Claudia Dain

by A Kiss To Die For

  She sure was cute, standing there, her face flushed and with a trace of soot on her lashes and swiped on her chin. Showing the first signs of fight he'd seen in her yet.

  He wondered if she'd shown that much spark with dog-lovin' Bill and just exactly what those kisses were like that she shared with him when he was in town. Like he was right now.

  That was the last thought he had before he opened his mouth.

  "Thank you, ma'am, I'd be obliged to stay with you." Could hardly be a better way to keep his eye on Bill Tucker.

  It was damn bad when a man started up lying to himself.

  * * *

  Miss Daphne stood wedged between the edge of the door and the jamb, refusing entrance to her home in every way available to her. Dammit stood pressed against her leg, growling.

  "Anne, I don't know what you were thinking to issue an invitation without any preparation or forethought," Miss Daphne said through thin lips.

  "Ma'am," Jack said softly, "she was just seeing that everyone who lost a bed because of that fire found a place to stay, and she spent the best part of the afternoon seeing to it. If you don't have the room..." He let it slide; Anne lived in the biggest house in Abilene and everyone knew it.

  Daphne's pride in her home was pricked. "Of course we have the room, but I don't open my home to just anyone who happens to be passing."

  Anne sucked in her breath and seemed to shrink down an inch or two. Jack shifted his weight, the spurs on his heels jingling like bells. He smiled slightly and said, "I'm not passin' by, Miss Daphne. I'm an invited guest. Invited by your own granddaughter in a time of tragedy for the whole town. I think it shows her raising that she was so free with her hospitality."

  And if Daphne declined to let him stay, she'd be shaming both Anne and herself with her lack of charity.

  "Besides," he added, "I don't plan to be a burden. I'll pay the same rates that I did at the hotel." They needed the money. The chipped paint and sagging porch told that tale.

  "I don't run a boardinghouse," Miss Daphne snapped irritably.

  "Of course not, ma'am," Jack said easily. "I'm just a guest of your hospitality who's helping to pay for the extra bother. I'll be gone as soon as I'm able and get out from under."

  There wasn't a woman in that house who had any trouble in believing that a man would git when he was able.

  Brown eyes bored into blue. Jack held his ground easily, meeting her stare and returning it without effort. Anne wanted to crawl back down the steps and burrow under the porch; she just hated this sort of thing. It was the combined presence of Jack and Miss Daphne that kept her rooted. Abruptly, the door flew open, the battle over. Dammit crept onto the porch, hackles raised, still growling and showing his teeth.

  "Dammit, get in the house!" Daphne said sharply.

  Jack smiled suddenly and said, "Thank you, ma'am, for the kind encouragement. You sure make a man feel welcome."

  Daphne blanched white as a sheet, her mouth softening in shock.

  "She was talking to our dog," Anne whispered as Jack walked into the foyer.

  "You sure about that?" he asked, taking his hat off and holding it in his hands.

  "Of course, I'm sure."

  "Your grandma always cuss like that?" he whispered with a smile.

  "She wasn't cussing," Anne whispered back. "His name is Dammit."

  Jack smiled and ducked his head down, trying to hide it. Maybe Anne wasn't as far out of his reach as he'd thought at first look. Any girl with a dog named Dammit...

  Miss Daphne stood with her hands clasped before her in the parlor, her expression as stern as her posture was rigid.

  "You may show our guest to the maid's room, Anne. And I don't want any of your weapons accidentally discharged in the house!"

  "No need to worry, ma'am, they don't discharge unless I want 'em to."

  Daphne couldn't seem to find the words to answer that.

  Anne hurried down the hall that skirted the parlor and edged along the kitchen wall. The maid's room was at the back of the house, next to the kitchen, It wasn't really a maid's room anymore; they hadn't been able to afford a maid in years. The room now functioned as a canning room and looked like it.

  Anne started moving glass jars out of the room, her arms full and awkward with the effort. Jack stood in the hallway and watched her, an amused expression on his face. He didn't help her. He just watched her. The jars rattled and clanked together as she tried to hurry, tried to avoid his eyes, tried to forget that he was so close and would be staying in the same house with her. And with her mother, aunt, and grandmother. That calmed her down some.

  He seemed to fill up every space he occupied. It wasn't just the hall, he had done the same on the platform, under the wide sky with no walls in sight. She felt her breath get tight in her chest just looking at him. He was lean, but his shoulders almost filled the doorway. Blue eyes watched her. He didn't look at the room she was trying to clear of kitchen paraphernalia, he was looking at her. Only at her.

  She dropped a jar. It didn't break only because it landed on the bed. He'd be sleeping in that narrow bed come tonight.

  She dropped another jar. She made a quick lunge for it; it bounced off her hands and landed dully on the floor to roll clumsily at his feet.

  He bent to pick up the jar and held it easily in one hand, fighting a smile. She ducked her head and took it from him, leaving the room with her arms full of glass jars. They'd all go in the kitchen for now, stacked in a wooden box and stored under the worktable.

  When she got back to the room, he was standing in it. Next to the bed. He'd thrown his hat on it and was running a hand through his hair. He had longish hair, soft brown in color and waved on the ends. Pretty hair.

  She couldn't think in anything but short bursts when he was around. Just impressions, quick as June bugs, that would flit and fly from pillar to post.

  Would he kiss her any time soon?

  "You didn't have to ask me to stay."

  Her eyes found his and then lowered in embarrassment. "I thought I should."

  "And you're a gal who always does what she should."

  He sounded amused and maybe irritated. She couldn't figure out why that would be so. She had invited him because it was her Christian duty to find lodging for those without a bed. She had invited him because she wanted him near so that he would court her, keeping Bill off her tail. It was that thought that kept her head bent. It surely wasn't Christian to so boldly arrange for one man to go against another.

  "Why'd you kiss me?" he said, moving away from the bed and walking toward her across the small room.

  Her head jerked up. "You kissed me!"

  "Then why didn't you push me off?"

  He was standing so close, she could see the soot lying on the surface of his eyebrows, so close she could see that one of his shirt buttons was broken in half, so close she could see the shadow of his beard on the chiseled angle of his jaw.

  "Is that what I should have done?" she said, her voice just above a whisper.

  "I'm sure your ma's told you already."

  Oh yes, she'd been told by just about everybody that she shouldn't have allowed that kiss. A kiss she'd been so eager for she would have followed him to the Great Divide to get it. But a nice girl, a smart girl, didn't admit a thing like that, even if she was bad enough to think it.

  She was going to be smart. She wasn't going to get tangled with any man.

  "Why did you kiss me?" she asked.

  "Wanted to," he said simply, his blue eyes suddenly hot with color. "I'm not a man who does what he should. I do what I want." He breathed the last.

  She watched his mouth as he said it. He wanted to kiss her, or had. Did he want to again? She wanted him to want her, to want her enough to keep trailing after her until she escaped Abilene, leaving him behind with the rest of them. That he trailed after men for money, hunted them down no matter where they went, she chose to ignore. No man chased a woman for long; there wasn't any profit in it.

 
; "What do you want now?" she asked, forcing herself to act bold, hoping she was flirting.

  What did he want? He wanted to tumble her back on that bed and kiss her till she couldn't take a breath that wasn't his. And then he wanted to shake her senseless for letting him. He knew she'd let him. The trouble with Anne was she'd let anybody push her around any old time they took the notion, and leave her apologizing for the trouble that spilled out after.

  Jack looked at her, at her bright eyes and her hope that he'd take up with her. Hell, she didn't have enough sense to know he wasn't the sort of man who should be on the same side of the street as her, let alone in a tiny little room with a door and a bed.

  Did she think he was something he wasn't? Didn't she understand what it meant that he hunted bounty; that he was no man for the likes of her?

  But Bill Tucker wasn't the man for her either. That's what he was doing here, keeping Bill off her. But Sarah had hooked him as bait to draw another man in. Well, hell, he'd have some fun of his own before she shoved him out of her life. If she was smart, she'd shove him. But Anne didn't seem to have much shove in her. That was the trouble. She was walking straight to her own killing and picking flowers on the way.

  "If you want me to kiss you," he said roughly, "ask straight out. I'm no Saturday night beau."

  He looked angry. She wasn't afraid. He was Jack Skull and she wasn't afraid. He was right, he wasn't her beau. Bill was. But Bill didn't make her feel like this, thank God, or she might have wanted to be his wife, to chain herself to a man when all a man did was run as far and fast as he could. She didn't have to worry about that with Jack. He wouldn't want to marry. He'd know she could never marry a bounty hunter. Wouldn't he? He'd never push for that, the way Bill and her family did. He didn't want her to do the one thing she'd made up her mind never to do.

  "I shouldn't," she said, looking at his broken button, at his suntanned throat, at his curling hair, but not at his eyes.

  "Probably not," he said, the anger in his voice gone.

  He was not going to force it or her. He was giving her the choice and she knew that no matter what she decided, he wouldn't be angry. Bill would have been angry.

  Or maybe he knew how she would answer. Maybe he knew how his kisses made her feel.

  "Kiss me," she whispered, her eyes downcast, wanting it. Dear God, she wasn't supposed to want it.

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  A finger tipped her chin up. She closed her eyes. She didn't want to see laughter in his look.

  His mouth hovered over hers, close enough to feel but not close enough to touch. His nearness made her tremble. His arms wrapped around her, holding her, gentling her. His mouth lowered to touch hers and she felt the breath go out of her as she leaned into him. His arms tightened and her nipples brushed against his shirt. She could only lean toward him, wanting the contact, the feel of him on any part of her. It was like hunger, like emptiness.

  His mouth was soft and persuasive and she pressed herself against him, wanting more, sensing there was more.

  His mouth opened over hers and he pulled her into him, his tongue demanding, enticing. Bill had never kissed her like this. She didn't know a kiss could be like this.

  Her arms wrapped themselves around him, around those narrow hips and flaring back, past all the belts of ammunition, to find the shape of the man. He was hard as wood, broad and lean at once, and ridged with muscle. Bill was softer and wider. This was better.

  His arms pulled her in and his thumb trailed down to sculpt the shape of her breast. Her nipple throbbed in response. His tongue demanded urgent attention, pressing deep and fast in her mouth. She tasted him and breathed in his smell and didn't even think to compare him to Bill.

  Her thoughts had been jumbled before; now they were lost. She could only feel and want. Only respond to what he was doing to her. Unafraid. Stupidly unafraid.

  "All settled in?"

  Sarah's voice made her jump in her skin and she pulled guiltily away from Jack's heat. Jack slowly let her go. He did not look guilty; he looked as if he'd been tumbling with a cougar. Without a word, she left the room, her eyes on the floorboards, her color high.

  "I'd ask what you were doing with my niece, but I'm afraid I know the answer."

  Jack picked up his hat and put it back on with casual ease. It took all his effort to look casual when he was as tied up as a fresh-roped stallion.

  "I'm courting your niece the only way I know how." With a soft smile, he added, "It seems to be workin'."

  Chapter 14

  The sheriff knocked on the door just as supper was being prepared. Nell answered, her arms dripping water from washing the greens. She was not inclined to invite Charles to stay and eat.

  "Good evening, Nell," he said, taking off his hat when he saw who it was.

  "Evening," she said tightly.

  "You recovered from fighting that fire? I saw you there and was plenty impressed by the amount of work you did to try and save the Cattlemen's."

  Nell pursed her lips and tilted her head at a sharp angle, holding Lane's eyes with her own. "I wasn't there to impress you, Mr. Lane. I was there to help a neighbor, which is my Christian duty and one which I don't shirk. And I don't need to 'recover,' I'm a healthy woman in the prime of life, not a bedridden matron."

  Charles clutched his hat, crushing the back brim. "Of course not, Nell, I never meant any such thing as that. Why, you're a handsome woman. I've always said so and never heard no argument otherwise."

  Nell's head tilted violently in the opposite direction. "Are you saying that you bandy my name about, comparing me to other women? Just who do you think you are, to discuss me as if I were a prize cow?"

  "Now, Nell," Charles said, twirling his hat in his hands and crushing the brim all around, "I didn't mean it like that. You know that I wouldn't do anything to—"

  "And I never gave you leave to call me by my given name, Mr. Lane. Please remember that when you're discussing me over drinks in the saloon!"

  She turned and marched off, sideswiping Jack as she stomped back to the kitchen. Jack didn't mind; listening to another man get tied up by a woman put him in a real pleasant mood. He looked at the mangled hat in Lane's hands and smiled. Lane jerked his hat behind his back and swore softly.

  "You finish your business here or did you want to talk to me, too?"

  "Where'd they put you?"

  "In the back, next to the kitchen."

  "Well, let's go on," Charles grumbled. "I've got some things to tell you."

  "You could have told me at the jail. I would have been by directly."

  "I needed the air, thought I'd walk down here."

  "And how was the air, down here?" Jack said over his grin.

  "Cold as January," Charles mumbled, closing the door to Jack's room behind them.

  Jack leaned his back against the closed door. Charles walked to the far wall, looked out the window, and then looked back at Jack.

  "Poked through the fire," Lane said. "Looks like it was accidental, though I'm not a top hand with fires."

  "What were you thinking?"

  "I was thinking that you're not real popular."

  "I'll take your word for it."

  "Maybe somebody'd want to get you out of Abilene?"

  "How many people heard about me kissing Anne? I'd guess about that many would want me on the next train out," Jack said evenly, his eyes not dropping.

  He was talking about Anne, but he was thinking about the killings. He was roped close to Abilene because of those killings. Maybe the killer knew that. The sheriff sure did. Might be better if folks thought he was staying because of Anne. Might even protect her better than she could protect herself. Hell, she couldn't protect herself from a tick.

  "That'd be one reason," Lane acknowledged. "Any others I should know about?"

  "No. But if anybody asks where I was when that fire started, I was in the saloon. With three witnesses."

  "If anybody asks, I'll tell 'em," Lane said pleasantly.


  "How about telling me about Tucker?" Jack said, easing off the door and coming more fully into the room that was now his. "When'd he hit Abilene the first time?"

  "Maybe four months ago, maybe a bit more. He came scouting through before he settled."

  "How much has he settled? I heard he traveled around some."

  "Yeah, he's on the loose a bit," Lane acknowledged. "He's always off, checking on land and finding buyers. Comes back to Abilene to register the deeds and the sales. Always seems to have a pocketful of money. Always a smile on his face."

  "A pocketful of money will do that for some people, give them something to smile about. You ever get the idea he was smiling about something else?"

  "Like women?"

  "Like women," Jack said with no trace of a smile.

  "The only woman he's buzzed around here has been Anne. I don't know where he was before he came here. He didn't offer and I didn't have no call to press."

  "And Anne didn't have no call to complain."

  "No," Lane said with the beginnings of a smile. A man didn't like to be alone in his female troubles. "She's seemed happy enough with him."

  But she had kissed Jack in full light and bright public and then again in this very room. Tucker didn't have her held all that tight. Still, there was a hungry look about that woman that didn't have everything to do with kissing; she was looking for something to fill up a hole somewhere in her. He knew the signs of that well enough.

  "But he's not made his move."

  Lane shrugged. "Not yet, but the talk is that it'll be soon."

  Neither one of them mentioned that Jack's kiss might have something to do with the timetable.

  "What's the talk on the ladies in this house?" Jack asked. "I've never come across so many women in one family who ain't got a man."

  "They've all been married, all's except Anne, and that'll come." Lane chuckled. "Daphne came into Abilene with a husband and two girls. She's still got the girls. Her husband, Malcolm Todd, was something big with the railroad and they came when Abilene was just a river and a patch of grass with only the hope of cows. The rail line moved west and so did he. Climbed on that train he'd help build and took off."