The Sheriff (Historical Romance) (14 page)

O
n Sunday afternoon the town was quieter than usual, the streets nearly deserted. A majority of the revelers from the previous night’s street dance hadn’t yet ventured out of their rooming houses or tents or campsites. Many lay prostate on their cots, suffering with headaches and upset stomachs from drinking too much rotgut whiskey. They cursed anybody who made so much as a peep.

A trio of rowdies who’d tried to shoot up the town were now sleeping it off in the city jail. Their loud, annoying snores had driven Travis and his deputy outdoors.

With their chairs tipped back and their booted feet resting on the hitching rail in front of the jail, Travis and Jiggs relaxed. They were enjoying the rare tranquillity.

“So…” After nearly half an hour, Jiggs finally
broke the silence. “Valentina gets back this afternoon, does she?”

Travis nodded. “Around five.” His hands laced on his stomach, he twiddled his thumbs restlessly.

“You going down to the river to—”

“No. I’m to join her later this afternoon. We’ll meet up at her suite above the Nugget around six o’clock. She wanted it that way.” He smiled and added, “Valentina’s a vain woman. She’ll want a chance to bathe and change before I get there.”

“I see.”

Another ten minutes passed in silence.

“I’m bored, Jiggs,” Travis finally announced. “Think I’ll take a walk. Kill some time before I head up to Val’s.”

“Sure,” said Jiggs. “Go on. I’ll hold the fort here.”

Travis took his feet off the rail, tipped his chair legs back down and stood up. He raised his long arms above his head, stretched and said, “You having supper with Alice Hester again tonight?”

Jiggs’s narrow face lit up like a summer sunrise. Bobbing his head, he said, “Chicken and dumplings and cherry pie.”

Travis grinned. “Same time as always? Eight o’clock?”’

He shrugged narrow shoulders. “Or thereabouts.”

“Eight is fine, Jiggs. Val will get ready to sing around eight, so I’ll be back here to spell you.”

“Good enough,” said the deputy.

Travis considered going inside to get his hat, but decided against it. He stepped down off the sidewalk and crossed the street. He had no particular destination in mind, but within minutes he had sauntered into the dense forest. The cooling shade was a welcome change from the harsh August sunshine.

Travis knew every inch of this pine forest and every landmark for miles around the town. Ducking tree limbs and weaving in and out, he soon began the climb to a favorite spot, a place he’d discovered on his first week in Fortune. At timberline, high above the town a smooth, flat shelf of rock jutted out from the side of the mountain.

Travis had gone there often during his first year in California. Young, homesick and lonely, he had found solace on the lofty windswept overhang. He hadn’t been there in a long time. Not in two or three years. He didn’t know why he was going there now.

Halfway up, Travis was perspiring. He stopped, unbuttoned his shirt, yanked it out of his trousers and whipped it off. He dropped it where he stood. He’d pick it up on the way back down.

He trudged rapidly on up the sharp incline, his legs growing weak, his breath short. At last he stepped out of the forest and onto the rocky overhang.

And then he saw her.

Kate VanNam was lying on the sun-heated promontory, drying her golden hair. She was barefoot. She
wore a beribboned camisole and cotton pantelets. Her petticoat and dress lay folded neatly beside her.

Travis didn’t dare move or take a step toward her. He stood as still as a statue and stared.

When Kate turned her head and saw him, she felt her stomach clench. He was bare chested and bare headed, his raven hair gleaming in the sunlight, his muscular torso and shoulders glistening with a sheen of perspiration. His gun belt rode low around his hips. So did his tight trousers. His belt buckle rested well below his navel.

Kate shaded her eyes with her hand and stared. She did not scold him or order him to leave. Nor did she anxiously reach for her dress and cover herself.

For a long, tense moment they simply stared at each other. Then Travis, holding her gaze, slowly unbuckled his gun belt and laid it down on the rock. Kate said nothing. She didn’t move.

Travis edged closer.

When he stood looking down at her, Kate lifted a hand. She gently grasped the fabric of his neatly creased trousers and tugged playfully at the pant leg. She saw him swallow anxiously and she felt a sudden surge of female power. Sliding her fingers around the back of his leg, she felt the muscles bunch and flex.

Travis tensed at her touch, and his low-riding trousers fell away from his drum-tight belly. His heart was racing as he sank to his knees beside her. Kate
slowly sat up. A strap of her camisole fell from her shoulder and down her arm. Travis hooked his little finger beneath the fallen strap and drew it back up into place.

Kate looked into his beautiful midnight black eyes and her lips parted. She nervously smiled. Travis clasped a handful of her damp golden hair, lifted it to his face and inhaled deeply of its perfumed scent. Kate waited, not daring to move. He released the silky hair, letting it spill slowly through his fingers.

Then, without a word, he drew her up onto her knees to face him, gathered her into his arms, bent his dark head, hesitated for a couple of heartbeats, then kissed her.

Just as it had been that night at the mansion, his kiss was at once utterly brazen and blazing hot. With one long arm wrapped securely around her, Travis clasped Kate’s chin with his thumb and forefinger and feasted on her tempting lips like a man too long starved for the taste of her.

Kate thrilled to the bold invasion of his kiss. His lips and tongue plundered her open mouth, and she melted against him, having neither the strength nor the inclination to stop him. She wanted him to keep on kissing her forever.

The instant Kate felt his heartbeat against her breasts she knew she was his to do with as he pleased. No one had ever kissed her the way Travis was kissing her, and she gloried in the intimate pleasure.
When his hand left her chin and settled warmly on her bare shoulder, Kate shivered expectantly. Would he lower the camisole strap back down off her shoulder?

As if he had read her thoughts, he teasingly plucked at the lacy strap, but did not brush it away. Instead he wrapped both arms around her and crushed her against his bare chest. While his masterful mouth molded her lips to his and his tongue did wonderful things to the sensitive insides of her mouth, Kate anxiously pressed her breasts against his naked torso.

Through the thin batiste of her camisole she could feel the crisp black hair and the muscled flesh of his hot, hard chest. Her breasts were flattened against him and her nipples tightened and ached. She moaned softly, anxiously clasping his biceps as she arched her back in an attempt to get even closer. His raw masculinity was like a powerful magnet pulling her into a fire that was rapidly burning away all her inhibitions.

His lips never leaving hers, Travis took hold of Kate’s slender arms and lifted them up around his neck. She clasped her wrists behind his head and clung to him. She felt his hands slide caressingly down to her waist, then her hips. While his tongue stroked hers and she eagerly slanted her lips to his, Travis skillfully insinuated a knee between her legs, nudging her knees apart. With his palms cupping her bottom, he drew her down onto his hard thigh.

Again she moaned and anxiously rode him, rubbing herself against his steely thigh just as he’d intended. His hands caressed her all over as, with his heart thudding in his chest, Travis kept kissing her, exciting her, arousing her.

While the hot August sun beat down on their heads, the pair kissed and touched and sighed until they were burning up with a sexual heat far hotter than any blinding summer sun.

They kissed until they were breathless and wanting each other so badly they shuddered with barely leashed desire. One more minute and it would have been too late.

But just in time, Travis came to his senses. He realized what was about to happen and anxiously tore his heated lips from Kate’s. Much as he wanted her, he couldn’t, wouldn’t allow this sudden summer madness to go any further. He was afraid of this angelic-looking blond beauty. He knew that if he made love to her, he’d pay for it, and that the price was too high. His heart for her body was too great a cost.

No thanks.

Kate’s eyes flew open in surprise and confusion. Travis gritted his teeth and sat her back.

“Sorry, Kate,” he said, a tortured expression in his dark, expressive eyes. “My fault. That shouldn’t have happened. It will never happen again.”

Too stunned and shaken to respond, she stayed there on her knees as he rose to his feet. Mystified,
she watched as he turned and walked away. He stopped, yanked up his gun belt, slung it over his shoulder and disappeared.

With her lips swollen from his kisses, her nipples stinging from being pressed against his chest, her groin aching from the contact with his hard thigh, Kate weakly sank back onto her heels.

She stared after him, longing to have him come back and keep on kissing her. She didn’t understand why he’d left so abruptly. She hugged her arms to her chest and trembled, hurt and humiliated.

And finally she became angry.

Angry with him.

Angry with herself.

With him because he had obviously taken perverse pleasure in showing her just how easily he could seduce her, if he so desired.

She chastised herself for falling right into his arms and proving him right.

Tears springing to her eyes, Kate cursed his name and vowed she’d never speak to him again, much less kiss him.

H
is blood up, Travis stopped, picked up his shirt, put it back on and headed directly to the Golden Nugget and the arms of the beautiful Valentina Knight.

He caught her in her bath. Her French maid was there, kneeling beside the tub, scrubbing her mistress’s back with a long-handled brush.

“Darling!” Valentina happily greeted Travis and snapped her fingers at the maid. The woman nodded, rose and promptly disappeared. “I’ll just be a minute, my love,” Valentina said, and then squealed with girlish delight when Travis stalked over to the tub and snatched her up out of the sudsy water.

Dripping all over the fine Aubusson carpet, Valentina joyfully threw her arms around his neck and leaped up onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist. While she clung to him and scattered kisses all
over his face, Travis unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it to the floor.

As agile as an acrobat, Valentina climbed all over Travis, quickly saturating his clothing. Then she delighted in stripping those wet clothes from his body. Swinging on him, laughing merrily, she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders and down his arms.

She was sprinkling kisses along his bare shoulder when Travis sank to his knees and sat back on his heels with her astride his spread thighs. Valentina didn’t hesitate. She knew just what to do. Kissing his well-cut chin and firm jawline, she deftly reached between them, unbuttoned his trousers and freed him.

“Well, what have we here?” she teased, and rubbed her wet body against his awesome erection. “Is this for me?”

“Just for you,” Travis said, wishing he meant it, knowing that he did not.

Still, she was incredibly beautiful and a skilled and innovative lover, and when she clasped him in her soft hands and guided him up inside her, Travis momentarily lost himself in her. Physical ecstasy was theirs for a few fleeting minutes. The slippery Valentina glided up and down the throbbing length of her lover with a mastery honed earlier. She knew how to please, how to take a man almost over the top, then pull back just in time.

She didn’t do that this afternoon.

Travis wanted, needed to climax quickly. She sensed it. Sadly, she sensed as well that this sudden
burst of burning lust had not been generated by or for her. An astute woman, Valentina suspected she was in danger of losing her lover, but for the moment she put that thought out of her mind. For this pleasurable minute, he was hers, and she gave him her all, determined to please him. Within minutes the two of them were shuddering in shared release.

Later, when both were fully undressed and lying stretched out in Valentina’s big soft bed, they made easy small talk. Valentina told Travis about her brief stay in San Francisco, said she’d gone to her dressmaker’s and had some exquisite gowns fitted. She’d done some shopping, went to the theater and dined at her favorite restaurants.

“But I missed you,” she said. “Now, tell me about last night’s street dance.” She turned onto her stomach beside Travis and folded her arms over his chest.

“It was pretty much like last year’s wild celebration,” Travis said. “All the miners got drunk and danced with all the women.”

“Did you?”

“Get drunk?”

“No, silly. Dance with all the women.”

“I danced a time or two.”

“Did you dance with Kate VanNam?”

“Yes, once,” he said.

“Was she there with Winn Delaney?”

Travis nodded.

Valentine made a face and said, “There’s something going on there that puzzles me, Travis.”

“What’s the mystery?” he said. “DeLaney is ardently courting Miss VanNam. I would assume he has marriage in mind.”

“Perhaps. But when he’s not with Kate VanNam, DeLaney—so I hear—is in bed with the new girl who works at the Whiskey Hill Saloon.”

Travis said nothing, but his lean body automatically stiffened. Valentina felt it. She continued, “You may have seen the woman. She’s not exactly pretty, but she’s exotic looking. She’s dark complected with green eyes. She wears a decorative golden dagger in her black hair.” Valentina paused, looked thoughtful, then added, “And, the strangest thing, she has a blue trinity tattoo on the side of her neck. Now why would a woman do that to herself?”

Travis eased Valentina’s arms off his chest and sat up. “She wouldn’t,” he said as reached for his clothes. “A blue trinity tattoo is the mark given to Australian prisoners. Apparently the lady in question is a felon.” He stood up and stepped into his trousers.

“What are you doing? So she’s been in prison, who cares?” Valentina said, and scrambled up out of the bed. She laid her hands on his chest. “Don’t go, darling. We have another hour before I’m due downstairs.”

Travis thrust his arms into his shirtsleeves. “I promised Jiggs I’d hurry back to the jail so he can have dinner with Alice Hester.”

Feeling as if her world was spinning out of control, Valentina pressed herself against Travis and said, “To hell with Alice Hester! I don’t care if that plain-faced widow ever has dinner with Jiggs. Let her bake some more of her overpriced pies!”

“Now, Val, it’s not like you to be unkind.” He gently tore her arms from around him. “I have to go.”

“So go!” she said angrily, “Get out of here.”

Travis smiled, touched her cheek affectionately, turned and left. For a long moment Valentina stood there and stared at the door he’d closed behind him. She felt tears come to her eyes. She had the sinking feeling that the handsome sheriff might never come through that door again.

And she knew why.

Her keen intuition told her that what she’d suspected for weeks was true. The man she loved was falling for the Boston blonde.

“You back already?” Jiggs said when Travis walked into the jail at five minutes of seven that evening.

“Val ran me off,” Travis said. “She has to get dressed for tonight’s performance.”

“So I can go on over to Alice’s?”

“Sure, Jiggs.” Travis dropped down into a chair behind his desk. “One thing, before you leave…I hope you’ll continue keeping a close eye on Kate VanNam. Just in the daylight hours. I’ll handle the nights.”

“Something happened that…?”

“No, no.” Travis cut him off. “It’s just that she’s such a pretty, naive young thing and I don’t completely trust DeLaney.”

“Me neither,” said Jiggs, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “There’s something about that fellow I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“Well don’t worry about it,” Travis said. “Go on. Enjoy your evening.”

Travis was still seated at his desk when, at shortly after eight, he glanced up and caught sight of Winn DeLaney and Kate. They were across the street, strolling down the sidewalk. When they went into the Bonanza Hotel, Travis pushed his chair back and got to his feet. DeLaney had a suite at the Bonanza. Did he mean to take Kate up there?

Travis wasted no time.

He looked in on his three prisoners. All were sound asleep in their cells. Travis left the jail, crossed the street and went into the Bonanza. He nodded to Dwayne, the room clerk, and crossed the lobby to the dining room. He stood in the arched doorway and looked inside. Kate was seated across from DeLaney at a linen-draped table for two.

Travis turned away, chose an overstuffed chair in the lobby and sat down to wait. An hour passed before the couple came out of the dining room. Travis stayed where he was. But if DeLaney had made one move to take Kate upstairs, Travis would have intervened immediately.

“Why, if it isn’t the town sheriff,” DeLaney said, looking up to see Travis. “What terrible mischief is going on in the Bonanza this evening to bring out the law?”

Travis rose to his feet and acknowledged the pair. “Delaney. Miss VanNam.”

Kate said nothing, just nodded silently, but Travis caught a look in her eyes that he’d never seen before. He wondered if that same expression was mirrored in his own.

“My sweetheart is quite tired this evening for some unexplained reason.” DeLaney broke into Travis’s thoughts. “Kate insists I take her straight home, despite the early hour. Why don’t you come along with us, Marshal?”

“No, thanks.”

“It would save you the trouble of following us,” DeLaney stated sarcastically, and slipped an arm around Kate’s waist. “That’s what you’ll do, isn’t it?” He laughed then and ushered Kate out the door.

Travis sat back down.

He debated doing just what Delaney accused, but decided against it. Instead Travis returned to the jail, where he took out a deck of cards and played Klondike.

But his mind wasn’t on the game.

It was on the beautiful blond-haired Kate. He kept seeing her lying on that sun-heated rock in her underwear. He kept feeling her lips moving sweetly
beneath his own, and he kept hearing her softly sigh as he caressed her.

Travis was helplessly drawn to Kate even if she aroused conflicting emotions in him. He was not, however, confused about Winn DeLaney, and after what Valentina had told him about the woman who was DeLaney’s mistress, Travis was doubly worried.

He looked up from his card game when he heard a loud knock on the frame of the open door.

Winn DeLaney walked in. “Evening again, Mc-Cloud.”

“Something on your mind, DeLaney?” Travis said.

“You’re following me, Sheriff, and I believe I know why. You want Kate for yourself and—”

Interrupting, Travis said, “DeLaney, I don’t know what you’re doing in Fortune, but I can’t help but wonder. Did you somehow know that the heiress to the old Cavalry Blue claim was here?”

Travis saw the other man nervously swallow. “That’s nonsense,” DeLaney said defensively.

“Is it? Or did somebody tell you that the mine might actually hold a fortune in gold?”

“Don’t be absurd! Everyone in this flea-bitten town knows there is no gold in that worthless claim of Kate’s.”

Travis pushed back his chair, rose and circled the desk. Towering over DeLaney, he said calmly, “Trifle with Kate or that mine and I’ll kill you.”