Cash (The Rock Creek Six Book 6)

by Linda Winstead Jones

  He loved her with a savage fierceness, but she felt the passion in his soul, the tenderness he tried to hide. Her release came with the same kind of fierceness, tempered with true love and the knowledge that this was her man. She started to cry out, but he caught her cry with his mouth, kissing her deep and finding his own release as she trembled around him.

  She threaded her fingers through his hair and hooked one leg over his to keep him in place. She wanted him to stay inside her just a while longer.

  “I never had a lover until I came here,” she whispered. “If you leave me, I will never have another.”

  “I am going to leave, and trust me,” he said coolly. “Eventually you will find yourself another lover.”

  She looked deep into his eyes and ran a finger along the edge of his well-trimmed beard. “Do you think you will be so easy to replace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I will be so easy to replace?”

  “Yes.” Ah, the answer sounded cruel and cold and suitably carefree, but his eyes said something completely different. His eyes spoke of years of heartache, pain she could not begin to understand, and hopelessness.

  “You’re wrong,” she said calmly, not taking the bait he offered. “No one will ever love you the way I do.”

  Cash slowly separated his body from hers. “I swear, if you keep telling me you love me, there’s no way I’ll wait around until next week’s Fourth of July celebration. It’s getting tiresome, Nadine.”

  He tried so hard to make her mad, to force her to be the one to send him away. So much for her perfect moment.

  “Can I tell you how much I want you? How much I adore the way I feel when you’re inside me?”

  With a half-smile he lifted her from the floor and placed her in the bathtub, where she landed with a splash. He stepped in and sat down facing her, his legs drawn up and entangled with her own.

  “You’re turning into a shameless hussy,” he teased. “I like it.”

  “Is that what you look for in a woman?” She splashed him, sending a handful of cool water across his chest. “Is that all you want? Shamelessness?”

  “The more brazen the better,” he said, splashing her as she had him, so water ran down her chest.

  She reached across and draped her arms around his neck. “You make me feel brazen,” she whispered. And I love you. She couldn’t say that, not again. Not yet. What would it take to make him see that without each other they were nothing? Alone they were lost. Together they were perfect. The thought of going back to a life without Cash in it terrified her.

  * * *

  Jed Rourke sat on the green sofa in the hotel lobby, a baby in each arm. The babies were small anyway, JD thought, but in their father’s big arms they looked extra tiny.

  Rourke lifted his head and grinned. “Hey, little woodpecker. Find any gold yet?”

  JD still didn’t like the name Rourke had pinned on him, but he didn’t argue. If he wanted to work for this man one day, he’d have to put up with stuff like that. Teddy said his uncle liked to tease all the kids, and he shouldn’t take the “little woodpecker” handle as an insult.

  “Not yet,” he said, stepping closer to take a good look at the babies. They were bundled up so tight and snug, all he could see was their little faces. Little, wrinkled, pink faces. “Which one is which?”

  Rourke barely lifted the baby in his left arm. “This is Vincent Byron. I think we’re going to call him Vin, though. Suits him. This little boy,” he said with a smile, “is William Lee. Will for short.”

  “You can tell them apart?” JD asked, narrowing his eyes to look for minor differences, finding none.

  “Sure I can,” Rourke said confidently.

  “Where’s the other one?” Three babies at once! He had never known of such a thing happening to anyone he knew. He’d already heard that if not for his mother, they wouldn’t have survived.

  “Annabelle Nadine is upstairs with her mother,” Rourke said with a grin. “Have you seen her yet? She’s a doll, a real, beautiful doll.”

  If Annabelle Nadine looked anything like her brothers, she was wrinkled and pink and not at all beautiful. Not that he would dare point that out to the man he wanted to be his employer one day. “Are you going to call her Ann or Anna?” He’d shortened the boys names, after all.

  “Annie,” Rourke said. “I took one look at her and knew she was an Annie.”

  The big man’s expression softened. “I owe your mother the world,” he said. “She saved my family. My whole damn family. She’s a remarkable woman.”

  He’d never thought of her as anything more than his mother. The woman who fed and clothed him, who made him study and had once washed his mouth out with soap. He had known, for years, that she took care of people, but he had never seen anything like this. “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  “I’m glad y’all are staying with us.”

  “Me, too,” JD admitted softly. Heck, small or not, he liked Rock Creek. He liked all the kids and most of the adults. Even Rico had seemed all right the last time he’d seen him, here in this hotel lobby, offering Rourke his congratulations.

  Besides, he wasn’t completely stupid. He was no niño tonto. Rico’s visit, the knife to the throat, had probably been one of Cash’s tests.

  He’d had nightmares about that knife at his throat, not that he’d admit it to anyone. If that exercise had been conducted to point out that being scared was unpleasant, then it had succeeded.

  JD sat down on the sofa and leaned over Will. Or was it Vin? If he was going to stay here, there was no reason not to state his case and get it out in the open.

  “I’m a great shootist,” he said, his eyes on the baby. “Fast and accurate.”

  “That’s what Teddy tells me,” Rourke said with a nod of his head.

  “I was going to be a gunfighter like Cash, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Do tell.”

  “But a man who’s good with a gun shouldn’t waste his time keeping a shop or raising cattle or cotton,” JD said, horrified that his voice squeaked once.

  “You’re right about that,” Rourke said. “You know, Teddy is planning on going to work for me when he’s a bit older. I don’t know if he’s mentioned it or not, but I’m opening my own detective agency.”

  “He mentioned it.” JD’s heart started beating too hard. This was better than finding gold! He wasn’t going to have to ask. Jed Rourke, one of the Rock Creek Six, was going to offer him a job!

  “If you’re interested in working for me when you’re a little bit older—”

  “Yeah!” JD said, the pitch of his voice higher than he’d planned it to be. “That would be great.”

  “You have to finish your schoolin’ first,” Rourke said seriously. “I won’t have any idiots working for me.” He leaned back on the sofa, a sleeping baby boy in each arm. “Shoot, that’s years away, little woodpecker. You’ll probably change your mind by the time you get out of school.”

  He didn’t mind so much when Rourke called him little woodpecker in that friendly tone. So long as he didn’t use that nickname in front of the girls! If Carrie and Millie ever found out...

  “I won’t change my mind, Mr. Rourke.”

  The big man closed his eyes and smiled. “Call me Uncle Jed.”

  Chapter 14

  Eden was more determined than ever to feed him this morning. She kept bringing food to his table, when all he really wanted was a cup of coffee and maybe a biscuit. It didn’t take him long to begin to suspect that something was up.

  When Eden sat down beside him and smiled too brightly, he knew he was about to find out exactly what that something was.

  “How are you this morning?” she asked, folding her hands on the table.

  “Fine and dandy. And you?”

  She nodded. “Wonderful. I just wanted to thank you again for helping out so much when Fiona was lost.” She shuddered visibly as she remembered.

  But that wasn’t the reason for her mood. She�
��d thanked him, and everyone else, many times after that horrifying incident. Since then she’d been diligently trying to forget what had happened that day. So, why was she bringing it up now?

  “I just don’t know what we’d do without you around here,” she said.

  Cash took a deep, stilling breath. At least he knew why Eden had been so jumpy lately, and why she was so damned and determined to feed him. “She told you, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t... whatever are you...” she stammered, and then she took a deep breath of her own and looked him square in the eye.

  “You’d make a lousy poker player, Eden,” he said with a smile. “You’re the worst liar I ever met.”

  “You’re not really going to leave, are you?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s not right.”

  He thought about telling her that Rock Creek needed Nadine more than it had ever needed Daniel Cash, but he didn’t. That kind of confession would be more telling than was acceptable. “Rock Creek just isn’t the place it used to be. There are too damn many kids, for one thing. I can’t take two steps without tripping over one.”

  “Oh, you love the children,” Eden countered.

  “I most certainly do not.” He tried to sound properly mortified at the very idea. “And they are only part of the problem. All my friends have turned into old women who would rather knit booties than go off looking for a good fight.”

  Eden pursed her lips. “Is that what you’re looking for? A good fight?”

  “Always.” He gave his cuff more attention than it needed. “I don’t imagine we need to discuss the lack of suitable female companionship in this fine town.”

  “I don’t imagine we do,” she said primly.

  He set emotionless eyes on her face. “So why on earth should I stay here?”

  “Because we need you,” Eden said simply, and without hesitation.

  “I disagree.”

  “You don’t get a vote,” she snapped.

  He couldn’t help but smile. Eden rarely lost her temper, but on occasion it was very clear that she and Jed were related by blood. Her response to his smile was a teary-eyed pursing of her lips. “I don’t want you to be like Isatekwa,” she said softly.

  “The Comanche?”

  “He used to be a warrior, but alone he was just... just...”

  Pathetic. Lonely. Forever lost. He wasn’t about to agree with her. “You think I can’t make it without someone around to watch my back?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes.”

  “I’ve been on my own for the past year.”

  “But things are different now. I have a bad feeling, Daniel.” She twisted her hands slightly. “I think if you leave here, we’ll have word of your death within six months.”

  “Nice of you to give me so long to live,” he growled.

  “Stay,” she insisted. She wagged a finger at him like a scolding mother might. “What you really need is a wife and a few babies.”

  “Bite your tongue. Babies?”

  “Oh, you love babies.”

  “They’re toothless parasites.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  Eden pursed her lips as Fiona ran to the table to join them. “Uncle Cash!” she cried, heading for his lap.

  “Scram, kid,” he said in his coldest voice, determined to prove his point to Eden.

  Fiona was not deterred. She never was. Undaunted, she climbed into his lap and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

  “You’re wrinkling my jacket.”

  “Sorry.” Fiona sat and ran her little palms over his lapel, smoothing the wrinkles. “There now, all better.”

  Eden looked on with a too-knowing smile.

  It was impossible to look into those wide hazel eyes and remain angry. Or cold. Or distant. And when Fiona reached up and laid her little hands on his cheeks, he quit trying.

  “My daddy has one gray hair.” She pointed a finger at Cash’s temple. “Right there. It’s brand new. He says it’s his Fiona lightning.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” Cash smiled, but looking at Fiona his heart broke a little. It was a sentimental reaction he could not afford. “You’d better run along,” he said, lifting her off his lap and setting her on her feet.

  “Okay, but I won’t go far, right, Mommy?”

  “Right,” Eden said as she watched Fiona run into the lobby and then up the stairs.

  “That’s what you need,” Eden said softly.

  “God above, one Fiona in this world is enough.”

  Eden smiled. “A daughter,” she said, turning her eyes back to him. “A little girl. That’s what you need.”

  Cash wanted to tell her that would never happen, but the words stuck in his throat. “How could you wish that on me? I thought you liked me, at least part of the time. If I had a daughter, I would be forever protecting her from men like her father.”

  “It’s what fathers do,” she said gently.

  He knew that. He saw it every day, in the men around him. “Is the lecture over, Mommy?” he asked caustically.

  “For now.” She bit her bottom lip. “Just promise you won’t leave without talking to me first.”

  He could lie to just about anyone else, but not Eden. Some of her disgustingly open qualities rubbed off on him when he spent too much time with her. Just another reason to leave.

  “Promise,” she said again as he remained silent.

  Cash pushed his chair back, finished with this conversation even if Eden was not. “Sorry. I can’t do that.”

  * * *

  Blindfolded, the men in her life on either side of her holding her hands and guiding her, Nadine smiled widely. Just moments earlier they had run across the street, dashing through the soft summer rain, but once they’d reached the safety of the boardwalk with its wide overhang, Cash and JD had tied a silk scarf over her eyes and slowed their step.

  “What’s the big surprise?” she asked softly.

  “If we told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise,” JD said. She heard the excitement in his voice, and smiled wider.

  Finally they came to a stop and Cash released her hand. His hands on her shoulders turned her around, and before her a door opened. Shoving gently, Cash guided her into a room and began to untie the blindfold.

  For a moment she didn’t recognize Rogue’s Palace. Only the long bar and the empty shelves behind it gave the place away.

  Everything else had changed. The rickety chairs and tables had been cleared away, and in their place was a desk and swivel chair, a long, sturdy table, and two narrow beds head to head in the far corner. An empty bookcase had been placed near the desk.

  “It’ll look a lot better when your things arrive from Marianna,” Cash said in a low voice. “And if there’s anything else you need to make the place complete...”

  “What have you done?”

  He removed a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. She took the paper with trembling fingers. “The place is yours. Rock Creek doesn’t need another saloon, but it does need a decent clinic.”

  She was alternately thrilled and terrified. As exciting as this was, as wonderful, it only proved to her that Cash hadn’t lied. Good heavens, he really was leaving and he wasn’t coming back. Giving her this place was proof of that fact.

  “And the upstairs is great,” JD said, bounding up to the top step before turning around to look down at her. “There are four rooms. One for you, one for me, and two that can be converted into rooms for patients. And the storeroom!” he said, rushing back down to open the door at the back of the room. “It’s still full of whiskey right now, but once it’s cleaned out you can store your supplies here.”

  “What supplies?” she mumbled.

  Cash leaned down and placed his mouth close to her ear. “I ordered you a few things from New York. A stethoscope, a set of surgical knives, a selection of the most common drugs, and—”

  She spun on him and looked up. If JD wasn’t here she’d throw her arms a
round Cash’s neck and hold on tight. She’d laugh and cry, thank him and beg him to stay. “Why?” she whispered.

  “Because you are an incredible woman who deserves to have everything she wants.”

  “Everything?”

  “Almost everything.”

  JD was oblivious. He went around the room checking every detail. “I told Cash you’d need a big bookcase for all your books,” he said. “We built this ourselves.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. Show her your thumb, Cash,” JD said brightly.

  “That’s really not necessary,” he said in a voice that held a hint of dire warning.

  “So,” JD said, coming to stand with them. “Do you like it?” It struck Nadine, with a tug of her heart, how tall JD was getting. Had he grown since they’d been here? Or was it just seeing Cash and his son together that reminded her of the time that had passed? JD would soon be a man. A couple more inches, and he’d be as tall as Cash.”I love it,” she said, glancing around the room. Her own office, her own clinic. Tears stung her eyes.

  “Great. I’m going back to the hotel,” he said, his part of the job done. “I told Teddy I wouldn’t be away long.” Like a whirlwind he was gone, leaving Nadine alone with Cash.

  “You shouldn’t have done this,” she said softly.

  “It’ll be good for the town, and for you.”

  She took his hands in hers and lifted them both, and immediately spotted the bruised thumb on his left hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” she said, raising the thumb to her mouth for a kiss.

  “If I had known a kiss was your prescribed medicine, I would have shown you my wound right away.”

  She hadn’t seen the bruise last night, since he came to her long after dark and left before the sun came up. He was determined that JD never know about them. He was right, of course, but in keeping their relationship secret she missed so many little things. Walking up the stairs with him at night, going down to breakfast together. Strolling down the street arm in arm, sitting on the lobby sofa with her head on his shoulder at the end of a long day.