by Merry Farmer
George, Lucy, and Luke stood in the yard outside the Hen House along with a few of the ranch hands. Lucy looked as though she was giving them orders, but they stood too far away to hear.
“I swear, I’m gonna murder someone once we get out of here,” Bonnie growled.
“I’ll be right there with you,” Rupert seconded.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, glaring at their captors.
“I think Trey might want to hear about you people kidnapping us,” Bonnie shouted through the window.
The pow-wow on the yard broke up, and George and Lucy stepped forward. “There is no good reason why the two of you shouldn’t be together,” George called out.
“It’s none of your business,” Rupert shouted back.
“It’s all of our business,” Lucy argued. “You’re our friends.”
Bonnie send a sideways look to Rupert. They were her friends. She’d gotten him into this mess.
“Forget Bonneville,” George went on. “I can speak to him.”
“He won’t listen,” Bonnie sighed, knowing there was no way anyone outside could hear her.
“Bonneville can go stick a pin in his eye!” Lucy shouted. “I have had enough of that man’s bullying and posturing. I won’t let you chain yourself to him forever, not when you belong with Rupert.”
“I won’t let him hurt your girls,” George added. “But if they’re really what’s most important here, why not set a good example and show them what a real marriage should be?”
Bonnie’s chest constricted at the thought. Another good point. Her girls all loved Rupert. She’d heard more than a few sighing over the fact that he was just the kind of man they hoped to meet someday. Surely that had to carry some weight?
“And besides all that,” Lucy continued, “Papa has offered Rupert a spectacular deal for building houses in Haskell. That should be plenty of money for the two of you to get married and live happily ever after.”
Rupert hmphed. It almost sounded like a laugh. Bonnie arched a brow and glanced sideways at him.
“I knew that deal was too good to be straightforward,” he said, rubbing his face.
“You’re just figuring that out now?” Bonnie’s lips twitched, tempted to grin.
“No,” he admitted, letting his arms drop. “It was pretty obvious, actually. Although for what Howard wants me to do, it’s not completely unheard of.” He shrugged.
“So you’re going to take the deal?” She angled her shoulders more to face him than the window.
“I have to ask Skipper,” Rupert admitted. “Although I can’t see him saying no.”
“See!” Lucy hollered on the other side of the window. “Like that! Talk to each other. Tell each other how much you love each other and can’t live apart.”
Bonnie smirked and crossed her arms. “She has no idea what we’re talking about in here, does she?”
“Not a clue.” Rupert crossed his arms as well, leaning against the window frame. “You’ve got yourself a bunch of half-crazy friends, you know.”
Bonnie laughed. “These are the tame ones.”
“Lord help us all.”
“We’re going to leave you two in there until you talk things through and come up with a better solution than marrying Bonneville,” George called. “We’re sure you’ll be able to figure out how to break free once you’ve thought of a plan to be together.”
“What, like this one?” Rupert teased.
“What kind of idiot locks two people in a house together to force them to change their minds about their lives?” Bonnie shook her head.
“So…so we’ll just leave you to it now,” Lucy finished. She and George exchanged uncertain looks, shrugged, continued to look uncomfortable, then finally waved and walked away.
Bonnie watched them until they rounded the corner of the house and disappeared. Then she sighed and pushed away from the window. “Well, this isn’t how I imagined today going.”
Rupert huffed a laugh. “Me neither. I’ve missed another train back to Everland.”
“Are you really in such an all-fired hurry to get back?” She faced him with more curiosity than hurt, although the hurt was definitely there.
Rupert rubbed the back of his neck, walking deeper into the room. “Can you blame me?” He ambled over to the small dining table, tapping the surface, not meeting her eyes. “It’s hard enough knowing you’re going to marry someone else, but sticking around to watch?” He shook his head.
“You know my reasons.” She crossed the room slowly to stand by him.
“I do.” He nodded, then looked up at her. “I know your priorities too.”
“But you wish that you were one of them.”
He looked away, face pinched with the unique pride of a man who couldn’t quite admit his feelings were hurt. “What would you expect?”
“Nothing less.” She rested her hand over top of his on the table. “But Rupert, you’ve always been my priority.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Really? You could have fooled me.” Hints of the old anger between the two of them surfaced.
Bonnie let out a breath and traced a circle on the back of his hand. “What would have happened to us all those years ago if I hadn’t left?”
“We would have loved each other and made a life together, had kids and settled down,” he answered, a little too fast.
She arched a brow. “Really? That’s what would have happened?”
He let out a breath, his shoulders dropping with it. “We would have fought and starved and ended up in a worse situation than we did.”
“You’re getting closer.” She turned and leaned her backside against the edge of the table, crossing her arms. “Do you remember how you put more and more of the burden of feeding and clothing us on my shoulders while you chased those dreams of your claim?”
He shuffled in his spot for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck again. “Turns out I really didn’t have a leg to stand on with the McGovern boys. I’d dug my way onto their claim, and that’s where the bulk of the silver was.”
Bonnie nodded. “You would have died trying to prove that was your silver if I hadn’t left.”
He frowned. “How do you figure?”
“Because my leaving meant you had to spend more energy putting food in your mouth than fighting. If you hadn’t had to think of something else to survive, you would have fought to the death.”
Rupert’s brow went up. “Is that why you left me?”
Unexpected tears stung her eyes. She nodded. “I couldn’t let you die, Rupert. I loved you too much. But I was hurting you by staying. I was taking care of you too much, to the point where you wouldn’t take care of yourself.”
“Bonnie.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight. “I never thought of it that way. That must have been a hard decision.”
“You have no idea,” she sniffled. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “Harder than deciding I have to marry Bonneville.”
“Do you?” There was a note of tremulous curiosity in his voice. “I mean, it’s not like deciding you had to sell yourself in order not to starve to death.”
“Isn’t it?” she replied, her words heavy.
“No, it’s not.” He held her at arm’s length, forcing her to look up at him. “Because this time it’s not about living or dying. It’s not about starving or going mad or hanging onto something that was never ours to begin with. This time we have money. We both do. This time we have friends who are willing to help us.” His lips twitched. “Even if they are plumb crazy.”
Bonnie relaxed into a sniffling laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“All right.” Rupert let go of her completely and stood facing her, arms crossed. “So let’s do what your crazy friends want us to do. Let’s talk this through.”
“How?” She threw her arms to the sides. “There’s no room to wiggle in this situation. Rex more or less finances my efforts with the girls, whether h
e knows it or not. Even if he didn’t, he holds the deed to the Place and could toss us all out on the street at a moment’s notice. Where else are we going to be able to set up shop?”
“Ah!” Rupert brightened. “That’s it. That’s the question right there.”
“What is?”
“If you lost the Place, where would you set up shop?”
Bonnie blinked. It couldn’t really be that easy, could it? But no, there was nothing easy about setting up a whorehouse in a town that strove constantly to make itself as respectable and attractive to new businesses and residents as possible.
“People in Haskell aren’t going to let us just move across the street and start entertaining in the saloon,” she argued.
“Are you sure about that? Sam might be open to the idea,” Rupert argued.
Bonnie shook her head. “He’s already said no. He says whores in saloons invite the kind of customers he doesn’t want to attract. I agree with him too. Those aren’t the sort of customers my girls want either.”
“You let them be choosy, I understand.” Rupert nodded, rubbing his chin.
“There’s whores and there’s whores,” Bonnie explained.
Rupert chuckled. “Sadly, I actually know what you mean by that. And I admire the fact that you let your girls be…the former? The latter?”
“My girls can be whatever they want to be,” Bonnie told him, using a little more energy than she’d intended. “That’s the point. I didn’t have that choice.”
“And I’m sorry for it,” he answered, barely above a whisper. His gaze met hers, regret filling his eyes. “Bonnie, I’m so, so sorry for it.”
She shook her head, then slipped back into his arms. “We were both young and incredibly stupid. I ran away from home to marry you and burned all my bridges behind me. It was my own fault that my family wouldn’t help me.”
“But I shouldn’t have landed you in the situation you landed in.”
“Like I said, we were young and stupid. How can you expect people who are nineteen and twenty to make solid choices with their lives?”
“I guess you can’t.” His arms tightened around her. “Good thing we’re solid, sensible people now.”
He laughed, but she looked up at him and said, “We are, though. After all that mess so long ago, we ended up doing pretty well for ourselves.”
“With a little help from friends,” he admitted.
“And it’s a good thing we had them too.” She gave him an extra squeeze. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be the fine, entrepreneurial builder that you are, the toast of Everland, and on the verge of signing a lucrative deal with Howard Haskell himself.”
“And you wouldn’t be a clever, enterprising woman who helps the people everyone else kicks to the curb, even if it comes at a steep price.”
“We’re just a pair of swells, aren’t we?” she laughed.
“A pair of swells about to lose one business just as another is getting sta—”
Rupert stopped, his eyes going wide.
“What?” Bonnie jumped back, heart barely daring to beat. “You just thought of something, didn’t you?”
Rupert blinked, looking off into space for a moment. “I can’t believe it. The solution has been staring us in the face this whole time.”
Prickles broke out across her skin. “What’s been staring us in the face? What solution?”
A moment later, Rupert drew in a breath and focused on her. “We’ve agreed that between the two of us, with your girls willing to take on some clients and my business, both in Haskell and Everland, we have the ability to get the money that you’ve needed to get from Rex up until this point, right?”
“Yes, yes!” she answered all at once, practically jumping up and down, she was so eager to know what he was thinking.
“And that the biggest hurdle is the fact that Rex holds the deed to the Place.”
“Yes, go on.”
Rupert shrugged, a grin that could almost be described as smug spreading across his face. “So let him have it.”
Bonnie’s enthusiasm dropped like a rock in a pond. She sank back on her heels and huffed out an irritated breath. “I am not going to let Rex have the Place. He’d kick us all out before you could say boo.”
“So?” Rupert’s grin twitched. “I’ll build you another Place.”
Bonnie blinked. Her brow flew up. Then she frowned. She blinked a few more times, then said, “Where? How? You can’t just go building whorehouses in any old place.”
Rupert took a step closer to her, pulling her into his arms with a mischievous spark in his eyes. “First of all, I’m a builder. Yes, I can just build a new one. It’s what I do.”
The excited tremor returned to her heart. She smiled up at him, grasping his hips, not quite willing to embrace him fully yet.
“Second, Haskell is a young and growing town. There’s plenty of land around it. I do believe your good friend Howard Haskell owns quite a bit of it. Something tells me that if it meant the difference between you having to marry his arch enemy—and yes, I heard the full story of how those two have been rivals for years from Sam over at the saloon the other day—or thumbing his nose at Rex by selling us land a discreet distance out of town, maybe on the other side of the railroad tracks past the station, then I bet he’d do it.”
Bonnie opened her mouth to reply, but the swell of emotion running through her closed up her throat. Move out of the Place and open a new Place? She’d never even considered the idea. She’d known she’d never have the money for that kind of an enterprise. Rupert might not have had that kind of money either, but if the whole point of his potential contract with Howard was to build houses and businesses for Haskell, the three of them might just be able to work out a larger deal. Not much had been built on the other side of the tracks so far, but now might be a good time to start. And it would separate her girls from the more upright citizens of Haskell—which was disappointing and self-defeating in one respect, but would make the crankier folks in town happy and protect her girls in the end.
“You know, I think that just might work,” she said at last.
“Of course it will work.” Rupert tugged her further into his arms. She circled her arms around his back, energy building where their bodies pressed together. A particular kind of heat filled her. “I’m beginning to believe anything could work if we came up with it together.”
He leaned in to kiss her. For the first time in years, she gave herself fully to his kiss, without hidden agendas or secret fears. There was nothing but hope in the interplay of their lips, the surge of desire as they caressed each other. Giddy joy replaced her worry, as if she’d suddenly found herself on the edge of a magnificent canyon that stretched in beauty to the horizon after struggling through a dense jungle for so long.
“Rex is going to be furious,” she managed to say as they shifted position to clasp each other tighter. She lowered her hands along his back to tug his shirt out of his trousers.
“Frankly, I don’t care how Rex Bonneville feels. You’re my wife.” He captured her mouth with his as his hands moved to the buttons at the back of her dress.
It seemed several beats too late and slightly pointless for Bonnie to say, “You know, there’s a bedroom in this house.”
“You don’t say.” Rupert chuckled, a low, seductive sound that send tremors through Bonnie, igniting her core.
Nothing else needed to be said or explained or apologized for. There were no more barriers between Bonnie and the man she’d never stopped loving, in spite of the pain and regret. If it made her every bit the whore people assumed she was, then so be it, but she yanked desperately at Rupert’s clothes, pushing his suspenders over his shoulders and down his arms. He helped her tug his shirt up over his head, then the insulating under shirt he wore beneath that. All the while, he fumbled with the buttons of her dress when he could, popping enough open to tug the bodice down her arms peeling it from her chest.
“Clothes are so damned inconvenient sometimes,�
�� she panted as she worked the fastenings of Rupert’s trousers.
“I’ll say,” Rupert agreed. He reached behind her to find the ties that would loosen her skirts and petticoats.
It was awkward, bumbling, and unsteady, but he pulled the drawstrings of her skirt, sending the whole lot sagging over her hips, just as she opened the front of his trousers and slid her hands inside. He was already stiff with need and groaned as her hands caressed him. She loved that sound, loved to hear the pleasure he couldn’t keep silent. She cupped his testes with one hand and surrounded his shaft with the other, moving that hand up and down.
“I want you, Rupert,” she murmured, glancing up at him with temptation in her eyes. “I want to feel you inside of me. I want to feel my husband inside of me.”
He replied with a wordless sound of desire, sliding his hands up to cradle her face as he brought his mouth crashing down over hers. It wasn’t a gentle, romantic kiss. It was a searing kiss that claimed her, even as she continued to hold and stroke him and bring him pleasure. Part of her wanted to work him until he released himself in her hands just so she could watch him in all his glory as he came apart, but the ache inside of her was growing hungrier by the moment. His tongue slipping in and out of her mouth in imitation of what she wanted didn’t help her patience at all.
The gentle rocking motion of his hips against her hands stopped suddenly, and he pulled away. “Too fast,” he growled, moving her hands back to her sides.
She understood, and instead of pushing him over the edge, swayed back and wriggled out of her dress and petticoats. With a teasing grin, she headed for the bedroom, peeking at him over her shoulder. When she reached the bedroom door, she crooked her finger at him, then slipped inside.
Rupert came after her like a shot, attempting to walk and undress at the same time. He stepped out of his boots and shucked his trousers and drawers as he stepped through the doorway to the bedroom, then kicked the door shut behind him. Bonnie twisted to face him from the side of the bed, heart pounding as she took in the sight of him fully naked. He was well-muscled and fit from his work, and the gift that God gave him stood out, thick and proud and obvious with desire. She couldn’t repress a throaty giggle at the sight of him.