Acres, Natalie - Propositioned by Outlaws [Outlaws 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (6 page)

He frowned, stuffed the knife he’d been using in his pocket, and refused her an answer.

“Never mind. It’s none of my business. That wasn’t an appropriate question to ask a stranger.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned the fact,” Lane admitted. “
Victoria
, I have a question for you. How often do you take off your clothes for strangers?”

She stared down at her clasped hands. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Tell me anyhow,” Lane encouraged her. “Why’d you take your dress off today? Why’d you show us your body?”

“You and Art made me mad. You hurt my feelings and I guess I wanted to show off.”

“You showed off aplenty,” Lane assured her. “Remind me to piss you off as much as I can while we’re staying here.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said, thinking about his dead wife, and then shifting her attention to something else he’d said. Were they planning to stay for more than one night?

“We didn’t mind. Trust me.”

“I didn’t either.”

He raised his eyebrows. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t have anything else to add.

Finally, she said, “I don’t know what got into me.”

“I couldn’t tell ya,” he said, taking a seat beside her and leaning back. He stared up at the stars again. There must’ve been something up in that sky that held his attention. After a few minutes, he asked, “Do you believe in heaven?”

“I believe in hell,” she retorted.

“Then you gotta believe in heaven, too.”

She shrugged.

“Let me tell you why I believe in both,” he said, rolling to his side and placing his hand behind his head. “My wife, Sarah Ann, she was an angel. She was as pretty as a picture, and just as sweet as milk and honey.

“A marshal accused her of killing some kids on a neighboring farm. There wasn’t a trial. There wasn’t anything to suggest she’d done it, but because she used to go and help the kids with their school work, that marshal and his posse drug her out of my home and took her to into town and hung her there.

“They said justice was served, but it took another five years for that to happen. Justice came after another ten boys were murdered. The man they caught with blood on his hands talked about the kids he’d killed outside of
Tombstone
. He even had some of their belongings to prove he’d been to their home.

“The marshal in town rode out to tell me what had happened after he heard. He didn’t apologize for taking my wife from me. He just said that was the way the law worked. In order to protect and serve the people of his town, he had to put some innocent men and women in the ground, and even said there were so many folks on this earth now, he doubted she’d be missed.”

“Oh, Lane,” Victoria said, touching his arm. “I’m so sorry. I know she’s been missed. Surely, you’ve longed to see her again.”

He nodded. “That I have. That’s why I believe in heaven and hell. And I just pray whichever way she went—and I believe she went to heaven—I hope that’s the way I go, too, when I pass on.”

“So that marshal never explained himself, and no one held him accountable for what he’d done?”

Lane shook his head. “He called a meeting after the townspeople caught wind of what he’d done. He said he was gonna run his town as he saw fit, said his form of thinking all along was that if someone else hanged, the outlaw responsible for the crimes would get sloppy. One day the real criminal would make a mistake, and when he did, he’d be there to put him away once and for all. Him or someone else, he’d added, which was a given considering the true outlaw was caught a few towns over.

“Anyhow, I wanted to kill the marshal that day. I wanted to draw my gun and pull the trigger. My finger itched to do what I should’ve done the day they took Sarah Ann from me.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Lane stared down at her hand which was when she realized she still had her fingers clasped around his forearm. “
Victoria
, there’s gonna be evil in every territory, particularly now with all these cowboys and outlaws talking this stuff about gold. Shooting one crooked marshal ain’t gonna solve the world’s troubles. It won’t bring Sarah back, and truth told, my Sarah? She’d be terribly ashamed of me if I used my gun to end another life.”

“You think your wife can still see you?”

“Sure,” he said, nodding like he believed it. “Don’t you believe your ma can see you now?”

She balked. “After today? I hope not.”

He chuckled and then covered her hand with his. “Don’t think anything of it. We enjoyed the show.” A beat later he said, “But I gotta tell ya. It’s hard to believe you haven’t pranced around like that before.”

“Why?”

“You’re pretty good at getting a man’s attention.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, hopeful.

When he didn’t reassure her, the silence separated them again. When it became more than she could bear, she asked, “How come you told me about your wife?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted someone to know about her before I die.”

“You’re dying?”

He slowly nodded. “I reckon that’s the plan.”

“Oh my God, Lane, that’s so upsetting. How long do you have?”

He shook his head. “It’s hard to say.”

“Oh good Lord, you must’ve thought I was an awful somebody,” she said, stammering around. “I reckon I pushed myself on you and here you can’t…you can’t…” She gulped. “I’m a terrible, horrible person. I flaunted myself in front of you, and you can’t have a woman anymore, can you?”

Lane bit his bottom lip, wrinkled his brow, and studied her for a good bit. Finally, he burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“I ain’t dying of natural causes,” Lane told her.

“You’re not?”

“No,” he said flippantly. “Me and Art? We’re gonna hang.”

“You’re what?” she asked, her voice raised a few octaves higher. Leaping to her feet, she paced in front of him. “What do you mean, you’re gonna hang? What did you do? Who did you kill? They don’t hang innocent people here in
Cripple Creek
. We’ve got a right nice marshal, and he abides by the law.”

“We’re still gonna hang.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a long story.”

“Long story or not, I deserve to know what kind of outlaws I’ve got sleeping under my roof tonight.”

“We’re sleeping in the barn, remember?”

“I don’t know if I even want you in my barn if you’re some kind of criminals.”

Lane splayed his legs and dropped his hands between them. “If you want us to leave, we’ll be on our way.”

“And if I want you to stay?” she asked, thinking about how her mother’s goal was to send a man to his grave well-satisfied. And it wasn’t like Lane was gonna kill her. He’d said a few minutes before he didn’t kill for sport. So if he were expecting to hang, what did that mean? He killed, but he didn’t have any fun doing it?

Lane stood. He placed his hands on her shoulders and said, “
Victoria
, let me ask you another question. If you thought you were harboring two outlaws with a bounty on their heads, what would you do?”

“I damn sure wouldn’t try to collect, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Why not? Based on that letter you read down by the stream today, I’m assuming your mother had a lot of opportunities to collect on the bounties around here. How come she didn’t do that? She had a daughter to feed. The law, when they place a bounty on a man, basically wants to pay an average person to kill for them. You’d save that town of yours the trouble if you went ahead and took our lives. Anyway, back to the point, how come your momma didn’t kill the outlaws she housed here?”

“That’s not the
kind of people she was
,”
Victoria
drawled. “She had morals and values.”

Lane snorted at that. “Really?”

“Well yes she did,”
Victoria
insisted, pulling away from him. “Ma wanted the best for me, and she tried every way she could to make a life for us. Her men friends brought her goods. They traded favors and sometimes, when she was short on cash, she’d take their money. She never told me, but I found the gold and coins after she died. We had plenty. I got more here than by appearance. I may look like I don’t have enough to get by, but I reckon I make out okay, and will get along for some years to come thanks to the sacrifices my momma made.”

“You best keep that to yourself, little lady,” Lane said.

“Well anyhow, I ain’t hurtin’,” she assured him.

“You will be,” Lane assured her. “If you sell yourself short and sell out to the life your mother led, then you’ll know pain all right. It’ll be darn hard to look at yourself in the mirror, and even harder to lie down and sleep with yourself at night.”

“Like I said, my mother made sacrifices. Don’t mean I plan to do the same.”

“Don’t you?” Lane asked, arching a brow. “A few hours ago, you were ready to walk in your momma’s footsteps.”

“Just what did you hear when you were down there by that stream?”

“I heard everything you read aloud, and learned plenty about your momma. Maybe you don’t want to hear this,
Victoria
, but your momma was a prostitute. Maybe she didn’t say that outright in her letter, but that’s what she was. She was just smarter than those girls who went to work in the saloons. She kept the house’s money here at home so she could support a daughter.”

“Why you…”
Victoria
thinned her lips and drew her arm back.

Before she struck him, Lane added, “You didn’t let me finish. Your momma loved you. Ain’t a doubt in my mind, she loved you a lot. Otherwise, she would’ve hightailed it to
Cripple Creek
or Poverty Gulch, whatever you wanna call the damn town, and made a decent living for herself there at the saloon. Instead, she lived on hard times out here, depending on the Indians for trade and connections those trappers wouldn’t have made without her.

“You ought to be proud of her, regardless of how she made her life and her way. She did what she could to take care of you. Now, question is, what are you gonna do for yourself now that she provided another way for you? If you’ve got gold and money to your name, you don’t have to make a way for yourself the same way your momma did,
Victoria
. If you do, that’s your choice of course. But I don’t think you want that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Let me ask you something,” Lane said. “Between us, have you ever been with a man?”

“What difference does it make?”

Lane bowed his head. “I’m not a perfect fella, Victoria, but if you ain’t a whore, I may take a notion to come back here for ya if the marshal in
Cripple Creek
lets me go.

“I don’t think that will happen, but you wait here for me for a day or two just in case. If that marshal will listen to what I have to say, I’ll come back here and make an honest woman out of ya. That is, if you ain’t been sharing what you have with everyone else in this prairie. If you’re the keepin’ kind, I may be the staying kind.”

“Like hell you are,” Art said, walking out on the porch. “Besides, I’ve got a better proposition for the both of ya.”

* * * *

“You want me to what?”
Victoria
’s high-pitched voice hit a squeaky note she rarely struck.

Art towered over her. He squared his broad shoulders and his natural grin took a quite wicked turn. “I’d like to lay down beside a woman tonight. I had time to ponder the notion while I was cleaning up the place there. I thought you might be rightly impressed with the idea.”

Victoria
pushed away from the stoop, her hand quickly finding its resting place in the curve of her waist. “Rightly impressed, did ya?” Oh she was spitfire mad.

“Yes, I reckon I did,” he said, thoughtfully. “All I said when I walked out here was that I had an idea, a good one I added. You were interested enough to ask me what was on my mind. I tell ya, and this is the thanks I get.” He grunted and paced.

She had a right mind to grab him by the arm and shake some sense into him. Before she took the opportunity, she considered the possibilities. “I suppose it’s natural for a man to want to poke a woman, but for him to suggest she get it from two men at the same time, well that’s just unheard of.”

“Is it? Want me to remind you of what you said to us down there by the stream today?”

“I do not,” she said, wondering then if she were to blame for Art’s sudden revelation. Had she led him to believe she was such a whore she’d take it from two men at the same time?

She considered her previous actions and the way she’d invited trouble. This notion of Art’s was her fault.

Maybe she’d stayed in the sun too long. Delirium must’ve set in after she saw her life pass in front of her. That snake didn’t strike her with its poison, but apparently left her affected all the same. Death had her in its clutches earlier that day, and even though she left the stream unharmed, she didn’t leave unchanged.