Secondhand Bride (12 page)

T
he sound, slight as it was, startled Chloe awake. She flailed against the sheets and quilt, entangled around her because of fitful dreams, and sat bolt upright in bed, blinking away sleep.

In the bright moonlight, she saw that the cottage was empty, the door still bolted, but the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood up, just the same.

It came again, and this time she identified it. Metal, tapping against glass.

She snatched the derringer off the little table next to the bed, scrambled into her wrapper, and went to the window.

Jeb McKettrick was standing in the grass, his hair lit with silver, just sliding his pistol back into the holster.

Chloe shoved up the sash and leaned out the window. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, in an affronted whisper. “Are you
trying
to get me sent away?”

He grinned foolishly, and she wondered if he was drunk. “I’ve got news,” he said, too loudly. “Put away that derringer, will you? It would be a hell of a thing if you shot me.”

Chloe set the gun aside, on top of the bookshelf. “For heaven’s sake,” she fussed, “it must be two in the morning!”

Jeb took a watch from his pants pocket and consulted it, swaying a little, as though even that small effort had upset his balance. “Three-fifteen,” he said, plainly relishing the opportunity to correct her.

Chloe was building toward a boil, so she turned down the fire and put a lid on her temper. “What do you want?” she demanded, having second thoughts about the derringer.

“I told you,” Jeb said, all long-suffering goodwill. “I have news.”

“What could you possibly have to tell me at this hour?” She ought to slam down the window and ignore him, she knew that, but for some reason, she couldn’t.

“I have a sister.”

Chloe stared down at him, confounded. If she could have gotten hold of his hair, she’d have pulled out a handful. “What?”

“I have a sister,” he repeated, very carefully, as though she were hard of hearing.

Chloe’s mind, fogged by sleep and sudden alarm, finally cleared. She remembered meeting his obviously pregnant stepmother, Concepcion, soon after her arrival on the Triple M. “Oh,” she said, taking a moment to envy the woman. She loved children, though with two failed marriages behind her, it didn’t seem likely that she’d ever have any of her own. “Well—that’s wonderful—”

“Her name is Katherine, for some saint,” Jeb said, slurring his words ever so slightly.

“Have you been drinking?” Chloe inquired.

“Celebrating,” he said, correcting her again.

“I’m very happy for you,” Chloe said tersely. “Now, kindly go ‘celebrate’ somewhere else before you wake up the whole town!”

He didn’t move, except to tilt his head to one side. “Do you ever get the feeling that the train’s pulled out of the station and you’re still standing on the platform?” he mused. The scent of whiskey rose on the night breeze, along with those of good grass and the last, late roses of the season.

The question touched a nerve, even though Chloe suspected that Jeb was talking about his own situation, not hers, and it made her testy. “I’ll get the marshal if you don’t leave,” she warned, “and have you arrested. Don’t you think I won’t!”

He grinned. “You’d have to come outside to do that, wouldn’t you? And then I’d take you in my arms and— have you ever made love in the grass, Chloe?”

Chloe slammed down the sash, and the glass panes rattled in their sturdy frames. Keeping well away from the window, she pulled on her clothes, then lit a lamp. There was no hope of sleeping, but neither did she intend to go outside, even though something elemental urged her to do just that. She would wait him out, get one of her books and read, right out loud if necessary, until he gave up and went away.

Jeb started to sing, softly at first, and then with escalating spirit. No serenade, this—it was a bawdy tune of the sort one might hear passing by a saloon. Not that she frequented such establishments. Except for her wedding night, when she’d gone looking for her stray bridegroom, she’d never set foot in one.

Chloe plunked down at the table, snapped open
Pilgrim’s Progress
, and began to read, silently, but forming the shape of each word with her lips.

Jeb sang louder.

Chloe slammed the book shut and was assailed by dust. She went back to the window, yanked it open.

“Shut up, damn you!” she hissed. “People will hear!”

Jeb grinned. “I guess you’d better let me in, then,” he said.

She was caught between a rock and a hard place. If she left him out there, he’d raise the dead with his catter-walling, and if she let him in, well, God knew what would happen. She reached for the pitcher on the washstand and flung its contents through the opening, dousing him.

He spread his hands, looking down at his drenched shirt and trousers in apparent disbelief. “Well,” he said philosophically, “now you’ve
got
to open the door. I could catch my death out here.” He favored her with another of his lethal grins. “Or, I could
really
start singing—”

“Don’t!” Chloe pleaded. “I’ll let you in. Just—
please
— stop carrying on!”

“Finally,” he said, with a beleaguered sigh, “the woman sees reason.”

She crossed the room in a few frustrated strides, worked the latch, and threw open the door. Jeb stood on the stoop, his eyes dancing, soaked to the skin. Up close, she could see that he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d appeared—no doubt the sluicing had sobered him considerably.

“Bloody
hell
,” Chloe muttered, stepping back to admit him, “you are half-again as much trouble as you’re worth!”

He came in, shut the door, leaned against it. “It’s been too long, Chloe,” he said gravely.

She hated the surge of heat that rushed through her system, hated him for being able to arouse it. “Keep your distance,” she ordered, though she couldn’t have said whether she was talking to him or to herself.

He let his gaze drift over her, then went to the bedside table, where the lamp was burning, and blew it out. Chloe watched, in miserable anticipation, as he sat down on the edge of her bed, kicked off his boots, and began unbuttoning his shirt, starting at the cuffs. In all that time, he never looked away from her face.

She folded her arms, determined to stand her ground. Remembering the kiss they’d exchanged, on his earlier visit, she felt as though she were being sucked down into a patch of molten quicksand.

He pulled his shirttails out, dealt with the last of his buttons, worked the buckle on his gun belt, and all the while, she was a willing hostage, knowing she should look away and never even blinking her eyes.

Jeb shrugged out of the shirt, stood, and started with his trousers.

A hot flush bubbled up from Chloe’s center, scalding its way toward her face. She felt herself opening to receive him, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well.

“What’s the matter, Chloe?” he asked quietly, his expression serious now. “You say I’m your husband. Doesn’t that give me a right to your bed?”

She swallowed. “No,” she said, with consummate uncertainty.

He was naked, gloriously perfect, unabashedly male. He held out a hand to her; it was an invitation, not a command. She might have resisted the latter, but she had no chance against the former.

She had been rooted to the floor, but now she felt the twining tendrils of her determination snapping, one by one. She took a single step in his direction, but that was enough. In the next instant, she was in his arms.

He kissed her, deeply, slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, as if the morning, with all its recriminations and consequences, would never come.

And she responded, under no spell, but by her own choice.

Jeb divested her of her hastily donned clothes, a garment at a time, without lifting his mouth from hers. He found her breasts unerringly, weighing them in his hands, chafing the nipples with the sides of his thumbs.

She moaned, heard and felt the sound echo off the back of his throat. Her arms found their way around his neck, seemingly of their own accord.

Before their marriage, they’d made love often, and wildly, but this was the first time they’d been together as man and wife, and, for Chloe at least, that made the event sacred, despite her certainty that a wiser woman would have refrained.

Jeb came up for air, and his eyes smiled down into hers. He didn’t ask if she wanted to change her mind; he knew her too well for that. Chloe never did anything she didn’t want to do, on some level, and this was no exception. She was reeling with desire, and with a need to match Jeb’s own, but she was under no illusion that she’d been coerced or even persuaded. For all her passion, her mind was clear as water from some hidden, sacred spring.

He wrapped a tendril of her hair around his finger. “I do believe you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

She laid her hands against his chest, lightly, and felt his nipples tighten under her palms. His arousal pressed against her belly, making her dizzy with promise. “Just how many have you seen,” she asked softly, “since the last time we were together?” It was a dangerous question, put to a man like Jeb, but the answer was vital.

“None,” he replied, without hesitation. And she believed him.

“That must have been difficult,” she said.

He went to the bed, sat down on its edge, drawing her with him. His hands cupping her bottom, he leaned forward, touched her navel with the tip of his tongue. “Worse than difficult,” he muttered.

Chloe trembled, let her head fall back in a sort of victorious surrender. “You surely had opportunities,” she said, her breath catching. She felt his lips on her right hipbone, then her left, light and warm.

He chuckled against her, sent fire racing beneath her flesh. “A few,” he admitted, “but my heart wasn’t in it.”

“I wasn’t thinking about your heart,” she replied. “Anyway, I’m not at all sure you even have one.”

This time he laughed. Simultaneously, he pulled her down onto his lap, facing him, and eased inside her.

Sensation took her over, completely. She gasped in exultation, tangled her fingers in his hair.

He delved deeper. Groaned. It was a homecoming sort of sound, a seeking of sanction and solace, part relief, part anticipation.

Chloe gave a soft cry, trembling at the beginning of an ecstasy she knew would soon consume her, consume them both.

He found her breast with his mouth, took her nipple hungrily.

A muffled shout burst from her throat.

“Don’t yell, Chloe,” he teased, on his way to ravish the other breast. “It will draw more attention than my singing.”

She bit down hard on her lower lip and made a desperate, soblike sound as he continued to enjoy her.

And then he began to move, raising her, lowering her, along the length of his shaft. Her eyes rolled back, she locked her thighs around his hips, and rode straight into the fire.

She lay askew on the bed, arms flung back, fingers still loosely curled around the rails of the headboard, hair blazing against the moon-washed white of the pillow. Spent, she slept, this angel temptress, and Jeb watched her for a long time, wishing he didn’t have to leave.

The moon was already thinning, though, turning transparent, and dawn would not be long in coming. He had sung his way past Chloe’s door, loved his way into her bed, but if his horse was still tied outside when the town woke up, somebody was sure to notice. The results would be disastrous for Chloe.

With a sigh of regret, Jeb stood, gathered his clothes off the floor, got into them. He was tucking in his shirt when Chloe opened her eyes.

“You’re going,” she said simply.

“Yes,” he answered. “Get up and latch the door when I’m gone.”

She stretched, made a little crooning sound that tightened his groin. “All right,” she agreed sleepily.

If only she were always that compliant. In another few hours, though, she’d probably be cursing his name. He buckled on his gun belt. “I mean it, Chloe,” he warned. “Don’t go back to sleep until you’ve seen to the door.”

She batted her lashes at him. “Yes, Mr. McKettrick,” she said sweetly, and with a coyness that made him want to strip down and crawl right back into bed.

He went to the front window, drew aside the curtains. The street was empty. “It feels strange,” he said, “sneaking out of here like we’ve done something wrong.”

The bedsprings creaked, and when he turned, she was sitting up, propped against the pillows, the covers drawn to the upper curves of her breasts. She was brazenly beautiful, even in the predawn light, and might as easily have been a courtesan in some foreign palace instead of a schoolmarm in Indian Rock. “I need this job, Jeb,” she said. “Right now, it’s all I’ve got.”

He wanted to contradict her, but the fact was, she was right. He had little to offer her, besides space in his room at the ranch and the pitiful wages he earned punching cattle and breaking horses to ride. No big house, like the one Rafe had built for Emmeline, across the creek from the home place. No horses or bank accounts to hand over, like Kade. They’d gotten those things by their own efforts, his brothers had, for the ways of Angus McKettrick were old-fashioned ones. He believed in thrift and hard work.

It was ironic as hell, realizing he couldn’t have Chloe, didn’t deserve her, after what they’d shared in the night. Maybe that was why he said what he did, the way he did.

“Too bad we’re not married,” he told her. “You would have made a lively wife.”

Silence buzzed behind him, and there was mayhem brewing in it.

He stepped out onto the small porch, smiled sadly when he heard something, probably a vase or a china plate, shatter against the door.

The ride back to the Triple M seemed longer than usual, and it was lonesome as hell.