The Gunslinger's Bride

by Cheryl St. John

  “I know.” He took the lamp from her and placed it on a mahogany table. “Just trust me that I know what’s best. Get some sleep.”

  She didn’t move. Her bare feet had to be freezing, because his were cold in his wool stockings. “No one saw me,” he assured her. “I’ll leave at first light and be careful not to be seen.”

  He stepped over to the hard-coal heater and added fuel.

  She turned and walked into her room, then returned with several blankets and a pillow, which he accepted. The memory of dancing with her was vivid in his mind, and her alluring scent played havoc with his senses. Her skin had a pearly glow in the golden light, and fire danced in her incredible hair. If he touched her, she’d turn to liquid heat in his arms. If he kissed her, she would respond with an angry intake of breath and then return the kiss with enough energy and passion to bring him to his knees.

  She had no idea how much power she held over him. Wouldn’t she just laugh if she knew? “Go to bed, Abby.”

  She walked as far as her doorway and paused to look back. “I hated dancing with you.”

  “I know.”

  The moment stretched out, with Brock’s senses tuned to a painful pitch. The floor beneath his feet was cold, the blaze from the heater a contrasting blast against his back. The wind made the roof creak overhead, while a clock ticked rhythmically from a nearby shelf. Abby shifted her weight and the shape of her knee became visible through the thin cotton nightdress. Brock’s imagination filled in the rest of her shapely leg, the flare of her hip and the breasts she hid behind her forearms. He imagined them fuller, softer, more womanly now.

  He could cross the space separating them and watch her eyes widen and hear her catch her breath. He could kiss her, and after an obligatory struggle, she would take him to her lilac-scented bed. He wanted that more than he’d wanted anything except anonymity and peace for a long time. And afterward she would hate him more than she did now. And she would hate herself, too. That wasn’t what he wanted to happen. “Go to bed, Abby.”

  She turned and fled into her room.

  Abby tucked her feet into the covers and rubbed them together for warmth. The dim light from the other room was extinguished, and she listened intently for the sounds of his presence—oddly reassuring when she had convinced herself she didn’t want him there. After a few rustles, the black night grew still.

  She’d been sitting at her dressing table when she’d heard his knock. Somehow, she’d known it was Brock; he needn’t have been angry that she’d opened the door without asking. She’d opened it quickly so he wouldn’t pound and let the sound echo in the alley, perhaps to alert the Spencers.

  His arrogance was infuriating. Telling her she shouldn’t be marrying Everett…! Even if he had a right to say anything, how did he know what was best for her? She had a mind of her own and a right to choose. He’d thought that being Jonathon’s father would stand in his favor, but he was wrong. That and his lack of caution in speaking out in public were enough to fuel her hostility for a good long time.

  At least they should have been.

  Abby worked to relax her body and close her eyes. Against her will, images and sensations floated in her mind and memory. She remembered the way he’d touched her while dancing tonight—proper for all appearance, but with an igniting fire that never failed to race through her veins and seduce her. Any touch from Brock, the most innocent of grazes, could set her skin to tingling and cause her blood to run fast and hot.

  And he knew it, damn his hide.

  Her reactions were illogical. She wanted solidity. Security. Stability. All the things that Everett represented. But could she truly bear a passionless marriage—again? Memories of her youthful adoration made Brock seem larger than life. She’d been foolish with him, and he’d been happy to take advantage of her. With Everett she was using caution, and he was exercising respect and patience. A gentleman was willing to wait for marriage.

  Brock wouldn’t show the same restraint.

  That troubling thought graphic in her tired mind, she dozed, sleeping lightly and encountering disjointed dreams. After a particularly disturbing and sensual one, she came fully awake and lay listening to the night. Some maternal instinct forced her out of the relative warmth of her bed and into her son’s chilly room to check on him. He slept soundly, though he was huddled into the covers for warmth.

  Their quarters were uncommonly cold, and she padded silently out to add more fuel to the heater. Her bare toe came in contact with an object near the end of the divan, and Brock sprang from his prone position and knocked her to the floor, where she bumped her elbow and immediately cradled it against her ribs. In the meager light from the heater, she made out the long barrel of his revolver pointed at her head. Her heart stopped beating before thumping madly in a panicked rhythm.

  The speed and agility with which he’d leaped from his position to throw her to the floor held her in amazement. What kind of man reacted that way? “Either shoot me or get that thing out of my face,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He cursed and leaned forward to lift her to her feet.

  Abby pulled her throbbing arm away from his hold, disturbed by whatever force had impelled him to do such a thing.

  Brock lit the lamp on the table, bringing an illuminating glow to the room. The blankets lay strewn from the divan, and she recognized his boot as the object she’d tripped over. His boots had been by the back door when she’d last seen them. He still wore the elegant black trousers and white shirt, but they were wrinkled now, and his fair hair fell over his forehead.

  He slid the revolver under the pillow. “I heard that whack,” he said, turning to survey the arm she cradled with her other hand. She allowed him to push her cotton sleeve up and examine her elbow. “Sit while I get some snow.”

  She didn’t bother to protest as he pulled on his boots and disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he returned with a crockery bowl full of snow, and a towel. He guided her to the divan, then knelt on the carpet in front of her.

  Letting him nestle her battered elbow into the freezing coldness, Abby winced.

  “What were you doing sneaking around in the dark?” he asked irritably.

  “How very like you to blame me,” she retorted. “I am attacked in my own home and you find me responsible.” It simply wasn’t common for a man to come awake with such a ferocious instinct. On one hand his reaction frightened her, while on the other it reassured her that she and Jonathon would come to no harm in his presence. He’d proved that earlier in the evening when he’d immediately pushed her down and covered her with his own body at the first sign of danger.

  She met his eyes, but couldn’t hold the intense look there, so averted her gaze. That was a mistake, too, because attending her as he was, the long fingers of one hand were wrapped gently around the flesh of her upper arm. Her elbow had gone numb from the cold, and she shivered. “That’s enough,” she said softly.

  He set the bowl aside, dried her arm with the towel and leaned to retrieve a blanket and wrap it around her shoulders. “Can you move your arm?”

  She flexed it to show him she could.

  “Good. I’ll take care of these and be right back.” He carried the bowl and towel to the kitchen and returned. “Is Jonathon warm enough, do you think?”

  “I was on my way to add some coal and get a brick for him when I tripped over your boot.”

  “I can do that.” He proceeded to add coal to the stove, waited until he was sure the bricks on top were good and warm, and slipped one into one of the wool sleeves Abby indicated. He carried it to Jonathon’s room and returned.

  “Did you tuck it under the covers by his feet?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He went back to the heater and prepared another. “For your bed.”

  She took it from him, the heat radiating through her fingers.

  “Jonathon should have had a brother,” he said.

  She had started to rise, but stopped to glance at him.

&
nbsp; “Someone to sleep with. Keep each other warm at night.”

  “Not everyone has someone to sleep with,” she said, but she’d thought the same thing many times. She should have had more children. It had never happened with Jed, but she would have more children with Everett. Somehow the thought didn’t fill her with hope and happiness as it should have.

  “Still think Matthews is the one you want warming your bed?” Brock asked, as though he knew her private thoughts.

  “That’s none of your business.” She stood and padded toward her curtained doorway.

  “Isn’t it?” He had followed and stood behind her as she paused with one hand on the wooden frame, the other holding the hot brick.

  “No, it’s not. And we’ve been over the subject before.” She called his bluff by turning toward him, placing him on the receiving end of the intimidation for once. “Would you like to explain what gives you the right to think you need to be here in the first place? Why do you feel Jonathon and I need protection? Why did you draw a gun on me in my own home? Are you in trouble? Hiding from the law?”

  He gave a half laugh. “Curb your girlish fantasies. I’m not hiding from the law. I’m related to the law in this town. I wouldn’t come here to hide.”

  “Sounds perfectly logical to me. Family would protect you.”

  “If I was an outlaw, James would arrest me, anyhow. Wrong is wrong. I got paid to protect others. I’ve worked on the side of the law, remember?”

  “Maybe someone has a grudge against you.”

  His posture changed fractionally. “I would never endanger you or Jonathon or anyone in my family if I believed that.”

  “But it’s a possibility. I can tell I’ve come pretty close to the truth by the way you’re acting.”

  One side of his mouth inched up mockingly. “I suppose the Pinkertons will be coming to you for advice now.”

  “You’re so smug.”

  He ran a long-fingered hand through his already mussed hair and rubbed the back of his neck in a weary motion. “Don’t you get tired of this?”

  “What?”

  “This constant battle between us. You’d think if you let down your hair a fraction, the world would come to an end.”

  Maybe it would. Her world as she knew it, anyway. This was safe. Agreement on anything wasn’t. “I am who I am,” she told him. “And if you don’t like it, consider yourself mostly to blame.”

  She turned and swept passed the curtains, dived into the bed and placed the brick at her feet. Immediately the delicious warmth spread across her toes. Solidity, she told herself again. Security. Stability. Those were the things worth having. She was just stubborn and hardheaded enough to get what she wanted.

  But, she wondered some time later, as dawn tinged her lacy curtains with pink, was she doubly determined to do this thing she’d planned simply because of her stubbornness—because Brock had told her not to?

  “Abby?” His voice seemed to be coming from a distant dream, but she realized it was only from the doorway, and that she had finally fallen asleep.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m leaving. Lock the door behind me.”

  She did as he instructed, sleepily closing the door after him and caressing the wood with her fingertips as though she were touching him.

  The talk in church that morning was centered on various suppositions about the shots fired at the front of the hotel the night before. Being a frontier town, Whitehorn had seen its share of shootings and chases, but the last fifteen or so years had brought law and order to the forefront, and now this type of happening wasn’t normal or acceptable.

  Everett sat beside Abby during the service, his presence not as comforting as she thought it might have been. He was handsome, hardworking, respected among the local residents, and a regular churchgoer. What more could Abby have sought in a mate? It was Brock Kincaid who had her head in a spin, and she needed to put a stop to his interference once and for all.

  Perhaps she could move her marriage to Everett forward. Saying “I do” and bringing him to live in her quarters over the store would be a deterrent. While Reverend McWhirter was making an announcement about a drive for the Ladies’ Benevolence Society, Abby leaned sideways and whispered, “What would you think about moving our wedding date forward?”

  Everett turned and looked at her with a raised brow. “Why?”

  “I just thought that—well, that perhaps we shouldn’t wait so long.”

  His eyes raked her face and warmth bloomed in her cheeks. Let him think she couldn’t wait to be intimate with him. Let him think whatever it took to discourage Brock.

  “It would appear to everyone as though we’d engaged in improprieties and were trying to quickly set things right,” he replied in a choked whisper. “I couldn’t damage your reputation like that.”

  “I—I don’t care what people think,” she said, and knew it was a lie straight from the pits of hell. She fully expected lightning to pierce the roof and set her ablaze in the pew. Of course she cared what people thought! That was why she’d worked so hard to keep up appearances and why she couldn’t admit to anyone except Laine what Brock had really been to her—and what he was to Jonathon.

  “Well, I care what they think of you,” he replied. “I’m marrying a respectable woman, and respectable you’ll stay.”

  Folding her gloved hands in her lap and glancing down at Jonathon, who was frowning on her other side, she forced a smile and patted her son’s leg reassuringly.

  Respectable. For the first time she thought about Everett’s reasons for courting and proposing to her. He hadn’t professed undying love, true, but she’d fancied he’d admired her for more qualities than her respectability. Ashamed, she remembered the things she’d ticked off about why she was marrying him, and knew respectability had been important.

  From a nagging corner of her mind, the thought of the hardware store and the ranch she owned mocked her. She’d always seen Everett as well-dressed and securely employed, but he probably wasn’t getting rich from his telegraph job. Did he see her as a financial asset? Any man she married would benefit from her prosperity, though, so she couldn’t accuse him of gold digging without good reason.

  Somehow he should think more tenderly toward her. He should find her charming and enjoy her company. She needed to change his thinking. And she needed to prove Brock wrong about her marriage plans.

  Chapter Ten

  Brock returned to the ranch with John in time to join the hands for the noon meal. All of them had heard about the shots fired the night before, and those who didn’t resent John or shy away from him were curious to hear any news. Brock had learned from him that day that he was working for Caleb to repay money Caleb had loaned him to buy land for his tribe and spare them being sent to the reservation.

  Floyd Cobb stabbed a chicken breast from the platter and asked, “You able to tell anything from the tracks, John?”

  “Only that the man was alone and that he wasn’t a hunter or a trapper.” He glanced at Brock.

  “He ate from tins,” Brock explained, helping himself to a piece of corn bread.

  “The horse was well shod and well fed,” the Cheyenne added.

  “Maybe he got it from the livery,” Bluey Muir suggested.

  “That’s possible. Same pattern to the shoes,” John replied. “But then Briggs shoes a good many horses in these parts.”

  “You could check the horses he rents.”

  “Briggs doesn’t think much of me,” John replied. “I don’t think he’d be big on letting me look at his stock.”

  “How ’bout we get you into the stable without ’im knowing?” Floyd asked.

  “Even if I could identify the horse and we found out who’d rented it, do you think anyone would take my word for it?” he asked.

  “James would,” Brock said.

  John merely shook his head. Brock understood, as Caleb surely did, that John had the responsibility of his entire tribe on his shoulders, and involvement with somethi
ng like this would bring him trouble he didn’t need.

  A silence fell over the men, and they continued their meal, glancing from time to time at the hands who sat at the other end of the table to avoid John.

  Brock thanked John, carried his tin plate to the tub of sudsy water and followed Caleb outside. “Been thinking about something.”

  Caleb withdrew his pipe and a drawstring bag, from which he pinched tobacco and poked it into the bowl. “What’s that?”

  “Maybe it’s time I used my share of land. Built a house, started a spread of my own.”

  Caleb nodded. “The land is there. You just have to choose which sections you want.” He lit his pipe and puffed until fragrant smoke filled the crisp air. “This have anything to do with Abby and Jonathon?”

  The insightful question amused Brock. “Couldn’t hurt to have a place of my own, could it?”

  “Nope. Would confirm to anyone that you meant to stay.” He gazed off toward the purple-hazed mountains. “Shows me you’re staying.”

  “I’m staying,” Brock confirmed, warmed by the fact that his brother had been glad to have him back and truly wanted him here.

  “We can get out the maps and go over the details tonight. You’ll want good water and natural windbreaks for the house site. John helped me bring the maps up to date a year or so ago. There’s something else, Brock.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a small case of our mother’s jewelry in the safe. I’ve taken a couple of pieces for Ruth, and Will wanted a pair of earrings for Lizzie, but there’s more. We didn’t want to divide it all without you.”

  “Thanks.” The fact that his brothers had waited for him to share their mother’s keepsakes meant a lot. Brock agreed they’d meet after supper, and joined the men on their way back to their duties.

  A week later he had a handle on exactly which sections were his and how he wanted the buildings laid out. He spent a couple of days in Butte, ordering supplies and contracting help for the project, which he planned to start after the weather cleared in the spring. An old settler’s cabin and barn that had weathered many a season and sat far above where spring thaws would flood had been chosen as a central location from which to work.