Only My Love (32 page)

Michael stubbed out what remained of her cigarette and laid it on the sill. She pulled the window shut. "I know you," she said.

Ethan said nothing, waiting. He wiped away the lather mustache, realized then what had helped her remember, and sighed. "I don't think you know me," he said. "You may have seen me before, but you don't know me." He got up and latched the door to make sure there were no interruptions.

"You're wrong. I know you. You're a Marshall."

"Keep your voice down." He stopped at the bureau on his way back to the bed and washed the last vestiges of lather from his face. Hanging onto the ends of the towel around his neck, he sat down and pulled alternately with each hand, trying to massage out the sudden tension. He was about to point out that Houston was a sheriff, so being a marshal didn't necessarily make him honorable, when Michael continued recounting her memory.

"I was trying to get in to see Logan that day," she said slowly, drawing on the past. "God, it must have been six months ago at least. I was still answering letters then, writing occasional columns for the society pages. There was a special assignment I wanted to work on, a murder trial. I'd been giving a lot of thought to an aspect of the story no one else had used. But I needed Logan's permission to proceed with it.

"I'd been screwing up the courage all day to see him. I finally thought I could do it only to discover that he was busy with some people. I caught a glimpse of you just as you walked into his office. I must have made some comment about it to Logan's secretary. That's when he told me you were a Marshall."

Faint color touched her cheeks as she recalled the more embarrassing moments of that afternoon. "I barged in to see him hours later, never suspecting he was still in a meeting. He gave me quite a dressing down then pointed out that he had company." She smiled ruefully. "I would have been happy if the floor had opened up and swallowed me. I remember turning around and seeing there were three men in the room. It's odd what goes through one's mind at times like that. I thought: tall, dark, and handsome." She glanced at Ethan's face and saw the ruddy color appearing just beneath his skin. "Before you flatter yourself too much, you were only the dark one. The older gentleman was tall, the younger one handsome."

Ethan's flinty stare widened slightly. He
had
been flattering himself. "As you say, it's odd what goes through one's mind. I remember thinking the pencils in your hair looked ridiculous."

Without a thought to what she was doing, Michael patted down her hair.

"I've become accustomed to them since then," Ethan said.

Her hands dropped to her lap again. For a moment she couldn't quite meet his eyes. "How are you related to Logan? I know he has a brother Christian, but others in his immediate family are dead. At least that's what I always understood."

Related to Logan? Ethan wondered. What was she talking about? Why would she think he was related to Logan Marshall? It wasn't until he heard himself complete the thought that he understood the problem. Marshall. Marshal. She'd made a natural assumption six months ago when she was told he was a marshal.

She had no reason to change it unless he gave her one. Ethan wasn't certain he was going to do that yet. Caution was still his best defense.

"A distant cousin," he said.

Michael nodded. "I thought it might be something like that. You have a little of their look. Black sheep strain, I'll bet."

"Mm-hmm."

"Is your first name really Ethan?"

"It's Ethan. Ethan Stone. I'm a Marshall on my mother's side."

"Does Logan know what his black sheep cousin does to put money in his pockets?"

Ethan's drawl became more pronounced. "What do you think?"

"I doubt it."

Some day, Ethan thought, Mary Michael Dennehy would not be so easily led into jumping to conclusions. At the moment he was glad it was still possible. He played to her suspicions. "You're right. He doesn't know."

"So what were you doing at his office that day I saw you?"

"Trying to negotiate a business deal."

"Who were those other men?"

"Just some people interested in the same deal."

"You make it sound like a poker game.
Deal
this and
deal
that."

He chuckled. "It was rather like a poker game."

"Did you win?"

"I'm still playing out my hand."

There were still tear tracks on Michael's cheeks. She took a cloth from the washstand and bathed her face quickly at the basin. Looking at Ethan over the wet cloth she held up to her cheeks, she asked, "Does that mean what you're doing now has something to do with the meeting that afternoon?"

"That's one way of interpreting it."

Michael wondered how many others there could possibly be. She didn't ask because she knew better than to expect a straight answer from Ethan. "Houston and the others don't know about your connection to the
Chronicle,
do they?"

"It's not much of a connection. I'm the black sheep, remember? As for the meeting, no, they don't know about it or that I was in New York then. But I'd have less problem explaining it than you would. They'd want to know how you came to be in the
Chronicle's
offices. I don't think you'd care for them to know, would you?"

"I think Houston already suspects."

Ethan slowly pulled the towel from around his neck. His narrowed, hooded eyes followed Michael back to her chair. "He suspects what?" he asked slowly.

"That I'm a reporter, or at least
my
connection to the
Chronicle
is more than simply being Drew Beaumont's traveling companion."

"Traveling companion? You were supposed to be his fiancée."

"Houston asked me about my engagement ring the other day. I had to say something. I told him the engagement wasn't official."

Ethan swore softly. "What exactly did he say to you this afternoon? And don't say it was nothing."

"Just
things,"
she said. At his sharp, angry look Michael recounted Houston's rather one-sided conversation with her. She told Ethan nothing about the physical confrontation that had taken place, only the verbal one. "It was all very veiled," she said. "Threatening without being specific. I don't even know why I'm telling you. You've threatened me with as much yourself. You probably told him what works best with me. I share one terrifying dream with you about falling into blackness and the next thing I know, I'm being threatened with eternity in a mine shaft."

Ethan had forgotten all about the dream until now, but he saw that she hadn't and the threat that Houston used, for all that it had been coincidental, clearly terrified Michael. He got up, opened the first drawer of his bureau and found a handkerchief. He gave it to Michael. "Here, you're crying again."

"Thank you." She hadn't even been aware of it.

He wondered what had happened between last night when Houston berated him for not caring well enough for Michael, and this afternoon, when Houston's own behavior had taken a dramatic turn. Had Houston discovered something, had Dee filled his ears with some lie about Michael, or was it just his manner of keeping her under his thumb?

Standing over her, Ethan placed one hand on the top rail of her chair. The tips of his fingers laid gently against her shoulder. "We've come to a crossroads, you and I, where one of us has to trust the other, even if it's on blind faith. As much as I might like to tell you certain things, I can't. My obligation to protect you conflicts with allowing you to know more. Therefore-"

"Therefore it has to be me who trusts you," she finished for him. "And when I did that you threw it back in my face. When I tried to find something good to believe in, you belittled me as if I were a schoolgirl in the throes of her first infatuation."

It was an apt description. Michael was reaching to him to steady her tilting world. It was natural, perhaps inevitable, that she felt something for him. In other circumstances, he reminded himself, she wouldn't have given him more notice than she'd ever given any man who didn't belong in her world.

"Well, I don't think so." She went on. "I'm not prepared to accept anything you have to say on blind faith. You'll have to give me something more to believe in." She raised her face to him, waiting.

"I didn't kill Drew Beaumont."

Michael sighed and shook her head. "That doesn't serve your case. The time to admit that has already passed." She stood and took a step away, intending to go around him. He blocked her path. "Yes?"

Ethan wanted to tell her. His mouth opened a fraction, the sun lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. There was tension in every line of his body, then it was gone. "No," he said finally, "I can't. I'd be trading your safety for time in your bed. I thought I was that selfish, perhaps I'm not. In any case, you deserve better."

Michael hesitated, moved by the desire that made him want to tell her something and the self-denial that held him back. "If you told me something, anything, to help me trust you, what is it you're afraid I might do?"

"Give the information away by some small misstep. It wouldn't be purposeful. I trust you that much. But it really wouldn't matter about the motive. If it happened you'd be dead."

"Is Nathaniel Houston your friend?" she asked, watching him closely.

Ethan didn't answer immediately. Finally he said, "Houston's using me to get something he wants. I'm using him for the same reason."

"But is he your friend?" She was unaware of the pleading look in her eyes. "Do you like him, admire him?"

"No. None of those things." He paused. "Is that what you needed to hear?"

"It's enough."

"It will have to be. If I respected Houston less, I'd tell you more."

Michael understood. It was the danger Houston represented that Ethan respected, not the man himself. "It's enough," she repeated.

Outside dusk was slipping quietly into Madison, silhouetting the surrounding mountains and bringing up the flames in gaslighted rooms along the main street. Ethan drew the curtain closed. Michael began taking the pins from her hair.

"Let me," he said.

"All right." She dropped her hand to her side and waited, anticipating, her eyes searching his face as he approached. Thick lashes shaded the darkening centers of his eyes. There was an intensity in their cool depths that held her immobile. Inside she trembled.

Ethan stopped just inches from her and raised his hands. His fingers barely touched the downy strands of hair at her nape. He heard her breath catch. "Do I frighten you, Michael?"

"When you look at me that way..." She shook her head, unable to finish. Unselfconsciously she tilted her face toward his cupped hand, rubbing her cheek against his palm. "...you make me want you."

It was Ethan who felt air swell in his lungs and burn before he could take another breath. His fingers tangled in her hair. He pulled at the pins, unwound the thick coil and combed through it with his fingertips. Silky, curling strands of copper, gold, and red spilled over his hands. He lifted her hair over one shoulder and let it fall and buried his face against her exposed neck. Her skin was as beautifully soft as it looked. He tasted. He sipped. Her arms went around him, holding him, stroking his naked back with the lightest touch of her tapered nails. She traced the length of his spinal cord. Her fingers dipped just below the waist of his jeans and circled around to the front. She fumbled with the button fly.

His mouth was hot on her skin. His tongue damp. Ethan's teeth caught her earlobe and worried it gently. His lips brushed her temple and he felt the faint racing of her pulse. Trailing across her forehead, he touched her feathery brows, her closed lids, the arch of her cheeks. His mouth teased the corner of her lips. Her mouth opened, hungry and demanding. She ground her lips against his mouth, pressing her tongue against his, making no secret of what she wanted.

Ethan was struck by her open and honest passion. There was no one else like her in his experience. Her reserve vanished in the face of her desire. She was without guile, untroubled by the depth of her wanting. Her fingers had managed the buttons on his jeans. She parted the material and pushed at his drawers. He had to capture her wrists as she captured him.

"I'll throw you back on the bed and toss up your skirts if you keep that up."

"I wouldn't mind."

"I would." His voice was husky, whiskey smooth. "I want to look at you."

Her smile was artless, not seductive, her pleasure genuine. She helped him with her buttons as he backed her toward the bed. He pulled the hunter green gown over her shoulders. She wiggled out of it as he tugged at the laces of her corset. She felt the mattress at the back of her thighs and dropped, lying back, supporting herself with her elbows while she raised one leg at a time for Ethan to make short work of her shoes and stockings. Grinning, he tossed them blindly over his shoulder. The shoes thumped, the stockings fluttered.

He was beside her on the bed then, rolling so that they stretched diagonally on the bed. Their mouths touched. Clung.

He pushed at her chemise, baring the smooth skin of her abdomen. She raised her arms over her head so he could pull it off. It went the way of the stockings. His knuckles brushed the tips of her breasts. The pink nipples seemed to darken to rose as they hardened.