“Oh.” Aching at the knowledge that he’d gone to so much trouble to look good for Adabelle, Caroline made no attempt to smile. Despite his promises, she knew that men were fickle creatures who could not be depended upon. Just the sight of the woman would surely bring back all the reasons he’d been so enamored of her in the first place.
He sighed and straightened his string tie nervously, then he took Caroline into his arms and gave her a kiss that started out gentle and then grew progressively more intimate until it rocked her soul.
Caroline found herself reclining when the kiss was over, though she remembered distinctly that she’d been sitting up when it began. When Guthrie opened her trousers, there was nothing she could do to stop him.
“When I come back,” he said, caressing her, “I mean to finish what I’ve started. Be ready for me.”
Caroline was trembling. “Guthrie—”
The skilled motions of his fingers made her buck against his hand. “Be ready,” he said again. Then he withdrew and left her lying there on the side of the bed, aroused but unsatisfied and most definitely furious.
* * *
Outside the room, Guthrie straightened his tie again. God knew, he would have preferred to remain on the bed with Caroline for the rest of the day, but he had serious business to take care of.
He knew Cheyenne, having worked for six months on a cattle ranch just a few miles out of town, and he proceeded toward Adabelle’s place in long, deliberate strides. She and her mother ran a respectable boardinghouse three streets to the east.
The familiar sign was still hanging from the limb of the big maple tree in the front yard, and the fence was freshly painted to a stark white. The grass was well kept and the flowerbeds burgeoned with colorful blossoms even though it was relatively early in the season.
Guthrie opened the gate—it still creaked on its hinges—and straightened his tie again as he advanced toward the front porch.
Both to his horror and relief, the screen door opened just as he reached the bottom step, and Adabelle came out. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes feverish, and she reminded Guthrie of a skittish filly.
She was pretty, with her dimpled smile, her shiny blond hair, her lush and ample figure. But Guthrie didn’t feel the complex tangle of emotions that always beset him whenever he laid eyes on Caroline.
He stopped, unsure how to begin.
“Hello, Guthrie,” she said, and her warm, husky voice quavered a little. She clasped her hands together and forced another smile. “I’m glad you’re here because there’s something I must tell you.”
Guthrie gulped back explanations and excuses of his own and waited, curious.
Adabelle flushed prettily and averted her eyes for a moment. “Guthrie … Mr. Hayes … I’ve … well, since I saw you last … I’ve …”
A shaky hope began to rise in Guthrie. Could it be that he was to be spared hurting this good woman who deserved only kindness and love? It seemed too much to expect.
“Yes?” he prompted gently, keeping his distance.
Her eyes shone bright with tears. “I’ve met someone,” she said. “A railroad man named John Dennis. He and I are to be married next month.”
Guthrie’s reaction must have surprised her mightily—he let out a whoop of joy, picked Adabelle up with his one working arm, and swung her around once in celebration. Then he gave her a smacking kiss on the forehead.
She looked up at him, stunned, a cautious smile forming on her mouth. He was a lucky cuss, this John Dennis, just as Guthrie himself was.
“You don’t mind?”
Guthrie chuckled. “’Course I mind, darlin’. But the irony of the situation is that I met someone else, too. Her name is Caroline Chalmers, and she’s a little skinny spitfire of a schoolmarm with the temperament of a scorched rooster.”
Adabelle laughed and sniffled, both at the same time. “Guthrie, that’s wonderful,” she said. Then she embraced him, kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Be happy. Please?”
“You too,” he responded, with gruff tenderness. Even though he realized now that he had never truly loved Adabelle, he also knew that she would have made an ideal wife. With her, he could have expected peaceful days, pleasant nights, and a whole dooryard full of apple-cheeked children.
She held his hands for a long moment; they said good-bye with their eyes; and then Guthrie was turning, walking away, toward a woman who would probably provide him with his share of trouble and Job’s too.
Sometimes, Guthrie reflected, things just didn’t make sense.
Caroline paced in front of the window, the tip of one fingernail caught between her teeth, her body still quivering in readiness like the strings of an instrument that had been tuned but never played. She’d taken a sponge bath and changed into the best garment she’d brought along, her simple calico dress. Her hair had been braided and then pinned up at the back of her head, and she’d pinched her cheeks repeatedly to make them rosy.
When a knock sounded at her door, she turned and said shyly, “Come in.”
Guthrie stepped into the room, and he was smiling at her, though there were signs of weariness in his face. “You look beautiful, Wildcat, but for a wedding you’re going to need something a little fancier than that.”
Her face felt warm, and she raised the fingers of both hands to cool it. For one dreadful moment, she thought he was going to say he’d decided to marry Adabelle after all and wanted her to stand up as a witness. And in the moment after that, she was purely confounded. “What?”
“I want you to wear something—floaty,” he said, frowning as he assessed her. “Something white.”
Caroline’s cheeks actually ached. “Some people would say it wasn’t suitable for me to wear white.”
“I don’t give a damn what people say.”
“But we don’t know for sure that I’m—expecting. And besides that, Guthrie Hayes, I’ve already told you I don’t plan to marry a man who doesn’t love me.”
Guthrie sighed. “You’re expecting, all right,” he said, as though it were a foregone conclusion. “And if I’m willing to marry a woman who doesn’t love me, why can’t you return the favor?”
Caroline hadn’t expected him to take this tack. And she wasn’t about to admit to her tender feelings when she knew Guthrie didn’t hold any for her. She clasped her hands together in anxiety. “Perhaps, given time, you might come to love me …”
He approached and pulled her into his arms. “I’d say there was a real good chance of that, Wildcat.”
Her heart was fluttering, eager and hesitant at the same time. “Guthrie, I could still go to prison. Then what would you do?”
He curved his fingers under her chin and lifted. “You won’t end up in prison,” he promised. “Now, let’s go and buy you a dress.” Then a look of consternation came over his face, and he edged her toward the bed. “Of course, I did say I’d finish what I started, and I’m a man of my word.”
Caroline’s tense body grew tenser at the prospect of sweet relief. But she laid the palms of both hands to his chest. “No, Guthrie,” she said, her voice husky with conviction. “If we’re going to be married, I want to wait.”
He chuckled and bent to nibble at her lips. “All right, Wildcat. Now, let’s go and find a dress and a judge in that order.”
A woman in a daze, Caroline allowed Guthrie to take her hand and lead her out of the room and down the stairs. They found a proper dress, gauzy as an angel’s gown and just as white, in the first shop they visited.
Guthrie bought it with what Caroline presumed were poker winnings, and then they proceeded to search out someone to marry them. According to the marshal, the circuit judge happened to be in town, staying over at Mrs. Rogers’s boardinghouse.
Caroline recognized the name, and her gaze went swiftly to Guthrie’s face.
Her future husband simply thanked the marshal and ushered her toward the door. “Go back to the hotel and change into your dress,” he said. “I’ll send somebody for the j
udge.”
All the problems, real and potential, came to the forefront of Caroline’s mind, but she loved Guthrie too much to call off the wedding. She agreed with a brisk little nod and, “All right, Mr. Hayes, I’ll do as you say. But in the future I’ll thank you to phrase your requests politely instead of issuing them as orders.”
Guthrie smiled. “I’ll try, Wildcat,” he agreed. And then he turned Caroline around and gave her a little push toward the hotel.
When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw him handing a coin to a young boy. She picked up her pace, wanting to be ready when the judge arrived.
Outside the hotel, Caroline encountered Tob, who whined when he saw her. Shuffling her dress box to her other arm, she bent to pat the dog’s head. “There now,” she said, “one of these days, we’re going to stop dragging you all over the territory and you’ll have a hearth to lay beside and plenty of soup bones to chew on.”
Tob gave a little whimper, and Caroline left him, knowing the desk clerk would never let her take the animal through the lobby to her room.
Once she was behind her own door, however, she tossed her dress box onto the bed, opened the window, and whistled. After several summonses, Tob came bounding up the fire stairs, panting with the effort, and leaped through the chasm to join his mistress.
“Shhh,” Caroline warned, as the dog settled himself laboriously onto a hooked rug in front of the dresser. “If anyone hears you, we’ll both be thrown out on our ears.”
Tob laid his muzzle on his front legs with a contented sigh and closed his eyes.
Caroline, in the meantime, unpacked her dress and hastily put it on. Since she couldn’t do up the buttons in the back, she waited for Guthrie.
When he arrived, he brought a handful of buttercups and bluebells. “Sorry, Wildcat,” he said, “but these were the best I could do on short notice. I picked them in the lot behind the feed and grain store.”
The little nosegay of wildflowers delighted Caroline, as did the image of Guthrie picking them for her. Holding the blossoms gently, she smiled up at him, her eyes glazed over with tears. The words were so close, so close that she almost said them. I love you, Guthrie. But she caught them in time.
“Thank you.”
He frowned. “What’s the matter with your dress?”
Caroline laughed and then sniffled. “Nothing,” she said, turning her back to him. “It just needs fastening.”
Guthrie managed the buttons with his usual dexterity and, by the time he turned her to face him again, her tears were gone. “Well, Wildcat, the judge is waiting to make an honest man out of me. Shall we go?”
It seemed that Caroline’s heart wedged itself into her throat. She nodded because she couldn’t speak.
Downstairs, in a corner of the lobby, the judge stood waiting. He was a large man with a rounded belly, and he was clad in a pin-striped suit. He favored Caroline with an admiring smile and then led the way into the hotel manager’s office, where there was a little more privacy.
He brought an ornate license, decorated with birds, flowers, and golden script, from the pocket of his coat, and both Guthrie and Caroline signed it. Then the judge took a book from his pocket and struck an authoritative pose. Two housemaids served as witnesses.
Caroline and Guthrie stood in front of the windows facing the street, a little distance apart, and a sidelong glance told Caroline her groom was every bit as nervous as she was, despite his attempts at aplomb. He had to be wondering whether such a marriage could possibly work or not, just as she was.
The judge began reading the sacred words, although Caroline could tell he knew them from memory, and somehow, she managed to make her responses at the appropriate time. Outside, she could hear the sounds of wagons and horses going by.
When the time came for the exchange of rings, Caroline didn’t have one. To her surprise, though, Guthrie produced a gold band from the pocket of his coat and slid it onto her finger.
“By the power vested in me by the territory of Wyoming,” the judge wound up, his voice rising as he neared the crescendo of the ceremony, “I now pronounce you man and wife. Mr. Hayes, you may kiss your bride.”
The feel of Guthrie’s lips on hers was familiar, and yet Caroline was as jarred by the contact as she had been the first time he’d kissed her. She swayed slightly and had to grip her husband’s suitcoat to steady herself.
Merciful heavens, she reflected with an inner smile, people would think she was drunk.
Guthrie paid the judge and collected the marriage license and it was all over, as quickly and simply as that. Caroline marveled that Fourth of July speeches by pompous politicians could go on for upwards of two hours, while a wedding lasted no more than ten minutes.
She stretched out her hand to admire her wedding ring, thinking how pleased Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel would be to learn that she’d finally landed a husband. And one she loved, no less. Involved as she was in these thoughts, it came as a surprise to Caroline when Guthrie suddenly swept her up into his arms.
“Now, Mrs. Hayes,” he said, “I have the right to bed you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
There were cowboys in the lobby when Guthrie carried Caroline up the stairs, and they all cheered. Reaching the first landing, Guthrie turned and she tossed the now bedraggled bouquet of bluebells and buttercups.
A grizzled old cowpuncher with big, mournful eyes and a handlebar mustache caught the flowers, and his friends laughed and slapped him on the back.
Guthrie chuckled and proceeded to the room Caroline had rented earlier. Tob was still lying on the hooked rug, and he opened his eyes when the bride and groom entered and gave his tail a half wag, but he didn’t lift his muzzle from his forelegs.
“You’ll have to put that dress back on tomorrow,” Guthrie said, setting his wife gently on her feet. “We’re going to have our picture taken, provided the photographer’s sobered up by then.”
Caroline laughed. A cowboy had caught her bridal bouquet and the daguerreotypist was too drunk to take wedding pictures. For all of that, she wouldn’t have changed anything about it, except to have her sisters and the Misses Maitland there with her.
Guthrie laid his hands on either side of her waist. “I could stand here and look at you for the rest of the day,” he said hoarsely.
She smiled. “Have you developed a taste for skinny schoolmarms, Mr. Hayes?” she asked, recalling opinions he’d expressed earlier in their acquaintance.
He gave her a light, nibbling kiss, and there was a look of wonder in his eyes, as though he were seeing something in her that he’d never noticed before. “Just for one in particular,” he answered, and then, with an awkwardness that was unusual for him, he reached up to pull out her hairpins. He unbraided her dark tresses and spread his fingers to comb them.
She slowly undid his string tie, and Guthrie swallowed visibly.
He sat her down on the edge of the bed and crouched to remove her shoes, then stood to kick off his own boots.
It became a ritual then, slow, methodical, and tender. Guthrie would remove one of Caroline’s garments, then she would take away one of his. Presently, they were naked, and there was no shame in Caroline’s heart, only awe.
Guthrie smoothed Caroline’s long, silken hair away from her breasts and then pulled her close for his kiss. She was careful of his wound, which was healing but still tender.
Before, their lovemaking had always been fiery and tempestuous, possessing a certain urgency. That day, it was gentle, leisurely. When Guthrie laid Caroline on their narrow bed and took her, it was with the same reverence and caution that he had taken her virginity.
She loved the feel of his hairy chest against her soft, smooth breasts, his hard thighs against her more fleshy ones, and she reveled in the sweet intrusion of his shaft as he moved it rhythmically in and out of her.
With all its gentleness and lack of haste, the culmination of their union caught them both unaware, for it was shatteringly explosive. Caroline flu
ng back her head and shouted with triumph and pleasure while her body buckled helplessly under Guthrie’s and, the moment the last of her cries had faded away, he stiffened on top of her and clasped the brass railings in the headboard in both hands. His eyes were glazed, and he moaned as her hidden muscles drew on him, making his seed erupt within her.
When he could give nothing more, Guthrie collapsed beside Caroline, gasping for breath. He rested his right leg across her thighs and held her breast in his hand, chafing the nipple with the side of his thumb.
Caroline rolled onto her side and moved up on the pillows, brushing his lips lightly with the peak of her breast. He took the morsel eagerly into his mouth and suckled, and Caroline groaned. Her body, so thoroughly appeased only minutes before, was already tightening again, and there was a warm ache in the depths of her, where only Guthrie could reach.
Gripping her bottom in one hand, he pressed her close against him, continuing to enjoy her breast. She arched her back as he moved her up and down against the flesh of his hip, and he left that nipple only to conquer the other.
Caroline whimpered softly, and a light film of perspiration dampened her skin from head to foot, and still he worked her, turning her on a fiery pivot.
“Oh, Guthrie,” she sobbed out, and though he must have known the words were a plea, he was ruthless.
At the last moment, he turned Caroline so that she lay with her back to his chest, found her feminine sheath with his shaft, and thrust it into her. His hands fondled her breasts as she exploded in instant response, her hips grinding against his as she sought relief, her cries echoing unchecked against the walls.
Caroline wanted to watch Guthrie’s face as he responded to her, so she turned in his arms and lifted one hand to touch his cheek. His eyes were hooded, his flesh damp, and he looked like a man in delirium.
She wrapped one leg around him in order to be closer, and when their joining inevitably deepened, he rasped out a senseless plea and emptied himself into her. They were still joined when Caroline bent her head and lightly touched her tongue to his nipple, it hardened instantaneously.
CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER Page 28