Banner O'Brien Read online

  Banner caught hold of one of his arms, afraid and confused. “Adam?”

  Her husband faced her, ran one hand through his hair. “Did Marshal Peters have any idea what happened?”

  “He said that they were probably smuggled in from Canada—the Chinese men, I mean—and dumped overboard when a government ship came. D-Do you think Mr. Royce—”

  “I know it was Royce.”

  “If he’s a smuggler, and a murderer, why hasn’t he been arrested?”

  Adam made a bitter, exasperated sound. “His money is good, O’Brien. By laying it across the right palms and throwing the occasional load of contraband overboard, he gets by.”

  Distractedly, Banner lifted an index finger to trace the stubbled outline of her husband’s jaw. “Why on earth do the Chinese take such a risk? Why would they even board a ship when—”

  Adam caught her hand, caressed the inside of her wrist with a gentle thumb. “They’re desperate, O’Brien. They want to work in the territories, join their families. They not only take the chance that they’ll be flung into the sound, they pay a hundred dollars and more for the privilege.”

  Banner tugged, trying to free her hand, but the effort was gently forestalled. “You aren’t going to tell me where you’ve been, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” If he wasn’t going to talk about his woman, she wasn’t going to explain about Sean and her divorce again. Let Adam wonder, as she wondered. “You need a bath.”

  Adam laughed and pulled and Banner found herself imprisoned against the lean, forbidding length of him. “I know. You’ll help me, won’t you—Mrs. Corbin?”

  Mrs. Corbin. Was he mocking her? “Of course I won’t help you. You’re a grown man, perfectly capable of—”

  He silenced her with a hungry, consuming kiss.

  Banner’s traitorous heart quickened within her, and her blood raced through her veins like lava. Damn him for daring to do this, she thought wildly. Damn him for turning to her after a rendezvous with his mountain woman!

  But was she, herself, any better? The awful truth was that she wasn’t. She not only wasn’t resisting him, she was enjoying this fierce, quiet travesty of her pride.

  She even helped him unhitch the team from his wagon.

  * * *

  The steam rose up around Adam’s bathtub in clouds not quite dense enough to hide his blatantly masculine frame—or Banner’s blush.

  He laughed at her, first with his eyes and then with his mouth. One long foot was propped on the rim of the tub, toes wriggling.

  “Why don’t you join me, O’Brien?”

  Banner did not know why she remained in the bathing room, his towel clutched to her bosom. It would have been easy to flee and he could hardly have given chase. “My name is not O’Brien,” she reminded him.

  “You will always be O’Brien to me, Shamrock.”

  Wounded, Banner lowered her eyes. “I-I hope you don’t mind, but I signed the papers, so that Marshal Peters could have those poor men buried.”

  Suddenly Adam stiffened. Water spilled over the sides of the stationary bathtub, with its complicated system of pipes and faucets and its steam-operated boiler. “Good God,” he breathed, rising like a phoenix and sending water everywhere. “You didn’t view the bodies?!”

  The reminder made bile scald in the back of Banner’s throat. She covered her mouth with one hand, just for a moment, and then lowered it again and squared her shoulders. She didn’t know what was more alarming—Adam’s anger or his naked, wonderously sculpted body.

  “I am a doctor,” she said, in a shaky voice. “And you weren’t here to do it.”

  There was a barb hidden in Banner’s words, and it caught on Adam and deflated him so that he sank back into the steamy tub, glaring at either his big toe or the spigot that allowed water to flow in from the black, kettlelike boiler.

  “It really wasn’t so bad,” she lied. “After all, in medical school, we had to—”

  Adam grimaced and held up one hand. “Enough, O’Brien. Enough.”

  “That is a remarkable bathtub.”

  He leaned back and laughed, loving her with his eyes if not his heart. “It is, isn’t it? Jeff brought it back from one of his voyages. Pirate’s plunder from some brothel, no doubt.”

  Frowning, forgetting the peril of such a move, Banner drew nearer, peering between Adam’s feet into the soapy depths of the water. “How do you empty it?”

  Adam grinned and reached to pull a plug from somewhere in the floor of the heavy iron vat. There was a loud gurgling sound, and then a rush of water traversing pipes. The waterline was getting dangerously low.

  Banner leaped backward, but not quickly enough. Adam wrapped strong, unerring fingers around her outer thigh and drew her back. She toppled unceremoniously over the side of the tub and into what remained of the water.

  Infuriated, she flailed and fought, but his muscleroped forearms closed around her and his mouth nibbled at the rage-pinkened shell of her right ear.

  Banner trembled and then gave one more valiant, if quite hopeless, struggle.

  Adam’s tongue flicked at the inside of her ear, sending all sorts of tempestuous feelings from that point to her breasts and her abdomen and the secret place. Her dress and shoes were soaked and he was hard beneath her. Ready.

  Banner struggled again, only to be easily restrained. In a swift movement, he was suddenly above her, astraddle of her hips, his eyes smoldering with laughter and passion.

  “Now, we’ll see,” he said cryptically.

  “See what?” snapped Banner, who was outraged and embarrassed and all too willing to surrender.

  Adam delayed his answer, opening the buttons of her saturated dress, unlacing the small blue ribbons that held her new camisole—a gift from Melissa—in place. Almost reverently, though he was still smiling, he bent to greet each bared breast with a kiss.

  Banner moaned. “S-See what?” she insisted.

  “Whether or not you’re wearing drawers, Mrs. Corbin,” he answered, pulling her dress down over her hips.

  Banner squeezed her eyes shut, and her face flamed at the soft chafing of his laughter.

  “So,” he said, in gruff triumph, “there is some wifely obedience in you after all, Little Rebel.”

  Had passion not sustained her, Banner Corbin would have died of mortification.

  * * *

  She was sleeping, still naked, still glowing from the warmth of their joining and the shared bath that followed. Tenderly, Adam covered Banner and then bent to kiss the cinnamon wisp at her temple.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She stirred slightly, but did not awaken.

  Turning away, Adam dressed and then added wood to the fire on the hearth. He was brushing his hair when he spotted the crumpled wad of paper half-hidden behind the foot of a chair leg.

  Frowning, he bent, retrieved the paper, smoothed it with his hands. It was the marriage certificate.

  With a pang, Adam glanced at the sweetly curved creature sleeping so peacefully in his bed. Judging by the condition of that document of matrimony, she had not been without doubts herself.

  He shrugged, read the words that would bind them to each other for always, as far as he was concerned, and smiled. They would make a life together, despite their differences, building on fire and passion if not reason and logic.

  It wouldn’t be the first such union, nor the last—but it would be among the best.

  * * *

  Banner sat up with a start, alone in the shadowy mixture of night and firelight. Adam’s side of the bed was cool and empty.

  Slowly, full cognizance returned. Adam was home from the mountain. They’d made love in the bathtub and again, here in the bed—

  She sank back to the pillows, pulled the covers up to her chin, and sighed. Several hours must have passed since their furious joinings, but she still felt sated and warm.

  Banner stretched, like a contented, feline creature, and then marveled that her brea
sts still remembered the magical ravaging of Adam’s mouth. Cupping her hands behind her head, she allowed the sleep-warmed, passion-plundered globes to rise free of the blankets, their tips straining. Adam, she thought. Adam.

  As if in answer to her unspoken cry, the bedroom door creaked open. “Shamrock?”

  She lay still as he entered the room, lit the lamp at the bedside, drew in his breath at the sight of her bounty.

  The bed shifted as Adam sat down. He was fully dressed, his hair and skin fragrant with some muted, musky cologne, his blue eyes possessing the breasts and their crests with quiet greed.

  One of his hands rose to gently pull Banner’s hands from beneath her head and stretch them high, imprisoning them against the pillows.

  She whimpered as he lowered his head to one reaching confection while tormenting the other with caresses and a plucking motion of his fingers.

  This was a rite as old as mankind; Banner knew that. But it seemed so special, so new, because it had never been good before. Now, oh, now, it was excruciatingly, deliciously, wonderously good.

  Banner writhed as he enjoyed a banquet freely served, crooning his name, feeling and reveling in the rising, savage need of his fulfillment and her own.

  Between greedy spates of suckling and tantalizingly slow samplings, he drove her into a fevered, mindless state with words. He ordered her to leave her drawers behind again and gruffly detailed the reasons why.

  The warm scandal of it drove Banner’s hips to rise and fall with the meter of her reeling pulse. He drew back from her breasts but did not release her hands.

  “Come to me,” she pleaded, without pride or shame.

  Slowly, his blue eyes plundering her breasts just as his mouth had done, Adam shook his head. “I’m not getting undressed, O’Brien,” he said. “Dinner is in five minutes and I’m hungry.”

  With his right hand, he tugged the blankets down, until Banner was completely revealed to him, her wrists still caught together high above her head. He touched her knee, his fingers doing a fire dance from there to the curve of her thigh and then the silky nest that veiled a pulsing, aching bud.

  “Yes,” she breathed, as his fingers questioned her.

  Banner’s back arched of its own accord as he claimed her. Her breath came in raspy whimpers, and her teeth were bared in a fierce and primitive surrender.

  Having no choice, she gave herself up to the business of passion.

  Chapter Eight

  KATHERINE CORBIN LOWERED HER LASHES AND HID HER smile behind the rim of her teacup. It was no great mental feat discerning what had delayed dinner. Banner was glowing and Adam frowned at the food spread on the table as though he resented it for existing.

  There was an expectant silence as the two approached the gathering. Melissa set her own cup down with a nervous rattle and Keith sat back in his chair, lips curved into a grin, arms folded across his chest. Even Clarence King, who was going back to Oregon in the morning, stopped staring at his plate to look up.

  They paused, and then Adam put one gently possessive hand to Banner’s elbow and announced, in comically formal tones, “Ladies and gentlemen—my wife.”

  A communal shout of glee went up, seeming to ring in the teardrop crystals of the chandelier over the table, and then there was a riot of hugs, kisses, and handshakes.

  Katherine joined in with exuberance.

  * * *

  Sean Malloy paused outside the south entrance to Erickson’s Bar, mentally counting the coins resting in the mended pocket of his coat. A snowy wind stung his ears and ate its way through his boots to his toes.

  Inside the famous saloon there was music, warmth, free food, whiskey. Out of work since the day his ship had docked in Portland, Sean hungered for all those things and more.

  He stepped inside, awed. Completely outlining the enormous room was a mahogany bar, polished to an impossible shine. A painting as tall as Sean himself showed plump, nude women being ravaged by legions of Roman soldiers.

  Sean scowled. Thanks to Banner, it had been long enough since he’d tossed up a skirt, and that was a fact.

  His attention was drawn to an ornate concert stage, which was edged with gas footlights and graced with an orchestra composed of eight buxom women. They were sedately playing a tune Sean didn’t recognize.

  “Buy you a drink, mate?”

  Sean turned, suspicious, and glared into the face of a brown-eyed dandy.

  The man laughed and held up hands that had never done a day’s work, from the look of them. “Don’t get excited—I’m as much a man as you are, my friend.”

  Sean relaxed. He’d been in jail too long, gotten too cautious. All the same, he allowed his eyes to rise to the mezzanine, where a bevy of soiled doves lounged, crying to lure a customer or two. When he met the dandy’s gaze again, he saw amusement there.

  “Sean Malloy,” he said, offering one calloused hand.

  “Temple Royce,” replied the dandy, ready with a hand of his own. “Are you a longshoreman, Mr. Malloy?”

  “Aye, when I can get the work.”

  They were at the bar then. Sean brought a two-bit piece from his pocket and asked for whiskey. Two shots were set before him.

  “I offered to buy your drink,” Royce reminded him.

  Sean assessed the man beside him, wondered what the bloke was after. “I’ll buy me own till I know what you’re wanting, then,” he replied.

  Royce shrugged and a half-smile curved his lips. “Very well. You’re a big man, Malloy. Have you ever worked aboard a ship?”

  Sean emitted a bitter, raspy chuckle. “Aye. All the way around the Horn. You hirin’ a crew, Mr. Royce?”

  “I am.”

  “Bound for where?” demanded Sean, downing one shot and taking up the other. He needed work—he’d already been thrown out of his room and God knew what he would have to eat once the coins in his pocket were gone, but he liked the feel of land beneath his feet and the idea that he could have himself a woman now and then.

  “Canada,” Royce answered, at length.

  Sean gazed at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He was a good-looking man, if he did say so himself, but who could tell it to see him now? His light brown hair, usually curly, was matted to his head. His hazel eyes were sunken into his face, and a scruffy beard hid the strong lines of his jaw.

  If he accepted the job Royce seemed to be offering, he could probably get some of his wages in advance, buy himself a meal and a bath and a romp with one of those buxom little trollops upstairs.

  “Canada,” he said, considering aloud.

  “Yes.”

  “After that?”

  “Seattle. Port Hastings. Back here, eventually.”

  “Port Hastings? Where the hell is that?”

  Royce smiled. “On the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Washington Territory. Little Sodom and Gomorrah, they call it.”

  Sean was intrigued. “Does it deserve its name, then?”

  “Absolutely. I’m offering fifty dollars for the Canadian run; half now and half when we dock in Port Hastings. Do we have an agreement, Mr. Malloy?”

  “We do, I’m thinking. When do we sail?”

  “First thing in the morning. The ship is the Jonathan Lee. Know where she’s anchored?”

  “Aye,” answered Sean, who had seen the clipper among a dozen others.

  Royce counted out the promised wage. “Be aboard by dawn—we sail at high tide.”

  Sean took the money, folded it, tucked it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll be there.”

  “See that you are.”

  So there was some steel under all that fine frippery after all. Sean was pleased. “You have me word.”

  Royce nodded, and then he was gone.

  There was some kind of stir on the mezzanine. Sean looked up to see a tall, light-haired man fielding the advances of two separate women.

  “Shit,” remarked the old swabbie next to Sean at the bar. “He don’t even have to pay ‘em, that one. Some say they pay him.”
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  Sean ordered two more shots of whiskey. “Who is he, then?”

  The sailor turned a pearl-handled knife in his hands, sheathed it at a warning look from one of the bartenders. “That’s Jeff Corbin. He skippers the Sea Mistress.”

  The name Corbin meant nothing to Sean, nor did the man’s obvious prowess with women. He’d only been making idle conversation.

  “Scuttlebutt is that the cap’n got his heart broken by a redheaded lady doctor.”

  Sean stiffened, flung a furtive glance at the captain, who was making his way down the stairs now, doing up the polished brass buttons on his coat as he went.

  “You know her name? This lady doctor, I mean?”

  “I’d never forget it—met her once, I did.”

  For just a moment, that crowded, noisy bar seemed to buckle and shift around Sean like a ship run onto a reef. She’d talked about becoming a doctor, Banner had—dreamed about it and fair driven Sean into a state with her chatter. Could she have done that—perhaps on the money she’d gotten for selling his hide to the law?

  “Banner O’Brien,” he said, reflectively. She wouldn’t be calling herself Malloy, now would she? Not after what she’d done to him.

  The old seaman looked disappointed. “Now, how the devil did you know that?”

  Without troubling to answer, Sean whirled away from the bar, forgetting his plans for dinner and a bath and a woman. He followed Captain Corbin out of the bar, hailed him in the street.

  Corbin turned, his eyes as blue as the North Sea and hollow-looking. He stood beneath a streetlamp, his hands wedged into his coat pockets, the snow gathering in his hair. “Yes?”

  Sean feared few men, but this one stirred a certain wariness in him. There was a quiet control about the bloke, a sureness that said more than all the boasting in the world could have done.

  “Good evenin’,” said the Irishman politely.

  The captain only nodded, his eyes watchful now.

  “There was a man in there—” Sean grinned engagingly and tossed his head toward the golden billow of light that was Erickson’s south door. “He said you know my sister.”

  Corbin made no reply, but he didn’t walk away either. Probably, with those archangel looks of his, he was often confronted by the brothers of women he’d trifled with. “Her name would be Banner,” Sean went on cautiously.