Elizabeth Lane (25 page)

“I fold,” he said, laying down what might have been a decent hand, had he chosen to play it. “You two can fight it out for the winnings. I’m going upstairs and check on Lydia and the youngsters.”

Moving deliberately, he slid his chair away from the table. Cherokee’s hand flashed for his holster, but Dooley stopped him with a glance.

“No tricks, Major,” he growled. “One false move, and Spade’ll put the first bullet through that little redheaded niece of yours.”

“No tricks,” Donovan muttered, knowing full well that Dooley spoke the truth. He turned away from the table and would have headed upstairs if a knock on the front door of the saloon had not broken the silence, riveting the men at the table.

At a nod from Dooley, Cherokee drew his pistol and cat-footed across the room to unlatch the door. It cracked open to reveal a rain-soaked Greta shivering on the open porch.

Donovan stared at her in dismay as she stumbled inside, water puddling off her clothes, her yellow hair dripping in strings around her plump, rouged face. Greta could have stayed away and saved herself. How could she be fool enough to risk her life coming back?

“I told Herr Satterlee you needed supplies,” she said in a tired, toneless voice. “Everything you asked for will be on the porch in an hour, along with three saddled horses from the livery stable. Nobody will try to stop you. They only want the children safe.”

Dooley’s breath rasped tautly in his throat. “What the hell took ‘em so long?”

Greta’s head drooped wearily as she slumped into a chair. “Herr Satterlee would not give up the supplies until the people paid for them. It took all this time to collect the money. Herr Satterlee…has no children.” Her voice broke. She stared dejectedly at the floor.

Donovan gulped back his disgust. He’d had his own problems with the mercenary little storekeeper, but this tale was beyond imagining. “What are you doing here, Greta?” he asked gently. “You didn’t have to come back, you know.”

Greta raised her head to give Donovan a ragged smile. “And where else was I to go,
jawohl?
This is my home. This is where my friends are. I don’t belong out there.”

Donovan swallowed the hardness in his throat. “Come on, Greta,” he murmured. “I’ll help you upstairs so you can get into some dry clothes. We don’t need another patient on our hands.”

He circled the woman’s shivering shoulders with his arm and drew her dampness against his side. Neither Dooley nor Cherokee made a move to stop them as they mounted the stairs. Why hadn’t someone taken Greta in? he wondered. What was wrong with the people in this town? Why would Sarah battle so hard to stay in such a place? Why would Varina refuse to leave?

“Is everybody all right in here?” Greta whispered as they reached the landing and turned the corner into the mauvered darkness of the hallway.

“No worse off than when you left. What was causing all that commotion outside a while ago?”

“Donnerwetter!
You don’t know?”

Donovan’s tight-lipped silence answered her question.

“It was Miss Sarah! She had one of the children—the little girl with red hair. She was trying to lower her out of the window.
Ach!
Some
dumkopf
outside started shouting, and—”

“What happened to them?” Donovan felt his heart slam.

“I don’t know. They disappeared inside. We didn’t see them again.” Greta paused outside her bedroom door, cast him a look of tragic futility, then vanished inside. When Donovan checked the adjoining room where he had left Sarah sleeping, he found it empty, the knotted sheet lying crumpled on the floor.

“Damn!” Donovan’s stomach knotted with dismay. For Sarah to take such a chance-His thoughts scattered like blown straw at the sight of Spade, lounging feet-up in the doorway of Faye’s room down the hall. Spade glanced up, saw him and grinned.

“Hey, Cole, your galfriend tried a pretty dumb trick. She shoulda knowed better. Shoulda knowed I’d catch her.”

Donovan’s teeth clenched as he bit back a surge of fury that would have sent him lunging at the pudgy gunman’s throat. “So help me, you bastard, if you’ve so much as touched her—”

Spade hawked and spat on the floor. “Hell, I ain’t laid a hand on the woman. Not that she didn’t offer to let me, mind you. Offered right nice, she did. But my taste runs to gals with some meat on their bones. Don’t know if I could of even got it up with a skinny one like her.”

Donovan groaned, wrenched by near-physical agony at the thought of Sarah’s offering herself to a man like Spade for the sake of the children. The urge to seize her shoulders and shake her till she whimpered for mercy faded, however, as he looked into the bedroom and saw her. She was seated on the floor, her head bent like a tender Madonna’s over the slumbering Katy. Her eyes lifted as he stepped into full view. In their silver-shadowed depths, he read anguish, frustration and—unbelievably—love.

He tore himself away from her luminous gaze. “Dooley wants her downstairs,” he told Spade.

“Shucks, how do I know you ain’t lyin’?”

“Go and ask him.”

Spade chewed his thumbnail as the realization sank in that checking with Dooley would leave his charges unguarded. “Take ‘er,” he grunted. “You know what’ll happen if you’re aimin’ to cross me.”

“I know.” Donovan waited while Sarah settled the sleeping Katy across the foot of the bed. Then he stepped back into the hallway, emotions churning as she slipped out the door to join him. He was sick with fear for her and desperately angry at the risk she’d taken. But when she was beside him, when he looked into her beautiful, tired face, he could think only of how much he wanted her.

He did not trust himself to speak. Not yet. But as they moved back down the hallway toward the stairs, he caught her elbow and swung her into Zoe’s empty bedroom, his arms trapping her against the near wall.

“Donovan—” Her eyes were wide gray pools, their surfaces vibrating with uncertainty. “I know what you’re—”

Donovan’s hard mouth blocked her words. His lips ground onto hers with a fury that exploded like nitroglycerin, torching blazes of wildfire in his veins. His arms jerked her to him, crushing her fragile flesh to his belly.

For the space of a heartbeat Sarah quivered rigidly against his burning length. Then her hands flashed into motion, fingers gripping his neck as she pulled him down to her. Her lips molded to his heat. The moisture of her swollen mouth mingled with his own as her tongue thrust deep for his suckle, velvet rough, tremblingly eager in its seeking. The taste of her was wild honey and moon musk to his reeling senses.

“We—we mustn’t—” she whispered. But the words were smoke, spiraling to air in the rising heat of her response. She wanted him, too. Every breath, every move of her supple body told him so.

Groaning with the heaviness of desire, Donovan slid his hand downward to clasp the cleft moons of her buttocks through the ripple of green silk. As he pressed her hard against his achingly aroused shaft, her gasp melted to a
crescendo of tiny whimpers. Her fingers clawed his hair as he thrust his weight against her, pinning her writhing hips to the wall. Hunger-wild, she butted and twisted, feeding the flames of their urgency. Reason shrilled that they had no time, no place of safety. They had only what they could steal from each perilous moment.

“I want you, Sarah,” he breathed in a frenzy of need. “Heaven help me—”

“Heaven help us both,” she murmured, drawing away to catch her breath. Her eyes were large and soft in the darkness. Donovan recognized the glimmer of tears. He gathered her close again, with exquisite tenderness this time, forcing his passion back to a warm simmer.

“I love you, Sarah Parker,” he said softly.

“And I love you,” she whispered, muffling the words against his chest. “I’ve always loved you, Donovan. But I can’t let myself want more than this. Our own lives matter so little right now. Our own happiness—”

“Hush.” His kisses were gentle now, urgent, seeking nibbles that grazed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. “We’ll take this one step at a time, love. Right now, what we need to do is go downstairs and spend some time looking for those claim papers. We’ll stall where and when we can, keep our eyes open, and maybe, somehow, we’ll discover a way out of this mess. Whatever happens, Sarah, I promise you—”

“No!” She sealed his lips with a determined forefinger. “No promises!” she declared fiercely. “One step at a time, that’s what you said. That has to be the only way for us. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to bear it!”

“All right, no promises.” He brushed a lingering kiss across her darkly swollen lips. He could make no promises to Sarah, but he could make them to himself. He would have a life with this woman, Donovan vowed. He would give her a home, sire their children with his love, care for her, protect her, grow old with her. Somehow, so help him, he would find a way to make it all possible.

The creak of a floorboard startled them apart. It would be Spade, most likely, checking on what they were up to, Donovan calculated. Or Greta moving about inside her room. In any case, he and Sarah could not stay here. Dooley would be waiting for them downstairs.

“Come on.” He guided her into the corridor. His hand, resting on the small of her back, felt the coiled-spring tension of the muscles that rimmed her spine. Her skin was cold to the touch, her face serene except for the resolute thrust of her chin.

As they descended the stairs Donovan’s thoughts darted back to Richmond. The old bitterness had waned from the memory now, tempered by a fresh understanding. As he had battled for his beliefs, Sarah had fought for hers—her beauty, her skill as an actress, and her coolheaded courage her only weapons.

What kind of bravery had it taken to face the enemy day after day, unarmed and vulnerable? he asked himself. What kind of fortitude, to wear the carefree mask of Lydia Taggart in the face of danger and heartache? What kind of strength, to bear up under the awful aloneness she must have felt?

Donovan’s hand tightened protectively around her waist. His lovely, fearless Sarah. In all his life, he had never known a woman to equal her.

A curious peace crept over his spirit as they reached the bottom of the staircase. For an instant Donovan was puzzled. Then, as his understanding fell into place, he realized that for him, the terrible war between North and South was over at last. He had come to the end of it with Sarah in his arms. Whatever battles remained to be fought, the two of them would fight side by side, as one.

Simeon Dooley glanced up from his card game. “Well, get on with it, then,” he growled with a cautious glance at Cherokee, who was glowering at his hand. “No tricks, now.”

“Tricks? Us? Why, Corporal, I can’t believe you’d suspect us of anything like that!” Sarah was back in character now, her smile brassy, her laughter coarse and careless. But the game she played was more dangerous than ever. Donovan thanked his stars that the mute half-breed could not tell Dooley what had happened upstairs with Katy.

“We may have a lot of looking to do,” Donovan cautioned.

Dooley shrugged and glanced at the pendulum clock on the wall. “It’s five minutes till two. I’ll give you till first light. Then, providin’ them supplies and horses are here, we’re ridin’ out—regardless of what you find. Got that, Cole?”

Donovan nodded, his eyes on Cherokee. The man was listening intently, his narrowed gaze fixed on Dooley. Clearly he was puzzled about what was going on. At least Donovan hoped he was.

“Come on, Lydia, darlin’.” He circled Sarah’s shoulders with his arm. “Let’s start by checking your office again. With luck, we may not have to look any further than that.” The conspiratorial glance he cast at Dooley could have been read by a blind man. “We’ll let you know the minute we find anything.”

Donovan paused to gauge Cherokee’s reaction. The gunman’s thin, dark face could have been chiseled from mahogany. It took Sarah to make a difference. When she turned at the doorway to Smitty’s office and shot Dooley a hoydenish flicker of a wink, Cherokee’s jaw muscles twitched perceptibly. Yes, the seed had been planted and was beginning to sprout.

Half-afraid Sarah would overplay her hand, Donovan stepped inside the office, jerked her after him and closed the door.

Sarah’s head spun as Donovan caught her in his arms. Things were moving too fast. She could not grasp them all.
She clung to him as she struggled for her physical, mental and emotional bearings.

His kiss was quick and hard. “That wink was a good touch, but don’t overdo it, love,” he whispered. “You’ll have the big bruiser in your lap! Next thing you know, he’ll be riding out of here with you slung across the front of his saddle!”

Sarah blinked up at him, then exploded. “Donovan, what in heaven’s name are we supposed to be doing? I’ve been trying to follow your signals, but it’s like fumbling my way through a maze!”

He guided her toward Smitty’s cluttered rolltop desk. “One step at a time, isn’t that what we agreed on? We’ve got till first light—that’s about four hours—to find a way out of this mess. Otherwise, Dooley plans to leave and take some of the children along as insurance. Let’s start by going through our late friend Smitty’s paperwork.”

They began with the desk and its contents. The miserly Smitty had possessed the hoarding instincts of a pack rat. Bills, receipts, notes, invoices and orders were stuffed haphazardly into every available cranny. There was no easy way to get through it all, and time was already running out.

“What difference does it make if we
do
find anything?” Sarah dumped the contents of one pigeonhole in her lap and began pawing frantically through them. “Why should Dooley bargain when he could take the claims and the children, too?”

“It’s not that simple, love.” Donovan was shuffling through a drawer he had yanked out of the desk. When he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. “The claims, if they exist, should have been signed over to the Crimson Belle, or to Smitty himself, whatever the poor old devil’s real name was. If we can convince Dooley the papers are worthless without you or me to file them at the land office—”

“Is that really true?” Sarah’s whirling mind struggled to grasp Donovan’s strategy.