Merline Lovelace (6 page)

“And who might you be, to be throwing orders at us like that?”

From where she stood, Victoria couldn’t tell if the man was drunk or just plain bellicose. He sounded both.

“The name’s Garrett. Sam Garrett.”

The reply raised a buzz of whispers that came to her in snatches.

“…General Garrett’s boy.”

“…sister’s married to Black Jack Sloan, the meanest gunslinger this side of the Mississippi.”

“Used to be a horse soldier hisself, but…”

Evidently the pugnacious coaler had heard a few of the same snippets as the whisperers. His lip curling, he swept Sam with a scornful glance.

“So it’s Captain Sam Garrett, is it? I’ve heard tell about you.”

Hooking his thumbs in his belt, he rocked back on his heels.

“Word down at the armory is that you got shed of your uniform jest when it was lookin’ like you might have to fight ’n’ get it all dirty.”

There was a hiss of indrawn breath among the watchers, then utter silence. In the staggering quiet, rage sliced into Victoria. How dare the man utter such drivel! About Sam, of all people. He
had
to be drunk. Or insane.

“Maybe you’re the one we should be treating to a coat of tar ’n’ feathers,” the brawny coaler suggested with a sneer.

“You’re welcome to try.”

Sam’s exaggerated drawl raised a tide of red in the Irishman’s cheeks.

“Well, now, I’m thinking perhaps I will!”

With no more warning than that, he launched his attack. The men who had just staggered away from the fray took that as a signal to leap back in. Total chaos erupted as one combatant after another rejoined the fight. Within mere seconds, the street was
once again filled with a seething, punching, grunting mass.

Horrified, Victoria shoved her way through the onlookers. Her ears rang from their shouts of encouragement, and one overly exuberant spectator almost knocked off her hat when he thrust up his fist along with the fighters. Hanging on to her hat with one hand, she gained the edge of the walkway and searched desperately for a glimpse of Sam in the tangle of arms and flying fists. She found him finally half buried under a pile of burly railroaders. Blood poured from a gash on his cheek. One eye was already purpling.

Distraught, she turned to the two men on horseback just beside her. They were buffalo hunters, she guessed from their buckskins and the long-shanked skinning knifes strapped to their thighs. Looping their wrists over their saddle horns, they watched the fight with every evidence of enjoyment.

“Surely you don’t intend to just sit there,” she implored. “Don’t you see those two men need help?”

“Ain’t our fight, ma’am,” the elder of the two replied. “’Sides,” he added with a shrug, “I don’t hold much sympathy for shirkers, either. Them two deserve whatever they get.”

Infuriated all over again at hearing Sam described as a shirker, Victoria snapped her jaw shut. A single step brought her close enough to snatch the man’s rifle from its fringed buckskin scabbard.

“Here now!”

Startled, the buffalo hunter jerked on his mount’s reins. The gelding reacted to the vicious pull of the bit and danced sideways, ramming into the withers of the horse next to him. Before the two hunters could recover, Victoria had the heavy rifle up and to her shoulder.

She’d only fired a breech-loading Sharp once before, when she’d badgered her papa into taking her along on a deer hunting excursion. She’d hit the white-tailed doe he’d helped her aim at, but the sight of the animal going down, then struggling back up on her forelegs and dragging her haunches for yards before she collapsed, had instantly rid Victoria of all desire to join the ranks of skilled hunters.

She knew which end of a rifle meant business, however.

“Stop!” she shouted, her arms quivering under the gun’s weight. “Stop this at once!”

None of the brawlers paid her the least attention. She doubted they could hear her over the shouts and grunts and nauseating crunch of bone against bone. Taking a deep breath, she aimed the barrel at the sky and squeezed the trigger. Her action produced instantaneous results.

The crack of rifle fire froze everyone right where they stood. And the wooden stock slammed into Victoria’s collarbone with brutal force. With a mewling cry, she crumpled.

The small sound brought Sam surging to his feet.
Fists bunched, chest heaving, he caught sight of the woman lying in the street. Shock slammed into him.

His first thought was that she’d been shot, that some fool had fired off a round and hit her by mistake. With his heart in his throat, he plunged through the crowd. He reached her at the same instant a red-faced buffalo skinner swung out of his saddle.

“How was I to know she’d go for my rifle?” the man whined. “A little bit of a thing like that, trying to fire ole Bessie! The recoil knocked her right back on her bustle.”

Shoving him aside, Sam dropped to his knees. Only after he spied the rifle still clutched in Victoria’s hands did terror turn to relief. Almost instantly it flowed into fury. At Victoria for putting herself in the middle of a brawl. At himself for not protecting her. At the Irishman and everyone else in the damned street.

“You little idiot,” he muttered, gathering the unconscious girl into his arms.

With the buffalo hunter pouring apologies, excuses and colorful oaths into his ears, Sam mounted the steps of the Frontier.

“Someone run for Doc Anderson,” he snarled. “And fetch Mr. Parker from the
Tribune.
”

V
ictoria experienced the oddest sensation, as though one half of her body was encased in cold, wet ice and the other burned by a fiery heat. Frowning, she struggled to open her eyes. The mere effort of lifting one lid sent pain slicing into her shoulder and neck.

“Oh!”

With a gasp, she reached for her shoulder. Or tried to. For some reason, she couldn’t seem to raise her arm.

“Lie still!”

The bad-tempered growl produced exactly the opposite effect it had intended. Startled, Victoria wrenched both eyes open and immediately tried to flinch away from the ruffian leaning over her.

“Dammit, I said to lie still.”

Only then did she recognize the voice behind the battered face.

“Sam? Good heavens, are you…? Oh! Oh, my!”

With another gasp, she abandoned her attempt to lift a hand to his bruised cheek. Agony rolled from her shoulder to the rest of her body in hot, red waves.

“Make another move and I swear I’ll tie you to this sofa,” the object of her anxious concern snarled.

It took a few moments for the black spots dancing in front of her eyes to clear and his words to sink in.

“Wh—what sofa?” she panted when she had her breath back again. “Where are we?”

“In a private parlor of the Frontier Hotel.”

Victoria’s dazed glance took in walls papered with pink cabbage roses. A marble-topped sideboard. A porcelain washbowl decorated with delicate violets on the floor beside the sofa where she now reclined. Her head whirling, she brought her gaze back to Sam as he repositioned what felt like a block of ice over the agonizing ache in her shoulder.

Wincing, she glanced down and discovered it
was
a block of ice, wrapped in a sopping tea towel. Well, that explained the cold.

The heat came from Sam’s body, pressed hard against her other side. She was absorbing the welcome warmth when she made another discovery. She was practically bare from her neck to her waist.

Her blouse lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Her chemise straps drooped down to her elbows, imprisoning her arms at her sides. And someone had loosened her corset strings. It gaped open at the back and sagged in front, letting her breasts swing free. The lacy frill on her lowered chemise barely covered their tips.

She knew better than to attempt to cover herself by now, though. Even the slightest movement would generate another shaft of pain. With heat scoring her cheeks, she met Sam’s eyes again.

“What happened?”

“The recoil from the rifle knocked you flat on your back, at which point you fainted.”

His utter disgust pierced both her embarrassment and pain.

“Well!” With a little huff, she tilted her chin. “I should think you’d show a bit more appreciation for the fact that I came to your aid.”

He leaned over her, his battered face displaying not the least hint of gratitude. “One, I didn’t ask for your aid. Two, I didn’t need it. Between us, that wrangler and I were holding our own.”

“It certainly didn’t appear so to me!”

“Three,” he ground out through tightly clenched teeth, “if you ever again do something as hare-brained as putting yourself in the midst of a mob and your father doesn’t take a switch to your backside, I will.”

Sheer indignation dropped her jaw.

Sam could see that his bullheaded ingratitude shocked her. Hell, it shocked him. But he’d be a long time getting over the vicious jolt to his spleen when he’d seen Victoria lying in a crumpled, lifeless heap.

“You’re lucky,” he said curtly. “As near as I can tell, your collarbone is bruised but not broken. I’ve sent for Doc Anderson. He’ll be able to say for sure. In the meantime, we’ll keep ice on your shoulder to hold down the swelling.”

“It—it doesn’t hurt in the least.”

The lie was barely out of her mouth before tears filmed her cornflower eyes. One after another, the glistening drops rolled down her cheeks.

Hell! Sam felt guilty enough as it was. Guilty and angry and still rubbery with fear at knowing how easily she could have been hurt.

“I didn’t mean to add to your hurts,” he said gruffly. “I know your shoulder pains you.”

“I’m not crying because of my shoulder. I’m merely so…so
incensed
at your ingratitude that…that…”

In her stuttering incoherence, she didn’t notice that her chemise had slipped another inch, baring one rosy-tipped nipple.

Sam noticed, however. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

“Victoria—”

“You needn’t try to apologize at the moment,” she informed him with a sniff. “Later, perhaps, when I’m…when I’m more prepared to…”

“Victoria, sweetheart!”

His voice raw, he reached across with his free hand. He intended to tug up the lacy edge of her camisole. At that moment, he would have sworn on a dozen Bibles that was
all
he intended. But the brush of his hand against her breast stunned her into immobility, and, right under his palm, her nipple hardened to a tight, taut bud.

His gaze dropped like a stone tossed into a well. For a heartbeat, maybe two, he savored the sight and the feel of her smooth, firm flesh.

“Sam—”

Her hoarse whisper pierced the roar in his ears. He started to pull away, but she leaned forward. Or he thought she leaned forward. However it happened, her warm breast filled his hand. Against his will, against every instinct in him, he caressed its creamy softness.

“You’re so beautiful.”

He couldn’t believe he’d uttered the words aloud. Or that she didn’t faint dead away when his thumb stroked the engorged nipple.

Heat flamed across her shoulders, rushed into her cheeks. Her mouth parted. Her tongue traced a ner
vous trail along her lower lip. But she didn’t faint, and she didn’t draw away so much as an inch.

“Sam—”

This time his name came out on a moan. Or a plea. Sam still hadn’t decided which when he bent his head. His mouth was only a breath from hers when the door to the parlor crashed open.

“Liebchen, ist du…? Mein Gott!”

With a smothered curse, Sam jerked upright and tried to shield Victoria from her father.

Not just from her father, he saw with a swift glance over his shoulder. From her mother. From Doc Anderson. And from an unidentified female in a straw hat decorated with a stuffed pheasant.

“Victoria?”

Rose Parker’s strangled cry produced a groan from her daughter, who scrunched up in a tight ball and cowered behind Sam.

For long moments, utter silence gripped the parlor. Then Rose tipped her chin, thrust out her impressive bosom and sent Sam a signal as clear as any wigwagged across the plains by army scouts.

“Well!” she exclaimed, surging forward. “I must say I’m shocked beyond words that my daughter would allow her fiancé to tend to her in…”

“Mama!”

Uncurling from her instinctive crouch, Victoria cast an agonized glance at Sam and opened her
mouth to disavow any such intimate relationship. Before she could get out a single word, Rose ruthlessly forged on.

“…in the public room of a hotel, of all places. But Sam was quite right to put ice to your shoulder. You really are quite bruised, Victoria.”

Shooing him aside, she took his place on the settee.

“Do turn over, dear, and let me see the full extent of your injury.”

“Mama, please…” Holding her chemise over her breasts, Victoria cringed in embarrassment. “I really don’t…”

“My stars!”

Momentarily shaken out of her rigid calm by the ugly purple that now colored the whole of her daughter’s right shoulder, Rose took a moment to recover. When she did, she rapped out orders like a drill sergeant.

“Deitrich, go at once and ask the hotel manager for more ice. Mrs. Jordan, continue on to Miss Henry’s shop, if you please, and inform her that Victoria and I won’t be able to keep our appointment this afternoon. Sam, do move. You’re blocking the light. Better yet, fetch a stiff brandy.”

“Do you think Victoria should drink strong spirits just yet? Doc Anderson may prescribe a—”

With a quelling look, the matron set him straight. “The brandy’s for me!”

Dutifully, Sam procured a brimming snifter of brandy. A short time later, he listened with profound relief as Doc Anderson predicted that his patient would be as right as a trivet in a few days. When Rose wrapped her daughter in a cloak and prepared to depart the Frontier Hotel, Sam took the thoroughly shaken Deitrich Parker aside and asked formal permission to call on Victoria after dinner, if she was feeling up to it.

His brows waggling wildly, Deitrich looked to his wife.

Rose glared an affirmative.

A freshly bathed, shaved and pomaded Sam joined his parents at dinner and gave them an abbreviated account of the happenings outside and inside the Frontier. He also announced that he intended to ask Victoria to marry him.

“Sam!”

Delight and dismay warred on his mother’s heart-shaped face. Reaching across the table, she grasped his hand.

“You know I would love to see you marry such a delightful girl, but this is so sudden. I thought—That is, Suzanne and I thought…” Shaking her head, she began again. “Are you sure Victoria’s the one you wish to marry? You’re not just asking her to save her embarrassment? She wouldn’t want that. No woman would.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget how I felt when I saw her lying in the street,” Sam answered with brutal honesty. “Yes, Mother, Victoria’s the one.”

An image of a warm-skinned woman with glossy black hair and dark, compelling eyes flashed into his mind. Resolutely, he banished it.

“The only one,” he said firmly.

Julia might have been convinced if not for the tick in the side of her son’s jaw. Uncertain, she threw a look at her husband.

The general leaned back in his chair and eyed Sam thoughtfully. “You’re doing the right thing by Victoria, aren’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir.” Their eyes met across the expanse of mahogany. “I’ll make her a good husband.”

Sam repeated exactly the same vow to Victoria later that evening.

She was waiting for him in the ornately furnished front sitting room when he arrived at her parents’ home. Hands folded and gripped in her lap, she watched him with wide eyes. Aside from her pallor and the bulge of a bandage under the shoulder of her high-necked claret gown, she showed no sign of the afternoon’s ordeal. Nor any sign that she welcomed him or the proposal they both knew he’d come to make.

“Are you all right?” he asked, depositing his
bowler on a gate-legged table crowded with tin-types, painted porcelain boxes and a glass-globed lamp.

“I’m quite recovered, thank you,” she replied coolly. “No, don’t sit too close to me. I smell disgustingly of horse liniment.”

Ignoring her request, he claimed the seat beside her on the settee. He tried to claim her hand, as well, but she drew it back.

“Let’s not make this moment more awkward than it needs to be, Sam. I’m well aware of why you’ve come. You and my mother think to save my reputation with a sham engagement.”

Before he could refute the blunt statement, her chin tipped. China-blue eyes flashed a warning.

“I refuse to participate in such a charade,” she stated flatly. “I think— No, I’m quite sure I have backbone enough to withstand whatever snickers and smirks are aimed my way.”

“After this afternoon, I don’t doubt you have backbone enough to withstand far more than that,” Sam agreed. “And, like you, I have no intention of participating in a charade.”

Surprise took some of the starch from her sails. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To ask you to be my wife.”

“But you just said— You agreed—”

“I agreed I wouldn’t take part in a subterfuge. I want to marry you, Victoria.”

She stared at him, speechless, for long moments.

A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. She looked so young, so confused. So damnably innocent and sensually seductive. The hard knot Sam had carried in his chest since that scene in the Frontier Hotel loosened a fraction. Their union would work. He’d make it work.

“Why?” she asked at last.

His smile widened. “You may have noticed that I can’t seem to keep my hands off you.”

“As a matter of fact—” she wet her lips “—I have.”

“I tried, Victoria. I told myself you were just a girl, Elise’s friend. I stayed away from you these past weeks. But it seems we have only to get within striking distance of each other and the sparks fly.”

It was the truth. Sam could admit that much at least without a trace of guilt. He wanted her, and he’d sensed the same leaping hunger in her. Patiently, he waited for her to acknowledge the desire neither one of them had succeeded in curbing.

Her heart throbbing as painfully as her shoulder, Victoria tried to sort through her jumbled thoughts. She’d had hours to reflect on the mortifying incident this afternoon, hours to prepare a polite rejec
tion of the proposal Sam obviously felt compelled to present.

She hadn’t lied when she said she could withstand the whispers and titillated smiles she knew would come her way when word got around about the afternoon’s incident. But she hadn’t expected the sincerity she now saw in his eyes. Or the desperate longing to join her life and her body with his that pulled at her very being.

Her head spun and her chest squeezed so tight it hurt, but Victoria was her father’s daughter. She wanted to know—no, she
had
to know the facts before she leaped to any conclusions.

“I can’t seem to keep my hands off you, either,” she admitted. “But is this…this hunger enough to make a marriage, Sam?”

His smile tipped into a grin so wicked that Victoria’s breath caught.

“More than enough.”

Somehow, she found the strength to resist the heat curling in her belly and ask the question that hung poised like an ax blade.

“What about Mrs. Prendergast?”

His expression didn’t alter. “What about her?”

“I thought— Well…I had formed the impression that you hold her in some regard.”

“I do.”

The quiet affirmative set the ax blade swinging.
It had sliced halfway through Victoria’s heart before Sam’s next words registered.