Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights

by Leigh Greenwood

  “You’re easy to care about,” Slade replied. “Besides, how often does a man find a beautiful woman kneeling at his feet?”

  “Is that what you want, a good looking woman who’ll worship you?”

  They faced each other, barely inches apart, but Slade felt like they were surrounded by an aura which bound them together as it cut them off from everyone else. How could he tell her she was wrong about what she felt just now, that she would realize it the moment her precious Frederick arrived? How could he tell her she was mistaken about him, that he was no Sir Galahad looking for a damsel to rescue?

  Nothing but a drifter running from the law.

  But he couldn’t deny the invitation in her eyes, turn away from her upturned face, or ignore her parted lips. Hell, why should he try? He had never thought it would last. He had no reason to think Pamela wanted it to. But they were together now, just the two of them, alone in the night. No matter who owned tomorrow, this moment belonged to them.

  Slade lifted his hand and caressed Pamela’s cheek with the back of his fingers.

  “I never wanted just any woman,” he said softly. “I want one who wants me as much as I want her, who needs me as much as I need her.” He feathered a fingertip over the high ridge of her ivory cheekbone. “It wouldn’t hurt if she looked like you and had a penchant for kneeling at my feet, but that’s not necessary. Oh Hell,” Slade said when he felt Pamela start to draw away, “I forgot I wasn’t supposed to talk about anything but cows. You running away?”

  “I ought to,” Pamela said hesitantly, “but I confess I’m intrigued by what you want in a woman. Tell me, what is necessary?”

  “We’ll, I don’t suppose necessary is the right word exactly, but I’d be mighty pleased if she fitted in my arms as nicely as you do,” Slade said. To demonstrate he slipped his arms around her waist and tugged.

  Pamela allowed her body to lean against him, her head to settle into the hollow of his shoulder.

  “It wouldn’t hurt if she could put her arms around me. It can be a might chilly out here sometimes.”

  “And after she does all that?” Pamela asked, looking up at him in a way that made him want to crush her to his chest.

  “She ought to want to kiss me. Some winter evenings there’s an awful lot of time to fill up.”

  Pamela’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes glittered with amusement. “And if you could find a woman compliant enough to bend herself to your demands, what then?”

  “I sure wouldn’t tell her to go start supper.”

  “Will you be serious?” Pamela said as she tried to find enough spare flesh on his lean frame to pinch.

  “I’m trying not to be,” Slade said, all amusement gone from his eyes. “If I was to get serious, what with you here in my arms and nothing but that old moon to keep us company, there’s no telling what I might do.”

  “Then let’s suppose you were to be serious.”

  “This is all playacting now? You won’t go thinking it’s the real thing?”

  “It’s all playacting,” Pamela assured him, settling back against his shoulder. “Now tell me, what would you do?”

  “I can tell you one thing. I wouldn’t waste a lot of time talking. I’d just grab her and kiss the daylights out of her.”

  “Are you always so rough?”

  “Only when I’m serious.”

  But Slade wasn’t rough. His arms tightened about Pamela, drew her closer to him, pressed her against his suddenly tense body. She could feel the rigid length of him pressed against her stomach, sending waves of heat pulsing through her body.

  Slade lowered his head until he could feel Pamela’s luxuriant hair against his cheek, until he could smell the fragrance of her expensive French perfume. He nuzzled her hair, reveled in the feel of the silky strands against his rough cheek; he nibbled her ear until she squirmed in protest; he kissed her neck until she was limp; he whispered in her ear until she was stiff with desire.

  Then he kissed her.

  His gentle lips captured her waiting mouth. Those lips sought to meld with hers as his arms involuntarily pulled her into his embrace. Gradually the pressure increased as he slowly forced her lips apart until her mouth opened to his seeking. The shock of his tongue in her mouth caused Pamela to pull in hard for breath, but she released it in a rush of compliance.

  Never had she experienced anything even close to this. The crushing strength of his embrace, the lean hardness of his body, the sudden tenderness in her breasts, the slowly building warmth in her abdomen, all of it intoxicated her. It tempted her to abandon herself completely to this celebration of her senses. Her mouth opened wider, inviting him farther into its depths; her body pressed harder against him, heedless of the growing hardness pressing against her abdomen; her arms held him tighter hoping he would never let her go.

  Slade broke the kiss, but his hold on her body never slackened.

  “You’re a very good actor,” Pamela said when she could finally catch her breath. “I could almost believe you meant that.”

  Slade removed one hand to run his fingers across her cheek, then through her hair. “I worked in the carnival, remember. A man learns all kinds of tricks in a place like that.”

  “Show me another.”

  “My repertory isn’t very big. Can I show you the same one again?”

  “I guess so,” Pamela whispered before she lost herself in Slade’s embrace.

  Slade hesitated almost too briefly to notice, but when he kissed her, Pamela forgot all about that split second of doubt. His mouth crushed hers in a desperate kiss, his lips demanding, seeking, plunging as though this kiss would have to last him a lifetime. The steel band of his arms tightened about her until she thought her ribs would break, and still he could not seem to hold her close enough. Pamela felt herself being swept away on an undertow, a current too strong to resist, a feeling too wonderful to want to.

  Then Slade abruptly broke off the kiss and put her an arm’s length from him.

  “That’s enough playacting for tonight.” He sounded winded, like a man who’d been in a fight.

  “But you weren’t acting,” Pamela said. She wasn’t any more calm than Slade, but surprise steadied her.

  “No,” Slade agreed. “It would have been better if I had been.”

  “But you like me, don’t you?” It was almost a plea.

  “You know I do.”

  “Then why have you avoided me ever since I got Amanda’s letter?”

  “You know the answer to that, too. We’re different people, Pamela, and we’re headed in different directions. We can’t do anything about it. We can’t be anything but who we are. There’s something deep within us that makes us that way. We’d be fools not to recognize it.”

  “But that doesn’t mean we have to stay away from each other.”

  “In a couple of weeks, maybe even a few days, we’ll go our separate ways and never see each other again. No sense starting something we can’t finish.”

  Pamela started to tell him she didn’t want to start anything, but hadn’t she done just that? She told him she would leave if he didn’t stick to business, but she had been the one to sidetrack the conversation. And she didn’t want it to end.

  She did want something, but she didn’t know what. She had always known what she wanted from Frederick, but Slade didn’t resemble Frederick at all. Something about him drew her irresistibly, gave a whole new meaning to her concept of the relationship between a man and a woman. She needed more time to figure out what it was.

  “We can still be friends,” she offered.

  “Maybe. Come on, it’s time to go back.”

  “It sure is,” someone said from behind a nearby boulder. “I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  In a movement so quick it left Pamela breathless, Slade had dropped to his knees, both guns drawn.

  “Come out slowly with your hands away from your guns,” Slade ordered. “I get mighty jumpy when people follow me around.” />
  “But you said one of us had to always keep the boss in sight,” the aggrieved cowboy muttered as he emerged from his hiding place. “You didn’t say we had to hold back when you went courting her.”

  Slade slid his guns back into their holsters. He started to say something but burst out laughing instead.

  “How can you stand there guffawing?” demanded Pamela, caught between embarrassment and the realization that Slade had drawn his guns as a reflex action. “Someone could have gotten hurt.”

  Slade only laughed harder.

  Pamela’s irritation with Slade had not disappeared by the next morning. Somehow she felt he had betrayed her, that he had played with her emotions, had not taken her feelings seriously. And that made her angry. She had enough difficulty justifying her interest in this cowboy. She doubted Amanda would approve of it, even as a lark, and she knew her mother would have been horrified.

  What would your father think she suddenly wondered. It came as something of a shock to realize he might possibly approve of Slade. He wouldn’t be pleased about his lack of background, he was too much a product of his Virginia heritage for that, but he would respect the man and like him for what he was.

  Or was he too much of a rootless vagabond?

  Yet oddly enough, Pamela found that wonderfully exciting and liberating. Slade made her feel totally free of any worries. Sometimes she felt that if things could go on like this forever, she would ask no more of life.

  But it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. She might be happy for a few weeks or months, possibly a year, but she would never be satisfied to remain at the ends of the earth, cut off from the kind of life she had grown to love. Neither did she wish to stay cut off from female companionship. She didn’t want her children to grow up on a ranch. She didn’t want her sons to grow up like Gaddy, and the thought of her daughters never setting foot off the Bar Double-B until they married some cowboy made her shudder.

  Slade had been right. They had no future together.

  But did he have to refuse her offer of friendship or to push her away? At least he could treat her with a little more consideration.

  But Pamela was inexperienced, not stupid; she knew she wanted a lot more from Slade than consideration. It didn’t need to be much. She would settle for a few sweet words and several kisses stolen in the moonlight.

  No. It was better that Slade had seen they were about to go too far, that it was time to pull back. Their relationship had no future.

  But what about now?

  Beyond the intoxicating excitement of being held in his arms or the electric sensation of his kisses, she enjoyed the enervating warmth as heat from his body flowed into hers. Could he expect her to ignore the feeling of pleasure she experienced when she caught him watching her? When she could see desire in his eyes, sense the tension in every line of his body? Did he think she could rid her dreams of a face so handsome it banished her ordinary thoughts, or a body so disturbing it gave rise to a crop of new ones? Did he think she could ignore the tingling of her breasts or the hot, heavy wetness she felt in her private female parts?

  She wouldn’t willingly give up any of this, at least not without a struggle.

  Or was it all simple pride? No man ever put Pamela White at arm’s length. And she wouldn’t make an exception for Slade Morgan. As of this moment he was a marked man.

  Pamela climbed down from her wagon a half an hour before sunrise. The cold air made her gasp and pull her coat more tightly about her, but most of the men had already eaten their breakfast and rolled up their beds. The various camps gathered around fires according to the outfit they worked for, but they would soon saddle up and ride out together. Pamela had hardly set both feet on the ground before Mongo materialized out of nowhere.

  “Would you do me the honor of riding with me today?” he asked in his most practiced, charming manner.

  Pamela had not intended to ride with anyone, and Mongo’s invitation only strengthened her resolution. If one of the men followed her—and one of them would—it could cause trouble. She planned to stay in camp, but Slade had unwittingly guaranteed she would have no choice. Or had it been unwitting? Had anything that man had done from the very first been accidental?

  “This is my first roundup,” she told Mongo, “so I thought I would watch from here today. If nothing else, I won’t get in anybody’s way.”

  “You’d never be in the way,” Mongo assured her.

  “Yes, she would,” Slade said coming up and handing Pamela a cup of steaming coffee, “You can bank on a tenderfoot always being in the worst possible place.”

  Pamela didn’t like being called a tenderfoot, even though she knew she was one. She liked even less being fenced in by Slade Morgan.

  “I won’t stay in camp every day,” she said to Mongo giving him an encouraging smile just to spite Slade.

  “Then I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”

  “Save your breath. She can’t ride out unless someone on the crew rides with her.”

  Mongo looked at Slade like he couldn’t decide whether to get angry again or be flabbergasted at his presumption. “What’s a two-bit cowpoke got to say about what Miss White does?” he demanded.

  “I’m ramrodding this outfit,” Slade said, his grey eyes hard and cold. “No one in the Bar Double-B outfit does anything without my permission.”

  “Is he telling the truth?” Mongo demanded of Pamela. The shock of his disbelief made him look comical.

  How dare he say it like that, Pamela raged to herself. She wouldn’t let him treat her like a child who needed permission before she could leave the house. She ached to deny his control of her actions, to fling Slade’s arrogance in his face—she had never meant this when she agreed to follow his orders—but she had agreed to all his conditions. She couldn’t deny his authority now without going back on her word. Besides, she refused to give Mongo Shepherd the pleasure of knowing Slade had forced her into a corner. As far as anyone on this roundup knew, she had made Slade Morgan her foreman because she thought he could handle the job better than anyone else.

  “Of course it’s true,” Pamela said forcing a smile to her lips that belied her inward urge to hit Slade over the head with something made out of stone. “You didn’t think he would be willing to fight over me for no reason, did you?”

  “Do you mean you were paying him then?”

  Pamela longed to say yes. Slade had hurt her pride. He had flat rejected her, and he had done so in front of one of her hands, but one look at his stiff-necked stance killed the strength of her anger. He expected her to deny his honor; he expected to be rejected by another woman he cared for; perhaps he even believed he wasn’t good enough for her. For those very reasons she wouldn’t salvage her pride at the cost of his.

  “He did that on his own. But since yesterday, he’s been working for me.” She couldn’t look him in the eye even though she wanted to, badly. She didn’t deserve any thanks. Chivalry had been his motivating impulse, hers pure spite. “If you want to talk business, talk to Slade. I’ll back any decision he makes.”

  Then without looking at either man, she walked over to where Dave sat and knelt down to talk with him.

  Slade wished he still had his beard. He hoped his face didn’t reveal his astonishment, but after the way Pamela had backed him, he couldn’t help but feel a little smug. Mongo’s face was a study in chagrin.

  But only Pamela’s face interested him. He knew she was still angry at him for last night. It had been on the tip of her tongue to repudiate his reason for fighting Mongo. He had hurt her vanity, and whether she knew it or not, she was a woman of many vanities. So why had she stood behind him without reservation? The answer came with the impact of a rifle stock slammed into his stomach. Because of the roundup, you fool. She wants the money to go back to Baltimore and her precious Frederick. You’re the only way she’s going to get it.

  But Slade couldn’t believe that was the only reason. She had refused to meet his eyes. There had to be another reason.
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  But he didn’t have time to figure it out. He had to deal with Mongo and the rest of the ranchers.

  “I mean to know what’s going on at all times,” Slade told Mongo. “You don’t round up from Bar Double-B range without talking to me, and you don’t brand mavericks without one of our men present.”

  “I’ll be damned if that’s so,” Mongo blustered. “I’m not taking orders from any two-bit drifter. I almost beat you once. I’ll finish the job.”

  “I’m still a little sore,” Slade said. He pointed to his shoulder, and his lips curved into a cold smile. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t offer to take off my guns this time.”

  His lips curled with scorn, but his eyes flickered uneasily between Slade’s face and his guns. “A foreman shot in the shoulder and an ex-foreman shot in the leg,” Mongo blustered. “Looks like Pamela’s got herself one helluva crew.”

  He turned on his heel and walked back in the direction of his own camp. Slade knew it wouldn’t end there. Mongo wouldn’t back down or give up. He just hadn’t decided what to do next.

  The day turned into a long, hard struggle. The men went out in pairs to systematically cover the more than two million acres of grazing land. It took from forty to fifty acres to support a single cow in this kind of country. With something like forty thousand cows to be sorted through so the new calves could be branded, the men had their work cut out for them.

  The branding fires of each camp blazed high long before noon as each crew busied itself branding its own cattle. The bawling of cows and calves separated for just a few moments—calves roped and branded and cows just irritated at being driven from their familiar territory—filled the air with a mild roar. Branding irons clinked; dozens of horses’ hooves echoed on the hard-packed ground; men shouted back and forth to each other as they cut, roped, and branded; the rank smell of dung, sweat and burning hair and hide fouled the air, sweat poured down men’s faces, touching their lips with salt and tightly molding their clothes to muscled bodies; spiraling heat made it hard to breath, and a thick, choking dust rose everywhere.