Wanton Angel

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Where Eli is concerned,” she said, thinking of his time in Cuba with Consolata Torrez, “the old saw sometimes applies—out of sight, out of mind.”

  Lizbeth paled slightly at the implication inherent in Bonnie’s words. She probably had similar doubts about Forbes’s ability to be faithful to any one woman, and that was understandable. “Not even a minute ago, Bonnie McKutchen,” she scolded gently, “you were telling me that you regretted the time you’ve lost.”

  “I do,” Bonnie said. “More than ever, I do.”

  “If you could turn the clock back, what would you do differently?”

  Bonnie thought of those terrible days and nights following Kiley’s death, of Eli’s coldness and his betrayals, of his soldiering in Cuba. “I would fight,” she said, with certainty. “Somehow I would pass through my own pain and grief and into Eli’s and force him to face his sorrow directly. And if he still insisted on chasing off to Cuba, I would wait for him. I would be there when he came to his senses.”

  “My stars,” Lizbeth breathed, “you do love that man, don’t you?”

  “More than my life,” Bonnie replied, without hesitation, “and certainly more than my pride.” She started toward the door, for it was time and past to go home, to be with Rose Marie, to have a hot bath and tumble into bed and sleep. In the doorway she paused. “Unless you want to lose Forbes—and I assure you, Lizbeth, there are plenty of women in this world who would be more than happy to bind his wounds and soothe his brow—fight for him.”

  Lizbeth lit a lamp, for the last of the light was nearly gone, and in the glow her face looked hopeful and determined. She started toward the rear door of the schoolhouse, which led into small but comfortable living quarters provided for her use and the use of those who would inevitably come after her. “Good night, Bonnie,” she said. “And thank you.”

  Bonnie smiled and stepped out into the twilight. Genoa had already left, but Seth, thoughtful, quietly valiant Seth, was waiting patiently in the seat of Eli’s buggy.

  Without waiting for help, Bonnie climbed up into the seat beside him and settled herself with a sigh. Seth was not a man to make small talk, and on this night Bonnie was grateful for that trait. They drove to Genoa’s brightly lit home in comfortable silence.

  The enormous clock in the entryway was chiming eight as Bonnie and Seth came in, and Bonnie sighed again. It was always later than she thought, she reflected. Katie would have long since given Rose Marie her supper and her bath and tucked her into bed.

  Disappointed, Bonnie said good night to Seth and climbed wearily up the stairs. Spending a happy hour or two with her daughter would have given her spirits a lift they sorely needed.

  Bonnie entered the master bedroom quietly, meaning to get a nightgown, a wrapper and slippers and then go back to the bathroom and sink into a hot, relaxing tub of water. A lamp flickered on one of the nightstands and the covers on the bed had been turned back, probably by the efficient if sometimes tart-tongued housekeeper, Martha. Bonnie took a gown of lightweight flannel from a bureau drawer and opened the wardrobe to pull out her favorite wrapper, a worn robe of dark blue corduroy trimmed in white piping.

  With both these garments over one arm, Bonnie crept toward the adjoining study-turned-nursery, hungry for at least a glimpse of her sleeping daughter. There would be no wild sessions of tickling this night, no hugs and no stories told, but at least she could look at Rose for a while. She could kiss her forehead or her cheek and make sure that the child hadn’t kicked away her covers …

  Bonnie entered the nursery and stopped between one step and the next, her breath caught in her throat. Eli was sitting beside Rose’s bed, in a leather barrelback chair, his chin resting flush with his chest, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Silvery moonlight flowed into the room, giving his wheat-gold hair an ethereal and completely misleading halo effect.

  A smile curved Bonnie’s lips and she was able to breathe again, able to move. She went to Rose’s bedside and saw that her daughter was sleeping soundly, her covers in place, and she bent to kiss her forehead. Eli chose exactly that moment to awaken, and being a man to take advantage of opportunity whenever it presented itself, he gave Bonnie’s bottom a mischievous pinch.

  She gasped and straightened, at once insulted and very, very glad that Eli was home again. “Cad!” she accused in a saucy whisper.

  Eli stood up and smoothly lifted Bonnie off her feet. The wrapper and nightgown she’d carried had long since fallen to the floor, forgotten. Chuckling to himself, Eli carried his wife into their bedroom and set her on her feet. Turning her so that she faced the bed—and the delicious fate that awaited her there—he began unfastening the buttons of her dress.

  Strangely flustered, her heart fluttering against her rib cage, Bonnie searched her mind for something to say. Something reasonable and ordinary. “Did you buy the shipyard?” she blurted at last.

  Eli had finished unbuttoning Bonnie’s dress, and his hands were warm on her bare shoulders as she shrugged free of the garment. He laughed and the sound was husky and warm and very, very masculine. “We’ll discuss the shipyard later. Right now, my love, I need you.”

  He turned Bonnie to face him and finished divesting her of her dress, leaving her to stand before him in her camisole and petticoats and drawers. She blushed, feeling just as nervous and bridelike as she had that long-ago night after their first wedding, when Eli introduced her so tenderly to the sweet mysteries of her own womanhood.

  Now his warm and deft fingers were undoing the wispy pink ribbons that held Bonnie’s camisole closed. She caught his hands in her own, half dizzy with the awesome power he exerted over her.

  “How long have you been home?” she asked. “The train came in hours ago—”

  Eli’s fingers, stopped by her touch, began their slow and gentle work again. “I’ve been back for a week,” he said, his golden eyes smiling at Bonnie’s mouth, just her mouth, as her tongue whisked once over her dry lips. “We’ll talk about that later, too.”

  “A week?” Bonnie gasped, stepping back. “Eli McKutchen, you didn’t go to San Francisco at all! What—”

  He drew her close again, his hands on her quivering shoulders, and kissed her. Bonnie forgot all the questions she wanted to ask and, moments later, when the lamp had been extinguished and Eli lowered her to the bed and stretched out beside her, she forgot her name.

  Mary. Jane. Elizabeth. She smiled as her husband groaned and tensed upon her, in the final throes of a passion that had already driven her into a maddened state of whimpering and thrashing about, and finally the sweet satiation her body had hungered for. Bonnie, that was it. Her name was Bonnie.

  The fingers of her right hand entwined themselves in Eli’s hair as he sank to her, appeased, while the fingers of her left explored the moist hollow between his shoulder blades. “I love you,” she said, laughing softly. Or was she crying?

  Whatever Eli said in reply was rendered insensible by the muffling of his face in the pillows.

  Bonnie giggled, purely happy. When Eli lifted his head, she caressed his cheek, rough and strong and exactly right, exactly wonderful.

  Still struggling to breathe properly, he gave her a brief kiss. “Woman,” he said, his lips moving softly against her mouth, “do you have any idea how badly—and how often—I need you?”

  “A vague one,” Bonnie teased. “In eight months, twentynine days and fifteen minutes, I’ll probably have triplets as well.”

  His grin was benevolently wicked. “That would be fine with me. Ummm, let’s sleep this way all night. I like being inside you.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Bonnie retorted, kissing his stubbly chin, “I like having you. But the sad truth is that you weigh as much as a horse and you’re squashing me.”

  Considerately he braced himself on his elbows, relieving Bonnie of his weight but not his swelling manhood. His face, barely visible in the moonlight, was suddenly serious. “I didn’t go to San Francisco,” he confessed g
ravely.

  Bonnie wriggled for the sheer pleasure of feeling him grow to straining magnificence within her. “I’d already guessed that. Where were you?”

  “In Spokane, for the first few days anyway.”

  “And somewhere in Northridge for the past week,” Bonnie concluded archly. “How did you manage to come back to the gossip capital of the world without being noticed?”

  “I took the train as far as Colville and rode from there on horseback.”

  “Arriving under cover of darkness, no doubt. Such mystery. And heaven help you, Eli McKutchen, if you’ve been under Earline Kalb’s roof all this time.”

  He groaned, caught between the renewed demands of his body and an obvious need to tell Bonnie what he’d been up to for the past two weeks. He moved slowly, involuntarily upon her, and she moved with him, purposely making his predicament worse. “I haven’t—oh, God, Bonnie, don’t do that—”

  Her hands coursed up and down the powerful expanse of his naked back and she smiled, enjoying her triumph while it lasted. “Go on,” she teased primly, though her heart was beating faster and it was difficult to breathe properly.

  Eli shuddered and delved deeper, in an effective exertion of mastery. “You little witch,” he gasped. “You like—tormenting me this way—”

  “I love tormenting you this way,” Bonnie gulped out. “Oh, especially this way.”

  “I was—in your father’s—” Eli sucked in a hard breath. “You heartless—little hellion—how am I supposed to tell you anything—”

  Bonnie gave a strangling, fevered laugh and caught both her hands behind his head, dragging him into a kiss that muffled a long moan that might have been his and might have been her own.

  Weaker now, but wiser, Eli rolled to the far side of the bed when the loving was over, and held the blankets firmly in place over his thighs even while he was stretching to light the lamp.

  Bonnie thought this was outrageously funny and shook with secret laughter.

  In the flickering light of the lamp, Eli scowled at her. “Don’t you dare touch me again,” he warned righteously, “until I tell you what I’ve been doing!”

  Bonnie’s laughter escaped as a series of muffled giggles. “Yes, sir!” she said, into the covers pressed to her mouth.

  Eli glared her into wide-eyed silence and then told her how he’d spent the past week hiding out in her father’s spare bedroom at the mercantile during the daytime and following the union delegation at night. Before that, he’d been in Spokane, checking into the Brotherhood of American Workers, and he’d learned some disturbing things about their tactics. As he might have expected from their tenacity, they didn’t accept defeat gracefully.

  Bonnie now understood why she’d been so on edge since Eli’s departure a fortnight before. She sat up in bed. “But the smelter workers took a vote—just a day or so after you left—”

  “Yes,” Eli broke in. “And almost to a man, they voted against the Brotherhood. They want a union, but one of their own choosing. Jack told me all that.”

  Bonnie wondered how Jack Fitzpatrick, a man Eli had always quietly disliked, had suddenly become a confidant and trusted ally. He had invariably been spoken of, with controlled disdain, as “your father.” Now, he was “Jack”? It didn’t make sense. “Why did you choose my father to help you, instead of Seth or Forbes or even Webb?”

  “Seth and Forbes knew what I was doing, of course.” Eli looked damnably smug. “And as for Webb—well, the whole thing was his idea. Bright man, Hutcheson—did you know he plans to run for mayor?”

  “I’m certainly glad you felt you could trust everyone in this damned town except me!” Bonnie flared in a furious hiss.

  Eli grinned and reached out to caress Bonnie’s cheek at the same time. “I trust you completely,” he said after a moment, looking serious again. “But in this case it was safer for you to believe that I was in San Francisco. The Brotherhood was watching you, and that wistful, bewildered expression on your face convinced them that the cat was away and the mice could play.”

  Bonnie was outraged. ‘“Wistful, bewildered expression’?!” Angry tears filled her eyes and she slammed him with her pillow. “Eli McKutchen, you beast! I really be lieved that you would go to San Francisco and become so engrossed in resurrecting some failing shipyard that you’d forget all about me!”

  He settled back in his pillows and sighed contentedly, then grinned up at the ceiling. “I could never forget you, Bonnie. Never. But I’ve got to admit that it was good to know that you missed me.”

  “You bastard,” she said, but with less spirit than such rash words called for. “You were watching me pine away like some sappy character in a melodrama, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. A couple of times, I even came into this room to watch you sleep. You cannot possibly imagine how hard it was not to wake you up and make sound, thorough love to you.” Again that mischievous grin tilted one corner of his mouth, though he was still staring up at the ceiling. “Speaking of that, Bonnie, I think you’d better prepare yourself for a new stepmother. I heard some things while I was hiding out over the mercantile that lead me to believe your dear father thinks it would be better, scripturally speaking, to marry than to burn.”

  Bonnie was out from under the covers and on her knees in the middle of Eli’s belly before he had a chance to protect himself. “Who is he going to marry? You’d better tell me, Eli, and right now, or I swear—”

  Eli groaned, and this time not with passion. “You’re not going to like the answer,” he said, grasping her shoulders in his hands and prying her off his stomach.

  “Tell me!”

  Suddenly Eli roared with laughter. He made to scramble out of the bed and thus to safety, but Bonnie prevented his escape by flinging herself at him and wrapping both arms around his middle. “Do you think you’ll be able to call Earline ‘Mama’?” he asked, his eyes dancing.

  Bonnie covered her mouth with both hands, staring at Eli in abject horror, but then the irony of the thing dawned on her and she gave a giggling squeal. Would she be able to call Earline “Mama”? She would make a point of it!

  Eli’s smile faded. “Bonnie,” he said seriously, pulling her into his arms and holding her against his chest as if to keep her safe from invading armies. “Listen to me.”

  Bonnie could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek, along with the pleasant cushion of brown-sugar hair on his chest. “I’m listening.”

  “The Brotherhood is planning to dynamite the smelter sometime tonight or early in the morning. I’ve got to see that it doesn’t happen, and I want your promise that you’ll wait here.”

  Bonnie tensed. If Eli was going to be in danger, she wanted to be with him. She grasped at the only excuse that came to mind. “I’m the mayor of this town!”

  He eased out from beneath her and began putting on his clothes. “I’ve got plenty of help, Bonnie—I don’t need a woman underfoot.” Eli shook one finger at her. “Don’t mistake this for an idle threat, because I mean it. If I see you anywhere near that smelter, tonight at least,” he vowed, glowering at Bonnie as he buttoned his trousers, “you’ll be the first mayor in history to be publicly spanked.”

  Bonnie was too frightened to be angry. She would be angry later, when and if Eli survived this night. “But I’ll be so worried—”

  The expression on Eli’s face was as cold and hard as granite. He clearly meant what he said, and there was going to be no reasoning with him. Pleading and crying would do no good either. There was only one way to get past his unreasonable decree, and that was by pretending to comply with it.

  Meekly Bonnie settled back in bed. She gave a docile sigh and even closed her eyes. “Very well, then,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Eli cursed roundly and then his hand clamped over Bonnie’s mouth. She stared up at him, trying to writhe free, but he not only restrained her, he assured her silence by gagging her with her own camisole. Then, to add insult to injury, he caught her hands
together at the wrists and bound her to the bedpost with his belt.

  Bonnie struggled helplessly, but the gag prevented a shout for help and the belt, though not secured tightly enough to hurt, held her hands fast to the bedpost above her head.

  Grinning, Eli kissed her forehead. “Sorry, my love,” he said lightly, “but I’m afraid this is the only way I can be sure you’ll stay put. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Bonnie squirmed, making a pleading sound behind the bunched muslin of her camisole, but Eli shook his head regretfully, blew out the lamp and left the room.

  “Sleep well, Mayor McKutchen,” he said from the doorway, then the door closed crisply behind him and he was gone.

  For what seemed like hours, Bonnie fought in vain to free herself. She had never felt so furious, so helpless or so afraid for Eli. Eventually she fell into an exhausted, fitful sleep.

  The explosion rocked the house and rattled the windows, and Bonnie awakened with screams locked in her throat. She flailed wildly at the belt that bound her hands and made a desperate humming sound behind her gag when there was an anxious knock at the bedroom door.

  Bless her forever, Bonnie thought, as her sister-in-law burst into the room, wearing a wrapper and a nightgown. Genoa’s hair was rumpled and her eyes were puffy from sleep, and she looked aghast as she hurried toward the bed.

  “I knew you two were passionate,” she fretted as she fumbled to undo the belt that kept Bonnie’s hands immobile, “but this is just silly!”

  Bonnie tore away the gag, just as a second explosion sounded, scrambling out of bed and frantically plundering the bureau drawers for underclothes.

  “What on earth?!” Genoa cried, as she rushed to the bedroom window to look out. “Where is Eli and why were you tied up that way?”

  Bonnie had no time for explanations. She shimmied into a dress just as Rose Marie came out of the nursery crying, and Katie bounded through the open doorway of the bedroom. “Mercy! What’s that noise?”