Gold Dust (42 page)

“Katy!” He growled against her throat. He tasted the warm, firm flesh from her chin to her collarbone. He was aroused to the
point of pain, and her instinctive movements against him were pushing him past the point of control. He ached to push her
down upon the bed, rid her of her clothing, and satisfy himself with a wild abandon he knew she would match.

She sought his mouth again. Her lips captured his, devouring him, flesh and breath and spirit. He felt himself sinking into
a state of total animal need.

“No! Katy, goddammit!”

“What?” she cried as he set her back from him.

He panted like a man who had run five miles. His grasp slid down her arm to her hand, which he refused to give up. “Katy.
You’ve got what you came for—gold. I’ve written—well, not all that should be written about this by a long shot, but all the
Record
readers will stomach. Let’s go out on the steamer. The gold we got out of the claim in one day will pay for our fare to Seattle
and then some.”

“You’re crazy! What about the claim?”

“It’s duly staked and recorded, and no one would be fool enough to bother it during a Klondike winter. It will be here next
spring, and we can spend the whole summer digging gold to your heart’s content. If you stay here for the winter, you’re going
to freeze your little rumpus off. You’ll need to melt the gravel with fires. It’s a slow and dangerous way to mine. Wait until
after the thaw next spring.”

“But—”

“Marry me, Katy. We’ll honeymoon in San Francisco. We’ll have the whole winter to decide what to do with all this gold.”

As if she thought he was teasing, Katy laughed, but there was uncertainty in the laughter. “Jonah Armstrong! Shame on you.
You want to marry me for my fortune.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Katy. You know goddamned well that I’m serious.”

“I can’t marry you! I’ve told you before!”

“You can’t? Or you won’t?”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that in every other walk of your life there’s no such thing as can’t. What makes marriage to me the one
thing that you
can’t
do?”

Her mouth settled into a mutinous line.

“I know you love me, Katy. You can’t lie worth a damn, and everything you feel shines in your eyes as bright as the sun. I
know you love me.”

“I’m half-Blackfoot. I grew up running wild all over Montana. I can just see me sipping tea in Chicago and parading down the
streets with a parasol to keep the sun off my face.”

“You think that’s the life I would ask you to lead?”

“I want to decide the kind of life I’ll lead! I’m where I belong!”

“Oh, bullshit!” Thwarted desire turned into impatient anger that swelled in his chest and crackled in his voice. “Stop lying
to yourself! You’re not afraid of Chicago—or New York or Europe or New Orleans or anyplace else on this whole
damned world. You’re afraid you can’t make it as a woman, as someone’s wife. You’ve been running around wearing britches and
skinning squirrels so long that you’re convinced that’s all there is to you.”

“That’s not true!”

“Isn’t it? Look inside yourself, Katy. How many times have you declared that you can’t sew, can’t cook, you don’t know what
to do with babies, and you’d rather muck out a barn than clean a house? Do you think those things constitute being a woman?
You think you’re going to make a fool of yourself because that’s all there is to being a wife?”

“That’s not what I think,” she growled. “I’m not afraid of marriage.”

“No? Then ask yourself this. Why, in all this time I’ve been pestering you to marry me and all this time you’ve been turning
your nose up at going with me to Chicago, why didn’t you once broach the subject of me staying out West?”

She scowled.

“It wasn’t because you didn’t want to be with me, Katy.”

“I… well…” She eyed him uncertainly.

“It’s because you were afraid I’d say yes, you little twit.”

“What the hell do you know!”

“More than you do on this subject, Katy my love! You’re getting all knotted up about problems that don’t exist. Sewing a good
seam and making great biscuits don’t make a woman, just as hard fists and a fast gun don’t make a man. It’s the heart that
makes a person, Katy, and believe me, your heart is purer gold than anything we could ever dig out of Skookum Gulch. I don’t
need a woman who wants to spend her life building a nest. I want someone who has a spirit of steel and the courage of a lion,
who can laugh at things that make other women gasp. I want someone who makes me feel alive, who lights up my life so that
if she left, I’d feel like a bottle after someone’s poured out all the wine.

“That’s you, Katy. I want you. And I don’t give a damn if you never sew a button on a shirt or light an oven.”

Her eyes were wide, her face drained of color. Without a word Katy grabbed her parka and fled the room. The door slammed behind
her, leaving an empty silence.

Katy kicked at a frozen clod of mud. One of the numerous dogs that roamed the streets of Dawson gave her a wary look and made
a wide detour around her. She suddenly longed for Hunter. Hunter knew she wasn’t a coward. Hunter knew she wasn’t a twit.
She could bury her face in Hunter’s plush fur and draw comfort from her best friend.

But Hunter, the traitor wolf, had stayed in the room with Jonah. No doubt he was listening to the damned greenhorn spout more
lies about her.

“Damn!” She paused in her march down the street to kick at another clod, but this one was frozen to the ground, and she jammed
her toe with the force of her own ferocity. She hopped a few steps, caught the hem of her skirt with her heel, and sat down
hard in the middle of the dark street. “Damned skirt! Damned ice! Damned
everything!”
This was all his fault, the low-down, arrogant, know-it-all, son of a skunk. Afraid, was she? Lying to herself, was she? What
did Jonah know? Nothing! That’s what! Absolutely nothing!

Katy got up and marched down the street. Light and music poured from the windows of the saloons and dance halls, and bursts
of laughter promised companionship, but she knew better than to seek solace in a saloon, especially gussied up in a dress.
She passed the two-story log Alaska Commercial Company store, the blacksmith shop and livery, a whorehouse that leaked music
around shuttered windows, and finally arrived at the little log cabin that Camilla had rented.

The cabin was dark and still. Camilla and Andy were asleep. Oh well, Katy thought as she sat on the edge of the porch, she
didn’t really need to talk to Camilla. She knew almost exactly what the Irish mother hen would say.

Well, Katy? You must think carefully. Is it true that you’re
afraid? Are you a coward and a two-bit twit who’s been lying to yourself about why you refuse to marry Jonah?

Camilla might have used gentler words, Katy suspected, but the message would be the same. And what would Katy’s answer be?
What was the truth of it?

Does he make you want things you never thought you could have? Does he make you lose a part of yourself in loving him? Does
that make you afraid, Katy?

Katy wished the phantom Camilla weren’t quite so perceptive.

Does he make you afraid that you’ll fail as a wife? Do you fear the pain of losing his love? Is it easier to lose him now,
when things have scarcely started between you?

She could almost see the sympathetic tilt of Camilla’s head, the motherly concern in her eyes. The Irishwoman would pat her
hand, give her hot coffee laced with good Irish whiskey, and lecture her gently that men and women weren’t meant to walk the
earth alone, that love could conquer all.

Horsefeathers! Katy would say to her. Love didn’t conquer all. Look at the mess Camilla had landed in in the name of love!

Jonah Armstrong is ten times the man Patrick Burke was,
Camilla would admit sorrowfully.

He only proposed out of gentlemanly duty, Katy would say, grasping at straws.

Camilla would raise a doubting brow. A
man might propose once out of duty. Not three or four times.

Katy dropped her head into her hands and sighed. Camilla had all the answers, dammit. Jonah was right. Living in Chicago or
anywhere else had nothing to do with her refusals to marry him. She was scared as a rabbit with a pack of wolves snapping
at its heels. Katy O’Connell, who prided herself on being afraid of nothing, was scared spitless of a thing any other woman
would meet with open arms, so scared she was willing to give up the man she loved.

Dear Jonah, with his laughing eyes and irreverent smile. What other man in the world combined such courage with
such gentleness? What other man would back down from men trying to steal his poker earnings, yet let fists fly at a scuzzy
skunk who abused his packhorses? What other man would give up his last funds to stake a cocky pest of a female who claimed
she could win enough money to get them across the Chilkoot? Who else could make her soar like a bird and at the same time
make her feel as fragile as a butterfly?

Damn but she loved that man!

Love conquers all,
Camilla’s imaginary voice reminded her.

Katy thought of her father and stepmother. A high-class lady doctor from New York shouldn’t be happy with an Irish longshoreman
turned Montana ex-outlaw, an ex-outlaw with two half-breed half-wild kids. Yet Olivia was happy. She loved Gabe O’Connell,
and Gabe loved her. How frightened Olivia must have been when she first came to Montana, found herself sucked into the middle
of a diphtheria epidemic, and then kidnapped by a gun-toting, hot-tempered fugitive with two sick kids. Yet she had charged
ahead. Love conquers all. It certainly had for Katy’s stepmother. Maybe it would for her.

Damned if she was going to let her life be ruled by fearૼshe who had faced grizzly bears and Montana claim jumpers without
a twitch of her pigtails. And damned if she would let Jonah Armstrong get away with calling her a coward and a liar.

She’d get back at him. That she would. She would marry the son of a skunk.

Jonah’s hotel room was dark when Katy slipped inside. Silently she shut the door behind her and stood with her back against
it. Jonah’s masculine scent filled the room. His quiet snoring was the only sound.

A floorboard creaked as Hunter got up from where he lay on the floor beside the bed, stretched, and padded over to greet her
with a cold nose shoved into the palm of her hand. The wolf had preferred Jonah’s company to awaiting Katy’s
return in her empty room. Katy couldn’t blame Hunter too much, since she’d just admitted to herself that she preferred Jonah’s
company over almost anything else on earth.

Before she could worry about Jonah’s reaction to her stealthy visit, Katy slipped out of her clothing and got into the bed.
Jonah came instantly and violently awake. Before Katy could so much as squeak he had her pinned to the bed with both wrists
in a brutal grasp.

“Jonah!”

“Katy! What the hell?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” She rubbed her wrists where he had grabbed her. “I’m going to have bruises,” she complained,
then slid a mischievous glance upward. “Now I guess we’re even, huh?”

“I doubt that you’ll have bruises, and no, we’re not even. Sore wrists are hardly in the same league as peppering someone’s
backside with buckshot.”

He hovered over her, still pinning her to the mattress with his body.

“Did you think I was someone trying to steal your money?”

His grin flashed above her in the darkness. “Now that I see who it is, I’d say you’re more likely here to steal my virtue.”

She made a rude noise in her throat. “What virtue?”

Silence descended, heavy and awkward. Finally, he moved off of her and collapsed onto his back. “Katy, what is this?”

Katy’s heart raced in her chest. “I came to find out if… well, if you’re still in the market for a wife.” In the quiet, she
imagined she could hear Jonah’s heart beating as well as her own.

“Did you have a candidate in mind?” he asked softly.

“Do you still want me, Jonah?”

“I’d say that was an understatement.”

“I’ve acted like a jackass every time you’ve asked me.”

“That’s a pretty accurate description.”

“And you were right—about a lot of things you said.”

“It must be painful for you to admit such a thing,” he said with a smile.

She frowned at the sting in his words. “You weren’t right about everything, though. I’m not really a coward. At times I can
be very brave.” She raised herself on one elbow so that she could look down upon his grinning face. “For instance, I’m not
afraid to do this.” Her hand slipped under the blankets and unerringly grasped a most sensitive part of his naked anatomy.

Jonah jolted. “Jesus, Katy! You could give a man a heart attack!” He was already hard and heavy in her hand, and got larger
and harder as she caressed and teased.

“And I’m not afraid to do this.” She leaned down to kiss him. As their lips joined, his hand came up behind her head to hold
them sealed together. His mouth was hard and demanding, slanting across hers with a hunger that erased any worry she had that
he might not still want her.

Still holding her into the kiss, he flipped her onto her back and settled himself on top of her, his hips between her thighs,
his chest hair tickling her breasts.

“Do you still want to marry me, Jonah Armstrong?” she asked with a wicked grin.

“Yes. And that’s not all I want to do to you, you little menace.”

He kissed her again, then tasted her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, devouring her as though she were a feast set before
him. Every warm pass of his tongue and pull of his lips fed the need that rose up in her. Her hands clutched at his back,
roving over bands of hard muscle, slipping around taut buttocks, and diving between their bodies to caress his eager arousal—velvet
over hot steel, moisture pearling at the very tip, moving in her hand like a live and hungry animal. She drew him down to
touch her own soft, moist flesh, so ready for him that she almost cried out in her need.