McCrory's Lady (17 page)

      
Instead, she heard a rustling of sheets and the solid whump of a body hitting the mattress, followed almost immediately by soft snoring. Snoring! She turned and glared at her husband. The lout had drunk himself into a stupor and passed out diagonally across the bed. Maggie eyed the settee for a moment, then gritted her teeth and swore.

      
“I'll be damned if I'll sleep on that rickety contraption.” She walked around the bed and seized Colin by his arm, yanking hard in a vain attempt to pull him onto his side of the mattress. The man was dead weight. She crawled up on the opposite side of the bed and tried shoving at his left shoulder. Still no luck. How could a man who looked so lean be so heavy? She sat back, with her heels sinking into the heavenly softness of the first comfortable mattress she had slept on since leaving her bed in San Luís.

      
Colin snored blissfully on under her baleful glare.

      
“You miserable, mule-headed Scots swine!” She lifted his arm and placed her knee in his back, then shoved again. He seemed to rouse, stopped snoring and flopped over onto his side, leaving her with half of the bed. Sighing with relief, she reclined on the mattress, then reconsidered and sat up. What if he rolled over onto his back again? He'd flatten her. Or worse yet, what if he woke up, still drunk, decided the hell with their agreement and tried to make love to her?

      
No. As Colin himself had said, he was “not nearly drunk enough.” Still, one of those bundling boards seemed like an excellent precaution just to show a pig-headed Scot how determined a Sassenach could be.
Are you worried about his forcing you—or your giving up without a fight?
an inner demon taunted.

      
She observed his even, slow breathing and the way the muscles of his back and arm moved with every breath. His lower body was haphazardly covered by the sheets, but one foot, long and surprisingly elegant with a high arch, stuck out from beneath the bed covers. Numerous scars marred his upper body, no doubt from bullets, knives and all other sorts of mayhem; but rather than detract from his male beauty, they only seemed to add to it. Longish hair fell around his nape in soft dark swirls, shimmering with silver flecks that looked like Stardust.

      
Maggie fought the irresistible urge to run her fingers through that thick hair and touch those lean, sinewy muscles ridged with the trophies of his survival in this violent land. Colin McCrory was a dangerous man.
And my husband.

      
Some husband—a man who vowed never to touch her, who considered her a worthless harlot good enough to bed outside of wedlock but never good enough to make love to as a man did his wife. She looked around the moon-dappled room, her eyes narrowing calculatingly as they made an inventory. There was nothing that would work as a bundling board. She would have to improvise. Then, her eyes fell on his heavy leather gun holster and cartridge belt, and a grim smile curved her lips.

      
Maggie slipped from the bed and seized the gun belt. Taking the Peacemaker from its holster, she carefully removed all six rounds from the cylinder, then replaced the heavy weapon and wrapped the belt tightly around the holster. The forty-five seemed to weigh as much as a small boulder in her hands. With a wicked chuckle, she returned to her side of the bed and climbed in. She shoved the rolled-up gun belt firmly against the small of his back. Colin grunted but did not awaken. With a beatific smile on her face, she lay back down and drifted into an exhausted sleep. Let him try and roll over on that!

* * * *

      
The cantina never closed. After midnight the customers started to trickle out, those still able to stand up and stagger after a night of drinking. Others slumped face forward onto the rough pine tables. A few slid bonelessly out of their chairs onto the filthy sawdust-strewn puncheon floor and lay amid the sour stench of spilled beer, cigar butts and lobs of tobacco juice that missed the cuspidor.

      
Wolf Blake was one of the few men hardy enough to remain upright at so late an hour. He sat in a corner, well away from the front door, as was his usual wont. He also sent the pretty little Mexican
puta
who made overtures on her way, which was not his usual wont. The barkeep had furnished him with a full bottle of tequila, now empty. Eyeing the bottle, he wondered if he had drunk the worm in the bottom of it and decided he was too drunk to care.

      
But not drunk enough to forget the vision that had haunted his dreams ever since the day he had caught that bastard Price spying on Eden McCrory. Eden, child woman with the shy, sad smile and warm, whiskey gold eyes. Before he called Beau Price to task for his perfidy, Wolf had been just as guilty. How could any man turn away after seeing her slender little body gleaming with droplets of water clinging to every sweet soft curve? Even before that fateful day, indeed from the first evening in the canyon when they had rescued her, Wolf had been strangely taken with her fey beauty. The morning when that drunken miner had put his hands on her, Wolf had itched to kill the man and then fought his insane desire to take her in his arms and shake her senseless for endangering herself that way.

      
Being a half-breed and one of the hated Apaches at that, Wolf had stayed clear of Anglo women, especially fancy young ladies from rich families who were prissy, frigid and not worth the trouble of pursuing. Yet, there was something ethereal and vulnerable about Eden McCrory. He originally told himself the attraction was simply because her pale blonde beauty was forbidden to a swarthy half-caste gunman, but he knew that was not true. He was certainly sympathetic about what Lazlo and his men had done to her, but his feelings ran far deeper than pity.

      
And all of that was before he had seen her naked in her bath. Ever since, he dreamed of those proudly pointed little breasts with pale pink nipples, that slender waist and those delicately flared hips, the small golden triangle of curls at the juncture of her thighs, those slimly curved legs. Every inch of her body was silky pale and smooth as satin.

      
He had taken extra turns at sentry duty just to keep from dreaming about her; but still, riding every day in their small group, he could not keep his eyes from seeking her out. It had been excruciating torture, made even worse because she treated him as if he were a leper, avoiding him. Wolf would never forget the angry accusing look in her eyes when she caught him beating Price. She certainly made her feelings of contempt and loathing for him clear. Still, he was drawn to her.

      
“I'm a damned fool,” he muttered, tipping the bottle up to his lips to drain the last drop. Tomorrow would bring a terrible hangover, but that was tomorrow. Somehow, Wolf Blake had to get through another night.

Chapter Eight

      
Colin awakened with a throbbing pain in his head. The damn whiskey. That was a bad idea last night. He tried to roll over, only to feel an even worse pain stabbing in his back. Reaching behind him, he extracted his wadded-up gun belt from where it seemed to have fused permanently to his right kidney. What the devil was going on? Then he snapped his head around to look at the woman sleeping on the other side of the bed. That was an even worse idea.

      
Everything started spinning and he saw stars. With a loud groan he dropped the gun belt back onto the bed between them, awakening Maggie. She bolted upright and stared at her prone husband with narrowed eyes.

      
The soft, springy mattress bounced; and he groaned again, then roused himself enough to give out with several exceedingly explicit curses dealing with the sexual practices her parents employed with various barnyard animals.

      
“If you wanted to become a rich widow, why didn't you just get it over with mercifully and shoot me with this?” he rasped as he struggled up onto one elbow, glaring at her through bloodshot eyes and rubbing his back.

      
Maggie shrugged. “I didn't intend to kill you, just to keep you from rolling over on me in your drunken stupor and crushing me.” He eyed her, then the gun. “I removed the bullets first,” she added dulcetly.

      
Colin hated the smug look on her face, hated the oversweet tone of her voice, even hated the vivid auburn of her hair that seemed so bright in the morning light that it hurt his eyes. “I could always reload.”

      
“Your hands are probably too shaky. You'd shoot off your own foot—if you could even get a shell into the cylinder.”

      
“For a woman facing death, you're awfully brave,” he said, uncoiling the mangled cartridge belt.

      
“For a man who pioneered Arizona Territory, you're awfully cowardly.”

      
His head jerked up and he glared at her, then winced as another wave of pain pounded through his skull.
      
“Cowardly?” he asked, his voice soft and dangerous.

      
“Was getting blind drunk the only way you could face me last night? I thought we had a civilized agreement about the sleeping arrangements. Did you have some problem with it?”
You desire me but you don't want me as your wife.

      
“Aye, I have some problem with it! You've damn near crippled me—and I'll drink whenever I feel like it—as much as I want. No woman has ever told me no before, and you won't either.”

      
“I told you no, Colin; but when you came bursting through that door last night, you didn't look as if you intended to stick to our agreement. That's why you got drunk.”

      
She had hit too close to the truth of the matter and it made him furious. He'd sat with Blake and Rosa for several hours trying not to think about spending the night alone with Maggie Worthington. No, Maggie McCrory—his wife in name only—if he could keep his hands off of her lush body. She was right. He was a coward for trying to drown his lust in a bottle. He hated her for knowing it. The woman was many things, but a fool was not one of them.

      
He let his gaze rake over her, revealing both lust and scorn. “Only a gelding would find you undesirable, Maggie, and I'm damn well not a gelding. But I am a man of my word. For Eden's sake, I'll keep our bloody agreement.”
If it kills me!

      
Maggie met his angry, contemptuous stare head on, then sighed and looked away. “Eden has some romantic notions about us, Colin. She needs to believe that men and women can love one another.”

      
He arched one eyebrow. “You think we should act like honeymooners around her? Considering that we plan to separate when her future's secured, that seems like a cruel trick to play on her.”

      
“We don't have to act love-struck, just civil,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.

      
“After you nearly crippled me, I'm not exactly feeling civil,” he replied, rolling up and rubbing his back again as he swung his feet over the side of the bed.

      
“You started it—bursting in here stone drunk and looking at me as if I were...”
A whore you'd paid for
.

      
He threw off the sheets and walked over to his clothes, jerking on a pair of denims. Then he faced her. She still sat in bed with the covers protectively clutched in her fists. “I won't frighten your delicate sensibilities again, Maggie. Crown Verde has a big ranch house. You'll have your own bedroom. Bar the door between it and mine if it will help you sleep better.” He finished dressing with a quick economy of movement. “I'll be civil if you will—for Eden's sake.” With that, he left the room.

      
The sound of the door closing echoed hollowly. Separate bedrooms and civility. Why did it all sound so terribly wrong, so empty now? She had agreed to this arrangement. Her pride had demanded she do so when he outlined his terms for the marriage. Confused and unhappy, Maggie arose and prepared to face her new role as mistress of Crown Verde.

* * * *

Prescott, one week later.

      
“I'm not certain that breaking the engagement is the wise thing to do, Mamá,” Edward Stanley said cautiously as he stirred sugar into his coffee and tasted it. His dark eyes studied the imperious woman.

      
Sophie Stanley stood by the bay window overlooking their splendid view of the capital. Prescott lay below in the wide, shallow valley; its frame and brick buildings interspersed with cedar and spruce trees. The town planners had built it with particular attention to a precise orderly grid and decidedly Anglo authenticity in a territory still predominantly Mexican. Sophie approved of Prescott, but her eye was on a higher destiny—Washington, D.C.

      
A thin, slight woman, the Widow Stanley commanded strict respect and attention by sheer force of will. In spite of her sixty-six years, her posture remained ramrod straight. Silvery hair drawn severely back from a pinched, fine-boned face tended to draw attention to her piercing ice blue eyes. She was a small wasp of a woman, and everyone in the capital was wary of her sting.

      
Edward knew her back was up by the stiff way she stood, staring out the window, perfectly motionless. He waited for her to speak, a habit learned in early childhood. As an only child, born late in his parents' lives, Edward Stanley had always been sensitive to their moods, especially Sophie's since his father passed on when he was still a small boy. He had grown up, molded both by his father's looks and his mother's will. Unlike Sophie, he had dark brown hair and eyes. Of medium height, he was stocky and square-jawed. Most women considered his straight, regular features to be handsome. He cultivated an image of earnestness.