She’d never had a real friend before, except for Maynell. Evidently, Maynell was her only friend.
Joe Patterson just sat there, looking surprised.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Copeland,” he said. “I’d just assumed that Eagle Jack was conducting your sale for you, or that you were acting in tandem.”
“I like to take care of my own…”
“We do act in tandem,” Eagle Jack interrupted. “We both engage in negotiations, whatever they are.”
Susanna bit her lip. She didn’t care what he said. All she wanted was for this to hurry up and be over. She had to get out of there so she could be alone.
“Mrs. Copeland is right, you know,” Eagle Jack said. “I’ve been thinking, too, that your offer might be less than we could get if we ask for bids from some other buyers.”
Patterson put down his fork in dismay (but only temporarily) and made a great show of distress, declaring that twenty dollars was the best he could do. And so the bargaining began. It went on while they finished the meal until they finally settled on twenty-two dollars.
Joe Patterson pushed his empty plate away and reached for his leather briefcase.
“Then if you two would be so kind as to sign the bills of sale, I will, in turn, sign bank drafts for you. That’s the way I like to do business. All the details taken care of at the time of the sale, almost like cash on the barrel head.”
Once the transaction was completed, he thanked them again and bustled out, on his way to his other client. Susanna waited to give him time to leave the Drovers Cottage because she couldn’t bear the thought of having to make small talk with him or anyone else in the lobby.
She lectured herself silently as she put her bank draft into her handbag and accepted one more cup of coffee. This moment had been foreordained from the instant she’d realized what she had in her marriage to Everett. She’d known right then that if she ever found herself free again, she could never trust another man enough to live with him.
And now Eagle Jack had proved that to be a wise decision. He’d not told her everything—in fact, hardly anything—since the day they met, and it was true what she’d said to him back there in Texas. A person could lie by omission just as well as any other way.
But the thing that hurt was that he hadn’t trusted her enough to confide in her. Even when she had confided everything in him.
He didn’t regard her as an equal. She wasn’t important enough for confidences of even the most casual kind.
Eagle Jack touched her hand, and the heat of his touch made her turn to look at him. He was talking about music, something about the piano player. He was saying something about dancing. He was asking her to dance.
“No, thank you.”
She took her napkin from her lap and laid it beside her plate while she looked him straight in the eye. That made it almost impossible for her to speak, but she did say it.
“This is the time for us to say good-bye, Eagle Jack.”
He looked so shocked and hurt that she could hardly bear it, in spite of the pain he was causing her at that moment.
“Our cattle are sold,” she said, “and I’ve paid you everything I owe you out of my race winnings. We’re square, as far as I can tell.”
“What is the matter with you?”
His voice was low and cold, it didn’t carry far, but the tension that had sprung up between them was like a live thing that attracted the attention of the other diners.
Susanna stood up and so did Eagle Jack. He pulled back her chair and she stepped away from the table.
“Let’s get out of here and go where we can talk,” he said, and threw some money on the table.
“No.” She began to walk very fast but he stayed at her side. He took her elbow, although she tried to prevent it. “Leave me,” she said fiercely. “I want to be alone.”
“Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Someone called to Eagle Jack as they left the restaurant for the lobby and when he turned his head, Susanna jerked free and began to run.
As Eagle Jack pounded up the stairs after Susanna, he couldn’t remember when he’d been so furious—or so scared. He dodged some more cattlemen he knew on the landing, and then he took the steps two and three at a time.
But when he hit the second floor hallway running, she was halfway down it, almost to her room. She glanced back over her shoulder.
“Go away, Eagle Jack.”
“Stop right where you are, Susanna.”
She stopped at her door and took the key from her bag. She fumbled with it, but she got it into the lock, turned it, went inside, and closed the door. He lunged for the knob. The key turned on the inside with a definite click.
He banged on the door with his fist.
“Let me in there, damn it! I’ve never been so mystified in my life. What is it that you’re not telling me?”
“Ha! You’re a fine one to ask that question.”
The door muffled her voice but only a little. Her tone clearly stated that he should know what she meant.
He tried. He had been there through the whole dinner, sitting right there. So why didn’t he know what had turned Susanna into a different, completely insane person?
Something that he wasn’t telling her?
She had been all right when she stepped out of the inn and onto the veranda. He would swear it.
It took every bit of control that he had, but he spoke in a more reasonable tone.
“You were at the table with me and Patterson, Susanna. You heard it all. You know everything I know about the sale.”
He waited but she didn’t respond to that.
“So what is it that I’m not telling you?”
“You’re the only one who knows that, aren’t you?”
Her sarcastic tone stoked his anger.
“Please, Eagle Jack,” she said, “just go away and stop making a scene.”
As if he were someone she barely knew. As if what somebody else thought about his behavior was more important than his feelings.
His fury burst into flames. He backed up, almost all the way across the wide hallway, then ran at the door and kicked the knob hard with the heel of his boot.
Susanna screamed as he burst into the room.
“Please, Susanna,” he said, in that same sardonic tone she’d used, “you’re making a scene.”
He turned and closed the door. It swung open again, so he propped it shut with a chair.
Susanna stared at Eagle Jack stalking across the room toward her, his heels clicking purposefully against the wooden floor. She’d forgotten how dangerous he could look.
“I’ll call for the marshal,” she said, though her mouth had gone dry. “You’ve just broken into my room.”
“I’ll go get the marshal for you,” he said. “But first you’re going to tell me what has turned you completely loco.”
He didn’t stop until he was right in her face, close enough that she could smell the coffee on his breath. His eyes were hard and his jaw was set.
“Talk,” he said.
She realized that she was standing huddled over her handbag, which she was holding to her chest with both hands as if she thought he was going to rob her. Pulling herself up straight, she turned and walked to the bed, dropped the bag onto it, and sat down beside it.
Her knees felt weak as water.
“You never told me you had some brothers,” she said. “You never told me that your home is a famous old ranch that your family has had for fifty years.”
He stared at her. “Glared” would be more like it.
“It never came up.”
He was looking at her with a mixture of scorn and disbelief that lit her temper like a fuse.
“Oh, no? What about when I said something about the owner of your beef herd? You didn’t say you were the owner. Or the Sixes and Sevens, whichever it is.”
He did have the grace to look a little chagrined.
“It wasn’t important,” he said.
“What about all the times I told you about my childhood? All my ugly, awful secrets that I usually can’t bear to think about. How come you didn’t reciprocate? When I talked about my ranch, why didn’t you talk about yours?”
“We were talking about you.”
“I tried to draw you out, but you wouldn’t let me. You know that’s true.”
He shrugged.
“And there’s all your men, Nat and the rest, coming to meet us directly from the Sixes and Sevens, right?”
“Yes.”
“But in all that time, in all the talk around the campfire, none of them—not even Nat who has such a big mouth—said anything that let me know you’re not what you seem to be. Instead, you’re a wealthy rancher out adventuring, hiring out to a penniless widow to be her trail boss, playing a part…” Her voice almost broke. “…including that of her lover.”
I took him as a lover and I didn’t know him at all.
He looked at her straight.
“I don’t talk about myself and my family. My men don’t, either,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s nobody’s business. Lots of people don’t think Indians are entitled to have anything. Some might even take it upon themselves to come visit. To cause trouble. There’s no sense asking for that.” He shrugged. “Lots of reasons.”
She thought about that for a moment, holding on to the edge of the bed with both hands. Otherwise, she felt she’d just fall into a heap in the middle of it.
“But you invited Patterson to the Sixes and Sevens and he stayed as a guest for a week.”
“We’ve known him for a long time.”
“Well, you knew me long enough to know I wouldn’t come raiding your ranch or go around blabbing about it to those who would.”
“Yes.”
His look was steady.
She returned it. “I know you’re a private person, Eagle Jack, but you still aren’t being quite straight with me, I’m thinking.”
He made a gesture of defeat and gave in.
“Don’t you understand, Susanna? I hated to talk about my home and my herds and my horses and my family when you didn’t have any of that.”
Surprised, she could only look at him.
“It seemed like it would be bragging or something. You were so worried about money and about losing your place.”
He waited but she didn’t react.
“You didn’t even have a decent pair of gloves.”
That struck her like a blow.
“Oh? So those were a pity purchase? They were. Isn’t that right, Eagle Jack?” She leaped off the bed and rushed toward her reticule where it sat in the armoire. “Well, I’ll just give them right back to you,” she cried. “I don’t accept pity from anyone.”
To her dismay, her voice broke on the last word.
“Now, hold on,” he said, in his authoritative voice that cracked like a whip. “That’s not true and you know it.”
She whirled to face him.
“I didn’t know enough about your situation to pity you, then,” he said. “I bought the gloves that very first day, remember? They were nothing but a little thank-you for getting me out of that jail.”
That eased her pain a little. A very little.
“You knew I thought you were a man like any other who’d have to hire out as a trail boss. You didn’t tell me one thing about yourself but you went ahead and made love with me and I didn’t know who you were.”
He crossed the space between them in two strides and stood over her.
“What are you talking about? Of course you knew who I was. The Sixes and Sevens isn’t me. My family isn’t me.”
She stood up to face him.
“You listened to me bare my soul and tell you things about my past and my family that I’ve never talked about to a living soul,” she said.
“I appreciate your trust in me,” he said.
Her heart broke in two but she kept her voice steady. “Yes,” she said, “I trusted you. But you didn’t trust me. You thought if I knew you were a man of substance I’d be after you to marry me. You thought I was a gold-digger, didn’t you?”
Genuine shock showed in his eyes but she wouldn’t let herself believe it.
“No! That never even occurred to me. I know you, Susanna.”
He reached out and brushed her hair back from her face, the way he liked to do.
She pulled away.
“Maybe not as well as you think, Eagle Jack.”
This time she was the one who walked to the window, the one who looked down on Texas Street as dusk fell over Abilene.
“Eagle Jack,” she said, turning to face him. “You’ve always said I’m a straight-talking woman. Well, here’s what I want to tell you. I will never—I can’t, I cannot—trust my life over into any man’s hands, ever again.”
He listened, his head cocked to one side, his eyes consuming her as he stood there beside the bed.
“So I want you to leave now and never see me again.”
“Why? I’m not asking you to trust your life to me, Susanna.” He spoke softly in his low, rich voice. It vibrated in the dimness of the room and reached out to touch her skin. “Remember? I’m not the marryin’ kind. I’m scared of settlin’ down. So there’s no reason in the world we can’t be friends…and lovers.”
“Yes, there is.”
“What is it?”
“I love you, Eagle Jack.”
She couldn’t bear to look at him another instant or she’d run and throw her arms around him, even while she was telling him to get out. She turned her back on him and stared, unseeing, out into the coming night.
For a long while, there was no sound except his breathing, and hers. Faint, faint sounds that could barely be heard.
Then came the click of his heels against the floor. And his voice from the door.
“Don’t worry about your lock being broken,” he said, his tone gentle as a new rain. “I’ll leave my door open and keep watch. I won’t sleep tonight.”
Eagle Jack lay propped up on all the pillows the Drovers Cottage had furnished him, with one booted heel planted in the coverlet and the other leg crossed over his knee. He was smoking and staring out at the stars over Abilene. He had his shirt off so he could feel the cool breeze from the open window and his jeans and boots on, in case Susanna should need him.
To keep his mind from wandering across the hall into her room, he pondered how a night could be so long and so short at the same time. Staying in here alone, with every nerve in his body wide awake, made every second crawl by and last for an hour. But knowing that this was the last night he’d ever spend anywhere near Susanna—even simply knowing where she was and how she was—made every second of it fly by on wings.
It was true that she could not ever trust another man enough to live with him. Hadn’t she told him that a dozen times or more in those very words?
That son of a bitch she’d been married to, that Everett, had soured her on men. And she hadn’t trusted any of the several people who had…not brought her up…he should say who had given her shelter while she raised herself. A rotten bunch if there ever was one.
But why did he care? Because she was his friend and a damn fine woman.
I love you, Eagle Jack.
He still couldn’t believe she’d said that. It brought a glow to his heart every time he thought of it.
He would never forget exactly how her voice sounded when she said it, either.
It would be a nice memory. It was an honor.
But he didn’t love her back, he truly didn’t. He really liked her, he enjoyed being with her, he admired her, and he respected her more than any woman he’d ever known except for his mother.
There was more to her—more interesting facets, more courage, more ingenuity, more stamina—than there’d been to any other woman he’d ever courted or dallied with. Yes, Susanna Copeland was a very, very special woman.
But he didn’t love her.
He c
ouldn’t afford to love her. He was not going to love any woman because it would cost him his whole way of life—his wanderings at will, his adventures, all the new women who might cross his path.
She deserved a man who would love her and be her husband. A man who would settle down and live with her for the rest of her life.
So he could not let himself love her.
He couldn’t settle down, he wasn’t that kind of man.
Susanna left her room an hour after dawn because she could not stay within its four walls for one moment longer. Evidently Eagle Jack had been true to his word—which she had never doubted—and left his door open so he could guard hers. It was standing open now but she caught no glimpse of him. Only the sight of his rumpled bed stabbed her in the heart.
She shifted her reticule straps higher onto her shoulder and changed her small traveling bag to the other hand. These were all she would need for the trip home and she could leave them at the station until time for her train.
Downstairs, at the desk, the clerk found a boy to take her bags to the station and another to carry a note out to the herd to Maynell. May and Jimbo were completely capable of bringing the Slanted S equipment back to Texas with no instructions at all. But Susanna wanted to reach out to her only friend, Maynell, this morning because she’d never felt so alone in her life.
She’d love to see May and talk to her for a minute, but there was not time enough to ride out to the herd and back and still catch the ten o’clock train. Besides, the herd might be exactly where Eagle Jack was at this moment.
When she had written the note and dispatched it, she walked to the little café beside Ingersoll’s Mercantile for a bite of breakfast. Eagle Jack might be in the Drovers Cottage restaurant, and besides, she had to get away from that entire establishment. If she trailed a herd to Abilene the next year, she would have to take a room someplace else, for the Drovers Cottage would always hold memories of Eagle Jack.
She looked around the little café while she waited for her food. It, too, held memories of Eagle Jack, although she had never been in it before, much less with him.
The Lover Page 24