by Sarah Hegger
Cole’s stare hardened. “If you think I’m going to let you go to San Francisco on your own, you’ve lost your mind.”
“I beg your pardon.” Where did he get off with being so bossy?
“I said.” Cole spread his arm over the back of the chair. “That you’re not going to California on your own.”
“Who are you to stay I’m not?”
“I’m saying it.” He sipped his drink. “And if you try it, I’ll follow you and drag you back.”
He was being impossible, and she needed to set him straight. “You wouldn’t dare. And anyway, you’re off to New York in a day or two.”
“I’m off to New York in the morning,” Cole said. “And you’re coming with me.”
Ellie didn’t bother with keeping her voice down. She was frustrated, and he wasn’t listening. “I can’t go to New York.”
“Why not?”
“Because…what would I do there? Where would I live?” Cole looked so calm and collected, she wanted to smack him.
He sipped his whisky. “You will do exactly what you planned to do in Denver. You’ll open a dress shop for women who can’t afford the expensive modistes. I’ll stake you a start in your business, same as I was going to do here.”
“Yes, but…” She couldn’t finish her sentence because her reasons against were running out.
“You can stay with me at a hotel for a bit. We’ll find you somewhere to live close to your business.”
Cole made it sound so reasonable, so plausible. All she had to do was get on that train with him tomorrow.
“You know it makes sense, Ellie.” Cole stood and put his glass on the side table. He took both her hands in his and pulled her arms about his waist. “I know it wasn’t the plan at first, but plans change. We can do this. I think your idea will go down even better in New York, where there are plenty of girls who need what you offer.”
Still not willing to believe the solution was so easy, Ellie pressed her cheek to his chest. “If I agree to this, it’s as your business partner and not your lover.”
“Why can’t we be both?” He rubbed her back with his big hands.
Already she was in too deep with Cole. Once he got back with his Victoria, she’d never be able to share him. She wasn’t made that way. On this point, she needed to stand firm, for the sake of her poor heart. “If we go to New York, we will be business partners only. Whatever this is between us ends the moment we step off the train to New York.”
“Done.” Cole’s eyes gleamed. He bent and lifted her off her feet. “Ever imagine you’d conduct a love affair on a train?”
“No.” Ellie wrapped her legs around his waist.
Cole gave her a wicked grin. “Well, get ready, Sugar, you’re about to.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In all her speculating about a love affair, Ellie had never thought of having one as fun. Turns out Cole was all about fun.
They’d taken his private rail car from Denver to Cheyenne, and then hitched to the New York train. Just last year, the Transcontinental Express had left New York and arrived in San Francisco eighty-three hours later. Ellie kind of wished they still went slower.
After she’d gotten over the surprise of going to New York, she’d made the decision to enjoy the life out of whatever hours she had with Cole.
Like now, sitting in her chemise on the huge rumpled bed where Cole made love to her any time the fancy took—and the fancy took often—as he taught her to play poker.
She had a working knowledge of the game, but Cole was trying to instruct her on the finer points. If he hadn’t been sitting there shirtless, his beautiful chest the subject of her slavish admiration, she might have absorbed more of the lesson.
“Sugar.” He gave her a reproving look over his cards. “You cannot see me without meeting the bet.”
Not with this fistful of nothing she had. “But I don’t want to.”
He looked torn between the desire to laugh or shake her. “Then you shouldn’t have played.”
“Pfft!” She waved her hand at him. “Maybe it’s all a ploy to get you to think I don’t know what to do. Then you’ll bet big, and bam, I got you.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Did that ever occur to you?”
“No, Sugar.” He drawled her name like honey poured into whisky. “That did not occur to me for one minute, and neither does it occur to me now. You’re not concentrating.”
“Oh, I’m concentrating all right.” She leered at him.
Cole’s expression warmed immediately. “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh.” She shrugged and the sleeve of her chemise slid down her shoulder.
His eyes tracked the fabric’s movement. “So what’s your next move?”
“I pay to see you.” She shoved her rapidly dwindling pile of pennies into the middle of their game.
“Right!” Cole tossed his cards over his shoulder and lunged. He caught her around the waist and bore her down to the bed beneath him. “Consider this me showing my cards.”
Giggling, Ellie wrapped her arms around his neck. Most of the time, he didn’t need to lay a finger on her for her to want him. A look from those molten gold eyes, or just looking at all the gorgeous male sharing a train car with her, and she craved him. “We should get up and get dressed.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Sugar.” He left a trail of hot kisses up her neck to her mouth. “You get dressed, and I’m only going to take all your clothes off again.”
“You’re so demanding.” And it might be her favorite thing about him. Along with the way he made her feel like the world centered around her. Or how he could always make her laugh, and he never spoke down to her when he discovered gaps in her education.
Ellie bet Victoria didn’t have those gaps in her education. When Cole spoke about stuff with Victoria, she would have an intelligent opinion.
“Hey!” Cole framed her face with his hands. A small frown creased his brow. “Where did you go?”
“I’m here.” She wriggled beneath him to prove her point.
Cole didn’t play. He continued to look into her eyes as if he could see her thoughts. “You went somewhere else.” He kissed her temple. “Your head left us.”
He also read her like one of the many books he kept in the car. “It’s nothing.” She slid her hands over his shoulders and down the fascinating swells of his arms. “I was thinking you spoil me.”
“I like spoiling you.” He took her lead, but his eyes said he didn’t entirely believe her. By unspoken agreement, they kept their discussions light. They steered clear of anything concerning the future. “And I have an obscene amount of money with which to do so.”
“I don’t think it’s polite to talk about how rich you are.”
He pulled a face. “You may be right. But you know what else isn’t polite?”
She shook her head. From the heat in his eyes, she knew she was going to really like the answer.
His lips trailed her chest and fastened over her nipple. Through the fabric of her chemise, he sucked it into the heat of his mouth and released it. “It’s not polite to tell a woman how much you want to bury your face in her breasts.” Sitting up, he tugged her chemise over her head and threw it away. He slid down her body to her belly. “Or here.” He parted her thighs and settled between them. “And it’s definitely the height of bad manners to bury your face between her thighs.”
With a small scream, Ellie arched into the caress of his mouth. Cole brought her to completion before crawling up her body. He shrugged out of his trousers.
Ellie wrapped her legs around his hips and let him take her there. Every time he loved her, it felt as good as the first time, better even. He taught her about her pleasure, and about his.
With every lesson he gave, Ellie fell deeper and deeper under his spell. Every touch bound him closer to her. Every time he loved her, he took another piece of her heart with him.
Hours later, Ellie lay beside a sleeping Cole, laying partially on his stomach, his ri
ght arm stretched out and resting across her belly.
The train rushed into the night, taking them with it. With every mile of grassland passing the window, her time with Cole drew to a close. Soon they would arrive in New York, and their love affair would be over. Only then, would she allow herself to tally how badly she’d miscalculated. Leaving Cole would plow a furrow straight through the middle of her.
Their time ran out a day and a half later. Ellie pressed her face to the window, staring into the bustling mammoth that was New York City, and hiding her steadily tearing heart.
“Almost there.” Cole sat beside her, his face shuttered as he stared into the city where he had grown up.
Ellie tried to read his thoughts. “Does it look different?”
“It does, and it doesn’t.” He tried for a light shrug, but she was coming to know this man. “It’s bigger, for sure.”
The train had slowed as they passed tall buildings all packed side by side.
From the safety of her carriage window, she eyed the heaving streets with trepidation. So many people and so many horses and carriages, they blurred into a mass of busy and impatient.
She wanted to ask him about the stuff she saw, but returning home must have been difficult for him. “How long since you’ve been in New York?”
“Twelve years.”
A lot changed in twelve years. For his sake, she hoped Victoria wasn’t one of those things. For hers, and this was the really pathetic part, she didn’t hope any different. She wanted him to be happy. Besides, the pragmatist in her insisted that even if Victoria never took Cole back, he’d already made his choice.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cole stood on the sidewalk in front to the towering mansion, morning sun beating on his head, the humidity already making him want to fidget, and waited. What for, he couldn’t say, but he waited anyway. Twelve long and grueling years had brought him to this point, and now he was struggling to take the next steps. Literally take the steps up to the mansion’s front door so he could ring the bell.
When he had been engaged to Victoria, she’d lived with her parents. He’d never been inside this house. It belonged to her late husband. Giles Bonnington had been one of the set he and Victoria ran with back then.
If pressed, Cole could form a vague image of light brown hair and average height. Victoria, however, was painted as vividly in his mind as she had been the day he’d left.
Tall and slender, Victoria moved with an innate grace that made her seem to float on her own air bubble. The quintessential upper crust debutante, her manners were impeccable, she spoke conversational French, could play the piano and sing, and dabbled in watercolor painting.
He had heard other girls complain at the time that everything Victoria did, she did better than anyone else. He’d felt like king of the world the day she’d said yes to his proposal.
The door opened and a stiff looking butler stared down his nose at Cole. “Mrs. Bonnington bids you enter, sir.”
That would be Victoria now, Mrs. Bonnington. Had she seen him standing outside? Did she recognize him?
Instead of standing there like a limp noodle, he needed to get in there and find out for himself. He pressed his sweating palms to his trouser legs. Every dime he’d scrabbled for, every hardship he’d overcome had been so he could come back and prove to Victoria he’d changed, and she could put her faith in him, this time forever.
Inside, the mansion smelled like wax and furniture oil. They were the scents of his privileged childhood, and they surrounded him in a rush of sentiment. He almost expected to turn and see his mother standing at the top of the large, curving staircase.
Heart still pounding in his throat, he followed the butler across the black and white tiled foyer. Bonnington had been a man of means or had come from a family that was. The house was large but beautifully furnished. He’d bet his left jewel Victoria had something to do with that.
The butler opened the door into a salon and stepped back.
And there she was.
Victoria.
He stood one pace inside the salon and stared at her. She’d matured, her figure fuller and her face missing the soft edges of a young girl.
Standing with her hands clasped in front of her, she was staring at him too. “Cole?” she whispered, alarmingly pale in her stiff black widow’s gown.
The gown made him think of Ellie, now Widow Pierce. Her austere black gowns provided a fetching foil for her vibrant beauty. Thinking about Ellie grounded him somehow, and he found his voice. “Good morning, Victoria, or would you prefer I call you Mrs. Bonnington?”
“Cole.” She blinked and sat abruptly on the chair behind her. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked out the window and saw you there.”
He moved deeper into the room. Her voice was the same, light and sweet. Even in his last dreadful days in New York, she had never raised it in his presence. “I was working on the courage to knock on your door.”
“You look…” Her large brown eyes catalogued every inch of him in a manner she would have found ill-bred in someone else. But twelve years was a long time not to see the man you’d pledged your life to. “You look well.”
And just like that, her breeding came to the rescue and her spine snapped erect and she schooled her expression.
“I know I have no right to be here, but I couldn’t not come.” He moved deeper into the room. She motioned him to sit and he did. “I needed to see you.”
“Have you been in New York long?” She folded her slim white hands on her lap.
Cole wanted her to react somehow. Instead, she sat as she’d been taught to do and showed precious little of her thoughts or her feelings. Jesus, Ellie would either be whaling on him for leaving her for so long, or demanding to know where the hell he’d been, and what the hell he thought he was doing showing up on her doorstep. “I arrived yesterday evening,” he said. “You are the first visit I made. I will try to see my mother next.”
“My condolences on your father’s passing.” Victoria inclined her head like she was bestowing a queenly blessing on him. “If it’s any comfort, he did not suffer.”
It was no fucking comfort. The old bastard should have gone slow and painfully. He’d certainly made his family’s lives a living torment when he’d been alive. “Thank you, and I was sorry to hear about Bonnington.”
“It was a shock.” She cleared her throat. “A sailing accident.”
Of course it was. Nobody in New York got dead in a high noon shootout or beaten to death for cheating the wrong man at cards. At least, not in the part of New York he’d been part of.
The clock over the mantel ticked away in the silence. From the street, faint noises drifted inside the mansion. But they were genteel noises, the scrunch of carriage wheels, the clop of horse hooves, the gentle chiding of a nursemaid to her pampered charge.
Twelve years of living a different kind of life robbed him of the ability to sit there and let the minute hand count off the acceptable time for a social call. Life was too short and too precious. It could be snatched away at any second.
“Victoria.” Cole sat forward, sweating and his gut tight. “I’ve never forgotten you.”
She jerked and stared at him. “I don’t…Cole. You can’t…” Then she softened. She was so beautiful, he forgot to breathe as she whispered, “Really?”
“I thought about you almost every day.” He took her softening as an encouraging sign. “There were days when the memory of your face was all that kept me going.”
“Oh.” She flushed and her eyes sparkled. “I was a married woman.”
“I know that.” And it had been his fault she’d married elsewhere. “And I respected your decision. God knows, I deserved no less.”
Dropping his gaze, she stared at her hands as she twisted her skirts between her fingers. Ladies like his mother and Victoria didn’t fidget, unless they were deeply perturbed. “Why, Cole?” She looked haunted by the question. “Why did you do it?”
“Accept that challenge? Or break off our engagement?” There was a strange disassociation within him to those events. Pivotal as they had been, they now belonged to another version of himself. A young man, a stranger now, had accepted a duel on some imagined slight. His father had forbidden him from dueling, but he’d done it anyway. Both duelists had been arrested, and only his father’s influence had kept Cole out of more trouble. But society had heard the news, and added to the tally of wild misdeeds he’d already accrued, Cole had been out.
“The challenge.” She kept her head lowered. “And my father broke off our engagement before you tried to see me that day.”
He had stood outside her father’s house for nearly two days straight waiting for the girl he had loved to come out and speak to him. In the end, her brothers had forced him away at gunpoint. About ten minutes later, he’d boarded a train going west.
“Whatever you believe about that day, know this.” Needing to bridge the gap between them, he took her hands. Cold, white and delicate, they looked fragile against his sun darkened, calloused palm. “I loved you. Nothing that happened all those years ago was because of lack of love for you.” She left her hand in his. “In my arrogance and stupidity, I was careless with your love and lost it.”
“Oh, Cole.” She took her hand away and pressed it to her mouth. “There were so many months I wished you would come to me and say the things you’re saying now.” Tears shone against the stark black of her lashes. “But it’s too late now. Too many years have passed.”
“I don’t believe that.” He hadn’t been naive enough to think she would throw open her doors to him. He had hurt her, changed the course of her life, as well as his, through his thoughtless actions. “All I ask is that you give me the chance to mend my fences.”
She stood and walked to the window. She held her head like a queen, her back slim and straight in her heavy black gown. “What do you want from me?”
“A chance.” He went with the truth. “A chance to mend the rift as much as you will allow.”