Home by Nightfall (22 page)

So when he sought her mouth in a cautious kiss that seemed to ask her permission to continue, she responded with fervent assent, and wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled of leather, horses, and saddle soap. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“It’s been too long,” he said against her mouth with a writhing anguish in his low voice. “Too long.” He pulled her up tight against his body—they were still a perfect fit of angle and curve. He covered her face with kisses, and she his, always returning to the softness of lips and tongues.

Susannah reveled in the hunger arcing between them. His hands ran over her from shoulders to buttocks, where he gripped her tightly and pressed his hips to hers. His bare back was warm under her icy hands, but if he noticed how cold they were, he didn’t seem bothered. His mouth traveled down her throat and with one hand, he took the wet shawl from her, flinging it across the room.

“God, you must be freezing.” He turned her and steered her to a chair that stood in front of the stove. It cast an apron of warmth around her. Dropping to one knee, he took off her soaked shoes and set them close to the stove. Then with a slow, deliberate movement, he reached under her skirt and hooked a finger in one of her ribbon garters. She inhaled sharply, surprised by her own powerful yearning. He pulled her stocking down and peeled it off, letting his hand trail along the inside of her thigh. A shiver ran down her spine, but not from the cold. He did the same with the other stocking and rubbed her icy feet between his warm, strong
hands while he held her gaze with eyes that looked smoke-gray in the low light.

Susannah had thought she might be timid if she and Tanner ever made love again. But she’d been wrong. Her desire to feel him lying with her, bare skin to bare skin, was as fierce as any hunger or thirst she’d ever known. Her brief, uncompleted tussle on Riley’s bed was nothing compared to what she felt now with this man and for this man. She pulled her feet from his grip, and uttering a small cry, flung herself into his arms, toppling both of them to the braided rug.

He rolled her over to her back and took her lips again, this time probing the soft slickness inside her mouth with his tongue. At the same time, he pushed her skirt out of his way and reached between the folds of her drawers to find the warm center of her femininity. His touch, desperate, tender, seeking, was enough to make her body ready for him.

Finding her slick and wanting, he groaned and yanked at his belt buckle and fly buttons. “Tell me,” he said, his breath coming fast, half angry, half pleading, “tell me I’m the man you want.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“
Tell me.
Say the words!” he demanded again.

“It’s you, Tanner. You’re my husband. That’s why I came to you.” And she realized it was true. She sought more than sanctuary. She wanted
him
. She had once believed that Riley was the love of her life. Now she knew that Tanner, who had waited for her over the past months, was that love. Another man would have demanded an immediate decision and not stuck around while she sorted out her dilemma.

Satisfied with her answer, swiftly he covered her and buried himself in her. She drew up one knee and wrapped her other leg around his waist. Their joining was primal and urgent, not tender
or delicate. It lacked the modest propriety of a bedroom with a rose-painted lamp and crisp, lavender-scented sheets. Susannah never expected to find herself rolling around on a floor with her husband, bucking like an unbroke horse, her skirts and petticoat up around her hips. But at that moment they needed each other more than those niceties; at that moment she felt as if together, they were all they had in a world gone so wrong.

The heat raged between them like a forest fire fanned by a strong wind, spreading and building. Tanner pushed her to a point of white-hot agony that wept for completion, then carried her one step farther into spasms so strong even he felt them. Somewhere far away, she heard a woman cry out as if her soul had been brazed to another’s.

With a final hard thrust, Tanner answered. A deep, incoherent sound rose from his chest, and she felt the throbbing pulsations of his body join her own. He rested his head on her shoulder for a moment, then wrapped his arms around her and rolled them both to their sides, still entwined. They lay breathless and spent.

He reached up and brushed wild curls away from her face. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt?” he asked.

She smiled and took his hand to press a kiss into his palm. “I might have an ache or pain tomorrow, but I’m fine now.”

“It wasn’t how I’d pictured our reunion—if there was even going to be one. But we have all night. I’ll make it up to you. Will you stay?”

She closed her eyes briefly and took a breath. “Yes. I’m staying.”

He pulled her to her feet and took her into the bedroom. In the darkest part of the night, the two lovers rediscovered each other. With tenderness and fire, Tanner showed Susannah an ardor and passion she had never known with him. He had always
been a thoughtful lover, but now, perhaps with the realization of what he might have missed had her heart beat in Riley’s favor, he flung them both into the center of a physical and emotional conflagration.

They pulled at each other’s clothes with no thought for where they fell.

When his lips sought her nipple and tugged, gooseflesh broke out over her skin. She closed her hand around his erection and gloried in the power she had over him as he lay back with one arm thrown over his eyes, his breath coming fast, his hips thrusting within her grip. When he could stand no more, he pulled her up and sheathed himself inside her moist warmth.

Susannah had never experienced this before. Now she was in control of not only his increasing need but her own as well. She pulled back, teasing him, then plunged forward, faster, again and again, until she felt herself tumbling into a climax that made her tremble with its intensity. She let out a sob and Tanner took his cue. He planted his hands on her waist and drove himself into her and the completion he sought. With a final thrust he joined his wife in the union of their spirits and bodies.

“I love you, Susannah,” he uttered, sweat-drenched and exhausted.

She lay down beside him and rested her head on his chest. “I love you, Tanner, ever and always.”

Snow, clean and soft, began falling as they drifted to sleep beneath a warm quilt, their hearts and souls comforted at last.

• • •

“Why the hell are we out here in the dark, freezing our asses off?” Bert Bauer carped, taking another pull from a bottle of Miss Dorothy’s home-mixed alcohol. “We can’t see a damned thing.”

Jobie Rush had taken up his position again in the overgrown privet and shrubbery. His rifle was loaded and he was ready. “While you were sleeping off your drunks, I been out here, watching these people come and go, Mr. Brains of the Operation. I got their routine figured out so I can get this done without any more trouble. I want to be finished with this, get paid, and quit this town.”

“In the dark?” Bauer sneered.

Rush gave him a look that was colder than the weather. “Have you noticed how the snow has lit up everything, you dumb ox? The sun will be up in a few minutes and it’ll be nearly as bright as a spring morning.
That’s
why we’re here. There’s a break in the snow. It’ll be tricky, making that shot on this uphill slant, but I’ll do it, and if you don’t shut your trap it won’t bother me none to blast your head off, too. You’ll be an easier target, and I’ll get all the money.”

Bauer might be a dumb ox, but he knew trouble when he saw it. Rush was nothing but trouble. Outmaneuvered, he dropped his empty medicine bottle, pulled up his baggy, stained pants, and shut his trap.

• • •

Tanner wrapped his arms around Susannah as they stood in front of the closed door. She had rescued her shawl from the floor and hung it near the stove to dry. “I don’t want you to go,” he said.

“I don’t want to go, either. We have to finally put this to rights,” she said against his shoulder. “But it will probably mean leaving here.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple and she felt the scratch of his morning beard against her skin. “Let me worry about that. It
doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “As long as we’re together, and I know we have a future.” He rocked her in his arms for a few seconds, back and forth, back and forth.

She could have stood there all day. “I’d better run along for now. I’ve got to get breakfast started. Cole is already here.” She nodded at the fresh tire tracks in the snow near the stable. “Will you come to the house and eat?”

He slung an arm over her shoulders and put his other hand on the doorknob. “Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I wash and scrape a comb through my hair.” They moved through the open doorway to the porch. The air smelled crisp with the new snowfall and even though it was just after sunup, everything looked fresh and new.

Finally, he let his arm trail away from her and she smiled at him, letting her whole heart show in her eyes. For so long, she’d felt that she couldn’t do that.
He
was her husband, Tanner, and it was true and right.

Suddenly, a shot rang out, flushing some birds from the leafless limbs of a tree. Susannah jumped and saw Tanner fall facedown on the porch flooring as if he’d been slammed in the back by an unseen hand. Blood bloomed like a hideous red flower on the back of his shoulder, soaking his shirt.

“Tanner!” She screamed and dropped to his side, struggling to roll him over. But she couldn’t do it.

Another shot sounded, pinging off an iron wagon wheel that leaned against the porch railing. A smell of hot rust and metal wafted by.

Across the yard, Cole appeared instantly from the cover of the stable, gripping a rifle. “Susannah!” He made a furious motion at her to stay down and then pulled back.

With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she grabbed Tanner’s arm and pulled them both crabwise back into the bunkhouse, leaving a bloody trail behind them on the snowy porch. She was
not
going to lose him now that she’d just gotten him back. She refused to even entertain the possibility. Although her insides quivered like aspic, she had to keep her wits together if she was going to save him, this man who had united her heart and soul, and now owned them both.

Once inside, he flattened out, gasping for breath but still conscious. “Could…you tell where…where the shots came from?”

As winded as he was from fear and exertion, she shook her head. “Maybe from the east. I—I’m not sure.” She glanced out the door and saw a flash of Riley at the kitchen door with a rifle before he retreated. Riley? How strange that he’d be up at this hour. Feeling cut off out here with the wide expanse of open yard between them and the house, she forced herself to suppress the bubble of panic growing in her chest. She reached out and slammed the door.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” Tanner panted. Sweat was already beading on his face and neck.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. But whoever it is was aiming at us on purpose—twice.” And they’d shot him in the back, one of the worst, most cowardly deeds a person could commit.

Stop the bleeding…stop the bleeding…
Some random fragment of a conversation she’d once had with Jess came back to her now, when she needed it. She looked around the kitchen and saw a clean towel hanging on a hook. Staying low to the floor, she made her way over to the wall and grabbed it. “I hope Cole is telephoning Whit Gannon—we can’t stay trapped in here forever. We’ve got to get help for you.” She pressed the towel to his shoulder and grew even more alarmed by how quickly it soaked through.
Thinking of all the kitchen accidents she’d had, she knew she needed to put pressure on the wound. He gritted his teeth until a muscle jumped in the side of his face.

“I’m so sorry,” she moaned, “I know it hurts, but I have to slow this blood loss. I have to.”

Minutes crept by like hours and there was no other sound anywhere until the thunder of pounding footsteps grew close and the door flew open. Susannah shrieked and Tanner instinctively groped at his hip for his revolver, but he wasn’t wearing it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Cole stood there with his rifle and she saw his gun belt under his sheepskin coat, then he dropped to a squat to look at Tanner. He peeked under the towel and winced. “Shit. We need to get you to Jessica.”

“Did you call the sheriff?” Susannah asked, her hands icy with fright.

“Yeah, lucky for us Birdeen was at the switchboard to put the call through and he’d just walked into his office. It’s kind of early but he was there to catch up on paperwork. I just want to get Tanner to Jess’s office. I’ll stop on the way and pick her up.” He took a quick glance out the window. “At least it only snowed about an inch. But I think more weather is coming. That wind hasn’t let up.”

“Who—who is that bastard out there sh-shooting at us?” Tanner sputtered again. The color was fading from his face.

“I don’t know yet, but Gannon will track them down. The gunfire came from down there, I think, but maybe from a couple of directions.” He gestured at the east edge of the property and then around to the side. It was closest to the road and had good cover. “Gannon has a suspicion about it.”

Susannah looked up at Cole. “How do we know they aren’t still out there, waiting to pick off more of us?”

“That’s a chance I’ll have to take. I can’t leave Tanner here.”

“I’m coming with you!”

“No, you stay here with the boys.”

She straightened her back and gave him a direct glare. “I certainly will not. They’re coming with
us
.”

Cole took a deep breath and sighed, accepting her orders. He left them to get the truck.

Her hands shaking, Susannah jumped up and grabbed the quilt and a pillow from the bed. Outside, the sound of the truck’s engine rumbled in the cold dawn. Between Susannah and Cole, they were able to get Tanner to his feet and half drag him down the steps, where they laid him in the bed of the Ford. She climbed in after him and covered him. From the porch, Riley gave her a searching look as they passed him but she ignored it. The sick feeling that he was somehow connected to this had begun germinating in the back of her mind. He must have known she spent the night with Tanner. The timing was too perfect.