“It’s been nearly eight, but who’s counting?” Patch replied flippantly.
Ethan ground his teeth and repeated, “When I left Montana, you were just a kid! I sure as hell didn’t propose marriage to a twelve-year-old with tangles in her hair and holes in her britches and a mouth that could use soaping every time she opened it!”
Patch was mortified by Ethan’s description of her. The words of protest and explanation were spoken before she could stop them. “I loved you!”
A red flush crawled up Ethan’s neck all the way to the tips of his ears. “Hell, Patch. You were just a kid.” He shook his head in disbelief. “What you felt must have been hero worship or something.”
“Hero worship?” This time it was Patch’s face that reddened, but with fury, not embarrassment. Her forefinger seemed to have a life of its own as it poked away at Ethan’s chest, punctuating her verbal rampage. “Why you vainglorious, cock-strutting, mule-eared jackass! Of all the hogwash I ever heard spouted, that was the worst!
“You made me a promise, Ethan Hawk. And durn it all, you’re going to keep it!”
Ethan grabbed Patch’s wrist and twisted the offending finger behind her. When her other hand came up, he grabbed that too, and suddenly he had both her arms snagged behind her. Only she wouldn’t stay still, so he backed her up against the unpainted wall of the house and held her there with his body. Which hardened like a rock when it met her softness.
Ethan felt his heart pounding. He had thrown a lasso expecting a kitten and caught a wildcat instead. His whole body was alive with expectation. He could feel generous breasts crushed against his chest, and his loins were cradled by soft, feminine flesh. He had the craziest urge to rub himself against her.
Then he remembered who she was. And who he was. And why what he wanted was ludicrous, not to mention impossible, stupid, and just plain idiotic.
“What does your father have to say about your being here?” Ethan demanded in a voice harsh with the passion he was struggling to control.
“I’m sure he’d approve.”
“And I’m sure he wouldn’t! Does Seth even know you’re here?”
“He will when he gets my letter.”
Ethan groaned. “He’ll kill me.”
“Not if you’re my husband.”
“I’m not going to marry you, Patch,” Ethan said through his teeth.
“Why not? I love—”
“Stop saying that!” Ethan found himself unable to look away from the blue eyes staring back at him. Her nose was tipped up in defiance and her chin jutted with stubborn determination.
“You’re just a kid!” he said in desperation.
“I’ll be twenty next month.”
Ethan sneered. “And already a sophisticated woman of the world, I see.”
Patch’s eyes slipped down to the soiled apron. She blew out a puff of air to remove the strand of hair that had caught on her lips. If only she’d had the time to repair the damage caused by that fracas between Max and the calico cat before Ethan had shown up. Then he would be treating her like the lady she had struggled so hard to become. For him. Because of him.
“I’m a grown woman, Ethan. A lady, to be precise. And I deserve to be treated like one.”
Ethan purposely chose to misunderstand her. “You want to be treated like a woman? Well, this is how I treat the only kind of woman I have anything to do with these days.”
Ethan ground his hips against hers the way he had been wanting to do. The surprised, satisfied sound she made in her throat drew his flesh up tight.
He hardened his jaw. Seduction wasn’t his intent. He transferred both her wrists to one hand and grasped her chin, angling her face up to his. Her eyes went wide with surprise and—heaven help him—anticipation.
Ethan lowered his mouth toward hers, determined on teaching her a lesson about girls playing with men that she wouldn’t soon forget. His mouth closed over hers and his tongue thrust its way past her sealed lips.
Only they weren’t sealed.
Her whole body swayed toward him.
Ethan jerked himself free. “Oh, no you don’t! I’m not going to get caught in that trap.”
Still dazed by the effects of Ethan’s closeness, Patch stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work.”
“What is that?”
“You’re trying to seduce me. Then I’ll be honor-bound to marry you. Or else have your father hound my tail for the rest of my life. Where’s your sense, girl? You’d have to be crazy to want to marry a man like me.”
“Why?”
“I’m an ex-convict,” he said flatly.
“I knew you were wanted by the law when I fell in love with you,” she countered.
“You weren’t old enough to know what that meant.” Ethan yanked off his Stetson and forked his fingers through sun-streaked chestnut hair that badly needed a trim. His eyes were bleak when they sought Patch’s again. “I spent time in prison for murdering Dorne Trahern.”
“But—”
“Don’t interrupt. Let me finish. If it were only that, I could maybe think about asking some woman someday to be my wife. But it’s far worse than that, Patch.” Ethan took a deep breath and let it out. He tried to look at her, but found he couldn’t face her expectant—devoted—expression and say what had to be said.
“I’ve paid for Dorne’s death with seven hard years in prison, so most people around here don’t hold that against me anymore. But the whole town of Oakville still believes I raped a girl so brutally that she lost her mind.
“There’s no hope of me marrying you—ever.” He turned and brushed the lock of hair away from her eyes with a touch as gentle as one he might use for a newborn filly. “I care enough about you—and your ma and pa—not to make you an object of pity and scorn by marrying you.”
“Are you done?”
Ethan nodded grimly.
“In the first place, I might have been a child when I first fell in love with you, but I’m grown up now.” She took a deep breath and, searching his troubled eyes, admitted, “I still love you, Ethan. I always will.
“In the second place, I don’t believe you raped Merielle Trahern.”
Ethan grimaced. “You’re the only one who doesn’t.”
Patch put a hand across his lips to shut him up and found them still damp from kissing her. And soft. She knew just how soft, because those lips had been pressed to hers. Ethan’s first kiss had been everything she had ever imagined, and some things she hadn’t.
She hadn’t expected her knees to go weak. She hadn’t expected him to put his tongue in her mouth. She hadn’t expected to taste him. Despite all her talk of being a woman, she had been amazed at the new sensations that had bombarded her, making her feel like a bowl of jelly left too long in the sun. But she had liked it all. And she wanted more.
“I know you’re worried about what Pa will say. But Pa only wants me to be happy, Ethan. And marrying you will make me happy.”
Patch saw the denial in Ethan’s features and hurried to finish before he cut her off. “You need a wife, Ethan. Or at least this ranch needs a woman’s touch. Your mother obviously isn’t well, and your sister …” Patch smiled ruefully. “Your sister reminds me of myself at the same age.” Patch grinned. “She’s no housekeeper.”
“Patch—”
Patch put her whole hand across his mouth. “You can’t say I’m not attractive to you, Ethan.” Patch felt the flush skating across her cheekbones at such plain speaking. “I … uh … could feel the evidence that would make any denial a lie.”
Ethan would never know how frightening that had been for her, to feel the shape of him pressed hard against her and to know what it meant he wanted from her. Her father raised horses, so she had seen more than one stallion cover a mare. Their coupling was always a wild and savage thing. When the time came, she couldn’t imagine how she was going to survive the embarrassment of it all. But with
Ethan, she darn sure was willing to give it a try.
Having nothing more to say, Patch dropped her hand from Ethan’s face. She threaded her fingers together before her and waited for his response. It wasn’t long coming.
“You’re forgetting the most important reason why I can’t—won’t—make you my wife.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Patch said. “I simply don’t believe a word of the accusation against you. You’d never rape a woman, Ethan.” She swallowed and said, “You wouldn’t have to.”
Ethan felt a painful tightening in his chest. He wasn’t sure whether it was gratitude for her blind faith in him or the awful knowledge that he had forfeited any chance of ever having a decent woman for his wife when he had fled so many years ago. Now he saw the folly of running instead of staying to seek out the truth.
He had been only fifteen when someone raped Merielle Trahern. He had found her after the fact, but when her brother, Dorne, discovered them together, he hadn’t waited for explanations. By the time Jefferson Trahern arrived on the scene to find Ethan wounded in the leg by Dorne’s bullet, and Dorne accidentally shot dead, Ethan had known nobody was going to listen to his side of the story before they hung him.
So he had run, and kept on running for ten years, until one of Trahern’s private detectives finally caught him. The trial had been a farce, but at least he hadn’t been convicted of raping Merielle, for which he had his friend, Boyd, to thank.
Now, seventeen years later, he still wasn’t free of his nightmare. He had been out of prison only one month—four short weeks—and judging from the hired guns he had faced today, Jefferson Trahern was planning to pick up his quest for vengeance where he had left off when Ethan went to prison. It was quickly becoming apparent that, although the townspeople might be willing to tolerate his presence in Oakville, Jefferson Trahern was not.
In fact, the man seemed obsessed with seeing him dead. Ethan supposed if he had spent the past seventeen years watching a beautiful daughter become a woman, yet remain a child, he might be a little crazed and unforgiving, too.
Ethan closed his eyes so Patch wouldn’t see the regret he felt when he thought of what she wanted from him. The events of the past prevented any thought of marriage to her. Even so, his feelings about finding her here were confused, to say the least. On the one hand, he found her incredibly desirable as a woman. On the other hand, he couldn’t separate the woman from the spirited, yet vulnerable tomboy in raggedy clothes for whom he felt a big-brotherly affection. It was the younger Patch he felt he had to protect. For her own good, he had to make her go home.
“You’re forgetting one other thing,” Ethan said in a grating voice.
“What is that?”
“I don’t love you.”
Patch felt her stomach shift sideways. She lowered her lashes to hide the sharp pain she felt at Ethan’s admission. Patch had believed when she left Montana that she had enough love for both of them. She hadn’t realized how it would feel to hear Ethan say those crushing words denying any feelings for her.
Patch didn’t know there were tears in her eyes until Ethan drew her into his arms and murmured, “Don’t cry, Patch. I can’t stand to see you cry.”
She buried her face in his shirt, clinging to him, to the dream that had brought her all the way to Texas from Montana, the dream of being loved by Ethan, of loving him in return. But he didn’t love her. He didn’t want to marry her. He—
Patch stiffened as a startling thought occurred to her. Ethan had said he didn’t love her in one breath, and in the next had pulled her into his arms and was, unless she was very much mistaken, kissing away her tears at this very moment.
Patch jerked herself from Ethan’s embrace. “Liar!” she accused.
“What?”
“You’re lying, Ethan Hawk, about not loving me. You do love me. That’s why you don’t want to marry me. You want to protect me from the scandal of marrying an ex-convict, an accused rapist.”
“Patch, I—”
“I appreciate those feelings,” Patch said. “Really, I do. Which is why I’m going to stay here and help you find the real culprit.”
“Patch, I—”
“When your name is cleared, we can be married and live happily ever after.”
“Patch, I—”
“Yes, Ethan?”
Ethan took one look at her glowing eyes and forgot what he was going to say. She smiled at him and his body started thinking what it would be like nestled up close to hers. His hands had already reached for her when his brain started functioning again.
“No.” Then, because her smile remained firmly in place, he repeated, “No, Patch. It’s been seventeen years since Merielle Trahern was violated. It could have been anyone, even some cowhand passing through town. It could have been—” Ethan cut himself off because he had his own ideas about who had done it. He’d had seventeen long years to think about it.
Patch took advantage of Ethan’s hesitation. “You do have some idea who might have done it! I knew you would!”
“It’s water under the dam. Knowing—suspecting—who did it won’t change what’s happened. Merielle will still be a child forever,” he said, his eyes bleak. His voice was bitter as he added, “And it won’t bring back all the years that were stolen from me.”
Patch reached out a tentative hand and placed it on Ethan’s forearm. She felt his muscles bunch under her touch. “If we find the man responsible, your name will be cleared.”
“And if we don’t? You’ll be stirring ashes that have been banked a long time.” There was liable to be a fire down there somewhere that would burn them both.
Ethan voiced another reason it would be foolhardy, not to mention dangerous, to go digging up the past. “Trahern hasn’t stopped hounding me, Patch. He wants me dead. He won’t care if you get caught in the crossfire.”
“But you do.” Patch took a step closer to Ethan. He did care. Probably more than he knew. She was sure of it when he folded her into his arms and held her tight. She would just give him a little hand clearing his name. Could she help it if, during the process, he fell deeply, hopelessly in love with her?
“We can find out the truth, Ethan. The two of us, together.”
“Patch, I—”
“We’ll be a team, hunting down clues to the mystery. Meanwhile, I’ll be here to help take care of your mother and sister. By the way, I told them you wrote me in Montana and asked me to come help with the housekeeping. Leah suspects I wasn’t telling the truth. You won’t give me away, will you?”
Ethan groaned.
“I love you, Ethan.”
His arms tightened around her. “All right, dammit,” he said in a guttural voice. “You can stay long enough for me to do some investigation. But if I don’t discover any new information about the rape, you’ll have to abide by my decision not to marry you and go home to Montana. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Ethan,” Patch said meekly.
“And meanwhile, you’re not to say anything to anybody about this crazy idea you have that I promised to marry you. Understand?”
“Yes, Ethan. You forbid me to tell anyone why I’m really here in Oakville. Is that right?”
Ethan hmmed his assent.
“And I promise”—Patch crossed her heart—”that if you don’t find the real culprit, I’ll leave.”
If Ethan could have seen Patch’s face, he would have put her on the next stage back to Montana. Fortunately for Patch, her face was safely, happily, snuggled against Ethan’s chest.
“Ethan!” Leah shouted from the house. “Someone’s coming!”
Leah’s warning cry set Ethan in motion. He set Patch aside and grabbed the doorknob. The kitchen door wouldn’t budge.
“I don’t believe this!” The door was wedged tight in the frame. “Can you see who it is, Leah?” Ethan shouted through the kitchen window.
“Why don’t you just walk around the house and see for yourself?” Patch asked.
Ethan turned a scowling
face toward Patch. “You might have noticed in town that the sight of me tends to draw bullets. I’d just as soon know who’s out there before I show my face.”
“I’ll go see who it is.”
Before Ethan could stop her, Patch scooted around the side of the house through the weeds that had grown up in the yard and headed for the front porch.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Ethan exploded. “That woman is going to be the death of me yet!”
He slammed his palm against the door and it popped open. He shoved it wide and raced—long step, halting step, long step, halting step—for the front of the house.
Patch told herself she wasn’t in any danger. Even if the two men riding toward her in the deepening shadows of sundown meant some harm to Ethan, they wouldn’t bother her. That made it easier to wait on the front porch with a smile on her face for the arrival of the intruders. The forced curve became more natural when she recognized one of the riders as the handsome young man who had come looking for Merielle Trahern in the mercantile. Her stomach rolled when she remembered he was also Jefferson Trahern’s foreman.
“Hello, Mr. Meade,” she called out when the two men were within hailing distance. “What brings you here?”
Frank tipped his hat. “Miz Kendrick. Came looking for Ethan.”
“He’s not—”
“We know he’s here,” the other man said.
Patch’s attention was drawn to the man on Frank’s left. She considered Frank handsome. The stranger beside him could only be called striking. His features might have been appealing viewed one at a time, but they were combined in a way that gave the man a fierce, unrelenting look, more intriguing than attractive. If she hadn’t been in love with Ethan, her heart might have taken a few quick beats.
He was wearing a Stetson shoved back off his brow, and a hank of dark hair hung down over his forehead. His eyes were mesmerizing, a tawny gold that reminded her of the cougar she had kept as a pet in Montana. She could almost feel the tension radiating from the man. She held her breath waiting for something—she wasn’t sure what—to happen.
He smiled.
He had dimples. One, actually, on the left side.
Outlaw’s Bride Page 5