As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) (12 page)

Jared felt the firm fullness of her breasts against his ribs, considered briefly about letting his lusty desires once again have free rein with this incredible woman, but then decided that both of them needed sleep. He kissed her on the forehead and, within two minutes, was doing something he’d never done before—sleeping contentedly with a woman in his arms.

* * * *

When the approaching horse whinnied, Jared was instantly and fully awake. Helen’s head was still on his left arm, and he eased her off quickly. She stirred, mumbling something indistinct before falling back to sleep. He went to the window.

He peered outside, between the curtain and the window frame, and saw a short, rather stout man dressed in a businessman’s suit. He was riding a palomino mare approaching the house. His clothes were charcoal gray, and even from a distance Jared could tell that they were high-quality and expensive, perhaps from St. Louis, or maybe, though he found this highly unlikely, even hand-tailored here in Whitetail Creek by an expert tailor. His rather oversized hat was the exact shade of charcoal gray, leading Jared to believe he was one of the few men who could buy sufficient hats to have one matching each of his outfits. Even from a distance, Jared could see the morning sunlight glinting off a heavy, gold watch chain running horizontally across the man’s vest. The horse, too, was a bit flashy, a little showy. She was a long-legged mare with a deep chest. A golden palomino that was beautiful, not only in coloring, but in musculature and form. And the saddle and bridle were matching pieces of hand-tooled leather, carefully crafted and metal-punch embroidered to give it a personal touch.

Jared realized he was looking at the man who had purchased Helen’s whiskey. The fact that he also knew that he was looking at Helen’s lover—
other
lover, a little voice whispered possessively in his mind—made a muscle flicker briefly in Jared’s jaw. The embers of raw hatred for the man began smoldering in Jared’s heart. It was not the first time he’d felt this emotion for the man, though he’d only now set eyes on him.

The man was still fifty yards off. Jared still had a little time before the unwanted intruder arrived. He plucked his Colt from the holster. Getting his gun was more important than getting his clothes. He then crossed the room silently to the bed and put a hand upon Helen’s shoulder.

Shaking her gently, he said, “Helen, someone’s coming. A short, fat man in expensive clothes riding a palomino.”

Her eyes blinked sleepily twice, but then he watched his words register in her brain. When she blinked a third time, she was wide awake and quite obviously nervous.

“Are you serious?” she asked foolishly, tossing the sheet aside and reaching for her robe at the foot of the bed. As she frantically thrust her arm into the sleeve of the robe, she muttered, “Why did
he
have to come
here now
?”

A momentary spark of delight flamed in Jared’s chest. It was quite obvious by Helen’s tone that the peacock on the palomino might be her lover, but she wasn’t exactly in love with him. Jared didn’t know what the entire background was between Helen and the approaching rider, but it was clear that something other than just affection was keeping her with him.

Jared liked that. He couldn’t say why, but he liked that a lot.

He asked, “Who is he?”

Helen replied, “Don’t ask. And for God’s sake, please, please, please don’t say anything.” She looked into Jared’s eyes and clearly didn’t like what she assumed were his thoughts. “Promise me you won’t do anything? Promise me you’ll stay quiet and not let him know you’re in here?”

Jared grinned and held his arms apart. “I’m an innocent man.”

Helen’s gaze went over the man who was completely naked though holding a Colt revolver. She replied with thick sarcasm, “I have a real hard time believing that.” She peeked out the window, shivered noticeably, and then asked Jared, “What time is it?”

“My watch is in my pants pocket,” he replied.

Helen looked out the window again, grimaced dramatically, and then turned to Jared and put a finger to his lips indicating he must maintain complete silence. She pulled her thin robe more tightly around herself, inhaled deeply for courage, and just as the sound of boots striking the front porch could be heard, she opened the door.

“Oh, hello,” she croaked, standing in the doorway.

Jared, standing not three feet away, hidden by the door but ready for anything, resisted the urge to cock the hammer of his Colt. The well-dressed, overfed man on Helen’s porch was her lover, and he stood less than ten feet away. A myriad of conflicting emotions went through Jared’s psyche in a heartbeat.

“You weren’t at work. It’s not like you to miss work.”

It was not a pleasant voice, Jared noted. Not high-pitched exactly, though it did have a reedy quality that would quickly rankle the nerves. For a flickering moment Jared wondered whether Helen’s romantic entanglements were motivated by mercenary concerns. The thought of love words spoken with that voice seemed, to Jared, unlikely to the point of being impossible, but then he quickly reminded himself that Helen had asked nothing of him, and even when they were running from the band of outlaws and the outcome of their flight was still quite in doubt, she had said that the fight was not his, and that he could save himself without being encumbered by her presence.

“I’m sick,” Helen replied. She put her foot against the door, wedging it so that the door could not be easily opened. “I’ve been sick all night. I’m sorry for missing work, but I had a truly dreadful night.”

Not from what I could tell, Jared thought spitefully, thinking then that it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing if Helen’s lover did discover him hiding naked behind the door. Not even for an instant did Jared consider this man a formidable foe.

“What’s wrong with you?’ the voice replied. There wasn’t even the hint of sympathy in the tone.

“It must have been something I ate,” Helen replied. “I’m sorry, but you really must leave.”

Jared could see Helen, but not the intruder. Helen was white-faced with either fear or embarrassment, and that added verisimilitude to the tale she was spinning.

“I don’t suppose you’ve eaten much.”

Helen shook her head. “Almost nothing at all.”

“Well, that’s one way of losing weight,” the voice replied, as though pleased to find the silver lining in this particular cloud.

As though on cue, the dark clouds overhead crackled as low thunder rumbled across the Dakota Territory. Jared, painfully aware of Helen’s insecurities regarding her weight, clenched his teeth in rage, and it took an act of strong willpower for him to not immediately make the intruder apologize for his shamelessly thoughtless comment. When he looked at Helen, he could tell that the blithe, vicious statement had cut her deeply, though she was trying to not let the pain show in her reaction.

“I’m sorry, but I really have to close the door now. I promise, I’ll be at work tomorrow.”

Helen started to close the door, but a thick-fingered, fat palm smacked loudly against the door, stopping its progress. Jared’s muscles coiled in response. There might be a confrontation after all. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, since Jared was looking forward to making the intruder pay for some of his cruel comments. Jared watched as Helen’s face took on an utterly pained, frustrated expression. This, he sensed, was not just acting on her part.

“Please…I promise to see you tomorrow. I really must get back to bed. I’ve hardly slept a wink all night.” Low thunder again rumbled. “You’d better get back to town. You’re going to get caught in the rain.”

A full thirty seconds lapsed in total silence before Jared heard footsteps retreating from the front door. Helen closed the door and threw the lock into place. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the door, her forehead against the hard, smooth wood.

“Are you okay?” Jared asked, keeping his voice very low. He did not trust the intruder to not return unannounced.

Helen turned so that she pressed her back against the door. When she inhaled deeply, he watched her breasts rise and fall beneath her thin, cotton robe. The shape of her nipples was visible. The urge to react, for Jared, was nearly overpowering. Jared was not far removed from his coarser, baser ancestors, despite his high-priced education and flawless diction.

“Yes,” she said after several seconds. “I’m fine. I…I suppose you’d like some explanations about what just happened.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and for a moment put her hands to her mouth. Then she said, “Please don’t ask me any questions right now, Jared. I’m all out of answers. And I can’t…I just can’t be hounded right now. I can’t be pushed any further.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to look into Jared’s. After a moment she smiled wearily and added, “My God, but you are a devilishly handsome man.” Several seconds passed before she added, “You have no idea how sincerely I wish that wasn’t so. Maybe if you weren’t so handsome I could resist you.”

* * * *

“I want to know, when is the wedding going to be?”

Gregg looked at the man who asked the question. For several seconds he said nothing, though he felt the acid begin to pool in his stomach, percolating like a witch’s brew. The relationship Gregg had with his father, Jerome Neilson, was—to be charitable by saying the very least—complicated. He adored and admired his father while simultaneously finding his presence either frightening or infuriating.

“Well?” Jerome prodded, standing near the windows to look out at the bustling street.

“Helen and I haven’t yet made a definite decision,” Gregg answered at last, knowing he couldn’t avoid the question.

Jerome made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. He looked around the office and then crossed the room to where a large, detailed surveyor’s map of Whitetail Creek and the surrounding area was tacked to the wall.

“I’m getting damned impatient with you,” Jerome said. He touched a spot on the map where a slender stream curled back upon itself so sharply that section of the stream was U-shaped. “This is Helen’s land. Now either you buy it from her or you marry that damned woman so that the land is yours. But we’ve got to have complete legal control of this land right here if we’re going to go through with the next phase of my plan.”

Gregg noted that whenever his father needed him to do something, he said “us” and “we” quite often, but when there was the chance to make immediate money, the profits were always “mine,” and Gregg’s involvement in the making of that money was entirely ignored. It was just one of a thousand quirks that made Gregg, in countless ways, truly despise his father.

Sitting at his chair behind his desk, Gregg watched his father studying the map. The elder Neilson’s expression slowly transformed from annoyance to contemplation. When Jerome continued speaking, his tone was soft, his diction less crisp, as though he was talking to himself.

“All I need to do is dam up the stream right here, at Helen’s land,” he said, tapping the map. “Rerouting the stream to the east instead of the west will turn all this land over here”—he tapped the map in a different location, where there were numerous small squares with numbers printed inside them to indicate land lot ownership—“into fertile grazing land. And with the stream no longer going straight south, as it does now, all the land that currently is irrigated will drop in value between seventy-five to ninety percent.” He took three steps backward to get a more complete view of the surveyor’s map. “I can buy land now at one tenth the value that it’ll be with water for irrigation. All I have to do is reroute the stream, and the only place to do that is at the Miller homestead.”

Gregg, watching and listening to his father’s almost trancelike dialog, said quietly, “I’ll get the date set for the wedding. Helen won’t sell the land. I’ve tried a hundred times to get her to sell, and she just won’t.”

“Then marry her. I don’t give a damn whether you love her or not. Just marry her.” Jerome turned his head slowly to look straight into his son’s eyes. “I can buy sixty different plots of land for a thirty thousand dollar investment. With some proper planning and execution of that plan, I can turn that thirty thousand into a half million dollars. Maybe more. If Helen is afraid of the altar, get her pregnant, then she’ll have to marry you.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “You are fucking her, aren’t you?”

There was obviously only one suitable answer that Jerome would accept.

Though his motives for marrying Helen were mercenary, Gregg was not entirely heartless toward the woman, and he certainly didn’t like the way his father talked about her. But he couldn’t say anything to Jerome about his disrespectful behavior. Jerome took even the slightest rebuttal as an all-out attack upon his authority, which he defended with fanatical ferocity. Gregg was not feeling strong enough to get another nasty dressing-down from his father.

“Well?” Jerome’s tone was stern. “Are you fucking her, or not? That shouldn’t be something you’d have to think about before answering.”

“I am.” Gregg looked into his father’s eyes before quickly looking away. He hated how weak and fearful he felt in his father’s presence. With strained casualness that wasn’t quite convincing, he added, “I fuck her all the time.”

“What about this gunman you hired? Where’s he?”

Pleased that the topic had turned away from Helen, Gregg smiled and replied, “His telegram said he would be here either today or tomorrow.” Gregg clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together vigorously, his smile broadening. “The guy’s got one hell of a reputation. A cattle cooperative in Nebraska was getting muscled by the Coltrane combine down there. There had been a series of shootings on either side. The cooperative was completely out-manned and out-gunned, so they hired Jared Parker. Within a month the battle was over. Rumor has it that Coltrane had his best men set up an ambush—eight killers against Parker, who was all by himself—and there wasn’t a single Coltrane hired gun left standing by the time the smoke cleared.”