“I’ve done everything I could to help you from the beginning. Why do you make it sound like I’m personally trying to run you out of Colorado?”
“Because you are.”
“All I said was that I can’t be around forever, that I have a job of my own to do. That seems to me to be a reasonable statement.”
“Now I’m not reasonable,” Carrie spurted.
“I never—”
“I suppose it’s a waste of your precious time to talk to a female, especially one from the East.”
“Ma’am, I never said time spent with you was wasted.” That light was back in his eyes, and there was nothing impersonal about it this time. Carrie suddenly felt a thrill go through her whole body; it seemed to be equally divided between pleasure and apprehension. All this man had to do was look at her hard, and he upended her ability to think clearly.
“But you just—”
“I said I wouldn’t be around all the time to help you. I never said it would be a waste of my time.” Carrie felt disarmed, but irrationally that fired her anger rather than cooled it.
“I see. Women have their place, and as long as I keep to it, I’m worthwhile. But suppose I decide to step outside your proscribed line. Will I become a waste of time then?” An ironic smile chased the severity from Lucas’s expression. He came even closer, and to Carrie’s shock and dismay, he took her chin in his hand and gently tilted her head up so he could look into her eyes. She had never seen such eyes, so clear and intense; she had never encountered any gaze she felt could penetrate her defenses … until now.
“I never saw anybody to beat you for twisting a man’s words. Any man who didn’t know you might get the notion you were trying to make him mad.” Carrie wondered how she could make anyone mad when her mind was in such chaos she didn’t know her own thoughts.
“I’m afraid that we women tend to let our emotions color our thinking. And in case you haven’t noticed, I am a woman,” she said a little hesitantly.
“That’s one thing I noticed right off,” Lucas stated, dropping his face until it was only a few inches from hers. “I knew the moment you stepped down off that stage you were more woman than I’d ever seen before, a woman a man could feel proud to call his own.” His own, Carrie thought, quickly recovering from her momentary bemusement. She’d show him Carrie Simpson wasn’t going to be owned by anyone. She reached up, pushed his hand away from her chin, and stepped back so she could see him without craning her neck.
“Treating me like the witless other half of some man is a mighty strange way of showing it. No woman wants to feel owned, not even one as silly and helpless as you seem to think I am.”
“Ma’am …”
“And don’t call me ma’am,” Carrie nearly screamed. “My name is Carrie. You said it once, and I doubt it would kill you to say it again.”
“I hope not, but you never can tell about things like that.”
“What are you talking about? First you insult me by telling me I ought to go back to Denver before I get myself hurt, then you start to make me feel like you want me to leave.”
“Ma’am, I mean Carrie ma’am, you sure do make a right spirited attempt to read a man wrong.” Furrows of frustration crisscrossed his brow, but Carrie could see the indisputable twinkle in his eye and feel the magnetism radiating from his body. He was laughing at her again, and she struggled to fight off the numbing effect this attraction was having on her ability to resist his blandishments.
“I wasn’t aware that your words left any room for interpretation.”
“You know, it’s silly for you to be getting so angry at a man when he’s doing everything he can to help you.” He came a step closer, and Carrie moved a step back, but his stride was much longer than hers and he was closer now. “We ought to be friends. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’ve got my own work to do.”
“So you keep telling me, but since you’re supposed to be providing the station with extra horses, I would think that you were, in a way at least, working for the company. If that’s the case, I don’t see why you can’t consider helping with the horses part of your job.”
“You seem determined to keep at me until you get your way,” Lucas said, and the twinkle turned into a smile. “I might as well warn you that I never give in to any female, not even when she’s as beautiful as you.”
Carrie felt as if she’d received two crushing blows and didn’t know which one to respond to first. That Lucas thought she was beautiful was a thrilling disclosure and made her want to sing and dance at the same time, although she knew she did both very badly, but the fact that he had interpreted her need for his help as a poorly disguised attempt to gain her own way, with God-only-knew what further demands he thought she might make, made her so angry she quite forgot the compliment.
“I would find it quite easy to remain angry with you whether you agreed to help me or not,” she said with lofty scorn.
Without warning, Lucas took her by the arms and kissed her soundly on the lips. Then thinking better of it, he took her in his arms and kissed her in a way Carrie didn’t know a woman could be kissed.
Carrie felt as though her lips were touched by fire, a hard and insistent heat that was determined to blaze a path all the way to her heart. There was nothing timid, chaste, or even gentleman like about this kiss; it was rough, demanding, and completely devastating, and his hard, muscled body pressed the length of hers merely added fuel to a fire that blazed out of control before Carrie even knew what had started it.
Lucas’s lips took hers and without hesitation his tongue eased its way between her teeth, thrusting, seeking, demanding. She was certain shock and mortification would hold her lifeless in his arms, but she found herself responding to his warmth, her body taut with yearning, her arms tentatively around his neck. Her mind shouted at her to resist, to push him aside, but her body remained helplessly enthralled and it was Lucas who ended the embrace.
There,” Lucas said, his impish grin disguising the fact that he was as thoroughly shaken as she, “now you have a reason to be angry with me.” Then he turned, picked up the dropped harnesses, and disappeared into the tack room, slamming the door behind him.
Carrie was immobilized. Her whole body had shut down, even her heart and breathing seemed to have stopped, and she was unable to stir from the spot. Then suddenly she gave a convulsive sob, turned, and ran toward the cabin.
Katie was finishing up the last of the breakfast dishes when Carrie returned to the kitchen sometime later. She poured herself a cup of coffee and almost collapsed into a chair.
“You have the look of a ghost about you, and no wonder,” Katie said. “I stepped outside when I heard the shots, and I saw you being carried off like you were a doll in a dog’s teeth. Me heart was in me throat, I can tell ye, I was so scared. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Barrow, you might have been killed.”
“It seems I have still another reason to be grateful to him,” Carrie said. The bleak note in her voice did not escape Katie’s notice.
“’Tis mighty useful to have a man like him about,” Katie said, watching Carrie out of the corner of her eye. “And mighty agreeable he is to look on too,” she added with a giggle. “Had there been any like him back home, ‘tis certain I would never have left Ireland. Some girls would do desperate things to get a man like that.” Carrie refused to allow her mind to think of Lucas as her man, but a tremor arced through her body and she felt betrayed by her own flesh.
“Maybe some girls would,” Carrie said, bringing her wary gaze up to meet Katie’s, “but “I’m not in the habit of pursuing men.”
“Oh, you don’t count,” Katie said blithely. “You’re married.”
“I’m not married and I do count, Carrie’s body screamed. But her mind warned her that everyone thought she was married and that they had decided she should be beyond feeling an attraction to any man other than her husband, and especially a man like Lucas.
“And naturally everybody knows married women lose
the urge right quick.”
“What urge?” demanded Carrie, her thoughts wrenched around by this unexpected statement.
Katie blushed scarlet. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know exactly,” she admitted. ““I’m not stupid and I have a pretty good notion, of course, it’s just that no one ever saw fit to explain things to me. First they said I was too young to know, and then they said “I’d be better off not knowing, living in a house full of men like I was.” She paused, an arrested look in her eye. “Perhaps you can tell me, ma’am.”
“Tell you what?” Carrie asked, panic routing any other emotion.
“Do married women lose the urge for a man? Us young girls didn’t see how it could be true, but the older women say that having a baby takes it away.”
“I couldn’t say,” Carrie replied, praying she could think of some way to halt this conversation before she both mortified and exposed herself. “I’ve only just gotten married, and of course I haven’t had a baby.”
“I was forgetting that.” Katie sighed. “I hope it’s not true. It would be such a waste.”
Carrie knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she just had to ask, “Why?”
“Because men seem to like it ever so much, even when they can barely find the energy to stir from their own hearth. It seems a shame for a woman to have something she starts out liking turn into a misery, especially when the menfolks can’t seem to get their fill of it.” She sank her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “I heard tell that some men who are quite old make their women’s lives a purgatory with their constant demands.”
“Do you know anything about Mr. Barrow?” Carrie asked, desperate to change the subject to something less likely to cause her difficulty breathing. She absolutely refused to allow any thoughts of Lucas coupled with the urge to cross her mind, but her body was not nearly so squeamish, and she soon found herself squirming restlessly in her chair.
“No more than I’ve done told you already. He was here when I got here. Not long I figure, but long enough for everybody to stop paying him much attention. He spends his time with those wild horses of his or sitting under that tree. It’s like he’s waiting for something, or someone, but he doesn’t miss a thing. The first night I was here, they decided I was to stay in the cabin. Seems they were too lazy to keep up two places and no one used it. Anyway, I went to bed early, but I couldn’t sleep, too tired from the stagecoach ride I guess, and I was standing near the window, looking at the moon when I caught a movement out of the corner of me eye. I stared hard into the dark, but I didn’t see anything for a minute. I had almost decided I was wrong when a man moved out of the shadows and darted quickly down the road to the next clump of trees. It was Buck and he was coming here. I had barred all the doors, but I tell you, ma’am, I was scared. I didn’t have a gun or anything else to defend meself with. I ran downstairs and found a knife in the kitchen, a real long butchering knife with a sharp blade. I tiptoed to the front door. I was going to let him think I was upstairs, and get him when he turned his back.”
“Weren’t you afraid to think of killing a man?”
“To be sure I was a little nervous over it, but I wasn’t upset about cutting him up. After all, what he was wanting to do to me wasn’t no nice thing.”
“No, but to kill a man.”
“I wasn’t hankering to do it. I just wanted to hurt him enough to let him know I didn’t want him sneaking back over the next night. Anyway, he no more than put his foot on the first step when I heard a pistol click. He heard it too because he froze and looked to either side, trying to see in the dark.”
“‘Well now, I’ll be dad-blasted,’ this voice said out of the dark, sort of conversational-like. ‘I didn’t know Cody walked in his sleep.’ It was Mr. Barrow, and he had a gun. Cody just stood there, not moving a muscle. ‘I sure hope he turns around and goes back. I’d hate to have to wake him up. I hear tell it’s better to put a sleepwalker to sleep forever than to wake him in the middle of one of his perambulations. Addles his brain forever.’ Well, you should have seen Cody. He slammed his eyes shut, raised his arms up in the air like he was levitating or something, and turned around and started walking back to the station.
“Guess I’d better tell Baca to lock him in at night for his own good,’ Mr. Barrow said loud enough for him to hear. ‘He might get lost in the woods and never find his way back. Or a grizzly might get him.’ You could see Cody walk a little bit faster every time Mr. Barrow spoke. He was nearly running by the time he reached the station steps.
“You okay, Miss O’Malley?’ Mr. Barrow asked real softlike.
“I had me a butchering knife, ‘I told him. ‘I always did want to see what a skunk looked like skinned.
“‘Same as any other wild animal, Miss O’Malley. They all look pretty much the same.’ I never did see him. He just faded into the night, but I knew he was there and I didn’t have any trouble sleeping after that. Why do you ask about him?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but he doesn’t strike me as the type of man to be a wrangler. When he got mad about me holding on to those horses, he forgot himself and he didn’t talk or act the way he had earlier. There’s something about that man he’s not telling anybody. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll bet you a new dress he’s not what he says he is.”
“I don’t know about that, but you won’t have any use for a new dress. Seems to me like men just don’t care about what a woman wears out here.”
They care,” Carrie said, remembering Lucas’s kiss and the look in his eyes. They may have a different way of showing it, but they care just the same.”
Chapter 6
Katie’s story of Lucas’s helpfulness did nothing to restore order to Carrie’s emotions or still the tumult in her mind. And after she had decided what should be prepared for lunch and helped Katie get the cooking started, she said, “I think I’ll set a wash pot on to boil in the back yard and turn out these bedrooms. They can’t be used as they are, and we might need to stay over sometime.”
“I’ll give you a hand if you choose to wait a bit,” Katie offered. “Twill be me room when your husband gets here, so I ought to be the one to do the cleaning.”
“There’s no need for you to move out of the cabin, not even after Robert arrives,” Carrie said. “We can’t use two bedrooms at once.”
“Just the same …”
“I know what you’re going to say, but you’re wrong. Now you get on with lunch, and I’ll see what I can do with these rooms.” But Carrie found that even hard work couldn’t keep her unwelcome thoughts at bay. She built a fire under the wash pot, stripped the beds and took down the curtains, put everything in boiling water with strong lye soap, hung the mattresses outside to air, and started scrubbing down the rooms with hot, soapy water, but she still couldn’t keep her mind off Lucas.
When Carrie had decided to pretend she was married and tell everyone her husband would be joining her in a few days, she had done it solely to get the position of station manager and prevent the company from dismissing her before she had a chance to prove she could do me job. It never occurred to her that it would also be a bar to any man developing an interest in her. She had been so preoccupied with Robert’s death and figuring out how to keep from having to go back to Virginia that she hadn’t thought of anything else. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought men and women in the West fell in love and married; it was just that she hadn’t thought at all.
Now she knew Lucas was interested in her, his kiss told her more than any words ever could, but she also knew he would hold back, might even leave Green Run altogether, because he thought she was married. One of the things she had learned was that most Western men had a solid respect for the institution of marriage, and they would do practically anything rather than tamper with that sanctified relationship.
Carrie wasn’t at all sure she wanted Lucas to be interested in her, there was too much about him she didn’t know and the idea of falling in love with a stranger with a mysterious
past didn’t appeal to her—there was too much risk in that—but she was sure she didn’t want to drive him away. Setting aside his physical appearance, if you could set aside such a powerful factor as that, he was the most interesting man she had ever met. The very fact that he was mysterious added to his attractiveness, but there was more to it than that. For one thing, he was a gentleman. He had repeatedly come to her rescue without being asked, and he obviously expected no thanks. And Carrie knew the reason he’d slept in the barn was to be closer to her in case anything happened. He hadn’t let Baca or the runaway horses hurt her, and those two men with the shotguns wouldn’t bring another gun to the station, if they ever dared to come back at all.
She had to grin. What would Emilie and Luanda have done if they’d been faced with what Carrie had been through in the last few days? A good look at Lucas’s piercing eyes would have scandalized their maidenly modesty, and one glance at Baca Riggins would have sent them into a fainting spell. She admitted she had felt a little faint herself when he grabbed her, but she had managed to pull through, with Lucas’s help.
But when it came right down to it, she couldn’t say what it was about Lucas that captivated her. She might be able to put a name on it when she got to know him better, but all she knew for certain now was that he was the most compelling man she’d ever met.
True, he was handsome. Not handsome like the men you saw in some magazines, but in a rugged way that sort of frightened and thrilled her at the same time. What she remembered about his clothes was not that they were clean or neat but that they were tight. She doubted there was a corset in the whole of the South that fitted its wearer’s waist any more tightly than Lucas’s Levi’s fitted his bottom, and she expected his shirt to rip open every time he flexed a muscle. It would take a little time for her to get used to a man walking in high-heeled boots and wearing a flat-crowned black felt hat eighteen hours out of twenty-four, but it took no time at all for her to become captivated by his silver-gray eyes, angular jaw, and flat-planed cheeks. He always looked like he needed a shave and the wisps of curly black hair peeking out from under his collar promised an equally furry chest, but the impact of all his parts came together in his face, in the smiles that could caress her like a soft summer breeze or frowns that could leap from his eyes with the impact of a shotgun blast.
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