A slight shuffle to the rear was the only warning Mary had before strong arms came around her. She dropped the chemise into the water and took a deep breath to scream. A large, rough hand clamped over her mouth; the scream went back down her throat and into her wildly beating heart.
Idiot! her mind ranted, even as her body struggled. She had no gun, no knife, and even if she had, she would be unable to retrieve any weapon with her hands pinned.
Mary was so annoyed with herself she nearly forgot to be afraid. Then a voice murmured in her ear, “You shouldn’t come out alone; anything could happen.”
She kicked Reese in the shins, and he released her. Spinning about, she was surprised to discover her hands had clenched into fists.
Reese rubbed his leg. He appeared almost as angry as she was. “I could easily have been El Diablo or one of his men, and they wouldn’t let you go because you kicked them. They’d knock you over the head with the butt of their gun and take you wherever it is they go with unconscious women. Then—” His lips tightened. “Well, you’d wish they had killed you rather than kidnapped you.”
Though Mary had been raised by nuns, she knew what Reese was referring to. While she had no business thinking about man-woman things, she’d thought about them a lot since Reese came to town. However, in her thoughts, he was always the man; she was always the woman. The idea of sharing those things with a stranger, or ten, made Mary shiver with dread.
The fight went right out of her, and she dropped her hands then hugged herself. “You scared me to death.” Her voice cracked in the middle, making her sound like a terrified child.
“Good. Maybe you won’t wander off by yourself again and give me heart failure.”
“You? What do you have to be scared about? You’re a big, tough man with guns. You’re the one who goes around terrifying women who are minding their own business!”
“What kind of business do you have out here?”
“My laundry. Haven’t you ever done laundry?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“I suppose you just buy new clothes every week.”
“No. I hand a woman in whatever town I’m in what’s dirty, and she brings it back clean.”
For some reason, the idea of a different woman in every town doing Reese’s laundry made Mary more angry than having him scare her old before her time. Laundry was a private thing. As private as kissing, and Mary had a sneaking suspicion that the woman who did Reese’s laundry was also the woman he happened to be kissing in whatever town he was in.
“I suspect you’ll be expecting me to do your laundry next.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Want to?”
“I don’t even want to do my own.” She glanced at her basket, and a swatch of white, down the river a ways, caught her attention. “Drat! My chemise is drifting away.”
“Let it go.”
“I will not.” She started after the undergarment, but Reese yanked her back.
“I’ll buy you another.”
“A man is not buying me unmentionables.”
“A man like me?”
“Any man, blast it! Now I’m getting that chemise.”
His hand tightened. “No, you’re not. Where the river disappears there into the trees she gets pretty deep. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you drown over a bit of cotton.”
“What do you care if I drown? I already gave you everything.”
“Not everything,” he murmured, and his thumb stroked the inside of her arm. “I care, Mary. Too much.”
All the anger and fear drained away as a pulsing sense of expectation took their place. “What are you saying?”
Using the arm he still held tightly, Reese pulled her close. She could have struggled, but why, when she wanted to be nowhere else but there?
“You make me crazy, Miss Mary.” He tucked her head beneath his chin. She wanted to stay right there forever. “After seeing you with Rico—” He stopped, and in the silence that followed, the steady beat of his heart pulsed beneath her ear. “I didn’t know what would be worse, the thought of you just walking around out here, alone and vulnerable, or the thought of you meeting someone by the river.”
“Like Jo?”
“Not Jo. A man.”
“A man?” She tilted back her head so she could see his face. “What for?”
He kissed her. No longer untutored in the art, she met him stroke for stroke. She let her hands wander over the breadth of his chest. When his tongue did fancy things with hers, she gripped his shoulders so she would not sink to the damp riverbank and melt into the water.
Maybe she would do his laundry.
As he coaxed her tongue into his mouth with teasing traces, she knocked his hat from his head and allowed her fingers to wallow in the softness of his golden hair.
She wanted to kiss something other than his mouth. When he’d kissed her neck, then her bruise, she’d felt so many different things. Wonderful, amazing, world-shifting things. And she wanted him to feel them too.
She pulled her mouth away and trailed her lips over his chin. The stubble scratched and scraped, a new sensation, not altogether unpleasant.
Next, she tasted the hollow beneath his ear—salt and man. She liked the flavor, so she tasted the hollow at the base of his throat too.
He moaned; the sound rumbled against her lips—another new sensation to add to her rapidly expanding repertoire. What she really wanted to discover was if the bronze hair on his chest that had haunted her nights since she’d seen him half-naked in Dallas was as soft as the hair on his head.
His shirt was unbuttoned to just beneath the curve of his throat. She raised trembling fingers and unbuttoned another button. His chest heaved as if he’d run a very long distance. That, combined with her clumsy hands, made the second button much harder to release than the first. She took too long, because his hands came up and closed over hers, stilling her explorations.
“Mary.” His whisper was the wind, a gentle brush against her temple, a sigh along her cheek.
She peered into his face, and the haunted sadness there made her breath catch; she tugged one of her hands free and set her palm to his cheek. “What is it?”
“I should never have kissed you, not even once. Now I can’t seem to stop.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
“Of course not. You have no idea what comes next.”
“I have an idea.”
His lips tilted at the corners, not a true smile but almost, then he covered her hand with his where it rested on his cheek. “You’d have a lot more of an idea if I let this continue. You need to be stronger than both of us. Call me a bastard and slap my face.”
“I never swear, and how could I slap this face?” She flexed her fingers beneath his, stroking him. “I don’t want to be strong. Just once I’d like to be weak.”
“But you’re not weak. What were you thinking when you let me kiss you again?”
They were back to that. Mary dropped her hand and narrowed her eyes. “I was thinking a dangerous, handsome man wanted me, if only for a moment. Silly old maid that I am.” She stepped away.
He picked up his hat, then smacked it onto his head. “You aren’t silly or old.” He reached out and yanked her against him, tight and true. “And as you can no doubt feel, I do want you. For more than a moment. But I can’t be the man you need, Mary. I can’t stay.”
She tugged free of his hold. With his body pressed to hers, she could not think. She could not breathe. “Who asked you to stay? What do you think I need? “
He closed his eyes and released a long sigh. “I’m not for you.”
“I know I’m not pretty.”
His eyes snapped open, and anger filled them. “Who told you that?”
“I can see, Reese.”
“Not very well.”
“You don’t have to tell me I’m pretty or anything else to kiss me. This may be the only chance I have in my life to be touched by a man like you.”
“You’
re making me mad.”
“Because I’m practical? Why would someone like you want to kiss someone like me? Unless you enjoy kissing, and as Mr. Sutton said, a woman’s a woman in the dark.”
He’d been rubbing his forehead, but suddenly he stopped. “When did he say that?”
The stillness of his stance caused a trickle of unease. “The other day.”
“Really?” Reese dropped his arm and glanced toward town.
Something about the way he held his fingers, curved and ready had Mary babbling. “It doesn’t matter. He was angry. That often happens when I say what I think. It’s a failing I’m trying to correct.”
“There’s not a blasted thing wrong with you, and don’t let that poor excuse for a man tell you there is.”
His anger on her behalf warmed Mary’s heart. No one had ever defended her before. She reached for his hand, and when he started to draw away from her touch, Mary held on tight. Holding hands was another thing she’d never done but found quite enjoyable. How could the simple act of placing palm against palm feel as if you were touching another person’s heart with your own?
“The sun’s going down,” she observed. “Is it safe to stay and watch a while?”
“Hmm?” Reese still stared at town. She squeezed his hand and he returned his gaze to her. “Sure. If you like, I’ll stay with you.”
She smiled. “I like.”
He stared at her as if she was a bit touched, and she smiled wider. He was very sweet once you got past the guns and the swearing and the growling. She had a feeling few people took the time or braved the trouble—even the men who rode at his side.
“Your friends don’t seem to know much about you.” She leaned against his shoulder.
He stiffened, though he continued to hold her hand, probably because she wouldn’t let his go. “You’ve been asking questions about me?”
“Do you have something to hide?”
“Of course.”
“A wife?”
He appeared horrified. “Hell, no!”
Relief washed through her. She cast him a quick sideways glance, but he watched the western horizon and not her, his face resembled stone, no expression there at all. “You needn’t worry; they didn’t tell me anything.”
“They don’t know anything.”
“Not even your real name?”
“Especially that.”
“Are you on the run? Are you wanted?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you know as little about your friends as they know about you?”
“They aren’t my friends. They’re good men who ride with me.”
“Sounds suspiciously like a friend.”
“We aren’t friends. We work together. I don’t know about their families, their dreams, their past or their nightmares, and I don’t want to.”
“How can you go through life without friends?”
“I’ve had friends. And when they die in front of you, or in your arms sometimes, the more you know about them, the more it hurts.”
“So you know nothing? You have no friends at all?”
“That’s right.”
The finality in his voice and the set of his mouth made Mary swallow the rest of her arguments. Who was she to judge or preach? She had not seen what he had seen or lost what he had lost.
She wanted to keep questioning him and discover why he was so bitter, but she couldn’t. She wanted to heal him, and she didn’t know how. Instead she let the subject drop and continued to hold his hand—because he continued to let her.
After a few moments, the silence became too loud. Mary had to fill it. “The sunsets here are like none I’ve ever seen, even in Virginia.”
At her neutral change of subject, the tension flowed from his body in a nearly audible rush. “I don’t get to watch many sunsets.”
“They’re like a gift from God. Bit by bit the sun slips down, and the colors change even as you’re watching. One minute there’s light and heat. You can feel it on your face, smell it in the air. Then, the next the sun is gone, and shadows spread over the land; everything goes cool and dark.”
She glanced at him. He was staring at her instead of the sun. “Watch.” She pointed at the bright red ball perched upon the cusp of night. “It’s magic.”
“Magic,” he murmured. “I think you’re right.”
They stared at each other as the sun died, and the shadows eclipsed them both. Something was happening here that went beyond anything Mary had ever experienced, and it was magic.
As the day slipped away completely, a cool breeze drifted over the water, washing them in the scent of river and darkness.
“Miss McKendrick,” Reese said, his voice as soft as the wind, “you’re trying to seduce me.”
“But, Reese, I wouldn’t know how.”
Chapter 11
Reese’s body was on fire, his mind a bewildered haze. Mary’s innocence was seduction itself and lured the wickedness roiling in his heart. She had no idea how she made him ache for the man he had once been—a man who was gone and never coming back. If he told her his secrets, would she still offer her untainted mouth to his?
He wasn’t going to find out. He was going to kiss her while he had the chance. Just one more time.
Only one last time.
When his mouth touched hers, Mary still smiled at what she thought had been a joke. Little did she know, Reese hadn’t made a joke since Stonewall Jackson died.
Her lips, curved from laughter, were as cool as midnight. She tasted like rain after a desert summer day, night fallen, dreams awakened. Her touch soothed his parched soul; her sigh of surrender filled him again with desire.
How many times had they kissed? He could not recall. Enough that they already knew the rhythm and the music. He kissed her gently at first, as light as her smile, as sweet as her eyes.
“Reese,” she whispered.
For a moment, he hesitated, the need to hear his real name from her lips nearly overwhelming. But to share that forgotten part of himself would be a mistake. Instead, he kissed her less gently, more deeply, and they both forgot everything but this moment.
For a woman who had never been kissed before he came to town, she caught on right quick. The thought of anyone else enjoying Mary’s eager mouth made Reese see red. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t beaten the crap out of Rico for daring. But Reese knew the Kid. Kissing Mary hadn’t meant a thing to him. Nothing like what it meant to Reese.
Everything.
Tongues mating, teeth scraping, lips caressing. Shared breath, shared sunset, shared dreams. What was he thinking? This was lust, nothing more. Even though Mary was a woman reminiscent of the man he had once been, she was not a woman he could call his own. Not now or ever again.
The shots, when they came, did not at first penetrate Reese’s jumbled mind. His senses were filled with Mary—the scent of soap, the taste of rain, the softness of a woman beneath his hard, rough hands. Then she tore her mouth from his, blinking at him owlishly beneath the painted sky.
They both looked toward town, then they ran—together, holding hands. Later, Reese would wonder if he’d grabbed her or if she’d grabbed him. But the answer to that question wasn’t half as disturbing as the fact that holding Mary’s hand felt like something he’d been missing all his life.
Expecting to see El Diablo and crew blasting holes in Rock Creek, Reese was surprised to find the street deserted.
Slowly, the two of them walked down the boardwalk. Reese held tightly to Mary’s hand. He wouldn’t put it past the woman to charge into any fray that occurred, whether between El Diablo and his men or his men alone.
That was the problem when you brought six rough men to a little town in Texas. Trouble kept them in business. It made them what they were. And if there wasn’t enough of it with others, they’d make trouble among themselves. Cash had warned him.
As Reese and Mary neared the saloon, they heard raised voices inside. Then Rico came flying through the doors and landed on his b
ack in the middle of the street.
Reese sighed. “They’re fighting again.”
“Your men?”
“They do that sometimes.”
“How… childish.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
“Can’t you make them stop?”
“I plan to.”
“I mean completely. Forever.”
“People hire us to fight. If I make them behave like humans, they won’t be any good to me at all.”
“Therefore you let them behave like animals?”
“To a point. They aren’t allowed to kill one another.”
“Excellent rule.” Mary’s voice was dry.
A figure emerged from the saloon. Reese couldn’t see his face, but he knew his men, and this wasn’t one of them. The guy pulled Rico up and started shaking him.
“Ah, hell, what did he do now?” Reese let Mary go and stalked into the street. Just as the fellow drew his fist back to punch the Kid in the face, Reese grabbed hold of his arm.
Rico fell back to the dirt as the guy swung around. Reese ducked, and the punch whistled over his head. He would have laid the man flat, but a quick glance at the guy’s face revealed that Rico’s attacker was at least sixty.
Instead, Reese pulled the man’s arm behind his back so he wouldn’t try to strike out again. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The stranger let loose a stream of profanity, none of which sounded like his name. Somehow Reese doubted he held Jesus Christ in his hands.
“William Brown!” Mary’s voice came from directly behind him, and when Reese glanced over his shoulder, he found her scowling. “Your mouth should be washed with soap!”
Brown continued to curse and struggle, trying to get at Rico. A movement behind Mary revealed Jed, Cash, and Sullivan lounging against the bullet-riddled entrance to the saloon. All watched the exchange with varying degrees of amusement.
“What’s going on here?” Reese demanded.
“This guy came in firin’ at Rico. Firin’ wide.” Jed snorted. “It’s no wonder they hired us if that’s how they shoot in this town.”
“My question was more to the why than the what.”
All four shrugged. Rico managed to get up, and Reese saw that Brown had scored at least one hit. The Kid’s pretty brown eye was swelling shut.
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