The Sheriff (Historical Romance)

by Nan Ryan

  She stretched out on her back, sighed and closed her eyes. In minutes she was sound asleep.

  Much later that night, Kate awakened.

  Bright moonlight streamed in through the windows and fell across the sofa where she lay. Reaching for the small clock she kept on the floor beneath the sofa next to her pistol, she saw that it was ten past two in the morning.

  Kate put the clock back in its place, sat up and swung her legs to the floor. It was a miserably hot night. She was perspiring, her face was shiny, her gown was sticking to her skin. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, she rose from the sofa.

  On that sweltering June night Travis lay in bed in his private quarters behind the city jail, wide awake as usual. He was worrying about Kate VanNam up there all alone in that secluded mansion. At least he supposed she was alone. Travis frowned. Maybe not. Maybe Winn DeLaney was…

  “Damnation!” Travis swore and got out of bed. He drew on his trousers, tugged on his boots and grabbed a shirt. He reached for his gun belt and went out the rear door.

  Travis skirted the backs of the buildings and disappeared into the forest. Muttering under his breath, he trudged up to Kate’s place. When he reached the clearing he saw that the house was dark. Satisfied she was alone and sound asleep, Travis considered returning immediately to his quarters, but instead he chose a towering pine and sat down beneath it. Reaching inside his breast pocket for a cigar, he suddenly stopped, blinked and then squinted.

  Kate had come out onto the porch wearing nothing but a nightgown.

  Travis stared, entranced, as she skipped barefooted down the front steps and crossed the yard. She was headed for the lake. Hardly daring to breathe, Travis watched as she paused at the water’s edge, looked warily around and, seeing no one, lifted her gown over her head and dropped it to the ground.

  Naked, she stood unmoving for a fleeting moment—just long enough for Travis to get a good look at her beautiful, unclothed body. Then she waded out into the moon-silvered lake and began to swim.

  It was all Travis could do to keep from stripping and joining her in the cool, clear water. Perspiring, burning up, he became unreasonably angry as he watched her slicing gracefully through the water. Damn her! What if someone other than him was watching?

  Travis rose to his feet.

  When Kate began to tire and swam back to shore, she was horrified to see the sheriff standing there holding her nightgown. She screamed and ordered him off her property.

  “I’ll go,” he told her, “but not before you get back inside that house and stay there.”

  Arms crossed over her breasts, Kate sank down into the waist-high water and shouted at him, “I am not getting out of this water until you are gone.”

  “Yes, you are,” he stated firmly, and started to come in after her.

  “All right, all right, I’ll get out, but you have to turn your back.”

  It took every bit of willpower he possessed to not look at her, but he obeyed. He held the nightgown behind him. Scowling, Kate stalked out of the water and grabbed the gown away from him.

  “Don’t you dare turn around,” she warned, and anxiously drew the gown over her head and stuck her arms through the sleeves. She yanked the long tails down past her knees and grimaced when she saw how the thin batiste fabric stuck to her wet flesh.

  Travis stood facing away from her, knowing she was naked, wanting to turn and look at her. He was coiled as tightly as a watch spring. His jaw was clenched and his heart was hammering. Perspiration beaded his hairline and dampened his shirt.

  “Now,” she said, “you may leave!”

  Travis didn’t leave.

  Instead he turned to face her and then reached for her.

  “What do you think you’re doing!” she protested, pushing against his broad chest.

  He yanked her up into his arms and carried her, kicking and screaming, back up to the house.

  He deposited her on the front porch and said, “Get inside that house and lock the door, which, as you may recall, I hung to keep you safe. And stay there, Miss VanNam.”

  “You go to blazes, Marshal. You don’t own me. You can’t make me do anything.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can make you do,” he said with a soft drawl as he reached out and plucked at the wet nightgown clinging to her breasts.

  Kate slapped his hand away, looked down and was mortified to see her tightened nipples stood out and were as visible as if she wore nothing at all. “Get off my property! You’re trespassing, Sheriff.”

  “I’m going,” he said, “but you keep running around here naked and the Vigilance Committee will have me throw you in jail for indecent exposure.”

  “Leave!” she shrieked, trembling despite the heat of the night.

  Eighteen

  It seemed the most normal thing in the world, so right and wonderful in every way.

  The two of them were alone together in the mansion in the middle of that sultry summer night.

  The darkly handsome sheriff sat comfortably on her sofa and she, in her damp nightgown, was seated on his left knee.

  She sighed with bliss when his warm face settled gently into her gown’s open bodice and his heated lips pressed lingering kisses over the swell of her breasts.

  Kate squirmed on Travis’s knee and arched her back. Her arm wound around his neck, her hand clutched at his shirt collar. As his lips brushed her tingling flesh, she moved her fingers up into his hair and clasped a handful of the thick raven locks.

  “Travis,” she whispered. “We shouldn’t, Travis.”

  “You’re a very desirable woman, Kate VanNam,” he said softly, as he lifted his head and gazed into her flashing eyes. “You want me to stay here with you, don’t you?”

  “You know I do,” she told him frankly. “I want to spend the whole night here in your arms.”

  “And wake up with me at sunrise.”

  “Yes. We’ll watch the sun come up, then go back to sleep.”

  “But before we sleep tonight,” he said in the drawl she loved so much, “we’ll make love here in the moonlight.”

  “Yes, oh yes.” Kate laid her hand on his chest. She smiled dreamily and said, “Travis, your heart is beating awfully fast. Almost as fast as my own.”

  “Show me,” he coaxed.

  Kate turned more fully to him and leaned close to press her left breast against his chest.

  “No, wait. Not good enough,” he said. “Unbutton my shirt, Kate.”

  Nodding, she complied. When his shirt was open, she needed no persuading to push it apart and fully uncover his broad chest. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she ran her hand over the perfect symmetry of his steely sculpted torso, eagerly raking her fingertips through the dense dark hair that grew in an appealing fanlike pattern. She thrilled to the heavy rhythmic pounding she felt against her palm.

  Travis reached up and opened the bodice of her nightgown. “Now,” he said, “let me feel your heart beating against mine.”

  At once her bare breasts were against his naked torso and both their hearts were wildly racing.

  Breathless, she told him, “Travis, the way you make me feel, it frightens me.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Kate,” he whispered. “I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do.”

  “I know, it’s just…Kiss me, Travis.” She brushed her tingling nipples back and forth against his chest. “Kiss me and keep on kissing me, forever and ever.”

  The sheriff laid his head against the sofa’s tall back and drew Kate’s flushed face down to his. With his hand in her flowing hair, he cupped the back of her head and drew her toward him, molding her lips to his. Then he opened his mouth and kissed her the way she wanted to be kissed. The kiss was at once tender and passionate, sweet and aggressive, subdued and sexual.

  It was thrilling beyond belief.

  Kate clung to Travis and gloried in his kiss, a kiss she could feel throughout her body. While his tongue met and mastered hers, it was as th
ough she could feel it circling her aching nipples and licking a path down her contracting belly.

  Travis kept kissing her until she was as breathless, weak and limp as a rag doll. She finally tore her swollen lips from his.

  “I love the way you kiss me,” she sighed, then added truthfully, “but it makes me quite dizzy.”

  “Then perhaps we should lie down,” he said, as he gently laid her on the long sofa. Standing just above, Travis took off his shirt, dropped it and kicked off his boots. He stretched out beside her, drew her into his arms and kissed her again.

  “Mmm,” she murmured, quickly realizing that kissing was even more enjoyable while lying down.

  Kate was glad the sofa was narrow so that they had to lie on their sides facing each other, their hearts beating as one. The stirring kisses continued as Travis’s burning lips stayed pressed to hers. He gently eased her over onto her back.

  When the prolonged caress finally ended, his handsome face hovered above hers, his dark eyes flashing with ardor as he gazed at her. When she felt the warmth of his hand on her breast, Kate trembled with pleasure. She continued to look into his smoldering eyes as his hand moved down her waist to her hip.

  She felt the fabric of her nightgown sliding up her legs. She tensed with anticipation and excitement.

  “Let me, Kate. Let me make sweet love to you,” he murmured as he gathered the gown and slowly drew it up her trembling thighs.

  “I will, Travis, I will, “ she murmured, her body vibrating with expectation. “Yes, oh, darling, yes…I…Travis, no, no don’t…don’t…don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Come back! Come back to me!”

  “Come back, come back to me,” Kate was still murmuring as she awakened from the sweetly sensual dream. “Please don’t leave me.”

  Her breath coming fast, her heart pounding, she lunged up and frantically looked around, half expecting to see a bare-chested Travis. A sense of crushing disappointment swept through her when she swung her bare feet to the floor. Her hand went to her throbbing heart. She shook her head to clear it.

  The dream had been so incredibly real that she could almost taste Travis’s burning kisses on her lips and feel his warm caressing hand on her breasts. Shaken and wistful, she squeezed her knees together and her eyes tightly shut.

  Then she exhaled heavily and leaned back against the sofa’s tall headrest. When finally she began to calm, she assured herself that it had just been a dream and dreams meant nothing. Nothing at all.

  But she was reluctant to go back to sleep for fear she might continue to dream of Travis McCloud. An even worse fear plagued her. How would she feel when next she encountered the sheriff? Would she be so embarrassed and red faced that he might guess she had dreamed about him? Would he read her guilty thoughts?

  Kate shivered, remembering what he had said when he’d deposited her on the front porch and plucked at her damp nightgown.

  You’d be surprised what I can make you do.

  Naked, she rose up out of the water and brazenly walked toward him, making no attempt to cover herself. God, she was beautiful, with her high, rounded breasts, her flat belly, flaring hips and long shapely legs.

  He stared at her unclothed body and knew he had to have her, that he could wait no longer. He was going to make love to her this very night as no one ever had.

  She paused when she was still a few feet away. She lifted her arms and swept her sopping golden hair back off her face. She smiled seductively and walked to him.

  When he reached for her, she warned, “I’ll get you wet, Sheriff.”

  “And I’ll return the favor. Now come here.” He caught her close and pressed the naked length of her against him. He could feel his clothes soaking up the moisture from her bare, silky body. He ran his hands over her wet back, her hips, her rounded buttocks. He kissed her and she looped her arms around his neck.

  He filled his hands with the twin cheeks of her bottom and strongly considered taking her right where they stood. When he lifted her, she wrapped her long legs around his waist. He clasped his wrists beneath her and kissed her.

  Then he turned and carried her up to the house. In the moonlit drawing room, he lowered her to the sofa, and while she lolled there, leaning back, looking breathtakingly beautiful, the water glistening on her breasts and shoulders and long legs, he undressed. In seconds his gun belt and clothes lay on the floor. Naked, he knelt before her, pushed her legs apart, wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and drew her face down to his.

  She pleased and surprised him when she said, “I want you to make love to me in every way possible.” Her eyes sparkled with deviltry. “You’re not leaving until you do.”

  “Ah, baby, I’m going to love you till you’re begging me to stop.”

  “That will never happen,” she said. “I’ll never get enough of you.”

  “Promise,” Travis murmured. Then he wrapped his hands around the backs of Kate’s knees and drew her to the sofa’s edge.

  She gripped his ribs with her knees and clutched the strong column of his neck when he grabbed a handful of her soaked hair, urged her face down to his and kissed her.

  By the time the long, lusty kiss ended, Travis had managed to maneuver her about so that she was lying on her back with one leg raised and draped along the sofa’s high back, the other bent at the knee and cocked outward.

  He was between.

  He swept a hand over her flat belly and gazed at her. She smiled seductively, licked her lips, lifted her hands and beckoned him into her arms.

  He shuddered.

  She was wonderfully wanton, wild and wet and open to him. And he was driven half-insane by the raw hunger she evoked. Blinded by passion, he could wait no longer.

  His heart hammering, he rose up onto his knees and moved into position. Gripping his painfully swollen cock, he was poised to plunge into her wet warmth when she rolled up onto her elbows to watch and urge him on.

  “Give it to me, Travis,” she invited eagerly. “Put it in me where it belongs.”

  “I will, baby,” he whispered. “I will.”

  “I will, I will,” Travis was muttering when he awakened abruptly from the highly erotic dream. “I will,” he mumbled, lunging up and foolishly looking around, half expecting to see a naked Kate in his bed.

  Perspiring, his heart beating wildly, Travis realized it had been a dream. Just a dream. A dream that meant nothing. Nothing at all.

  He had no burning desire to make love to Kate VanNam. He had dreamed of her because he’d seen her shortly before going to sleep. Now he cursed the golden-haired beauty for foolishly taking a late night swim in the nude. She sure as hell should have known better. Her lack of judgment was responsible for the carnal dream and for the aching erection now lifting the sheet like a tent.

  “Damn you, Kate VanNam.”

  Nineteen

  “Cal, come here. You heard me! Come here. What on earth do you have in your mouth?” Kate called out as the big calico padded down the mansion’s central corridor shortly after sunup. She frowned and snapped her fingers loudly. “Come here this minute!”

  The cat made no effort to obey, but he headed directly for the open front door. Something—she couldn’t tell what—was dangling from a string clamped firmly between his teeth. The object was swinging back and forth.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Kate shouted, and dashed after him.

  She caught up to the cat, sank down on her heels and grabbed him. She snatched the small leather pouch from his mouth and studied it carefully.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she lamented, “this is Chang Li’s savings. He hid it here in a secret place, but of course you snooped around until you found it! You’re a bad, bad boy, Cal,” she rebuked him. He just placed his front paws on her knees, lowered his head and rubbed it against Kate’s chin, softly purring.

  “That won’t work, my friend,” she warned, and rose to her feet.

  Her brows knitted, Kate held the pouch in her hand and considered what she should do. Sh
e had no idea where Chang Li had hidden it, so she couldn’t put it back in its place. She had no choice. She would have to tell him the truth and suggest he choose a new hiding place.

  For now she’d put the little purse under a sofa cushion and ask Chang Li to stop by at day’s end to either take it with him or hide it again somewhere in the mansion. That was the best she could do.

  Kate walked into the drawing room and went directly to the sofa. She lifted a cushion and started to slip the pouch underneath, but hesitated. She was curious. Almost as curious as Cal.

  She knew that Chang Li had been saving for a long time in hopes of accumulating enough to bring his family to America. She wondered how much he had managed to put away.

  Kate looked around guiltily.

  Cal meowed and she jumped as if she’d been caught in some heinous crime. She glanced down, saw the cat seated regally at her feet, his tail curled around him, staring up at her with narrowed eyes as though he knew her intention.

  “You’re a good one to talk,” she accused, frowning at him. “You’re who went snooping around, not me.”

  Kate sat down and ignored Cal when he leaped up onto the sofa to watch her. She carefully loosened the drawstrings, reached inside, withdrew the money and laid it atop a cushion. Gently shoving Cal away when he pounced on the money and sniffed at it, she carefully counted the bills. Then she recounted them, to make sure she had tallied correctly. Holding the hardworking Chang Li’s entire fortune in her hand, Kate shook her head sadly.

  Two hundred seventy-eight dollars.

  That’s all the poor man had been able to save after three or four years of slaving away in the heat and the cold of the rugged Sierra Nevadas. He saved every cent he possibly could. He lived in a canvas tent. He never ate fancy meals. He never drank or gambled. All he had to show for his hard work and self-denial was two hundred seventy-eight dollars.

  Yet he never complained about his lot in life. Never whined no matter how hungry or tired or lonely he was. He was always smiling and cheerful. Never gave up hope.