Bushedwhacked Bride (5 page)

The boys rushed off, while Cole stood his ground and
continued to glower at the women. Leading Jessica away,
Ma jerked a thumb back toward her eldest son. “Don’t
mind him, honey. He’s the strong, silent type.”

“I’ve noticed,” Jessica replied ruefully.

Ma wrapped an arm around Jessica’s waist. “Come on in, and we’ll git you settled. What did you say your name
was?”

“Jessica Garrett.”

Ma clucked again. “Well, Miss Jessie, my land, are you
dusty. What them boys do to you, anyhow? Drag you through the dirt?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ll thrash ‘em till they squeal. How ‘bout we fix you
up with a nice hot bath?”

“Yes, that sounds good. But I really can’t stay.”

“Now, honey, don’t say that. A nice hot bath and some
home-cooked vittles, and you’ll be warming up to the
idea of sticking ‘round these parts for a spell.”

“Well, maybe . . .”

On the front porch, Ma paused to regard Jessica wist
fully. “Law, you’re a beauteous ‘un. We’ll put a shine on that curly auburn hair, and some pink in them dainty
cheeks.” To Jessica’s astonishment, the woman sniffed
and even wiped away a tear with her sleeve. “I’m so glad
you’re here. Been right lonesome for me. You see, I ain’t
never had me no daughter to rear. Only five boys, and all of ‘em
wilder than the devil’s tail. Hell, I can’t wait to sew you
up some frilly new duds.”

Jessica started to protest, but found she didn’t have the
heart to. Much as she bristled at her current bizarre plight, she couldn’t help feeling touched by the woman’s obvious
emotion and sincerity. “How kind of you,” she murmured.

As the two women headed inside, Jessica dared a last glance behind her to see Cole Reklaw still watching her.
She stifled a shiver. His dark gaze was so intense that she
half expected to go up in flames . . .

Chapter Five

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This woman was trouble.

That was Cole Reklaw’s thought as he stood lounging
against a tree, chewing on a stalk of grass and scowling at the bag of trinkets Billy had taken from the stage passen
gers. He pulled out the lady’s ring with its odd numbers, 19
94. He fought a smile as he recalled Wesley suggesting
that perhaps this was the number of notches on the little
lady’s bedpost.

1994. The numbers confounded him. They for sure
couldn’t represent a date, since this was the year 1888.
He held the ring up to the light and could just make out
some additional small lettering: “
University
of
New Mex
ico
.” Hmmmm. Cole knew of no such institution in
New
Mexico
Territory
, but then he was neither a widely trav
eled, nor a widely read, man. And hadn’t the lady said she
was a schoolmarm somewhere else—
Pawnee
College
, wasn’t it? Another school he’d never heard of. Plus, both
she and the sheriff had claimed she was on her way to
teach at Mariposa. This little lady got around quite a bit, he mused cyni
cally.

Who was this mysterious female and where had she
come from? The fact that she’d been in Lila Lullaby’s old
parlor wagon had really perplexed him. Cole had known Lila well—too well, in fact—before she’d been run out of
Colorado City, and seeing her old bordello wagon had stirred up mixed emotions within him.

As for the lady, she was quite a study in contradictions.
She’d been dressed like a schoolmarm and was obviously
well educated. But she had a peculiar manner of talking,
had blessed them out with all the vehemence of a
cathouse madam, and had met his eye with a boldness
that should have scandalized any proper lady.

Whoever she was, Cole felt uneasy about her being
here. Damn her for goading him into throwing her over his horse in the first place. Kidnapping her had been a mistake. She’d get the boys all worked up for no good reason, maybe even turn them against one another.

Hell, she already had
him
all riled up. She was a pretty
one, with that curly auburn hair, those large, fiery green eyes, and that sassy, full-lipped mouth. He smiled as he recalled her feistiness when he’d brought her home. Re
membering her lush curves wiggling against him, her derriere bobbing so enticingly to the rhythm of his horse, he felt himself growing hot. And he had only himself to
blame for putting himself within temptation’s reach.

Cole uttered a curse under his breath and spat out the
stalk of grass. What had come over him that he’d allow
a female to so beguile him? As head of the outlaw gang, he
could ill afford such luxuries as love and marriage, and
he had little need of women beyond the satisfaction of
his physical needs. Besides, he’d learned long ago that
women weren’t to be trusted. They took your money,
lied to you, stole your heart with their feminine wiles,
then betrayed you. The last female Cole had taken a cot
ton to had seduced him with her siren’s body, then turned
him in to the law for the reward money. It had taken all
the boys’ efforts to bust him out of the calaboose and
save him from a certain necktie party.

No, women weren’t to be trusted. He and his brothers
were about a dangerous business, and they couldn’t afford a potential traitor in their midst.

The problem was, his ma had taken a real shine to the lady, and so had his brothers. Cole’s ma had never had a daughter, and had always wanted one; she’d also lost two
good husbands at the Aspen Gulch Mines, and Cole hated
to bring her another disappointment.

So they were stuck with the lady, at least for now, and
that left it all to him. As the eldest, it was obviously his
call to protect his family from the little temptress.

Perhaps it was time he had a word with the “lady” and
set her in her place . . .

***

Jessica felt rather risqué, bathing in an old-fashioned tin
bathtub on the back porch. But Ma had assured her no
one would dare bother her here. Though Mrs. Reklaw had
taken all of Jessica’s clothing to be washed, a wrapper
and towel were laid out within reach on a slat-back
rocker.

The porch was enclosed on two sides by exterior walls,
while a row of trellises covered the third, so Jessica was
afforded some measure of privacy. And she had to admit it was pleasant and picturesque here. The aroma from the
lavender soap was sweet, as was the smell of honeysuckle
wafting from the trellises. It felt good to cleanse the dust
from her body, even though the tub was small, forcing her
to sit with her knees cramped up against her chest, and
the bathwater was tepid rather than hot.

Jessica shared the porch with a gray calico cat, a fe
male by the look of her enlarged teats, who sat grooming
herself nearby on a large stump of wood. Beyond the
porch stretched a backyard lined with clotheslines, with
sheets and towels blowing in the breeze; in the distance
loomed misty blue mountains. Jessica couldn’t recall the last time she’d bathed with a
mountain view
.

Still, the entire setting filled her with a sense of unre
ality. Ever since these “outlaws” had captured her, she’d
seen no trace of the twentieth century. There was cer
tainly no indoor plumbing, evidenced by the very tub in
which she sat, and by the fact that Ma had filled it by hauling water in an old tin bucket.

Jessica had also been required to use an antique
“chamber pot” after undressing in Ma Reklaw’s bedroom. That particular boudoir had been really quaint,
with its iron bedstead with feathered tick and lacy Victo
rian linens, its old-fashioned dressing table with beveled
mirror, not to mention the antique china accessories laid
out everywhere, the pomander balls in a homey wicker basket near the hearth.

Where
was
she? Were these people members of some
obscure religious sect that forbade any accoutrements of the twentieth century? Or, even more horrifying, was she no longer
in
the twentieth century? Was she stranded far
away from her family, her friends, from the very life
she’d known before?

She carefully considered what had happened to her. One
minute, she’d been riding along in the stage with her col
leagues; the next, she’d hit her head and poked herself with
the cameo, and everything had changed. Could the cameo
have possessed magical properties? She’d have to examine it carefully when she returned to Ma’s room. She smiled as
she recalled that Sleeping Beauty had pricked her finger on a spindle, then had fallen asleep for a hundred years.

Of course, it hadn’t been her
finger
she’d pricked.

Jessica was still smiling over this, running the soap
over her arm, when abruptly the back door of the house banged open and Cole Reklaw stepped out.

Jessica recoiled in horror. Wide-eyed, she covered her bosom with her arms and watched him advance with all
the arrogance of the cock of the walk. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded
hoarsely, heart pounding frantically.

Cole didn’t answer right away. With a brazenness that in
furiated her, he simply strode closer, appearing daunting as
hell with the intent gleam in his eyes, the powerful rhythms
of his body, and especially the way his jeans molded to his
muscled thighs and to the male bulge between them that
was as audacious as this outlaw’s entire manner.

At last he paused before her, shoving his thumbs into
his pockets. “I’ll be having a word with you, lady.”

“The hell you will! You get out of here!” Jessica re
torted. “Can’t you see I’m taking a bath?”

He looked her over with an insolence that made her
blush deepen. “Yeah. I can see.”

“Get out of here or I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. Scream,” he taunted.

“Your ma will. . . “

Jessica’s voice faded into a creak as she watched Cole
lazily plop himself into the rocker next to her. Appalled,
she watched him prop a dusty boot against her tub.
Heavens, the big lug was sitting on her towel, her wrap
per. The only way she could escape would be to run past
him stark naked.

“My ma is out butchering chickens for your supper and
she won’t hear,” Cole drawled, indolently lacing his fin
gers behind his neck. “She gets right worked up when she
butchers hens. Usually sings all six stanzas of ‘When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,’ as I recollect.”

Jessica was mortified by his gall, his insulting familiarity. She shoved his boot off the tub. “I don’t care. Get
out of here, or I’ll—”

He sat up straight. “You’ll what, sugar? Pop up out of
that tub and slap my face? Now, that’s a sight I’d purely
love to see.”

Jessica was too mortified to respond.

From his pocket, Cole drew out a cheroot and a match.
“So, what’s your name, honey?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Striking the match on his boot heel, he slowly lit his
smoke. “Now, that’s a peculiar thing to say to a man while you’re sitting in front of him buck naked in a
bathtub.”

“Jessica Garrett!” she all but spat.

“Well, Miss Jessie, I hear you’re the new schoolmarm,”
he remarked, blowing a smoke ring at her. “What would
you like to teach me?”

Jessica was so livid, she almost did bolt out of the tub.
“First, to put out that disgusting cigar,” she shot back. “Secondly, to get the hell off this porch.”

He leaned toward her. “I’m not going anywhere, lady,
so you’d best get used to it.”

“You’re a coward to wait until I’m alone and defense
less—”

Again Jessica’s words were cut short as Cole abruptly stood, his menacing six-foot form looming just inches away from her—though she noted with satisfaction that he dropped his cheroot onto the porch and snuffed it out beneath the toe of his boot.

“So I’m a coward, am I?” he asked softly. “Lady, you
sure are full of prunes, a female alone in her bath with a
man who is known to be . . . well, right ruthless.”

Jessica trembled in anger. “Oh! If you assault me—”

“Assault?” he repeated in disbelief. “Lady, you’ve al
ready assaulted my dignity three ways to sundown, and
that’s why I’ve come here to have a word with you.”
Stubbornly, he crossed his arms over his chest. “And I’m
not leaving till I do.”

Jessica could not believe she was having this absurd
conversation with this infuriating man. “Very well, then.
Have your word. Then get out of my sight.”

Instead of lighting into her as Jessica would have ex
pected, he just scowled, appearing at a loss. Then the
mama cat meowed plaintively, breaking the tension. Cole
strode over to the cat, clucked softly to her, and stroked
her ears. At once the female stood, shamelessly rubbed against Cole’s thigh, and purred loudly. He stroked her flank and continued to coo to her.

Jessica’s mouth went dry at the sight of this hardened
outlaw displaying such tenderness. It occurred to her that
a man who could behave so gently toward a cat couldn’t
be all bad. She dismissed the notion at once as being not
the least bit helpful to her in her current plight.

Yet the sight of him petting the cat still fascinated her,
and she also realized that, since this man held all the
cards, it might behoove her to be civil.

She cleared her throat. “What’s the cat’s name?”

“Jezebel.” Mischief shone in Cole’s eyes as he gazed
up at Jessica. “She likes catting around, and comes
through with a litter at least twice a year. Got the latest batch hidden under the porch somewhere.”