by Tracy Sumner
She dashed forward, grabbing his hat as she passed it. “Wait!” Her words only seemed to increase his pace. She had to run alongside him to keep up with his long strides. “Can we talk about this?”
He grabbed his hat from her hands with such force that she jumped. She guessed that meant “no.”
They left the cornfield. Adam stalked directly to Taber, who nickered at his approach. In a precise, militaristic manner, he took hold of the reins, propelled his foot into the stirrup, braced his knee against Taber’s flank and pushed up, swinging his leg smoothly over the horse. Charlie felt her toes curl with hunger as she watched his lithe movements.
“Where are you going?”
Ignoring her question, he twisted in the saddle, flipped open his saddlebag, searching. He tossed something to her. It landed in the dirt at her feet. Without a word, he clicked his heels and trotted off.
Feeling battered much like a ship upon the sea, she watched him until he was a small, bouncing dot in the distance. When she could no longer see him, she knelt upon the ground. A book. She glanced at it, but it was too dark to read the title. Her heart still raced. And her mouth felt as dry as the morning after Kath’s engagement party, when she drank too much and had to be carried home.
Hellfire. Amidst all the confusion, she had forgotten to ask him about the bruise on his face.
* * *
Miles rode into town, the steady motion of his horse’s gait making him sleepy. Useless, he knew. The way things were going tonight, his head wouldn’t hit a pillow for hours yet. In the back of his mind, he wondered if having friends was worth all this trouble. First, he’d had to escort a silent, brooding Charlie home. And now—at nearly eleven o’clock at night—he was on his way into town to find Adam. Kath had pleaded with him, those green eyes of hers shining, telling him their friend was in some kind of trouble.
The piano music from the Four Leaf Clover rippled along the deserted street like waves in a still pond. Miles pulled on the reins, directing his horse to the hitching post just past the Sentinel office. He slid from the saddle and glanced about, not wanting any questions about what he was doing in town this late.
A gentle breeze ruffled his hair as he tapped on the office door. He’d never felt the need to knock before, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something wasn’t right. There was no reply, so he pushed the door open just enough to stick his head in. The front room was empty except for shadows from the oil lamp dancing on the walls. Surely, Adam wouldn’t have left that lit if he went home. Why, it could fall and burn the whole town down around their ears.
Miles put his shoulder into the door. The faint rattle of glass panes and his footsteps thumping against the plank floor rang in the silence. He halted in the middle of the room as another sound reached his ears. Frowning, he tilted his head toward the back room. What the hell was going on?
“Adam?” He walked a step or two. “Are you in here?”
A loud thud, followed by a whispered curse, shattered the stillness. Miles did not go any further. He was starting to suspect he had walked in on a private situation. Then, a woman’s throaty, nervous giggle confirmed it. Miles swallowed and backed in the direction of the door. “I’ll be leaving now. I just wanted to check to see, uh...good-bye!” He swung around.
“Why run now?”
Miles winced at Adam’s derisive tone. He stopped and turned, an embarrassed smile plastered upon his face. Adam’s activity in the back room was apparent from the tangled condition of his hair and, most especially, the smear of bright red rouge smudged across his cheek. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, which was usual, but a lower button was in the wrong hole, giving the cloth an odd bulge over his stomach. Miles glanced away as he felt his face getting hot.
“Honey, do you want to meet my friend?”
Miles marched to Adam, holding up his hand. “I’ve...I’ve got to go. Kath was the one who wanted me—”
“Come on, sweetie.” Adam’s tone was remarkably cooperative.
“Let me get freshened up,” a soft voice called from the back room. A giggle followed the statement. “You have to give a girl some time, you know.”
Adam smiled at Miles. A hostile smile. “Oh, I know, honey. Believe me, I know.”
Miles swallowed and took a step back, inching closer to the door when a woman sauntered into the room. She was pretty, if a bit cheap-looking. Thankfully, Miles didn’t recognize her. He watched Adam smile at her, calm as could be. And she smiled back, like they were meeting for the first time at a picnic or something. Miles was the only one suffering any kind of embarrassment.
The woman stopped as she reached Adam, laying her hand upon his arm. Miles stared at her nails, painted as bright red as her lips, and even longer than the girls’ in the Four Leaf. He couldn’t stop himself from looking. Brown hair, whitish streaks running through it, hung like wet straw past her shoulders. A blue dress clung to her like second skin, except across her bosom, where mostly real skin showed.
As he continued to stare, she lifted on her toes, placing her lips against Adam’s ear. Her soft whisper floated to Miles, though he didn’t understand the words.
Adam smiled but shook his head. “No, this one is in love.” He gritted the last two words as if they cut his tongue to utter them. “With his wife, no less.”
She looked at Miles, her eyes glittering, her smile in place. “Too bad.” She shrugged, released Adam’s arm and walked to Charlie’s desk. Her reticule sat upon a pile of papers. As ridiculous as it was, somehow this made Miles angry, that Adam would involve Charlie’s desk in this mess. Couldn’t she have left her bag somewhere else? He glared at Adam, who did not seem to notice.
“Do you want me to walk you back to the Four Leaf?” Adam asked as he stepped beside her.
She shook her head. “No, my husband is there. Playing cards. He’ll probably be at it all night. His brother lives here. We’re visiting, you know, and all they ever do is drink and play cards.” She shrugged again, as if she had long ago resigned herself to her situation. “I wish I was staying longer, but we’re leaving tomorrow on the two o’clock stage.”
She kissed Adam’s cheek. “It was fun.” She glanced at Miles, noting his angry expression. “Don’t be mad at your friend, honey. A man has to have fun. And, so do some women.” She laughed then and waved as she departed through the open door, her reticule playing a tune against her shapely thigh.
The men were silent. Neither moved, only Miles angrily tapping his foot. “You’re fighting this like hell, aren’t you?” Miles finally asked.
Adam turned to face him. “I don’t remember calling you Mama lately.”
Miles threw up his arms. “Hell, I don’t care who you chose to carouse with, but in the office? What if Charlie had come here tonight? With that woman’s bag sitting on her desk? And that woman’s husband down in the Four Leaf?”
Adam walked to his desk, squatted on his haunches and pulled glasses and a bottle of whiskey from a drawer. “Want a drink?”
Miles pulled a chair over, throwing himself into it with a sigh.
Adam slid into his own chair, silent, watchful. He poured a generous amount and settled back against the worn leather. Taking a slow sip, he lifted his gaze to the ceiling. It was a long moment before he spoke. “Why are you so angry? You didn’t get caught with, excuse the expression, your trousers down.”
Miles laughed, embarrassed yet intrigued. He supposed it was the man in him. He coughed, not because he needed to, but because he was nervous. “Did you have you trousers down?”
Adam rolled the glass between his hands, his gaze still plastered to the ceiling. “A gentleman never tells.”
“Ah.”
Adam grabbed a newspaper from his desk. It landed in front of Miles. “Take a gander at that.”
Miles glanced down, a headline leaping at him: New Bank Legislation-Wrongful Preparation for Succession? He scanned the page slowly. When he finished, he lifted his gaze. Adam was refilling his glass,
his hand shaking ever so slightly.
“What do you think?”
Miles rubbed his hand over his jaw, weary and confused. “Am I mistaken in thinking Stokes is going to be mad as hell when he sees this?”
“No, you are not mistaken.” Adam laughed—a short, hard laugh. “But, by God, it’s the best she’s ever written.” He tapped his glass on the desk. “Hot-tempered, stubborn, strong. And talented.”
“What are you going to do?”
Adam rested his head against the chair and closed his eyes. “Just the question I keep asking myself. Who knows. I’m tempted to telegraph Stokes in Richmond, explain how this happened. Make up some reasonable excuse. I’ll take full responsibility. Charlie does not need to be involved.”
“She wrote the piece and placed it without telling you?”
Adam nodded, his eyes still closed. “Miles, she doesn’t have any idea how dangerous this business is. Partly my fault for protecting her, I guess. Maybe I didn’t tell her enough.”
Miles emptied his glass and considered asking for another. “What could you have done?”
Adam rubbed his eyes, fatigue and frustration visible in the drawn skin around his mouth. “I should have told her about all the times I’ve spent a night, or a week, in the hospital. A stab wound here, a gunshot wound there. Broken jaw, three broken fingers.” He laughed. “Those were only the times they caught me.”
Miles leaned forward in his chair. “You don’t think, I mean, that won’t happen here, will it?”
“Until I talk with Stokes, I want Charlie out of here. This is the only place they would know to find her. I was going to tell her at dinner...” Adam’s words drifted off as his eyes opened. He stared long and hard at the cracked, whitewashed ceiling.
“What happened tonight?” Miles asked.
Adam’s gaze skated to his, then away. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about coming in here, finding you in the back room with some woman, after you and Charlie have an argument in my cornfield.”
Adam settled his gaze on Miles. “Who said we were arguing?”“Well, what were you doing then?” When Miles could see his friend wasn’t going to talk, he decided to try a different path. “You know what the men in town are saying? Two bruised faces in the crowd. What do you reckon could be the connection there? A woman, maybe?”
Adam’s gaze grew dark. “It doesn’t matter what anyone says.”
“For you, no, it doesn’t.”
Adam slammed his glass on the desk so hard Miles was sure it had broken. “What would you have me do, marry her?”
Miles sat back, relieved the conversation was finally going somewhere. “If you want to, I think that’s a fine idea.”
“I don’t want marriage. To anyone,” Adam said through clenched teeth.
“Are you sure?”
Adam bounded from his chair, made it to the windows running along the front of the office. He lifted his finger, trailing it through the dust coloring the glass smoky gray. He did not love Charlie Whitney. He felt protective of her. He admired her spunk, her intelligence, her wit. He found her beautiful in the most natural, remarkable way.
He liked her.
Liked her sense of humor, her smile, her proud, eager manner. Liked her hair, her kisses, her legs, her breasts. Ah, her breasts, which he now had the memory of touching to add to the list keeping him awake at night. He could still taste the sweetness of her mouth, lemon and a hint of sugar. Already, the taste of the woman he had held in his arms only a short time before had disappeared. He had no idea what she tasted like, smelled like.
Hell, he did not even remember her name.
Charlie...always smelled wonderful. The lightest scent of roses lay upon her skin like silk. And, the way she responded to him, with as much unbridled passion and sincere wonderment as he felt for her.
Why should any woman, after all these years, enthrall him? Captivate him? Distract him?
Why did Miles have to come after him tonight of all nights? The little piece of fluff in that clinging dress might have solved some of his problems. As it was, all he had done was fondle her breasts. And the whole time, all he could think of was how well Charlotte fit his palm, how perfectly her body fused with his.
Would he have been able to finish what he started with that woman? He had doubts. Doubts he was not about to share with Miles Lambert. The meddlesome bastard.
“I don’t want to get married,” he reiterated.
He heard Miles chuckle. “She’s gotten to you, though?”
Adam grunted.
“Is it true what the men are saying about you and Tom?”
Adam took a vicious swipe at the dirty window. “Jesus, you just will not give up. Like a goddamn old woman.”
“I’m only trying to be a good friend. Give you a little advice.”
Another grunt.
“Well?”
Abandoning his inspection of the window, Adam moved to the press and began lifting stacks of newspapers bound with string to the floor. The rest, including the copies sent by stagecoach to Stokes’ office in Richmond, had left the office earlier today. Too late to stop their arrival.
Sometimes, life had a strange way of twisting and turning.
“Miles, if the men you speak of were saying Tom Walker came into the Sentinel office one night, as pickled as a beet, spewing a lot of immaterial nonsense and stamping his foot” —Adam dropped a bundle to the floor and nodded— “then yes, I would have to say your gossip is accurate.”
“What kind of nonsense?”
“What do you think? The same nonsense you’ve been spewing.”
“Seems like quite a few of us are spewing that same nonsense. Strange, ain’t it?”
Adam glanced up, his dark gaze holding Miles’. “Charlie is my friend. End of story. That’s all we can be.”
“Because you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“You could take her with you. She doesn’t have anyone here.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I guess I don’t.”
He didn’t have an explanation he wanted to share. Not this close to the time when he would be sleeping. The dreams would come too easily if he talked about it now. “I had a family once. I lost them. My brother in disastrous accident, my father and stepmother in a steamboat explosion a year later. My father and I had not spoken since my brother’s death, so he—” He pushed his hand though his hair. It shook as he lowered it to the cool metal press. “You’re my friend. The first one I’ve had in a long time. I want to talk to you. I wish I knew how.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I hurt when I think of...” He placed his hand on his stomach, unable to finish. “A deep, hard pain right in the middle of my gut. Charlie isn’t so different. I feel it in her. I recognize it. She doesn’t want to need anyone any more than I do.”
His hand closed into a tight fist, sucking up the material of his shirt like quicksand. “I have not loved anyone in years, Miles. Years. That part of me is gone. It died with my family as surely as there is a God.” He leaned, his arms outstretched, his palms flat on the press. “I want her, Miles. Sometimes so much that I literally quake with it. That kind of wanting is not love. You’re a man, you know that. At the same time, I like her too much to push her away.”
Miles appeared in front of him, holding a glass filled to the lip. The dark liquor sloshed onto Miles’ hand and the floor. He placed the glass in Adam’s hand before he spoke, “Drink this. I’ve not known a man to need a drink more than you do right now.”
Adam drained the glass in one swallow.
“Another?”
“No. Widow Davis is ready to throw me out. When she got a look at my face the other night after Tom—” He shook the glass in the air. “As bad as living with my mother.”
“And Charlie?”
“I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t give her any more than I already have. Hell, I need to give her less.”
“That may be easier said
than done.”
“Yeah.”
Miles walked to the door. He paused, turned back. “My pa wanted me to tell you he’s coming in early to finish the deliveries. Said he didn’t want to hear any of your bitching about them sitting around all day.”
Adam smiled. “I may be here when he arrives. I don’t feel like going home.”
“Do you want me to get a message to Charlie, tell her to stay home tomorrow?”
“I better do that in person. She’s likely to kill the messenger. Besides, Stokes won’t receive the Sentinel for another day or two. By then, I’ll have a plan.”
Miles stopped by the door. “Let me know.”
“Good night.” Adam walked to the window and watched Miles untie his horse, climb astride and ride down the deserted street. Maybe he should have taken him up on his offer to talk to Charlie. After ravishing her in the middle of a cornfield, he questioned the intelligence of them spending more time together. In an office with a back room that had already presented itself as a perfectly adequate spot for lovemaking.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would tell Charlie. Damn, his head ached just thinking about it.
Chapter Twenty
Indignation
Strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting or base.
Fortunately, he was in the back room when the men barged in. He was looking for an edition of the Charleston Mercury Charlie had stored in her files. The only problem with her filing system was, she was the only one who could find anything. Some system.
When he left the room, the men’s backs were to him. Another lucky thing. As Adam watched, the taller one pulled a knife from his boot and began slashing the newspaper bundles on the floor. Adam waited until he resheathed his knife.
“You two certainly showed up sooner than I expected.”
They spun around, and Adam catalogued everything. Size, stance, facial features, clothing. Except for the knife in the tall one’s boot, they looked unarmed. Although, there was no telling what else a boot or pocket concealed.