The Outcast (34 page)

Tucking both rifles under one arm, he picked up several cartridge boxes and turned toward the hall. Stopping in absolute, mind-blanking surprise.

“I’m not leaving, Reeve.”

How could she manage to look so drawn and delicate and at the same time braced by a foundation of steel? He was too stunned to react at first. So Patrice continued.

“You were right, Reeve. About everything. I’ve always expected you to have enough courage to change things for the both of us, so I wouldn’t have to take the risks, and I see now, how unfair I’ve been, how cowardly. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to make it anyone’s fault but my own. But it wasn’t. It was my doing. I chose Jonah because it was what was expected of me. Then I would have spent the rest of my life wanting you, wishing I’d had the strength to tell you so before you rode off to war. I’m sorry, Reeve. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

He took a quick step toward her, intentions halted by the sudden brace of her palms.

“Don’t. Not until you hear everything.”

“Patrice, you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. Then if you never want to see me again after tonight, I’ll understand, and I’ll stay away.”

Reeve hesitated, alarmed by the intensity of her grief and her determination to confess sins, real or imagined.

“When everyone in Pride said you were responsible for Jonah, I never spoke up to say different, even though I knew you would never do anything to harm him, that you would have given your own life first. I never said anything to them or to the squire or even to you because I was so ashamed of what I’d done.”

“What you’d done? But ‘Trice, you had nothing to do with what happened to Jonah.” He stopped
just short of telling her the rest. His hesitation gave her the opportunity to grab a quick breath and spill all.

“I killed Jonah.”

“Patrice—”

“No! I did! I’m responsible. You said you were angry with Jonah for not standing behind his beliefs. I made him go against them by taking up a cause he didn’t support, and it killed him.”

She had to look away, unable to endure the awareness of her treachery when it began to dawn in his perplexed gaze. He would loathe her. When he learned all of it, he would curse her for her shallow sentiments and her vindictive spirit. And she would be deserving of it.

“It was just after we learned of my father’s death,” she began in a leaden voice. She spoke flatly, expressionless, so as not to evoke any sympathy for her situation. She wouldn’t let him feel sorry for her. “The news was such a shock. I knew men were dying on both sides, but I never considered Deacon or my own father—” Her words fractured for a slight moment, then continued more strongly.

“All I could feel was this huge hole of loss in my heart and a terror that Deacon would never come home, either. There was Jonah, safe at home, risking nothing, always bragging about you and your noble honor, and how he wished he could be as brave. I wanted to hurt him because you had hurt me by leaving, and fate had hurt me. I-I told him that you were a traitor to our love for you. I told him that if he was to be deserving of the same kind of love I’d felt for you, he’d be man enough to avenge my father’s death and to earn his own father’s respect. I
told him I could not care for a man who didn’t defend his family’s pride, that I would despise him if he did nothing. He died to prove that he was worthy of my love. I pushed him to it. I killed him, Reeve. I did, because I was too selfish to love him for the man he was, and he loved me enough to try to be the man he thought I wanted him to be.”

The purge of secrecy wrought relief as well as shame. She hung her head, choking on her sobs, letting them crowd up in her throat until it ached from the effort at containment. She had no right to cry for Jonah now. Or for the result of her own foolish mistakes. The sudden settling of Reeve’s hands upon her upper arms made her start, the contact unexpected. As was the warm brush of his cheek against her damp one.

“Patrice, it wasn’t you. It wasn’t me. It was Jonah.”

Too overwhelmed by the heat of his nearness and the tenderness in his tone, Patrice’s objections never formed.

“Jonah made his own choices. That’s what he was trying to tell me the morning he—that morning. No one pushed him into it. He didn’t make that choice out of envy or to prove anything to you. He didn’t have to stand up in front of that firing squad. He could have saved himself by naming others, but he made the sacrifice himself. He died a hero, Patrice. His choice. His way of taking a stand for what meant the most to him.”

Reeve left it at that. He saw no need to involve Deacon. Not to protect him, as Jonah sought to, but to spare Patrice from any further disillusionment. Let her continue to regard her brother as a paragon. It would do less harm than the truth.

Patrice revolved slowly within the lax circle of his arms. She looked weepy and haggard and still was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Her wrists slid over his shoulders so small hands dangled against his back. Thoughts of Jonah deserted him. Now, there was only Patrice. And she demanded the truth.

“I wanted you to win that kiss from me on the day Jonah broke his leg. Why didn’t you?”

Her question dragged up issues long stored away but never truly forgotten. “Much as I wanted that kiss, I wanted to disgrace Jonah more. Instead, I ended up almost ruining his life. He stood up for me, knowing that I’d done what I’d done on purpose. He still protected me. I made a promise to myself that day that I would do everything I could to be worthy of that gesture. Jonah was the first one ever to think of me as an equal. I’ll never forget that or forget him.”

Her thumbs rubbed soothingly behind his ears. “You made him stronger that day by becoming his friend, his big brother. He was so proud of that fact.” She glanced down to frame carefully her next question. “Is that promise the reason you stepped back and let Jonah ask me to marry him?”

“Partly. And partly ‘cause I knew he’d be better for you than I would have been.”

“How can you be so sure of that, Reeve Garrett?” Her gaze probed his.

“I was waiting for you to correct me.”

Darkness crept closer, edging up to the porch, reaching for the steps, bringing danger with it. It put an edge of intensity into the time they had left them. A fierce refusal to let the moment go with so much unrealized. Patrice’s hands spread along the
jut of his collarbone, her thumbs resting on his top shirt button.

“How long before they get here?”

“I don’t know. After dark.”

“And that’s about a half hour from now?”

He nodded, distracted by the way the vee of her thumbs popped open first one button then the next. Her stare was unwavering and so was her voice.

“I love you, Reeve. Let me show you how much.”

An entire lifetime of heartache fell away at that simple claim. His hand fit to the curve of her waist, pressing slightly to guide her toward the stairs.

His room held all the familiarity of a patient lover awaiting her return. She entered without reluctance, without hurry, led by a full range of emotion, not just the fickle passion her mother warned about. There was no virginal excitement, no urgent suspense, just a building intensity, a sense of certainty. She released the tapes connecting her hoops to her waistband. They collapsed in concentric circles growing ever outward like the expanding magnitude of her love for Reeve Garrett. She stepped from the hoops into his arms as if that progression was the most natural in the world.

His kisses rained down upon her uplifted face, dotting her cheeks, her chin, her nose, her brow, adoring each before finally settling firm and fast upon her mouth. Slanting, lingering over soft textures, shaping them to his own contours. His arms encircled her, drawing her against him, flattening her breasts to his hard torso, tucking her hips into the cradle of his thighs. Reveling in her receptive form. Making them as close to one entity as they could be through the boundaries of their attire.
They stepped apart only long enough to strip that barrier away.

The mattress chimed beneath their combined weight, Reeve easing back, Patrice riding him down until she was leveled above him. They kissed again, a long exploration involving tongues and increasingly hurried breaths. Her hands began a slow sweeping study of his heated skin, traveling over rugged swells and valleys, mapping each change in texture from sleek biceps to tight abdomen, rippling over it the way water flowed along a river bottom. Caressing the jut of his hipbones, the coarse bulk of his thighs, testing the fullness of his groin with the gentle rocking of her belly. Sighing, as his hands spread wide on her rib cage pressing her down, moving her in suggestive circles. Arching as his palms rubbed down her back to cup the curve of her bottom, kneading with the heels of his hands.

She gasped into his mouth as his touch grew intimate, then insistent, their kiss wetly devouring as he coaxed the rivers of her body to overflow their banks in a sudden flood. In the shivery aftermath, she opened her eyes languorously to find his gaze fixed upon hers. The knowledge that he’d watched her passions crest upon the plays of her expression sharpened her pleasure. And made her want to return it.

She kissed him softly, lapping, nipping gently at his lips until his eyelids lowered to a sultry half-mast.

“Now you.” Desire rasped in her throaty whisper. “I want to watch you.”

He inhaled as the potency of that suggestion struck, and struck hard. He’d been buffing the curve of her hips with his palms. Now his hands stilled
and held tight, all the while, meeting the tender temptation of her gaze in his own fiercely focused way. He raised her up, shifting slightly so she was positioned above him, then lowered her, filling her in gradual increments until he was hot and snug inside. His breath escaped, a harsh hiss.

Patrice caught his hands, and with fingers entwined, pressed the backs of them to the mattress beside his shoulders, leaning against them for the leverage to begin small lifts. She watched the angles of his face sharpen as tension thinned his lips and darkened his eyes. Quickening breaths flaring his nostrils. His fingers curled and clenched convulsively causing the bunched muscles in his arms to dance beneath the taut glossy bronze of his skin. Like sitting astride a powerful thoroughbred, Patrice rode out the tremors, controlling them with pressure from her knees, urging a faster pace with her rhythmic rocking.

His eyes rolled wildly, glazing, focus gone as they squeezed shut. His mouth opened to emit a ragged, guttural sound that wracked her body with answering need. Raw sensation poured through her in shuddering waves. In her concentration on him, her own response took her unaware, making it all the more shattering.

With a quick surge, Reeve reversed their positions, coming up over her, driving into her, fast, hard, deep, deeper until clutched by the same ferocious rush of urgency that had him spasming thickly inside her.

Then, it was a relief to hold to one another, to languish in spent luxury, nuzzling, kissing softly, touching with total freedom. Finally, Reeve lifted Patrice’s hand, pressing a kiss upon its palm, curling
her fingers to caress each knuckle. Until he reached the fourth one to find it as naked for him as the rest of her. Jonah’s ring was gone.

The tide of exquisite emotion nearly took him under.

But instead, he touched his lips to that strip of pale skin, then said, “They’ll be here soon.”

And without another word, he rose and began to dress.

Chapter 25

Reeve stood at the front door, peering out into the fast-settling darkness. One loaded weapon rested against the jamb beside him, the other he wore in a sling across his back. Boxes of shells were stacked ankle high at his feet. Just in case, he’d wedged a pistol into the waistband of his denims, a handful of rounds weighting the pocket of his Union jacket. Might as well give them a target worth aiming at, he’d decided when slipping it on.

A rustle from behind him made him turn. The sight of Patrice descending his stairs, her ladylike elegance a dusky contrast to the signs of their recent lovemaking, made his chest seize up. She paused when she saw him, her chin going up a notch, not in a gesture of arrogance but of proud confidence, instead.

A terrible fear threaded between the pangs of fierce possession and anxious longing.

“I’ll saddle up one of the mares. You shouldn’t run into any trouble if you go cross-country and stay off the main roads.”

She continued her descent and swept across the foyer, her mood disturbingly calm. “I don’t plan to run at all. I thought I made that clear to you.”

He didn’t want to fight with her. But he didn’t want her to die with him, either.

“You have to leave.” His tone carried enough terse authority to make any raw recruit pale and scramble to obey. Patrice never flinched. Instead, she hefted one of the rifles to expertly check the chamber.

“Careful with that.”

She gave him a jaundiced look. “I know what I’m doing. Mede taught me.” She hoisted the long gun to her shoulder, testing the sights, then nodding in satisfaction. “What direction do you think they’ll come from?”

Short of physically moving her, Reeve realized he stood little chance of convincing her to go. As aggravating as that was, he couldn’t help the welling sense of pride.

“Straight on is my guess.”

“Do you think a few shots will scare them off?”

His flat, “No,” ended any optimism.

Patrice took a breath and studied the lay of the land. “If we catch them in a cross fire, it should—”

Reeve gripped the rifle barrel, shoving it toward the floor. “Patrice, we’re not talking a pigeon shoot here. You’ll be firing on friends, on folks you know.”

Her expression grew maddeningly impassive. “They’ll be shooting at us.”

“Not at us. At me.” He emphasized that, hoping she’d listen. But her determination never wavered.

“What’s the difference?”

Whether nonchalance or sheer bravado, Reeve suffered a stab of searing panic, knowing she wasn’t going to leave. She planned to make a stand beside him, whatever the risk or consequence.

She picked a damn fine time to declare her independence.