Deborah Camp (20 page)

“Good God,” he breathed before nuzzling her left breast and then her right. When his lips latched onto her nipple, she arched her back in sizzling pleasure and released a long, shuddering moan.

The dance of their bodies began, and although she knew the steps, she was unprepared for the improvisation of his clever hands, his seeking mouth, and his talented tongue. He touched her in places that had been private until that night and delved so deeply into her she thought she might fly apart into a million shimmering sparks like fireworks.

Their union was a frantic thrust and parry. His lovemaking was so different from what she had known before. He took the lead, lifting her, positioning her, encouraging her with his hands, his mouth, and his whispered words – “Good, yes, there, there, that’s right, touch me, do you feel that?” The words buzzed in her mind and made her feel drunk with power.

When he finally emptied himself deep inside her, a veil of perspiration covered her body and his, and their breathing was fast and hoarse. She felt like she was drifting down, down, down from a very high place. Muscles twitched in her core as he slid out and off of her. She turned onto her side and ran a hand across his chest where a patch of reddish-blond hair curled. She kissed his freckled shoulder. Although she had never felt so satisfied in her life, she wanted more. She wanted him again.

She kissed his reddened cheek. “Judge Bishop must have been very angry at you.”

“He was lashing out because he’s trapped.”

“By Luna?”

“By his love for Luna. I feel sorry for the old boy. His first wife was a good woman and Judge Bishop thought all women were like her, I guess.” He curved an arm around her shoulders and his hand skimmed down her back to her hip. “He was lonely and vulnerable and Luna struck and wrapped herself around him so fast that he didn’t have time to think that maybe she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Jennie rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “That’s what happened to Charles.” The truth of that rang in her with the clarity of a bell. “He was lonely and vulnerable, too. She saw that. When he told her he had purchased land, she probably thought he was a man of means and she pounced.”

“And when she learned that he didn’t have any money left, she made his life a living hell.”

“That’s why he came back to me.”

Zach sighed. “She played him for a fool.”

“He couldn’t admit his failures to me, as usual. He was raised to blame everyone else when things went wrong. It makes more sense to me now. I’ve wondered how it happened – what was so special about Luna that she could erase me from his mind.”

“Shhh.” He smoothed a hand along her hip and kissed her forehead. “Don’t you think for one second that Luna was a better woman than you in any way. Luna is a viper with a cold heart. You are any sane man’s dream.”

She looked up into his eyes, his words like sweet music to her ears. “Am I your dream?”

“In every way,” he whispered. “If I died right now, I’d die a happy man.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.” She bit him softly on the shoulder.

His gaze held hers for a few heart-stopping moments before he turned onto his side, his arms coming around her, his nose an inch from hers. “Yeah, you’re right, but I do believe that this is the first time I actually mean it.”

Chapter 15

The next morning Jennie stood before the mirror in her room at the boarding house. The morning light fell over her from the open window. She leaned closer to her image, marveling that there was no measurable change in her appearance. Yesterday when Zachary had walked her back to the boarding house from his office after their tumultuous tryst, she had expected Mrs. Philpot or one of the boarders to take one look at her and know that she had been with a man. But no one said a thing to her – not even Mrs. Carter, who was like a sentry, keeping watch on everything and everyone from her perch on the front porch.

After supper Dottie asked Jennie if she was feeling well because she had been so quiet. “I hope you’re not catching what Oliver had,” Dottie had said, worry lies forming between her wide-set brown eyes.

Smiling, Jennie tipped her head to one side and regarded her reflection. Amazing how no one could tell that she was a changed woman. In Zach’s arms she had abandoned herself to a passion so consuming that she felt cleansed – cleansed of the lies, the innuendoes, the insults, and the confusion she’d known since arriving in Guthrie. For those searing minutes of the joining of their bodies and souls, she had known she had met her match in Zach, her equal, and a man she trusted to take the lead. That night, in her bed, she had realized with a start that Charles had never entered her mind while she’d been with Zach. There was no comparison to be made. Coupling had been predictable with Charles. What she and Zach had done was so far beyond that. While it had been their first time together, they had known each other’s pleasure points. He had encouraged her to explore him and herself, to climb higher and higher, to release her pleasure with moans and writhing exuberance.

She blushed now just thinking of how he moved her, how his mouth conquered every part of her, and how she cried out his name at the moment of her ecstatic release.

“I love him,” she whispered to the dewy-eyed woman staring back at her. “Does he love me?”

Only one person could answer that for her. His answer would either complete her dream or shatter it.

When he arrived at the courthouse the next morning, Zachary went straight to the corner office on the ground floor where Judge Enos Olson kept an office. He had made an appointment yesterday afternoon, wanting to be sure he would have an audience with the judge and not have to postpone delivering his findings any longer than necessary.

Approaching the office, his step slowed as he went over in his mind what he would say and what the reaction would be. Mainly, he wanted advice on what he should do next or if Judge Olson would take it from here.

He entered the office and gave a nod to the judge’s secretary, a tiny woman in her late forties. She wore her pale brown hair braided and piled on top of her head. Zach wondered if she had ever cut it. “Hello, Mrs. Haney. I have an appointment.”

“Yes, you do. Please, have a seat, Mr. Warner. I will let the judge know you’re here.” She stood up from the desk and went down a short hall. She tapped on a door, waiting a few moments, and then went inside.

Zach paced, feeling as taut as a guitar string. Now that he had the evidence he needed to help Jennie, he wanted to proceed with lightning speed. The sooner this was over, the sooner he would no longer be her attorney and he could devote himself to being her man. The thought of that filled him with longing. Would he ever be satiated? Yesterday after he had walked her to the boarding house, he hadn’t been more than a few yards away from her when he had felt the stirrings of desire. He’d had half a mind to march back to the boarding house and ask her to spend the night with him in his room so that he could get lost in her over and over again.

But was he lost in her … or had he found himself in her?

“Mr. Warner?”

Shoving aside his daydreams, Zach spun around to face Mrs. Haney. “Yes, ma’am?”

“You can go in.”

“Thanks.” He walked briskly down the short hall. The judge’s door was slightly open and Zach gave it a push and entered the office. Judge Olson sat behind his desk. He was a stout man with a shock of red hair and a walrus mustache. Zach opened his mouth to greet him, but the words died on his tongue when he realized that another man stood off to one side. Judge Bishop.

“Good morning, Warner,” Judge Olson said. “Now that you’re here, let’s sort through this sordid business. I believe you have some documents to show me.”

“Yes, sir.” Zachary tore his gaze from Judge Bishop, whose face was as pale as fresh-picked cotton, and removed the documents from his jacket pocket. He handed them to Judge Olson. “Has Judge Bishop told you about the fraud he committed?”

“He has, and we can both appreciate his desire to save what is left of his integrity. Let’s see here.” He slipped on a pair of glasses and peered at the documents carefully. Removing the glasses, a frown covering his face, he shifted in his chair to glare coldly at Judge Bishop. “Why don’t you both have a seat?” He motioned to the two wingback chairs in front of his desk. “Warner, when do you have to be in court this morning?”

“Not until eleven.”

“Good, that will give us sufficient time to thrash this out.” He squinted his brown eyes at Zachary. “Looks as if you’ve already been thrashing about.”

Zach smiled and sat down. “Judge Bishop didn’t take kindly to my visit to his home yesterday.”

Judge Bishop lowered his frame into the other chair. He looked grumpy, like a child who had been caught stealing candy. “What is there to talk about?”

“Beg your pardon?” Judge Olson leaned forward, hand clasped on top of his desk. “Do you think this ends now, Silas? You’ve been found out and all you have to do is march in here and apologize to me?”

“I explained that I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“To hell you say,” Judge Olson said, frowning mightily. “I believe that you had to think quite a bit to hatch this plan. Or, perhaps, your wife did the planning and you simply carried out her wishes.”

“Leave her out of this.”

Zachary whipped his gaze around to Judge Bishop, amazed that he was defending Luna. “Luna is as guilty as sin. She has been aware of these fraudulent documents. She knows that Jennie Hastings hired me to untangle this mess you all made that put her and her son off the land that should lawfully be theirs.”

“Simmer down, Counselor Warner,” Judge Olson said. “Does your client know about this development?”

“Not yet. I wanted to discuss this with you first.”

“I appreciate that.” Judge Olson shifted his gaze to Judge Bishop. “What do you have to say for yourself, Silas? Are you going to take full responsibility for this or share it with your wife? She could not have been in the dark about this. Charles Hastings was divorced in March, not in January as so stated in this forged document. The court docket shows that Luna married him the following June. He was not divorced long enough for that marriage to be legal. Someone knew about that and decided to make it legal by creating a false divorce decree for Mr. Hastings.” He tapped the papers on his desk.

“I was only trying to help … we didn’t know about his other wife —.”

“His
only
wife,” Zach corrected him.

“Ex-wife,” Judge Bishop said with a surly scowl. “When we received word of his death, it seemed the land would go to waste and Luna should inherit it because she had married the man and been callously abandoned by him.”

Zach made a scoffing sound.

“This is your reasoning?” Judge Olson asked. “How would land go to waste? Say, there was not another wife and a son. What would happen to the land? It would be sold again to someone, so how is that going to waste?”

“What I meant to say is … it would go to a stranger and that would seem such a waste.” Judge Bishop ran a finger around his shirt collar.

“If your wife did not own it, it would be a waste,” Judge Olson repeated. “That is flawed logic and certainly not clear thinking. Greedy, yes. Opportunistic, yes. Logical, no.”

Zach sat back, beginning to enjoy the interchange between the two judges. Bishop, on the defensive, and Olson moving in slowly for the attack.

“I admit I didn’t think it through, but I didn’t think anyone would be harmed by the — uh — the alteration.”

“Forgery,” Judge Olson said, his eyebrows jumping up and down in consternation. “Let’s not mince words. You forged a document, Silas. You not only committed a crime, you have, in effect, disbarred yourself. Your career has been forever tarnished by your own doing.”

“I know it was wrong. I have apologized and I came here of my own volition —.”

“You came here because you knew I was coming here,” Zachary said. “Pure and simple. You wanted to get the jump on me.”

“I came here to right a wrong,” he said, not even glancing at Zach. “Again, I’m sorry for my transgression, Enos. Warner can allow the Hastings boy to inherit the property.”

“You understand that your client was legally divorced from Charles Hastings, even though she was not aware of it at the time,” Judge Olson said, switching his attention to Zach.

“Yes, I understand that and so does she.”

“Therefore, her son will inherit.”

“I will file papers to have the property held in trust until he’s twenty-one and place his mother as the Trustee,” Zach said.

Judge Olson nodded, then his gaze latched onto Judge Bishop again. “Silas, if you had hauled off and called me a stinkin’ sonofabitch in the halls of justice here, I would accept your apology and let bygones be bygones. But you did a little more than that. You deliberately and brazenly removed property from this courthouse and forged my name on a document. You don’t walk out of here on a ‘Sorry, I made a mistake’ for those crimes, Silas. Now you surely know that.”

“We’ve known each other a long time, Enos, and you know me to be an honorable man. I admitted that I wasn’t thinking clearly —.”

“People are tried and convicted for what you did,” Judge Olson interrupted. “Are you afraid of her? Is that why you went to such measures?”

“Afraid of Luna?” Judge Bishop shook his head and then buried his face in his hands. “No, no. I love her. I adore her. It seemed to me at the time to be a simple matter. She wanted that land so badly and I could make it happen for her. The way she said it, it didn’t sound like a crime. But I knew. I knew I could be ruined!” His voice broke on the last word.

Despite his exasperation, Zach felt pity for the older man. Luna specialized in lonely men. Charles Hastings and Silas Bishop and who knows who before them? Hell, she might have even figured that
he
had been lonely that night at the dance. Zach recalled that he’d come alone and he had been relatively new in town. But he hadn’t been lonely – just alone that night – so her manipulations hadn’t worked on him. After that tawdry encounter, he hadn’t been the least bit tempted to seek her out or have anything to do with her.

“Silas, this is sad business,” Judge Olson said, sitting back in his chair and glancing toward Zachary. “You have wronged Counselor Warner’s client. I might feel more sympathetic toward you if you had come to me about this when Mrs. Hastings and her son arrived in Guthrie, obviously seeking to claim the land. But you did not. You stayed silent and you and your wife were even obstinate and uncooperative toward Mrs. Hastings. This is a young woman who came here a widow, having been with her husband when he died. She has a child to raise and this land was her one bright hope. You could have approached me and told me of your crime and that this woman deserved the land you stole from her. That would have been the honorable thing to do. But you developed lockjaw, instead.”

“I should have said something, but Luna was sure the woman would go on back to St. Louis to her people. Luna said she was a city girl and would have no use for the land. She would sell it, so we might as well keep it.”

“Looks like you drove your cattle to a bad market, Silas, and now you have to accept your losses – the loss of your honor, your standing in this community, and probably your freedom for a while. I don’t know about Counselor Warner here, but I am not of a mind to cut you any slack.”

Judge Bishop’s eyes were red-rimmed and his nose was ruddy. He turned toward Zachary, his expression beseeching. “I’ll apologize to your client, too. So will Luna.”

Zachary couldn’t look at him anymore. The sympathy drained away with the realization that the judge thought he would actually leave these chambers with a slap on the wrist and one-hundred-and-sixty-acres lighter. “Luna has other problems, as well. The man living out there on the land is a convicted cattle rustler and I have reason to believe that he killed Stella Carlson, the girl who worked at the Lantern Saloon.”

“She has nothing to do with that. Her cousin —.”

“He’s not her cousin,” Zach said, almost growling the words. “He’s her lover.”

“I ought to —.” The judge made to rise from the chair, but Judge Olson stopped him by slamming the flat of his hand on his desktop.

“Enough! Silas, I’m charging you with forgery and theft of government property. Counselor Warner, I can take it from here. Thank you for your attention to duty. You honor our profession.” He stood and offered his hand.

Zach rose to his feet and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you, sir.” He left the office without even glancing at Judge Bishop again. The man was spineless and had let Luna do his thinking for him.

As he was striding along the hallway, thinking ahead to telling Jennie about what had just transpired, he caught sight of Deputy Lane. “Hey, there!” he called to the man, making him stop and wait for him. “What’s happening with the Stella Carlson murder? Have you made an arrest yet?”

“Just got the warrant,” the deputy said, waving a paper he held. “Got enough eye witnesses who saw Melvin Parks with her that night that we can make an arrest. He was seen by two fellas having a fistfight that night, too. They said he was chasing a gal down the street.”

Zach ran a hand around to the back of his neck where a weight seemed to have settled. “Damn. She was running for her life.” In his mind’s eye, he could see the wisp of a girl sprinting down the dark street with Parks hot on her heels.