She’d expected something like this, but the reality of it infuriated her far beyond any imagining. A stranger— no doubt one of Zeb’s hired men—had found his way onto her land and into her home. She looked all around, then rose to her feet. “We have to go after Zeb.”
“Oh, no, we don’t.”
“He’s not getting away with this!”
She walked to Mogie, who was grazing by the fence, and took the dangling reins. Before she could lift her foot into the stirrup, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Let me go, Fletcher.”
“Not on your life.”
“I said let me go!” She tried to struggle free of him, but he held her tight around the waist.
Growing more angry by the second, Jo elbowed Fletcher in the ribs.
Then, in an instant, her feet were swept out from under her and she landed hard on the ground with a thump. The cool handle of a Colt .45 came down to rest gently on her forehead, its light pressure a clear message not to move. She blinked up at Fletcher’s irate gaze.
“I don’t want to knock you out, Jo, but I will if I have to.”
Relaxing the back of her head on the ground, she let out an exasperated sigh, then noticed John’s bare feet in the dirt beside her. He was holding the glass of water she had asked for.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded. He glared at Fletcher. “Did you give Mrs. O’Malley that black eye?”
Jo tried to get up. “John, you don’t understand.”
His gaze moved up and down her manly attire and settled on her eye again. “I think I do, ma’am. I know the house was empty last night, and seeing how you’re riding up so early with the marshal…”
John gave the glass of water to Jo and balled his hands into fists. “What kind of lily-livered vermin are you, hitting a woman like that? If you can dish it out, Marshal Collins, you sure as hell better be ready to take it.”
Chapter Sixteen
Barely able to get a full breath into his tight lungs, Fletcher dropped his gun into his holster. He took in John’s snug-fitting red underwear and bare toes. “Now, listen here…”
“Don’t you now listen here me! I’m about as savage as a meat ax over what you did!”
“It’s not what it looks like,” Jo said.
“You stay out of this, Mrs. O’Malley.”
“It’s my business, not yours!”
Before Fletcher had a chance to explain anything, a tight fist came hurling through the air, straight for his nose. “No, wait!”
The crack of bone against bone cleared Fletcher’s lungs in a hurry. His cheekbones vibrated with agonizing spasms of pain that shot straight to his brain until his whole head hammered. “Ah, hell! Not again!” He cupped his throbbing nose, feeling blood drain onto his lips.
“John! Stop it!” Jo yelled, trying to take hold of him. The other ranch hands emerged from the house and gathered on the covered porch to watch.
John pounced away like an amateur boxer. With both fists drawn, he bobbed up and down on the balls of his bare feet. “Face me like a man, Marshal.”
“Let’s talk about this,” Fletcher said.
“What’s there to talk about? Somebody’s gotta stand up for the lady.”
Furious, Jo ripped off her hat and threw it on the ground. “I can take care of myself!”
“No lady should have to take care of herself against men like him,” John said. “Preying on this lonely widow—listening to the gossip about her, no doubt! You’re a disgrace to your badge.”
Fletcher bent forward, still holding his nose. “Jeez, what next?”
“If you weren’t such a bastard, I’d force you to marry her.”
“Marry her?”
“Marry me!” Jo echoed.
Not sure what to say, Fletcher tried to stand straight. He wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve. John bounced like a March Hare toward him and threw another punch. Fletcher dodged it.
“But you ain’t good enough for someone like her. So if you ain’t gonna honor her by proposing, I will!”
Another punch flew past Fletcher’s ear. He wiped more blood off his throbbing nose, his nerves just about at the breaking point. “Nobody’s marrying anybody.”
John bounced around the barnyard, then made one more lunge toward Fletcher. “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!”
Enough was enough. Fletcher went for his gun.
The very next second, John was flat on his back, blinking up at the sky and rubbing his bruised noggin. Fletcher dropped his gun back into the holster.
“Damn, that was fast,” John mumbled.
Jo set the glass of water down on the ground and knelt beside him. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
She helped him sit up.
“I feel a little dizzy, though.”
Jo gave Fletcher an irritated glare.
“What—he was going to punch me again!” Fletcher insisted.
“You didn’t have to hit him so hard.”
“I wasn’t about to get my nose broken a third time.”
Jo parted John’s hair to examine his head. “I don’t see any blood.”
“Plenty of blood over here,” Fletcher pointed out, feeling around the bridge of his nose.
Jo ignored him. “John, why don’t you go get dressed. We’ll talk later.”
He rose to his feet and Fletcher had to strain to hear what John whispered to her: “I meant it about marrying you, Mrs. O’Malley. If that’s what you need, I’m your man.”
Jo only nodded and tapped him a few times on the arm. The sheepish foreman made his way awkwardly to the bunkhouse, rubbing the top of his head.
Jo turned to the others on the porch, all staring in silence. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen, but you can get to work now. Breakfast will be a little late this morning.”
A general murmur of acknowledgment floated down the steps with them as they moved past, all glaring irately at Fletcher. “You okay, Mrs. O’Malley?” one of them asked. “You want someone to stick around?”
“I’m fine, thank you. This is all a misunderstanding.”
When they were gone, Fletcher tipped his head back to stop the blood from dripping onto his boots.
“I’m sorry about that,” Jo said swiftly, picking up the glass and rising.
“Yeah? You don’t look sorry to me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fletcher hobbled to the house and up the porch steps, hearing Jo pick up her hat and follow behind him. “You just got yourself a marriage proposal.”
“As if I wanted it! I don’t want to marry him. Or you, for that matter!”
“No?”
“No!” Face-to-face on the covered porch, breathing in the scent of singed carpet, they glared angrily at each other. Jo slammed her hat onto her head and Fletcher could feel all his pent-up frustrations exploding at once.
“Well, I don’t want to marry you, either,” he said, holding his painful, swollen, crooked nose.
“So you said already.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did! You said, ‘nobody’s marrying anybody.”’
He stood quietly, trying to remember what, exactly, he had said, then he gave up on it and tipped his head back again to stop the blood that was dripping onto the porch floor. Throat burning, he coughed dryly. “I need a drink of water.”
“Here!” Jo threw the water she held straight into his face.
Feeling the cold slap against his dry, sooty skin, Fletcher shut his eyes. He kept them shut a moment, trying to rid himself of the shock before he opened them to meet Jo’s surprised gaze.
She covered her mouth with her hand. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
Fletcher wiped a hand over his wet face and flicked the water into the air. “Feel better?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied, the rage all gone from her voice now.
He wish
ed he felt better, but since he didn’t have a glass of water to pour over her head, all he could do was keep on struggling against the impossible cravings that had been torturing him ever since he’d made the mistake of touching her on the bed last night.
Feeling hot all of a sudden, he stared down at her blushing cheeks and full lips and noticed a spot of soot smeared across her chin. Her golden hair was falling in stray tendrils onto her dust-covered shoulders; the hat she wore was wrinkled and rakishly askew, and she hardly seemed aware she still held an empty drinking glass in her hand.
Without thinking, Fletcher grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into the house. “Come in here.”
“Why? What are you—”
Once inside, he slammed the door behind them, pushed her up against it and smothered her next words with his mouth.
Jo dropped her hat and the glass onto the floor. Fletcher barely heard the smash as it shattered into tiny pieces. All he could comprehend was the sound of his own breathing, deep and labored. Her tiny moan of pleasure made his body ache for the rest of her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and opened her moist lips to his kiss.
“I want to take you upstairs,” he whispered against her neck as he nibbled the soft flesh.
“No, we can’t, not with the men just outside.” Her leg came up to wrap around his hips, and he thrust against her, wishing their clothing wasn’t stopping him from what he really wanted to do to her, here against the heavy oak door. “They’ll be looking for their breakfast,” she mumbled in a drawn-out whisper.
“Let them eat the roasted curtains.”
Jo threw her head back and he kissed the skin just beneath her collar.
“Maybe you should lock the door,” she whispered.
Eyes closed, he clumsily felt around for the key in the lock, found it and turned it. “No one’s getting in.”
Just then, someone knocked upon it.
Fletcher stopped kissing her.
Jo’s eyes opened. “Who is it?” she asked in a melodic voice.
“It’s John. Do you need any help with breakfast, Mrs. O’Malley?”
Her face paled as she squeezed Fletcher’s shoulders. Fletcher raised his forefinger to his lips to keep her from sounding as if anything was out of the ordinary—he certainly didn’t want his nose broken again—then he nodded for her to reply.
“No, thank you, John.” Her voice seemed strained, out of breath. “I’m fine.”
Silence swelled on the porch. Then John asked, “You okay in there?”
“Yes. I’ll ring the bell when everything’s ready.” Still, they did not hear any departing footsteps.
Growing impatient while staring down at Jo’s wide-eyed gaze, breathing in the distinct orange flower water scent he had grown to associate with her, and her alone, Fletcher kissed the top of her head. His body throbbed with need, and he could not stop himself from pressing his lips to hers again, slowly, gently, as quietly as possible, letting his tongue drift inside her mouth.
Jo’s little moan of pleasure soon made Fletcher forget about John, even as he heard the footsteps tapping down the porch stairs.
Quieter now, they finished what they’d so hastily begun—a chain of kisses as long as the Santa Fe Trail, each one melting hotly into the next. Before long, Jo buried her face into Fletcher’s neck, clutched at his shoulders, and told him in whispered words, “Take me upstairs.”
Damn, how he wanted to hear her cry out as he knew she would if he made love to her. The idea alone made his blood race until he could hardly make sense of anything. He had to mentally shake himself to see reason.
He continued to hold her, to kiss her neck and collarbone, trying to think of a way to make himself refuse what she was offering. He took her trembling hand in his and pressed the soft, warm palm to his lips.
“I can’t do that, Jo,” he said softly.
He felt the weight of her stare and saw her expression change from heated arousal to insulted disbelief. “You can’t do it?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
She yanked her hand away and he closed his eyes in defeat. Sometimes he could be so unimaginably stupid.
“You’re not the only one who’s risking something here!” she burst out. “I have reasons to stay away from you, too, and let me tell you, they’re infinite.”
“Jo, let’s not do this.”
“No, I think we should. If not now, when? I’ll be in jail before long, so we won’t be able to have much of a conversation there.”
“Jo, don’t—”
“Why not? I am still your prisoner, am I not? And I wasn’t kissing you to get you to change your mind about arresting me.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“It sounded like you did.”
“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
“How did you mean it? No, never mind. There’s no point discussing it. When I suggested we go upstairs…well, that was rash of me. I’ve been confused about a lot of things lately, but I wasn’t trying to trick you.”
She was rambling now, and Fletcher had the feeling it was her pride talking; she was trying to hold on to her dignity. “Look, I don’t usually analyze these things. I wanted you, too,” he told her, just to be sure she didn’t think he wasn’t interested. Nothing could have been further from the truth. “It was as simple as that.”
“That’s right, I forgot. You’re a temporary man. These things would have to be simple, wouldn’t they?”
“That’s not fair.”
She bent down and picked her hat up off the floor. “None of this is fair. You’re going to drag me off to jail as soon as you’ve solved the murders and upheld your precious law. That’s the only reason you haven’t put me in shackles already—because you need me to act like nothing’s happening in order to close this case.”
“Jo, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Complicated. I thought you said it was simple.”
“It is simple…the other part of it, I mean.”
He backed away and sat on the bottom stair, resting his forehead in his hands, feeling more confused now than ever. For a long moment, he just sat there.
“I don’t understand,” Jo said despondently.
He looked up at her, his eyes burning and bloodshot. He didn’t want to talk about this now, or tell her how he felt about her, but with things the way they were, he probably owed her at least that before he locked her up and called in the judge.
“The fact that I want you is simple enough,” he said after a great deal of painful deliberation. “It’s the way I feel about you that’s complicated.”
Jo sank down to sit on the floor, her legs stretched out in a V in front of her.
“This isn’t at all how I’d planned things,” he went on, “and I always plan things.” He moved forward to kneel between her legs, and found himself revealing more than he’d intended to.
“When John told me he would marry you if I didn’t, I wanted to flatten him.”
“You did,” she reminded him with a hint of a smile that eased him, but only a bit.
Fletcher grinned, too. “I guess I did.”
“John’s a kind man, but I’m not going to marry him.”
“I know it’s none of my business, but I’m glad.” He took her hand in his. “I’m sorry for all this, Jo, I really am. I do care about you—more than care—but you know I can never marry you. I’m a lawman and I don’t plan on changing the way I live.”
Jo stood up, catching him off guard, and glared down at him. “I never asked you to marry me.”
She moved around him on her way to the stairs, but stopped to straighten Edwyn’s portrait on the wall. A mixture of fatigue and sadness passed over her features and, watching her, Fletcher felt a heaviness center in his chest.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Jo said, forcing all emotion from her voice and telling him in no uncertain terms that she was shutting him out, “I have work to do. And I believe you do, too.”
When she turned her back on him and started up the stairs, he dropped his head into his hands, and wished that he could somehow change the man he had become.
Chapter Seventeen
Fletcher rose to his feet in the front hall and touched the tender bridge of his nose, still throbbing painfully. Right now, his whole body was aching, but mostly from the icy tone in Jo’s voice when she’d turned away from him.
He had to admit, though, she was right. They’d become too damn close, and her shutting him out was the best thing for both of them.
What had he been thinking, anyway, kissing her again like that? He’d taken advantage of her, that was certain, in her very own house after it nearly burned to the ground, up against her front door and under the watchful gaze of her dead husband’s crooked, smoke-stained portrait. It was a stupidly selfish thing to do.
Feeling guilty and more out of touch than ever with the part of himself that was supposed to be a lawman, Fletcher looked up the long, empty staircase and heard the floorboards creaking under Jo’s angry footsteps.
Her harsh tone reverberated inside his head. I never asked you to marry me….
What had possessed him to bring up marriage? It was the furthest thing from his mind—with any woman— and Mrs. O’Malley was hardly ready for marriage… hell, the way she constantly straightened that darn picture.
Fletcher went to the kitchen, found a rag and managed to wet it under the forceful flow of cold water from the indoor pump. As he wiped the dried blood from under his nose and pressed the cool cloth to his burning eyelids, he struggled to remember who—and what—he was. A lawman. The sooner he took Jo to jail and left her there for someone else to deal with, the sooner he’d be back in control of his senses and better able to do his job.
He winced when he touched the cloth to his nose.
Returning to the front hall, he decided it was time to find the men who had killed Jo’s husband and finish this investigation. That was the only way to be free of her and her effect on him. It was time he looked more closely into her affairs.
He glanced once more up the staircase and, hearing nothing, he decided to take a look around. He walked down the hall toward the back of the large ranch house, and let himself into what, as luck would have it, appeared to be Edwyn’s den.
The Marshal and Mrs. O'Malley Page 14
