Tempting the Marshal: (A Western Historical Romance) (Dodge City Brides Series Book 2) (28 page)

Fletcher touched his forehead to hers. “I didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Edwyn’s gone now, but you’re here, and I want you in ways I’ve never wanted any man. I never imagined it could feel like this.” She wiggled her hips on the bed, pressing her body closer and tighter to his rock hard pelvis. She felt his erection between her legs and nearly lost her mind with anticipation.

“Take this off,” he whispered in a husky voice, reaching for the buttons on her bodice and unfastening each one. Within seconds, she was sitting up and shrugging out of it, while he kicked off his boots. It was all hurried, desperate and passionate. She couldn’t wait to be naked in his arms and feel his body pressed hotly to hers beneath the sheets.

She lay back on the pillows while he straddled her to unhook her corset in the front. As it came loose and he pulled it out from under her, she took a deep breath, welcoming her body’s freedom.

“Now this,” he whispered, pulling her skirt and petticoats down over her ankles. He rolled down her stockings and began to untie her boot laces. “These, too.”

Wearing only her chemise and cotton drawers, she sat up and pushed him onto his back. She felt his Peacemaker against her knee. “This will be the first to go,” she said in a low, mischievous voice, then unbuckled his leather belt and pulled it away.

He raised his hips in compliance, but reached for the gun before she tossed the belt onto the floor. “I’ll keep
that.”
His large bicep tightened as he slid the weapon beneath his pillow. Then she pulled his trousers off of him.

Now, completely naked, he rose up and eased her onto her back again. Her body tingled with unleashed desire as he pulled off her chemise and flicked his tongue over her breasts. Meanwhile, the explosive sensation of his hips thrusting between her legs made her ache for more.

“I need you inside me,” she whispered breathlessly.

She gasped as he slowly, teasingly entered her, his forehead resting on hers, their bodies moving together in perfect unison. Shivers of lust shook her as her passions grew to a peak. Within moments, she was soaring to a new height, pulling him deeper inside and holding him there as her body throbbed and quaked with rapture around him and he groaned and spilled fiercely into her.

Many moments later, when they were lying side by side, finally catching their breath, he turned his head on the pillow to look at her. His green eyes were warm with affection, but something had changed.

“I’ve never felt like this, Jo. It makes it so difficult, because—”

She blinked back a tear. “Please, Fletcher, I want to pretend for just one minute that nothing exists outside of this room.”

“Okay.” He pulled her in to rest her cheek on his shoulder. The clock ticked steadily on the bedside table, and the crickets chirped outside the window.

Fletcher waited a long moment before he finally spoke again. “We can’t just ignore it. I think you’re right. Zeb wants your land, and he might want you dead as well, to cover up what happened to Edwyn. He’s definitely up to something with George Greer, something to do with the cattle rustling, but I have no proof yet, and I don’t know how to get it. It’s making me crazy.”

“Maybe the wires you sent will help us,” she said, lifting her cheek to look at him.

“Maybe.” But Fletcher’s dark tone revealed his doubts. He sat up, leaned against the oak headboard and raised a knee under the light sheet. “Maybe you
should
leave Dodge.”

Jo tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and sat up, too. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you could pack a bag and go. Go to Leo and take him someplace safe—someplace no one knows about.”

“But you’d have to set me free,” she said, reminding him that she was still his prisoner and a suspect for attempted murder.

All he did was stroke her shoulder, back and forth, lightly with the tip of his forefinger. “I’m aware of that.”

She leaned up on her elbow. “But you’ve never let anyone go free in your life. You don’t bend the rules, remember?”

He stroked her hair. “Maybe things have changed. Maybe
I’ve
changed.”

Stricken, Jo leaned forward and hugged him. “I can’t let you do it. The law is your life. Besides that, I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to leave, either,’ he replied, “but I think it would be best. And you wouldn’t be a fugitive. Only you and I know what really happened. I’ve never filed a report.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

She shook her head as if to clear it. “But still, I can’t let you do that. I wouldn’t want you to always think of me as the criminal you let escape from justice. And I understand if you don’t want to marry me. It wouldn’t help your reputation any, once I’m arrested. It certainly wouldn’t buy you any votes as sheriff, but at least you’d know that I tried to do what was right. And maybe, under the circumstances, it might be considered self-defense. He fired first, remember?”

Fletcher regarded her with disbelief. “I don’t want to be
sheriff
, Jo. All I want is
you
.”

It was the most bizarre thing. She laughed and sobbed at the same time. “Well then. We’ll just have to prove that Zeb killed Edwyn and that he’s guilty of cattle theft. The truth has to come out, and then I’ll be safe to live my life here on the ranch, where I belong. I just feel sorry for Elizabeth.”

Fletcher wet his lips. “I know my sister. If she’s married to a killer, she’ll want to know. And she’s a survivor. She’ll recover.”

Jo hugged him again, and then snuggled down under the sheet to hold him close, and enjoy what time they had left together, through the rest of the dark night.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“If I’m going to find anything to use against Zeb,” Fletcher said the next morning, tossing the sheet aside and sitting up on the edge of the bed, “I’m going to need some time. I definitely want you to go and stay with Leo in Newton.”

“I still don’t want to go,” she said. “I don’t want to be away from you.” Staring at his bare, muscular back in the pale light of the rainy dawn, Jo waited anxiously for his response.

“I’m not giving you a choice. I can’t protect you and investigate Zeb at the same time.”

“I can take care of myself,” she assured him. “I know how to use those weapons you took from me.”

Fletcher picked his trousers up off the floor and shook them before pulling them on. “I don’t doubt that, but whether you can protect yourself or not isn’t the point.”

“Then what
is
the point?”

“The point is I’d be thinking about you. I’d be worrying when I wasn’t with you and distracted when I was. Not a good mix for a man in my line of work.” He pulled on his trousers.

“What if Zeb catches on to what you’re doing?” Jo asked. “I don’t think I could bear…”

Shirt half-open to reveal his muscular chest and rippled stomach, he crawled onto the bed, on all fours above her, and cupped her face in his hands. Her body burned with another heated wave of desire that simply would not recede.

“Zeb is beginning to trust me,” he said. “And I promise I’ll be careful.”

Jo ran her open palms down his chest, then rubbed her thumbs across his soft, moist mouth. “Do you have to get dressed right now? The men won’t be expecting breakfast yet. They’re always slow when it rains.” She pulled him in for another more demanding kiss.

Fletcher gently pushed her down onto her back and smiled. “I’ll stay on one condition.”

“What’s that?” She hurried to unbutton his trousers again.

“You promise to leave town.”

“But I don’t want to go,” she insisted.

“I told you, I’m not giving you a choice.”

As he pressed his open mouth to hers and settled himself snugly between her quivering, welcoming thighs, Jo was incapable of arguing.

* * *

It had just stopped raining when Leo hopped out of his uncle’s buggy, splashed into the mud and hurried into the Newton post office. Inside, he removed his hat to discover the brim was holding enough rainwater to fill a bucket. He accidentally spilled it onto the floor. He tried to spread the puddle around with his boot so no one would slip, then made his way to the counter. “Anything for Cecil O’Malley?” he asked the postmaster.

The gray-haired, craggy-faced man turned and retrieved a pile of envelopes from the box behind him and, without a word, slapped them onto the unpainted counter. Leo gathered them up and thanked the man, but he’d already turned away to finish sorting the mail.

Once outside, Leo replaced the rain-drenched hat on his head and flipped through the letters. His eyes widened at the sight of the return address on the last one—
Edwyn O’Malley, Dodge City, Kansas.

Leo spun around and hurried back into the post office. “Where did this letter come from?” he asked the postmaster.

The man faced him and peered over his spectacles at the envelope. “Return address says Dodge City. Maybe it’s time you learned to read.”

“I
can
read. But this letter’s old. Look!”

The postmaster glared at him, then snapped the envelope into his hand and held his spectacles between two fingers to examine it. “Postmarked January 10. You’re right. It must have gotten lost for a time. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Leo turned and walked out of the building, staring in stunned silence at his father’s penmanship on the outside of the dirty, tattered envelope. Leo heard the post office door fall closed behind him. He stood beside his uncle’s buggy, the letter in his hand making his heart ache with grief. He looked at the familiar writing again and, before he could think, ripped open the flimsy envelope and read what was inside.

* * *

After preparing breakfast for the men and seeing them off to work, Jo grudgingly packed a bag. She left a note for John on the bunkhouse door, asking him to see to the animals for the next few days and ensure the men were fed from the cookhouse. She didn’t explain where she was going, only that she would be gone a while.

She was
not
happy about it.

The rain fell mercilessly from the ashen sky as she crossed the muddy yard toward the wagon. Holding her umbrella over her head, she climbed onto the wet seat beside Fletcher, who wore his long brown slicker and his hat pulled forward on his head, the brim dripping with rain. She curled her gloved hand around his arm.

“We have one last hour together,” she said, trying to keep her mood light when all she wanted to do was beg him to let her stay. The wagon swished through a deep puddle and she thought about how to convince him. “I think you need me for this.”

He was quiet for a moment, then he shook his head. “I can’t take that chance, not with your life. You should be with Leo. Take him somewhere safe, in case things get dicey.”

Jo couldn’t very well argue with that. When it came to her son, she would do anything to keep him safe, and Fletcher knew it.

He squeezed her hand with reassurance, and she felt a love in her heart swell far beyond what she had ever believed possible.

If only it was not such a painful love. If only there was no fear—because if anything happened to Fletcher, she would blame herself for how things turned out, for getting him involved in this. “Please, be careful,” she said.

“Nothing will happen,” he promised. “I’ll find the evidence we need, and I won’t quit until I uncover the whole truth.”

They drove through the rain and over the low, sodden hills, crossing mile after mile of weather-beaten landscape, but Jo couldn’t herself relax. She had a bad feeling.

By the time they reached the railway station, the train was there and waiting with hissing bursts of steam. Jo’s clothing was soaked straight through to her petticoats. She was shivering, and her heart was aching at the thought of saying goodbye to Fletcher. What if she left Dodge and something terrible happened to this man she had given all of her heart, body and soul to?

While she waited in the wagon, Fletcher ran into the station to purchase her ticket, and returned a few minutes later. “I bought a ticket all the way to Topeka, just in case anyone sees you get on and asks where you’re going. Change seats along the way—cars if you can—and try to get off without too many folks noticing. Don’t tell anyone you’re getting off at Newton, and when you get there, take Leo somewhere else. Go north and contact me later.”

Jo nodded as he helped her out of the seat and retrieved her valise from under the canvas in the wagon bed. He led the way to the platform and stepped up onto the train, turning around to take her hand and pull her up.

Carrying her folded, dripping umbrella, Jo entered the train and followed Fletcher down the narrow aisle until he found her a seat to herself at the back of the car. He set down her bag.

“I guess this is goodbye,” Jo said shakily, facing him.

The lady in the seat behind her coughed.

“Will you be all right?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine.” But Jo had to fight the crushing urge to throw her arms around his neck and beg that he come with her and leave all this behind them. “Will
you
be all right?”

“Of course. I know what I’m doing.”

Yet, she did not feel reassured. All she felt was a sense of gloom—that this was not going to end well—and heartache at the idea of losing him forever, when they’d only just found each other.