Kit Gardner (28 page)

John French visibly winced.

And to Jessica’s profound satisfaction, Gage reddened from collar to hairline, then jerked his chin at John French. “Git her the hell outa here ‘fore I have ta slap irons on her ta shut her up.”

At that moment, Hubert McGlue stepped forward in a grand bluster. “I say, that is no way to speak to this young woman!”

“Thank you, Hubert,” Jessica said quickly, laying a restraining hand upon his arm, lest he commit the unpardonable and draw his blunderbuss from his coat, a circumstance that would undoubtedly land him in jail. “But I believe our business is with Cameron Spotz and this Judge McClain. Not their lackey.” Leveling a stony glare on Gage, she hoisted her skirts and stepped onto the boardwalk. “Before we go, I will content myself with a look through your window here, Mr. Gage. If this somehow aids Rance Logan in escaping, you have a handful of witnesses to testify on your behalf to Cameron Spotz.”

Without waiting for his reply, she swept past him with chin held high and moved to the window. Cupping her hands around her face, she leaned close to the glass. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the dim gloom within, and then she saw him there, in the farthest cell, shadowy and curled into a corner. He lay with his back to her, on a barren dirt floor, his knees tucked into his belly. Sunlight slanted through a barred window, splashing the lined pattern across his back, across the fine white linen shirt he’d worn last evening to the town social, the same shirt she’d peeled from his back in the milky moonlight. Her fingers still itched with the feel of the cloth spilling over his heated skin. Only now, dirt streaked the tattered cotton, and dark red splotches...blood.

Save for the brief shudders wracking his powerful frame, further hunching him toward his knees, she might have thought him dead, so still did he lie.

Bile welled in her throat. She turned from the window, incapable of looking at him for another moment without helping him. She’d never thought to see him so helpless, so vulnerable, beaten by Black Jack Bartlett, at the mercy of Cameron Spotz.

Unless she did something, no matter how ominous the circumstances might seem.

“Quickly,” she said to John French as she stepped from the boardwalk, battling a gathering barrage of tears. “We have to go to Spotz’s ranch and find both Spotz and this Judge McClain. All the answers lie there.”

She heard the click of John’s jaw. She’d heard that click before, when Louise turned him all around with her female logic. “An altogether brilliant deduction, Jessica,” John replied, with no lack of sarcasm, as he fell into step beside her. “It’s a wonder I didn’t think of it first. But once we’re there, might I point out, the answers won’t present themselves. We need a plan.”

“I know we do,” Jessica said, chewing at her lower lip, then casting him a concerned frown from beneath the brim of her hat. Even as she did, her fingers slipped into the deep pocket of her muslin gown and touched the cool steel of Rance’s six-gun. “So you’d better start thinking, John. That’s why I brought you.”

* * *

Cameron Spotz had long conducted his grisliest business in the evenings. He often chose the vacant back stalls of the farthest of his four barns, perhaps because he claimed never to trust anyone, his wife, Abigail, and his servants included, being as they were most prone to overhearing in the sprawling stone ranch house. The man did not inspire loyalty, other than that which could be bought or threatened, and he knew it.

Rance could still remember the smell of stale hay and decaying wood mixing with the sour taste in his mouth when Spotz had met him there in the quiet of one evening over a year ago, then ordered him to “take care of” the farmers settling on his grazing land. Normally Black Jack would have handled the job, Spotz had said, in so deliberately careless a manner that Rance’s instincts had instantly been roused. But with that bothersome Judge McClain nosing around Black Jack’s tail and patrolling the grazing lands, the risks were too great for Black Jack. But not for Rance, the loner, the drifter, the quiet one. The man no one would suspect, not even McClain.

Rance still remembered the feel of the thousand dollars’ worth of crisp bills that Spotz had pressed into his hand. Even more, he remembered the fevered glittering in Spotz’s black eyes, as though he’d successfully laid a trap for Rance from which he’d never escape. Spotz had hated him even then. It had been there in his eyes.

Rance had left those bills strewn at Spotz’s feet, had wiped the last glitter of triumph from Spotz’s eyes with one chilling glare, and had paused only long enough to gather his gear before leaving the ranch. He should have ridden straight north, out of town. Instinct should have told him that Spotz would never let him walk away without exacting some kind of revenge.

Then again, how could he damn instinct, when it had led him to Jess?

Through a gap in the slats of the barn wall, he watched as Spotz left the back of the house and ambled across the sun-scorched grass toward him. He wore his affluence like most ranchers, around his belly, his girth having increased twofold since Rance had last seen him. His dark trousers rode low beneath his gut, his white shirt stretching taut over his torso, but the boots on his feet were the finest made in Mexico, complete with flashing silver spurs.

He wore no hat on his thatch of silver hair, just a thick cigar clamped between his teeth so that his mouth seemed permanently twisted in a crooked half smile that bared his long, yellowed teeth.

One flick of Rance’s eyes proved Spotz didn’t carry a weapon. And the fevered pumping of his arms and legs attested to a certain impatience. The bastard looked eager to hear whatever news old Black Jack was bearing.

A grim smile curved Rance’s lips, and he flicked the toothpick with his tongue, shoving himself away from the stall’s wall to settle deeper into the shadows. Spotz’s steward had taken him for Bartlett, and he’d been standing in the ranch house doorway, lit only by the dim lantern he carried, the same lantern that was now nestled at his feet. Here, with him cloaked in shadows and a fight-swollen face, Spotz would surely believe him to be Black Jack. Anyone would at first glance. They’d have no reason to think otherwise.

The barn door squeaked open on its hinges before it again slammed closed. Hay rustled beneath polished boot heels, and the sound of a man’s labored breathing echoed high among the rafters overhead, stirring several nesting swallows.

“Where the hell are you, Bartlett?” Spotz growled.

Rance stepped from the dark stall, blocking Spotz’s path. Spotz took an immediate step back, stared at him for one long moment, then grimaced. “Where the hell is Logan? I told you not to come back until you’d found him.”

“I found him,” Rance drawled, slouching one shoulder against the jamb of one stall and crossing one boot over the other.

Spotz snatched the cigar from his mouth. “You look like hell. Got in some kind of fight with Logan?”

Rance barely jerked his head.

Spotz grunted and shoved his cigar back into his mouth, its orange tip glowing in the semidarkness. “So? Where is he?”

Rance watched the toe of his boot move through the hay on the floor, then barely angled his hat toward Spotz. “He’s in the Wichita jailhouse.”

“He’s what?”
Scarlet flamed through Spotz’s already flushed face. “What the hell is he doing there? I told you to bring him here,
here,
so I could personally hang the bastard...so
my wife
could watch him hang from the tree right outside her bedroom window, damned cuckolding son of a bitch.”

Rance stared at the other man as he paced back and forth, chomping on his cigar. Abigail...so Spotz had seen the way Abigail looked at him during those months he rode the ranch and dined at her table. Perhaps Spotz even suspected that Abigail had freed him from jail. A hell of a bitter pill to swallow when a man’s wife couldn’t hide her lust, particularly for a man who refused to be owned. No matter that Rance had never returned her feelings and had never once given her any reason to believe he would.

Spotz paused and scowled at him. “Quit staring at me like a dumb ox, Bartlett, and go get Logan before he escapes again. And here—” Spotz fished into his trouser pocket, then slapped a wad of bills into Rance’s gloved hand. “Give this to Gage. Tell him to keep his damned mouth shut about ever seeing Rance Logan. That’s all I need, is McClain’s fat gut on my front doorstep.”

The toothpick slipped to the corner of his mouth as Rance worked the bills between his fingers thoughtfully, then waved the bundle. “Yer gonna need more of this.”

Spotz squinted up at him through cigar smoke. “Is that so, smart boy? Gage understands his circumstances. He won’t ask for any more than I give him. A smart man never does. That’s more than I can say for you. Taking Logan to the jailhouse. Of all the dumb—”

“I don’t reckon so,” Rance drawled, rolling his toothpick slowly over his tongue. “S’pose I tell ya there’s a witness.”

Spotz’s thick black brows dived together. “A what?”

“A witness.”

“To what?”

“Some fella who was in Buffalo Kate’s saloon that night says he saw that Wynne fella accuse Logan of cheatin’, then draw on Logan first. Says he saw Logan aim fer the fella’s trigger hand, only Wynne ducked and took the bullet square.”

Spotz’s fleshy bottom lip sagged. Slowly he took the cigar from his mouth. “Who is he?”

Rance shrugged, his deliberate casualness of movement further thwarting Spotz, as he’d known it would.

“How the hell did this happen?” Spotz said, his voice rising with every word. “Can you tell me how we missed
one man?
I thought we’d taken care of them all, from the witnesses down to the jury, even Kate, and she was sweet on Logan. I paid a small fortune to get Logan convicted to hang,
a small fortune
to
buy his death.
And now one man, one small man, comes along and says he was there. How do I know it’s not a bluff?”

“His story’s good.”

“So it is.” Spotz rubbed a beefy hand over his jaw. “So it is, right down to the aim of Logan’s gun. But memory can be changed, Bartlett. With your persuasive powers, and the right amount of cash, a man’s memory can be completely altered. We’ve proven it.”

“And if he don’t persuade?”

Spotz snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re getting soft on me, Bartlett? You’re like a hound dog with the scent of blood in his nose. If he doesn’t come around, kill him. What’s one more man to you? But first, you go get me Logan. I’ve been waiting too long for this to wait anymore. I—”

The barn door thwacked open. Lamplight flooded into the barn, and then Abigail Spotz appeared between the narrow rows of stalls. She looked too small, too frail, too drained of spirit, to be the Abigail Rance remembered. His eyes met hers, and a frown skittered across her features and was gone.

Spotz spun about with a growled curse. “Dammit, woman, what the hell are you doing—?”

But Abigail ignored his blustering and held a hand toward them, as though indicating them. She turned her head and spoke to someone...

And then Jess stepped next to Abigail, paused only to murmur something to her, and began walking slowly toward them, down the narrow passage between the rows of deserted stalls. A woman had never looked more beautiful, her eyes flashing sapphire flames, her cheeks flushed rosy, her full breasts heaving with her every passionate breath. To Rance, it was as if a fresh breath of spring had blown into the barn along with her, promising new life, banishing every last sour and painful memory. He barely saw John French skid to a halt alongside Abigail Spotz, barely heard John’s shout of warning, so did he drown in the sight of her, the smell of her drifting to him. Lemons...

Suddenly she pulled a six-gun, what looked to be
his
six-gun, from her pocket, and with both hands pointed it squarely at him. He had no doubt she would pull the trigger. It was in the eyes, always in the eyes.

“Whoa, now!” Spotz erupted with a nervous laugh, his hands jerking skyward. “Put the gun down, missy, before someone gets hurt.”

“Stay where you are, John,” Jess tossed over her shoulder, just as John French started after her. “You gentleman don’t want a lady nervous when she’s holding a gun, do you?”

Rance took a step toward her. “Jess.”

Her eyes widened. The hammer clicked into place, and the black barrel pointed directly into his chest. At this range, she’d hit something. “Stop right there, Mr. Bartlett.”

“Come on out, Judge,” Rance said, without taking his eyes from Jess. “I think you heard enough of what Spotz had to say.”

Spotz jerked around just as Judge Clarence McClain appeared from behind the very last stall. Before Spotz could do more than sputter, McClain slapped handcuffs around his wrists, then shoved his face no more than an inch from Spotz’s.

“Fat gut, eh?” McClain purred as though savoring some truly heinous thought. “I heard enough to put yours in a cell for the next twenty years, if we got one big enough, that is.” With that, he hauled Spotz past Jessica with a gallant nod and a “Pardon me, miss.”

Rance put his hands on his hips and felt his lips curve when Jess shoved the gun at him with a renewed flourish.

“This reminds me of another time you pointed a gun at me, woman,” he rumbled, starting toward her. She blinked and gulped, took a backward step, then another. The gun wavered, and swift breaths spilled from her parted lips. Shoving the hat back on his head, he gave her a dazzling grin, barely feeling the pain in his jaw, and drawled, “You don’t want to shoot me again, do you, Jess?”

He caught her in his arms just as she went entirely limp. And then she was sobbing and clinging to him and kissing his grimy, swollen, bruised and beard-stubbled face, telling him over and over again that she loved him.

Life had never felt so good.

May 1883

J
essica heard the boisterous shouts even above the rumble of the buckboard’s wheels and the squawking of chickens scattering across the barnyard. With a quick glance into her looking glass and a useless poke or two at her flyaway curls, she dashed from the bedroom, through the kitchen and out the back door into the midmorning warmth. The sun-stoked scents of spring tickled her nose, filled her lungs and brought a wide smile to her lips, which dissolved when the buckboard pulled to a halt and her husband jumped from the seat.

“What the devil is that?” she asked, arching a brow at the horse dancing at its tether at the rear of the wagon. Rance pounced on opportunity and caught her parted lips with his in a soul-stirring kiss entirely unsuited to a barnyard at midmorning. For several moments they lingered there among the clucking chickens meandering about, oblivious to all but each other. Jessica sensed the burgeoning impatience in his hands, caressing her waist and ribs, venturing just beneath her breasts...

“It’s a horse,” he murmured against her mouth, in a voice laced with such seductive allure she felt her knees go weak.

“I know it’s a horse,” she said, a smile creeping over her mouth as she grasped his wandering hands in both of hers and tugged him along beside her. “Who is he?”

“It’s a she, Mama,” Christian supplied, peeping around the flanks of the sleek bay filly. His freckled face broke into a wide grin as he patted the filly’s glistening side with obvious pride. “She’s mine, Mama. But Rance said you could ride her, too.”

“I don’t ride,” Jessica replied firmly, casting Rance a dubious look. “She looks awfully young for a boy, Rance.”

“She is young,” he said in a rumbling voice she knew all too well, the heat of him pressing possessively into her back. “Best time for taming a female’s when she’s young and spirited. And eager.” His tone was a seductive purr. “Very eager.”

A shiver whispered up her spine, and she couldn’t resist slanting him a coy look from beneath her lashes.

His mouth brushed against her ear like willows rustling in the wind. “She’s a finely built female, Jess. Sleek, long-limbed, but full-chested. Just the way I like them.”

She stilled his palm beneath hers upon the slight curve of her belly, where the butterflies stirred. “Stouthearted, is she?”

“No doubt. Jack’s type, all the way around. See the way he’s watching her, catching her scent. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about breeding. Have you?”

Jessica lifted a shoulder. “From time to time.”

“What about now, wife?”

This time, she swayed back against him when one large hand cupped beneath her breast. Her eyelids drooped slightly as she basked in the peace and contentment that had become daily ritual for her. As was his wont, Christian seemed oblivious to them, consumed as he was with the task of unharnessing Jack and letting him loose in the newly fenced-in paddock. “Where is the plow?” Jessica asked, her gaze following her son as he moved purposefully about in a manner not unlike Rance’s, tending to the new filly with a sureness she found comforting.

“Ledbetter’s delivering it,” Rance replied. “Let’s go inside, Jess.”

“But we got the seeds!” Christian piped up, scrambling into the back of the buckboard, where several large sacks lay. “We’re planting tomorrow, Mama. Come fall, Rance says we’ll have fields full of wheat. The blizzards kept the ground moist and good for planting. I’m gonna be a farmer, Mama. Right, Rance?”

The love and admiration shone like twin beacons in her son’s eyes when they swung up to Rance. Jessica could now only marvel at a child’s capacity for understanding and forgiveness. Yet she’d dreaded explaining it all to Christian when they returned from Wichita. How could she possibly expect him to understand the twists of fate that had brought Rance to them? But she’d determined he had to know the truth, the reasons, even if he didn’t understand them at first. But he had, somehow, his brow puckered with confusion at first, his gaze clouding. The simplicity of his logic...

“But Rance would never hurt us, Mama,” Christian had said softly. “He loves us. He went with that bad man. He saved me, Mama.”

He’d saved them both.

“Tend to the horses, Christian,” she said. Taking her husband’s hand in hers, Jessica turned and headed toward the house. She paused at the door and pressed her fingers against his lips, then gently pushed the door open. Soundlessly she moved across the freshly scrubbed pine floor to the wooden cradle tucked into a shadowy corner. The tiny bundle barely stirred with each shallow breath. Raven-black hair crowned a perfectly round head, and sooty lashes concealed eyes the color of brilliant sapphires.

“She sleeps,” Jessica whispered, her soul swelling with emotion when Rance gently curved his sun-bronzed hand around the tiny head.

“Grace...” he rasped, his thumb tracing the curve of her downy cheek. “My mother would think she has a beautiful namesake.” He seemed to swallow the sudden hoarseness in his voice. “Sadie McGlue wants to know when she can come and fuss over the baby.”

“She’s just six weeks old, Rance. Don’t you think it’s too soon?”

“For visiting?” he murmured, drawing her flush against him.

She stared up into eyes glowing with unbanked desires and felt deep, warm stirrings in her loins. Pushing his hat from his head, she sank her fingers into his loosely curling blue-black hair and drew his head to hers. “Yes,” she whispered, brushing her lips over his. “It’s far too soon for visiting.”

Rance’s long fingers worked over the row of pearl buttons dotting Jessica’s violet-sprigged white cotton dress, one of a closetful of beautiful dresses he’d bought her not a day after they wed. “Christian wants a brother.”

“And what do you want?” she said softly, her breath catching when he drew the gown from her shoulders and it spilled to the floor. Deep masculine satisfaction darkened his features as his gaze plundered the sheer cotton camisole and pantalets. Jessica felt the heat of her flush clear to the tips of her swollen breasts.

In one gentle movement, Rance swept her from her feet and carried her to the bedroom, laying her upon the white coverlet. “What do I want?” he rumbled, stripping his shirt, boots and denims with severe impatience, his gaze burning over her entire length. And then he slowly lowered himself over her, with a reverence and tenderness that tore at her soul. “I want to make love to my wife, Jess,” he rasped against the high curves of her breasts. “I’ve been patient. I’ve waited long enough. And now, I want to love every inch of her skin, taste her, drown in her, and fill her with my seed again and again, just as it was meant to be with us.”

“Yes...” Cool air spilled over her flesh as cotton dissolved beneath his hands. And he was gentle, so gentle upon her tender breasts, stroking and taking her nipples deep into his mouth with smooth, even pulls. “Rance...no... I’m...you’re...”

“Shy Jess—” He kissed her burning cheeks, her trembling lips, his hands smoothing over her slick breasts. “Everything about you, our baby...this life we’ve found, it’s beautiful. As natural and right as the sun coming up every morning in the east. We couldn’t fight it from the day we met. And it’s only going to get better.”

She let the tears come now, felt them spilling across her temples like the love flowing from her heart. Her palms cupped his beloved face, her thumbs lingering in the deep cleft of his chin. “Promise me, Rance, nothing is going to take our happiness from us. It will always be like this.”

He gathered her against the fierce beating of his heart, and for once his strength was enough for both of them. “I promise. And you know better than anyone, Jess, I’m a man of my word.”

* * * * *