The Outsider (2 page)

“When did this happen?”

“I’ve been working on it for a while. Wanted to surprise you. Promised I’d stand up for you, didn’t I? Couldn’t very well do that while sitting in that chair. Just don’t expect me to hold both of us up when it comes time to say your vows.”

They were standing by the judge when Patrice Sinclair made her entrance on her brother’s arm. In a bell skirt of white silk and Brussels lace, she was a vision to reduce any man to trembling at his good fortune. Reeve was no exception as he watched her sweep down the narrow aisle made by the small gathering of their friends. His gaze fixed upon her in a daze of reverence, while hers settled wide and disbelieving … on the best man.

“Dodge!”

With that soft cry, Patrice released Deacon’s elbow to race ahead, throwing her arms not about her intended, but around the man beside him, rocking Dodge back with her enthusiastic hugging.

Aware that they’d become the awkward center
of attention, Dodge balanced on the crutches and levered a weeping Patrice away. “You’re not supposed to cry before the wedding,” he reminded her gently.

Patrice stood back, her wondering gaze taking him in from top to toe with tears and unabashed pleasure. She hit his shoulder with her bouquet of roses and calla lilies.

“How could you keep such a secret from us?”

He grinned. “It wasn’t easy.”

She smiled and wiped at the flood of fresh wetness glistening on her cheek. “Hamilton Dodge, you’ve given us the best gift possible.”

By not greeting them in the imprisoning chair he’d accepted in order to save her life, he was freeing the two people he cared about more than any others to go on with their future without the burden of guilt over his sacrifice. He knew well the significance of the gift.

“It was no trouble.”

She studied him then, her gaze a little too shrewd, too observant, catching the pinch of discomfort mixed with the laughter around his eyes, seeing the faint sheen of effort forming on his brow hinting that the cost of this grand gesture was anything but trifling. And loving him for it. She leaned into him, pressing a light kiss to his cheek as she whispered, “Thank you, Dodge. I owe you the happiness of this day.”

“Remember, I’m a banker. I’ll see you pay me back with interest.”

The judge cleared his throat impatiently. “Miss Sinclair, which of these men are you marrying?”

Patrice looked up with a blush. She reached for Reeve’s hand. “This one, your honor.”

“Now that we have that decided, shall we get on with the ceremony?”

They fell into their places before the judge, Dodge flanking his best friend, Deacon a stiff pillar of stoic duty as he passed his sister into another’s care before stepping back to support their joyfully weeping mother. Everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly until the judge reached the part where he called for anyone who might have objections to the match to speak them or hold them silent forever.

None would have been surprised to hear Deacon Sinclair’s somber tones naming some damnable reason, but it was a feminine voice ringing up from the back of the room that declared, “I do.”

The gathering turned as one to see a slight woman posed dramatically in the open doorway. Before any of them could react, the intruder claimed, “Patrice Sinclair, how dare you think you could get married without me standing beside you?”

“Starla!”

The bride-to-be raced the length of the room to fall into an embrace with her best friend since childhood.

Dodge didn’t need an introduction to know exactly who the woman was. Her features were unmistakable, their delicate Creole beauty marking her as Tyler Fairfax’s sister. Fairfax and his group of night-riding bullies were responsible for the bullet in his back, but he didn’t extend that grudge to
the lovely creature coming toward him. He couldn’t. He was lost the moment her vivid green eyes met his in brief curiosity before she cast her arms about Reeve.

All earlier thoughts about looking up a harlot for the night completely disappeared from Dodge’s mind.

“Reeve Garrett, I just knew Patrice’d snare you someday,” came the husky purr of her voice. “She’s had eyes for nobody but you since we were babies.”

And from over his shoulder she let her vivacious stare linger thoroughly along the best man.

Here was the smoldering hint of promise he’d been missing, steeped in those bold, assessing eyes. Anticipation tightened in Dodge’s chest even as he loosened an appreciative grin.

“And who might your friend be?”

“Starla, this is Hamilton Dodge, our guardian angel. Dodge, Starla Fairfax. The one I was telling you about.” This last Patrice said as a significant aside.

“And I can see she’s everything you said and more.”

There was no missing the way the gorgeous flirt froze up at the sound of Dodge’s crisp Northern accent. Her smile didn’t fade, but all the warmth was extinguished from her eyes in a blink. Her honeyed tone took on a tang of vinegar.

“If my friends speak so highly of you, we shall have to be friends as well.”

Hearing the unspoken “when hell freezes over”
in her invitation, Dodge grinned all the wider. “Yes, ma’am. You can count on it.”

She snubbed him to look around the room impatiently. “Is Tyler here? I had to rush from the train to get here on time, no thanks to you, Patrice Sinclair.”

Patrice’s smile thinned, but her words were gentle. “He’s not here, Starla. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Can we get back to this wedding?” the judge requested.

Vows, rings, and a too-long-to-be-proper kiss were exchanged, transforming Patrice into Mrs. Reeve Garrett before the intimate assembly. After private toasts and congratulations, the bridal party went from the small parlor room to a spacious hall where the affluent of the county would soon arrive to offer their best wishes—because of the social weight the Sinclair name carried, not out of any fondness for Reeve Garrett, whom most still considered a traitor for serving on the Union side in a war they wouldn’t allow to end.

Dismissed from his obligations, Dodge chose to search out a comfortable chair on the fringe of the gathering where he could succumb to the agony of remaining on his feet. In the three weeks since sensation had begun seeping back through his legs, he’d ignored the doctor’s cautionings, pushing his recuperation beyond the edge of endurance to get to this spot, to stand beside the friend to whom he owed his life. That done, he could collapse in happy misery. With a glass of good bourbon in one hand and a cigar smoldering in the other, he
amused himself by watching the elite company mill about with practiced insincerity. They were smiling at his best friend through gritted teeth because he was now linked to the mighty Sinclairs of Pride County. And the Sinclairs couldn’t be snubbed.

Dodge wasn’t one for artifice. His cut-to-the-point bluntness put him at odds with the average silken-tongued Southerner. To Dodge there was a fine line between tact and lying, a line most of those in the room crossed without compunction, though none quite so eloquently as Starla Fairfax.

He never made a conscious decision to stare. The black-haired beauty demanded attention, and who was he to refuse? She was everything he’d ever heard about Confederate women, with their vain need to conquer everything in their path as determinedly as Sherman had on his sweep to the sea. He could imagine a long line of broken hearts, left like smoldering chimneys in Starla’s scorching wake. But what man could resist casting himself in the path of purposeful self-destruction? She was the most mesmerizing creature imaginable.

She entranced him.

He watched her flit from gentleman to gentleman, a lunar moth, all dainty gossamer without weight or true substance. She’d light for a moment, fluttering both fan and eyelashes with the seriousness of a fencing foil:
en garde
, parry, thrust, luring each unsuspecting fool into a game he’d already lost. The tease of her smile, the sultry gleam of promise in eyes cold as glittering gems, the musical scale of her laughter playing out in devastating lower registers, the tempting toss of ebony curls—all
were designed to bewitch and intrigue. While Dodge was both those things, he was also wondering why a woman so beautiful, so alluring, could be so good doing something she obviously disliked so much. Because the instant she was certain of her conquest, she ducked away from the besotted swain to home in on another.

The swaying bell of her skirt stilled before Deacon Sinclair, a man so austere and forbidding that most females quaked at his attention. But not Patrice’s daring Mend. Her performance was flawless; Dodge gave her that. The stroke of her closed fan along the lapel of Deacon’s frock coat was meant to stir a flurry of excitement within the breast beneath it. Her luscious pouts puckered her lips into unbearably kissable treasures. But when she leaned near enough to send most men staggering back in a panic of self-denial, Deacon caught her Wrists, and with a contemptuous word, pushed her away.

In that moment, Starla turned to catch Dodge’s entertained smirk. Instead of blushing at the witness of her failed seduction, she met Dodge’s look with one of haughty challenge. Instead of fleeing in embarrassment, she sashayed toward him, her stride purposeful in intent. The edge to her words betrayed her annoyance at his refusal to look ashamed.

“Something amuses you, sir? Share the jest so we both might laugh together. Unless you only find humor at the uninvited expense of others.”

He grinned up at her. He didn’t have Deacon Sinclair’s celibate nature, and the woman had set everything that was male growling to life inside
him. She was magnificent this close, her skin ivory perfection against the cloud of raven hair, above the snug dip of her neckline, skin that would feel softer to the touch than anything had a right to.

But a wise man wouldn’t give such a woman the power that came with the knowledge that she rattled him to his soul. So he gave away nothing with his reply. “Oh, I have a hell of a sense of humor, ma’am. I was just admiring your boldness in taking on Sinclair. You had to know that was like trying to defeat the Army of the Potomac with a pocket knife.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

“How uncharitable of you to liken my attention to that of a siege.” The assessment in her gaze grew less flattering. “I suppose you’d be scrambling for cover.”

“No, ma’am.” He nodded toward his crutches. “I’m not much for running these days. I tend to stand my ground.”

She glanced at the crutches. It would have been a simple thing for her to use his infirmity to strip the pride from him. She could have done so with an unkind remark, even with a disdainful glance designed to make him feel less of a man in her esteem. From such a glorious creature, the wound might have been fatal. But no trace of sympathy or intolerable pity softened her mood. Her gaze lost none of its glitter as she said, “Is that so? Then you do more than watch?”

Relieved and revitalized, he snapped to the challenge. “As much as decorum … and the lady … allow me, ma’am.”

“You have no manners, sir.” She said it casually, as a comment, not a complaint.

“If someone told you I had, they misled you. We’re going to get along famously, you and I.”

His confident claim shocked past her air of ennui. He saw the change and wondered over it. Her stare sharpened warily, transforming her from flighty moth to aggressive bird of prey in an instant.

“Why would you think that, sir? You do not know me, nor I you.”

“I mean to remedy that, the you-knowing-me part. But I
do
know you. I know you’re more like your brother than I first suspected.”

Starla frowned, alarmed, agitated by his insight and insinuation. “You and Tyler are friends?”

“Not exactly. We’ve had—dealings.”

“And that makes you think we will, too, is that it, Mr. Dodge?” She trailed the edge of her fan along his jaw to let it pause beneath his chin. Their gazes met and held for a heartbeat, then two. Just when he feared he’d strangle on the thickening sense of expectation, her ripe lips pursed in sultry defiance, daring him to make some foolish claim.

Unable to resist, Dodge grinned wide. “I’d bank on it, ma’am.”

Her fan continued up the other side of his face, then delivered a sharp rap to his ear that was neither playful nor coy. It stung like the bite of her pronouncement.

“You’d be wrong.”

With that she spun away, leaving him grinning after her, not at all discouraged.

What he did find discouraging was that though she fired his blood into a twenty-one-gun salute, below the waist there was nothing burning … not even a spark.

If a woman like Starla Fairfax couldn’t bring a man’s loins roaring back to life, he was as good as dead. Was that what he had to look forward to? A lifetime of chafing at desires he couldn’t satisfy? He couldn’t look at a woman like Starla without imagining the touching and all the pleasurable things that would follow that initial contact if he had his way. If looking was all he’d ever be allowed, death seemed preferable.

He quickly hid his misgivings as Patrice Garrett came to kneel beside his chair. She teased him with her knowing smile, coaxing his humor back from the edge of abysmal self-indulgence as only she could.

“Has she broken your heart already?”

Dodge gave her a wry look. “I don’t think it was my heart she was trying to rupture.”

Used to his blunt ways, Patrice wasn’t offended. “That means she’s either interested—”

“Or—?”

“She’s interested,” Patrice concluded.

Dodge wasn’t so sure. “In filleting me alive, maybe.”

“If you hadn’t made an impression, she wouldn’t have bothered to give you an honest reaction. She’s—how to explain Starla Fairfax?”

“Complicated?”

Patrice nodded at his astute claim. “And you like her! Oh, I’d hoped you would. She and Tyler—”
A sad bitterness broke that happy reminiscence, and Dodge was quick to distract her from her sorrow.

“Now, you hold on there, missy. Don’t go ringing wedding bells just yet.”

“I won’t.”

But he could see her eyes measuring him for groom’s wear. Surprisingly, he didn’t fight her overt matchmaking too hard. What man would object to the thought of sharing a future of days—and nights—with a woman of such beauty and mystery? Until he caught a glimpse of a furtive figure skimming past the doorway to the hall, reminding him of the one detail surrounding Starla Fairfax that could be a problem.