“I’m a man of my word. You know that. But for the next few months, being apart is the only way we will find ourselves again and know what we really want. Don’t ever feel used or ashamed, Kate. You’re one hell of a woman who deserves the best, and the shape I’m in right now, I’m not the best at all.”
You’re everything I want in a man. But I’m not going to beg you into my life, Luke Bowden.
“I’ll go talk to the men who said they’d help me. We will probably leave in the morning for the Lazy T.”
“Please don’t let this be just about me. It embarrasses me, Luke.”
“It isn’t just about you. The tension between men here in Lander and those out at the Lazy T has been building for a long time, and bored men in places like this itch for a fight, so we might as well get it over with. I don’t doubt some of the men in town will come riding back with Lazy T cattle and horses.” He grinned and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need to see Doc Gray?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m fine.” Kate stepped away and folded her arms, wrapping herself into the coat again. “Thank you for this coat, Luke. It’s really lovely.”
“And so is the woman wearing it.”
Kate looked up at him, and for a moment, she thought she saw the spark there she’d seen that first time he took her in the wilds of the Outlaw Trail.
“I just might come back and find out you’ve found some man you care about and married him,” Luke told her, “and that you don’t need me at all.”
Like what Bonnie did to you? Kate wondered if she should just debase herself and tell him he was the only man she needed and wanted, and that he could have her all he wanted any time. She shook her head. “I highly doubt that.” She touched his arm. “Be careful, Luke. Don’t do something to get yourself hurt or killed and leave me stranded in this wild, lawless place forever.”
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Don’t you know by now that I know what I’m doing?”
Kate searched his eyes. “I only know that I can’t stop you—not from going out to that ranch, and not from leaving Lander once this is over. That’s the part that scares me the most.”
He touched the deep red that was turning to a bruise on her cheek. “Between me and the other men in this town, Kate, no one will ever hit you again,” he said. “That’s one thing I can promise.
Kate couldn’t hold back her feelings any longer. “I need a kiss, Luke. Brazen as that sounds, I can’t let you leave me for months without another kiss, because I…I wasn’t going to say it, but I love you. Why not say it? You already know that I love you. I miss what we had, even it if was only for a few days and even though I know I’m not marriage material and even—”
Luke put his fingers to her lips. “What makes you believe you aren’t a woman worth marrying?”
Kate leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. “I’m sorry, but when I went to that shed to find my coat, I found a leather bag of yours and—I know I shouldn’t have—but I looked inside. I found the pocket watch—the one with Bonnie’s picture in it. She looked so young and so beautiful, and that’s the kind of woman you should look for when you are ready to start life over.” She felt Luke stiffen a little, but then he pulled her into his arms.
“Kate, Bonnie has been out of my life for a long time. I was younger then and thought youth and beauty meant everything.” He reached under her chin and made her look at him. “And you have the beauty, in more ways than just looks. You’re a beautiful woman in your strength and your ability to survive. You’d make a wonderful wife. But I have so many doubts, not about you but about myself. I never said I would only settle for a woman like Bonnie, and I never said I didn’t love you. But I need to go away and sort things out. Being away from you is the only way I can know this is what I want, and I have to learn to trust again. Neither one of us is in any shape to have our hearts broken all over again.”
Kate grasped his hand and kissed it. “It’s too late for that—at least for me, Luke. My heart is already full of love for you, and I don’t need time or to be apart from you to know these feelings will never change. But you do what you have to do. I’m old and wise enough to understand.” She looked up at him, and in the next moment he was tasting her mouth in a sweet, tender kiss that led to wrapping their arms around each other with great passion, the kiss growing deeper.
Kate whimpered in the glory of the delicious kiss, a kiss she’d needed for so long. Still, she felt his lingering anger, the battle going on inside this man. Yes, he was probably right. He needed to go away.
Luke finally released the kiss and pushed her slightly away. “Not this way, Kate. I don’t want to do this to you again. I can’t stay away if I’m worried I’ve left you in a bad way. You think you can’t have children, but you don’t know that for sure and I’m not going to sleep at night wondering. I have to go, Kate. If I stay here, we’ll keep doing this and we’ll never know if it’s real. Tell me again that you understand.”
Kate couldn’t help the tears that formed in her eyes, but she nodded and pulled even farther away from him. “I understand,” she said softly.
“I will be back, Kate. We just both need some breathing room.”
Kate felt sick inside. “Just go then. God be with you, Luke. I don’t want you to go to that ranch first, but if it will settle your restless, angry spirit, then go.” She met his gaze. “Just be careful. Don’t try to do it all on your own. Let those other men help you.”
Luke looked her over in that way he had of making her want him again, but then he turned away. “I’ll be back, Kate. That’s a promise.” He opened the kitchen door that led into the hallway, then looked back at her once more before walking out. He left, closing the front door behind him softly this time instead of slamming it.
Kate folded her coat closer and walked back to the window, still wondering if she would really ever see Luke Bowden again. The window faced away from town, and in the distance, she saw two men riding in the foothills, one of them leading a pack horse. It reminded her of traveling with Luke, two strangers, yet deep friends…two lovers, yet Luke wasn’t sure he was in love at all. She hardly knew who she was anymore or where she belonged. Luke was just a man who’d come into her life under the strangest of circumstances, a man who would have meant nothing to her in an ordinary life…yet she wasn’t sure how on earth she would ever be able to forget him…or stop loving him.
“Stay away as long as you need, Luke Bowden,” she said softly. “You could come back two years from now, and I’d still be here…waiting.”
Thirty-three
Kate stood on the boardwalk with Esther, both women shivering into their coats. Esther’s Clothing was only three buildings down from The Royal Flush Saloon, where a good twenty-five men had gathered for the ride to the Lazy T. It seemed half the town was up in arms, and Kate felt responsible for all of it. What if one of the men who’d decided to join Luke was hurt or killed when they rode out to make war on the Lazy T? Worse, what if Luke himself was killed? He would be a prime target.
“They’ll be on the lookout for us,” Luke yelled, “and I’m told by those of you who have seen the Lazy T that we have to ride through a canyon to get there. Keep an eye out, because there will likely be men hidden up in the rocks! I want volunteers from this posse who are willing to go up into the rocks and try to climb around behind the Lazy T men and keep them busy while the rest of us ride like hell through that canyon!”
About five men raised six-guns and rifles. They cheered and whooped. “We’ll get ’em, Luke!” one of them yelled.
All the men preparing to ride out with Luke had gathered around him in front of the saloon, and some of were obviously already looking drunk, even though it was only nine in the morning. Practically every hitching post anywhere near the saloon was crowded with their horses.
“This is going to be bad,” Esther comment
ed softly.
“I know, and I feel so responsible,” Kate told her.
Esther patted her arm. “The way I hear it, Luke Bowden was going to go there anyway to find those two men who got away after that attack on you. Luke is doing this just as much for himself and his pride as he is for you. This isn’t your fault, Kate. Luke is out for revenge, plain and simple, just like when he came here after those men who tried to hang him. What happened to you yesterday just strengthened his resolve, and it made the rest of those men mad enough to join him.”
Men were agreeing with Luke when he said it was time to end the threats from Lazy T men. They raised fists and guns in support, several of them firing shots into the air.
“No one man has dared to try doing something about those men on his own,” Luke shouted, “but if we ride out there in force, we can end their constant threats and abuse, especially toward the women of Lander!”
A number of men in the crowd shouted their own ideas for how to get through the canyon. Kate noticed three women with painted faces who were wearing colorful satin dresses were mixed into the crowd. Her insides burned when one of them, a blond-haired, buxom beauty, made her way to stand beside Luke. She grasped his arm as he continued shouting orders, then leaned up and kissed his cheek. Luke turned and kissed her on the lips, then turned his attention to the crowd of men again, encouraging them to ride with him to the Lazy T to avenge what happened to “Mrs. Winters.”
Kate closed her eyes and struggled with a jealousy that she really shouldn’t be feeling. Had he been sleeping with that blond woman? Was that why it was easier for him to ride out of her life than it was for her to watch him ride away? Why were men allowed to sleep around without retribution, while women had to always guard their reputations and live without a man’s affection if they weren’t married?
Men began mounting their horses while Kate grappled with seeing that kiss. In her case, it wouldn’t matter if she was allowed to sleep with any man she wanted. She didn’t want any other man but Luke. She didn’t want to believe he’d kissed that woman because he had any feelings for her. Maybe he wasn’t sleeping with her. Maybe that was just a good-luck kiss.
She told herself none of it mattered. The fact remained that in spite of what feelings they might have for each other, nothing Luke Bowden did was any of her business. All that mattered at the moment was that Luke was deliberately riding into danger. He could be killed by a bushwhacker hidden in that canyon. She didn’t want him or any of these men to be killed or wounded because of her, but she suspected a lot of them were joining Luke just for something to do. There certainly wasn’t much in the form of entertainment in places like this, and with winter setting in, few of them would consider riding into the big country beyond Lander to steal cattle or rob a bank just for excitement.
God only knew what some of the men yelling and drinking and mounting their horses today had done in their pasts. Yet there was this odd good side to some of them. They could rob a bank and kill innocent men in doing so, yet they would turn around and risk their lives for a woman, or even another man they hardly knew.
“I’ve never seen such stark contrasts in the nature of men as there is in this country,” she told Esther. Both women continued watching the wildly excited men.
“Oh, yes, you see all kinds out here,” Esther said. “But when you think about it, you can find mean and nasty men who abuse women anywhere and among all classes. You don’t have to come to outlaw country for that.”
“Yes. I never thought of it that way.” And you don’t have to stay in your own hometown to find good men. Sometimes you can find a good man in the most unlikely places. Kate thought how, back home in Indiana, she’d lived in the same town all her life, a town where everybody knew everybody and knew who was good and who was bad. Yet she’d come out to a new land, and within a few days, she’d fallen in love with a complete stranger.
The men were growing even more restless. They continued shouting and whooping it up, firing off more gunshots, causing some of the horses to whirl in place or rear up from all the noise. Some of the men leaned down from their saddles and kissed the women, and some rode past the clothing store and tipped their hats to Kate.
“Ain’t no son of a bitch from the Lazy T gonna come here and bother you again, Mrs. Winters,” one man told her before charging away.
Most of the posse thundered past, still yelling and sounding like a bunch of wild animals. The street quickly became a churned-up mess of mud and snow. Seconds later, Luke rode up to Kate and nodded. “Big Jim is bringing my pack horse along,” he said. “Remember everything I told you, Kate. I’ll be back.”
Don’t go! Please don’t go! “You be careful,” Kate said. “I don’t trust any other person to get me to Oregon.”
Their gazes held. Was there something more he wanted to tell her?
“I’ll get you there.” Luke smiled rather sadly, then kicked Red into a hard run in order to catch up with the other men, who, even in the distance, were still whooping and cheering and shooting off their guns. Kate watched him, wondering if she’d seen Luke Bowden for the last time. She ached to feel him hold her once more, taste his kiss once more, feel his big, muscled body lying on top of her once more, invading her once more. She wanted him so badly that her head ached.
Shaking her head, Esther walked back into the store as Kate turned to watch a couple of stragglers mount their horses and head out after Luke. That’s when she noticed the blond woman Luke had kissed walking her way.
Kate considered going back inside the store and ignoring her, but jealousy mixed with curiosity made her wait. The woman shivered into her shawl when a quick, cold wind hit her face. She wore a pink satin dress that had seen better days, and the deep-pink paint on her lips looked out of place as she walked closer. Kate couldn’t help thinking she’d be prettier if she left the paint off. Hard living and the gaudy paint made it impossible to tell her age. Eighteen? Twenty-five?
The woman stepped to within three or four feet from Kate, squinting from a bright sun that temporarily broke through the snow clouds above and gleamed against the white snow on the ground and on rooftops. “You’re Kate Winters,” the woman said matter-of-factly.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sienna.”
Kate nodded. “Is there something you want?”
The woman sauntered even closer. “Luke Bowden is a damn good man.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Not bad-lookin’, either,” Sienna said with a sly grin.
Kate grasped the collar of the blue coat Luke had bought her and pulled it tighter around her throat. “And?”
“He loves you, you know.”
“What?”
“He loves you. He’s just afraid to tell you or admit it to himself. That woman Bonnie hurt him real bad, and it’s hard for him to trust another woman.”
“He told you he loved me, or are you just assuming?”
“He came to me one night for…well…you know.” She smiled.
Kate felt her cheeks flushing from anger. “Yes, I know.”
“And you’re jealous as hell.”
Kate struggled with an urge to hit the woman. “What is your point, Sienna?”
Sienna shook her head. “My point is that if you’re so damn jealous, then you must love the man.”
“I’m not so sure that I do.”
“Yes, you are.” Sienna laughed lightly. “Look, Mrs. Winters, he didn’t sleep with me. He wanted to. He even paid me. But he said he couldn’t because somebody else was on his mind. And when a virile man like Luke Bowden can’t perform, I get curious. We ended up just talking, and he told me about that Bonnie woman and about you and how you saved his life and all. And then he told me what happened between you and him, and how it was just something you both needed but he said that now he can’t forget it…said you were a good woman…and maybe he was in love with you b
ut he’s scared to death of being hurt again. Don’t you know that’s why he’s leaving?”
Kate frowned. “Yes, I do. But why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because I’ll bet you think he will forget about you if he goes away and will decide he doesn’t love you at all.”
“I have considered that. I’m not exactly the age most men look for in marrying.”
Sienna shook her head. “He thinks you’re beautiful. He told me so. But he’s giving you a chance to find somebody else, a chance to be sure he’s what you want, just as much as him needing to be sure about you.”
“He thinks I might find another man? In this town?”
Sienna threw her head back and laughed. “Sure. There are some good men here. Some of them will want to court you. Luke wants to see if you will wait for him. After what that woman Bonnie did to him when he came home from the war, he doesn’t trust any woman. But with you—he said you’re the first woman who’s come along he feels like he can trust. He just wants to be sure.”
Kate hated the thought that this woman knew everything. She scowled at her. “I’m not sure he would want you talking about him or talking about what he and I shared.”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone else, not even the other women. Luke told me not to, and women like me know when to keep our mouths shut. It’s just that I like Luke, and I want to help. You admitted to Luke that you do love him, didn’t you? Poor Luke is afraid that will change if he goes away, like it did with Bonnie. He wants to find out if you’ll see other men while he’s gone, maybe even marry someone else on account of you’re alone.”
Kate raised her chin. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Not to Luke. What Bonnie did really hardened him on women, and out here, loneliness can make a man or woman do strange things. Luke is just guarding his heart, Mrs. Winters, and making damn sure the next woman he loves won’t break it all over again. That’s why he hasn’t out and out said those three words—I love you—yet.” Sienna shivered into her shawl again as the sun disappeared behind dark clouds.
Ride the High Lonesome Page 22