Katy Run Away (3 page)

Damn straight, she ought to be ashamed. More than that, she ought to be sorry. And if he had anything to say about it, by golly, she was about to be very, very sorry indeed!

Cal ducked and Katy let out a shriek when he suddenly tossed her over his shoulder and hefted her kicking feet off the ground. She began to struggle in earnest now, her small fists thumping against his back right up until the flat of his hand caught the curve of her rump. Satin and ruffled petticoats did little to mitigate the impact. Katy yelped again, her whole body going stiff as a board over his shoulder. Chuckling laughter from the audience followed Cal as he carried her off the stage.

“Put me down!” Katy cried. “Cal! Cal, stop it!” She tried to grab onto the threshold of the first small room he came to, but she let go quick enough when he smacked her bottom again, harder this time. Yelping, she grabbed her bottom, rubbing fiercely, and in she went. There was a mirror in this room, scandalous, too-short dresses like the one Katy was wearing and pots of face, lip and eye paint scattered across the narrow top of a bench-like table, along with a series of straight-backed chairs tucked up under it.

Heavy footsteps were coming up the hall behind him.

This room would have to do.

Cal closed the door, grabbed the back of one chair and jammed it up under the knob, effectively blocking it from opening. The next chair he grabbed, he pulled out into the middle of the room. Katy had roughly two seconds from the moment he dropped her onto her feet and she wasted both of them; first, by trying to run, and then again by swinging on him when he quickly caught her arm. Cal blocked the blow. He also sat and, with a single hard jerk, he spilled a very grown-up Katy facedown across his knees.

“What are you doing?!” Katy struggled to get up again, her arms flailing when he tossed the volumes of satin and ruffled skirts up over her back. Her hands shot back, grabbing and slapping at his when he jerked the ties apart and skinned her bloomers far enough down the backs of her thighs to bare the milky round curves of her bottom. He caught her wrist, tucking her interfering hand up under her stomach. He captured her kicking legs, pinning them in a vise of his own. And he closed his ears to her shouts and then her shrieks as he began to put a burn in her bottom the likes of which she’d never forget.

“Your father would be appalled!” It was the only thing Cal could think to say, and after that, he let the flat of his hand do all his talking for him.

“Baby girl! Baby girl!” Somebody—that brunette from the stage, by the sounds of it, tried to break into the room.

She beat and rattled at the door, but the chair held firm and after a few seconds of escalating panic, fed by Katy’s shrieks and cries, a deeper voice from out in the hall said, “Nobody ever died from a bare ass whupping. He ain’t hurting her. Get on back to work now. Go on.”

That rattling at the door stopped; Cal’s hand did not. He paddled Katy with single-minded devotion, stripping every bit of white right on out of her skin and turning all that curvy flesh behind her a rosy shade of humility and hurt. He spanked until her shrieks and cries became gasps and wails and then pleading sobs for him to stop—please stop—please! The flat of his hand burned and hurt, but he kept right on spanking, turning the rosy hue of her bottom to a deep shade of blazing hot burgundy and taking comfort from knowing this had to be hurting her a hell of a lot more. He’d never spanked any woman in his life the way he was spanking not-so-little Katy Furlow, and the only reason he stopped when he did was because of that booming voice out in the hall.

“Calvin Anthony Beckton, that is
enough
!”

Cal sat stiff and angry on that chair, his aching hand held high above its cringing, writhing target, listening to the ragged sobs of Katy crying over his knee. His arm was trembling with the furious need to continue his whole body was shaking, but that voice was right. It was enough. It was maybe even a little bit past enough. Her bottom looked raw. It looked swollen. It looked like it really hurt.

Good. Because she deserved for it to hurt.

Catching her by the scruff of her neck, Cal pulled her up off his knee. He marched her into the nearest corner, squeezing her in between a crush of dresses and a bureau with open drawers that overflowed with stockings, garters, ribbons and wadded up bundles of lacy underthings. He pushed her in so close to the walls that her nose almost touched, and in a voice that sounded so much calmer than he was currently capable of feeling, he said, “You move so much as an inch, and I’ll take off my belt. You hear me?”

Holding her bottom in both hands, Katy bounced a little, fighting to hold still and not to stamp her feet or rub or give in to another round of shoulder-wracking tears. Eventually, she nodded. “Yes.”

She gasped and sniffled, and Cal let her go. He quickly moved away, getting as much distance between them as that tiny dressing room would allow. His hand was pulsing, throbbing. He flexed his fingers, pacing a short restless distance, glaring at the back of her head with each pass until a slow, steady knock at the door finally wormed its way in past the blinding force of his anger and commanded a response. He went to the door and dislodged the chair.

The bartender stood with one hand on his hip and the other on the muzzle of the rifle he’d braced against the floor. “Cal,” he said, his conversational tone at complete odds with the stern look he wore.

“Ben,” Cal answered in kind.

“You two get what you needed talked out?”

“There’ll be time enough for that on the train back to Wyoming,” Cal replied. “Tally up what I owe you for the damages, and if she owes you anything at all, you can add that to it. Katy doesn’t work here anymore. I’m taking her back home.”

CHAPTER TWO

Katy hadn’t said two words to Cal since he’d held her down over the dresser in the Abilene and scrubbed the make-up off her face. Frankly, that was all right by him. While he had a good many things he wanted to say to her, right now, Cal wasn’t sure he could say any of it without putting her back over his knee first. So he kept his mouth shut. Even harder, he kept his hands to himself.

They stood together side by side in front of the train station, two tickets burning a hole in his jacket breast pocket. Mothers being what they were and prone to worrying under the best of circumstances, he’d already sent Katy’s mother a telegram.

Found Katy. STOP Will be arriving by train on Monday. STOP Kindly have someone waiting to meet us. END

Katy’s hard, unforgiving glare was locked on the distant horizon, much the way her arm was locked in his restraining grip. She looked mad. He didn’t much care. As soon as the line dwindled, he was going to march her up onto that train, they’d find their seats and he was going to take her home. He owed her father that much for all the good the man had done for Cal and his family. He wasn’t about to look the other way while Clifton Furlow’s only daughter kicked up her heels in a bawdy house.

“You have no right,” Katy said stiffly, not looking at him.

“I got every right,” he replied, just as stiffly, and when it finally came their turn to board, he pushed her up the steps ahead of him and propelled her down the aisle between the rows of narrow benches until he found a quiet spot. She tried to take up the aisle-side seat, but he forced her over one more, giving her no choice but to accept the one nearest to the window so that he could block her in.

She glared at the bench and then at him, no doubt thinking the same thing he was. She’d have to hike her skirts and climb all the way over his lap in order to get out, and she hadn’t a prayer without his noticing. Her lips compressed into a hard, flat, rebellious line.

“Sit,” he said.

Her mouth tightened even more, but eventually she did, lowering herself quite gingerly to perch on her part of the cushion-less bench. He thought he saw hints of a pained wince flash across her features just before she turned her face to the window. Good. As tender as his hand still felt, her bottom ought to be at least twice as sore.

Shoving her valise under the bench at their feet, he sat down beside her and let his long legs stretch out, filling up the narrow space between their bench and the one in front of them. This was a lower class car. Instead of each row of seats facing one another, everybody faced the back of the person seated in front of them. Cal didn’t mind that; he wasn’t in any mood to be sociable.

“I need to use the privy,” Katy said stiffly, just as the train blared its whistle, warning of imminent departure.

“Too bad.” He wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. Not until the train was well underway, and she had no choice but to accept that she was going home. He didn’t understand why she was being so reluctant about it. “One would almost think you prefer a life of sin and degradation.”

“Hypocrite,” she snapped. “You were there too.”

“Men are allowed.”

“And women aren’t?”

“That’s right.” He tried to make himself comfortable on what was quickly proving to be an uncomfortable bench.

“If that were true, whorehouses and dancehalls would be nothing more than messy tributes to Madame Palm and her five illegitimate daughters.”

Cal snapped his head around to stare at her. He quickly shifted to face her fully, holding up his finger and dropping his voice to a low growl. “One more comment like that and not only will I blister your fanny, but I will scrub every corner of your mouth with soap.”

Her mouth compressed into a tight, hard line. Folding her arms across her chest, she turned her dark glare from him to the window. “You’re a brute.”

“And you’re a brat, so don’t think for a second I won’t put you back over my knee and paddle your bottom raw, right here in front of all these nice people, if you push me to it.”

There were only four other people in this car, but he knew as they went from stop to stop, they’d likely pick up more.

Katy must have known it too. Her cheeks flushed and she lowered her voice to a whispering hiss. “I’m eighteen! I can go where I want to!”

The temper he thought he had firmly under control flared hot behind his face, burning in his eyes. He only just managed to lower his voice too. “What would your father say, hm? Seeing you like I did, flashing your fanny to a bunch of ogling ne’er-do-wells, kicking your pins in a place like that. He’d be ashamed!”

“My father’s dead!”

“That still doesn’t make it right!” Someone two seats ahead of them turned around and looked their way. Cal swallowed hard, forcing himself to lower his voice even more. “And you know it doesn’t.”

She did, too. He could see the truth of it in her eyes when she cast her mutinous glare at him, cheeks all flushed with burning guilt. She opened her mouth, but then shut it again without a word and snapped her furious eyes back to the window, though not before he thought he saw the glimmer of tears.

Good. She ought to be sorry.

Folding his arms across his chest, Cal settled himself to endure the long train ride north to Wyoming. It had been ten years since he’d said goodbye to the Furlow ranch. He’d been…what, Katy’s age now? Maybe a little younger. Hell, she’d been eight the last time he’d seen her. It was hard to match the young woman he saw before him now with the little slip of a girl that he remembered—all bouncing braids, scrawny arms and legs and dusty pinafore dresses. Well, she wasn’t a little slip of anything anymore. She was all grown up and she looked it, both in her face and her body. The palm of his hand twitched. Though he hadn’t been paying much attention at the time, the bottom he’d paddled so vigorously had definitely not belonged to a little girl.

Another blow of the whistle and suddenly the train gave a groaning lurch as the wheels began to turn.

Katy shifted slightly beside him, her cheeks flushing all over again. “I need the loo.”

“You’re not going anywhere. Just hold your water.” Leaning out into the aisle, Cal glanced to the rear of the car at the closed washroom door. At the absolute rear of the car, it was also right next to the exit. Sitting back again, he watched the station drift past the window, only to be replaced by a veritable city of white canvas tents. They began to pass faster as the train gradually picked up speed and soon all signs of Dustwallow were gone. The windows looked out now upon a sea of brown grass, sage and scrub. It was fifty miles to their next stop and it would be nightfall before they reached it.

Katy shifted again, and then again.

He tsked, not completely without sympathy. “Guess you should have gone back at the Abilene when you had the chance.”

“I didn’t have to go back at the Abilene,” she hissed. “And it’s none of your business what I do or where.” She glared outside, frowning fiercely, arms folded across her chest.

“You used to be the sweetest kid.”

“You think I don’t remember you too?” She snorted, a very unladylike sound. “You spent all day yelling at me. I mean, how dare you! You think you can walk back into my life after ten years, kidnap me, drag me home by my ear as if I were a recalcitrant child—”

He snorted right back at her. “You are a recalcitrant child.”

Her arms came unfolded, color flooded her face and she vaulted to her feet almost faster than he could follow. He only just blocked her way before she shoved past him and walked away.

“Move.” Her teeth were clenched. Her lips barely moved.

“Set your fanny back on that bench,” he snarled back. “Or I promise you’re going to spend the rest of this trip standing up.” He wasn’t playing with her. All he could feel right now was his itching palm, but Katy did not back down. She didn’t even flinch. If anything, she leaned in closer, bringing her pretty face to just within inches of his. All he could see now was the flashing blue of her beautiful eyes. If he wasn’t already so angry, he might have found himself spellbound by them.