Hannah Howell (24 page)
Authors: Stolen Ecstasy
He frowned as he acknowledged that fact. She had been firmly set in his mind from the first. No other woman had accomplished that feat—he had forgotten most of them as soon as he stepped out of their beds. He could bring Leanne to mind with no effort at all, and so clearly he could smell the sweet, clean scent of her.
And that, he thought with an inner groan, should tell him something. She was in his head. She just had to smile and he was hot and ready. He himself had nearly died of fear when she was shot. He had proposed because the thought of her leaving had chilled him. She made him laugh. She had, in fact, the ability to touch and twist every emotion he possessed. He had never felt as possessive about anything in his life as he did about her. He loved her. He swore.
Owen, stretched out at his brother’s side, looked at Hunter. “Something wrong?”
“I was thinking about Leanne,” Hunter snapped, fear of revealing his true feelings making him testy.
“The last thing I’d have thought that’d do is make you mad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s only one thing that can make a man look like you did today—dead tired yet as happy as a pig in mud. Looking at you today was enough to make a fellow jealous.” When Hunter said nothing, he pressed, “So what’s got you cussing her?”
For a moment Hunter still made no reply. He was not sure he wanted to expose such a newly discovered vulnerability. Then he sighed. He felt a real need to discuss it with someone, and he trusted few people as much as Owen to keep his mouth shut.
“I just had a revelation that set me back a pace.”
“Ah, you finally realized you’re in love with little Leanne.”
Scowling at Owen, Hunter muttered, “Just what makes you think that?”
“I’m neither as blind nor as stupid as some people I could mention. What made you finally see it? It didn’t just pop into your head.”
“No, but she did and I got to thinking on how often and how easily she does. She’s there all the time. Hell, I swear I can sometimes smell her, the memory’s so clear. That started me to thinking on a lot of other things.”
“And they all added up to love. Things like how possessive you are, glaring at any guy who smiles at her. I saw that right off. It’s why I didn’t tell you that when I first saw her, she was in her bath.”
“What?” Hunter snapped, half sitting up, then grimaced and lay back down when Owen laughed. “Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell me either.”
“Reckon she just didn’t think on it or wanted to forget it. It sore embarrassed her, though she recovered herself well. It was that pretty, bright red face of hers and that brief look of horror that made me realize she wasn’t some girl from Jennie’s Palace or the saloon.”
“Hell, there’s something else I should’ve seen. I haven’t touched another woman since I set eyes on Leanne. I had a mistress in Mexico who knew every trick in the book and then some—but I told her adios because of some purple-eyed girl with a smart mouth.”
“Why do you sound so annoyed about it—like you’d just discovered you’d caught something nasty at Jennie’s?”
“I should be happy, should I? Look what being in love got Pa. I don’t need that sort of trouble.”
“You won’t get it from Leanne and you know it. She’s nothing like our mother. Pa’s being in love didn’t hurt or help that situation. It made him blind to her faults maybe, but the best of us can suffer that. Somehow I don’t think you do.”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
He thought on that for a while. Leanne did have faults, such as a quick temper, but her good qualities softened them. Why, he had more faults than she did. She was far more pliable, more compromising, than he was, for a start. He sighed.
“I know what it is that’s really eating at me,” he admitted despite some reluctance to do so. “I don’t like being the one bitten while she doesn’t suffer the same affliction.”
“Damn, but it’s hard on the youngest son to realize the oldest son can be such an idiot.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“She hasn’t said she loves me.”
“Maybe she’s as thick as you, or maybe she doesn’t want to say it when you haven’t. Look, I can’t say for certain she loves you, but I’d be damned surprised if she didn’t. She accepted you, trusted you, when she thought you were nothing but an outlaw trying to outrun a posse. She’s become your lover, yet I know she’s what we all call a good woman. Someone like that doesn’t take that step lightly. Hell, she’s been putting up with our mother so she can stay with you. If you’d think for a while, you’d probably come up with a lot of things that show how she feels.”
“She loves him all right.”
Owen and Hunter looked behind them and found Sebastian standing there smoking a cigarette. “Damn it, this was a private conversation,” Hunter snapped.
“I made sure it stayed that way too.”
Owen laughed and Hunter glared at him, then at Sebastian. “And what makes you so sure she does? What do you know about it?”
“I’ve got me a few sisters. I watched them as they fell in love. Listened to them. Saw how they looked, how they acted. Leanne does all the same things. She’s also waiting, like you wanted, to get married.”
“She agreed with my reasoning.”
“Yup, she did. Probably really does. She’s deep-down scared, though—scared that while you wait, you’ll change your mind. But she sits and waits and tries not to be scared. Well, don’t you worry on it. Even if you do change your mind, you don’t need to worry on her. She’ll be taken good care of.” Sebastian quietly walked away.
“He means by him, doesn’t he?” Owen murmured after a few moments of stunned silence.
“That’s exactly what he means. Damn, I should’ve seen it. Well, he can just whistle into the wind.”
After a few moments of quiet as they tried to get as comfortable as possible in their rough beds, Owen called, “Hunter?”
“Um?”
“I’m glad you found Leanne. She’s taken the bitterness away.”
Hunter looked inside of himself and realized that Owen was right. The bitterness and disillusionment had gone. A touch of cynicism remained, a little wariness, but he knew that was not a bad thing. It would keep him cautious. Without his even seeing it, Leanne had healed his wounds.
“Yeh, she has—but damn, Owen,” he whispered, “I fear she could put it back tenfold with little effort.”
By the time they reached their destination, Hunter knew he was not the only one who felt inclined to forget the trial and hang Watkins outright, Martin at his side. Neither man missed a chance to threaten, jeer, or goad anyone within hearing distance. Marshal Tuckman had taken to gagging them at first, but it had helped little. They seemed to save up their vitriol for the few times they had to be ungagged. One dismal attempt by Watkins’s men to free him had ended in utter defeat, added two more prisoners, and increased Watkins’s vengeful fury. Hunter watched in cold-eyed satisfaction as both men were dragged off to their cells to await their trial.
“Soon it’ll be all over.” Marshal Tuckman gave Hunter a sympathetic slap on the back.
“I’m inclined to toss aside my original intention of leaving as soon as he’s sentenced and stay to see the bastard hang.”
“Ever see a hanging?”
“Yes.” Hunter sighed and shook his head. “I swore to God I’d never watch another one, no matter who it was.”
“Might be an idea to stick to that promise. They’re apt to hang more than one at a time here.”
“God. I think I need a drink, a bath, and a bed.”
“That’s where Sebastian’s headed. Follow him. I’ll send word when you’re needed.”
More than glad to leave, Hunter strode off after Sebastian, Owen falling into step at his side. He hoped he would not have to wait long for the trial. All he wanted to do was go home—home to Leanne.
Leanne slowly rocked in the porch swing, staring somewhat blindly into the distance. Out there were the Walsh men. She wished she could be with them. In that general direction, too, were New Mexico and Hunter. She dearly wished she was with him. She laughed wryly. In truth, she wished she was anywhere but where she was.
When the Walsh men were home, things were fine. The moment they left in the morning, Lorraine swept into control and life was miserable. Lorraine made her dislike, even her distaste, very clear, and about the only diversion Leanne had from persecution was when Lorraine turned on Molly Pitts, who stoically endured being treated like some galley slave. Leanne was beginning to suspect that Molly put up with that nonsense for one reason only—Sloane Walsh. It was, all in all, an appalling situation. Unfortunately, she was failing miserably in bettering it in any way.
And today, she thought with a deep sense of weariness, started the worst campaign of all. At the moment, Lorraine had all her friends in the parlor sipping tea and, Leanne was certain, having their ears filled with gossip about her, gossip they would undoubtedly spread. She would soon be an outcast just as she had been in Colorado. It made her want to weep when she thought of how it would hurt Hunter. While he was so busy clearing her name, his mother was blackening it, perhaps beyond repair. She had no idea of how to keep it from happening either.
“May I sit with you, Leanne?”
Startled a little, for she had not seen Laurie approach, Leanne sighed. “I think if I hear one ‘Mother says’ right now, Laurie, I will toss you to the ground and jump up and down on you while I scream like a stuck pig.”
“I won’t say it.” Laurie sat down. “They are all talking about you, y’know.”
“Well, I did think they were. They are very busy spreading lies about me.”
“Are they all lies?”
“Probably not. There’s enough that’s happened to me, and to Hunter and me, to fulfill a gossip’s wildest dreams. It’s none of their business, however. They will also make it all sound so bad, so sordid, and it isn’t.”
“Did she really see you in Hunter’s bed?”
A little surprised that Lorraine would have told the girl about that, Leanne decided to be fully honest. “I’m afraid so. We are going to be married. Not that that makes it right, really. But when you’re running from posses and bounty hunters, and you’ve been marked as a criminal and have a price on your head, what a bunch of women over tea are going to say about you just doesn’t seem very important. Silly I may have been, but I’ve only ever been one man’s woman. I have no intention of changing that, and they have no right to go passing judgment on me.”
“No, they don’t. But they will anyway. Leanne, can you love someone but not like them very much?” Laurie asked in a small voice.
“Yes, that’s entirely possible.” She gave Laurie a terse explanation about Charity. “Even now, it’s hard not to think of her as my mother. That’s what she was to me up until a few months ago, when she spat the truth in my face. I never really liked her. She could be mean, cold, and sarcastic. She cheated her boarders and had no interest in me. For a while I felt guilty, but then I met others who had families they could not really like or get along with. I would do anything expected of a daughter—give the loyalty, defense, support and care required—but I realized I didn’t have to like her.”
Laurie sighed. “I don’t think Pa or my brothers like me very much.”
“They don’t know you enough to like or dislike you. They’ve never been allowed to know you very much.”
“No they haven’t really, have they? I can grasp at enough memories to know you’re right about that.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t get to know them now. They wouldn’t push you away.”
“True, and they don’t. Not even when I say ‘Mother says’ now, and that’s because of you. I know it is. Until you came, they’d never try to talk to me once I said that. They’d just yell and walk away.”
“I only made a suggestion. If they’re behaving differently, it’s because they want to.”
“I suppose that’s true. Maybe I’ll stop playing the game of ‘Mother says’.”
“You might find things go a lot more smoothly. You’d probably see fewer gritted teeth and retreating backs.” She smiled when Laurie giggled, then realized sadly that was the first time she had heard the girl laugh.
“Can I ask what made you start that game? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” She feared pushing the girl too hard.
“I want to. I saw how my father and brothers would laugh and talk together. Then one day, I realized Mother never laughed with me and only talked at me. Then I caught her in two lies. It doesn’t really matter what they were. It just started me thinking there might be others, and I was mad enough about her telling me those two to start looking for answers—Even though they were usually short and loud.” She smiled when Leanne laughed softly. “I did get some answers and I overheard a lot. She’s done a lot of lying. I got really mad at first, then decided there was no point in that when she didn’t even notice I was mad at her. So I decided to start thinking and doing for myself. Now it’s time to step out from behind Mother and look around with my own eyes.”
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