Sweetwater Seduction (48 page)

Eden surprised both men when she levered herself away from Kerrigan and answered, “I would have if I'd had to. You see, a wise man taught me that although violence isn't always the answer, sometimes it's the only answer when dealing with a sanguinary primate.”

“A what?”

“A bloodthirsty man.”

Eden turned and met Kerrigan's dark eyes as he said, “You're one smart lady, Miss Devlin.”

“I was wondering when you would notice, Mr. Kerrigan,” she said with a grin.

When their eyes locked, Deputy Joe saw his chance and took off at a run. He hadn't gone two steps before Kerrigan stuck out a foot and tripped him. The deputy lost his balance and fell. His head hit a rotted tree trunk as he went down, knocking him out cold.

“Some people never learn,” Eden said, shaking her head at the sight of the unconscious man.

Kerrigan walked purposefully back to her. “We have some business to settle.”

Eden's chin went up. “The answer is yes.”

“I haven't asked the question yet,” he said with a rueful grin.

“Then ask!”

“I'm asking for the third and last time. Will you marry me, Miss Devlin?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

They both laughed as he lifted her in his arms and hugged her tight. Her arms wrapped eagerly around him and she showered him with kisses on his face and neck and eyes, murmuring, “I love you, Burke Kerrigan. Love you more than life itself.”

“And I love you, Eden Devlin. Love you for now and forever.”

Everything after that was done with haste. Kerrigan hefted Deputy Joe over his shoulder and walked back to the wagon. Joe was still unconscious when they got there, so Kerrigan laid him in the bed of the wagon. Since they weren't far from Eden's place, Kerrigan dropped her off, promising to return as soon as he could.

When he got back to Sweetwater, he put Deputy Joe, who by now was suffering from a bad headache but otherwise seemed all right, in his regular cell. Only this time, Kerrigan locked him in. He left the key with the clerk at the Townhouse Hotel with instructions to feed the deputy until the sheriff got back to town.

Then he sent a telegram to Felton in Canyon Creek to tell him he would ha short his honeymoon until he arranged to hire another deputy to take Joe's place.

Kerrigan dropped off the spring wagon at the livery and made a stop at the hotel to shave, bathe, and change his clothes. He belted on Sundance's gun, which Eden had insisted he take, before he headed down the hotel stairs, ready for the last leg of his journey back to her.

Meanwhile, Eden was a nervous wreck. She had stripped off her clothes the minute she got inside the house and taken a sponge bath. Instead of putting on a dress, she had donned a warm flannel robe that tied at the waist. Then she had gone through every toilet preparation on her dresser, trying to make herself beautiful for Kerrigan.

When she was done, she looked in the mirror and saw a face as plain as it had ever been. What if, now that Kerrigan had proposed, he took another look at her and changed his mind?

She stared at her barren ring finger. He hadn't said anything about a ring. She wanted an engagement ring, of course, but she wasn't going to ask for one. What if he didn't think of it?

She thrust her fingers through her striking red hair, which lay in a mass of curls around her shoulders. He had said he liked it down. What if he had lied to spare her feelings? She quickly drew her hair into a bun at the back of her neck, grabbing pins and stuffing them in as fast as she could. A second later she pulled them all back out again, and threw them on the dresser, helter-skelter.

Suddenly, she noticed the freckles cascading across her nose and cheeks. She had just treated them with C. H. Berry Freckle Ointment but, if anything, they were even more noticeable than before. She grabbed a puff and powdered her face. That only made her look pale as death. She grabbed a handkerchief and wiped off the powder. The freckles reappeared with a vengeance. It looked like someone had spattered her face with red paint. She tried a lighter dusting of powder and stayed away from the mirror when she was done.

Every flaw she had ever seen in herself was magnified a hundred—no, a thousand—times. She was terrified that now that she had her heart's desire, it would escape her somehow.

What if Deputy Joe slipped his bonds and attacked Kerrigan and killed him before they got back to town?

Miss Devlin snorted. Now she was making up stories so farfetched they wouldn't bear printing in a penny dreadful. She had to get hold of herself. She had to stay calm, and wait patiently for Kerrigan to come.

Where is he?

Eden forced herself to lie down in bed. She was exhausted from her travails and really ought to rest but felt too keyed up to sleep. She closed her eyes and consciously relaxed her muscles, starting with her toes and working her way up. She got no farther than her knees before she was sound asleep.

Kerrigan had knocked twice, but he hadn't heard a sound on the other side of the door. What if Eden had changed her mind? What if, after all, she had decided a tiger couldn't change its stripes, and she would ray a spinster than marry a gunslinger.

He ran a finger under the red bandanna he had tied around his throat, which was suddenly choking him, then opened the door and walked in.

“Eden?”

No answer.

Her bedroom door was open and he headed toward it as unerringly as a bee seeking honey from a bright spring flower. She was asleep on the bed, her hand tucked under her head, her body curled around a pillow that was clutched in her arms.

He sat down on the bed beside her, knowing that he had finally found his destiny. There was a lump in his throat as he whispered, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Your prince has come.”

Eden awoke to Kerrigan's gentle kiss, which became more urgent as they both sought to express the measure of their love.

“It's been too long since I've held you in my arms, Eden,” he murmured.

Miss Devlin realized she didn't feel the least bit plain. The only problem with having freckles was that Kerrigan insisted on kissing each and every one of them. She laughed as he counted, “. . . thirty-two . . . thirty-three . . . thirty-four . . .”

“Enough,” she said with a giggle. “I have something I want to share with you.”

“This sounds serious.”

She shook her head. “It's not serious exactly. It's . . . Wait here.”

When she got up off the bed, Kerrigan sat up and settled himself more comfortably with his back against the headboard. He watched Eden cross to her dresser and pick up a decorated wooden box. When she got closer, he noticed the lid was broken in two.

She sat on the bed beside him with her feet curled under her. “This is my Wish Box.”

He didn't say anything, just waited, curious, for her to explain.

“I collected things in it that I hoped someday I would need, if I—when I—became a wife and mother.”

She set the box in front of Kerrigan.

He couldn't imagine what she had in there. He was fascinated. And terrified. What did a woman cherish? What symbols of love and marriage had Eden Devlin collected in a wooden box on her dresser?

She took them out, one by one, and shared them with him.

A pair of nickel-plated barber snips.

He insisted right then and there that she give him a trim. Laughing, she took off an inch of hair that had hung down over his collar for as long as he could remember. He felt helpless to resist her when she was done. He could see how Samson had felt with Delilah.

A genuine badger-hair shaving brush.

It was a gift, she said as she handed it to him, for the man she married. He didn't ask her how many years it had been in the box. He just accepted it and promised, “I'll use it every day.”

Although he had given himself a shave before leaving town, he insisted he could use another. After all, as much kissing as they were bound to do, he didn't want to leave her face aflame. Eden found a cake of shaving soap, while he ran out to his saddlebags to get her father's razor. When he was done shaving, he set the brush on her dresser, and realized with a start that henceforth his things would always sit there alongside hers.

A baby's teething ring.

Eden admitted to him that she had always wanted a child of her own to love, and that she had spent hours wondering what it would feel like to have another human being moving inside her. He put his hand on her womb and wondered the same thing himself.

One blue spool and one pink spool of satin grosgrain baby ribbon.

He asked her whether she would rather have a boy or a girl, and she immediately replied “Both!” So he asked which she would rather have first, and she answered, “A boy, so he could watch over his sister.”

A silver baby spoon.

It was the shell-shaped spoon he had given her. He felt touched to know it had found its way into her heart and her hopes.

He felt awed that she trusted him with the feminine secrets she had harbored in her Wish Box all these years. Now that he knew how much she wanted a child, he became determined to help her make that wish come true. So he tied a snip of blue satin baby ribbon in her hair, “For luck,” he said with a roguish grin, and made sweet, sweet love to her for the rest of the day.

It was while she was sleeping, as day turned to dusk, that he slipped the ring on her finger. When she woke, he kissed her, and said, “I love you, Eden Devlin. I—”

She cut him off by kissing him back.

Before he could tell her about the ring, they were both swept up in a vortex of desire that took them back to Eden's own version of paradise.

It was a long while later before either of them had any inclination to speak. Kerrigan was lying beside Eden, and she had nestled her buttocks into the curve of his sinewy body, when he finally broke the peaceful silence between them.

“Do you like the ring?”

“What ring

He held up her hand, and she stared at the breathtaking emerald set in a narrow gold band that she had been too busy making love to notice. She gasped, unable to speak. Finally she managed, “It's beautiful.”

“No more beautiful than you.”

Eden saw that, in his eyes, she was beautiful. “Will you make love to me again, Mr. Kerrigan?”

Kerrigan grinned. “I will be happy to seduce you, Miss Devlin, for the rest of your life.”

Epilogue

A stone stops rollin' when it finds the kind
of moss it wants to gather.

E
VERYONE IN
S
WEETWATER WAS IN CHURCH THIS
particular Sunday in June, because Bliss and Hadley Westbrook's newborn daughter was scheduled to be christened. Kerrigan and Eden had to be there because they were godparents for the newest resident of Sweetwater.

As Eden walked down the aisle with Kerrigan she noticed that ranchers and nesters still pretty much sat on opposite sides of the church. But here and there you would see close neighbors clustered together, even though they lived their lives on opposite sides of the fence, so to speak.

Eden snickered when Reverend Simonson announced his sermon for the day was “Be fruitful and multiply,” because it was pretty obvious that most of his fecund congregation had long since taken the preacher's words to heart.

Sheriff Reeves was holding his new son, Frank, in one arm and had the other around his wife, Darcie. Amity Carson was nursing her sixth daughter, Eula, at her breast. As for the rest of the congregation, there were at least a dozen families expecting new additions in September, including Rusty and Claire Falkner, Cyrus and Lynette Wyatt, an