Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  They bade Little Elk good-night. H.L. had sort of expected the Sioux women to come over and thank him, maybe give him some kind of Indian cake or something as a thank-you gift, but they didn’t. Hell, he guessed he really didn’t know beans about Indians.

  “I really mean it, Mr. May,” Rose said after they’d walked a little way in silence. “You were wonderful tonight, and Little Elk and his kin truly appreciate it.”

  “They didn’t act like it.” H.L. wished he hadn’t said that as soon as the words were out. They sounded whiny, as if he expected somebody to build a statue in his honor or something. Although that would be nice, and he admitted it—to himself—he knew the real point was getting Bear back to his folks.

  “The Sioux don’t express themselves the way we do. I have a feeling you’ll be thanked in no uncertain terms in the days to come.”

  “Hmmm.” That made him feel better.

  He glanced down at Rose, noticed she appeared weary, and decided there was something else that would make him feel even better. “Say, Miss Gilhooley. We’ve known each other for quite a few days now, and we did rescue that boy together. Don’t you think it’s about time we started calling each other by our Christian names?”

  “Oh!” She glanced up at him and looked as startled as she sounded.

  H.L. frowned, wondering what the hell was so astonishing about calling each other by name. It wasn’t as if he’d asked her to marry him or anything.

  Where in the name of holy hell had that thought come from? He had no idea, and hadn’t thought one up before Rose spoke again.

  “Why—certainly. I guess. I mean, I’m sure that would be all right. Um, but I don’t know your name, Mr. May.”

  “Everyone just calls me H.L.,” he said, deciding to shelve the marriage issue for the moment. Cripes, he’d never, ever, not once, even thought about himself and marriage, except to be glad he wasn’t saddled with a wife. The mere word generally made him shudder. That he didn’t shudder now, he chalked up to his being particularly tired.

  “I see. Well, as you know, my name is Rose. And—well, I should think it would be fine if you call me Rose.” A small frown marred the perfection of her piquant face. “I suppose I can call you H.L., if that’s what you prefer, although I’ve never known anyone who goes by his initials before.

  “If more parents named their kids awful names, I’m sure more folks would,” he said.

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I’m sure that must have something to do with it.” She eyed him curiously. “I must say, now you have me intrigued, however. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me what the initials stand for, would you?”

  He grinned. “I don’t mind at all. The H. stands for my first name, and the L. stands for my middle name.”

  Rose huffed. “Thank you. That’s very informative.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  They’d reached her tent, and H.L. found he was reluctant to let her go. He needed something more from her before they parted for the night, although he wasn’t sure what.

  Rose sighed heavily. “Thank God. I’m so tired. I think I’m going to sleep all day tomorrow. Or today.” She glanced up at the sky as if she expected to see dawn creeping over the horizon.

  It wasn’t. H.L. pulled out his pocket watch, fumbling a bit because his bandages interfered with his movements, flicked the case open, and squinted at the dial. “It’s almost four.” Shoot, that was late.

  “My goodness. I can’t even remember the last time I stayed awake this long.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure Annie will want to go to church, but it had better be an evening service. I’m sure I won’t be up in time for a morning one.”

  “Have you ever stayed up this late?” H.L. asked with a broader grin, the notion of her being worried about going to church having tickled him.

  She didn’t grin back. “When my father was sick, we took turns sitting up with him.”

  Aw, hell, he would have had to go and stir up sorry memories, wouldn’t he? H.L. gave himself a mental kick. In an effort to make up for it, he said, “I think we really ought to shake hands, Rose. After all, we did a good deed tonight, and we ought to congratulate each other.”

  Now she smiled. Thank God. “Of course. We did do a good deed, didn’t we?” She held out her right hand. It was small, delicate-looking. Nobody simply looking at it would ever know it could handle a gun and a horse better than most other human hands in the world.

  H.L. took it in his big, bandaged one. “Shoot, this isn’t working out the way I wanted it to.”

  She looked confused. “It isn’t?”

  “No.” He wanted to touch her flesh, and he couldn’t feel anything through all that blasted cotton batting. “I have a better idea.”

  Rose resisted a little when he started reeling her in, but not enough to thwart him. His arms went around her snugly, and he peered down at her. In the darkness of the night, her eyes were large and luminous, and her expression conveyed deep doubt and a modicum of consternation.

  “Mr. May,” she whispered.

  “H.L.,” he corrected her.

  “H.L.,” she repeated obediently.

  “You’re a surprising woman, Rose Gilhooley.”

  “I am?”

  He nodded and leaned down to brush his lips against hers. She gasped slightly, but didn’t wrench herself away from him. In fact, her big eyes fluttered for a split second, then closed. Ah. This was more like it. As gently as a butterfly settling on a flower petal, H.L. covered her lips with his. He brushed feathery soft kisses against her mouth for a moment, until she sighed and seemed to melt in his arms.

  A powerful surge of lust, combined with a fierce sense of possessiveness, roared through H.L. He tightened his arms around her small, soft body. Damn, she felt good. She felt even better a moment later, when she began kissing him back.

  Tentatively, shyly, her lips moved beneath his. His triumph in that moment was ten times what his triumph at pummeling Pegleg had been. He felt her hands, which had been bunched into tight little fists, open and splay against his back. He had too many clothes on to appreciate her touch fully, but he liked it when she caressed him hesitantly.

  “You feel good, Rose. Very good.” he whispered. Her damned Stetson was in his way, so he plucked it off and dropped it on the ground beside them. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, and he wanted to run his hands through it, but his bandages got in the way. “Some day,” he murmured into her tousled hair. “Someday, I’m going to feel your hair the way I want to.”

  Rose whispered, “Hmmm.”

  He was hard as a rock, primed and ready, and he knew he couldn’t take much more of this tantalizing embrace. Fearing what he’d do if he prolonged the kiss, he reluctantly pulled back from her. Rose, not understanding his motivation for breaking the kiss, clung to him like a limpet. When he glanced down and saw her dazed, confused expression, he felt guilty. Not very guilty, but guilty nonetheless. She blinked up at him as if she didn’t know what had just happened to her.

  H.L. understood completely. He’d kissed lots of women in his day, but he’d never become so involved in a kiss that he’d feared for his sanity before this minute.

  He had to be going nuts. There couldn’t be another explanation for his sudden, overwhelming, all-consuming desire to attach Rose Gilhooley to himself. Permanently. For damned ever. Permanence as regards a woman to H.L. May had always seemed akin to a life sentence in prison or eternity in hell or something equally drastic and horrifying.

  But permanence as concerned Rose Gilhooley didn’t conjure up anything but bliss to his innards, which were obviously suffering some sort of dementia. He needed space and distance, and he needed them fast. Now. Instantly.

  Gently, so as neither to scare nor to hurt her, he pulled away and opened his mouth to say something. Anything.

  Nothing came out of his mouth, so he cleared his throat. That helped his throat, but didn’t do anything to unscramble his brains, which hadn’t yet formed a coherent sentence, much less
one that was appropriate to this circumstance.

  After a moment of looking as if she’d been hit by a bolt of lightning, Rose took a quick step back. She was rocky on her feet and had to grab the flap of her tent to steady herself. She lifted a hand to her lips, as if she didn’t understand the sensations tingling there.

  H.L. had to grit his teeth and steel himself to keep from lunging after her and drawing her into his arms again. He’d have stuck his hands in his pockets, only they wouldn’t fit anymore. Thwarted, he put them behind his back. “I, ah, had better be getting along, Rose. I still have to write that article.” A rock jammed his throat, and he had to clear it out again. “My, ah, editor’s a bear about schedules.”

  “Bear? A bear?”

  “I mean he’s touchy about schedules.”

  “Ah. I thought you meant Bear. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  She blinked a few more times, opened and closed her mouth twice, and said, “Oh. Yes. Of course. I see.” She shut her eyes tight, took a deep breath, let it out, and opened her eyes again. “Yes, well, I need to get some rest.”

  “Right. Me, too, but I have to write my story first.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’d better be off.” Dammit, what was the matter with him tonight? He never had trouble leaving a woman. He almost always felt vast relief when he left one, in fact.

  “Yes. Of course.” Rose seemed to have difficulty turning to enter her tent.

  Suddenly filled with panic at the thought of losing her, H.L. took a quick step forward before catching himself and forcing himself to get a grip on his senses. Hell, if he didn’t watch his step, he’d do something that would lose him his freedom forever.

  Whatever good his freedom had ever done him.

  “Right,” he said in an effort to clear his mind. “Right. Well, then, I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon, if that’s all right. I—ah—want to interview you some more, if you don’t mind.”

  “Interview me some more?” She appeared puzzled and not altogether pleased.

  “Yeah, and I’ll be able to bring you a copy of the early edition. You know, the paper that will come out Monday morning. My first article about you will be in that one.”

  “It will?”

  “Yes. I’ll document Bear’s rescue and how you went about finding him, using your tracking skills, in another article. Tomorrow will be an introduction.” Talking about his job was easing him back into a sense of normality, thank God. Feeling slightly more chipper, he went on, “So since I still want to write a whole series, why don’t I take you out to supper, and interview you some more then.”

  “Well, all right. If you need to, I guess it’s all right.”

  “Right. Good. Then, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Fine, then.” It seemed to H.L. that it took an effort for her to smile at him. “Thank you, then. Um, thanks for helping me get Bear back. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think I could have done it.”

  H.L.’s cynical side reared up at once. “Yeah? You surprise me, Rose. I thought you could do anything.” He wanted to smack himself when he saw her lips press together and the stunned look evaporate completely from her face. Her eyes flashed.

  “Of course, I’m sure I could have done it without your help, but not as quickly.” She lifted the flap of her tent with a snap. “Good night, Mr. May. I mean, H.L.” She ducked under the flap, entered her tent, and let the flap drop.

  H.L. experienced a moment of total bereavement when she was lost to his sight. Muttering a soft, “Damn it all to hell,” he turned and slouched off, kicking at clots of dirt that he couldn’t see as he went. He had the cabbie take him to the Globe office, where he let himself in with his key and wrote his story. This one documented Bear’s rescue, and i would appear in Thursday’s paper. It was a great story, dammit, and he’d been a goddamned hero in it.

  So why did he feel so rotten?

  H.L. decided it was probably best not to try to find an answer to that one until after he got some sleep. By that time, and with luck, his heart would have stopped whacking away at his ribcage every time he remembered kissing Rose.

  # # #

  Rose felt unsteady and lightheaded when she entered her tent. Good heavens, H.L. May had kissed her. Worse, she’d kissed him back.

  Annie would be horrified.

  For that matter, Rose was horrified. She collapsed onto her bed, pressed her hands to her cheeks, and uttered a low moan.

  Well, this proved a point, at any rate. Annie was right. H.L. May, whose professed interest in her was only business, was a snake in the grass underneath. What’s more, even knowing what she knew, having been lectured endlessly by Annie about the perfidies of men, Rose had fallen for his lures, hook, line, and sinker.

  The truly appalling aspect of the situation was that Rose would love to rush outside, holler at H.L. to come back, haul him into her tent, and tell him to kiss her some more. Lifting her head and staring into the blackness surrounding her, she wondered if her character had been damaged by entering into a life that might be considered show business. She’d heard show business was bad for a person’s morals.

  Yet the colonel did such a good job of keeping an eye on his cast and crew, especially Rose and Annie, who were the only two white women traveling with the Wild West. He’d been especially careful of Rose, who didn’t have a husband to see to her welfare, as Annie did.

  So much for good intentions, thought Rose glumly. In spite of the colonel’s best efforts on her behalf, Rose had managed to find someone to seduce her. She wished like thunder that being seduced by H.L. May didn’t sound like such a good idea.

  However would she face him in the morning—rather, this afternoon? It occurred to her that, if he arrived at the Wild West encampment in time, she could invite him to attend the evening church service with Annie and herself. That would give him a tangible, if false, impression of her moral fiber and character. But he didn’t have to know that inviting him to church didn’t appeal to her innermost self as much as inviting him into her tent did. That would remain her secret. She wouldn’t even tell Annie.

  “Bother. Rose Gilhooley, you’re pathetic.”

  On that unhappy note, Rose fumbled for a match on her night table, which consisted of one of the trunks in which she packed her costumes, and struck it against the striker she kept next to a kerosene lamp. She lit the lamp, and yawned deeply before she stood to remove her clothes and climb into her nightgown.

  As she undressed, her brain kept slipping back to the kiss she’d shared with H.L. May. She wished it wouldn’t, but was too exhausted to exert any control over it. Rose had never been kissed before except by Freddie, and that didn’t count, because he was her brother and his kisses had been little pecks on the cheek when she’d brought in something extra-special for supper. He’d actually pecked her cheek twice when she’d brought home two antelopes.

  H.L.’s kiss had meant something entirely different. It meant he considered her a desirable woman, and it had thrilled Rose to her very core. It also frightened her an equal amount, since it meant she was vulnerable to him and his wicked ways.

  Were his ways wicked? Annie would say so. Annie had much more experience of the world than Rose did. Probably Annie was right about it, but that made Rose feel bad, and she hoped she was wrong.

  How did a woman tell if a man’s intentions were honorable or not? Pondering this, Rose brushed out her tangled hair and plaited it into one thick braid for bed. She imagined Annie would tell her that if a man was honorable, he wouldn’t kiss a lady without asking her permission first.

  H.L. hadn’t asked. In fact, he’d surprised her nearly into a swoon when he’d kissed her.

  She frowned as she pulled down her bedclothes. Asking would take all the spontaneity and fun out of a kiss, though, wouldn’t it? Rose didn’t think she’d have been half so excited if H.L. had asked first.

  Of course, that was probably because she’d have refuse
d if he’d asked—and not because she didn’t want him to kiss her, but because she knew that his kissing her was wrong.

  Fiddlesticks. She was too tired to be thinking about any of this confusing nonsense. After a sound sleep, perhaps she’d be able to understand better what had happened this evening—morning—whatever it was—and how to proceed from now on, as concerned H.L. May.

  She didn’t believe herself, but went to sleep before her conflicting sides could engage in an all-out battle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Afternoon, hell. It was almost seven o’clock before H.L. jumped out of the cab in front of the Wild West encampment and, clutching a copy of Monday’s early edition, raced to Rose’s tent. He hadn’t meant to come this late, but he’d stayed at the Globe office until nearly 8:00 a.m., writing two complete articles. By the time he’d finally fallen into his bed, he’d been dead on his feet, and he’d slept for nine hours.

  He told himself he was hurrying to see Rose not because he wanted to see her, exactly, but because he wanted to interview her some more. He’d almost talked himself into believing it by the time he got to her tent and discovered she wasn’t there.

  “Rose!” he cried in real distress. The fact that his unhappiness was real, and that he felt as if someone had gouged a hole in his heart, made him reassess his motives. Hell, not even H.L. May, who considered himself at the top of the line when it came to ace reporting, could conscientiously allow himself to preserve the fiction that he only wanted Rose for a story.

  “Damn.” So much for that pleasant theory. As he stomped off, wondering where the hell she’d gotten herself off to, he berated himself as an ass.

  He never should have kissed her. He wouldn’t feel this intense longing to see her again if he’d kept better control over himself. But had he?

  No. He’d had to succumb to temptation, draw her into his arms, and kiss her. The kiss had kindled all of his wolfish instincts, and now he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d known her completely, in the Biblical sense.

  Not that there was anything the least bit Biblical about his carnal urges as regarded Rose Gilhooley. The problem was that, when he entertained the delicious fantasy about Rose in his bed, he didn’t feel quite right about it, and that had never happened to him before. He’d never experienced any qualms about bedding a delectable female. Why the hell were qualms attacking him now?