In the Arms of a Cowboy

by Pam Crooks

  But at the moment, Quinn thought on a wave of weariness, none of them had an idea how.

  Hannah leaned forward. “Loretta said the newspapers picked up Quinn’s story.”

  Jody frowned. “Loretta Carter? You’ve seen her?”

  Quinn nodded. “At the Amarillo Hotel. She wrangled a room for us there.”

  “How was she?” he asked.

  “Glad to see me. Fell all over herself trying to help me.”

  “I’m not surprised. She took the news of your death hard. She always thought the world of you, Quinn. It meant a lot to her that you rescued her from the whorehouse.” He paused. “Her husband had to have her committed for a spell after Sarah died. She had to be sedated, then had a relapse when the newspapers claimed you were dead.”

  Quinn pondered that. Loretta had been a friend, but her grief ran unusually deep.

  Jody strode to the cabinet, removed a faintly yellowed bundle of newsprint. “You can read the stories yourself.”

  Quinn read the headline shouting out from the top of the pile.

  Prominent Cattleman Dies in Prison.

  His brows furrowed. “If no one knew where I was, then how did the papers know I was dead?”

  Jody leaned forward, his features intense. “Elliott. Who else? He’s the only one that article quotes. And they printed it because Elliott Landry of the prestigious Star L outfit would not lie!” he said with a snarl. “Or so they think.”

  Hannah sighed. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “All right. Let’s call it a night.” Quinn admitted to a pounding in his own temples. He sat aside his empty whiskey glass and reached for the Stetson.

  Jody walked them to the door and sheepishly removed the chair wedged beneath the knob.

  Quinn extended his hand. “I can’t thank you enough, my friend, for trying so hard and for not asking if I was guilty.”

  Jody’s mouth pursed ruefully. “If I thought you were, I’d clamp the chains back on you myself. I was as close to Sarah as you were.”

  They made their good-byes. On an afterthought, Quinn turned back to him. “I almost forgot. How’s Manny doing?”

  Jody blanched; his throat bobbed in a hard swallow. “Didn’t Loretta tell you?”

  Quinn stilled. Dread crawled up his spine. “Tell me what?”

  “Manny died. Less than a month after your arrest.”

  Chapter 17

  She hurt for him.

  The pain in Hannah’s heart was separate from the one in her head. Words failed her. She clung to Quinn’s arm, offering him comfort when she had nothing else to give.

  They walked silently from Jody’s office back down Polk Street toward the hotel. The crisp night air nipped at Hannah’s nose and swept through her lungs, chilling her to the bone.

  Much as Jody’s revelations had done.

  A different clerk had assumed duty in the hotel’s lobby, a young man in his early twenties. Hannah requested he send a light meal up to their suite. Having none of the haughty airs that Wesley possessed, the clerk agreed and hastened to place their order in the hotel’s kitchen.

  Hannah and Quinn climbed the flight of stairs. Once inside their room, he flipped the switch to the electric chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. The glass globes shed a subdued light in the room. He strode toward the window, opened it wide, and leaned on the sill to stare somberly at the Amarillo streets below.

  Hannah bit her lip. He still hadn’t spoken.

  She set the bundle of newspapers she’d brought from Jody’s office onto the writing table. Crossing the room to the floral-painted wardrobe, she removed her new mantle and hat and put them inside one of the drawers, then set her gloves and crocheted handbag on top of them. Carefully, she closed the drawer again.

  She cast a worried glance at him.

  A short rap on the door indicated their supper had arrived. Hannah wheeled the cart in herself and positioned it next to the fireplace. She set a highly polished round table with plates and silverware, wine glasses and linen napkins. Finally, she lit a single candle and put it in the middle of the arrangement.

  She waited. He made no attempt to join her. Her ache intensified for what he was going through.

  “Quinn?” she said. “I’m sorry about Manny.”

  His hands clenched over the window sill. “He was only a little boy.” His voice rasped the words. “He died before his time.”

  “Yes.”

  From the tintype Jody had showed her, Manny had been a captivating child with big round eyes and thick hair falling to his eyebrows. His dimpled smile had stolen her heart; she understood why Quinn wanted him as his own.

  He died from a violent epileptic seizure, Jody had said. Puzzling, since he’d been provided with the best of medicines and had been healthy until Quinn’s arrest.

  What had gone wrong?

  “I’ll kill Elliott for this,” Quinn said, pushing away from the sill. “With me gone, Manny was his responsibility.”

  Hannah didn’t move, didn’t speak. He needed time to vent his grief.

  “He would have been seven now. Going to school, riding a horse on his own, doing chores.” Quinn yanked off his string tie and dropped it on the shelf over the wash stand. “I’d have given him a pony and shown him how to take care of it. I would’ve taught him about cows and bulls and planting cotton and hay.”

  “Yes,” she said. He would have done all those things.

  He turned both faucets on in the lavatory, let the water run into the porcelain basin and shut them off again. His fingers worked the buttons of his shirt.

  “He was so damned smart. Curious about everything. He would’ve been good for the Star L. Hell, he was good for me. And now I’ll never see him again.”

  Tears welled in her eyes for all Quinn was going through, for all he’d been denied.

  He jerked his shirt out from the waistband of his pants, shucked free of it and hurled the garment aside. He turned from her, bent over the basin, and pressed a wet washcloth to his face.

  A lattice work of ugly scars criss-crossed his back. Up to now, he’d spared her the sight, only allowing her to see his chest without a shirt, but never his back.

  Hannah sucked in a breath. “Oh, my God.”

  Her grief over Manny’s death was buried by the onslaught of this new pain. The scars tore at her, just as the whip had torn across his skin. She went to him and pressed her cheek against his warm shoulder. He stilled.

  “Who did this to you?” She lifted her head again, choking on the sob rushing to her throat. “It was Briggs, wasn’t it? Briggs did this to you.”

  The cat o’nine tails. She remembered seeing it that night in the penitentiary. How much pain did one man have to endure? How much agony and horror?

  He must have felt so alone, so abandoned. He must have despaired from the hopelessness of it all.

  Her eyes closed, and she was tortured by a vision of that whip being raised again and again over his naked back. She imagined him shackled in some dark, foul-smelling place, unable to fight back. She heard his screams, smelled the sick scent of his blood pouring in rivulets across his body.

  The pain would have been staggering, and the tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. She touched her lips to one scar, then another. Some had long since healed, others only recently. Her open palms glided across the breadth of his taut muscles. She wanted to take the terrible scars away, knowing she couldn’t, knowing no one could, and still she went on kissing and stroking to easy away his hurt.

  “Hannah, Hannah.”

  His whispers reached her through the sobs wrenching from her throat, and he turned her firmly, pulling her from his back and crushing her to his front.

  She moved with him and circled her arms around his neck. The tears wouldn’t stop, and she cried for him. For Manny. For Sarah and Jody and Loretta and for all the injustices for which Elliott might have been responsible, and for those he wasn’t.

  “I love you, Quinn. I love you. I love you.”


  He trembled. His mouth closed over hers ruthlessly, and she met his savagery with her own. Emotions ran high, strong, deep. Her lips opened. She had to taste him, feel his vibrancy and his heat. His tongue delved inward to curl and chase and mate with hers.

  She moaned. It wasn’t enough. Their mouths couldn’t satisfy the yearning to give herself to him, to console and love him as completely as possible, to give him all he deserved.

  And wanted.

  His fingers pulled at the tiny buttons at her neck, and she helped him finish the row. Her dress fell open, and his mouth dragged across her cheek to press fevered kisses along the curve of her neck and the base of her throat, his hands clutching upward at the countless yards of fabric draping over her hips.

  One long, sinewy arm wound around her waist, holding her as they tumbled to the floor. Her hands plucked at the buttons on his pants, forced them aside with frantic impatience, and bared him in all his pulsing, hot masculinity.

  Their breathing grew ragged and frenzied. He rose above her and swept aside her chemise; her thighs widened to take him. His mouth plundered hers, kissing without mercy, without tenderness, and she reveled in this primitive side of him.

  But it still wasn’t enough. She wanted more, needed more, and her fingers gripped his buttocks, pulling him deep inside her. She gasped at the parting of the virginal barrier, at his continued thrusts, at this fierce interlocking of their bodies. Her hips lifted, her back arched. He drove into her with unrestrained passion, sending her catapulting into the throes of sensation and pleasure, and she cried out as wave after wave of sweet release rocked through her.

  He held her there on the pinnacle of ecstasy, letting her savor it, holding back his own, and then, with one last shuddering thrust, he took her completely, claiming her in blatant, fervid possession.

  Their loving ended as wildly as it began. Quinn lowered himself slowly, gently, on top of her, as if every quivering muscle had lost its strength, and he couldn’t separate himself from her. As if he wanted to stay joined forever.

  She lay limp beneath the warm weight of his body. She’d never known such exhaustion, such utter fulfillment such as Quinn had just given her, and she closed her eyes.

  Her tears were gone now, her sorrow calmed. The scars on his back would not be forgotten, but she would always love him more because of them. For what he’d endured.

  Their pulses, once thundering, slowed by degrees. Finally, Quinn groaned in male satisfaction and rolled off of her, sweeping her on top of him with a rustle of silk and petticoats.

  “A hundred times I’ve thought of making love to you,” he murmured into her hair. “But not once did I think it’d be when we were both still dressed.”

  Her mouth formed a sleepy smile against his chest. In the next moment, her eyes flew open.

  “My new gown!” she said. “We’re wrinkling it.”

  Thinking of the expense and waste if it was ruined, she tugged and smoothed the hopelessly twisted garment.

  “Just take it off,” Quinn said, amused. “Then come back and lay with me some more.”

  She wriggled off him and caught a glimpse in the mirror with their clothes half on, half off their bodies but their shoes still firmly on their feet, and she couldn’t help laughing.

  Shifting to all fours, she bent down and touched her mouth to his.

  “I’m shameless with you,” she breathed.

  “We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.” He curled his hand around the back of her neck and thrilled her with a languid kiss. “Don’t ever think we did.”

  After long moments of kissing him back, she drew away.

  “No,” she murmured, thinking of the awful scars. “It was fitting and right.”

  His dark eyes smoldered, and he released her, his gaze hot upon her while she removed the dress and fussed over it, finally deciding the gown needed only a good pressing to restore it. She folded the petticoats and her delicate stockings in a drawer, all the while admiring their fine quality and her good fortune to own them.

  She took so long that Quinn eventually tired of waiting for her and got up from the floor. He stripped, wrapped a thick towel around his lean hips and finished washing at the basin. Afterward, he padded over to the round table to investigate the supper she had readied for them.

  By the time he poured them both a glass of wine, Hannah had washed, too, and donned a lace-trimmed wrapper. Acutely aware she wore nothing beneath, and feeling wickedly feminine for it, she accepted the glass he offered.

  “Any regrets?” he asked quietly.

  She sipped the burgundy before answering. She remembered his promise to give her an annulment after his business had been completed in Amarillo.

  Now, everything had changed.

  Regrets?

  “No,” she said. “None.”

  Not at the moment. Perhaps in the morning. Or next week. Even next month.

  But not now. Returning to the convent was the farthest thing on her mind. Making love to Quinn and righting his life took precedence.

  “Manny is happy, you know,” she said, trailing a fingertip round and round Quinn’s dark nipple. “He’s with his mama, the way he should be.”

  “Yes,” he murmured, as if he’d not thought of it that way. “Maybe it was best he died while I was in prison. The separation made his death . . ..” He hesitated.

  “Easier,” she finished, understanding.

  “Yes. Easier. But if I didn’t have you Hannah--.” He halted again, his features grim and intense. “If I didn’t have you, I’d go stark, raving mad.”

  “I’m here, my love. And if I wasn’t”--she cocked her head mischievously--“you’d have Jody.”

  “Jody.” He made a sound of exasperation. “Not the same. Not at all.”

  She laughed softly. “I like him. And Loretta, too.”

  “Good people. Both of them.” He set his empty glass on the table. “I have lots of friends I want you to meet. I know it doesn’t seem like there’s many of them around, but there are. And they’ll be smitten by you from the minute they first lay eyes on you.”

  He took her glass from her, though she’d not yet finished the wine. He slowly pulled the top ribbon of her wrapper loose.

  “I fell in love with you the minute I heard your voice coming through the grate over my cell. You were a piece of heaven sent down to save me.” He undid one button. Two, three.

  Her heart stepped up its beat. “You didn’t act like I was a piece of heaven. I was terrified of you. You threatened to kill me.”

  He grimaced. “I went half-crazy in that prison. And I was scared. I needed you to rescue me, and you did.”

  Only a few buttons held the robe together. He didn’t bother with them, but gently pushed the fabric off her shoulders, first one, then the other. The garment drifted to a heap at her feet, and she stood naked before him.

  “You gave me no choice.” Her voice turned shaky and husky.

  “Best decision I’ve ever made.” His hands circled her neck, his thumbs lazily coursing down her throat. His fingers spread and his palms flattened as they continued their sensual, unhurried descent onto her breasts.

  And lingered there. He caressed the rounded flesh, the pads of his thumbs stroking her nipples until they hardened to pebbles. No other man had ever touched her in such a way.

  Her knees quivered at the pleasure, and she sighed with the longing building up inside her.

  “I love you, Hannah Landry. I love you for saving me from Fenwick’s Solution, and I love you for all you’ve given me tonight.”

  He pulled at the towel, and it dropped onto the wrapper. His virility, blatant in its desire for her, stole her breath away.

  Slowly, his arms circled around her back, and he drew her to him. Her breasts pressed against the hard wall of his chest, skin against warm skin, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of their intimate, tender embrace.

  “You’ll always be mine,” he murmured, against her temple. “I’ll never allow anyone
--or anything--to take you away from me.”

  She drew back and touched a finger to his lips.

  “Don’t speak of it,” she murmured, for she knew his words were true. He wouldn’t let her go easily, no matter what the circumstances, and the thought of ever leaving him pierced her heart.

  There would never be another man, no matter what the future held. The knowledge rendered her love for him priceless, and she rose up on tiptoe for his kiss, needing his assurance that it would always be like this between them. He responded without question, his lips warm and full and lazy in their seduction.

  “I’m feeling shameless again,” she whispered, nuzzling his chin, his jaw.

  “I love it when you’re shameless.”

  He drew back, hooked his arm behind her knees and scooped her into his arms. He carried her to the bed, the thick coverlet and ruffled pillows already thrown aside.

  He laid her on the mattress and stretched his lean, sinewy length next to her. There was not a bit of unneeded flesh on him. Every inch was man and muscle, and she delighted in looking at him.

  “You’re easy on the eyes, husband of mine. So handsome and strong and manly.” She skimmed his torso with the palms of her hands. “All the women in this state will be jealous of me for having married you.”

  “Hardly.” His low chuckle surrounded her. “And you’re wrong. It’s the men in this state who will be jealous of me. Jody’s only the first.”

  “Jody?” Her mouth curved at how he interpreted his old friend’s outrageous flirting. “It’s you I want, Quinn. No one else.”

  She locked her arms around his neck and kissed him long and tenderly. She cherished this time, these moments, with him. They’d opened themselves to each other without holding back, giving freely of their bodies and souls.

  The kiss ended, and Quinn’s burgeoning desire made her shiver in longing for the excitement that lay ahead.

  “I love you, Hannah,” he said.

  “Then love me now, my darling. The whole night long.”

  He groaned and traced the swirl of her ear with his tongue, nipped her lobe gently with his teeth. He lowered, licking the sensitive skin along her neck and shoulder.