Only Mine

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Jessica gave Reno a startled look. He was pouring an intricate pattern of honey over a steaming biscuit, ignoring the conversation completely.

  “After that, folks started talking about Reno’s Revenge and a man who was pure hell with a six-gun,” Wolfe concluded. “Pretty soon they were just talking about a man called Reno, a man who would help you if you drew short cards in a rigged game, a man who didn’t look for fights but didn’t back away when one found him. I liked what I heard, so I looked Reno up.”

  When Reno turned toward Wolfe to reply, Jessica calmly filched a biscuit from Reno’s plate. Rafe saw, winked, and passed her the honey. Jessica smiled and looked sideways at Reno. She knew his quick green eyes had seen the small theft, just as she knew he could have retrieved the biscuit before she had a chance to blink. Reno had the fastest reflexes of any man she had ever met.

  “Pass the biscuits,” Reno said. “A certain small redhead stole one of mine.”

  “She’s just trying to keep you from getting fat,” Rafe said blandly.

  “Then she better eat yours, too. Much more of Willy’s cooking and the only thing that will fit around your waist is that long bullwhip you fancy.”

  Jessica looked from one hard, lean Moran brother to the other. She put her napkin over her mouth, but mere cloth couldn’t muffle her snickers. Reno heard and turned toward her.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  Peeking over the napkin, Jessica nodded her head.

  Reno’s face softened into a smile. “Sassy as your hair, aren’t you?”

  Wolfe’s hand tightened around his fork as he saw Jessica’s eyes sparkle with amusement. He told himself that Reno couldn’t help being handsome as sin and lethal as hell. Nor could Rafe help his fallen-angel good looks and potent male charm, both of which he showed in abundance around Jessica. Neither Moran brother would have touched any man’s wife, much less the wife of a friend like Wolfe Lonetree, and he knew it.

  Yet day after day of watching Jessica respond to their masculine teasing like a flower soaking up warm rain had worn Wolfe raw. He couldn’t remember the last time Jessica had turned toward him with light in her eyes and laughter on her lips.

  And that’s the way it has to stay. Wolfe reminded himself savagely. It’s been hard enough sharing a bed with her for the past week. If she looked up at me and smiled and held out her arms…

  A shudder of raw desire went through Wolfe. He told himself he was a fool for not sleeping with Rafe and Reno in the small cabin that had served as Caleb and Willow’s home while the big house was being built. If Wolfe had been in the cabin, he wouldn’t have lain awake for long hours, listening to the soft breathing of the girl who lay so close to him, yet never touched him at all. If he had been in the cabin, he wouldn’t have lain rigid with a need that grew greater every moment, his body demanding what his mind would not permit him to take.

  And if Wolfe had been in the cabin, he wouldn’t have heard Jessica’s broken whimpers and muffled cries, wouldn’t have felt the erratic stirring of her body as she fought within the coils of a dark dream that came every night, waking her, waking him.

  What is it, Jessi?

  Nothing. I don’t remember.

  Damn it, what is it that frightens you so?

  I’m foolish, my lord bastard, but not stupid. I’ll give you no more weapons to turn against me.

  So at night they lay side by side, stiff, sleepless, listening to the wind moan over the battleground between winter and spring.

  “FISHING?” Jessica asked, looking up from the mending in her lap. “Did I hear trout fishing mentioned?”

  Caleb and Wolfe were sitting at the dinner table, studying a map Caleb had drawn, showing the range of several nearby mustang herds. He turned away from Wolfe and looked at Jessica, who was mending one of Willow’s dresses by lantern light.

  “Do you like to fish?” Caleb asked.

  “No,” she said calmly. “I love it. I will walk through fire barefoot to get to a good trout stream.”

  Caleb raised black eyebrows and looked at Wolfe.

  “It’s the truth,” Wolfe admitted. “She’ll be out working a piece of water on a stormy evening when everyone else is in front of a fire talking about the one that got away.”

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Caleb asked Wolfe. “There’s some good trout water nearby.”

  “It’s too early for trout to be out of their winter torpor.”

  “Not along parts of the Columbine. There’s enough hot-spring water mixed into the stream that certain stretches of it come alive long before anything else does.”

  “Truly?” Jessica asked.

  Caleb grinned. “Truly.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Jessica set aside the mending and ran into the bedroom. When she returned, her hands were full of small boxes.

  “What do the streamside insects here look like?” she asked eagerly, opening boxes and setting them on the dinner table in front of the men. Tiny, carefully tied flies rested within the boxes. “Are they light or dark, big or small, colorful or drab?”

  “Yes.”

  She gave Caleb a slanting, sidelong glance. “Yes?”

  He nodded gravely. “They’re light and dark, big and small, colorful and drab.”

  “Caleb, stop teasing Jessica,” Willow called from the back of the house.

  “But I’m getting so good at it.”

  Jessica tried not to smile, and failed. Caleb was indeed getting quite good at teasing her.

  There was the sound of the wind slamming the back door, followed by footsteps as Willow walked through the kitchen into the living room. Sleet glistened in the wool shawl she had worn to the privy.

  She shook the shawl and hung it on a peg near the door for the next trip, knowing it wouldn’t be long before necessity overcame her reluctance to face the cold scouring of the spring wind. The more pregnant she became, the more frequently she was forced to visit the privy’s drafty comforts.

  “Jessi gets quite enough ribbing from my brothers,” Willow continued, yawning. “Why don’t you try protecting her, instead?”

  “That’s Wolfe’s job,” Caleb said, giving the other man an amused look, “and God help the man who gets in Wolfe’s way.”

  Wolfe looked back impassively.

  Caleb’s grin was rather feral. No matter how hard Wolfe tried to conceal his irritation at the handsome Moran brothers’ gallant attentions to Jessica, Caleb sensed the jealousy that seethed just beneath Wolfe’s calm surface. Caleb would have had more sympathy for his friend, but he didn’t understand why Wolfe was so hard on his young wife.

  “I don’t mind the way Rafe and Reno tease,” Jessica said as Willow walked in from the kitchen, patting back another yawn. “I never had any brothers or sisters. I had no idea how much fun it could be.”

  “No siblings?” Willow asked, surprised. “You poor darling. How lonely it must have been for you.”

  Jessica hesitated, then shrugged. “It was all I knew. And I had the firth and forest to roam.” “I can’t imagine having only one child,” Willow said, shaking her head. “I want a house full of kids.”

  “I imagine many women feel like that before they experience childbed.”

  The barely muted horror in Jessica’s voice created a pool of silence that expanded and deepened until she realized her mistake and changed the subject with a determined smile.

  “Do you like to fish, Willow?”

  “Caleb is the fisherman in the family. He’s very good at it.”

  Caleb gave Willow a lazy, sidelong glance and a crooked smile. Though not a word was said, her cheeks turned a revealing shade of pink.

  “I’m a fair fisherman,” he admitted. “Don’t care much for fishing rods or lures, though.”

  “You don’t?” Jessica asked. “What do you use, then? Nets or traps? Or do you hunt like the Eskimo, with spears?”

  Caleb shook his head. “Nothing that fancy.”

  “How do you catch fish, th
en?”

  “Patience, stealth, and bare hands.”

  His smile shifted as he measured the deepening color of Willow’s cheeks. His golden eyes gleamed with a frank male sensuality that surprised Jessica; up to that instant, she hadn’t thought of Caleb as a particularly passionate man. She had been wrong. The hunger in his eyes as he watched his wife was barely veiled by his half-lowered lids.

  “You see,” Caleb explained in a slow, deep voice, “trout like to be stroked all over. That’s why they hold station in the fastest currents. Isn’t that right, honey? Don’t they just lie there, quivering, waiting for the moment when—”

  Willow’s hands clapped over her husband’s mouth, cutting off his words.

  “Caleb Winslow Black, if you weren’t too big, I’d turn you over my knee and teach you a few manners!”

  Laughing, Caleb turned his head quickly aside, evading his wife’s attempts to muzzle him. Believing the caress would be hidden by Willow’s hands, he flicked the tip of his tongue between two of her fingers, stroking the sensitive skin.

  But Jessica saw the secret caress, just as she saw the change in Willow’s smile and the brief, sensual glide of her fingertip over his lower lip. For an instant, something quite primitive arced between man and wife; then Caleb smiled and pulled Willow onto his lap with gentle hands.

  “I’m too big for your knees, honey. You fit real nice across mine, though.”

  “Caleb…”

  Willow’s voice died. She flushed and glanced toward the other two people in the room.

  “Hush,” Caleb said softly, pressing Willow’s cheek against his shoulder. “Wolfe and Jessi are husband and wife. They won’t faint if they see you sitting in my lap.”

  With a sigh, Willow relaxed against her husband. He shifted her more closely against his body, brushed a kiss over her hair, and leaned toward the boxes with their intriguing array of flies.

  “You’ll probably have some luck with this one,” he said to Jessica, pointing toward something that looked like a black ant. “We have mayflies and caddis, too, so that box should fill many a frying pan.”

  “Is the stream you mentioned far from here?” Jessica asked.

  But the question occupied only part of her mind. She was still measuring the difference between marriage as she understood it and marriage as Willow and Caleb lived it.

  Is this why Wolfe can’t be reconciled to our marriage? Did he expect of marriage what Caleb and Willow so obviously have—a union of lives rather than a merger of titles and wealth?

  “The Columbine isn’t far,” Caleb said. “Wolfe knows how to get there.”

  “Thank you,” Jessica said quickly, “but if it’s close, I’ll just go by myself.”

  “Like hell you will,” Wolfe said. “If it’s the stream I’m thinking of, there’s a band of Utes that winters there. They like hot springs as well as white men do.”

  Caleb nodded. “There’s a small camp. No more than three or four families. Mostly old men, women, and boys. I haven’t had any trouble with them.”

  “Yet,” Wolfe retorted. “You let down your guard and you’ll be missing some horses real quick.”

  “Keeps a man on his toes,” Caleb agreed blandly.

  Wolfe laughed. “You should have been a warrior.”

  “He is,” Willow said sleepily. She yawned and burrowed closer to her husband’s strength. “If he weren’t, I’d have died a year ago.”

  Long, amber eyelashes flickered down and Willow sighed, relaxing deeply against her husband, letting the rest of the world fade into the warm distance of sleep.

  “Reno and Wolf j helped me,” Caleb pointed out in a dry voice.

  Willow didn’t answer. She had fallen asleep. Caleb smiled and smoothed a bright lock of hair back from his wife’s face.

  “You’re right about the camp,” he said quietly to Wolfe. “It’s not far from the best stretch of trout water for a hundred miles around. But as long as you keep your rifle handy, you won’t have any problems. The Utes know Tree That Stands Alone. You’re a legend with them.”

  “I’m sure Wolfe has better things to do than watch me lash a stream,” Jessica said quietly.

  “That’s a fact,” Wolfe agreed.

  Caleb looked from Jessica to Wolfe and bit back impatient words. Caleb didn’t know what was wrong between the two of them, but he had no doubt that something was. Normally controlled to a fault, Wolfe’s temper had become as volatile as nitroglycerin. He spent the days working like a man possessed, yet from the look of him there was no rest at night, nor any peace. Jessica looked no better. When she had arrived ten days ago, she had been exhausted from the long trip. She still looked exhausted.

  “Nonsense,” Caleb said firmly. “It will do Wolfe good. He’s been working like two men.”

  “Bull,” Wolfe said. “Looking after our broodmares isn’t work, it’s pleasure.”

  “And digging pestholes, cleaning out springs, fencing off rockfalls and blind canyons, chopping firewood—”

  “I said I don’t mind,” Wolfe said, cutting across the other man’s words.

  “Do be quiet, you’ll wake Willow,” Jessica said, showing both men two rows of even white teeth.

  “In any case, I won’t be leaving Willow while you’re out working all over the countryside. The babe could decide to be born at any moment. There is enough agony and terror waiting for Willow. She shouldn’t be alone in the bargain.”

  “Hold your tongue,” Wolfe said coldly. “Not everyone feels as you do about bearing children.”

  “Not everyone,” Jessica agreed with equal chill.

  “Merely every woman.”

  “That’s enough!” Wolfe said.

  “Jessica is right,” Caleb said abruptly. “God help me, she’s right about the danger. When I think of how Becky died…” His expression changed as he looked down at the woman who slept so trustingly in his arms. “Willow is my life.”

  “I didn’t mean…” Jessica whispered, but no one was listening.

  Caleb stood, lifting Willow with him. Without a word, he carried his wife into their bedroom. The door shut softly behind them.

  Sleet rattled over the windows, breaking the silence Caleb had left behind. The howling voice of the wind curled through the room, filling all space, all silence, summoning all that Jessica had spent a lifetime trying to forget.

  Hands clasped together until her fingers ached, Jessica fought not to show the fear she had lived with so long she couldn’t remember a time without it. The need to cry out was a constant aching in her throat. Hiding her fear was becoming harder each day. The nights were becoming impossible. Soon she would hear a woman’s screams mingled in awful harmony with the wind’s predatory cry.

  Jessica wondered whether the screams would be Willow’s or her own.

  11

  “S UCH a fine, delicate stitch,” Willow marveled, watching Jessica embroider an ornate B on a christening gown. “I tried to learn when I was a child, but I didn’t have the patience. I still don’t.”

  “I’d rather be able to make biscuits.”

  “Your stew is excellent,” Willow said, suppressing a smile.

  “It’s edible,” Jessica corrected wryly, “thanks to you. Without your tutoring. I’d still be trying to interest a skunk in my cooking. You’ve been very patient with me.”

  “My pleasure. I’ve enjoyed having you here. I haven’t really had another woman to talk to since my mother died.”

  Jessica hesitated. “You must have been lonely.”

  “Not since I found Caleb.”

  With a sigh, Willow settled deeper into the sofa next to Jessica.

  “If there’s anything else about the domestic arts you want to know, just ask,” Willow said, yawning. “I’m going to be lazy and watch you embroider while the bread rises.”

  Jessica became very still. “Do you mean that?”

  “Definitely. I feel very lazy.”

  “I meant about asking questions.”

  “Of
course.” Willow sighed and shifted her weight, trying to accommodate the baby’s restlessness. “Fire away.”

  “What I need to know is very…personal.”

  “That’s all right. The War Between the States made me pretty shockproof. Ask whatever you like.”

  Jessica took a deep breath and said quickly, “You seem to enjoy your husband.”

  “Oh, yes. Very much. He’s a wonderful man.” Willow’s hazel eyes kindled with delight and her smile became incandescent.

  “No, I mean you enjoy him. Physically. In the marriage bed.”

  Willow blinked. “Yes. I do.”

  “Do many women actually enjoy the marriage bed?”

  For a moment, Willow looked thoughtful as she remembered her mother’s laughter and her father’s low voice murmuring through the house late at night. Willow also remembered the Widow Sorenson’s eyes lighting when she talked about the pleasure of sharing her life with a man.

  “I think many women do,” Willow said slowly. Then she admitted, “I never truly understood it until I met Caleb. I was engaged to a boy who died in the war. When he kissed my cheek or held my hand, it was nice but it didn’t make me want to be his woman. Yet when Caleb looks at me or smiles or touches me…”

  She hesitated, searching for words.

  “There’s nothing else in the world for you,” Jessica finished quietly, remembering how it had felt when Wolfe smiled at her, filling her world.

  But he no longer smiled at her, and her world was the empty wind.

  “Yes. Everything else vanishes.” After a moment, Willow said simply, “I never knew babies were conceived in ecstasy, until Caleb.”

  The embroidery thread knotted under Jessica’s tense fingers as memories spurted through her unwilling mind. “Not all babies are conceived that way. My mother’s certainly weren’t. She fought my father. Dear God, how she fought him.”

  Unhappily, Willow watched Jessica, sensing the violent tension in the other girl’s slim body. She put her arm around Jessica in silent sympathy.

  “Was there no love between them?” Willow asked softly.

  “My father needed a male heir. His first wife was an aristocrat, who couldn’t conceive. When she died, he took my mother as his wife. She was a common lady’s maid. She was pregnant with me at the time. The earl had bedded her, you see.”