Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone Sheriff\The Gentleman Rogue\Never Trust a Rebel (19 page)

“Talk some sense into her, Rooney. She's gone and fallen in love with our Johnny.”

Rooney studied her. “Well, you're not the first,” he said kindly. “But you sure might be the prettiest.” He snagged the sodden handkerchief out of her hand and produced another from the pocket of his fringed buckskin vest.

“And maybe,” he confided in a low, raspy voice, “you'll be the last.”

Maddie shook her head and blew her nose.

“You're not Johnny's cousin, are ya? Didn't think so. He never knew his ma or his pa, so how would he know a cousin from a trapeze artist?”

Maddie said nothing, just mopped at a new freshet of tears. It was not at all like her to weep, but she could not seem to stop.

“So, don't tell me no lies, ma'am. Who are ya, anyway?”

“I am a Pinkerton agent, Mr. Cloudman. A detective.”

He gave her a long, considering look. “That why ya pack a Colt .32 in your skirt pocket? Oh, don't bother denyin' it—Sarah, uh, Mrs. Rose told me about it.”

“I was sent to help Sheriff Silver capture the Tucker gang. My job was to gather information and supply Jericho with intelligence. But at the moment I am not feeling like a terribly successful Pinkerton agent.”

Rooney flashed her a lopsided grin. “Well, honey-girl, them jobs are always more complicated than they sound. The minute ya start supplyin' intelligence, you're involved way over your britches—er, knees. Ya want to see things work out right.”

“Mr. Cloudman, I—”

“Why don'tcha call me Rooney? Seems to me we're gonna have a long and interestin' friendship.”

“No, Mr. Rooney,” Maddie whispered. “We will not. As soon as the Tucker gang is behind bars, I will be returning to Chicago.”

“Chicago, huh?” Rooney tugged on his salt-and-pepper mustache. “Kinda far away from Smoke River, ain't it?”

Maddie nodded.

The beginnings of a frown creased the man's suntanned forehead. “Well, that don't make much sense if you and our Johnny—”

She shook her head so violently her headache again bullied its way into her left temple.

“Oh, I see.” He rocked the swing back and forth for a full minute. “Well, hell, no, I don't see!”

“Let me explain,” Maddie said, her voice quiet. She spoke nonstop for the next quarter hour, telling him everything, even hinting about that night in her hotel room, and all the time Rooney rocked and nodded and pursed his lips. Finally she ran out of breath.

“So it's big-city livin' that appeals to you, huh? Why's that?”

For a moment Maddie could not answer. “Well,” she said at last. “Chicago has museums and concerts and libraries and even a university. And it has Mr. Pinkerton.”

“Yeah,” Rooney muttered, holding her gaze. “Pinkerton's in Chicago, all right.”

Maddie plunged on. “My detective work is very important to me. It is always interesting. Each assignment is a challenge. An adventure. As I told you, I had an extremely proper and unimaginative upbringing. And it was terribly dull being married. So I am partial to doing things that are, well, important.”

“You like a challenge, do ya?”

“I do, yes. Something that
matters
.”

Rooney rocked and rocked while Maddie gulped back tears and massaged her throbbing temple. The soft morning air smelled of honeysuckle and fresh grass, and way up in an alder tree a sparrow chirped and twittered in the quiet. She liked it, all of it. Even the sparrow.

But it wasn't Chicago.

“Well, honey-girl,” Rooney finally rumbled. “I hear what you're sayin'. And I hear what you're wantin'. And I've got some thoughts, if you'd care to hear 'em.”

“Yes, Mr. Cloudman, I would.”

He cleared his throat. Twice. “You ain't gonna believe this. You ain't even gonna like it much, but here it is.”

Maddie held her breath. She liked this weathered-looking man beside her. And she knew he would tell her the truth, at least as he saw it.

“Now,” Rooney continued. “I know about life, both good and bad.” He touched her arm. “And you gotta know I'm on your side, Miss Maddie.”

“Yes, I do know that.” She patted his rough, callused hand where it rested on his thigh.

“Well, here it is, then. You say you crave a challenge. An adventure. Somethin' worthwhile that really matters.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Honey-girl, let me tell you, there ain't nothing more challenging or full of adventure or worthwhile than lovin' someone. It's a challenge to get along with someone for years and years, and it's one helluva challenge to keep lovin' a body when you'd as soon dump a bucket of wash water over his head.”

Maddie stared at him. This was not what she'd expected to hear. Not at all. And he was not finished.

“Now, I've learned something over the years, Miss Maddie. The best kind of people are the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with. Never say a word, just sit.”

He slanted her a sharp look. “But ya know somethin'? Life is richer, and more fun, and more challenging when you love that someone you're swingin' on the porch with. And it's sure as hell empty when you don't.”

His bushy eyebrows rose. “Now, you tell me. What has Chicago got to top that?”

Chapter Twenty-One

M
addie filled the long hours waiting for Jericho to return with sewing lessons from Verena Forester. It kept her hands busy so she didn't spend time wringing them until her knuckles cracked, worrying about Jericho.

She cut and sewed a new calico walking skirt with two inseam pockets, one large enough for her pistol, and two daringly cut nightgowns, one in pink silk and one in a delicate pale blue lawn. She even had Verena create a new hat for her—silk velvet with partridge feathers.

Always outspoken about everything, during Maddie's lessons Verena commented on the summer heat, on Carl Ness's shocking addition of ready-to-wear pantalettes to his mercantile stock, even on Sheriff Jericho Silver. “Never talks much. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was half sphinx instead of half Indian or whatever it is he's half of.”

Maddie looked up from her pincushion. Whatever Jericho was, she could not hear his name without a flock of butterflies fluttering into her stomach. The dressmaker shook out a length of red seersucker and laid out the paper pieces of a Butterick dress pattern. “Jericho Silver's been a mystery ever since he turned up in Smoke River.”

Maddie kept her head bent and stitched the hem on her blue nightgown. “Is Jericho perhaps a mystery because he doesn't court any of the girls in Smoke River?”

“Huh!” Verena's scissors crunched into the seersucker. “That's true enough. Though plenty of 'em have pined after him. The man is as skittish as a spooked deer.”

Oh, no, he isn't,
Maddie thought with a secret smile. Jericho was not skittish. When he wanted something, he went after it. What Jericho had done all his adult life was protect himself from emotional involvement.

When she couldn't stand any more of Verena's chatter, Maddie talked Doc Graham into teaching her how to suture cuts, and every afternoon she had tea with Rooney and Sarah Rose on the honeysuckle-swathed front porch of the boardinghouse.

She discovered that Rita at the restaurant had been married not once, but twice—once in Texas and once in Montana. “Awful,” the waitress said of Texas. But Montana had been “beautiful.” Rita had been a widow for the past twenty years.

“Ain't worth the risk to hitch up with anybody again,” she confessed. “Unless—” she sent Maddie a teasing look “—he looks like Johnny Silver.”

Maddie spent a lot of time thinking and she decided the young man she had once encountered at Carl Ness's mercantile was most likely the informer for the Tucker gang; but shortly before she was abducted, the “cousin” disappeared.

The bakery in town, run by a Chinaman everyone called Uncle Charlie, sold the most extraordinary lemon pies. Rooney was partial to them. Mrs. Rose encouraged Maddie to try making her own piecrust and offered her the use of the boardinghouse kitchen. Her initial efforts were tough and chewy, but just yesterday she had produced a crust so flaky it showered tiny bits of pastry all over Rooney's buckskin vest.

But no matter what she did to distract herself, apprehension hovered over her all day, every day, like a veil of worry and questions. One Sunday she even visited the Smoke River community church and found herself bargaining with God.
Please, Lord, please, return Jericho to me alive and I will never ask You for another thing
.

Four more days dragged by, and suddenly Maddie could not bear one more minute of sewing lessons or sutures or lemon pies. That evening at dinner she slumped in her chair at the restaurant under Rita's worried look and put her face in her hands.

I cannot go on this way. I simply cannot. All the life has gone out of me.

Resolutely she lifted her head to glance out the front window and spilled her cup of brandy-laced coffee all over the tablecloth.

“Jericho!” she yelped.

Rita materialized at her side. “Where?”

Maddie pointed. Rita forgot all about sopping up the spill and joined Maddie at the window.

Four horses moved steadily down the main street. One had a blanket-shrouded corpse slung head down over the saddle. Maddie recognized Rafe's red hair. The second horse carried a pudgy figure with one arm splinted across his chest. Lefty. Tucker lurched along on a black gelding, his wrists lashed to the saddle horn.

And Jericho. Covered in dust, his hair straggling into his eyes, he looked so haggard it brought tears to Maddie's eyes. He moved slowly, as if he had not slept for days, and she gulped back a shaky sob. Her relief at seeing him alive and uninjured drove away her fury at his leaving her without saying goodbye.

She jumped to her feet and headed for the doorway.

“Maddie, wait!” Rita called after her. “What about your steak?”

“Save it for my breakfast. I have to see Jericho!”

Rita propped her hands on her ample hips. “See Jericho, is it? Well now, Miz O'Donnell, that saves me askin' a thousand questions I been wantin' to ask.” She removed the dishes from the table and grinned all the way into the kitchen.

Maddie dashed into the street straight at Jericho's gray horse, which shied and sidestepped until he brought it under control. He reined up and sat staring down at her. His face was so dust-streaked sweat ran down in rivulets.

“Jericho! Are you all right?”

“Maddie, don't ever rush at a horse like that. Like to get yourself stomped.”

“Jericho.” She started to cry for no reason and he leaned down and touched her shoulder.

“Don't, Maddie. It's all over.”

“Are you all right?” she asked again.

He gave her a lopsided smile. “I will be. I need a bath and a shave and...” His voice dropped to a murmur. “And then I need to take you to bed.”

Her heart flipped over and dropped into her stomach. She gazed up at him and tried to breathe normally. “Come to the hotel,” she said. “I'll order a bath for you.”

He nodded, then tipped his head at the men behind him. “I got the rest of the gang.” Then he grinned, touched his hat brim, and moved on down toward the jail.

Maddie stared after him until he was out of sight and then she raced into the hotel and up the stairs to her room.

* * *

Señor Sanchez and his wife lugged hot bath water up to her hotel room and dumped it into a wooden tub. Maddie waited and waited, wondering what kept Jericho, while the water slowly cooled. Disappointment choking her breathing, she watched for him through the window.

Suddenly the door banged open and she gave a little cry. Jericho walked into the room, strode straight to her and wrapped both his arms tight around her.

“Maddie.” His voice was hoarse.

He smelled of dirt and sweat and leather. He held her without speaking while his heart thumped unevenly against her breasts. She was so glad to see him she could scarcely speak.

“Jericho,” she murmured into his shoulder. “Thank you,
oh, thank you,
for not getting yourself killed.”

He laughed and loosened his arms just enough to capture her mouth with his. His kiss went on and on, his mouth hungry, his breathing erratic. Her knees turned to lemon-pie filling.

He broke away and buried his face in her hair. After a long minute he stepped away and held her at arm's length.

“I know I look kinda rough. I came straight from the jail.”

“You look simply wonderful to me,” she said softly. “I do not care about dust or your four-day stubble or your tangled hair or...anything. Oh, Jericho, I was so worried.”

“Yeah, me, too. If anything could go haywire, it did. Had to shoot Rafe when he charged me, and that fat fellow got drunk and slipped off his horse going down the side of a steep canyon. Broke his elbow. Tucker—well, let's just say when the man gets scared enough, he stops thinking. I caught him cold, dropping his pants behind a coyote bush.”

Maddie bit off a laugh. “He will never forgive you for that.”

“Don't care if he does. Tomorrow morning, the Federal Marshal's takin' him and the other prisoners to the courthouse jail in Portland. Tucker's also wanted in Idaho for killing four miners and stealing their diggings.”

“So, it is over?” Maddie dropped her gaze to the carpet to hide her smile of relief. When she lifted her head, their gazes locked. His eyes looked so tired her heart stuttered.

“Jericho?” she whispered.

“Yeah?” He reached for her and at the same moment looked over her shoulder and spied the bathtub. Without another word he stepped past her, unbuttoning his shirt. Then his jeans. His boots clunked onto the floor and his socks sailed through the air to land on top of them.

He circled the tub, stepped out of his drawers, and splashed down into the water. “God, that feels good.”

Maddie stared at him. “The water must be stone-cold by now.”

“You know how hot it was out there tracking those men? This feels like heaven.” He settled back in the tub with a contented groan, resting his head on the metal edge. His eyelids closed.

Maddie studied his sun-bronzed face for a long minute and then looked closer. Heavens, had he fallen asleep?

“Jericho?”

He didn't answer.

“Jericho? Must you go back to the jail tonight? Jericho?”

No answer. Her heartbeat thrummed like hoofbeats against her ribs. She wanted to ease his weariness. Oh, heavens, she wanted to take care of him.

She slipped a folded towel under his neck and laid another within reach. Then she removed her clothes, donned a blue silk wrapper and curled up on the bed to watch his muscled chest rise and fall.

She studied his chin, his neck, the part of his ears that showed under the over-long dark hair, his shoulders, the suntanned arms that lay along the sides of the tub. Even dusted with dirt and mud and bits of leaves he was a beautiful man. She wanted to crawl into the bathwater with him.

She swallowed a giggle. The small tub would overflow and poor Señor Sanchez would have more work to do mopping it all up. She would wait for Jericho to wake up, and then...and then...

* * *

Jericho jerked out of a deep sleep, wondering where the hell he was. Then he remembered Maddie and the bathtub and laughed softly. He never thought he'd be so tired he'd forgo Maddie for a nap in a tub of cool water.

The light in the room looked warm and kinda rosy. Sunset, maybe. He glanced out the window where dusk was fading into a purple-blue sky tinged with scarlet. Maddie was propped up on the bed with two pillows behind her and a pretty blue gown hitched up so one of her bent knees showed.

Forget Tucker and his gang. Forget three nights with no campfire and no supper. And no whiskey. Forget that his chin was stubbly and he couldn't keep the hair out of his eyes and his neck was sunburned. Maddie was here with him and that was all that mattered.

He scooped handfuls of the tepid bath water over his body and then dunked his head under the surface. When he came up and opened his eyes, Maddie had not moved. And, heavens, she was smiling at him.

He grabbed a clean towel, hurriedly wiped himself down and rubbed his hair almost dry. Then he wrapped the damp towel around his waist and finger-combed his hair so it wasn't straggling over his forehead.

“Maddie?”

“Yes?”

He lowered his aching body onto the bed next to her.

“In the morning, I'll have to get word to Sandy to bring me some clean socks. And drawers. And a shirt. And—”

“No, Jericho,” she said calmly. “You cannot do that in the morning.” She brushed the hair out of his eyes.

“Why not?”

“It will have to be in the afternoon.”

He kicked the towel onto the floor, stretched out beside her and gathered her close. “Pretty nightgown,” he said, smoothing one hand over the blue lawn.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah.” He waited a heartbeat, then reached for the hem. “Take it off.”

“But I—”

“Take it off,” he repeated.

When she did, he kissed her and touched her all over, just as he'd dreamed of doing for the last four days. “You're mine, Maddie. And I want you like hell.” He rolled on top of her.

The first time was urgent and hungry, and left them both near tears. The second time was slow and skilled, and afterward they held each other in silence.

Finally Jericho broke the quiet. “What did you do while I was gone?”

“Oh, lots of things. I baked a lemon pie. Rooney Cloudman likes lemon pies. And I took some sewing lessons—stop smiling!—from Verena Forester and listened to all the gossip about everybody in Smoke River. Even you. Especially you.”

Jericho frowned.

“Verena thinks you are mysterious.”

“Verena is the busiest busybody in town,” he said. “What else?”

“Well, let me see. I did some target practice with Sandy. It scared the jail inmates half to death. They thought we were a vigilante party.”

Jericho chuckled.

“Rita Sheltonberg and I are becoming good friends.”

“Sheltonberg? That's her last name?”

“That is her last husband's last name. Her maiden name was Kelly.”

Jericho kissed her. “You know what, Maddie? I never thought I'd like lying in bed talking to a woman, but I like doing it with you. I like it a whole lot.”

“I like it, too, Jericho.”

The quiet in the room stretched into soft kisses. Neither of them heard the soft tap on the door.

Señor Sanchez entered quietly. “I come for bathing tub and to bring package from jail man. He say is for the lady.”

Without looking up, he laid the parcel just inside the door and began dipping pails of water from the tub.

“Clean socks,” Jericho murmured in her ear.

“And a shirt, I hope.”

“And maybe a pair of drawers. On second thought,” he whispered, “I don't need drawers.”

Maddie clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a spurt of unladylike laughter.

Keeping his eyes on the floor, Señor Sanchez set the buckets of water out in the hallway and backed out the door, dragging the empty tub.