“I was so scared,” she said as he led her up the stairs.
“Me, too.” Truth was, he’d never been so scared in his life.
When they reached the second-story hallway, she stopped, took his hand, and laid it over her belly, just beneath her navel. He knew what was coming even before she said, “Mostly I was worried about him. Or her. Our baby.”
His fingers brushed against her still-flat belly, where his child, their child, already grew. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“No,” she said with a smile. “You certainly shouldn’t.”
A baby. He should be terrified. He should be concerned about the blood of his father and the blood of his mother running through another body, and how he and Eden were going to make it when they were so different and always would be, but at the moment he was oddly happy.
“Did I thank you?” she whispered, “for saving my life, that is?”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you did.”
She came up on her toes and kissed him, her lips soft and yielding, the caress deep and undeniably loving. “Thank you, Sinclair Sullivan,” she whispered as she reluctantly took her mouth from his. “What would I do without you?”
He brushed a strand of pale hair away from her face. “You’ll never have to know.”
“Good,” she whispered, kissing him again, much too briefly. “I suppose I should thank Daniel, too, and Rico and Nate and Jedidiah, of course,” she said softly. “They were all wonderful.”
Sullivan arched his eyebrows slightly. “You can’t thank them the way you thanked me,” he insisted. “Make ‘em soup.”
“I do make very good soup,” she said with a smile.
How had he survived this long without that smile?
“I meant what I said out there.” He slipped his arms around his wife and lifted her off her feet. “I do love you.”
She laughed lightly and tilted her head back. “I knew it before you did.”
“Yes,” he whispered as he gently spun her around. “Yes, you did.”
Chapter 23
The Merriweathers had been disposed of less than a week earlier, and Sin was already packing his saddlebags. Eden tried to stay calm.
“How long will you be gone, do you think?” She sat on the edge of the bed and watched him pack.
“Not long,” he said. “I have a few things to take care of. A few loose ends to tie up.”
How many days was not long? Two? Ten? Thirty? “You’re going to Webberville,” she said softly.
Sin lifted his head and smiled at her. “Yep.”
Eden had to bite her lip to keep from telling him, at least asking him, not to go. “It’s that damn hat,” she muttered. When Sin lifted surprised eyebrows at her unexpected curse, she muttered an even softer, “Sorry.”
She’d told Daniel she would become the woman Sin needed, if that’s what it took to keep him. Could she do it? If he needed to ride off on occasion, to one troubled place or another, could she stand it?
Yes.
“You know,” she said more calmly, “I still want all of you, but I’d rather have a little piece of you than all of anyone else in the world. If you need to go, go. I’ll be waiting for you when you get home.”
He gave her a look that said he’d never doubted it, but there was nothing possessive or selfish about that look. It was warm and confident and told her all she needed to know. It told her he loved her.
“I’m going to rename the hotel,” she said, changing the subject so she wouldn’t cry. “Jedediah’s going to help me paint a new sign to replace the old one.”
“Does he know this yet?”
Eden shook her head. “No, but he won’t mind.”
“What are you going to name it?”
She looked deep into his eyes. “Paradise.”
* * *
Paradise. He thought about the new name for Eden’s hotel all the way to Webberville, a trip much quicker on his horse and alone than it had been in Eden’s crowded wagon. Paradise.
What had Eden said? A long time ago, it seemed like, she’d said she’d rather live in the most desolate place on earth surrounded by people she loved than to live alone in paradise. She’d also supposed that the exact opposite was true of him. Maybe she was right, or at least had been then. Now... Hell, he missed her already. He missed the kids. He missed his own bed.
And he’d only been gone a few hours.
He camped out that night, slept on the hard ground. When he dreamed, he dreamed of Eden and the baby she carried. If it was a girl, he decided, he wanted to name her Fiona. The world needed a happy Fiona Sullivan again, he figured.
The next afternoon he arrived in Webberville. No one would take him by surprise this time, that was for goddamn sure. They weren’t expecting him, so he had time to glance around as he stepped through the bat-wing doors. Almost immediately, he spotted the men who had ambushed him, his hat hanging behind the bar like a kind of trophy... and something else that drew his attention away from it all.
* * *
Eden looked up at the new sign, red paint on a white background standing out against the weathered boards of her hotel, Paradise.
“It looks good, Mama,” Millie said, shielding her eyes with her small hand. “Very pretty.”
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “I like it.”
The streets were crowded, but then it was Saturday afternoon and people from visiting ranches filled the streets and streamed from the businesses along Rock Creek’s main thoroughfare. As soon as she hired one or two girls to help her, she might start opening the hotel restaurant for meals in the evening and on Saturday afternoons. There appeared to be lots of hungry people out there.
“Papa’s coming,” Teddy said softly, his eyes turned to the end of the street.
Eden turned to watch the black stallion making its way slowly down the street. Sin had been gone less than a week, and she’d missed him so much she hurt with it. How would she stand it when he left again?
She would, she reminded herself. She would do whatever she had to do.
Sin wore his accursed hat, the one he’d been compelled to go back to Webberville and fight for, and underneath that hat his long strands of hair were missing. She squinted against the sun to see more clearly, but it didn’t help. He might’ve pulled his hair back, she supposed, but he’d never done that before.
He had another surprise in store for her. A child with pale brown hair peeked warily around Sin’s side as he pulled up to the hotel. He helped the kid to his feet before dismounting and tossing the reins across a hitching post. He took the child’s hand as he came to Eden with a smile.
“This is the lady I told you about,” he said, “Eden Sullivan. Eden, this is Rafe. He’s going to be staying with us.”
Rafe looked terrified, as if he expected an argument. He held onto Sin’s hand and stared up at her with big green eyes. The sun made his hair look like honey, and it was as fine as spun silk. He probably wasn’t much older than Millie.
She gave him a smile. “Well, I’m glad to have you here, Rafe.”
“You are?” he asked suspiciously.
“Of course,” Eden said, her voice leaving no room for doubt.
Millie and Teddy had to vie for Sin’s attention, Millie springing up until he caught her, Teddy standing close until Sin dropped to his haunches.
With Millie still in his arms, Sin looked Teddy in the eye, man-to-man. “You been keeping an eye on things around here, like I asked you to?”
Teddy nodded. “Yes, Papa.” His eyes got wide. “Uncle Jed is teaching me to shoot a rifle,” he added with unconcealed excitement.
Jedidiah and Teddy had spent a lot of time together in the past few days. Teddy didn’t glare at his new uncle anymore, and had even confided to Eden once that not all uncles were bad.
“He is?” Sin asked.
“Yep. I have to be able to defend my sister with something other than the pointy toe of my boots. That’s what Uncle Jed says. He said I’m a n
atural marksman.” And then something wonderful happened; Teddy smiled. “I’m glad you’re home.”
Sin ruffled the hair on Teddy’s head, not making a big deal out of the smile, and he offered his cheek when Millie leaned forward to kiss him again.
Eden had to do something, otherwise she was sure to cry, right there in the middle of the street. “Teddy, why don’t you take Rafe upstairs and show him where he’ll be staying. In the room with you two, for now. In a few minutes I’ll fix our travelers something to eat. Do you like custard pie, Rafe?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said softly. “I never had any custard pie.”
“That is an injustice that will soon be remedied.”
Sin rose slowly to his feet and readjusted the hat on his head. The three children headed into the hotel, leaving Eden to stare up into his face. She’d worried incessantly for days, but in the shadow of the hat she could see no bruises, no cuts. He looked perfect, in fact.
“Got my hat back,” he said sheepishly. “And my rig.” He jangled the well-worn holster and plain six-shooter that hung low on his hips.
“And I suppose the fine men of Webberville just handed them over without a fuss,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I had to kick some ass to get my hat back.”
She put a finger on his jaw and turned his head this way and that. “Looks like they didn’t touch you.”
“Not this time.” His smile faded. “That’s where I found Rafe. His mother used to work upstairs, but she died a while back. The kid was sweeping the floor when I got there, cleaning up after a bunch of drunks.”
“That’s terrible,” she whispered.
Sin opened his mouth, closed it again, shifted uneasily on his booted feet. “Hell, Eden, I couldn’t just leave him there.”
She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Of course you couldn’t.”
He gave her a belated kiss hello, in spite of the fact that people passed all around. Neither of them cared. When she pulled away, Eden reached up and grabbed his hat.
“Let me get a good look at this hat that’s worth so much trouble.”
She didn’t look at the hat after it left Sin’s head. He’d cut his hair. Short. A barber somewhere between Rock Creek and Webberville had given him a crisp, neat, very ordinary haircut. She reached up to touch the strands above his ear.
“You cut your hair,” she whispered.
“Do you mind?”
She shook her head. “It’s very handsome, but...”
“I don’t need it anymore,” he interrupted. “On the way into Webberville it kept blowing in my face, and getting tangled against my neck, and I wondered why the hell I’d kept it long all these years.”
Eden raised her eyebrows skeptically.
“Besides,” he said, “the haircut goes with the job.”
Oh, he was going to leave again! She took a deep breath to calm herself. She would be the wife he needed, even if she didn’t always like what that entailed. “What job?”
He pulled a telegram from his pocket. “You are looking at the new sheriff of this fine county. The governor’s appointed me to the office until we hold a special election and make it official.”
“Sheriff Sullivan,” she said with a smile. He wasn’t going to leave her, after all. He wasn’t going to come and go like a nomad. He was going to stay.
He leaned down, placing his handsome face close to hers. “Did you really think I could ride away from you and be content?”
“I did wonder...”
“Well, stop your wondering, Mrs. Sullivan. I’m home to stay.”
Sin put his arm around her shoulder and they walked toward the hotel entrance. He glanced up once and studied the new sign.
“Paradise,” he muttered as they stepped into the shade of the boardwalk. “You got that right.”
The End
Please read on for a sample from
Lori Handeland’s
RICO
Book 3
The Rock Creek Six
Rico
The Rock Creek Series
Book 3
by Lori Handeland
“Times certainly are changing.” Daniel Cash sat with his back to the wall so that his empty black eyes could watch the door of the Rock Creek saloon.
Rico Salvatore lounged opposite, his own back to the door. If Cash was watching, and he always was, no one would sneak into this place.
The abandoned saloon belonged to Cash now, and everyone in Rock Creek knew it. Since Rico, Cash, and their four friends had saved the town from the outlaw El Diablo, they’d been accepted as residents, if not upstanding citizens. Times might be changing, but not the spots on an Indian pony.
“What changes?” A drink appeared next to his hand, and Rico nodded his thanks to Yvonne, the war widow Cash had hired to run the bar. Besides Laurel and Kate, who were still sleeping off last night above stairs, Yvonne was the only woman allowed in the place. “Nate’s still drunk; Jed always wanders; I still have mucho knives.” Rico slipped one out of his boot and began to clean the mud off the sole, letting the dirt drop to the floor. No one here would notice. “And you still shoot everything that annoys you.”
“You’re alive,” Cash muttered.
Rico ignored him. With Cash, sometimes that was best. “What is so different, amigo?”
“Reese is a married daddy-schoolteacher, and Sullivan is a leg-shackled, tin-star-wearing papa of four. What good are they?”
“Would you like to tell them that?”
Cash took his time lighting a cigar, then blew smoke rings at the ceiling. “Not today.”
“That is what I thought.” Cash might be the roughest, toughest, meanest gunman in these parts, but he appreciated Reese. The only person Rico had ever seen Cash back down from was their former captain. And Sullivan was just spooky the way he sneaked up on people—kind of like Rico himself. Cash might be quick with a gun, but not quick enough if Sinclair Sullivan decided to slit his throat in the middle of the night.
“Life is dull, kid. I’m not made to sit around and drink, smoke, gamble, and...” He paused, casting a glance at Yvonne, who scowled at him from behind the bar.
Perhaps because Cash made her leave the rest of the saloon alone, Yvonne polished that bar during her every spare moment. She served drinks and nothing else. When Cash had tried to hit on her tail once, Yvonne had threatened to fix his face with a broken bottle and castrate him with a rusty nail. Cash respected that, too.
“I’m just bored,” Cash finished, leaving out his other occupation—namely, switching off bed partners between Laurel and Kate, the only two saloon girls left after Eden, Sullivan’s wife, had come to town.
Cash sat up, and his hand went to his pistol. Rico dropped his boot and spun toward the door, knife pulled back to his ear.
“Dammit, Rico, that child is peeking beneath the doors again. Does she want to die young?”
Rico put his knife back into his boot. “Sometimes I wonder.”
He went through the swinging doors and into the early spring sunshine. The wind had a sharp bite, and Rico rubbed his arms, wishing he wore a coat atop his coarse black shirt. Over ten years gone from San Antonio and he still missed the heated springs of his childhood home.
Carrie Brown lurked at the corner of the saloon. Every day after school she came for him. Rico didn’t mind. She reminded him so much of the sister he had lost, he already felt as if they were joined by flesh and blood instead of mere friendship. Though he, of all people, should know that friendship forged by blood was stronger than any family tie.
“You can’t keep lurking around the door, Carrie. Cash is a jumpy sort of fellow.”
Her sweet face, framed by loose brown braids, appeared around the side of the building. “You won’t let him hurt me. No one will ever hurt me when you’re here.”
Rico flinched. That’s what his sister had thought, too. Such belief in him had gotten her a very early grave.
“What if I am not here? O
r Cash is faster than me?”
“He isn’t.” She threw her arms about his waist. Used to be she had to hug his leg. She’d grown. “No one is.”
There was no talking to her. Rico had learned that in the past three years. She was nine now; he was twenty-five. Old enough to be her father. Poor kid didn’t have a father or a mother, only a grumpy old grandpapa who let her run wild.
“Look!” she shouted, pointing toward the center of town. “Stage is in, and someone’s getting off.”
The stage came through once a week, and usually people got on. Once in a while, folks arrived to visit relatives who lived in Rock Creek or on the surrounding ranches, but very few people came to stay, even though the six had cleaned the place up mighty fine.
A tall, skinny kid leaped out. His gaze lit on Rico and Carrie, and he studied them for a moment. Rico, who’d had a lot of experience with folks of a jumpy sort, thought the kid appeared a bit tense.
But Rico forgot all about the boy when the woman stepped down. Even from here he could see she had a figure that would make grown men beg. Rico never had to. He adored women, and women adored him. All women—even the little ones.
Rico pulled Carrie close for a quick hug before releasing her. The child soaked up attention like a dry streambed. Sometimes Rico considered talking to her grandpapa in a way William Brown would understand, but Reese wouldn’t let him. Besides, if Rico did what he wanted to Sullivan would have to put him in jail, and Rico liked Sullivan too much to make him do that. So he kept his fists, and his precious knives, away from William Brown.
Rico didn’t realize he’d begun to walk toward the stage until Carrie tugged on his hand. “Where ya goin’? I thought we were gonna play poker.”
“We will, muchacha. I just want to see—”
“That woman!” Carrie dropped his hand. “Why do you always want to see the women?”
Rico shrugged. “I like women.”
“I thought you liked me.”
Rico went down on one knee so she could see his face. Immediately, she put her arms around his neck, and his throat went thick. “I—” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I do like you. But there’s like and there’s... like. Someday you’ll meet a boy your own age, and then you’ll understand.”
Sullivan (The Rock Creek Six Book 2) Page 26