Sweetwater Seduction (36 page)

Tell him about Kerrigan.

Felton hadn't said he was marrying her because she was virtuous. He had merely said she would make a good wife and mother. She would be the most loyal and steadfast wife and devoted mother any man could have.

Tell him about Kerrigan.

“You know, Kerrigan and I—”

“Kerrigan won't ask you to marry him,” Felton said in a harsh voice. “He ain't the marrying kind.”

“But he and I—”

“I don't care what you've been to Kerrigan in the past, so long as once you put that ring on your finger you know you're mine.”

Tell him about Kerrigan.

But Felton had already said he didn't care. Who could blame her if she chose to believe him?

Miss Devlin took a deep breath and forced a smile. “I guess this means we're engaged. Would you like to put the ring on my finger?”

“Sure,” he said, his Adam's apple bobbing again.

She held out her hand and after fumbling a little, he slid the ring on her finger. It fit. It didn't look quite so bad once it was on. It took up most of the space on her ring finger below her knuckle, leaving barely enough room for a wedding band.

“You've made me a very happy man,” Felton said. But his eyes said differently.

“And you've made me a happy woman,” Miss Devlin replied, her gaze equally solemn. She had purposely left out the
very
in front of the
happy
. There were limits to how much lying she thought she ought to do under the circumstances. “Maybe we should have some kind of party to celebrate,” she suggested, “and invite our friends.”

“Yeah, sure,” Felton agreed. Except Felton's best friend was Darcie Morton, and he didn't hardly think he could, or should, invite her to his engagement party. “On the other hand, maybe we could wait and announce our engagement at that party the town's having at the end of the week,” Felton said. “That way everybody would already be there.”

“Why, that's a wonderful idea!” Once her engagement was public, Miss Devlin wouldn't be having all these doubts and second thoughts. Once it was public, she wouldn't be able to back out.

They both sat for a while, neither saying anything, while a pall settled over them.

Felton wanted to scream,
Forget the whole damn thing!
but just as he opened his mouth Thank you again for the ring, Felton.”

Miss Devlin knew she ought to
oooh
and
ahhh
over the ring a little more, but as long as she was drawing these squiggly lines of honesty, she didn't want to step over them any more than necessary.

She leaned forward, expecting Felton's kiss to seal their engagement. Instead she received a hard, punishing attack on her mouth; there was nothing tender or loving about it. When he was done, she had a lump in her throat and her eyes burned with unshed tears. What they had shared hadn't been a kiss of joy, or reverence, or even passion. It had been an act of tumult, of vehemence, of violence. “What's wrong, Felton?”

Felton jumped, certain Miss Devlin had read the confused state of his mind. He couldn't say the same things to her that he could say to Darcie. And he certainly couldn't confide his stark fear that this engagement was a terrible mistake. So he said, “I'm a little worried, that's all, what with such an important town meeting coming up next week. I guess I'll be saying good night. It's been a long day. Be seeing you.”

Felton was already at the door by the time he finished talking. He let Miss Devlin help him into his coat. His gut tightened when she flinched away from him as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. Everything would be all right once they were married. He wouldn't feel like kicking something anymore, and this sick feeling would go away.

When Felton was gone, Miss Devlin held her hand out and perused the engagement ring on her finger. She should feel enraptured. A handsome, eligible man had proposed to her. Soon she was going to be a married woman. Why did she feel positively ill?

Well, she had plenty of remedies for an upset stomach. She walked over to the china cabinet and took a silver spoon from the top drawer. She marched into her bedroom and filled the spoon from the bottle of Tasteless Castor Oil. Closing her eyes and opening her mouth wide, she swallowed the stuff down. Her face screwed up so tight, her eyes and lips practically disappeared.

When she could talk again, she said, “Whoever said that was
tasteless
just plain lied!” To make matters worse, she now felt absolutely nauseous.

Miss Devlin stripped off her clothes and slipped under the bedcovers. She didn't bother with a lamp. She wouldn't be needing any light because she couldn't bear to stay up and read. All she wanted to do was sleep until tomorrow morning. Maybe she would feel a little better about being an engaged woman in the bright light of day.

Kerrigan was troubled when he arrived on Miss Devlin's doorstep in the early evening and found her house dark. In the days since he had come to stay with her, he had gotten used to her habit of reading far into the night, with her legs tucked under her and her spectacles perched on the end of her nose. He knocked on the front door, but when no one answered he opened it and walked in. “Eden? Are you here?”

No answer.

H himself into the bedroom. He found her lying curled up with her hands under her head, minus her spectacles, like Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to awaken her with a kiss. Thanks to his Grandma Haley, Kerrigan knew all the romantic fairy tales by heart. He leaned across Eden with a hand on either side of her head, whispered, “Wake now, my lovely princess,” and kissed her softly on the lips.

She must have been dreaming of him because she began to kiss him back. Her lips were yielding and responsive and Kerrigan lifted her into his arms so he could bask in her warmth.

His fingertips brushed tendrils of hair away from her face as he gifted her with kisses at her temple, and on her eyelids and across her freckled nose. “You are so beautiful, Eden,” he whispered. “Like an unspoiled garden of beautiful flowers, budding and blossoming in my arms.”

Still half asleep, Eden thought she was dreaming his words, they were so much what she had always hoped someday to hear from the man she loved. She smiled lazily up at Kerrigan's shadowed profile and threaded her fingers through his hair. His day's growth of beard felt wonderfully rough against her cheek as he nuzzled her neck.

She giggled as his tongue tickled her ear and hunched her shoulder to keep him away. “What are you doing?”

His dark eyes twinkled with mischief. “Relax. If you don't like it I'll stop.”

Eden leaned back into the supportive curl of his arm, and allowed Kerrigan to have his way with her.

He mouthed delightful kisses along the underside of her chin and along her neck on his way to her ear. He took her earlobe in his teeth and bit just until she could feel pain, and then his lips and tongue were there to soothe, sending frissons of excitement dancing along her skin.

“Feel good?” he whispered.

She gasped as his moist breath fanned her ear. “It feels wonderful,” she said. “It's my turn now.”

His lids were lowered and his dark eyes revealed a threatening passion barely held in restraint. “Not yet,” he said.

His mouth claimed hers, or at least tried, because Eden fought him for the right to give the most pleasure, to bite and tease and taste the most. With a heartfelt sigh of surrender, he let her win. It was the first duel Kerrigan had lost since the war, but he was fully, and cheerfully, prepared to suffer the consequences.

“Your turn,” he said, when his mouth was free to speak.

She laughed, and placed her hand on the bulging front of his Levi's.

“Whoa, there, lady!” He caught her hand and held it against his hardness. And felt the ring.

Eden froze, horrified, when she felt him outlining the ring with his fingers. “What am I doing? What have I done?” She tried to jerk herself out of Kerrigan's embrace, but he had hold of her hand and the harder she struggled to free herself, the tighter his grasp became. “You're hurting me!”

“Tell me about the ring, Eden,” he demanded in a harsh voice.

She stopped fighting him and took several deep, calming breaths. “Let me go first.”

He held out her hand so the betraying diamond glittered in the moonlight. “Tell me about the ring.”

It was obvious he wasn't going to move an inch before she told him what he wanted to know. “Felton gave it to me.”

“What for?”

“It's an engagement ring.”

“You got engaged to Felton Reeves? When?”

“Don't yell. Tonight.”

“I'm not yelling,” he yelled.

“Can I have my hand back now?”

He dropped her hand as if it were a hot coal. As soon as she was free, she sought out a lantern, breaking several matches before she finally got it lit. She sat down at the head of the bed and balled her knees up and held them tight with her laced hands.

Kerrigan jumped up and began pacing back and forth across her bedroom like a caged animal. “I don't understand you. You can't even have a conversation with Felton Reeves without correcting his grammar!”

Eden reddened.

“You sure as hell don't love him.” He stopped and turned to face her, his fisted hands on his hips. “Tell me you love him.”

“You know I don't.”

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Then why did you get engaged to him?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“And just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“you're going to do it?”

“I want a home and a husband and children, Kerrigan. I think I always have, though I haven't always admitted it to myself. Felton is offering me those things.”

“But you love me,” he said, his chin jutting mulishly.

“Yes, I do,” she admitted in a quiet voice. “Do you care for me at all, Kerrigan? You've never said you love me,

“I . . .”

His lips pressed into a flat line of denial, but she saw her answer in his eyes. Everything he felt was there for her to find: his pain, his confusion, his anger. She looked for more, and he let her see it. Behind the fragile facade of volatile emotions, he had painstakingly hidden the one feeling she most wanted him to share with her: his love. It was there a brief flicker of time, and then cached away to be hoarded again like a miser's gold.

“You're a hard man to love, Kerrigan,” she said.

“You sure jumped into my arms quick enough tonight.”

Eden rose onto her knees and grasped one of the bedposts to keep her balance. “That's not fair. I was half asleep—”

“Not for long,” he said with a scornful laugh. “Have you ever thought that if you'd just hold your horses, someday I might decide to marry you and settle down on some nice little spread—”

It was her turn to laugh scornfully. “I know your kind, Kerrigan.
Someday
never comes.”

“I don't want you to marry Felton Reeves.”

“There's nothing you can say that'll change my mind.”

“He's not the man for you,” Kerrigan insisted.

“Why not?”

Kerrigan was in a quandary. He had no proof that Felton was the brains behind the rustlers. Nor did he have any proof that Felton had bushwhacked him. All he had was a whole lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed toward the sheriff as the likeliest suspect—and a powerful desire to discredit his rival.

“Felton is an outlaw.”

Eden laughed in his face. “Felton is the
sheriff
.”

“Felton is also the leader of the rustlers. And he shot me in the back.”

She was on her feet confronting him in an instant, her hair a flaming banner of fury as she shook her head in denial of his accusation. “I don't believe you!”

“It's true.”

She grabbed his shirt in both fists. “What proof do you have?”

“None, but—”

She let him go and stepped back away from the powerful destructive aura that surrounded him, and attracted her. He was even more like Sundance than she had thought. Just like her father he was making up lies to manipulate her to do what . Just like her father he was holding out the carrot on a stick so she would follow him around, knowing all along that he would always keep it a step beyond her reach.