Trail of Passion (Hot on the Trail Book 7)

by Merry Farmer

  “Um, science isn’t exactly a story,” Gideon said. He drifted away from her, even as she inched closer across the silty riverbed.

  “But the story of how you became a scientist and how you started working with your chemicals is,” she insisted.

  A series of conflicting emotions crossed his face. He leaned sideways, as if he would try to swim away from her and from his thoughts. She followed.

  “My family has always had a background in science,” he explained.

  “Mine has always had a background in business. Business and farming, or at least ranching now. Papa says ranching is the future of Wyoming. He said—” She stopped herself, flushing with shame. “I was asking you about science, not trying to tell you all about my father.”

  “No, no.” he swam closer to her. “I want to hear about your father.”

  “And I want to hear about chemistry.”

  The statement left her lips with far more boldness than she’d intended. Her mother would be appalled—a thought that only made Lucy bolder. She drifted close enough to brush a part of him with her hand under the murky water. The part of her that came from her mother hoped she’d brushed his arm. The Aunt Virginia part of her hoped it was something a little lower.

  “Um.” Gideon’s voice cracked on the one syllable. He swished this way and that in the water, most definitely a man in some sort of torment. “I didn’t actually get my start in chemistry.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “I began my studies as a biologist.”

  “Really? How fascinating.” She blinked, wishing she was a whole world smarter than she was. “What do biologists do?”

  “Study life,” he answered. “Plants, animals, things like that.”

  “Did you study plants and animals?”

  “I….” His eyes lost their focus for a moment and his face burned red with far more than the sun above them. When he refocused on her, he couldn’t hold eye-contact. “I was part of a team studying the mating habits of bald eagles.”

  “Mating habits of….” She trailed off into a laugh. It was too sweet, too charming for her to believe. Even more charming was the easy way that Gideon laughed when he saw her amusement.

  “It was because of Darwin,” he explained, more humor than tension in his voice now. “After Origin of Species was published a few years ago, so many of my classmates became interested in this theory of evolution—proving it and disproving it—that any scientific student with an ax to grind immediately went into biology and studied some species or another to see if Darwin’s theory holds water.”

  “Do you think bald eagles are descended from monkeys too?” Lucy puzzled.

  “No.” He let out a loose chuckle. “But it is interesting that they mate for life.”

  She blinked, heating once again. “Do they?”

  He hesitated, their eyes meeting. “Yes. They do.”

  She drifted closer to him, wondering if he would let her brush up against him once more. In fact—she darted a quick glance around to see if anyone was spying on them—she wondered if he would do more than let her brush against him. There was still the matter of that kiss….

  Her leg bumped against something. He flinched.

  “Chemistry was always my first interest,” he said in a rush. “So when the eagle study reached a lull, I switched back to chemical research.”

  “Laws of attraction?” She searched for his leg again under the water, chasing him further downstream.

  “No, no. Chemical compounds. Gasses.”

  She stopped, wrinkling her nose. “Gasses?”

  “Chlorine. I mean….” He pushed hard to swim away from her.

  The knot of frustration that seemed to tie itself up again every time she thought she was getting somewhere returned. What was wrong with her? One minute he looked like he was about to cave. He talked about chemistry and mating habits. Then the next, it was all over. Was she that odd? That unlikable? An ache spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the far more pleasant one that had started in her core.

  “Maybe we should get out of the water and go back to work,” he suggested, swimming for the riverbank.

  “But my work is done.” The new ache crushed the nicer one, spreading gloom and a stinging sense of the inevitable through her.

  All she wanted was one kiss.

  Her friends had gathered up their things and were returning to the cluster of wagons by the time Lucy followed Gideon out of the water. He might have been quick to get away from her and their banter about chemistry, but as soon as they were out of the water, shaking off what they didn’t have towels to blot up, he took great care to hand over her things and to carry her basket of washing back to the camp. He even helped her to hang her few articles of clothing up to dry. Blast it, Gideon was such a bundle of contradictions that she didn’t know which way was up. If her mother was watching, she would gloat and tell her that’s what she got for being bold.

  “I’ll do your laundry for you one of these days, if you want me to.” She attempted to salvage what little connection was left between them, peeking around the corner of his wagon to the line of his laundry that Estelle had washed earlier.

  “Oh. Um….” He hesitated, scratching his head. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “What if I want to?”

  She walked around the end of his wagon to where he was, once again, rearranging the crates that she now knew were full of jars that she wasn’t allowed to touch.

  “I suppose it couldn’t do any harm,” he answered, half to himself.

  Well, it was something. She peered into the back of his wagon, curiosity blossoming at all of the strange and unusual things he kept stored there. It wasn’t just the crates and chemicals. After his last shuffling of the wagon’s contents, he’d uncovered a pile of metal rods wrapped with twine resting against one side of the wagon bed.

  “What are these?” She tugged the bundle toward her, surprised by how heavy it was.

  “Lightning rods,” Gideon explained, watching her with wary eyes as she brushed her fingers up and down the bundle. When she circled her hand around the rods, then danced her fingertips along the length of one, he made a strangled sound, cleared his throat, then said. “I thought they might come in handy since we’re all out in the open.”

  “I see.” She continued to stroke her fingers along the rods, circling the end absently. Something about the coolness of the metal in contrast to the heat of the prairie was soothing. She rubbed her palm along the bundle, bit her lip, then peeked up at Gideon when she realized he’d gone silent. “What?”

  He swallowed hard, face flushed, and gestured to the rods. “Your hands.”

  “What about them?” She made a fist around the rods in defense and slid it up toward the end.

  “The motion,” he rumbled, then swallowed. With a grunt, he puffed out a breath and let his shoulders drop.

  “All right. I surrender. I won’t fight it anymore.”

  “Fight wh—”

  Before the question was out of her mouth, he swept his arms around her—causing her to drop the bundle of rods—and brought his mouth crashing down over hers.

  Lucy was so surprised by the sudden, passionate kiss that she yelped. Or at least she would have if her mouth hadn’t been covered. His lips were soft, yet insistent. His arms around her, hands splayed across the small of her back, sent warmth radiating through her. A hardness at his hips had her pulse racing. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know what that was all about. Knowing she could have that effect on him bubbled joy through her.

  She returned his kiss with equal fervor, lifting her arms to circle around his shoulders. Maybe he would be shocked that she knew how to kiss a man, but at the moment it didn’t matter. She let her lips part, let her tongue touch his, and hummed with victory. Yes, this was exactly what she’d been after.

  As he broke their kiss, Gideon let out a breath that was something between relief and regret.

  “There,�
� Lucy said. “That was exactly what you needed, wasn’t it?”

  His eyes flashed up to meet hers. “What I needed?”

  She giggled. “I’ve been trying to kiss you for days. I’ve been so certain that what you need to wipe that worried frown off of your face and to feel less lonely is someone to kiss you.”

  He flinched and pulled away from her, dropping to a suspicious frown. “Did you just kiss me because you feel sorry for me?”

  It took a second for the foolishness of her words to catch up to her. When it did, she gasped and pressed a hand to her tender lips.

  “No! I don’t feel sorry for you at all. I think you’re wonderful, and so smart. I could never be that smart, and I talk so much that I’m sure I’ll never learn anything. I just thought that you look so sad sometimes, and that breaks my heart. So if I just gave you a kiss, just a little kiss, you might feel better and think that somebody cares about you. I never meant to—”

  She was back in his arms, his mouth slanted over hers, drinking deeply from her lips to silence her, before she could blink. This time, one of his hands spread between her shoulder blades and the other dipped very low down her back, pressing her close. So close that she could feel his hardness again. She melted at the very thought of it.

  “Perhaps I should have continued to study the mating habits of something or other,” he told her, breathless. “Then I might have a clue how tender-hearted women act when they decide they fancy a man.”

  She hummed, and it wasn’t until she realized he was holding her up that she knew her response hadn’t actually been in the form of words. If they had been words, she would have told him that yes, she fancied him, and she planned to go on fancying him as long as he would let her. Instead, she surged into him and kissed him once more with all the heat of the passion he awakened in her.

  Laws of attraction indeed!

  It was only when someone—Pete—cleared his throat beside him that Gideon stopped kissing her and let her go.

  “I thought you two might want to know that there’s gonna be a supper inside the fort tonight before we head out tomorrow,” he said.

  Lucy’s heart was racing so fast and her head spun so thoroughly that in that moment she wasn’t certain she remembered what fort they had reached… or what supper was.

  “Thank you, Pete,” Gideon answered, as hoarse as could be.

  Pete responded by chuckling, shaking his head, and saying, “I warned you.”

  As he walked away, Lucy recovered herself enough to ask, “What was that supposed to mean?”

  Gideon blushed scarlet. “Mating habits of the North American Trail Woman,” he said, then broke into a sheepish laugh. Lucy wanted to ask more, but he cut her off with, “We’d better get back to work before we get into any more trouble.”

  Lucy opened her mouth to protest, but before she could think of what she was protesting, he’d turned back to his wagon and started putting things away.

  Chapter Five

  “And it was just like that,” Lucy finished her story for Josephine as the two of them sat mending. She leaned closer to her older friend. “Halfway through a sentence, pop! His lips were on mine and his arms were around me. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me, ever.”

  Josephine had a hard time suppressing her laughter. “So you’ve gone around kissing boys before?”

  Lucy sat straighter, rolling her shoulders and trying to focus on putting small, neat stitches in the hem of a pair of Gideon’s trousers. “Well, maybe. Kissing boys is a delightful activity, no matter what they tell you. Not to mention the fact that it drove mother half mad every time she caught me.”

  Josephine’s laughter burst into a snort. “A young woman who kisses boys to aggravate her mother? It’s a shame we aren’t closer in age and that we didn’t grow up near each other. I think we would have been fast friends.”

  Lucy beamed as the compliment warmed her down to her toes. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Most girls I know were only friends with me because their mothers forced them to be. They certainly made no secret of what they truly thought of me the moment our mothers’ backs were turned.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy thought she saw Josephine’s grin drop, but she went on before the mood of their conversation was brought down.

  “No, I think what made kissing Gideon the other day so special is that he kissed me.” Her lips still tingled at the memory. She smiled at his trousers as she stitched them. A thought struck her and she drew in a breath. “I wonder what it would take to get him to kiss me again.”

  Josephine chuckled anew. “Careful, my dear. Kissing can lead to a whole lot more, and much faster than you’d think. Why, when I was a younger woman….”

  She leaned closer, a glint in her eyes, to share what Lucy was certain would be a juicy confidence, but the story didn’t get a chance to be told.

  “That’s right.” Charlie Garrett’s booming voice sounded a few yards away from them. “I’m getting married. That’s why I need your services, Rev. Kilpatrick. And I’m glad that I caught you while you’re with us.”

  “Married?” Lucy perked up.

  “Who you getting married to?” Pete echoed her next question from the small circle he made with Charlie and Rev. Kilpatrick, the preacher who had joined them at Ft. Kearney.

  “The charming and elusive Miss Olivia Walters,” Charlie answered.

  Lucy gasped and leapt to her feet. Gideon’s trousers dropped to the ground, forgotten. “To Olivia?” she asked, loud enough for the men to hear her.

  Charlie’s smile when he turned to her was downright wolfish. “Yes indeed, Miss Lucy.”

  “Oh, my. I have to talk to her.”

  She left Josephine behind with the men and rushed through the camps, searching for Olivia. As she passed Gideon’s wagon, he glanced up from the large bucket of water he was dropping spoonfuls of his yellow-green chlorine mixture into.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked.

  Lucy skidded to a stop, panting with excitement. “Charlie Garrett just declared he’s going to marry Olivia.”

  Gideon blinked, his mouth dropping open. “And I thought I was in trouble,” he murmured, mostly to himself. To Lucy he said, “Let me just clean up this experiment and I’ll see if I can help you.”

  Lucy smiled at the unexpected offer. She would have stayed and helped Gideon clean up his things, but at that moment, she spotted Olivia talking to Estelle and Graham a few camps away. She gave Gideon one last, longing look, then rushed on.

  “What’s this I hear about you marrying Charlie Garrett, Olivia?” she asked as she approached them, spooking some of the horses in the process. “I just heard him talking to Mr. Evans and that nice Rev. Kilpatrick a moment ago. It can’t be true, can it?”

  “It’s true.” Olivia sighed and shook her head. “I was foolish, and now I’m going to pay for it.”

  Lucy’s brow rose. That sounded far too much like what Josephine had just been saying to her. Olivia hadn’t been caught kissing Charlie Garrett a few too many times, had she? It couldn’t be. She was Olivia and he was… Charlie.

  She pushed aside her surprise and asked. “What can I do to help?”

  Olivia squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingertips to her temples as though her head ached. “I can hardly think,” she said. “I suppose I need a pretty dress, a veil, some flowers.”

  “I should say,” Lucy agreed. “At the very least. Oh, we can be bridesmaids, Estelle and I. We’ll need flowers as well. Does Mr. Garrett have a ring? What on earth prompted him to propose so suddenly?”

  Olivia huffed a dire laugh. “Cards.”

  Cards?

  Estelle tightened her grip on Olivia’s arm. “You don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to,” she advised her. “If this is some sort of misunderstanding, or if he’s importuned you in some way, I’m certain Graham or Mr. Evans could sort it out.”

  “No,” Olivia sighed.
“I want to marry him. In a way.” She laughed at herself and shook her head. “Land sakes, I run away from one man who was pursuing me against my wishes and fall straight into the arms of another. One would think a serious schoolmistress would be exempt from these sorts of muddles.”

  Lucy had a feeling no one was exempt from any sort of muddles, particularly on the trail. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Gideon secure the last of his chemical crates in the back of his wagon, then head toward her.

  “I’ll go pick flowers for a bouquet,” she said, then immediately left her friends to skip her way over to Gideon.

  “What do you need me to do?” Gideon asked as they met between two camps.

  “We should pick flowers,” she said, then paused. “Which means going on a walk on the prairie. Together. Just the two of us.”

  Gideon turned a lovely shade of beet red. A grin quirked at the corner of his mouth. If she wasn’t mistaken, he shook his head slightly as he reached up to adjust his hat. At last he said, “All right.”

  Gathering wildflowers on the prairie with Gideon would have been a great deal more enjoyable if they could have done it at a leisurely pace.

  “We should probably hurry,” she sighed as the two of them walked swiftly through tall grass, shoulder to shoulder.

  “Which ones should I pick?” Gideon asked.

  “The yellow ones.” Lucy burst into a smile. All of the images she’d conjured for herself the week before about holding Gideon’s hand and strolling in the sunlight came back to her, painting her face with splotches of pink. “They’re my favorite. I mean, I’m certain Olivia would love them.”

  Gideon grinned and shook his head, but more in the way that someone laughed at a joke they told themselves in their head than at what she’d said.

  At that thought, Lucy froze and frowned, letting him walk ahead. She didn’t want to be a joke to Gideon, like she’d been to so many others. She wanted him to take her seriously, to consider her as… as so much more than a woman to kiss and laugh at. The desperate thought left her feeling as itchy as if she’d rolled in poison ivy.