by Carol Arens
“That was my kid brother you sliced up.”
“You a Folsom or a Broadhower?”
“Henry Broadhower. I’m the mean son of a bitch who’s going to make you pay for what you did to Buck.”
“Broadhower, huh?” Colt gripped Broadhower’s shoulder in fake camaraderie. “Better bring your brothers along.”
While Henry wrestled with the hand on his shoulder, Colt neatly tripped him with a boot hook to the knee. He turned the fall to make sure that the man fell face-first onto the road.
After a moment of flailing about, Broadhower scrambled to his knees. There wasn’t much blood, but the fellow looked mad as a swatted hornet.
Colt turned his back, continuing on to The Sweet Treat.
“Don’t forget to bring your kin,” he called behind him.
* * *
It was Sunday afternoon. What Holly Jane wanted to be doing was getting to know her new horse. To be firming the bond that had begun with Molly the very first moment that Colt had presented the mare to her.
Instead, she stood at the stove of The Sweet Treat scrubbing vigorously at a spot that she knew would not come off anyway.
What she was really scrubbing at was a memory...a vision...a picture that the stiffest brush would not be able to scrape from her mind...in case she really wanted it to.
Apparently, Colt Wesson enjoyed a cold swim in the river, and he enjoyed it as bare as an egg.
It was pure accident that she had discovered that fact. Earlier today, she had taken the ladies to lunch in town and to visit with some of the older women who met on Sunday afternoons. With Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie easily making friends, she had decided to come home and do the same with Molly.
The afternoon had been pleasant so she had decided to walk beside the river. She had not anticipated coming around a curve of the bank to a cove where water circled in a pool and seeing her neighbor floating sunny-side up.
He seemed blissfully at one with the water, the trees and his closed-eye appreciation of them. She should know; she had spent special moments in this spot many times over the years.
Blame it, she didn’t want him to know she had seen him. There was nothing to be done but duck behind a bush and wait him out.
While the bush provided cover, there were also spaces in the vegetation...peek holes through which she was most blatantly peeking.
She ought to be whipped. The problem was, when Colt suddenly stood up, water lapped his hips, and hugged the curve of his bottom. Mercy, but she would gladly take that whipping. When he shook the water from his hair and sent droplets flinging about, she knew it would be worth it.
For the life of her, she could not look away from the sparkling liquid sluicing over his naked back. He resembled Poseidon rising from the sea, but a thousand times more appealing in the flesh than on the printed page.
The wind came up all at once. Colt’s skin pebbled with the chill as he stepped out of the pool. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in her arms.
She’d had no idea that she had it in her to be so rude. She would need to come up with some sort of chastisement and enforce it upon herself.
Drops of water pattered on her hiding place. She heard one smack a leaf over her head...she felt one hit her scalp.
“Like to join me?” Colt’s voice crooned.
She opened her eyes to see ten toes wriggling in the dirt in front of the bush.
She looked up, inch by inch. Flogging is what she needed. A respectful woman would have fled from the scene when she first saw him, not continue to ogle him.
And now she’d been caught.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but she must not have been truly sorry because she continued to sit in the shrubbery feeling weak at the sight of his firm, bare thighs. Maybe the reason she didn’t flee was because she might faint if she tried.
In the end, he laughed. He snatched his clothes from a tree branch and presented his back.
He dressed, but not before she saw... When he bent over... Well, male animals had them too but not like... Oh glory, how had the day suddenly become so blisteringly hot?
“See you at supper.” He turned toward her with his shirt unbuttoned and damp hair hanging in front of a blue-eyed expression that clearly found her apology amusing.
Now here she was hours later, too ashamed to go home but not too ashamed to squelch his virile image from her mind.
A key turned in the lock of the back door.
Susan Broadhower stepped inside. “Oh, I’m sorry Miss Munroe. If I’d guessed you were here I would have knocked.”
“I’m so glad you came.” She greeted the girl with a hug.
“If you don’t mind, I’ve brought my cousin with me.”
“That’s lovely. Bring as many as want to come.”
Susan glanced behind her. “Come on in Cissy, Miss Munroe says it’s all right.”
Cissy Broadhower came in and stood behind Susan. Being a head taller, she looked shyly at Holly Jane over her cousin’s shoulder.
“Since I’m here, I’ll fix you girls a snack.” She didn’t want to go home. The longer she baked the longer she could postpone facing Colt.
“Bethanne is bringing her sister.”
With four girls now wanting to defy the family hatred, the future of Friendship Springs suddenly seemed brighter.
“I think that you girls are brave and wonderful.” She would help them in any way she could. “You keep bringing friends and I’ll keep baking you treats.”
An hour later the shop was filled with the scent of chocolate, cinnamon...and the laughter of young women. They visited until an hour before sunset then got up to go home with hugs and promises to see each other next Sunday afternoon.
“Miss Munroe.” Bethanne touched Holly Jane’s sleeve before she went out the back door. “There’s something we reckoned you ought to know.”
“Something to do with your young man,” Cissy added.
“I don’t have a young man, not anyone special,” she lied to herself as much as to them.
“It’s to do with Mr. Travers,” Susan said with a frown. “We think he’s in danger. Our uncle Henry had a run-in with him and now he counts him as an enemy.”
“He wants to tie him up and drown him in the river,” Cissy Broadhower added. “We pay attention when Uncle Henry starts talking mean.”
“And that’s only the half of it, Miss Munroe.” Bethanne frowned and nodded at her sister.
“I heard the men talking at the woodshed the other day.” She shook her head. “The men in my family don’t like your Mr. Travers any more than the Broadhowers do. They think that if he wasn’t around that they might get the land. They figure maybe it would go back to you and then they could outright force you...not even try to propose anymore.”
“We wish we could help,” Susan said, “but we’re only girls—no one will pay a wick of attention to what we think.”
All four girls nodded at the same time, looking disgusted at the thought.
“The more of you who stand together, the stronger you will be. Just be sure and stay safe.”
“Thank you.” Cissy hugged her neck. “We’ll say a prayer for your beau.”
“He’s only my neighbor!” she called after them as they vanished into the woods.
She was a ninny and no doubt about it. How many times had she gawked at a naked neighbor? Never, she wouldn’t have cared to.
Colt made her feel things far beyond neighborly. Watching him come up sleek and bare from the water had made her want to rip off her own clothes.
When he had mockingly invited her to join him, she had nearly done it.
* * *
Grannie and Aunt Tillie had gone up to bed an hour ago. Colt peered out the window into the dark. Heavy clouds pressed clos
e to the earth, threatening rain.
He’d seen Holly Jane come home from The Sweet Treat shortly after dark. She’d passed by the house without pausing for a greeting or her supper and gone straight into the barn. After a while she came out but went only as far as the carousel. And that is where she had stayed the whole livelong evening.
He’d planned on teasing her, making light of what had happened at the pool. He never should have been swimming in the altogether during the daylight. He might have guessed that Holly Jane would come home.
It was his fault that she was feeling so wretched and embarrassed.
“Come on, pig. Let’s bring that little gal inside.”
Lulu twitched her hooves where she slept beside the fireplace but otherwise ignored him. The little side of ham sure did enjoy her comfort.
Colt put on his long duster and went outside. The air felt damp. Rain would be falling soon. In the distance he spotted Holly Jane dragging something in the dirt, a shovel he thought.
What the hell was she doing?
He’d embarrassed her and he shouldn’t have. No doubt, she believed that she owed him an apology, but the opposite was true.
If he’d been a gentleman he would have warned her away when he first heard her footsteps rustling along the riverbank, before she ever walked around the bend of the pool. He couldn’t say what made him float about pretending to be asleep. Probably the Travers in him.
He sure the hell knew what made him get up and turn his back, though. Miss Holly Jane had riled him, excited him. She had done it by simply peering at him through the brush.
By nature he wasn’t a modest man. The human form, designed by the Creator’s hand was nothing to be ashamed of. Still, knowing that Holly Jane was looking at him, judging his body, made his carnal urges roar to life. If their past encounters were anything to go by, her urges weren’t taking a nap, either.
He had put on a swagger, acted the part of an arrogant bastard, then hightailed it back to the house like his pants were on fire because, hell and damn, they were.
“What are you doing with the shovel, Holly Jane?” he asked, standing across from her over a trench she was gouging into the earth.
“I’m digging a boundary line to divide my property from yours. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to live under the same roof any longer.” She dropped a shovel of dirt on the toe of his boot. “You are trespassing.”
“I owe you an apology,” he said, and watched her eyes widen in surprise.
“I hardly think it’s you—”
He stepped closer, cupped her face in his hands and cut off her words with a delving kiss that left the both of them breathless.
Boundary line be damned. It might not be right, but he wanted more and so did she.
With an arm under her knees he scooped her up, carried her to the carousel then set her on the back of the elephant.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
Chapter Nine
Sitting upon the big broad back of the elephant, not only did Holly Jane want to run away, she never wanted to face Colt Wesson again.
Her behavior of a moment ago pointed out that she was not as ashamed as she ought to be. A truly repentant person would be shoveling a hole to bury her wicked self in, not kissing the man she had humiliated. An honorable woman would not be holding his naked image in her mind, cherishing and polishing the vision so that she wouldn’t—
All at once the elephant jerked. The platform shimmied then moved beneath her. She grabbed the pole to keep from falling off. She felt dizzy, off-kilter...and there was music.
A tune that she hadn’t heard in years tinkled over the cloud-smothered land.
The platform picked up speed, turning the long-dormant animals in a circle. Her hair blew out in streaming banners.
Gripping the pole, she leaned back to feel the rush of cool wind across her cheeks and the tickle of it on her scalp.
The past fell away, both the recent and the long-ago. It couldn’t be, but wasn’t that Granddaddy calling her name? She listened with her heart, feeling that it might burst with joy.
It was a pure and sweet miracle to have the carousel spinning cheerfully after all these years. As hard as she tried to hold on to Granddaddy’s voice, she knew that it was Colt calling to her.
She opened her eyes to see him standing beside her knee, grinning.
“What do you think, Holly Jane?”
“I think that I’m going to cry.” After what she had done to him this afternoon, he had fixed her carousel.
“You look like you’re going to laugh.”
“I am.” And she did. “Come on, Colt. Pick a steed.”
He leaped up behind her in one happy bound. She couldn’t see him grinning, but she felt it against her hair.
The carousel was enchantment...it was healing. Troubles were chased off by joy for the few moments one spent flying on the backs of the magical creatures.
She turned her head to watch Colt, his face caught up in pleasure. Years fell away, and she saw the boy he would have been, the child who defied his family to behave in a decent way.
Knowledge hit her smack in the heart. Colt Wesson was not a criminal. He never had been and would not be.
“Is this your first time?” she asked.
“To repair, yes, to ride, no.” He slipped his arm about her waist and pulled her to him. “One of the first things I did when I skedaddled from the ranch was ride a big wood pony.”
“What was the second?”
“I got a job in a livery. My boss let me stay there, fed me along with his family in exchange for tending his horses.”
“Is that where your dream began?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know when I decided I would have a ranch. It’s always been inside of me, I reckon.”
She watched the dark land spinning before then behind her.
“When did you go to work for the railroad?”
“Two years later.” His breath skimmed her ear. “I heard the train whistle one day and figured I wanted to see new places. I was hired to keep the cars clean. After that I learned how to repair the engines. I saved every penny I had, and the job paid well enough to buy me the ranch.”
Colt Wesson was not a single thing like his no-good relatives. He worked hard for what he wanted and he got it. Even though it was her ranch that he got, she had to admire him.
“I admire you, Colt.” His fingers suddenly clenched her waist.
He was quiet for so long she guessed he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m going to have a celebration and invite the children of Friendship Springs, just like I used to.” She covered his big hand with hers. It felt natural to stroke his rough-skinned knuckles. They were so very different from her own. “Today I had four girls come into The Sweet Treat. They say there are more who want to come.”
“Tell me what to do to help.” His breath skimmed her ear, closer this time, warm and moist.
Raindrops pattered on the carousel roof. In the past, rain had leaked through holes in the canopy in several spots. She glanced about but the only water coming down dripped off the carousel eves.
Colt had been busy with more than the horses while she had been away at The Sweet Treat.
“I can’t believe you did this!” She would have hugged him, but she was facing the wrong way. “I certainly don’t deserve it after this afternoon. Thank you doesn’t begin to express how I feel.”
“There’s something you need to know about this afternoon, Holly Jane.”
“I can’t imagine what you must think of me. I’ll do anything to make it up to you... I swear it on an oath.”
She felt his breath skimming her temple.
“Turn around,” he said. “Face me.”
It was awkward, with
knees and elbows bending and stretching but she managed.
At last she faced him, her knees pressed to his thighs in the cramped space.
“Now, just to even things between us, take off your clothes.”
“What!” She would have fallen off the elephant, but he caught her wrist. “I can’t do that.”
“You did say you’d do anything...and it would make us even.”
She had said that. She’d made a vow. To back down now would prove that she was not repentant at all. Not only would she be a voyeur, she would be a liar.
“I want to look at you, Holly Jane.”
* * *
Colt held his breath when Holly Jane reached for the buttons at her collar. He hadn’t expected her to do it.
Her fingers trembled. She bent her head, keeping her eyes on her work.
“Are you scared?” He watched while she slowly slipped the little pearl-like balls free of the fabric. “I won’t hurt you.”
She shook her head and reached behind to unbutton the waist of her skirt.
“Cold?”
She laughed under her breath. “Hardly that.”
He helped pull the skirt from under her when she lifted her hips.
She looked up and speared him with her gaze. She slid her blouse down her arms then held it away from her. She let go and it fluttered away into the night.
“What then?”
“I’m nervous. I’ve never undressed for a man before.”
He’d known that. He wouldn’t say so, but it pleased him, knowing no other man had been privy to the treasure beneath her frilly white undergarments.
“Take off the rest.”
In anticipation, he studied the shape of her breasts where they strained against the pristine white fabric. He caressed her with his eyes and made sure she knew he was doing it.
She hesitated a moment, then lifted the camisole over her head. She tossed it on the elephant’s raised trunk. When she wriggled out of her bloomers he didn’t help her. Couldn’t, he didn’t trust himself.
And there she was, sitting astride the elephant’s back, naked and not an arm’s reach away.
Music drifted among the raindrops. She lifted her arms and plucked the pins from her hair. They hit the floorboards with a ping. Golden loops of hair tumbled over her chest, hiding her from his view.