Sweetwater Seduction (4 page)

“Why you vainglorious, supercilious—”

“Use all the big words you want. Because I'm not the least bit
hebetudinous,
ma'am. Pardon me, that's
Miss
Devlin, isn't it?”

She retreated.

He advanced.

Miss Devlin stared in disbelief at the look on his face. She could have sworn he was actually
leering
at her.

Eden was shaken and hard-pressed not to show it. This stranger simply ignored the verbal no trespassing signs she had posted all around her. Under the circumstances she wasn't sure how to handle him—assuming he could be handled. Maybe conciliation was the better route. She decided to give it a try.

“Perhaps I was too hasty in my condemnation of you. I—”

“I wear a gun because I need it for my work,” he continued inexorably. “And I use it only when I have no other choice.”

Miss Devlin had been too concerned with the stranger's intimidating presence to concentrate on what he was saying. All at once it sank in. “My God! You're a hired gun?”

The stranger shrugged. “It's how I make my living.”

“Surely no one asked you to come to Sweetwater.”

The stranger remained silent, and Eden felt an awful sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't aware that her hand gripped her gown in front, bunching the soft material so her full breasts were outlined for the stranger's frankly interested gaze.

“Who hired you?” she demanded.

He raised a brow but didn't answer.

“We don't need anyone bringing trouble here,” Miss Devlin said, unaware of the pleading tone in her voice or the two flags of color burning in her cheeks.

“Trouble is where you find it,” he replied curtly. The stranger abruptly shifted his body away from Miss Devlin toward the bookcase along one wall.

Miss Devlin had no explanation for his sudden defection from the argument at hand, but she was grateful for the respite that allowed her to compose herself—which was when she realized that the way she was clutching her gown had outlined her breasts, right down to the nipples, for the gunman's perusal. She did her best to rearrange the nightshift into its former shapelessness, but nothing she did could conceal the fact she had a respectable bosom.

Feel at a distinct disadvantage, she decided discretion was the better part of valor. She would save her arguments for another time and place. It was past time to get this stranger out of her house. When she cleared her throat, the gunman turned his dark eyes back on her.

“As I was saying,” Miss Devlin began. “We don't want any trouble here in Sweetwater. So I think it's best—”

“After what happened to this girl tonight I'd judge there's already trouble in this valley. I'm here to take care of it.”

“We don't need you here,” Miss Devlin snapped, her gray eyes flashing. She stepped around behind the sofa—which seemed a safer distance from the stranger—and slipped a protective arm around Bliss's shoulder. “So you can turn right around tonight and go back where you came from before some other young woman is subjected to the same disgraceful treatment as this poor girl.”

“I won't take blame for what happened to the girl.”

“I'm sure you don't like taking blame for the kind of rowdy behavior cowboys like yourself impose on others, drinking—”

“Oh, no, Miss Devlin,” Bliss interrupted. “This man
saved
me from the drunken cowboys. In fact, he shot one of them.”

Miss Devlin mashed her lips together and glared at the stranger. There was an intense struggle going on between her good sense and her redheaded temper, and she thought it best to keep her mouth shut until she could say something nice, since she was in the presence of one of her pupils. The returning glint of humor in the gunslinger's eyes proved to be more than she could bear.

“Bliss, go in my bedroom and shut the door,” she ordered.

“But Miss Devlin—”

“Go!”

The unaccustomed stridency in Miss Devlin's voice sent Bliss scampering to the bedroom. The instant the door shut behind her pupil, Miss Devlin confronted the gunslinger. “However nobly you may have acted tonight I know your kind too well to believe—”

Her eyes widened as he vaulted over the sofa as though it wasn't there. Suddenly they were face-to-face.

“And I know your kind, Miss Devlin,” the gunslinger said in a silky voice.

He stepped forward.

She stepped back.

Miss Devlin opened her mouth to tell him to stay away from her, but nothing came out. She fought the urge to cross her arms over her bosom. He was standing so close now she could feel his breath on her face.

“Like I said, Miss Devlin. I know your kind.”

His voice was low, and so seductive she was prepared for anything but what he said next.

“You're a straitlaced, stiff-necked, stuffy old spinster who lives her life through the experiences of others and—”

“How dare you!”

“Too close to the mark for comfort,
Miss
Devlin?” the gunslinger goaded.

Miss Devlin's open palm hit the gunslinger's face with a resounding
thwack
. Eden recoiled in surprise at what she'd done. She had never struck another human being in her life, and the fact she should resort to violence, when her supposed objection to the man was that he solved people's problems in a violent way, caused her face to whiten with mortification. And yet, to her utter horror, she found it impossible to utter the words of apology she knew were necessary.

“Get out of my house,” she grated in a voice that was a mere whisper.

“I thought there might be more to you than met the eye,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “You know, you should learn to control that educated tongue of yours. It's likely to get you into trouble someday.” With a wink and a roguish grin he turned on his heel, spurs jangling, and strolled out the door.

“Oh, you—” Miss Devlin couldn't think of an epithet harsh enough for the scoundrel who had just sauntered away from her. She was used to having the last word, but since nothing (decent) came to mind, she settled for slamming the door hard enough after him to leave the windows rattling.

Miss Devlin looked down at her hands and realized they were trembling. What a horrible, despicable man! He was sure to cause trouble in Sweetwater. Why, that stranger—whoever he was—had already shot a man. Then he had sauntered in and out of her home, insulting her and threatening her, and—and never even told her his name!

She thought of the awful things he had said about her. Imagine calling her a
straitlaced, stiff-necked, stuffy old spinster.
She was no such thing! Well, perhaps at twenty-nine she must own up to the spinster part, but she was none of the others.

Besides, there were perfectly good reasons why she had never married. And no one could say she hadn't led a perfectly fulfilled life all these years without a man by her side. Why, she most certainly had!

Besides, if Miss Devlin hadn't rushed into marriage it was because she had learned from bitter experience that having a husband didn't necessarily ensure happiness. She had seen firsthand the pain and suffering that could result from loving the wrong man. Just such a tragedy had left Eden orphaned at eleven when she had buried her mother, a woman who had made the mistake of marrying in haste and for love. That was enough to give anyone pause for thought. Miss Devlin had simply taken twenty-nine years to think about it.

It wasn't that she hadn't dregetting married
someday
. And lately, when she lay alone in her bed, she admitted she might have missed something by denying herself a husband and children all these years. With her thirtieth birthday looming on the horizon, she had begun actually making lists in her head, weighing all the advantages of marriage against the risks.

That was how Miss Devlin had come up with the notion that she might avoid her mother's mistake if she simply didn't fall in love with the man she planned to marry. Of course, Eden intended to like him a great deal. But that wasn't the same thing. As long as she didn't love him, she would never be vulnerable—he could never break her heart. All this assuming, of course, that she could find some man willing to marry her whom she also liked well enough to take for a husband. So maybe she had earned the unflattering title of spinster, but it was a title she was not averse to seeing changed.

“Miss Devlin?” Bliss's tentative inquiry from the bedroom door called Miss Devlin's attention back to the matters at hand. She squared her shoulders and turned to face Bliss.

“Why don't you come out here and sit down at the dining room table with me, Bliss. It's time we talked about what you're doing out of bed in the middle of the night.”

There was enough scold in Miss Devlin's voice to make Bliss quail. Nonetheless, she lifted her chin and replied, “I had to come. There's something I have to tell you.”

“What's so important it couldn't wait until Monday?”

Bliss paused dramatically and then blurted, “I'm going to have a baby!”

Burke Kerrigan spent the entire ride to Sweetwater mulling his reaction to the enigmatic Miss Devlin. There was a certain kind of woman he usually associated with, and it wasn't schoolmarms. Yet he had found himself baiting her and waiting to see if she would rise and take the lure. He had enjoyed sparring verbally with her. In fact, she was the first woman he'd known who'd given as good as she'd got.

He hadn't missed her physical reaction to him either, which had been totally female. He felt sure, however, seeing how flustered she had become, that she hadn't understood her feelings. It might be fun, he thought with a grin, to strip off all those straitlaced, stiff-necked, stuffy old layers to see what lay beneath her priggish spinster's facade. He suspected what he would find might be well worth the effort.

Kerrigan shook his head when he thought of the galling things he had said to the schoolmarm. Truth to tell, he had deserved her slap. He ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. The lady sure packed a wallop. But she was a big woman. Not big, exactly, but tall. Not that he held that against her. In fact, he found something decidedly exciting about the thought of having that much woman in his arms.

He had been on the verge of thinking her plain, but realized that between her flashing gray eyes and her striking cheekbones with their scattering of charming freckles, the word didn't fit. He'd had to turn away from herone point for fear she would detect his visible response to the magnificent figure she had revealed beneath that shapeless nightgown.

He couldn't help grinning again when he remembered the ridiculous nightcap she had been wearing. Where had she gotten such a thing? There had been the promise of a wealth of burnished hair constrained beneath that prim cap, as he was sure there was a wealth of passion constrained beneath Miss Devlin's prim exterior.

Kerrigan sobered. He had no business thinking such thoughts about the local schoolteacher. He had other matters to attend to, and once he did, he would be leaving this town to move on to another. He was a drifter. A hired gun. There was no time or place in his life to tangle with a sharp-tongued spinster like Miss Devlin.

It was nearly midnight by the time Kerrigan arrived in town, and the saloon was still noisy with the sounds of Saturday night revelry. The Dog's Hind Leg was like dozens of other such establishments Kerrigan had seen in his lifetime, only on a smaller scale, and he easily passed it by in favor of the Townhouse Hotel across the street.

But appealing as he found the idea of a room with a bed that wasn't as hard or lumpy as the ground, Kerrigan was too keyed up to sleep. After setting his gear at the foot of the four-poster bed, and rinsing his face in the bowl of water on the washtable, he headed back downstairs to the saloon.

A man wearing a badge stood at the door to the Dog's Hind Leg, barring Kerrigan's entry. “Leave your weapon outside,” the deputy said.

“My gun stays with me,” Kerrigan replied, distastefully perusing the disorganized pile of handguns on a nearby table.

The deputy surveyed the gunslinger, noting his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and the way his gun was tied down low. “Don't want no trouble,” the deputy said.

Kerrigan smiled, and for the second time that evening said, “I'm a peaceful man.”

The deputy waited, but the tall stranger stood there, hard as whetstone. Deputy Joe Titman wasn't used to being defied. The local cowboys knew that if they didn't obey Deputy Joe, they would have to deal with Sheriff Reeves, and that was a different matter altogether. But that wasn't going to help him now. The stranger looked touchy as a teased rattler. Deputy Joe took an involuntary step back from the menacing man and said, “Sheriff Reeves ain't gonna like it.”