Sunset Embrace (34 page)

"There's probably not much sense in that until we get settled." She gasped softly when she realized she had voiced her most urgent prayer. Two days ago he had said they would stay together only until they could obtain a divorce in Texas.

"You want to stay married then?" he asked brusquely.

"It would be all right with me. If you want to."

Ross had hoped that she would profess some kind of feeling for him, that she would indicate that the thought of their separating was as bleak to her as it was to him. After what had happened this morning, couldn't she force herself to show some enthusiasm for their staying together? Again she had lit the short fuse of his temper. "Well, from now on we're going to live like a married couple," he stated firmly. He placed his finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up to him. "A husband has rights, you know. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I think so."

Just so there would be no doubt, he slid one arm around her waist and yanked her forward to collide with his chest At the same time he ground his lips against hers in a searing kiss.

When he released her, she stepped back and covered her breasts with a fluttering hand. "What's the matter?" he asked, instantly contrite over his roughness.

"My hearts beating so fast."

His glazed eyes fastened on her breasts. "Is it?" he asked huskily.

The kiss had been intended to teach her that he was still boss, that out of the benevolence of his heart he was going to keep her around under the condition that she serve as bis bed partner. But his composure had been as shattered by the kiss as hers. All he could taste now was her mouth. Her scent assailed him. He could feel her as she felt this morning beneath him, pliant and feminine, accepting all of him.

"Lydia," he murmured gently. He was reaching for her again when he was summoned by a call from outside the wagon. Cursing and frustratedly passing a hand over the fly nf his pants, he grabbed his hat and stepped outside.

He told Lydia at breakfast that he had been asked to ride point so he could direct them to the campsite he and Stout had selected. Lydia thought he had more than likely been asked because of his precision with a gun. The entire train was still edgy about Luke's murder. She was both proud that Ross had been chosen to help look after the rest of them and worried that something would happen to him.

"Will you be all right driving today?" he asked her from the back of one of his mares, who was prancing and eager to be off.

"Yes," Lydia said, smiling in answer from her seat on the wagon. "I asked Anabeth to ride with me. I thought if she had me to visit with, it might help get her mind off Luke."

He nodded solemnly. "I tried talking to Bubba when I went to the corral this morning. The subject of Luke is closed." He glanced toward the front of the train where the first wagons were pulling out. "I've got to go."

"I'll see you at sunset."

Her message, spoken with such quiet emphasis, was clear. Ross's heart expanded in his chest. His eyes wandered leisurely over ner face before he doffed the brim of his hat and rode off in a cloud of dust.

She saw him many times before sunset because he invented excuses to ride back along the train just to catch
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sight of her. People began to comment on how conscientious Mr. Coleman was in his job as vigilante. It gave them a sense of security to know that a man with his soldiering experience—because where else could he have acquired that talent with guns?—was guarding them.

Their confidence was to tax Ross more than he could have imagined.

That evening he rushed through his chores, returning to the wagon in record time, washing quickly but thoroughly, humming to himself. When he went in the wagon to fetch clean clothes, he noticed Lydia had swept it out and tidied things. It was roomier somehow . . .

Only one bedroll was in evidence. She had combined the two they had been using to make one, and it was thickly padded and neatly turned down. There was a bouquet of wildflowers in a glass of water sitting on the oak chest of drawers.

She was as nervous as he during supper and seemed in a hurry to clean up afterward. Lee was fed and sponged down, so he would sleep easier, and then put in his bed. They were sharing one last cup of coffee and giving the sun plenty of time to set so they could go into the wagon when Mr. Grayson approached them.

"Good evening, Mrs. Coleman."

"Good evening, Mr. Grayson."

He marveled over the young woman who now bore little or no resemblance to the dirty creature Ma had brought to Coleman's wagon weeks ago. She was a pretty little thing, if her hair was a bit too free and her eyes a bit too eloquent. Her coloring was remarkable, the likes of which a man couldn't ignore. As was her shape. He had a hard time dragging his eyes off her to speak to her husband.

"Ross, I hate to ask you this, but would you mind patrolling the camp tonight?"

"Patrolling?" he echoed dismally. He wanted to go to bed with Lydia, as soon as it was good and dark.

Grayson cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Some of the folks got together and figured they sure would feel safer if someone with your . , . skills . . . was looking out for all of us. They offered to swap off, but I'm afraid if we do that, one of them will accidentally shoot the other. Everybody's edgy about Luke Langston's murderer still being on the loose. Would you mind too terribly much?"

He minded like hell. But how could he say no? "All right. Just for tonight."

Grayson coughed lightly. "Well, they were thinking maybe for a week or so. They've offered to pay you," he rushed to add.

A curse sizzled through Ross's thinned lips and Grayson cast another embarrassed glance in Lydia's direction. "How am I supposed to stay up all night and then ride point every day?"

"Not all night. The others will take turns relieving you after midnight. That'll give you a few hours to sleep."

But no time with my wife, Ross thought.

"Please, Ross. Just until we're out of this area and everyone's nerves calm down a little."

Ross really had no choice but to agree. What excuse could he provide for not wanting to? Certainly not the true one.

The days passed. The train made progress through southern Arkansas. All of them began to relax as they put more distance between the train and the site of Luke's murder. Everyone but Ross, who seemed to grow meaner by the day. Folks began to dread meeting him face-to-face. Invariably they were glowered at by green eyes that now had lines of fatigue and tension radiating from them.

By the end of the sixth day, Ross was at his wit's end. As soon as he put his horses up, he stamped to his wagon and slung open the canvas. He caught an unsuspecting Lydia washing from a basin. Her hair was pinned precariously to the top of her head. Disobedient strands had escaped to lie on her neck and shoulders that were still damp where she had just washed. In her surprise she dropped her washcloth and it splashed in the china bowl. It went unheeded. Her arms fell to her sides. Her unbuttoned chemise barely covered her nipples. Twin half-moons of flesh filled the space between the opening.

Without his uttering a word, Ross's eyes traveled from the base of her throat, where he could see a rapid pulse beating, down to the valley between her breasts, down her stomach to her navel. He stared at the spot for a long, silent moment before he whirled out of the wagon and went striding across the camp toward Graysons wagon.

"I want to talk to you," he virtually growled to the man.

"Of course, Ross," Grayson said, taking Ross aside to keep Mrs. Grayson from hearing any unfortunate words the man might choose to use.

Ross wasn't good at speeches. He wanted to say, "Look, Grayson, I'm horny as hell and want to tumble my wife, if it's all right with you and everyone else on this goddamn wagon train." But he was no longer a hellion and couldn't talk like one. He forced a modicum of control over himself and said tightly, "I've had it, understand? No more nights away from my . . . family. I haven't had time to piss this week." A man was entitled to one slipup. "I'm tired. The extra money is nice, but . . ."He pulled in an exasperated breath when the vision of Lydia's clean-smelling flesh came back into his mind. "I resign."

"That's fine, Ross. I think everyone's assured that it was an isolated incident and that the rest of us are in no danger."

Ross willed his body to relax. He had counted on an argument. Now that he didn't get one, he was ashamed of the way he had stormed at Grayson.

"All right, then. See you tomorrow."

He walked downstream from where everybody was getting water, shucked off all his clothes, and plunged in.

* * *

"Do you think that's what it was? An isolated incident?"

They were in the wagon, having eaten supper, cleaned things away, gotten Lee to sleep, and waited a decent interval to go inside. Now they were passing time until the rest of the camp settled into sleep.

Ross gazed at Lydia as she dragged the brush through her hair. "Yes, I think it was a renegade, long gone by now. I told you that from the first,"

Putting her hairbrush aside, she began unlacing her shoes. "Ma and the others seem to have accepted Luke's death. I don't know how anyone gets over losing a child." She was thinking how she would feel should anything happen to Lee. That's why she looked up in speechless shock when Ross said incisively, "You got over losing yours."

She ducked her head and took off her shoes. That hadn't been a child. It had been a lifeless product of shame and abuse. "That was different," she muttered.

"Was it? How?"

"It just was."

"Lydia." He waited until she was looking at him before he spoke again. And when he did it was with a gravity that told her he demanded an answer. "Who was the man?"

B
arefoot now, she walked to where he sat on a stool. As she knelt in front of him, she placed her hands on his thighs, just above his knees, and peered up into his face. Tears made her eyes shine like mellow wine in the dim lantern light.

"He was no one, Ross. No one. Unworthy of even thinking about." She tilted her head to one side as she pleaded with him. Her hair swept across her back to fall in a heavy cascade over one shoulder.

"I hated him. He was cruel. He took pleasure from hurting other people, from hurting me. By leaving him I didn't desert him, I escaped him. To save my life, to save my soul. Believe me, Ross."

She was weeping now, but only from her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks in a silver stream, but her voice didn't waver. It was full of supplication.

"He was the only one, Ross, I swear it. The only man to have me. I fought him every time. I was never with him willingly. I didn't want his baby. It was good that it died." Her fingers curled tighter around the outer edges of his thighs. "I wish I had never known him. I wish I could have been pure and new for you."

"Lydia—"

She shook her head, not letting him finish. Now that she had gone this far, she wanted to tell him how she felt. She might never have the courage again.

"You thought I was trash when the Langstons took me in. It's true that's how I had been living, but on the inside I knew I wasn't like that. I wanted to live among decent folks. When you married me, I made up my mind not to dwell on my past. I had been given a new life and was determined to put the old one behind me."

"The times we've been together have nothing to do with what happened to me before. I learned from you that what passes between a man and a woman doesn't have to be shameful and painful and horrible."

His hands came up to frame her face. With his stroking thumbs, he smoothed away the tears. He ran his hand from the crown of her head to her shoulders, loving the feel of her hair against his palm.

"Nothing in my life has been as fine, as good, as the time I've spent with you and Lee. I can't change the past, though I wish I could forget it. But don't hold it against me. Please. I want to be a good mother to Lee. I want to be a good wife to you. I'm ignorant and awkward and have so much to learn. Teach me, Ross. I'm trying hard to forget where I came from. Please, can't you forget it too?"

Who was he, Sonny Clark, to pass judgment on anyone? Hadn't he thought of himself as a victim of his heritage, and forgiven himself of past transgressions on those grounds? If he could absolve himself from guilt using his sordid upbringing as the reason, how could he condemn Lydia? Obviously she had been a victim too. And did he really care anymore what she had been, who had fathered her baby?

With her head now resting on his knee, her hair spilling over his thigh like a skein of knotted silk, he couldn't deny himself loving her because of some muddied principle. What she might have done before he ever met her seemed of little consequence.

Gently he raised her head. Opening his knees wider, he drew her close to him. He laid his thumbs vertically along her windpipe and curved his fingers around her neck to intertwine at her nape. Softly he said, "You're beautiful, Lydia."

She shook her head as much as his strong fingers around her throat would allow. "I'm not."

"You are,"

She gloried in the hooded eyes that bathed her face with emerald heat. "Not until I met you."

He urged her toward him as he bent slightly and placed his lips against hers. He kissed her softly with his moustache. His hands fell away from her throat and glanced over her breasts to her sides. His lips roamed her face, dropping light kisses on the tear-damp cheeks, on her eyelids, her nose, her temples, and then back to her mouth. His hands slipped around to the middle of her back.

He applied a constant, gradually increasing pressure, until she was molded against him. "I've dreamed of this all week," he confessed against her lips. "I've wanted you so damn much." He sighed. "From the very beginning I wanted you and hated myself for it. I took all my anger and frustration out on you." That admission cost him dearly. Lydia couldn't even appreciate how far Ross had come to be able to admit such a weakness in himself. None who had witnessed the hot-tempered young gunman drawing on a man for the merest slight, real or imaginary, would recognize this man who now reverently stroked his lovers cheek.