by Chloe Garner
She’d held no preconceptions that she was aware of, concerning sex, and this wasn’t where her thoughts primarily wandered, now, though she did have a distinct awareness, somewhere yet far away, that Jezzie and Lise would have been better at it. It would bother her, but not for a while.
There were also logistical and relational questions to be answered, primarily about Jimmy and Rhoda, but they were only going to turn up a little before the ones about Jezzie and Lise.
Sarah’s thoughts now were concerned with whether or not she and Jimmy could actually work. They hadn’t before, not in recent memory. Not as allies. As friends, sure, and she was the best advisor Jimmy would ever have - there she had no doubt. But as something softer toward one another, something much more exposed, it seemed like they would both simply be inviting injury, and that it would only be a matter of time before one of them couldn’t stand it any longer. There would be a fight, an explosive one, one that ripped up the foundations of their relationship, and she worried that it would be irreparable.
But she was here. They’d made it this far without gutting each other. Maybe that meant there was hope.
Jimmy grinned.
“I can hear the gears turning over there,” he said.
She didn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile like that.
“Since when have you had perfect teeth?” she asked. Baby steps. Sleeping with him once didn’t mean she suddenly had to be cloyingly nice to him all the time.
“Since Intec,” he said. “Might be the best money I spent there.”
She was about to mock him further, but his intake of breath indicated he was going to keep talking.
“So, there’s some stuff we probably need to talk about.”
“You think?” she asked. He laughed again.
“I don’t know who’s going to be more unlivable, you or them,” Jimmy said, eyes still closed.
“Them?” Sarah asked.
He sighed, rolling onto his side and propping his head up.
“Thomas and Rhoda.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah.”
She raised her eyebrows at him and he nodded his chin down to his chest.
“Rhoda and Thomas have been on-again-off-again for the best part of six years.”
“If this is about you being a bastard, I’m already in on that.”
“No, you’re misunderstanding. They’re on, right now. Planning on getting married.”
“Too many blanks left, Lawson.”
“It was Thomas’ idea, at first, if you take them seriously. Apparently Rhoda just latched onto it, though, and she just went running with it.”
“What idea is that?”
“That you needed a legitimate rival.”
She sat up.
“You...” She jerked her head back. “You went along with that?”
“Thomas only told me the morning she got here. He was supposed to come get her, and he told me that she was expecting me, and why. I wasn’t sure I would go along with it until I got there.”
He shrugged.
“Bastard,” she said. “Manipulative bastard.”
“Sarah, I asked. I pleaded. I begged you to come with us, and I thought, maybe, when we came back, it would all be behind us and we could be what we were always supposed to be, but it never happened. We kept getting in the way.”
“I kept getting in the way. So y’all figured you’d help me get myself out of my own way.”
Her accent crept back in as she grew angrier.
“Not just you,” he said. “I baited you more than once. I like it when you’re angry.”
“You think you can trap me into this...” Sarah warned. He looked up at her with placid eyes.
“I asked you if that was what it was about,” he said. “I asked, and you said it wasn’t. Was that a lie?”
Her first response was defensiveness. She was off-balance, upset. She calmed herself, feeling the cool of anger as it slid over the turmoil of everything else.
“Lie or not, it don’t change that you got what you wanted with a lie, and I ain’t gonna hold myself to anything, under that.”
His face turned up to the ceiling again, his face placid.
“See, that.” He shifted his shoulders into her pillows, a sense of belonging, of ownership even in the way his body moved. He did belong. Dammit, he did.
She wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
“That’s what I love about you. That fire. No matter what’s in your best interest or what you really want, you aren’t going to let anyone put out that fire.” His head twisted quickly, viperlike, and the eyes were playful. “It wasn’t my idea. And by the end, Thomas hated it, but she was right. Can’t you see it? We’d have done this dance, this dance right here, until the end of time if she hadn’t come cut in.”
He blinked, then let his gaze roll back up the ceiling. Again, Sarah interrupted herself with silence as he began to speak.
“What was it you were thinking, right then, before I said anything?”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, heavy lashes over eyes that knew her.
“That I was going to have to kill Jezzie, just to be sure,” Sarah said. He shook his head, licking his lips.
“No.”
“That I didn’t want to be the one to tell Rhoda,” she said. He narrowed his eyes.
“No.”
She’d never been in her bed naked before. She wasn’t sure the last time she’d been to-the-skin naked, at all. She didn’t like to be exposed like that, unable to react should she need to. It was strange, but even now it didn’t bother her.
Even as she was an inch away from sending Jimmy home, blowing up the whole thing, she could be this close to him and not feel wrong.
It was a thought that came out of nowhere, but it was the one that tipped her away from the destructive instinct.
“I was wondering how long we could keep it up without one of us scuttling it on purpose.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, the little snort, and he shifted again.
“I guess we have our answer.”
“Are you blaming me?” she asked, the edge of her anger gone, but still firm, defensiveness gone.
“No,” he said to the ceiling. “Me. I wanted to see what you’d do when I told you. I’ve been dying to tell you basically since I saw your face when she kissed me at the train.”
She found she was grinning.
“You’re sick.”
“I am,” he said introspectively. “But I love you.” The intake of breath, full of potential, words to come. He licked his lips again. “I want this, Sarah. I don’t know how long we can keep the plates in the air, but I want to try.”
“Oh, I have no doubt I’ll throw plates at you at some point,” she said.
The open smile. He sucked on his lower lip, then reached over and wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck and pulled her mouth down against his, kissing her hard. It wasn’t like the first time, two people who maybe hadn’t ever existed, innocent and belonging to each other totally. Transparent and sincere as that had been, this was much more honest. Much more real. She kissed him back with an angry relief, pulling the tangle of sheets straight again so that her skin slid against his, their bodies wrestled together.
Here.
Now.
Jimmy Lawson.
Sarah Todd.
––—
The sun was coming up outside. Her eyes were heavy, but there were too many thoughts yet for sleeping.
They’d been talking about the auction for an hour, going over all of the bids, all of the politics, all of the things that Sarah had missed by not knowing the players and all of the things that she’d noticed that Jimmy had missed in his focus on the bidding.
They’d finally gotten to the last one, the one she’d wanted to talk about more than any of them.
“I can’t believe you looked at all of them and just... bluffed,” she said. He smiled, putting his finger
s through her hair again with an air of disbelief, like he still didn’t trust her to really be there.
“It’s what I do.”
“You know, I didn’t know who it was going to be. I thought maybe Maxim.”
He shook his head.
“The man can’t keep any secret but his own.”
“Who is she?”
The corner of his eye ticked, the hint of humor.
“That was Yip’s sister-in-law.”
“No,” Sarah said. “Bad choice. They’re going to track her down in no time.”
Now he did smile, perfect teeth and humored eyes.
“If they can find him, they should tell me where he is.”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head.
“They aren’t legally married, Yip and Cassandra. They went on a spiritual retreat and he sent me a letter telling me not to look for him.”
“Is he okay? You’re sure?”
She’d never known Yip that well. He had still been a teenager when the Lawsons had left. All the same, she would have tracked him down and dragged him home, like it or not.
“He told me when he left he wasn’t sure when they’d be back. There was enough in the letter to know it was what he wanted.”
“And you just let him go?”
His eyebrows told a whole story, that there was more to it than he was letting on, that he’d gotten the best part of the deal, even letting Yip go, that maybe he was in favor of his brother never coming back.
“Cassandra and Coriander are the youngest two daughters of the richest, most connected man in Intec, and he just so happens to play on our side of the fence.” It had been a term Peter Lawson had used to describe the difference between homesteaders and miners. Miners were ‘our’ side of the fence, homesteaders the other side. Homesteaders had clear rules, clear ownership, clear boundaries. Fences. Miners, prospectors, digging gamblers were a different thing entirely, and they played by Lawson rules.
“So you bought yourself a rich ally with your little brother,” Sarah said.
“He’s happy,” Jimmy said. “You can’t say that I’ve kept any of them from what they really wanted. I just made them keep looking, a few times.”
“What about Rhoda?” Sarah asked.
“What about her?”
“What’s her major asset that she brings to the Lawson family?”
He put his fingers through her hair again, letting his hand rest on her neck.
“You think Thomas would ask my permission for anything related to his love life?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “But I could see him not listening to you.”
Jimmy smiled.
“She’s everything you said. She is her own asset. And he loves her more than he loves air.”
“And he let her throw herself at you,” Sarah said.
“You know she doubled down after she met you,” he said. She raised an eyebrow and he laughed. “She was determined, even when I said it wasn’t going to work.”
“I still don’t see him being okay with it,” Sarah said. She had a hard time imagining Thomas being deceptive at all, not to mention with something as important as the woman he was in love with.
Jimmy was reading her eyes. She wondered what he saw.
“It’s because he loves you that much,” he said. She jerked her head back, and he moved his hand away.
“What?”
“Not like that,” he said. “He thinks that you’re not happy. And that you would be, if we could finally get everything worked out.”
She shook her head.
“He’ll hear from me.”
“What I wouldn’t give to hear that,” he answered.
“So what’s your deal with Coriander?” Sarah asked.
“It’s a loan. Apex and Thor get the claim, like you said, but they’re going to owe us a payment schedule that covers what we owe Descartes.”
“Descartes?” Sarah asked. He shrugged.
“His brothers are Pythagoras and Augustus.”
She shook her head.
“And we take a cut of profit off the top, I assume, plus what we get from protection fees?”
“Until it’s paid off. It’s worth at least three or four times that, so they shouldn’t have any problem dying rich.”
She tucked her arm under her head.
So there was that.
“I need to talk to Pete’s mom. I want to make sure they’re set up, too.”
“Whatever you need to do,” Jimmy said.
It was long-standing tradition, law, that claims lapsed as soon as the owner died, regardless of the circumstances. It kept families from fighting over them and the feuds that tended to result. It was up to Sarah to keep profitable claim owners from being targets by making sure that no one involved in a suspicious death ever got a hint of a useful claim, and it was up to Jimmy to make sure that if someone got killed over a claim, everyone else involved eventually met the same fate.
All the same, she would take care of Pete’s family. She owed him that much, and it had nothing to do with her role in the claim process.
“What are you going to do with the money?” Sarah asked.
“I have plans,” he said with a hint of smug sparkle. “What are you going to do with your half?”
“Haven’t thought about it,” she said. “Retire to a beach somewhere, maybe.”
“Now that would be something.”
“What plans?” she pressed.
“I want to build a reservoir,” he said. “Irrigation channels, import the right soil supplements to actually grow real food, maybe even real livestock here.”
“Ignoring that everyone knows you can’t build a reservoir out here because of the sandstorms, that reminds me of something,” Sarah said.
“It’s possible,” he insisted. She ignored him.
“The homesteaders are threatening open rebellion. You need to be careful. They could outgun you, if they put their minds to it.”
“Someone told you that?” Jimmy asked. She nodded.
“Said if I wanted to lead the charge, they’d back me.”
He snorted his soft laugh.
“They’re going to be disappointed, then. Who was it?”
“Messenger doesn’t matter,” Sarah said. “He isn’t one of the real threats, anyway. Just someone who trusts me.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Jimmy said.
“Try not to set fire to too many bridges,” Sarah said. He raised an eyebrow at her and she rolled, pulling the curtain away from the window to look out at the sunrise.
“We should go,” she said. “We need to see everyone off at the train.”
“I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll be very disappointed if you do,” he told her. “The rest of them can handle it.”
“Aren’t they going to come looking for you?” Sarah asked. “What are they going to do when you didn’t come home last night?”
“Thomas will figure it out.”
“There wasn’t a horse outside.”
“I walked.”
“Why?”
He reached up to touch the ends of her hair.
“Because I wanted to watch what you were like when you didn’t know I was here.”
“For three seconds.”
He smiled.
“Worth it.”
She shook her head.
“I should have shot you then kicked you out. Would have served you right.”
“Where do you hide all of your guns?” he asked.
“What?”
He gave her an innocent look and shrugged.
‘They’re mostly in the pantry downstairs,” she said. “There are others around. Why?”
“I want to make sure they get them all when they come to move you.”
“Try that again?” she said.
“Sometime after lunch, a crew of men are going to come and pack up all of your stuff and bring it home.”
“No.”
He nodded.
“It’s going to happen.”
“No.”
“You aren’t staying here any more,” he said. “They’ll take the floor safe out and bring it, and your books and papers. The furniture will stay, which is why I need to know where to find the guns. I know you’ve gotten them hidden everywhere.”
“Like hell,” Sarah said.
“Sarah, with the right horse, I could pull this place down. You aren’t staying here any more. This isn’t who you are anymore.”
“And who am I? Just another Lawson wife? Not happening. I am Sarah Todd, and I’m gonna stay Sarah Todd. You aren’t going to change that.”
“And who is that?” he asked. “You’ve spent your entire life waiting to figure out who you actually are. I’m not going to tell you who that is, but I’m damn well going to tell you who it isn’t. And this? This is who you aren’t.”
“Is this you trying to make me angry for your own fun?”
“Yes,” he said. “But it’s still happening.”
“You were that confident that you’d get me to say yes,” she said, growing angrier still.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I thought you would send me away like you always have. I haven’t arranged anything, yet. I just don’t have any shortage of labor to choose from.”
She stared at him, waiting for him to back down, knowing that he wouldn’t. He returned her gaze easily, one of the only men she’d ever known who could do that.
“No,” she finally said. The pitch was different. This wasn’t her fighting with him, being combative and angry. This was a simple statement.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I’m not going to just go quietly into being a Lawson wife,” she said. “I won’t just drop everything in my life and go disappear into that house.”
“Is that what you think happens?” he asked. “Is that what you think is going to happen?”
“No,” she said. “But because I’m not moving.”
“Ever?” he asked with something that sounded like humor. She paused.
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head.
“You are Sarah Todd. I know that. Everyone in town knows that. You took a bull whip to my brother on Main Street. No one is going to forget any time soon that you are your own woman. But you don’t have to live in exile out here anymore. My father sent you away. He was wrong. You’re one of us, too, and I’m bringing you home.”