The Lawman's Bride (23 page)

“I’m old enough now,” she said, “wise enough to know there are worse things than being coerced or manipulated, and one of them is the loss of respect. Not respecting myself. I’ll scream and fight or I’ll jump out that window before I’ll ever submit my body to you again.”

He straightened his shirt and tie. “Think more about that, Gabriella. Consider other people who might have more to lose in all this than you.”

Clay. Amanda. She’d already considered. “You said you’d leave them alone if I went along with your job. If you want to trust me to do what you ask, don’t go back on your word now.”

“We’re not finished,” he told her. “Not nearly finished. Once we’ve moved on and you don’t have your friends and your marshal, you’ll see things my way.”

Sophie’d said enough. She held back anything more she might have spewn at him and asked, “How much longer will it be?”

“Any time. He’s ready. Be prepared.” He took a few steps toward the door and pointed to a liquor bottle she hadn’t noticed sitting behind the door. “He likes brandy…and blondes.”

Sophie’s heart hammered long after he’d left and she’d locked the door. She leaned against it, thinking what tissue-thin protection a locked door was.

Finally, she moved. Noticing the wet rag on the floor, she picked it up and rinsed it out. Her skin was hot and clammy, so she washed before donning her nightclothes, then extinguished the lamp.

She sat before the window and concentrated on thinking about her meeting with Ellie. Garrett had stolen much of the relief she’d felt, but she wasn’t as lonely as she’d been before.

As bad as all this was right now, Ellie had survived worse. She remembered Ellie’s advise and made up her mind to trust Clay no matter what.

She had nothing to lose.

A knock startled her. Jumping at the sound was foolish. Anyone who meant her harm wouldn’t knock. Garrett certainly wouldn’t bother. She padded to the door in the dark. “Who is it?”

“Me.” His voice.

Chapter Eighteen

H
er heart slammed against her ribs with joy at hearing Clay. She opened the door and ushered him inside. “You came.”

She stepped to the bureau and relit the oil lamp, then another on the writing desk. He looked so good, so tall and handsome, his skin burnished from the sun, his thick dark hair unruly as though he’d run all the way in the wind. He smelled like fresh air and safety. She wanted to run to him, press herself against him and never let go. But she didn’t.

“The posters came today,” he said.

She studied his expression. And waited.

Seeing her took away Clay’s breath as it always did. She looked like the same woman he’d fallen in love with, maybe even softer and more lovely in her green satin wrapper and bare feet. Her dark hair was spread over her shoulders in shining waves. Was she the same woman he thought he’d known? Was she who she said she was?

“I think your plan will work. I’ll let the others know and have the men at the ready.”

Sophie rushed forward and flung herself against him. “Oh, thank you, Clay!”

He was so surprised, he didn’t make a move to respond, and she drew away as though she’d been struck. She backed into the center of the room. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to do that.”

Her eyes expressed such uncertainty and fear, he could barely stand to look. He took a long forward stride to reach her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t let herself relax against him.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, Sophie,” he told her. “I had hoped—well, it don’t matter what I’d hoped.”

Sophie took a step back and looked up at him. “It matters to me what you hoped. Tell me.”

Before he’d heard the rest of her story he’d hoped that she’d decide she wanted to marry him. He’d even voiced it, but she hadn’t responded. “I had a pipe dream that we could start a family.”

The first real emotion he’d ever seen displayed crossed her features. Regret filled her lovely dark eyes. “He stole my life, Clay. He’s the reason I can’t have friends or a husband or a family. I’ve never been free, and now I’m going to jail.”

The disappointment and hurt in her tone sounded real. She didn’t seem afraid, just…sorry. “Garrett’s gonna pay,” he assured her. “He’s gonna hang for that killin’.”

He thought he saw relief cross her features.

“He couldn’t steal my love or my dreams,” she said.

He ached to hold her. To believe in her.

“Amanda is leaving in the morning to visit her family for a while,” she told him.

“Good.”

“Telling the truth spared her, didn’t it?” she asked.

“You spared her.”

“You think less of me now, don’t you?” she asked.

“Not less. It’s just…I thought I knew you, but I didn’t. You’re not the person I thought you were.”

“Yes, yes I am,” she argued in a quivering voice. “I’m the same Sophia who went riding with you and shared a picnic lunch. I’m—” her words caught, but she finished “—I’m the same woman who smoked cigars in your bed.”

Her mention of that day hurt like a surprise punch to the gut. That had been one of the best days of his life. Hers, too, he’d thought. “You’ve closed up.”

She shook her head. “I tried to barricade myself from having feelings again, but it didn’t work. It’s just…” She crossed her hands on her breast. “I thought I had so much to lose. Freedom. Self-respect. You. None of them were ever mine anyway.”

Maybe she truly had risked everything to tell the truth. What purpose would a lie serve now? He’d been as angry with himself as he’d been with her. He’d felt like a chump, falling for her while she’d been lying to him. “Thinkin’ over your options in all this, I see how you thought you had no choice but to do things the way you did. You went out of your way to avoid the law. To avoid me.”

“I’m sorry you got pulled in, but I’m not sorry about a single minute I spent with you,” she told him. “Not a minute. I lied about my past, Clay, but I never lied about the way I feel about you. It wasn’t fair to let either one of us think there was a chance for anything more, but the woman you were with that day was me. The real me.”

He stepped forward to wrap his arms around her.

This time she folded into his embrace and laid her head against his chest. She was small and soft and the wonderful scent he couldn’t forget filled his head.

As though she’d just thought of something, she looked up. “You didn’t let anyone know you were coming here tonight, did you?”

He shook his head. “Don’t want Garrett to know what we’re up to.”

“And you can’t let anyone see you coming here or let them know you’re more than the city marshal to me.” Her eyes were a deep dark umber in the lamplight.

Her words restored his hope. “Am I?”

“You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me,” she told him. “You’re what I never even let myself dream about or imagine. But you and I can’t happen. You’ll meet a woman who deserves you.”

The thought was absurd. “Do you really think I’d want anyone else now?”

“Time makes a difference,” she assured him. “Once I’m gone you’ll find someone to make you a good wife.”

She believed she was going to jail, and he couldn’t tell her differently. “I can’t think past what we have to do,” he told her. “Can’t see past the woman in front of me. All I want to consider is you in my arms right now.”

Sophia rested her head against his chin. She didn’t want to think past this moment either. At least not yet. She had so few good memories to take with her. Selfishly she wanted more. Enough to fill her heart for all the cold lonely hours that would be hers soon enough.

“I have some first-rate cigars,” she told him. “I’d be glad to share.”

“Hold that idea,” he told her.

He stepped away and twisted the key in the lock, then unbuckled his holster and hung the guns on the back of the door.

Sophie waited expectantly.

He took off his boots and moved toward her. “What is this?” he asked, untying the ribbons over her breast.

“My nightwear.”

“Mighty fancy nightwear for a Harvey Girl.”

“No uniforms at bedtime,” she informed him with a smile.

He spread the front apart and let it fall down her arms. Sophie tossed the wrapper on the foot of the bed.

He fingered the satin edging above her breasts.

Her skin tingled everywhere he touched her.

Clay glanced toward the bowl on the washstand.

“Go ahead,” she offered. “It’s cold by now though.”

He unbuttoned his shirt. “I won’t notice.”

She backed up to the bed and watched him wash, appreciating the smooth contours of his back, the play of muscle in his shoulders and arms. He was a pleasure to look at, pleasure to touch. Even the sound of his voice was a pleasure she wanted to engrave into her memory forever.

She wanted him with her forever, too. The thought that he might forget her and assign his affections to an other woman was almost more than she could endure. He was hers. Hers for tonight. Hers for right now, anyway.

And he
would
remember her.

Chapter Nineteen

S
he hurried to tug the curtains closed over the open window and turn down the wick on the nearest lamp before folding back the covers on the bed. Sophie removed her nightgown while he was still occupied with a towel. The summer air kissed her skin.

Clay draped the towel over the brass holder, extinguished the lamp and turned. His expression would be in her memories for all time. He didn’t move, just studied her with hooded eyes. The breeze sucked the curtain out the open window and blew it back in.

“Beautiful Sophia,” he said at last.

Her heart ached with loss already. She took bittersweet pleasure in the way his gaze glided from her body to her face and hair. He was everything she wanted and nothing she deserved.

He moved forward to capture her lips in a kiss of possession and purpose. She didn’t need to breathe again because he was her air. Her heart never had to beat again; he was the life force that sustained her. His kiss was her nourishment, his groan of desire a cleansing drink.

Whatever happened, she would have this. She had trusted him to make the right decision regarding Garrett. Now she was trusting him with her heart. It wasn’t fair to say it to him, so she showed him her love with kisses and touches that came from her soul.

She hoped that a month from now, a year from now, he would still feel she’d been a risk worth taking.

She wanted to kiss him hard and keep him with her forever. She wanted to let him go before it hurt more than this, before he could be hurt more. But she was selfish enough to want this night.

His kiss was so tender, she would have cried if she hadn’t already purged every tear earlier. He unbuttoned his trousers, dropped them to the floor, and eased her onto the crisp sheets. His lips trailed down her neck, blazing a path between her breasts. “So beautiful…soft everywhere…smell is in my head…”

He cupped her breast and kissed her.

She arched toward him, eager for his touch, famished for tenderness, for the sheer joy of each intimate moment in his arms.

“Sophia,” he said on a gruff sigh. “I can’t get enough of you. Sophia. Yes, kiss me like that.”

How was it he could wound her with words of love and kill her with tenderness when another man’s cruelty had never pierced her armor? She clung to each kiss as though it could be the last, carved his face and body into her memory with her hands. He would remember her; she would see to it. She wanted to love him so well and so thoroughly that she would be a part of him forever.

When he joined their bodies, she was so overcome by the sheer beauty and inconceivable goodness that her throat constricted and tears welled in her eyes. She gulped them back, but an emotional flood had been unleashed, and there was no restraining it. Her chest heaved with her feeble efforts to hold back, and a wail escaped her lips.

“Sophia?” he asked, holding her gently, pushing her hair from her face with one hand.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Please d-don’t stop.”

“But you’re cryin’.”

“Yes. And it’s s-so good. It’s such a relief to feel.”

Clay pressed his lips to her wet cheek, tasted her tears, kept his movements slow and easy. From that moment on nothing would ever be the same. She’d never voice it, but she loved him. Loved him enough to want to protect him. Loved him enough to open herself up to him. Loved him enough to cry.

Her eyes fluttered closed when he wanted to see them, wanted to know what she was thinking…feeling…He wanted more. He wanted promises. He wanted forever. The desperate way he wanted her hurt.

“Look at me, darlin’.”

Her eyes were dark and wet with tears that still flowed.

He’d wanted more than physical possession. He wanted her to be his. Not in the way Garrett had wanted to own her, but in an intimate, almost spiritual way.

With an ache he needed to ease, he drank at the sweetness of her lips, threaded his fingers into the silken texture of her hair. He forgot she’d never said the words because her demonstration spoke to his heart.

He loved to say her name, loved her reaction when he did.

“Sophia.”

She trembled.

“Sophia.”

She kissed him, openmouthed and tasting of tears.

Was this her goodbye then? “You cryin’ because it might be the last time?” he asked.

She cradled his cheek. “I’m crying because it’s the first time,” she answered.

He had never expected to experience the hollow ache of loss again, but here it was, a claw ripping at his gut. He wouldn’t lose her. He’d do whatever it took to keep her with him.

She met him kiss for kiss as he realigned his mouth over hers. He rolled her with him so they lay on their sides and eased her thigh over his hip. She became impatient with his leisurely lovemaking and moved to straddle him, surprising them both, releasing a soft gasp, and then discovering her position of control.

In the nearly-diminished glow of the lamp, she fulfilled all the dreams he’d ever had. Her expressions were real, her inexpert movements endearingly erotic. She wasn’t crying now. She was concentrating, her breathing telling him she’d found her way.