Warming Emerald: The Red Petticoat Saloon

by Maren Smith

  “Let’s not—” With effort, he reclaimed his smile, but his face felt numb and judging by the wariness that suddenly flittered over Myron as he too leaned back, he couldn’t help but wonder if his eyes now looked as dead as he felt. “We’re not talking about that, right now. We’re talking about women. We’re talking about the loves of our lives. The sweeter—”

  Myron snorted.

  “—softer,” Garrett persisted, “and sometimes, yes, more emotional better half of every man born into this world. Sometimes all that emotion can get the best of a body. Sometimes it can distort the thinking, cloud a person’s judgment.”

  “Makes them spread vile gossip about others, or attack four-year-old children who never did a thing to her?” Myron glumly asked.

  Garrett spread his hands again, letting them slap down upon his own thighs. “Makes them throw horse dung at the sheriff and punch a material witness.”

  Myron looked away, his face melting from grimaces of disgust into reservation. “Ah, she didn’t see nothing,” he finally admitted.

  “The hell I didn’t!” Millicent vaulted off her bed and stomped to the bars. “Benedict Arnold! What kind of husband are you?”

  “One who knows when you’re lying,” Myron snapped back, a rare show of temper that dropped his wife’s jaw, but tickled Garrett no end.

  “How dare you talk to me like that?” she gasped, hurt.

  “You go right ahead,” Garrett encouraged. “Talk to her exactly like that, and you know why? Because deep down inside that’s exactly what some people need. You think your wife doesn’t know how out of control she is? You think she’s happy being this way?”

  Myron blinked twice. “Yes.”

  “She’s not.”

  “I’m pretty sure she is. In fact, I’m posi—”

  “Mr. Crankshaw…” Clearing his throat, Garrett shifted with the effort it took not to either laugh or lose his patience. “Nobody can be happy being that nasty to everybody around her. Unhappy as she is, though, she’s stuck in a pattern of behavior that she can’t make herself change. So she won’t. Not until she’s given a good reason to, and that’s where you come in.”

  “And beat her,” Myron guessed.

  “Discipline,” Garrett countered. “Gentle, loving correction applied to the very seat of the county’s biggest—” He censured himself. “—problem. She’ll thank you for it.”

  Myron blinked again. “No, she won’t.”

  “Yes, she will.” Garrett’s grin was back. “May take a time or two, but be consistent and eventually she’ll come around.”

  “Or clobber me upside the head with a shovel and bury me in the backyard.”

  Now it was Millicent who snorted. She folded her arms across her chest. “And don’t you dare forget it.”

  “Not if you do it right,” Garrett argued, resisting the urge to frown at her.

  Puffing out a hopeless breath, Myron started to shake his head, thought about it, then shook his head with greater finality. “I’m sorry, Mr. Drake. While you make it sound simple enough, truth be told, I just wouldn’t know how. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  Hands resting lightly on his thighs, Garrett studied him a moment, then nodded once himself. “All right.” He stood up. “Pay close attention, because it’s not likely I’ll ever volunteer this kind of show again.”

  Whether Myron paid attention or not, Garrett didn’t know. Once he faced the cells, all his attention redirected onto Lydia.

  “D-don’t you dare!” Millicent hissed, dashing as far from him as the narrow cell allowed. She tucked herself into the farthest possible corner between the foot of the bed and the window.

  As if he would ever presume to lay hand on another man’s problem. Especially when he had his own and, Garrett realized right from the moment he stepped into the mouth of that second cell and got his first close-up look at Lydia, he did have a problem. She was pale. She was shaking too, a rabid trembling that rattled up through the center of her. He could barely see it in her fingertips; it wasn’t until he was within steps of her that he saw it at all.

  He touched her shoulder and his concern grew exponentially when she neither flinched nor jerked away. “Lydia?”

  She did not react. Staring at his feet, she refused to meet his gaze even when he hooked a finger under her chin. He tried to center himself in her sights, but she only breathed faster, shook harder, and locked her gaze on something off to the far right of him.

  “Hey?” He moved into that something’s visual space, and she jerked left far enough to temporarily free her chin. He caught her again, but now she was staring off to his left. Her nostrils flared. Her chest rose and fell, shallow breaths that were coming much too fast for his comfort.

  She was frightened, he suddenly realized. She was panicking, bringing to mind a memory he’d thought he’d long ago buried—that of a screaming mare bolting across a field of combat, with the battle cries, the wounded screaming and the gunfire going off all around as she desperately sought a safe direction in which to run. Any direction. He’d been young and stupid back then, and more than a little traumatized himself. That she was the mount of some fallen Indian was as clear as the war paint on her flanks, but that hadn’t seemed to matter much at the time. He’d still run right into her path. She nearly trampled him twice before he caught her, held her, calmed her. Led her by her simple bridle back to his hiding place in the trees and spent the rest of the fight soothing her with gentle strokes and a soft voice. His commanding officer would have had him shot for deserting the fight, but Cullen had managed to stop that from happening. Still, after that, Garrett had learned to harden himself.

  And he still had that mare. She’d had to harden herself, too.

  “Hey,” he said again, and this time Lydia looked at him, the whites of her eyes showing all around. Her pupils were pinpricks, showing way too much stormy green. “Shh,” he soothed, his touch turning feather-soft upon her cheek. “It’s all right, baby. You’re all right.”

  Her eyebrows twitched, beetling together. Otherwise, she didn’t move, not even when he tried to move her. She felt stiff, wooden when he drew her in closer. It wasn’t that he forgot about the Crankshaws—Millicent, creeping out of her corner in the cell beside them; Myron, watching from his chair. Garrett dismissed them both as easily as he shut out all other potential distractions, and he could hear many of them.

  The sun was setting, bringing the day to a close. People were passing the jailhouse windows—hardworking husbands on their way home; laughing families heading to the Culpepper Café (or Miss Patty’s… or Miss Velma’s… or whatever it was now called by whoever now owned it) for a hot meal served in a warm home-style atmosphere; exhausted miners heading to the bars or the Red Petticoat.

  Lydia could hear them too. She was flinching, not melting into his touch. Garrett drew her closer. He turned her, putting her back to both Crankshaws and the single window. She wasn’t short, really, but she was shorter than he was and that helped him control what she could see. He tried to make sure it was only him. He tried to make sure his arms and the hard breadth of his body was all she could feel, and that his voice was all she heard while he whispered low words of comfort into her ear. “It’s all right. Shh. Shh, I’ve got you.”

  Her body shuddered.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured again, combing his fingers through her hair to follow the silken chestnut waves down her small back. The ends almost reached her waist. A man could lose himself in hair like that, tie himself up in it and never want to break free. A man could lose himself in the smell of her, the faint femininity of her perfume and the underlying musk of her. Her shoulders hitched as her breath caught; Garrett held her tighter. His heart beat faster. His breaths betrayed him, turning just as shallow as her own but for very different reasons. Shallow breaths meant more breaths, all of them tainted with the heady scent of her.

  Go slow, he told himself as his hands returned to her shoulders and she twitched, for j
ust a second, seeming about to tuck her face into his neck before she abruptly looked away. “Shh,” he whispered, and his hands followed the waves of her hair all the way down to her waist again. Go real slow.

  Her shaking intensified, though she didn’t pull away. She didn’t even try.

  “I c-can’t,” she whispered.

  “What can’t you do?” He bowed his head, touching his cheek to hers. She still did not pull away, and he was scruffy too. He hadn’t shaved that morning. He’d have to remember to do that tomorrow, before his whiskers abraded her soft, delicate skin.

  Lydia caught a hard breath, and that was his first indication that all her shaking had suddenly turned into breaking. She was crying. It was so quiet, like a secret shame that had to be hidden at all costs. His arms tightened when her body bent. She was hiding her “shame” against his chest, letting her tears soak into his shirt and her now keening cries be muffled. “I… c-can’t…”

  “Then don’t.” Garrett pulled her closer, held her tighter. “Let me do it for you.”

  She shook her head against his shoulder; he nodded against her cheek, and ever so slightly began to rock her. A tender side to side motion that somehow turned into dancing without his realizing it. Not that he knew many who would call such minor movement as this “dancing.” Still, it was chest-to-chest and heart-to-heart, and even, God help him, hip-to-hip. And she was crying in a way that no decent man could have endured with erection still intact, and yet, here he was. The crotch of his pants bulging hard as the devil’s right horn, pretty much cementing in his mind just how indecent he really was.

  “I’ll do it for you,” he promised anyway. His saving redemption lay in his absolute determination to keep that promise. No matter what, he’d always keep it.

  She sucked another breath, despite the hiccups that broke it into three shaky gasps. “You c-can’t either.”

  The hell he couldn’t. “Try me. Haven’t I kept every promise I’ve made you so far? I mean, truly. Look how far we’ve come.”

  Lifting her head from his shoulder, she flashed him an annoyed and tearful glare. “You mean, jail?”

  “Progress is progress.”

  Her incredulous stare became a snort.

  “Oh, but it is,” he insisted. “Remember what you said to me the first time we met?”

  Her face was still wet with tears, but at least no more new ones were falling. No more were forming, either. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Sure, you did.”

  “Are you talking about the first day you came to the Red Petticoat asking for me? You told me your name and I told you to go to hell.”

  “Our foreplay has always been interesting,” he allowed, “but I’m not talking about then. I meant the first first time we ever met.”

  “The brawl?”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. The brawl.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” she insisted.

  “But, you did.”

  Her brow furrowed. “No…”

  “You spoke with your eyes.”

  Her frown deepened now too. “I did not,” she said, insulted.

  She had no idea how cute she was when she glared like that.

  “You did,” Garrett promised. “You gazed up at me, pouring all that new-green loveliness deep into my eyes, and I distinctly heard it when they said, ‘Help me.’ ”

  Lydia stiffened. “They never said that.”

  “‘Love me,’” Garrett persisted.

  “They absolutely never said that.”

  “‘Take me,’ they cried, ‘and make me your own.’ ”

  “You’re a lunatic,” she huffed, unable even to look at him now. Probably because the corners of her mouth were fighting not to twitch into something that might have been the beginnings of a smile. She squelched it before facing him again. “Would you like to know what I remember about that day?”

  He waited, still moving with her in that intoxicating side-to-side motion that kept their hips brushing back and forth together, a constant pendulum of growing awareness. His feet never fully left the floor, but they were turning now too in the barest of circles.

  “I remember the taste of your blood in every corner of my mouth,” she told him, her sadness shuttering as her eyes hardened right before his. It was all very mare-like—still desperate, still running—even as she fiercely added, “I bit the hell out of you.”

  “And sank your needle-sharp teeth into every facet of my soul,” Garrett agreed.

  “Oh. My. God.” She laughed, a hard and bitter sound. She also tried to disentangle herself from his loving grip and shoved back in an effort to escape.

  Garrett turned as she walked around him, his fingertips trailed down her arm only to fasten upon her wrist.

  “Ugh.” Her head fell back on her shoulders; she rolled her eyes. But as all the slack came out of their outstretched arms and he gave a tug, she came back to him. He twirled her, capturing her now with her back to his chest and his arm around her waist. He rocked her, their side-to-side motion much more visible, the swing of her soft bottom concealed beneath all her skirts flush up against his pelvis. If she could feel his body’s natural response to such seduction, she didn’t say anything, and on they continued in an age-old dance to which the only music was that set by their hearts. He wasn’t sure what hers was doing, but his was pounding brutally hard, thundering against his ribs and throbbing low down in the confines of his trousers.

  “Your teeth have been in me ever since,” he confessed.

  “Please don’t tell me you love me,” she begged, but there was something about that plea that sounded… insincere.

  “Would that be so bad?”

  She looked away without answering, and that right there was an answer in and of itself.

  Chuckling, he threw her out again, letting her escape as far as their outstretched arms would allow before he brought her back to him again. This time, face-to-face once more.

  “You’re warming to me,” he said with a grin. “Admit it. I’ve got my teeth in you now too.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We barely know one another.”

  “We know the important things.”

  “I’d kill you as soon as look at you,” she lied.

  Lied. An outright fabrication of the truth; in direct opposition to what she actually felt; he could see it in her face. His silly brutal, thundering heart soared.

  Take it slow, his head cautioned. But when Garrett opened his mouth, what came out next was anything but. “Marry me.”

  Emerald green eyes snapped back to stare at him. Then she laughed, a hard and bitter sound that barely lasted a second before she again stared at him in disbelief. “You really are crazy!”

  “You could do a whole lot worse.” He fed her his most beguiling smile.

  She tried again to disengage herself from his arms. “I’m going home now.”

  He tsked as she turned away, and this time without his pull on her captured wrist, she immediately whipped around and of her own accord, came back to him.

  “What?” she demanded, her mouth flattening in a frown even as he took her back into his arms. “What does that sound mean?”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  Her tiny left hand was in his, his right was on her waist, her hips were once more swaying in seductive time with his and their feet were moving—slow, small steps—he was leading and she was following, even as she squared herself against him. “Why? Because you haven’t made your example out of me yet?”

  “Ah well. I said I would, so I suppose I will. You’ve got to admit though, you have earned a little something for your part in tonight’s misbehavior.”

  Her nostrils flared as her green eyes flashed. “If you expect me to say I’m sorry for hitting that old, pinch-faced—”

  “Jezebel,” Millicent immediately spat.

  “Prune-sucking—”

  “Pinch-prick!”

  “—cow!” Lydia snarled back at her around Garrett’s shoulder
.

  “All right, enough,” Garrett said, holding up a silencing hand, which they both ignored.

  “Then you’ve got a long night ahead of you,” Lydia finished hotly.

  “And if you expect me to spank you for that, then you don’t know me half as well as I’d hoped you would by now,” Garrett replied. Just like he wasn’t sure when the dancing had started, he wasn’t sure he could pinpoint the exact moment when they both stopped moving. They stared at one another: her, fuming; him, striving for patience. “Your friend Gabriel would have, and yes, that is one of the least of my reasons for paying your fine. I didn’t want him punishing you for something I don’t feel warranted that kind of discipline.”

  Her frown deepened. “Y-you… aren’t going to spank me for hitting her?”

  “I’m not going to pin a medal on you either, but no. I’m not.”

  “I didn’t take part in throwing shit at her, so if you think you’re going to—”

  “If I’d been there, I’d have been hard-pressed not to throw an apple or two myself,” Garrett said, ignoring Millicent’s indignant squawk.

  Visibly thrown off-balance, Lydia studied him. She was trying to harden herself, but something about that didn’t seem genuine either. He could see the reluctant confusion deep inside her every time she tried so hard to look away and yet couldn’t. “So, you’re going to spank me for no reason?”

  “No,” he countered. “I’m going to spank you because you didn’t think. You let your temper lead you without considering the consequences.”

  Her body stiffened beneath his hands. “You’re going to spank me for losing my temper, then.”

  “Yes, I am.” His smile softened. “But only after you agree with me that you deserve it.”

  She startled. “Only after I agree…”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a couple cows short of a stampede if you think I’d ever agree to let you spank me.”

  “You’re not only going to agree to let me, but—” he added, halting her instant refusal before she could do more than open her mouth, “you’re going to agree you deserve it.”