"What?" Christal gasped. She could hardly believe her ears.
"That's right." Cain turned to her, his face still harboring a previous anger. "I don't know what you were up to tonight, but from this moment onward, you're in my custody. Consider Faulty your guardian till I return."
She stared at him, mute with fury.
He and Jericho left without another word.
Chapter Twenty-one
Cain and Jericho were back by morning, conspicuously absent a prisoner. They had taken so long that Christal had begun to worry. Even the fright of the half-breed dimmed in the wee hours of the morning as her anxiety grew. There were a hundred innocuous reasons for Cain and Jericho's delay, but instead of thinking of lame horses and bad weather, she thought of grizzlies and gun-toting renegades unwilling to be captured.
Christal had stayed with Ivy all night. She'd tended to her with compresses and hot broth, but the girl cried until she fell into an exhausted sleep. Deep inside, Christal cried too. They'd all had enough of the misery of their lives. At least Ivy's misery would end when Jericho took her away.
From the window, Christal watched Cain dismount. His spurs cut into the ice of the road as he handed the horses to a boy from the stable. He hadn't shaved that morning and his jaw was covered by a dark beard that only accentuated the icy gray of his eyes. He wore a battered fringed jacket she remembered from Falling Water, and chaps, those same chaps worn smooth along the inside of the thighs, and that now made her want to slip her hand between his legs to remember just how slick and hard and warm those chaps were.
He turned around toward the saloon, and as if by instinct he looked up at her window. Their gazes locked. A grave error. Christal saw too much, she revealed too much. Her love for him left her breathless, but it sliced through her heart to think of the future. In the small dark hours of night, she'd longed for him to slip into bed beside her and erase all her tortured imaginings. But now in the cold light of morning, she was glad he had not come. Her practical side had taken hold once more and she was convinced it was best. He could only betray her. Keep him at bay, she told herself. His anger was a good thing.
After Cain had entered the saloon, there were muffled voices down the hall near Ivy's room. She expected it; still, the knock at her door made her jump.
"Who is it?" she called out, already knowing who it ; was.
"Macaulay." His voice was unusually somber.
She slowly opened the door. By sheer dint of will, she refrained from flinging herself into his protective arms.
"Did you catch him?" she asked.
He entered her room and closed the door behind him. "He's dead."
"But—?" She turned silent. "Did you shoot him?"
Cain rubbed his unshaven jaw. It was ten o'clock in the morning, but he looked as if he could use a drink. "Jericho killed him. Shot him clean through the head. Maybe I shouldn't have let him come with me."
"Did he murder him?"
"I'll tell the judge in my report that it was in self-defense. If you look at it in a certain light, well, it was self-defense."
She stared at him, wondering about his words. "It's impossible to make a just and perfect world, even for a sheriff." She looked away. "What's to happen to Ivy?"
"Jericho's taking her out to his cabin. In a few years, things'll be better for them. His cattle should do well. They'll get married, have a few kids. It won't be so bad."
"It sounds wonderful."
Their gazes met. A muscle in Macaulay's jaw tensed. The moment was painful and uncertain.
"Girl, I didn't like what you did last night." His words were like an icy wind rushing through her. The old anger and fear came back to her. "I told you never to do that again." Each syllable was enunciated with scathing anger.
"How am I to earn my room and board here if I don't work for Faulty?"
"I don't want you here anymore. I want you to come to the jail."
"I'm not living with you at the jail."
"What's gotten into you?"
A terrible lamenting pain settled in her chest. "I don't want to be with you anymore, Macaulay. I want you to go back to Washington. There's no future for us. I see that clearly. You must too."
"When did you come to this conclusion?" His question was quiet, foreboding.
"I've known it all along."
"Why?"
One small question that needed a lifetime to answer. She took a deep breath. There was really no way to explain except to tell him everything, and that was something she could never do. Not when she'd seen how he'd treated Dixiana—guilty before proven innocent.
"Why doesn't change the inevitable, Cain," she whispered.
"No." He grabbed her, unnerving her by the desperation in his eyes. "The only thing that was inevitable was our coming together, not our parting. You gave your word you would stay, remember?"
She closed her eyes. It hurt to remember it. "You blackmailed me. You elicited that response from me. I won't keep it."
"You will keep it."
She opened her eyes and stared at him. There was a wildness in his expression, that same wildness that once made her believe he was an outlaw.
"I'm not going to go chasing you from place to place. I've already done that. You're going to stay with me until we've finished our business and if that means locking you up so you can't go anywhere, I will."
"You can't keep me against my will twice. And need I remind you, you're a sheriff now, not an outlaw. If you make me a prisoner you have to come up with a charge." Her gaze snapped with ire. She hated it when he played sheriff. That damned badge was already a fortress between them, he needn't abuse his powers more than he already had.
"If I wire New York, instinct tells me they might come up with a charge." His words were like acid burning into her heart.
She turned from him, unable to let him see how upset she was. She had never felt more desolate. "If you wire New York, they'll take me from you. The result will be the same."
He touched her, drew her back against the warm, hard planking of his chest. She found it very difficult to be strong. "Get your things together, girl. We're leaving."
"Where?"
"Someplace where we can be alone. Where the rest of the world won't ever bother us. We'll be there by dawn. Get your things."
Her silence was damning; her reluctance palpable.
He cupped her chin. "You'll be going of your own free will, Christal. Because even now that free will of yours is tellin' you to go with me. I am your only salvation. Without me I give you two months before you start whoring for your coins. Without me, they'll take you back to New York because there'll be no one to hide you like I'm willing to do."
She stared at him, shocked by his offer and the risk he was willing to take. An uneasy gratitude seeped into her, just as it had back at Falling Water. She didn't want the answer to her next question, but she had to have it now. It was fight or die.
"Do you love me, Macaulay?" The words were barely a whisper. She refused to meet his gaze and let him see her heart in her eyes. If his answer was yes, she would go with him. If it was no, she didn't care what happened to her. She might even surrender herself to the authorities.
She forced herself to glance at him. There were so many lies between them, she didn't know how one single answer to one single question could change everything. But it could, she knew it could. She waited in terror.
"Yes, I love you."
The answer and, more so, his delivery caught her by surprise. He used the same tone as when he cursed.
She looked up. Her gaze locked with his. His eyes were angry and crystalline cold.
"Don't ever ask me that question again."
"I've the right to know. If I'm to go away with you—"
"You've no right to know. None at all. I've risked everything for you. Even death. And the result is that I love you, but my love is not tender and sweet. It's angry and dark. You'd do well not to explore it."
Raw, fearful emotion choked
her. "You sound as if you hate me more than love me."
"I hate your shadowed past and your subterfuge. In every breath that I love you, I can't escape the hatred for your lies that lives there as well, and so my love for you has become my own personal hell. You once asked me if love was obsession. I can finally answer you with a resounding yes. The cruel part is, that's only half the answer."
She stood like a statue in front of him, her heart turned to marble, her tongue unable to refute anything he said. His words were an unbearable, inescapable truth. He said he was her only salvation, but he was her ruin too. She could never really have him with her past standing between them, yet if she revealed all, tore the wall down, she knew he'd no longer be there for her, standing on the other side.
"I would rather a man love me or hate me than feel the way you do. Discover the truth about me, then," she said quietly. "Wire New York."
He backed her against the wall, then took her face in his hands. "You're coming with me, Christal. Because as long as I don't know about your bad past, I can still love you. And as long as you have something to hide, I can still make you do the things I want. Like this . . ." His lips came down on hers, a hot, seductive kiss, utterly manipulative. Utterly powerful.
"No . . ." She moaned when his hands braced her rib cage, then slid to her breasts.
He whispered against her hair. "Will you fight me, then? Do you want me to wire New York? Do you want me to hate you?"
"No . . ." She sobbed, wanting him to love her. Desperately wanting him to love her.
"Kiss me, then. Take me to your bed and love me with all the fury I've seen before. Take me between your thighs and in your mouth, then let me take you, where I will keep you safe."
Her chest heaved with deep, ragged breaths, her heart torn with her need for survival and her need for him.
But surrender closed in quickly. As did his mouth. And his hands. His kiss was deep, hard, rhythmical, his lips daring her to remain cold and unfeeling, every movement of his hands a burning sweet torture, until inch by painful inch he began to win, spiriting away her independence like an Indian on the raid, and leaving nothing behind but a shuddering, melted woman who kissed him back with all the passion in her soul.
"You're a wise woman, Christal, a very wise woman." He groaned as her lips dragged across his neck, feather soft against the hardened flesh of his scar.
"No, I'm a fool." She touched his face with her hand, wanting to know every hungry line on his cheeks, every dark slash of his eyebrows, every straight ridge of his nose. Then, with a deep, wrenching sadness in her soul, she took his hand, led him to her bed, and did all that he asked.
Chapter Twenty-two
"But Sheriff, what am I gonna do without Christal here? You've gone and taken all my girls away!" Faulty was not pleased at the news Christal was leaving. He normally slept until well past noon and they had to wake him up. Now he stood behind the bar in a nightshirt, a weary blanket full of holes wrapped around his shoulders.
"She wasn't going to sell any more dances, so you don't need her anymore." Cain's expression brooked no argument.
"I'm sorry, Faulty." Christal could hardly meet his gaze. She felt everything showed, her fear, her love, her kiss-bruised lips, the raw skin in the hollow of her throat where Cain had marked her in a moment of passion.
She gave him a guilty glance. "I know it's an awkward time to ask you, Faulty, but I don't know when I'll be back, if ever, and before I go, there is a matter of thirty-five cents that you held for me that night I discovered a hole in my pocket . . . ?"
Faulty nodded wearily. "All right, all right. You went and broke me. All you girls. Take the whole damned kitty, Christal. It ain't gonna help now."
She cringed at his dramatics; it only increased her guilt, but she told herself again and again, she was doing the right thing. With her gone, Cain wouldn't have any need to bother him. Faulty didn't know it yet, but her leaving was his good fortune.
The money was in a tin box hidden behind the jugs of sarsaparilla. She retrieved it, then counted out her due—exactly seven nickels—with Faulty's gaze monitoring her every move. She then put the canister back, but one coin slipped from her hand and rolled beneath the bar. Shuddering to explore the dusty, unclean darkness beneath the bar, she reached for it nonetheless, unwilling to let even one precious nickel out of her possession.
In the void, her hand came in contact with a silken object. Dismayed, she drew it out. It was, indeed, a dirty green silk purse.
"Whoooeee, is Dixiana gonna be mad at you, Sheriff," Faulty murmured as Christal handed him the purse. "Looks like the thing's been here all along. It must've fallen off the bar when Jameson went to pay his bill, then it got kicked underneath." He opened it and counted out three hundred and two dollars and change.
Cain took the purse. "I'll take it back to him."
"Sure." Faulty scratched his head. "But do you think, Sheriff, you could send Dixi back here right away, if it ain't too much bother? I could sure use a girl around here tonight. I had three of 'em just yesterday, you know," he added accusingly.
Cain nodded, not acknowledging he was the one responsible. He took Christal's hand in his and they went to the jail.
Mechanically, as if moving in a trance, Christal helped Dixi dress while Macaulay went to Jameson's to return the purse. Dixiana complained the entire time, though Christal's thoughts were elsewhere, somberly dwelling on Cain and their future.
"Men!" Dixi groused, straightening her black knitted stockings and rebuckling her garters. "Ah told that sheriff Ah had nothing to do with that man's money being gone. And does he believe me? No!"
"He needed proof. You know that." Absentmindedly Christal hooked the back of Dixi's corset.
"Why do they always have to have proof? Why can't they just take your word for it?" Dixi faced her. "That damned Macaulay Cain! He could have asked Faulty, he could have asked you or Ivy. Ah don't steal. Ah don't have to. Mah gentlemen are good enough to me without me stealing from them. Why do they never believe us, Christal?"
Christal didn't answer. She just stared down at the scar on her palm, her face drawn and somber.
"Darlin', you never did tell me where you got that scar."
Christal closed her palm. With a bitter curve to her lips, she drew Dixi's dress over her. "I don't know, Dixi. All I know is that some people will never be convinced of the truth."
"Don't Ah know it." Dixi adjusted her corset, a maneuver that required a fair amount of shimmying and jiggling. All the while she ranted and raved like a politician. "But someday that's all gonna change! Mark mah words, Christal, Ah'm gonna go out and vote in that there next election, yes sirree! We're lucky we live in the territory. We've had that vote since '69 and Ah'm takin' it seriously now. Things is gonna change 'round here. Ah might even run for justice of the peace just to show 'em all. They had a woman do that down in South Pass, why not here?"
Dixi stared at her, indignant, as if somehow Christal could answer that question.
"I'd vote for you, Dixi," Christal offered.
"Well, Ah'm thinkin' about it, don't you think Ah'm not." She hooked her front, shoved her skirts down over her garters, and walked out of the jail, a free woman.
"Faulty's waiting for you at the saloon, Dixi." Macaulay entered the jail, a hard, unyielding expression on his face whenever he looked at Christal.
"No apology, Sheriff?" Dixiana sniffed.
"I did my job, that's all." He turned to Christal. "Are you ready?"
"Where y'all goin?" Dixi gazed at Cain, then Christal. Cain crossed his arms over his chest, as if defying Christal to refute his answer.
She didn't.
"I'm taking Christal away for a while. I've got a cabin up in the mountains. She's going to stay with me there."
"So you're leavin' us too, Sheriff? Why, you just got here." Dixi looked at Cain and raised an eyebrow. Christal wasn't sure if Dixi was sorry Cain was leaving or not. He was an unpredictable, intimidating man; Dixi preferred inexp
erienced, adulating boys. Still, Dixi was attracted to Cain. Even now Christal could see it. Dixi had always done a poor job of hiding it.
Cain cleared his throat. "I'll be comin' down now and again to take care of what needs to be done. This town doesn't need a sheriff on hand every minute. I'll be around if you need me."
"Oh, Ah hope so," Dixi answered, a sarcastic smile playing on her pretty lips. "Ah mean, Ah wouldn't want someone else around here missin' something and me gettin' away with another crime."
His mouth twisted ruefully. "There wasn't any help for it. If it'd been up to me, I never would have made you come here, you know it."
"Yeah, yeah, tell that to the justice of the peace. Ah'm runnin' for office, haven't you heard?"
As if he couldn't help himself, he chuckled. Dixi gave him a swat, and Christal felt a strange jealousy burn her insides.
"You take care now, Christal. All right?" Dixi said in farewell.
"You too, Dixiana." Almost forlornly, Christal watched her go, the jealousy having burned itself away. She didn't think she'd ever forget her. Dixi was a memorable sort. But Dixi would be all right. She might even win that office.
Christal's eyes slid to Cain. There was nothing more to take care of, except to leave.
He nodded to the table. "Take that package and bring it with us."
"What is it?"
"Look."
She opened one corner of the large package. A sky-blue wool fabric peeked out of the tear.
"Do you like it? Jan told me you were admiring it. It'll make a pretty dress. Better than the one you have on." He moved closer and caressed her upper arms, his hands like warm wrought iron.
Fair Is the Rose Page 25
