by Pam Crooks
She cocked her head, considering that. As her mother’s favorite cowboy, TJ had been close to her parents. It was only natural, she supposed, he’d feel some responsibility toward her. He’d felt the same toward Danny. From the day her brother had been born.
“Most of the outfit did, I think,” she said. “They’ve always been loyal to my family.”
“Goes beyond loyal.”
“Does it?”
“You should know it does.”
Callie Mae didn’t know what to think anymore. This confusion he brewed inside her. The way he turned her life upside down, when only yesterday she’d been straight-minded. In control.
“I love you, Callie Mae,” he said quietly.
Her lashes lowered against an unexpected welling of tears. What had she done to deserve his devotion?
“Oh, TJ,” she whispered.
With their hands still joined, he curled her arm behind her back and pulled her against him. Her forehead sank into his chest. Suddenly, everything about him filled her awareness—the faint scent of tobacco in the fabric of his shirt, the enticing combination of sweat and leather on his skin. His heat and strength, the hard breadth of his shoulders and chest…
His thumb stroked hers, and he slid his free hand into her hair, reminding her of how tangled the strands must feel to him. But he didn’t seem to notice; instead, he coaxed her head back so she could look at him, and soon her vanity became lost in the feel of his rough palm against her cheek, the sensation of his strong thighs next to her slim ones.
Mostly, his lips hovering above hers.
Oh, the picture he made. A ruthless one with his cheeks rough and shadowed, his eyes heavily-lashed and black in the moonlight. As if he were a rugged desperado, bold enough to steal what he couldn’t have.
Her knees weakened, and she feared they’d buckle if she didn’t hang on to him, and she slid her arm to his back and onto his shoulder, so she could.
“I want to make love to you, Callie Mae. Tonight,” he said huskily.
She dragged in a breath and recognized the stirring of an ache his words created, deep inside her. “No. You can’t. We mustn’t.”
He pulled her tighter against him, allowing her to feel the swollen length of his desire.
“You’re the only one here to stop us,” he murmured. “Is that what you really want to do?”
He was merciless in his persuasion, but she couldn’t let him win. She struggled to hang on to reality.
“TJ, we have to talk about what your mother said tonight,” she pleaded.
His head lowered; his jaw nuzzled her cheek, and her nerve endings sprang to life at the bristly feel of his beard, a sensation not unpleasant—
“She told you the truth.” His breath swirled against her ear. “If you don’t believe her, there’s nothing more either of us can say or do to convince you about how Danny really died.” Finally, his dark head lifted; his expression turned gravely serious. “Do you believe her?”
A vivid reenactment of the story Maggie told rolled through Callie Mae’s mind. The poor woman had shed real tears; she’d endured an anguish no one with her fragile mental state could fake. She’d inspired horror and heartache in Callie Mae, as if little Danny had died all over again.
“Yes.” Callie Mae nodded slowly. “I believe her.”
Silent, he regarded her, as if to decide for himself if she meant it.
“What you did, TJ—”
“—had to be done.”
No apologies. No explanations. His mother’s would have to be enough. At least for now. His curt tone warned not to pursue the matter.
“Yes,” she murmured, accepting it. “I suppose it did.”
Still, she wondered how he survived the shame and those lonely days in jail. He’d lost everything he worked for. Stood for. The life he’d always known was gone—because he loved Maggie enough to throw it away.
He’d do the same for the woman who claimed his heart. Someone who would be his for the rest of her life.
A tiny sigh escaped Callie Mae. And how fortunate she would be.
Would Kullen be as gallant? As selfless?
With a certainty that left her increasingly troubled, Callie Mae thought not.
“Quit thinking so much,” TJ commanded roughly.
His growled command cleared her mind with the realization his head was lowering, that his mouth waited over hers, enticing her all over again with a promise of what would come soon, very soon…
“How can I not?” she breathed, knowing she should step away, out of his embrace. She had no right to be here with him like this. Wanting.
She couldn’t keep on wanting, but God help her, she did. She wanted him to kiss her like he did this morning, as if he were starved for the taste of her, an all-over kind of taste, demanding to be satisfied.
He groaned, low in his throat, and claimed her lips with a hunger that melted her bones into his. If she could’ve pressed herself closer, climbed into his skin and shared the heat of his blood, she would have. Her mouth opened. His tongue delved inward, hot and passionate, igniting a fire deep within her core.
He released the hand he held captive behind her back to hold her hard against him. His fingers splayed against her spine, as if to fill a need to touch as much of her as he could. She buried her hands in his hair, holding him to her, even as her mind protested that she couldn’t keep on, couldn’t keep on—
This passion TJ lit inside her was only sympathy for what he’d endured, she told herself. Or perhaps guilt, a plea for forgiveness for the hate she’d shown him, everyone had shown him, when he deserved none of it. And of course, she’d forgotten Kullen, to whom she was betrothed, and, oh, what was she doing, kissing TJ instead?
“Stop,” she whispered, her eyes closed during his seduction, her body absorbed in how he made her feel. “Stop, TJ.”
His mouth dragged over her jaw, nuzzled into the curve of her neck. “Don’t think of him, Callie Mae.”
“I must.” Forcing her head back, she pressed her fingers to TJ’s lips. “Stop. Please.”
Undeterred, he drew her fingertip into his mouth and suckled, his tongue deliciously warm and slick over her knuckle. She couldn’t move away from this new sensation, the primal simplicity of it, if she tried.
Which she didn’t.
“He’s not entitled to your fidelity,” TJ said and pressed a kiss into her palm. “One day, you’ll see that.”
“I’ve already betrayed him.” Miserable, she eased her head onto TJ’s shoulder, even as she despised her weakness in needing his comfort.
“I know you think of it that way, but—”
Her head came up. “If it was you, and the woman you planned to marry took her pleasure in another man’s arms, wouldn’t you feel betrayed?”
TJ frowned and brought her back down to his shoulder. “This is different.”
“It’s not.”
He slid both hands down her torso, over the curve of her waist, then cupped her buttocks, kneading the flesh and bringing her full against him. His thick blade bulged through the front of his Levi’s and left no doubt of his yearning. Why did he have this power over her? This appalling ability to keep her from ending these moments in his arms?
“Trust me, Callie Mae,” he said, husky-toned. “That’s all I ask.”
“How can I when I no longer trust myself?” Dredging up every shred of willpower she possessed, she pushed out of his embrace, then took a step back. Two, for good measure. “Don’t kiss me anymore, TJ. Do you hear me?”
His eyes narrowed. He nodded. Once. “I hear you.”
“Promise me you won’t.”
A moment passed. “Not sure I want to, darlin’.”
“Promise, or I’m saddling up and riding out of here right now. So you can’t.”
He took so long to respond, she began to fear she’d have to make good her threat. And she didn’t want to leave. Not really.
“Guess you’re starting to see your being with Kullen is wr
ong,” he drawled. “Aren’t you?”
“What’s wrong is letting you love me up in his absence,” she shot back.
TJ shifted and slid his fingers into his hip pockets. To keep from reaching for her again?
Finally, he shrugged. “All right, Callie Mae. I’ll promise. If that’s what you want.”
She told herself it was. “Thank you.”
His mouth formed a wry quirk. “You’re welcome.”
“Well, then.” She tossed her head. “Good night.”
Squaring her shoulders, she pivoted and headed back toward camp, leaving him staring after her.
And knowing it would be a long night.
For both of them.
Chapter Fourteen
“Kullen.”
He dragged himself out of the blackest depths of sleep to comprehend the hushed sound. His name. Spoken from someone beside his hospital bed.
He cracked his eyes open. Hoped it was the good doctor or one of the young nuns who nursed him, ready to give him more of his precious morphine.
It wasn’t. He opened his eyes wider, peered at the shape standing over him in his darkened room.
“It’s me, Kullen. Emmett.”
Seeing no one with him, Kullen twisted and scanned the room, to make sure. A dull pain shot through his thigh, a reminder of what Grier had done to him.
“Where’s Callie Mae?” he demanded in a thick voice.
“She’s still with Grier.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’s still with Grier’?” he snapped.
“We got trouble, Kullen.”
Emmett was prone to think calamity lurked around every corner. Nevertheless, if he didn’t have Callie Mae with him, something must’ve gone wrong. Emmett rarely failed at what Kullen ordered him to do. Kullen pushed himself to a sitting position; he gnashed his teeth from the flare of fire in his leg.
Emmett moved away to quietly close the door, shutting out the faint light from the hall and keeping the sound of their voices from drifting toward the night nurses. He returned to fumble with the kerosene lamp on the bedside table and kept the flame low.
Kullen pondered the man’s red-rimmed eyes, heavy-lidded from fatigue. From worry. He smelled of horse and dust; his clothes were wrinkled and dirty. Obviously, he’d ridden hard to get to Amarillo and St. Anthony’s Hospital.
Kullen tried not to be alarmed. “What kind of trouble?”
“Maggie Grier was the one who shot McClure’s boy. I heard her ’fess up tonight to Callie Mae.”
Kullen stared. “TJ Grier’s mother?”
Serious, Emmett nodded.
“But you said—” Kullen sputtered.
“I know what I said.”
That a crazy drunk had come at him out of the shadows, struck him on the face with his whiskey bottle, chased after him with a shotgun…
From the way he—she, Kullen mentally corrected—had been dressed, they’d both assumed the attacker was male.
A mistake.
Then, the drunk had disappeared. Emmett had been stunned to hear TJ came forward, claiming guilt.
Kullen hadn’t known what to think. His cousin’s recollection wasn’t normally faulty, but with no sign of the shadowed intruder, Kullen had been forced to change his strategy. He took advantage of Callie Mae and her family’s grief to destroy TJ’s reputation, feeding a gullible judge and jury lies to lock him in jail and neatly answer any questions about what happened to Danny.
The lack of evidence, however, had kept TJ’s neck out of the hangman’s noose. Still, his confession had fit into Kullen’s plans so well, he’d all but forgotten about Danny’s real killer.
Until now.
“Who else was there with Grier’s old lady?” he asked.
“Boomer Preston. And a friend of theirs, a cowboy named Stinky Dale.”
Cooper. Stinky Dale Cooper. The unusual name dropped out of the past and into Kullen’s brain like a stone.
Ten years ago in Dodge City, Stinky Dale had been one of the men from the C Bar C outfit who’d helped Penn McClure kill Rogan Webb. Callie Mae’s father.
Several months earlier, McClure killed Bill Brockway, too. Kullen’s father. In his determination to wreak revenge on McClure, Kullen had taken it upon himself to learn everything he could about his father’s death. From the moment McClure shot Brockway in Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, to that fateful day in Dodge City when McClure and several others from the C Bar C outfit set Rogan up for arrest.
Only he’d been killed instead.
Kullen had learned most everything that happened since then, too—with the exception of the true identity of Danny McClure’s killer.
“Callie Mae took it hard, Kullen,” Emmett said, sounding desperate. “Grier’s old lady brought everything back and made it fresh again. Now, Callie Mae’s going to want to know who it was in that barn tryin’ to steal her brother. Just like Grier and everyone else.”
Pain throbbed in Kullen’s head right along with the throbbing in his thigh.
“They’re going to find out about me, Kullen.” Emmett swiped a hand across his mouth. “We have to hightail it out of here before they do.”
Kullen had taken great care to cover his tracks in his quest to marry Callie Mae and surround himself with her money—of which every dime he deserved after what McClure had done. In his dreams to settle for a life of ease in Mexico, Emmett had been a willing accomplice.
Kullen refused to leave it all behind. A life of ease for himself, with Callie Mae’s riches.
Still, Emmett was right about one thing. Lying in this damn hospital bed like an invalid made Kullen an easy target for TJ’s vengeance—if he ever found out the truth.
Kullen flung aside the covers and braced himself for the ordeal ahead.
“Sure, Emmett,” he lied. “Whatever you say.”
His cousin would soon find out, but he intended to take care of a few matters first.
“I’m cold, TJ.”
Callie Mae’s frustrated whisper tugged TJ awake. Night still shrouded their camp, but he figured it’d be dawn soon since he’d already spent too many hours remembering the feel of her in his arms and regretting that damned promise she’d forced him to make.
Not to kiss her again.
Only a heap of effort and an annoying sense of honor allowed him to keep the promise. Another heap of both kept him on his side, facing away from her, to keep him from being tempted.
And now she was cold?
Well, well, well.
Already, he began to feel better. He rolled over to check the fire and discovered it had dwindled down to a glow of embers, and yep, that chilled things, all right. Left the night air good and brisk. Not that he’d particularly noticed. He lowered his glance to Callie Mae and found her facing him, her blanket tucked to her neck.
“You’re cold, eh?” he asked.
She nodded, and a shiver went through her. “I’m freezing.”
“Reckon I can help with that.” He raised himself up on an elbow. “But then, that’d mean I’d have to put my arms around you to warm you up, and aw, hell, I already promised not to.”
She frowned over at him. “TJ.”
“I figure you’re just likely to fight me on cozying up to you, being’s I’m only a cowboy, and you’re the Callie Mae Lockett who just happens to be engaged to—”
She clucked a shivery breath of exasperation. “TJ, stop.”
“Then again, you did wake me up to complain, didn’t you? Maybe I ought to just throw a few more pieces of wood on the fire and hope you get warm that way.”
Her head lifted; her eyes slitted in a glare. “Are you going to invite me to share your blanket or am I going to have to force my way under it?”
Damned if her teeth weren’t chattering.
Fighting a grin, he lifted one side of his wool covering, and she scurried under it, like a half-frozen mouse. After a few moments of combining bedrolls and adjusting blankets, she snuggled beside him with a kittenish purr.
&nbs
p; “Better?” he murmured.
“Much. Oh, much.” She peeped up at him from beneath her lashes. “Thank you.”
“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” He rubbed her arm to warm her faster.
“I guess I was thinking too long on it.”
Did she wonder if he’d refuse? He grunted. “What else were you thinking about?”
“If you’re expecting me to say ‘Kullen,’ I wasn’t.” She frowned. “I should have been thinking about him, I suppose. But I wasn’t.”
He took some satisfaction from that. “What then?”
“I was thinking how I’ll be glad to sleep in a real bed again. I want to wash my hair and take a long, hot bath.” She wriggled a bit, as if to get more comfortable on the hard ground. “I wasn’t born to sleep on the range.”
Ceasing his arm-rubbing, his hand rested thoughtfully on her flat belly beneath the wool. “No.”
She was destined for finer things. Luxury, power and comfort, all the advantages gained from her legacy. From her being a Lockett.
And yet she’d endured the rigors of chasing after Blue without complaint, her current chill excepted. She’d ridden and worked as hard as any woman could be expected. She’d been capable—and willing.
And too soon, he would have to let her go.
“How will this end, TJ?” she asked quietly.
Her question mirrored his thoughts, and she sounded as somber as he felt, which filled him with a sudden yearning to comfort her—hell, both of them—the only way he knew how. With his body. To make love to her then and there. Make time stand still and create a memory he’d be able to keep with him for a good long while.
It didn’t matter that she’d promised herself to another. It had never mattered, and he leaned closer. His hand moved off her belly and over her ribs, his mouth craving her lips, his palm craving the feel of that supple globe of flesh hidden inside her shirt—
But her hand was faster, and she stopped him before he could satisfy either.
“We can’t, TJ,” she whispered. “Please. I don’t know how much longer I can… keep telling you.”
Her admission heated his blood. Assured him she didn’t despise him as much as she used to. That she was weakening, and while that was a good thing, a very good thing, well, she was feeling a mite too vulnerable and he wanted her too much to take advantage of her that way.