Midnight Lover (34 page)

"If you don't mind me sayin' so, miss, Sarah saw him coming out of your room. Evidence wouldn't be seemin' much better than that."

"No," said Caroline slowly, "I don't suppose it does, does it?"

"But don't worry, miss," Abby said. "Your reputation wouldn't be tarnished. I told them you and the mister were all legally wed."

Caroline leaped to her feet. "You did what!?"

Abby didn't bat an eyelash. "I told them you were married. 'Twould seem the right thing to do, what with a woman's good name bein' so important and all."

Caroline looked at the earnest faces of the girls sitting at her breakfast table and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "You must think me the worst hypocrite on earth for stooping to such deception. Please believe me when I say I had no desire or plan to marry. This is simply a business arrangement to—" She stopped, blushing furiously, and wished the ground would open up to swallow her whole.

"Don't you feel you have to explain anything to us, Caroline," said Margaret, patting her on the arm in a sisterly gesture of affection. "We ain't ones to pass judgment on anybody for fallin' in love and gettin' married."

Didn't anybody understand what her marriage was all about? She and Jesse had married solely to protect their own separate interests, a coldly logical arrangement for mutual benefit.

"We're not in love, Margaret," Caroline said.

"Oh, you can protest all you want, honey, but I ain't gonna pay you no mind."

Jenny Wilder leaned across the table and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I saw him with my own eyes, Caroline, and he had that look. Yessiree, he sure did, and I tell you I'd sell my best earbobs to see that look on Harry's face."

"Harry?" Was there to be no end of surprises this morning? "Who on earth is Harry?"

"Harry Morgan's her beau," said Sarah as her sister ducked her head and giggled. "Been seein' each other every Tuesday and Thursday regular as clockwork."

And that was just the beginning. It seemed as if the spinsters of the Crazy Arrow had all found romance. Abby and Sam Markham, the bartender at the King of Hearts Saloon. Jenny and Harry. Sarah and the blacksmith. The McGuigan girls with the four young men who ran the dry goods store.

"I cannot believe it," said Caroline, shaking her head in amazement. "What about the Single Man's Protection League? I thought courtship was out of the question."

"Some things just don't take real well to rules," said Jenny with a knowing smile. "Can't make no laws against love."

Love
, thought Caroline with a sigh. Now there was the rub. For Abby and Jenny and the rest of the girls love was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the mysterious and wonderful emotion that brought a man and a woman together and made them dream about a future. They believed in happily ever after, in rose covered cottages and plump and pretty babies, and growing old together as you sat by the fireplace and reminisced about what used to be.

A few months ago Caroline would have laughed at girls who believed in such foolish, sentimental claptrap. Now she envied those who did. She had grown up as the daughter of a man who made a lifetime out of falling in love and she'd seen firsthand how short forever really was; but, how she wished she could throw caution to the wind and enjoy what she had for however long it would be hers.

"Don't look so sad, Caroline," said Betty McGuigan. "That old Single Man's League ain't got long to last. Silver Spur's ripe for weddings and ain't nothin' going to change that fact."

"And you're proof of the pudding," said Sarah, toasting Caroline with her mug of coffee. "Here's to the first of many weddings for the Crazy Arrow!"

The other girls jumped to their feet, holding their coffee cups aloft. "To the bride!"

Caroline met Abby's hazel eyes across the room and her maid quickly read the plea in her employer's expression.

"Remember what I be tellin' you about the weddin'," cautioned Abby. "Only way the Crazy Arrow will stay open is if the weddin' stays a secret and you know that without the Arrow there wouldn't be many of you what could be stayin' on in town to win yourselves a husband."

"We wouldn't do a thing to hurt you, Caroline," promised Margaret as the others murmured their agreement. "I think it'll be a heap of fun keeping this secret from the menfolk. They'll learn soon enough that bein' single ain't so all-fired wonderful and we'll be havin' the last laugh on the League yet." Caroline could only pray they were women of their word.

#

"You ain't payin' attention tonight, boss." Sam Markham pounded on the bar at the King of Hearts. "Hell, you ain't paid attention to nothin' all day."

Jesse looked up from his whiskey. "What was that, Sam?"

His bartender shook his head in exasperation. "You got mush for brains or are you roostered?"

"I haven't drunk enough whiskey to get roostered," Jesse said, "and ain't you gettin' a little personal?"

"You been actin' stranger than a hound in heat," said Sam, pouring himself a draft and sitting down next to Jesse at the bar. "Jade giving you a hard time?"

Jesse shrugged. "Ain't seen her today." After their battle the night before, he wasn't about to go round to the Golden Dragon and set himself up for more of her hot temper. Besides, he didn't owe her an explanation for anything; he had his own life and Jade had hers and right now those two lives weren't exactly moving in the same direction. He'd never hung his brand on her and he sure as hell hadn't let her hang one on him. From the start they'd both been free to do as they please; Jade opened the Golden Dragon and continued to entertain customers of her own choosing, while Jesse had himself a string of women over the years and continued to keep his heart his own.

At least, he'd thought so before last night. Last night something had happened to him, something he couldn't exactly understand. Nothing he and Caroline had done was new or untried; yet he felt as if he had discovered a beautiful new world.

The thought scared hell out of him.

"You ain't been stayin' with Jade lately, have you?" Sam asked.

"What's it to you, Markham?"

Sam shrugged. "Talk is you got yourself a new woman. Can't say the League's too happy about that."

"Can't say I exactly give a prod pole what the League thinks about it." There was no way on earth he would expose Caroline to the anger of Big Red and his crew.

"Now ain't the time to start trouble with 'em, boss. You jest got 'em all calmed down by movin' into the Crazy Arrow. Why give them new reason to get all fired up again and maybe bust into the Arrow, lookin' for trouble?"

Markham seemed damned concerned about the Crazy Arrow. "Opening up the old Rayburn mine ain't good enough for them these days, Sam?"

"You been talking about it a lot but ain't nothin' much going on."

He forced his mind away from Caroline. "I'm signing up a crew tomorrow. Think that'll put the League's fires out for awhile?"

"Hell, yes, boss." Sam's broad face split with a smile. "I think that's going to do the job real fine."

Sam got up and left and the mine and the saloon and everything else drifted away. Jesse took a swallow of whiskey and let it roll slowly down his throat as he thought about his wife and all the reasons why he wouldn't let it happen again.

#

He brought her roses this time, yellow roses trembling on the brink of full flower, and he drew them across her breasts and belly and said things Caroline had only heard in her dreams.

Outside lightning split the sky as thunder rumbled over the foothills and for the first time in her life, it didn't matter at all because she was in his arms.

Once she tried to move away from him, to break free of the spell she was falling under, but his arms tightened around her and he pulled her close to his body.

"Don't," she said, her words a whisper in the night. "Don't let me become accustomed to you when we both know this can't last."

"Hush, Car-o-line," he murmured against her shoulder, his hands cupping her breasts. "Don't go thinkin' about the end of it when you can be enjoying what we got now."

But she couldn't do that for in her mind the beginning and the end were part of the whole that was their marriage. She knew full well that implicit in each hello they uttered, was the final and heartbreaking goodbye.

"I never meant for this to happen, Jesse."

"I did." He pinned her hands overhead and pressed his weight down upon her. "You're not goin' near that mine alone again."

His words pleased her immeasurably. Dangerously. "You don't have to worry, Jesse," she said, her voice light. "Nothing will happen to me."

"I ain't taking no for an answer." His voice was fierce and possessive and a thrill ran through her body. "I don't want anything happening to you."

"Of course not." She tried to hide the pleasure his words gave her, even thought she knew they were fool's gold. "I am worth much more alive than dead."

"I want you to start carryin' that derringer Abby got you."

She shivered. "I'd rather not."

"This ain't Boston. A gal like you needs protection."

"I have you, Mr. Reardon."

"I won't always be around, Car-o-line."

"I understand." Tears, quick and unexpected, stung her eyelids and she blinked and looked away. This cannot last, a voice inside her heart reminded her. It will not last.

"You'll tote the derringer?"

"It will be my constant companion."

He nodded and then his lips found hers and she forgot everything but the way he made her feel.

#

Freedom was a dangerous commodity.

Unfortunately, Thomas Addison didn't realize how dangerous until he lost his freedom to the Dodge City, Kansas marshal.

The stagecoach had been delayed in town overnight because the longhorns had just been driven in on their way to the eastern packing houses and the place was a mess of cattle and cowboys. The sweet smell of money and sin was everywhere Thomas went. There was nobody to tell him no; nobody to tell him he couldn't gamble and drink and whore with the best of them.

In a manner of speaking, Thomas was as far away from his Boston home as he was likely to ever get, and that knowledge broke down the last of the barriers separating fantasy from reality. This might be his last chance, he told himself as the money flew from his pockets. Marriage did things to a man even marriage to a woman like Caroline Bennett. Once that ring was on their pretty finger, they changed, grew bossy and tight-fisted like his mother Emily or ornery and cold-hearted like the prim and proper wives of his friends. In his heart, he knew this was his last chance to kick up his heels and howl at the moon.

It was like God had been looking the other way when he put Dodge City on the map and things that would put you behind bars in Boston made you a hero there in Kansas.

Except for running out of money.

He hadn't meant to do it, Thomas told the stony-faced marshal as he was rudely tossed into the cell and the door clanged shut after him. It was just the temptation had been so great he couldn't resist.

And so he drank too much and gambled too much and spent the rest of his money on women who were more willing than he would have imagined a woman could be. He could be forgiven his last hurrah, could he not, for if all went well he'd soon be tying that matrimonial noose about his neck and settling into domesticity with the girl he loved.

Maybe it was worth being in jail. He'd wired his banker in Boston to send more money and with a little bit of luck by this time tomorrow he'd be on his way again to Silver Spur and Caroline.

Chapter 20

The next few days went by in a pleasant blur for Caroline as the carpenter began work on enlarging the parlor of the Crazy Arrow into a dining room where she could serve guests.

The rat-tat-tat of hammering and the scrape of his saw was the music of the day. Abby grumbled and walked around with cotton in her ears but to Caroline the cacophony was more beautiful than the loveliest waltz for it meant her dreams were coming true.

She could barely remember her old life in Boston. It seemed a thousand years since she had sat in the parlor with Thomas Addison sitting, docile and hopeful, by her side. Poor Thomas, she thought, as she waved goodbye to Abby and headed outside to await the stage. Doomed to spend the rest of his life in the stultifying atmosphere of that big house on the hill, obeying his mother and one day obeying his wife, and never once asking why.

Jesse's dreams for the old Rayburn mine were coming true, as well. By the time they approached the end of their second week of marriage, he had put together a crew of miners and gamblers who would re-open the abandoned site and begin the search for silver anew. A spirit of optimism and hope for the future had settled on the town, and Jesse was the one to thank