Fair Is the Rose (44 page)

After Cain had entered the saloon, there were muffled voices down the hall near Ivy's room. She expected it; still, the knock at her door made her jump.

"Who is it?" she called out, already knowing who
it ;
was.

"Macaulay." His voice was unusually somber.

She slowly opened the door. By sheer dint of will, she refrained from flinging herself into his protective arms.

"Did you catch him?" she asked.

He entered her room and closed the door behind him. "He's dead."

"But—?" She turned silent. "Did you shoot him?"

Cain rubbed his unshaven jaw. It was ten o'clock in the morning, but he looked as if he could use a drink. "Jericho killed him. Shot him clean through the head. Maybe I shouldn't have let him come with me."

"Did he murder him?"

"I'll tell the judge in my report that it was in self-defense. If you look at it in a certain light, well, it was self-defense."

She stared at him, wondering about his words. "It's impossible to make a just and perfect world, even for a sheriff." She looked away. "What's to happen to Ivy?"

"Jericho's taking her out to his cabin. In a few years, things'll be better for them. His cattle should do well. They'll get married, have a few kids. It won't be so bad."

"It sounds wonderful."

Their gazes met. A muscle in Macaulay's jaw tensed. The moment was painful and uncertain.

"Girl, I didn't like what you
did
last night." His words were like an icy wind rushing through her. The old anger and fear came back to her. "I told you never to do that again." Each syllable was enunciated with scathing anger.

"How am I to earn my room and board here if I don't work for Faulty?"

"I don't want you here anymore. I want you to come to the jail."

"I'm not living with you at the jail."

"What's gotten into you?"

A terrible lamenting pain settled in her chest. "I don't want to be with you anymore, Macaulay. I want you to go back to Washington. There's no future for us. I see that clearly. You must too."

"When did you come to this conclusion?" His question was quiet, foreboding.

"I've known it all along."

"Why?"

One small question that needed a lifetime to answer.
She took a deep breath. There was really no way to explain except to tell him everything, and that was something she could never do. Not when she'd seen how he'd treated Dixiana—guilty before proven innocent.

"Why
doesn't change the inevitable, Cain," she whispered.

"No." He grabbed her, unnerving her by the desperation in his eyes. "The only thing that was inevitable was our coming together, not our parting. You gave your word you would stay, remember?"

She closed her eyes. It hurt to remember it. "You blackmailed me. You elicited that response from me. I won't keep it."

"You
will
keep it."

She opened her eyes and stared at him. There was
a wildness
in his expression, that same wildness that once made her believe he was an outlaw.

"I'm not going to go chasing you from place to place. I've already done that. You're going to stay with me until we've finished our business and if that means locking you up so you can't go anywhere, I will."

"You can't keep me against my will twice. And need I remind you, you're a sheriff now, not an outlaw. If you make me a prisoner you have to come up with a charge." Her gaze snapped with ire. She hated it when he played sheriff. That damned badge was already a fortress between
them,
he needn't abuse his powers more than he already had.

"If I wire New York, instinct tells me they might come up with a charge." His words were like acid burning into her heart.

She turned from him, unable to let him see how upset she was. She had never felt more desolate. "If you wire New York, they'll take me from you. The result will be the same."

He touched her, drew her back against the warm, hard planking of his chest. She found it very difficult to be strong. "Get your things together, girl. We're leaving."

"Where?"

"Someplace where we can be alone.
Where the rest of the world won't ever bother us.
We'll be there by dawn. Get your things."

Her silence was damning; her reluctance palpable.

He cupped her chin. "You'll be going of your own free will, Christal. Because even now that free will of yours is tellin' you to go with me. I am your only salvation. Without me I give you two months before you start whoring for your coins. Without me, they'll take you back to New York because there'll be no one to hide you like I'm willing to do."

She stared at him, shocked by his offer and the risk he was willing to take. An uneasy gratitude seeped into her, just as it had back at Falling Water. She didn't want the answer to her next question, but she had to have it now. It was fight or die.

"Do you love me, Macaulay?" The words were barely a whisper. She refused to meet his gaze and let him see her heart in her eyes. If his answer was yes, she would go with him. If it was no, she didn't care what happened to her. She might even surrender herself to the authorities.

She forced herself to glance at him. There were so many lies between
them,
she didn't know how one single answer to one single question could change everything. But it could, she knew it could. She waited in terror.

"Yes, I love you."

The answer and, more so, his delivery caught her by surprise. He used the same tone as when he cursed.

She looked up. Her gaze locked with his. His eyes were angry and crystalline cold.

"Don't ever ask me that question again."

"I've the right to know. If I'm to go away with you—"

"You've no right to know.
None at all.
I've risked everything for you.
Even death.
And the result is that I love you, but my love is not tender and sweet. It's angry and dark. You'd do well not to explore it."

Raw, fearful emotion choked her. "You sound as if you hate me more than love me."

"I hate your shadowed past and your subterfuge. In every breath that I love you, I can't escape the hatred for your lies that lives there as well, and so my love for you has become my own personal hell. You once asked me if love was obsession. I can finally answer you with a resounding yes. The cruel part is
,
that's only half the answer."

She stood like a statue in front of him, her heart turned to marble,
her
tongue unable to refute anything he said. His words were an unbearable, inescapable truth. He said he was her only salvation, but he was her ruin too. She could never really have him with her past standing between them, yet if she revealed all, tore the wall down, she knew he'd no longer be there for her, standing on the other side.

"I would rather a man love me or hate me than feel the way you do. Discover the truth about me, then," she said quietly. "Wire New York."

He backed her against the wall,
then
took her face in his hands. "You're coming with me, Christal.
Because as long as I don't know about your bad past, I can still love you.
And as long as you have something to hide, I can still make you do the things I want. Like this . . ." His lips came down on hers, a hot, seductive kiss, utterly manipulative.
Utterly powerful.

"No . . ." She moaned when his hands braced her rib cage,
then
slid to her breasts.

He whispered against her hair. "Will you fight me, then? Do you want me to wire New York? Do you want me to hate you?"

"No . . ." She sobbed, wanting him to love her.
Desperately wanting him to love her.

"Kiss me, then. Take me to your bed and love me with all the fury I've seen before. Take me between your thighs and in your mouth, then let me take you, where I will keep you safe."

Her chest heaved with deep, ragged breaths, her heart torn with her need for survival and her need for him.

But surrender closed in quickly. As did his mouth.
And his hands.
His kiss was deep, hard, rhythmical, his lips daring her to remain cold and unfeeling, every movement of his hands a burning sweet torture, until inch by painful inch he began to win, spiriting away her independence like an Indian on the raid, and leaving nothing behind but a shuddering, melted woman who kissed him back with all the passion in her soul.

"You're a wise woman, Christal, a very wise woman." He groaned as her lips dragged across his neck, feather soft against the hardened flesh of his scar.

"No, I'm a fool." She touched his face with her hand, wanting to know every hungry line on his cheeks, every dark slash of his eyebrows, every straight ridge of his nose. Then, with a deep, wrenching sadness in her soul, she took his hand, led him to her bed, and did all that he asked.

"But Sheriff, what am I gonna do without Christal here? You've gone and taken all my girls away!" Faulty was not pleased at the news Christal was leaving. He normally slept until well past noon and they had to wake him up. Now he stood behind the bar in a nightshirt, a weary blanket full of holes wrapped around his shoulders.

"She wasn't going to sell any more dances, so you don't need her anymore." Cain's expression brooked no argument.

"I'm sorry, Faulty." Christal could hardly meet his gaze. She felt everything showed, her fear, her love, her kiss-bruised lips, the raw skin in the hollow of her throat where Cain had marked her in a moment of passion.

She gave him a guilty glance. "I know it's an awkward time to ask you, Faulty, but I don't know when I'll be back, if ever, and before I go, there is a matter of thirty-five cents that you held for me that night I discovered a hole in my pocket . . . ?"