by Maren Smith
Lydia gave up around midnight. He knew because her breathing changed, deepening and evening out. That was all right, he didn’t mind letting her rest. She was going to need all the strength she could muster just to keep up with him once he got into bed with her. Plus, it gave him plenty of quiet time to correct the one serious design flaw he’d just realized he and Cullen had built into their home. Currently the two bedrooms designated for their future children lay on the second floor between Cullen’s room and his. Clearly that was going to have to move. He’d brainstorm it with his brother, but at this point he was inclined to put them in the barn. He’d practically grown up in a barn, something his mother oft lamented of, but look at them now. He and his brother were both fine—
Well, all right. They both had their issues, but neither he nor Cullen had turned out half bad—
They weren’t completely—
Neither he nor his brother robbed banks. Being raised in a barn had a lot to do with that, he was sure. Plus, both Drake brothers were really good with horses and that was a life skill everyone should pass on to their kids, especially around canoodling time.
He really needed to get some sleep.
Sighing, Garrett closed his eyes and even dozed for a time, but this felt so much like his army days (the sleeping on the floor part, not so much the bedding down in a woman’s bedroom, although…) and he’d never sleep well then either. Sleeping soldiers were easy to sneak up on, even with the watches on patrol and competent at their posts. He and Garrett had always taken turns watching each other’s back. He probably should send word out to Cullen in the morning, let him know what was going on. He didn’t often spend nights away from the ranch, particularly not when he had only gone to town for a handful of supplies.
And to pester Emerald, as Cullen liked to call it. Well, a man who’d already caught his lady love couldn’t be expected to remember all the finer points involved in hunting down the romantic beast. Maybe he was “pestering” just a bit, but by golly, she was warming to him. No way was he about to back down so she could grow all tepid on him again.
Paquah whimpered, then kicked.
Lifting his head, Garrett studied the shadow of him in the overall darkness of the room, but he had fallen still and quiet once more. Laying back down, Garrett made himself comfortable, but it didn’t last. Suddenly it occurred to him that he’d just moved and the boy was still asleep, opening all kinds of avenues that started with him crawling under the blanket with Lydia and ended with him cuddling up to something warm, soft and willing.
Another whimper and this time the kicks were more violent. Paquah thrashed, shoving his pillow all the way off his small trundle bed. Sitting up again, Garrett balanced his arms on his knees. Eyes narrowing, he studied the shadow of the sleeping child.
The next sound wasn’t more than a suck for air, but he got up. Lydia was still fast asleep when he hunkered down beside Paquah. Just enough light fell in through the window for him to make out the straining lines of the small boy’s face before he threw his head all the way to one side, his arms flinging stiffly out in the opposite direction.
Garrett put his hand on the young boy’s chest. “Shh,” he whispered, alternately rocking and rubbing his small body until the gasps and whimpers stopped. Gradually, the tension ebbed from him and the slamming heartbeat beneath Garrett’s palm calmed. He brushed dark strands of hair back from his face. Resting his hand on Paquah’s forehead, he bent down and for the little boy’s ears alone, said, “No more nightmares, son.”
Soft as he had spoken, Garrett startled when he sat back on his heels to find Paquah’s dark eyes open. Surely that had to be a trick of the shadows. Garrett leaned down. Nope. No, the boy really had his eyes open.
“You awake?” Garrett whispered.
Paquah nodded and whispered back, “I had a scary dream.”
“Ah.” Hands clasped loose between his knees, he settled back on his heels, unsure what to say. “Well, to tell the truth, sometimes I do too. Know what I do when it happens to me?”
Shaking his head, Paquah waited.
“I get up. I go to the bathroom. Sometimes I get me a shot or three of—” He censured himself. “—uh, milk, and then I crawl back into bed and I say to myself, ‘Tonight, I’m going to have good dreams and only good dreams all night long.’”
Paquah’s fingers picked at the front of his nightshirt. “Does that help?”
Garrett rubbed the boy’s chest. His hand was almost large enough to cover it completely. “You’d be surprised just how often it does.”
And if the phrase didn’t work, the whiskey usually did. He kept that part to himself, though.
Paquah picked at his nightshirt some more. Garrett waited, but when the child made no move to yawn or roll over and try to sleep again, he realized the boy was waiting too.
“Do you need to use the necessary?”
Paquah nodded.
They both looked at one another, waiting.
“Do you want me to get it?” Garrett finally asked.
Paquah frowned. “The pot is for babies and mamas in nightgowns.”
“Oh. Oh, right.” Garrett glanced toward Lydia again, but her breathing hadn’t changed. She was still asleep. “All right. Nobody broke my legs, I guess. Come on.” He peeled the boy out of his tossed bedding. “Don’t wake your ma.”
Paquah promptly stubbed his toe on his own bed’s box frame. Garrett caught him before he fell and to the child’s credit, while his mouth did open, he didn’t yell or cry. He did, however, hop and bounce in a limping dance of pain. Swooping him up, Garrett tiptoed him out of Lydia’s room as quick as he could.
“Good job,” Garrett whispered, more than a little surprised at the boy’s dedication to silence. “I don’t think I would have been half that quiet.”
“Ooowwwww!” Paquah whisper-wailed back, flopping over in Garrett’s arms far enough to catch hold of his aching toes. “That really hurt!”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Feeling the phantom pangs of every toe he’d ever stubbed, Garrett held onto Paquah’s foot too. He didn’t rub. He just added his own commiseration while the little boy folded over again, this time to bury his face against Garrett’s shoulder, breathing through the pain and thumping him twice on the arm until at last he pulled himself under control. There was a shimmer in his eyes, but he scrubbed his arm across them, sniffed once, and never shed a tear. “Good man,” Garrett praised again. “Ready?”
Paquah nodded.
Garrett looked up and down the long, dark hallway. Not a single lamp had been left lit and the only form of light came in the ghostly glow of relative paleness stringing through the curtains of the window that opened onto the alley at the end of the hall. He wasn’t sure if they were catching starlight or the distant streetlamps. It didn’t matter, it was still dark.
“How about if I carry you?” he suggested.
Paquah looked down at his feet. “Good idea. You’re still wearing shoes.”
That he was, and it took effort to tiptoe in them past all those sleeping gems.
“I’m not supposed to go down this way. I’m supposed to use the other stairs.”
As quietly as he could, Garrett changed directions and followed the line of doors back the way he’d come, past Lydia’s room and on toward the window. The opening for a very narrow and unornamented staircase melded so completely with the shadows that he didn’t see it until he was even with it. Softly as he tried to be, his steps still echoed as he descended to the kitchen. It felt strange being here when it was this empty.
“We go out that way.” Paquah pointed, and Garrett promptly opened the wrong of his two door options. Another set of stairs, skeletal bare-bone planks, led down into the cold cellar. He closed that door and tried again, and this time opened onto the cool night air that swept through the back alley.
He found the outhouse secluded around back and set Paquah down just inside. He closed the door, only to re-open it when the little boy squawked in protest—
&nb
sp; “Sorry.”
—and then took up a sentinel’s position that faced the unlit surveyor’s office that faced the street directly behind the saloon.
“Nice night,” he commented, trying not to listen in.
“I can’t do this when you’re talking.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
“That’s still talking.”
It sure was. Garrett tsked. Arms folded across his chest, he watched the stars and waited. Out back like this, he could see them a little better now than he’d been able to from the floor in Lydia’s bedroom.
“Do you think Old Toothy’s down there?” Paquah suddenly asked, sounding uncertain.
“I don’t think the river runs beneath this particular shitter,” Garrett assured.
“It might.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
Paquah was quiet for a while longer. Too quiet. Garrett shifted, waiting for the telltale tinkle of passing water. It didn’t come.
“It’s awful wet down there. I’ll bet he’s down there.”
“If he is,” Garrett tsked, “he’d best not show his hide. I could use me a new pair of boots this winter. How about it? You need you some good croc-o-gator boots?”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Not of Old Toothy.”
“What are you scared of?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Not of Old Toothy,” he repeated.
“Spiders?”
“Nope.”
“Soldiers?”
He half-glanced behind him towards the dark of the gaping outhouse doorway. “None I’ve yet met.”
“Monsters?”
“Only the ones I’ve yet to kill.”
“Have you killed a lot?”
“Didn’t you say you had to pee?”
A few minutes of silence passed before a thin trickling sound joined the sounds of crickets in the night.
“Give a shake,” Garrett reminded, probably unnecessarily.
“I’m shakin’, I’m shakin’.” Paquah emerged from the dark, wiping his hands down the front of his nightshirt before holding out his arms.
“Upsie-daisy.” Garrett hefted him up and back into the Red Petticoat they went. He started up the steps, but only advanced two before stopping. “Thirsty?”
When Paquah nodded, Garrett set him on the floor.
“Don’t move from that spot,” he warned as he lit a lamp, then ventured down into the cold cellar and past the ice in search of milk. Nettie had provided the boy with warm milk and honey, but this wasn’t his kitchen and Garrett wasn’t about to fire up the stove, so he did the next best thing. With Paquah following like a duckling at his heels, he led the way from the kitchen out into the empty saloon. Lifting him up to sit on the bar, Garrett set up two shot glasses.
“So.” He poured them both a drink, handing the boy one milk shot and taking the other for himself. “That nightmare you had. Want to tell me about it?”
He wasn’t particularly surprised when Paquah shook his head.
“Was it about Old Toothy?” Garrett pressed anyway.
Again, Paquah shook his head. He held his milk in both hands, studying Garrett in the flickering amber of the oil lamp.
“Was it about spiders?” Garrett already knew full well it wasn’t.
Paquah looked at his milk.
Garrett swirled the milk in his shot glass. “Was it about soldiers?”
“I don’t like when they come.” The little boy raised his dark eyes to Garrett’s. “They make everybody go away.”
“Is that what you think is going to happen here? Do you think they’re going to make you go away?”
Paquah shrugged. Then looked at him again, and nodded.
“Do you think your ma would let them take you?”
“She couldn’t stop them before,” he said solemnly.
“Maybe not,” Garrett agreed. “But your ma has something now that she didn’t have before. Do you know what that something is?” When Paquah only looked at him, Garrett lifted his shot glass in a kind of salute. “Me, and I’m not going to let that happen either.”
Gently, he tapped his glass to Paquah’s and knocked back the milk. Gah! There was a reason he’d given this stuff up for beer. Rapping the shot glass down on the bar, he grimaced as he swallowed.
It must have been impressive. After a minute, Paquah followed suit. He downed his glass in three swallows and rapped his glass down on the bar next to Garrett’s with a grimace and a gasp, and even a tentative smile as he rubbed his hands over his tummy and waited for whatever Garrett was going to do next.
“What do you think? Is this a two-shot night?” Garrett asked, gesturing to the empty glasses. When Paquah nodded, Garrett obligingly poured another round. Gah, he thought again, but downed it.
It was probably a good twenty minutes after that that he got Paquah back into bed. He tucked the little boy in, ruffled his hair, whispered one last good night and then went back to his place on the floor. He made himself comfortable again, hands behind his head, staring up at the stars through the window. Paquah squirmed once, rolled over onto his stomach and soon his breathing had leveled back out into sleep, leaving Garrett’s mind free to wander back over the exchange.
That hadn’t been so bad. Kinda easy, in fact. He’d never considered himself much of a children person, but maybe that was only because up until now he hadn’t had much contact with them, apart from dodging one or two whenever he drove the wagon into town for supplies. No, that hadn’t been hard at all. He probably ought to tone down the sort of stories he spun, until the boy got old enough to recognize a yarn when he heard it, but other than that…
Another whimper.
Garrett uncrossed his ankles and sat up again, peering through the dark at Paquah, but the dark little lump on the trundle bed hadn’t moved. He watched a moment, but when all remained quiet and the child’s soft breaths even, he lay back down.
Definitely no more Old Toothy stories.
He was just pillowing his hands back under his head when he heard it again. This time, he didn’t just sit up. He stood up, creeping halfway to the trundle bed when Lydia suddenly tossed over onto her back with a whimper that ended in a sob. He changed directions, circling to the far side of her bed. Just enough light from the stars allowed him to see the shadowed contours of her face. The hollow of her eyes looked positively sunken. Her lips were parted. She arched, her hands flying up onto her pillow to either side of her head as she tossed, twisting her face again. A shimmer of moisture showed the tracks of her silent tears.
“Hey,” he whispered, easing onto the bed beside her.
She snapped awake, bolting upright with both fists clenched and one already cocked back to deliver the kind of blow that only a woman who lived, slept and worked in a brothel would need to deliver.
And if he ever caught a man making that need a necessity where Lydia was concerned, Garrett knew as he caught her by the wrist, stopping the wild blow before it could be thrown (her thumb was tucked just like he’d taught her; good girl), he’d kill the bastard.
“Hey,” he whispered again.
Lydia sucked a shaky breath. The whole of her strong body was shaking. She stared at him, wide-eyed and panicked.
“It’s me.” He gradually released his hold on her wrist once he was sure she’d recognized him. “You’re safe, sweetheart.”
Her whole body shuddered. She snapped around, searching for Paquah until she spied the trundle bed.
“He’s safe too,” Garrett assured. His fingertips only just grazed her cheek before she jerked, spasming to knock his hand away. It was panicked reflex. He reached again. This time she flinched, but he persisted. She shuddered again, but at the first soft caress of his fingers sliding up into her hair, the warm cup of his palm on her cheek, the gentle brush of his thumb as he smoothed away the wet of her tears, she weakened for him. Just for him, and only just a little. “Shh, sweetheart. It’s all right.”
She dissolved in upon h
erself. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she climbed her pillows. She’d have retreated from him if he’d let her, but she was warming to him, by God, and he wasn’t about to allow any kind of backward steps from that. He moved closer, chasing her up those damn pillows, pulling her whole body onto his lap and into his embrace as she shook and cracked, and in a series of sucking gasps for air, finally broke into pieces. She collapsed against his chest, clutching at his clothes before latching onto him.
He caught all of her, hugging her with all the fierceness she required and rocking her as she wept. She made almost no sound, just the gasping and then the sniffling, and the creaking of the bedsprings beneath them.
He didn’t tell her it was all right. Words were cheap, and it would take time before a woman as wounded as she would come to believe them anyway. He let the rocking comfort of his body tell her instead. He smoothed his hands over her hair and down her back. She clung tighter, so he pulled her closer, kissing her forehead, cheeks, and both the bridge and the end of her nose. His heart quickened and pure, unadulterated heat shot straight through his belly and into his groin when she, her soft breath catching, lifted her face to his.
Her lips tasted of heaven and tears. Her whole body trembled, but her lips parted. That she might bite never once entered his mind. He swept in, intent on taking only what she was willing to give, but she was rising up, not just meeting the hunger of his kiss but matching it. She tried to climb him now, the same way she had climbed those pillows, all hot frantic kisses and clutching hands that couldn’t seem to hold enough of him.
He rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the bed, not just for the scintillating thrill of finally having her beneath him, but because it was what she seemed to need just then. Not merely want, but need. To feel him, all of him, pressing up hard against all the fragile and trembling parts of her. It must have worked too, because it wasn’t until he had her head pillowed at the foot of the bed and the scramble of their feet kicking her pillows off onto the floor at the head of it that she at last seemed to ease. She caught his shoulders and for the first time, instead of clutching and pulling at him, just held on.