despite repeated attempts on Mary’s part to entice them. She’d even gone to Jo, but for the first time her dear friend had been no help.

  Jo had the misbegotten idea that Nate Lang needed a friend, and Jo was going to be one. Nate needed Jo more than Mary did, or at least that was how Jo saw it, and therefore she could not anger her father any further by defying him on the matter of guns as well as Nate.

  Jo did inform Mary why the rest of the women had failed to show up for their lessons. Baxter Sutton had convinced everyone that the six men Mary had hired were killers and thieves. No decent woman would go near them.

  Mary knew where that put her in Baxter’s opinion; not that she cared so much what he thought. The town was another matter. No doubt she’d hear about the entire incident in a thinly veiled attack during Sunday’s sermon. But neither Clancy nor Sutton would stop her from doing what must be done. Mary believed in finishing what she began.

  Things would work out. The women would come around—somehow.

  Since that first morning when they’d shared a conversation, Reese had barely spoken to her beyond grunts and sharply worded orders. She’d managed to hit a few things she aimed at, but she could tell that Reese was disgusted with her. For Mary, being unable to hit what she aimed at was not exactly a bad thing, but she kept that opinion to herself.

  Reese no longer touched her, either, and that
was a bad thing. But she couldn’t very well ask him to stroke her with his rough, albeit gentle, fingers or encircle her body with his strong arms or let his breath brush her hair, then her brow, then her cheek. Even though she wanted to.

  Mary didn’t blame Reese for keeping his distance. Every time he came near her, she acted like an idiot. Staring at him, questioning him, kissing him. Most likely he didn’t care to hurt her feelings by saying he did not want to kiss again someone as plain and naive and old as she.

  So Mary kept her distance too, and she did what Reese told her, and she tried not to stare at him too much while he gazed at the distant hills. But sometimes the silence between them spoke too loudly to be ignored.

  “When do you think El Diablo will come back?” Mary finished loading her gun for one final round of practice.

  She felt him glance at her then away. “Hard to say. He lost three men last time. He may try and replace them, wait and see if we leave, or come at us harder any minute now.”

  “Wonderful,” Mary muttered, and fired at her favorite hay bale.

  The bullet hit the dirt several feet behind the target, and Reese gave a long-suffering sigh.

  Mary bit her lip and narrowed her eyes on that blasted bale. She managed everything else, why couldn’t she manage this?

  Tucking the rifle more tightly against her shoulder, Mary fired one shot after another without thinking or aiming. When the echoes died away, Mary stared at the holes in the target.

  Reese appeared at her side. “Not bad. What did you do differently?”

  “I got mad.”

  “Maybe you should get mad more often.”

  He took the gun, and the butt scraped across Mary’s shoulder. Her hiss of pain echoed loudly in the stillness that had followed the shots.

  Reese stilled. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m not used to having a gun kick my shoulder twenty times a day. I’ll get used to it.”

  She leaned down to pick up her ammunition, and her dress, loose at the bodice because Reese had made her stop wearing a corset the third day in an effort to improve her aim, slid down.

  “What in hell is that?” The rifle clattered to the ground as he stepped closer and peered at the riot of colors decorating her skin.

  “It’ll go away.” Mary tugged her dress back where it belonged and turned away from his view, irrationally embarrassed that he’d seen the bruise.

  Gently, he tugged her back to face him. “You’ve been banging that rifle against a bruised shoulder day after day?”

  Mary shrugged then winced at the pain caused by that simple movement. Reese cursed, and his hand shifted, fingers moving her dress aside so he could stare at the purple, yellow, and green oblong mark.

  His gaze flicked from the bruise to her eyes, and she saw a question there that she did not comprehend. Then his gaze returned to her shoulder, and his fingers drifted across the injury.

  Before she could stop herself, she sighed and arched against his hand. When Reese touched her, all the pain went away.

  Silly old maid.

  He stepped closer; her skirt brushed his thigh. “My mama always said…”

  Her eyes widened as his golden head dipped in her direction. “What?”

  “A kiss will make it better.”

  Her mouth opened, to protest or beg, she wasn’t sure which, but when his lips feathered over her, she clamped her mouth shut so she wouldn’t moan aloud.

  A wet tickle slid across her skin. Had he licked her? Why would he do that? But the thought of it made her wet, lower and deeper. Her body felt on fire, pins and needles here, there, everywhere.

  She raised her hands—to push him away or draw him closer? How could a kiss to make it better make things worse?

  “Reese?” Her voice sounded hoarse, the voice of a woman she did not recognize. Although this man touched her in the deepest part of her mind, body, and soul, she didn’t even know his real name.

  When her palms met his shoulders, he stiffened then sighed. She shivered at the combination of hot breath along wet skin. He had put his tongue on her, and she wanted him to do it again.

  Instead, he kissed her pain once more, as a parent might soothe an injured child, then straightened. Without so much as a glance at her face, he returned her dress to her shoulder and walked away.

  *

  The next morning, at dawn, Rico awaited her on the front porch of the hotel.

  Mary felt as if she’d been slapped. Even Rico’s cheery disposition and outrageously flirtatious behavior could not help her today.

  “El capitan says you must learn to use a knife, senorita.”

  “Oh, he does?” She put her fists on her hips. “Who died and made him God?”

  “Quite a lot of people, actually. Now come, we will use the targets, but we will stand a bit closer. A knife is nothing like a gun, but I enjoy them.”

  Rico set his hand at the small of her back as if they were going for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Reese always stalked off, expecting her to keep up or be left behind. So why did she find him so appealing when, in comparison with most others, he was a rude lout? She had no idea.

  Rico opened a case of sharp silver knives. He traced the handles with dark fingers, his sooty, long lashes shadowing his cheekbones. His skin was copper and as smooth as a child’s, though she had seen stubble grace his chin long about sundown. The man was so beautiful it was a disgrace, but Mary didn’t feel a thing for him beyond an amused sort of fondness.

  “Those look expensive,” she said.

  He glanced up, and for a moment his eyes were unfocused, as if he’d been staring into the past. He blinked, centered his gaze on Mary, then shrugged. “They get the job done.”

  Rico gathered the weapons, and in one swift, fluid motion turned and threw them one after the other at a burlap sack. When he finished, a semicircle of knife butts stuck from the middle.

  “Tell me you were aiming at the hay bale two bales down,” Mary muttered.

  He grinned, white teeth flashing between full auburn lips. “I do not think so, senorita. What I aim for I hit. Otherwise I would be no good at my job.”

  “Which is?”

  His smile died. “You know my job.”

  “Spying?”

  He walked forward and pulled out the knives. “Among other things. I see very well in the dark.”

  Spying, knives, darkness? Was he an assassin? Would Reese send this boy out to slit throats in the night? She wasn’t sure.

  “What things?” she demanded.

  “Things I would not tell a lady.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “I’m sure you would not. Unlike many ladies I know, you are strong. Texas eats ladies for lunch. But you, I think, will eat Texas.” He winked and handed Mary one of the knives.

  She held the weapon gingerly.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Rico scolded. “The knife handle will not cut you. Throw it.”

  She tried to throw the knife exactly as Rico had. The blade stuck in the dirt halfway between Mary and the hay.

  Her gaze went to Rico. At least he wasn’t laughing.

  “Here.” He positioned himself behind her as Reese had; she did not enjoy it half as much. He put his hand over hers and lifted them both. “We will move our arms forward, and when I say ‘release,’ you will do so.”

  Rico pulled her arm back, and Mary’s body aligned to his. He had a very nice body, but all she could think about was that Reese had sent this child in his place, and her anger returned.

  “Release!” Rico murmured in her ear.

  She jumped, let the knife go, and the weapon fell to the ground with a thud, narrowly missing her foot.

  Rico sighed. “Perhaps we should forget knife throwing. It is, after all, a special skill. I am not much of a teacher, and I did not think this through. We should work on the hiding and retrieving of knives first.”

  “Hiding?”

  “Upon your person.”

  Mary gave him her Miss McKendrick
glare, and Rico laughed. “Ah, when you look at me like that, senorita, I feel like a child again.”

  “You are a child.”

  “At heart, perhaps. But in my soul?” He shook his head. “Now, tell me, how many knives do you think I am carrying?”

  “Besides the bowie?”

  “That is obvious, si?”

  Mary peered at the immense sheath filled with steel that rested on his hip. “Very obvious.”

  “Do you see anything else?”

  She tried but she could not detect any telltale signs of weaponry. “There’s probably one in your boot.”

  “Si.” He withdrew a thin silver blade from his left boot. “Now watch closely.”

  With movements so graceful as to be a dance, he withdrew a matching blade from his other boot, a knife from his back pocket, one from a sheath on his forearm, and another from somewhere inside his shirt.

  “What about your hat?” she asked sarcastically.

  He raised a black eyebrow, removed his well-worn hat, and withdrew another—this one short and squat—the perfect size to fit into the crown. “I’d forgotten that one. I haven’t had to use it in a very long time.”

  “One knife is never enough?”

  “Why have one when you can have seven?”

  Mary’s lips twitched. He was incorrigible. If he’d been in her class, she’d have had a hard time punishing him for insubordination. He did everything with such flare.

  Rico bent to pick up his arsenal. “Now we will discover the best place to hide a knife on Miss McKendrick, and you will practice retrieving the knife.”

  “What good is a knife if you have a gun and so do they?”

  “A knife never runs out of bullets and is better than nothing when it’s just you and a very bad man. As long as you have one knife left, you have a chance. I cannot tell you how many times I have saved my life, and that of my friends, with that one last knife. Humor me, senorita. Mi capitan said you must learn about knives.”

  His words brought back yesterday’s lesson, the sensual interlude she and Reese had shared, all she had felt for the man and how little he must feel for her since he’d ordered Rico to take his place. Unaccustomed annoyance returned.