Silver Dreams

by Thomason, Cynthia

  He silenced her with the approach of his lips and a low, throaty whisper that brought goose bumps to her arms. "I think I know what you want, and if those shadows hadn’t...”

  “They’re gone, Max. You said so yourself. And thanks to you, we’re safe in here.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, I think we are.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Then I suggest we take full advantage of the one time we both want the same thing."

  His mouth descended to take hers in a moist, lingering kiss of such exquisite tenderness it flooded her with warmth and planted Max firmly in her heart. His mouth moved over hers, molding her pliant lips to his.

  She might have been content to experience the gentle, sweet caress of his lips for endless minutes, but Max had more in mind than mere contentment. The pressure of his kiss increased, and he moved his tongue along the crease of her lips, raising her to a new plateau of sensation, one that left her yearning for more.

  With a moan of pleasure, she opened to him, inviting him into the intimate recesses of her mouth. He coaxed her tongue to circle with his in a slow, languorous dance of desire. She whimpered when his mouth moved from her lips, and so he brought it back, hungrier and more possessive than before.

  Rising above her, he cupped her face, and placed urgent, wet kisses on her eyes, her cheeks. Waves of sensations, mysterious and pleasurable, coursed through her, and he fed them with gentle, insistent strokes of his hand. He touched the base of her throat, her chest. Heat, like low, flickering flames, flowed through her at each tempting caress, until he cupped her breast over her gown.

  With skill and speed he loosened her ribbon. Then his hand was inside, teasing, kneading, and the slow building warmth became a white hot brilliance. His palm was slightly roughened from the last days' labors, and she thrust her breast forward, in anticipation of the punishing friction of his touch. He played over the tip with the pad of his thumb while his mouth moved lower, leaving a trail of moist heat along her neck. She arched her back, fitting her soft curves against his solid chest and thighs. Elizabeth, who’d never done anything like this before, suddenly just knew what to do. She rejoiced, and welcomed every bold stroke of Max’s hands.

  The hard ridge of arousal in his trousers pressed against her stomach. He moved over her, his actions alien yet exciting, and revealing the power she held to quench his hunger for her – only her. And she wanted to please him more than she’d ever wanted anything before in her life.

  He grasped the bodice of her gown, and the confining fabric slipped from her shoulder. Drawing her skirt to her thighs, he reached under and cupped her over her pantaloons, bringing her hard against the eager thrusts of his loins. When at last he took the tip of her breast into his mouth and suckled gently, she felt it in the core of her body and moved with him.

  "I want you Betsy," he said hoarsely. "If you don't want to do this, stop me now."

  In response, she pressed her lips to his and thoroughly kissed him. "I'm flesh and blood, Max,” she whispered against his neck. “Not a china doll. I don't want to watch life from a shelf any longer. I want this, I do."

  "I've never thought of you as a china doll," he said, as his hand moved languorously over one taut nipple. "And certainly not right now."

  "Tarnation! Can't a body get any sleep in this rat trap of a hotel?"

  Dooley!

  "First there's Sheridan and the girlie dove upstairs. They sent dust raining down on me through the floor boards, and now you two are threatening to shake the first floor off its foundation. Is there a one of you young people who even remembers why we've come here?"

  Elizabeth covered her mouth to keep from choking out loud. "I forgot all about him."

  Max's fingers froze on the third button of his shirt. "Damn, Betsy, the old guy's just over there on the other side of that sofa thing."

  It was hard to believe that the kind of delirious passion she'd just experienced could cool down so quickly, but that's exactly what happened. It was even more incredible because Max still looked so adorable positioned above her like that, his hair mussed and his face flushed with guilt.

  "I think maybe this isn't the right time after all," she said.

  "No kidding." He discreetly climbed off her and flopped down on his makeshift pillow. She started to say something to smooth over the awkwardness of the moment, but he held up his hand. "No, don't say anything. Just give me a minute."

  When he spoke again, his voice was gravely. "Sorry, Dooley, if we kept you awake."

  "Are you finished?" the old man asked.

  "You might say that. Go to sleep, okay?"

  Within minutes Dooley's breathing was steady, and only then did Max speak to Elizabeth. "I've thought lots of times about making love to you, Betsy. Even when you've been unpredictable and uncooperative, it's never been far from my mind. But of all the ways I imagined it happening, I never counted on this."

  She stared into his eyes. “Max, you owe me an apology.”

  "I know. I can’t believe I forgot about Dooley."

  "Oh, no. You don't need to apologize for that.”

  "Then what?”

  "For calling me unpredictable and uncooperative. I've never been either one of those things."

  He caught her around the waist and pulled her down next to him. She started to squeal, and he smothered the sound with his mouth. "Like hell you haven't," he said when he let her go. She settled against him and he put his arm around her. His shoulder was the only pillow she needed. "Our time will come, Betsy, and when it does, it will be right. Now go to sleep."

  His words floated somewhere in the back of her mind because she'd already begun to do what he told her.

  Max brushed strands of hair away from Betsy's forehead and listened to the soft murmurs she made in her sleep. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let things get so carried away? After all, Betsy wasn't Ramona Redbud or even Sally from Flanagan's.

  A girl like Betsy is raised to believe her virtue is her honor, her special gift to the man she would marry, and despite Max's bravado to the contrary, the voice of old Seamus was probably right. An upper east side Sheridan would not likely marry a mid-town Cassidy. Max had no right to take away what was not rightly his.

  And besides all that, he still had to deal with a nagging conscience that continually reminded him that he hadn't been honest with Betsy since he'd first boarded the train in New York. He was here, after all, to discredit her brother, and make him look in print to be the fool Gus Kritsky believed him to be. He had come to Colorado to give the Gazette editor a story that would knock Winston Sheridan off his journalistic pedestal.

  And that wasn't the end of Max's dishonesty. He knew that the money Ross used to finance the trip had come from Frankie Galbotto. More than once, Betsy had refused to believe that her brother would have anything to do with a thug like Galbotto, and she probably wouldn't believe Ross was capable of the association now. What would she think of Max if she knew he'd kept information like this from her? And what if her life was in jeopardy because of Ross's connections? That was the most chilling thought of all.

  As he lay awake listening to Betsy sleep, Max wished Ross would actually find silver in that damned mine and come out of this looking like a financial wizard. Ross could then pay back his debt and keep Galbotto from possibly killing him and others. It was the only way Max could fathom Ross maintaining his stature in his sister's eyes. And Max wished that the two men he'd seen on the Penn Central train and the pair of shadows on the gully wall didn't make the hair on the back of his neck stand up. But the truth was, he suspected that any minute, this little adventure could take a dangerous turn.

  He looked down at the beautiful, trusting face of Betsy, and because of his feelings for her, he realized that he had probably never truly loved anyone before in his life. He might have loved his mother if he'd had a chance to know her. He certainly didn't love the bastard who'd fathered him. But he was falling for Betsy Sheridan just as surely as if he'd tumbl
ed off Devil's Fork Mountain. And when she found out the truth, he figured his landing would be just as hard and just as painful.

  At least he hadn't taken the gift she offered him tonight. Maybe he'd deceived her, but he hadn't done that. And he might just get the chance to do one more thing for her, too. He'd protect her with his own life if it came to that. But right now, as he faced a sleepless night, he'd settle for being wrong about a lot of things.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Preparing a warm breakfast proved much easier in the kitchen of the Bonanza Hotel than it had over an open campfire with a cold wind chilling everyone to the bone. Max made a fire in the old stove which was adequate for heating the muffins and oatmeal the prospectors had brought with them.

  While they were eating, Dooley announced that the time for lolly-gagging was over. "Today's the day we find the Fair Day," he said, with such confidence that Elizabeth's spirits were raised almost as much as when Max had given her a secretive little smile at the table.

  “Dooley's right,” Ross said. “We’ll look over the landmarks for the mine until you are sure what we're looking for."

  Dooley nodded and tapped the side of his head. "We don't need any of your maps and papers. I got the landmarks all memorized right here where they won't get lost. Once we get close to the tree line, we start looking for Clyde Faraday's markers. There's four of them all together."

  "At least tell us what they are," Ross said.

  "Number one, we find the old man's tear. Once we cross over that, we come to the horse thief's heel, then the head of the third bald man and straight to the spinster's sun bonnet."

  Max whispered to Elizabeth. "Shouldn't be too hard. Sounds like navigating midtown Manhattan to me."

  She was as confused as Max. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, Dooley," she said. "How will we know when we come to those things?"

  Ross chuckled and shook his head slowly, like a school teacher might with a poor student. "You sure don't know much about the old West, Lizzie. That's the way old timers write maps. They just look around them and make up word pictures to match the landscape. Dooley’s markers may not make sense now, but once we get there, all these things will be clear as glass."

  Max crooked his thumb at the grimy kitchen window next to them. "See there, everyone? Ross says it'll be clear as glass, and there's a fine example."

  "We could be hopelessly lost, right, Max?" she whispered, unable to hide the despair that had suddenly come over her.

  "We're not," he assured her. "I left markers of my own all the way down the mountain to Georgetown just in case. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Fair Day Mine was lost...forever."

  "Maybe we'll run into the ghosts of Ian and Clyde Faraday," Elizabeth said to raise the party’s spirits. "They can show us the way."

  Dooley pounded his fist on the table and glared at her. "Don't you talk that way, girlie. Not never!"

  His face had turned as pale as the ghosts Elizabeth had been speaking of, and the finger he held in her face shook with an agitation that bordered on hysteria. "There ain't a prospector with half a mind left who'd go inside a mine after talk of haunts and apparitions!"

  "Sorry, Dooley. I promise." She put her hand on his arm comfortingly. "I didn’t know you were so superstitious.”

  “Not superstition,” he said. “Fact.”

  She glanced at Max who shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “No more talk of ghosts

  Later, after journeying out of the gully, climbing part way up the mountain, and scrutinizing the landscape for hours, no one had spotted anything that could definitely be called the old man's tear. Several times during the morning, members of the party called out rock and tree formations that might, with a stretch of the imagination, be the tear they were looking for. However, when no other member confirmed the sighting as being it, the search continued.

  In the early afternoon a frustrated silence settled over the travelers. No one said that locating the old man's tear was becoming hopeless, but an overall gloom indicated that everyone thought it. Max suggested that they stop and have something to eat. He chose a patch of level ground protected by a narrow rocky ledge jutting out of the mountain side. While the food was unpacked, he walked back the way they'd come, returning a few minutes later.

  Ross accepted the bread and cheese Ramona gave him, but refused to sit. He paced in a circle, biting off bits of food and chewing furiously, as if his meal were the focus of his anger. He finally exploded. "This is a damn fine thing! Five hours and not a sign of any old man crying over anything. So help me, Dooley if you've led us on a merry chase, you'll be the one shedding tears around here.”

  Dooley raised a threatening fist in the air and aimed it at Ross. "I'll give every bit as good as I get, you mule-headed city slicker. Don't try to buffalo me with your hot air..."

  "Stop it, both of you,” Elizabeth said. “Squabbling won't help anything."

  Ramona reached for Ross's hand. "She's right, honey. Come sit down next to me and cool off. Who knows? We might just find that little tear around the next boulder."

  "I wouldn't count on it," Max said, studying the ledge over their heads.

  Ross squatted reluctantly next to Ramona. "And why the hell not?" he said, redirecting his anger at Max.

  "Because if my hunch is correct, we're sitting smack in the middle of the old man's tear right now."

  "Oh, right, Cassidy. After searching this mountain for five hours, we just happened to pick the very spot we've been looking for to have lunch? Not bloody likely. Besides, the last time I looked, tears were wet. There's nothing around here but dry, solid rock."

  Undaunted, Max looked at Dooley. "Tell me, Dooley. When did Clyde Faraday come up with his list of markers? What month?"

  "It was May as I recall. The first of May."

  "Isn't it likely that snow was still melting off the highest peaks and running down the mountains at that time of the year?"

  "Not just likely, boy. That's the way it is up here. Some of the worst avalanches happen in the spring when the snow is unsettled. A good run-off can cause all sorts of mischief."

  "Then Clyde might have seen some of this run-off when he thought up the old man’s tear."

  "What's your point, Cassidy? Why do you think we’ve found the tear?"

  Max pointed to a section of the mountain wall. The sun glinted off the smooth surface, making it appear shinier than the area around it. "See how this part of the mountain, the part under the ledge, looks different? It's been worn smooth from centuries of some form of minimal friction, water perhaps. Eons of trickling water could have caused this."

  "So? Lots of the mountain has probably been worn by water."

  "True, but when we were walking up to this formation, I thought it looked odd. That's why I suggested we stop here. I needed a moment to figure it out. Then it hit me and I walked back to check out my theory.”

  He stood on his toes and patted the overhang above the worn surface. "When you go far enough away to get a clear picture, this could resemble a brow. Assuming an eye would be under the brow, then the snow run-off created Clyde Faraday's tear." He tapped his foot on the ground and pointed with his right hand to a jutting rock formation a few feet away. "This area where we've just had lunch is the old man's shoulder, and I'll bet that outcropping is the guy's nose."

  Elizabeth stood as well and examined the glistening section of granite. "I'm going to walk back and look, just as Max did."

  "Me, too, girlie," Dooley said.

  They retraced their steps until they got a clear view of the profile Max had described. "He's right!" Elizabeth called back. "This has to be it...the old man's tear! Come see, Ross."

  When Ross and Ramona joined them, Ramona agreed with the findings.

  "Anyone can make a lucky guess," Ross mumbled.

  Leaning casually against the old man's nose, Max called out, "What's that you say, Ross? Were you admitting I was right."

  Ross stomped back to the makeshift camp. "Well, come on, everybo
dy. We've obviously found the first marker, so let's get going while we still have daylight."

  Minutes later, Elizabeth slung her pack on her back and fell in step beside Max. "That was pretty amazing."

  He grinned at her. "Hold off your praise, girlie. We've got three more to go."

  She picked up the pace and walked a few steps ahead of him. "The next one's mine."

  Watching the rounded curve and enticing sashay of Betsy's hips inside the baggy britches, Max had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the path ahead of him. If he wasn't careful, he'd slip on some crumbling rock and have to explain to her just how he happened to land flat on his back.