Heart of the Hawk (25 page)

Kate gaped at him. “There’s
no way
it can even exist, but it does!”

“I’m not being run out of town by a damned book!” he shot back.

“All right, stay! Stay and get killed. I’ll have them bury the book with you.”

“You do that,” Josh snapped.

She stared at him, not sure whether she was feeling furious or sick. “It’s true, isn’t it? You really do want to die.”

“What?” he exclaimed.

“Marshal Pike was right. He said you didn’t want to live anymore, not like you’d been living.”

Josh drew back a little. “He said that?”

“He said that when you were in jail, waiting . . . that you didn’t seem to mind the idea.”

Josh’s mouth quirked. “Knew that old coot was smarter than he looked,” he murmured. Then his brows drew together. “And when did he tell you this? And why?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re going to prove him right, aren’t you?”

“I’m not going to take to my heels because this damned book says I’m going to die here,” he said emphatically. “Now I’ve got work to do.”

“Not here you don’t.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I don’t want a man who’s too contrary to save his own life around here.”

“Contrary?” He sounded offended.

“You were ready to ride out, until somebody said that’s what you should do.”

“I don’t take orders from anyone.” He threw the book a sideways glare. “Or anything.”

“Then I have no use for you here.”

He stared at her, as if astonished. “Are you firing me?”

“If that’s what it take to get you to see sense.”

“Fine,” he snapped. He scooped up his saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. He picked up the bedroll and strode out from behind the counter.

“You forgot something,” she called out, picking up the book.

He half turned, and she heaved it at him. He moved instinctively to catch it. He glared at it, then at her. Kate watched as he turned and marched out the door. He went down the steps to the street and turned right, past the water trough.

And as he passed the trough, she heard the splash as he tossed the book into the water.

HE SHOULD HAVE looked for Luke, Josh thought as Buck settled into that smooth, single-footed pace that made him the easiest-riding horse he’d ever slapped a saddle on. The boy had been pretty upset this morning. And then that damned book had scared the liver out of him.

Not, Josh thought wryly, that it hadn’t done pretty near the same to him.

He should have done this sooner, take the rangy buckskin out for a ramble. The horse had been fretting, Luke had told him, cooped up in a corral for so long. It would clear his head of some of this foolishness as well; he’d been cooped up too long himself, playing storekeeper. Maybe all he really needed was room, some space around him, and things would start to become clear.

Maybe.

It had been a very strange feeling, he mused, to see someone, even a young boy, upset that he was leaving. Usually his departure from any town was welcomed by most, the occasional dance hall girl who feigned heartache notwithstanding.

He wondered if Luke would be glad he wasn’t gone yet. Although he should make it clear to the boy that this was only a delay in his departure. But at least he’d have the chance to say good-bye. Unexpectedly, there were a few people in Gambler’s Notch he’d like the chance to say good-bye to; that had never happened before. Even the marshal, he thought. And Art Rankin. Maybe even the intrepid Miss Taylor.

The thought of the dauntless Deborah Taylor made him wonder. Was she really, as Kate had hinted, sweet on that lawyer? And if so, what was he doing proposing to Kate? He was a fine one to be accusing Josh of dallying with two women at the same time. And was he really fool enough to let a little thing like her being a trifle older than him interfere? She was an uncommonly fine woman; any man could see that. Or should. Of course, if it were true, his hope that Kate would marry Hall could hurt Deborah.

Josh sighed. Life had been much simpler when he’d been alone, no one and nothing to think about but himself and staying alive. How had he ever lost that simplicity? When had things become so complicated?

Buck tossed his head and snorted. Josh recognized the signs; the powerful horse had had enough of the leisurely pace. And a good, fast, high-loping charge across the flats held a certain appeal for him as well; maybe it would blow some of the fuzziness out of his head. Clapping his Stetson down firmly, he let Buck loose. No urging was necessary; the buckskin had had too little freedom to run in the past three weeks, and romping in the stable’s corral barely took the edge off.

Setting him in a circling course that would bring them back into Gambler’s Notch from the opposite direction, he let the horse run until he’d worked up a good sweat, but reined him in before he was tuckered. The last thing he wanted was to be caught with a run-out horse. Buck was still ready to run, and Josh had to keep a firm hand on the reins to keep the horse single-footing again. Near a thick stand of cottonwoods about a mile from town, he pulled the horse down to a walk, and by the time they passed the telegraph office at the edge of town, the buckskin was cooled out.

He only wished he could say the same for himself. He was no closer to any answers than he had been when he’d ridden out.

At the stable he led Buck inside and unsaddled him. He was about to start rubbing the horse down when a piece of straw drifting down from above warned him he wasn’t alone.

“You want to come down out of there, Luke?”

Silence greeted him.

“I was kind of hoping you wanted to talk. That infernal book has me awful twitchy.”

There was the sound of movement against the boards of the loft over his head.

“I’d be grateful if you were to come down here and keep me company. I don’t want to be alone if that thing shows up again.”

A blond head popped out over the edge of the loft. “Where is it?”

“Darned if I know,” he said honestly. “I dumped it in the water trough, but I don’t have much hope it’ll liquefy any more than it burned.”

Luke scrambled down the pegs driven into the upright beam that served as a ladder. He brushed at the straw that clung to him, casting sidelong glances at Josh.

“Are you really scared?”

Josh shrugged. “It’s natural to be scared of something you don’t understand,” he said. “And I sure don’t understand how that book does what it does.”

Luke let out a breath of relief, obviously deciding that if The Hawk could be scared, he could, too. “I’m scared, too. Is it really magic?”

“I don’t know, Luke. I truly don’t know. I don’t know what else to call it, though.”

There was a long silence before the boy spoke again.

“Is there good magic and bad magic?”

Josh paused in his work on Buck’s withers. “I suppose, if it exists at all, it’d be like luck, with good and bad. Why?”

Luke sighed. “I was hoping there’d be some good for Miss Kate.”

Josh couldn’t quarrel with that hope. “She surely is due some good luck.”

“She doesn’t want to marry Mr. Hall; I know she doesn’t.”

Josh knew it, too, with even more certainty than the boy; Kate had made that clear.

“She’d have to kiss him, and she don’t like kissin’,” Luke said.

Didn’t like kissing? Josh busied himself below Buck’s shoulder, so Luke couldn’t see his face. She’d curled his toes and brought him to the boil faster than any woman he’d ever touched, and she didn’t even like kissing?

“What . . . makes you think that?” he finally managed to ask.

“I seen her, when ol’ Arly’d grab her and start kissing her.”

He didn’t want to know, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from asking. “What happened?”

“She’d fight him something awful, till he started to get mean. Then he’d drag her up the stairs, and all the folks’d start looking at each other real funny.”

Josh’s stomach knotted. God, what had she endured at the mercy of those brutal hands, that massive body? How had she survived it? And why hadn’t anyone helped her? How had they let it go on for four awful years?

And if that lawyer cared enough about her to propose, where the hell had he been? Did he think that marrying her now would make up for it? Even if he was the gentlest lover in creation, it wouldn’t—

With a sudden jolt, Josh realized he didn’t care for the idea of Kate married to Hall any more than he cared to think of her life with Arly Dixon. And the image of Kate in Hall’s arms, of her kissing the lawyer as she’d kissed him, of the two of them intimately entwined, Alex Hall taking all the sweetness she had to give, spending himself in the honeyed depths of her body, started a slow rage inside him.

His first instinct was to find the young lawyer and thoroughly settle his hash for even thinking about Kate as his. Only that he had to admit—reluctantly—that he kind of admired the sometimes foolish, but never cowardly man stopped him. That, and the fact that he had no right whatsoever to do it.

“—wish somethin’ good happen,” Luke was saying, yanking Josh out of his useless anger, “so’s she wouldn’t have to marry him, or leave.”

“Maybe she won’t have to leave,” Josh said.

Luke shook his head. “If ol’ Arly’s brother’s as mean as he was, he’ll be mean to her, too, when he gets here.”

Josh looked at the boy over the buckskin’s back. “What?”

“He’ll make her go away, or he’ll hurt her, like Arly did.”

“Luke . . . you said ‘when he gets here.’ Do you mean . . . he’s coming?”

The boy nodded miserably. “Mr. Boardman, he got the answer to Mr. Hall’s telegram.”

“And Arly’s brother is coming here?”

The nod, even more miserable, came again. “In a couple of weeks.”

A couple of weeks. That would put it about May first.

May, Josh thought, was going to be an interesting month.

Chapter 17

SHE NEVER SHOULD have relented. She’d fired him, and she should have kept it that way.

“Kate? Are you all right?”

Kate looked up to see Deborah, standing in her open doorway, watching her curiously. She flushed as she realized she’d done it again, had been so lost in her thoughts about Josh that she’d been standing in a daze on Deborah’s porch, without even knocking at the door. Long enough for her friend to notice and come see what was wrong.

“I swan, Deborah,” she exclaimed, “that man is the most bothersome, unsettling—”

“So you’ve said,” Deborah interjected with a smile that was almost a grin.

“Hello, Kate.”

“Oh!” Kate’s breath caught at the quiet, solemn greeting; she hadn’t realized Alex had been standing right behind Deborah. “I . . . Hello, Alex,” she ended rather lamely, now furiously embarrassed at her outburst. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

An odd look flashed in the young lawyer’s eyes, as if she’d said something far more significant. The expression was replaced by one she couldn’t define but that looked almost like relief. She looked from Alex’s face to Deborah’s faint blush, and suddenly felt very awkward.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to . . . intrude.”

“I was just leaving,” Alex assured her, with a glance at Deborah that Kate thought rather pointed.

“I’ll see you this evening, Alex,” Deborah said.

Alex nodded, glanced at Kate almost furtively, then bid them both a hasty good-bye and walked past Kate and down the porch steps.

Kate watched him go, then turned back to Deborah. “I truly didn’t mean to—”

Deborah waved her hand. “It’s all right, dear. It’s time for our Sunday tea, and I wouldn’t miss that. Besides,” she added with a pretty blush, as she waved Kate inside, “he’s coming back for supper.”

Kate stepped through the doorway, then turned to stare at Deborah. She knew her friend had fixed supper for Alex before, but never had Deborah acted so strangely when talking about it. She was acting like . . . like . . . Kate’s eyes widened as a possibility struck her.

“Is Alex . . . I mean, are you . . . Did he . . .” She gave up, afraid she would hurt her friend if she was guessing wrong.

“He’s been here a lot in the past few days,” Deborah admitted, her color deepening. “In fact, ever since Josh stopped by just as he was leaving Wednesday afternoon, he’s been quite . . . attentive.”

Kate blinked. “Josh . . . was here?”

Deborah nodded. Her brow furrowed. “He said his arm was bothering him, but it seemed fine.”

Kate frowned. “Where he was . . . shot? He’s been doing a lot of heavy work, and we’ve been unusually busy for the past few days, but he wasn’t acting like it hurt him.”

An oddly pleased expression flitted across Deborah’s face before she said, “It really wasn’t that serious a wound.” Her brows lowered. “And he acted very . . . odd while he was here. Restless.”

“Restless,” Kate said with a sigh, “is a good word for it.”

Kate followed Deborah into the kitchen, where she set out the cups while Deborah took the steaming kettle of water and filled the graceful little teapot that matched them. She hadn’t told her friend about her attempt to fire Josh, because there wasn’t any way to explain without telling about the book, and she had no right to do that. Not that it could be explained anyway, she thought.

And it didn’t matter anyway; Josh had stubbornly refused to be fired or to leave. He’d continued to work around the store, and she hadn’t had the heart to tell him to go sleep in the barn with Luke if he was so determined to stay. Besides, she admitted, she would miss dreadfully the evenings when he kept his promise and helped her with her reading—when he told her she was really much better than she thought, because she could work out what unfamiliar words meant by the way they were used. His quiet praise warmed her in a way she’d never known before.

As did the soft, gentle good-night kisses he gave her each evening after their reading, kisses she knew she shouldn’t allow, but awaited too eagerly to prevent. Kisses she knew she was foolish to believe in, coming from a man who’d been ready to ride out of her life mere days ago. But she was so fascinated with the idea that a kiss could be gentle, that a man could be aroused yet not act, could want to mate, yet not force it, she couldn’t bring herself to stop him.

And if she were to be honest, she had to admit that, much to her shock, she
liked
the way his kisses made her feel. She liked the odd, tingly sensation, the warmth that flooded through her, the feel of his hands, strong yet light on her arms as he held her, on her cheeks as he tilted her head back. She liked it all, and she was stunned by that fact.

And too often she found herself wondering if the rest of the act between man and woman could be as different as Josh’s kisses. Could a man truly be gentle then, too? Or were all men brutal when seized by lust? Would Josh use . . . that part of his body as Arly had, cruelly, painfully? She knew he got as hard as Arly had; she’d felt him more than once when he’d kissed her. It had frightened her at first, until the second night when she’d frozen in his arms, and Josh had whispered quietly to her that he would never do anything she didn’t want him to do.

Want? Was it possible? Could a woman truly want such a thing? She would never have believed it. Until Josh’s kisses made her shiver with pleasure instead of quake with fear.

“Kate?”

She came back to herself with a start, and her hands flew to her cheeks as she became aware of the heat there, not from a blush this time, but from her own wayward, wanton thoughts. She mumbled something to Deborah as she hastily busied herself with the cups, trying desperately to bury those wicked thoughts.

They were seated with the tea poured before Kate, determined to stay off the subject of Josh, gathered her nerve and asked, “Is Alex . . . upset with me?”

“Because you told him you wouldn’t marry him?”

Kate’s eyes widened. “He told you?”

“That he proposed? Yes. But I already knew he was going to.”

“You knew?”

“I guessed,” Deborah corrected. “He felt very responsible for what happened with Arly’s will.”

Kate sighed. “I know.”

“There can be good marriages, Kate. My parents were very happy, before my mother died.”

Why did it seem everyone was trying to convince her of this? And using their family to do it? Surely Deborah didn’t want her to marry Alex, not when she cared for him herself.

“Why would I want to marry again? I know I . . . have no place to go right now, but to marry just to . . . have a place to live, or someone responsible for me seems . . .”

Deborah started to speak, then hesitated. Then, after a deep breath, she said quickly, “The marriage act can be . . . pleasant, too.”

Kate stared at her friend, all her wayward thoughts coming back in a rush.

“Don’t be shocked,” Deborah said, blushing. “I know it’s not proper of me to say, being a spinster, but . . . some of the wounded soldiers, I had to read their letters to them. At first Father wouldn’t let me read . . . that kind, letters from their wives that talked about . . . that. But in the end, there was no one else to do it.”

Kate was stunned at the thought that other women perhaps had wicked thoughts similar to her own. “They really . . . wrote about . . .?”

Deborah nodded. “And some . . . were quite . . . blunt about missing their husbands. And . . . such intimacy.”

So it was true, Kate thought wonderingly. It could be different. It must be, for those women to truly long for it, for no woman could ever desire the kind of thing Arly did, but Josh . . .

I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do.

Josh’s whispered words rang in her head, and she wondered if she was a fool for believing them. Was it possible? Could a man really . . . stop himself, as Arly had always said was impossible? Could the act she had come to dread really be something . . . pleasant? Something a woman might even . . . like? Could it—

“I only tell you this,” Deborah said, clearly still embarrassed and wanting to explain, “because I know Arly was . . . a callous, cruel man. And I know, better than anyone, Kate, what he . . . did to you. It would be enough to make any woman fear the marriage bed.”

“I know not all men are like Arly,” she said. “Some are gentle and kind.”

She thought she saw Deborah’s lips tremble for a moment, but then her friend’s head came up and she said steadily, “Alex is like that.”

Kate looked at Deborah for a long moment, wondering if she dared say that part of her reason for turning Alex down was knowing Deborah cared for him. Kate hesitated, knowing she could embarrass her horribly. But she couldn’t just let it go, not when her friend was so obviously willing to sacrifice any chance at her own happiness for Kate’s sake.

Then Deborah spoke again, as if to thoroughly change the embarrassing subject.

“I’m glad you took his advice not to make any hasty decisions, until Will Dixon arrives. We could be misjudging the man.”

“I doubt it,” Kate said.

“Then you’ll just move in here,” Deborah said simply. “At least until you decide what to do.”

“Perhaps,” Kate said cautiously. She didn’t like the idea of taking charity, even from her dearest friend, but she knew also that she might not have any choice. She saw Deborah open her mouth to insist, and spoke quickly to forestall her.

“I know you . . . care for Alex,” she began.

Deborah blushed, and lowered her gaze, confirming what Kate had always suspected. But then Deborah’s head came up, and she frowned. “That isn’t why you said no, is it? For you know I’m simply being foolish. I’m far too old for that kind of—”

“Don’t be silly. You’re
not
old.”

“I’m thirty, Kate. Alex is no older than Josh.”

“And it was Josh who said a woman as clever as you wouldn’t hold that against a man, if he were lucky enough to catch her eye.”

Deborah stared at her. “Josh . . . said that?”

Kate nodded. “He said you were handsome, smart, level-headed, loyal—”

“So is a good dog,” Deborah said, her tone wry. But her blush betrayed her as she asked, “Just when did he say all this to you?”

“Oh, not to me. To Alex.”

“Alex?”

It came out as a yelp, and for the first time since Kate had known her, Deborah looked utterly disconcerted. And despite herself, Kate smiled. It was wicked of her, she supposed, but it was nice to see someone else at a loss for a change. Besides, she hated it when Deborah called herself old, as if her life were nearly over, when Kate knew she’d given up so much to help others.

“He told him how Marshal Pike said you were a fine-looking woman, too,” she added, just to see her friend’s eyes go wider. Kate smothered a smile as she went on. “And Alex didn’t like hearing it much. He didn’t like much of anything Josh said.”

And she’d been so pleased at what Josh had done. She would have felt awful had she actually blurted out what she knew Deborah would hold as her closest secret, but Josh had quickly discerned the meaning behind her words and had proceeded to rattle Alex out of his complacency about the one who had for so long been his confidante, yet whom he seemed never to see as a woman.

Could that be why Josh had come here? Deborah had said his injury had seemed fine. Had he purposely come when Alex had been visiting, to remind the lawyer that there were men in Gambler’s Notch who indeed saw Deborah as a woman, not just a friendly, understanding ear?

But that made no sense. The only reason she could see for him to do that was if he wanted to see Alex and Deborah together. But he’d told Kate flatly she should marry Alex. But then he’d started that dizzying string of nightly kisses, each one longer than before, each one hotter, each one giving rise to more of those wanton, lustful thoughts that both astonished and mortified her. But she wasn’t foolish enough to believe he meant anything by it; he’d made his feelings clear enough about that, as well. So what did he want? Why did he continue to kiss her like that? Simply because she let him?

Surely not because he wanted to, not her, not too-plain, too-tall Kathleen. Although Arly had told her often enough one woman was the same as another when the need was upon a man. Perhaps that was it. But if so, why hadn’t he forced himself on her? Why did he seem content to kiss her and then let her walk away, in fact even hurry away, when she knew he was—

“Kate? What
is
wrong with you? You’ve been miles away all afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, Deborah,” she said, meaning it. “I know I’ve been woolgathering all day. It’s just that—”

“Josh is a most bothersome, unsettling man.”

Kate sighed. “Yes. Yes, he is.”

Deborah sighed, the first time Kate had ever heard such a thing from her. “It seems we’ve both done something very foolish, haven’t we?”

Kate knew she had done more than one foolish thing recently, but Deborah? “I doubt you’ve ever done anything foolish in your life,” Kate said.

“Perhaps.” Deborah sighed yet again. “But for the first time I’m not certain that’s something to be glad about.”

“Do you mean Alex?” Kate asked gently. “Did he . . . say something?”

“Not really. But he . . . acted differently.” Deborah grimaced. “But if Josh said that to him . . .”

“Don’t blame Josh. I started it,” Kate said. “You’re a wonderful woman, and if he’s too blind to see that, then it was time someone opened his eyes.”

“I’m sure you only meant to help, but I should be far past harboring any tender feelings for a man, especially one so much younger.”