The Lover (17 page)

She saw the humor gradually come back into his eyes.

“If we ever run across them again, you'll have to hang them yourself,” he said. “My feelings will require it.”

She held his gaze, freely letting her appreciation and affection for him show.

“Fair enough,” she said. “We've got a deal.”

She leaned from her horse and held out her hand. He took it and shook it, then squeezed it when he let go.

“At least we're going back to the herd with something to show for our scouting trip,” he said. “The gray's pretty fast. And he's good-looking.
The boys will be fighting to get him into their mounts.”

“And you have to remember, Eagle Jack, that what you did to Oates and Folger is poetic justice,” she said.

He smiled.

“It is,” he said. “No telling how many other men they've left afoot. I hope they have to walk all the way back to Kentucky, providing they live that long.”

“Let's drink to that,” she said, reaching for the canteen of water that hung from her saddle. “To a long, long walk for the Kentucky gentlemen.”

 

As the drive moved steadily north through good, grassy country with plentiful water from the recent rains, Susanna decided this was the best time of her whole life. She'd never been around so much laughter and teasing or had feelings of closeness with so many people. She realized that, until now, she'd never truly been a member of any group, never really belonged, and she loved the safe, secure pleasure it gave her.

The whole crew had endless fun with the new horses—racing Molly and the tall gray with horses from the other outfits they encountered and passing both the thieves' horses around to decide how they liked them. There were also the two saddles and other tack to replace some that had
been lost, and it took many discussions, bargainings, gambling games, and deals to decide who got them.

It had perked everyone up considerably to have some good news for a change, and as soon as Susanna and Eagle Jack rode in from their lucrative scout that day, the crew had started playing cards and mumblety-peg and betting on their two new running horses. Other questions were who should get the fine boots that had belonged to Oates and Folger, plus the gear that was in their saddle bags. Finally, they were raffled off and then the winners sold them to someone who could wear them and, since none of the crew had any cash money, the deals became so complicated that they entertained everyone on the drive for days and days.

After they'd passed Fort Worth—where she did buy supplies on her own credit and Eagle Jack visited the office of the Texas Rangers—they pushed on to the Red River Crossing. There they swam the cattle and horses and ferried the wagons, all without a tragic or even a disturbing incident.

This went a long way toward restoring the confidence of every man in the outfit as they left Texas. They drove almost straight north, skirting the western edge of the Cross Timbers and the eastern edge of the Great Plains. It was powerful, fascinating country on either side, and the rolling
hills seemed to surround her and Eagle Jack as they rode together out ahead of the herd.

“Sometimes I wish we were going to trail them on to Colorado or Wyoming,” she said, one day when an overnight rain had washed the sky and the earth and the sun was making everything sparkle.

“By the time we get to Abilene, you'll be so happy to see the end of this trail, you'll jump up and shout,” Eagle Jack said.

He was laughing at her a little.

She pretended to be offended. “And just how can you say that?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. “You think you know me so well?”

They were letting their horses amble along as the cool breeze played in their manes and tickled Susanna's and Eagle Jack's bare forearms. It was a day when the sun on naked skin felt like a caress.

“Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do,” he said, with that flashing grin she loved. “But even if I didn't, I could say that because you're human.”

He was in that happy, teasing mood she loved. Carefree. That was the word for Eagle Jack most of the time and that was what drew her to him the most.

She realized that truth with a start. Carefree was something she had hardly even been, until this trip with Eagle Jack.

Even with the troubles and dangers they'd already endured, even if they encountered many more, when she was ninety years old sitting in a rocking chair on her porch, she would remember this as the most carefree time of her life.

“Oh?” she said. “And I'm just like every other human?”

“No-o,” he drawled, looking her up and down in that slow, provocative stare that never failed to thrill her, “I'm not saying that at all.”

He let his gaze linger on her mouth while he smiled at her foolishness in jumping to that conclusion.

Then, with a sweep of his heavy lashes, he lifted it to meet her eyes.

“We'll come back to that in a minute,” he said. “But right now I want to make the point that any human being gets tired of sleeping on the ground. Any human being gets tired of having no buttermilk biscuits, sand in the stew, and no table to eat at.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if none of those inconveniences had ever come to her notice before.

“No problem for me,” she said, with a grin. “So what's your point, Eagle Jack?”

“That you're like everybody else in those ways whether you'll admit it or not,” he said, “but…”

He looked around at the hillside gently rising in front of them, where the little orange wildflowers
called Indian paintbrush waved at the snowy clouds and the green grass spread its blanket to meet the blue of the sky. Then he turned back to Susanna.

“But what?” she said.

“You'll have to get down and let me show you,” he said, and stopped his horse.

He dismounted and dropped the reins.

“Come on, Annie,” he said, as he came to her. “It's a beautiful day. Let's have a picnic.”

He reached up and lifted her off her horse.

His first touch made her go weak. In his arms, she had no strength at all.

The only thing she could manage was to put her arm around his neck.

He carried her to his horse and, holding her in one arm, took down the blanket rolled behind the saddle.

She chuckled.

“I'm not used to a blanket to sit on,” she said. “This is a fancy picnic.”

“Damn straight it is,” he murmured, and when he turned to look at her, his face was so close that she brushed a kiss onto the hard line of his jaw.

“Watch it now,” he said, with a grin, “you're gonna make me lose my train of thought.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“Hang on to this,” he said, and held her gaze with his so intensely that neither of them could move for a moment.

Then he laid the blanket across her lap and went to get the leather bag and the canteen hanging from his saddle horn.

“I guess you want me to carry those, too,” she said. “And here I am, already all burdened down.”

“You don't know nothin' about it,” he said. “How do you think I feel, haulin' around a great big girl that weighs more than a side of beef?”

She gasped in mock horror and struggled to get out of his arms. “
What?
Let me down. Let me down, this minute, do you hear me?”

He walked over to the side of the hill, dropped the rolled blanket, and dumped her unceremoniously on top of it. Susanna screamed with laughter and pulled him down on top of her.

“Here…here…now,” he said, as she interrupted him between every word with a hard, quick kiss on the mouth, “this is a
fancy
picnic. We're supposed to spread out the blanket.”

She held on around his neck, hard, with both arms and pulled back only far enough to give him her narrow-eyed, dangerous look.

“Are you some kind of a tenderfoot?” she demanded. “Since when is the thick, sweet-smelling grass not good enough for you?”

“Not as sweet as you, Susanna,” he said, and started in on the buttons to her shirt.

She pulled the tail of his blue work shirt, an exact match for her own, out of his jeans and ran her
palms up under it, caressing his marvelous, muscular back with both her palms.

He shivered, and she marveled at her power.

“You're not sweet, Eagle Jack,” she murmured, against his cheek, touching it with her lips and the tip of her tongue.

“No?”

He turned his head and kissed her mouth. Once. Quick and hard.

Then he moved down to kiss the bare skin of the path he was opening between her breasts.

“No,” she said, and gasped when he pulled apart the snaps of her camisole and turned the fabric back.

The sunlight and the breeze moved over her breasts but his gaze stayed on them. And then his mouth.

His mouth that was even more magic than his hands. He started in between them and planted a row of slow, slow, wet kisses up the inside of each of her breasts, then raised his head and looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes the color of liquid chocolate, eyes that set a fire burning in her core.

“So,” he said, raising up to look at her with his smoldering. dark brown eyes. “If I'm not sweet, what am I?”

“Sexy,” she said, and gave him a slow, slow smile.

Then she reached for his head with both hands and pulled it to her. She thrust her fingers into his
long, thick black hair and tore away the thong that held it to let it fall, to let it swing around her breast when he took the nipple with his lips and his tongue and brush her skin with the scorching promise of things to come.

He suckled her, he nipped her with his teeth, he licked her skin until she begged him, until she cried out his name and tore at his belt with both her trembling hands.

“No,” he murmured. “Not yet, sweet Susanna.”

Then he took both her hands and laid them out beside her, her arms flat on the ground and he put them there with a push that meant for them to stay. She lay still, looking at his face through her half-open eyes, trembling at his slightest touch.

It was he who took away her belt, who opened her jeans and slipped all her clothes off, her boots and all the rest down over her feet after them. He was touching her here and there—small, light burning touches like the bite of a flame.

After that his lips and his hands were gone from her but she was holding him with her sure gaze, watching him peeling out of his own clothes and coming back to her. He parted her thighs with his own and knelt between her legs.

He held her gaze with his molten one.

Until the last moment when he bent his head and kissed the flat of her belly. His hair closed around her like a curtain of silk. His lips drew her into himself. For a long, floating moment.

Then he came into her and they moved together in that ancient rhythm that held them to the earth so it could rock them in its arms.

 

After that picnic day, Susanna knew she could love somebody. Her love for Eagle Jack filled the very air that day and she recognized it for what it was late that afternoon when the sun was going down on the most perfect day of her life.

And, as day after day came to her, one after another, like perfect pearls on a string—they were beautiful days whether it rained or hailed or the sun blazed down, even the two scary days they had to drive the cattle faster with no water, even after they crossed the Kansas line and rode, mile after mile after endless mile, across the flat, empty plains—she actually dared to wonder whether Eagle Jack could, perhaps, love her.

The reason all the days were beautiful was Eagle Jack.

He treated her, all the time, with that same passionate tenderness he'd shown on that picnic blanket or else with the rollicking fun-making attitude that was the backbone of their friendship. Many times, even sometimes with Maynell there and the men all sitting talking around the fire, he looked at her in a way that she imagined was the look of love.

But she had nothing to compare it to and no intention of letting herself lose her good sense, even
if she knew for sure that he loved her. There was no way she could ever give over the control of her life to anyone else again.

Until Everett had died, she had never been free. Never even close to being free. She would never give that up.

And besides, she had already promised herself that this drive with him would be a special time separate from the rest of her life. She would hold to that.

She would never forget one moment of it. At least, now she knew what it was like to love someone.

T
he first glimpse of Abilene made Susanna wish none of it was true. She wished the town weren't there, she wished they were trailing the cattle all the way to Montana, she wished that she'd never begun to love Eagle Jack, and she wished that he didn't treat her as if he might love her, too, so she could hate him instead.

She wished she could be a different person. Why couldn't she be a normal woman who could love a man and live with him and let him love her in return?

Abilene. The very name of the town, spoken aloud, made her sad. When they'd camped last evening and Eagle Jack had told her they were nearly there, she'd felt a terrible loss. She had hardly slept, and this morning her entire self was as empty as the plains.

The time out of time she had promised herself was past.

The time had come when she must think about her ranch and the cattle sale and how much money she'd be taking home to Texas. The time had come when she must let Eagle Jack stake her so she could bet on Molly.

She hated to get deeper into his debt—in case the mare should lose—but the river stampede had decimated her herd so that the remaining cattle couldn't bring enough to pay off her mortgage for Brushy Creek, much less pay Eagle Jack for the remuda and pay all the men's wages and still give her enough to operate on until time to drive another bunch of cattle north next year. Plus she'd have hotel and food expenses here in Abilene. Thank goodness, so far, Molly had won every race they'd entered her in.

So that's what Susanna had to do. She would try to think of Eagle Jack as her business partner now—only that—and concentrate on the future of Brushy Creek, although, at the moment, her home seemed as far away as the moon. It was the only home she'd ever had, and she could hardly remember what it looked like.

How could any man take over her mind like that? She must take control of it again.

“Do you really think I can win enough with Molly to make up for the cattle I lost in the river?” she asked.

She and Eagle Jack were riding into Abilene from where they'd left Maynell and Jimbo and the rest of the crew camped with the herd out south of town. Everyone else would have his time in town once the buyer took possession of the cattle, but first, to get that done, Eagle Jack and Susanna were moving into the hotel built especially for cattlemen, the Drovers Cottage.

“Yep,” he said. “Miss Molly's all rested up and full of herself. She'll bring in the mortgage money for you.”

Susanna cast a questioning look at the little mare slow-trotting on Eagle Jack's lead rope. Shaggy head down, ears at rest, legs shuffling along, eyes half-closed, she looked ready to drop off to sleep.

“Will you, Molly? Are you in the mood to run?”

Molly didn't even turn her head at the sound of her name.

“I don't know,” Susanna said, “we haven't raced her since we crossed into Kansas. Maybe she's given up the sport and not told us yet.”

Eagle Jack grinned. “This is how she's always been,” he said. “That loser's look of hers is how we get our best matches and our best bets.”

“Eagle Jack, are you sure?”

He chuckled.

“I'm sure. It's happened over and over again.”

Susanna looked at Molly one more time, then sat up in the saddle and squared her shoulders.

“Well, then,” she said, “let's look Abilene over and pick us out some suckers.”

That made him laugh.

“Plain-talking Annie,” he said. “She comes right out and says what she means.”

“I didn't used to be that way,” she said. “Not until after Everett died. Before then, in my whole life, I never said anything straight out of my head or my heart.”

He cocked his head and looked at her as if that were one of the most interesting things he'd ever heard.

“That's hard to believe,” he said. “Keeping quiet must've been hard for a woman who wants to boss the world.”

She pretended to slap at his leg. He pretended to dodge away.

“I decided to set my real self free and I did,” she said.

He grinned at her.

“Yes,” he said, “and it's a good thing for the rest of us that you did. If your real self was all caged up and fretting, no telling
what
you'd do.”

She grinned back at him. “Just be glad you don't have to find out.”

A wagon rattled past them and drowned out her words. When it was gone, Eagle Jack gave her a serious look.

“All right, now, Susanna, we're in town,” he said. “When we start talking horse race, put your
plain talk aside. In fact, let me take the lead and you back me up.”

“I can't imagine you taking the lead,” she said dryly, “when all you do is rave about what a buggy boss I am.”

“That's why I'm telling you now,” he said, and they both laughed.

Easily. As they had done a hundred times before. Looking right at each other and saying many, many other things with their eyes.

“Susanna,” he said, “I've been saving something for you. Now that we're coming into town, and going to buy new clothes and all, you'll want it.”

New clothes. That was another expense she'd forgotten—probably because it was so rare in her life.

“What is it?”

Still holding her gaze, he reached back, unbuckled the flap on his saddle bag, and pulled out a paper-wrapped package.

“Something I bought you the day you got me out of the Salado Jail.”

He handed it to her across Molly's back.

She hung her reins around her saddle horn and used both hands. After she picked up the one fold of paper, she cried out.

“Gloves!”

Her heart was beating so fast, out of all proportion to the occasion.

“Oh, Eagle Jack, thank you! No one's ever bought me a gift before.”

She stroked the soft leather and looked at its buttery color in the sunlight.

“Never?”

“No. Not store-bought,” she said, then she thought about that for a minute, then added, “and not homemade, either.”

“Well,” he said, in a droll tone, “I'm sure glad you're taking it better than you did the first flower anybody ever gave you.”

She felt the heat of embarrassment paint her cheeks as she turned to look at him.

“Look how far you've brought me,” she said quietly. “Finally I can accept a kindness graciously.”

“Did nobody ever give you
anything
?”

She shrugged and tried to throw off the chill of her childhood.

“Just a hard time,” she said, trying for a light tone. “They simply didn't have enough food or clothes or anything else for an extra person in the house. None of my relatives did.”

“Well, they didn't have to be mean to you. You couldn't help being an orphan.”

“I wish I'd never told you about Uncle Job giving me those whippings,” she said. “Or locking me in the smokehouse…”

She bit her lip as all the old humiliation came back to haunt her. Whatever had possessed her to
tell him all that, anyhow? During the long hours of riding side by side, she had bared her heart to him, mile by mile. She had never meant to do so, she wouldn't have told all that to anybody else—she never had done so before—but Eagle Jack made her feel so safe. Maybe that was the reason.

Now his face was a thundercloud.

“What? What is it?” she asked.

“It's a damn shame, that's what,” he snapped. “For you to be treated so…”

Something in her expression must have stopped him. She did not want pity. She would not accept it, even though the hurt, confused little girl she had been was alive inside her once more.

“It's about damn time you got a gift, then,” he said, with a trace of his old grin. “At least those'll be warmer this winter than the ones with the holes in them.”

This winter
.

This winter they'd be months and miles apart.

But this was now and they were still together. And Eagle Jack would not take his eyes from hers.

Susanna didn't want to look away. Ever. She was going to be lost forever in this brown-eyed handsome man. If she wasn't already.

And why would he want her forever if nobody else ever had?

She must sell her cattle, win a horse race or two, get the money, and run.

“Eagle Jack,” she said, although her tongue
would barely move to obey her, “I think we should take separate rooms at the Drovers Cottage.”

Startled, he stared at her. “Why is that?”

“This is a public place and you said it's always full of Texans. There'll be people you know here. And if we continue to pretend to be married, then you'll have to explain why we're not when you get home.”

“But the crew…” he began to argue.

She stiffened her spine and refused to let herself give in.

“They won't know,” she said. “They won't be in town at night until the deal's done. I'm heading home the minute I have my money and get settled up.”

He kept on looking at her and she wished he'd look away.

“You only wanted them to think we're married so you'd be safe on the trail,” he said speculatively, as if to go over the story one more time.

“And so they'd respect me, since I was on the trail where women aren't supposed to be,” she said.

“Right,” he agreed.

“Maynell and Jimbo know the truth,” she went on explaining. “Marvin and his men aren't with me permanently, and if I ever run across them again I'll just explain that you and I aren't together anymore.”

“That takes care of you,” Eagle Jack said, “but
I'll be seeing a lot of the men with my beef herd. They'll naturally ask about my wife. What shall I tell them?”

The vision of that happening caught at her throat. The knowledge that she had to separate from him caught at her heart. The word “wife” took her breath away completely. She couldn't stand it.

“Tell them whatever you want, Eagle Jack,” she said, “whatever will help you most with all your other women.”

He just kept looking at her. Silently.

“We've both known it from the start,” she said, “you have to admit that.”

“Known what?” he said, in his quietly dangerous voice.

“That we'd have to part.”

He didn't say a word. Finally, he looked away and rode out a little bit ahead.

 

Eagle Jack wanted to slow it all down, somehow. The time seemed to be sliding past him like water through his fingers, and he had a lot he wanted to do with Susanna.

Like escort her to a long, leisurely dinner at the fine restaurant in the Drovers Cottage. If the place had musicians there tonight, they would dance—he'd been wanting to take her into his arms and dance with her.

If he could dance with her, he could go back to
her room with her, he just knew it. He could hold on to her a little bit longer. The very thought of this insanity about not being in her bed anymore—just like that, fast as a snap of her fingers, no more—was killing him. He had to do something about it.

He wanted to see that same look in her eyes that had been there when he gave her the gloves. No woman had ever looked at him like that before.

That look went right through him and it caused him to want to make it all up to her—the terrible childhood she'd survived and the stupid, mean husband who had treated her no better. All of that would have broken a lesser woman. He admired her and he wanted to reward her.

She deserved some easy time with no hard work in it, she deserved some of the pretty things she'd never had. She deserved some fun.

He wanted to sit on the long veranda of the Drovers Cottage with her and see the trains come in and out and watch the endless parade up and down the street of cattle buyers, commission agents, saloonkeepers, gamblers, and all the other kinds of humanity that descended upon Abilene. He wanted to take her to Goldsoll's Texas store and buy her a dress, blue to match her eyes, and then she could wear it to dinner.

He wanted to just walk with her, with her hand on his arm, up and down the main street, called Texas Street, and see her be surprised, as most
cowboys were on their first visit, that the establishments on one side of it were more Texan than some Texas towns, with everything named the Lone Star or the Alamo or the Bull's Head and everybody talking about cattle and everybody dressed in a way that showed they were
from
Texas. He could introduce her to some people in the cattle business that she should know.

No, she shouldn't. She was too beautiful and they were all men. A woman who had the looks that Susanna did shouldn't be in business at all. It was dangerous.

But instead of doing anything that he wanted to do, here they were, out on the edge of town riding in to race Miss Molly and win Susanna some money. Rare was the day he didn't care to see a horse race and even rarer was the day he didn't care to run Miss Molly, but this day was one.

She'd been right when she said he'd known from the start that they couldn't stay together forever. He agreed with her on that, one hundred percent. But it was making him crazy just the same.

He didn't know what was wrong with him.

 

Susanna stood under one of the few trees in Kansas, near the impromptu racetrack, holding the reins of her mount and Eagle Jack's. She was listening to Eagle Jack talking to one of the young boys who were hiring out as jockeys for the series
of races that were springing up, and smiling to herself about how closely he was predicting Molly's behavior and her speed. She could only pray that Molly would come through as she usually did, and
win
as she usually did, because she, Susanna, had borrowed a hundred dollars from Eagle Jack—a hundred dollars!—to bet on this race.

But she couldn't afford to fool around with lesser amounts when she must either replace her losses on her cattle or give up on paying off her mortgage. The cattle buyer would meet with her and Eagle Jack tomorrow. As soon as that business was settled and she'd paid everybody off, she had to go home.