A Touch of Camelot (12 page)

She sat up, smacked her forehead into the upper berth, and swore as she unbuttoned her blouse with unsteady fingers and shrugged it from her shoulders.

"Fifty-eight seconds."

"Unchivalrous cad," Gwin mumbled, rising up on her knees to unhook the back of her skirt. She sat again, rolled onto her stomach, pushed the skirt down over her hips, and wiggled it the rest of the way down to her ankles. He had some nerve! She would make him pay for subjecting her to this indignity. In spades.
And soon
.

"Twenty-five seconds."

Gwin yanked pins from her hair to set curls tumbling free past her shoulders. Now stripped down to her chemise, pantalets, and stockings, she searched in the dark for her discarded clothing. Gathering her skirt and blouse, she crammed them, along with a handful of hairpins, into her valise, snapping it closed with an angry oath.

"Five seconds and counting, Gwin."

"You just stay where you are, Shepherd, or, I swear I'll scream, you despicable worm, you... you..."

She batted aside the curtain, remembering at the last second to grab one side up to her bosom as she stuffed her shoes and her valise beneath the berth.

Cole's jacket was off, slung over one arm, and his shirt was unbuttoned, hanging open, allowing just a glimpse of his broad, bare chest. Gwin's mouth went as dry as if she'd swallowed a cupful of chicken feathers. He spoke first.

"Your time is up."

Chapter Seven

Cole sat on the edge of their makeshift bed, bending down to pull off his boots, as Gwin inched backward, plastering her body against the far side of the berth in an effort to put as much distance between them as possible. She tried to slide undetected beneath the coverlet.

Cole ignored all of her various contortions as he shed his gun belt and started to unbutton his trousers.

Gwin was horrified. "Holy Moses! You're not actually going to take them
off
, are you?"

"Gwin, it's hot enough to fry an egg. Now, what do you think?"

Gwin groaned and slipped the rest of the way under the coverlet while Cole stripped down to his drawers and socks. He stowed his gun belt and clothing beneath the berth.

Gwin was grateful that it was dark. What little she could see, the outline of his broad shoulders and chest, was disturbing enough. What was left to her imagination was just about enough to give her the vapors.

Cole collapsed onto his back with a weary sigh, the berth creaking precariously beneath his weight as he settled in for the night.

Gwin lay stiff and very still, feeling suddenly smaller than she could remember feeling since she was a child. She had stopped growing at sixteen, stalled at a petite five feet three inches, but that was no matter. She'd learned early on how to deal with people taller than she. A little attitude added a good six inches, and the rest was just fluff.
Lying
next to Cole, however, seemed to be an altogether different matter. He suddenly seemed so  ... big.

Angry with herself, she turned over and was doubly horrified to find her breasts all smashed up against his arm and her nose poking his shoulder. "For Pete's sake!" She shot up, thumping her head on the upper berth. "Ouch!"

"You'll want to watch out for that," Cole said.

"You're taking up the whole bed! I can't even move!"

He chuckled in the dark. "How much room do you need? Arthur and I managed just fine last night, and you two are about the same size, aren't you?"

"I happen to be two inches taller than he is."

"Really? Have you checked lately?"

"Ooooohh!” Gwin buried her face in her hands. "I'm never going to get any sleep!"

"All right, it's cramped quarters, I'll admit, but there is a way this can work if you'll cooperate for a change."

"How?"

"Lie down on your left side." Cole tugged on her arm to pull her down next to him. "You do prefer to sleep on your left. Isn't that what you told me?"

Gwin eased down as he instructed, turning her back to him warily. His arm slipped easily around her waist as he snuggled against her from behind.

"See? Just like a couple of spoons," he said.

Gwin barely heard his words. She was having trouble sifting through an assortment of queerly familiar stirrings in the pit of her stomach. She'd felt those stirrings before, but only in her dreams. Dreams of
him
.

By now, she imagined she could feel the entire length of him, every blessed inch, so strong and firm and warm. She relished the sensation despite herself. Had she imagined anything like this even in her dreams?

He spoke, startling her. "You're stiffer than a pine needle. Relax. You're perfectly safe. I'm so beat, I doubt I could rise to the occasion even if you begged me."

A hot blush swept over Gwin from head to toe—a combination of indignant embarrassment at the suggestive nature of his comment and the horrifying certainty that he had just read her mind. "I thought you Pinkerton men are supposed to be so virtuous. I can't believe you're compromising a lady like this."

"You are not being compromised. If I were compromising you, you wouldn't have the time to be lying here jabbering about it."

"Well, I can't help wondering what your lady friend back home would have to say about this."

There was a pause. "What lady friend?"

"I assumed you had one," Gwin ventured cautiously, unable to deny even to herself that she was fishing.

"That's not the case."

"Oh." She let a significant silence pass before she could no longer resist asking, "Why not?"

"Why not?" he echoed, sounding annoyed.

"Yeah, why not?”

"None of your business why not."

Another moment passed as Gwin listened to the ever-present
clickety-clack
of the iron horse's wheels from beneath and Arthur's gurgling snores from above. Finally, she spoke again. "Sorry. I didn't realize it was such a sore subject."

"It's not a sore subject. I just don't have the time for it right now."

"Oh. How much time does it take?"

"I'm very busy with my job."

"Is that all? In case you didn't notice, there are plenty of marriage-minded women who are willing to wait around for their men."

"Are there?"

"Certainly. The shrinking violets, the sweet, empty-headed types." Gwin had no idea why she felt so compelled to pursue this subject. "You know the types I'm talking about."

"Ah, yes," Cole replied dryly. "The types who don't steal horses, you mean."

"Hmm, maybe."

"You know," Cole continued, pushing up onto one elbow to look down at her in the dark. "It's just too bad you won’t be around when I get back to Chicago. To help point out these types for me, I mean."

Gwin couldn't help noticing that his hand came to rest intimately across the soft expanse of her abdomen, and he didn't sound nearly as sleepy as he had only moments ago.

"You don't have to go back to Chicago to find them," she said. "They're all over. Take that flirty little blonde in the compartment across the aisle, for example."

Cole hesitated before inquiring too innocently, "What flirty little blonde?"

"Oh, please," Gwin said, disgusted. "I'm talking about the one who's been making cow eyes at you since Topeka. As if you haven't noticed, as if you haven't been egging her on all along, grinning at her and small-taking with her every chance you get."

Cole started to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"You're jealous."

"That's ridiculous."

"That's why you tripped her in the aisle this afternoon when we were boarding at Limon. I didn't realize it at the time, but there it was. Female spite was rearing its ugly head."

"I did not trip her in the aisle."

"Oh, I stand corrected. That must have been someone else's foot attached to your ankle."

Gwin folded her arms stiffly. "You're so conceited."

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he settled again on his side, his hand coming to rest comfortably on her belly. Gwin stiffened slightly when his long fingers began to spread slowly, experimentally, as if measuring the width of her abdomen.

He spoke in a low whisper. "Didn't your mother ever teach you that nice girls don't lie?"

Gwin tried to ignore his physical nearness and the confusing emotions it stirred within her. Somewhere along the way, he had managed to turn the tables. All the fun had suddenly gone from their verbal sparring, leaving only a thick tension between them. Cole Shepherd wasn't nearly as harmless as she had assumed him to be.

Careful not to move lest his hand wander into more dangerous territory, Gwin tried to keep her voice unaffected. "My mother taught me two things, how to shoot straight and deal crooked."

"She must have been an interesting woman, your mother."

"Most men thought so."

Cole's fingers spread again, spanning her abdomen, pressing softly and causing a bone-melting rush of warmth that nearly undid her. "Was she a cardsharp even before she hitched up with Silas Pierce?" he asked.

Gwin sucked in a deep breath as his fingers slid slowly back up to play at the side of her waist. "My mother was a schoolteacher, the youngest daughter of a Methodist minister."

"That's a far cry from dealing crooked cards."

Gwin closed her eyes. His thumb drew lazy circles along the side of her rib cage, sending ripples of pleasure that were difficult to ignore. She grew both apprehensive and eager at the thought of his hand sliding up a little farther, just a little farther, to finally touch her breast. What would happen then? Would they stop talking?
It's your dream, Gwin. What happens next in your dream?

She didn't know for sure. A kiss. A caress. Whispered words of love. Her dreams had always ended there, for even her dreaming mind could not imagine what she had never experienced in her waking life. She could not know what it felt like to be made love to by a man. She could only suspect that it started out something like this, awash in a sea of physical and emotional sensations, needing and wanting to touch, to draw closer and closer until two became one.

Gwin's eyes flew open. His fingers continued to massage her lazily through the thin material of her chemise, and they
were
moving up.

"Cole! Your hand."

His fingers stilled. "What about it?"

"It was moving."

"Was it?"

"You know darned well it was. I thought you said I was perfectly safe with you."

"Did I say that?
Perfectl
y safe?"

"Yes."

Gwin detected no sign of contrition in his voice. In fact, without being able to see his face, she got the unsettling impression that he knew exactly what he was doing and what effect it had on her. "And you call yourself a gentleman," she muttered, burrowing her head deep in her pillow, trying to force her swirling emotions back into check.

His arm wrapped snugly around her waist again and only part of her was thankful that his hand behaved itself this time as they lay quietly for a moment.

"In the interest of safety, maybe we could both use a little distraction," Cole suggested into her ear. "Tell me more about your mother."

"Like what?"

"Like, what makes the daughter of a Methodist minister turn to cardsharping and confidence games?"

"I don't know," Gwin said, grateful for the opportunity to turn her attention to something else, even if it was Emmaline. "She always had an ambition to sing, to become famous. She dreamed of living in New York City."

"And so where did Silas Pierce fit in?"

"She met Silas when he and his brother got jobs at a skinning house in New Orleans. Emmaline was already working there, singing a few nights a week, dealing faro the rest of the time."

"So, they met in a gambling house? How romantic."

"It was for Silas. He fell in love with her right away, but it was Sidney Emmaline was interested in. He was younger and more ambitious. He had big ideas. He wasn't the type to consider marrying a woman just because they ..." Gwin faltered, searching for a delicate euphemism.

Cole finished for her. "Were involved?"

"Yes, involved is as good a word as any."

"Sidney was your father?"

Gwin stiffened. "You knew?"

"Arthur told me."

She let out a sigh. "What a big mouth."

"He didn't mean any harm."

"Oh, I know. It shook him up too. Emmaline never said anything until three years ago on the night she left Silas. She dropped that cannonball and walked out of our lives to be with some rich cattleman in Dodge City."

Gwin paused, remembering that awful night. After overhearing her parents' last argument, she'd followed her mother from the hotel, demanding that she admit that it was an awful, hateful lie, but instead, Gwin had found herself listening in stunned disbelief as her mother recounted the whole story.

Emmaline knew that if she told Sidney of her pregnancy, he was as likely to skip town as to marry her. Instead of taking her chances with the truth, she decided to force his hand. By purposely leading Silas on and arranging for Sidney to discover them in a compromising situation, she succeeded in pitting brother against brother.

Only things had not worked out as she had hoped. Sidney had been jealous, all right, furious, in fact, but he hadn't stuck around to fight for her. He chose instead to storm out of their lives for good. A classic case of a con gone bad.

"Arthur told me she passed away," Cole said, breaking into Gwin's thoughts.

"Yes, we found out about it six months later when Silas went back for her. She was singing in a saloon and got caught in the cross fire when two drunken cowboys drew on each other. It was a stupid accident."

"Tragic, if you ask me," Cole said.

A lump formed in Gwin's throat. "Hopeless. A hopeless, meaningless end to a hopeless, meaningless life."

"Not so meaningless," Cole offered. "She had you and Arthur. And not hopeless, either. She named her children after kings and queens."

"She lived in a dream world."

"There's nothing wrong with having dreams, Gwin. It gives us something to strive for. Sometimes they come true."