An Inescapable Attraction

by Sydney Jane Baily

  "Of all the addle-headed, ridiculous, loopy, half-witted..." He trailed off when she said nothing to defend herself. In fact, she'd gone very quiet. He thought she was looking down in disgrace, but no, she was looking down at... him.

  And—damnation!—there wasn't very much of him to look at.

  "Shit!" He turned quickly away and stomped back to his clothing. How could he explain to her about the cold water and his male parts? Ah hell! He brushed any remaining water from his legs with the edge of his hat before he grabbed up his trousers.

  Letting out another curse as he tugged and jumped, struggling to get his pants on over his damp legs, he turned and damn it all if she wasn't right close, nearer than he'd expected, and staring at him with big eyes. She didn't say a word.

  Was she smiling? She had better not be smiling, so help her God!

  No, she must have been looking at his backside, he concluded, for even in the pale light, he could see that her face burned red. He hoped that looking at the rest of him had made up for the earlier view.

  "Well?" he asked, glaring at her for scaring the life out of him and then humiliating him to boot.

  "Did you throw away my man pants?" she asked. Her glance took in his own pants from crotch to toe and back again.

  "I left them with Mr. Grindel." Thaddeus said, his tone rough, still feeling completely exposed, picturing the image of him that was probably stuck in her craw.

  "I guess I'll have to put on my other shift while everything dries." She went over to Lucky and began digging around in her bag tied to the back of his saddle. "It's all I have. When I escaped from Stoddard in his dealer's clothes, I grabbed my bag and stuffed in just the one outfit."

  She chatted while she clutched her dry shift, which only served to draw his attention to the sodden garment that clung to her like a second skin. Yes, she'd better change, or heaven help him—his manhood was rapidly overcoming the effects of the chilled water. Even now, with her hair wet and hanging about her, she was as lovely as any woman he'd ever known.

  She turned her back on him giving him a view of her gently rounded buttocks where the white cotton stuck to her skin, and his heart thumped like a trapped rabbit.

  He waited. Was she going to strip off her thin wet garment and send him to paradise with his first glance of her entirely unclothed body? She edged around Lucky and then even farther around the tree that he was tied to. Thaddeus could see nothing and went back to dressing.

  "That turned out to be more of an adventure than I'd imagined," he said, as he pulled on his damp boots and she reappeared. Knowing she would be riding while pressed against him in nothing but her shift had cheered him up. He slipped on his shirt.

  "I guess we're fortunate the Indian didn't show up and take his clothes off, too," he added with a chuckle, but it died out fast. They were deep in trouble, and recalling that fact was crucial.

  She hooked her bag on Lucky again, and let Thaddeus tie her wet clothes on top of her bag to dry out.

  "It looks like the darn horse is wearing my skirt," Ellie said, but she couldn't help giggling. "For pity's sake, don't give her my shoes, too."

  Thank God she'd regained her good humor. Helping her onto Lucky, he climbed on behind her and groaned.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  He couldn't tell her that his entire body had gone as taut as a banjo string. Images of her sweetly curvaceous figure with her wet shift plastered to it filled his head, and those same curves now leaned against him. Why had he ever thought this torture would be pleasurable?

  "It's nearly daybreak. We'll be at Panola by midday, but right now, we have to find a place to hide and sleep, Ellie. I'm dying."

  They rode on, and Thaddeus wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed as though the more he tried to distance himself, the more she pushed back against his chest and his crotch, tormenting him.

  "Ellie," he ground out, feeling himself grow tumescent for the umpteenth time. Unthinkingly, he took the reins in one hand and a moment later found he was cupping her breast through the thin cotton fabric with the other.

  She gasped.

  "Sorry," he muttered, but she shook her head and didn't reprimand him. Hearing her sigh, he wondered if maybe these rides on Lucky were no easier for her than they were for him. His other hand, still clutching the reins, lay lightly on her lap, feeling the warmth between her legs. He had nowhere to put his hands that didn't touch her.

  They needed a place to take a break from all this bodily togetherness and to catch up on sleep, at least for an hour or two.

  Another mile and his gaze lit upon a tin-roofed farmhouse, sitting in the middle of a poorly tilled field. Thaddeus leaped nimbly off Lucky before helping Ellie down. He knocked on the door; a bedraggled woman who could be any age from twenty to forty pulled it open, a shotgun in her hand.

  "My husband's in the field," she told him when he explained what he wanted. But likely desperate for money and having made her point with her firearm, the farmer's wife allowed them access to the barn for approximately the same amount as a good hotel room would cost.

  "Why, that's robbery!" Ellie protested, coming up behind Thaddeus as he handed the woman money.

  "Then you can get off my land," the wife suggested, eyes narrowing at seeing Ellie in her shift.

  "No, no," Thaddeus said. "It's very good of you to let us stay. My wife's clothes are drying and then she'll put them back on. She fell in a stream," he added with a shrug, hoping to lighten the mood, but the farmer's wife merely raised an eyebrow, snatched the money out of his hand, and slammed the door.

  "Come on, Ellie, at least we can stay and not get shot as trespassers."

  "You should have offered her half that amount."

  He could tell she was fuming, but she marched ahead of him to the barn and climbed the ladder like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  He sighed, and the sight of her figure climbing to the hayloft gave him pause. This was his chance to redeem himself; all he had to do was be a gentleman and keep his hands to himself.

  "Don't forget my bag," she called down to him.

  "Yes, darlin'. I'll be right up."

  He took care of Lucky, with hay and water. Then he climbed the ladder with both bags in his arms. Half of him hoped she was already asleep while the other half... would wait and see.

  Her watchful blue gaze struck him like a bolt of lightning as he crested the ladder and heaved the bags and himself into the loft. What did she want from him now?

  "Everything all right?" she asked.

  "Yup." He put the bags down. "We should get some sleep," he said, though his body was clamoring to hold her. He removed his still-damp boots and his hat, and he lay down beside her, flat on his back, crossing his legs and closing his eyes.

  She rustled around, perhaps turning on her side. With a whisper that sounded practically in his ear, she said, "I never got a good look at a man's parts before."

  He wanted to die right then and there, to sink beneath the hay and fall to the floor below and keep on going. Her first good look and it was at the wrong time in the wrong place.

  Then he frowned, opened his eyes, and stared at her. He stared so hard she looked away from him, a pale blush on her cheeks.

  "Just a doggone minute," he said, "I thought you, I mean, Ellie, are you sure you're not a virgin?"

  Perhaps she didn't know what the actual act was. He knew she hadn't seen much when they'd pleasured each other with their hands, but if she'd had intercourse before, then surely she'd seen something.

  Her head snapped up, and they locked gazes again.

  "Of course I'm sure," she said, eyeing him levelly.

  Why would she be so direct with him? So casually familiar. The way she spoke, as if he should already know, made him feel strange. He sat up again, just as she gasped.

  "Oh, my God," she exclaimed, her eyes growing round as plates. Then the color of her cheeks deepened. "Are you telling me that the one memory of us together that I've carried
all these years, you don't even remember?"

  His head spun with her words.

  "Are you saying that we," he paused, swallowing, "that I deflowered you?"

  She shook her head in disbelief. "You were so drunk, but I was sure you'd remember. It was more that I gave myself to you than that you 'deflowered' me," she added with a toss of her head before she lay on her back and covered her face with her hands. "In your barn."

  He wanted to cry. His dream girl—he'd had her and hadn't known it, all this time! He was the scoundrel that he wanted to kill with his bare hands!

  "It was in July, after that so-called 'firefly' dance when I was eighteen. You'd been so attentive all evening." Her words trailed off.

  He recalled that night, part of it anyway. After the dance, after drinking mightily with his friend Dan, he'd gone looking for her. He'd found her on her back porch.

  "I knew we'd kissed," he said, rubbing his hand around the back of his neck, willing more memories to come forth.

  "We kissed quite a bit," she reminded him, "and did a whole lot more than that."

  He'd always vaguely thought that they'd somehow ended up in the barn back at his own house—touching, kissing, but he'd woken up alone. And then he hadn't been certain what had been real.

  He gaped at her with the burgeoning horror of having no memory of the moment they were intimate. If he'd taken her virginity, it must have been a piss-poor performance, and maybe he hadn't even completed the act. One thing he knew for sure, he would like another chance for a more memorable demonstration. No wonder she'd turned to Riley so fast that fall. She'd probably hated him.

  "I am so sorry I did that to you, Ellie."

  She lifted a hand off her face and peered at him with one eye. "Just hold on a minute, Thaddeus Sanborn. You didn't do anything to me. You snuck up on my back porch, and you kissed like a dream. I could have gone inside safely upstairs to my bed, and that would have been the end of it. But when you looked at me that way and smiled at me like that," she said, flashing him a shy smile, "I decided to take a chance on something exciting."

  She'd taken a chance on him, and he'd let her down.

  She continued, "I knew what I was doing when I went with you to your barn, though I could have wished you'd been—" she paused, searching for the words.

  What? he wanted to scream, feeling worse with every passing moment. Had she wished him gentler, kinder. Oh God, had he hurt her?

  "I wished you'd lasted longer and not gone to sleep so quickly."

  He would have laughed if he hadn't felt so low. Seriously, if he could beat himself up, he would. Perhaps he could tie himself to Lucky and let the horse drag him around a while. What a cad! What a jackass! All these years, priding himself on never taking advantage of women, though he'd had his share of willing women and paid a few others, but that was their job. And he'd always paid well, at that!

  But to have taken Ellie's innocence in his own barn and then passed out? If she didn't need him now to get her securely to Boston, he would shoot himself.

  Into the silence, her voice came, sounding nervous, worried even. "For pity's sake, Thaddeus, say something."

  He stared at her, wishing he could see her eyes more clearly. She didn't sound angry, she sounded anxious. Why would she be anxious that he might be upset? As if she had reason to be embarrassed when it was entirely his fault?

  "Honestly, I don't know what to say, except you deserved a helluva lot better than what I did. It should never have happened, Ellie, and I'm truly sorry."

  She blanched and removed her other hand from her face, her eyes staring right up into his.

  "You're sorry that you ever kissed me and made love to me, aren't you?" She looked away. "I figured that was the case when we kissed at the Grindels. You said sorry then, too. And we didn't quite 'do the deed' in the last barn, did we? It was plain, then, that you were mad at me for even doing what we did. I shoved my 'cake' in your face, as you said."

  He cringed. Christ! Did she think he didn't desire her? Well, that wouldn't stand.

  "Darlin'," he said, touching her chin to make her look at him. "I have wanted you since I was fourteen years old. You were fifteen and way out of my league. But you were my angel, and I watched you grow up. And I never stopped wanting you." He owed it to her to tell her everything.

  "But what we did in my barn was not making love. That was the drunken groping of an overheated teenage boy, and you were sweet to tolerate it. Maybe I didn't believe you were really there, not after all the whisky I'd had. I'd already spent many nights pleasuring myself while thinking of—"

  He broke off. Maybe she didn't need to know that much. "Anyway, I do remember finding you on your porch that night. I didn't just find you, did I? I sought you out like a bee to nectar, sneaking into your back garden. I thought you were the prettiest thing to ever walk the earth. I always have. Now that you've reminded me, I vaguely remember us running in the dark to my house. You smelled so good. Then I woke up in the straw, and for all I knew, you'd been only a dream."

  He touched the side of her face. "Ellie, I wish I remembered every last second of whatever we did together. I swear it. Do you believe me?"

  She nodded, opened her mouth to speak but, instead, yawned broadly.

  It was time to end this dreadful conversation. Later, he could tell her, or better yet show her, how much he wanted her still.

  "You sleep. I'll keep watch," he said.

  She closed her eyes but snapped them open again, and he was riveted as always by her clear blue scrutiny.

  "Keep watch for what? No one knows we're here. You need to sleep as much as I do. More even, so you can shoot straight." She raised an eyebrow. "You can shoot straight, can't you?"

  He nodded, amazed at the warmth that flowed through him simply looking at her, all drowsy in the hay.

  "Good," she said, closing her eyes again. "Then maybe you can teach me. I'd like to learn to shoot. A woman needs to be able to protect herself."

  "Especially you," he uttered softly.

  "Especially me," she agreed, a small smile on her lips, as she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  Thaddeus fell asleep, about as quickly as she did. When he awoke, it was late morning and he'd slept for hours. He lay still, wrestling with the urge to turn toward Ellie and kiss her. He could imagine starting to make love to her while she remained sleepy and yielding. It would be so easy to slip off her thin shift and sweep his hands over her satiny skin.

  But after their last barn experience—make that two—she didn't need him pawing at her. Because she'd invited him once, that didn't give him free rein to take her whenever he wanted. They had no understanding between them at all, and he couldn't see past the end of the week when they'd be at his sister's house; that is, if they finally had a stretch of good fortune.

  In the end, he woke her with a quick shake to her shoulder before hastening down the ladder to tack up Lucky, avoiding temptation while Ellie put on her now-dry clothes.

  Not wanting to encounter the farmer's wife again, even to ask for food, they left quietly, walking beside Lucky for a good twenty minutes to loosen their stiff, sore muscles.

  When he told Ellie it was time to ride and get some miles under them, she didn't complain. Apparently a good rest and dry clothes perked her up. Surprising him, she quite contentedly climbed aboard Lucky, who moved along at a good trot after her hours of respite.

  Thaddeus had every confidence that they'd make it to the train by midday. Though fervently wishing they weren't riding the last part of their journey in broad daylight, he'd learned a thing or two about staying out of sight over the years, and he kept to the tree line.

  Ellie didn't have much to say, not that he did, either. Holding her was enough. He let her lean back against him, not caring that she left him perpetually aroused. He deserved the torture, still hardly able to believe what she'd told him. They'd been intimate! And her words kept returning to him—how she'd carried the memory all these years of him an
d her together. It sounded as though she meant with fondness, not with bitterness or regret. But how could that be?

  Trying to get his mind back to the business at hand, getting on a train as soon as possible, he tightened his arms around her in a gentle squeeze and asked, "What were you planning on doing when you got in that boxcar?"

  She didn't answer right away, perhaps taking a moment to follow his thoughts.

  "I planned on getting far away from Stoddard and the Missouri-Illinois state line and then..." She shrugged in his arms, and he fought the desire to nuzzle her ear and kiss her neck.

  He settled for resting his chin gently on the top of her head, waiting for her to finish.

  "To tell you the truth, I didn't have much of a plan," she confessed. "I couldn't go back to Spring City, because Stoddard knows my home is there. At least, my house is. I'm not sure where home is at the moment."

  Home, for him, was on this horse holding Ellie, but he wouldn't tell her that. She had a heap of trouble, a huge debt, an unwanted husband, and the last thing she needed was him latching onto her like a lovesick puppy.

  For God's sake, man, get a grip! He spurred their horse, and Lucky jumped before breaking into a faster trot.

  "What's wrong?" Ellie asked, jolted by the change in cadence.

  "Nothing," he ground out, wishing he could make things right for her and hoping Reed could help. "This is taking too long, is all."

  She stiffened at his harsh words, so he hugged her again.

  "Sorry, darlin'. I just want to get you safe and sound to Boston."

  She relaxed and didn't speak again until they came upon the rail line at Panola. Surveying it as they approached, Thaddeus swore under his breath and then loudly over it.

  His heart had started to pound at the first sight of what should be Panola station, and as Ellie exclaimed in dismay, his stomach clamped uncomfortably. Rather than a busy station greeting them, a husk of collapsed beams and bricks and melted glass gave evidence of a devastating fire.

  From astride Lucky, they stared at the remains, as if looking at it long enough would fix things.