He burst out laughing again.
“I don't see what's so funny,” Miss Devlin said.
“You are. I thought we agreed it was a waste of time for you to use big—obscure, abstruse, obtuse—words to put me in my place.”
Kerrigan knew he had misspoken the instant the words were out of his mouth. Eden's face whitened and her fisted hands disappeared into the folds of her skirt. It had become clear to him that while Eden Devlin might be sensitive about her looks and her height, she was plainly hubristic about her intelligence. By discounting what she considered her one strength, he had struck a low blow. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings, but damnit, he didn't know what else to do to get past those fences she kept throwing up at him.
“Look,” he began. He opened his mouth to say he was sorry, and shut it again. He wasn't sorry.
Eden reached out and took the tray from his lap. “If you're done, I'll remove this.”
When she started out the door with the tray, he said, “Wait. Don't go.”
Eden looked down the length of her nose at him. “I don't see that we have anything else to say to one another.”
“I want you to get a message to Sheriff Reeves.”
“Why not wait until you're well and talk to him yourself?”
“I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important,” Kerrigan said.
“What do you want me to tell him?”
Kerrigan met her troubled gaze and said, “Tell him I want to talk to him . . . here.”
“That's impossible.”
“Why?”
“You know why!” Miss Devlin slammed the tray down on the bedside table. “I don't want anyone to know you've been here. Most especially not him.”
“Oh, so that's the way it is.”
“That's the way it is.”
He leaned his head back against the pillow and looked her up and down. “I didn't know things were that seriou you and Felton Reeves.”
“They're not . . . yet.” His continuing stare made her wonder if her hair was falling down, or her buttons unlooped, and she began self-consciously to check them. “But inviting Felton to meet you here . . . letting him find out you've been here all along when I told him straight out that you weren't—”
“Felton was here?”
“He came asking about you earlier in the week when you turned up missing. I told him I had no idea where you were. To let him find out that I lied would be as good as a slap in the face to a proud man like him.”
“And you care so much what Felton Reeves thinks?”
Miss Devlin turned away so Kerrigan wouldn't see the conflict on her face. She did care . . . and she didn't. The truth was, she hadn't had a chance yet to find out. But she wasn't about to end any hope of a life with Felton before she knew for sure whether she wanted one. She turned back to him and said simply, “You know he wants to marry me.”
“And you're taking him up on the offer?”
Miss Devlin had no idea why Kerrigan sounded so angry, but she was confused and upset enough to answer him in kind. “I don't know what I'm going to do. I only know I don't want to make it impossible for Felton to ask when, or if, the times comes.”
“All right,” Kerrigan said brusquely. “I'll tell you what I want him to know.”
“Very well,” she said, threading her hands in front of her to keep him from seeing how agitated she was. “I'll have one of my pupils take a message to him on Monday. Is that soon enough to please you?”
He could see she was confused by the attitude he had taken toward her relationship with Felton. Try as he might, though, he couldn't get the sneer off his face. He wasn't sure of the source of his anger, but he knew it was real. “I'm surprised that with this great romance you two have going Felton doesn't drop by to see you every day.”
“Oooooh! You're impossible!” Miss Devlin whirled and started out the door.
“Wait!”
“I have nothing further to say to you,” Miss Devlin gritted out between clenched teeth.
“You forgot the tray,” he said, extending it to bar her way.
She couldn't very well leave it. She reached out for it, and when she did he grasped her arm with his other hand and quickly set the tray on the bedside table.
“Don't leave mad,” he said. “I had no right to say those things. What you do with Felton Reeves is
“You're damn right it is!” She met his gaze, her body trembling with fury.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rueful. His fingers caressed her wrist to soothe the tiny bruises he had made.
Miss Devlin wasn't in a forgiving mood. “I have to clean up the kitchen. Let me go.”
“Will you come back later to talk to me?”
Eden opened her mouth to tell him absolutely not, but what came out was, “All right.”
He looked as surprised as she felt. She was halfway to the kitchen when she heard him call after her, “Bring another cup of coffee when you come.”
Miss Devlin was soon having second thoughts about her impulsive agreement to spend more time in Kerrigan's company. She was a perfect idiot to fall for the coaxing plea in his dark eyes or the beseeching summons in his voice. But the fact was, she liked looking at him. And she liked hearing him say nice things about her.
Eden chided herself severely for believing Kerrigan's compliments. He probably found pretty words to flatter every woman who crossed his path. However, she had taken his compliments to heart precisely because he had been so honest about what he didn't like about her. As she washed dishes Miss Devlin found herself thinking seriously about changing her behavior—resorting to Big Words less often—as a result of his comments. That was when she knew she was in serious trouble.
Miss Devlin decided she would deliver the promised cup of coffee and make a quick exit. Once she had the dinner things washed up, she came back to her bedroom with a hot cup of coffee in each hand, fully intending, if he grabbed her again, to spill it on him.
“Kerrigan? May I come in?”
“Come ahead.”
She managed somehow to get the door open and hand him his coffee. Seating herself in her rocker, she allowed herself to relax for the first time in days. She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand while she balanced her cup of coffee in the other.
“You look tired,” he said.
“It's been a long week.”
“Come here. I can do that for you.”
She stopped rubbing her neck abruptly. “Never mind, I—”
He set his coffee aside and said, “Come on. I promise not to bite.” His lips twisted up on one side in a self-deprecating grin as he carefully levered himself over to make room for her.
“I really don't think it's a good idea for you to be . . . touching
“I'm just going to be rubbing a few sore muscles. Where's the harm in that?”
He sounded perfectly innocent. She couldn't accuse him of having designs on her person without seeming ridiculous. Quite frankly, it would be nice to have him rub out the soreness in her shoulders. “All right. If you're sure you're feeling up to it.”
Eden sat on the bed with her back to him, her buttocks resting against his thigh. He took her coffee cup from her and set it beside his on the table. His large, strong hands encircled her neck, his thumbs pressing hard into her stiff shoulder muscles.
The instant he touched her she knew she had made another mistake. Because she didn't just like the way his hands made her feel, she loved it. She tried to convince herself she should get up and leave, but the sensations were so wonderful, she wanted to stay and enjoy them. After all, no one was going to know this had ever happened.
She groaned.
He paused. “Am I being too rough?”
“No, no. It feels wonderful. Don't s
top.” Her head lolled forward and a shiver of pleasure rolled down her spine.
Kerrigan felt her response to his touch. The little wisps of hair that had escaped from the old-lady bun onto her neck were the only thing between his lips and her enticing skin. The muscles were bunched in her shoulders, and he wondered if he was the reason she was so tense. “How's school been going?” he asked to get his mind off what he was thinking.
“If you're asking whether Jett and Keefe have been fighting lately, the answer is no,” she said with a chuckle. “You seem to have made a permanent impression with that little demonstration you staged. But with one thing and another every day is a challenge.”
“Why do you stay here, with all the trouble in the valley? Why don't you leave?”
She turned to look at him. His hands stilled and he noticed again how sometimes, when she was upset, her eyes turned an icy blue.
“I've spent my whole adult life looking for the perfect place to settle down,” she said. “I'm here in Sweetwater to stay.”
She turned and looked around the bedroom, her eyes resting on odds and ends she had collected to make the room seem less transient, and his hands claimed her shoulders again. As his gentling touch soothed her, she inventoried the things that had made this place a real home.
A huge French sewing basket woven of willow and rattan and lined with red satin sat in one corner of the room. It contained dozens of spools of thread, scissors, a pincushion, and needles. The first thing she had done the summer she arrived in Sweetwater was to make the braided rag rug now on her bedroom floor out of scraps of material she had collected over the years. It remind all the places she had been, and how she was here to stay.
The most damning evidence that she had settled for good was the huge collection of breakables on her dresser. These consisted of two things: medicinals and toilet preparations.
Her collection of family remedies included tasteless castor oil, a box of carbolic arnica salve for burns and fever sores, effervescent salts for upset stomach, hydrogen peroxide, lavender smelling salts, and pure Norwegian cod-liver oil.
More astonishing, even to her, was the array of toilet preparations she had hoped might enable her to appear less plain than she was. None of them had ever worked, but nevertheless, when she was a child traveling with her parents, it would have been impossible to cart such a collection of breakable bottles and jars.
The dresser held Eastman's Toilet Waters (which she had intended to use with the Eastman's Violette Cold Cream that Kerrigan had kept her from purchasing), Fleur de Lis Talcum Powder, White Lily Face Wash, Witch Hazel Glycerine Jelly, C. H. Berry Freckle Ointment, Orange Flower Skin Food, Franklin's Liquid Depilatory for Removing Superfluous Hair, and last, but most certainly not least, Mrs. Graham's Kosmeo Toilet Cerate, which promised a perfect complexion in only ten minutes a day of cleansing with her beautifier.
Miss Devlin had taken to heart Mrs. Graham's caution on the label: When a man marries, nine times out of ten he chooses the girl who is careful about her personal appearance, the girl with the pretty complexion.
Eden had used the product religiously, and to be honest, she did have lovely skin. But nothing she had collected, used, dusted, or sprayed had ever made her face anything but plain. Miss Devlin knew it was going to take a very special man to look past her face to the wonderful woman inside.
The saddest part of her collection (because she had never expected to need them) were items useful only to a wife and mother. Her decorated wooden Wish Box contained such treasures as a bone teething ring with a rubber nipple and a luxurious silk cord that attached to the baby's arm so it wouldn't be lost, two spools of satin and grosgrain baby ribbon (one pink, one blue, just in case), a nickel-plated steel barber clipper, and a genuine badger-hair shaving brush with a black bone handle, which she intended as a wedding gift for her husband—if she ever had one. Most recently, she had added the silver baby spoon Kerrigan had given her.
Miss Devlin had no idea how long she had been sitting there dreaming, but she was suddenly conscious of the gunslinger's hands clear down on the small of her back. While it felt delicious, she was sure something that felt that good must be equally improper.
She slipped forward, and turned to meet his studying gaze. “As I was saying, I don't plan to leave this valley. That's why I'm doing my best to keep peace here. I'm through with leaving when things start to go bad.”
Kerrigan waited for her to speak again, because he wondered what kind of calamity had once made a drifter out of this tall, plain woman. When she didn't offer the rest, he asked, “You have experience with things going bad?”
She turned away and his hands began their cradling work again, mostly because he could tell she wanted to get away from him and he didn't want her to go.
“My father wasn't the kind of man people wanted to see riding into their towns. And they were mighty glad to see the back of him.”
His hands moved down her back, and though she arched away, he held her fast, circling her waist, his thumbs working low on her spine, to comfort, to ease. “What kind of work did he do?”
“Whatever he was paid to do,” she said evasively. “It doesn't matter, does it?”
“I guess not.” It was clear that if he pressed her, she was going to bolt. So he changed the subject. “Tell me. When you were going through my things, did you happen to find my watch?”
He felt her tense.
Sheepishly she admitted, “I have it right here in my pocket.” She had been carrying the watch all week long, waiting for the moment she could confront him about the pictures inside. She reached slowly into her pocket, pulled out the heavy gold watch, and handed it over to him.
He stopped what he was doing to take the watch reverently into his hands.
“I was wondering,” she said, angling herself on the bed so she could see his face better, “if you would tell me about the pictures.”
He popped the back of the watch open. His face took on a pinched look as he studied the two portraits. “The one on the left is me. The one on the right is . . . was . . . my wife, Elizabeth.”
“She was very beautiful,” Eden said.
“The most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”
Eden felt a lump in her throat. From the pain on his face it was easy to see that he hadn't stopped loving her even though she was dead. She cleared her throat and said, “How long ago did she die?”
“It's been . . . fifteen years.”
“I'm sorry. What about Colby and Susanna?”
“Damned Yankee carpetbaggers killed them!” he said in a harsh voice. Then, “How did you know about my brother and his wife?”
“When you were delirious—with the fever—you talked about them.”
“How much did I say?” he asked bitterly.
“Just that you found the men who killed your family . . . and killed them.”
His eyes were filled with hate and horror.
“Would you tell me the whole story?” she asked.
He looked out the window, and his dark eyes saw a world far away and long gone. “I've never thought it was a good idea to talk about what's done and over.”
“I'd like to know.”
He snapped the watch shut and huffed out a breath of air. “I suppose I owe you something for keeping me alive.”
“If you'd rather not—”
“I carried a gun from the day I was old enough to heft one,” he said, rubbing the etched gold watch with his thumb. “First to put food on the table and then to fight off renegade Comanches. I left Texas with gun in hand when I was twenty, to fight for the South.
“My brother Colby stayed home to keep the ranch going because his wife, Susanna, was already expecting a baby by the time the South needed boys from Texas towns as small as ours, who were as young and naive as we were then. I married Elizabeth before I left, and she st
ayed with my brother and his wife.
“I was lucky. I came home after the war with nothing more than this little scar on my face.” He traced the long, thin scar along his cheekbone with the cool edge of the watch. “I was glad the killing was over. I was ready to let bygones be bygones. To get on with my life.”
He clutched the watch in his fist and drew a ragged breath. “Only I never got the chance. When I got home, Colby and Susanna were already dead—killed by the carpetbaggers who took over our ranch. With Colby out of the way, there was no one to keep them from taking what they wanted.”
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