The Invitation (39 page)

He turned her head to one side and deepened the kiss, and when his hand slipped down her side to cup her breast, Dorie didn't even think of pulling away from him. To look at her as she had been a few weeks ago, a man would have guessed she'd take a riding crop to any man who dared touch her, but when Cole touched her, her body seemed to open to his. She moved so her hips were pressed against his, sliding her leg higher between his, and when she moved her thigh, she felt his groan against her lips.

When he pulled away from her, Dorie tried to pull him back, but he pushed her head back down so her lips were far away from his.

“Mr. Hunter, may I call you Cole?”

“No,” he said sharply. “It's better this way. Listen to me, Dorie, and listen to me hard. I'm not what you seem to believe I am. I'm not your damned hero. I'm what you said I was the first time you met me: an aging gunslinger. I don't know how I happened to live this long—an accident of nature, I guess. You were right; most of us are dead by the time we reach our thirties. Right now I'm living on borrowed time. I shouldn't be alive now, and I'm sure I haven't much time left.”

“But—”

“No!” he said sharply. “I can see it and feel it.” As he said the words he couldn't help but run his hand down her back, feeling the curve of her body. He couldn't resist cupping her round buttocks and pressing her closer to him. Nor could he help the groan that escaped him. He would die before he told her that she was the most desirable female he'd ever seen, that he'd rather have a night with her than with any other woman, even a woman twice as beautiful as that sister of hers.

“We have to stay together until I can get you out of this, but after that, you go back to your world and I to mine. We aren't the same kind of people. We come from two different places.”

“Maybe we are the same kind of people but we were simply born in different places. Maybe you'd have been different if you'd been my father's son.”

“Probably hanged for murder for killing the bastard,” he said under his breath.

Dorie smiled. She knew he disliked her father because her father had been unkind to her.

Smiling contentedly, she snuggled against him. “I like you,” she said. “I like you very much. You're a good man.”

She had no idea that her words startled him. Several women had told him they loved him, but never had a woman told him that she
liked
him or that he was a good person. And yet somehow, when Dorie said the words, he almost believed them.

He held her close to him, feeling her warmth and the purity of her. It was odd, but when she was near he felt like a good person. All the gunfights in his life seemed to have happened to someone else. And when Dorie looked up at him he felt as if he could do anything.

“I'll get you out of this, sweetheart,” he whispered.

She didn't answer because she was asleep. She trusted him so much that she had fallen asleep in his arms. Cole knew that he'd die before he allowed anything or anyone to harm her.

I
'm not going,” Dorie said, standing beside the horse she and Cole were riding, her arms folded across her chest, her eyes straight ahead. “I won't do it and that's that. You can shoot me or not, but I
will not do it!”

Cole decided that every good thought he'd ever had about Dorie, about women in general, was the devil's work. Only the devil could have made him have good thoughts about a creature as stubborn, not to mention stupid, as this one.

When Ford got over his shock—few men and no women had ever told him no—he pulled his gun out of his holster. That was when Cole came off his horse and put his body between Dorie and the bullet that might come her way.

I must be calm, he told himself. I must reason with her, try to persuade her. Women like sweet words. “Damn you!” were the first words out of his mouth, words said with his teeth clenched together. “Don't you realize the seriousness of this? You could be killed. You could—”

“I won't tell him where the gold is even if he kills me,” Dorie said, not even looking at Cole. Her mouth was set in a line so rigid it could have been used for a buckboard seat.

“Dorie,” he began, then said, “What the hell,” put his arm around her waist, and started to forcibly put her on the horse.

She was little, true, but she was fierce, and he had the use of only one arm. When he tried to pick her up, she fought him by flailing her arms and legs, then by making her body rigid, then by pushing at him with both her arms and her legs.

Within seconds they were in what seemed to be an equal contest of muscle against stubbornness.

It was the rusty old laugh of Ford that made Cole drop her in order to try to get a better grip on her.

“Let her go,” Ford said.

Immediately Cole set Dorie on the ground and put his body between hers and Ford's. “You're not going to hurt her,” he said, his eyes glittering.

Ford snorted. “Hunter, I think maybe you two lied about not likin' each other.”

At those words, Cole felt a chill run up his spine. If Ford found out they had lied about this, he'd figure out they'd lied about other things, too. He'd soon realize that there was no reason to keep them alive.

Right now he thought he could cheerfully strangle Dorie. For days he'd been thinking that for the first time in his life he'd met a woman who had some sense. But then this morning she'd shown that she was the…well, the most female of females. That was the worst thing he could think to call her. She hadn't a brain in her head.

This morning, after a mere two hours of sleep, they'd been told to mount their horses. They'd ridden hard for three hours until they came to a ridge overlooking a little town that seemed to consist mostly of opportunities for sin. There had once been a reason for the town, but that had died out so long ago that no one remembered, or cared, why the village was there. But in the dying embers of the town's life, after the people who wanted to earn a living had left, the gamblers and murderers had moved in. Now it was nothing but a place for men—or women—to lose their money or their lives. It was, of course, Winotka Ford's home base, the only place on earth where he felt safe.

They lingered atop the ridge overlooking the few broken-down buildings long enough to make sure that there was no sheriff's posse there, no soldiers, no one who might give them trouble.

It was while she and Cole, still mounted on their horse, were looking down into the town that Dorie spoke. “Are we going down there?”

“Yes,” Cole said, trying to think how he could get out of the place. He had no money for bribes; he couldn't shoot his way out. Once they got in, how were they going to get out?

“I can't go into town wearing a nightgown,” Dorie said, sounding as if she might cry.

“No one will notice,” he said in dismissal, wondering if there were any people he knew in town. If there were, he hoped he hadn't killed any of their relatives.

“You don't understand,” Dorie said. “I can't do this.”

Why was she bothering him about things that didn't matter? “Dorie, you have been traveling across the state of Texas for two days wearing nothing but a nightgown. What difference will a few more hours make? We'll get you something to wear when we ride into town.” He had no idea what he was going to use for money to buy her a dress, but he couldn't say that to her.

“No,” she said, her voice sounding desperate. “No one has seen me until now. If I go into town there will be women there.”

He gave her a look that told her he thought she was crazy. “You have been wearing your nightgown in front of
men.
Isn't that worse than being seen by women?”

Why were men so stupid? she wondered. How in the world did their mothers teach them to tie their shoes when they had no brains? She gave him a look of great patience. “Men
like
to see women in nightgowns. Even in my limited experience I know that.” Her tone asked why
he
didn't know that. “Women
laugh
at other women riding into town wearing nothing but a dirty nightgown.”

Cole's jaw dropped in astonishment. “Four dangerous men are ready to kill you and you're worried about women
laughing
at you?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “It's a matter of dignity.”

“This is a matter of life and death.” He ran his hand over his face. Had any man ever understood a woman? “Take a look at that place down there,” he said, looking over her shoulder at the town below them. Only about eight buildings were still standing. A couple of them were burned-out shells, and one looked as though the roof had been blown off. Signs hung at precarious angles; boardwalks had long sections missing. Even while they watched, three men started shooting at each other and within seconds one of them was dead. The rest of the people milling about didn't so much as pause in what they were doing at this very usual sight of bloodshed. A man who looked to be the undertaker dragged the dead man out of the street.

“We're about to ride into
that
and you're concerned about being seen in a nightgown?” He grinned at the back of her head. “Afraid they won't let you into the local ladies' society if you're seen improperly attired?”

Obviously, Cole was not understanding her at all. With one lithe motion, she slipped off the horse and told him she was not going to enter the town wearing only her nightgown. Nothing he said persuaded her to reconsider.

“Dorie,” he said with exaggerated patience, “you're wearing more clothes now than any other woman in town. You're not indecently exposed.”

She wasn't going to answer him because even to her she wasn't making sense. But she did know that she could not ride into that odd little town wearing about fifteen yards of nearly white cotton.

“Dorie, you—” Cole began.

“Go get her a dress,” Ford said, looking at one of his men and motioning with his gun toward the town.

At that, Cole exchanged a look with Ford that was age-old. It said that no man had or ever would understand a woman and there was no use trying.

Dorie, glad to be off the horse, went to the only bit of shade in the area, under a piñon tree, and sat down, smoothing the folds of her nightgown about her in a way that would befit the lady she knew she was.

Cole threw up his good arm in a gesture of helplessness, then took the canteen from the horse and went to her to offer her water. He didn't dare say a word to her for fear that he might completely lose his temper. If she was this stubborn over something trivial, would she refuse to do what she must when they tried to escape?

After a while he stretched out on the grass behind her, put his hat over his face, and promptly went to sleep, not waking until he heard the thunder of a horse riding toward them. Automatically he reached for his gun, then winced in pain when his injured arm hurt and his gun wasn't there.

“I got it,” one of Ford's men was saying, his voice as eager as a boy's. No doubt this was the first—and if Cole had his way, his last—time to buy a dress for a lady. The man had dismounted and was talking to Ford, his face looking as happy as though he'd just completed his first bank job. “It ain't hardly been worn. I got it from Ellie 'cause she's the only one in town that's little like this one. Ellie didn't want to give it up, but I told her it was for you so she did. She said she didn't want no blood on it, though.” Proudly he held up a pile of dark red velvet and a canvas bag of underwear. “It come all the way from Paris,” he said.

Cole gave a laugh of derision. “Paris, Tennessee?” he asked, looking at the dress the man was holding up. It was a dress for a prostitute: very little above the waist, then sleek over the hips, with an exaggerated bustle to emphasize a woman's backside curves. “Take it back,” he said. “She won't wear it.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” Dorie said, stepping forward and grabbing the dress from the man's grubby hands.

“You will not!” Cole said indignantly. “There's nothing to the top half of that thing. You'll be…You'll be exposed.”

“You sound worse than the preacher in Willoughby.”

That threw Cole for a loop. “Willoughby?”

“Where I live, where the gold is,” she said pointedly.

Cole was annoyed about the dress, but he was downright angry that she had made such a statement and he hadn't caught on right away. This girl was getting out of hand. “You're not going to wear that dress,” he said, snatching it from her.

“Yes, I am.” She tried to take it from him, but he held it behind his back.

She started to grab it, but when he held it out of her reach, she turned her back on him and folded her arms over her chest. “If I can't wear that dress, I won't go into town and no one will ever get any gold.”

Cole had never in his life dealt with a problem like this one. Because of his good looks, he'd never had trouble persuading a woman to say yes to him. But then, he'd never been stupid enough to forbid a woman to do something she obviously wanted to do.

Instinctively he turned to the other men, but to his disgust he saw that they were watching as though he and Dorie were traveling players putting on a show just for their entertainment. Even Ford, trimming his nails with a knife big enough to skin buffalo, seemed to be in no hurry for the argument to be settled.

“Dorie, you must listen to reason,” Cole said, taking a step toward her.

She turned on him. “What is wrong with me wearing that dress? Do you think that town carries a selection of dresses for women to wear to church? And besides, what business is it of yours?”

Already angry, Cole found that that statement made him even more furious. “I don't want the whole town looking at you!” he shouted. “You're my
wife!”

To his disbelief, Dorie's face dissolved into a smile. He seemed to have pleased her very much. “Give me the dress,” she said softly, holding out her hand.

How could something as small as she was drive a man so close to the edge of insanity? Or maybe it wasn't insanity but tears of frustration that were flooding his mind. He wasn't a fool; he knew when he was defeated. He'd never get her on the horse wearing that nightgown, nor would he be able to buy her a respectable dress.

With resignation on his face he handed her the dress, and Dorie went behind the nearest boulder to put it on.

Once out of his sight she was elated at the feel of the velvet. She had wanted something decent to wear, but this was much, much better than what she'd expected to get. This was the kind of dress a woman dreamed of wearing, a dress that would make men notice her. It was the kind of dress she'd never been allowed to wear in her father's house. He had always inspected her, making sure her hair was pulled back tightly, that every inch of her skin was covered. He got angry when she didn't wear gloves to cover her hands from the sight of men.

She stripped off the virginal nightgown and began the long, intricate process of dressing from the skin out: chemise, drawers with pink bows at the knee, pretty black stockings with only one tear in them, lacy garters, a corset that her father would have considered indecent—black satin with pink ribbon at the edges—corset cover, two petticoats, both edged with eyelet, and finally the dress. Holding her breath, she slipped the velvet over her head.

The gown was dark red velvet, but running vertically, every six inches or so, were inset stripes of crimson satin. When the dress floated over Dorie's head, she knew it was going to fit. And fit it did. She would, of course, have to give up breathing to make her waist fit the dress, but what did a little thing like breathing matter? The bodice of the dress was indeed half missing, cut so low that her breasts nearly spilled over the top. And even to Dorie herself, the dark red against her ivory skin, untouched by sun in all her life, was a rather pleasant contrast.

To her delight, the dress fastened in the front with what seemed to be a few hundred hooks and eyes. She didn't have any idea why the fastening, usually in the back, was in the front, but it did occur to her that the dress was much easier to get in and out of this way—which was, of course, the reason for the front closure.