The Last Renegade (31 page)

“Walt told me you asked for directions to Dr. Kent’s. Did you go there?”

“Yes. What happened to Pennway forced my hand. I had to know beyond any doubt that it wasn’t the fall that killed him. I asked Dr. Kent to go over to the Pennway home, judge for himself.”

Raine frowned deeply. “What possible reason did you give him for your involvement?”

“You.” When that didn’t ease Raine’s frown, he went on. “I explained that Walt told you what happened to Scott Pennway and that you needed to know more. He understood why you asked someone other than Walt to carry the information back. He figured you chose me because he heard I was a reporter and more likely to keep the facts in order. Keep in mind that Dr. Kent has good reason to learn the truth for himself. He’s as likely to be a target of the Burdicks’ vigilante justice as any of the jury. He stood up for Ellen the same as that lawyer from Rawlins. In his place I’d be hoping that being the only doctor around would give me more time than the lawyer.”

Raine closed her eyes while she briefly rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her sigh was long and heartfelt. “He shrugs off worry when I ask him about it, but I know he thinks there’s something to worry about. He won’t leave town, and after John Hood arrived home in a box and no one’s heard from Hank Thompson, it’s hard to fault him or anyone else for not wanting to pull up roots.”

“If it helps, he thanked me for alerting him. I waited at Kent’s house until he returned. He confirmed your suspicions and mine. It wasn’t the fall that broke Pennway’s neck. There
was no evidence that Pennway ever hit his head. No lumps. No bruising. The ground was hard, but we both believe it would have required a longer fall to snap Pennway’s neck.” Kellen described his observations of the porch and backyard and repeated the information Walt had given him. “Mrs. Pennway doesn’t know any of this. Neither does Howard Wheeler or Mrs. Stillwell. They were both with Mrs. Pennway when Kent arrived. He quieted Mrs. Pennway with some laudanum so Mrs. Stillwell could help her to bed. When they went upstairs, he and Wheeler took care of the body.”

“Do you think Howard knew that Dr. Kent was doing an examination?”

“I asked Kent the same thing. He said Wheeler never asked any questions.”

“Perhaps because he doesn’t want to know the answers.”

“Or perhaps because he already does. You knew from the first that it wasn’t an accident.”

She blew out a small breath. “What now?”

He held up an index finger. “Give me a moment.”

Kellen went out to the sitting room to retrieve the crate. He set it on the floor in front of her.

She stared into the open box. “I am not opposed to giving my customers a copy of that book, and perhaps I’ll read it myself sometime, but on the other hand, I’d just as soon set them all on fire.” She pointed to the stove to indicate that she had the means to do so close at hand.

Kellen knelt and began to unpack the books, shaking off the curled wood shavings that clung to the covers before he dropped them on the floor. He took out two dozen copies before he sat back, grinning.

“Go ahead,” he told her, pointing to the crate. “You take it out.”

Raine’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Is it alive?”

“No.”

“Is it a telephone?”

He chuckled. “No telephone. Go on. Reach inside and take it.”

She leaned forward for a better view. A large folder covered
most of the remaining books. Her heart thudded, and she abandoned the bed. She pretended that she couldn’t see Kellen’s amusement as she lifted the folder. The excelsior scattered everywhere as she opened it.

The certificate of marriage lay inside. All the information was there, including the name of the judge who married them in absentia. The only requirement remaining was for them to sign it. “How well do you know this judge?”

Kellen tipped the folder so he could see the certificate. He recognized the bold hand. “Macaulay Packard? I don’t know him at all. That’s my brother’s writing. The M is familiar. He cannot resist the flourishing detail. He would have preferred to have been born John Hancock.”

“It’s impressive.”

“I’ll tell him you thought so.”

Raine ran her fingertips over the certificate. “There’s something under it.” She lifted the document and saw the envelope with Kellen’s name scrawled on top. She handed it to him.

Kellen opened it and smiled wryly as he read. When his brother was not writing a closing argument, he was a man of few words.

“May I know what he’s written?” she asked.

“He says there better be a good story to answer for this.” He handed it to her.

Raine looked it over. “Does your family think you’re a reporter?”

“No. They know what I do.”

“Is it difficult for them to accept?”

He shrugged. “Some more than others, my father most of all.”

“I don’t suppose any father hopes his son will grow up to be a gunslinger.”

“At least not a bad one.”

Raine returned the letter so he could put it away. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your family?”

“Six months.”

“Are you welcomed?”

“Like the prodigal son. That lasts until we have our first Sunday dinner together. I can’t stay long after that.”

“Do they know you’re a good man?”

He smiled a little. “I think so. My parents simply want me to be a better one.”

Raine nodded slowly. There was an ache behind her eyes that she recognized as the press of tears. She did not want to think about why it was there. She closed the folder. “I’ll put this in the hotel safe, if you don’t object.”

She slid the folder under the nightstand to put it out of the way and picked up one of the Nat Church novels. She thumbed the pages. “Did you know there were books in the crate before you opened it?”

“No. I kept my request simple. I didn’t have much time. This was his idea, and a good one as it happens. Even if Dan Sugar shows any curiosity about our certificate—which I doubt—there’ll be nothing to suggest that we only took delivery of it this morning. An envelope might have got him thinking. But Nat Church novels?”

“You could have told me about it once we left the station.”

“I thought you understood. I was trying to figure out what the burr was under your bustle. I didn’t understand until you asked about the proof of marriage.”

“And you still didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t remember you giving me a lot of room for explanation, but even if you had, it’s possible I was feeling a touch bristly by then and took some satisfaction in keeping it to myself.”

It was his honesty that undid her, and that he offered it a shade grudgingly made the admission that much sweeter. Raine did not want her heart to turn over. She did not want it to jump. It tumbled and fluttered anyway.

She had never been in love, had given little thought to it in any serious way, and she wasn’t ready to claim that what she felt now was that emotion. She was confident it was a new experience, identifiable as kin to the love she had for Adam and Ellen, for her mother, yet distinguishable from it as well. This feeling was more acute, intense in a way that was both
splendid and uncomfortable. Once her heart stopped its frantic beat, she felt her skin flush hot and her breath lodge in her throat, but when she could breathe again, she merely felt warm all over.

“Are you all right?”

Raine realized she was the subject of Kellen’s scrutiny. Not liking it, she scowled at him.

He smirked.

Her eyes were drawn to his beautiful mouth. The smirk did not detract from it at all. Still worse from her perspective, there was a tiny crescent of a dimple at the left corner of his lips. She had never noticed it before. She was not particularly happy about noticing it now, but she was aroused.

Raine pushed the crate out of the way as she came up on her knees. Slipping her hands around his neck, she kissed him full on the mouth, erasing the smirk, the dimple, and all hint of amusement. It was not a long kiss, but it was a heady one, and when she drew back, she was satisfied to see that his darkening eyes were vaguely unfocused.

She couldn’t help herself. She smirked.

Raine didn’t think about fending him off. She let him topple her back on the floor, let him stretch out beside her and pin her down with one of his legs. His face hovered over hers. She did not turn away from his study. The movement of his eyes across her face was like the graze of his fingertips against her skin. He touched her cheeks, her temples, the bridge of her nose. His eyes lingered on her chin, then her bottom lip, and when her lips parted, they lingered on the space between them. It was as if he willed her tongue to appear because she couldn’t think of any reason why she chose that moment to wet her lips, but she heard the sharp intake of his breath when she did.

“You’re going to kiss me, aren’t you?” The huskiness of her voice made it almost unrecognizable to her. “I want you to.”

“Something we agree on. But first…” He fiddled with the pins and combs in her hair and ignored her when she batted at his hands. “There’s nothing I’m doing that can’t be repaired. And this…” He lifted her head just enough to loosen the coil.
He separated her hair with his fingertips, carefully combing through the strands. “It’s like wading through a pool of fire.”

“It is?”

He nodded. “Liquid to the touch. Brilliant to the eyes.”

She stared up at him, said nothing.

“I think I better kiss you now.”

Raine pressed her lips together, but she nodded. If he didn’t, she would burst into flame. She might do exactly that anyway. When his mouth covered hers, Raine’s body lifted, arched. His touch was electric, and the current made her limbs seize, not painfully, but wonderfully. If she had been standing, she would have been in his arms, her breasts flush to his chest, and her heels would have been raised off the floor. She might have even sparkled.

The fancy struck her, and she smiled into the kiss and wondered if he could feel the shape of it on her lips. She knew everything about the shape of his mouth now. She knew that the wry twist thinned the right side and that the smirk lifted the left. She knew the exact distance he thrust out his lower lip when he released a long-held breath. She had intimate knowledge of his mouth against the hollow beneath her ear and at her throat. She had watched it sip her skin, her nipples, and make a damp trail across her collarbone. When he kissed her, she felt as if he was teasing her with the secrets he guarded. Eventually she would know them all.

Raine felt herself being taken from want to need. Her mouth clung to his. She matched the slant of his kiss, the hunger that drove it harder. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his vest and pulled at his shirt. She slipped her hands under his trousers and unfastened the overlap of his drawers. She pushed. He tugged. Her skirt rode up her legs. His knee urged it higher. She guided him to the crushed, uncomfortable bustle at her back. He pushed her hands out of the way to get at the ribbons, and when she was finally free of the damnable contraption, they both shoved it hard under the bed. Laughing, she lifted her bottom when his fingers scrabbled under her petticoats to remove her cotton drawers. She stopped laughing when he spread her legs and jerked her close.

She watched him steadily. Waited for him. And knew before he did when he would come to her.

“Ah!” Her sharp cry made her press her knuckles against her mouth. She did not want him to draw back, to ask if he was hurting her. She was tender, but her body remembered him, welcomed him, and the warm pleasure of being joined to him made the tenderness insignificant.

He didn’t ask, but she felt the cadence change from the frenzy of the first thrusts to something slow and deep and powerful. Sometimes he held himself back to kiss her, and the kiss was exactly the same, slow and deep and powerful.

Her hands slid under his shirt. She rubbed his back, ran her palms across the muscles bunching in his shoulders. His skin was warm, and she had a memory of it being warmer still when she slept in the cradle of his body.

She found the dimples at the base of his spine. Her fingers spread out from there, clutching his taut buttocks, leaving the imprint of her nails like a brand. She raised her face, brushed her mouth against his when he dipped his head.

In the late morning light, she could see his face as she had not been able to the night before. Without the soft glow of the oil lamp, the edges of his features seemed sharper, less likely to yield. His eyebrows were dark slashes, his nose, a blade. His jaw had the hard line of a granite block, and the wintry blue-gray color of his eyes lent him the watchful, perceptive gaze of a predator.

“Mmm.” The sound did not part her lips, but it was perfectly audible. She started to cover her mouth again. He nudged her hand out of the way, and the next thing she said was his name. “Kellen.”

“Yes,” he said. “Raine.”

Somehow he made her name sound raw, primal. It moved her. Pleasure had already wound her as tight as the string on a child’s top, and when he said her name like that, it was as if he’d pulled the cord.

She spun and spun, and as dizzy as he made her, she never lost sight of him. She flung her arms wide. Her hands balled into fists. She gave herself up to pleasure and to him and then made certain he could do the same.

She matched him measure for measure, letting him use her body as a cradle this time, and when she felt him still, she contracted all around him, his shoulders, his back, his thighs, his cock, making surrender his only choice. The sharp, shallow thrusts that he couldn’t restrain spilled his seed into her.

He landed on considerably softer ground than she did.

Raine nudged Kellen’s shoulders. She didn’t mind his weight as much as she minded the steel cage of her corset. “A little breathing room,” she whispered.

Nodding, he eased out of her and rolled onto his back. He trapped Raine’s arm under his neck. “Sorry.” He lifted his head, and she freed her arm. While she began to straighten her clothes, he looked longingly at the bed. “How did we not get that far?”

Raine glanced at him, saw the direction of his gaze, and realized what he was asking. She chose to believe the question was rhetorical and therefore better left alone.