Kit Gardner

by Twilight

  “Well, I can. And I will.” Again, she jabbed his chest. And then something in his eyes, a deep and wild darkening of gold to bronze, sent a shaft of warning through her, despite all her exhilaration. She turned away from him, seeking her misplaced son under the buggy. “Christian, come with Mama now. You’ve got to get dressed and eat. I baked some—” She jerked upright and froze. Her mouth sagged in horror. “My bread! Good heavens, my bread has been in the oven for—!”

  She spun right, nearly slammed into the buggy, whirled left and almost plowed into Stark’s beast. She spun again and slammed right into Stark’s chest. A solitary wail of despair fled her lips before she could snatch it back in dismay.

  “Jess—” Her name flowed around her like warm sunlight, soothing. As though she would ever require or need his comfort. She would have pummeled that chest if he hadn’t caught her arms and held her fast. “It’s okay, Jess. It’s only one loaf of bread.”

  “And I burned it!” she yelled up at him, almost stricken when she felt the hated burn of tears at the backs of her eyes. No, she would never, never, allow this man to see any emotional weakness. She might need his physical strength, but never anything more from him. “No, you would never understand that, would you?”

  “Yes, I do, Jess.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she spat, twisting from his grasp. And then she fled the barn without turning back, because the tears did fall then, and she couldn’t stop them.

  * * *

  She’d barely looked at Rance, much less her newly restored buckboard, as he handed her up onto the freshly polished seat. Instead, she gave Jack a glare full of dire warnings and then directed all her attention to something far out on the bleak distant horizon for the duration of the ride to Twilight—that is, when she wasn’t fussing over Christian.

  A sound ignoring, that was what it was. She sat ramrod-straight, her straw hat angled abruptly away from him, white-gloved hands folded in her lap over a small straw purse, upturned nose poking skyward, full lips stalwart and compressed as if she were sucking very hard upon a lemon.

  Rance had a hell of a time keeping his eyes off her.

  All that stubborn pride. He’d never encountered so much in a man before, much less a woman, even the gun-toting bandit queens he’d encountered. And yet in her he found it compelling, too damned compelling, and her not a harsh and cynical version of a woman, but innocent still. And young, younger than her years. The sunlight spilling through her hair, the delicate curving length of her neck, the trembling of her chin when she’d yelled up at him. And the feel of all that injured pride against him, rousing a deeply yearning hunger in him.

  “Can I hold the reins, Logan?” Christian asked. “You said I could, remember?”

  Rance kept his gaze between Jack’s ears on the twin ruts that cleaved through the prairie, but even so he felt the heat of her glare over her son’s head far more than he did the sun slapping at the back of his neck. The leather hung loose in his hands, a sure testament to the trust he’d placed in his animal long ago. His gaze shifted over the desolate horizon. “Maybe your mama would like to try first.”

  “Mama?” Christian squawked. “She’s afraid of everything.”

  “I am not,” came the hot retort.

  “Yes, you are, Mama. Remember that horse Pa had? You said he was a nasty old thing that cost too much money and ate your flowers and bit.”

  “Precisely,” Jessica retorted. “He indeed ate every last one of my geraniums, and he bit your pa.”

  Christian grinned wickedly at Rance. “In the butt.”

  “Christian! Don’t ever say that again.”

  “Say what, Mama? That he bit him? He did. Right in the butt.”

  “Oh, good grief.”

  “Mama had to clean it and bandage it, and my pa howled like a coyote-wolf.”

  “Christian, shut your mouth at once.”

  “He couldn’t sit without a pillow for a week. Mama was so mad. She said she wouldn’t make him supper till he sold that horse. But he said no and she made him supper anyway, ‘cause Miss Beecher says a good wife don’t send her family to bed on an empty tummy.”

  “Doesn’t send,” Jessica said quickly. “Not don’t. Now, keep quiet.”

  “Who’s Miss Beecher?” Rance asked.

  “Mama has her book.”

  “Of course I do. Miss Beecher projects sound views on thrift, morals, and improved diet. We could all stand a good browse from time to time.”

  “Mama always looks in it.”

  “I most certainly do not.”

  “Yes, you do, Mama. You have lots of books to help you be a good wife. You’re lookin’ in them all the time.”

  “Christian, I don’t want to hear another sound from you.”

  “You were afraid of Pa’s horse, Mama.”

  “Anyone of sound mind would have been. Give me those.” She reached one of those pristine white-gloved hands across her son and grabbed the reins. Rance had the impression that she did so solely to quiet her son. She didn’t seem the sort to want it known her departed husband’s hind end had once been fodder for some animal. Still, the image brought Rance a certain deeply felt satisfaction, as did her sputtering. He had to struggle to keep a bemused look from his face, and he directed his scowl at nothing in particular.

  Jack would have kept to any pace simply on Rance’s verbal command. It mattered little in whose hands the reins were gripped. But Jess didn’t know that. And damned if Rance didn’t detect the slightest softening of her mouth, a decided satisfaction in the angling of her silly hat down at her son. No, but she wouldn’t allow her eyes to even alight upon him. Damned proud woman. He wondered if she had any idea how beautiful she looked with that ribbon fluttering like wings about her and her hair ablaze with prairie fire.

  She kept the reins all the way to Twilight, smack down the center of Main Street, and even managed to haul back on them with a bit too much fervor when they pulled before Ledbetter’s General Store. Perhaps because of all those curious stares they’d drawn since the moment the buggy rolled into town, stares that seemed to force Jessica’s nose up another notch. But Rance had far more to occupy his thoughts at the moment. Far more, in the form of his own Wanted handbills, fluttering in the hot midmorning breeze upon nearly every storefront, amid all the other handbills. Twenty-five hundred to the man who could bring him in alive. A thousand for his dead body.

  Spotz must be itching to watch him die to offer bounty like that.

  He’d purposely cropped his hair short to fall over his forehead, and he’d shaved and pulled his hat well over his eyes. Had even chosen a light-colored shirt and kerchief, the better to go unrecognized. No, he looked nothing like some artist’s rendering of the long-haired, black-garbed, bearded outlaw Rance Logan. Yet his own bleak stare seemed to taunt him from every handbill as he alighted from the buggy and attempted to assist Jessica. But she’d already hopped down, obviously spurning his attempt at gallantry. Surely this was not in deference to his shoulder.

  She barely glanced at him, her eyes instead straying past him, toward Ledbetter’s. He saw the flicker of something cross her face, a momentary dissolving of all those barriers, when her wide gaze finally met with his. An unseen fist slammed into his middle. No, she couldn’t possibly recognize him. Or could she?

  He saw uncertainty there, so fleeting, yet so profound, all his worry fled him. She was, without doubt, primly lifted nose and all, entirely uncomfortable here in Twilight. Perhaps even more than he.

  “Here.” She shoved the straw purse at him. “This is all I can spare at the moment for supplies you might need to begin work, though I don’t know if your shoulder is well enough to—”

  “I can manage, ma’am.”

  She tilted her head up at him, and sunlight spilled over the sprinkling of freckles upon her cheeks and nose. “Of course you can. You did manage to—” One white glove waved toward the buggy. Her eyes again strayed away from him, northward, down the row of establishments lining
the street. “I don’t suppose I thanked you. I—” Her mouth snapped closed, and she blinked. “Good heavens, there’s Sadie McGlue. I can’t possibly...not now...with you...” Her hand fluttered at her hat brim, then at her neck, before she grabbed Christian’s hand and brushed past Rance. “You’ll find all you need—though I don’t quite know what all that might be—in Ledbetter’s. I...we...I’ve need of a few things at the clothiers. This way, Christian.”

  “But, Mama, you’re walking too fast.”

  Indeed she was, her heavy heels clomping upon the wooden boardwalk, south, away from whoever it was she had wished to avoid. Rance stuffed the purse into his pocket and watched the furious swishing of her skirts. He then glanced northward. Ah, there it was, the telltale bobbing of feathered hats and satin parasols. Two of them, as his luck would have it, their wide, much-flounced and beribboned skirts sashaying along with all the pomposity of a naval frigate. And a matching set of imperious, entirely unlikable female faces to add the finishing touch.

  Both sets of their glittering little eyes had fastened upon him. Like a full-fledged cavalry, with colors flying and weapons braced, they descended upon him. At the moment, he’d rather take on a battalion of Rebel soldiers. After all, he’d had considerably more success on the battlefield than on female turf. Particularly when a gentler manner might be the order of things.

  Sadie McGlue. Yes, he could imagine a half-dozen reasons why ordinary women might flee the inevitable scrutiny from such a woman. But his proud and noble Jess? Then again, he was only beginning to realize all that puffed-up indignation concealed an exquisite vulnerability that she would rather die for than betray. Vulnerability, so desolate and bleak lurking deep in her eyes, no matter how she might try to convince herself otherwise. And how it must pain her to even realize it. One day she would look at him without that deep sadness in her eyes. One day. And then he would leave.

  The solitary wail of a train’s whistle sliced through the relative stillness and echoed off the wooden buildings surrounding. A gnawing unease filled Rance’s gut. The Kansas Pacific line, no doubt. Over the flat rooftops, he watched the puffs of oily black smoke billowing skyward as the train moved slowly west. That line ran straight to Wichita and onward to Dodge City and Abilene. Hell, he was smack in the middle of cattle country, not an altogether brilliant place to be for a man wanted for murder by one of the most powerful cattlemen in the state. A man who had many friends, a man who could pay for those friends. Those friends could in all likelihood step from any train in Twilight, to conduct business, to simply rest for the night.

  Tugging his brim lower over his eyes, he glanced swiftly about, then mounted the steps to Ledbetter’s. He nodded briefly to the two older men playing checkers on overturned cracker barrels just outside the door. They’d paused in their game some time ago to stare at him with twin impassive masks, their jaws working in unison on their chew. No, he recognized neither of those weather-beaten, guarded countenances.

  He shoved the door wide, well aware that his female pursuers had stopped outside the store. Not a moment later, their beslippered feet mounted the steps behind him.

  Chapter Five

  “I said don’t touch anything,” Jessica whispered into her son’s mutinous glower. His bottom lip poked at her, his glower deepened, and she cursed for the thousandth time her rash decision to hire Stark. He, of course, was responsible for this annoying rebelliousness in her son this morning. What else could possibly be the reason? Certainly not her own distracted state...

  She extricated his pudgy fingers from a hopelessly tangled skein of ribbon and fidgeted with untangling it, thankful for the excuse it gave her to linger here at the window of Philip’s Clothiers. Through the bolts of cloth stacked in the window, she had a fairly unobstructed view of Ledbetter’s. If she stood on tiptoe, that is, and leaned slightly to the right and craned her neck and braced herself against one of the stacked bolts.

  “I want to go now,” Christian grumbled.

  “Shush, Christian.” Her eyes narrowed upon the pair of bustles and matching parasols lingering in front of Ledbetter’s. Blast Sadie and her idle mind, so spiteful and eager to pounce on the latest gossip. Or to stir something up and feast on it. Indeed, Sadie must have enjoyed a veritable banquet when all those creditors descended upon Jessica after Frank’s death, demanding payment of all his gambling debts and spreading the seeds of the malicious rumor that had made coming to town all but unbearable for Jessica ever since. Oh, most people were kind enough to behave as though they’d heard positively nothing about Frank’s perfidy, and if they had, they acted as though they didn’t believe a word of it. People like Samuel Ledbetter, who had offered kind words of sympathy and then heartily agreed to purchase her fruits and preserves. Then again, there were those, like Sadie, who were either too nosy or perhaps too insecure in some way, those who seemed to derive perverse pleasure from others’ misfortune. Oh, she’d offered her sympathies delivered with expertise from beneath the fringe of her parasol. She’d smiled her typical bland smile. Nothing overtly malicious. But this inadequacy and embarrassment swept over Jessica whenever she ventured anywhere near those women. Not that she allowed it to bother her in any way. Absolutely not.

  She simply kept to her farm as much as she could. But then there was the purposeful exclusion of Christian from the group of youngsters who played after church on Sunday. Even Avram couldn’t fix that. Jessica had come to wish he’d never tried.

  “You made me wear this suit, and it hurts my tummy,” Christian said, interrupting her thoughts. “And I can’t wiggle my toes in these shoes. These are baby shoes. I don’t like them.”

  Jessica didn’t take her eyes from Sadie McGlue’s rather alarming backside. Perhaps these bustles were fashioned for women less broad of beam. Navigating such a contraption through Ledbetter’s narrow door just might prove impossible, even for Twilight’s reigning society queen. But Sadie must have been profoundly overcome with curiosity, positively itching to sink her claws into Logan Stark and discover what he was all about. No alarming backside would stand in her way.

  Even Jessica had to admit the man necessitated a good long look. Several, actually.

  He was a stranger, wasn’t he? And Twilight had so very few of those. It didn’t help that the man was handsome as sin.

  Why the devil hadn’t he chosen someone else’s backyard in which to make his appearance? Blast, but she wished she didn’t need him so much. The thought of relieving him of his post whispered through her mind and was instantly gone.

  “I want to go now, Mama.”

  Jessica chewed her lip and, without looking, plucked Christian’s hand once again from the pile of ribbon. No, this would certainly not do. A woman such as she, with business interests and her farm at risk, simply could not afford to allow Stark to muck things up for her any more than he already had. Blasted stupid of her to allow her feelings of...of...inadequacy to send her fleeing from Sadie McGlue. Fleeing, yes, cowardly as it might truly be, anything to avoid confrontation. Perhaps to avoid having to defend a dead man, her dead husband, something Miss Beecher would advise any goodly and honorable wife to do. To lie, if need be, though Miss Beecher would phrase it a bit more delicately. No, it was far better to continue to deny that she, more than anyone, had reason to believe the most lascivious of those rumors. She had, after all, washed the evidence from her husband’s shirts, the unmistakable scent of another woman’s musky perfume...

  It was at that moment that the sunlight caught with a certain mocking brilliance at the buckboard, particularly at the polished leather seat. How the devil had Stark contrived to fix it in a solitary morning? The man mustn’t have slept the entire night through.

  Her eyes shifted again when those bustles managed to disappear within Ledbetter’s. Jessica strained on tiptoe, levered herself between stacked bolts of cloth and squinted at the windows of the general store. Confounded glass reflected nothing but the sunny street without. Not even a hint of a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. />
  “Damn,” she muttered.

  “I beg your pardon— I— Good heavens, Jessica! It is you! Whatever are you doing crawling up into the window?”

  Jessica whirled about so suddenly she had to clutch a heavy bolt of muslin to keep it from toppling to the floor. A furious blush of guilt swept her from head to toe and back when her eyes met those of Louise French, her one true friend in Twilight. Willowy, dark-haired and elegant even in a simple cotton frock and bonnet, both of the most lively shade of buttercup yellow, Louise gave Jessica a deeply curious look, then immediately bent to Christian, who had assumed his typical position upon being greeted by positively anyone, even someone as familiar as Louise. Both arms had a vise grip around Jessica’s knee, and he’d buried half his face in her skirts.

  “Good morning, Master Wynne,” Louise said with an understanding smile. “How grown-up you look today. Are you helping your mama like a big boy?”

  Jessica shoved the bolt back into the window and attempted without success to pry her son from her leg. “Say hullo to Mrs. French, Christian.”

  Christian mumbled something very quiet and thoroughly unintelligible into her skirts and only tightened his grip on her knees.

  “Buying a hair ribbon?” Louise mused, indicating the ribbon still twisted in Jessica’s fingers.

  “Yes,” Jessica replied quickly—too quickly, she realized when she glanced at the ribbon again. She replaced it on the pile.

  “Sapphire blue isn’t your usual color,” Louise said. She gave Jessica’s arm a squeeze. Her tone brimmed with mischief. “Or does Avram wish to see you in something gloriously bold and daring? I was wondering when you were going to come to your senses about that drab gray dress at Ledbetter’s. So?”

  “It’s not gray. It’s a lovely cornflower blue.”

  “Posh. It’s gunboat gray and you know it. All high-necked and stiff. It matches every other dress you own.”

  “It also matches my eyes.”

  “Your eyes were a lovely vivid blue the last I looked. The precise color of the other dress at Ledbetter’s, the sapphire silk with the shocking scooped neckline. You know the one.”