Kit Gardner

by Twilight

  Indeed, she could envision years of endeavoring in unbearable heat to master the delicate art of canning vegetables and fruit in return for such appreciation. For one night spent in his bed.

  The ache in her loins blossomed upward into her belly and gathered into a churning ball of heat. Her fingers loosened the top buttons of her gown, just beneath her chin, then drifted lower, loosening several others before stilling upon the upthrust curve of one breast. The muslin was damp, heavy against her skin, as though begging to be shed. And beneath its thickness, a nipple thrust with wanton impudence against her trembling fingertips.

  A breath whispered through her parted lips. “Logan...”

  The back door slammed open against the opposite wall. “Where is he?” Avram Halsey boomed, marching without preamble into the steamy kitchen. He took three strides, then abruptly slammed one boot into a kitchen chair and let forth a painfully grunted “Good heavens, Jessica.”

  “I moved the table,” Jessica said, her fingers fumbling over the parted buttons at her neck. “You might have seen it if you had removed your glasses, Avram.”

  Twin fogged lenses fixed upon her, his eyes entirely concealed by the ovals. “The devil I would have. That table has sat in the same precise location since I’ve known you. Why, might I ask, did you move it?”

  The row of buttons completed, Jessica spun with sudden realization to tend her boiling beets. Blithely she waved a hand through steamy air. “I found it was in the way.”

  “You’re mistaken, Jessica. I never once found maneuvering around it an inconvenience.”

  Logan Stark did.

  “Whereas now, my toe aches so, I believe it might be sprained. Did you hear me, Jessica?”

  “Yes, Avram. Perhaps you should soak it.”

  “Oh, good heavens, surely you’re not canning vegetables again? You quite outdid yourself with overcooked beets last year, my dear. I daresay I haven’t had an appetite for a beet since.”

  Jessica shoved a fork into a well-overdone beet and made little effort to tame her tongue. “Perhaps you’d best find yourself another table to sup at all winter then, Avram. Even Mabel Brown could can a beet better than I.”

  Quite obviously unaware of her sarcasm, or his suddenly tenuous circumstances, Avram let loose a guffaw that sent a chill of agitation shimmying up Jessica’s spine. “I know of no surer recipe for dyspepsia than a place set at Mabel Brown’s table. Damned woman’s cooking has me fetching Doc Eagan every time.”

  Jessica snatched a long, curved wooden ladle from above the stove and began transferring beets from the boiling water into the glass jars. Her teeth slid together as Avram paused to peer over her shoulder, then again gave a harsh laugh.

  “You know, Avram,” she began, her tongue all but curling with her acerbity, “Doc Eagan has long expounded the close connection between good morals and good digestion.”

  Avram sucked in a hissing breath. “Jessica, what the devil are you implying?”

  A smug smile crept over Jessica’s lips as she ladled. She gave a casual shrug of her shoulder, well aware that Avram lingered just at her elbow, and that he had seen fit to finally remove his fogged glasses to stare at her. “Implying? Why nothing, Avram. Does that naturally imply something?”

  “Why, no,” Avram quickly replied, his elbow jostling against her as he polished his glasses clear of steam. “Absolutely not. Nothing of the sort. It’s just that I’ve never once heard Doc Eagan mention such a thing.”

  “You see him often, don’t you, Avram?”

  “Often? Why, no. Not that often, actually. At one time, perhaps several times a week, but not for quite a while now. No, indeed, my food has never sat better in my belly and bowels.”

  “That’s good to hear, Avram. Would you care for a beet?”

  “A beet? Why, yes, now that you mention it, I just might, Jessica. Indeed, I would partake, but all this talk of morals has reminded me why I came. Where is he?”

  “Who, Avram?”

  “Who, indeed. That black-hearted outlaw you call farmhand. Where is he?”

  Jessica stuck the ladle into the beans. “I believe he went to town with Christian.”

  “You believe? Ha! Now this is what I’ve been talking about, Jessica. This laxness you display is entirely too much for me to bear. Allowing your son one moment alone with that—that hoodlum is outrage enough, but to so casually, so deliberately, send him to town with such a man, why it—it staggers the imagination.”

  The ladle clattered to the stove as Jessica spun toward him with hands planted on her hips. “I’ll tell you what staggers the imagination, Avram. Your insisting you know best for my son. And your complete lack of regard for Stark.”

  Avram blinked furiously from behind his fogging lenses. “The man is an outlaw! There’s no hiding from the facts. You saw him handle his weaponry. A man like that should be prevented from owning a firearm.”

  Jessica set her teeth. “He drove that gang from town before they could do anyone harm. You know very well he saved us.”

  “Try telling that to the sheriff,” Avram countered with a smug curl of his upper lip. “As we speak, he and several of the other menfolk are deciding whether Stark should pack his musty saddlebags and leave our town in the peace it has enjoyed for years. It is no slight coincidence that no riffraff outlaw gang ever breached our boundaries before Stark set his boots on our boardwalks.”

  Jessica gasped with outrage. “What? Why, just yesterday, the railroad was to blame for that gang, was it not, Avram? Indeed, and was it not just yesterday that the sheriff offered Stark a post as deputy?”

  Avram shrugged. “I suppose even the best of lawmen have lapses in judgment from time to time.”

  Jessica felt her lungs fill near to bursting as her thoughts flew. Her eyes narrowed upon Avram. “Something changed his mind since yesterday. Did you, perhaps, happen to speak with the sheriff, Avram?”

  Avram’s black brows rose innocently. “I suppose in passing I might have spoken to the man. I’m a busy man, Jessica.”

  An invisible but mighty weight pressed against Jessica’s chest, trapping all air, and half her voice. “Y-you’re responsible.”

  Avram looked duly affronted. “Me? True, I’m not overly fond of that Stark fellow—”

  “Your grievance has nothing to do with him,” Jessica said slowly. “It’s what his being here means to me, to restoring the place. Look at you, Avram. You can barely keep the triumphant tone from your voice. How your chest puffs up with smugness. Indeed, in victory you betray your guilt.”

  “Now see here, my dear,” he began gently, reaching a hand toward her, which she swiftly swatted aside.

  “Get out of my house,” she railed, flinging one arm to the door. “Now.”

  “By God, I shan’t be thrown from this moldering farm twice in as many days!” Avram barked, his face bathed with sweat. “It’s an outrage!”

  “What did you say?” Jessica asked, with deceptive softness.

  Avram shoved an index finger skyward in his vehemence. “I said it’s an outrage that—”

  “Who but I has sought to throw you from this farm?”

  Avram’s mouth opened and closed precisely three times, enough to allow color to suffuse his sallow cheeks. “Why, nobody, my dear. You misunderstood.”

  Jessica nearly choked on the obvious lie. So, last night Stark had found it necessary to throw Avram from the barn. Though Logan hadn’t yet spoken to her of it, she instinctively knew, given Avram’s recent behavior, that he’d had ample motive. What scheme had Avram hatched and sought to carry out in the deepest hours of night, without her knowledge? A scheme involving Stark, a scheme that he had soundly thwarted, and for which Avram now seemed determined to make him pay?

  Seized by a blinding rage, she had to turn about and grasp the edge of the stove to keep herself from clawing Avram’s eyes from his bloated head. “Avram, I’ve been thinking a good deal about postponing our wedding.”

  “You what?”

&n
bsp; “However, I’ve had a sudden change of heart.”

  “You always were a reasonable woman, Jessica.”

  “Precisely. That’s why I shall never become your wife, Avram. In fact, I’m feeling so reasonable at the moment, I’m wondering why I ever consented to marry you in the first place. Now if you would please leave, Avram, and save yourself some embarrassment.”

  Halsey sucked in a huge breath. “Listen to me, Jessica,” he crooned, his touch upon her arm enough to make the bile rise in her throat. “All this steam has obviously muddled your brain. Or perhaps Stark has swayed your thinking. He deserves neither your loyalties nor your trust. And if you think I would allow such a man to come between us another day, you’re forgetting who I am, what we mean to one another, and the implicit trust you’ve laid in me as your future husband to take care of you. To know what’s best for you.”

  Her skin crawled beneath his fingers. How he twisted the circumstances to suit his purpose! Had he forever been so capable of coercion? And why had she again failed to see it?

  “My head has begun to ache, Avram,” she said through her teeth, the steam swimming before her eyes. She could barely trust herself to face the man without losing all semblance of control. “I’m afraid I won’t discuss the matter any longer.”

  “Of course, my dear. We shall talk later...at the town social. I shall come for you this evening around seven—”

  “No. I’d rather you didn’t, Avram.”

  “Yes, of course. As you wish, my dearest. Trust me, another day shall not pass without my putting your troubles to rest.”

  She barely waited for the door to close behind him. Then, with a strength she’d never before displayed, she heaved the enormous boiler from the stove and dumped it into the sink. The two pots full of vegetables followed. She didn’t give her ruined vegetables another thought. Merely paused to snatch up a straw hat before she fled the house and set off at a brisk walk down the road to Twilight.

  * * *

  “Ya want me ta wrap all the rest o’ this up real nice in brown paper, Logan Stark?” the young brunette behind Ledbetter’s counter asked in her deep drawl, her tongue wrapping eagerly around her lips. She leaned her forearms on the counter, pointedly dipped her eyes to his crotch, and again licked her lips in a manner that made Rance supremely grateful for the counter that separated them. “I can do some downright nasty things with my hands,” she purred, eyes slanting provocatively up at him. “An’ bow tyin’ is the least of ‘em.”

  Purposely avoiding her sultry gaze, he hefted the sacks of flour and sugar onto one shoulder. “No thanks,” he replied, snatching the wrapped parcel from the counter and under his arm before her little fingers could grab it back. With a curt nod, he flashed her a quick grin of thanks, which only served to dilate her pupils and set her breasts to heaving.

  Damned nubile young women seemed to be swarming all over town today. He’d had the same problem with the blacksmith’s lusty redheaded daughter when he took Jack to be reshod. On his way from the smithy, he’d been all but swarmed by a giggling gaggle of young women with more on their minds than just a simple midday stroll. And now this Ledbetter chit. In the past hour, he’d received no fewer than three invitations to this evening’s town social, and twice as many lewd propositions detailing precisely what he could expect if he ventured into the open prairie after dark with an eager young woman.

  This hero thing was starting to get on his nerves. With a bounty hunter or a pack of outlaws he felt more than capable of dealing, but ravenous, husband-seeking women?

  “Logan Stark. Just the man I wanted to see.” In a rustle of crisp taffeta, Sadie McGlue glided into the store. Her face lit with a radiant smile until her eyes flickered behind the counter. She blinked several times, then inclined her head, tilting her plumed hat so that the feathers wafted in the hot breeze. “Why, Constance Ledbetter, hasn’t anyone told you that salivating is quite gauche for a young girl barely out of diapers? And close your mouth, dear. If you for one minute think I’m going to let you get your sticky little fingers on Logan Stark, think again.” Her eyes twinkled as they settled once more upon him. “Oh, no, I’ve my own plans for him, though little good it will do me. Or you, Constance. Men like Mr. Stark here have their minds made up about what they’re going to do, long before we females can even begin to use our wiles upon them. Isn’t that so, Logan?”

  “Something tells me Hubert never had a chance, ma’am,” he replied, immediately warming to Sadie McGlue’s banter.

  “Well, that’s Hubert. And regrettably, delightful though he is, Hubert is not you.” She laid a gloved hand upon his arm, her tone dropping to a soft whisper, all mischief fleeing her eyes. “How are you faring?”

  A sliver of warning shot through Rance. “Fine, ma’am,” he said evenly. “Should I be otherwise?”

  Sadie raised her penciled brows. “No. Of course not. Foolish men always get ridiculous ideas into their heads, and it’s up to us women to talk the sense back into them. Just idle gossip, is all. Forget I even said anything.” Her smile again wrinkled the doughy folds of her heavily powdered cheeks. “Shall I expect to see you at this evening’s social? Or do you intend to break my heart?”

  “Never that, ma’am,” he replied with a warm smile. “I’ll make it a point to be there.”

  Sadie’s fan snapped open and flapped heatedly over her bosom. “Like I told Hubert. A man that charming can’t be the sort folks like us would run off.”

  Instinct prickled along the back of Rance’s neck. “Ma’am?”

  “Leave it to me, Logan Stark. Only a woman knows what to do when men are all puffed up and determined to show they’re men.” Sadie peered close to the counter, plucked a hard candy from a glass jar and popped it into her mouth, her glare daring Constance Ledbetter to say otherwise. “So, what about Jessica, Logan Stark? Will Reverend Halsey be accompanying her this evening?”

  His teeth met, despite the blithe look he managed to achieve. “I suppose he will, ma’am.”

  For some reason, the way Sadie McGlue looked at him and sucked on her candy made the heat climb from his open collar clear up his throat. “I see” was all she said, with a slight tip of her lips he chose to attribute solely to the candy’s sugar.

  After bidding Sadie McGlue good-day, Rance located Christian just as he tried to clamber atop a perilously high stack of canned goods.

  “Did you get it?” Christian asked as they headed down the wooden boardwalk toward the blacksmith’s.

  Rance frowned. “Was I supposed to get something besides flour and sugar?”

  Christian rolled his eyes almost entirely up into his head and continued his half skip, half jump gait alongside Rance. “You didn’t forget.”

  “Check my pocket.”

  Christian’s brows dived into a frown. “It wouldn’t fit in your pocket.”

  Rance shrugged and lengthened his stride.

  Not a moment later, a grubby hand wriggled into his pocket.

  “Logan!” the child cried, waving the peppermint stick he pulled out. His small tongue curled out of his mouth as his impatient fingers tore at the wrapper. Poking the candy into his mouth, he tilted his face up to Rance once more. “You did remember to get it, didn’t you, Logan?”

  The earnest appeal in the child’s voice sliced like the finest blade through Rance, the tone so like Jess’s. “I got it,” he replied softly, drawing the wrapped package from beneath his arm.

  “Mama’s gonna love it!”

  Rance felt his lips curve upward at the thought. Yes, it was all he could do not to envision the many ways Jess would show her appreciation.

  “Logan, you’re walking too fast.”

  “Just anxious, is all,” Rance muttered, half to himself, and then his boots all but froze beneath him with his next step. Beneath the shadow of his hat, his gaze riveted upon the very tall man in the long black duster paused not twenty paces farther along the wooden boardwalk. Rance didn’t have to look any closer than the dusty black Stets
on pulled ominously low over those slitted eyes to recognize the congealing in his gut for what it was.

  No. Not now.

  He’d met the man only once, several years before, over a nightlong game of faro in a Wichita gambling house, but he’d never forgotten the way those lifeless, half-hooded eyes had looked when Rance beat him. Rumor had it he’d never been beaten before at faro...by any man who lived to tell the tale. The same dead eyes now scanned Twilight’s peaceful, sun-dappled thoroughfare with the precision of a hawk intent upon a kill. One shoulder leaned against a wooden post. One silver-spurred boot rested lazily upon a hitching rail, where a large black horse stood tethered. A toothpick worked from one corner of his mouth to the other. And at his hips nestled the matched pair of ivory-inlaid revolvers that had put more than a score of innocent men in pine boxes.

  No other bounty hunter or hired gun hungered for the kill like Black Jack Bartlett. Little wonder lawmen statewide had devoted their careers to landing Bartlett in jail, without success. Little wonder Cameron Spotz had hired him on to find Rance.

  The black Stetson turned, and Rance looked into the deeply shadowed face of death.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The instinct to feel cold steel in his palm grew almost painful when Rance met Bartlett’s squinty-eyed stare. Trouble was, his arms were filled, and his gun he’d left in his saddlebags, with his horse, at the blacksmith’s. And then there was Christian, skipping along beside him, happily sucking on his peppermint. Like it or not, his desire to protect the child ran far deeper and far more potent than any instinct for his own survival.

  He kept his stride deliberate and casual, his gaze unchallenging, yet as unwavering as any man with nothing to hide...until Bartlett shoved the toothpick to the corner of his mouth with a roll of his tongue and turned his gaze once more to the street. Rance knew better than to allow himself the slightest relief. Nothing good or bad could be read from Bartlett’s response. He might have recognized him. He might not have.