“No.” She buried her nose in his armpit, hiding her face from him. “Now if you was to ask me am I hungry, the answer would be different.”
“Supper’s long over,” he told her, grinning as he got his sense back. He sat up, pulling her to a sitting position beside him. “I think my horse took off for parts unknown. We’ll have to walk back to the house.”
“Will your folks all be abed?” she asked, reaching for her clothes.
“Yep,” he assured her. “Curled up and asleep, just as we’ll be after I find us something to eat in the kitchen.”
“I’m a sight. I need to get clean and I can’t be going into your house halfway through the night. Maybe you can bring me out a plate of something before I head home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Well, as to that.” She squirmed, looking guilty. “I been using a little place that sits next to the river out east of Eclipse.”
Heat prickles danced up Deacon’s spine and stirred the hair on his neck. “It have a copse of cottonwood trees next to the water?”
“Yep. That’s where I got my patch-up material. You know who owns the place?” She frowned at him. “I asked Hiram about it and he said it was abandoned and me staying there would be all right.”
“It sounds like you found Annie’s house. Is it fit to live in?” Deacon asked, disbelief warring with a feeling of inevitability.
“It is since Possum, Ketchum and me put a roof on it.”
Deacon snorted. “I have my doubts that as talented as your pets are, either of them can climb a ladder or nail a board.”
“The two galoots I partner with aren’t pets,” she corrected him. “We’re a team. I cut the logs but I didn’t have a ladder. I had to stand on Possum’s back just to get to the roof to rig a pulley system. When I was ready, I yelled ‘hoist’, and Ketchum and Possum pulled on their end of the rope. We did it. We got the logs to the top of the roof and I notched ’em and nailed ’em into the cabin walls. I told Hiram if the owner ever gets around to checking on the place, I’ve left it better than it was.”
She squinted at him suspiciously. “You the owner?”
“It belonged to my wife, Annie. We lived there after we married.” Though her living in Annie’s house should have surprised him, it didn’t. But her fixing a caved-in roof made his sense of protectiveness seem silly. Hell, she didn’t need him. She was an Amazon, a woman who didn’t need anyone.
“Well, you should take better care of her things,” Miri huffed. “Did you not love her?”
Deacon heard the censure in the question and struggled to share long-hidden thoughts of Annie.
“I think I buried most of what we were and what we might have been with her body.” An unrealized barrier in his mind opened, flooding his brain with images of him and Annie when they’d lived in the river house.
“Yes,” he said gruffly. “I loved her. I’m ashamed I neglected her property. I guess I didn’t want to face the fact that she was dead and it was because of me.”
“What happened?”
Haltingly he told Miri, letting himself remember for the first time in years.
“I was fresh from the seminary, first-time minister and newly married. I thought I was cock of the walk, preaching fire and brimstone in the pulpit every Sunday.”
He stopped, appalled as he looked back at the magnitude of his stupidity.
“I don’t imagine whatever happened was because of your preaching.” Miri rubbed his shoulder and tried to reassure him.
“I wish that were true,” he told her. “But had I not decided to pit my strength and influence against the scum in town, Annie’d still be alive.” With the zeal of youth and stubborn need to win, he’d used the power of his pulpit to preach against the outlaws tainting the town.
“Ed Johnson wasn’t my favorite sheriff back then but I went to him, asking him to stand up to the thugs who were terrorizing the business owners.”
“Now I know that didn’t work. There’s good sheriffs and bad sheriffs and then there’s Ed.” Miri delivered her opinion using Beauregard’s distinctive twang.
“One of my parishioner’s daughters was accosted at the general store. Three of Dodge Henley’s riders roughed her up and scared her to death. I would have been better off bracing the men myself. Instead, I preached against them, encouraging the church members to run the riffraff out of town. I should have kept my mouth shut and moved us to another town. I didn’t and she paid for it.”
Miri pulled his head down, laying it on her shoulder, petting his back and comforting him as he told her about how the thieves and murderers making up the underbelly of Abilene had conspired to rid themselves of the fiery minister. They’d lured Reverend McCallister from home with a false message from a member of the church.
“After the filthy animals raped Annie, they cut her throat and pinned a Bible to the floor next to her.” His throat clogged with rage and unrelieved grief as he tried to steady his voice.
“Ed Johnson was a coward then same as now and it didn’t matter that he was Abilene’s sheriff and it was his job. He flat out said if he hunted Annie’s killers he’d end up dead and he wouldn’t do it. So Charlie, Sam and I tracked ’em down. And I executed ’em. It didn’t bring Annie back and it didn’t make me feel any better.” He let out a gust of breath, heart-sick at his memories.
“But the heathens won’t be hurtin’ and killin’ any more girls, so you did what you had to do. You brought the men to justice, Deacon.” Miri planted a kiss on his forehead before reaching for her clothes. “You’re a good man. I never doubted it. Now let’s get back to the McCallister house so I can get back to my house, which is really your house, which makes me living there just plain strange.”
Deacon stopped pulling on his denims, stepped out of them and picked her up, striding naked with her toward the water.
“What are you doing?” she protested. “I’m too heavy for you to be—”
“You said you wanted to get clean. So do I.” He walked to the edge of the creek and into the fast-moving water that came midway to his thighs. It ran straight down from the mountains and was crystal clear and cold as ice. She made a splash when he dropped her. He returned to shore to fumble a bar of soap from his saddle bag before returning.
She was beautiful, mad as a she-wolf and shivering from the shock of the cold water. Remorselessly, he lathered his hands, gave her the soap and began scrubbing her body.
“You can do the same for me,” he instructed her.
He winced when she rubbed the soap over his chest and pulled on the hair she found there.
“Ouch,” he complained.
“Don’t you
ouch
me, preacher man. This water’s freezing.” She washed him, he scrubbed her and before they headed for shore, she sank under the surface, wetting her hair and reemerging to soap and lather it before rinsing again.
Then, paying him no heed, she stalked from the creek, shivering in the night air as she scurried to the blanket and her clothes.
“Use that cloth you wrap around your bosom to dry off. You won’t be needing that again.”
“And did you think no one will notice my big chest bouncing all over the place when I cash in my prisoners?” She paused in rubbing her hair dry to look at him quizzically, the jut of her jaw telling him she was prepared to tell him to go to hell.
He pulled a clean shirt from his saddlebag and dressed her in it, lifting her wet hair over the collar and buttoning it up to her neck. Then he smiled and ran his hands up her bare torso under the shirt, cupping her breasts in his hands.
“After we cash in Ned and collect on the plates let’s try a different kind of client.” He wasn’t ready for this discussion but sometimes circumstances beat out good timing. He improvised quickly, deciding to approach their partnership as something that was a fact to be taken for granted.
“I can see that detective work is something you have a knack for. I’m thinking that there are plenty of government agencies that can use both of us.”
Her belligerent stance relaxed into interest as she listened, looking pleased at what he suggested. Deacon had no idea if he could sell their services to the Pinkertons or join the army of undercover operatives the Texas Rangers had working in the state. He did know that he wasn’t hitting the trail, sleeping on the ground, riding herd on petty thieves or chasing dangerous murderers any longer—and neither was she.
Miri hid her smile as Deacon planned her future. Aside from his high-handed assumption that his say-so was the last word on the subject, he had good ideas.
She’d thought more than once that it would be exciting to work for the Pinkertons. Landing a job with the Texas Rangers though seemed way out of her reach. But then again, Hiram’s lawman friend Logan Doyle might be able to put in a good word for them. And Deacon seemed to think her dress-up skills would be something both agencies would want to employ. She was impatient to get on with their future endeavors and pointed out the obvious as she saw it.
“I think Ned has trouble telling the truth so there’s no reason to think he did this time. We haven’t found the plates yet, and he’s hunkered down and comfortable on the Hawks ranch. We’re no closer to closing this case than we were before we questioned him.”
She was startled when Deacon disagreed. “I think he’s telling the truth. You followed him all summer. He kept going back to the Pleasure Dome. Who knows how he got hold of the printing plates, but he’s creative. I’m betting they’re exactly where he said, in the attic.”
She had a nagging feeling she’d missed something important. She tried to think back to the customers coming and going at the Pleasure Dome.
“The one I remember real well was Crispin. He visited on a regular basis but I don’t know why. His carnal tastes ran in a different direction from most of the folks at the Pleasure Dome.”
Deacon slid his arm around her shoulders and she planted a kiss on his lips just to make sure he understood that she could. He returned the kiss, caressing her bare rump with his hand as he penetrated her lips with his tongue.
Then he released her and stepped back with a laugh, grabbing up his pants and stepping into them before she could take him back to the blanket.
“Hungry, remember,” he reminded her.
Miri gathered up her wig, her hat and the sheet of material she used to bind her breasts—all remnants of her Beau disguise.
“Took me awhile to get Beau’s character straight. Not to mention the fact that I’ve got lawmen who trust him to bring in the wanteds.” She wasn’t quite certain what he thought she was going to do with her life until they negotiated some new clients. But she knew. She had money to earn and outlaws to catch.
“I have responsibilities, Deacon,” she told him. “I can’t neglect my duties though it would be nice to have a breather now and then.”
“What duties? Who are you responsible to?” He frowned at her.
She grimaced and shrugged. Best to get it out now so he didn’t say she didn’t warn him. ’Course, it wasn’t warning but pride in her voice when she said, “I have children.”
He blinked, his brow wrinkled. He buttoned his shirt slowly, watching her so intently she fidgeted. Then he asked, “How many?”
“Seven.” She cleared her throat, surprised at how nervous she felt.
He didn’t say anything. Miri finished lacing up her moccasins and stood. Deacon held out his hand.
“Ready?”
“Don’t you want to know how I came to have seven young’uns?” His apparent disinterest peeved her.
“Well,” he drawled, scooping her up in his arms before she knew what to expect. He was midway across the stream with her holding tight around his neck when he continued. “I figure there’s a good story in it. I know you didn’t birth one let alone seven. If you say they’re yours, you must mean you’re paying for ’em since I know you’re not tending them.”
She gaped at him as they reached the other side and he brushed his lips across hers before setting her on the ground.
“Did you think you were the only one who can figure?”
Miri blushed. Sometimes she was like Ned—a mite high in the instep thinking she was smarter than folks. She couldn’t help it, because for the most part, she was. Guess Deacon was an exception to the rule in more than one way.
“Well, now that you know, you see how it is,” she told him, shaking the wig and hat at him. “I can’t just up and quit being Beauregard. I’ve got kids to feed.”
“How long since you’ve sent money?” Deacon was nosey and seemed determined to ask the wrong questions.
“Why?” Her business was her business and she didn’t feel right about telling it to him. Especially her money business.
“Because if you get your ass shot off going after outlaws or your throat cut challenging a pack of Indian braves to a fight, I don’t want the kids left starving. So in case you decide to be a fool and end up dead, how much and where do I send?”
“Oh.” How was that for a show of her smarts? It was all she could think to say. There was no laughter in his expression, no teasing as he turned her to face him.
“I’m pushing thirty-four and no prize. I was married once and my big mouth got my wife killed. I never thought I’d want to marry again, but I was wrong. I want to spend the rest of my days with you.”
“I said we could be partners.” She no more got that out than he had his answer ready.