Claudia Dain (16 page)

"What made you do it? Anne 'n' all," Lane asked.

"You have to ask?" Jack smiled crookedly before taking another swallow.

She was the prettiest woman he'd seen in years, maybe the prettiest north of the Red River, and that was conservative. He'd never seen a woman like her. He'd never known a woman who made him feel the way she did, like he wanted to lay his brand all over her and protect her from every kind of predator the world could cough up, while he devoured her himself.

He wanted to know why she spent half her time jumping in her own skin and the other half trying to be better than a preacher's wife. He wanted to know why she let a man like him lay hands on her. And he wanted her to let him close enough to do it again. Hell, if she didn't want him up close to her, he'd just have to convince her. He was enough of a hand with the ladies to do that.

"Yeah, I have to ask. I've heard things about you, Jack, but courting women wasn't one of them. What's different now?"

Jack put down his drink on the edge of the desk, thinking. He had no secrets to keep, not about Anne, so he might as well tell what had started him on her trail.

"Her aunt's mighty persuasive."

"I figured it for something like that. She have to persuade you much?" Lane smiled over the rim of his glass.

"Some," he said.

He'd never have gone near her, no matter what his blood did inside him when he looked at her, if her kin hadn't opened the chute on her and waved him in. He wanted her, wanted her any way he could have her, even as a pretend beau to spur another man on. If that's what opened the door to her, he'd take it. But now that he was in, he had his own game to play and it wasn't as the spark to light another man's fire. He wasn't that much of a fool.

"Anne's got a beau—she tell you that?"

"She told me that right off, that's why she was talking at all to a man like me. Seems he doesn't pay her enough mind, leaving her to herself more than he should. I'm supposed to make him sit up."

"You're off to a start, what with this morning."

"Yeah," Jack mumbled, picking up his drink again.

But that wasn't why he'd kissed her. He'd kissed her because he couldn't stop himself, and he was a man who always stopped himself, especially with a woman like her. He didn't have any call to be rubbing up against so fine a woman. She ought to know that. Hell, the whole damn town knew that.

"What's with that gal? She doesn't have the gumption to save herself from drowning," he said to Lane.

"You saying that you didn't expect to get away with that kiss?"

"I'm saying that she ought to know how to handle herself with a man by now."

Charles Lane set his glass down and carefully corked his rye. The drawer slid open with a long squeak and slid back shut with a muffled bang, the bottle rolling against the sides. It was a time before he lifted his eyes to Jack's.

"You know that man we were talking about? The one who'd die for a stray dog?"

Jack finished his drink and set the glass down. "Yeah."

"Name's Bill Tucker and he's been courting Anne all spring."

Chapter 12

Martha O'Shaughnessy hadn't wasted any time in getting to Nell. Nell turned as white as flour when she heard, but didn't say a word, either in acceptance or denial. Miss Daphne was in the garden picking greens for supper and heard the tail end of the story as she came through the back door. Martha obliged her by repeating it. Miss Daphne didn't turn white, she turned pink, but she managed to hold her tongue in front of Martha; they were all members of the same sewing circle and it wouldn't do to be the center of such a fuss with her words being bandied about by women who didn't have to suffer her trials of life. Martha left, settled in her own mind that she hadn't done anything but her Christian duty and was not spreading gossip. After all, it was the
truth.
Miss Daphne and Nell waited in the parlor for Anne to come home.

When Anne came home, it started.

"Anne, did—"

"I'll talk to her, Nell," Daphne interrupted. "You just sit and keep still awhile."

Nell closed her mouth and sat back in her chair.

Anne closed the door softly behind her, wishing she had the grit to run down the street and jump on a train going anywhere. With the gentle click of the door, she closed herself in to face the nearest thing to the wrath of God she'd face this side of heaven.

"Anne," her grandmother began, "you've disappointed me and brought shame and disgrace to our family by your wanton and unseemly behavior today." It would have been bad enough if she'd stopped there, but she didn't stop. Miss Daphne never stopped.

"You've been brought up in a fine home, having had the grace to be born into a family of untarnished reputation and you have seen fit, by your unrestrained and ill-considered actions today, to take those gifts, given from God Himself, and throw them down into the dirt."

Anne pressed back against the door, the feel of the handle a wedge of pain on her spine. She didn't move. She wasn't sure if she even blinked.

"The Lord has not seen fit to give me an easy life, left alone to support two daughters on my own and you, my only grandchild, but I have not complained. I have not asked God to make my load any lighter, I have taken what God gives and I have not shirked my duty." Daphne's voice rose in volume with every sentence; she spoke with all the divine authority of Moses on the mountain.

"That you have turned from all that you have been taught and thrown it under the scuffed boots of that killer is self-seeking disobedience of the worst kind. You commit your foul acts and then run home to the family who has loved you and cared for you since your birth like a mockery of the prodigal son. He, at least, was truly repentant. He had known true degradation and isolation. If you are going to wallow with the pigs, Anne, you should at least have the dignity to be truly repentant of your acts. Perhaps it is that you have not known true degradation and isolation. You have a home where you have been shown respect and love and you do not know enough of the world to be truly thankful for these gifts that God, in His mercy, has given you."

There was silence for a moment. Her mother was pressed against the cushion of the love seat, her hands in her lap, her fingers twined. Her grandmother stood before the hearth, pulled to her full height, chin up; God's anointed one surrounded by the unrepentant and unredeemed. Anne kept her back against the door and her eyes on her grandmother's feet; her left leg was going numb. She didn't dare move away from the door and shift her weight for fear it would be interpreted as a lack of proper contrition to seek her own comfort.

"What do you think Bill will do when he finds out about your very public display of impropriety?" Daphne continued. "Do you think him the sort of man to turn a blind eye to such an affront? Do you think he will willingly saddle himself with a wife of so little propriety, so little modesty, so little self-control? And do you think that Bill Tucker will be able to ignore the damage to your reputation that your display at the depot has caused? What man will want a wife of such loose morals?"

The answer seemed obvious. No man would want a wife who displayed the character traits of impropriety, immodesty, licentiousness, and self-indulgence. That had been the idea. Except she hadn't had a thought in her head when Jack had brushed up against her skirts and looked into her eyes. When his mouth had touched her, she had forgotten her own name.

Bill's kisses were private, cool, and self-controlled. Jack's kiss had been the opposite in every regard. Out of control, hot, pushing her plan to escape Abilene down to the dust beneath her feet. And she had liked it, wanted more of it.

Not good.

"Anne? I asked you a question and you will do me the courtesy of answering me in my own home."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," she said softly.

Miss Daphne looked her over carefully, her eyes slits of concentration. "I hope you are, Anne, because you have certainly made God cry rivers of tears over your rebelliousness. How will you ever enter His kingdom acting this way? Did Jesus not say, 'Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect'? What you did today is not in line with His perfection and His standards."

"I don't think one little kiss will get Anne thrown out of heaven, Mama," Sarah said, coming into the room from the back.

"Don't contradict me, Sarah," Daphne said briskly, not taking her eyes off Anne. "And why didn't you come in the front? My family does not enter the house from the back, like hired help."

"I tried, but the door wouldn't budge," Sarah said with a little smile for Anne.

Anne made herself take a step into the room, away from the solid security of the door.

"Anne, are you truly repentant?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause a fuss and I didn't mean for him to kiss me and I didn't mean to bring shame on you."

Daphne pursed her lips and tightened her apron strings before saying, "Very well. We'll let it lie. For now."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Come, Nell, help me pick some more greens while Sarah and Anne roll out the crust for dessert."

Having been given their assignments, each woman went to her task. The weight of Daphne's pronouncements pressed upon the women for a while before time and task eased it off. Anne worked the dough while Sarah mixed up the soft filling that would make up the type of pie Miss Daphne liked best.

"Well, are you going to tell me how it was?"

Anne looked up, saw the sparkle in Sarah's eye, and ducked her head as a blush crept up her throat.

"Does everyone really know about it?"

"Yes, everyone really knows." Sarah smiled, stirring, the bowl balanced on her left hip.

"Even Bill?"

"Especially Bill."

Anne didn't say anything, thinking that through. If Bill knew, her chances with him had narrowed to wafer thin. Bill Tucker was black-haired, blue-eyed, and handsome. He was successful, personable, and affable. He was good husband material. Jack was lean as jerky, tough as string, and dusty. He was hated, feared, and avoided. He was a bounty hunter and no girl in her right mind tied up with a man who hunted bounty. Would Bill believe he was being thrown over for a bounty hunter? Would anyone believe it? She had to have a reason, if asked, and she had one. Even better, it was a reason rooted in truth.

She liked Jack better.

He made her feel things, things that would probably get her scratched out of the Book of Life, things that a God-fearing woman would never allow herself to feel. Things that a smart woman wouldn't let herself feel.

She still liked Jack better. And she didn't want to stop feeling what he made her feel, even if it didn't last very long. She wasn't going to let herself get tangled up with any man, even if he could kiss the breath out of her. She had more grit than that.

But did that mean her soul was in peril? Could a kiss be what separated her from heaven?

"Anne, if you mash that dough any more, it'll be as delicate as hardtack."

She eased up on her rolling. Maybe she'd better talk with Reverend Holt; he'd know if her soul was secure. He'd know if a kiss could be eternally fatal.

"Well? I'm waiting to hear about you and Jack."

Anne looked up at her aunt and said, "I'm going to let him court me. Jack, I mean."

Sarah grinned widely and picked up the pace with her stirring; Miss Daphne hated lumps.

"That good, huh?"

Anne matched her smile and, for once, didn't drop her eyes.

"That good."

Chapter 13

She'd kissed Jack Skull.

He ran a hand through his hair and looked over to her house. It sat on the edge of town, big and wind-worn, isolated and intimidating. He'd thought of her that way, he realized. A woman he couldn't reach and wouldn't touch. But if a bounty hunter could lay hands on her, then that opened a door for him into her life. She hadn't kicked up a fuss over that kiss. That told him a lot and all of it was sweet.

It was better if they didn't fight, at least not until the end.