Carolyn Davidson

by The Tender Stranger

  “St. Louis, Missouri, if that makes any difference.” He glared at Quinn. “Take your seat.”

  “Anybody threatens a man’s property or his family out in this neck of the woods leaves himself open to whatever happens to him,” Quinn told him fiercely. “I came here from New York City, and even I know that.”

  Erin turned to him. “It’s all right, Quinn. I’m fine. Here, take the baby and sit down with him.”

  Quinn reached for the child, scanning Erin’s pale features. She was in control once more, her trembling a thing of the past, but her fingers were chilled as she relinquished Robert to his embrace.

  He stepped back to his seat, the pain in his head responding to the anger he struggled to control, throbbing in unison with his heartbeat.

  “The laws are the same in Missouri, young man. What we need to decide is whether or not these men were only asking for neighborly concern from your wife, or whether they were, in truth, threatening her.”

  “Doesn’t it matter that someone shot Quinn when he took the body back to the mining camp?” Erin asked.

  The judge lifted his brow. “Who shot him?” “He doesn’t know. He was shot from ambush, and then left to die, without his horse or packhorse.”

  Judge Beal looked beyond Erin to where Quinn sat. “That true? You were ambushed? Somebody stole your horses?”

  Quinn winced as he nodded. “I’ve got a crease in my skull to prove it. And I’ll warrant if you visited the mining camp, you’d find my horses.”

  “Well, I sure didn’t shoot you!” Toby Jones blustered. “There’s no need to be lookin’ for your animals at Big Bertha.”

  “No one’s accusing you,” the judge said. “But I think it might be beneficial to check out this man’s claim, don’t you, Sheriff?”

  Sheriff Mason cleared his throat. “Probably wouldn’t hurt a thing to keep all three of these folks on hand till we find out all the facts.”

  “You got no reason to send me to jail,” Toby whined, turning to face the lawman. “I got a job to tend to, up at Big Bertha.”

  Sheriff Mason gave him a dismissing glance. “I’ll be making charges against Mr. Yarborough here, too, Your Honor. He tied up my deputy and took his horse, then hotfooted it down here after his wife.”

  The judge inspected Quinn from beneath bushy eyebrows. “You attacked a lawman?”

  “No, sir. I just borrowed his horse. My wife needed me, and there was only the one horse.”

  “Where’s your deputy?” the judge asked the sheriff. “Is he in the room?”

  Tater Folsom spoke up from near the door. “Yessir, I’m right here. Quinn didn’t attack me, sir, and he loosened the ropes so’s I could get free right quick.” He shot a grin at Quinn. “I guess I could understand why he did it, sir.”

  “I sent a man back up the mountain with an extra horse to get my deputy yesterday morning,” Sheriff Mason said.

  “Well, I think we need to get these folks behind bars till we get to the bottom of this thing,” the judge said sternly. “Sheriff, I want you to go to the mining camp and talk to the boss up there. Can you do that?”

  Sheriff Mason nodded. “I reckon I can.”

  “ In fact, I want you to take Mr. Yarborough with you, so he can identify his animals.”

  “You’re puttin’ me in jail and lettin’ him loose?” Toby whined in a high voice.

  “He’s not about to run off,” the judge stated. “His wife’s going to be right here where I can keep an eye on her.”

  Quinn surged to his feet. “I don’t want Erin in a jail cell.” Robert roused from sleep at the abrupt movement and began to cry, a frightened, high-pitched wail. Quinn shifted him easily to his shoulder, patting his back in an automatic motion.

  The judge appeared hard put to keep his demeanor official, a smile playing about the corners of his mouth. “Well, I don’t see as how what you want has much to do with it, young man. She’ll stay where I say, and you’ll go where I tell you.” He lifted his gavel and rapped sharply at the table. “Court’s dismissed until day after tomorrow.”

  Quinn stepped to Erin’s side, and she reached for the crying baby. “I’ll be all right, Quinn,” she whispered. “Just go with the sheriff and get this thing all straightened out.”

  Tater had stepped forward, grasping Toby Jones by one arm. The miner looked back at Erin, glaring from rheumy eyes. “Yer a damn lyin’.” The pressure of Tater’s fingers silenced him, and he winced, turning his attention to the deputy. “I ain’t the one killed somebody here. You’re puttin’ the wrong one in jail.”

  “Don’t you worry.” The sheriff spoke up. “Mrs. Yarborough is headin’ for her cell right quick.”

  “You got more than one cell back there, Sheriff?” Quinn asked in an ominous tone.

  “Yeah, but we keep women prisoners across the way,” he answered, beckoning Erin with his index finger. At the back of the room Alice Mason waited. Once again Erin was given in to her custody. With a motherly arm around Erin’s shoulders, Alice led her out the door.

  “You fit to ride?” Sheriff Mason asked Quinn. He eyed him, taking his measure. “I’m thinking we might wait till tomorrow morning. It’ll save campin’ out up there tonight.”

  Quinn nodded. “The morning might be better.” He ached to follow Erin out the door, but his better judgment told him he was only about twenty feet from his bed for the night.

  “Mr. Yarborough?” The voice of Tater Folsom called from the other side of the bars, and Quinn rolled to his side, then sat on the edge of the hard cot.

  “Yeah, what do you want?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes. It was pitch-black outside the panes of wavy glass over his bed, and he shivered as a draft caught him from the poorly framed window.

  “Miz Mason wants to check out your head wound tonight, before you leave in the morning. She told the sheriff you couldn’t ride out until she made sure you were fit to travel.”

  Quinn stifled a groan as he rose to his feet. “Where is she?”

  “Over at the house, sir. Better grab your coat.” Tater turned the key in the cell door and opened it wide, grinning in the faint light of the lantern in the other room.

  “Where you takin’ him? You ain’t lettin’ him go, are you?” Toby Jones sputtered from the other cell.

  “Nope, just doin’ what I’m told,” Tater answered, leading the way from the cell to the outer office. “Come on, Mr. Yarborough.”

  Erin’s gaze met his as Quinn entered the sheriff’s house, the blast of warm air from the big cookstove more than welcome. She sat perched on a chair, pouring from a teapot, and the pretty little container hit the table with a clatter as she rose to her feet.

  In three steps she was in front of him, her hands reaching to press against his coat. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, scanning her pale features, her shadowed eyes. “How about you, honey? Is the baby—”

  “We’re fine,” she interrupted, shaking her head as if to dismiss his concern. “Sit down and let me look at your head.” She led him to the chair she’d abandoned and urged him to the seat.

  In seconds her fingers were combing his hair from the scabbed-over wound, exposing it to the lamplight. Her indrawn breath spoke of her distress, and he soothed her instinctively.

  “It’s about healed up, honey. Don’t worry, I’m about good as new.” He closed his eyes, enjoying the touch of her fingers against his scalp, inhaling the sweet scent of her body as she stood between his knees. His hands itched with the urge to enclose her waist, his arms yearning to enclose her in his embrace.

  “Let me take a look,” Alice said, bustling to his side. He felt Erin’s hands leave his head to rest upon his shoulders, and then the older woman’s fingers ruffled through his hair until she could examine the wound. “He’s right, Erin. It looks about healed over. Scab’s nice and dry.”

  “You hauled him over here for nothing,” Sheriff Mason grumped. “He could have stayed in that cell until morning just fine.”

  “He�
��s still recovering from a head wound,” his wife told him, her words chiding him. “He’ll do better in a warm bed.”

  “Well, I don’t reckon it’ll hurt anything to keep him here for the night,” the sheriff said after a moment. “Long as the judge don’t know.”

  The bed was too short, but the woman beside him was warm and welcoming, and Quinn turned to her. She curled against him, one arm around his neck, her nose tucked into the hollow beneath his ear. Her warm breath brought a smile to his face and chill bumps to his arms, and he shivered in response, tightening his hold on her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered, and he shifted a bit, the better to press her breasts against him. She was soft and pliable in his arms, her mouth eager as she dusted the sensitive skin of his throat with her kisses.

  His eyes squeezed shut, the better to enjoy the pleasure of her touch. She radiated love as the sun gives its warmth, Quinn decided, freely and joyfully. The day he’d taken on the job of finding Erin Wentworth had been a turning point in his life. One he would forever be grateful for. As a bounty hunter, he’d made more than his share of hard, cold cash. But the reward for this expedition could not be measured in money. Bounty had never had such power to charm him.

  Sweet bounty. She was prime, this woman he’d married.

  “Quinn?” She whispered his name and he bent his head to listen. “Quinn, do you remember the night.” She hesitated, and he grinned in the darkness.

  “The night we made love?” he asked, tipping his head to brush a kiss across her cheek.

  “Well…whatever you call it…it seemed to me that I was.” She caught her breath. “You know…like I talked you into it.”

  He muffled his laughter against her hair. “Sweetheart, I was more than ready for you that night. I only hesitated because I was tryin’ my best not to take advantage of you.”

  “Well, what I’m trying to say is, if you wanted to now…you know. well, it would be all right with me.”

  A sense of supreme well-being surged through Quinn Yarborough. His only wish right now was that the happiness he held within his arms at this moment would last for an eternity. He rolled with her, rising above her to brush his mouth against her face, tasting the faint flavor of her skin.

  “Erin.” His mouth suckled at her lower lip, and she whimpered. “Sweetheart.” He nibbled at the lobe of her ear and nuzzled against it. She moaned, a soft, desperate sound deep within her throat, and he felt the surging power of his arousal spring into being.

  It was no good, he decided morosely. The baby dozed fitfully beside the bed, their hosts slept just beyond a thin wall, and his own needs were going to have to be put in abeyance for now.

  “Baby? We can’t do this now,” he murmured with regret. “When we make love again, I want to have a long night ahead of us and someplace more private than this. I don’t want Sheriff Mason knowin’ what I’m doin’ with my wife, while I’m doin’ it.”

  She wiggled, her hands rising between their bodies to push against him in a futile gesture. He pressed her into the mattress with his weight, his mouth against her ear.

  “Hush, sweetheart!” he whispered. “Don’t make the bed jiggle that way.”

  “Quinn Yarborough!” She made the whisper sound like the voice of doom, and he sighed. “What a way to talk!”

  “Don’t you go gettin’ mad at me.” He breathed the words in her ear and she shivered.

  “You’d think I was trying to talk you into something,” she hissed.

  He chuckled, enjoying the movement of her slender form beneath him, even as he bemoaned the discomfort he would live with for the next little while.

  “Don’t wiggle like that, honey,” he pleaded softly.

  “Then just get yourself off me,” she told him, her voice rising a bit.

  “Shh…hush now.” The urge to laugh aloud was almost more than he could contain and he rolled to his side, drawing her with him, his arms enclosing her in a grip she had no chance of breaking.

  Not that she seemed in a mood to. She settled against him and sighed. “For married folks, we surely haven’t done much. you know.”

  “You may not understand this, Erin, but holding you gives me more pleasure than the thought of makin’ love with a passel of women, and that’s the truth.”

  “A passel of women?” She drew out the words in a taunting fashion, and he cringed as he considered the implication she had drawn.

  “Now, I didn’t mean it that way. I haven’t been with that many.” Somehow he felt he was becoming mired in a mud hole he might never escape, and he began backtracking. “You’re my wife, sweetheart. I’ll never look at another woman, so help me. What I meant was that I’d rather cuddle up with you, and put up with hurtin’ a bit, than anything else in this world. For right now,” he amended quickly.

  “For right now?”

  He nodded. “But just you wait till I have you all to myself, with no one around to hear, and the baby sound asleep.”

  From the laundry basket beside their bed, Robert snuffled and cried out, subsiding quickly as he found his hand. He suckled against his fingers for a moment, and Erin sighed.

  “He’s going to want to eat.” She rolled from Quinn’s embrace and reached over the side of the bed to lift the infant to her side. She undid her gown, preparing herself for nursing, whispering soft, cajoling words to pacify the baby. Then, with a sigh of contentment, she brought him to her breast and inhaled sharply as he drew her nipple into his mouth.

  “Does it hurt?” Quinn asked from behind her, rising on one elbow to peer over her shoulder into the darkness.

  She giggled, and he buried his face against her shoulder, wishing for just a moment that he were the supplicant, and that Robert were tucked away, dreaming whatever dreams babies enjoy in the middle of the night.

  His grumble was halfhearted as he slipped one arm under her head and drew her back against his chest and belly. His legs cradled her thighs and he settled his other hand against Robert’s back, holding him in place.

  “Quinn?” Her whisper bore a wistful note and he smiled in the darkness.

  “Yeah?”

  “What will we do? What if the judge finds me guilty? Will you take Robert? Or will they let me take him with me?”

  He rocked her in his arms for a moment. “Don’t borrow trouble, honey. That judge is just letting old Toby dig himself a hole. Once we find my horses up at the mining camp tomorrow the game will be over, and Toby’s gonna be in deep trouble.”

  “What if they’re not there?”

  “They’ll be there. I have to believe that, Erin. What we need to be thinking about is where we’re going from here. If you want to go back up to the cabin for the rest of the winter, we can do that. For myself, I’d rather think about finding a house here in town till the weather breaks. How about it, honey? What do you think?”

  She was quiet for a while, so long that he wondered if she had fallen asleep. And then she took a deep breath. “I love the cabin. It’s where I began to like myself again, Quinn. But it holds some bad memories, and I guess I’m not permanently attached to it.”

  “That settles it, then. Once we get this whole thing cleared up, I’ll find us a place to live and we can settle in until the snow melts and it warms up. If you want to move back up the mountain then, we’ll see about it.”

  Robert’s small body squirmed beneath Quinn’s hand and Erin pushed herself erect, sitting up to place the baby on her shoulder to burp him. She listened for the bubble of air and then turned to her other side, offering her other breast.

  “What about your business in New York?” she asked Quinn, facing him in the middle of the bed, the baby between them. Quinn’s features were a blur in the dim light, but she caught sight of his mouth, his lips tightening in a firm line.

  “We’ve got all the time in the world to talk about that, honey. For right now, Joel Guinan has things under control, and he deposits my share of the profits in the bank every week. Later on, things may chang
e.” He eased a little closer to the baby, slipping his long arm into place across Erin’s hips.

  Her voice was hesitant. “I’m not sure I’ll ever want to live in New York City again. I don’t think I was cut out for all that hubbub and fuss and bother. And for sure I’m not interested in anything to do with society.”

  He chuckled softly. “Well, I can’t say that afternoon tea holds much interest for me, either. I’ve gone out of my way to avoid high society. I spent most of my time in other parts of the country anyway.”

  “You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?”

  “Not pleasure trips, honey,” he said with a dry laugh. “I’ve chased down crooks and criminals from one end of the country to the other over the years, even before I settled in New York. It’s not the easiest way to make a living, but the money’s good.”

  “How much was I worth?” she asked after a moment. Her voice sounded wistful to his ear, and he was struck by a pang of guilt, that she would equate herself with any monetary value. Surely she knew that he had no desire to claim a reward for finding her for Ted Wentworth.

  “I won’t be making a plugged nickel on you, sweet. My deal with Wentworth went down the drain a long time ago.”

  “Does he know that?” She moved away from his touch to place the baby back in his makeshift crib, and Quinn’s hand clenched against the sheet.

  “I haven’t communicated with him directly, but Joel Guinan has. I’m going to wire Joel and let him know we’re here for the duration. He can notify Ted and Estelle that I won’t be in communication with them any longer.”

  “They’re going to be angry.” Erin snuggled back down in the warm nest of covers, and Quinn waited for her to move to his side.

  “They weren’t honest with me, Erin. I started out after you blind. I don’t owe them a thing.” He felt the warmth of her body only a few inches away, but it wasn’t enough. Only the soft curving length of her nestled in his arms would satisfy the urgency of his need tonight. That he could not spend his desire within her was a fact he was willing to live with for now. But he wouldn’t settle for less than holding her throughout the long, dark hours that remained, before dawn sent him on his way up the mountain to the mining camp.