The Rustler (32 page)

“Go upstairs and wash up for supper,” Sarah told Owen.

He obeyed without question. Having ruined his new school clothes and taken two unauthorized trips to Stone Creek Ranch that day, he must have used up a good measure of the defiance on hand.

“Are we doing the right thing, Wyatt?” Sarah asked softly, when they were alone. A little smile curved her mouth—the mouth Wyatt wanted to kiss and then kiss again. “Judge Harvey says you're good-looking, and therefore, a rascal.”

“I'll be a faithful husband, Sarah,” Wyatt said. “Right now, that's about all I can promise.”

It must have been enough, because Sarah smiled again, a little wistfully, and nodded once more. “Two o'clock,” she said. “Don't be late.”

P
ROMPTLY AT TWO O'CLOCK
on Sunday afternoon, the wedding party crowded into Ephriam's bedroom, with Doc and Rowdy and Kitty for witnesses, and Owen standing up as Wyatt's best man. Even Lonesome was in attendance, with a bandanna tied at his throat in honor of the festivities.

Of course, Ephriam could not give Sarah away in the traditional fashion, but Kitty and Doc had propped him up in bed, with many pillows at his back, his hair combed and his face scrubbed shiny, and while he wasn't able to speak, he seemed alert. Just before Judge Harvey began the ceremony, Sarah took her father's hand, and felt his palm press against hers. Her eyes welled when she realized he'd given her his own wedding band, so she'd have one for Wyatt.

She wore her mother's dress, with no veil, and held a bouquet of the last of Maddie O'Ballivan's wild climbing roses, sent to town with Wyatt and Lonesome as a marriage gift from Sam. There'd been a message, too, scrawled in Sam's strong hand, addressed to Sarah alone.

Maddie and Lark will be riled up something considerable when they find out they've missed this shindig. Enjoy it anyway. I think you've chosen well. S.O'B.

Wyatt looked breathtakingly handsome, if a bit strangled by the collar of the white shirt he'd probably borrowed from Rowdy. He wore plain trousers of a lightweight woolen, suspenders, but no coat, due to the heat, and his boots were spit-shined. Sarah knew he'd been out at the “new” place since sunup, he and Lonesome, starting on the new roof. Around noon, they'd come to town, and he'd had a bath at Rowdy's.

We don't even know where we're going to live,
Sarah thought, joyously fitful, as she took her place beside Wyatt.

The words were a droning blur; Sarah responded when she was supposed to, and Wyatt did the same.

“Mr. Yarbro,” the judge said ponderously, “you may kiss your bride.”

It was no chaste peck. Indeed, it seemed that Wyatt had barely been able to contain that kiss until the proper moment came. He wrapped one steely arm around Sarah's waist, hoisted her clear off her feet, and kissed her so deeply and so hard that little frissons of excitement erupted inside her, sweet portents of the long, languid night to come. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him right back, and they might have gone on like that for a good long time if Rowdy hadn't cleared his throat with enough force to get their attention.

They broke apart, Sarah blushing, Wyatt red in the neck and jawline.

There was a cake, made up on short notice over in the hotel kitchen and tilting distinctly to one side, but Sarah didn't care. For his gift, Doc had engaged a photographer, the same oft-drunken saloon rat he'd hired to take the likenesses of the three dead men before they were buried, for purposes of later identification.

Sarah and Wyatt posed together, with the funny dried apple wedding cake listing on the kitchen table in front of them, solemn and unsmiling, for having one's picture made was no light business. In a second pose, Owen stood with them, flouting tradition and grinning wide.

Had Sarah allowed herself to think about her son's hopes to grow up in Stone Creek, with her for a mother and Wyatt for a father, she would have broken down and cried on her own wedding day. So she did her best to stay within the confines of the right now. Right now, she was Mrs. Wyatt Yarbro, and her groom didn't have a penny to his name but she didn't care, and Owen was with them.

The first hint of a disagreement arose over the honeymoon. Sarah had naturally assumed she and Wyatt would spend the night in her room upstairs.

Wyatt clearly had other ideas. He'd brought Sam's buckboard to town for a purpose, he informed her, besides hauling Lonesome in from the ranch and having a way to bring his tools back from the new place. They were honeymooning, he informed Sarah implacably, in his cabin on Stone Creek Ranch. Just the two of them—and, of course, Lonesome. If they left him behind, he'd pine so for Wyatt that the whole household would be disrupted.

Cake was served, and coffee was poured. Hands were shaken, cheeks were kissed.

Kitty smiled at Sarah's reluctant acquiescence and promised to look after Owen, as well as Ephriam, until she and Wyatt decided where the heck they were going to live.

“Here,” Sarah insisted. She'd always lived in this house, except while she was away in Philadelphia, of course. The old Henson place wasn't ready to live in, and Wyatt's cabin on the ranch was a long way out of town. Married or not, she still had the bank to run. “We'll live right
here.
”

Kitty took hold of Sarah's arm and pulled her into the pantry for a word. “Sarah Tamlin Yarbro,” she said, “don't be a ninny. You can't spend your
wedding night
in the same house with Owen and your papa and me. Wyatt wants to take you to his cabin so he can have you right, with nobody to hear the carrying on!”

Sarah's face burned. “The
carrying on?
”

Kitty looked smug. “Oh, you'll carry on, all right. Fit to raise the roof, probably, once that man of yours gets you out of that corset and everything else under that dress. You're damn lucky, and I'd take your place in a trice if I could. There's no telling what tomorrow will bring, or the day after. Let your hair down, Sarah. Stop being such a—
banker's daughter.
You're married to Wyatt Yarbro in the eyes of God and man. So stop fretting about this and that and the other thing and let him love you.”

Sarah put her hands to her cheeks, but they wouldn't cool down. “Kitty!” she whispered, scandalized.

Kitty turned her around and gave her a push toward the pantry door. “The words have been said. The paper's been signed. The cake's been cut. The pictures have been taken. Now, get in the wagon with that man and let him take you wherever he wants, and do whatever he wants.”

“Keep your voice down!” Sarah protested, and because she had turned her head to look back at Kitty, she collided hard with Wyatt.

He set his hands on her shoulders to steady her, chuckling under his breath, and even if she'd been suddenly and permanently blinded, she realized with a start, she'd have recognized his touch, his sunlight-and-starch scent, the hard heat and substance of his body.

“I've already loaded up your valise,” he told her, his dark eyes at once smoldering and reverent as he gazed down into her upturned and still-flushed face. “Kitty packed it for you earlier.” This was said with a nod to the woman standing just behind Sarah. “Are you ready to go home, Mrs. Yarbro?”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest the word
home,
but Kitty gave her a sharp poke from behind, and she held her tongue. “Yes, Mr. Yarbro,” she replied. “I think I am.”

It was tradition to carry the bride over the threshold of her new home, but Wyatt swept Sarah up into his arms, right then and there, and carried her through the kitchen, where cheers erupted from the few but earnest wedding guests, onto the porch and down the steps.

He hoisted her up into the buckboard seat, Lonesome already installed in back, looking dapper in his wedding bandanna, and then climbed up beside her.

Owen waved from the porch, looking a little forlorn, for all his happy frolic in front of the camera and the two huge pieces of cake he'd consumed. Rowdy stood behind him, laid his hands on the boy's shoulders to reassure him, as well as Sarah.

Wyatt was embarrassingly eager to be away. He climbed up beside Sarah, took the reins, released the brake lever with a hard motion of one foot, and they were rolling.

Sarah felt suddenly shy, as virginal as any bride.

Suppose she'd been wrong about Wyatt? Suppose he wasn't the skilled and gentle lover she'd instinctively believed him to be? All the wedding-night horror stories she'd ever heard, always whispered, always involving blood and pain, came back to her in an overwhelming rush.

Wyatt might have sensed her trepidation, because he shifted the reins to his left hand and took Sarah's in his right.

The drive out to Stone Creek Ranch went too quickly, and not quickly enough. On horseback, it was a half-hour journey. In a buckboard, bouncing over rutted roads that were little more than cattle tracks, a full hour was required. Sarah didn't know whether she wanted to speed up or slow down.

When they reached the top of a rise, Wyatt stopped the wagon and pointed out the cabin, far off in the distance, behind Sam and Maddie's big house and the substantial barn and what was probably the bunkhouse.

Sarah's heart rose into her throat and pounded there. Blood thundered in her ears.

It was still broad daylight, she told herself, in an effort to calm down a little. Surely Wyatt would not expect to make love to her in
broad daylight.

She breathed a little easier.

Wyatt was grinning, she noticed in a sidelong glance, as he slapped down the reins and whistled to get the two-horse team moving again.

There seemed to be no one around—Sam and whatever other men he employed, besides Wyatt of course, were surely with the herd. Lonesome began to whine, with impatience rather than discomfort, eager to get out of the wagon.

Wyatt stopped the buckboard, sprang down to the ground, and walked around back to lower the tailgate and set Lonesome on his feet in the grass. When that was done, he came to Sarah's side, looked up at her, and extended his arms.

She hesitated for a moment, swallowing her heart. Then she let her bridegroom help her to alight. Instead of setting her on her feet, though, as he'd done with Lonesome, he carried her. Pushed open the door of the cabin with one foot.

Sarah had not known what to expect of the place, had not actually thought about it much at all, since she'd fully expected to spend her wedding night in her own room in town.

Bright pink roses graced the rustic table, charming in their mason-jar vase. The wood floor had been swept, and the bed had been made up with a faded but pretty quilt and serviceable linen sheets. Someone had turned the covers back.

Sarah felt shy again.

“I'll go back to the buckboard for your valise,” Wyatt said, sounding shy himself. Only Lonesome, curling up in front of the stove for an afternoon snooze, seemed to feel at home in this strange, small, sturdy place.

Sarah stood in the middle of the room—indeed, the middle of the
house
—and breathed slowly and deeply. She was no frail flower, but just then, she thought if she didn't control her breathing, she would surely get light-headed and swoon.

The door stood open, and through it, Sarah heard Wyatt talking to someone. She turned and saw Jody Wexler climbing up to take the reins of the buckboard and drive it away toward the barn.

She went to the bed, sat down to test the mattress, and immediately sprang up again.

Wyatt had returned just in time to see this, and though he was rimmed in sunlight from the doorway, Sarah knew he was grinning.

“Nervous?” he asked. As he closed the door, she could see his features again—his strong, almost patrician face, his dark, intelligent eyes, his distinctly appealing mouth.

“No,” she lied.

He laughed, low and soft. Rubbed his chin. Although he'd surely shaved at Rowdy's, when he bathed, stubble had already appeared.

Sarah sat down on the bed again, because her knees suddenly wouldn't support her.

Wyatt latched the door, watching Sarah the whole time.

She gulped.

“Just in case there's a chivaree planned,” Wyatt said.

Sarah nodded, gulped again.

Wyatt crossed the room and sat beside her. This time, the bed springs creaked.

Sarah started a little. Lonesome, dead to the world, didn't even stir. And Wyatt grinned.

“I could leave you alone for a while,” he said. “In case you need more time or something.”

“Might as well get it over with,” Sarah said, and then could have bitten off her tongue.

Wyatt merely laughed and shoved a hand through his hair.

“I didn't mean—”

He turned, cupped her cheeks in his hands, and nuzzled her mouth, just once and very lightly. A hot shiver went through her. If he kissed her, the way he had at the wedding—

He did, but this time there were no witnesses. Rowdy wasn't around to clear his throat. Wyatt's tongue delved deep into Sarah's mouth, and sparred with hers.

Sarah gave a tremulous groan. Put her arms around his neck.

Presently, Wyatt broke off the kiss, stood suddenly, sucked in an audible breath, as though he'd been underwater too long. And, holding Sarah's hand, he brought her right along with him.

Turned her to face him.

“I do believe you're the most beautiful woman I've ever laid eyes on,” he said, his voice gruff. And then he began to work the tiny pearl buttons running the full length of her bodice.

“Now?” she whispered. “But Wyatt—it's still light out—there are people around—couldn't we…?”