One big hand went to the middle of her spine, right between her shoulder blades; he gave one mighty thrust, and splat! With a shriek, she was flung down the bank and face-forward into the water before she realized what was happening. She landed in practically the same spot, and the same position, where he had ended up a few minutes earlier.
As she fought for an upright posture, snorting and coughing and pushing her drenched hair out of the way, her skirts billowed up around her like a giant jellyfish.
“You—miserable—no-good—piece of—gutter trash—!” she railed at him.
“Huh. It’s about is fair play, ain’t it, Miss Clark? Howdja like gettin’ the same treatment? Huh?” He stood there, fists on hips, surveying her bedraggled self with an annoying he-man swagger.
“You ready to call it quits now?”
He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Forgive and forget, and all that. She needed but to meet him halfway.
“Well?”
No answer. She simply sat there, sulking, looking like the Wreck of the Hesperus while fabric gently bobbed in the water around her and her hair dripped down as stringy as clumped-up seaweed.
Sam cursed softly under his breath. The girl was possessed of far too much pride; she would never give in. At least not to him, here, now.
Time to extend an olive branch. And his hand.
He clambered forward, stretching out to reach and pull her back to the sloping bank.
“C’mon,” he ordered. “Grab hold, and I’ll get you outta there.”
For once she obeyed, surrendering to the inevitable. Clenching his fingers to grip hard and tight, she looked up at him with a smile. A tentative smile that turned suddenly completely evil. He was bent toward her, overbalanced; she was kneeling in the current.
“I’ll call it quits over my dead body!” Vickie yelled at him, and jerked him right back into the rippling waters beside her.
“Yurt!” he exclaimed helplessly as he tumbled in again.
Which made no sense at all, of course, other than some sort of exclamation of rage.
This sideways tributary of Vestigo River was neither wide nor deep, nor threatening nor cold. It was simply a creek in which to play, enticing any swimmer or wader to cool off during hot summer days.
Slowly, spitting and sputtering, he got up on hands and knees to glower at his companion.
Both were, naturally, drenched to the skin. Under the thin stuff of her gown, Vickie shivered just a little, despite the sun’s warmth; parts of her involuntarily pebbled and tightened. Parts which Sam had no business seeing, especially at such close range.
That he was completely aware of such vulnerability was obvious; he hastily averted his eyes.
“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” she snapped, sinking a little lower into the water in self-defense.
“Well, you started it!” he childishly accused her. With a flounce that might have been amusing under other circumstances, he managed to flop down onto his backside to give her a look full of daggers. “What in tarnation didja think you were doin’, anyhow?”
She put on an expression of deep chagrin. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she told him in a small voice.
“Yeah, sure you are. You said that before. And I took you at your word. Instead I ended up in the drink not once, but twice.”
“Um. No hurts anywhere, or harm done?”
“Lots, if it’s anything to you. Landin’ on all these rocks ain’t like fallin’ into a featherbed, y’ know.”
“But—your head wound? No fresh cuts there, to cause problems?”
Reminded, he lifted one hand to run exploratory fingers into the shallow depression in his skull still trying to build itself back into shape. “Reckon not. No thanks to you.”
“Good.”
Her moods, her aspects, were as changeable and as capricious as the sky, from cloud to clear or day to night, and just as swiftly altered. Confronting him, she unexpectedly skimmed the heel of her palm across the water’s surface, sending another deluge right into his astonished face.
“Vickie!” he burbled, feeling half-drowned by now, and resenting the undignified position into which he had been forced. “Stop it!”
Grinning hugely now, like some wicked temptress from the days of Eve, she shot another blast of water at him.
“You dagnab she-devil!”
For just an instant, completely confounded, he stared at her. Then, with a roar, he leaped.
His tackle sent her reeling backward, toward shore, in shallows but a foot or so deep. His thighs were straddling her middle, and his great hands were reaching toward her throat when he felt her whole body shaking violently from head to foot.
Aghast, he had rolled off and away before he realized that she was shaking not from fear or terror but from mirth.
Then her laughter burst forth, great peals of laughter interspersed with gurgles of the river water she had accidentally swallowed.
“Just like—just like old times!” she finally settled down enough to chortle.
Sam was panting over his exertion, the swirl of eddies around them, and a rising tide of inexplicable emotion. “Old times?”
“This is where we sometimes came, as teenagers, and as—later on. To leave everyone and everything behind. To seek the privacy we weren’t granted with either of our families.”
Once again proving that her moods were mercurial, veering rapidly from one to another, her great turquoise eyes were filling with tears, and Sam could only gape at her. The murkiest of memories were spiraling in his cerebral matter, top to bottom, both confusing and frustrating.
Nothing came to bear, no clear vision of his past with this girl. Yet, obviously, in their youth—and possibly beyond—they had shared some history. He desperately needed lucidity, transparence. He needed those befuddled brain cells to gel. To act. To organize and classify.
To remember.
“Vickie, did you write to me while I was gone?” Sam, unable to wait any longer, suddenly blurted out.
“Oh, Sam. Write to you? Of course I did. How could I not, when we—” She halted, her lips trembling.
This moment, this instant in time when all good things converged, hit him hard. As much as there was so appealing about this drenched but saucy combatant, it was those trembling lips, so pink and full, that pulled him in like blossom pollen to a honeybee.
Grabbing hold of her wet shoulders, he leaned forward and gently but firmly encapsulated her upraised, ready mouth with his own.
It was a breathtaking kiss, one that rocked him to the soles of his waterlogged stockinged feet and left his heart pounding. More, his heart and body demanded. More, give more, take more! It’s been done before, in similar circumstances, in similar positions, and you’ll enjoy it as much now as you did then!
There was absolutely no doubt in what was left of Sam’s feeble mind that Vickie was delighting in the feel and taste and touch of this embrace as well, because she was returning his favors with as much hot blood and full force of her own. They were reveling in this new discovery of each other, and a barely-hinted-at background that they held in tandem, while somewhere around them birds tweeted and chirped overhead (unheard), and chipmunks raced and scrambled across the grass (unseen).
Until…
“Well, isn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?”
Instantly, with a gasp of shock from Sam and a little muffled shriek from Vickie, the sodden couple jerked apart.
“It’s just about the most charmin’ scene I have ever come across in my life!” gritted out a sarcastic, furious Jessica, at the water’s edge.
Under orders to retrieve her sister back to the home front, she had arrived, on horseback, some few minutes ago. Only to stand thunderstruck, hidden by bushes, during the first, second, and third dunkings into Vestigo Creek. She had gnashed her teeth in silent rage as events moved forward to the inevitable conclusion.
But, providentially, she had halted that little spectacle just in time.
�
�And wouldn’t Papa have a few words to say,” she demanded icily, “if he had happened upon your sickening display. And Aunt Sophie—well, I hate to think! Tell me, just how far did this go, anyway? Did my arrival here prevent the final disgrace? And aren’t you both ashamed of such immodest behavior?”
Sam, holding his trousers together against the weight of the water which saturated them, rose slowly and carefully. “Stop talkin’ like a goldarn book, Jess,” he said wearily, “and move aside. Nothin’ much happened, other’n the kiss you saw. And that was accidental.”
“And you expect me to believe that balderdash? I mean, really—”
“Don’t get yourself in an uproar. Everything was just teasin’ and spur of the moment. Lemme assure you, as I would assure Mr. Clark, was he here, that his daughter’s virtue has not been compromised.”
He sloshed out, piled onto the rock where his shirt still lay, and yanked off his socks.
“Better come back to dry land, Victoria, dear, before you catch pneumonia,” caroled Jessica in a super-syrupy voice. “You can wrap up in that towel during your walk home.”
“You got nothin’ better to do than bark orders around?” Sam was struggling to shove his bare, damp feet inside cold damp boots. It was not a happy fit. He planned on squelching his way back home to change as soon as possible. Then, he supposed, he would be required to visit the Yellowstar and dance attendance upon his picky, prickly bride-to-be.
Jessica had already turned away to grab her horse’s reins. “Absolutely, when I’m having to deal with fools.” Flinging herself into the saddle, she gave him one last taunt. “How dare you? How dare you humiliate me like this? I’ll expect you at the ranch this evenin’, Sam Marsden, and we’re gonna have us a little chat and settle matters, once and for all. Especially concerning limits as to how far I will allow you to go when it comes to prospective in-laws.”
Kicking her surprised mount in the ribs, she tore away through the bushes and thundered down the hill.
Silence. Even the birds had stopped their singing.
One curled up sycamore leaf released its hold on a branch and drifted slowly to the ground.
“I’ll turn my back for now, Miss Clark,” Sam, gathering up his shirt and socks, said quietly. “Just wanna make sure you get outta that creek all right, and start for home.”
A slosh and a splash indicated that she was, for once, following his directions. When no more splodge of water sounded, he forced himself to take a step away from her. And another.
“I’m sorry, Vickie.” His voice, as he headed over the knoll to the Marsden farm, was almost too low and twisted to be heard. “I am—so—sorry…”
Chapter 12
“Y’ mean, the man kissed you and then never said another word about it, he just walked away?”
In disbelief, Valentine repeated what he saw as the most important part of her recital. He himself could never imagine kissing Vickie Clark at any time that he wouldn’t want to keep on kissing her, no matter how often and how rude the interruption. It was what he dreamed of. It was what he lived for.
“I let him,” confessed Vickie miserably, “because I thought—I hoped—then he wouldn’t have so easily forgotten our time together before the War. When Sam wanted me to marry him. I still haven’t solved that mystery. I meant to ask him, to find out what happened, but—well—I just didn’t. Oh, Val, I feel like such a failure!”
Good old reliable, dependable, available Val, he thought bitterly. During Sam’s absence, she had brought her wounded heart and shattered soul to whom else but Valentine DeMarco for soothing and fixing. It was a role he had enjoyed. Especially considering there ought to be a considerable reward waiting at the end of it, once she’d gotten used to Sam being temporarily gone.
Was it wrong for him to have assumed—to have expected—that that absence might become permanent, and then good old reliable Val could step into his rival’s shoes? Take his place?
Yesterday’s experience was evidently still so fresh in her mind, weighing so heavily on her mind, that she had evaded all the old guard at Yellowstar and come pelting into town on Marigold in search of her best friend.
Vickie had looked so distraught when she had burst into his newspaper office, mused Val, that he had immediately hung up the ‘Closed’ sign on its hook across the office door, turned the lock, and gently drawn her into the back corner where some vestige of privacy remained.
He didn’t yet know what the problem was, but he was about to find out. Dispatching her into the rather battered settee he sometimes used as a bed when events around town were jumping, Val served her a hot strong cup of coffee (and added a behind-the-scene dollop of excellent Kentucky bourbon, just for good measure) and plenty of sympathy.
With lots of patience and encouragement, he enticed her (it didn’t need much) to relate her story of what had taken place, from her first hour of wandering along Vestigo River to the final ignominious moment when she was caught almost in flagrante delicto with Sam Marsden, her sister’s betrothed.
It came out in dibs and drabs, fits and starts, interrupted by occasional tears, a muffled sob or two, and too many silent minutes of staring glassily into space.
She admitted that, from when she had finally taken her sodden self home, until just now, she had re-lived every detail, rehashing every word said, every action taken. All, she insisted, to her detriment.
How could she even live with herself from here on?
“Enough of that. You will because you will,” said Val harshly. Too much hand-holding was not a good thing. Not when the one whose hand was being held needed a good hard boot in the posterior to bring back her fighting spirit.
To give him credit, he had listened to her recount of the sousing and dousing, followed by that fatal kiss, with barely a change of expression. All the while thinking, Oh, where was I while all this was going on? Why I couldn’t I have been there, wherever it was? Can’t she see? Is the girl blind?
“I’m sorry, Vickie, love,” he said quietly. “Sounds like the world turned upside down on you, just like that.”
“Oh, everything is such a mess. I simply can’t find my way out of it, Val. I simply can’t imagine watching the two of them marry, and settle in to a life at the ranch, while I—while I… Life is so unfair.”
“Yup. Reckon it is. Give me your cup; I’ll pour you more coffee.”
And more bourbon. It might make her sleepy, probably maudlin, but at least she wouldn’t be crying great helpless tears all over the shoulder of his best suit again. Talk about an unfair life!
“I suppose that sister of yours couldn’t wait to get home and tell the tale of your downfall,” he observed, using a sleight of hand with the booze.
“Papa and Auntie were waiting for me, when I sloshed into the house,” she said, taking a deep gulp of the refilled potion. “Jessica was nowhere to be seen. They did,” she recalled, on bitten lip, “have the decency to wait for my horsewhipping until I’d changed into dry things and gotten decent.”
“Let the chastisements begin,” intoned Val.
“Exactly. They took me into the parlor, and offered me the early supper that I missed. Then things went downhill from there. They were shocked. They were disappointed. They were disgusted. I am too old to be sent away to boarding school, and too young to be married off to some stranger from a foreign land but, believe me, they are strongly considering both those options.”
Sighing, Val shifted one ungainly leg over the other. “I suppose the tale Jess told far exceeded actual fact.”
An Endless Love to Remember: A Historical Western Romance Book Page 20
