Heartbreak Ranch: Amy's StoryJosie's StoryHarmony's StoryArabella's Story

by Chelley Kitzmiller

  He closed his eyes and waited to see what she would do next. He was disappointed when he heard the sound of her rinsing out the cloth. When she again touched him with the cold cloth, he flinched and pretended to come awake.

  “I’m almost finished,” she said, a worried look upon her face.

  For some inexplicable reason he felt compelled to guard her secret. “I must have nodded off.”

  “Rest is the best thing,” she answered in a breathy voice. “I think I’ll go see about fixing something to eat. I imagine you must be hungry.”

  “Starved,” he said, meaning it far differently from how she would take it.

  Seconds after Amy left the room, Toddy walked in, stood beside the bed and looked at him with expectation.

  Walker eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want?” Damned if that wasn’t the silliest-looking dog he’d ever seen. Toddy whined softly, then sat back on his haunches and lifted his right paw as Walker had seen him do with Amy. “No. I don’t wanna shake hands,” he mumbled beneath his breath.

  Toddy cocked his head and whined again. Walker glanced toward the open doorway and saw Amy standing at the table, her back to the bedroom. He slid his hand over the edge of the bed, grabbed Toddy’s paw and gave it a quick shake.

  “All right now, outta here,” he whispered gruffly, jerking his hand away.

  Hanging his head as if he’d been reprimanded, Toddy got up and walked toward the door. He stopped near the threshold, looked back toward the bed, then lifted his leg and peed on Walker’s boots.

  * * *

  AMY COULDN’T GET Walker’s belt buckle off her mind. While stoking the fire for her stew pot, she reflected upon what she’d done and vowed not to let anything like that happen again. The journal had warned her about the dangers of casual experimentation and now she knew why. It worried her to think that if she hadn’t been so afraid he’d wake up and catch her, she actually might have gone lower.

  Amy backed away from the fire, the heat suddenly unbearable.

  As the stew cooked, Amy went outside and corralled Walker’s horse. She considered ignoring

  Walker’s warning that nobody could ride Outlaw except him, but she didn’t have enough confidence in her horsemanship to take the chance.

  On her way back to the house, she picked up the things she’d dropped when Walker fell off the roof. She would have to be careful not to let him see the journal. If he ever read it, there was no telling what he would do.

  Walker was snoring softly as Amy entered the house. She tiptoed into the bedroom, put the journal back in the trunk and left the room.

  Not a minute later, he woke up.

  “Amy?”

  “I hope you’re hungry,” she answered from the kitchen. “I’ve got enough stew to feed a house full of hungry whores.” The second the words were out, she gasped, then clamped her hand over her mouth. In spite of her boarding school education, there were a few of her mother’s expressions that she just couldn’t seem to stop herself from saying.

  “What did you say?”

  Amy could hear the uncertainty in his voice and knew he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “I said, I’ve got enough stew to feed a hungry horse.” She stood next to the table, gripping the back of the chair, awaiting his answer. None came. It was Toddy’s cold, wet nose nudging her elbow, reminding her he was hungry, that got her moving again.

  “Just a second,” she told him, then ladled out a generous portion of stew into a bowl and set it on the floor. When it came to suppertime, Toddy was a beggar who turned into a thief if he didn’t get fed right away.

  Once Toddy was settled, Amy looked around for something she could use for a tray. She found an old wooden box lid and covered it with a blue-and-white checkered napkin, then spent several minutes arranging and rearranging a large bowl of steaming hot stew, a knife and spoon, two perfectly browned biscuits from yesterday’s baking, and a cupful of rich black coffee.

  Walker looked up when she came into the room. “Let me set this tray down, then I’ll help you sit up.” She was prepared for him to be difficult and refuse her help as he had earlier. This time, however, he didn’t make a move, but waited patiently for her assistance.

  Was he in too much pain to be difficult? Or was his good behavior a direct result of the dog training commands she had used earlier? Her lips pursed with a smile that threatened to take over her face.

  Sitting Walker up proved almost as difficult as getting him into bed. After propping pillows behind his back, she placed the tray on his lap, then moved away and sat down near the footrail.

  Amy waited for him to eat a few bites before beginning a conversation. “Tell me, why do you call this place Heartbreak Ranch? It’s such a sad name.”

  “My ma named it. Said it broke her heart when Pa up and decided they should leave Philadelphia and go West.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Before the war. I remember we had a big, fancy house full of furniture I wasn’t allowed to sit on, and servants to cook and clean.”

  “Why would your father give up all that...for this?” She gestured with a sweep of her hand.

  “He’d worked in Gramps’s dry-goods store since he was old enough to count, and hated it. Claimed he wasn’t a salesman. He hankered to work outdoors.”

  Amy lifted her chin and looked up at the cloth-covered painting hanging behind Walker’s head. Sam Heart had given up a beautiful home and a lucrative business to make his dreams come true. Then he destroyed her mother’s dreams by betraying her.

  “I know all about dreams,” she told him. “When my mother died, I vowed to make her dream of living on a ranch come true.”

  “And so, this is it?”

  Amy nodded. “Your father must have been a better salesman than he thought to sell my mother a ranch she’d never seen,” she jested lightly, knowing she was stretching the truth considerably to say that Sam sold the property, when he had most probably lost it to her mother at faro.

  “We don’t know that he sold it to her,” Walker reminded her pointedly.

  “No, we don’t,” Amy returned with all sincerity. In fact, she had no idea whether or not her mother had ever carried out her revenge. Changing the subject, she asked, “Were you and your father close?”

  Walker appeared to consider the question before speaking. “We used to be...before Ma died.”

  When he didn’t volunteer any more, Amy gently coaxed him into answering a few more questions but soon realized she’d made a mistake. She didn’t want to know that Sam Heart had loved his wife or that he’d been a good father. She needed to think of him as the man who’d broken her mother’s heart, the scoundrel who’d bet he could make a fool of Bella Duprey.

  “After Ma died he just wasn’t himself anymore. He started actin’ funny—real restless-like. Nothin’ I did—nothin’ anyone did—satisfied him. Then he started takin’ up with that woman.” He shook his head in disgust.

  Amy’s heart leaped into her throat. “Woman?

  Wh-what woman?” To her dismay, her voice broke slightly.

  “Jersey Lil. Runs the saloon in Havilah. I knew he was lonely, but I didn’t figure he’d get himself involved with that kind of woman. A whore. When the business of the boundary dispute came up, I suggested he go to San Francisco and spend some extra time there. Just so’s he’d be away from her.”

  From the tone of his voice, Amy knew Walker was feeling responsible for his father’s apparent disappearance. She wanted to tell him he had nothing to do with what had happened between his father and her mother, but she couldn’t. Not now. Maybe never.

  * * *

  LYING IN FRONT of the fire on her makeshift pallet of blankets, Amy stared into the low-burning flames. She’d turned from side to side so often in the past few hours that she felt like a well-roasted pig. She’d tried everything to fall asleep. Counted sheep. Counted the knotholes in the ceiling beams. Even tried to hypnotize herself by ga
zing at the sparks drifting up the chimney.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Walker. Walker striding toward her in anger that first day. Walker holding her after she’d run blindly out of the smoke-filled house. Walker kissing her in the doorway.

  Walker’s belt buckle. Walker lying in her bed, half-naked.

  She put an arm around Toddy and nuzzled her chin into the curls atop his head. “What am I going to do, boy?” she asked in a troubled whisper. “I can’t let myself love him. There’s too much between us. Too many secrets. Too many lies.” Even if the Pinkerton man didn’t discover the truth, she knew the truth—at least most of it—and it was getting harder and harder to keep it from Walker. Toddy cocked his head to the side consideringly.

  Guilt had been stabbing at her from opposite directions for several days. From Walker, because he deserved to know what had become of his father. And from her mother, because revealing what she knew to Walker would be a betrayal.

  A loud noise in the other room alerted Toddy. He ran to investigate and started barking.

  “Shut up, you miserable excuse for a dog,” Walker said between his teeth. “Get out of here before I—”

  “What’s going on?” Amy asked, staring at him from the doorway. Walker lay on his side, his leg over the edge of the bed and one foot on the floor. She rushed over to him and started to help him back into bed.

  “No,” he roared. “I have to get up.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the middle of the night.”

  He grabbed both her arms and used them to bring himself to a sitting position. “I don’t care what time it is. I have to go to the outhouse!”

  Amy felt her face flame. “Oh, of course.” She thought about it a moment. “But you don’t have to go outside. The chamber pot is under the bed.”

  “No, thank you.” Before she could offer him her assistance, he rose to his feet.

  “I’ll go with you,” she blurted, lifting his arm around her shoulder.

  Walker took a step forward, then stopped. “This is one thing you can’t help me with, all right?”

  Suddenly realizing that she had actually offered to take him to the outhouse, she stepped back. That she felt foolish was a gross understatement. She didn’t even want to imagine what he must be thinking.

  It seemed like hours rather than minutes before he returned. He appeared none the worse for his late-night outing. In fact, he looked to be moving a little easier. She preceded him into the bedroom and waited for him at the edge of the bed.

  “Walker, lie down.” The dog command rolled too easily off her tongue. She was beginning to wish she’d never read her mother’s journal.

  “I wish you’d stop fussin’ over me.”

  “I’m not fussing over you, for heaven’s sake, I’m just trying to help,” she said defensively, grabbing one of his arms. She positioned herself in front of him, a few inches right of his leg, and held on to him as he bent his knees and lowered himself toward the mattress. He was halfway there when she realized she didn’t have sufficient strength to hold him.

  “Walker! I can’t hold—” His weight pulled her toward him.

  In a tangle of arms and legs, they tumbled backward, falling onto the foot of the bed. It was a moment before she could recover enough to realize what had happened, and another before she could speak.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. Walker lay directly beneath her, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

  He took a long time to answer. “I’m not sure yet.” When she started to move off him, he groaned. “Don’t!” He grabbed her upper arms and held her still. “You’ll make it worse.”

  Afraid to move for fear she would hurt him more, Amy stayed where she was and waited for his cue.

  After a moment she asked, “Are you sure I’m not hurting you more by lying on top of you like this? I could just sort of slide off and—”

  “No.” He pressed his hands to her lower back. “Stay where you are.” Slowly his fingers traced up the ridge of her spine from her waist to her shoulders, relaxing her. Then, he slid his hands back down to her hips, his fingers pressing deep into her flesh, as he moved himself beneath her.

  Only now, feeling the hard male swell against her abdomen, did Amy realize what was happening. “Walker, I—”

  In a movement that took her by surprise, he gathered her in his arms and rolled them onto their sides. Before Amy could guess his intent, his mouth covered hers in a kiss that took her breath away. Ever since that first time he’d kissed her, she’d dreamed of him doing it again.

  But unlike that first time, there was no gentleness in him now. His mouth was hard and demanding, almost bruising in its urgency to possess her. With a whimper of bewilderment, Amy held still. He parted her lips with his probing tongue. The shock of it thrusting inside her mouth—and of what those thrusts exemplified—sent her pulse racing and her senses spinning out of control.

  “Walker, you mustn’t—” she breathed into his heated mouth, even as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Though she’d never before even entertained the idea of making love to a man out of wedlock, though she knew she might be making the biggest mistake of her life and that the consequences could be devastating, she was helpless to stop him from doing whatever he wanted to. It was as if her body and mind were battling to take control of her will, and her body was winning.

  A gentle breeze fluttered the blue-checkered tablecloth, reminding Amy of the painting that hung behind it and of her mother’s desire that she not become a courtesan.

  “Your back!” she said suddenly, her mind making one last attempt to gain control. She unwrapped her arms from around his neck. “You’ll hurt yourself more—”

  Instead of heeding her warning and releasing her, he kissed her into silence. If he was in pain, he didn’t let on. He moved one hand to the back of her head and combed his fingers through her hair. He placed tiny, wet kisses down her cheek, then along the column of her throat.

  Pleasure flowed through her veins like fine wine, intensifying a thousandfold when he untied the satin ribbon holding the neck of her nightgown together. He spread the material wide and kissed the pillow of her breasts.

  She moaned deep in her throat, her head pressed back against his arm. She arched her spine, bringing her already taut nipples closer to his lips. She waited impatiently to feel him put his mouth on her body and the moment he did she shuddered in reaction.

  Wants and needs—only just acknowledged—overwhelmed her. Surprisingly, with everything she knew about lovemaking, neither her mother nor any of the girls had ever told Amy that a man could make a woman feel like this.

  Scared and excited. Weak and strong. Her body alternately burned, then shivered.

  A tingle of apprehension coursed through her when Walker slid her nightgown up her body, exposing one hip to the cool air. His fingers splayed over her skin, then moved lightly across her buttocks and down the back of her legs.

  “I need you so much, Amy,” he whispered against her mouth, his breath fanning the flames of her desire. “Let me love you.”

  Amy’s heart swelled with joy. Was he telling her that he loved her? Or was he being a gentleman and asking her permission to take her? She couldn’t be sure. And it didn’t matter. Because, despite the moral rules she would be breaking, she had already decided that she wanted him.

  Because she loved him.

  The realization took her by surprise. And delighted her.

  She loved him.

  Emboldened by the depth of her feelings, she touched the corner of his mouth with the tip of her finger and whispered back, “Love me, Walker.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes for a moment, then spoke soberly. “Are you sure, I mean, really sure? I want to know for certain this is what you want.”

  His touching words only served to fuel her desire. “You are what I want.”

  He needed no further prompting. His hand moved between her thighs, nudging them apart, then closed over her like a white-hot
brand.

  “Amy. Amy.” He groaned her name like a litany as his fingers explored the soft contours of her womanhood.

  He groaned again, louder, and this time she heard the pain in his voice.

  “Walker, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  He pushed himself away from her, rolling onto his back, a tortured expression on his face.

  Amy rose on an elbow and leaned over him. “Your back?”

  He nodded and moments later he laughed—a harsh, bitter laugh that translated his frustration.

  Feeling cold and empty, Amy clamped her legs together. She supposed she should be grateful for the reprieve. But she wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raw with regret.

  Amy brushed her lips against his mouth, then whispered, “I know. I’m sorry, too. But in a few days, you’ll be good as new. Then, if you still want me...”

  He guffawed. “If I still want you? Amy, I never wanted anything or anyone so much in all my life. I don’t know what tricks you’re usin’, but you got me feelin’ things I never felt before.”

  Tricks? Amy decided it would be prudent not to ask him what he meant.

  He loved her. He still hadn’t come out and said the words, but he’d said it in other ways, ways he probably hadn’t even realized. Knowing that was enough...for now.

  You can have it all, my darling daughter. The ranch. The man. And love. You can make both our dreams come true.

  Amy looked back over her shoulder at the painting. It was still covered. Beneath her breath, she said, “Oui, Mama.”

  * * *

  A BRISK BREEZE blew across the basin, ruffling the calico curtains hanging at the bedroom window. Walker had been awake for more than an hour, content to do nothing but think, and listen to the soft cadence of Amy’s breathing.