Reese (17 page)

Nate had said, "She's an infant, Reese. What kind of man do you think I am?" And he'd appeared so hurt when he'd said it that Reese didn't have the heart to answer.

Miss Clancy, on the other hand, had glared. "Nate needs a friend, and since you five are worthless, I guess it'll have to be me."

Reese had thought he was being a mighty good friend. How many times had he put Nate back in the saddle? How many times had he covered him with a horse blanket when he lay dead drunk in the corner of a saloon? How many times had he backed Nate in a fight that had come about because the man was pretty much pissed at the world and everyone in it?

However, Reese doubted Miss Clancy would think he was any kind of hero, and since Reese had to agree, he let them do what ever it was they did when they were together. He'd done his best to thwart disaster.

Reese passed the schoolhouse, but school was out for the day. No one sat on the porch of the cabin, no movement behind the windows.

He hunched his shoulders and tugged on his hat. He was acting like a lovesick schoolboy walking past her house, but he couldn't really help it as there was only one street in Rock Creek to walk
on
.

Once back at the hotel, he sat outside, having no desire to go inside and play with the boys. Just as he lit the match for his cigarette, Reese caught a glimpse of Mary headed for the creek, a basket under her arm.

How often did she sneak off alone? And why?

The match burnt his thumb, and Reese dropped it to the floor with a curse, before grinding out the flame with his boot. When he lifted his head, Mary was gone.

He returned his cigarette to his vest pocket then headed across the street, through the alley, and down into the valley where the river ran.

* * *

The warmth of the day drew Mary to the water. Spring slid toward summer, and soon the days would be hot, miserable, and long. Once school was out, she would have little to do but prepare for next session. During other summers, in other places, she had worked in hotels as a maid, served food in a restaurant, waited on customers at a mercantile. But the way the wind had shifted in Rock Creek, there would be no summer job for the teacher.

She dropped her basket then pulled out her soap and washboard. In the winter she hauled water to the cabin, heated it, and scrubbed clothes on the porch. That way took twice as long and was twice as much work as washing clothes in the river. But she couldn't bear to stick her hands in the icy water that ran past in mid-January.

Today the flow was tepid, almost soothing in the languid heat. She twirled her unmentionables beneath the surface and contemplated the sun on the water.

Mary was a champion daydreamer. Always had been, even when Sister Hortensia forbade her. Daydreaming was not something you could stop on a whim—or a prayer. Daydreaming was part of who you were.

As a child, Mary'd had little choice but to dream about a past she did not know and a future that was frightening. She had been left on the doorstep of St. Peter's with a note naming her Mary Margaret McKendrick—Irish, to be sure—and that was all she knew. So Mary had dreamed up a father who had died too young and a mother who had loved her enough to let her go. Only in that way could Mary forgive being left alone forever.

But, despite her dreams, the questions always haunted her. Why had she been left? Would no one ever love her? Or was she, perhaps, unlovable?

A heated breeze brushed her face, and Mary lifted her head to breathe the scented wind. Dust and grass and a hint of flowers—Texas in springtime. She loved Rock Creek more than any other town she had ever been to.

The other places she'd lived were gone now. Even St. Peter's stood empty, the victim of a cursed war. So Rock Creek was the sanctuary she'd dreamed up all those years ago and embellished upon whenever she'd desperately needed something to look forward to.

She'd wanted a home, friends, a life she'd built for herself. She'd learned in those years of being alone and dependent on the mercy of others that the only way to survive was to make certain she could take care of herself no matter what happened.

Mary had seen enough women depend on a man for everything. When the man departed—through death or design, it didn't matter—the woman was left with the children and no means to take care of them. The panic on the faces of those women when they knocked on the doors of St. Peter's had impressed itself upon Mary at a very young age.

She'd been almost glad to discover she wasn't marriage material. Herself, she could depend upon. Mary could manage just fine alone, and if the children she taught sometimes called to the motherly soul she hid, well, she could manage that too.

While kissing Reese had shown her what was missing in her life—excitement, passion, vibrancy—she also knew that anything other than kissing might cost her everything she'd worked so long to accomplish. Teachers with bad reputations did not teach long. And teaching was all that stood between Mary and the desperate life many others were forced to lead.

She was a smart woman who made intelligent choices, with her mind and not her heart. As long as she remembered what was important, her dream would come true. She was no longer a child who longed for love. How could she long for something she had never known? Mary had learned to settle for the best that came along, and for her, the best was Rock Creek. She was not so foolish as to throw away everything on temptation's kiss.

Mary wrung the water from her extra chemise. Sometimes being smart was no fun at all. But no one ever promised life would be fun. Life was just... life.

A slight shuffle to the rear was the only warning Mary had before strong arms came around her. She dropped the chemise into the water and took a deep breath to scream. A large, rough hand clamped over her mouth; the scream went back down her throat and into her wildly beating heart.

Idiot!
her mind ranted, even as her body struggled. She had no gun, no knife, and even if she had, she would be unable to retrieve any weapon with her hands pinned.

Mary was so annoyed with herself she nearly forgot to be afraid. Then a voice murmured in her ear, "You shouldn't come out alone; anything could happen."

She kicked Reese in the shins, and he released her. Spinning about, she was surprised to discover her hands had clenched into fists.

Reese rubbed his leg. He appeared almost as angry as she was. "I could easily have been El Diablo or one of his men, and they wouldn't let you go because you kicked them. They'd knock you over the head with the butt of their gun and take you wherever it is they go with unconscious women. Then—" His lips tightened. "Well, you'd wish they had killed you rather than kidnapped you."

Though Mary had been raised by nuns, she knew what Reese was referring to. While she had no business thinking about man-woman things, she'd thought about them a lot since Reese came to town. However, in her thoughts, he was always the man; she was always the woman. The idea of sharing those things with a stranger, or ten, made Mary shiver with dread.

The fight went right out of her, and she dropped her hands then hugged herself. "You scared me to death." Her voice cracked in the middle, making her sound like a terrified child.

"Good. Maybe you won't wander off by yourself again and give me heart failure."

"You? What do you have to be scared about? You're a big, tough man with guns. You're the one who goes around terrifying women who are minding their own business!"

"What kind of business do you have out here?"

"My laundry. Haven't you ever done laundry?"

"Can't say that I have."

"I suppose you just buy new clothes every week."

"No. I hand a woman in whatever town I'm in what's dirty, and she brings it back clean."

For some reason, the idea of a different woman in every town doing Reese's laundry made Mary more angry than having him scare her old before her time. Laundry was a private thing. As private as kissing, and Mary had a sneaking suspicion that the woman who did Reese's laundry was also the woman he happened to be kissing in whatever town he was in.

"I suspect you'll be expecting me to do
your
laundry next."

He raised an eyebrow. "Want to?"

"I don't even want to do my own." She glanced at her basket, and a swatch of white, down the river a ways, caught her attention. "Drat! My chemise is drifting away."

"Let it go."

"I will not." She started after the undergarment, but Reese yanked her back.

"I'll buy you another."

"A man is not buying me unmentionables."

"A man like me?"

"Any man, blast it! Now I'm getting that chemise."

His hand tightened. "No, you're not. Where the river disappears there into the trees she gets pretty deep. I'll be damned if I'll let you drown over a bit of cotton."

"What do you care if I drown? I already gave you everything."

"Not everything," he murmured, and his thumb stroked the inside of her arm. "I care, Mary. Too much."

All the anger and fear drained away as a pulsing sense of expectation took their place. "What are you saying?"

Using the arm he still held tightly, Reese pulled her close. She could have struggled, but why, when she wanted to be nowhere else but there?

"You make me crazy, Miss Mary." He tucked her head beneath his chin. She wanted to stay right there forever. "After seeing you with Rico—" He stopped, and in the silence that followed, the steady beat of his heart pulsed beneath her ear. "I didn't know what would be worse, the thought of you just walking around out here, alone and vulnerable, or the thought of you meeting someone by the river."

"Like Jo?"

"Not Jo. A man."

"A man?" She tilted back her head so she could see his face. "What for?"

He kissed her. No longer untutored in the art, she met him stroke for stroke. She let her hands wander over the breadth of his chest. When his tongue did fancy things with hers, she gripped his shoulders so she would not sink to the damp riverbank and melt into the water.

Maybe she
would
do his laundry.

As he coaxed her tongue into his mouth with teasing traces, she knocked his hat from his head and allowed her fingers to wallow in the softness of his golden hair.

She wanted to kiss something other than his mouth. When he'd kissed her neck, then her bruise, she'd felt so many different things. Wonderful, amazing, world-shifting things. And she wanted him to feel them too.

She pulled her mouth away and trailed her lips over his chin. The stubble scratched and scraped, a new sensation, not altogether unpleasant.

Next, she tasted the hollow beneath his ear—salt and man. She liked the flavor, so she tasted the hollow at the base of his throat too.

He moaned; the sound rumbled against her lips—another new sensation to add to her rapidly expanding repertoire. What she really wanted to discover was if the bronze hair on his chest that had haunted her nights since she'd seen him half-naked in Dallas was as soft as the hair on his head.

His shirt was unbuttoned to just beneath the curve of his throat. She raised trembling fingers and unbuttoned another button. His chest heaved as if he'd run a very long distance. That, combined with her clumsy hands, made the second button much harder to release than the first. She took too long, because his hands came up and closed over hers, stilling her explorations.

"Mary." His whisper was the wind, a gentle brush against her temple, a sigh along her cheek.

She peered into his face, and the haunted sadness there made her breath catch; she tugged one of her hands free and set her palm to his cheek. "What is it?"

"I should never have kissed you, not even once. Now I can't seem to stop."

"I don't want you to stop."

"Of course not. You have no idea what comes next."

"I have an idea."

His lips tilted at the corners, not a true smile but almost, then he covered her hand with his where it rested on his cheek. "You'd have a lot more of an idea if I let this continue. You need to be stronger than both of us. Call me a bastard and slap my face."

"I never swear, and how could I slap this face?" She flexed her fingers beneath his, stroking him. "I don't want to be strong. Just once I'd like to be weak."

"But you're not weak. What were you thinking when you let me kiss you again?"

They were back to that. Mary dropped her hand and narrowed her eyes. "I was thinking a dangerous, handsome man wanted me, if only for a moment. Silly old maid that I am." She stepped away.

He picked up his hat, then smacked it onto his head. "You aren't silly or old." He reached out and yanked her against him, tight and true. "And as you can no doubt feel, I
do
want you. For more than a moment. But I can't be the man you need, Mary. I can't stay."

She tugged free of his hold. With his body pressed to hers, she could not think. She could not breathe. "Who asked you to stay? What do you think I need? "

He closed his eyes and released a long sigh. "I'm not for you."

"I know I'm not pretty."

His eyes snapped open, and anger filled them. "Who told you that?"

"I can see, Reese."

"Not very well."

"You don't have to tell me I'm pretty or anything else to kiss me. This may be the only chance I have in my life to be touched by a man like you."

"You're making me mad."

"Because I'm practical? Why would someone like you want to kiss someone like me? Unless you enjoy kissing, and as Mr. Sutton said, a woman's a woman in the dark."

He'd been rubbing his forehead, but suddenly he stopped. "When did he say that?"

The stillness of his stance caused a trickle of unease. "The other day."

"Really?" Reese dropped his arm and glanced toward town.

Something about the way he held his fingers, curved and ready had Mary babbling. "It doesn't matter. He was angry. That often happens when I say what I think. It's a failing I'm trying to correct."

"There's not a blasted thing wrong with you, and don't let that poor excuse for a man tell you there is."

His anger on her behalf warmed Mary's heart. No one had ever defended her before. She reached for his hand, and when he started to draw away from her touch, Mary held on tight. Holding hands was another thing she'd never done but found quite enjoyable. How could the simple act of placing palm against palm feel as if you were touching another person's heart with your own?