Nate (The Rock Creek Six)

by Handeland, Lori

  He'd stiffened, pushed her away and rubbed her taste from his lips. The horror in his eyes had sent Jo running from Rock Creek, and then, when she'd gotten the courage to come back, he'd run off.

  So why had things changed? And did it really matter as long as they had?

  At the darkest hour, just before dawn, Nate turned to her again. She came awake at the first drift of his breath along her neck. She knew immediately who he was, where they were, what she wanted. Only with him had she ever felt whole. Beneath his hands she had at last come alive.

  The night breeze through the doorway cooled the sweat on her skin. She shivered, and he covered her with his body, warmed her with his kiss. His large hands clasped hers as he rocked inside of her, harder and deeper, touching a part of her she had not known could be touched. Together they came apart; his fingers clenched around her own until the tremors ceased.

  Dawn approached, turning the darkness gray. She could make out the tables and chairs now, even see a bead of moisture meandering down the side of Nate's neck.

  Pressing her lips to the drop, it burned her parched lips. She could taste him in her mouth, smell him on her skin. He surrounded her, filled her, consumed her.

  Jo rubbed her nose beneath his ear, tugged the lobe into her mouth and twirled it about with her tongue. She released him and whispered, "Morning, Nate."

  His entire body went rigid. Slowly he lifted his head. He blinked as if he could not believe what he was seeing. "Jo?"

  Dread filled her belly; ice danced down her spine. She couldn't speak. She could only nod.

  Horror filled his eyes, just as it had the only other time he'd touched her. Then he leaped from the bed, dragging the blanket with him. She skittered back against the wall, tugging the pillow across her front. His gaze went from Jo to the mattress and stuck there. The darkness of his beard only emphasized the gradual paling of his skin. He covered his mouth and ran outside.

  Jo let her gaze fall where Nate's had. As she'd expected, blood marred the yellowed mattress. The sound of his retching filled the room. Jo should go to him, hold him, help him, but she couldn't. Something was very wrong, and she had a dreadful feeling she knew what it was.

  She scrambled off the bed and yanked on her clothes. By the time Nate returned, looking paler than before if that were possible, she sat in the chair she'd found him in the night before. Though her entire body ached, inside and out, her mind whirled with logical and emotional premonitions as tangled as their bodies had been all night long.

  Nate leaned in the doorway as if he could not hold himself up without help. He probably couldn't, and right now Jo didn't care. For once she did not want to go to him and take all of his burdens onto herself. For once she would deal with her own burdens first.

  At least he'd looped the blanket around his waist so they would not have this conversation while he was completely naked. Nate was the least self-conscious man she knew. He rarely noticed when he was unclothed. Back in Rock Creek, she'd often had to remind him to put on his pants when she came to visit. Seeing his body had made her hot then. Funny how it made her cold now.

  "Who did you think I was?" Her voice was as frigid as her hands. Good.

  His gaze jerked from a continued contemplation of the bed to her face, and the shock in his eyes flared, then faded. He rubbed his head as if it pained him, and Jo thought back on all that had been said and done the night before.

  Nate was much worse than he'd been the last time she'd seen him. He had most likely been drinking for days, yet to her he had appeared stone sober. But maybe she had only seen what she wanted to see and heard what she wanted to hear.

  He sighed and dropped his hand, but he stared at the floor and not at her. "I thought you were my wife."

  Jo had believed she was cold before, but nothing could have prepared her for the chills that arrived on the heels of his confession. "Your who?"

  He made an impatient sound and stalked into the room, tossing the blanket over the evidence on the bed as if he couldn't bear to see it anymore.

  That made two of them.

  His bent head pulled the muscles in his back taut, and Jo had to force herself not to be distracted by his physical beauty. How on earth could she be aroused by him after what he'd said, after what they'd done?

  Adultery.

  Jo wanted to go outside and retch herself. Instead, she reached across the table and picked up one of Nate's pretty pearl pistols. She contemplated the gun. She couldn't go to hell twice, could she? Besides, she was already there.

  "When did you get married?" Her voice conversational, she tilted the weapon this way and that, catching the light from the rising sun along the handles. How could something so deadly be so appealing?

  She glanced at Nate's smooth, tanned back. Maybe ugliness lay beneath the surface of everything that was beautiful.

  She stood, cocked the gun and slowly he turned. She refused to be intimidated by his nakedness. He didn't care. Why should she? Just because the sight of him reminded her of every touch, every kiss, the glide of his skin on hers, his body within hers.

  "Put on your pants, Nate."

  Blue eyes still dark with shadows of despair met hers. "I don't think I will."

  She narrowed her gaze, tightened her lips. "Do it."

  He started to laugh, the sound a bit crazed. Jo wasn't sure what to do.

  "You going to shoot me, Josephine? You've always had a larger supply of guts than most men. More than me, at any rate."

  He started toward her and Jo tensed, alarmed. She didn't want him near her naked. She didn't want him near her at all. "S-stay over there."

  He smiled. "No."

  "I-I mean it, N-nate. Don't make me—"

  "What?" His long legs ate up the short distance. She didn't like the desperation in his eyes. Holding his gaze, she surreptitiously eased her finger off the trigger, moved her thumb up to release the hammer.

  She was too late. He took one last giant step and wrapped his large hand around the barrel, put the business end against his belly. "Do it, Josephine. What do you think I was up to here in Soledad? Why do you think I got Cash pissed enough to leave me behind? Why do you think I have all my guns loaded and all my good-byes left unsaid?"

  Her heart thundered so loudly she could scarcely think. With the gun against his skin, Jo was terrified to touch the hammer or anything else. He'd been planning to kill himself last night? She shouldn't be surprised.

  "Let go, Nate."

  He ignored her. "And you picked the right gun too. You asked me once why I never fired these pistols even though I carry them everywhere."

  Her eyes widened as the truth became evident. She tried to tug the gun free, but his hand was immovable.

  "Maybe you'll have better luck firing them than I ever did. I could face twenty men without a quiver, but try to shoot my own worthless self and I lost my nerve every time."

  "Suicide is a sin," she whispered.

  He laughed again, his hand and his body shaking with the force of his movements, and she held her breath, terrified the gun would go off.

  "You say that as if I believe in sin and redemption. As if anything matters to me but guns, women, booze, and the friendship of five men." He shook his head. "You should know me better than that by now, Josephine."

  When he called her Josephine, she wanted to kick him in the shins. He always used her full name when he was talking to her as if he were vastly older and wiser. He was thirty-five—ten years her senior. Certainly not old enough to be her father, if she'd been looking for one. Which she wasn't. One had been quite enough.

  She needed to calm down, to think and not to feel. Taking a deep breath, making a conscious effort, Jo forced her anger to fade. She would deal with it later, along with the death of her dream.

  With a cooler head came rational thoughts. Nate would not purposely hurt her. She doubted that he could. She had to get the gun away from him before he hurt himself.

  "You might not believe in sin and redemption, but
I do. Don't make me hurt you, Nate. Don't make me watch you hurt yourself. Last night you said you'd come home with me."

  "Last night I thought you were my wife, come to take me out of this hell in which I live."

  She blinked, shocked. "Nevertheless, you can come home with me now. Let the people who care about you heal you."

  "No one can heal me. I'm broken beyond repair."

  "I don't believe that."

  He looked into her face, his stark white and strained. In that moment he appeared much older than his thirty-five years. "Believe it."

  Reaching out with her free hand, she inserted her palm in front of the gun. If it went off, she'd be shot too. Nate would never allow that.

  As she'd expected, he let go of the barrel, grabbed her arm and pointed the weapon away from them both. "Jesus, Jo, have you no sense?"

  "Don't take the Lord's name in vain."

  He released her with a flick of the wrist. While she divested the pistols of their bullets and slipped the metal bits into her pockets, his curses, low and vicious, took the name of the Lord vainly a hundred ways. She should have known better than to rebuke him for such a thing. He enjoyed flouting his irreverence, he who had once been called reverend.

  "I need a goddamn drink." He put on his pants.

  Jo pursed her lips, refusing to rise to the bait. They had better things to argue about than his desecration of the language. Perhaps now that he'd covered himself, she could keep her mind off of his body for a few moments.

  He stretched, and the muscles across his bare belly and chest rippled. Make that a few seconds.

  "Where's your wife?"

  He flinched then rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Kentucky."

  "Does anyone else know?"

  "Know what?"

  "That you're married."

  A few muttered curses and he sat on the bed, almost immediately leaping to his feet as if he couldn't bear to be near the place where they had touched. Jo's heart hurt.

  "I'm not married."

  "But you said—"

  "She's dead, all right? Been dead for thirteen years now. Sometimes when I'm..." He lifted one chiseled shoulder, then lowered it. "I've never forgotten her. I'll never stop loving her."

  Thirteen years ago would have been during the war. How had she died? Jo wanted to ask, but couldn't bring herself to.

  Instead she said, "What was her name?"

  "Angela."

  "Angel face." The words slipped out before Jo could stop them.

  His gaze flew to hers. "How did you know that?"

  Obviously he remembered nothing of what he had said to her last night. He probably remembered nothing of what they had done, either, wouldn't have known any different if she'd slipped from his bed, taken him home, and kept the beautiful lie to herself.

  In her secret soul, relief burned as inappropriate and hateful happiness bubbled. If his wife was gone, he wasn't married any longer. The sin of adultery did not exist—merely fornication instead. An ugly word for what had happened last night.

  Jo had believed they were touching in love, that marriage would follow. Now she knew she loved alone and would remain alone. Because even though Nate wasn't married to someone else, he didn't want to be married to her. His heart belonged to a dead woman.

  "Jo." His voice was soft, but urgent. "How did you know that?"

  "You called me angel face last night."

  His sigh was so sad Jo's eyes burned. She blinked hard to make the unaccustomed tears recede. Only Nate could make her want to weep with the slightest inflection of his voice, the merest tightening of his mouth.

  "We need to talk about this." He waved his hands in a vague motion that included him, her, the bed—everything and nothing at all. "But first I need a drink."

  Jo's hand shot out, her fingers curling around his. He stilled and confusion flickered across his face. Did he remember how their hands had clenched together with the release of their bodies the final time they'd been in each other's arms?

  But when he looked into her eyes, his held not a hint of softness, nor a single flicker of nostalgia. "Don't," he said, his voice as hard as his gaze.

  "What?"

  "Don't ask me not to drink, Jo. It's the only thing you've ever asked of me, and the one thing I can't give. So, please, don't make me disappoint you again."

  She released him and turned around so she wouldn't have to watch him walk out of the cottage and into the saloon. How many times had she asked him to stop? She'd never realized he took his inability to give her what she asked for as a personal failure.

  Jo leaned her head against the adobe wall. The chill of the night still lived in the stone and soothed her feverish skin. She thought back over all he'd said, all they'd done, all that had happened since she'd ridden into Soledad.

  Nate could not know she loved him. She could not add to his guilt; she would not invite his pity. Nate's heart was taken by another and would never be hers.

  Jo had endured a lifetime of loving a man who turned away every time she asked to be loved back. She had never heard the words I love you except from her own mouth. The humiliation of that would never leave her, even though her father was gone. She would not put herself in such a situation again.

  Something else bothered her about last night. But she was too tired from the sex, too sad from the truth, too frightened over how close Nate had come to dying to think straight. She couldn't put her finger on what was out of place.

  But she would.

  Chapter 3

  Nate's appearance in the saloon just after dawn surprised a squeak out of the owner, Hernando. Nate never woke up before noon. The sunrise was too damn bright and cheery, too indicative of hope, of which there was none. Sunsets were more his style. Or perhaps midnight with no moon.

  "Senor! Are you ill?"

  "Shut up, Nando."

  Nate went behind the bar and took a bottle. He was already to the door when the barkeep cleared his throat nervously. Why the little man was afraid of him, Nate couldn't quite recall, but he enjoyed the solitude brought by the man's fear.

  "Senor, I stabled the senorita's horse. Is the senorita... como usted dice...?" He searched his mind for the English then lit upon it with a smile. "All right?"

  "She's fine. Gracias."

  Nate stalked back to the cottage. It was unlike Jo to forget her horse. But then she'd been fully occupied losing her virginity.

  He resisted the urge to smash the bottle of whiskey against his head. What had happened last night?

  Besides the obvious.

  He'd finished what he'd believed was his last bottle, loaded the guns, and waited for the sun to die first. Then Angela had come to take him home, preventing him from killing himself. He'd been so happy to see her, he hadn't stopped to think—as if he were capable of thinking in that condition—that Angela was in her grave and would not be coming back for him. How could he have been such a fool?

  Jo was off limits. She was a child, for Christ's sake. She was a friggin' missionary. Jesus!

  The curse words he favored, any variation of the violation of the Third Commandment, flowed through his head freely, but the usual litany did no good.

  He couldn't change what he'd done. He couldn't give back what he'd taken, couldn't replace what she'd lost. So what was he going to do with her?

  Nate stood in the doorway and lifted the bottle to his lips—one, two, three swigs. He waited for the tremors that had begun in his belly, and would soon spread to his hands and from there throughout his body if he didn't satisfy the craving for alcohol, to subside.

  Jo stood across the room, her forehead pressed to the adobe wall as though afraid if she moved she'd fall down. What in hell had she done to her hair? It looked as if she'd hacked it off with a Bowie knife.

  He wanted to go over and hold her up as she'd held him up so many times. But he no longer knew what to say to her, was afraid if he touched her, she'd recoil. Or, worse, she'd come back into his arms and he'd let her. The oblivion provided
by a willing woman was an oblivion he'd availed himself of a thousand times before.

  But Jo deserved more than becoming his newest method of forgetfulness. She deserved the world, and he would only give her pain. Why in hell hadn't she shot him last night the instant he'd first touched her?

  "I figured you'd drink at the saloon."

  Her voice sounded the same, as if nothing untoward had happened between them. Since he couldn't remember any of it, perhaps they could continue to pretend just that.

  "What for?"

  She turned and stared at him with the same cool impartiality in her eyes that had seconds ago been in her voice, but she still held up the wall—with her back instead of her head.

  "Not like this—" Nate lifted the bottle to the light, tilted it this way and that until the liquid turned the shade of flames across the water "—is it any kind of secret."

  He crossed the room and sat at the table. He needed three to five more swallows before he'd be able to stand for more than a minute without his knees shaking.

  "Nando, from the bar, stabled your horse."

  "Ruth! I completely forgot about her." Instead of holding up the wall, she slumped against it.

  "Relax. No harm done."

  "She depends on me to take care of her."

  "Is there anyone or anything you don't take care of?"

  "There's you. But only because you won't let me."

  Same old Jo, same old argument.

  He sighed. "There is no helping me."

  "So you say."

  "Sit," he ordered. She merely raised her eyebrows and stayed where she was.

  The way she refused to come near him now, when in the past he'd been unable to get rid of her, caused a horrible thought to surface. "Did I force you?" he blurted.

  She straightened, hands clenching, eyes narrowing. "Of course not!"

  "Then why... how..." He gave up trying to put into words what he couldn't believe he had done and tilted the bottle up once, twice more.

  If he hadn't taken, then why had she given him something so precious? He wasn't sure how to ask. He should have known Jo would simply answer.