Kit Gardner (19 page)

The whiskey flamed through his belly, a welcome diversion, however momentary, until his fingers gripped the glass. A man’s inability to forget the past was a sorry excuse for seriously jeopardizing his position. And it wasn’t the folks in Twilight that worried him, not even the thought of that gang returning to recoup all the pride they’d had slaughtered for them in that churchyard.

Some whiskey-logged part of him knew he should have killed them, all three of them, right there in front of the church and the women and the children. He should never have let them ride out of town and on to another, where they would be certain to nurse their vengeance and, inevitably, spill the news of a fast draw in Twilight.

Twilight. A town whose sheriff barely knew how to shoot. A town that would have little need of a hired gun. That sort of news would find its way quickly to Wichita and beyond.

Levelheaded thinking slammed about in the muddled recesses of his brain. Yes, now would be a prudent time to think about heading on. No sense in even considering returning. Too great a risk. He’d be found out. It was only a matter of time.

And then she’d know the deception he’d played on her. A new pain and humiliation would settle in her eyes, this time for good. It was too late, dammit. Too late to undo all the damage.

Better simply to move on. Just mount up and ride off. Forget her.
Forget her.

“Hey, cowboy,” a husky female voice murmured close to his ear as twin palms moved with experienced deliberation over his chest to caress his belly. Soft breast rubbed provocatively against his back. Musky scent drifted over him, and then the seasoned voice. “You lonely, cowboy?”

Forget her...

He turned as he’d done countless times before, too many times to remember, his hands slipping with a seasoned surety about the woman’s waist. She was achingly young, beautiful, blue-eyed...and blond.

He took an invisible blow to his midsection. She entwined plump white arms about his neck and offered full red lips. Her breasts swelled from her recklessly low-cut red satin gown, pushing into his chest with merciless abandon. She laughed, low, and shrugged one rounded shoulder. As intended, the cap sleeve slipped down her arm and the gown sagged from her breasts, allowing him a full view of a plunging cleavage and large coral nipples.

A feast for any man. Any sane man. His for the taking. And the leaving. Life as he’d know if for so many years. Simple. So very simple. He could disappear forever into a life like that.

Forget her...

She shimmied against him, her amply perfumed breasts all but overflowing her gown, snuggling into his chest. Her eyes slanted up at him...waiting, hopeful.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

* * *

The night descended with a mocking dispatch, creeping into the yard with a swiftness and surety Jessica would never before have thought possible. Indeed, how many lonely nights had she stared from the same kitchen window and listened to the sluggish ticking of the mantel clock as darkness took its time to chase away the dusk? Too many nights working a needle through a sampler to simply pass the time, her only companion the soft drone of her son in deep slumber upstairs. Darkness had been no ally to her then, nor was it now. A foe, taunting her then with her solitary existence, and now...

Where was Stark?

She finally left the house, unable to bear the overloud ticking of the clock or the inane drudgery of needlework a moment longer. Even Christian’s gentle snores mocked her for not seeking her bed at such a late hour. Yet she knew no amount of fitful tossing upon a mattress would ease the knot of apprehension gathering into a deep foreboding in her belly.

Her lantern cast a dim glow about the barn. She paused. Nothing comforting here, either. Just the solitary silence of night on the prairie. Even the smell of fresh hay stoked her anxiety this eve and summoned memories of a night not long ago when she had ventured here to tend to Stark’s wounded shoulder.

And now...nothing but a barren loneliness, with but a promise of what once had been in the newly planked wall of the barn. The wood flowed smooth and strong beneath her palm. To one side, planks lay piled in readiness beside nails, hammers, a saw. A job incomplete. As if purposely left there, to await his return.

She turned, her throat swelling closed, mists fogging her vision. She passed Jack’s empty stall, the cot where Stark had slept, without glancing at either, and found herself on her knees before his trunk, her fingers drifting over the worn leather latches.

Where was he?

She lifted the trunk lid, only to shudder and close her eyes as the familiar scents wrapped like invisible silken ties about her. Spicy, woodsy, clean and supremely male...all tugging at her. Her fingers played over the cotton shirts, smoothing, caressing, and a yearning blossomed within her, so bleak she gripped one hand over her belly.

Grief, more deeply felt than she could ever have imagined. For a man she barely knew. This endless well of emotion never before tapped, not even when Frank had died. It made little sense.

Yet reason had fled the moment the sun sank below the horizon and Stark still hadn’t returned. He had left her. She felt this now with a conviction that cleaved her soul and left her hollow. He was gone, never to return to that waiting pile of wood, to the woman who wanted just one more dance with him, one last chance to smile into his golden eyes, no matter that he intended to ride out of her life one day.

Hot tears burned, and she buried her face in cool cotton shirting. Anguish writhed like a living thing in her belly. Despair engulfed her as soundly as the creeping of the night. A sob struggled to escape from her throat. Opportunity lost forever. She should have clutched at it while it all loomed within her reach, should have run as fast as her legs could carry her to that stream with him, no matter the risks, the inevitable heartache.

Instinct, or perhaps some barely audible stirring of the air, bade her lift her head. She blinked through unshed tears and the tangled curtain of her unbound hair.

He stood just inside the barn, one arm braced upon a beam above his head, as though he’d lingered there for some time. Watching her.

Silent as the creeping of the night, he had come.

The world tilted. All breath left her beneath an onslaught of relief, of blossoming desire, all tangled up with an unbidden anger that left her trembling. And kept her rooted to her spot.

Yes, better rage than some embarrassing blathering that she’d believed him gone for good, that the mere thought had ripped her heart from her chest and plunged her to fathomless depths of despair. Yet even anger sputtered like a squashed tempest as she stared at him...and he at her.

His eyes reflected hooded flame, insolent, savage, full of forbidden promise, like the arrogant curve of his lower lip. His boldness he wore like a cloak this eve, draped over the breadth of his shoulders and the exposed band of his chest where his shirt hung open to his waist. Lamplight played with a wanton abandon over that furred expanse, capturing her gaze. Lean hips jutted in those tight denims. Tonight they seemed to mold his thighs and the swell of his pelvis with the most daring aplomb.

She swallowed thickly and dug her fingers into the shirt she still clutched to her belly. Something in his manner... She’d never felt such wariness in his presence before, as though she dared not tread too heavily, lest she tempt the beast lurking there. And a beast he was, smelling heavily of turpentine, with the look of the devil himself in his eyes. Silent. Wary. Yet something barely checked simmered just beneath that fierce veneer.

“Where were you?” she asked, rising to her feet and facing him with chin jutting. Reason, prudence, years of learned behavior, all bade her flee this man, even more the sudden intimacy of the night. Yet her feet remained solidly beneath her.

His lip barely curled, his gaze flickering for the briefest moment to the open trunk. “Looking for something in there?” Sarcasm flowed through his words, despite the leisured yet supremely audacious moving of his eyes over her. He might well have touched her, so palpable was his regard. His hunger was raw, unabashed in its display, yet he remained unmoving there, one arm braced against the beam, his eyes fixed upon her breasts. “You should be in bed.”

Heat poured through her veins, pooled deep in her belly and in the sudden thrusting peaks of her breasts. At one time, not long ago, she would have closed her eyes in humiliation at such a wanton, uncontrolled response. But she’d since experienced the stabs of pleasure that come when desire displays itself so boldly in a man. This man. Particularly when he showed no inclination toward any apology. No deference to her tender sensibilities. Just this simple, raw male hunger.

She should have run for her life. Instead, she drank of it as would a desert-bound soul of the coolest water.

“You saved us all today,” she said rather breathlessly, her voice husky from passions stirred. “Thanks seem grossly inadequate, given what you did.”

His jaw took up a rhythmic tic, yet he gave no reply, simply watched her like a lion intent upon a kill.

She forced another swallow down her throat and sought the elusive lightness of tone. What was this sudden difficulty in conducting a simple conversation with the man? Perhaps it was because the man looked utterly uninterested in conversation at the moment. “The sheriff is rather intent upon making you his deputy. It’s a well-paying job. Far better than what I can offer you here. I will, of course, understand if you choose to—”

He moved so swiftly, all remaining words fled her like scattered birds. The blood drained from her limbs, rushed in her ears, and she was quite certain she would have crumpled in a heap had he not gripped her upper arms and shook her.

“Why don’t you ask me, Jess?” His teeth bared savagely, and with one flex of his arms he crushed her against his chest, driving all breath from her lungs and flooding her with desires better known to pagan souls. “Or don’t you want to know why your farm boy can shoot like an outlaw?”

She blinked up at him, feeling dread congeal until it was like a lead ball in her chest. “Stark, please—”

His grip upon her arms became almost painful, so entirely not in keeping with the fevered heat of his body melding with hers. “Please what? Please spare you the truth, so you can run from that, like you do everything else that doesn’t suit your damned virtuous life? What don’t you want to hear, Jess? That I’ve killed men? That I’ve looked into their eyes and taken their lives?”

“Please—”

Her toes barely skimmed the dirt as he lifted her flush against him, his hard mouth just inches from hers. Her chin lifted. Her soft lips parted, and she stared into his eyes burning with an intensity to match that of the most glorious sunrise. “Do you have any idea what killing a man feels like?” he rasped. “What it’s like to live with memory like that? I’m no outlaw, Jess. I’m a hired gun. Paid to kill. Paid to hunt people down, to breed terror in them. Paid for my shot, by men lower than the scum in the deepest sea. Do you hear me, Jess? These men have no value for human life. And I’ve worked for them. I’ve taken their money and done their bidding.”

Her denials fluttered and died upon her lips. The truth. Somehow, she’d known all along, yet she’d denied even her own suspicions as the foolish conjurings of a woman once scorned and betrayed. Even now, she didn’t want to know that somehow, in some way, he’d deceived her. Yet did it matter that he had, when in her heart she trusted him, and still she knew not why?

“You spared those men today,” she whispered, her eyes searching his. “You could have killed them. You had just reason. Yet you didn’t.”

“Damned stupid of me,” he snarled, his frown embedding itself deeper in the weathered crevices of his face. “They’ll be back, Jess. They’ll come looking for me, simply to avenge their misbegotten sense of pride.”

“Perhaps.”

“I did nothing but endanger the whole town with that foolish display. I should have killed them all.”

“You saved the town.”

“I’ve jeopardized your and Christian’s safety.”

“I feel remarkably secure to have been unduly jeopardized.”

“That’s because you’re a foolish woman.”

“Then for once I shall delight in that fact.”

“They’ll be back, with three more just like them.”

“Perhaps. And if they do, I have every faith that you will save us all once more. Then again, if they have any sense whatsoever, they will simply ride on to another town, and another after that, and never make mention of the incident. Most probably we will never see them again. I think you realize that.”

“The hell I do. I’ll kill them this time. All of them. Thrice over. And it will be bloody. I promise you.”

Her fingers itched to smooth those lines from his face, the shaggy fall of his hair from his tortured brow. The pain so deeply ingrained in his eyes. “It would suit you well to have me believe you some murdering monster, wouldn’t it?” she murmured. “You have borne the title so long you find it of more comfort and solace to you than that of farmhand, friend, and hero of the people.”

This prompted a dubious narrowing of his eyes. “Hero of the—? Hell.”

“Ah. The title doesn’t sit well with you, eh? Well, now that you’ve given this heartfelt confession, I suppose you expect me to shriek with fright and demand you take yourself and your beast from my farm with undue haste. Glower and bark all you like. Spin tale after tale of the evil skulduggery and terror you’ve stirred in the blackest of hearts throughout the West. A most fascinating tale, I’m sure, and one I would love to hear in all its horror-inspiring detail. You see, I’m not afraid of you, Logan Stark. I never was.”

“You will be.”

She stared into those fathomless golden eyes, and felt the heat of his breath upon her cheek, the vitality emanating from him, the gentleness in his touch even now, despite the ominous promise of his words. Those same hands had held her child with infinite tenderness. Those same hands had thrown the blade that killed that rattler and had slipped the strap of her camisole from her shoulder like a whisper of the softest breeze. “No. I will never be afraid of you. I don’t care how many men you’ve found it necessary to kill to keep yourself alive. I know only that you found yourself here for good reason. Whatever it is that you’re running from, I only hope you can keep it at bay a good while longer. I want you to stay. I want my barn fixed and my ceilings patched and the house painted. Just as you promised.”