It smelled good enough to kill for.
Truman turned to Dempsey. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on Lou’s gang.”
“I watched them ride out of town this morning,” he explained.
“Are you sure they’re gone? All of them?”
“Positive. I followed them for more than an hour.”
Truman holstered his gun and glanced at Jessica with a word of warning. “That sounds reassuring,” he said, “but I wouldn’t relax just yet if I were you. They’re a slippery bunch.”
* * *
TRUMAN WALKED JESSICA as far as the Front Street intersection, but stopped abruptly when she touched his arm and gave him a flirtatious look.
“You don’t need to walk me home,” she said sweetly. “Deputy Dempsey said the gang rode out of town, so I’m sure I’ll be fine. Besides, I have a few errands to run in town.”
She gazed up at him with those bewitching green eyes, and he knew something was up.
Jessica stuck out her hand. “Thank you, Truman. It was a pleasure.” She paused. “Well, some of it was, and I’m sure you know which part I’m talking about.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle. Dang, she was a sexy piece of work. Of course, he knew what she was referring to, and her provocative words cost him a fresh rush of exhilaration.
He took hold of her hand and shook it. “I believe I do.”
The air between them sparked with attraction, then she grinned mischievously and walked off toward the hardware store, wiggling her cute little bottom as she went.
He struggled to maintain an appearance of casual disinterest as he watched her turn into Zimmerman’s. People passed him on the boardwalk, saying hello, bumping elbows with him. He nodded in return, barely aware of who he was acknowledging, and knew full well that he should be at the city clerk’s office by now, but he needed to keep an eye on Jessica.
Besides, last night’s kiss was still clanging like an alarm bell in his head, and he couldn’t seem to silence it.
Ever since Dorothy was taken from him, he hadn’t felt much need for a woman. Not until Jessica came to town. And last night she had looked up at him with those alluring green eyes, and he experienced a shock of arousal from his head to his nether regions that still had him reeling with desire this morning. All he wanted to do was follow her home, carry her upstairs to a bed—any bed would do—and plant himself firmly and snugly between her thighs. Over and over and over.
With a frustrated shake of his head, he leaned against a post and watched the goings-on in the street, while he kept an eye on Zimmerman’s.
A few minutes later, Jessica walked out and started up the boardwalk again in the other direction. He expected her to turn up the street toward Maxwell’s place, but instead, she turned down Second Avenue toward the bridge and disappeared.
Wondering where she was going, Truman went into Zimmerman’s and approached the counter.
“Morning Sheriff,” Fred said. “Beautiful day.”
“Yep, it’s something else. Tell me, did you just wait on a young woman, about so high with dark, reddish hair?”
“Sounds like you’re referring to Junebug Jess. Pretty little thing, ain’t she? I don’t believe a word of what the papers say. That girl wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Yeah...well. What did she buy?”
“Nothing. She sold me something.”
Truman’s eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “What was it?”
Fred reached into the glass display case and withdrew a necklace. “I don’t usually deal in this type of thing, but I couldn’t pass it up. Look at the size of that diamond, and she sold it for a song.”
Truman examined the silver chain and single sparkling stone. It was the biggest diamond he’d ever seen in his life, at least half an inch in diameter. It was no small trinket. Why was Jessica selling this? Something worth that much money would have to be a family heirloom. Unless, of course, it was stolen. Maybe this was what the gang wanted from her.
Had she lied about that after all? Something tugged hard in his gut, and he wished he’d never kissed her. It was only going to complicate things, because he still wanted to do it again.
“Thanks, Fred.” Truman walked out of the store and crossed the street.
He spotted Jessica at a distance, crossing the bridge and heading onto the open prairie where the herds were grazing. Without a horse or buggy, she wasn’t going to get too far. There wasn’t much out there except for grass.
Maybe she was going to meet someone.
Truman decided to follow. He fetched his binoculars from his saddlebag, left Thunder tethered at the water trough, then crossed the bridge, maintaining a safe distance behind Jessica and crouching down in the tall grass.
About a mile outside of town, she stopped and moved to the edge of the road. Truman scanned the horizon for company, but saw no one, so he hunkered down behind an old upturned wagon to keep watch.
From where he was kneeling, he could see her quite clearly through the binoculars. She paced back and forth on the road, as if searching for something. Truman lowered the binoculars and squinted through the summer haze while insects buzzed all around him.
After a moment, Jessica trudged down a grassy bank into an irrigation ditch, then stretched her arms out to the side and began to spin around. She ran in circles, flapping her arms like a bird attempting to fly.
“What the devil…?” Truman raised the binoculars and watched her whirl and dance around. She pulled her skirts up over her knees—she wasn’t wearing any stockings—and hopped up and down like she was plum out of her mind.
Refocusing the lenses on those suntanned, smoothly muscled legs, Truman’s hands turned clumsy and he dropped the binoculars. Jessica continued to spin and jump, and all he could do was stare.
Just then, she stopped spinning and staggered sideways. She toppled over and fell into the grass.
Truman quickly stood. He remembered Dorothy collapsing....
Gathering up his binoculars, he took off in a full run across the prairie to reach her.
* * *
JESSICA LAY FLAT on her back, blinking up at the sky.
Why hadn’t it worked? All she’d managed to do was make herself dizzy and give herself another headache.
She pressed her palm to her forehead and tried to shut out the world, which was still spinning around and around.
What would it take? If only she could remember all the details of the experience.
Gazing up at the topsy-turvy sky, she pondered the fact that the fluffy white clouds were no different from the clouds back in the twenty-first century. She could be home for all she knew.
But it wasn’t likely. She couldn’t hear any traffic, only the gentle whisper of the wind through the tall prairie grasses and the sounds of grasshoppers and bees.
She sat up and wondered if a rainy day would do the trick. Maybe it was the lightning.
Suddenly she heard someone call her name. She glanced toward town and saw Truman running toward her. Thank God it was him, but how long had he been watching her?
She collapsed onto her back again, relieved and mortified at the same time. He had seen her, she knew it, and any moment now, he was going to arrive and ask her if she’d taken leave of her senses.
His boots whisked over the grass and came to a halt beside her. “Are you hurt? What are you doing out here? Are you okay?”
Jessica sat up. “I think the more relevant question is what are you doing out here?”
“I followed you.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s quite obvious, but something tells me you weren’t concerned for my safety. Otherwise, you simply would have made your presence known.”
Truman ripped off his coat and tossed it onto the ground. “You didn’t answer my question, Jessica. I asked what you were doing out here.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“No? I saw you walk into Zimmerman’s, and I know you pawned a necklace. Tha
t wouldn’t be what Lou’s gang was after, would it?”
“No!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?”
She laughed with disbelief. “You never mentioned you wanted an inventory of all my worldly possessions.”
He shook his head. “It was more than a worldly possession. You parted with a fortune this morning, and you seem to be taking it pretty lightly. You could’ve at least gone down the street for a better price. Why were you in such a hurry to get rid of it?”
Jessica wasn’t sure if she should tell him that the stone was a cubic zirconia that Liam had given her for Christmas. She explained that it was a fake to the clerk, but she doubted he’d revealed that to Truman.
“I just needed some cash,” she told him. “I didn’t want to keep borrowing from Mr. Maxwell.”
“So you practically gave away something worth a fortune? Makes me think you didn’t care much about that necklace. I’d hate to think you got it through some unscrupulous means.”
Jessica frowned. “You think I stole it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Good, because it’s not true. If you must know, my ex-fiancé gave it to me, and it really wasn’t worth very much.”
Truman paused. “You didn’t give it back to him?”
“No. He didn’t want it. The necklace was a fake, just like everything else in our relationship.”
Truman raked his fingers through his hair. “A fake?”
“Yes.”
He sat down in the grass beside her and said nothing for a long time.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Truman asked.
“It’s been a number of months.”
He looked at her intently. “Do you plan on seeing him again?”
She laughed bitterly. “Trust me, with the way things are going, it’s not likely to happen. Not in this lifetime.”
She and Truman sat quietly on the grass while Jessica considered the situation. With all these personal questions about her fiancé, she was beginning to wonder if he was as obsessed by last night’s kiss as she was.
Part of her was excited by the possibility, but another part of her didn’t want anything to distract her from finding a way home.
“There’s one question you still haven’t answered yet,” Truman said.
“What’s that?”
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing out here.”
She searched through the chaos in her mind for a reasonable reply. “I just wanted to go for a walk.”
“A walk… Then what was all the dancing and spinning?”
Jessica began to smile. “I suppose I looked quite outrageous.” She couldn’t help but laugh.
Truman regarded her with puzzled dismay, then shook his head in resignation and lay back in the grass. “I give up. You are crazier than a waltzing pig.”
She chuckled at that. “So why were you following me?” she finally asked.
He tossed his arms up under his head. “I wanted to know where you were going.”
“Why? I’m not your prisoner. I’m free to leave town if I want to.”
“Is that what you were doing?” he asked with suspicion. “Leaving town?”
“No. I wasn’t sure I could even get out of here.”
His chest heaved with a sigh. “You don’t always make a lot of sense, Junebug.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” she replied, squinting toward the horizon.
“Are you also aware that when you’re cryptic,” he said, “it only makes me more suspicious? More intrigued?”
She didn’t answer. How could she? She didn’t know if he was speaking professionally or personally, or if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Well...” He rose to his feet and offered his hand. “Time to head back.”
She was eye level with his belt buckle. She gazed at his hips and muscular thighs, and was half tempted to ask him to stay a while longer and talk. She might not always like his questions, but she did enjoy the anticipation she felt whenever she was alone with him.
“Coming?” he repeated.
Jessica shook herself out of her infatuation and accepted his hand. He pulled her to her feet, and she lifted her skirts and hiked ahead of him through the tall grass toward the road.
“Jessica!”
Heart thumping a rapid rhythm in her chest, she stopped and turned. “What is it?”
He glanced at her feet. She looked down and realized she was holding her skirts clear above her knees.
Knowing a thing or two about the times, she guessed Truman had never seen a woman do that. She quickly dropped the skirt and shrugged, as if to say, ‘what does it matter anyway?’
“You’re different from most women,” he said.
“I know.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then kept this eyes trained on the ground as he walked past her. “And you ain’t easy to be around.”
“I know that, too,” she casually replied.
While they walked side by side back to town, they talked about simpler matters—like Dodge City’s cattle trade and the occasional scuffle that kept Truman busy in his job.
When they reached the bridge, Jessica cleared her throat. “Truman, I hope from now on you won’t waste any more time trying to investigate my past. I guarantee there’s nothing to find.”
“Model citizen?”
“You could say that.”
Truman’s gaze roamed leisurely down the length of her body, and she felt another stirring of excitement as she remembered the kiss, and wanted very much to do it again.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said in a low, husky voice. “I’ll stop trying to dig up your past, if you promise to keep a close watch over your shoulder.”
A surge of apprehension moved through her. “Why? Do you think the gang will come back?”
“Don’t know. But if you didn’t kill Lou, somebody else did, and there’s probably a damn good reason why they haven’t come forward for the reward.” He leaned even closer and whispered hotly in her ear. “And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
She thanked him politely, but inside, she swooned.
Chapter Eleven
* * *
IN THE DAYS that followed—while Jessica waited for a rain and lightning storm so that she could go back out onto the prairie and try spinning again—she saw Truman only once. Passing him on the boardwalk, she smiled politely after he tipped his hat at her, and when he was gone, she had to fight a hot and lusty compulsion to chase after him, grab him by the hand, drag him home to her bed, and get naked in a frenzied hurry.
If only she could conquer those heady urges. She was lonely; there was no denying that. There was also no denying that she was lonely for her home and family. The thing that worried her, however, was the sense that Truman could make it hurt less if he made wild, passionate love to her for about ten days straight without stopping, except to eat and take short naps. Together of course.
That evening she tried to sweep thoughts of him and her family from her mind by focusing on dinner preparations for Mr. Maxwell. She wanted to cook something delicious for him in return for his many kindnesses, so she prepared a hot supper of roast beef, turnips and gravy, and cherry pie for dessert.
After dinner, they retired to the parlor to sip apple brandy.
“Jessica,” Angus asked, “is Wendy as nice as she seems?”
“Yes. She’s a lovely person.”
“I thought so.” He looked down at his crystal glass. “She always looks happy. Will she be going to the circus next week?”
“I have no idea.”
“Will you be going?”
“I’m not sure.” A wagon rolled by outside, and Jessica could hear the driver talking to his mules. What she wouldn’t give to hear the sound of a modern day police siren or the ring of her computer to let her know that she had email…
She waited until the wagon passed. “Would you like me to invite Wendy to go with me?”
Angus’s face lit up. “Would you?”
“Of course. We can all go together.” She finished her brandy and stood to go to bed, but stopped in the doorway when that sinking feeling returned. “Angus? Do you even care if you ever go home? Do you miss it at all?”
He sighed heavily and with obvious compassion. “Not much anymore. It’s been so long. I’ve grown used to this place. It would be very strange to go back now.”
“What about your family? Don’t you miss them?”
He gazed wistfully at the window. “Of course I do, but I suppose I’ve learned to accept that I won’t ever see them again.”
“But how can you just accept that? I don’t think I ever could. It would mean giving up.”
His eyes glimmered with sadness, or maybe it was simple wisdom. “It’s no different from losing a loved one,” he said. “You grieve, but then you have no choice but to go on living your life. You find a way to be happy again. It’s not impossible. You just have to decide when you’re ready to accept that they’re gone.”
She nodded and understood that after ten years, Angus had grown comfortable in this century and wasn’t as eager as she was to find a way home.
As she climbed the stairs, she decided that she was going to have to stay on top of this, before she grew too comfortable herself.
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER, Jessica knocked against the jailhouse door until her knuckles burned. When no one answered, she cupped her hands to the window and peered inside. The cabinets were locked, there were no troublemakers in either of the cells, and the coat rack was bare of hats, gun belts, and coats.
Turning to face the street, Jessica heard a hammer cracking, a man’s deep voice shouting orders, and a dim yet constant screech of monkey laughter. It then occurred to her that the circus was setting up in town. Perhaps that’s where Truman was this morning.
She picked up her skirts and walked along the railroad tracks, past the windmill spinning steadily in the breeze and the water tower beside it. She walked up Railroad Avenue where she stopped to watch a gigantic white tent blooming like a flower from the ground. Its sluggish movement resisted the push to rise as the wind blew hard against the tarpaulin. Men tugged and shouldered the poles to launch them to an upright position as the canvas billowed and fought against their thrust. It was a magnificent sight against the bare, flat prairie beyond, where everything seemed still and lifeless.
Bodyguards Boxed Set Page 9