“You went back up the trail, didn’t you?” She didn’t need his nod before she continued. “You never found anything?”
A shake of his head confirmed it. There appeared to be little way of investigating crimes in 1870. Ellie doubted fingerprinting had been discovered, at least not out west. Without the bullet that hit her, there was no way to get a fix on who had ambushed them.
“You need to get some rest.” Jesse stood and removed the tray from her lap. “I’m staying here today and the boys will be back to watch over you tomorrow.”
Ellie protested. “Jesse, we can’t find out what Clayton’s up to if you three are hovering around me all day. He told me to come see him when I got better.”
“He was here?” Anger laced Jesse’s curt question.
“Yes.” Clayton’s green pallor flashed before her eyes and she almost laughed. “He didn’t quite take to my being sick.”
“That’s just fine and dandy. He’d better stay away or I’ll sit on the porch with a shotgun.”
A sense of panic Ellie couldn’t understand rose in her chest. “No, you can’t do that. We’ve got to know before--” she broke off when Jesse pinned her with a hard, calculating stare.
“Know what? By when?” He stood motionless with the breakfast tray in his hands.
Ellie groaned and fell back against the pillows. There were some things she just couldn’t tell Jesse, and others she didn’t understand herself. “Never mind, it must have been something I dreamed.”
Jesse seemed to accept that. “Get some rest, El. I’ll be here if you need me.”
* * *
Jesse looked in on Ellie late in the afternoon to find her crawling back into bed. “What are you doing out of bed?”
A groan answered him as she hid her face in the pillow. He moved to adjust her covers when he heard her anguished words. “Just let me die in peace.” A touch to her forehead and Jesse knew her fever was back.
“I’ve got to get you in a bath. You’re burning up.”
“Yeah, well it’s summer and hotter than hell. What do you expect?” She immediately tossed aside the sheet he had pulled over her. He paused momentarily at the sight of her long legs, exposed past the knee where her gown had crept up. He gave a heartfelt sigh as he headed for the kitchen.
Under normal circumstances, Jesse would have enjoyed Ellie’s attitude as he sponged her off in the tub of cool water. She kept trying to pull him into the water with her, curling her arms around his neck and lifting herself up so her wet breasts glistened in the lamplight.
However, every time her hot lips tried to capture his, he knew it was the fever making her act the way she did. And even as he chuckled at her antics, it was impossible for him to take advantage of the situation.
He grew more concerned as he lifted her out of the tub. Her legs seemed unable to support her, and he ended up with her on his lap as he rubbed her down with the soft towel.
Wrapped again in her robe, he tucked her into bed where she immediately curled onto her side and fell into a deep sleep. Jesse knew sleep would be the best thing for her, so he contented himself to sit by her side in the dark, listening to her breathing.
* * *
“Jesse!” Her scream tore through the black of night, raising the hair on Jesse’s arms and shooting him straight out of the chair.
“Sh, it’s all right.” He sat on the side of her bed as she groped for his arm in the dark.
“Turn on the light. I hate the dark. You know I hate the dark!” She clung to him like a leech while he struggled to free one arm to strike a match to the lamp on the bedside table.
Once the low light chased away the darkest of the shadows, he turned only to realize that she really didn’t see the room. Her eyes were glazed with fever. He rose from the bed to fetch some water.
“Don’t leave me.” This time it was a whimper and the sound of it tore at Jesse’s heart more than her frightened screams had. He bent to kiss her hot cheek.
“Only for a moment, honey. I’ve got to cool you down.”
“Alcohol.”
He cocked a brow at her request. “I don’t think you need a drink of anything but water.”
“Alcohol...rub,” she said on a sigh.
Jesse frowned over her words, but once he got to the kitchen, he paused at the pantry. Examining the containers, he found Dr. Melon’s Wondrous Elixir among the bottles and tins. Knowing most of the so-called patented medicines were nothing more than flavored alcohol, he figured it might work just as well to rub her down with it as to let her drink it.
Thirty minutes later, Ellie rested easier, her fever abated, but Jesse’s restlessness had grown. While he wouldn’t entrust Ellie’s health to anyone else, it had taken all his will power as he had rubbed the Elixir soaked cloth over her satiny body, leaving her uncovered and totally naked so the alcohol could evaporate and cool her body.
Earlier, he had controlled his lust because he kept telling himself she had a fever. Now, he repeated that lecture, but it didn’t help considering he had seen her naked for the better part of the day. As if that weren’t bad enough, she had moaned and wiggled under his ministrations until he thought he would burst into flames.
He could smell peppermint as he tucked the sheet under her chin and thought at least the Elixir wasn’t licorice flavored. He hated licorice. “Lord, woman, what I don’t sacrifice for you,” he whispered. He had thought her asleep, but at his softly spoken words, she opened her eyes.
“I’m falling in love with you, Jesse Cole.” Her words, husky and soft and passion laden, sounded more like a burden than a benediction.
He knelt on the floor beside her. “Is that so bad?” Truth of the matter was, he had fallen in love with her, too. Not the youthful lust he recalled from their early years. This was a deeper, more potent passion that she had just recently evoked in him. One that he knew would last a lifetime.
She had a passion for life that rubbed off on him. While he still worked the mine and searched for the motherlode, she had inspired him to truancy -- playing hooky, she called it. He thought of their recent trip to Steamboat Springs, where she had told him to “chill out.” Her language was strange, her passion invigorating.
Jesse had tried to sort out his feelings on the train ride home. The rocking, clickety-clack of the train had lulled her to sleep, her head on his shoulder. He had thought at the time he would be content to spend the rest of his life with her tucked into the curve of his shoulder.
A sob interrupted his thoughts. “Now what?”
“I’m not really Elizabeth and I don’t belong here. Zeke and Lucky dragged me back to Peavine to help. Clayton Scott is trying to take your mine and he’s going to blow it up and you’ll be killed.” She cried in earnest now, and Jesse gathered her in his arms.
Jesse had to laugh, regardless of how sincere she sounded. Her story was just too preposterous to believe.
She weakly pounded his arm. “I’m telling the truth.”
Trying to calm her, he asked, “All right, if you’re not Elizabeth, who are you?”
“I’m Ellie; Ellie from New York and I work for a magazine.” She tilted her head back to look him straight in the eye.
Jesse wondered if her fever had returned. Her beautiful brown eyes glistened with tears, and when he lightly kissed her forehead, he couldn’t tell if it was her skin or his lips that felt so hot.
“I really am just Ellie. Does Jesse love Ellie?”
Jesse thought about the imp who kept disrupting his work; if not with her presence, then with his thoughts of her. He recalled her lush body beneath his; her cries of ecstasy as they plunged into the deepest passion he had ever thought to know.
“Oh, yes,” he whispered, hugging her close, “Jesse definitely loves Ellie.”
Chapter 12
Ellie felt much better the next day, but Jesse insisted on staying close at hand most of the morning. When he kept looking at her strangely, Ellie figured she must look a fright. Finally, when she promised
not to overdo, he left her in peace, but sent Lucky by twice to check on her.
Ellie didn’t want to spend her remaining time with Jesse by being sick, so she went to bed early that night to regain her strength. The second day, she sent a message to Clayton that although she had recovered from the flu, she was now femininely indisposed and figured that ailment could last up to a week.
Although Jesse continued to work long hours in the mine, he got word to her through Lucky or Zeke at least once a day, and they would spend a few hours together. That time became idyllic.
Even so, they still played a waiting game. She and Zeke and Lucky counted the days, hoping against hope that Elizabeth wouldn’t show up before the Independence Day celebration. Zeke had convinced Jesse to close the mine for the celebration, even though they couldn’t tell him the particulars. They had to play the game as close to the first happening as possible, but Ellie hadn’t wanted the possibility of other men getting hurt. Since Zeke knew only Jesse had died in the first explosion, they didn’t figure it would matter if they made sure the men were out of the mine this time. They did know charges would be set at the mine because that’s what had happened before. And the educated guess was that Clayton would be involved.
Ellie just hoped the outcome would be different. Her heart ached at the possibility of Jesse being killed in the prime of his life. Regardless of the fact that she would no longer be here with him, she couldn’t bear to have him sacrificed.
Now, she waded across the creek barefoot, stopping mid-stream to splash water on her bare arms. She laughed at herself, realizing she no longer missed the fast-paced craziness of her century and had even acclimated to the super-hot weather here on the slopes of the Sierra’s.
She tried not to think of re-entering her own world; the world of microwave dinners, digital telecommunications and speedy transportation. One thing for sure, their plot to save Jesse wouldn’t have worked in Ellie’s world, for Elizabeth could have returned home in hours instead of days.
Ellie shrugged off the thought, knowing there was nothing she could do about any of it. Plans had been set in motion a hundred forty-five years ago and were beyond her control.
Jesse had asked her to meet him at the entrance to the mine. Ellie still refused to enter the Nightingale, even with Jesse, and she tried not to think about him being inside the dark pit.
As she left the tree lined path and entered a clearing in front of the mine, she could hear Jesse hollering at one of the men, but couldn’t see him. Finally, she found him at the top of a wooden tower built like an oil derrick.
“Hey, I’ll be down in a minute,” he shouted as he waved from his perch.
Ellie waved back, then watched in amazement as he scrambled down rickety cross bars which formed ladder steps on the side of the framework.
“What is that?” She questioned when Jesse reached her, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a large red bandanna.
“What? Oh, that?” He frowned and Ellie figured she had goofed again. Since Elizabeth’s father had once mined, she supposed she should already know the names of all this stuff.
“We started using headframes a few years ago when we tunneled under more level ground, instead of burrowing into the side of a mountain. The pulleys at the top are used to hoist ore from the mine shafts below. It saves alot of man-hours and hard work when we don’t have to push ore carts up the slopes on rails through endless miles of tunnels to the main entrance.”
Ellie looked at the apparatus with renewed interest. They knew Clayton would have to get into the mine to blow it, and Ellie now wondered how many different entrances they had to worry about. “Could a person go down into the mine from that?”
Jesse looked at her in surprise. “Why would you want to do that? I thought you didn’t like dark places.” He took a step closer and gave her a seductive smile. “Unless you were with me, that is, so I could keep your mind off it.”
Her stomach immediately flip-flopped at his suggestive tone. His voice always did that to her. How was she to live without him? A shiver sliced through her. Dear Lord, why couldn’t things be different?
“Jesse,” his name escaped her lips on a sigh. Her eyes drifted closed as she leaned slightly forward to kiss him, only to be rudely interrupted when a shout came down the hill.
“Cole!” Carlos, Jesse’s foreman, shouted. “You ready to put this timbering in?”
“Be right there.” Jesse smile apologetically. “Sorry, but after I sent Lucky to get you, Carlos noticed the defective timbering in tunnel C. If we don’t square set it, we won’t be able to go any further. All indications are this is the place where we’ll find the big vein, but I have to make sure it’s safe for the men to be that far down.”
“But is it safe for you?”
He shrugged. “After we get the timbering done, it will be. By building squares of framed timbers instead of the old cross beam method, we can work an ore vein of any width safely and alot quicker than before.” He pointed to the headframe. “Tunnel C runs directly beneath that. Once we find the motherlode, it will be easy work hauling the ore to the surface and on to the stamp mill.”
He winked. “That’s the secret. Most of the mines are tunneling deeper and deeper into the mountain, and while they’re finding small veins, nothing big has been found in years. All our assay reports indicate that this vein, running away from the slope, could yield three thousand to the ton.”
“Dollars?” Ellie asked, incredulous.
“Yes, dollars,” Jesse returned, his facing breaking into a grin.
“Cole, you coming?” Carlos yelled again.
“Sorry, sweetheart, I’ve got to go. I want this done right.”
Ellie nodded numbly as Jesse hurried off. Suddenly Clayton’s words came back to her. No wonder Clayton blew up Jesse’s mine and killed him. Jesse had just told her, as Elizabeth, about the possible size of the strike. Elizabeth would have told Clayton, and together they would have plotted the end. Even though Ellie had no intention of telling Clayton anything, he still had mentioned “an accident.” If he had any idea what could come from the Nightingale, Jesse wouldn’t stand a chance.
Swinging around and heading back down the slope, Ellie was more determined than ever that it wouldn’t happen again. Jesse and his men deserved to strike it rich, and she wouldn’t allow Clayton or anyone else to rob them of it. She would save Jesse and the Nightingale, or die trying.
* * *
The next evening, Ellie watched as Jesse moved around his small cabin, gathering ingredients to make her supper. As he stretched to reach a top shelf, she admired the play of muscles across his bare back, and watched avidly as his trousers rode low on his hips with every movement. Her gaze continued down his long legs to his bare feet. Even his feet were sexy, she thought and giggled.
She had caught him unawares in a tub of water when she had arrived earlier than planned. Just moments after she had offered to wash his back, he had pulled her into the tub with him, leaving most of the bath water on the floor of the cabin. The rest had puddled beside the heap of wet clothes at the foot of the bed.
They had been so hungry for each other. No prelude; no foreplay as Jesse swept her into a whirlwind of passion, possessing her again and again. Ellie hadn’t been a passive partner in what had transpired, because he had taught her well and she had become addicted to his loving.
By the time she lay sated across his bare chest, it had grown dark. As Jesse had said, she felt no fear, for his arms wrapped her in a cocoon of warmth and security.
His stomach had growled loud enough for Ellie to think a bear kept them company in the cabin, and with a sigh he had risen from bed to fix their supper. He had slipped his pants on but tossed his shirt to Ellie.
“Your clothes are wet,” was all he said as he gathered the bundle and disappeared outside to hang them on a line.
Now, as she sat cross-legged on the bed, his cotton shirt rubbing against her bare breasts, she wanted him all over again. When she giggled, he
glanced her way, winked, then resumed his biscuit making.
“You’re poetry in motion, you know that?” she said. At his snort, she added, “No, I mean it. You’re all fluid grace and it’s like no action is wasted. Watching you move is like watching a ballerina.”
Jesse cocked a brow as he scowled at her. “I hope you don’t go around telling that to anyone. Sounds kinda sissified.”
Ellie thought a moment. “Maybe what Robert Frost said will explain it. ‘Love, the moon and murder have poetry in them by common consent. But it’s in other places. It’s in the axe-handle of a Canadian woodchopper, and it’s in poultry-stricken ground.’”
She slowly rose from the bed and walked over to stand before him, her gaze never leaving his. Looping her arms around his neck, she added, “The most wondrous poetry isn’t that of words on paper. Rather it is the beauty and movement of a man; majestically toiling, diligently seeking his dreams, tenderly loving.”
“Does your Mr. Frost have a fondness for men?” Jesse asked sardonically.
Ellie laughed as he did, but slowly the humor faded from her voice as passion flared. “No; the last lines were mine.”
“So sweet,” he murmured as he lowered his head to meet her lips.
Ellie breathed in the scent of him as he kissed her, wondering if she could ever get enough of this man. With a groan, she surrendered her body to his lips, her heart to his safekeeping.
A pot bubbling over on the stove brought them back to awareness. With a light kiss on her nose, Jesse released her. “Dessert,” he promised with a smile.
While Jesse finished the preparations for their meal, Ellie perused his book shelf. Pulling one slim volume off the shelf, she opened it to read the title. On the inside cover was the inscription, To Shelley J. Cole, I will love you always.
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