Running Wild

by Denise Eagan

  “And what would that be? Needlepoint? I warn you, I’m far more dangerous with a needle than I should ever be with a rifle! The embroidery I’ve created could scare a person into the great beyond!”

  He grinned, chuckling again. “Not your cup of tea, huh? O.K., then, I’ll teach you to shoot a rifle. Long as your Pa agrees to it, that is.”

  She beamed at him. “Then it is decided, for Father rarely denies my anything.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve noticed that.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

  That ever blotted paper.

  Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

  Nick walked into the house and closed the door with one foot, while dropping the mail on the side table with his right hand and tugging on his gun belt with his left. Nothin’ like being a rancher to make a body capable of doing three things at once. After hanging up his coat and gun belt on a wooden peg, he picked up the stack of mail. Shuffling through it, he started across the entryway into the parlor, heading for the library. A bill for barbed wire, a letter from Rick in his large, mostly-illegible scrawl, another to Melinda from Lilah in her careful, neat hand—

  “Why good afternoon, Nicholas. You’ve returned from town early, haven’t you? I was under the impression that you’d left for the night.”

  Nick’s head jerked up at the sound of Star’s deep, melodious voice. Dressed in a white and purple flowered dress, she was sitting with a book in her lap on the brown, leather sofa, in front of a large fire. A heavy black shawl was drape around her shoulders and she’d curled her feet up under her gown. Her shoes were on the floor next to the sofa. Why was that seductive? Feet were not sensual. They were hard, smelly attachments to the legs, useful only to get a body from one place to another. There wasn’t a thing about ’em that that a man could find seductive.

  Most likely Star’s were soft and perfumed, though, with pretty little toes, wiggling in joy when—

  Sonuvabitch!

  “Just went in for supplies and mail,” Nick answered and jerked hard on the reins of lust, so easily pulled from his grip these days.

  She smiled and reached up to play with her earring as she tilted her head. Dressed as she was, seated as she was, she ought to be the picture of maidenly innocence. The gleam in her eyes told a man an entirely different story. “Is that so? I thought Mondays were your—how shall I phrase this?—your night in town.”

  “That’d be Tuesdays and Saturdays, ma’am,” he answered blandly. “And an occasional Thursday.”

  She laughed and straightened her head once more, all attempt at innocence gone. “You know, that is one of the things I like the most about you, Nicholas. You never dissemble.”

  “Why should I, when you don’t either? Besides, we’re both old enough to understand a man’s needs.”

  The gleam turned to a wicked sparkle. “And a woman’s.”

  Damn, just when he got a good grasp on those reins, she yanked ’em out of his hands as easily as if he were a child. “Reckon I know somethin’ about them, too,” he answered, before he thought it through. Ah hell, he ought not to have said that. The last thing the woman needed was encouragement.

  “I expect you do. That is certainly another reason I like you so much.”

  Damn! He drew a breath, then answered abruptly, “What made you decide to sit in here? Melinda’s parlor is a cozier place to read. She’s got the stove and all.”

  Amusement glittering in her eyes, she smiled and shifted slightly in her seat, adjusting her legs. For a few seconds her toes peeped out from under her gown—the longest few seconds of Nick’s life. “In some ways, perhaps. Father and Mother are in there with Melinda and the children. It’s quieter here and. . . .” She paused. Her gaze moved around the room, passing over windows and furniture, before catching his eyes again. A puzzle appeared between her brows. “I’m more comfortable here. I do so love the smell of wood smoke.”

  Her voice took on a slightly wistful quality, which touched Nick’s heart. “Me too. Melinda’s nagged me to put in a coal-burning stove like in her parlor. Truth is what she really wants is a furnace and central heating. Hate to have the house ripped up like that, though.”

  Star shrugged. “I’m warm enough.”

  She shouldn’t be. An Easterner like her, used to all kinds of luxury from furnaces to telephones, ought to hate it.

  “O.K.,” he said. He shuffled through the mail and tried to shove aside the peculiar sense of connection that floated on the air whenever they were together. The more he saw her and the more they talked, the more it grew. He sure didn’t need to become attached to a woman who lived over a thousand miles away.

  “Let’s see what I got here for you.” He seated himself on the edge of the sofa, leaving a goodly distance between his thigh and those pretty feet. He withdrew two large, stuffed envelopes with feminine writing scrawled across the front, along with a slimmer packet, neatly addressed in small letters with the precision of a man’s hand. Instead of a return address, the man had drawn a black rose. It gave Nick the creeps. She sure had strange friends, he thought handing her the letters. He was starting to rise when she gasped. The color drained from her face as she stared at the envelope.

  “Problem?” he asked frowning.

  “I—I—” she stuttered. She looked up at him. Shadows from the fireplace pranced across her face, making it appear anxious and pinched. Nick’s muscles tightened. He’d never seen Star truly scared. Not even when confronted by two hundred pounds of rabid cougar.

  She forced a smile. It didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s just . . . why you see. . . I haven’t told many people where I am. Just a close friend or two and the editors of the magazine to which I contribute. I was treating this as a sort of holiday.”

  “So the man who wrote that isn’t one of those people?”

  “N—no, I don’t think so,” she said. She drew in a breath, then turned the envelope over and passed a well-manicured finger under the flap.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “You see the thing is, well I don’t quite know who he is.” She pulled out two sheets of paper, carefully written in the same small, tight male writing. “He’s my secret admirer.”

  “Secret admirer,” Nick repeated, watching her spread the paper in her lap. Ordinarily it’d have amused him, but the increased pitch of her voice and the tension in her jaw stole the merriment from the situation. “Sounds silly, if you ask me.”

  “Yes,” she said absentmindedly. “You’re right, of—” She stopped abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Not really.”

  “You don’t look as if it’s nothing. Can I read it?”

  She lifted her head. The gold in her eyes had darkened to a light brown. “If you wish, but it’s really just flummery.”

  Except that she was ghost-pale.

  He pulled the paper from her lap, shoving aside a flash of desire when his fingers brushed over her thighs.

  My dearest Virginia,

  How thrilled I am to hear of your holiday in the West. I am quite certain it will do my dearest love a great deal of good. As I write this letter, I envision the way the cold mountain air will put lovely red roses in your cheeks and a spring in your graceful step. I imagine your eyes glowing gently, and surely your soft white hands quiver with anticipation as you read my words, for I know in my adoring heart how eagerly you await my letters. No doubt, the overwhelming joy of receiving this one has elicited grand excitement in your bosom, and when I close my eyes, I can see the sweet, rapid rise and fall of it. Ah, but I shall write no more on that subject, my darling, dearest love, for words such as these must surely bring you to the blush, and I am a gentleman.

  Grimacing, Nick raised his head. “It’s god awful. Does he really think you’d like this kinda hogwash?”

  She let out a tiny laugh and her eyes brightened a mite. “You don’t consider me poetic, Nicholas?”

&
nbsp; “I’d reckon you’re more a Poe kind of woman than Shelley.”

  “Are you accusing me of being unfeminine?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Never, ma’am. Only not a shrinking violet. Or the kind of woman who’d put much store in lines like. . .” He looked down and read, “‘such as these much surely bring you to the blush.’”

  “Ah, then I am coarse.” Something flickered in her eye. Insecurity. It coursed over his nerves, then pierced his heart. He rarely marked any degree of vulnerability in Star Montgomery; she behaved as if she owned the world. Yet here she was looking at him as if anxious that he’d take her straight-to-the-point forwardness as lacking gentility. The truth was, he appreciated not needing to constantly guess her thoughts. “No, ma’am,” he said gently. “Just not silly enough to blush at the word bosom.”

  She studied him a moment. The vulnerability melted under the heat rising in those eyes, as passion ignited and flickered in the air between them.

  “Yes, well,” she said after a moment and reached for the letter, “I did tell you it was nothing—”

  He held tightly to the sheets. “I’m not done.” He began reading again.

  “I told you. . . .” she started then trailed off.

  Two more paragraphs of lush, poetic descriptions of a woman the man obviously did not know. Star wouldn’t give the time of day to an hombre like this. And then. . .

  I am supremely grateful and pleased that your family has at long last realized the strain of Society upon your gentle spirit and has removed you from the pressures of the East. As dreadfully as I miss your heavenly visage, I look forward to reveling in the splendid alterations a holiday will make upon my dearest love. Surely with the passage of time and the mountain air to breathe a new understanding into your lungs, you now recognize the folly of your ways, my dear, and when you at last return to my side, you will be repulsed by the company you have been keeping. Westerners, I have heard, understand a woman’s place much better than these reformers in the East, and will gently exhort upon you the error of your ways.

  Nick’s shoulders knotted. He looked up. “Error of your ways?”

  “He doesn’t believe in the women’s movement.”

  He frowned. “Then why the hell is he interested in you?”

  A muscle jumped in her cheek. “Why the hell, indeed,” she said, a trace of her usual merriment marbling her voice.

  “Damn, I was tryin’ not to cuss so much in front of you,” he said, looking back down at the letter.

  “You appear to be losing that battle.”

  It is with a hopeful heart that I close this letter. I know that when you return to me, my angel, you will be on the outside the woman whom I know is hiding in your heart, one joyous at being a woman, happy to lay the course and instruction of her life in the hands of a man. No longer will I spend sleepless nights worrying that you are demeaning yourself, in truth, damning yourself in the eyes of God, by following the harridans of this ridiculous and dangerous movement. No longer will I laboriously ponder what manner of correction I might, in the end, be required to resort to in order to steer you toward a proper path. No, you shall now be the soft and gracious creature God created, and shall, with a warm and loving heart, turn away from the destructive influences of these women, and into my waiting, welcoming arms.

  I’ll be watching you,

  Romeo

  With a tightness in his jaw, Nick lifted his head, narrowing his eyes as he stared at Star. “Correction? What kind of correction?”

  “None other than reams of letters imploring me to change my ways.”

  “Has he sent you a lot of these things?”

  She hesitated. “One a week, but they aren’t anything, really. I’ve had admirers before, Nicholas.”

  And six fiancés.

  Still, this letter seemed threatening.

  “But it troubles you,” he said lamely.

  She shrugged, trying, most likely to appear unconcerned. She was still peaked, though, and her hands lay clenched in her lap. “It is rather daunting,” she said, “that for all the work and education we reformers have done, there are still many, many men who refuse to listen. Oh, they hear us—they can’t help but hear us, for we are loud and growing louder—but they don’t listen.”

  Nick shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, it’s not your cause that bothers me about this letter. It’s this hombre’s assertion that he’s going to make dam—danged sure that you change your ways. Or else. He doesn’t say ‘or else’, but it’s there.”

  “Why, yes, but he says very much the same in all his letters and he’s done nothing at all. Nor would I expect him to, since he has not even the strength of spirit to provide his real name.”

  “Another thing that troubles me is,” Nick said slowly, glancing briefly at the envelope on the sofa between them, “the fact that he knows you’re here.”

  She grimaced. “Yes. Yes, that is a trifle distressing.”

  Damn, Nick thought as he digested the information. This wasn’t just some lovesick boy, but a man in earnest pursuit. “You sent invitations to Lee’s wedding to a whole slew of people back East, didn’t you?”

  She tilted her head in that deliberative way of hers, which tugged at his chest. Why? Because it meant she was thinking. Puzzling through a problem. The women he’d grown up with didn’t work through problems outside of cooking or cleaning or child rearing. “Why, yes, of course, with the understanding that they would not attend. It’s quite a distance and during the holiday season at well. But,” she said, nodding slightly, “I see your point. All of those invitations had the Bar M as a return address.”

  “He could’ve gotten our location from them.”

  “Presuming he’s a member of Society. Until now, I thought he’d only heard of me through the movement.”

  “Could be he knows one of your friends.”

  “Yes,” she said nodding slowly. “That is a possibility. He may even have rifled through the trash.”

  He grinned and gave her letter back reluctantly. “More ’n likely not that. He writes like an educated man,” he said, taking up the rest of the mail and rising. “Does your Pa know about this?”

  “The whole family does. They find it diverting.”

  The tension eased in his muscles. If Ward knew about the letters and didn’t care, well he was a smart, smart man, who better understood the style of those folk back East. No doubt Nick was just seein’ ghosts.

  “I imagine if he’s educated then he is a member of Society,” Star speculated aloud.

  “Not everybody who’s educated is a member of your Society. Just probably not living on the streets.”

  She smiled and the light came back into her eyes again. “Forgive me, Nicholas. For a moment I’d forgotten that you are an educated man. It is quite possible,” she said as she played with her earring again, “that someone like you has written me these letters. How intriguing that would be. I think I should like to meet Romeo after all and become—how shall I say this?—better acquainted.”

  The flirt was back and Nick found himself on well-trod ground. “A man like me wouldn’t be writin’ letters. Man like me would be upfront and honest. Letters and poetry are a waste of time.”

  “Is that so? You know, I must confess yours is an approach I would prefer. Letters are so impersonal. Too much mental energy and not nearly enough physical attention.”

  Man alive, the way she could switch moods—and drag him with her—made his head spin. “I expect so. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d better deliver the rest of this mail.”

  “Yes,” she said, and returned the letter to its envelope. “Quite right.” She picked up another letter and slid her finger along the seam. Nick started toward the door linking the old house and the expansion wing, complete with Melinda’s parlor. Try as he did though, he couldn’t dismiss Romeo altogether. After several steps, he stopped and turned. She was reading another letter. Judging by the frown of concentration between her eyebrows, it was interesting,
but not upsetting.

  “Miz Montgomery?”

  She raised her head. “Yes?”

  “’Bout that shootin’ lesson. You ask your Pa?”

  Her eyes darkened a bit—she knew why he mentioned it—but a seductive smile walked across her face, eclipsing concern. “Yes, I did. He said he couldn’t care less as long as I took pains not to shoot him. Why, are you willing to teach me, then?”

  Stupid, stupid idea. The woman was just fine and didn’t need a damned bit of help from him. She had a father and two brothers to care for her. “Sure. When?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  Her gold eyes gleamed with mischief. “Whenever it is convenient for you.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon sound good? Right after dinner.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. He turned, trying not to think about the way her voice had become a low purr, which heated his blood and made his idiotic heart pound.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was so free with him as not to mince the matter.

  Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha

  My honor is my life; both grow in one;

  Take honor from me, and my life is done.

  Shakespeare, King Richard II

  Star easily kept pace with Nicholas, who guided her through a small section of trees to the shooting range situated about a half mile southeast of the ranch house. Their feet crunched on a thin layer of snow, while the early afternoon sun started its decline in a light blue sky. As a cool breeze wafted under her plain straw hat, Star cast a sidelong glance at Nicholas. Dressed in his tan leather coat and blue jean pants, he covered the ground quickly in that confident, mile-eating jaunt of his, cradling his rifle in his right arm. He wore a pair of tan leather gloves, and he’d slung a small sack containing boxes of bullets over his left shoulder. It swung gently with each stride. Under the shadow of his Stetson, his face showed a half-day’s growth of beard.