by Anne Avery
“What the hell?”
Molly gasped as his hand clamped down on her arm.
Louisa gave a frightened little squawk and grabbed her other arm. “Go away! Leave us alone or I’ll scream!”
“It’s all right, Louisa,” Molly said, tugging free of both of them. Annoyed, she hitched her shawl back into place. “It’s only Sheriff Gavin and his friends.”
In the darker shadows cast by the pine, the other two men with Witt were little more than large, bulky shapes in the dark. The man in the middle looked like he’d collapse if the other two hadn’t been propping him up.
Molly stepped closer, trying to make out details. “Mr. Trainer?”
The man in the middle shook off his supports. His head wobbled on his shoulders.
“We home, are we?” Zacharius Trainer blearily demanded.
“Almost,” said the third man.
“Mr. McCord?”
“The same, ma’am.” She could hear the grin in Crazy Mike’s voice even if she couldn’t see it.
“This one’uv Josiah’s girlfriends?” Zacharius squinted, trying to get his eyes to focus. “My, ain’t you a purty one! Pleashed t’meet yuh.”
He tried to sweep her a bow. His burly escorts grabbed him just before he fell flat on his face.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” said Louisa, wringing her hands. “Mrs. Trainer is going to be so upset. Do you really think you ought to take him home when he’s like this?”
“We’ve been walking him around, trying to sober him up,” Witt said, disgusted.
“You obviously haven’t walked him enough,” Molly observed dryly. Zacharius was trying to sing. His words weren’t slurred quite enough to disguise the vulgar lyrics.
“Keep telling you we ought to let him sleep it off in the jail.” Mike was clearly enjoying himself. “Bed’s not bad, and from what I’ve heard, his missus is almighty anxious to see him there.”
“I’m not puttin’ him in the jail.”
“You didn’t mind puttin me there.”
“He didn’t shoot the damned piano!”
“Watch your language, man,” Mike chided, fighting not to laugh. “There’s ladies present.”
Balked, Witt turned his frustration on her, instead.
“What are you doing out this late, anyway?” he demanded, aggrieved. “I figured your meeting’d be over hours ago.”
“Mrs. Trainer had a lot of things to discuss,” Louisa said. “We’ve only just left.”
“And the others may be right behind us,” Molly added. “If you don’t want them to see you dragging Mr. Trainer home, you’d better find a good alley to hide him in until they’ve all gone by.”
“Jus’ left?” said Mr. Trainer, weaving slightly. He thumped Witt’s shoulder weakly. “Toldja coulda shtayed another hour. Women get to talkin’, can’t hardly ever shut ’em up. I know. I’m married t’one of ’em.”
“Don’t remind me,” muttered Witt. “I should’ve left you to sleep it off at Jackson’s. All right, then, we’ll—Dammit!”
Voices, and footsteps coming their way.
Without another word, Witt dragged both her and Zacharius Trainer into the deepest shadows, back under the spreading branches of the old pine. Mike pushed through the bushes on their right, taking Louisa with him.
Heart hammering, Molly held her breath. Zacharius giggled weakly. Witt clamped his hand over the older man’s mouth.
The women came closer, then, to Molly’s infinite relief, went on. Only blind men would have missed them, even in the dark, if they’d come on round the corner.
Just when Molly was sure they could relax, another cluster of women went past.
Witt shifted, put his mouth close to her ear. “Any more?”
“Probably not,” she whispered back. She had to fight against the urge to press her hand to her ear. The faint, warm brush of his breath against her cheek and throat had set her nerve ends burning.
“Probably? You mean, you don’t know?”
“You want me to run after them to check?”
If it weren’t for the smell of whiskey emanating from Zacharius Trainer, she could almost forget the older man existed. Witt was so close she could reach out and touch him if she’d had the nerve.
There in the dark, with the massive trunk at their backs and the broad pine boughs wrapped around them like a sheltering tent, the world had shrunk until he filled all the empty spaces. He wasn’t touching her, yet she could feel him up and down the length of her body and all the way down her arms to her fingertips. She’d swear the very air was part of him, like blood and breath, warm and alive.
“Let’s go.” He hitched his arm more firmly around Zacharius Trainer’s back.
“What if—”
“That’s Zach’s problem, not mine,” he said gruffly. “Move.”
Louisa and Mike stepped out of the bushes right behind them.
“Got us an idea,” Mike said.
“A very good idea!” chimed in Louisa happily.
“Miss Merton an’ me, we’ll take Mr. Trainer home. Missus Trainer don’t have a grudge against me, and she can’t hardly abide the sight of you.”
“You’re welcome to him,” Witt growled. “Old goat weighs a ton and I swear he’s fallen asleep.”
“Shleep,” said Zacharius, and giggled.
Witt shifted to get a better grip. “You want to explain why Miss Merton should be involved?”
“Mike, that is, Mr. McCord—” Louisa glanced up at the big miner beside her, and smiled.
Even in the moonlight, Molly could see him smiling back.
“Mr. McCord?” she prompted, knowing what was coming.
“He said it would help if I knocked on the door since he’ll have his hands full with Mr. Trainer,” Louisa earnestly explained. “We agreed I could duck down behind the porch railing after so she doesn’t know I’m there.”
“I don’t think—” said Molly.
“Fine,” Witt agreed. “He’s all yours.”
Mike grunted at the dead weight, then shifted to drape the now unconscious Zacharius over his shoulders. “And here I thought he was heavy when there was two of us.”
“Took six men to haul you out of Jackson’s,” Witt said with satisfaction.
“Come on,” he added, taking Molly’s arm. “I’ll walk you home.”
He didn’t bother turning around. The last thing Molly saw when she glanced back was Louisa, looking up at Crazy Mike McCord and laughing.
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m not sure it’s right for the two of them—”
“You’re the one told me he was a good man,” Witt interrupted. “You were right. There’s no one Miss Merton would be safer with than Crazy Mike, and that’s includin’ the preacher.”
He hadn’t glanced at her since he’d dragged her away from that tree, and he hadn’t slowed down. He also hadn’t taken his hand off her arm.
Molly hadn’t tried to pull free. It wasn’t that she wanted him touching her, she silently assured herself, it was just too much trouble to argue. It had nothing to do with the warmth from his hand that had seeped clear through to her skin and was now spreading through her blood like heady wine.
“I can find my way home perfectly well,” she said.
“I know.”
“You really don’t have to bother.”
“No.”
“You’re hurting my arm.”
He stopped so suddenly she staggered. Instead of letting her go, he dragged her around and grabbed her other arm, then pulled her to him and kissed her, right there in the middle of State Street and Pearl where all the world could see if they bothered to look out their bedroom windows.
Molly didn’t know if anyone had bothered, and didn’t really care. This was not the quick kiss she’d given him, there by the river. This kiss was hot, demanding, mouth crushing down on mouth with heat and hunger and a world of promise in it.
When he pulled back an eon later, gasping for breath, she gasped, too,
and sagged against him. His broad chest was as safe and comforting as she had imagined it would be. She could hear his heart thundering inside it, just beneath her ear.
“You’re still hurting my arm,” she murmured, fighting against the dizzying need he’d so easily roused within her.
He swore and let her go. He would have shoved her away if she hadn’t wrapped her newly liberated arms around his neck and dragged him down for another kiss.
He wouldn’t have been half as staggered if she’d just shot him, instead.
She could feel the breath hitch in his lungs, then the sudden leap of his heart as it started beating again. His hands still held her, one cradling her head, the other pressed tight against her waist, pinioning her to him. Tongues met, tangled, probed, devoured.
They shared the same air, pressed so close against each other that they seemed as one, driven by the same furious passion. Molly knew they shared the same hunger. She could feel it in him, as sharp and demanding as the hunger that raged through her.
A quiver shot through his body like the quiver of a hound straining at the leash. It was the mate of the shudder that shook her down to her very bones as his mouth left hers to press against the soft, vulnerable flesh just beneath the angle of her jaw, then lower, where her starched collar began.
He was the first to come to his senses, not her. With a groan, he lifted his head. His eyes were black hollows in the darkness, full of secrets.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—That wasn’t right.” He let her go and backed away. “I’m really sorry.”
Molly fought against the urge to laugh out loud and run dancing through the streets. She ought to be appalled by her behavior, but she wasn’t. All the confusion and doubts and questions of the last few days seemed to be sorting themselves out somehow. She wasn’t sure what it would all add up to in the end, but for the first time, she wasn’t worried by the answer, whatever it turned out to be.
If she spread her shawl like wings she thought she might even fly.
“If you won’t kiss me, will you walk me home?”
“Walkin’ you home was what got us into trouble in the first place.”
Inch by inch, he was edging farther away from her. He hadn’t, Molly thought with amusement, quite worked up the courage to run.
“It wasn’t the walking that was the problem,” she teased. “And I don’t consider what we just shared a problem, anyway.”
“Still wasn’t right.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Trainer would agree.”
The bite in her tone got his attention, as she’d hoped it would.
“She’d also think it quite proper to see a lady home when she’d got caught out late like this. Just to be sure she’s safe, you know.”
There were a dozen other things she wanted to say—rash, dangerous things—but she shoved the words aside. Tomorrow, when she had time to think, she’d pick the right ones. For now, she was too giddy, so excited by the emotions tumbling through her that she might go too far, too fast, and end up ruining it all.
Witt didn’t say anything at all.
“I usually go that way.” Molly pointed down Pearl. “Four blocks over, three blocks up.”
He didn’t move.
She made a quarter turn and gestured. “Or we can go three blocks up State, then four blocks over on Granite.”
Nothing.
“Some people,” she said thoughtfully, as if giving the matter careful consideration, “think it’s better to turn on Gold Street. I suspect that’s because Mrs. Jacobson always has such a lovely garden this time of year, but it may be because the trees there provide so much shade.
“That would be two blocks up State, four blocks over, then one more up on Delaford,” she added helpfully. “Not counting the jog over to reach the alley.”
Silence…with a dangerous rumble underneath, like a mountain just before an explosion.
Molly smiled, a small, secret smile all for herself. “Of course we can always walk one block up, four—”
He made a strangled sound somewhere deep in his throat. Gravel grated under his heel as he turned to face down Pearl.
“This way,” he growled, and stalked off without her.
Her secret smile turned to a triumphant grin. Heart pounding happily, she set off after him.
They covered the blocks in silence save for the sounds of their shoes on the hard-packed dirt streets and the sleepy barking of an occasional dog. The moon was higher now—not full, but enough to see their way. She wondered if he’d chosen Pearl in order to avoid that tree-shadowed section of Gold, but didn’t ask.
They saw no one. Here and there a lamp glowed behind a curtain, but most of the houses were dark beneath their moon-silvered roofs. Elk City was in bed and asleep.
Unlike that one evening when they’d gone out walking, he made no effort to match his stride to hers. For each of his long steps, she had to take two. By the time they reached Delaford, the last street before hers, she was almost running to keep up.
They turned down the alley and his pace suddenly slowed, his stride shortened. It wasn’t the lack of light because the broad alley was no darker than the unlit street behind them. It wasn’t because he was worn-out with the exercise, even if he was breathing harder than he should have after that little walk. And the closer they got to her back door, the slower he walked.
The scent of roses and damp earth and garden greenery wrapped around them as they walked up the path leading to her back step.
He waited at the foot of the steps as she checked to be sure Bonnie had left the screen unlatched and the door unlocked. Rather than going in, however, she came back down, stopping on the last step but one.
From that vantage point, she was almost an inch taller than he was. His head was tilted up slightly, but his hat shaded his eyes so that all she could see was a faint glint in their depths. In the moonlight, his mouth looked uncompromisingly stern, his jaw an unyielding rock.
“I liked it, you know,” she said. “I liked you kissing me very much.”
And then she leaned down and kissed him on that stern mouth, which was much warmer and more welcoming than it looked.
“Good night, Sheriff.” It was hard to get the words out past the sudden tightness in her throat.
“Ma’am,” he said in a strangled sort of voice.
She swung the back door open. The lamp she’d left burning on the kitchen table had long since burned out. The house, like all the houses around her, was dark and silent, its occupants soundly asleep.
Witt was backing up the path. He got all the way to the roses before he spun around.
“Good night,” she called, not caring if the neighbors heard.
The only sound out of the darkness was that of footsteps, hurrying away.
“Toldja!”
“Shh!” Bonnie glared down at her brother. They were kneeling on his bed, trying to see what was happening in the yard below, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught at it.
Dickie had rushed into her room not two minutes before to inform her that their mother was returning and that it looked as if the sheriff was with her. Bonnie had started to argue, but the barking of old Mr. Schroeder’s dog across the alley, followed by the muffled sounds of footsteps out back, had brought them on a run to Dickie’s window. Unfortunately the combination of darkness and window screen made it impossible to see what was going on on their own back steps.
“I toldja they was gettin’ sweet on each other,” Dickie insisted in a whisper.
“He just walked her home,” Bonnie whispered back. “Any gentleman would see a lady got home safe, this time of night. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, Tom Seiffert says they’re takin’ bets up at Jackson’s about it.”
“Are not.”
“Are, too. Ask Tom.”
Bonnie gave a ladylike snort. “I wouldn’t believe a word he says. He exaggerates.”
“Does not,” said Dickie, though he didn’t sound perfectly
convinced. “Anyways, the sheriff’s brought Mama back tonight. An’ she’s late. Must be ’leven o’clock. She’s never this late.”
He smooshed the side of his face against the screen, trying to get a better view.
“Stop that. You’ll make the screen bag out, just like the last one. You know what mother said. How you’d have to pay for a new one if you did it again.”
“Who cares,” said Dickie, removing his face from the screen just long enough to argue. “I got money, even if you don’t.”
Bonnie thought of arguing, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort and pressed her face against the screen, instead. She caught her mother’s voice, too low to make out the words, then the sheriff’s “ma’am.” And then he was walking backward up their garden path. Backward!
The only time she’d seen a man do that was when Jimmy Jacobs was courting Mary Sue Mandelbaum. Jimmy had been seventeen, near a man full-grown, and he’d been pretty much gone on Mary Sue. Every time he’d left her house he’d walked backward until he ran into their front gate. The whole town had been laughing about it and how moony he was over Mary Sue, but it must have been all right in the end since Jimmy and Mary Sue had been married going on for two years now and already had their first baby, with another on the way.
But her mother? And the sheriff?
“Good night,” her mother called. Pretty loud for so late at night. If she wasn’t careful, she’d wake the neighbors and then Mrs. Fein would talk and everyone in town would know that the sheriff had walked her home tonight.
The sheriff didn’t say a word, leastwise not that she could hear. She didn’t find that particularly encouraging, somehow.
Dickie slowly sank back on his bed. “It’s sorta like that story about Tim Toller. His mother was sweet on the sheriff, see, but there was this bad guy who—”
“Oh, be quiet. I don’t want to hear about any of your silly stories. Not right now.”
Troubled, Bonnie gave her brother a poke, just on general principles, then slid off his bed and out the door, taking especial care to avoid that spot in the floor that always creaked.