The Devil's Own Desperado

by Lynda J. Cox

  There was something intimate about standing this close to him and performing this routine ablution. Her heart raced, that ache deep in her was almost a pain, and her chest was tight. She concentrated to keep her hand from trembling. The warmth of his skin seared her palm and fingers, as surely as if she’d grabbed a hot pan from the oven.

  Carefully, she shaved his chin, tilted his head to the other side, and shaved that cheek. She was so close to him she could see flecks of black and even white in the depths of those gray eyes. With one finger, she tilted his head back and slid the razor down the column of his throat. His pulse tapped a slow and steady cadence.

  Finally, she was through. Amelia stepped back. Colt dipped a corner of the towel in the still-warm water and wiped the last of the shaving lather from his face and neck. Then he pulled a hand along his jaw. “No blood, Amelia. Didn’t miss a single spot either. You did a right fine job.” He stood and dropped the towel onto the tabletop. “You’d almost think you’ve had practice shaving a man’s face.”

  Did he think she had been this close to any other man? “No, I haven’t.” Amelia shook her head. “I’ve never done this before. I was just very careful.”

  She needed to flee the suddenly too-small confines of the house. Colt caught her elbow as she turned, and pulled her into his chest. He winced but didn’t release her. “I didn’t mean it as if I thought something wrong, Amelia. I just wanted you to know you did a good job.”

  She dropped her gaze to the long, elegant fingers wrapped around her elbow. The irrelevant thought struck her that he had pianist’s fingers, just as Daddy had said Momma did. “Please, Mr. Evans, let me go. I have chores to do. I have to clean the stalls—they haven’t been done in a week—and the garden needs to be watered or it’s going to shrivel up to nothing.” She was babbling and she couldn’t stop the tumble of words from her mouth. “If I don’t supervise Saul, he’ll weed out the vegetables along with the weeds. He isn’t too careful about what he gets with the hoe.”

  “Colt.” His fingers shifted on her wrist, sending a jolt of raw energy through her suddenly quivering insides. “Say my name, and I’ll let you go.”

  His deep velvety voice snaked into her and grew into a scalding heat. Her chest tightened, her heart quickened, and her mouth went dry again. His thumb traced a light circle on the inside of her wrist. The sensation was nearly overwhelming, and it shimmered through her, coiling around her limbs with a dizzying lethargy.

  “Please…Colt, let me go.”

  Chapter Six

  Amelia fled the kitchen as if the hem of her skirts were ablaze. If Colt was any judge of women, he’d say she had never been that close to any man other than her father. Dear heavens, a nineteen-year-old woman who had never been close to a man. Hell, he was damn sure now she’d never been kissed.

  The room dimmed in his vision and he grabbed the table to steady himself against the lightheaded exhaustion hammering at him. He took a moment to gather his waning strength and then staggered into the bedroom. He collapsed on the bed and stared up at the low, flat roof of the cabin. Maybe if he fixed his gaze on one point on the ceiling, the room would stop spinning around him. This was worse than being drunk. At least with a roaring drunk tied on, he would have an excuse for the room whirling around him. He let his thoughts drift and the room slowly stopped dancing, easing his nausea.

  Letting Amelia shave him had been torture. It had taken everything in him to keep from grabbing her around the waist and pulling her onto his lap so he could kiss her. She had smelled so good, the scent of rainwater and vanilla in her hair and on her skin. He wondered for a moment if she put vanilla in her bath water. If he’d bent his head forward, he could have pillowed himself on those soft mounds swelling under the bodice of her blouse.

  And gotten his throat slit for his impertinence.

  The rapid, dramatic pounding of her heartbeat at the base of that long, creamy neck had driven him to distraction. Would she have tasted like vanilla if he had pressed his mouth to her throat? His loins tightened with the thought of pressing his mouth against her racing pulse and tasting her warm skin. If she put vanilla in her bath water, she’d taste like a sweet sugar cookie just meant to be savored.

  He groaned. Was he out of his mind? He didn’t have time to cool his heels here, seducing a virgin. He had to find his gun before the Matthews brothers picked up his trail and found him. Colt draped his arm over his eyes. Find the gun and get the hell out of this two-bit town, while leaving a trail plain enough a blind man could follow—at least for a day or two. He slid his arm to his side. He had to find that gun for more reasons than that he felt naked without it.

  If he were a stubborn, headstrong woman, where would he hide a gun? There weren’t a lot of places in the room to hide a revolver. He glanced around the low-ceilinged room, over a short chest of drawers, a wobbly nightstand, and a battered trunk at the foot of the bed. He smiled.

  He sat up, ignoring the way the room spun around him, and forced himself to take long, slow breaths until the motion ceased. He stood. The room didn’t loop around him this time. He pulled the lid up on the travel-scarred trunk at the foot of the bed. A heavy down comforter rested on top, and Colt tossed it onto the bed.

  His hand brushed against silk and he lifted an ivory wedding dress, tucking it under his injured arm. Under the dress he found a fading tintype. Colt picked up the picture and dropped the dress into the depths of the trunk. A woman, clad in the ivory dress, stood stiffly next to a man in a high-collared shirt. If this was a picture of Amelia’s parents, she didn’t look like either one of them, but there was a marked resemblance between the woman and Jenny. The woman had been beautiful. The man wore a preacher’s suit, had his hair slicked back, and sported a narrow mustache. The white collar around his throat made Colt think of a noose.

  Colt raised a brow. Her father had been a preacher-man? No wonder Amelia was so sheltered and naive. It would also explain why she wasn’t married. Most men that he knew—and those who believed themselves to be men—weren’t keen on courting a preacher’s daughter.

  A wry smile lifted a corner of Colt’s mouth. A preacher’s daughter had taken him in and nursed him. He returned his scrutiny to the picture. The father was evident in the son, as well. Saul was just a younger version of the older man. And as he studied the picture of the couple, a different memory clicked.

  He imagined the man in the picture with a thick mustache, a spade beard, and a slouch hat perched on his head. Colt’s jaw dropped. Thirteen years before, or thereabouts, one of the most notorious shootists in Missouri had just up and vanished. A few had taken credit for gunning down Brimstone Phillips—so named for his habit of quoting the Good Book in a thick, Scottish burr—but when no one could come up with a body, no reward was ever paid.

  “What are you doing?” The words sounded in the room with the startling quality of gunfire.

  Colt straightened. Amelia stood in the doorway, her eyes glittering and her lips compressed into a thin line.

  “Looking for my revolver,” he said.

  “It’s not in there.” She stalked over to him and snatched the tintype from his hand. Her expression softened for a moment as she gazed down at it. She brushed her fingertips over the glass front before her other hand tightened on the gilt wooden frame.

  “Your parents?”

  She nodded, her expression hardening again. She carefully set the tintype in the trunk and tossed the comforter back in before slamming the lid with the finality of a coffin. Colt knew he had just been told in very certain terms not to look through the trunk again.

  She marched to the window and flung the curtains open, her motions sharp and short. Sunlight flooded the dark, low-ceilinged room. Her shoulders were squared and she held herself as if a ramrod had been sewn into the back of her starched calico dress.

  “What were their names?” he asked.

  “Mary and Phillip McCollister.”

  Maybe it wasn’t old Brimstone Phillips. Colt slid his hand
into his trouser pocket. “I’d like my gun back, Amelia.”

  “When you leave, I will give it back to you. I will not have a weapon like that in this house.”

  She seemed as unwavering as the mountains visible through the windows. Yet pain radiated from her, a pain he knew had nothing to do with physical hurts. Finding that tintype had opened wounds he was willing to bet hadn’t healed.

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “They died.” She fussed with the curtain over the window.

  She could be as close-mouthed as a padlock, Colt decided. “I gathered as much. How?”

  “Does it matter how?” Her voice cracked and her hand closed around the hem of the curtain. “It won’t bring them back to Saul and Jenny.”

  Colt caught hold of her shoulder. He gently pulled her away from the window and caught her chin in the palm of his hand, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Or bring them back to you, Amelia? How did they die?”

  Damn it, he shouldn’t care. All that mattered was getting his gun back and leaving here…leaving her. He couldn’t afford to care about anyone other than himself, and yet, he cared how her parents had died. He cared that she was raising her brother and sister by herself, that she was carrying that weight on her slender shoulders. He cared that the longer he was with her, the greater the odds became that the Matthews brothers would find him here, and that she or those kids could be hurt.

  She shook her head, the loose tendrils of her hair brushing her face. “It doesn’t matter how, it just matters that they are dead, and I have to raise Saul and Jenny.”

  “Did a gunman kill them? Is that why you’re so opposed to a gun in your house?”

  Amelia didn’t answer. Colt brushed several long, wispy tendrils of strawberry-blonde hair from her slender cheeks. “It’s not an easy job you have. Raising kids, especially a boy, can’t be easy.”

  She stilled under his light touch, and her eyes widened. Colt trailed his fingertips down the length of her neck, resting them for a moment in the hollow of her throat. Her pulse leaped under his fingers. She scarcely took a breath.

  Dear God, she was innocent as a newborn. Colt’s chest tightened and a heavy weight settled in his groin. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face up to him. He bent his head to her. He doubted it would have been possible, but she stilled even more.

  Colt hesitated. “You’ve never been kissed, have you?”

  Her tongue darted out, skimming along her lips. Colt ground his teeth with the effort to keep from claiming her mouth at that instant.

  “Yes, I have.” Bright color splashed on her cheeks, matching the defensive tone of her voice.

  “Really kissed, or just a peck on the cheek by some sweaty-palmed boy behind the church?” He bent closer, his mouth nearly on hers. “Did some boy press his lips to yours for a second and tell you that you’d been kissed?”

  The bedroom door flew open and Saul raced in. “Amy, the cows got out again.”

  Amelia leaped back as if scalded. Colt smothered a groan when she slipped from his fingers and brushed past him. “I’ll help you catch them,” she said to Saul.

  Colt dropped his head to his chest, ruthlessly quelling the desire firing through him. The tormenting, faint scent of vanilla lingered in her wake.

  ****

  Amelia raced from the bedroom as if a pack of hell’s demons was dogging her heels. Her body tingled and her skin burned along the path his fingers had traced down her neck. Thank heavens Saul had intruded when he did.

  As she looped a rope around Buttercup’s horns and dragged her back to the small pasture next to the barn, Amelia wondered what the difference was between being kissed and really being kissed. A kiss was a kiss, wasn’t it? After securing the cow in the enclosure, Amelia leaned her elbows onto the fence and attempted to sort out her cascading emotions. She dropped her head to her hands, admitting in that instant Colt Evans had fully intended to kiss her.

  Somehow she knew kissing Colt Evans would not be like the quick, cool kiss Donnie Morris had stolen from her behind the Methodist Church a year ago. Being near Donnie Morris didn’t make her stomach fill with butterflies, or make her ache deep in her core. Donnie Morris certainly didn’t make her insides tremble when he touched her, and holding hands with him had been like holding a cold, dead trout.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Donnie. She’d known him ever since her parents had moved to the Wyoming Territory. He had been the only one brave—or foolish—enough to try to fulfill all the Reverend Phillip McCollister’s requirements to court his oldest daughter. Even then, it wasn’t until after her parents’ deaths that Donnie had actually announced he wanted to court her. Donnie was sweet on her, she knew that. And he was good-looking, in a boyish manner. But when she compared him to Colt Evans…that was unfair, and she knew it. Donnie Morris was a boy and Colt Evans wasn’t.

  Amelia laughed, embarrassed with the direction her thoughts were taking. Colt had asked if she considered a peck on the cheek by some sweaty-palmed boy a kiss. That was Donnie Morris, and Donnie’s kiss, and that honestly was the extent of her knowledge of kissing.

  Oh heavens, Colt had to leave. She didn’t need this added difficulty in her life.

  A horse trotting into the yard caused her to turn. She was startled to see Marshal Taylor rein in his huge, black gelding and silently regard her. That level gaze reminded her of the day her parents had been killed. He had been so kind and understanding, but there had also been a cool, distant shading to his eyes that day, as if he knew something he would not tell her.

  The ever-present Wyoming wind gusted, tugging on Amelia’s skirts and blowing the long strands of the black gelding’s tail to the side. “Marshal, what brings you out here?”

  Taylor sat still as a statue. “Everything all right, Amy?”

  His question startled her more than his unexpected visit. “Why would you ask that?”

  He swung down from the horse, and dropped a rein. Tipping the brim of his hat to her, he said, “Doc Archer tells me you’ve been taking care of a man who wandered in here with a bullet hole in his chest. Doc says his name is Colt Evans. So I’m just checking up to make sure you, Saul, and Jenny are all right.”

  “We’re fine, thank you.” She wiped her palms down her skirt and brushed a long strand of hair from her face, the whole while meeting Taylor’s level gaze.

  “In my experience, when a woman stands with her head buried in her hands, she’s upset about something. Are you sure everything is all right? You’re all right?”

  Amelia glanced at the house and her stomach knotted. Taylor followed her glance.

  Colt stood on the top step of the small porch, his face shrouded by the shadow of the overhang, the white sling a stark contrast to his all-black attire. The slash of white accentuated the width of his shoulders and drew attention to the narrowness of his hips.

  “Introduce me,” Taylor said, leaving no doubt this wasn’t a request. Under his soft, Kentucky drawl was the strength of railroad-track iron.

  Amelia led the way to the cabin. Every line of Colt’s expression was chiseled from the same granite that formed the peaks of the Medicine Bow Range. One corner of his mouth curled in a brief, mocking smile. No January day ever held the bitter cold his eyes did at that moment.

  Amelia stopped a few feet from Colt. She tipped her head to the man behind her. “Marshal Taylor, Colt Evans. Mr. Evans, this is our marshal, Harrison Taylor.”

  Only Colt’s level, icy gaze shifted, moving from Amelia, to the silver badge on Taylor’s chest, and then up to the man’s face. “Marshal.”

  “The Colt Evans?”

  Amelia had the sensation of standing between two snarling mountain lions sizing each other up. What might have been a smile skated for a second across Colt’s face. He still hadn’t moved, but Amelia sensed there was a coiled, dangerous energy in him just waiting for the slightest misstep to be unleashed.

  “If I said no would you believe me?”
>
  “Nope,” Taylor said.

  Amelia stepped between the two men. “Marshal, Mr. Evans has assured me it is a simple coincidence—”

  “Amy,” Taylor cut her off. “Don’t bother. I’ve seen enough shootists pass through Federal that I could probably pick them out of a crowd.” Taylor’s brutal glare returned to Colt. “Far as I know, you’ve managed to keep your killing legal. But let me find out differently…”

  “I’ve never shot any man who didn’t draw on me first.” Colt leaned against a post. “I rather like my neck the length it is. I’d prefer not to have it stretched.” Colt’s brow arched up. “Anything else, Marshal?”

  “Yeah, there is, Evans. Some of the folks in Federal feel downright protective toward Amy, Saul, and Jenny. I’m one of those folks. Don’t overstay your welcome.”

  In the moment of silence between the two men, a meadowlark near the house trilled liquid notes from the tall grasses bending in the face of the breeze. Captain crowed from his post on the fence. Taylor’s horse shook his head, the bit jangling.

  Colt’s frigid gaze slid over to Amelia and thawed. “That’s rather up to the lady, Marshal, not you or anyone else.”

  Taylor took a step closer, forcing Amelia out of the way. “You do anything to hurt her or those kids or do anything that puts them in harm’s way, and you will answer to me.”

  An insolent smile curled Colt’s mouth. He lifted his brow again and crossed one ankle over the other. With a jolt Amelia realized that even though he was shorter than the marshal, he had forced Taylor to look up at him by not stepping off the porch. “Answer to you, or answer to the badge?”

  “Whichever you want, Evans.” The marshal’s voice sharpened. “You do anything that threatens any one of the people I care about, and I’ll take it very personally. The last man who pushed me on that point ended up dead.”

  Amelia cringed with the arctic quality of Colt’s laugh. “And you despise me for never killing a man unless he’s already drawn on me? Were you wearing that badge when you killed him, just to keep it all legal?”