by Shirl Henke
"Life's always a risk—anywhere. There are no guarantees, Jess. I'm not asking you for one," she said quietly as she cleansed the wound, probing to make certain it was not healing over putrefaction.
"You and Johnny could've been safe back East. No one there would've known about his background."
"Including him? Was I going to lie to him? He has a great deal to be proud of. Jonah's told me about your parents. Your father was a war hero, and your mother was a woman of rare courage, too. They had principles, integrity—a heritage I don't plan to cheat my son of, especially considering how selfish and ruthless his other grandfather turned out to be."
"You can't eat principles, Lissa. I watched my mother die by inches after we were burned out and lost the ranch. Pa may have been a federal hero, but Texas is reb country. My parents lost everything. Then when Pa died, Mama just gave up."
"You mean after you took your vengeance on his killers and then ran off?" Hot anger had been building to the boiling point in her as they argued. Her voice was sharp, and she saw that her question had taken him aback.
"I did what I had to," he said defensively, reaching for his shirt.
"You left her alone with a baby to care for while she was still grieving for her husband. That seems to be your long suit, Jesse Robbins—running away from people you love. Trying to solve all your problems with a gun." She set down the disinfectant bottle with a sharp thud. "You're a fool, Jess! You have so much bitterness welled up inside you that you've lost all judgment. I've traveled nearly a thousand miles, waited for two years, and made a home here for us to share as a family, but it's still not enough to convince you. Nothing I can ever do will change you. I've abased myself for the last time!"
Tears stung her eyes as she whirled away from him and ran for the front door.
Jess reached out with his injured arm, but she slipped free of his grasp. "Lissa, wait!" He swore as a sharp surge of agony lanced through his wounded bicep. Then he followed her outside.
She raced heedlessly down toward the creek, where a dense stand of redbud trees grew. Not watching where she was going, Lissa only wanted to escape the pain clawing at her with its terrible promise of life without Jess, of her son growing up without his father.
He chased her, calling out her name, but Lissa was beyond reason. After all the endless waiting and hoping, something deep inside her had finally snapped. She dodged stickers and ducked branches as she ran alongside the sluggish path of the creek, splashing through the water. Finally, when the stitch in her side robbed her of breath, she crumpled onto the stone-strewn ground, gasping and sobbing alternately. Jess's voice echoed somewhere to the left through a thick stand of mountain laurel.
Jess searched the dense undergrowth with mounting apprehension, calling out Lissa's name.
Her words haunted him, hammering in his head over and over. Had he really been running away all of his life? The truth hit him, like scales falling from his eyes. His wife had never been one to sugarcoat the medicine. His wife. Had he finally driven her away for good?
Cursing his own stubborn blindness, he called her name again. The Texas brush was alive with poisonous snakes, wild animals—even rabid ones. She could be in danger. Then he saw her, crumpled beside the stream, a small, forlorn figure with her hands covering her face, racked with silent weeping. Every shudder of her slender body ripped through his gut. Jess stood frozen, trembling so badly he could scarcely breathe. If I lose her now. . . . Finally he said her name, low and hoarse.
"Lissa."
She raised her head and saw him standing there. Lissa could sense his fear, and his need. Scrambling to her feet, she flew into his waiting arms.
Jess held her so tightly that she could not breathe. Lissa could feel his whole body shaking so badly, she marveled that he could stand. She whispered his name softly, unable to caress him as she wished because he had imprisoned her arms at her sides. Instead she brushed her face against his and felt the wetness of his tears.
"Lissa, Lissa. I could have lost you—I drove you away."
The anguish in his voice made his words difficult to decipher, but she felt them in her heart. Finally, he loosened his hold enough that she could reach up and touch him. With wonder, she let her fingertips glide along his beard-stubbled cheek to touch the wetness of tears. His gray eyes glistened like the purest silver as he gazed into her face.
Her throat tightened as she looked up at the hard loner whom she had loved for so long. Killer, renegade, outsider. All meaningless words. He stood before her now with his very soul bared as she knew he had never revealed it to anyone before in his life. Or ever would again.
"Can you ever forgive me?" he whispered.
"How could I not? I love you more than life." She cupped his face between her hands and looked deeply into his eyes.
"I love you so much it's always frightened me—almost driven me crazy at times. It's like an obsession, a fire in the blood. Only having you with me can quench the flames," he whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers.
His kiss was worshipful at first, gentle and reverent, a poem to the love and life they had almost lost. Then gradually, it grew fierce and passionate as the old familiar fires raged between them. She held him tightly, pressing her body against his, running her hands up and down his arms. Then she squeezed the bullet hole in his left arm and felt him flinch with pain.
"I'm sorry, darling." She pulled back. "You're hurt."
"Mostly just filthy," he replied with a laugh. God, how good it felt to laugh, to be free to accept Lissa's love. "We have the rest of our lives for passion . .. and the rest of our lives to be a family," he added as he put his good arm around her waist and began walking back toward the house.
When they reached the cabin, Lissa heated water and showed Jess the big tin tub sitting in the center of their bedroom. Soon she had it filled and ready for him.
He glanced around the new addition with its neatly whitewashed walls, bright curtains, even a braided rug on the floor. "Sure is a lot bigger than my old bedroom."
She smiled as she set several fat towels beside the tub. "That was only for sleeping. I figure we'll do a lot more than just sleep in here."
"You do, do you?" he replied with a grin as he pulled off his shirt and began to unfasten his pants.
"Hardly took Jonah and Tate any time at all to build it. I also figure, with you helping, adding on the next room will go even faster."
He kicked his boots into the corner and stepped out of his denims. "How many rooms do you 'figure' we'll need?"
She shrugged casually as her skirt joined her camisa on the floor. "Depends on how many babies we can make in the next ten or twenty years. Johnny'll be two in the spring. Past time he had a little brother or sister, don't you think?"
Looking at her silken curves revealed through her sheer cotton undergarments, he could not think very well at all. All the blood had rushed from his brain and traveled to another part of his anatomy. "You're so beautiful, Lissa."
She slowly slid off her camisole. "Life on a Texas ranch must agree with me."
His breath caught as the milky paleness of her breasts contrasted with the golden skin above them where her low-cut Mexican peasant blouse had left the sun free to touch her. He watched, enthralled, as she untied the tapes of her underdrawers and let them fall.
"I figure I'm pretty sweaty, too. And there's room enough in that tub for the two of us," she said, her eyes boldly raking his lean, naked body, pausing to stare hungrily at his pulsing erection.
"I like the way you figure," he whispered hoarsely as he approached her. "You must've bought that oversized tub on purpose."
She chuckled. "As soon as I saw it in the catalogue, I had to have it. It's not as fancy as the one at the Metropolitan Hotel, but I'll never forget you sitting there, all covered with soapsuds."
"Brazen hussy," he murmured as he took a pale breast in each hand, teasing the hard little nipples. She arched against him, following him toward the tub.
T
hey climbed in together and knelt facing each other. He picked up the soap and began to work up a thick lather across his chest. "This bring back any fond memories?" he asked with a wicked smile.
She rubbed the tips of her breasts in small circles on his chest until his flat male nipples hardened. She looked down at the bubbles. "This might be a unique way of sudsing up."
He agreed with a sharp gasp when she took the soap from him and began to work the lather lower, down his belly, until she had slicked his rigid staff, then pressed herself close against him, trapping his phallus between her thighs. "See . . . washes everywhere," she whispered thickly.
They spread the silky suds from head to toe over each other, letting their hungry hands glide and caress, explore and remember every curve, muscle, nuance. Murmuring wordlessly, crying out with small gasps of pleasured surprise and amazement, they lost themselves in one another.
"Enough. We're clean," he finally gasped, seizing one of the pitchers of water from beside the tub and dumping it over their heads. Drops splashed everywhere as he shook his shaggy shoulder-length hair and she wrung out her waist-length mane of dark curls.
He stood up and grabbed a towel, then reached for her hand and pulled her up. After helping her dry the excess water from her masses of fiery hair, he took another towel and rubbed her body, then helped her step from the tub. Lissa returned the favor, drying his body with loving care, noting a few new scars, kissing them and the old ones until he tugged away the linens with an impatient growl and picked her up in his arms.
"Jess, your injured arm."
"The hell with it. I can't even feel it." He laid her on the big bed and covered her with his body.
Lissa's arms reached up to pull him close as her thighs opened and locked around his hips. "Now, Jess, now," she urged as he plunged deeply into her. She arched and dug her heels into the backs of his thighs, undulating as he thrust.
"At last. Home. I'm home," he whispered against her throat as her silky sheath squeezed his staff.
They both spiraled off in blinding bliss, as fierce as it was swift. He collapsed atop her for a moment, then began to move again, far more slowly, more gently than before, worshipping her with his body, kissing her face and throat, nuzzling and suckling her breasts.
Lissa ran her fingers through his straight, night- dark hair and pulled his head up to hers for a deep kiss, tasting him as she rimmed his beautiful mouth with the tip of her tongue, then danced inside. He slanted his lips across hers and let their tongues collide, duel, and twine, drinking in the essence of his wife.
They moved in perfect rhythm, giving those tiny involuntary, unconscious signals to each other that only longtime lovers know, telling each other whenever the crest grew near, backing away from the precipice, prolonging the perfection of union. Then, finally, it came, softly whispering over them like a spring wind on the plains, hot yet sweet with a promise that built and built to a culmination so powerful it left them utterly at peace. Whole.
"Did you mean it?" she finally whispered, her hand resting against the steady thrum of his heartbeat as she lay nestled against his side. "About being home at last—for good?"
"I meant it. I'm not saying I'll never strap on a gun again, Lissa. This is dangerous country. But I won't hire out anymore. The three thousand I sent was only part of the bounty. There's another eight thousand coming. I reckon it'll buy you a few more pretties to hold you until we start getting a real income from that Army contract."
She shuddered, thinking of the danger he had been in to earn that kind of money. "Just so you stay here with us. I don't care about anything else."
He looked down at her and took her hand in his, examining it critically. Her nails were shorter, but otherwise the skin was not reddened or workworn. "It's remarkable. You seem to bloom where other women fade, but I don't want you working yourself to death. We'll hire more servants."
"I don't need to be waited on, Jess. I love the work here. I never really belonged at J Bar. You're not the only one who's come home."
Her simple declaration stirred emotions he had buried for years. "You always wondered about my stubbornness . . . my insistence that you couldn't fit in my life or me in yours . . ."
When he hesitated, she caressed his cheek and prompted, "It happened in North Africa, didn't it?"
He took a deep breath and began. "Her name was Monique Dupres, and she was my commanding officer's daughter. They were some sort of land-poor minor French nobility. She was blonde and pretty—at least as much as I can remember now. It was so long ago. I was barely eighteen, but I'd been in the desert campaigns against the Tuaregs for over a year when I met her."
"You were dark and dangerous, exotic to her, and she was fascinated with you." She began to understand.
"Yes. Until Monique, all I'd ever sampled were a few Mexican and Indian girls here and some Algerian whores. She seemed like a goddess to me." He chuckled mirthlessly, but he could feel that the bite of old bitterness was gone. "As I look back on it now, I realize she seduced me."
He raised one eyebrow at Lissa. She met his gaze. "I may have teased a little . . ."
"A little? Anyway, we became lovers. She said I was her first. Now knowing what I've learned about fine white virgins, I know she lied," he said, gently tracing his fingertip along the curve of her cheek as she blushed. "But I believed her then and spun a lot of foolish daydreams. Saved all my pay to buy a fancy engagement ring. The night I was going to give it to her, the fort was approached by the rebel chieftains under a flag of truce.
"I was telling Monique about my grand plans for returning to Texas when her father interrupted us. He'd come to make certain she was hidden while the Tuaregs were inside the fort. He picked a bad time, since we'd just finished making love. He caught us in her bed. She jumped away from me and began screaming and crying that I'd forced her. I grabbed the ring from the bedside and told him I intended to do the honorable thing and marry his daughter.
"He laughed. Said he'd already made the arrangements for her to marry some fellow officer—a white man with a fancy title and lots of money. She knew all about it. In fact, she was leaving for Algiers the very next month to prepare for the wedding. I was just a diversion for her while she was bored, stuck in the desert."
For a man of his pride, Lissa could well imagine how devastating that must have been. She held him tightly as he continued.
"He would've had me quietly executed on some trumped-up charge just to keep her involvement with a sauvage quiet. I was no more to the colonel or his daughter than any despised desert tribesman. But the Tuaregs had played Dupres for a fool. Their truce flag was a ruse to get inside the fort. They picked that time to blow the arsenal. Things happened pretty fast after that. Dupres lost over half his command and his own life before it was over."
"Whatever happened to Monique?" Lissa asked.
"She survived the massacre. The next week, when reinforcements came, she rode off to Algiers to marry her betrothed. I sold the ring and sent the money to my mother. The next time we had a liberty in Algiers, I deserted. Took a ship to Majorca and from there to New Orleans and home."
"And so you became a gunman," she said, understanding it all now, hurting for the boy whose dreams had died so young.
He looked down at Lissa with a wistful smile on his face. "For years I replayed that scene in Monique's bedroom, remembering her lies to her father, the way she called me a sauvage americaine, a boy she would never marry. I heard the colonel's disgusted laughter. I knew the gulf that separated people like me from white society, and it ate at me."
"And now?"
"And now it's over at last. What you said about my running away from those I loved—it was true. I've spent my whole life running one way or the other. But no more, Lissa. I don't have to live by my gun. I don't have to prove anything. I won't ever run away again."
"At last, home," she whispered as she kissed him, content and secure in his love. The specters of the past were vanquished forever. "Tomorrow we'll ha
ve to go and collect Johnny and Cormac and Tate and Jonah."
"That's tomorrow. Now, about those brothers and sisters for Johnny . . ." he whispered low.
She rolled into his arms, eager to begin the new project.
About the Author
SHIRL HENKE lives in St. Louis, where she enjoys gardening in her yard and greenhouse, cooking holiday dinners for her family and listening to jazz. In addition to helping brainstorm and research her books, her husband Jim is “lion tamer” for their two wild young tomcats, Pewter and Sooty, geniuses at pillage and destruction.
Shirl has been a RITA finalist twice, and has won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewer’s Choice Awards from Romantic Times.
“I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ballpoint pen—it’s hard to get good quills these days,” she says. Dragged into the twenty-first century by her son Matt, a telecommunication specialist, Shirl now uses two of those “devil machines.” Another troglodyte bites the dust. Please visit her at www.shirlhenke.com.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23