California Caress (13 page)

“Yeah, Frazier,” Old Joe grumbled, now that the invitation had been extended. “Come on in and pull up a seat.”

Drake strutted to the table, and Hope noticed that this time no holster was attached to the black leather belt riding low on his hips. She was staring, she knew, but it couldn’t be helped. Her gaze was perversely drawn do that sinewy thigh, and no amount of will could budge it, until Drake lazily slid onto the bench beside her.

“How you doing, Joe?”

“Not bad.” The bulging eye scrutinized the gunslinger carefully.

“Been a long time. Two years?”

Old Joe nodded. “Yup, ‘bout that.”

Hope ignored the conversation.
Why did the only available spot have to be the one her father had just vacated?
her mind raged.

The twins’ spoons clattered to their plates. Distaste shimmered in their matching hazel eyes as they focused on Drake. Kyle mumbled under his breath. The two stood and strode to the door, both retrieving their hats.

“We’ll be at The Button,” Lyle grumbled as they disappeared in Bart’s wake, with Kyle slamming the door loudly behind them.

“Friendly guys,” Drake said as he took Bart’s plate and scraped the remains of her father’s dinner onto what was left of Kyle’s. Seemingly unfazed by the rude departure, he ladled a goodly portion of the stew onto the plate, then let his eyes settle on Hope.

A tingle of uneasiness rippled through her body, and no matter how she tried to ignore its presence, she was excruciatingly aware it was there. As though it were not bad enough to have his body within touching distance, the muscular length of his thigh was now pressing intimately against her own. All semblance of logical thought abandoned her.

Hope shifted her attention, and was immediately captured by his piercing gaze.
It’s after suppertime,
those eyes were saying. Was it her imagination, or was there a flicker of frustration in those eyes as well?

“A spoon?” Drake said, his voice deep and cynically husky as his warm breath fanned her upturned cheek.

Hope pulled her gaze away and concentrated on pushing the stew around her plate, segregating the carrots and potatoes. She inclined her head toward the counter that held the utensils. “Get it yourself, you’re not crippled.” God, but she hated the way her voice came out as a throaty whisper!

“I’d rather you got it for me.”

His voice was thick, dripping with hidden challenge. To Hope, that voice seemed to say,
“You didn’t show up when I told you to. Now I intend to see you humiliated for keeping me waiting.”

Taking a deep breath to control her anger, Hope slammed down her spoon and climbed over the bench. Glaring angrily at Frazier, she found a clean spoon. It crashed onto the table next to his plate with enough force to make the handle of the kettle rattle.

Luke kept eating as though nothing had happened. He’d seen his sister’s anger before, and he wanted no part of it. Following the twins to The Brass Button was an idea that looked better by the minute, but he couldn’t let Hope’s stew go to waste; she’d never forgive him.

Old Joe was having a very different reaction to Drake Frazier’s presence. In fact, his bulging eye stared at Hope quite peculiarly.

In all the time he’d been with the Bennetts, never once had he seen her fetch a spoon for one of the men—until now. She’d made it clear from the beginning that she was nobody’s maid, and that if one of the men wanted something he’d best get it himself. Yet here she was fetching a spoon for Frazier like she was... well, like she was his woman. It wasn’t right, he thought. It just wasn’t right.

Hope glared at Frazier for a second, letting a string of curses run temptingly close to her tongue, then plucked the half-finished slice of bread from her plate and retreated to the rocking chair near the fire. The old wood groaned as she plopped onto it, but she barely heard it over the clank of Luke’s spoon scraping up the last mouthfuls of stew from his plate.

Except for a curious glance over his shoulder, Luke ignored his sister’s inexplicably sullen mood as he sent Drake a complimentary smile. “You fought good today,” he said as he folded a slice of bread in half and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.

Drake fingered the bruise swelling on his jaw, partially concealed beneath a coat of fresh stubble, and returned the big man’s smile. The cut on his cheekbone had dried to a thin, jagged line that wasn’t as easily hidden.

“You could have done it yourself,” Drake replied, surprised at how easily the lie sprang to his lips. If it had been Luke fighting this morning, the boy would be dead right now. For some reason, the thought disturbed him.

“You think so?” Luke asked. “You really think I could’a whipped the Swede?” He leaned toward Drake, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I do too,” he added with a wink, nodding over his shoulder. “I
told
her I could a done it, but she wouldn’t believe me. Said I’d get myself hurt, maybe even killed. But you don’t think I would of gotten killed, do you?”

Drake declined a comment, his gaze drifting over the big man’s shoulder to settle on Hope. She sat with her back ramrod straight, her long legs tucked beneath her. The large, velvet brown eyes were lost in the flickering light of the flames that bathed the girl in a shifting, crackling orange glow that made each copper highlight in her hair dance to life. The braid was still long over her shoulder, much the way it had been that afternoon, but now more hair had escaped the tight plait. It was soft, that hair, shimmering with silky promise as the wavy tresses tickled the long, thin neck.

Feeling his stare, Hope looked up. A surge of color washed over her cheeks before she shifted her weight and turned her back to the table.

A slow smile pulled at Drake’s lips. The girl might try to convey an air of disdain, but she wasn’t as unaffected by his presence as she would like him to think, not by a long shot. And there was still the matter of payment to be discussed. Has she guessed that he wouldn’t leave until the subject had been decided, he wondered? Yes, Drake thought. She knew it, and she wasn’t at all pleased at the prospect. He turned his attention to the crooked old man at the end of the bench, realizing belatedly that Old Joe had been speaking to him, and that he had no idea what the man had said.

“Don’t you think?” Old Joe insisted, knowing Frazier hadn’t heard a word of it, and enjoying the man’s discomfort. Nope, Drake Frazier hadn’t changed a bit. His head could still be turned by a pretty face. “Frazier?”

Drake shrugged, turning his attention to the rapidly cooling stew. To an observer, it would have looked as though he had responded to the question. Only Old Joe knew he hadn’t.

“Come on, Frazier,” Luke cried in innocent delight. The bench scraped the roughly planked floor as he pushed himself to a stand. “It’ll be fun. The twins’re already there. Pa probably is too. You’re coming, ain’t you, Joe?”

The old man shook his head and waved the suggestion away with his spoon. “Getting’ too old for those kind a shenanigans. You two go, with my blessin’s. Leave me outta it.”

“They got girls,” Luke teased. To Hope, he looked like a boy holding a bone just out of a hungry dog’s reach as he anxiously rubbed his big, flat palms together. “Real live girls. How long’s it been since you seen a real live girl, Joe? How long’s it been since you
held
one?”

Old Joe stifled a groan. How long?
Too
long, that’s how long!

Luke could see his old friend change his mind. The thought of “real live girls” could do that to a man,
any
man, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with nary a skirt in sight. A body could get sick of seeing dusty trousers and sweat-soaked shirts real fast, especially when there wasn’t a whole lot else to look at.

Old Joe wiped his mouth on the napkin, then set it aside and stood up. “You comin’, pal?” he asked Frazier as he climbed over the bench. The bones in his knees cracked with age, but Old Joe hardly noticed. The thought of what was in store for him tonight was enough to take a good ten years off his face. Now, instead of looking ancient, he looked merely old.

Frazier shook his head as he dipped the spoon into his plate and brought it up heaped with vegetables and gravy. “Nope,” he said flatly, his gaze meeting Old Joe’s bulging eye head on. “The lady and I have some talking to do. Don’t mind, do you?”

It wasn’t a question, and Old Joe knew it. He wasn’t sure leaving Hope alone with this guy was such a good idea after all. But it was too late for second thoughts. If he tried to stay, he’d have to come up with a damned good reason for his sudden change of heart, and Old Joe wasn’t that quick on his feet.

The larger eye narrowed until it was almost equal to the smaller one in size. He looked at Hope, who had suddenly gone deathly pale. She caught his gaze as it traveled from her to the sack of flour propped up in the corner near the counter. There was a pistol back there, his pistol, primed and ready to shoot.

Hope gave the barest of nods. She knew that, normally, leaving the gun behind would be risky. No man in his right mind walked the streets of Thirsty Gulch unarmed. But he had Luke to protect him. Most of the miners who trickled into Thirsty Gulch feared the big man, if only because they couldn’t guess what he was or was not capable of. Old Joe and Luke would be safe without a gun, but Hope might need it to protect herself from Drake Frazier.

A smile curved her lips as the color returned to her cheeks. Just knowing the gun was there if she needed it was enough to bolster her pitifully floundering courage.

She nodded to the door. “You two go on, have yourselves a good time.” She sent them a stern look, much like a protective mother would cast on her precocious children. “And don’t get in any trouble. Last time you went to The Button you—”

Old Joe groaned and shook his head as he plucked his hat, and Luke’s from the rack. “I know, I know,” he grumbled, tossing one to Luke before pulling the other on top of his own wispy head. “Don’t need to go remindin’ me.” He looked like a hurt dog nursing his wounds. “I paid, didn’t I?” he added as he pulled open the door and let Luke by. “And they
did
rebuild the place, didn’t they?”

“Did they have a choice?” Hope countered.

He sent her a thoughtful glance, his wrinkled hand poised on the latch. “Nope. Guess they didn’t at that.” With a grin, he was gone.

“Come on, Joe, hurry it up,” she heard her brother call impatiently as they rounded the corner of the shanty with a muffled crunch of dried leaves. “The good ones will all be gone by the time you—”

“Hold yer horses, young ‘un. I’s a comin’.” The voice grew fainter. “I’s a comin’.”

Luke mumbled something, probably one of the curses Hope forbade him to use in the house, but they were too far away to hear. The words were lost on the cool night breeze.

Drake let his gaze settle on the girl in the rocking chair, noting that her attention had turned back to the fire. Although she pretended he’d left with the others, he recognized her preoccupation with the dancing flames for what it was.

Tension coiled in the room, so real it was almost palpable. If he reached up, Drake thought, he might actually feel the hostile currents hanging in the air like a thick, black cloud.

As Luke had promised, the stew was good, but not good enough to hold Drake’s attention from the matter at hand. He pushed the plate away and stretched. The liquid motion caught Hope’s attention from the corner of her eye.

She shifted her weight so she could no longer see him, but it did no good. She could
feel
him looking at her,
feel
his gaze raking over her body, missing nothing; her entire body tingled with the knowledge of his eyes. The emotions this kindled within made her limbs suddenly itchy and restless. Her fingers played with the peach folds of her skirt, smudged with light patches of flour where the apron hadn’t covered it.
That
nervous movement wasn’t missed either. Forcing her grip to slacken, she raised a hand to her forehead and noticed her fingers were trembling.

Angry that a man’s gaze—not his hands,
just his gaze
—could affect her so strongly, Hope sprang from the chair as though she’d just been struck by lightning. She wasn’t pleased to find her knees shaking every bit as badly as her fingers, but at least
they
were concealed beneath the billowing expanse of her skirt.

She walked to the table with what she hoped was a casual step, noticing as she did how more and more of her body began to tingle with each closing inch. By the time she reached the cracked oak tabletop, she could have collapsed onto the bench beside it in exhaustion.

Instead, she reached out and began plucking up the discarded plates one by one, scraping the remains of each into the near-empty kettle before adding them to the neat stack she’d created on the side.

It was difficult, but she found that with a great deal of effort she could almost forget Frazier’s presence and carry on with her chores in the same manner she would have employed if he hadn’t shown up at all. Almost.

The problem was, Drake Frazier had no intentions of being forgotten. “Put the plate down, Hope,” he said, his voice hard, penetrating Hope’s body as if he’d driven an icicle straight through her heart. She hesitated, but otherwise ignored him. “I said, put the plate down.”

Hope did, but she put it on the stack and reached for another. “I don’t have time for games, Mr. Frazier, I have work to do.”

A hand snaked out and wrapped around her wrist as she reached for another plate. Hope froze. She wasn’t surprised; she’d half expected it, but she was shocked that he’d done it so
fast
.

“I don’t like games either, sunshine,” he said through gritted teeth. Hope tried to pull away, afraid of the cold hostility in his voice. It was useless. His grip held painfully firm.

Even knowing a struggle was useless, she yanked again, almost dislocating her wrist for the effort. “Let me go!” she demanded, leaning back as he drew her up hard against the table. Her gaze flickered to the flour sack as she was forced to throw the other hand on top of the table to brace herself. It did no good. With her elbows bent, drawing her body towards him until her torso was almost lying over the table was child’s play.