Lonestar's Lady

by Deborah Camp

  “You’re so beautiful, Lonestar,” she said. She reached out, almost tentatively, and then pressed her fingertips against his collar bone. Her touch was soft and lingering as she dragged her fingers down his biceps and through the black, sparse hair in the center of his chest. “I see how women in these parts look at you. The admiration that comes over their faces. The wishing. The hunger. Then they realize that they’re staring at you and they stop and get all red because of where their minds were taking them.”

  “You have a vivid imagination, Augusta.” Still, he preened inside, loving that she found him desirable . . . that she found him . . . beautiful? “Only women are beautiful. Like you. You are a beauty.” He caught her hands in his, stopping them from drifting below his navel because, if she went there, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t stop himself from ravaging her. Bringing her hands up to his lips, he kissed her knuckles, noticing that they were a bit rough and reddened from scrubbing laundry. Her tender smile made his heart give a kick.

  “I am ordinary looking, Max Lonestar.”

  “There isn’t a blessed thing ordinary about you, Augusta Lonestar.” Unable to resist her for another second, he took her mouth, his tongue sliding on top of hers. Her sweet taste saturated his senses with desire. He backed her toward the bed until she was forced to fall back onto it, her lips peeling off his. “My turn.” He caught the hem of her nightdress and worked it up her body until it cleared her head. Her hair fell in a golden avalanche to her creamy shoulders. Her breasts were ivory globes with bright pink centers, rising and falling rapidly with her panting breaths. He drank her in and she went to his head like one hundred proof whiskey.

  Propping a knee on the mattress, he crawled onto the bed, kissing his way over her belly, breasts, neck, cheek, lips. She caught fire under him, writhing and moaning his name. Parting her thighs, she rubbed the back of his legs with her heels and emitted sighs of pleasure as he suckled her and chased her rosy nipples with the tip of his tongue.

  Her body was a white, satiny invitation and he took what she offered. Passion rose like smoke through his mind, blocking out all thoughts but of her and how she made him feel. He could remember no other woman he’d laid with. She had burned them from his memory, making them less than unimportant. Only she remained, heating his blood and stoking his desire until it consumed him.

  He chanted her name between kisses, loving the sound of it and the feel of it on his tongue, throat, lips. He had no doubt that she had been sent to him, created just for him, placed squarely in his path so that he couldn’t miss her. She was his, he thought. Since the day she was born – his. “Let me . . .”

  She arched up and her legs clutched at his hips. “Yes,” she hissed in his ear. “Now. I want you, Lonestar.”

  He guided himself inside her, making her release a gasp that dissolved into a moan of pleasure. Her eyes went dreamy, her lids closing lazily, lustily.

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she whispered, her hips gyrating against his. “Just like this.”

  Her words were an anthem to their coupling and he had no more words to add to it. All she’d left him with were feelings as fierce and intense as a summer squall. He drove into her without mercy and she reared up to meet each powerful surge. She enveloped him in her heat, her soft body taking his hard edges, clutching at him, begging for more of him. His breathing became grunts and hers whistled in her throat as their bodies grew slick. She drove her fingers in his hair and clutched, tightly. Suddenly, she stiffened and held her breath for a few second before she let go. He felt her release in the flutter of inner muscles, the quaking of her limbs, and the thrusting of her tongue in his mouth.

  His own succumbing stampeded over his. Pleasure in its purest form trampled him, obliterating everything except for the overflowing gush of himself into her. He bowed his head, kissing her softly, revering her completely.

  A few minutes later, he lay on his side, she on hers, and watched moonlight paint her face, her shoulders, and the dip of her waist with stardust. He palmed her breast, his finger and thumb catching her pink nipple until it blushed crimson and she released a moan of pleasure.

  “I could have just made you pregnant, Augusta.”

  She was quiet for a few moments as he held his breath, waiting for her reaction, running his lips slowly over the roundness of her breasts. He hadn’t meant to release his seed in her, but his mind had been hijacked by his desire for her.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “We’re married.”

  He grinned and breathed steadily again. “You are a worrisome woman,” he said, the words lifted from his heart.

  She emitted a soft laugh. “Am I?”

  “You are,” he assured her, his eyelids suddenly feeling weighted as satisfaction teetered toward slumber. “Most of the time, I don’t know whether to fuss at you or stand back and marvel at you.”

  Her smile was gentle and sassy. “So, you do both.”

  He chuckled and closed his eyes. “I do both.”

  She inched closer to kiss his cheek and then his lax mouth. “Same with me. Most times, I’m torn between giving you a piece of my mind or just giving you all of me to do with as you wish.”

  “Like tonight,” he murmured, his body and mind going limp and relaxed.

  She kissed the base of his throat. Her hair smelled like the land right after a spring rain. “Sweet dreams, Lonestar.”

  “Of you,” he managed to whisper before those dreams claimed him.

  Chapter 15

  The two Jersey cows Lonestar had bought from Mr. Poindexter were called Louise and Buttons. Lonestar didn’t know how they came to earn those monikers, but he went ahead and kept them intact.

  Buttons was the youngest. Coffee colored with big splotches of white on her rump, chest, and down her face. She would have her first calf this spring. Louise was a light tan with white socks and a blazed face. She’d been bred before and would calve again. Or that had been the plan.

  Now, Louise lay dead in the pasture. Lonestar had heard the single blast of a rifle and had stopped swinging the ax at a decaying poplar tree he meant to add to the winter firewood stacks. The shot came in the opposite direction of the house, so he was relieved by that, but he still dreaded what he might find. What with the barn being lit and the fences damaged in several places, he had felt in his gut that more was to come. His gut had not let him down.

  A single gunshot to her head had felled the gentle cow. There would be no more rich milk from her and no sweet-faced calf in the spring.

  The pure evil and pointlessness of it grabbed him hard, rattled him, and sent a red mist over his eyes. He stiffened and roared his frustration up at the sky. Then he dropped to his knees and ran a shaking hand along the cow’s neck, still warm, as tears burned in his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, girl,” he whispered. “Sorry to see you go like this.”

  Turning the other cheek was bordering on impossible. Not searching out Babbitt and beating him to a bloody pulp was the stuff of a coward, wasn’t it? Felt like it. Doing nothing was curdling his soul.

  Trudging back to the house, he’d exchanged his ax for a shovel, and was glad that Augusta was in the woods back of the house picking the rest of the blackberries she could find and scooping up handfuls of pecans. She might not have even heard the rifle’s report.

  He buried Louise where she’d fallen, telling himself he should butcher the cow, but knowing that neither he nor Augusta would want to be nourished by her vengeful demise.

  After washing the sweat from his face, neck, and arms, he saddled Clover and rode toward the far plowed fields, just in case Augusta spied him. Not wanting to worry her, he preferred that she think he was going to fell more trees for winter firewood, rather than know that he was heading for a confrontation. Once he was out of sight from the house, he directed Clover to a low part of the fence, kicked her into a gallop and asked her to jump the rails. She did with hardly any effort.

  “Good girl,” he told her, patting her neck. “Let’s go
to town.”

  On the way to Pear Orchard, he went over and over what he’d do and what he’d say to Bob Babbitt. He also thought of what he would not do to the man. He wouldn’t strike him, unless Babbitt threw the first punch. He wouldn’t be goaded into a tussle with him. His primary aim was to let Babbitt know that he was on to him and wouldn’t tolerate any more trouble from him. He’d hoped that Babbitt’s revenge would sputter out before things went too far, but he suspected that Babbitt was being egged on by Daisy and Pansy. Those two had a wicked streak running through them and they dearly loved to stir up gossip and rancor.

  When he’d courted Daisy – well, courting wasn’t exactly right, he amended. Met with her in out-of-the-way places where they exchanged hot kisses and fevered caresses. She was a tease. She’d wanted him. Wanted him bad. But she was smart enough to know that her father, and more importantly her formidable mother, would make her life miserable if they discovered she’d had anything to do with him. She’d kept herself pure, although sullied. Pansy was the same. They flirted to the edge of ruination, but didn’t allow themselves to cross the line.

  He didn’t know Pansy as well. They’d eyed each other, kissed a couple of times when nobody was around, and that was it. Pansy had been too afraid of being caught with him. Daisy was the more daring of the two. Being with Daisy, he’d learned that she was totally untrustworthy, a vicious gossip, and was interested almost totally in herself. She was pretty in a diamondback way. Fascinating, alluring, and dangerous. She was the type of gal who could get you in a whole peck of trouble and slither away without a backward glance.

  Arriving in town, he tied Clover to the hitching rail outside the undertaker’s office. Frank Albert wandered out, his thumbs stuck in his vest pockets. He raised his brows when he spotted Max.

  “Hey there, Lonestar. What brings you into town?”

  “I’m looking for Babbitt. Is he working for you today?”

  “No, he doesn’t work here anymore. Can’t rely on him.” Albert pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and consulted it. A white cat strolled out and meowed at Lonestar. “Johnathan Raines is helping me around the place now. You know the Raines family?”

  Max nodded. “They live out by Four Mile Creek.”

  “That’s them. Johnathan is a strapping lad and as reliable as this timepiece. We must be punctual in this business. People are upset enough without having to stand about and wait for someone to hoist a casket or dig a grave.” He returned the silver watch to its vest pocket as he spun around and went back into his office, the cat leading the way. “Good day to you, Lonestar.”

  Max surveyed the street scene for a few minutes as his memory played out the first time he’d laid eyes on Gussie Horton. He couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he recalled how easy it had been to see that she was madder than a wet hen and looking to skin someone. The disgusted face she’d made as she’d taken in her surroundings had tickled him and he had been unable to keep his eyes off her as she’d marched across the street and up onto the walkway. Then she’d noticed him – giving him the once over and glaring at him along the short bridge of her upturned nose – and his heart had banged against his ribs. Even scowling at him in her goat-gnawed hat, she was the most fetching little gal he’d ever seen. He loved her spirit. The proud set of her of narrow shoulders and the way her lower lip had trembled ever so slightly with nerves had caused curiosity to spring to life inside him.

  She was like the first page of a novel that he could not put down. He had to keep reading. He had to know who she was searching for, where she’d traveled from, and why she was on the warpath. He had to know her.

  When he’d overheard her conversation with the undertaker and figured out Bob Babbitt’s scheme and her part in it, he’d panicked, thinking that Babbitt had outfoxed him. But in the next minute, Susan had pointed out that they could outfox the fox if they could get this feisty, furious female to listen to a reasonable offer. Thank God for Susan’s nimble mind and Augusta’s daring.

  “I declare, if it isn’t Max Lonestar,” a sneering voice interrupted his reminiscing. “Did you get shed of that wife of yours finally?”

  He turned toward Pansy Sherman. Deep mauve satin draped her full figure and black lace bordered her neck and wrists. Thank God, Daisy wasn’t with her.

  “How do, Miss Sherman. Have you see Bob Babbitt today?”

  She fiddled with the satin strap of the tapestry reticule dangling from her wrist. “I have not. Why?”

  He shrugged, purposefully telling her nothing, and touched the brim of his hat. “Good day to you then.” He started to cross the street.

  “You didn’t answer me about why you’re looking for Mr. Babbitt,” Pansy protested.

  “That’s right.” He kept on walking, figuring he’d find Babbitt in one of two places – back of the dry goods store unloading freight or at Taylor’s Tack and Saddle where he rented a room upstairs. A couple of men standing outside the saloon nodded greetings. One of them was the bartender. “Hey, fellas. Is Babbitt in there?”

  “Haven’t seen him,” the barkeep said. “He’s probably working at Allsup’s today.”

  Allsup’s Dry Goods was his next scheduled stop. “Much obliged.”

  “Heard you up and married,” the barkeep said.

  “You heard right.”

  The man gave him a good-natured wink. “Welcome to the corral. You had to get broke sometime or other.”

  Lonestar chuckled and walked on in the direction of the dry goods store. He went around to the back of it. The double doors stood open and crates and barrels sat outside, waiting to be opened, the contents sorted, and eventually sold. Bob Babbitt stood by one crate, his back to Max, and used a clawfoot hammer to pry open the top of it. He wrestled with his task and the material of his blue shirt stretched tightly across his massive shoulders. A slouchy, black hat covered his head – chiefly a spot on his crown that was hairless. Lonestar smirked behind the man’s back, tickled that Babbitt was touchy about getting bald. He never went hatless anymore.

  He must have heard the crunch of Max’s boots on the pebbled alley path because he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened fractionally, and he released a spate of laughter.

  “You looking for me, Lonestar?”

  “I am.” Max stopped in front of him. “That shouldn’t come as a surprise.”

  Babbitt’s gaze bounced up and away. “I got nothing to say to you.”

  “That’s fine by me. I have something to say to you.” Max tucked his thumbs in his belt. “Stay away from my place. I told you once. Now I’m telling you again.”

  “I ain’t been at the Poindexter farm of late,” Babbitt mumbled. Nails screeched against wood and the lid popped off.

  “It’s the Lonestar farm and I know you set fire to our barn, you’ve been knocking down our fences, and you shot dead our best Jersey cow earlier this morning.”

  “Don’t go accusing a man of such deeds without proof of them, Lonestar.” Babbitt straightened and bounced the heavy hammer from one hand to the other.

  “Your lack of character is all the proof I need.”

  He clutched the hammer tightly in his right hand. “You best watch what you’re saying.”

  Max stared hard at him, not worried in the least by the hammer. He could duck out of Babbitt’s way before the man could swing on him. It had been like that since they were boys. Babbitt would lunge at him and Max would dodge him easily. Babbitt would swing a beefy fist at Max’s face and end up doing a pirouette because Max was no longer in range.

  “Bob, we’ve always competed with each other, ever since we were boys. It’s mostly been half-hearted. We were letting off steam or itching for a fight. But this has gone too far.”

  “Damn right! You took my farm and my intended. She came here to marry me.” He tapped the hammer against his own chest. “I sent for her and I paid for her.” Tap. Tap. “The farm was to be mine because I was getting married. Not you.” He would have shoved the hammer in
to Max’s chest if Max hadn’t already taken a step back.

  “You were in jail. She chose me instead and she’s glad of it.”

  “Glad, is she?” Babbitt snarled at that. “Glad to be married to a convict? A half-breed whose been riding the skirts of his mama and now his sister? More like she can’t leave your sorry ass or she’ll end up with nothing.”

  “Think whatever you want. Doesn’t change the facts of it. Don’t come around again or I’ll fill you full of buckshot. You’ve been duly warned.”

  Shock and then anger registered in Babbitt’s close-set eyes. His mouth went slack for a few seconds and his breath made the ends of his droopy mustache quiver. Then he pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes to slits. “Why, you stinkin’ pile of horseshit! You shoot me, and I’ll make sure you hang.”

  “You stay off my property and I won’t have to shoot you.” Max matched him glare for glare, feeling his temper ratchet up and doing his damnedest not to let Babbitt spike it any further. “And dead men tell no tales.”

  “You’re going to solve your problems with murder? Again?”

  His blood boiled and whooshed in his ears. Babbitt always riled him. Made him want to haul off and hull some of his teeth. “What’s done is done. Augusta isn’t going to marry you because she’s married to me. And you’re not getting the Poindexter place because it belongs to me now. Leave us be.”

  “She owes me money!” Babbitt said, pointing the hammer at him, the veins in his neck standing out and his skin growing bright red.