Sweetwater Seduction (26 page)

“Thank you for the compliment,” she answered without the least bit of encouragement to Felton to continue the conversation.

“I've missed you,” he said, and added pointedly, “I've been waiting for another invitation to dinner.”

He waited some more. Miss Devlin couldn't get the words out.

But Felton wasn't going to be denied. He scooted closer to her on the sofa and took her hand in his. “Have you been thinking about what our life together will be like, Miss Devlin?”

“Yes,” she croaked.

“I would like to kiss you. Would that be all right?”

How could she say no to him when she had been willing, even eager, to kiss Kerrigan. “Yes,” she croaked.

There was a noise from the bedroom, and Felton jerked his head in that direction. “What was that?”

“Uh . . . my cat.”

“I didn't know you had a cat.”

“There was a litter of kittens at the Davis farm. I took one,” Miss Devlin blithely lied.

“Oh. Where were we? What about that kiss?”

Miss Devlin saw the bedroom door was open a crack, and one fierce dark eye was glaring at her. She clamped her jaw shut. She had given Felton the message as Kerrigan had asked. What was happening now between her and Felton was none of his business, and he should have known better than to eavesdrop. If he saw or heard something he didn't like, that was his own fault! She was entitled to a courtship. She was entitled to get married. And Felton Reeves was the only man who had offered either.

She turned to the sheriff and said, “Yes, I think a kiss would be fine.”

Miss Devlin wasn't as inexperienced kissing now as she had been the first time with Kerrigan. She had the gunslinger to thank for the fact she wouldn't make a fool of herself now, when it was really important to make a good impression. She simply closed her eyes and waited, lips slightly apart, for Felton's kiss.

It was a surprise.

His mustache was so soft. His lips were so gentle. He tasted so different from Kerrigan.

She hadn't expected to like Felton's kiss. She hadn't expected it to move her. But it did. Not with the same thrilling tingle she felt when Kerrigan barely touched her, but there was something there. And that was a whole lot more than she had expected. Perhaps, with time, that feeling could grow.

But if it never , it would be enough. That, and children, and a husband who came home to the same bed every night. She wanted those things, and needed the security that Felton Reeves would provide when he became the dutiful husband and solid-citizen rancher he had said he would become.

“That was nice,” she murmured.

“Yes, it was.” he agreed. “Again?”

“Yes, again.”

Kerrigan stood behind the bedroom door with his fists balled into knots. She was kissing Felton again. And she was enjoying it. They were both enjoying it. He wanted to tear the two of them apart. He knew it would only take his stepping out of her bedroom right now to end any chance she had of marriage to Felton Reeves. What Felton had wanted most of all was a chance to enjoy Miss Devlin's respectability. What would Felton think if he knew the spinster lady had hidden Burke Kerrigan in her bedroom for the better part of two weeks?

But he had learned to like and respect Miss Devlin. He owed her a lot. He owed her his life. He certainly owed her a chance to have a decent life of her own. And that meant a husband and kids. If Felton could give her that, who was he to interfere? He felt awful damn sick to his stomach as he inched the door closed.

“Why hasn't anybody seen him, then?” Cyrus demanded.

“How the hell do I know?” Oak answered irritably. “He's the best there is. If he can't find the rustlers, nobody can. Speaking of missing folks, where's Rusty?”

“Rusty isn't coming,” Cyrus said.

“Why not?” Oak demanded.

“He promised his wife he wouldn't come to any more meetings until the Association agreed to call off that gunslinger.”

“How're we supposed to call 'im off if we don't even know where the durned man is?” one man muttered.

Oak heard the grumbling, but didn't know what to say. There had been talk that Kerrigan had caught Pete Eustes rustling and shot him, but the sheriff said Kerrigan denied being responsible. Which left them a wondering who the hell had shot Eustes, and why. They should have been able to turn to Kerrigan for answers, but the troubleshooter they'd hired hadn't been seen for nearly two weeks.

Another week remained of the month they had promised to remain celibate in order to give Kerrigan time to work. But in light of the gunslinger's disappearance, Oak could hardly blame Rusty for dropping out. It was hard for Oak himself to remain resolute in the face of his wife's temptations.

He hadn't imagined Regina could be so devious. Or so inventive. He had begun to look forward to their evening encounters, even to relish them.

Last night she had come into his study bearing a tray of hot coffee. He had been entranced by the totally out-of-character flirting that followed.

What had attracted him to Regina thirty-two years ago was her confidence in herself, which she had transferred to him. Throughout the years they had been married, she had constantly challenged him to be more, to do more, to reach beyond anything he had ever thought within his grasp. That alone had made her a wife beyond compare.

What he had been seeing the past two weeks, the subtle seduction, the sexual titillation, was an entirely new and different side of his wife. Adding seduction to the mental challenge of living with Regina was putting an entirely new face on their relationship. It was like eating dried-apple pie for years, and loving it, only to discover how much the flavor was enhanced by adding cheddar cheese on top.

The fire burning low in the study last night had provided enough light to reveal Regina's shapely form through the flimsy garment she was wearing for a robe. Her figure hadn't changed much during the thirty-two years they had been married. Or maybe it had, only he still saw her the way she had been the first time he had set eyes on her, at a cotillion in Houston, long before the war. She hadn't been the most beautiful woman there, but she had possessed a dignity, a proud way of holding herself, that had impressed him much more than simple beauty.

Another man might have been intimidated by all that pulchritude. Oak had known right away that Regina was a woman worthy of her regal name. Suddenly, after years of living with her, he was seeing something so entirely different in the woman who was his wife, it had thrown him completely off stride. This woman who brushed against him so his skin felt hot frissons of desire, who eyed his body as though she wanted to eat him alive, and who taunted him with glimpses of flesh he was forbidden to touch, was a person he didn't know at all, but someone he very much wanted to meet.

It wasn't easy for him to wait and wonder along with the rest of the men sitting glumly around his study, why that goddamned gunslinger had run off without telling anybody where he was going.

“I say we give it up,” one of the cowmen said.

“Yeah,” another agreed.

Before approval of such an idea could spread, Oak interrupted, “We promised we'd wait a month. You men ready to raise a white flag after just three weeks? H're you going to live with yourselves if you do? More importantly, how're you going to live with your wives? You going to let them know you can't last four measly—though I'll grant you, miserable—weeks without them?”

It was easy to see that without their fellow cowmen to keep them to the straight and narrow, those sitting in the room would have given up the fight in the time it took a bronc to unseat a greenhorn. But each of them knew the ribbing—the sometimes downright harsh cowboy teasing—he would get from the others for the rest of his life in Sweetwater if he gave up now.

“All right, one more week,” one of the men said. “But not a day longer. If that gunslinger hasn't delivered the rustlers by then—”

“Let's wait and see what happens with Miss Devlin before we decide what we're going to do in a week,” Oak said. “After all, things looked pretty promising there for a while with the other half of the job we gave him to do.”

There was uneasy shifting in the room and a few sly looks exchanged as they recalled the gossip rife in Sweetwater about the spinster and the gunslinger. It was said both Kerrigan and the sheriff had gone to her house for supper the Friday before last. It was Felton Reeves who had come riding back into town first. It was anybody's guess what Kerrigan and Miss Devlin had spent the time alone talking about. Or whether they had done much talking at all . . .

“If Kerrigan seduces Miss Devlin, we may not need to be in such a godawful hurry to look for peace with those water-hogging, rustling sodbusters,” Oak said.

There were murmured assents, and a few men actually sprouted grins.

“If that's all,” Oak said, “this meeting is adjourned.”

Oak was still sitting at his desk in the study brooding when Regina came in. He pretended to be working on the ledger he had stared at sightlessly for the past half hour.

She walked over to the bookcase and pulled out a volume of poetry to page through it. “How did your meeting go?”

“Fine.”

“Has anyone seen the gunslinger?”

“Nope.”

“So what are your plans now?”

Oak took his cigar out of his mouth and laid it carefully in an ashtray. He swiveled his desk chair around to face his wife, and leaned back with his hands templed together, the tips of his fingers resting under his chin. “You're the one who put us on opposite sides of the fence, Regina. You can hardly expect me to tell you my plans under the circumstances.”

“I only meant—”

He stood abruptly. meant ‘Are you ready to take me up to bed now?' the answer is yes.” He stalked steadily toward her, and she backed away step by step as he advanced. “I've wanted to do that for the past three weeks. You're the one barring the door.”

He backed her up against the bookcase, his body pressed against hers. He was hard, harder than he had been in years, more desperate than he had been in years. He knew from the enlarged pupils in Regina's wide hazel eyes, her indrawn breath, her trembling body, that not only was she aware of his arousal, she was aroused herself. He ground himself against her once and heard her gasp of pleasure. He was angry at the need for restraint, and struggled to control the furious desire to lay her flat and take her on the parquet floor.

“Get out.”

Regina stared at him, helpless, paralyzed by her own need.

He backed up a step. It was all he could manage.
“Out.”

Regina scurried away. She was both elated and devastated by the evidence of Oak's need. The anguish on her face as she fled the room would have pleased him if he had seen it. Her teasing was a two-edged sword. For she wanted him as she never had. And it was killing her to keep him at arm's length. Regina cursed Miss Devlin and the foolish pride that had made her think she could bring Oak to heel this way. No one could win in a war like this. They would both lose if they kept at it until one of them gave in.