Heart of the Hawk (9 page)

He was losing his mind. Or his manhood, he thought sourly. Between the widow and that damned book, he couldn’t even think straight anymore. Here he was, being made an offer he’d be crazy to turn down, the chance to seek the release he’d been dying for just a day ago, with a willing and tolerably attractive woman, the only kind of woman he dealt with, and he couldn’t even stir up a trace of interest.

He watched as she finished the brandy, then licked her lips in a suggestive manner that promised him things he hadn’t thought about in a long time. His body should have roused to the mere idea, but instead he just found himself thinking that if he left now instead of waiting until morning, he could be back in Gambler’s Notch by noon.

Inwardly, he rattled off a string of curses directed at himself and his own stupidity. Outwardly, he sighed. “Some other time.”

The woman looked surprised. “I don’t make that kind of offer to just any man, Hawk.”

“Thank you,” he said, for the moment meaning it. “But some other time.”

She reached over and ran a hand up his arm. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if maybe he could work up some interest after all. Nothing. He wasn’t aroused; he was only tired.

“I’d make you happy,” she said huskily. “Very happy.”

Not likely, Josh thought. But he said, “I’m sure you’d try.” He stood up, dug his last silver dollar out of his pocket, and added it to the whore’s stack of coins. “Buy yourself a night off instead, Lily.”

Something flickered in her dark-rimmed eyes, some trace of the woman he supposed she’d once been. “I’ll save you a spot on my dance card,” she said softly. “Come back and collect it sometime, Hawk.”

“Maybe,” he said. He picked up his own glass, downed the last swallow, and headed for the swinging doors.

By the time he reached the stable where he’d left the wagon and its load, he’d again run through every curse he knew. And every vicious word had been directed at himself.

Still swearing, he tied Buck to the back of the wagon. He left the buckskin saddled, just in case, but took his Winchester out of the scabbard and set it on the wagon seat. It had been a while since he’d driven a team, but he supposed he’d remember fast enough. He checked the load, although he doubted anybody would have dared to go near it once it became known it was his.

After a moment’s thought, he went back and got his saddlebags as well; the widow had insisted on sending him off with a good supply of jerky and bread that he figured he’d be glad of in a few hours.

“Should have eaten that instead,” he muttered to himself as he slung the bags up onto the seat.

They hit with an oddly heavy-sounding thud.

His brow furrowing, he lifted the bags again. There was more than just food in there, he thought, lifting the flap on the heavier bag cautiously. He reached inside and felt a familiar shape. His breath lodged in his throat. Disbelieving, he pulled it out.

It was the book. The book he’d intentionally left behind, shoved behind a crate in the widow’s storeroom.

And he knew damned well it hadn’t been in those bags when he’d left Gambler’s Notch.

“YOU GAVE HIM all the money you had set aside to pay for supplies?”

Kate nodded at Deborah.

“And he left the day before yesterday?”

Kate nodded again. She could see Deborah calculating the hours to Granite Bluff, and how long it might take to get back with a heavily loaded freight wagon.

“He couldn’t be back until late tonight, even if he turned right around and started back the next morning,” Kate said, staring out toward the front of the store where the early afternoon sun was glinting off the glass. She’d done the same calculating in her mind countless times as she’d lain awake last night, wondering how big a mistake she’d made.

And trying not to acknowledge the incredible possibility that this odd, off-center feeling she’d had ever since Josh had left stemmed from a very simple source: that she missed him. She hadn’t realized how he’d taken up so much of her life and her thoughts until he was gone, and she found herself wandering aimlessly, pacing, waiting. When she at last realized what she was doing, she’d run from the knowledge just as she’d run from Arly.

When her friend said nothing more, she forged on.

“Aren’t you going to tell me I’m a fool?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me I’ll never see that money again, or the supplies?”

“No.”

Deborah picked up a can of peaches and added them to her basket. Kate sighed. “You are a wonder, Deborah. How do you manage to be so . . .”

“Wise? Discreet? Restrained?”

Kate smiled. It wasn’t a particularly happy smile, since she wasn’t it all sure she wasn’t the fool she’d expected her friend to call her.

“All of those things,” she said. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Deborah looked uncomfortable. “If I’d been a true friend, I would have thought of a way to get you away from Arly long ago.”

Kate shook her head. “He would only have hurt you, too. I couldn’t have lived with that. It was so awful when he hurt Luke, because of me, and I—”

“Hush,” Deborah said soothingly. “It’s over now. Arly’s gone, and you don’t ever have to worry about him hurting anyone again.”

Kate sighed, for the first time wondering if she could live with this, either.

“Do you think he’ll have any trouble?” she asked, without stopping to think what her assumption that Deborah would know who she was talking about might imply.

Deborah blinked, then gave her friend a speculative look. “I would think The Hawk could accomplish just about anything he set out to do.”

Kate’s mouth tightened. “You just don’t think he really set out to get my supplies.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“He said . . . he said he wasn’t a thief.”

“I doubt that he is.”

“But I gave him all that money—”

“Kate, Kate,” Deborah said, shaking her head, “that might seem like all the money in the world to you, but to The Hawk? I suspicion he gets that much for a day’s work.”

In that case, Kate thought wearily, perhaps I owe it to him, for he certainly did a fine day’s work for me. She saw Deborah give her a sharp look, and tried to smile.

“I swan, girl, you’re up and down these days,” Deborah said. “I know you can’t be sorry to be free of Arly.”

“No,” Kate admitted.

“I suppose it’s wicked to be glad of a man’s death,” Deborah said, “and the good Lord knows I’ve seen enough of men dying to wish never to see it again. But if ever a man deserved it, that one did.”

“I . . . suppose you’re right.”

“You know I’m right. You’ve got a good life to look forward to now. You’ll find some good, decent man to marry—”

“No.” Kate shook her head positively. “I’ll never marry again.”

“Now, Kate,” Deborah said in a placating tone, “not all men are like Arly. You’re young—”

“No,” Kate repeated. “Besides, who would want to marry me? Arly only did because he had to. A man wants a pretty woman, or at least one who can . . . who can—”

She broke off, unable to say the words, but knowing she didn’t have to; it had been Deborah who had given her the grim news.

“I never said you couldn’t have children,” Deborah said gently. “Just that it might be very difficult for you to conceive.”

Kate wrapped her arms around herself. She’d never wanted Arly’s child, had lived in fear of someday having to protect a child from her husband’s brutal wrath when she couldn’t even protect herself. She’d even been grateful when Deborah had told her a baby was unlikely. But now she found herself lacking in the only thing she could see a man would ever want her for. She certainly would never capture one’s attention with her looks.

“You have the store now,” Deborah pointed out.

Kate shook herself out of her self-pity. “What?”

“You’re a woman of some means now, Kate. That’s something to consider.”

“I . . . suppose so.”

She hadn’t really thought of it that way. The idea of a man who would want her just for the mercantile didn’t appeal to her, but was it really so different than a man who would want a woman only for the children she could give him? And for that matter, was either any different than Arly, who wanted her to fix his meals, do the work in the mercantile, and submit to him at night?

She shivered, shoving those ugliest of thoughts out of her mind. She didn’t have to share her bed with Arly anymore. Never again would she have to face that painful humiliation. With any man. There was no point; the only reason she could see that any woman would participate in that brutal act willingly was for children, and since she—

“Miss Kate! Miss Kate!”

Luke’s excited voice was audible before his rapid footsteps. The boy burst in, a grin as big as the Rockies on his face.

“He’s back! He’s got the wagon!”

Kate stared at the boy.

“Well, well,” Deborah said, her voice holding an undertone that suggested she was responding to far more than just Luke’s news.

Kate continued to stare at Luke, joy and relief flooding her so completely that she couldn’t speak.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Luke asked when she didn’t react. “The Hawk is home!”

The words sent a ripple of heat through her.

Home. The Hawk is home.

Chapter 6

JOSH WAS DUSTY, hot, and tired. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, his backside was sore from a night spent sitting on that miserable wagon seat, and his hands were stiff from the unaccustomed task of driving a heavy team. He was generally miserable, and didn’t much care who knew it. And he forgot it all a moment later, when he walked into the mercantile and Kate, eyes shining, threw her arms around him.

Instinctively, his arms went around her in turn, and then it hit him in a rush, that wave of heat that had been so strangely absent in Granite Bluff. Kate Dixon had more curves than he’d thought, and he swore he could feel each one. He felt like a boy who’d never had a woman’s body pressed against him before, and his own body responded as quickly as if it were true. As if having this particular woman welcoming him back were something he’d waited his entire life for.

He swallowed tightly, trying to brush off that ridiculous idea with the thought that if the widow held him so close like this for another minute, she was going to be in for a big surprise. So was he, for that matter, he thought as his blood began to surge, then pool low and deep inside him. But for the life of him he couldn’t pull away from her.

Kate suddenly seemed to realize what she’d done, and released him hastily. Just as hastily she backed up a step, clasping her hands behind her back as if to assure him she wouldn’t do such a thing again. But her eyes were still alight as she looked at him.

“You came back,” she whispered.

Her relief was clear, and it added another layer to his exhaustion, frustration, and irritation. He resisted the urge to yank off his hat and hold it in front of him, hiding his half arousal; better that she knew what she’d done to him. It might keep her from doing it again.

“Of course, I did,” he snapped. “Did you think I was going to steal your canned peaches and disappear?”

“ ’Course she didn’t,” Luke put in with a laugh full of a boy’s reverence for his hero, and utter unawareness of the other tensions in the room. “But we didn’t ’spect you back so soon. Granite Bluff is a long ways.”

“You are early,” Deborah said mildly.

Only then did Josh realize that both the boy and the dauntless Miss Taylor had been standing there during Kate’s unexpectedly enthusiastic greeting. And while the boy might be too young to understand the undercurrent here, he doubted Miss Taylor was. She might be unmarried, but Josh guessed she knew a thing or two.

“I started back last night,” he said, less sharply but still gruffly. He glanced at Luke. “Go start on that wagon, will you? Untie the rope, and get that canvas off. I’ve got a lot of unloading to do.”

“You must be exhausted and hungry if you traveled all night,” Kate said. “Rest, and I’ll fix you something to eat. The drivers can unload—”

“You’re looking at the driver.”

“What?”

“The Barton brothers seemed in a big hurry to get back home.”

“I’ll bet they did,” Luke chortled happily. “I’ll bet they ran like rabbits once they found out they’d tried to cross The Hawk!”

That was close to how it had happened, but Josh merely shrugged. “Get started, will you, boy?”

Luke nodded and darted outside almost as quickly as he’d come in.

“But the wagon,” Kate said, looking puzzled. “How will they get it back?”

“They don’t. I bought it.”

“What?” she said again.

Josh let out a compressed breath; he was in no mood for a long discussion.

“I couldn’t very well get the load here without it. You can use it next time you need supplies. Send someone to meet them halfway again. It’ll be cheaper.”

“Use their wagon?”

“Your wagon,” he said, wondering why she didn’t understand; she was usually so quick.

Kate frowned. “But what about the horses?”

“They came with the wagon,” he said with a tinge of sarcasm. “I could hardly hitch Buck to the thing.”

Kate’s eyes widened as she stared at him. “You bought the wagon
and
the horses?”

Josh tried to hang on to the last of his patience. “Don’t get in a pucker over it. I didn’t use your money.”

“Well that’s a considerable relief,” Deborah put in, her tone very dry. “That means they’re yours, and
you
can pay for their keep.”

Josh wasn’t amused. It was suddenly too much, and he was too tired to deal with this abrupt change from delighted greeting to censure. He didn’t know why the hell he was doing this anyway, any of it. He should have left the dust of Gambler’s Notch far behind by now.

“You said you needed those supplies,” he said irritably. “And now you’ve got them. If you don’t like the way I did it, then maybe you—”

“I’m sorry,” Kate said swiftly. “I
did
need the supplies, and you saved me having to start all over. And it would be difficult, trying to buy goods when people are stocking up for their trip west.”

He hadn’t even thought of that, but he supposed few enough folks could afford the two hundred dollars or so each it cost to take the train west, making the big prairie schooners the transportation still most commonly used by those yearning for the land beyond the Rockies.

But Kate had thought of it.

Arly always told them I was stupid. Useless. A nuisance. They don’t trust me. They don’t think I can run this place.

The Barton brothers were the stupid ones, Josh thought, his anger fading as he remembered what Kate was up against. And he owed her. Owed her his life. He understood a little better now why she’d done it, why she wasn’t consumed with any great need to see him die for killing her husband, but that didn’t lessen the debt any.

He turned his head at the sound of Luke returning, still at a run.

“All done,” the boy said proudly.

Josh nodded. “I’ll get started unloading.”

“I’ll help!” Luke was back outside in an instant. Josh shook his head tiredly; the boy’s energy was making him feel even more weary.

“Josh, at least sit and rest for a while first. You look so tired.”

Kate’s concern washed over him like balm, and for the moment he forgot how angry he’d been just a short moment ago.

“I’ve been sitting,” he told her with a wince. “Besides, if I stop now, I may never get started again. Best if I just keep moving.”

He turned and walked back outside. Surprisingly, Luke was more help than he’d expected, racing back and forth with the smaller items: bolts of cloth, lengths of stovepipe, and individual cooking pots out of a larger crate Josh pried open for him. Still, it was a lengthy process, and a rough one; the wagon was packed to capacity with a very bulky load.

Josh was shoving a large, heavy crate that he guessed had to contain Art Rankin’s shipment of iron for horseshoes to the back of the wagon when Marshal Pike, cheerfully whistling something that sounded vaguely like the refrain of “Beautiful Dreamer,” paused in his walk to observe the struggle.

“Well, now,” he said cheerfully, “isn’t this a sight I never thought to see?”

Grunting, Josh ignored the man and his cheer. He leaned into the crate with his shoulder and managed to shove it a couple of feet. Pike was grinning now, and Josh didn’t like the looks of that.

“The Hawk taking to shopkeeping. Why, nobody’d believe such a thing, were I to tell them.”

Josh glared at the man over the top of the crate. “Then don’t.”

Pike tugged at his mustache, still grinning. “I haven’t. Leastwise, not yet. Had to come see for myself if it was true, what folks are sayin’.”

Josh didn’t want to know what folks were saying. He didn’t want anything except to get this done, eat a decent meal—Kate had been cooking something that had had his stomach growling for the past hour—and go to sleep for two days.

“Looks like it’s plumb factual, though,” Pike said, chuckling audibly now.

With a final surge born of annoyance, Josh shoved the box to the back edge of the wagon. Rankin, he thought, could tote the thing himself the rest of the way. Then he jumped down to the ground and turned to look at Pike dourly.

“All right, Marshal. You’re set on telling me; that’s clear enough. So what are folks saying, besides that I’ve taken up shopkeeping?”

Pike glanced at the mercantile, sniffing as if he could detect the aroma of Kate’s cooking clear out here. Perhaps he could, Josh thought, wondering if that thick mustache somehow improved the man’s sense of smell.

“Why, they’re saying it’s plumb amazing,” Pike said.

Exasperated by this game the marshal was obviously enjoying at his expense, Josh clenched his jaw. Pike had pretty much left him alone up to now, and he didn’t want the man angry at him, but he was in no mood to be toyed with.

“What,” he said tightly, “is so all-fired amazing?”

Pike grinned widely. “That The Hawk has been tamed by a sparrow.”

KATE FELT JOSH’S gaze on her as she served up the meal of chicken and dumplings. It was early, barely dusk, but she’d begun cooking soon after Josh had begun to unload the wagon; she’d never seen a man look so tired before. And he looked worse now after unloading all those supplies and toting them inside, stacking the ones that she had no room for on the shelves in the storeroom, eating away at his already limited sleeping space.

And she felt badly that she’d questioned what he’d done. If he’d felt it necessary to buy the horses and the heavy wagon, then she was sure he’d been right. It certainly wasn’t her place to challenge him when he’d been doing her a tremendous favor. Whatever he felt he owed her because of her help in saving him from the hangman’s noose, he’d surely more than paid it back by now.

“What’s this?” Luke asked as she set a plate before him. She’d invited the boy to stay when Josh had thanked him for his help, saying he’d worked as hard as any man today.

“Chicken,” Josh said, rather solemnly.

“And dumplings,” Kate added, amused by Josh’s tone—chicken was a rarity in this land of beef—and the fact that she thought she’d heard his stomach growl.

“You eat chickens?” Luke asked, looking at his plate doubtfully. “I thought they were just for eggs.”

“They usually are, out here,” Kate explained. “Back in the States, folks eat them all the time.”

“Why?” Luke asked.

“Because there are lots of them,” Josh said. “Now eat yours.”

Kate sat down as Josh spoke, sounding, she thought, like a father directing his son to be quiet at the table so he could begin his own meal. The thought made her want to smile, and at the same time filled her with a wistfulness she’d never experienced before. She didn’t dare contemplate the cause of that feeling, just as she didn’t dare think about the foolish, scandalous thing she’d done this afternoon, something she’d never in her life even thought of doing before, hugging a man like that. Yet she’d done it, throwing her arms around Josh in front of both Deborah and Luke, clinging to him, and she just barely a widow.

She’d told herself it was the heat of the stove that had her cheeks so flushed, but she knew it was really humiliation. At first she’d been thankful Josh hadn’t talked about it, but then she realized he was probably as embarrassed as she had been, and thinking all kinds of pitiful things of the widow who had treated him so familiarly. She tried to keep her mind occupied with her cooking because she couldn’t bear to think about what she’d done.

Nor did she dare think about the odd sensations that had coursed through her when he had held her against him, when she’d felt the hard, solid male body against her own. Arly had only frightened her with his massive bulk and strength; Josh, while he was much less burly was nearly as tall and seemed just as strong, didn’t frighten her at all. At least she didn’t think that was the word for the feeling that went through her every time he got close. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t the fear she’d always associated with Arly.

“This is delicious. Thank you,” Josh said when he finally slowed after nearly cleaning his plate.

“You’re welcome. You more than earned a good meal, both of you, today.”

Luke tried to smile around full cheeks. Josh took a swallow of coffee, then asked, “Where
did
this bird come from?”

Kate smiled. “It was a gift from Deborah.”

“A gift?”

“She felt bad about what she said this afternoon.”

Josh gave her a sideways look. He looked back at his plate, took the last bite of his chicken, finished the last, plump dumpling, then set down his fork.

“She was right,” he said at last. “I didn’t think about you having to pay for the horses’ keep all year, when you really only need them a few times.”

“I may need them more,” she said, “if the Barton brothers won’t do business with me.”

“They will,” Josh said. “I made that clear to them before they left Granite Bluff.”

“See, Miss Kate,” Luke said, his first words since he’d warily tested the chicken and found it much to his liking, eating nearly as fast as Josh had. “I told you Josh’d handle it!”

“Yes,” Kate agreed, “so you did.”

She glanced at Josh, who was staring down at his plate as if the boy’s words had made him uncomfortable.

“That new dress in that load,” he said suddenly. “I hope it’s for you.”

Kate blinked. “Me? Of course not. It’s for the store.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Well, certainly, it’s very nice, but—”

“Then why don’t you take it? Arly isn’t running things anymore.”

“That would be foolish. It’s to sell, not for me. I have no use for new clothes.”