Ace's Wild (Hqn)

by Sarah McCarty

  “He can change.”

  Ace shook his head and dealt the first row of his solitaire game. “No.”

  Luke grunted. “Doubtful he’s got anything in his saddlebags to do the lady proud.”

  More chairs scraped. A couple creaked as the patrons perked up to the potential excitement. Shit.

  Caden wasn’t deterred. “He can borrow yours.”

  Ace made a couple of moves with the cards. He could already tell the game wasn’t going well. Laying out another row of cards he said, “You two are making a spectacle of yourselves.”

  Caden panned with the shotgun to include the greater world beyond the saloon. “I’d have to go a bit to make a bigger one than you did last night.”

  If he and Pet hadn’t tipped over the tub getting out, they might not have made a scene at all, but things were what they were. With a jerk of his chin, Ace indicated the audience. “I’m not the one making a spectacle of the woman’s name in a saloon.”

  To his surprise, Luke backed him. “Another good point.”

  Caden growled under his breath. Ace kicked out an empty chair with his foot. “Take a seat before you give anyone any more gossip to gnaw on.”

  Caden grabbed the chair and cut him a glare. “Just so you know, if I’m not happy with the conclusion to this talk we’re about to have, I’m going to blow your toe off.”

  “Boots won’t fit right without a toe,” Luke observed, pulling out a chair for himself.

  The bartender looked over. Ace nodded and motioned. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Silence reigned for a minute. The new barkeep put two glasses on the table. Ace had to think to remember his name. “Thanks, Tim.”

  Uncorking the bottle, Ace poured whiskey into each and then pushed them over.

  Caden looked at his. “A little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”

  Luke took his and lifted it in a silent toast. “I’m thinking not.”

  Ace followed suit. Caden’s gaze jumped between the two of them. On a curse he threw his back, too. It was too much to hope a single shot would be much of a distraction. Caden’s glass hit the table.

  “So spill it.”

  Ace refilled the glasses. “This may shock you, gentlemen, but you’ve got the shotgun pointed at the wrong party.”

  Luke choked on his drink. Caden slowly narrowed his eyes, the way he did when he was absorbing something.

  “We’re going to need another bottle for this.” Luke motioned to Tim, who brought it over immediately. “What the hell happened?”

  Ace poured the last of the bottle with not too steady a hand. “The lady turned me down.”

  Luke cocked an eyebrow at him as the bottle rapped on the lip of his glass. “How many of these bottles have you had?”

  “None of your business.”

  Luke glanced to the barkeep. Tim held up one finger. Caden snagged the second bottle before Ace could.

  “Then you’re done.”

  “The hell I am,” Ace snarled. To Tim he said, “You’re not long for this saloon.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Parker. Mr. Miller’s—”

  Caden cut him off. “Don’t worry about it, Tim.”

  Very deliberately, Ace moved the black two on the red three. “Fuck you, Caden.”

  “You need a sober head to deal with women problems.”

  “Who said I have problems?”

  Luke huffed. “The fact that your lady love needs a shotgun turned on her to see the sense in accepting you? Just a thought.”

  “That’s not doing Hell’s Eight’s reputation a lick of good,” Caden added, leaning back in his chair.

  Ace scooped up the cards. “Not much left of that reputation after your wife not only rejected you but threw you out of her house.”

  Caden leaned back in his chair, a smug smile on his face. “Only until she saw the light. But you’ll note, in the end, she did become my wife.”

  “Maddie’s different.”

  Caden shook his head. “True. Maddie had a need to know who she was. There’s no lack of self-knowing in Petunia.”

  That was the truth. “I’m beginning to think that lady knows herself too well.”

  “Meaning?” Caden asked, pulling the cork from the second bottle and pouring a shot into two glasses.

  “I thought you said we were done?”

  Caden took one glass, Luke the other.

  Caden smiled. “I said you were done.”

  Ace grabbed the bottle back. “Uh-huh.”

  He poured a glass. Luke confiscated it.

  “Son of a bitch. Why don’t you two worry about your own women?”

  “I don’t have one.” Luke grinned.

  “Maddie said you’ve been around Hester quite a bit lately,” Caden offered.

  It was Luke’s turn to frown. “Maddie needs a new hobby.”

  That was news to Ace. He cocked a brow at Luke. “You’re interested in Hester?”

  “We’re not talking about me.”

  “I’m talking about Hester.” He’d much rather have the conversation focused on Luke. “Pass me the shotgun, Caden.”

  Caden didn’t pass the gun but he did sit back in his chair and study both of them. “Now, I can understand Hester wanting to stay man-free, but Petunia’s been goggle-eyed over you, Ace, since you ran her over at the bakery.”

  “Now, there’s an image.” He poured another whiskey. This time no one took it from him.

  “So what happened last night?” Luke asked.

  The liquor shone a dull amber in the glass, sitting as it was far from the sunlight, struggling to make it through the saloon’s dirty windows. “I don’t think Petunia is fond of the institution of marriage.”

  Luke poured another glass. “Can’t say that I blame her. She’s used to doing what she wants, when she wants, and you would definitely hamper that.”

  “Like hell.”

  Caden snorted. “Have you met yourself? You couldn’t help it. You been lusting after that woman the way a dog lusts after a bone, and it’s not in you to be halfway with a woman. You’d want all of her. In all ways.”

  Intensity. Totality. Yes, he wanted that. “There’s plenty of women here in town would tell you differently.”

  Luke scoffed. “We’re not talking about dalliances. We’re talking about that rare woman who can hold her own with you.”

  “And still be giving,” Caden added with emphasis on the giving.

  He hadn’t realized they understood him so well. “Ya’ll been studying me?”

  “You’ve been the topic of conversation a time or two.”

  “Even placed a bet a time or two.”

  “On what?”

  Luke shrugged. “Hard to pick just one thing.”

  “So who won on this one?”

  Caden sighed, took Luke’s glass and tipped the contents into Ace’s. “No one, it appears.”

  “What is she going to do?” Luke asked. “Head on out to California?”

  “I imagine.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “The conversation ended when she said no.”

  “And you left it there?” Caden asked.

  “No place to take it.”

  Ace picked up his glass. Nothing had ever taken him aback as much as that no. He’d been holding marriage as his ace in the hole. And it’d been nothing against the wild card of her independence.

  Luke swore. “Damn.”

  Ace put his glass down, the liquor untouched. He’d started the morning with the plan of getting stinking drunk, but the drunker he got, the less appeal he was finding in the idea. He was too damn old to be waking up hungover.

  Lucas filled his glass again. “Short of hog-tying, how do you pl
an on keeping her here?”

  Now, there was an image to fire a man’s blood.

  “More than that, what makes you think you have the right?” Caden asked too casually.

  “She could be carrying my baby.”

  Caden reached for the shotgun and whistled under his breath. “That’s a hell of a lot of right.”

  Ace nodded to the shotgun. “If you point that at her, I’m going to be unhappy.”

  Caden shrugged. “It might scare her into being reasonable.”

  “Have you met Petunia?”

  With a sigh, Caden put the gun back. “You’ve got a point.”

  Luke swirled the whiskey in his glass. “So even after the trauma with the Comanche, she let you touch her?”

  She hadn’t just let him, she’d begged him. It had been the hottest yet sweetest lovemaking he could ever remember having. And he wasn’t a man who thought he valued sweet.

  “She had her reasons.”

  Caden whistled again. “That’s one tough woman.”

  “Worth holding on to,” Luke added.

  Yes, she was. Ace took his shot glass and poured the contents into Caden’s. “Yup.”

  Caden looked at it before leaning back in his chair. “I heard Rose was in here draped all over you the other day when she came in. Women tend to frown on that.”

  “Proud women even more,” Luke tacked on.

  Caden spun the glass between his fingers. “It’s never good for a woman to know about a man’s past dalliances.”

  No, it wasn’t. And Petunia knew all about his. The foreign sense of helpless frustration swelled. “Shit.”

  A couple of cowboys burst through the door, their hooting and hollering too raucous for his mood. Ace considered shooting them.

  Luke shook his head. “Don’t.”

  Ace paused, hand on his gun. “Why the hell not?”

  “’Cause we’re the ones that would have to clean up the mess.”

  It was a good point.

  “Still doesn’t mean I’m not going to shoot you,” Caden said, adjusting the shotgun against the extra chair.

  “What the hell for?”

  Caden sipped the whiskey Ace had just poured him and met his gaze squarely. “There’s the little issue of you two taking off after Comanche without me.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

  Luke shrugged. “You’re married.”

  “Married or not, I’m still Hell’s Eight.”

  Those were fighting words for Caden. Ace pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and pushed the liquor away.

  It really wasn’t his day.

  * * *

  IT REALLY WASN’T her day. Last night had been the most tumultuous of Petunia’s life. There was nothing she wanted more right now than the time and privacy to sort out how she felt about what had happened. Instead, she had a room full of friends wanting to make her feel better about the kidnapping, about Ace, about everything. But mostly they wanted to fix what they saw as a pressing problem. Her compromised state.

  “In my day such things did not go on,” Luisa repeated for the third time in her thick Italian accent from where she stood by the window.

  “It’s not what it seemed,” Petunia hedged, sitting on the side of the bed rubbing her forehead.

  Hester, over by the wardrobe, huffed and folded her arms across her chest. “What else could it mean when a man stays in a woman’s room?”

  “You’re not helping, Hester.”

  Hester snapped back, “I’m not trying to.”

  “I wasn’t myself.” In the beginning, at least. But in the end... In the end, Ace had given her back herself. Petunia owed him for that.

  “Hester is right,” Maddie said, pushing her hair off her face. “There’s only one way that will look.”

  Luisa fussed with the curtains. “For a man to stay in a woman’s room all night, this is serious.”

  “I think we all know Ace well enough to know he’s always serious,” Hester said.

  Petunia cut her another glare. Hester smiled sweetly back.

  Maddie licked her lips, fussed with her skirt, grabbed the post at the foot of the bed as if she needed the balance and then took the bull by the horns. “He needs to be serious about you, Petunia.”

  “As in proposing?”

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t want to be married.”

  Maddie waved her hand as if her wishes were nothing. “But marriage will solve everything.”

  For everyone else. “What everything?”

  “The rumors and gossip...” She looked away and didn’t finish.

  Luisa crossed herself. “A woman’s reputation, this is a fragile thing.”

  “Mine’s tough as nails,” Petunia said.

  Maddie shook her head. “You say that because you haven’t left this room yet.”

  “Already, there is talk,” Luisa whispered, looking out the window nervously as if she expected those talking to be gathering at the door.

  “What talk?”

  “About what was done to you.”

  Part of her cared. How could she not? But this town wasn’t her home, and she’d soon be leaving. When she did, she’d leave the talk behind. “They’re going to speculate one way or the other. Marriage won’t stop that.”

  But marriage would stop her.

  “Neither will leaving. Because that’s your plan, isn’t it?” Hester asked. “Just to leave us all here to cope as best we can while you run off to a shiny new life?”

  “The world is not so big that this won’t follow you,” Maddie cautioned. “Being kidnapped makes you...notorious.”

  “Spending the night with Ace makes him notorious.”

  “For a man this doesn’t matter,” Luisa said.

  “It matters to some,” Hester protested.

  Finally, Petunia could get a word in edgewise. “I’m sure his reputation will survive.”

  “He’s a good man,” Hester said. “And he’s Hell’s Eight. A Texas Ranger and proud. What makes you think he wants to be thought of as a low-down despoiler of women?”

  Luisa and Maddie looked at Hester askance. Petunia sagged in exasperation. Damn it. Why did Hester have to make sense? Why did she have to keep hammering this point? Why did Petunia have to care? About Ace. About honor. About any of this. Smoothing her hair back, she asked, “Is there a lot of talk?”

  “Enough.”

  “There might have been sympathy before about the Comanche, but once Ace spent the night...” Maddie sighed.

  “You are the teacher of the children. People worry for the little ones.”

  “That’s ridiculous! I’m a Wayfield, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Your family name means nothing here.”

  No, she realized, it didn’t. Along with leaving behind the protection of her family’s money, she’d left behind the protection of their reputation. “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

  “Caden isn’t happy,” Maddie confessed.

  Petunia pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to stop the encroaching headache. She was tired. She just wanted to take a nap, not sit here having a pointless debate. “Don’t tell me you talked to him about it.”

  Maddie’s “It’s not right, Petunia” wasn’t any more encouraging than her “Ace may do what he wants with the women over in the saloon but with a good woman, there are limits.”

  “I think we should call the preacher,” Luisa said, arms folded across her chest. “Then there will be no more of this nonsense. Ace will be a man and make the proposal.” Letting the curtain drop, she nodded emphatically. “I will speak to Antonio about it.”

  Petunia could feel the walls closing in.
“The situation doesn’t need a preacher. It just needs to be left alone.”

  Luisa and Maddie exchanged a guilty glance. The one Hester shot Petunia was a knowing one. Damn her, she just smiled that knowing smile. She’d told Petunia she couldn’t contain this and leave it to feed on itself. That it was unfair to Ace. Petunia hadn’t believed her then, but now, seeing that shared look between Maddie and Luisa, she had a sinking feeling Hester had been right.

  “Maddie, what did you do?”

  “I was upset...” she began.

  “About what?” Petunia pressed.

  “About what happened to you. About Ace. The way he treated you.”

  “He treated me like a gentleman. You had no reason to think otherwise.”

  Maddie wouldn’t look at her. “Sometimes I can’t separate what’s me and what’s others. I was crying.”

  Oh, God.

  “Caden saw...”

  Oh, my God. Maddie’s tears would make everything more critical to Caden.

  “He grabbed the shotgun.”

  “Good!” Luisa exclaimed. She reached over and patted Petunia’s leg. “Caden, he’s a good man. He will set this to right.”

  Petunia didn’t need it to be set right. She didn’t need Ace pinned down by the business end of a shotgun and forced to marry her. She’d wanted to be made love to. She’d wanted to feel like a woman not a victim. She’d wanted a lover, not a lifetime. How could she explain that to these women? That Ace had offered marriage, and she’d refused? Maddie and Luisa wouldn’t understand and to Hester it would be a slap in the face.

  “In my day, men did not play fast and loose with a woman’s reputation,” Luisa continued.

  “I agree.”

  How could Maddie agree? “Maddie, you lived with Caden before you married him.”

  “We were discreet.”

  Petunia dropped her hand to her side. “Your fights were legendary. There was a whole betting board set up in the saloon.”

  “But there was never any doubt in anyone’s mind but mine that we were getting married. Caden had ‘mine’ written all over anything pertaining to us.”

  “Uh-huh. And Ace doesn’t when it comes to Petunia?” With a shake of her head, Hester picked up her breakfast tray. “I can’t listen to any more of this foolishness. I’m going to see what the children are up to.”