Thunder on the Plains (43 page)

“Now, you,” he continued, “in turn, can't come out here and live like just any common settler woman. For one thing, you have a railroad to finish. I know how much that means to you, Sunny, no matter how much you might love me. You also have a fiancé who'll be coming back here anytime now expecting to take you to Chicago to marry him. Maybe I
should
go back with you for the time being, just for moral support. I don't like the prospect of you facing Blaine alone, or Vince, for that matter.”

She stared at the fire. “I'm not worried about Vince. I've been handling him alone for years now. He'll rant and rave, but there's really nothing he can do. I
am
a little worried about Blaine. After all these years, he'll be terribly angry.”

Colt sat up a little straighter. “Would he hurt you?”

She met his eyes. “No.” She smiled at the look in his eyes. “You'd kill for me, wouldn't you?”

He took another drag on the cigarette. “I already have in the past. Have you forgotten those buffalo hunters? You don't think I did that just as part of my job in protecting you, do you? It was the thought of what they had in mind to do to you. I wasn't about to let them touch something as beautiful and innocent as you, especially when I wanted you for myself.”

She sighed and leaned closer. “I wish you would have told me then. I loved you so much, Colt.”

He tossed the cigarette into the fire. “I figured such a relationship was impossible.” He turned to meet her eyes. “Maybe it still is.”

She felt the pain in her throat at the remark. He lay back and she stretched out beside him. “We'll find a way, Colt. I can't stand the thought of leaving you, but I suppose for the time being I'll have to. I'm going to go back to Omaha and tell Blaine when he comes that I can't marry him, that I just don't love him the way I should. I would take you with me, but I want to spare you as much as I can. Just breaking up with Blaine will bring terrible gossip. I don't want you involved right away.”

“Sunny, I'm a man. I can take it. I don't want you going back alone.”

“It has to be that way. I won't have people insulting you. We have to take this one step at a time. After a while we'll find ways to be together, slowly let people know what's happening—that we're in love and we're going to marry. If I break up with Blaine and we tell everyone at the same time about us, the cruel gossip will be that much worse.”

She touched his face, studying his eyes. “There must be a way to make it work, Colt. I want to have your children. I want you always in my life, and we can't just carry on an affair forever. We have to make it legal so we can be free always to do this whenever we please.” She stroked his hair back from his face, studying the scar over his eye. “We have to take a step at a time. The headlines will scream with the story, I can assure you, and we have to be prepared—
you
have to be prepared. I'm used to the attention, but you aren't.” Her eyes teared. “I don't want all the gossip and remarks and cruelty of others to change you, make you hate me in the end. That's what I fear most.”

He took hold of her wrist and kissed her hand. “I could never hate you. But I understand why we have to do this slowly. You just remember that I'm here for you, and all I need is one telegram telling me to come to Omaha and I'll be there, gossip or not. In the meantime, maybe we'll find a solution to how in hell we're going to manage to live together. The only damn thing we have in common is that we love each other.”

She kissed him. “It's going to have to be enough, Colt. That love will have to get us through some very bad times. I'm so sorry, because it's mostly my fault. I could just give everything over to Vince and Stuart—”

“No!” He sat up. “I don't want a damn thing to do with any of your money, Sunny, but I'd never ask you to give all that up. It would be like me just giving up everything I love out here, denying my heritage, putting on a silk suit and going to operas and pretending to be something I'm not. What you have is a part of you. You shouldn't have to lose part of yourself just so we can be together. I think we're both smart enough to find a way to make this work without losing ourselves, losing the very things we love most about each other.”

He looked down at her, lying back down to rest on one elbow again. “It isn't the wealth and the power that I love, Sunny. It's your strength, your determination, the way you took all that on and wouldn't let Vince browbeat you out of it, wouldn't break your promises to your father. Now here you are building that railroad you and your father always dreamed about. I'd never take that away from you, just like you'd never make me sit in boardrooms instead of riding free here, where I belong. We can love each other and still be ourselves. And we can instill in our children the best of both of us.”

She could not stop the tears, and he pulled her into his arms. “You make it sound like we really can do it, Colt.”

“Of course we can. I know how strong you are, and I know how determined you can be when it's necessary. I'm just as stubborn.” He moved on top of her. “We're going to make this work, Sunny. I'm not giving up, not now. I'll do whatever it takes to keep you right here in my arms, and neither one of us is going to give up everything that we are to make that happen.” He kissed her eyes. “One thing that's different about me from any of those men in your life now—if you came to me tomorrow and said you weren't worth a dime, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.”

A tear slipped out of her eye. “I know,” she whispered.
But
that
isn't how it is, Colt
, she thought. She touched his face, thinking how little he understood of how he would be treated back in her world. The night of the dinner party was only one tiny example. Some had gossiped cruelly then, even when she and Colt were only old friends. They had looked upon him as a curiosity, asked ridiculous questions about his heritage. What would it be like if she told the world she was marrying the scout Colt Travis? She was probably wrong to have come out here and done this to him. Now that she realized how much she truly did love him, she couldn't bear the thought of him taking any kind of ridicule. He was such a proud man, and so untouched by greed and corruption and all the things she put up with almost daily.

She leaned up and kissed his shoulder. “You're right about the railroad. That's one thing I feel responsible to stay with, Colt. Once it's finished, I'll have so much more time to devote to a marriage and children. But that doesn't mean we have to wait until then to be husband and wife. I can hardly stand the thought of having to leave you for a few days.”

He ran a hand along her slender leg, pushing up her gown and stroking her hip. “And
only
a few days. Don't make me have to wait too long.”

“Blaine will be in Omaha any day now. As soon as I've told him and gotten Stuart and Vi used to the idea—as soon as all the hullabaloo is over as far as the newspapers and all—I'll come back and we can decide how we're going to handle the rest of our lives together.”

He sighed, moving between her legs. “You
sure
you don't want me to come with you?”

She traced her fingers over his lips, thinking how she would want to die if people were cruel to him. “Yes. Just be very, very careful while I'm gone, will you? I would hate to lose you now, after finally finding you. I'm your woman now, Colt, and you're my man, no matter how different we are. It's right. I know it in my heart.”

He met her mouth in a sweet kiss, pressing himself against her belly. She wrapped her legs around him, and he reached down and unbuttoned his long johns. He rubbed himself lightly against her, teasing with both his penis and his tongue until she begged him to finish it. Again he moved inside her in a sweet, slow rhythm. He rubbed his cheek against the fullness of her breasts beneath the soft flannel gown, taking comfort in resting against them. He met her mouth, moving his hands under her hips and pushing deep, softly rubbing against that secret place that made her breathing deepen, made her arch toward him until he gloried in the feel of her pulsating climax that pulled sweetly at him and made him groan with the want of her. She was tight and wild and exotic, and he owned every part of her, had tasted and explored and loved her in ways he knew she never would consent to with any other man. Here was one area in which he had more power than any of the men she faced in any boardroom or in Congress.

He shuddered with his release, then lay on top of her a moment before relaxing beside her.

Sunny snuggled against him. “We'll be happy, won't we, Colt?” she asked, sounding sleepy.

“Sure we will,” he answered, kissing her hair. She closed her eyes, and he watched her awhile, her face looking small and almost childlike in the light of the fire, with no makeup, her thick hair a tumble. In moments like this she was so vulnerable and almost dependent, nothing like the kind of woman he imagined she had to be when she faced business and political enemies.

No
more
, he thought.
She
won't face them alone anymore
. He might not be a full part of that world, but he would be there for her to turn to, cling to, draw strength from. And he would be her escape. She needed to get away from all that sometimes. That's why he was better for her if he didn't change too much. She didn't need a Blaine O'Brien. She needed a Colt Travis to keep her sane and strong and safe…and loved.

***

“You what?” Colt rolled up another blanket. Most everything else was packed into their gear.

“I told potential investors I would pay the required ten percent on their stock if they would sign and say they bought the stock. When the U.P. begins making a profit, they'll get their share and they can pay me the ten percent. In the meantime, I actually own much of the stock myself. Dr. Durant sold many shares that way.”

Colt put on his hat. “Why doesn't that sound legal to me?”

“Probably because it isn't. But we had to get things going, Colt. Congress was stalling, demanding that a certain number of stocks be sold first, making us prove we had plenty of investors. So what if it's just names on paper? The money is still there.”

He shook his head. “I couldn't do business that way.”

Sunny checked the cinch under her horse's belly. “Oh, Colt, it's done all the time in my circle. We're even using our own construction company to supply the railroad. The government pays so much a mile, and we base our costs on cost of supplies, and so forth. We pad the prices for our own construction company, the government adjusts its share accordingly, and we make back some of our own invested money before the U.P. even starts taking on passengers and freight.” She straightened and faced him. “It's called survival. Just like out here, Colt. The strongest, wiliest, most seasoned scouts like yourself live. The others die. In my world there are other ways to be strong and wily.”

He stared at her a moment, wondering at how different she seemed when she talked this way. This was not the sweet, innocent, vulnerable woman who slept in his arms last night and to whom he had made love twice more this morning before they finally bathed again, ate, and dressed. This was the Sunny he didn't understand, the one who did not fit into his world, or he into hers. “If I was involved in all that, I'd have to be honest about everything. That's the only way I could run a business.”

“Honest!” She laughed lightly. “Talk to our own congressmen about being honest. If I hadn't had to do so much bribing to get the railroad act passed in the first place, I wouldn't have to be thinking of ways to get my money back out of them. It's a common business practice, Colt. You scratch their backs, they scratch yours.”

He kicked around at the fire to be sure it was out. “And you
stab
their backs, they stab
yours
,” he added.

Sunny mounted up, watching him a moment. “Sometimes. Colt, are you angry with me?”

He met her eyes, breathing in a deep sigh. “No. I just don't like your kind of enemy. Mine come at me with real weapons and a look to kill. Yours smile and shake your hand, and to fight them you have to be just like them. That's not the Sunny I know and love.”

She smiled softly. “This Sunny is nothing like the one who will return to Omaha. The wrong decision, or sometimes just being too honest, can cost you millions in the business world, Colt.”

He mounted his own horse, turning the animal to face her. “Isn't there a saying that honesty is the best policy?”

“You would soon learn that doesn't often apply where I come from.”

Their eyes held, both of them feeling the burden of their differences. He rode closer, studying the proud way she sat, her blouse now neatly tucked again, her hair twisted up and pinned at the back of her head. She had to look proper when she returned to the train, and he wanted it that way too. He remembered the remark the man in Billie's saloon had made about her, and he wanted none of that kind of talk. When they made this public, it would be in the right place at the right time, in a way that would create the least gossip. Each of them was worried about the pain the other might suffer at the hands of the public because of their relationship.

“Well, Miss Landers, when you become my wife, I am going to have to show you that things can get done without all that bribing and scheming. Maybe your father thought that was the only way to do it, but I happen to disagree. I might not understand all the ins and outs of your little empire, but I understand human nature, and I understand right and wrong.”

She shook her head, smiling sadly. “You make it sound so simple, Colt.”

“It
can
be simple.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Just remember what we said, about our love getting us through this.”