The Gunslinger's Bride

by Cheryl St. John

  So she stood, waiting nervously for him to decide that he’d done enough bullying for one day and be gone.

  A knock sounded on the outside door behind her, and she stifled a startled shriek. She opened the door to Everett, who stood at the top of the stairs, his wool collar pulled up around his ears against the wind.

  “I thought you had a customer, but it’s all dark downstairs.”

  “No, I closed up.”

  “There’s a horse out front.”

  Boots sounded on the floor of the hall. Everett’s dark gaze traveled beyond Abby’s shoulder. He hid his surprise well, turning and gently closing the door behind him.

  “Don’t think we’ve met,” Brock said, striding forward and stating his name.

  “Everett Matthews,” he said, removing his glove to take the hand Brock offered.

  “Everett is my fiancé,” Abby managed to say, then watched Brock for a reaction.

  “Well,” he said, his face void of emotion. He took his coat from the chair. “I’ll be going now. Have a nice evening.”

  “Where’th your hat, Brock?” Jonathon asked.

  “Left it on my saddle, half-pint.”

  “Thank you for lettin’ me ride your horth.”

  “You’re welcome. We’ll do it again.”

  Jonathon grinned jubilantly. “Hear that, Mama? Brock’th gonna let me ride hith horth again!”

  “Yes, I heard. Gather your things to take to the Spencers’ now.”

  “G’night.” Brock nodded at Abby and exited onto the outside stairs.

  She could tell Everett didn’t know what to say. He studied the door for a moment, then turned his dark gaze, almost accusingly, on Abby.

  Jonathon appeared with his bundle, and Abby walked him across the hall to the Spencers.

  “There’s my checker buddy!” Asa called from beside the hard-coal heater identical to the one that kept Abby and Jonathon’s quarters cozily warm.

  “I made Jonathon some bread pudding,” Daisy said with a cheerful smile.

  “You spoil him,” Abby admonished.

  “Well, we have to have somebody to spoil, don’t we? Have a good time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Everett walked ahead as they descended the narrow stairs, and Abby clutched his shoulder for support in the dark. They reached the ground and walked toward the hotel, several buildings away and across the street.

  Once inside the Carlton, Everett hung their coats, and the two of them were promptly seated in the dining room. Most of the tables were full, but Amos Carlton had extra help on Saturday evenings.

  “News has it Amos’s wife is barely hanging on,” Everett reported. “He wired her sister back East.”

  “Poor thing.” The woman had been ill for some time. “I’ll make a point to send her a little something.”

  Abby knew everything on the menu, but read it anyway, avoiding the subject she knew Everett would bring up next, though the queries were inevitable. When the waitress took their orders, Everett ordered pot roast, potatoes and carrots, as she knew he would. Pot roast was the special, and Everett was frugal.

  “I was quite surprised to see Kincaid in your home,” he said finally.

  Not any more surprised than she was to have him there. Her stomach fluttered nervously. “I’m sure you were. Jonathon wanted to show him his horse collection.”

  “I don’t know if it’s wise, allowing Jonathon to get friendly with the man.”

  Abby was certain it wasn’t wise, but she was helpless to keep Brock from his son. She shrugged.

  “I can’t see as how this will do anything except confuse our relationship,” Everett pressed. “Jonathon has to get used to a new father.”

  Her heart raced at his words, and her mind went blank for a moment.

  “Kincaid’s presence is only going to muddy the waters while I’m trying to be his father.”

  Of course he didn’t know Brock was Jonathon’s father. He was referring to himself! The waitress brought strong tea and she laced hers with cream, something about the thought of Everett being Jonathon’s father making her uneasy. She wanted a father for him, so she should just be thankful for his concern and willingness to take on a ready-made family.

  “You could be referring to half the population of Whitehorn when you refer to him as Kincaid,” she said lightly, without touching the subject.

  “No one even knows where he’s been all these years,” Everett continued quietly, flattening a palm on the tabletop.

  Abby finally found her voice. “I heard him mention he’d been a U.S. Marshal.”

  “There’s a fine line between marshals and hired guns,” he replied.

  His comment brought even more awkwardness to their meal. Their food arrived and Abby tasted her glazed chicken.

  Several minutes later, Everett laid down his fork with a clank. She turned her head and followed his scowling gaze to the patrons being seated several tables away. Accompanying Will and Lizzie Kincaid was Brock. Big as you please, he folded himself onto a chair directly facing their table. The three Kincaids got settled, greeted neighbors on either side of their table and glanced around.

  Brock’s gaze unerringly met Abby’s. One side of his mouth inched up in that provocatively irritating manner, and he gave her an exaggerated nod.

  Her heart jumped.

  Abby didn’t want to greet him civilly, but Everett was watching her reaction, so she returned the nod with a stiff smile and jerked her head back to their own table. The nerve of the man! He’d known she was going out to dinner and he’d deliberately come here to torment her!

  Her chicken tasted like sawdust, and she had trouble swallowing the delicately browned potatoes. All she had to do was turn her head and she’d find him staring at her. Using every ounce of her resolve, she ate her entire meal without glancing over once. Why did he have the power to make her heart race so erratically, then stop altogether? Why did she want to know where he was looking and who he was talking to? That he held so much control over her was a revelation she would have rather never faced.

  The waitress cleared their plates and brought them fresh tea, and Abby sipped hers as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “He’s making himself right at home,” Everett said.

  “Whitehorn is his home,” she replied, hoping Everett hadn’t noted her wry tone. And Whitehorn being Brock’s home was the problem. Most of the problem, anyway. She could have continued her life the way it had been, married Everett and been perfectly happy to never set eyes on Brock again. Instead he’d come back and deliberately turned her world upside down at every opportunity. Where was this going from here? She couldn’t begin to imagine. She gave Everett a sweet smile for no reason, and he became flustered under her gaze.

  They finished their tea and sat speaking about the weather and the telegraph news for nearly half an hour, as though Everett, too, was loath to let Brock run them off. Finally, Everett pushed his chair back and stood, coming around to assist Abby.

  She refused to look again, though she could feel Brock’s gaze on her back the whole time she walked to the foyer and slipped into her coat. The cold night air felt gloriously refreshing on her heated skin. Everett took her arm and guided her over the treacherously icy boardwalks.

  “Thank you for dinner,” she told him at the top of the stairs. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Just for a moment. It’s getting late.”

  It wasn’t late at all, but rarely did he come inside to be alone with her. She had always appreciated his thoughtfulness, knowing he was protecting her reputation, but she grew lonely, too, and craved adult company on these long winter nights. Her relationship with Jed had been warm, but never passionate or truly personal. Sometimes she imagined a man who would wrap his strong arms around her, kiss her with more than duty or perfunctoriness.

  They stood inside the door in their coats, and Everett leaned toward her as was expected of him. Abby raised her face and accepted his kiss. She was older no
w, wiser and more mature. Not having to hide her relationship with Everett stole the excitement she’d known in her impetuous youth. Those were factors in the lack of passion they shared, and she was glad for it. Not being crazy in love allowed her to make better choices. What was passion compared to stability, anyway?

  When they pulled apart, he kissed her cheek and went down the stairs. His form disappeared into the darkness beyond the gas lamp, and she closed the door, leaning her forehead against the cool wood and blotting out acute disappointment. She had herself to blame. She’d allowed Brock liberties before marriage. She had never been courted properly, and the proper way was slowly. Everett was a gentleman.

  Abby remained at the Spencers’ for over an hour, since Jonathon wouldn’t let Asa stop reading to him. Daisy chatted to Abby about this and that.

  Descriptive words caught her attention, and she realized the story Asa read was one of the many dime novels glorifying Jack Spade, the legendary gunfighter. She had never told Asa not to read such a book to her son, so he wasn’t going against her directions, but the man should know better than to fill a boy’s head with such violent tales!

  “Mama, did you know how Jack Thpade got that name? Cauth he leavth a jack of thpadeth on the body of the bad men he killth.”

  She had never heard about the gunman leaving a jack of spades on his victims, and she didn’t think Jonathon had needed to know it, either. She would talk to Asa the following day and let him know she disapproved of his bedtime stories.

  “Jack Thpade ith in town, Mama, did you know that?”

  She took her son home and put him to bed, then undressed herself and climbed beneath her heavy quilt. An hour later, she had barely begun to doze when Jonathon’s cough woke her. She checked on him, finding his skin warm and his hair damp. After bathing his face with cool water, she sat at his side until he slept peacefully, then tiredly lay down beside him.

  The following morning, Jonathon was still warm and the cough nagged. Abby went to get Daisy, who’d been preparing for church, to sit with Jonathon while she went to Laine’s. The town council had been looking for a new doctor since Dr. Leland’s death. Harry Talbert took care of teeth and boils and the like, but Abby had complete confidence in her Chinese friend’s herbal remedies.

  “I will come,” Laine said after Abby woke her and told her of Jonathon’s symptoms. She packed several small cloth bags and a few tiny bottles in a basket, and they trudged along the paths in the shin-deep snow and up the flight of stairs.

  “It’s nothing serious,” she told Abby, after checking Jonathon over, looking in his eyes and mouth, and listening to his heart and lungs. “The fever will run its course and he will feel better. I will make a tonic for his cough, though. He will sleep better, then.”

  “Thank you, Laine. You’ve attended Jonathon through all his childhood ailments, and I wouldn’t trust a licensed physician as much as you.”

  “Thank goodness many of the families in Whitehorn feel the same.” Laine grinned. “And my father is none the wiser about the nice nest egg I have set aside.”

  Her father didn’t approve of her practicing herbal medicine on the townspeople, so over the last few years she had deposited her earnings in the bank without his knowledge.

  Abby sat at the kitchen table while Laine crushed herbs into a fine power and added tinctures from her bag. “You and I aren’t like most women this far West,” Abby told her. “We aren’t dependent on a man for our livelihood.”

  “Your inheritance is not a secret, however.” Laine added a few drops of boiling water to her mixture. “My savings are. But my father did not force me into the marriage he wanted for me, and for that I am thankful. I work as hard as my brother, and unlike many fathers, mine sees my value.” She poured the mixture into a bottle and corked it. “Your father forced you to marry your husband?” she asked quietly.

  Abby nodded.

  “I cannot imagine how difficult that must have been for you.”

  “Doing what I did, I didn’t give him much choice, I guess,” she replied with a shrug.

  “You believe you lost your head with Mr. Brock because you were young and foolish?” her friend asked.

  “Definitely young and foolish,” Abby agreed. “Stupid.”

  “And if you could live it over, you would do it differently?”

  “I would do it differently. But I’m not sorry about Jonathon. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Is it not the same regarding Mr. Brock?”

  Abby frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Was he not young and foolish, too?”

  “I didn’t carry a gun and look for trouble,” she said.

  “If he had it to live over, would he not do it differently?”

  “He still flaunts those guns,” Abby declared. “He never learned anything!”

  “Abby, most every man I see carries a gun. This land where we live requires them to do so for protection.”

  “Using them against bears and cougars is one thing,” Abby protested. “Shooting people is different.”

  “We need protection from people as well as animals.” Laine sighed. “I am talking about you and Mr. Brock, and you are avoiding the discussion by talking about guns.”

  Abby stood and pulled out ingredients to bake bread. “I’m not going to agree with you, so stop trying to make me change my mind.”

  Laine shrugged. “All right. Let me show you how to give this to Jonathon.”

  They dropped the subject, and Laine stayed for another hour, helping Abby knead dough and entertaining Jonathon. Finally, she said her goodbyes and hurried out.

  While the dough was rising, Abby heated water and washed her hair, then sat before the stove, drying the heavy length.

  A light tap sounded on the outside door, startling her into dropping her brush with a clatter. She picked it up and hurried forward, expecting Laine to have returned. Instead, Brock stood in the cold, wearing a stern expression she had begun to recognize and resent. His handsomely carved features softened slightly as he took in her loose hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I came to see Jonathon. I heard he was sick.”

  “How on earth could you have heard that?”

  “Daisy told Will and Lizzie, and they told me when they got home from church.”

  “Of course,” Abby said, throwing up the hand with the hairbrush.

  Brock glanced at the brush and back at her hair, and her face grew warm, remembering. He’d loved her hair. All those years ago, he’d loosened her braid and run his fingers through the tresses, bringing them to his face, touching her skin through her hair.

  He obviously remembered, too, the recognition changing his features and darkening the blue of his eyes.

  Abby’s pulse beat faster. She became aware of her femininity as she hadn’t for a long time, feeling his gaze touch her hair and face and infuse her with sudden heat.

  As she moved back and allowed him to shut out the cold, the rustle of her skirts seemed loud, the fit of her modest dress suddenly revealing a woman’s body.

  And he noticed. Lord help her, he noticed.

  Chapter Five

  Brock allowed the warmth of the room, the yeasty smell in the air and the seductive beauty of the woman to silence him for a full minute. Seven years had changed her. Her shape had blossomed; her breasts beneath the plain fabric dress had become more rounded and womanly than he recalled. Her face had lost its charming girlish roundness, and now delicately modeled bone structure and pearly skin characterized her haunting beauty.

  And that hair. The shining, fragrant mass aroused memories whose erotic images shot a reaction from his brain to his loins. His palms itched with the urge to touch the silken skein and know if it still felt the way he remembered.

  Her luminous green eyes were shimmering with a combination of confusion and something he could have sworn was desire, and when he focused his attention on he
r mouth, he thought her breathing stopped.

  He’d never forgotten the softness of those lips, the heated passion of the young woman or the exquisite pleasure of hot slick intimacy with her. Her nearness still had the same disturbing effect on him. For a split second he fought lightheadedness, until his thoughts were under control. His body didn’t obey as quickly, so he stoically ignored it.

  “What’s wrong with him?” he demanded, more roughly than he’d intended.

  She blinked and licked her lips. He refocused his gaze on her shoulder, but it was covered by that glorious hair and didn’t provide much distraction. “Nothing serious. Laine made him some medicine.”

  “Laine? What’s she doing giving him medicine?”

  “She has treated Jonathon and me both since he was very small. She’s an herbal healer. There’s no doctor in Whitehorn.”

  “I could ride to Butte for a doctor.”

  “That’s not necessary. I trust her implicitly.”

  “She’s done this before?”

  “Many times.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “He’s resting now—”

  “Mama, who’th here?”

  Brock shrugged out of his coat and hooked it on a peg beside the door. His hat followed.

  He turned to find her frowning. “Something wrong?”

  “I believe you should have respect for my wishes when you’re in my home. If you insist on coming here and seeing Jonathon, then I would prefer that you didn’t wear those weapons.”

  Brock’s hand went to the butt of one revolver in its holster. She had every right to ask him to remove them in her home. She simply didn’t know what she was asking. He’d have been more comfortable removing his clothing.

  But knowing how she felt, and knowing, too, that her strong feelings involved a fear for Jonathon, Brock unfastened the buckle and removed the holster. He was perfectly justified in doing so, he told himself, but he never knew when he would need the .45s, and their weighty assurance had been a constant companion for years.