“Never!” Colleen said sharply though she managed to keep her voice down. “Not in my lifetime. Do you hear me?” She paused a moment as he looked at her with unalloyed contempt in his eyes. “I’ll starve before I ever let you touch me.”
“Oh really? Well, we’ll see about that.”
“It’s time for you to walk away, Ralph.” Marc’s baritone was uncompromising. “Walk away…and do it fast. I’ve had a couple drinks tonight, and I’m not inclined toward patience with men who don’t know how to treat ladies.”
“Ladies?” Ralph made an ugly sound in his throat. “She’s no lady. And you’re a fool for thinking she is.”
In a voice that was both calm and deadly, Marc said, “Walk away. Walk away now…or die where you stand.”
Ralph, clearly influenced by the liquor he’d already consumed, spit once more on the floor and mumbled under his breath as he left, “Carpenter fucked her every which way a man can fuck a woman. Why you getting righteous on her now? Don’t see any point in that. Don’t see any point at all.”
The words cut into Colleen’s soul like the jagged edge of a serrated knife. Ralph was a vicious idiot, but he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t understand exactly what words to say that would have the most devastating impact. He knew all about her foolishness with Allen Carpenter, and he knew that Marc did, too.
“There’s a lot you can’t see,” Marc said softly. “Walk away while you can still walk.”
Colleen wasn’t surprised when Ralph turned and retreated. Marc wasn’t a man to pick fights with. Just looking at his face told her everything she needed to know about his frame of mind.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to have to get involved.”
Several seconds passed before Marc replied, “I’m not involved. I can’t stand the thought of that blackguard talking to you so disrespectfully.” He smiled, but it was a tight smile with little warmth in it. “Good night, Colleen. If there’s,” he cleared his throat and half-turned away from her, “anything you need, all you have to do is let me know and it’s yours.”
He walked out of the kitchen quickly.
Chapter Four
“There are three types of winners at a poker table,” Zachery Singer said quietly, looking at his second-place hand of eights over sevens. “Good players, lucky players, and cheaters.”
Frank tapped the table with his forefinger, a smile curling his lips. He had jacks over deuces for the winning hand. “I’ll grant you, I’ve been lucky tonight.” He pulled the winnings in from the center of the table. “And you’ve been unlucky. That’s the third time tonight my two pair has been higher than yours.”
“That’s right. Three times in one night.” Zachery pushed his chair back from the table, and all conversation in the card room ceased. “Once is skill, twice is luck, and three times means you’ve been cheating.”
Frank continued piling his chips into neat stacks on the green velvet tabletop. “Talk like that will only get you hurt.”
Zachery stood slowly, and men stepped back. Theoretically, all handguns had been confiscated upon entering the banquet, but that didn’t prevent the men from carrying hideouts.
“I’m calling you a cheater.”
Leaning back in his chair, Frank crossed his legs, putting his right boot up onto his left knee. On the inside of his brightly polished black boot was a custom-made holster sewn into the tube, and in that holster was a double-barreled .41-caliber Derringer. It wouldn’t be easy getting to the small but deadly weapon.
Frank looked straight into Zachery’s eyes. He saw the cold fury there in the dark brown depths. Shining in his eyes was greed and hatred, but most of what Frank saw was frustration. Two generations of Singers had been trying to get the best of the Bishops, and for two generations, they had more often than not come up short. The next logical step would be for Zachery to get his holster and revolver and call Frank out into the street.
While Frank’s skills at the poker table were formidable, his skills with a revolver were minimal.
The sound of boot heels clicking against the slat wood floor drew Frank’s attention, but his gaze never wavered from Zachery’s.
“Winning again?” Marc’s tone was faintly mocking as he approached the poker table. There wasn’t a single person in the entire card room who was talking. “Don’t you get tired to taking people’s money?”
A low murmur of voices sounded through the room. Though Frank was not much of a threat to anyone with a pistol in his hand, Marc’s speed and accuracy were legendary. The previous summer two cowboys had gone for their guns against him, and Marc put a bullet through each man’s gun hand before they were even able to completely draw their weapons.
“Good to see you, Marc,” Frank said. “What have you been doing?”
“Dancing.” His tone was casual. “And since there are several of Montana’s most lovely ladies waiting for their turn with you on the floor, I suggest you cash in your chips and stop disappointing them.”
Frank stood slowly. At six-foot-three, he towered over most men. He looked around at the other card players at the table. “You don’t mind me quitting, do you?”
“No, Frank,” one player said.
Another added, “It’s a free country. You can quit whenever you want.”
All eyes turned to Zachery, whose fury hadn’t abated, though he occasionally cast sideways glances at Marc. If he called Frank out into the street, he stood a good chance of winning the showdown. But if Marc involved himself in the bloody affair, as he most surely would since he and Frank were closer than brothers, then Zachery’s fate was sealed.
“You don’t mind?” Frank asked, his voice calm though the tension in the room was almost palatable.
A muscle twitched in Zachery’s lean jaw. “Do what you want. But we’re not finished here. Remember that. We’re not finished.”
Frank scooped the winnings into his big palm. He had taken several hundred from the other players at the table, but in less than two hours of playing five card stud, he’d taken Zachery for nearly three thousand dollars.
They walked to the “bank,” being run by Arthur Singer, Zachery’s father.
“I hear you got pretty lucky tonight.” Arthur was sitting at a table by himself with a cashbox loaded with paper and coin. “Cashing in, or you planning on coming back later?”
“I think I’m done for the evening.” Frank set the chips down in front of the banker.
“Smart move. You’ve got my son mighty riled, and that’s not a smart thing to do.”
The implied threat made Frank’s jaw clench, but for only a moment. He forced a smile to his lips and replied, “If your son can’t afford to lose, then he can’t afford to play. A man should know what he’s good at, and what he’s not so good at.” He took the money, mostly in paper, and stuffed it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. “I’m sure that, sooner or later, Zachery will figure out what he’s good at. Somebody should tell him it isn’t cards.”
Frank could feel the old man’s hatred, sensing how difficult it was for him to restrain his more violent impulses.
“You watch yourself, young man. You and Marc have been making a lot of enemies, and that can be real dangerous.”
Frank walked away with Marc at his side, stepping out of the card room and into the ballroom where the orchestra would continue playing until midnight.
* * * *
Colleen finished drying the last of the crystal cocktail goblets and set it on the counter. At last, after a long day and an even longer night, her work was finished. She felt tired and sweaty, but she’d made more money working the banquet, selling her own chickens and cooking them herself, than she typically made in a week selling her chickens, eggs, milk, and cheese to her regular customers. She was exhausted but pleased with the outcome of her efforts.
As she climbed up into her buckboard, she reflected that it would take her another hour to travel the four miles from Golden Valley to her small, tidy home. Sh
e wasn’t looking forward to the travel time. With work finished and her horse knowing the road from town to her house, she would have time to think about the day…and undoubtedly replay in her mind her own brazen response to the kisses she’d received from Marc and Frank.
Colleen had just driven her buckboard through the alley out onto Main Street
when she heard laughter ahead. She could see that one of the riders was larger than the other and that both men wore hats. Their shoulders were broad.
Then she heard laughter again and recognized it as Frank Bishop’s. A moment later, she heard Marc’s voice carry on the gentle midnight breeze.
“It’s the truth, I tell you,” Marc said, then added his laughter with Frank’s.
Their voices were quieter after that, and Colleen could no longer make out complete sentences, though she occasionally heard snippets of words and a suggestion of laughter.
The Andollini ranch was a mile past Colleen’s house. Frank Bishop lived in the largest mansion in Golden Valley. Apparently Frank was going to spend the night at Marc’s, and perhaps in the morning they would go hunting or spend their day in some other amusement.
Colleen sighed wistfully. For her, tomorrow would be just another day, no different from any other. She wouldn’t spend the day hunting or fishing or playing poker, nor would she read a novel to take her mind off her troubles. Instead, tomorrow, just like every morning, she would milk her cow, inspect the chickens and carefully pack whatever eggs were to be gathered, then once again pack her buckboard with her goods and make the trip back to Golden Valley.
What would it be like to have the time to just do whatever I pleased? What if I didn’t always have chores to do? What if I didn’t always have to worry about money?
Laughter from ahead drew Colleen out of her self-pitying thoughts, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t like self-pity in other people, and she positively loathed it in herself.
Who is the better kisser? Marc or Frank?
That question was infinitely more troubling that a fatigue-induced moment of self-pity. A heated flush went through her veins, and she had to resist the urge to look around guiltily to make sure she wasn’t being watched.
Her response to the men, to their boldness, to their kisses…it had been so much stronger and more uninhibited than she had imagined possible. During the time she’d behaved so foolishly with Allen, she had taken some pleasure in his kisses and caresses, but what she experienced was more a sense of appreciation than sexual pleasure.
When Marc had taken her into his arms and sealed his mouth over hers, Colleen responded instantly. In fact, Colleen suspected that her response to Marc’s heated, demanding kisses was the more ardent.
Frank’s tongue had been a devil’s serpent, gliding over her lips, slipping between them, sometimes pushing deeply into her mouth, always playing with her tongue. His hands, long-fingered and very powerful, had touched her with consummate skill. He could ignite a fire without matches and do it in an astonishingly short period of time.
As her buckboard made its way slowly down the road, Colleen closed her eyes for a moment, remembering what it had felt like to in the arms of one man and then another. Each man was as handsome as the next, though physically they were not much alike. But their kisses, individually and collectively, were nothing less than ambrosia.
Strong hands had squeezed the cheeks of her ass, and Colleen had done nothing to push those hands away. Instead, she had molded her body against a powerfully masculine one and boldly thrust her tongue into Frank’s mouth.
You’re neither Frank’s type, nor Marc’s, Colleen thought, deciding that it was best to be as logical as possible.
She had already learned the consequences of letting her heart make life decisions.
Frank said he’d never danced with a woman wearing trousers. I wear trousers to work in the chicken coop and the barn at least half the time, so I sure am not Frank’s type. And Marc? His type is any woman who is pretty and wants to be the recipient of his charm. They say he’s slept with most of the available women in Golden Valley and in Helena. Any man with that many women wanting him isn’t going to bother with a twenty-three-year-old woman with a tarnished reputation trying to scratch out a living with some chickens and a single milking cow.
But the calm voice of logic didn’t mitigate illicit memories of how her nipples had tightened and elongated with passion when she was with Marc and Frank or how the slick moisture of her passion had readied her for penetration. Her cream had flowed freely, her body silently inviting the men to enter her, to satisfy the empty ache that she’d known since Allen’s betrayal had shattered all of her naïve illusions about a life of love and luxury.
Another peal of laughter came from the twin riders ahead, and this time Colleen was quite certain that they were pleasantly intoxicated and passing a bottle back and forth between them while they rode.
Something in the shadows, off to the west, caught Colleen’s eye. As a chicken rancher, she was endlessly tormented by wolves, foxes, badgers, and even an occasional puma or bear, so she was well-versed with searching the shadows for a wary nighttime enemy. Many a carnivore had thought himself hidden in shadows only to feel the lethal burn of a .44-caliber bullet.
For an instant, Colleen thought of calling out to warn Marc and Frank. They had both been drinking, and it was easy to see that neither man was riding with a cautious eye out for his own safety. Hardly had this thought entered her head before Colleen quashed it mercilessly.
Marc and Frank can look out for themselves, and they sure don’t need you babysitting them. Besides, if you let them know you’re following, they’ll want to ride along…and then you could find yourself in their arms again.
Colleen’s behavior in the banquet hall kitchen, going from Marc’s arms right into Frank’s embrace, was behavior that was beyond anything that she had thought possible. It was bad enough knowing she had reacted so passionately to one man’s kisses, but to very nearly lose all inhibitions with two men at the same time? Unimaginable! No woman would ever do such a thing. At least no respectable woman.
But I’m not such a respectable woman, am I? There isn’t a woman in Golden Valley who hasn’t heard what I’ve done, and Allen’s already told all the men the things I let him to do me.
Something indistinct in the shadows moved again. It was perhaps fifty yards off the road, an uncongealed mass of something shrouded in shadows. Colleen squinted, trying to see in the darkness, her mind attempting to make sense out of too little information. Ahead of her, Marc and Frank continued to ride, their bodies loose in the saddle, their conversation carefree and vaguely alcoholic.
And then the shot rang out, shattering the near silence of a Montana midnight. An instant later, Colleen watched as Frank reacted to the bullet, his arms flying up in the air as he rolled sideways off his horse.
A second rifle shot quickly followed the first, and this time Marc’s horse let out a hideous whinny of agony as it collapsed beneath him.
What had been an indistinct mass in the shadows quickly materialized into four men leaping up into their saddles and putting spurs to the flanks of their mounts as they rushed headlong in the darkness toward Marc and Frank.
Surprise had slowed Colleen’s reaction, but only for an instant. Between the first shot and the second, she was already reaching for the old but trustworthy Henry repeating rifle she kept in the scabbard beneath the front seat of the buckboard. She never traveled anywhere without the rifle, and since her livelihood came from very tasty chickens that nearly all carnivores in Montana found both delicious and easy to catch, out of necessity she was a crack shot.
The four riders had cut the distance between themselves and their downed quarry in half by the time Colleen had the Henry’s walnut stock up to her shoulder. She levered in a round, aimed, and fired at the lead rider. She saw him slump in the saddle of his galloping horse, but he stayed astride the animal.
She worked the lever action, aimed quickly, and fired
a second time. A second dry-gulcher reacted to her well-placed bullet, first falling forward over the neck of his horse, then rolling off the back as the animal veered sharply away from the sound of rifle fire.
Colleen could not see either of the men she had kissed so passionately earlier in the day. Off in the distance, running down the road at top speed, she saw Frank’s horse. The animal had panicked and wouldn’t stop running until she had winded herself. Marc was using his own downed horse as protection and had drawn his revolver. As Colleen levered a third bullet into the chamber, Marc opened up with his Colt, and the third of the would-be ambushers cried out as hot lead ripped into soft flesh.
As Marc continued to fire with his revolver, the bushwhackers abandoned their attack. One of the men who had been knocked from his saddle managed to get back astride his mount, but when he rode away, he wobbled precariously. One false step by his horse and he would be out of the saddle. Colleen aimed at the man but didn’t squeeze the trigger. He was no longer a threat.
“Marc, it’s me, Colleen! Don’t shoot!” she shouted, laying her rifle across her lap and slapping the reins to her horse. “Come on, girl,” she said to the old mare. “Hurry it on up.”
Though her old horse wasn’t in the least bit happy about having to run, Colleen made it quickly to where Frank and Marc were. She brought the buckboard to a dusty stop, her heart clenching in her chest as she saw Frank on his back, his eyes closed, his body unmoving as Marc cradled his head in his lap.
“They’ve shot him,” Marc said, his face a mask of fury and pain. “Those lousy bastards shot him.”
Colleen knelt next to the men and touched her fingertips to Frank’s throat. Though he was unconscious, his pulse was strong, and rapid.
“Thank God he’s still alive.” Then she saw the blood pouring from the side of his head, just above his ear, and whatever confident feelings she’d experienced a moment earlier vanished.
Maxwell, Brandi - Colleen's Desire [The Lost Collection] (Siren Publishing Menage Everlasting) Page 4