Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  Bonnie trembled and raised her eyes to Webb’s kind, handsome face. Again she willed herself to love him, again she failed. Her whole soul hungered for Eli McKutchen, much as she wished things to be otherwise.

  “You don’t love me,” Webb guessed, without bitterness or rancor.

  Miserably Bonnie shook her head. “Not the way a wife should love a husband, Webb.”

  A short silence fell. Rose Marie fretted in her sleep and Webb touched her little back with one hand, settling her.

  “You still love Eli,” he said after a few moments.

  Bonnie nodded. “Against all good sense and all reason.” She paused, the pain and fear and despair nearly overwhelming her. “H-he hates me, Webb. He’s planning to take Rose Marie away from me.”

  Webb tensed. “Did Eli tell you that himself?”

  “No. Genoa did,” Bonnie confessed, and her dignity, so long her strength, was broken at last. One tear slid, tickling, down her cheek. “I’ll die without Rose. She’s all I have.”

  Rose whimpered in her sleep as Webb smoothed the child’s tangled hair. “You won’t lose her, Bonnie. I won’t let that happen.”

  “There isn’t anything you can do to stop it,” Bonnie insisted, dashing at her wet cheek with one hand. “Eli will win. He has money, power, influence—”

  “And he knows that Rose Marie is his daughter?”

  Webb’s question surprised Bonnie. “Yes.”

  “Suppose we said that she was mine? Suppose you married me, and we told the world that Rose Marie was my child?”

  Bonnie’s eyes widened, even though she had considered this approach herself. “You would do that? You would claim Rose—you would still want to marry me, even knowing that I don’t love you?”

  Webb shrugged and, though he smiled an ingenuous smile, his blue eyes were dark with pain. “You might come to love me, Bonnie—someday. Stranger things have happened, you know.”

  Bonnie lowered her head, stricken. Under the circumstances, Webb looked very good to her; he was a warm, dry place to run to while rain lashed at the ground, but he was truly a wonderful man who deserved so much more than Bonnie could give him. “I would be cheating you, Webb. Suppose—suppose I never forget Eli?”

  “I’m willing to take that chance, Bonnie. Marry me—let me prove that I can make you happy.”

  Impulsively Bonnie reached out and grasped both his hands in hers. “Webb, will you think of yourself just once? Suppose I don’t make you happy? Suppose you end up hating the sight of me?”

  “I could never hate you.”

  “Yes, you could!”

  A cool wind was blowing up from the river, and Bonnie shivered. The sky had clouded over and a light spattering of rain began to fall, ending the conversation and sending both Webb and Bonnie into frantic activity. While Bonnie snatched up the picnic basket, Webb roused Rose Marie and hurried toward the shelter of the house.

  They waited in the living room, hoping the rain would let up. It didn’t.

  “Unless you want to be stranded here,” Webb said diplomatically, “we’d better leave.”

  Involuntarily Bonnie’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. Webb’s bedroom was directly above. For all that she was considering marrying this man, she had not once imagined sleeping with him. How could she have overlooked something so fundamental? She blushed hotly when she saw that Webb was watching her, reading her thoughts.

  “Let’s go,” she said, too hastily.

  “Damn,” Webb replied, with good-natured disappointment. And then he bundled Rose tightly in his suitcoat and bolted outside, leading the way to the buggy.

  The road, if it could be called that, was already a mass of muddy goo, and it was barely visible for the pounding rain. When they reached the ferry landing, Hem and his helper were unhitching the team that worked on that side of the river.

  “Water’s too damned high to cross!” the old man informed them. “You’ll have to wait till morning!”

  Bonnie cast one frantic glance at Webb and saw that he was more than content to accept the situation. In fact he was grinning a cocky grin.

  “Hem Fenwick!” Bonnie yelled over the din of the rain. “You take us across that river right now!”

  “No, ma’am!” Hem shouted back.

  Webb looked damnably smug. In the last analysis, it seemed, all men were alike. “We’ll drown if we try it, Bonnie!”

  “Webb Hutcheson, people are going to talk!” Bonnie shrieked, and Rose, startled, began to wail and struggle in her arms.

  Webb took the child onto his lap, soothing her. “That has never bothered you before, now, has it?” he retorted.

  Hem looked delighted. “Whoo-ee, I’d like to be there when McKutchen hears about this!”

  “It might lend a lot of credence to our story,” Webb reasoned quietly. Hem was frowning now, trying to hear what was being said. “We could even say that we’ve been secretly married for months—”

  “Webb!” Bonnie wailed.

  Webb patted her knee. “Now, now, dear, let’s be calm. Reasonable. We can’t cross the river without a ferry, now can we?”

  “There’s a bridge downriver—” Bonnie speculated anxiously.

  “Ten miles downriver,” Webb pointed out. “Bonnie, we’d never make it through. It’s getting dark and there isn’t much of a road even in the best of weather. Imagine how it would be now, in this rain.”

  Sizing Hem Fenwick up in a long glance, Bonnie considered piracy. Following that, she weighed the possibility of swimming across the river.

  “Think of Rose,” Webb said, spoiling everything.

  Bonnie sighed, wholly defeated.

  Chuckling, Webb turned the buggy back toward his house.

  It was a night for surprises, Forbes Durrant thought to himself. He wouldn’t have expected McKutchen to patronize the Brass Eagle after all that had happened, but there he was, swilling whiskey as though he might be trying to put out a fire in his belly. Forbes could have told him, from bitter experience, that whiskey wasn’t going to cure what ailed him, but why extend the favor? Let McKutchen learn for himself that nothing could extinguish the Angel’s blazes, once she’d set them.

  The second surprise was seeing Earline Kalb storming toward him. Even for a woman of her questionable reputation, entering a saloon alone was unthinkable.

  Forbes gave her a mild assessment as she approached. She was a shapely piece and he wondered what it would be like to bed her.

  “Earline,” he said with a nod.

  She took in his bruised and battered face and smiled. “Forbes,” she returned cordially.

  After refilling McKutchen’s glass, Forbes turned back to the woman. She was drawing stares all around. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Bonnie McKutchen.”

  The whole saloon went silent. Out of the corner of his swollen eye, Forbes saw Eli’s glass stop midway between the bar and his mouth.

  “The Angel doesn’t work here anymore,” Forbes said moderately.

  “She’s no angel,” Earline shot back, “and we both know it.”

  Forbes shrugged.

  “How about Webb Hutcheson? Has he been in tonight?”

  Forbes allowed himself a quick glance in Eli McKutchen’s direction and saw that he was listening. Intently. “Sorry. Webb isn’t a regular customer. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Earline allowed, “but you always know where the Angel is and what she’s doing, Forbes, and don’t try to deny it.”

  “I’m not denying anything.”

  “Pa took Webb and Mrs. McKutchen across the river this mornin’,” put in young Walt Fenwick, from beside one of the billiard tables. “Reckon they’re stuck over there for the night, ’cause of the rain. Don’t nobody need to worry, though—Webb’s got himself a fine house yonder and they’ll stay warm and dry.”

  Forbes closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he looked again, he saw Earline grab a billiard ball and fling it at Walt’s h
ead. Poor Walt dodged that, a baffled expression on his face, and whirled, only to collide with Eli McKutchen.

  Eli caught the hapless ferryman by the lapels and lifted him clear off the floor. “Where exactly is this fine house?”

  Forbes sighed and started to round the bar. He couldn’t afford any trouble; now that he was no longer managing the McKutchen holdings, the Brass Eagle was his only source of income. All the same he didn’t know what he was going to do once he reached Eli and the man he was about to strangle.

  He was saved by that scrawny little lawyer Callahan, who left his own place at the bar and craned his neck to look into his client’s face and say with authority, “Eli, that will be quite enough.”

  Eli released his hold on Walt’s coat and thrust him onto the billiard table. Forbes winced, remembering what it would cost to replace the felt that covered it.

  “Where is it?” the giant demanded, his gaze shifting to Forbes.

  Forbes swallowed. “Where is what?”

  Eli advanced a step, looking dangerous. “The house, you idiot. Hutcheson’s house.”

  “Two miles due north of the ferry landing,” Earline supplied helpfully. “But you’ll never get across that river in this rain.”

  I wouldn’t bet on that, Forbes thought, careful to keep a straight face.

  Thunder cracked in the sky as Eli McKutchen turned and strode toward the door. The lawyer slapped a bill down on the bar and ran after him.

  For the Angel’s sake, Forbes hoped some stupid son of a bitch wouldn’t offer the use of a rowboat.

  The house was snug against the cold and the rain, and Webb had lit lamps all around. They’d made supper of the leftovers from the picnic and a warm fire was blazing on the living-room hearth.

  Rose slept comfortably in a corner, Webb having made her a bed of his coat and the lap robe from the buggy.

  Bonnie was miserable. “I’m ruined,” she said to the flames in the fireplace. “Ruined!”

  Webb returned from the barn just then, his hair dripping wet, his shirt transparent. He chuckled as he sat down beside Bonnie in front of the fire. “This is ironic,” he said. “The Angel, worrying about her reputation!”

  “I do have morals, you know!”

  Webb grinned and planted an innocuous kiss on the tip of Bonnie’s nose. “Be honest. It isn’t the talk you’re worried about at all. It’s what you think I expect of you.”

  Bonnie blushed. “What exactly do you expect?”

  Webb gave a heavy and rather exaggerated sigh. “Nothing you don’t want to give, Bonnie, so calm down.”

  Bonnie drew a deep breath. Of course, she knew that Webb would never force her, but she had to worry about something, it seemed. “Suppose it rains for days and days, Webb,” she fretted, gazing into the flames again.

  Webb took the newest edition of his paper from the picnic basket and handed it to her. There was just the merest hint of sadness in his voice as he said, “If it does, I’ll build an ark. Read the paper, Bonnie, while I look around for something we can sleep on.”

  Bonnie had no intention of sleeping, but she did need something to distract herself. She unfolded the latest issue of the Northridge News and tilted the paper toward the fire in order to see the print. Webb’s article about the troubles at the smelter caught her eye immediately, and she read with growing concern. Hem Fenwick had been right when he’d said this piece would squash a few toes.

  Knowing Webb as a gentle, caring man, Bonnie was always struck by the blunt manner in which he wrote. The article was a scathing indictment of outsiders who stirred up trouble for their own purposes, and it urged the workers of Northridge to give Eli McKutchen a fighting chance to right the wrongs that had been done them. If he refused to meet their demands for higher wages, and better conditions in which to live and work, then and only then should they strike.

  Bonnie was staring thoughtfully into the fire when Webb returned with an armload of work clothes. Of these, he made a makeshift bed on the floor in front of the fireplace.

  “I’m afraid this was the best I could do,” he said. “Next time I come out here, I’m bringing food and blankets.”

  Bonnie could only think of the article. “Webb, Hem was right. The union people aren’t going to thank you for this piece.”

  “I don’t write to please them, Bonnie.”

  She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them. “Frankly, I’m surprised that you took Eli’s side the way you did. You’ve always been critical of the way the smelter has been managed, and you’ve waged a one-man campaign against Patch Town.”

  Webb sighed and, after one cautious look at Bonnie, removed his sodden shirt. Only then did she notice that he was shivering. “I’m no friend of Eli McKutchen’s, Bonnie—he knew about Patch Town and all the other problems connected with the smelter, and he took his sweet time looking into things.”

  “But still you defended him.” Bonnie took up a heavy coat from the pile of work clothes and gently draped it over Webb’s broad shoulders.

  “I wasn’t defending McKutchen,” Webb insisted quietly. “I was only trying to avoid more trouble. If he’s willing to make things right, then the town ought to give him that chance. I just hope it isn’t too late.”

  Once again Bonnie sat with her chin on her knees. She thought of the men already out on strike, and a shiver ran up her spine. “In a way I blame myself,” she said. “For the conditions in Patch Town, at least.”

  Webb was silent, thoughtful.

  “No one knew better than I did how it was—how it is—to live there. I should have pressed Eli to make changes.”

  “You were young, Bonnie. And how much influence would you have had?”

  Bonnie wanted to cry, but she held back. “There was a time when I had a great deal of influence with Eli, Webb. He loved me very much. Until—until—”

  Webb’s hand came shyly to cover Bonnie’s. “Until your baby died?”

  Bonnie cast a quick look at the sleeping Rose Marie, in an unconscious attempt to reassure herself that this child was indeed safe. “Everything went wrong after that. Eli blamed me, you know.”

  Webb nodded and his grip on Bonnie’s hand tightened for a second. “I know.”

  In spite of herself, Bonnie trembled at the memory. “I thought it would pass, that it was his grief making him act that way. But things just went from bad to worse and finally everything fell apart. Eli ran away, and so did I.”

  Webb glanced at Rose Marie. “There must have been moments when you could reach out to each other.”

  Bonnie would have been embarrassed to speak of such intimate matters with any other man and most women, but this was Webb. Her friend. No matter what she said to him, he always seemed to understand. “Eli moved out of our house the day after the funeral, the very day. I know he took at least one mistress. I—I was desperate to reach him somehow—”

  “You don’t need to tell me, Bonnie.”

  “I need to tell someone, Webb—I so need to tell someone!”

  Webb put one strong arm around her shoulders and held her close. Bonnie sensed that he had braced himself against whatever she might say, but she was unable to keep her peace.

  “J-just before Eli left for Cuba, I telephoned him at—at his club. I begged him—oh, Webb, I actually begged him—to come home. I thought we could talk—”

  Webb waited in silence for Bonnie to go on.

  “I th-threw myself at him, Webb. I was so afraid and so desperate—”

  “And he made love to you.”

  Bonnie shivered and tears sprang to her eyes. “That’s putting it kindly. I’ve never seen Eli like that—he tore my clothes, Webb. It was as th-though he hated me.”

  Webb stiffened, and Bonnie could feel the quiet fury coursing through his big frame. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Oh, yes. But not in the way you think. The pain wasn’t physical, Webb.” Bonnie ached to remember that afternoon in the sumptuous room she had once shared so happily with her husband. Eli had u
sed her, driven her to one shameful response after another, and then left her. “It was the contempt. Webb, he was so cold. So brutally cold.”

  “It’s over now, Bonnie,” Webb pointed out, after a very long time. “I know you were hurt, but that part of your life is behind you.”

  Bonnie thought of a night just past, when she had lain with Eli McKutchen. She’d forgotten everything, every hurt, every insult, and responded to him with an abandon that could only be described as wanton. And in the morning she’d awakened to find a fifty-dollar bill on her bedside table. For all of that, Bonnie couldn’t be certain, even now, that if Eli crooked one finger, she wouldn’t go to him. Her need of him was that consuming, that dangerous.

  She sighed.

  “It’s over,” Webb said again.

  Solid, substantial Webb. How Bonnie hoped and prayed that he was right.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE BACK OF Eli’s head throbbed, and the thin light flowing in through his bedroom window was an assault on his eyes. He drew the covers up over his face and groaned.

  “I don’t remember getting drunk enough to deserve a hangover this bad,” he muttered, the words muffled by several layers of bedding.

  Seth’s voice came from somewhere near the foot of the bed. “You didn’t. I clubbed you over the head with a bottle.”

  Slowly Eli drew his covers down to the middle of his nose and tried to focus on the man who claimed to be his friend. “What?”

  “You were bound and determined to swim the Columbia River,” Seth huffed. “I had to do something.”

  Eli grimaced as he touched the back of his head and found a goose egg the size of a croquet ball. “You might have tried reasoning with me, you know,” he complained.

  “I might have tried reasoning with a stump, too. Get out of that bed, Eli, and get dressed. We’ve got to meet with the union people again.”

  “Talk about reasoning with stumps,” Eli sighed, squinting up at the ceiling until his vision came right. “We tried that yesterday, remember?”

  “Yes, and we’ll try again today. We’ll try tomorrow, if we have to, and the day after that and the day after—”