by Maren Smith
Her whole body shuddered.
“It’s fine,” Lydia muttered. Gabe frowned, but he backed off. The Colonel frowned too; she knew that without looking at him. She could feel the weight of his displeasure pressing down on her worse than his belly would soon afterward. “One dance.”
“Ah, now.” Taking her arm, Garrett winked at the Colonel before escorting her through the crowd to a less occupied section of the floor. “That’s the thing about dances, sweetheart. No one ever really knows where they might lead.”
Seated at the piano, bobbing his head and tapping along to the swift melody, Charlie’s fingers moved fast and loose across the ivory keys. He always played as if he’d been born sitting on that bench. And who knows, he might have been. Certainly he switched seamlessly from Camptown Races to Paddy Whack while the tromping, stomping, half-drunk and whooping miners let out a cheer and Garrett took Lydia into his arms. In the six months since Jewel first named Lydia one of her gems, she had sold at least a hundred dances and been pulled into embraces like this a dozen times over on the nights she worked, but none had felt like this.
Because she didn’t like him, Lydia told herself. But then, she didn’t like a lot of men.
Garrett’s hand came to rest light and respectable on her hip as he took her other in his right. The small section of floor he’d brought her to was open enough to allow the crush of dancers to move, just not by much. So when he began to move with her and she realized they were dancing along the outer edge of the others, one skip-turn-skip at a time taking her closer to that single step that led to the swinging outer doors, at first she saw nothing suspicious in it.
“You look very pretty tonight,” Garrett told her.
“Thank you,” she said, without much appreciation. Usually this was where he presented her with whatever flower he’d brought, but the yellow rose stayed in his wristband.
“You’d look prettier if you smiled more.” He bounced once. Stomp, turn, stomp-stomp. Up on the step they went, her black skirts flying out around them as he spun her into another turn, and back down on the main floor, brushing up against the other dancers as they settled in amongst them again.
“Like you do?” she countered. “Smiling all the time only makes a man seem foolish. Or insane.”
“I see.” Amusement made his grey eyes sparkle. “Let me ask you a question. Is he watching us?”
Not understanding why that should be important, Lydia blinked twice. “Who, Mr. Gabriel? Of course he is.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Stomp, turn, back up on the step they went. Lydia spied Gabe, still standing where they’d left him, catching a grumbling earful from the Colonel. By the look of him, Gabe wasn’t giving the man much of his attention and he hadn’t taken his eyes off Lydia. Judging by that frown, he didn’t intend to any time soon.
“He look fit to be tied yet?”
“Yes,” she said, tapping her foot, heel-toe-heel, in anticipation of the next turn that would sweep them back down among the masses.
“Want to see him tied even tighter?” Garrett waggled his eyebrows.
“What?” Lydia almost froze. “No!”
But Garrett was a good dancer, a masterful lead, and when he spun, she followed. The next thing she knew, he’d swept her out through the swinging doors into the night beyond. As hot as it was outside, compared to the heat of the crowded Red Petticoat, the evening breeze brushed her cheeks and shoulders in a soothing, comfortable kiss. If she weren’t so upset, she would have enjoyed it.
“I can’t be out here,” Lydia said stiffly.
“Dancing in the streets is illegal,” Garrett replied without remorse. With plenty of room now to move and no more need for the tight, shallow movements of before, he kicked up his feet. Staid stomps gave way to hops, skips and wider, more exuberant spins and turns. He was a much better dancer than she was. It took all of Lydia’s concentration just to keep up, but like him or not, she refused to let it be said she ever cheated a paying customer. A dance was what he’d asked for; she gave him every penny’s worth. Up the sidewalk, down into the street, where moonlight and streetlamps were the only illumination. Two men dodged quickly out of their way or Garrett would have danced her right over the tops of them both.
Faster and faster he moved, until her light and proper touch upon his arm became the tightest grip she could manage, both at his hand and his shoulder. She yelped when she stumbled, but he did not let her fall. His arm became a python’s grip about her waist and her feet completely left the ground as he swept her into a circle, smaller and smaller, faster and faster. Her yelp became a squeal and then an outright laugh. She didn’t mean to, but it was as involuntary as the spinning of the whole world around them.
For just a few off-kilter seconds, they became as if the only two people in all of creation. For just a few seconds, she wasn’t who and what she was, and he wasn’t like every other white man she had met since her “rescue” from the “savages” one year before. For a moment, she was back in her village and Maska had just returned from the hunt. And it wasn’t Garrett’s arms that held her close like this, spinning her around and around. It was the father of her son, the light of her starry night, the owner of the first gentle touch she ever remembered back when she was three and he, no more than a horrified boy of ten, dragging her from the wreckage of the burning house he’d found her in. And then, more than a decade later when she barely remembered her days as Lydia and answered only to Mausi, her first gentle touch again as they came together as husband and wife.
Then her feet found the ground again, and the hands that weren’t Maska’s let her go. They spun apart, Garrett out into the street and Lydia toward the Red Petticoat. She caught a support post, the only thing that kept her from falling as what few tickles of laughter startled out of her quickly choked themselves off again. Slowly, the world stopped spinning and her smile vanished. Even more reluctantly, she fixed on Garrett again.
Bent, clasping his own knees, Garrett was grinning. His eyes seemed only for her, sparing little notice for the two stunned cowboys standing well back on the sidewalk or the dark silhouette of the sheriff walking towards them down the middle of the near empty street. At least not until Sheriff Justice called out in that easy-going, warm-as-summer’s-molasses voice, “We don’t allow those kinds of shenanigans in the streets, boy, and you know it.”
Slowly straightening, Garrett ignored Sheriff Justice’s warning. He inched towards her, his steps cautious and his tone soothing as he said, “Easy now.”
As if she were a startled mare, all white-eyed and ready to bolt. Her heart racing, she barely realized she was doing it even as she shrank back against the support post.
“Easy.” Garrett reached into his pocket. He took out the two ten-dollar coins, holding them up for her to see. “I’ve got four more just like these, and they’re yours for half an hour upstairs in your bed.”
He sidled a few steps closer, stretching out the coins for her to take. It wasn’t until she snatched them from his hand that Lydia realized she was shaking. No gentle trembling, this. She was shaking so hard her legs barely supported her. If not for the post, she’d have fallen. Her chest ached. She wasn’t breathing right. She pressed the coins to her chest, needing that physical confirmation that her breasts were still rising and falling. Her lungs felt no relief, but she knew she must be getting air.
“Half an hour,” Garrett repeated, taking the yellow rose from his wristband and offering it to her. “I’ll never hurt you, I swear it.”
No, he wouldn’t ever hurt her. Because she would never, ever again give another white man that chance.
Using the post for support, her head still spinning, Lydia drew herself up stiff and straight. “I hate yellow flowers.”
It took all she had not to weave as she stalked up the sidewalk steps. Head held high, she walked back into the Red Petticoat Saloon, past Gabe who was standing guard at the door. He allowed Lydia to pass, but stepped in to block Garrett should h
e try to follow.
He didn’t. Garrett came only as close as the edge of the wooden sidewalk; Lydia knew because he was still standing there the one and only time she looked back, watching what he could see of her beneath the swinging doors. Smiling, without a hint of judgment, he touched two fingers to the brim of his hat.
Her skin still sparked, electrified, sizzling everywhere he had touched her. She shuddered, hating the sensation, needing to get it off her and already knowing one way how. She pushed through the crowd until she found the Colonel standing at the faro table, two fingers of whiskey in his glass while he watched the game play, a sullen frown on his face. His frown did not lighten when she touched his arm.
“Give me two minutes. I’ll put my buckskins on.” Without waiting for his reply, she headed for the stairs. She hoped Garrett was watching. She hoped he continued to watch long enough to see the Colonel being escorted up behind her. She hoped thoughts of what the Colonel and she would do in her room haunted him all the way back to his ranch, because more than anything else, Lydia hoped he never came back to see her again.
But she already knew he would. He was nothing if not persistent.
He just kept coming back.
Chapter Two
Garrett was whistling as he rode beneath the Circle-Bar-Bar sign that hung from the top of the Drake ranch gate. He was almost home, something he looked forward to with both dread and relief. Dread, because inevitably someone was going to ask him how it went; someone always did. Relief because it was a long way back and forth to town; this saddle was absolutely killing his butt and to be honest, that was kind of pathetic. It wasn’t so long ago that he couldn’t vividly recall the days when he’d all but lived on the back of his horse. Once upon a time, he could have ridden for days and nights on end—eating in his saddle; sleeping in it too, regardless of the weather—and if the situation arose, he was pretty sure he could do it again. If the situation arose. In the two years he’d spent building this ranch from the dust up alongside his brother Cullen, Garrett would be the first to admit he’d gotten awfully accustomed to the comforts of home, hearth and a bed up off the ground. Goose-tick mattress and pillows, Mama’s worn rag quilts, and sheets—honest to God, clean cotton sheets.
The first time he crawled between a set of those after he and Cullen gave up their uniforms… ah now, that was as close to heaven as he imagined he’d ever get while still alive. The only thing that might get a little bit closer would be the heaven of crawling between two crisp, clean cotton sheets and settling down next to Emerald.
His horse sighed.
“Yeah,” Garrett commiserated, and patted the mare’s dusty neck. “I know.”
Urging her on, he had no trouble following the twin paths left in the weeds and grass by their wagon’s weekly trips to and from Culpepper Cove. He didn’t know why, but this part of the ride always seemed longer when coming home than it did at the start. Lit only by moonlight, the paths wound through the rolling hills of the prairie for a good half mile before he crested the last gentle slope and came in sight of the house and barn. Pulling the reins up short, Garrett paused to drink in the sight. A ghostly pallor of moonlight lit up all four buildings, not just their cabin and barn, but the outhouse and well-house too. These buildings were as familiar to him as the stitch pattern of his own boots, and yet with each day that passed, it was getting harder and harder to recognize this as home.
Home.
Where a man was king. Where he and Cullen had been kings together, up until about four months ago. Where, his brother insisted, Garrett was still king, but a lot had changed since Chinny had moved in. Any more, the last thing Garrett had come to feel from the moment he awoke in the morning until he lay his head on his pillow each night, one arm tucked behind his neck and his gaze sightlessly glued to the ceiling until sleep finally claimed him, was kingly.
He’d lost that position. Practically from the moment Cullen had pulled Chin from the flood waters and thereby saved her life, he’d lost it. Both would have been appalled to know that was how he felt, but Garrett was finding it harder and harder to remain in this house with them. Not because of any lack of authority; if Garrett had a strong enough position on an opinion to voice one, he had no doubt his brother would listen and Chin did nothing to make him feel unwelcome. No, what he felt was a decided lack of companionship.
Thick as inkle weavers, as their mother had so often referred to Garrett and his older brother, whom he’d followed like a second shadow practically from the moment he could crawl. They’d grown up in one another’s pockets, hunted together, fished together, and joined the military together. After Briar Creek and the honorable discharge for actions that had been anything but, they’d buried their mother and moved out West together.
The Circle-Bar-Bar was the culmination of all the money they’d pooled in that first disastrous attempt at reforming themselves from killers into ranchers. If it hadn’t been for Chin and the huge influx of money she’d given Cullen—just given him, as if people did that kind of thing all the time—they would not now still be the owners of this ranch. And yet, it wasn’t that kindness that left Garrett feeling displaced. Rather, it was the fact that she, as a woman, had been created to do all the things for and with Cullen that he, as a brother, couldn’t and wouldn’t do. A realization neither brother had discovered until Chin arrived.
He was not a third wheel, Garrett knew. He still had a place both at the ranch and in Cullen’s life. It was just a smaller place, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was simply the way family and life was meant to be. The way men and women aligning themselves into lovers and life partners should be. Standing on the outside of such a relationship, having spent the last four months looking in on it wistfully, all Garrett wanted was to feel what it was like to be a part of something like that.
Plus, it was awfully hard to ignore the sound of bed boards creaking and knocking all night damn-near every night. Even harder was ignoring how they’d spring apart each time he walked into the room to catch them with that guilty blush stealing up into their cheeks and the rosiness still visible on their kiss-swollen lips. And then that look would invariably pass between them, the one that promised a continuation of those stolen kisses just as soon as he was gone again. Garrett didn’t want them feeling guilty for the pleasure they took in one another’s company. He wanted someone with whom he also could inspire that kind of guilt. He wanted to be the one stealing blush-inducing kisses. He wanted someone with whom he could tell, with just a slow-eyed look, that there would be much, much more of that to come once night fell and they retired to his bed. And he’d be damned if the person his wayward lusts had settled on to share all that passion with was none other than the emerald-eyed beauty who had so fiercely sunk her teeth into him during that Red Petticoat bar fight.
You’re crazy. Cullen was getting awfully fond of saying that.
He wasn’t the only one, either.
Smirking, Garrett rode his horse to the barn. Dismounting at the door, he led the mare inside to brush her down and put her to bed. He fed her a scoop of oats, filled her troughs with sweet grass and fresh water, and checked both his brother’s stallion and the yearling Nico had sired.
What is it you see in her? Cullen was getting fond of saying that too, but Garrett had no answer for him. Emerald didn’t like him and she made no secret of that. But she was warming up to him and that dance tonight had proved it. Yes, he’d paid her twenty dollars for it, but the closeness with which he’d held her during that extremely dear purchase of time had yielded something infinitely more precious than money. For just one moment, little more than a flintlock flash in the pan, she had smiled. More than that, she had laughed. She had enjoyed herself in a way she was probably even now wishing she’d hidden better.
Oh yeah, Emerald didn’t yet like him, but she was warming up.
He just had to keep at it.
Heading for the house, he paused at the bottom of the steps to kick the dirt from his boots and listen.
Outside, all he could hear were the chirping of late summer crickets and the rustle of the soft breeze swaying through the long grass. Inside the house, however, he heard nothing. Not even when he cracked the front door. They must have gone to bed. Two lamps had been left lit for him, one on the small table in front of the window in the formal room and one on the kitchen table next to a plate of whatever Chin had cooked for supper. A mix of vegetables and, judging by the whiteness of the meat, a spare rooster that hadn’t been quite quick enough to avoid her.
He prodded a few vegetables around the plate, identifying most of it but not yet sure he wanted to risk a bite. Chin was an… interesting cook. On a good day, she could fry a chicken, mash a potato and bake bread with the best of them, but God help them all when she got nostalgic or homesick. That was when, visually, most of what she prepared didn’t seem like it ought to go together and five meals out of seven came with the same oddly flavored overtones. To be fair, when it came to taste even her culinary flops (including that truly spectacular one involving ducks’ tongues and congealed blood) were still more palatable than eggs, biscuits and beans day in and day out. So really, giving Chin full run of the kitchen had made as much sense as Garrett and Cullen’s unspoken decision to stockpile jerky in hidden stashes around the house. For emergency purposes. Just in case.
Drawing the lamp closer, Garrett drew out a chair and sat. He tried a few bites of the stew, but only after making sure he could identify the meat. As it turned out, it wasn’t rooster after all. Not that he had anything against chicken, but when Chin cooked (and she was in that mood), she tended to use the whole bird—feet, beak, eyes and everything else he’d just as soon bury out in the discard pile. He didn’t see any feet and a beak floating in this though. His first tentative taste at the fleshy white bits revealed the meat to be trout over fowl. He checked carefully, but finding no eyeballs floating amongst the vegetables, he pulled his bowl in closer and ate. Halfway through, the quiet of the house yielded its first subtle distraction.