by Lisa Plumley
Well, that eventuality didn’t bear thinking about. Not if a man wanted to keep his wits about him. Using those wits of his to form a new plan now, Linus raised himself up. He peeked in the window. The lady had finished at her telegraphing machine. Now she just sat there with her chin in her hand, gazing into thin air like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.
Linus didn’t know what she was thinking about. But whatever it was, it made her appear almost as sparkly and beautiful as she had in her show poster. For a minute, Linus almost sighed. He wished he had a reason to look all dreamy-eyed and happy.
Then he snapped himself to attention. Once he got all that nest-egg money, he would be happy. Hell, he’d be overjoyed!
That thought just about clinched it. He had to get that money. Unfortunately Linus couldn’t risk sneaking in now. If The Seductive Sensation or her man saw him, they might run off for good—and take all their money with them, too. This time Linus had to be smart. He had to be cautious. He had to be sneaky.
Sidling through the shadows, he made his escape. He headed for his stolen horse—the horse that had once belonged to Adam Corwin, that cuss—his mind busy with formulating a new plan to steal that money and maybe make The Seductive Sensation dance for him while he was at it. That sounded mighty good.
Chapter Six
By the time another two days had gone by, Savannah had established a routine for herself and her husband-to-be. She arose near dawn, washed and dressed, checked the wires, took care of her chickens and lone dairy cow, then started breakfast.
Ordinarily she viewed cooking and baking as dreary necessities—partly because she was still so inexperienced at both. Growing up on the other side of the New York City theater footlights hadn’t exactly given her authoritative skills with a frying pan. She relied heavily on advice from Mrs. Beeton’s receipt book. She and Mose had endured some very poor meals, too. But these days, with her fiancé to care for, Savannah found new enthusiasm for the tasks of frying eggs and baking bread.
With Adam’s smile as her reward for her efforts, Savannah almost couldn’t wait to start cooking every morning.
Smiling now as she finished making breakfast, she set out a covered plate for Mose, the way she usually did. Her friend would be arriving soon. His hours were still erratic, but he’d definitely spent more time at the station of late—and not because he’d promised Dr. Finney he would serve as her (unneeded) “chaperone,” either.
The truth was, Mose still had a few doubts about Adam—and her impending marriage to him, too. Mose’s continuing grumbles and sidelong looks made that plain. Savannah couldn’t reason out why he felt that way. Of course, she didn’t yet trust Adam herself. Not entirely. But as far as she could discern, her mail-order groom could not have appeared more commendable if he’d earned a medal from President Arthur himself.
Humming a tune, she took a hasty bite of buttered toast for herself, then put the finishing touches on a tray of food for Adam. She arranged the plate, napkin and cutlery just so, then added a sprig of mountain laurel to the tray. She couldn’t help smiling as she anticipated Adam’s reaction to her efforts.
He always said something nice about her cooking—and not in that polite but obligatory way Mose sometimes did, either…right before he fed his scraps to the station’s cat, Esmeralda. Unlike Mose, Adam seemed to truly appreciate all the pains she went to.
It was almost as though the man had never experienced down-home cooking, cheerful company, and a fond consideration for his health and well-being, all in a snug home that would soon be his very own. But of course that couldn’t be true.
Surely his family in Baltimore had cared for him.
Hadn’t they?
Stuck on the troubling thought that perhaps they hadn’t—which would go far to explain Adam’s excessive gratitude—Savannah hesitated at the far end of the station’s meager kitchen with her tray in hand. She’d always assumed Adam had been happy in Baltimore. But if that were true, why had he agreed to come west? Had the notion of being with her been that much of a lure?
She liked to think she was attractive and kind, of course. But what woman was alluring enough to draw a man away from the life he knew and had made for himself?
In his letters, Adam hadn’t confided much about his past. In fact, he’d been largely silent on the subject, it occurred to her. At the time, his omissions hadn’t bothered Savannah. She hadn’t wanted to bring up the subject and risk having him ask about her history. But now she wondered anew. What if Adam were hiding something—something dire? She ought to find out about it.
Feeling increasingly curious about him, Savannah hefted her tray. She shouldered open the kitchen door, then marched to the center of the station building. The place had been erected in haphazard fashion, with the office for the telegraphy equipment arising first, the sitting room and bedroom next, then the ramshackle kitchen tacked on last, after a need had developed for a full-time telegraph operator to live there.
The crowded arrangement had caused some awkward moments early on. She’d been forced to maneuver past a slumbering Adam to brew a cup of tea or put on a pot to boil in the kitchen—or simply to take herself to bed at the end of a long day. But Mose had solved that problem handily by stringing up fabric partitions between Adam’s bed and Savannah’s makeshift cot on the other side of the room. Now, as close as their quarters were, they had some necessary privacy—and some propriety, too.
Above all, preserving that sense of decorum mattered to Savannah. She couldn’t become the woman she wanted to be without making sure her behavior was as near to perfect as it could be.
Striving for that same propriety now, she directed her gaze away from the nearest of those partitions as she entered the room. She didn’t want to seem too forward—or to catch Adam in an unguarded, potentially awkward moment. All the same, she truly savored this part of her day. Her heart picked up pace as she stepped forward, ready to deliver another breakfast to Adam.
She took a modest peek at the partition. To her surprise, Savannah saw that the fabric had already been drawn back. Beyond it, the bed was empty of everything except rumpled sheets, an indented feather pillow and a tossed-away quilt.
Had her mail-order groom run away…again?
Heart pounding, she set her breakfast tray on the bureau. Where could she go? What could she do? Mose wasn’t even here yet. They shared ownership of a horse and wagon, but Mose used both to travel between his cabin and the station. On foot, she’d be unlikely to catch up with Adam before he got away. Or got lost. Or got into town and revealed their plans to be wed. She hadn’t exactly stressed the need for circumspection with him. She’d feared any such warning would arouse undue suspicion.
And bring up questions she didn’t want to answer yet.
Cursing her own lack of foresight now, Savannah hesitated. If Adam let slip her unmarried name too freely, Morrow Creek could become her next Ledgerville. Her past could follow her here, too, bringing scandal and whispers and accusations that she was a “Ruthless Reed”—someone to be wary and suspicious of.
She liked Morrow Creek. She didn’t want to leave the cozy little town! She didn’t want to be forced to start over someplace new. She didn’t know if she could stand that. Breaking the news to Mose, packing up their belongings, striking out…
Just when she’d reached the verge of panic, Savannah heard footsteps on the floorboards behind her. Then Adam’s voice.
“Good morning,” he said.
Surprised, she swiveled to see Adam crossing the room. His movements seemed surer than they had been for days. Scarcely noticing the muted clunk of the station’s door shutting, she stared as Adam dropped his rucksack near the bureau.
Magnificently bare-chested, he gave her a cheerful nod. He used one of her embroidered towels to dab at his face, making that simple amalgamation of cotton and needlework appear far more interesting than it ever had when she’d used it to towel off after one of her own baths. In Adam’s hearty grasp, her ordi
nary towel seemed absurdly delicate. Set against his sun-browned skin, its snowy-whiteness seemed blinding.
She glanced down at her own hand, then at her forearm. Her bare skin was only partly visible below her lacy sleeve, but even that tiny sample was enough to inform Savannah that she and Adam were very different when it came to skin color. She was fashionably pale. He was nearly the color of toffee. Against all reason, she found the difference between them arresting. What would it look like, she wondered, if their hands came together?
“Sorry if I startled you.” Adam stopped at the ladder-back chair. He gave his face a final rubdown, then seemed at a loss as to what to do with his towel. He settled on holding it as he lifted his gaze to hers. “I woke up feeling like a grizzly bear after a long winter. It was high time for a shave, I decided.”
He grinned. The effect that good humor had on his face was striking. His smile eased all the angles there, from his hard jawline to his jutting cheekbones to his strong brows. Now, without several days’ worth of beard growth to obscure his features, he appeared even more attractive than he had before.
As though demonstrating his former need for a shave to her, Adam rubbed his palm over his jawline. Savannah gawked at him, instantly struck by a wild desire to do the same. She wanted to feel his bare skin under her fingertips. She wanted to know the flex and play of the muscles that formed his singular smile. She wanted to know him, pure and simple.
Of course she’d touched him already, she reminded herself staunchly. She’d cared for him, nursed him, watched over him. During the course of his recuperation, Savannah had become quite comfortable with the new man in her home. She’d grown accustomed to the sight of Adam’s naked, hair-sprinkled chest as she’d changed his bandages. She’d gotten familiar with the feel of his strong arm muscles and taut abdomen as she’d helped him take slow, painful walks around the station as a necessary part of building up his strength. But those things…
Well. Those things, quite simply, didn’t compare with this.
This Adam Corwin was a different man altogether. This Adam Corwin appeared alert and vital. This Adam Corwin gazed at her with directness and sharp wit, his striking blue eyes not the least bit clouded by Doc Finney’s tincture. He’d been strong and considerate and grateful while he’d been injured. But now that he was on the mend, Adam was…downright fascinating.
His new vigor was a bit intimidating. Whereas before Savannah had felt fairly comfortable with fussing over him, now she felt embarrassed at the thought of the liberties she’d taken with his privacy and his person. Truly she’d manhandled him almost as much as Mose had accused her of doing, cavalierly grabbing Adam’s trouser legs or his arms to maneuver him more comfortably in bed. Flushed at the memory, she averted her gaze.
Then she swerved it straight back to Adam again. Frankly the sight of him was too wonderful not to linger over.
“I’m happy to see all you were doing was getting cleaned up,” she confessed. “I was worried you’d run away again.”
“Never.” With a grave expression, Adam came near enough to touch. “I won’t leave you, Savannah. Not unless you ask me to.”
“Well. That’s unlikely to happen, isn’t it? Especially now that you’re so…” Lively. Handsome. Downright captivating.
No. She could hardly say any of those things. “So much improved,” she settled for. Discomfited all over again—and likely still blushing—she dropped her gaze to the towel in his hands. “Here. Let me take care of that for you.”
Savannah reached for it. At the same time, Adam murmured a word of thanks, then tried to hand the towel to her.
Their fingers brushed. Jolted by the contact, Savannah inhaled. Mesmerized, she stared at their almost-joined hands.
Together, they appeared every bit as enthralling as she’d imagined they might. Where their fingers touched, warmth surged between them. A funny tingle traveled all the way up her arm. Somehow it managed to make itself felt clear down to her toes.
Feeling unsettled, she lifted her gaze to Adam’s. Like her, he stared at their hands. Then he shifted his gaze to her face. The moment he did so, something…powerful moved between them.
Savannah caught her breath. She would have sworn that Adam was staring at her mouth. But that was crazy, wasn’t it?
She wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t smiling just then, wasn’t doing a single, solitary thing with her mouth that would have warranted such intense interest.
And yet… She felt an equally intense interest in him. And his mouth. Which appeared full. And masculine. But soft. With her mind awhirl, Savannah tried to decide what to do about that. This situation had not been discussed in her etiquette book.
She settled on her failsafe maneuver as described in the Guide to Correct Etiquette and Proper Behavior: a curtsy. Using Adam’s hand for balance, Savannah arranged herself in her most ladylike pose. To her relief, she scarcely even wobbled.
Adam fell silent. She hoped that meant he was impressed. She could not look up at him without a lapse in deportment.
Then he said, “Savannah, stand up. You needn’t curtsy to me. Not ever again. Please.” Sounding aggrieved, Adam raised her up with a gentle tug. “Believe me, I’m anything but your superior. I don’t deserve that kind of treatment from you.”
“Of course you do!” Relieved of the need to be formal, Savannah took Adam’s towel from him. She tossed it on the chair. In all honesty, curtsying made her knees ache. She would not be sorry if the need for it arose less frequently. “You’re a fine, upstanding man. You deserve all the best from me.”
“I doubt you could give anything less than the best, just by being you.” His mouth quirked on a charming smile. “But the plain fact is, I’m a ‘fine, upstanding man’ who’s been thinking about kissing you ever since you came close enough for me to count your freckles this morning. So I’d guess that pretty much wrecks your theory about what I deserve and don’t deserve.”
“I don’t have freckles!” Perish the thought. She’d tried every possible remedy for those blasted spots, including fresh buttermilk compresses and lumpy concoctions of dandelion greens mixed with lemon and— Abruptly Savannah stopped. “Kissing me?”
The notion bloomed in her head, bright and potent and impossible to stop thinking about. She’d been kissed before, of course. But only a few times. Sloppily and without finesse. But given the way all the other stage girls went on about kissing, Savannah knew there must be something more to the process. Something she’d never experienced…but would very much like to.
With his gaze still fixed on her, Adam nodded. “Yes.”
He wanted to kiss her! He wanted, wanted, wanted….
Savannah wanted his kiss, too. Sadly she could not allow herself that.
“I’d planned,” she confessed demurely, “to save our first kiss for our wedding day. So that it would feel truly special.”
“Yes. Our wedding.” Adam’s face fell. He looked away. “About that—there’s something you should know. Something—”
“But I just changed my mind,” Savannah blurted.
Then she raised herself on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth eagerly to his.
Adam had known he was in trouble the moment Savannah’s gaze turned wistful. When her mouth softened, turning twice as luscious as usual, he’d realized the situation was even more dire than he’d thought. By the time her bosom expanded on a hasty indrawn breath, momentarily diverting his attention, he’d understood that he was in over his head for certain.
He’d known full well he should put a stop to what was happening between them. But a heartbeat later, Savannah had lurched upward, sparking his sense of anticipation and desire to a fever pitch. Then his whole mind had gone blank…with pain.
Damnation. Giving a strangled cry, Adam stepped backward. He put his arms on Savannah’s shoulders to wrench her away.
“What’s wrong?” Worriedly she fluttered her hands in an effort to help him. “Did I hurt you?”
“My ribs. You pushed
—” he panted “—right on my broken ribs.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I got…carried away.”
“It’s all right.” He’d gotten carried away, too. Adam clenched his teeth in an approximation of a smile, not wanting Savannah to feel bad—especially for a rascally act of his own. He never should have confessed his desire to kiss her. “I’ve been needing to toughen up anyway. Getting out of bed to shave today was only the first step. Tomorrow I plan to start in on breaking wild horses, as usual. The day after that, I’ll lay a railroad line from your front door all the way south to Tucson.”
He grinned to show he was joking. But Savannah greeted his jest with pure earnestness. Wearing a concerned frown, she put her hands on her hips. Her lush, calico-covered, womanly—
“I told you, you don’t have to impress me with Wild West heroics. When I invited you here, I knew what I was getting: a plain, commonsense man. If you hadn’t been attacked and robbed and left for dead outside the station, we’d already be married by now. That was our plan when we agreed to this, remember?”
Adam did remember. He remembered that detail from her letters to Roy Bedell. He had to tell her the truth. Soon. But the way she looked at him—as though he really were capable of Wild West heroics and fearlessness in general—somehow took all his good intentions and popped them like soap bubbles.
Mutely Adam nodded. In response, Savannah smiled broadly at him. It pleased him to see her smile. He felt like a damned hero all over again, just for agreeing with her views.
Most of the time, Savannah appeared happy, he’d noticed. Yet she had a face that looked as though it had seen its share of tears, too. The past few days, he’d wondered about that. He didn’t like the thought of her being unhappy. Not ever. If he could have, Adam would have shouldered all her burdens himself.