Willow’s face was warm. “Oh, Gideon, would you do that? Could we have a real wedding?”
“Certainly. Provided we have a real honeymoon afterward.”
“We’ve already done more honeymooning than marrying, Gideon Marshall!” Willow scolded. “Besides, we can’t go on neglecting our ranch any longer.”
He lifted one eyebrow; clearly, his thoughts were straying away from the subject at hand. “Speaking of neglect, have you seen Zachary?”
Remembering what had happened in front of her father’s house, the night she and Daphne and Dove had been kidnapped, Willow blushed. Some instinct warned against telling Gideon, just yet, what had taken place. “No.”
Gideon shrugged and drew her close. “Maybe he finally took my advice and went home. Go upstairs and change into that ivory dress you were wearing the day I stole you from Mr. Pickering, my dear. We’re about to be officially married.”
* * *
She looked so damned appealing, standing there at the stove, with a wisp of tarnished-gold hair moving against the back of her neck. Her dress was of simple calico, properly modest for a rancher’s wife, and yet Gideon wanted her so badly that he wondered how in hell he was ever going to get any work done.
He paused, for if he said her name, she would turn to him and he would end up leading her off to bed or to the piano bench or somewhere, and having her. Even though it was suppertime, the chores that awaited him in the barn were far from completed, and he needed to speak with the range foreman he’d hired before leaving town that day.
“It’s about time you got home,” Willow chimed, surprising him. “I was beginning to think you were planning on spending your wedding night in a hurdy-gurdy house.”
Gideon laughed. It was their wedding night, as much as it was Dove and Devlin’s. Hell, a man couldn’t go off and jaw with the foreman on his wedding night, now could he?
“I accomplished a lot after we parted at your father’s house,” he said, kissing the back of her neck and flinging aside the newspaper he’d bought from Norville Pickering in the same motion. “I hired a foreman, for one thing.”
She purred at his sampling of her nape, pressing the full firmness of her delectable backside into his groin and wriggling slightly. “Good,” she said, and Gideon didn’t know whether she was talking about the foreman or about what he was doing.
“You should have waited there for me,” he remonstrated gently, letting his hands slide up over her trim middle to her breasts.
“I had things to do here,” she said, whimpering a little as he teased the pert nipples covered in calico.
“What things?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Just wifely things—cooking, dusting, that sort of—Gideon, stop that.”
He began unbuttoning her dress, then slid his hands inside to fully possess the sweet mounds hidden there. “Come upstairs with me, Mrs. Marshall, and do something wifely.”
She groaned. “Gideon, supper . . .”
Gideon turned her slightly and bent to nip and then suckle at her breast. “Supper be damned,” he drew back to say, “that is good enough.”
With that, he sat down, pulling Willow close, drawing up her skirts. After baring his manhood, he lowered her gently onto it. She sheathed it with a cry that made Gideon’s spirit soar within him, moaned and nuzzled his mouth with her breasts until he supped.
It was much later that he showed her the newspaper article on the front page of the Virginia City Sun, evening edition.
STEVEN GALLAGHER
ROBS LAST TRAIN
Word reached this reporter, just in time for today’s final edition, that the notorious bandit stopped the Central Pacific as it began the journey southward early this afternoon. The recently pardoned outlaw demanded the hand of one Daphne Roberts, late of San Francisco, and witnesses report that her father gave her over willingly, on the condition that Mr. Gallagher would marry her posthaste. He agreed, it is said, to see to this pleasant duty before nightfall.
Norville G. Pickering,
Editor in Chief
* * *
Eight and one half months later . . .
Judge and Mrs. Devlin Gallagher
proudly announce the births
of their grandchildren,
Steven Marshall,
born March 28, 1884,
to Gideon and Willow Marshall,
and Charity Gallagher,
born April 10, 1884,
to Steven and Daphne Gallagher.
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Willow: A Novel (No Series) Page 30