“I was looking at them when you knocked. Rather than have you see them, I stuffed them under the bedspread.”
Anger burned, tightening his throat and making his voice harsh. “Why’d you even have the damn things?”
“I was curious.” Her face throbbed in embarrassment, but she knew she had to explain. After the pain she’d caused him, she owed him that much. “No one has ever kissed me the way you did, or made me feel that way before.” She gathered her hands into a tight fist in front of her. “I just wanted to know something about you. That’s all.”
His eyes turned hard as steel. “So what do you think? Did I do it?”
Callie would rather climb in the hole the rat had found than answer the question. Since that wasn’t a possibility, she offered vaguely, “I don’t know.”
“Surely you have an opinion after reading all the trash they published about the trial.”
“If I were to judge on that alone, I’d say you were guilty.” She waited a beat, then added, “But I learned a long time ago to believe only half of what I see, and none of what I hear.”
He stared at her long and hard. “Yet you believe you are a descendant of Miss Lizzy’s?”
“Miss Lizzy?”
“Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. That’s what everybody in town called her.”
“Oh,” she replied thoughtfully, then more determinedly asserted, “Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because William Leighton Sawyer is my great-grandfather, and he was her son.”
“Who says?”
“He says.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Because I trust him.”
Judd took a step toward her. “Do you trust me?”
Cornered, Callie took a step back. “Well, yes.”
“Liar.”
She stopped, and her chin came up. “Okay, I don’t trust you, but then I don’t know you as well as I do Papa.”
“That I can accept. Because I don’t know you, either, and I’m not at all sure I trust you.” He puckered his lips thoughtfully. “I guess that makes us about even then, doesn’t it?”
Callie’s breath sagged out of her. For the first time since she had met Judd, she felt as if they were on even ground. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
Judd stared at her for a moment, then nodded toward the boxes. “What were you doing when the mouse paid you a visit?”
“That was no mouse,” she stated indignantly. “It was a rat, and I was trying to clear a path to the room I rented so I can move in my equipment.”
“Need any help?”
The offer took Callie by surprise. “Well, yes, if you don’t have anything else to do.”
Judd thought of the liquor order spread on the table downstairs that was due in by five o’clock. If he helped her, he knew he’d never get it done in time. “Nothing that can’t wait.”
They fell to the task together, pushing and shoving, and a walkway soon appeared. While Judd dragged an old, tattered sofa out of the way and nudged it against the wall, Callie lifted the lid on a trunk. The stinging scent of mothballs hit her full in the face. Fanning the air beneath her nose, she lifted out a box. She opened it and poked through an assortment of buttons, yellowed envelopes and broken pieces of jewelry. She chuckled as she picked up a letter and waved it toward Judd. “Would you look at this? A three cent—”
Her smile faded when she caught a glimpse of the address.
Judd made his way through the trail of boxes, dusting off his hands. “What cost three cents?”
“A postage stamp,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the name.
When he reached her side, she lifted her gaze to his, her eyes filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, and handed him the envelope.
Frowning, Judd scanned the front of the envelope. Mrs. Elizabeth Bodean, Guthrie, Oklahoma. He glanced up to find Callie watching him through unblinking eyes.
“It was hers,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Mary Elizabeth’s.”
He’d known the trunk was here and more, but he hadn’t told Callie. There were secrets he felt obligated to protect. Unable to meet her gaze any longer, Judd dropped his own back to the envelope. “So it is.”
Callie sank to her knees in front of the trunk. “The answers I’m looking for might very well be right here.”
“Maybe,” Judd replied doubtfully.
Callie tipped up her head. “Do you think anyone would mind my looking through this?”
A disapproving frown quirked one side of Judd’s mouth, but then he let out a sigh. “Who’d complain? The Bodeans didn’t have any family. All this junk was here when my parents bought the building years ago.” He watched her reach inside and knew this was something she needed to do on her own. “I’ll head back downstairs. If you need anything, just holler.”
Her attention already taken by the contents of the trunk, Callie replied absently, “Thanks, Judd.”
* * *
Hours later, Callie sat curled on the tattered tapestry sofa, surrounded by piles of old clothes, stacks of yellowed letters bound by faded ribbon and boxes filled with sundry items whose importance were only known by the person who had placed them there. In her lap lay an opened book. An old floor lamp, dragged from one of the rooms opening off the common area, threw a circle of light on the book. Bound in leather and filled with the swirling handwriting of a young girl, the diary was the one Mary Elizabeth Sawyer had started at the age of sixteen.
Callie rubbed at her tired eyes and stretched to ease her cramped muscles. She’d read the entire book and didn’t have any more idea than before about her great-great-grandmother—or Miss Lizzy, as Judd had said she’d been known.
The writings were those of a young girl, immature in many ways, but with a hint of the woman she must have become. That she was intelligent was obvious. That she was stubborn, more obvious still.
Callie sighed and laid the book aside. The answers she’d hoped to find still evaded her. The picture Lizzie had painted of her parents was much like that Papa had shared of his life with them. The Sawyers were cold, strict and unforgiving.
Her thoughts clouded by the past, she pulled a shawl up around her shoulders and leaned back, letting her mind drift. Why would a woman of Lizzy’s upbringing leave Boston and follow a man she hardly knew halfway across the country into an unsettled and wild territory? And why had she sent her infant son back to Boston to be raised by the parents that by her own admission she’d wanted so badly to escape?
A door opened and closed, the sound seeming to come from one of the rooms behind her. Callie unfolded her legs and sat up, listening. A draft of cold air swept over her. She twisted around and squinted into the darkness beyond the lamp’s circle of light. A shiver worked its way down her spine. She wrapped the shawl tightly around herself. “Is anyone there?” she called.
She strained to listen and watch. Shadows moved through the darkness, and Callie swore she heard a woman’s voice humming a tender lullaby. She stood, took a few steps toward the far room, then stopped and listened again. The humming drifted away to be replaced by another sound coming from the opposite direction—the soft strains of guitar music. And it seemed to come from the staircase leading from the bar. Sure that the acoustics in the large room were playing tricks on her, Callie tiptoed to the stairwell and peered down.
The saloon had already closed for the night and only a single light shone above the bar. Drawn by the lonely call of each strummed chord, Callie eased down the steps and peeked over the stair rail, trying to locate the source of the haunting music. At the foot of the stairway, she turned, then ducked back into the shadows when she saw Judd sitting on a stool at the center of a small stage, a guitar propped on his knee. She waited, listening, letting the music wash over her until his thumb raked the strings on the final chord.
He continued to sit, his head bowed, his arm crooked lovingly over the guitar’s curved body
as if it were a woman’s waist. Callie stepped from the shadows. “That was beautiful.”
His head came up with a jerk. His eyes narrowed when he spotted her and he laid aside the guitar.
Though his look was anything but inviting, Callie strolled toward him. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that tune before. What was it?”
“It’s just a little ditty I’ve been working on.”
“Are you planning to record it?”
“No.”
“You should. It would be a hit.”
“I’m not in the music business anymore.” He pulled a cigarette from his front pocket, stuck it between his lips and let it dangle there while he stretched out a leg to dig a matchbook from his jean’s pocket. The match flamed, illuminating his face behind his cupped hands. He looked the part of the gunslinger again, the lines on his face hard and unforgiving.
Callie watched him draw in the first long drag. “I didn’t think singers smoked.”
“They usually don’t.” He bent and picked up a beer sitting in a pool of condensation by his stool. Straightening, he tipped the bottle and drank long and deep. He lowered the bottle to his thigh and squinted at her through a haze of smoke. “But like I said, I’m not in the music business anymore.”
He tilted the bottle her way. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Though she’d never developed the taste for beer, Callie shrugged. “Sure.”
She followed him to the bar. He slipped behind it while she angled a hip onto a stool opposite him.
Judd pried the caps off two long-neck bottles and shoved one across the bar. Callie held hers between her palms, letting the moisture dampen her hands as she watched Judd lean back against the counter fronting the mirror. The light behind and above him threw his face into shadows. As always, simply being in his presence made her pulse race and her mouth go as dry as parchment. She lifted the bottle and took a sip.
She wasn’t a beer drinker. Judd knew that as soon as he saw her nose wrinkle after the first delicate sip. Her tongue arced out to lick at the moisture the bottle had left around her mouth. He knew if he didn’t say something and fast, he’d be tempted to kiss her again. “Did you find anything interesting in the trunk?”
The question won a frown. “No, not really. I found a diary Mary Elizabeth wrote as a teenager while still living at home with her parents, but nothing after her arrival in Guthrie.”
“So what do you plan to do now?”
“I made an appointment with a lawyer for the day after tomorrow to check on having the grave exhumed.”
Judd scowled.
His constant censure frustrated Callie. “I suppose you don’t approve.”
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
“I think the past is sometimes better left alone.”
The bitterness in his response could be a result of his own troubled history, but Callie had the distinct feeling he was holding something back. “Do you know something you aren’t telling me?”
Judd stared at her a moment, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. “I’ve told you everything I know about the grave,” he said finally. “Miss Lizzy’s baby died at birth and was buried out on the hill at Summit View.”
Callie’s fingers tightened on the beer bottle. “Her baby did not die.”
Judd pushed away from the counter and moved to lean across the bar, his face bare inches from hers. “I know. Her son’s name is William Leighton Sawyer and he’s one hundred and four years old and lives in a nursing home in Dallas.” A teasing grin chipped at one corner of his mouth. “You sure are pretty when you’re riled.”
Heat flooded Callie’s face at the backhanded compliment. She flattened her hand against his nose and shoved his face away. “Don’t try to change the subject by sweet-talking me.”
Judd chuckled. “Sorry, but you are pretty when you’re riled.” He flattened his palms on the bar, heaved himself up, then twisted around until his boots dangled next to Callie’s knee. Catching her fingers in his, he lifted her hand, pulling her up until she stood between his legs. “How ‘bout another little experiment?” he asked. “The last one we tried seemed a little inconclusive to me.”
Five
“Do you mean a kiss, like the last experiment we tried?” she asked, her pulse skittering at the mere memory.
His lips curved in a lazy smile. “We could start there.” He nudged aside her hair and brushed his lips across the sensitive skin beneath her ear. Callie dug her hands into his arms to steady herself. She didn’t need another experiment. The first had been conclusive enough. Judd Barker’s kisses devastated her like no other man’s had. But if an experiment was what he needed to justify a little one-on-one, who was she to argue?
She closed her eyes and tipped back her head, savoring the warmth of his breath at her neck. “Okay,” she whispered. “If you think it’s necessary.”
“Oh, I definitely think it’s necessary,” he whispered. He wet a trail up the smooth column of her neck with his tongue, then nipped lightly at her lower lip before withdrawing slightly to ask, “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” she murmured, forcing her eyes open to meet the heat in his eyes. “Yes,” she repeated, then leaned into him, seeking the pleasure and taste of his lips again.
Judd locked his ankles beneath the cheeks of her backside and dragged her full against him, knotting his hands in her hair. Callie knew it was insane, impossible, but she wanted desperately to get closer still. She wanted to burrow beneath his skin and bury herself at the very core of his soul. The sensation was new to her, for she’d never experienced anything like it with Stephen. With him, she more often dodged intimacy than sought it. So why did she feel this way with Judd Barker, a man she barely knew? Why? Why? Why?
The question continued to hammer at her until she dragged her lips from his. Her breasts heaving, she framed his head between her hands and tipped his face until their foreheads touched.
“My God, how do you do this to me?” she murmured shakily.
“What do I do?”
Callie lifted her face until her gaze met his. “You make me crazy.”
A hint of a smile touched his lips. “Do I? I thought it was you making me crazy.”
“No,” she said, wagging her head in denial. “It’s definitely you.” She took a step back, digging her fingers through her hair, confused by the emotions flooding her. “I think I should go.”
Judd’s eyes darkened and the smile slowly melted off his face. He hopped down from the bar. “Probably best if you did,” he agreed curtly. “I’ll walk you back to the hotel.”
That she’d offended him was obvious, but it couldn’t be helped. And she was about to offend him further, because she certainly didn’t want him walking her back to the hotel. Distance is what she needed from him, not an escort.
“Thanks, but that’s not necessary. The Harrison House is just a block away.”
“It’s late. You don’t need to be out on the street alone.”
One glance at the window and the eerie feeling she’d experienced earlier upstairs came crawling back. She swallowed back the arguments. “If you insist,” she replied reluctantly, assuring herself she would leave him at the door to the hotel.
She followed him to the saloon’s entrance, where he grabbed his duster and hat from a rack nearby before tugging open the door for her. Putting on her jacket, she stepped outside, then waited while he shrugged into his duster and locked up. Together, they started up the brick walk. They walked in silence, the night cold and lonesome around them. If she’d thought she could leave the magnetism that drew her to him at the bar, she was wrong. It hummed between them like something alive.
Their shoulders brushed once. Twice. Their knuckles grazed. Electricity crackled between them. Their hands touched again, and this time Judd laced his fingers through Callie’s. Startled, she glanced up. His eyes remained fixed on the street ahead, his gaze unwavering, but he tightened his grip on her hand and lengthened his stride. Callie was for
ced to all but run to keep up.
By the time they reached the hotel, she was breathing hard, her skin alive with nerves. Judd pushed open the door to the hotel, nodded a tight-lipped greeting to Frank behind the desk and firmly guided Callie to the elevator. In silence, they traveled to the second floor, each staring at the floor indicator, unable and unwilling to look at the other. When the doors slid open, Judd slapped a hand against the panel to hold it open for her, then followed her out into the hallway.
Her fingers shaking, Callie dug her key from her jacket pocket. “Thanks for walking me to my room.” She stuck the key in the lock and gave it a twist without looking at Judd, though every nerve ending in her body tingled at his nearness.
“If I were a gentleman, I’d say good-night and go home.”
Her heart leapt to her throat. Somehow she found the courage to look up. His eyes were on her, watching, waiting. The attraction that always seemed to hum between them turned to a deafening roar.
“I don’t want you to go.” The words were out before Callie could stop them.
Judd gave the door a push with the toe of his boot. “Good, ‘cause I wasn’t feeling like much of a gentleman.”
Callie tore her gaze from his and entered the room ahead of him. A bedside lamp was on, bathing the room in soft light, and the bed covers were turned down, courtesy of the hotel. The room was spacious, but for some reason tonight the bed seemed to dominate the area. Callie cut a wide girth around it while she pulled off her jacket. She hung it in the closet, then reached for Judd’s, her gaze meeting his, then skittering nervously away. She hung his duster beside her jacket, taking her good, sweet time at the task.
The weight of his hand at her shoulder made her turn. Their gazes met and tangled. Emotions warred in the depths of his brown eyes. Passion, loneliness, caution, even a little fear. Because she understood and shared each, her heart reached out to him.
He opened his arms in silent invitation and she stepped into them, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her cheek against his chest. The thud of his heart was a welcome sound, the warmth and strength of his embrace a comfort she’d wanted more than she cared to admit.
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