Sunset Embrace (17 page)

Lost in his memories, he snapped the barrel back into place, spun the loaded six-bullet chamber, and twirled the pistol on his index finger with uncanny talent before taking aim on an imaginary target.

Lydia stared at him with fascination. When it occurred to Boss what he had done out of reflex, he jerked his head around to see if she had noticed. Her dark amber eyes were wide with incredulity. He shoved the pistol into its holster as if to deny that it existed.

She licked her lips nervously. "How . . . how far is your land from Jefferson?"

"About a day's ride by wagon. Half a day on horseback. As near as I can figure it on the map."

"What will we do when we get to Jefferson?"

She had listened to the others in the train enough to know that Jefferson was the second largest city in Texas. It was an inland port in the northeastern corner of the state that was connected to the Red River via Cypress Creek and Caddo Lake. The Red flowed into the Mississippi in Louisiana. Jefferson was a commercial center with paddle-wheelers bringing supplies from the east and New Orleans in exchange for taking cotton down to the markets in that city. For settlers moving into the state, it was a stopping-off place where they purchased wagons and household goods before continuing their trek westward.

"We won't have any trouble selling the wagon. I hear there's a waiting list for them. Folks are camped for miles around town just waiting for more wagons to be built. I'll buy a flatbed before we continue on."

Lydia had been listening, but her mind was elsewhere. "Would you like for me to trim your hair?"

"What?" His head came up like a spring mechanism was operating it.

Lydia swallowed her caution. "Your hair. It keeps felling over your eyes. Would you like me to cut it for you?"

He didn't think that was a good idea. Damn. He
knew
that wasn't a good idea. Still, he couldn't leave the idea alone. "You've got your hands full," he mumbled, nodding toward Lee.

She laughed. "I'm spoiling him rotten. I should have put him in his bed long ago." She turned to do just that, tucking the baby in with a light blanket to keep the damp air off him.

She had on one of the shirtwaists and skirts he had financed the day before. He wasn't going to let it be said that Ross Coleman wouldn't take care of his wife, any more than he was going to let it be said that he was steeping outside his own wagon when he had a new wife sleeping inside. It was hell on him and he didn't know how he was going to survive many more nights like the sleepless one he had spent last night. But his pride had to be served. After a suitable time when suspicions would no longer be aroused, he would start sleeping outside. Many of the men did, giving up the wagons to their wives and children.

She liked those new clothes. She had folded and refolded them about ten times throughout the day. Ross couldn't decide if she was a woman accustomed to having fine clothes who had fallen on bad times, or a woman who had never possessed any clothes so fine. When it came right down to it, he didn't know anything about her. But then, she didn't know about him either, nor did anyone else.

All he knew of her was that a man had touched her; kissed her, known her intimately. And the more Ross thought about that, the more it drove him crazy. Who was the man and where was he now? Every time Ross looked at her, he could imagine that man lying on her, kissing her mouth, her breasts, burying his hands in her hair, fitting his body deep into hers. What disturbed him most was that the image had begun to wear his face.

"Do you have any scissors?"

Ross nodded, knowing he was jumping from the frying pan into the fire and condemning himself to another night of sleepless misery. He wanted badly to hate her. He also wanted badly to bed her.

He resumed his seat on the stool after he had given her the scissors. She draped a towel around his neck and told him to hold it together with one hand. Then she stood away from him, tilting her head first to one side then the other as she studied him.

When she lifted the first lock of his hair, he caught her wrist with his free hand. "You aren't going to butcher me, are you? Do you know what you're doing?"

"Sure," she said, teasing laughter shining like a sunbeam in her eyes. "Who do you think cuts
my
hair?" His face drained of color and took on a sickly expression. She burst out laughing. "Scared you, didn't I?" She shook off his hand and made the first snip with the scissors. "I don't think you'll be too mutilated." She stepped behind him to work on the back side first.

His hair felt as good coiling over her fingers as she had thought it would. It was coarse and thick, yet silky. She played with it more than she actually cut, hoping to prolong the pleasure. They chatted inconsequentially about Lee, about the various members of the train, and laughed over Luke Langston's latest mischievous antic.

The dark strands fell to his shoulders and then drifted to the floor of the wagon as she deftly maneuvered the scissors around his head. It was an effort to keep his voice steady when her breasts pressed into his back as she leaned forward or glanced his arm as she moved from one spot to another. Once a clump of hair fell onto his ear. Lydia bent at the waist and blew on it gently. Ross's arm shot up and all but knocked her to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Her warm breath on his skin had sent shafts of desire firing through him like cannon-balls. His hand all but made a garrote out of the towel around his neck. The other hand balled into a tight fist where it rested on the top of his thigh.

She was stunned. "I ... I was . . . what? What did I do?"

"Nothing," he growled. "Just hurry the hell up and get done with this."

Her spirits sank. They had been having such an easy time. She had actually begun to hope that he might come to like her. She moved around to his front, hoping to rectify whatever she had done to startle him so, but he became even more still and tense.

Ross had decided that if she were to trim his hair, it was necessary for her fingers to be sliding through it. He had even decided that it was necessary for her to lay her hand along his cheek to turn his head. He had decided that this was going to feel good no matter how much he didn't want it to and that he might just as well sit back and enjoy her attention.

But when he had felt her breath, heavy and warm and fragrant, whispering around his ear, it had had the impact of a strike of lightning. The bolt went straight from his head to his loins and ignited them.

If that weren't bad enough, now she was standing in front of him between his knees—it had only been natural to open them so she could move closer and not have to reach so far. Her breasts were directly in his line of vision and looked as tempting as ripe peaches waiting to be picked. God, but didn t she know what she was doing? Couldn't she tell by the fine sheen of sweat on his face that she was driving him slowly crazy? Each time she moved, he was tantalized by her scent, by the supple grace of her limbs, by the rustling of the clothes against her body which hinted at mysteries worth discovering.

"I'm almost done," she said when he shifted restlessly on the stool. Her knees had come dangerously close to his vulnerable crotch.

Oh, God, no!
She leaned down closer to trim the hair on the crown of his head. Raising her arms higher, her breasts were lifted as we'll. If he inclined forward a fraction of an inch, he could nuzzle her with his nose and chin and mouth, bury his face in her lushness and breathe her, imbibe her. His lips, with searching lovebites, would find her nipple.

He hated himself. He plowed through his memory, trying to recall a time when Victoria had been such a temptation to him, or a time when he had felt free to put his hands over her breasts for the sheer pleasure of holding them. He couldn't. Had there ever been such a time?

No. Victoria hadn't been the kind of woman who deliberately lured a man, reducing him to an animal. Every time Ross had made love to Victoria it had been with reverence and an attitude of worship. He had entered her body as one walks into a church, a tittle ashamed for what he was, apologetic because he wasn't worthy, a supplicant for mercy, contrite that such a temple was defiled by his presence.

There was nothing spiritual in what he was feeling now. He was consumed by undiluted carnality. Lydia was a woman who inspired that in a man, who had probably inspired it as a profession, despite her denials. She was trying to work the tricks of her trade on him by looking and acting as innocent as a virgin bride.

Well, by God, it wasn't going to work!

"Your moustache needs trimming too."

"What?" he asked stupidly, by now totally disoriented. He saw nothing but the feminine form before him, heard nothing but the pounding of his own pulse.

"Your moustache. Be very still." Bending to the task, she carefully clipped away a few longish hairs in his moustache, working her mouth in the way she wanted his to go.

Had he been looking at her comical, mobile mouth, it might have made him laugh. Instead he had lowered his eyes to trace the arch of her throat. The skin of it looked creamy at the base before it melded into the more velvety texture of her chest that disappeared into the top of her shirtwaist. Did she smell more like honeysuckle or magnolia blossoms?

Every sensory receptor in his body went off like a fire bell when she lightly touched his moustache, brushing his lips free of the clipped hairs with her fingertips. First to one side, then the other, her finger glided over his mouth. The choice was his. He could either stop her, or he could explode.

He pushed her hands away and said gruffly, "That's enough."

"But there's one—"

"Dammit, I said that's enough," he shouted, whipping the towel from around his neck and flinging it to the floor as he came off the stool. "Clean this mess up."

Lydia was at first taken off guard by his rudeness and his curt order, but anger soon overcame astonishment. She grabbed his hand and slapped the scissors into his palm with a resounding whack. You clean it up. "It's your hair. And haven't you ever heard the words 'thank you before?"

With that she spun away from him and, after having taken off her skirt and shirtwaist and carefully folding them, crawled into her pallet, giving him her back as she pulled the covers over her shoulders.

He stood watching her in speechless fury before turning away to find the broom.

* * *

The sun shone from dawn till dusk the next day. And on the following day they crossed the Mississippi.

Everyone was at a pitch of excitement as the wagons rolled in file down the bluffs to the banks of the muddy river. Mr. Grayson collected each wagons toll, which, like everything else postwar, was inflated. Two steam ferries would be working, carrying two wagons, their teams, and their families at a time.

Lydia was as excited as everyone else. Until she saw the river. It could have been an ocean and not appeared more vast, limitless, life-threatening. Holding Lee protectively against her pounding heart, she watched as the first wagons were guided onto the ferries and their wheels secured between braces. She saw the murky water slapping at the hull of the ferry.

The hateful memory from her childhood came rolling over her. The brackish taste of river water flooding her mouth and throat-was real. She couldn't breathe, just as she hadn't been able to that day.

They had been taking one of their rare trips to town. For once old man Russell had agreed to let her and Mama go along. She had looked forward to the day for a week. They had to cross a branch of the Tennessee on a poled ferry. She had been leaning over the railing, watching the sunlight dancing on the water. Clancey came up behind her and nudged her lightly enough to appear accidental and yet hard enough to make her lose her balance and send her plunging into the water.

She clawed her way to the surface, sputtering and screaming. Hie water sucked at her skirt and the one petticoat she owned. Through water-filled eyes she could see Otis and Clancey laughing hilariously, slapping their thighs, hooting over her distress. Mama had both hands clasped to her head, screaming for them to pull Lydia out. She reached for the splintery edge of the bargelike ferry, but Clancey kicked at her hand with his boot. For a full minute, she had struggled to stay on the surface, and they wouldn't help her. When Mama tried to, Clancey held her back. Finally, he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her out. "Enjoy your swim?" he had taunted.

She had been about eleven when that happened, but she could still remember the terror she had known when the water had closed over her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, cutting off her air supply. Now she stared entranced into the opaque waters of the Mississippi and wondered how she would ever force herself to step onto the ferry.

She was still trembling when Ross, who had been busy helping secure the wagons, came up to her. "Our turn next. You stand with Lee there against the engine house. The Langstons are crossing with us."

"Ross," she called out when he turned and strode away.

"Yes?" He looked back, a trace impatiently.

"Wh . . . where are you going to be?"

"With my horses."

She nodded, pale and nervous. "Oh, yes, of course,"

He stared at her for one intense moment, then went back to the chore of getting the two wagons secured onto the ferry with as little delay as possible. Lydia stepped onto the gently rocking ferry, hastened toward the engine house and plastered herself to the vibrating walls, clutching Lee tightly. Ma joined her there, though the children stood as close to the railing as they could. This was an adventure they would remember for the rest of their lives, and after one cautioning lecture, Ma let them enjoy themselves.

The ferry was about a third of the way across when Marynell called, "Come here, Lydia. Look." She was pointing down into the water at something that was riding the current of the river and entertaining the children with its bobbing course.

"No, I've got to stay with Lee."

"Go on," Ma said, taking the baby from her before she could object. "You ain't much more than a kid yourself. Have some fun."