A Wedding Story (6 page)

Instead he stood in the gathering gloom, trading barbs with the woman who’d betrayed both him and the doc, and likely destroyed dozens of lesser men along the way. Because it made him feel alive, tingly and edgy, alert with the kind of anticipation he used to feel when he was right on the verge of discovering something extraordinary.

“What do we next, Jim?”

“We go to bed.”

H
e studied her expression as she entered the shack. He knew what she saw: a half dozen tools, rusted beyond recognition. A stack of splintery boards, a pile of moldy hay, gaps in the walls as broad as her wrist. Any one of her gowns was worth more than ten times the place.

She looked lovely in the shadows, every bit as bewitching as she did in sunshine. Her hair shimmered softly, her eyes growing darker, mysterious as twilight. Some women seemed made for moonlight, others for the clear, bright day. She seemed a dozen women in one, different in every light, every situation, multifaceted as a gem, each one as beguiling as the next.

Perhaps that was her essential allure. A changeling seductress, all colors flashing in one—one moment all tender innocence, heartrendingly pure; the next the blatant sexuality of a practiced temptress.

He kept searching for remnants of that girl he’d known. He knew she was gone. Knew she’d never really existed anywhere but in his starved imagination. Yet he couldn’t help but look for her, as thirsty for a glimpse of the girl he’d thought he’d known as he’d been for water when he’d first left the desert.

Her lip curled, only a slight hint of revulsion, smoothing into a cool smile in an instant.

She looked up at him then, too quickly for him to glance away. Caught, he felt the crackle of electricity, the air so charged that he half expected the pile of hay to ignite.

Her mouth waited. Half open, ripe as a summer berry, a soft gleam of moisture and temptation. He could only guess at the number of lovers she’d had in the intervening years. A dozen? A hundred?

It should have repulsed him. She was a woman who had betrayed not only him but Doctor Goodale as well. But oh, the wicked things she must have learned to do with that mouth. There was powerful excitement in the knowledge that she knew how to use it.

She saved him. She looked away, as if unable to hold his gaze any longer. In profile, she was pretty. Lovely, even, jawline cleanly defined, nose a perfect slope. But resistable; without the animation of her face, the light in her eyes, she was only another beautiful woman.

“It’s getting dark,” she murmured, gesturing to the open window. Outside, evening was sliding toward night, the sky bruising to deep purple.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Cloudy.”

“Yes,” he said again, as irritation tightened the corners of her mouth. Was it so easy for her, then? A hint and men leaped to do her bidding? Well, if she wanted something from him, she’d have to ask.

And maybe not even then.

“Don’t you think we should get my luggage in?”

He shrugged. “You want it in, you move it.”

“Excuse me?” she said, with enough disbelief he laughed aloud.

“You heard what I said.”

“But—”

“Do I look like a porter to you?”

She slowly eyed the width of his shoulders, and his breath staggered. Damn, shouldn’t this be wearing off by now? He simply couldn’t spend the next few months aroused to the point of pain every time she came within a few feet of him.

But her gaze skittered away like a scalded cat. She seemed as unsettled by his presence as he was by hers. Perhaps it was guilt that disturbed her, though he wouldn’t have considered her the guilty type. Or simple annoyance—they seemed unable to pass a word together without sniping at each other, and she was obviously accustomed to bending men to her will with the snap of her fingers.

His pride wanted him to believe it was ardor, the same incendiary passion, unwelcome and ungovernable, that blew through him with the force of a hurricane. But in that way lay certain disaster; if he dared accept that the same desire simmered in her, they wouldn’t make it through the night unscathed, much less through the entire contest.

Would that be so bad?
The thought was insidious, a whisper of potent temptation. He indulged it for a moment until his vision blurred and blood pumped in his temples.

Of course it was bad. Not to mention downright stupid. One kiss from her had haunted him for years. God only knew what a whole night might do.

She shook her head slowly. “You’re really not going to bring them in?”

“There’s no point in it. We’re going to have to leave them all behind anyway.”

“Hmm.” She wasn’t a bit convinced. Her mouth was pursed, the smooth arches of her brows drawn together in concentration. “It can wait until morning, I suppose. It doesn’t look much like rain, and it’s not as if a thief’s likely to stumble across us in the dark.”

“True.”

“I need a few things, though.”

“Go ahead.”

She returned dragging a trunk that had to weigh more than she did, and pulled up short when she saw him settled in his pallet on the lone stack of hay.

“Why do you get the bed?”

“It’s hardly a bed,” he replied, and turned over with as much rustling and crackling as he could manage.

“It’s as close as we’ve got.”

“
We’ve
got nothing.” He tugged a blanket over his shoulders and snapped his eyes shut. “
I
found a reasonably comfortable place to spend the night. It is not my problem that you decided to come barging in.”

He heard the swish of her skirts as she approached, followed by the impatient tapping of her feet near his own.

“Did your mother teach you
nothing
?”

“She taught me all kinds of things.” Mustiness filled his nostrils and his nose twitched. The old straw prickled in all sorts of uncomfortable places. Had he been alone, he would have already surrendered to the floor. But now it had become the principle of the thing. “But the field taught me a fair amount, too. And your husband even more.”

“Well, now,
that
explains a great deal.”

He dared to crack open one eye. She had both fists on her hips—and lovely, curvy things they were—and blood in her eyes. And he’d have pulled her right down with him if it wasn’t guaranteed she’d fight him every step of the way.

Then her posture eased. “I’ll play you for it,” she said, such suggestion in her voice that she might have been proposing something else entirely.

“Play me?” He pushed himself up to his elbows.

“Play you
for it
.”

“Play what?”

She shrugged, as if it meant little. “Whatever. Cards, dice…riddles?”

There was no way in hell he was going to get tangled up in word games with her.

“I don’t gamble,” he told her.

She arched a brow. “Ever?”

“No.” He knew the night was warm. And yet he pulled the blanket closer around him. “My father and my brother did enough of that for a dozen families, thank you very much. And lost enough for ten dozen, for they’d been as rotten at the tables as they’d been good at taking out their losses on anyone within reach.”

“Oh.” Her head tilted as if she didn’t know quite what to make of his admission. “So you’ve never tried it?”

“For twigs or stones, around a campfire now and then. Nothing that mattered.” When he couldn’t talk his way out of playing without the explanations becoming more painful than the game.

She smiled broadly, a flash of even white teeth, a seductive curve of mouth. “Well, this should be fine, then. A night’s use of that pile of straw is scarcely worth more than a handful of twigs.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “If you get me started…who knows where I might end up, once you nudge me down that slippery slope.”

“Would I lead you astray?”

Their mood had been light, verging on playful. It darkened in an instant, pulsing with seduction.

“I imagine you’ve done your fair share of leading astray.”

She swallowed hard and took a step back, putting a strip of packed earth between them, and focused her gaze on the battered wood of the wall above his head. The cords of her neck stood out tautly above a soft ruffle of lace.

She couldn’t be hurt, not by such a simple remark. She was not a young, sheltered girl to be wounded by the merest slight. He reminded himself that she was as capable of playing on his sympathies as playing on his passions.

“I would be willing to bet,” she said softly, “that you’ve done your own share of leading astray, too.”

Damn.

“Fine.” He could not lay at her feet a moment longer and surged to his feet. “I’ll play you for the bed.”

“No.” She backed away farther, shaking her head. “It was a silly idea. You were here first. The floor will suit for tonight.”

“I said I’d play you for it,” he snapped, more sharply than he intended.

“You should enjoy it while you can,” she said. “Because you won’t be beating me to the prime spot from here on out, I promise you.” Her smile was bare of its usual dazzle. Interesting; this smile did not make his heart go thump, his breath bellow in and out of its own accord.

“I couldn’t sleep at the moment anyway. I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”

She nodded, sharp and short. “All right.”

“What shall we play?”

“Poker.”

“Poker?”

At his astonishment, the smile became genuine, and just like that, his knees almost gave out beneath him. She drew herself up, mock-offended. “You don’t think I look like the poker type?”

“No.”

“What type do I look like?”

Mine.

He cleared his throat. “I believe I’ll reserve comment on that one.”

“Coward,” she said. “It’s a bit late to retreat into tactful silence, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid I’m fresh out of playing cards.”

“Oh, I have some.”

“You do?”

“You don’t think those are
all
clothes in those trunks, do you?” She flew to the first one and flipped open the top. It held neatly wrapped packages, as ruthlessly organized as hospital supplies.

She didn’t hesitate. She moved two square boxes, pulled out a small rectangle, replaced the two, and lowered the lid in less time than it would’ve taken to snuff a candle. She waggled the small box at him. “See?”

“How’d you know which one it was in?”

“They’re all color-coded, of course,” she said, as if pointing out the obvious to the slowest dullard.

“Of course,” he murmured.

Color-coded.
Cripes. He’d considered himself well prepared, carefully controlling every aspect of an expedition, double and triple-checking until Matt threatened to murder him by choking him on his own lists, but color-coding?

She lifted her skirts as though to sit, giving him just a glimpse of white-clad ankle, and then apparently thought the better of it. She dashed back to his makeshift bed, inspected all the blankets briefly before selecting the flimsiest one, and snapped it into place beside the trunk. She lowered herself to the blanket and, after smoothing her skirts into perfect array and placing the deck square in the middle of the trunk, looked up at him expectantly. “Well?”

He didn’t bother with a blanket, just plopped right down in the hard-packed earth, making sure the width of the trunk was between them, a small barrier but better than nothing.

“Is there enough light, do you think?” she asked. The simmering dusk muted his vision.

“Don’t tell me you packed a kerosene lamp, too.”

“No, but—”

“This shouldn’t take long.”

“No,” she agreed quickly. “It shouldn’t. Would you like to deal?”

“Certainly.” The small box that held her cards was rosewood, inlaid with a two-toned star, polished to a gloss that approached the shine on her hair. He brushed his fingers across its surface. It was slick against his thumb, so perfectly smooth it seemed unreal. “Where did you learn to play?”

“Where do you think?”

“Doc?”

“You seem surprised.” She reached across the table and tapped the top of the box, reminding him of his duties. “He loved to play. It wasn’t something he just picked up after he could no longer go in the field, was it? I assumed he’d always been so fond of the game.”

“Yes, he was.”

He opened the box. The cards inside were well used, the edges soft, the colors muted. He dumped them out and began to shuffle.

“Exactly,” she said. “What did you think we did all the time together?”

The cards spewed up. “I don’t.”
Please, Lord, be merciful and never let me think of what they did together.

“Oh, let me,” she said, reaching for the scattered rectangles.

“I can do it,” he insisted, and dove for the cards and the meager distraction they offered.

Night had fallen an hour ago, spurring Kate to dash out to the yard and, over Jim’s protests, dig two candles from one of her trunks. Jim had suggested that they could simply quit and go to sleep, but Kate maintained it would be most unsporting of him to take advantage in such a way. She was rusty and he must give her a fair opportunity to recoup her losses.

And so, eight hands later, he sat across from her in a puddle of soft candlelight, perhaps fifteen twigs piled in front of him like a miniature fire waiting for a torch. Kate had no more than a half dozen twigs before her, arrayed in military precision on top of the trunk. She kept adjusting them, nudging them further into alignment that was already perfect, as she inspected the cards she held in her other hand.

The motion kept drawing his attention to her hands. He couldn’t recall noticing her hands before. No surprise, he thought wryly; there was plenty else to attract his attention. Now he couldn’t seem to think of anything else. Her fingers were long, tapered, the nails softly shining. They moved like quicksilver, movements blurring into a suggestion of grace like a hummingbird’s wings.

He could remember her mouth, the feel of her beneath his hands, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t recall if she’d ever touched him. It seemed a horrible oversight if she hadn’t, a gap in his knowledge and his memories that he wanted far too much to fill.

“I think that I…” she hesitated, inspecting her cards with as much fierce concentration as she’d studied the map at the Rose Springs. Her mouth pinched up and lines speared between her brows, so different from her usual smooth expression that he’d be willing to bet he was the only living man who’d ever witnessed it. “Hmm…” She flicked one twig out of alignment, rolled it back in. “I see, and raise.” She nudged two sticks into the small pile between them.