Patricia Potter (22 page)

“He’s no different from any other hand.”

“He is, Willow, and you know it, and the town knows it.”

Willow felt herself shaking. He was right. She might lose her job now. Only with Sullivan’s help had she been able to keep it. Still…

“I won’t ask him to leave,” Willow said stubbornly.

“Then I will.”

“No!” The word sounded like a pistol shot, and even Willow was taken aback by her vehemence.

Sullivan’s face whitened. He stepped closer to her, aware suddenly of something new in her face. She had always been pretty, but now she appeared radiant, her eyes full of fire. “There’s nothing between you and him?”

Willow felt herself blush, and she turned around. “Can I make you some coffee?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. I just thought we both needed some coffee.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

Willow spun around. “No. The answer is no. He’s just been very good to us, and there’s something about him that makes me think he’s so very alone.”

“He made it that way himself, Willow. Gunfighters don’t have friends.”

“Well, he does now. Ever since he saved Sallie Sue.”

Sullivan gave up temporarily. At least Brady and Chad were there. That was something. “No coffee. I have to go.” He saw the relief on her face. “But I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

“There’s no need, really.”

“There’s every need in the world.”

Now it was Willow’s turn to surrender. She knew he wouldn’t change his mind. “All right.”

“You’ll send Chad for me if you need anything.”

She nodded.

He hesitated as if hating to leave. “You’re sure?”

She grinned at him. “I’m very sure.”

“Dammit, I hate to leave you with him.”

“I’m not alone, you know.”

“You might as well be,” he said with frustration.

“He’s been here half a dozen times now, and he’s never so much as—”

Sullivan’s eyes narrowed. “As what?”

“Said anything or done anything that gives any cause for alarm.”

“Just being who he is gives cause for alarm.”

“Oh, Sullivan, you worry too much. And how was Marisa when you took her home?”

“You’re changing the subject again.”

“Because I think you and Marisa look grand together.”

He smiled then. “You’re hopeless.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, Willow.” And as he closed the door, he prayed to God it would be.

L
OBO THREW HIS
blanket down in the corner of the barn. It smelled like newly cut lumber, which was not unpleasant. Still, he would rather have been outside, especially when Brady Thomas took a place alongside the opposite wall.

But if Newton made a move, it would be the barn, and he also wanted to make sure Thomas didn’t do something stupid again.

Neither of them had a lantern. Neither of them wanted to return to the house to fetch one. So they felt their way, and when Lobo finally lay still, he missed the stars and the moon above, and the fresh, sighing breeze that cooled the evening.

He wondered what in the hell he’d just done, why he had agreed to stay on the ranch when he’d intended to stay in town. It had been partially the doctor, partially the kiss, partially the boy. And all three reasons were stupid, the kiss most of all.

He thought about that kiss. It had been unlike any he’d ever known. Gentleness had never been an attribute of his, and yet he had been consumed with it when he’d looked into those sky-blue eyes.

What was he expected to do anyway, for chrissakes? He had been so damned sure she’d be disgusted when she found out who he was. But he should have known better. After all, she’d taken in a one-eyed saloon girl and a drunk ex-sheriff who burned down barns. Hell, he was practically a choirboy in this company. The thought almost made him chuckle.

Almost.

13

W
illow couldn’t sleep.
She kept remembering the taste of his lips on hers.

Jess. Lobo.

She knew she’d been falling in love with the former. She had dreaded the latter. How strange that they’d turned out to be the same person.

And who, really, was he?

Like Odysseus, he seemed to be many men, to have many contradictions.

The following day was Sunday. Perhaps she would have time then to discover something more about him. It was a delicious thought, delicious and irresistible and frightening.

She had accustomed herself to the idea of being a maiden lady, although she’d never truly thought of herself that way. But she knew others did. She was twenty-five, and she’d never experienced the wonder and awe of being in love, and she’d never been willing to accept anything less.

She had almost come to believe that man-woman love was something to be found only in books, an emotion reserved for the gods, that ordinary people merely settled for companionship or security or the joy of having children.

But her heart pounded frantically when she thought of Jess just yards away. Her hands ached to touch him, and she felt a deep yearning hunger inside. She finally understood why the gods and goddesses suffered so many torments for love.

She’d known this odd hunger from the first time she’d seen him. He’d stood scowling, his body covered with soot after risking his life for Brady and Jupiter. She’d felt struck by a thunderbolt, mesmerized by the magnetism that had bound them together so completely for several seconds.

A gunfighter. A man who killed for a living.

An involuntary shudder went through her as she remembered her revulsion at Gil Morrow’s suggestion that she be protected by a man who made his living by the gun. She thought of Canton, of how coldly he had killed a man at the dance.

She couldn’t possibly think of Jess that way, not the man who’d climbed down a well to rescue a child, who’d wrestled a bull to save a boy and braved a burning barn to pull out an obstinate bull. No matter what others saw when they looked at him, she saw only those things.

But, dear God, he was still a wanderer, a man who probably would die violently any day.

She rose and went to the window and looked down at the barn, and something in her warmed just knowing he was there. Gunfighter or not, she felt irrevocably linked to him, and she wasn’t going to go through the rest of her life without reaching toward him, without exploring these wonderful, tingling, wanting feelings. No matter the cost. She’d always gone after what she wanted. She couldn’t stop now.

Willow thought of his eyes, those glittering turquoise eyes that were so good at barricading his emotions. If she hadn’t seen that brief naked compassion for Chad, she might think they were merely empty.

She had always been very good at unraveling layers of protective barriers from people, ever since she was a young girl and had mothered some of her father’s young pupils. She had heard and seen more than he’d ever suspected, and despite the fact that she had a hopeful nature, she also realized that terrible things happened to people and often shaped what they were. That thought kept her from hating Alex; she knew something truly heartbreaking had changed and twisted him.

What had happened to Jess?

A gunfighter.

She tried to imagine him as a character in one of those dime novels her students read. In her mind’s eye she saw him standing at one end of the street while another man approached. She saw them both go for their guns. She saw him fall….

No! her mind screamed. No!

Then her mind moved to another scene. Jess in her kitchen, his hand rubbing the back of his neck as if troubled, his eyes lit with a very brief glint of humor. She saw him holding Chad and looking down at him. She saw him rush into a burning barn for a bull.

And her stomach flip-flopped.

A gunfighter!

A
TEACHER!

For chrissakes, a teacher. A pillar of the community.

Lobo didn’t know what time he finally gave up trying to sleep. He rose and left the barn, automatically strapping on his gun as he moved silently to the fence and sat on the top rail.

He looked up at the sky. Two more days and it would be full moon. He’d always heard strange things happened at full moon, but nothing could be stranger than the events of the past ten days.

What kind of fool was he? Hungering, like some wolf cub whose mother was killed. Hungering for something that didn’t exist.

Why was his body so tied up in knots, so consumed by an ache that spread to the empty places within him like a prairie grass fire? He had never been aware of such emptiness before, but now he felt it with a vengeance. He’d let himself feel the warmth in that ranch house, the affection that so abounded between its occupants, and now it pierced him like a knife in the gut, turning and twisting until he was aflame with quiet, desperate agony.

He swallowed, telling himself he was as crazy as an Apache with loco weed. He was imagining the whole thing, making something out of nothing. His gaze went to the house. He saw a shadow at the window and the very slight movement of the curtains. It gave him little pleasure to know that Willow, too, couldn’t sleep.

As if burned, he turned away, looking toward the mountains. The last refuge for a wounded wolf. He should go there and heal himself, as he had in the past, fill those empty places with the smell of the forest and the icy touch of cold, unfettered wind. He’d done it before when he’d been wounded in a gunfight, when he’d found himself a complete outcast in two societies that had laid claim to him and then despised him.

Why didn’t she despise him?

Because she didn’t know enough to. She didn’t yet completely understand. And when she did, she’d be like everyone else.

He was so consumed in bitter thoughts that his usually sharp ears didn’t hear the soft tread of slippers or the softer swish of a skirt. And when his consciousness detected another presence, he jumped down and went for the gun. The weapon was in his hand when he whirled around and saw her standing there, her eyes wide with surprise as her gaze fixed on the gun.

“Chrissakes, lady,” he said roughly to conceal his fear. He could have killed her. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you about sneaking up on a man?”

“I didn’t think I was sneaking,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

“What in the hell are you doing out here?”

There was no warmth in his voice, Willow thought, only irritation. She wondered if she’d made a mistake. But he’d looked so alone, and something had compelled her to hurriedly pull on a blouse and skirt and go to him.

Somehow she knew that explanation would not be welcomed. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said instead.

He allowed himself to look at her then, really look at her. He purposely made his perusal rude and insulting, his gaze lingering on her breasts as if mentally undressing her. In the light of the moon he saw a flush creep up from her neck to her face.

“Are you going to put the gun away?” This time there was no quiver in her voice, and Lobo was stunned by her lack of outrage. There was only an understanding of what he was trying to do: send her running and screaming back to the house.

He slowly holstered his Peacemaker and turned away. “Go back inside,” he said. “You don’t belong out here. Not with me.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you heard?” he said in a taunting voice. “I’m the White Apache. No woman is safe with me.”

“Then why do I feel perfectly safe?”

“Because you’re a damn fool.”

“People keep telling me that,” she admitted.

“Do you ever listen?” he asked. There was a note of curiosity in his voice.

“Not if I think I’m right.”

“Are you always right?”

“No.” It was a reluctant admission.

He turned to her, and his eyes seem to bore into her soul. His lips were as firm and unmoving as ever, and all she could think of was the way they’d felt on hers.

“Go inside, lady.”

“Willow.”

He shook his head, and his lips softened for the slightest fraction of a second. “Go inside, Willow.”

“I can’t sleep,” she argued. “You obviously can’t sleep either.”

“I like the night,” he whispered. “I couldn’t sleep inside.”

“Jess…”

“Lobo.” He corrected her just as she had corrected him with her name. She sensed that he was willing her to accept the name and all that went with it.

“Where did Jess come from?”

He was silent for a very long time, as if he were weighing whether he should tell her.

“He died a long time ago,” he said finally.

“How old was he?” Willow knew he was talking about himself, about the Jess that once was, that still was. Only he wouldn’t admit it.

He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “‘Round seven. I’m not sure.” Lobo didn’t know why he told her that. He hadn’t intended to. He didn’t want to tell her anything. He didn’t want to give any of himself away to anyone.