Sweetwater Seduction (41 page)

It was Deputy Joe.

“You gotta come quick,” he said in a breathless voice. “There's been a gunfight twixt Kerrigan and the sheriff. Kerrigan's shot bad, Miss Devlin. He's asking for you!”

Chapter 18

If you'd like to know a man,
find out what makes him mad.

F
ELTON HAD FLED
M
ISS
D
EVLIN
'
S HOUSE IN SEARCH
of Darcie Morton, afraid she would leave town before he had a chance to explain what had happened. When the sheriff stepped through the door of the town meetinghouse, he found much the same merriment under way as when he had left. The celebration might have even been a little louder, the smiles a little broader.

Regina and Oak were dancing, as were Bevis and Mabel Ives, and Cyrus and Lynette Wyatt. Persia and Big Ben were sitting on a bench holding hands, and next to them were Ollie and Amity Carson. As usual, Amity had a baby at her breast, and if rumor was correct, she was already pregnant with the next. Rusty and Claire Falkner were standing at the refreshment table enjoying a glass of punch. Finally, he spied the woman he had been scanning that sea of faces to find.

Felton experienced a surge of pleasure when he saw the beatific smile on Darcie's face. As the crowd shuffled he realized three things at once: Darcie was dancing in another man's arms; the beatific smile on her face was directed at that other man; and the man embracing her was none other than his arch rival, Burke Kerrigan.

Never in his life had Felton known such rage. It enveloped him in a fiery cloud from head to toe. A fierce, animalistic urge to protect what was his propelled him toward Kerrigan. If he had been thinking rationally, he would have noticed that neither Darcie nor Kerrigan was smiling with more than their mouths, that their eyes were distressed, and that their steps were leaden.

But fear that he had lost Darcie to another man, and fury that Kerrigan would dare lay claim to his woman, sent the sheriff's fist ahead of him to greet the unsuspecting gunslinger.

Some instinctual response to a flicker of movement kept Kerrigan from taking Felton's blow square on the chin, but even a glancing contact with the sheriff's powerful fist knocked Kerrigan sideways. The gunslinger didn't stop to ask why the sheriff had hit him. He had his own reasons for hitting back. Felton Reeves had stolen Kerrigan's woman right out of his arms. A film of red glazed Kerriganeyes and a savage frenzy possessed him, sending him into battle against his foe.

They struck at each other like two berserker barbarians fist and foot, elbow and knee, tooth and claw. A noisy circle of anxious observers formed around them, but no one dared to interfere. Both combatants were wearing guns, and who was to say whether they might not draw on someone who got in the way?

Felton got in a good right to the eye, but Kerrigan countered with a left that nearly broke Felton's nose. The two men grappled, slugging at each other even though they were too close to get much strength into the blows. Both of them had been in fights without rules before, but neither had been so enraged during the battle. It heightened sensations, so that everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

Kerrigan followed his fist as it drove into Felton's gut, feeling the sheriff's washboard belly give way and finally resist only as Felton buckled in half. Felton watched his knuckles slam into Kerrigan's face, the flesh tearing, blood spurting, as his knuckles reached bone. They pummeled and punched. They tripped and rolled on the floor and lurched to their feet again. Their rage kept them from realizing how tired they were or how much damage they were doing to each other.

They were both bloodied and battered, wrestling in the sawdust on the floor, when the deafening roar of a gunshot brought the fight to an abrupt halt. They clung to each other for support as they staggered to their feet. The crowd cleared a space so the sheriff and the gunslinger could see Darcie Morton standing by the door to the meetinghouse with a smoking gun in her hand.

“You're both out of your minds,” she said in a sobbing breath. “If you had a lick of sense you'd realize that killing each other isn't going to change anythin'. I'm going back to Canyon Creek where I belong, Felton. Don't you dare come after me.”

She dropped the derringer and marched out of the room, eyes blazing, chin up, shoulders squared.

Felton had never felt prouder of anyone in his life. “That's some woman,” he said, his arm wrapped around what he thought might be a cracked rib.

Kerrigan swiped the blood off his mouth with his sleeve. “So why did you go through with that engagement to Eden tonight?” he snarled.

“I didn't! I mean, I did, but—” Felton looked around and saw they still had an audience. “The fight's over. Go on about your business.”

As the crowd began dispersing Felton said, “Let's go where we can talk in private.”

It was slow going, as beat up as they were. Felton draped his coat over his shoulders rather than trying to get into it. A few minutes later they were settled at a table at the Dog's Hind Leg, each with a whiskey glass that had been filled and emptied and then filled again.

“That stings,” Kerrigan said as he licked whiskey off a cut on his lip. “All right, Felton, we're aloneou have to say?”

Felton dabbed at a cut over his eye with his bandanna. “You're the one has some explaining to do.”

“I wasn't the one started swinging for no good reason,” Kerrigan retorted.

Felton frowned, then winced as his battered face protested the movement. “I saw you dancing with Darcie and I guess I went a little crazy.”

Kerrigan snorted. “If you wanted Darcie, why in hell did you announce your engagement to Eden tonight?”

“Wasn't me did the announcing, if you'll recall,” Felton said heatedly. “I've been having second thoughts about marrying Miss Devlin all along, but I've kept them to myself. When I saw Darcie tonight . . . guess I knew then I wanted to spend my life with her and not the schoolteacher.

“I never got a chance to say anything to Miss Devlin before it was too late. I couldn't have stopped her with a forty-foot rope and a snubbin' post. She marched onto that platform and started jabbering . . . and suddenly we were engaged.”

Kerrigan rolled his whiskey glass in his hands. “So what do we do now?”

Two spots of color rose in Felton's cheeks. “To tell you the truth, after I took Miss Devlin home I told her that I couldn't go through with it, that I plan to marry Darcie Morton. I told her she could wait awhile and then tell everybody she changed her mind about our engagement.”

“What did she say to that?”

Felton pulled a ring out of his pocket. “She gave me the ring back and told me I'd better go find Darcie and explain things to her. Which I did, which is why when I saw you with Darcie, I guess I lost my head.”

“What a mess,” Kerrigan muttered.

Poor Eden,
he thought. The whole town would know she wasn't the one who had changed her mind, because everybody knew she had been waiting her whole life for a man like Felton Reeves to come along. She would be so humiliated, she would probably leave Sweetwater and start wandering like some tumbleweed again. And if she did, it would be all his fault for waiting so long to tell her he loved her.

What Kerrigan didn't understand was what had possessed Eden to fly off the handle like that. Something, some catastrophe, had obviously occurred at the dance to change her mind about marrying him. But what?

“I don't know what got into her,” he muttered. “One minute she agreed to marry me and headed off to find you and tell you she'd changed her mind. The next . . .”

“I saw her come in from outside looking white as a ghost and jumpy as a bit up old bull at fly time,” Felton said. “Quicker'n that”—Felton started to snap his fingers but gave it up when he realized it was going to hurt—“she was up there announcing our engagement.”

Kerrigan frowned. “Outside? What was outside?”

“Nothing much. Just a bunch of ranchers celebrating by passing around a flask of whiskey.”

Eden would have gone outside looking for Felton . . . and found ranchers . . . with tongues loosened by all that whiskey . . . discussing certain things that were best left unsaid. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what Eden must have heard outside that had left her looking like she'd found a rattler in her bedroll.

“She heard I was being paid to seduce her,” Kerrigan murmured, half to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kerrigan said, his lips in a flat, unhappy line. “I think maybe we both better go do some talking with our women.”

“I just hope the hell Darcie will give me a chance to explain.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean. You better get going. Darcie's got a room at the Townhouse. She's probably there packing now.”

“Are you going to talk to Miss Devlin tonight?”

“I don't know,” Kerrigan said. “If she's hurting the way I think she is, it's going to take a lot more than talk to convince her to marry me.”

“You're going to marry Miss Devlin?” Felton asked in a shocked voice.

“Yeah. What's so surprising about that?”

Felton grinned, and then moaned when his scabbed lip split again. “If you don't know, I ain't going to tell you. Don't spend too much time thinking. Just remember a woman appreciates the
doing
as much as the
saying.
”

“Where'd you learn that?” Kerrigan asked.

“From a woman with eyes as soft and green as new-grown grass, more guts than you could hang on a fence, and a heart so full of caring, we're going to need a wheel-barrow to get it down the aisle the day I make her my wife.”

It was snowing when Felton left the saloon, but the wind was blowing so hard, the flakes came at him sideways. It looked like the blizzard that had been threatening was finally going to make its appearance. The snow had already drifted knee-high against the boardwalk, and the wind swept away his footprints almost as soon as he made them. He was glad he didn't have to be on duty tonight. Deputy Joe could take care of things for a change while he settled his personal life.

Darcie hadn't checked out of the Townhouse y. He found out her room number and headed up the stairs. He would have taken them two at a time, but when he tried it, his ribs protested and he was forced to slow down. He checked his appearance when he arrived at her door, but there wasn't much he could do without completely changing his clothes. His shirt was torn and bloody, and from the way his face felt he could only imagine what it looked like. Actually, he was hoping his appearance might wring a little sympathy out of her.

He started to knock on the door and realized his knuckles were bruised pretty badly. He turned his fist sideways and pounded once.

“Who's there?”

“It's me, Darcie. Can I come in?”

“Go away, Felton.”

“It's important, Darcie. I have to talk to you.”

“You got a woman now, Felton. Go talk to her.”

“I ain't engaged to Miss Devlin no more, Darcie. You gotta—”

The door was flung open and Darcie stood there, her eyes wide. “What did you say?”

Felton grinned, and didn't even feel his split lip. “I said I ain't—I'm not—engaged no more. I'm a free man. Free to marry the woman I love.”

A door opened down the hall and someone peered out. Felton glared and the door shut. “Can I come inside, Darcie?”

“All right.” She stepped back to let him in.

They stood and stared at each other in the dimness of the cut-glass lamp beside the bed and the flickering light from the fireplace.