Calico

by Raine Cantrell

  In a soft, coaxing tone he said, “Show me where the wee ones are, and I’ll get rid of them for you.”

  “Here,” she answered, rubbing her belly in circles. “An’ down here.” Maggie dragged her hands over her thighs. “Your fault. You bring ’em out.”

  “I bring them out? Don’t blame me for this.” McCready closed his eyes for a moment, groaning at the urge to replace Maggie’s hands with his.

  Maggie started laughing. “You’re movin’.” She cocked her head to the side and covered her mouth with one hand to stifle the laughter. “Can’t fool me.”

  Whatever anger he had at that second left him. How could he remain angry when she wore a lopsided smile and wagged her finger at him. “Maggie, I don’t want to fool you. I just want you to come down from the table before you hurt yourself.”

  Even with the door open McCready felt the whiskey fumes getting to him. A twinge of guilt wormed its way inside him. He had not left the windows open so that Maggie couldn’t climb out and escape.

  “Come to me, Maggie. I’ll help you.”

  She eyed the four hands he held out and began humming the song she had been singing.

  McCready edged around the table, trying to get his hands on her.

  Maggie wavered back and forth, almost lost her balance, but managed to evade him.

  Twice around the table was enough for McCready. He waited until Maggie had taken another turn and her back was to him, then leapt up onto the table, hoping it would hold their combined weight. “Maggie,” he whispered, “I’m—”

  “I’m drunk.” Wide-eyed and solemn, she gazed at him over her shoulder.

  “I know that, Maggie.”

  “Do?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I can see that for myself. Was this your idea of revenge because I left you alone or some whim you indulged?”

  She lowered her head, trying to make sense of what he had asked. The only word she grabbed hold of was revenge. McCready wasn’t going to like knowing that’s why she broke his whiskey bottles. But he was wrong about why she did.

  He touched her shoulder. “ ’Cready? You’re makin’ the wee ones dance.”

  Holding one arm out to the side ready to catch her, he could only murmur that he was sorry, then asked, “Does it happen often?”

  “When you’re near.”

  McCready drew on the last store of his patience. “Then come off the table, and I won’t be near you anymore. The wee ones will leave then, won’t they?”

  “I keep tryin’ to make ’em go.”

  McCready knew it wasn’t a plea for help, but he jumped down and braced himself, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her off the table. He staggered as Maggie fell against him, but he managed to keep them both upright. Within his loose embrace Maggie sighed and flung her arms around him.

  His destroyed stash of whiskey was forgotten. Maggie’s lips were pressing against his. Definitely more potent, and infinitely smoother, they pressed and parted, and he couldn’t help himself. He took her mouth, sweeping the whiskey-warm taste of her up and inside himself, hungry enough to forget that she didn’t know what she was doing.

  Maggie knew the wee ones had somehow gotten hold of McCready’s whiskey. There could be no other reason for the seeping warmth that trickled from her breasts to her thighs. With a cry she freed her mouth and sagged against him. She closed her eyes but could still see McCready’s face. Into the whiskey-induced cloud came the certainty that no matter what she tried, nothing was going to get rid of the flutters that danced inside her the same way McCready’s fingers played on her back. Not whiskey. Not kissing.

  The gold, Maggie, a voice whispered. You’ve still got the gold.

  McCready beat the feather mattress after he had cleared the wooden tub out of the cabin and put Maggie to bed. The tick, hanging on a rope strung from the corner of the cabin to the empty corral’s fence, took the punishment he longed to deliver to her bottom.

  “Two damn days!” he yelled, taking another swing with the broom. “I had to tell Dutch to wait two days before he comes back.”

  Sweat rolled down his face, and he used his forearm to wipe it away, having long since discarded his shirt. With a glance at the cloudless sky, he asked, “Did that woman have any idea of the strain she’d put on me without my whiskey?” He remembered her smug smile as he had tucked her in. “She knew, all right, she knew.”

  Muttering to himself, he gripped the broom handle tighter. Suddenly he realized that even when Dutch met him in two days, the man wouldn’t know that McCready needed whiskey. His next swing split open the repair Maggie had labored over, and the feathers went flying. But he didn’t curse, he didn’t once swear. He dropped the broom and started for the open door.

  Beating the feather tick no longer satisfied him.

  The sight of Maggie, curled tight in the quilt on his bed, stopped him. Male instinct said she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. He couldn’t take his revenge with violence. Maggie would be expecting that from him, and what’s more, she would be ready to fight him.

  His smile smacked of the devil’s own. “Mary Margaret O’Roarke, you’re not going to like how you will pay for my whiskey. But, I swear, pay for it you will.”

  And as the long hours of the night crawled by, and Maggie blissfully slept on, McCready kept adding to his list of her sins, compounding the debt that she owed him.

  “You owe me, Cornwallis!” Ryder shouted, banging his fist on the gleaming wood desk that belonged to Thadius. “I damn near killed that horse to get here an’ tell you what’s been happening in Cooney Camp. You’re the man with his hands in every bit of dirty laundry in the territory. An’ you tell me that I ain’t got money coming?”

  Thadius lit his cigar, then shifted the papers in front of him to buy time. Lowly hirelings like Ryder were never supposed to know he was the man behind their doings. He gazed at the ash on his cigar and said, “Sit down. We’ll discuss this, Ryder. I’m not unreasonable, but I’m curious as to how you knew about me. Care to explain that?”

  Shrugging, Ryder sat. “Ain’t no big deal. I searched Quincy’s bags before I said I’d work for him.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “The letter you sent telling him what to do.”

  “You can read?”

  Ryder came up out of his chair. Threateningly he leaned over the desk. “Yeah. I can read, little fat man. So what?”

  “Sit down. Please, sit down,” Thadius implored, mopping the sweat from his brow. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It is unusual to find a man of your … well, your talents able to read.”

  “My ma was a Bible-reading woman, an’ she taught me.”

  Thadius nodded, but he was silently acknowledging that he had made a mistake and judged Ryder too fast. He would never again commit anything to paper linking him with Cooney Camp. But Ryder was going to be his means to an end, not Quincy’s. He could not let Ryder know how upsetting his news was. Damn Quincy! The man’s failure to follow simple orders to marry a backward girl, and have her make out a will before he killed her, was costing him time and money. But he would have to wait to deal with Quincy’s incompetence when he showed up.

  He didn’t need this along with the additional pressure from William Berger. The man was obsessed with gaining possession of that gold mine to realize his political dreams. He glanced at the gun slung low on Ryder’s hip as the man sat down again. Perhaps he could use Ryder to rid him of all three problems. Berger had lost his usefulness. Quincy had unwittingly revealed his involvement, and Maggie O’Roarke was an unnecessary obstacle.

  He knew that Ryder was waiting for him to offer money. It went against Thadius’s grain to pay for something twice, when the first time didn’t see the job done.

  Thadius flipped open the box on the corner of his desk. “Help yourself, Ryder. We have business to discuss.”

  “Ain’t a smoking man. An’ I’d rather hear about the money I got coming.”

&nb
sp; “In good time.” Smiling, Thadius leaned forward. “There is a man I want you to see in Cooney Camp. Andrew Burton.”

  “The mercantile owner? What’s he got to do with you?”

  “Now, let’s talk money, Ryder. Then I’ll explain what you have to do to earn it.”

  William Berger had made his decision. Thadius was stalling. He didn’t trust anyone but himself to gain possession of that gold mine near Cooney Camp. A three-day growth of beard along with the store-bought clothes marked him as one of a hundred drifters in the territory. His altered appearance ensured him that no one would recognize him.

  After snapping closed the loaded cylinder on his gun, he sighted it beyond the fire. Tomorrow would see him in Cooney Camp with Cora Ann Avernel working for him. There were times when he missed being the man of action. It sweetened the reward he was after. He had to eliminate what stood in his way. First Quincy and his supposed-to-be bride. Then Thadius.

  It had been a long time since he’d set up such a smooth double cross. He settled his head on his saddle, dreaming of gold and all it could buy.

  Chapter 11

  “Hang it, McCready! Your damn whistlin’s got me wishin’ I was grinnin’ at the daisy roots.”

  He smiled, then continued his whistling.

  The morning had crept by, just as Maggie herself had crept around the cabin, restless and filled with the dread of what he was going to do. She knew he thought it was the whiskey that made her mood surly, but Maggie knew better. It was the dreams of his mouth and the hot look of his eyes that had plagued her sleep and made her long for freedom.

  And he watched her. The moment she went near the open window to study the dark clouds piling in the distance, he was on his feet behind her.

  She couldn’t take much more. Careful not to touch him, Maggie slipped away and returned to her place by the fire. Desperation for something to do had driven her to make biscuits, and she moved the short-legged cast-iron spider back from the coals so that they would not burn. In a kettle beans, venison, and wild onions simmered. She gave it a stir, staring at the stew.

  “Needs more salt.”

  “You didn’t even taste it, Maggie.”

  “Some things you just know by lookin’.”

  McCready was giving her the crock before she could move. Maggie took it, unable to avoid touching his hands. Her gaze locked with his, and her memory supplied a flash of seeing this same look in his eyes once before. The day she had confronted him in the Rawhider. McCready was not only eating her alive with his eyes, he attacked her senses and sent panic streaming through her again. Her breath caught in her throat. The crock slipped from her hands, spilling the salt before it shattered.

  McCready didn’t glance at the broken crockery. He couldn’t drag his gaze away from the glittering awareness he glimpsed in Maggie’s eyes. He felt himself being pulled by more than the desire he felt for her. Maggie was stirring emotions that he had thought long dead and unneeded.

  “McCready?” she whispered.

  “Yeah, Maggie. I know just what you mean. Some things you just know by looking.”

  Awareness melded with feminine curiosity in the ancient green of her eyes. The quick little catch of her breath, the parting of her lips, and the slight forward move she made, all invited a kiss. But for once McCready didn’t act on it. He knew kisses weren’t going to be enough to calm the fever that was building by seconds inside him.

  Maggie didn’t ask what he meant. She knew. Her hands curled into fists and her belly tightened. She didn’t want to be kissed by McCready, did she? She shouldn’t want him to kiss her again—want it so badly she could taste it.

  She remembered that he told her she would like being married to him, that he would make her understand what being his wife meant. Maggie wasn’t sure she was ready to find out.

  McCready had reached the same conclusion. But there was still the matter of his whiskey to be settled between them. He slowly straightened and crooked his finger at her. “Come with me, Maggie. I want to explain how you’ll pay for my whiskey.”

  “Whiskey? Pay?” Was that near mewling voice hers? Maggie shook her head. She wasn’t afraid of him, was she? It was the sight of his crooked finger motioning her to come that shredded the last of the webs he skillfully entangled around her with his nearness. She joined him at the table.

  “Let’s imagine that there is a bottle on this table, Maggie. And you watch me pour out a glass. Please,” he said sarcastically, “note, I must use both my hands, one to hold the bottle, the other to hold the glass. Now a man sometimes likes to sip and contemplate his whiskey. He uses both hands to do so. With me so far?”

  Maggie glanced from the cupped hands up to McCready’s watchful eyes. She didn’t trust the glitter within their blue color, but she nodded that she understood his motions.

  “Good, Maggie.” He gave her a beaming smile of approval. “Now, as I was explaining, here I am holding my glass, and I lift it to my lips to drink. Then I set it down. A serious drinking man could stretch out a bottle for hours, but we need to remember that I don’t have a bottle of whiskey anymore. Do I?”

  What was he getting at? She shook her head, then added a weak, “No.”

  McCready leaned forward, his gaze once more targeting hers. “Did you give a thought as you broke my bottles of whiskey as to what I’d be doing with my hands and mouth if I couldn’t drink?”

  Maggie’s hands clutched each other tight on her lap.

  “Where’s that quick stabbing tongue, Maggie mine?”

  Stuck to the roof of me mouth, she wanted to answer but couldn’t. The glitter in McCready’s eyes seemed brighter. Maggie knew this boded her no good.

  “You’ll have to pay, O’Roarke. I’ll need something to keep my hands and mouth busy. Fair enough?”

  Maggie swallowed. “If I had me knife, I could teach you to whittle.”

  “Not good enough. That would keep my hands busy, but not my mouth.”

  “You could whistle, McCready. Much as it drives me crazy to hear it, you could do it.”

  “Ah, it does my heart good to know that you’re so willing to be accommodating about this, Maggie. I had hoped it would be so.”

  The crafty look he wore alerted Maggie that she wasn’t going to like his payment demand. She had seen that same look on a hundred miners’ faces when someone asked about their claims.

  “To make sure there is no misunderstanding between us, we are in agreement that you owe me for breaking my supply of whiskey.” McCready was betting on Maggie’s honesty to get her to say yes. She made him wait, but patience was on his side, since he wanted everything spelled out for her.

  “I owe you, McCready. An’ as soon as me mines are producin’, I’ll pay you.”

  “Now, Maggie mine, I’m the one who is going to set the terms here, not you. Besides,” he added, sitting back and crooking one arm over the back of the chair, “I can’t wait that long.”

  “Oh.”

  He watched her squirm in her chair, but to her credit she didn’t try to get up.

  “So, you see my predicament. I—”

  “Stop usin’ them big words. An’ I found a way. I’ll cook and wash. Drive me crazy to do for the likes of you, but I’ll pay what I owe.”

  “Not good enough, Maggie. That keeps you busy, not me.”

  “You cook and wash?” she suggested, holding on to the hope that he would agree. The crafty look was gone from his face, but in its place was the look McCready wore when he held the winning hand. Her whole body was tensing, and Maggie didn’t know if it was from fear or excitement.

  “No, Maggie, that doesn’t work, either. My way will give us both something to do at the same time.”

  “It will?” Faith and begorra! What was the man thinking of?

  McCready savored the moment and let her wait after he nodded. He couldn’t decide if he should tell her or show her. Given Maggie’s volatile temperament, no matter which he ch
ose it could end with the same results. McCready shoved his chair back and rose, coming around the table before Maggie could move. At her side he hunkered down, bracing one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the table in front of her.

  “Maggie, you agreed to pay me. And this is how. Each time I need a drink, you’ll have to kiss me.”

  “Kiss you?” she parroted. With her eyes closed she didn’t see his nod or his satisfied smile. All Maggie thought about was his knowing that she had wanted to kiss him. Devil’s own that McCready was, he had figured out a way. She felt the quickening of her heart and the wee ones dancing with glee. Her body was against her mind.

  She opened her eyes but kept them on the table, studying the hard strength of his hand. She had to keep his hands and mouth busy, that’s what he said. There had to be more rules to this payment. She had to know where he’d be keeping his hands.

  McCready lifted his hand from the back of her chair and lightly smoothed her hair. “Well? Are you going to do it or welsh?”

  “I’ve never welshed in me life, McCready, an’ if you’d not be knowin’ that—”

  “I know, Maggie. I counted on it.”

  The ring of truth was in his voice, and Maggie had to face him. “You figured this for a time, didn’t you?”

  “No. How could I? You broke the whiskey, Maggie. I’m just collecting on the debt you owe me.” He found himself swallowing and hesitating a moment before he asked, “Do you find the thought of kissing me distasteful?”

  “I wouldn’t be sayin’ that.”

  “Then you like kissing me?”

  Maggie knew she was in hot water, hot and deep. She’d be a fool seven ways to Saturday to admit she liked his kisses.

  Avoiding answering his question took some thought, but she found a way. “You like drinkin’ for hours.”

  “I’ve been known to.”