by Pam Crooks
“Don’t ask me twice, woman,” he murmured, his hand finding one slim buttock. He helped himself to an appreciative squeeze. “You’ll convince me for sure.”
She purred, as if the ache in his response pleased her. “Forever and ever and ever, Jack.”
She slid her tongue into the hollow of his throat. Licked and swirled and nuzzled him in blatant invitation to give her what she wanted.
What they both wanted.
And though it took every shred of willpower he possessed, Jack couldn’t.
He reluctantly, but firmly, pulled her arms from around him and eased her back onto the mattress. Still, unable to leave her just yet, he succumbed to the need to taste her again, and he took her mouth in a hungry, fiercely controlled kiss that begged to prolong their time together, if only for a few minutes more.
When his head lifted, his blood had warmed up again, and her breathing turned ragged.
He forced himself to move away and resettle the blankets over her. Robbed of the heat of her body, gooseflesh raised on his naked skin.
“I’ll build up the fire,” he said. “It’s as cold as a witch’s tits in here.”
Amusement from his crudity grew into tinkling laughter when he cursed mightily at the sensation of the frigid floor against his bare feet. He worked quickly to throw more wood into the block and poke the embers to life, and in short time, a healthy fire flared again.
Grace sat up and pulled her knees to her chest, keeping the covers close about her.
“What now, Jack?” She watched him tug on his socks, then reach for his knitted union suit. “Where do we go from here?”
Jack wasn’t sure if she was preparing to leave him so soon—or if she meant their investigation into the stolen money.
He chose the safer of the two.
“It’s only right that we see to the remains of your brother. He deserves a decent burial.” Though Jack wasn’t entirely convinced he did, but for Grace’s sake, he’d make sure the kid got one. “Then we meet with Paris. I’m hoping he’ll have information to share with us.”
She frowned. “That would be good.”
“Better than good. It’s imperative.”
“I just want this whole thing to be over with.”
Grace flung back the covers and slid out of the sheets. Jack buttoned his Levi’s and reached for his shirt. His gaze clung to her creamy nakedness and the graceful way her body moved, a perfect synchronization of female hips and arms and legs. Without a shred of shyness from his staring.
But then, why would she be shy? He’d already seen and tasted every beautiful inch of her.
“It will end, Grace. Soon enough.”
Jack couldn’t bring himself to agree with her about wanting the case closed. Not when a part of him wanted it to go on forever. As long as it did, she’d be here with him, trying to solve it, too.
Grace strode toward the bureau and pulled open the top drawer, bringing out a fresh chemise. On the bureau’s surface lay a wad of gold-colored paper she’d obviously crumpled and tossed aside.
Part of the words were visible. Recognizable. The bold, black letters declaring The Western Union Telegraph Company.
“What’s this?” he asked, the urge running strong in him to pick up the telegram and read what it said. He needed to know who sent it. And when. Mostly he wanted to know why she hadn’t mentioned it to him.
Her head popped out above the neckline of her white cotton undergarment; she straightened the fabric around her hips. “What’s what?” Seeing what he indicated, she paled. “Oh. That. I meant to throw it away.”
She reached for it.
He clamped her wrist, preventing her.
His mind rolled to last night when he and Mick spied Grace and Allie following them on the mountain, in the tree line. They’d circled back and found Grace off her horse, talking to Boone. She’d picked something up from the snow. A piece of gold paper. It took her some time to read it, and whatever it said upset her.
“Why did Boone want you to read the telegram?” he demanded in a rough voice.
She bit her lip. “Because it was about me.”
“You?” That he hadn’t expected. “Who sent it?”
“I’m not sure.”
It wasn’t easy, but he reined in his burgeoning suspicions. As far as he knew, wires were always signed, but maybe this one wasn’t. “I want to know what it says.”
“Jack.” She angled her gaze sideways. Since he still held her wrist, she couldn’t walk away. “Please. Not now.”
One-handed, he smoothed out the wad and thrust it at her. He could read the wire himself; the words were right there. One easy glance. She wouldn’t be able to stop him.
But her evasiveness troubled him. What didn’t she want him to know?
“It’s only one sentence, Grace,” he growled. “Read it for me.”
She turned back. Her chin lifted; her throat worked. Pain welled in her ocean-blue eyes.
What wasn’t she telling him?
“I can’t,” she said quietly.
“You can’t?” he shot back. “Or won’t?”
But before he could bite back the words, a startling possibility emerged from hers.
Images popped into Jack’s mind…Grace at the restaurant, poring over the menu with her fingertip sliding slowly—painstakingly—across the page…
“I can.” Sounding miserable, she corrected herself. “But not easily and not particularly well.”
The note Carl had given her at the woodshed came, too, reminding Jack how he’d conveniently informed her of its contents. An image of the Nut Cake she’d made, without a cookbook in sight, followed…
“So read it yourself, if you want.” Her voice kicked an octave higher. Beneath the chemise’s thin cotton, her bosom lifted. “I don’t care.”
And yet another one dropped into his memory. On the mountain last night, while she stalled for time with Boone’s note in her hand…
“Do you hear me, Jack?” She sounded ready to crack from his ruminating. Which was growing more enlightened by the moment.
She stood as still as stone, looking up at him with pain and anguished pride in her eyes, as if she braced for the recrimination she was sure would come.
But wouldn’t. Not from him. Not in a million years.
Jack never expected an inability to read from someone so perfect. She hid it well, with poise and dignity. Hell, he’d never known another female whose name suited her more.
“Yes, you care,” he said quietly. “You care a whole lot. Come here, honey.”
He pulled her toward him, released her wrist and curled his arm around her shoulders. She sank against him, her forehead against his chest, and moaned his name into his shirt.
He couldn’t tell if it was relief he heard—or mortification.
“This has less to do with me reading your telegram and more to do with the fact that you’re finally admitting something you’ve dreaded for a long while,” he said.
Her head wobbled. “I hate it that you know.”
“Why? Because you feel less of a person?”
“Because I am less of one.”
He frowned. “Grace.”
“You have no idea what it’s like to have this…problem. It’s awful.”
“I suppose it would be.” He wasn’t going to sugarcoat the affliction. Everyone needed to read; it was a necessity, a privilege everyone should enjoy. He could only imagine the difficulties she’d lived with. “But you’re an intelligent woman. Vibrant and beautiful and damned capable of doing whatever you set your mind to doing. Don’t think you’re not.”
She shifted to rest her cheek against his shoulder and slide her arms around his waist. Taking the comfort she seemed to need. “I often feel very stupid, Jack.”
“A shame you do. Because you’re not,” he stressed again.
He understood how her feelings of inferiority ran deep. Hadn’t he lived with plenty inferiority of his own? Starting with the shame of growing up und
er Sam Ketchum’s sins, then forced to wear the ugly scar he’d been given. Jack rested his chin on the top of her dark head, stroked her hair and let her talk.
“I always believed that’s why my mother never wanted me,” she murmured. “Because there was no hope I could get better. It was as if she didn’t know what else to do but push me out of her life.”
Jack declined to tell her that Bess Reilly’s outlaw life wasn’t fitting for a young girl anyway. Most likely Grace didn’t see it that way, but Bess had done her a favor by sending her off to live a normal childhood somewhere else, with someone who loved her like she deserved.
“My grandmother did everything she could to help me learn,” Grace continued. “She hired private tutors and highly educated doctors, but they just diagnosed me with word blindness and told us there was no cure.”
Sympathy stirred within Jack. “Must’ve been hard for both of you.”
“You have no idea. So Grandmother read to me constantly, doing for me what I could hardly do for myself.”
“She taught you to love books.”
“And so much more besides.”
Though Grace didn’t say it, Jack knew her work with the Ladies Literary Aid Society helped her save face by giving her a place in the Minneapolis community and a reason to hold her head high.
Unfortunately the Society and the library they wanted to build planted her right on the path toward Charles Renner. And a whole heap of trouble.
Jack drew back, and Grace’s head lifted.
“I’m glad you got your word blindness off your chest, honey,” he said quietly. “It was something that needed to be done. You can’t keep hiding your secret away from everyone forever. Like it’s some sort of terrible sin.”
Distress knitted her brows. “I don’t want anyone else to know, Jack. Besides you and Allie, no one does. Promise me you won’t say anything.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Promise me, Jack.”
Damned if he didn’t sound like a hypocrite. Hadn’t he turned coward, too, hiding behind the name of Hollister when he was a Ketchum, born and bred? Who was he to deny her?
“All right.” Pensive, he dropped a gentle kiss to her forehead. He’d take her wishes to his grave, if that’s what she wanted. “Not until you’re ready.”
A little sigh of relief slipped through her lips. “Thank you.”
“But you’re not going to keep this a secret from me.” He tapped her nose with the telegram he still held.
“No.” Looking as if she preferred the paper would up and disintegrate, she stepped away and retrieved a pair of hosiery from the bureau. “Go ahead and read it. You need to know what it says.”
“I’m glad you agree,” he drawled.
His glance dropped to the words scrawled in neat penmanship.
Silence her for good. LD
Jack nearly choked.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?” he thundered.
She whirled toward him, one delicate stocking in her hand.
“Because you occupied me with far more pleasant things to think about,” she snapped back. “Would you rather I thought more of that than the love we made?”
He scowled. And some of his fury died.
But only some.
“Since Boone insisted you read the telegram, we have to assume you’re the ‘her’ the telegram is about,” he said.
“I’m afraid so.” She sat on the edge of the bed with a shudder.
“It came in three days ago.” His brain worked out the details. “The day you arrived in Great Falls.”
“Yes.”
“It’s addressed to A. Thibault.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s from Minneapolis.” Wishing he could delve into her mind to pull out every man and woman she’d ever met, he pinned her with a hard gaze. “Who’s LD?”
“I have no idea.”
“You don’t know anyone with those initials?”
“No. Not that I can recall, at least.” She appealed to him, sincere and a little desperate. “But I’ll keep thinking, Jack. I promise.”
“It’s Charles Renner.”
Her throat moved with the devastation she could barely hide. “You think he’s using an alias.”
“Why not? Boone is.”
“Yes.” She glanced away to busy herself pulling a stocking onto one slender and very shapely leg. “He’d be too shrewd to sign his own name, I suppose.”
“And too shrewd to use yours.”
Filled with a sudden restlessness, Jack hurried to finish dressing, keenly aware of how too much time had passed, that Boone and Charles were slowly, steadily, closing in on Grace. More than ever, and soon, he had to find a way to best both men.
Then throw them into jail for a very long time.
Chapter Fifteen
Alexandre leaned back in the barber shop’s leather cushioned chair, propped his feet comfortably on the matching footrest and for the first time in more months than should ever have passed, he relaxed.
He deserved the luxury of a haircut and shave. After all he’d done for the Métis people, they’d say he was entitled. No one would deny him. Not when he told them it was important that he do this for himself. For the sake of the Revolution.
He stared at the shaving mugs lined up in neat rows in front of him and let the young barber with the protruding ears prattle on while he lathered Alexandre’s cheeks and neck.
Alexandre marveled at those ceramic mugs. Each one was artfully painted to reflect its owner’s occupation, then personalized with his name in gold ink and fancy lettering. Cattlemen, horse breeders, telegraphers, printers, railroad conductors and engineers. Even a mortician. All of whom were valued patrons at the barber shop.
Someday, Alexandre vowed, he’d have his own shaving mug once he returned to his beloved Canada, and he entertained a variety of ways how his would be emblazoned.
Alexandre Thibault. Patriot.
Alexandre Thibault. Leader of the Métis people.
Alexandre Thibault. Revolutionist.
Or perhaps, simply…Alexandre Thibault. Hero.
Ah, yes. That would be the one he would choose. Hero, because that’s what he would be, once the Revolution ended and their cause was won.
Alexandre closed his eyes and enjoyed the feel of the bristles swirling against his skin, still rough and reddened from too many hours outside, but warm, at least, from his bath. The cool sensation of the soap, the scent of castile, the feel of the straight razor sliding over his face…once he’d taken the age-old ritual for granted, but now, Alexandre gloried in all of it.
Never would he deny himself a simple haircut and shave again.
“Quite a wound you got here,” the barber said, wielding the razor carefully around the tender laceration on Alexandre’s forehead. “What happened?”
He’d almost forgotten how Jack Ketchum had hurled the ceramic pitcher at him back in Grace’s sleeping room, that the vessel had connected with his head with such force the blood had streamed from his veins. Contempt burned a vow within Alexandre to return the painful favor. Very soon.
“I fell,” Alexandre said.
“Too bad.” The blade shifted direction. “Reckon it’s been awhile since you’ve been to town,” he went on cheerfully. “You’re looking a little long today.”
Alexandre didn’t bother to open his eyes. He didn’t care if the man mocked him, even in a friendly way. Alexandre knew exactly how long his hair and beard had gotten.
Too long.
What was it Grace had called him?
A savage.
Alexandre smiled to himself. He could hardly wait to see her surprise.
“I’ve been traveling,” he said, though it was no one’s business why he came to look the way he did.
“Have you now? Where from?”
Alexandre almost said Canada, but it was far more important to keep his intentions for the Revolution to himself.
“Minneapolis,�
� he said instead.
The barber stepped to his other side, and the blade resumed its slick, efficient strokes. “Long ways from Montana. You got friends around these parts? Family?”
“I’m expecting someone to arrive by train.”
“That so?”
Alexandre refused to elaborate, and the young man lapsed into a one-sided conversation about his own family, which included, apparently, a varied assortment of goldfish, all of whom Alexandre couldn’t care less about.
Finally the barber wiped his razor on a towel and adjusted the chair forward. Alexandre’s feet returned to the floor, liberally littered with dark hanks of his once-filthy hair.
“Well, now. You’re a whole different man, aren’t you?” The barber chuckled, clearly pleased with his handiwork.
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“No one’s going to recognize you, for sure.”
That was the idea, too, but Alexandre didn’t say so. His stare lingered over his startling new image in the mirror. A pencil-thin moustache replaced his bushy one. For the first time in untold months, he saw his cheeks, which had grown thin and sunken while he lived like an outcast, always on the move, more hungry than not.
Close-trimmed, parted on the side and swept back, his hair gleamed in the shop’s lighting and filled his nostrils with the scent of the tonic combed in. He looked human again. No longer a savage, but civilized. Just like he used to be.
A gentleman ready to return to society.
Grace would find him a handsome subject in her camera lens. She would understand the importance of the photographs he needed her to take so he could send them to newspapers all over the country, along with the works he needed published. Now that he’d returned to his true identity, she was the only one who could help him succeed.
“That’ll be one dollar, sir. Including the bath.”
Alexandre rose from the chair, pulled back the jacket of his gray herringbone suit and withdrew a leather wallet, new like the rest of him. Plucking out a pair of bills, he handed both to the white-coated barber.
Alexandre felt no guilt that he’d taken money from the Cause; it had grown into a necessity to do so. He’d earned it, of course. A small price to pay for all he’d denied himself.