Always You (25 page)

“October,” she repeated, pulling back, troubled.

“It’s only a month away, Melora.”

“It’ll seem like a year.”

His tone was gentle but held an undercurrent of firmness that made her stare. “The separation and the delay will give you a chance to think things over. Make a clean break with the past. Be sure in your own mind.”

“Cal Holden, I am sure!” she cried indignantly.

Cal dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Then you’ll be more sure,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s settled. October first.”

“It would serve you right if I did change my mind!” she exclaimed, though she kept her voice low, mindful of the sleeping family members in both the house and the barn. Suddenly she broke free of his embrace and jumped back just out of reach to glower at him.

“Cal Holden, you are infuriating. You’re the most stubborn, mulish, irritating, high-handed man—”

“Come here, Melora.”

“I will not,” she whispered furiously. “If you think I’m going to take orders from you after we’re married and go meekly along with everything you say, you have another thing coming—”

“Come here, Melora.”
He grasped her arms as he spoke, hauling her up against his chest.

“I will
not
give in to you on every point—”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Cal grinned. “If I thought you were some mealymouthed little worm, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you. Do you know how adorable you look when you get your back up?”

“Don’t try to change the subject on me. I’m talking about this October business—”

“Melora—”

“Why can’t we—?”

“Melora!” He silenced her with a kiss that stole the fight right out from under her. His lips claimed hers with a heat and need that completely obliterated all of her anger.

“Oh, very well, I’ll give in to you just this once,” Melora said shakily when she could speak again. “October first we’ll join the Deane clan with the Holdens.” Her saucy smile teased him, making him want her all over again, as she had intended it to do. “I suggest we seal the bargain with another kiss.”

“Only one kiss?” Cal’s mouth seared the tender hollow at her throat.

His hand found her breast. His stroking intensified the fresh waves of desire that were already sweeping over her. Melora moaned as her body thrummed alive beneath his hands, and desire waged a battle with responsibility.

“As many as you like,” she gasped, “but, Cal, we can’t... not right here... the children—”

“When we’re married, I’m building a separate wing for the children,” Cal growled. He tugged her away from the door. “Come on, I know another place.”

“Where now?” she whispered on a half giggle, running alongside him.

“The well house.”

The well house?

It proved to be cool, dark, and quiet in the well house and sheltered from the wind.

They didn’t come out until dawn.

The hideout shack was cleverly concealed on a hidden shelf deep in Wild Horse Canyon. But not cleverly enough. Cal found it at sunup after five days of concentrated tracking. He left Rascal tethered to a rock some distance away and made his way stealthily down a rocky incline and through a trail of brush and scrub.

Eagles arced beneath the glimmering sun. The cloudless sky was porcelain blue, delicate and smooth in contrast with the harsh abrasiveness of the land.

Cal noticed neither land nor sky, however. His attention was completely focused on his quarry. Otis Strong had apparently found himself some new partners, outlaws no doubt as cunning and amoral as himself

But Cal wasn’t interested in them either.

Two of Strong’s companions were saddling their horses in front of the hideout shack when he spotted them. It didn’t take long for Strong to emerge as well. He swaggered out the front door with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, and Cal noticed that above his beard, the big man’s face still showed bruises from their fight. He was scratching his armpits and taking gulps of whiskey.

With satisfaction Cal observed that he was also wearing his guns.

“Nobody move!” He leaped out from the rocks less than fifteen feet from the three desperadoes, his Colt aimed straight at Strong’s belly.

Strong and the other two froze.

“This has nothing to do with either of you,” Cal barked to the strangers. All the while he kept his gaze riveted upon the incredulous face of Otis Strong. “You boys stay out of this and you can go to hell in your own good time. It’s Strong I want.”

“You!” Recognition turned Strong’s ruddy skin the color of putty. “You low-down bastard. I’m going to kill you!”

“I’m taking you in, Strong.”

“The hell you are.”

“You’re going to hang for the murder of Craig Deane.”

“Like hell I am!” Strong’s mouth stretched into a sneer. “You’re the one going to die, mister. Right here, right now! Get him, boys!”

Gunmetal flashed in the sunlight. The eagles scattered. And the high rocks echoed with thunder as a hail of bullets sprayed the desolate shelf of land.

It was over quickly, and when the shooting stopped, Cal sprang up swiftly from the dust where he’d leaped and rolled and crouched while firing. He swept a cold glance over the bodies of the three dead men and holstered his gun.

Walking slowly, he crossed the weeds to stand over Strong’s corpse, to study it dispassionately. “This is called justice, Strong. Evening the score. Now it’s over.”

Killing a man had never given him cause for happiness or celebration, but as the pale blue wisps of gunsmoke dissipated in the clear, cold air, Cal’s lips thinned into a smile of grim satisfaction.

Now he could go home. To Melora.

It was almost his wedding day, and Cal knew if he didn’t make it to Rawhide in time, he might just as well dig himself a grave right here alongside Otis Strong.

* * *

Evening, September 30

Tomorrow night, tomorrow night, I’ll be a bride tomorrow night.

Cal Holden, if, you leave me standing at the altar, I’m going to skin you alive,
Melora thought, lamplight casting an amber glow upon her furious countenance as she paced barefoot across her gleaming bedroom floor. Her diaphanous white silk wrapper swished in time to her rapid footsteps, whipping around her legs like a shimmering cloud.

“Don’t worry, Melora.” Jinx stuck her head in the door with a sympathetic smile. “Cal will make it in time.”

Melora’s dismay faded at the sight of her sister in her ankle-length blue flannel nightgown. Her eyes softening with pleasure, she watched the girl scamper across the floor and plop down on the bed, Blackie curled comfortably on her shoulder. It was so good to see Jinx well. She was not only walking now, but running, skipping, jumping. A miracle had come to pass. Not a day went by that Melora wasn’t thankful for it.

But at this moment it was difficult to feel thankful, difficult to find a trace of the peaceful contentment that had enveloped her all the past month as she planned her wedding.

“I’m supposed to be getting married in the morning, Jinx,” she grated out between clenched teeth. She wheeled toward the window, where the moon shone like her cameo against a sky of deepest ebony. Melora took a quick, panicky breath and brushed her fingers over the necklace, as if touching the cameo would bring her good luck. “All of the town will be there,” she whispered dejectedly. “All except the groom! I’m going to be the laughingstock of Rawhide—again!”

Melora resumed her pacing, her hands tearing through her curling, freshly washed hair.

The citizens of Rawhide had found it richly amusing that Melora Deane was planning a wedding for the second time to a man named Wyatt Holden, an altogether
different
Wyatt Holden. The corrals and stores and saloons and offices were full of folks grinning and shaking their heads.

But not a soul had found anything funny about the criminal deceptions her original groom had carried out.

Many of the townspeople and ranchers had met Cal when he’d arrived a few weeks ago to help move Jesse and the children into the Diamond X ranch house. They liked him and warmly welcomed him and his family. And they especially welcomed the fact that they could expect cattle ranching profits to go up and rustling incidents to go down now that at his hands, the rustlers’ ringleader, Rafe Campbell, was dead.

But how everyone would roar, Melora fretted to Jinx bitterly, when
she
found herself abandoned at the altar, just like Campbell had been before. Why, folks would flap their jaws for months about how Melora Deane’s second attempt at a wedding had ended in failure.

“Failure? Since when are you talking about failure?” Aggie broke in, following Jinx into the bedroom, her tone crisp as corn. “That man will not let you down.”

“But—”

“He’s a good man, Melora. I may have made a mistake about that
other
man, but this time there can be no mistaking. Cal Holden will come through for you—always—unless I sorely miss my guess. Besides,” she added, her eyes sparkling as they rested on the girl’s hopeful face. “I saw the way he looked at you the night the Holdens all moved into the Diamond X and we brought his family that delicious fried chicken supper.”

“And I saw the way he kissed you in the kitchen when he thought no one was looking!” Jinx giggled.

Melora couldn’t hold back a grin. “Cal does love me,” she muttered, closing her eyes and remembering how beautifully they fit together. “I know that at least. So I guess I have to dig down deep and find myself a little bit of faith.”

But she kept on pacing.

She scarcely heard Aggie urge Jinx to move along to bed. But she shook herself out of her reverie when Jinx whispered from the door, “Mel! Are you
sure
you want to marry Wyatt Holden?”

The same question her sister had asked the night before her other wedding. Now their eyes met with warmth and love and sisterly laughter.

“I’m sure.” Melora went to Jinx and knelt. She hugged her tightly, emotion swamping her. “Oh, Jinx, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

It was quiet when Jinx and Aggie went to bed. The darkness of the midnight sky, the emptiness of the night haunted Melora as she padded to her closet and gazed at her mother’s wedding gown, wondering if she would have the chance to wear it come morning. It was so beautiful. Her fingers trembled over the elegant lace veil, the creamy satin bridal slippers, the flowing train...

She never saw the man who swung through her window with single-minded purpose. She didn’t hear even a footfall until she was seized roughly from behind and yanked against his tall, hard frame.

“Princess, don’t tell me you weren’t expecting me.” Cal’s breath tickled warm and enticing against her ear.

He spun her around in his arms and drowned out her shriek of joy with a kiss so fierce it left her weak with happiness.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, clutching him, her lips darkened from the force of the kiss, her whole body melting against his. “I thought you were leaving me at the altar!”

“Never, Melora. Not if I’d had to crawl across the plains on my knees and elbows to get here.” He grinned. Then the grin faded, and his features became grave. As he caressed her cheek, every last glimmer of humor left his eyes. “I had business to attend to.”

He picked her up, carried her to the bed, and set her down upon it very tenderly. As she drew him down beside her, she studied his serious expression with growing concern.

“What kind of business?”

“Otis Strong.”

She bolted upright. Her golden brown eyes widened with a single crucial question.

Cal kissed her cheek. “He’s dead, Melora. That hombre’s taken up permanent residence in hell.”

She nodded, her gaze locked upon his. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome.” This time their kiss was longer, deeper. Cal tugged at the sash of her wrapper, discovering to his intense approval that beneath it she wore nothing at all.

“Now about this wedding tomorrow—” he said.

“What about it?” She had already stripped off his vest, and her fingers were skimming eagerly across the buttons of his shirt, freeing one after the other in rapid succession. She slid the shirt from his shoulders, her lips curving into a saucily tantalizing smile.

“You’re sure you’re getting hitched to the right fellow this time?” Cal inquired, pulling her down on top of him and wrapping his arms around her so tightly her breasts were crushed against the hair-coarsened roughness of his chest. “I’d hate to see you make any mistakes.”

“No mistakes.” Her slender finger traced his mouth, rubbing against the smooth warmth of his lips. “I love
you,
Cal,” she said softly, gifting him with sweet, tiny kisses. “Only you. Always you.”

“That about sums it up for me too, Princess.” He grinned, and then the rest of their garments landed on the floor in a heap and there was nothing left to impede their lovemaking, nothing standing in the way of the happiness that swept through them with such passionate intensity that their bodies and hearts and souls burned like fiery spears with the heat of it.

And when their passion had joined them together and made them blissfully one, when they’d touched the edges of heaven and floated back to earth, when the night was nearly gone and a silvered pink dawn was peeking over the horizon, they slept in each other’s arms and dreamed of their wedding and their future and their children and their home.

And the angels that accompanied the dawn on its glowing journey across the earth paused that October morning. They glanced in the ranch house window and looked and nodded sagely to one another, for they felt the joy bouncing in the air, the peace and harmony and happiness, the quiet, pinging thrum of souls meeting. Loving. Touching.

And the angels smiled.

If you enjoyed
Always You
, I would be honored if you would tell others by writing a review on the retailer’s website where you purchased this title.

Thank you!

Jill Gregory