The Devil's Own Desperado (15 page)

“Maybe because that man is a shootist, a known killer,” Rachel suggested gently. “And maybe I assumed such a thing because you flew out of Harrison’s office as if something had upset you terribly.” A grin crossed the other woman’s elfin features. “Should I go box my husband’s ears for something he said to you?”

“Yes,” Amelia muttered. The mischievous smile on Rachel Taylor’s face and the mental image of the tiny woman boxing her tall, imposing husband’s ears took the edge from her anger. She sighed. “No, you don’t need to box his ears. Your husband is only doing what he thinks is best.” Amelia glanced across Federal Avenue.

On the other side of the dusty street, Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Hamilton stood staring at them. Amelia’s hands balled into fists. Anger and frustration boiled out in her words. “Did you ever do anything you knew was the right thing, even though everyone else around you was telling you it was the wrong thing to do?”

“Yes, actually, I have. There was a time when I was the topic of gossip in Federal. Harrison too. But I did what I knew in my heart to be the right thing, Amy, and I have never regretted it for an instant.” Rachel took Amelia’s clenched fist into her hand. “If your heart tells you it’s the right thing to do, listen to it. Hold your head up, look everyone else in the eye, and dare them to stop you. And Federal is like any other small town. By next week, those two old hens over there will have something else to gossip about.”

Tears sprang into Amelia’s eyes. “Thank you for understanding.”

Rachel smiled. “I think you’d be surprised just how much Harrison understands too.”

****

Dr. Archer’s buggy stood in the yard when Amelia returned home. “Stay here,” she said to Saul and Jenny. She leaped from the wagon, and raced to the house.

Archer met her as she rushed onto the porch.

“Colt?” she asked in a breathless rush.

“Colt’s fine.” He smiled and patted her arm. “I just came out to check on him. I made him lie down because changing the bandage wore him out. Pain can do that.” Archer set his black bag on the low railing. “What happened to make that wound break open? He’s awfully tight-lipped about it.”

“Donnie Morris shoved him into the doorjamb after I slapped him.”

Archer’s brows shot up. “You slapped Colt and then Donnie—”

“No, I slapped Donnie. He said something inappropriate, and I lost my head and slapped him.” Amelia dropped her gaze. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Archer cleared his throat. “So, Donnie took his temper out on Colt. Lucky Donnie’s still walking.” He picked up the bag. “I’ll be back in about a week and we’ll see how that shoulder’s healing. By the way, that was a good idea, putting his arm in a sling. It has to be a bit more comfortable for him.”

“Dr. Archer.” Amelia caught his arm before her resolve faded. “Saul and Jenny haven’t seen Nathan and Molly in some time. Would you mind taking them home with you, and I’ll come and get them later this evening?”

Archer tugged the ends of his mustache. “Folks are already talking, Amy. You sure you want to be here alone with him for a couple of hours?”

Rachel Taylor’s words echoed in her head.
If your heart tells you it’s the right thing to do, listen to it
.

“You don’t trust him either?”

Archer shook his head. “It’s not Colt I don’t trust. It’s the course of nature that worries me the most. Putting two attractive young people together in a situation where they can be alone is dangerous. It could have lasting implications.”

Amelia’s face burned. “I need to talk to him, and it is rather hard to do that with Saul and Jenny here. I’m asking you to do this favor for me as my friend, not as my doctor.”

Archer was silent for a long moment. He cleared his throat again, shifted his bag from hand to hand, and tugged at the collar of his frock coat. “Amy, I—”

“Please don’t lecture me. I’ve already been lectured by Marshal Taylor today. People in this town seem to forget that I’m nineteen, and most girls my age are already married. And Momma and Daddy aren’t here anymore. Whether or not I wanted to, I had to become an adult that day.”

“You remind me of Rebecca.” The doctor tugged lightly on the sleeve of Amelia’s blouse. “This isn’t a good place to wear your heart.”

Amelia drew a deep breath. “Dr. Archer, everyone is telling me to marry Donnie Morris. Are you going to tell me that too? They’re all telling me to send Colt on his way. That he is nothing but trouble for me and Saul and Jenny. A few years ago I remember folks saying you got away with murder when you were found not guilty after your first wife died, yet no one told Rebecca that you were nothing but trouble for her.”

Archer’s gaze moved to the distance.

Amelia knew she had scored a point. She had been old enough to hear the gossip about how troubled Dr. Archer’s marriage to Rebecca was at first, and the whole town had buzzed for weeks over Dr. Archer’s arrest and trial. Amelia quelled her guilt for reminding him. “Colt is not trouble for me or Saul or Jenny. And I don’t want to marry someone like Donnie Morris.”

At long last, Archer nodded and peered down at her. “This is against my better judgment, and will have every tongue in town wagging, but I’ll take Saul and Jenny with me. Rebecca and I can keep them overnight. It’ll give me an excuse not to go into the office in the morning. Mrs. Porter has an appointment, and I swear that woman has a mighty grist of imagined complaints.”

“Thank you.” For one moment, she hesitated, wondering if this was the best course of action. Then Rachel’s words echoed in her again and she lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders. Her heart was telling her this was the right thing to do. Now, she just had to summon the courage to tell Colt what she wanted to say, and find the words to say it.

****

Amelia waved to Jenny and Saul as they rode away in Archer’s small buggy. When she walked into the cabin, Colt stood by the table, watching her intently.

For a moment, Amelia stood motionless. Then she flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Colt caught her with his good arm. His deep chuckle washed over her, warmer than the heat of the July sun. “What’s this all about?”

Amelia shook her head, unable to voice her emotions. For just a second or two, she relished the strength of his arm around her waist, the warmth of his shoulder under her cheek, the sound of his voice and the scent of him, a blending of bay rum, talc, and soap. “You washed your hair,” she murmured, refusing to lift her head from his shoulder.

“It was a little difficult one-handed, bending over a bucket at the hand pump, but I couldn’t stand it another minute.” Colt eased away from her. “Now, what’s this all about?”

Amelia dropped her head, uncertain of where to start or even how to begin.

He caught her chin in his palm, fingers splaying over her cheek. With gentle pressure, he tilted her head up to him, and forced her to meet his cool, gray gaze. “Amy?”

“I’ve been thinking.” She backed a step away. There was a curl to the ends of his silver-shot black hair she hadn’t seen before. He was dressed in another of her father’s shirts, and the white sling wasn’t such a contrast to the gray material. The color deepened the gray of his eyes to a shade that made her think of the underside of a towering thunderhead, heavy with rain.

She forced her attention away from the depths of his eyes, tried to gather her scattered thoughts, and repeated, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Obviously. Want to tell me what you’ve been thinking?”

She licked suddenly dry lips, and wished her mouth didn’t feel as parched as an arroyo in August. “I think, when you kissed me, I was wrong when I told you I didn’t like being kissed like that.”

“How were you wrong?”

She dropped her gaze, and trailed a fingertip along the edge of the table, riding the bumps and ridges of the hand-hewn pine planks. Now that the moment had arrived, she couldn’t find the words she had rehearsed in her head all the way from town. A huge lump seemed to be lodged in her throat.

“Amy?”

“Does being grown up mean really having to give up dreams and never letting those hopes be more than dreams?” She lifted her face to him.

“What are you getting at?”

He hadn’t moved, yet Amelia sensed he was poised somehow. “I don’t know, Colt, what I’m trying to get at. I was raised to be a good, obedient girl. I was raised not to talk back or question my elders. Yet today, I told Marshal Taylor off. I just sent Saul and Jenny home with Dr. Archer, and I don’t care what anyone in town will think when they hear we’ve been here, all alone for a night.”

He tilted his head, and one brow rose in slow degrees.

“For as long as I could remember, I was raised to marry someone like Donnie Morris. But I don’t want to be married to someone like Donnie Morris. I don’t know anything about the things a husband and a wife do, but I know that when Donnie Morris kissed me”—she drew a deep breath—“when he kissed me it wasn’t anything like when you kissed me.”

Colt dragged his hand through his hair, thoroughly disheveling it, but didn’t speak.

Amelia glanced away from him for a moment. “I don’t know what it is, but ever since you’ve been here, I can’t stand to be away from you. Whenever you’re near me, I have butterflies in my stomach, my heart races as if I’ve been running a long, long way, and I know I like the way you make me feel. I know you’ve only been here for a day more than a week, but I also know I could never even think of kissing someone like Donnie Morris again. I don’t think anyone will ever make me feel inside the way you make me feel.”

Colt’s jaw dropped as if she had hit him across the back of the head with an axe handle.

“I’m not asking you to stay, Colt.” She lowered her gaze to the table. “And I’m not even asking you to kiss me again, because you probably don’t want to. I know I’m not pretty.”

Silence reigned in the cabin for the space of a heartbeat.

With one finger, Colt tilted her head. “Don’t you ever say that again.”

“I’m sorry, but I just wanted you to…”

He pressed a finger over her lips, stilling her words. He shook his head, amazement and awe lining his lean features. “Don’t you ever again say you’re not pretty. Not where I can hear it. As to wanting to kiss you…Amy, I have been wanting to do a whole hell of a lot more than just kiss you.”

Colt brushed the back of his hand along her jaw, and curled his fingers around her neck. Amelia stepped closer as he pulled her to him. His thumb lightly rose along her jaw, tilting up her face.

The butterflies had returned, fluttering into her breast. Her heart raced and her hands trembled. A shock of hair fell across his forehead. With trembling fingers, she pushed it back onto his head. It felt like the most natural thing she had ever done. She trailed her fingertips down the side of his face, tracing the strength of his jaw.

Sunlight slanted into the small cabin through the still-open door, bathing Colt in the long rays of the setting sun. Amelia couldn’t breathe for the tenderness and awe in his expression. His eyes told her that she was something to be treasured, something beautiful, and fine. This was a totally new sensation, heady and exhilarating, and her throat tightened.

Colt shook his head. “This isn’t right, Amy.” His voice was rough.

Her heart felt as if it was being squeezed. He didn’t want to kiss her again, despite what he’d said. Tears stung her eyes.

As if he read her thoughts, he pulled her into his embrace, and stroked her back. “It’s not right. You deserve so much more than a few stolen hours. It shouldn’t have to be this way for you.”

Amelia slipped her arms around his waist, and pressed her cheek to the width of his good shoulder. “If all we have…”

“No. I want more than a few hours, Amy. I want to know that maybe those dreams I gave up aren’t gone forever. I’m tired of constantly looking over my shoulder. I’m so damn tired of surviving. And you are worth so much more than that. You don’t deserve that kind of life, and you don’t deserve a man who can’t be committed completely to you because he’s always looking over his shoulder.”

Colt broke away from her, his chiseled features lined and haggard. He shook his head and that shock of hair fell over his brow again. She ached to brush it away.

“I don’t want a few stolen hours, lady.” His voice grew rougher. “I want to be able to come to you and know it’s going to be for the rest of our lives.”

“Then stay. Stay here with me and Saul and Jenny. Stay and learn to dream again.”

“I wish to God I could.”

Frustration added an edge to her voice. “Why can’t you? I’m offering you a chance to put your past behind you, to make a new li—”

“My past is the very reason I can’t stay, Amy. Don’t you see that? I will always have a past and I will always be waiting for it to come riding over the horizon, waiting for the bullet that has my name on it to find me.” He turned from her, his shoulders slumping. “And I don’t want my past ever finding me here, because I don’t want you hurt by the things I’ve done.”

Colt sat on a granite boulder high atop a ridge, staring down at the small cabin. Smoke curled from the chimney, which meant Amelia was awake and had started breakfast. The early morning sunlight took the chill of the night from the land and beat down on his back, warming him.

He pulled his gaze from the house to settle on a hawk rising into the brilliant azure dome. The raptor screamed at regular intervals, Colt knew, to try to scare some small game into bolting from a hiding place. The bird of prey circled lazily, soaring higher and higher until it was little more than a tiny speck of black and its cries were whisper-quiet.

The faint, acrid scent of burning tobacco made Colt look around but he didn’t see anyone. Any man trying to get the drop on him wouldn’t be smoking. Colt allowed himself to relax and remain seated on the granite boulder.

He shut his eyes. Did Amelia know what she had offered him? Not just herself, not just her heart, but the chance to finally stop looking over his shoulder, to maybe make a life for himself.

What kind of a fool was he for refusing her offer? No, he wasn’t a fool, but he also wasn’t a blackguard or a conscienceless cad as those damn dime novels Saul read made him out to be. What kind of fool was he to even hope he could accept her offer and put his past behind him? He knew better.