Sweetwater Seduction (25 page)

“Ah. You may have a point there. My grandmother Haley was a schoolteacherde sure I learned to appreciate a good book.”

Which was where he had gotten his understanding of all the Big Words she used, Eden guessed.

Kerrigan frowned and shook his head. “Naw. A farmer like Wade Ives isn't going to have time to read. And when he does have the time, he's going to be too tired.”

“You're painting an awful dreary life for this boy.”

“Not dreary. But hard, yes. After all, what do you expect for someone without an education?”

Miss Devlin stared at him. Then she burst out laughing. “You don't disagree with me at all.”

“No, I don't.”

Finding a kindred spirit, Miss Devlin said earnestly, “I want him to keep on learning, keep on reading. Then, when life is hardest, he can turn to literature for escape—to better worlds, or more exciting ones.”

“Is that why you read so much? To escape?”

His perception frightened her. “Of course not,” she retorted.

“Why don't I believe you?”

“You can believe what you choose,” she said. “I read because I enjoy reading. It's as simple as that.”

“Why?”

Eden simply stared at him.

“Why do you enjoy reading?” he persisted.

“Why do you enjoy reading?” she countered.

Kerrigan smiled. “It's a great escape from the everyday world,” he freely admitted. “And because what I read often provokes thought.”

“I guess that holds true for me too,” Eden agreed.

They abandoned the conversation because Kerrigan pleaded fatigue, only to pick it up again a few days later. Eden was sitting in the reception chair in the parlor mending the hem on one of her dresses when Kerrigan appeared from the bedroom, wrapped in a sheet and dragging a blanket. In short order he had settled himself (Lord help her, bare-chested again!) on the sofa, with his outstretched legs covered by the quilt.

“What is it books make you think about?” Kerrigan asked once he was comfortable.

“Well, for one thing, I think about how often fate steps in to cause a tragedy,” Eden answered. “Like in
Romeo and Juliet.
Mercutio tries to separate Romeo and Tybalt when they're fighting, and gets stabbed by mistake.”

Kerrigan snorted. “That wasn't fate. Mercutio made a choice. A stupid one, as it turned out. I don't believe in fate, myself. I'm convinced we control our own destiny.”

“Children don't,” Eden said bitterly. “Look at the pupils in my schoolroom. What control do they have over the havoc their parents are wreaking around them? My father never once asked me if I wanted—” Eden cut herself off. Sundance was a subject she didn't want to discuss.

Kerrigan saw the troubled look on Eden's face and pursued the cause of it like a cutting horse dogging an elusive steer. “I don't say a child can control what his parents do,” Kerrigan said. “But once he's grown, all the decisions are his.”

“Not if his parents have limited his choices,” Eden retorted. She bit her lip to keep from saying more.

“I don't see how that's possible,” Kerrigan said.

“By the way they raise him,” Eden said, feeling her way carefully, so as to keep her secrets to herself. “Like if Wade Ives's father doesn't make him do his homework, the only choice he'll ever have is to be a farmer. Or say a parent teaches a child to hate certain kinds of people or . . . or to fear certain things . . .”

“Is that what your parents did?” Kerrigan asked. “Taught you to hate and fear?”

“If they did, it wasn't done purposely,” Eden said in a quiet voice. “I learned lessons from them I'm sure they had no idea they were teaching.”

“Like what?”

Eden found his concerned eyes difficult to avoid. And then she was telling him things she had never told another soul. “They taught me that loving someone too much can be painful. And they taught me that a man who lives with a gun is bound to die a violent death.” She looked Kerrigan straight in the eye and said, “Sometimes we don't have choices. Things have already been decided for us.”

This time it was Eden's turn to plead fatigue. She went out to the kitchen to allow Kerrigan time to get settled on the pallet in front of the fireplace in her bedroom, which he had begun to use, insisting he could no longer deprive her of her bed.

The next evening Eden was settled on the sofa reading a book when Kerrigan came into the parlor dragging his quilt, and carrying a book of his own. Instead of sitting in the reception chair across from her, he settled on the opposite end of the sofa.

“I need the light to read,” he explained.

Since the Victorian sofa wasn't a large piece of furniture, Eden could have reached out a hand to touch the soft hairs on his bare chest. They read silently together for about an hour before Kerrigan laid his book down and took them back to gn conversational bone.

“It must have been fate that brought me here,” he said.

Startled by the sound of his voice, Eden looked up from her book to find his dark eyes full of mischief. “What?”

“I said fate must have brought me here.”

“I suppose I'll lose all the ground I've gained if I suggest you came here on purpose to complicate my life,” she said with a smile.

“If there is such a thing as fate, why have you and I been thrust together like this?” he asked. “Do you suppose our lives will change forever because our paths have crossed?”

Eden shifted uneasily under Kerrigan's steady gaze. “I really don't see that my life has changed that much since you came,” she said. “Except I've had a little more practice cooking for company.”

Kerrigan laughed. “I don't think I was fated to come into your life to make you a better cook,” he said. “As far as that goes, your appearance has improved more than your cooking.”

“It has? I . . . I'm not dressing any differently.”

“It isn't what you're wearing. It's you.”

“Me?”

“Your hair looks more touchable, less severe,” he said.

“Oh.” It was true she had stopped brushing those unruly curls into submission.

“There's a warmth in your eyes, a kind of glow that lights up your whole face.”

“There is?” Eden dropped her eyes to hide the evidence of how much she was affected by his words.

“Your mouth is . . . softer.”

“Softer?”

Kerrigan reached out his thumb and rubbed it across her full lower lip.

“Yeah, softer,” he said. “You don't pucker up your mouth like a prune so much anymore.”

His thumb stopped the protest forming on her lips. “You look very kissable.”

Eden raised her eyes to meet Kerrigan's tender gaze. In the days they had spent together he had ceased being “the gunslinger” and become just a man, one who teased and challenged and, yes, even admired her.

As he leaned toward her she thought how this moment had been fated from the first instant she had laid eyes on himed her. And, God help her, she wanted him.

His lips brushed hers lightly at first, softly, a tease, a taste. The rasp of his week-old beard against her face felt marvelous. Then his mouth was back on hers, more insistent, more demanding.

Her lips softened under his and she began kissing him back, her lips brushing, teasing. The change happened without her quite knowing it, and suddenly she was the one who became insistent, demanding.

Kerrigan's hand curled around her nape and held her captive as his tongue came searching for the honey she had withheld for so many years.

At the first touch of his tongue caressing her lips, Eden gasped in startled pleasure. He gently tasted her, then withdrew.

She returned the favor and heard him make a guttural sound deep in his throat that sent shivers down her spine.

A moment later he had the pins out of her hair and had thrust his hands into the soft, silky mass. His mouth found hers again, his tongue thrusting deep, seeking all the textures and tastes of Miss Eden Devlin, spinster.

Eden was afraid to breathe, afraid that if she did, all the magical sensations might vanish. But they didn't. They only grew stronger, until she tentatively began returning his intimate kisses, her tongue imitating his, teasing his lips open and seeking the taste of him.

Eden's whole body was trembling. She wanted more. Needed more. She wanted to press herself against him. To touch—She gently laid her hands on his chest and heard him groan with pleasure. The muscles of his chest were hard under her fingertips, the black curls so unbelievably soft.

Eden had forgotten herself so completely that it was only when Kerrigan took her shoulders and wrenched the two of them apart that she realized someone was knocking on the door.

Eden sat stunned while Kerrigan swore several oaths she had never heard before, grabbed his quilt and book, and disappeared into her bedroom.

The pounding became more insistent and she heard, “Miss Devlin, are you in there? Are you all right?”

It was Felton Reeves! “I'll be there in a minute,” she shouted back.

Eden raced frantically to gather the riotous curls back from her face. She held her hair with one hand while she searched the sofa for the pins Kerrigan had let fall where they might. Moments later she had fashioned an old-lady bun at her nape. There was nothing she could do to erase the aroused state of her body. She felt hot, and her knees were surprisingly weak. Her breasts ached and her lips were puffy and sore. She wiped the dampness from her palms onto her dress and opened the door.

“My message said I would meet you in your office when you got back into town,” she said in the sternest voice she could muster.

“I decided to stop.” Felton looked suspiciously around the parlor, as though he expected to find evidence of Kerrigan's presence.

Realizing she couldn't keep him out, Eden invited him inside. His first words, after she had taken his coat and hat and joined him on the sofa in the parlor, were: “Where's that killer been hiding out?”

The “killer” had carefully rehearsed Miss Devlin on what she should tell Felton, and she replied with remarkable presence of mind, “He's been moving around. He only stopped here long enough to give me a message for you.”

“Well, what is it?”

Miss Devlin was put off by the curtness of Felton's tone, and that, combined with her anxiety over the fact Kerrigan was listening to every word they said through the bedroom door, made her equally abrupt. “He said to tell you that he kicked Levander Early, along with Bud Fraley, Hogg Smith, Doanie Benson, and Stick Humbert, out of Montana last year for rustling cattle. He said he thinks maybe Levander and his gang are rustling cattle here in Sweetwater now.”

“That's crazy,” Felton said. “Why would they bother to file for farmland if they was—”

“Were.”

“—
were
going to rustle steers?”

“Kerrigan thought you might have that reaction. He said to tell you to take another look in Sweetwater Canyon. He's pretty sure that's where the stolen cattle are being hidden until the rustlers can get them to market.”

“Why don't—”

“Doesn't.”

“—
doesn't
Kerrigan hog-tie the rustlers himself, if he's so sure who they are?”

The truth was, Kerrigan hadn't been well enough to do more than eat, sleep, and read for the past two weeks. Knowing Felton was liable to ask this question, he had tutored Miss Devlin to say, “He's waiting to see if there's anybody else involved besides Levander and his gang before he rounds them up.”

Felton stared a long time without saying anything, and she wondered what he was thinking. Apparently her answer had satisfied him, because he let the subject drop and asked, “How've you been? I ain't—haven't—seen you for a while. But you look . . . beautiful.” Felton meant what he said. There was something different about Miss Devlin tonight . . .

Eden felt guilty because she knew that what Felton was seeing on her face was the result of Kerrigan's lovemaking. It was Felton's courtship she should be encouraging. Kerrigan was just passing through; Felton was her future. She determined to remedy her lack of attention to her suitor at the first opportunity. But this was not the time—not with Burke Kerrigan listening to every word they