Renegade Most Wanted

chapter Nine



If Billy and Matt wanted courting, let them have a taste of it. No Suede men, no matter how dear they were to her, would decide her future.

She stepped toward the barn door, trying not to cringe at the sight of Woody coming toward her in a near gallop across the barn.

Emma steadied the grin on her lips when Woody swooped her up in a bone-jarring two-step that spun her close enough to Matt that her skirt brushed the crate he stood upon.

She laughed out loud as though Woody had said something clever; she tossed her hair, she lifted her chin. She looked Woody in the eye, holding his gaze when she wanted to duck her head to avoid watching the sweat bead up on his forehead.

With the next spin past Matt’s crate, Emma dared a glance up at him. A red flush crept up his neck, but his song didn’t waver.

Woody stepped on her toe. Emma closed her eyes and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

When the pain receded, her chest swelled in a relieved sigh. She opened her eyes to see a moist grin spread over Woody’s face. She hadn’t intended her heaving bosom to be a seduction, but her partner’s palms grew damp.

Woody bounced her this way and that. The soles of her shoes grew warm with hopping and twirling to one end of the barn, then skipping and bounding to the other.

Coming once more toward Matt, she glanced up. The red blush had darkened and spread over his face. The beginnings of a scowl tightened his lips, but he kept up his lively tune.

Lord help her, she didn’t know if showing Matt how wrong he had been was worth the pain. Another turn about the barn might do her in.

In a moment she would have to set Woody straight. His hand had begun to creep up her ribs in ill-considered boldness.

On the next pass by Matt, Woody slowed a bit.

“Why, Mr. Vance, you dance like a dream,” Emma had time to say. Did Matt hear the sigh that was truly a gasp for breath? “I could go on all night long.”

“In time, Mrs. Suede,” Woody said with a hiccup. “I’d be pleased to make all your dreams come true.”

Emma heard Matt skip a word, pick it up and then lose it again.

The instant they twirled into a shadowy corner, Woody’s fingers twitched upward, too close to where they had no right to be.

She swatted his hand. The slap and his grunt of surprise were muffled by a hoot on Willie’s jug.

His boot landed hard on her wounded toe.

Pain buckled her knees, but Woody caught her around her waist. At last he had the good sense to look mortified. Words of apology bumbled about in his mouth, but he could seem to get only one or two of them out.

Matt leaped off the stage and dived into the shadow. He swept her out of Woody’s hold and into his own. Then he swung her away from her would-be swain and pressed her close to his chest.

“Go find yourself a single lady, Vance. My wife is going to be busy for the rest of your life.”

* * *

Woodrow Vance might never know how close he had come to being maimed. If it hadn’t been for the truly stricken look on his face and the swiftness with which he had relinquished Emma, he would have been eating barn floor for dinner and no teeth to chew it with.

It was a lucky break for Cousin Billy, too, that he had picked that moment for some private courting and was not in the barn.

Matt settled Emma in his arms and stomped out of the barn. He snugged her in good and tight and carried her toward the creek.

Closer to the creek crickets and tumbling water became the night music. Party sounds seemed a long way off.

At the creek Matt turned north, walking near the edge of the water. He walked for a long time with his boots squishing in the mud. When he found a secluded spot, he set Emma down, then sat beside her.

“How’s your toe?”

“It’s screaming at me good and proper.” He touched the toe of her shoe. “Ouch!”

“I’m so sorry, Emma.” He took her shoe in his lap and eased it off her foot. “I never should have said what I did. Even if Billy thinks it’s best…even if I think it, it’s not my place to choose a man for you.”

She winced when the slipper passed over her toe. “I will be busy for the rest of Woody’s life,” Emma said, a little smile teasing the corner of her lips. “Heaven only knows, it will take a stouter woman than I am to dodge his feet.”

A big fat full moon shone down on them. It glinted off the water and played games in Emma’s hair where it fell full and free down her back. The ribbon had disappeared some time ago. No doubt it was being tromped on by dozens of party-going boots in the barn.

Life was perfect here in the deep quiet of the night. Let the party go on until dawn—he was where he wanted to be.

“Here, darlin’, roll up your skirt and give me your foot.”

He touched her ankle, then slid his palm up her calf. She must not have felt that this was a seduction, because she let him continue halfway up her thigh. When he found the top of her stocking, he rolled it down her leg, easily over the ankle and just whispering over the injured toe.

“Move toward the water just a little…that’s it.” He lowered her foot into the creek and watched the water swirl about her calf. “That ought to help the swelling some.”

“Feels like heaven,” she murmured, then took off her other shoe.

She began to roll down her stocking, but he placed his hand over hers. She allowed his knuckles to glide slowly against her thigh, so that must not have been seduction, either.

“Take off your shoes, Matt. It’s awfully nice and cool.”

He did and put his feet in the water.

She kicked her legs. Droplets tumbling in midair caught freckles of moonlight.

“Oh! Look at that!” She pointed her finger at the sky. “A shooting star!”

He couldn’t look at the sky, though—he couldn’t look away from her face. How would he live the rest of his life not seeing that smile?

He did the one thing he could do in that moment, what the moonlight and stars demanded of him.

He kissed her.

Her mouth felt like home and heaven all in one. When he pulled away he didn’t see anger or broken promises. He saw starlight.

Emma pulled her feet out of the water. She straddled his thighs, cupped his face in her hands and kissed him back.

“I think you better stop now, darlin’, if you want me to abide by that agreement.”

“I think I better not.”

She pushed him backward on the springy grass, sitting on top of him, kissing him again, but only with her eyes.

In his lifetime he’d never imagined a kiss like that. Yes, he felt it on his lips, his face, his neck and lower, but more than that he felt it in his soul. She’d seen into every dark corner, turned over every secret and wanted him, anyway.

And she did want him, even if she didn’t want to. But enough to leave her dreams behind?

Before he thought any further on that, she started to unbutton his shirt. She slid it off his shoulders, so he eased it off his arms.

Even still, she kissed with her eyes, watching his chest while he tried to breathe. At last she looked away and stared at the sky.

She hadn’t touched him, but he’d been laid claim to. From this night on there would be no other woman for him. It didn’t matter where he was or where she was—there would be only Emma.

The night was peaceful in the way that only crickets and frogs could make it. A splash of water or the wind in the grass only made the land more tranquil.

After a long moment Emma sighed and looked down. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a face as beautiful. And her hands, worn with work and caring for others, snatched his soul when they began to pop open the tiny buttons on the front of her shirt.

With the buttons open she slipped the garment off. She untied a ribbon on her shift. There was a whisper of cloth on flesh when she took that off, too. She wriggled out of the dress and tossed it aside.

There she sat on top of him naked to the night breeze. Moonlight did what he didn’t dare. It caressed her breasts with soft light and sparkled over her nipples, touching them, pebbling them.

His fingers hurt, his jaw ached. Then she reached between her thighs and opened the buttons of his pants. She tugged, so he lifted his hips.

“Seduce me, Matt,” she whispered, and trailed one finger down his chest.

“You know I can’t do that.” But he did touch her. With both his hands. Her heart beat triple time under his fingers.

“I was angry when I made you promise that. We don’t have much time left.” She rubbed her fingertips in a circle around his nipples, so he did the same to her.

She moaned something, maybe his name. “Please, be my husband for a little while.”

“I can’t, not for a little while. It’s got to be for good.”

“I can’t give you for good, Matt. You can’t give it to me, either.”

Matt put his arms about her and rolled, setting her beside him then drawing them both down, side by side in the grass.

He leaned up on his elbow. Moonlight kissed Emma. It twinkled her cheeks, laughed along her neck, then stroked shimmers across her chest and ribs. It pooled in the hollow between her hips, then fingered down to tease her mound of woman’s hair. It adored her like the luckiest of lovers. He wished life would allow him to do the same.

“What if I stayed?”

“Don’t tease me.”

“If I told you I would, we’d have a big whoop-de-do over it and ruin this.” He gestured toward the water, the sky and their naked bodies.

She scrunched up on her shoulder, looking at him, eye to eye. “We would. If you said those words, our fight would wake the children who are likely tucked in bed at the party by now.”

“If I asked you to come to California?”

“That would wake the folks in Dodge.” She stroked his hair, his cheek with the back of her hand. “If I asked you to make love to me, just forget about what’s coming, what then?”

“Could you be so cruel, darlin’? To take my heart, then toss it back to me when I’m leaving?” Lord, he hadn’t wanted her to well up. A fight might have been better. He dashed the moisture off her cheek. “Looks like we’re at an impasse. You can’t go my way and I can’t go yours.”

“We have tonight. Let’s call a truce. Just this once, we put it all aside. What if we lie here until morning with nothing between us but moonlight.”

“I suppose we can have that fight tomorrow.”

She lay back on the grass. He did the same. Emma reached for his hand at the same instant he reached for hers.

* * *

Back home an hour before dawn and still in her party dress, Emma stood in her kitchen. Set out on the table, slowly plumping in the lamplight, were six loaves of rising dough. She gave each one a punch in the center and watched while the warm dough folded in on itself.

Was she cruel? Maybe even selfish? If she looked at things through Matt’s eyes, maybe.

It had been a relief last night to be able to set things aside for a while, but now a new day was about to come up with the sun and problems had to be faced.

From the kitchen window she saw the dugout door open. Matt stepped out carrying a lantern in his fist with a shirt draped over his elbow.

The lantern swung with his stride, setting a circle of light swaying over the ground from the dugout to the pump in the yard.

Cruel was having to watch the man she could nearly taste on her tongue splashing water over his bare chest.

Cruel was watching him dip his hand into the bucket he had hauled up, with chest muscles pulling and stretching in the glow of the lamp. It was watching while he dumped water over his head, then shook his shoulder-kissing hair into the still inky dawn.

Cruel was asking her to leave the only home that had ever truly been hers. Making a choice like that would rip her heart in two. The very thought of it made her stomach queasy. She cared about Matt, more deeply than she had ever cared for anyone, but her four walls were her dream come true.

Without a doubt, between the two of them, Matt was the cruel one.

Emma dropped a dab of grease into the frying pan heating on the stove. She watched it pop and turn clear, spreading thinly over the black bottom of the skillet.

It might be only days until he left. She would have to hurry and make the new dress she had promised Lucy.

Or take her good time. But that would make her selfish. With death riding into town, Matt would have to go, and soon.

* * *

With a full day of chores stretched out before him, Matt stepped out of the dugout. The moon had set but stars still dotted the dark sky—the same ones that had twinkled on Emma’s bare skin the whole night long.

A coyote howled far out beyond the creek. Matt’s boots crunched the dried-out earth when he walked toward the well, but other than that, all the world slept, silent and still.

All the world but Emma, that is. He watched her through the window while he approached the well. She still had on her party dress and hadn’t yet done up her hair. Even from this distance he could see a sprig or two of grass wedged in with the curls.

She had to be mad as a pistol at him for asking her, again, to give up the thing most important to her.

Watching her move about the kitchen, turning something over in the skillet and stir something else, made his heart trip up inside him.

This was the woman most men only dreamed of. What man in town wouldn’t give his best boots to be able to stand here in the dark and watch while she opened the oven door and slid in something to be baked?

Which one of them wouldn’t give half a lifetime to be offered her body? Was he ten times over a fool not to take what she clearly wanted to give?

Matt lowered the bucket into the well and drew it up again full of fresh, morning-crisp water. He dumped some over his head, then shook it to clear out the image of Emma lying chaste but naked beside him.

He’d longed to taste her flesh when the moon had spun its magic on it. And now, again, when the heat from the stove blushed her cheeks pink.

Matt shrugged on his shirt, then tied his bandanna around his neck. He’d better feed the horses before his thoughts got the best of him. In another second he might find himself bursting through the kitchen door to take his wife right there on the table that she was cleaning with a soapy cloth.

If he had half as much sense as Red, which wasn’t much these days, he’d say goodbye tomorrow. The house was finished and there was no longer anything to hold him here.

He ought to give her a long, hard kiss farewell first thing after chores. He’d do it for sure, if Emma hadn’t promised to make Lucy a new dress.

* * *

“Mama Emma, when will you make my new dress?”

Emma lifted Lucy to the seat of the wagon, then checked to make sure Red had loaded the large bucket and the small one in the back along with four barrels of water.

“Not today. It might take most of the afternoon to get the trees watered.”

It had been ten hot days since the last rain. If she didn’t make the effort to water the saplings by hand they would dry out more quickly than the petticoat pinned on the clothesline.

As far as she could see, the sky stretched away with as pure a blue as she’d ever seen. The appearance of a big black cloud would be welcome. How many hours of work wouldn’t a good downpour save?

“Well, then.” Emma gathered up her skirt in one hand and grabbed hold of the wagon’s wooden seat with the other to pull herself up. “I suppose new Mr. Hoppety Tree is ready for a good long drink, don’t you?”

“Maybe after that he’ll grow an apple.”

“A big fat red one,” Emma pronounced cheerfully to cover the sorrow that nipped at her heart knowing that Lucy wouldn’t be here to eat that apple.

Emma clicked to the team. They turned toward the barn door, then set out at a slow pace toward the grove of tender young trees.

“Step carefully, ladies. We don’t want to overturn the water.”

“Do horsies know words?”

“Maybe one or two.”

“Fluffy and Princess know lots of words.”

“They don’t know stay outside,” Emma pointed out.

Lucy sighed and spread her palms. “They know it—they just don’t like it.”

Emma touched Lucy’s chin and lifted her face. “It’s your job to make them like it.”

“Just like you make me like to wear a bonnet?”

Hopefully, Lucy would have more luck. Emma tugged and straightened the pink bow under the child’s chin. “Yes, something like that.”

“They won’t—oh! Mama Emma, look!” Lucy bounced up and pointed her finger at a fat red cow. “A cow got inside the fence!”

Cut again! Lands, Lawrence Pendragon was a persistent man. Did he think he could wear her down with a snip of wire?

At least only one cow had gotten through and hadn’t noticed yet how sweet and green the young trees were.

“Wait here in the wagon, baby, while I shoo the pesky thing away.”

With each step she took, parched grass cracked underfoot. Far off, the baked horizon shimmered in waves of dry heat.

Luckily the bovine didn’t need more than a well-placed whack with a shovel on its rump to set it scurrying for the open range.

Emma lifted Lucy from the front of the wagon, then set her down in the back.

“Take the little bucket and fill up the big one for me,” she said. “We’d better get this finished soon so that Papa or Uncle Billy can come back and mend the fence before supper.”

“Okay, Mama.” Lucy filled her bucket three times, dumping it into the big one.

Emma lifted the large pail with both hands. The weight of it cut the iron handle into her palm. After watering only five trees, her dress had begun to stick to her sweating skin.

Red welts chafed the creases of her palms. She’d have to hide them from Matt since he’d use her aching hands as proof that she needed a husband to take care of the heavy work.

All she really needed was to remember to bring along Matt’s big leather gloves.

“Can my new dress be blue?”

“Blue with flowers, or pure blue?” she called over her shoulder, nearly breathless as she dumped the water into the dirt well ringing a sapling.

A hired man to work the place might be a good idea, although he’d probably expect to be fed on a daily basis. A husband, even a hungry one, wouldn’t require a salary.

“Blast,” she muttered under her breath. She wouldn’t come around to that way of thinking, no matter how much less it would cost. At least a hired man could be let go when she didn’t need him anymore, and he wouldn’t expect to sleep in the house.

“Blue with apples.”

It might take some time to find blue apple fabric. The thought snuck up from the back of her mind and pleased her before she had a chance to think better of it.

Precious time that she could use to adjust to Matt’s leaving. She could use it to soak up the sight of him sitting tall on Thunder’s back, the way he did early each morning, looking out over the homestead as if he was judging what kind of day it might be. Most times he turned to look at her standing on the porch with a grin shining on his face.

Matt loved this life. It showed in his smile and the flash of sudden humor that came to him all at once for no reason that she could think of. Any time of day she heard it in his song, whether he sang to the horses or the nail he was hammering into a fence.

If she took each stitch of Lucy’s dress nice and slowly she would have time to dream about what it would be like if he came to her in the night.

Precious time, but dangerous.

Each moment that Matt delayed his departure brought Hawker closer. And delay was far too easy.

It had been his idea, a week back with Lucy sitting on his lap, rocking beside the fireplace while Emma mended his shirt, that she should sew the child a new dress before the trip to San Francisco.

She’d been to town since then, twice, and each time she’d “forgotten” to purchase the fabric for the dress. Maybe it was because the sewing of that dress was the last promise to be kept. It was the only thing holding Matt here.

What foolishness. They both knew the dress was an excuse. She was the one holding Matt here. She and the home they were building…together.

She could see him now far in the distance, clearing the firebreak with Billy.

Emma closed her eyes and tried to picture a new house in San Francisco. She had never lived in a big city; neither had Matt. Maybe she ought to consider it. If she agreed to go, they might all be safe…and homesick.

More foolishness! Her roots were here, deep in her own soil.

Fanciful feelings aside, she wanted him to go…truly. It had been her plan all along—they’d agreed to it.

With half a breath of encouragement, and a kiss for luck, Matt would stay and take his chances with Hawker. He’d made that clear on the night of the party, but she would end up as dead as Matt with the guilt of his murder on her heart.

Emma brought the bucket back for Lucy to fill again.

“After the noon meal tomorrow, I’ll go find you some blue apple fabric.”

This would be the quickest dress she’d ever made. The times were precious and dangerous—she couldn’t do a thing to change that. But she wouldn’t make them selfish times.

To keep Matt from staying beyond what was safe she’d sew until her fingers grew raw.