Only Love

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “What about my boots?” Whip asked. “Will she settle for stocking feet?”

  “She’ll think of something. She protects this house like a tigress with only one cub.”

  “Can you blame her? An orphanage like she was raised in would make a body crave a home of their own.”

  Reno and Whip washed up at a small bench Reno had built at the back of the house. The water waiting for them was warm and scented with lilac.

  As cheerful as the scent was, Whip couldn’t help remembering the spearmint freshness that he associated with Shannon, and the small ritual of handing him a towel and inspecting his face so carefully for any speck of lather.

  Stop thinking about those beautiful blue eyes and that sweet mouth smiling up at you, Whip advised himself grimly. It isn’t fair to either one of us.

  Do what you have to do.

  Get Reno. Get gold.

  Get out.

  The thought didn’t have as much appeal as it should have.

  “Well, don’t take all day,” Eve said, smiling at the men from the back doorway. “If I wait any longer to give you a hug, the biscuits will burn.”

  Grinning, Reno wiped his hands on a clean rag and held out his arms. Eve stepped into them and held on hard.

  “Is everything all right?” she whispered very softly against Reno’s ear.

  “Nothing for us to worry about, sugar,” Reno answered with equal softness.

  He felt as much as heard his wife’s sigh of relief.

  “I smell burning biscuits,” Whip said blandly.

  Reno released Eve, who turned immediately to Whip and held out her arms.

  “They’ll be all right,” she said, “but I’m pining for a hug from my second-favorite man in the whole world.”

  Whip bent slightly, gathered Eve in a big hug, and held her close.

  Reno watched with an indulgent smile and no jealousy at all. He knew that his wife and brother had forged a special bond between them when both had risked their lives to dig Reno out from deep inside an ancient, dangerous mine.

  With a final squeeze, Whip set Eve back on her feet.

  “Come in and eat,” Eve said, smiling widely. “I can hear your stomach growling all the way from here. I’ll set your place while you change shoes. If you like, you can hang your bullwhip on one of the jacket pegs. Or you can wear it at the table. Suit yourself, so long as the hat stays here with the boots.”

  Reno and Whip exchanged a silent glance of amusement when they saw the pair of large, clean socks laid out beside Reno’s moccasins. But neither man had the heart to tease Eve about her attempt to civilize one small part of the West. In truth, the men welcomed the gentle rituals and generous feminine warmth that made a home from a simple house.

  While Whip ate, he told Reno and Eve about what he had been doing since they had seen him months ago. When he got around to talking about Echo Basin and Holler Creek, he passed lightly over the Culpeppers.

  Even without explanations or embroidery, Eve understood what had happened in Murphy’s mercantile. She had lived in some rough places before she met Reno. She knew exactly what stripe of male animal the Culpepper bunch was.

  What she didn’t know was why Silent John’s widow was at the Black ranch rather than with Whip.

  “Why didn’t you bring Mrs. Smith with you?” Eve asked Whip.

  “Mrs. Smith?”

  Eve saw the blank lack of comprehension in Whip’s eyes and made an exasperated sound.

  “The woman you brought from Echo Basin to the Black ranch,” Eve said, speaking slowly, as though to a backward child. “The woman who was insulted by the Culpeppers. The woman whose modesty you defended with that lethal bullwhip of yours.”

  “Oh. You mean Shannon.”

  “Lord above, of course I do,” Eve said, laughing. “Is your mind off woolgathering around the world again?”

  Surprisingly, red stained Whip’s cheekbones.

  “I don’t think of Shannon as Mrs. Smith,” Whip said tersely.

  Eve blinked, sweeping long lashes over her eyes, concealing the sudden speculation in them. She very much wanted to look at Reno, to see what he thought of Whip and the woman who might or might not be a widow, the woman Whip obviously didn’t like to think about as married at all.

  “I see,” Eve murmured. “Was Shannon too tired after the ride down from Echo Basin to come here?”

  “I left her with Willy and Cal. I was hoping Shannon would want to live with them and help Willy.”

  “That would be nice,” Eve said. “Willow has been looking to hire a girl for—”

  “Not as hired help,” Whip interrupted roughly. “Not really. Sort of like a sister or a maiden aunt.”

  Eve cleared her throat rather than point out that a widow was nobody’s maiden aunt. She knew the Moran men too well not to recognize the warning in Whip’s clear, bleak eyes. He was a man caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to move.

  Yet he had to move.

  Yondering man.

  Half of Eve’s heart went out to Whip and his pain. The other half of her heart went out to Shannon, whom she suspected was caught in pain as Eve had once been caught, in love with a man who wasn’t ready to love her. But in the end, Reno had come to love her.

  Eve wondered if Shannon would be that lucky.

  She looked at the big, blond-haired man whose eyes were clear as autumn ice. Whip could be gentle and loving, but God help anyone who tried to hold him when he would rather roam.

  “A family kind of thing, room and board and a little egg money,” Whip explained. “And safety. That most of all.”

  A sideways glance at Reno told Eve that her husband was both amused and bemused by his brother. The gentle curve of Reno’s mouth told of his sympathy, as well.

  “Is that what Shannon wants?” Eve asked, curious. “Safety and a little egg money?”

  The line of Whip’s mouth flattened even more. Put that way, it sounded like a paltry kind of existence for anyone, much less for a young woman like Shannon.

  Silence stretched uncomfortably.

  “If Shannon is half the woman you make her out to be,” Eve said finally, her voice careful, “you won’t need to worry about her for long. Some smart man will come down the road and give her a lot more than room and board and a little egg money.”

  Whip’s head came up. His eyes were narrowed to splinters of glittering gray.

  “He’ll give her his name and his children and build a home for her,” Eve said calmly. “She won’t have to live on the kindness of others. She’ll have her own home to enjoy, her own man to love, and her own children to raise. He will be her safety and she will be his refuge.”

  “No.”

  Whip didn’t know he had spoken aloud until he heard the echo of his own savage denial at the thought of Shannon bearing another man’s child. Whip’s hands gripped the edge of the table until his skin was white. He shouldn’t feel this way about Shannon and another man.

  But he did.

  Eve’s dark gold eyebrows raised in silent query at Whip’s vehemence.

  “She doesn’t have to marry some man and have his kids to be safe,” Whip said doggedly. “All she needs is…”

  His voice died.

  “I take it you don’t want to marry her yourself,” Eve said neutrally.

  “It’s nothing against Shannon.” Whip’s voice was raw. “If s me.”

  “Sugar,” Reno said softly, “it would be no kindness for Whip to marry Shannon. She might as well marry the wind.”

  “Does she know that?” Eve asked.

  “She knows,” Whip said flatly. “She told me she’d never marry a man who loved a sunrise he had never seen more than he loved her.”

  “Smart woman,” Eve said.

  “Stubborn woman,” Whip shot back. “She won’t leave the high country and it’s not safe there for a woman alone.”

  “Why won’t she leave?”

  “Up there, she isn’t beholden to anyone for her salt and bread
.”

  “Very smart woman,” Eve said.

  “Very damned stubborn woman,” Whip snarled. “I can’t leave her at the mercy of those miners and I can’t stay up there with her until she comes to her senses.”

  Eve made a sound that was sympathetic, questioning, and subtly goading.

  “The only way out of the mess,” Whip said, “is to find enough gold on those damned claims to buy her a place in Denver or back east or whatever, just so I know she’s safe.”

  “And unmarried?” Eve suggested sardonically.

  The bleak anger in Whip’s eyes was all the answer she needed.

  “Whip, for the love of heaven!” she said, exasperated. “If you don’t want to marry Shannon, why should you get so upset at the idea that some other man—”

  A nudge from Reno’s foot under the table cut off Eve’s words.

  “Whip knows he’s being unreasonable,” Reno said. “That’s why his temper is on a hair trigger. If he needs a fight, I’ll be the one to give it to him.”

  “Men,” Eve said under her breath.

  Then she sighed and tried another approach.

  “Why don’t you just give her some of your own gold from that Spanish mine?” Eve asked. “Lord knows you’ve barely touched it.”

  “In her place, would you take it?” Reno asked before Whip could speak.

  “No. But I was in love with a man who was a fool for hunting gold.”

  “And Shannon,” Reno said, “is in love with a man who is a fool for yon—”

  “She doesn’t really love me!” Whip interrupted harshly.

  “Is that what she says?” Eve retorted. “Or is it what you hope?”

  “She’s never been around anyone but a snake-mean old man hunter, and a tough old hermit called Cherokee, and a bunch of young miners with the manners of rutting elks,” Whip said. “Of course she would think the first man who treats her decently is special.”

  “In other words, she loves you,” Eve summarized.

  Whip grimaced and said nothing.

  “Let’s see if I have this straight,” Eve said blandly. “You don’t love Shannon, but you care about her safety. She doesn’t want to be someone’s hired girl. You don’t want her to live alone in Echo Basin, and you don’t want her marrying anyone, including you. So you’ve decided to find enough gold on her claims to salve your conscience before you take off yondering again. Does that about cover it?”

  Whip’s eyelids flinched.

  Reno’s breath came out in a low rush of air. “Eve…”

  She ignored him.

  “If you were a man,” Whip began, his voice uninflected.

  “If I were a man you’d be beating the tar out of me,” Eve said. “That’s one of the reasons God made women, so that men would have to think as well as fight.”

  Whip’s expression said he would rather fight.

  Eve stood and went around the table to where Whip sat coiled and struggling within a cage of his own making. She stroked his sun-bright hair, so different from her husband’s.

  “I love you, Whip,” Eve said softly. “You and Caleb and Willow and Wolfe and Jessi. You’re the family I always wanted and thought I would never have. Be mad at me if it helps. Because I want to help you. I ache to see you so unhappy.”

  Whip closed his eyes. A visible tremor went through him. Then, slowly, his grip on the table loosened. He looked up at Eve and gave her a smile so sad that it brought tears to her eyes.

  “You’re like Willy,” Whip said softly. “A handful of sunshine. I can’t stay mad at either of you for more than a few minutes at a time.”

  Eve touched Whip’s cheek and smiled in return.

  “What do you find in all those foreign places?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t think I can put it into words.”

  “Will you try?”

  Whip raked his fingers through his hair, then ran his fingertips over the soothing coils of the bullwhip on his shoulder. The gesture said much about his restlessness, as did the narrowness of his eyes and the bleak line of his mouth.

  “It’s exciting,” Whip said finally.

  “What is?” Eve asked. “New land? New languages? New cities? New women?”

  Frowning, Whip pulled the long lash off his shoulder and began running the supple coils through his fingers, absently probing for frayed places.

  “It’s not the women,” Whip said. “Oh, they’re pretty, all right. Some of them are as exotic as anything you can imagine. But Shannon is a lot prettier to me than any girl I’ve seen across the ocean. It’s not the kind of pretty that wears off, either. She just gets more beautiful every time I look at her.”

  Reno’s black eyebrows went up, but he said not one word. Pointing out that Reno felt the same way about Eve would only make Whip’s temper flash.

  “The languages are kind of intriguing,” Whip said after a moment. “Chinese is pure hell to get a handle on, but Portuguese isn’t, and their explorers settled some far-flung ports. Between Portuguese and English, I can get by in most places around Asia, so long as I don’t stray too far from the water.

  “And Portuguese and Spanish aren’t all that different, once you get the hang of how to pronounce the same words in a different way. I can go anywhere in South America and Mexico….”

  Reno waited quietly, watching his brother wrestle with the roots of his own yondering urge.

  Eve stood close by, touching Whip’s shoulder from time to time, silently urging him to talk, to loosen the harsh tension that lay just beneath his surface.

  “The cities…” Whip began.

  Then he stopped and shifted restlessly, running the bullwhip through his fingers the whole time.

  “The cities…?” Eve coaxed softly.

  Whip’s wrist made a lazy movement. The bullwhip uncoiled across the floor. The lash popped softly.

  “It was the cities that lured me, at first,” Whip said. “I couldn’t get enough of them. Strange ways of putting together buildings, exotic faces, new smells and sounds and foods. Some of what I saw was good and some was plain awful, but it all was different.”

  Reno nodded and made an encouraging sound.

  Eve waited.

  “Funny thing,” Whip said quietly, “but after a time, all that difference ends up feeling pretty much the same to me. I never thought about it until just now.”

  The bullwhip stilled, then resumed its whispering movements, popping softly, punctuating Whip’s thoughts.

  “As for the land itself,” Whip said slowly, “that’s a big part of it. This old world is plain incredible when it comes to putting rock and water together in new shapes.”

  “Yes,” Reno said. “That’s why I came back here. For my money, the Colorado Territory has some of the most extraordinary and curious shapes of land. Not to mention a lot of gold waiting to be found.”

  “Do you have your own favorite landscape,” Eve asked Whip, “one you can’t wait to get back to?”

  Whip shook his head. “I never go to the same place twice.”

  “Then you haven’t found what you’re looking for yet, have you?” Eve asked simply.

  Whip opened his mouth. No words came out.

  He stood up and walked out of the house into the glorious Colorado day. As he moved, the bullwhip seethed around him, nipping delicately at the grass, snapping softly as a campfire.

  “What do you think he’s going to do?” Eve asked Reno in a quiet voice.

  “What he has always done.”

  “Yondering.”

  “Yes,” Reno said.

  “Poor Shannon.”

  “Poor Whip. He’s not exactly what I’d call happy.”

  “That’s his choice,” Eve said. “It’s a choice Shannon didn’t get to make.”

  “You sound like you wouldn’t mind hammering on my brother’s thick skull.”

  “One thick-skulled man at a time is all I can handle,” she retorted.

  “And I’m the one?”

  Eve smiled
slightly, went to Reno, and ruffled his midnight hair with her fingers.

  “You’re the one,” she agreed.

  Smiling, Reno pulled Eve onto his lap. For a long time there was no sound in the kitchen but that of soft words and kisses that started as gentle comfort and swiftly became smoldering promises that would be kept later, when they were alone in the big bed.

  When Whip finally came back to the house, the long lash was once again riding quietly on his shoulder. Nothing was mentioned about Shannon or yondering.

  Whip permitted talk only of gold—where it was found, how it was found, how to mine it. While Reno listened intently, Whip described the claim he had worked. Then they talked through sundown and well into the night.

  At dawn the next day, the silence was broken by a drumroll of hooves. Horses, running hard.

  Moments later Whip eased out the back door, rifle in one hand and bullwhip on his shoulder, and his pants only half fastened. Reno stood back from the front window, watching through narrowed eyes. Eve stood beside him, a shotgun in her hands.

  There were two horses. Only one of them carried a rider. Reno identified that horse instantly. The redgold coat, flashing white stocking, and tail carried like a red silk banner could belong only to Willow’s prize Arabian stallion.

  “That’s Ishmael,” Reno said. “And that’s Wolfe riding him!”

  Reno whistled sharply, a signal left over from childhood. A few moments later, Whip appeared around the side of the house, saw who the visitor was, and ran out to greet Wolfe. Whip noted that both horses had been ridden hard and fast, which told him that Wolfe had come on the run, switching mounts to rest first one horse, and then the other. The second horse was tall, long-legged, with the lean lines of a racing horse and the stamina of a mustang.

  “What happened?” Whip and Reno asked urgently as Wolfe reined to a stop in the yard.

  “Cal galloped up to our house leading Ishmael, handed me the bridle, and told me to find Whip and find him fast. Then he hightailed it back to Willow.”

  Whip looked up into Wolfe’s dark face. Eyes the same blue-black as twilight looked back at him.

  “You found me,” Whip said. “Now spit it out.”

  “You have a woman called Shannon?” Wolfe asked.