Lawless (14 page)

Laurel, delectably in disarray after their impetuous lovemaking, the skirts of her white nightdress still up around her slender hips, looked unfazed. Tendrils of golden hair brushed her smooth cheeks and her blue eyes were direct with challenge. “It’s possible. I lost track of the days while we were at the cabin and on our way back, but I’m at least a little late.”

He wasn’t an expert on how female cycles worked, but he wasn’t ignorant either and she certainly hadn’t had her flux during their time on the mountain at Gabe’s place. The rough calculation he did as he tried to assimilate what she just said told him they were out nearly three weeks and the past one made it four.

Late. Yes, at least a week, maybe two, depending on when her last cycle had been.

Jesus. He’d just been a little rough with her, not taking his time, wild with need and repressed emotion…

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” He reached for her, not certain why, stopped himself because being gentle now wouldn’t change what came before, and felt worse than he had the night he’d had to pretend to take her against her will. His arms dropped back down and he had no idea what to do.

Laurel had that unique ability. To completely disarm him, leave him uncertain, humbled, shaken.

She smiled with pure feminine assurance. “No, Cal, you didn’t hurt me. If you couldn’t tell that, you weren’t paying attention.”

This changed
everything
.

His whole—up until her—meaningless life.

He felt…shattered.

Blessed at this miraculous possibility.

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Frightened also, a new sensation and one he had no idea how to deal with. A child?

His child.

No,
their
child. He couldn’t fathom that Laurel, so achingly beautiful, so loved by her family, so able to choose any man, even one of the elite Bostonians Will had told him courted her when she went back East, didn’t look at all perturbed by the notion of having his baby. It stunned him.

He should say something. Reassure her, tell her he would always be there to care for her and the precious miracle she might hold, only he couldn’t be sure of that because of what he was and their uncertain future.

“Do you want to hear my compromise?”

The soft question brought him out of his self-absorbed contemplation. “I suppose so.

I have to admit you just threw me.”

“We should know soon. Let’s give it a week before you say anything to my father and I want to be there when you do, by the way. This isn’t just about you, but about me too, and maybe about the three of us.”

Put that way, how could he say no?

How could he refuse her anything anyway?

“A week is reasonable.” He stood. The house was utterly quiet and since he wasn’t good at talking about feelings, he preferred a more expeditious method to demonstrate his emotions. “One week and I tell your father one way or the other, agreed?”

Laurel watched him peel out of his shirt, her eyes heavy with the inviting look he’d come to know. “Agreed, as long as you make love to me again tonight.”

“We don’t have to negotiate that part of it,” he said as he sat down to remove his boots.

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Will wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, but blunt honesty seemed best, and so he guided his horse around a small patch of scrub and said in as neutral a voice as possible,

“If Laurel is going to spend the night in your room, Cal, I suggest you put a ring on her finger.”

It wasn’t surprising that the other man didn’t bat an eye, even upon fairly short acquaintance it was easy to discern his remarkable self-control. Instead their guest glanced out over to where the warm day laid a shimmer of heat across the valley, the mountains in the distance glorious against a vivid blue sky. “I told her it was a bad idea.”

No denial. Will hadn’t expected one, mostly because Cal seemed like the kind of person who rarely explained himself to someone else. On the other hand, Will felt he had the right—as Laurel’s older brother—to find out what the hell the man had in mind.

“She’s had a lot of beaux and never shown more than a passing interest. Even Weston Harper got only a few smiles and maybe a stolen kiss or two.”

No response. Not one word. Cal just rode beside him as they headed out to check on the far herd, the one pastured in the northernmost part of the ranch, the light sigh of a warm breeze the only sound besides the dull clump of their horses’ hooves. In profile, his face was impassive.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Will went on, determined they were going to have this conversation, even if he was the only one talking. “It happens more than I’d like. I usually go for a walk and it helps sometimes. I walked past your window. I could…well, damn it, I could
hear
you.”

He sure as hell had. Soft sighs, murmured words, the faint rhythmic creak of the bed.

There hadn’t been much of a mystery surrounding what was going on.

Cal finally looked at him, his silver eyes disconcertingly direct. “It wasn’t particularly an honorable thing to do right under your parents’ roof. I know it. But I love 100

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Lawless

her. I
love
her. I’d die for her, that goes without saying. For whatever miraculous reason, she seems to feel the same way about me. I don’t deserve it, don’t deserve her, but this has happened somehow.”

Laurel’s feelings toward the man who had rescued her weren’t exactly a secret to anyone who knew her well. Will understood her heart was involved and it troubled him because he had a feeling the mystique around Cal Smith wasn’t necessarily a good one.

He actually liked the man riding beside him, and his parents also seemed to cautiously approve, but there wasn’t much doubt he was reticent about his past and he had a dark, dangerous air to him sometimes that was simply unmistakable.

“What are you going to do about it?” A right-to-the-point question seemed best.

“She wants marriage.” Cal held the reins in one hand easily, sitting on his horse like he was a part of it, a natural cowboy at home in the saddle.

“Women do.” Will shied away from most of the young ladies he knew for that reason. He wasn’t ready to settle down just yet. “More to the point, she deserves it.

You’re not denying what happened between you, Cal.”

“No.”

“There could be a child.”

“She tells me maybe there already is.”

Fucking hell, that was quick. Laurel is pregnant and doesn’t have a husband. Over
my bleeding dead body…

Curtly, Will said, “There’s a local preacher in Tijeras. He can take care of this in no time.”

Something flickered in Cal’s eyes. “How trustworthy is he?”

Now they were coming to it. Will had struggled with how to handle this conversation, the questions crowding his mind like stampeding cows trying to fit through a hole in a fence. “What does he need to keep to himself?” he asked bluntly.

“I can’t marry her under a false name. That would mean it wasn’t legal and she deserves better.”

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Shit.
He’d wondered all along just who this man was. “Yes, she does,” Will agreed, tense, angry and apprehensive. “Care to tell me what name it is you’re not anxious to spread around?”

“Cal Riker.”

Cal Riker?

For a moment he felt blank. No wonder, he realized in unhappy comprehension, Cal wore those guns like he knew just how to use them. He’d used them plenty. How many dead men? Will didn’t remember precisely, but the legendary lethal force of Riker’s reputation alone made people run for cover. Very carefully, he repeated, “You’re telling me you’re Cal Riker?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me if it isn’t the best news I’ve ever gotten.”

For the first time, the man next to him looked grimly amused as his mouth curved in a humorless smile. “Yeah, I sort of thought you’d feel that way.”

“Laurel knows?”

“Yes. She knew the minute we met at the River Bend Outfit’s camp. I had to bargain for her and believe me, at six to one, it wasn’t a sure thing. Luckily, I bluffed my way into giving them my share of the take from the robbery for her and we left the next morning.”

Odd how that worked, with John Evans getting information on the exact location of the hideout somehow. Will gave the man riding next to him a searching look. If there was one thing he hadn’t heard about Riker was that he was a thief. “Someone told John where their camp was. We were out looking, hoping to find Laurel, but we couldn’t find it.”

“It’s big country.” The declaration was made in a cool tone.

In other words, no more on that subject. Will knew when to shut up, especially if questioning a man as dangerous as Cal Riker.

The father of his sister’s baby.
Jesus, this is an interesting mess
.

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“The preacher is pretty trustworthy,” he said slowly, weighing each word. “He’s also fond of Laurel and if she wants to marry you, I think he’d keep his mouth shut about who you really are.”

“You think.” There was a slight ironic note to that observation.

“Best I can do.”

“There’s a decent price on my head in Texas.” Cal sounded unmoved, his voice utterly without emotion. “Dead or alive.”

“Is that so?” Will wasn’t exactly stunned to hear it. Riker’s notoriety started with the prominent slaying of a judge who’d sentenced his brother to hang for the murder of a local shopkeeper. By all accounts, at the age of nineteen, Cal had accosted the judge on the street, given the man a gun and dared him to draw. When the judge, scared to death according to the eyewitness accounts, had finally gotten off a shot, it came nowhere near the mark, and Riker had drawn and killed the man with a lightning swift accuracy that had given him a name. Rumor said Riker’s younger brother was innocent and that’s why he went after the judge. The state of Texas didn’t seem to agree with his vigilante brand of justice.

Will wasn’t certain if he wouldn’t have done the same damn thing. He sure as hell had wanted blood from the River Bend Outfit when he’d heard they’d taken his sister off that train. He’d been there, in fact, when Sheriff Evans had stormed the camp, and he’d shot one of the fleeing bandits himself.

“I’m a marked man.”

“Yes,” Will couldn’t help but agree, “you are. But if Laurel loves you, maybe we can keep up this charade. Damn it, Cal, if she is pregnant you have no choice.”

“I’ve already told her I was going to come clean with your father.”

“He’s not going to like it, but then again, like he’s said before, he owes you.”

“All that matters is Laurel.” His companion turned away and for a moment, he looked as bleak as a winter’s day. “I never thought something like this would happen to me.”

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No man like him did, but the fact it happened at all proved something. Cal Riker might be a notorious gunman, fast on the draw and with a reputation for violence, but he was a bit more complicated than the legend. Will knew it after being around him for the past week, and he also knew his sister wouldn’t fall for a man who was truly a cold-blooded killer. Her rescue alone showed Riker was not some ruthless outlaw who made a living with his gun, and Will knew in his gut he was the man responsible for giving John Evans the location of the camp.

“I promised her I wouldn’t say anything for a week. She wants to be sure about the baby and she’s afraid he’ll want me gone if he knows who I am.”

Will knew his father. If Laurel loved Cal—even if he was Cal Riker—he doubted he would be willing to break her heart. “I think Pa isn’t going to be all that surprised.”

Riker shot him a sardonic look. “How so?”

“Let’s face it, the fact you can handle a gun a certain way hasn’t escaped anyone here. You also aren’t real anxious to go into town, and now I know why.”

“I doubt anyone would recognize me, but you never know.”

That was probably true if you lived your life on the run. “Think you can settle down?

Live here quiet-like with a wife and raise a family on a cattle ranch? If the answer isn’t damned clear in your mind, I’d say even if Laurel is carrying your baby maybe you should move on.”

“I’m not leaving her pregnant and alone.” The answer was flat and harsh. “Don’t you think I’ve told myself I should ride away for her sake? Well, hell yes, I have. But I flat out can’t, Will. I can’t do it.”

Something inside him eased, for the declaration was more than a little convincing.

“You seem sure.”

“It surprises me too.” The admission was a bit rueful. “As for settling down, it sounds like heaven to a man who’s told himself that he’d never see thirty. Without her, that was probably a pretty accurate guess.”

“With all the wild stories, I’m kinda surprised you’ve lived this long,” Will said dryly.

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“Yeah, well, half of them aren’t true.”

“If half of them
are
true, I’m still surprised.”

“I’m not easy to kill, but someone would get around to it eventually.” The statement was made with cold practicality. “However, trust me on this, I’ve got something to live for now.”

***

John strolled into the room, listening to the dissonant sound of the piano punctuated by the laughter of the patrons. The place was quiet, but then again, most cowboys hadn’t been paid yet for the month. At times you couldn’t think the noise was so loud. He went up to the bar and said, “Hi, Henry.”

“Howdy, Sheriff.” Bearded, with thick arms and a jovial smile, Henry Adams beamed at him across the polished surface. “Beer?”

“Not right now, thanks. Can you tell me something?”

“Like what?”

“I heard there was a stranger in here earlier. Older, wiry, hungry look about him.

Flashed a big bankroll and sat in on a game.”

“I remember him.” Adams inclined his head. “Name was Rollins. He was askin’