Emma and the Outlaw Read online

  Images of Steven Fairfax sprawled in Chloe’s bathtub with a washcloth over his privates filled her mind. Despite her efforts not to see, she’d noticed his hairy chest, the corded muscles in his thighs, the brown strength of his forearms. Her breath came a little faster and a fine mist of perspiration gathered between her breasts and along her upper lip.

  Emma closed her eyes for a moment, determined to think of something else.

  Lord, but Steven was even more appealing than before, now that the layers of trail dust, sweat, and dried blood had been washed away. His smile was as bright as the lamp on the front of a train rolling through the darkness, and his hair, while a touch on the long side, invited a woman to tangle her fingers in it.

  Emma felt so warm that she went over and opened the door, just to let in some fresh air. It was unseasonably hot for April, it seemed to her.

  It was just then that Big John Lenahan strolled in, whistling. He was, as his nickname suggested, well over six feet tall and powerfully built. He had thinning white hair and eyes of the same cornflower blue as his daughter Joellen’s, but he was a far kinder person than his child.

  “Hello, Miss Emma,” he said pleasantly.

  Emma smiled at him. “Afternoon, Big John. How may I help you?”

  “Well, it seems Joellen took a fancy to some book you’ve got here, and she didn’t want to wait her turn to read it. I thought I’d find out from you what it was and have old Mitch over at the general store order it up for a surprise.”

  Emma didn’t let her opinion of Joellen show in her expression or the tone of her voice, for she wouldn’t have hurt Big John’s feelings for the world. “Of corse. It was Mr. Hardy’s new novel.” She wrote the information on a slip of paper and handed it to the prosperous rancher standing on the other side of the counter. “How are things out on the Circle L?”

  Big John shrugged shoulders the size of a grizzly bear’s. “We’re shorthanded, as always, and Joellen’s a handful. I sure wish Chloe would break down and marry me, so that girl could have a mother.”

  Emma smiled to think of Chloe as Joellen’s stepmother. The girl’s career as a brat would end in short order. “You know how Chloe is, Big John.”

  He nodded ruefully and tucked the slip of paper Emma had written the book title on into the pocket of his buckskin vest. “There ain’t a stubborner woman in the territory, but I’ll rope that filly if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  “It just might be,” Emma warned, waggling a finger, and she and Big John laughed together.

  Same as usual. Miss Emma?” asked Ethan Peters, editor-in-chief of the Whitneyville Orator.

  Emma was feeling melancholy that sunny Friday morning. She’d had thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of posters printed up in her time, and she’d never heard a word about Lily or Caroline. Sometimes she wondered if anybody, anywhere, was reading her notices. “Yes, Mr. Peters,” she sighed.

  The kindly middle-aged man smiled at her as he reached for a pencil to take down the order. His long black mustache was waxed, and he’d combed what remained of his hair artfully across the top of his head. It seemed to Emma that a man was better off just going ahead and being bald than trying to hide the obvious.

  “I certainly hope you aren’t fixing to give up, Miss Emma. Those sisters of yours are out there someplace, and you can bet somebody who knows them is going to see your posters someday.”

  Emma worked up a smile. “I hope you’re right.”

  Mr. Peters nodded. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Emma left the newspaper office and continued down the street toward the library. The illfated Yellow Belly Saloon had been burned to the ground and there had been no talk as yet of rebuilding. Chloe’s place, now the only establishment in town where liquor could be had, was jumping with music and laughter.

  With a little smile and a shake of her head, Emma proceeded past the Stardust at a respectable pace, though secretly she yearned for a look inside. She was especially curious about the upstairs, where girls like Callie received their amorous callers.

  While plundering her jet-beaded handbag for the key to the library’s front door, Emma once again accepted the fact that she’d probably never see any part of the Stardust Saloon, upstairs or downstairs. Chloe had sworn to skin her alive if she put one foot over the threshold. Although Chloe had been the gentlest of adoptive mothers, Emma knew the legendary Miss Reese was immovable where this subject was concerned.

  Emma was just fitthe key into the lock when Fulton appeared, wearing his usual suit and derby hat. He looked very agitated indeed.

  “I must speak with you,” he said in an earnest whisper, as though the whole town might be bending its collective ear to hear whatever passed between them.

  For the second time that morning Emma sighed. “Come in off the street, Fulton.”

  He followed her into the cool, musty confines of the Whitneyville Lending Library, which was founded by Miss Chloe Reese and patronized by people who wouldn’t have spoken to the woman to save themselves from the fiery pits of hell. “Emma,” he began, taking off his hat and turning its brim nervously in his fingers, “something must be done about the rumors.”

  “What rumors?” Emma asked, though she knew full well why Fulton was there. She’d guessed the moment she saw him that he was going to lecture her about Steven.

  Fulton paused to run appreciative blue eyes over her trim green skirt and pristine white shirtwaist. “You do look real nice this morning,” he allowed.

  Emma slipped behind the desk, mostly to put a barrier between them, and pretended to be busy with the card file. “Thank you.”

  He took the plunge. “It’s that outlaw you and Chloe are putting up. He has to go, Emma.”

  She thought of Steven listening with real interest to another chapter of Little Women the night before, and lowered her eyes so Fulton wouldn’t see the memory there. “The man is quite harmless,” Emma lied. Steven wasn’t just passing through her life, she knew that. He was just cussed enough to have some lasting, and probably devastating, effect on it.

  “I’ve talked to some of the people who were in the Yellow Belly when he rode in, Emma,” Fulton rushed on. “They said he wore a forty-five, and there wasn’t a man in the place who would have challenged him.”

  “There probably wasn’t a man in the place sober enough to challenge him,” Emma reasoned a little impatiently, as her fingertips flicked over the card file.

  “He’s a gunslinger,” Fulton asserted, placing his hands against the counter and leaning toward Emma. “I must insist that you ask him to leave.”

  Emma had a slight headache. Fulton had no right to insist on anything, since he and Emma had made no formal agreement to marry. “I don’t see how he could leave,” she said, “when he can’t even walk on his own.”

  “Then send him over to stay with Doc Waverly.”

  “That’s a grand idea, Fulton. Whenever the doctor happens to be sober, he can see to his patient’s needs.”

  Emma’s sarcasm was not lost on Fulton, nor did it move him. He knotted one hand into a fist and slammed it down hard on the counter. “Damn it all to hell, Emma, people are saying you’re intimate with the man—that you bathed him, for God’s sake!”

  Emma’s headache was now full-blown. So Doc Waverly had spread the word. Well, when she saw him again, she’d give him ece of her mind for being such an old busybody. “I think you’d better take your case to Chloe,” she said, fumbling underneath the counter for the box of headache powders she kept there.

  They both knew what Chloe would say: that Fulton should go count his money and stay out of her business. Only, she wouldn’t put it so politely.

  Emma drew a deep breath, to embolden herself. “Furthermore, I don’t think you and I should see quite so much of each other for a while. We both need time to gain some perspective.”

  Fulton glared at her for a moment then, seething, he stormed out of the library and slammed the door behind him.

 
Emma got water from the temperamental spigot in the backroom sink and stirred in a packet of headache powders. She was busy all morning, and when she walked home at noon she found a plate of chicken sandwiches on the kitchen table, covered with a checkered napkin. There was no other sign of Daisy’s presence.

  After making sure her braid was tidy, and pinching her cheeks for color, Emma took the plate of sandwiches up the rear stairs and knocked at Steven’s door.

  He sounded irritable when he told her to come in.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  He slammed shut the book Emma had brought him from downstairs that morning. “Fine,” he said, glowering.

  Emma laughed, taking her customary chair, the plate of sandwiches balanced on her knees. “I know you can be pleasant if you try, Mr. Fairfax. You were a perfect gentleman last night, when I was reading to you.”

  Steven’s glance at the sandwiches made her extend the plate, and he took one of Daisy’s creations with a sort of reluctant gratitude. “I need my forty-five,” he said.

  Emma smoothed her skirt, the sateen slick and shiny under her fingers. The movements of Steven’s throat as he chewed and swallowed gave her a strange, heated feeling. “This seems to be my day for dealing with impossible demands,” she said.

  Steven frowned even as he continued to consume the sandwich, and Emma suppressed an urge to fan herself with one hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.

  “I think that’s obvious. It means I’m not going to give you the gun.”

  He didn’t take another sandwich, and when he ran his tongue swiftly over his lips, Emma felt a stab of what could only be raw desire. “Has anybody ever told you what a hardheaded little spitfire you are?”

  “Yes,” Emma replied primly, “and it’s never done them a mite of good.”

  Steven sank back against his pillows, and Emma knew by his involuntary grimace and the paleness of his skin that he was in severe pain.

  Gently, and without thinking, Emma reached out to touch his forehead. His hand rose and closed around her wrist, and his fingers were at once strong and gentle. “Come here,” he said gruffly.

  He was like the mystical, superhuman creatures Emma had read about, captivating their victims with their eyes. S put the sandwich plate on the bedside stand and allowed him to pull her nearer, so that she sat on the edge of the bed.

  Her breasts rose and fell beneath her very proper bodice as he ran the calloused pad of his thumb up and down the inside of her wrist. A shiver went through her, and she swallowed hard, feeling like a field mouse facing a cobra.

  Steven’s hand left her wrist to lightly grasp her thick, red-blond braid and run it between his fingers. Then he traced her jawline and the full moistness of her lips, and she trembled and started to move away.

  He wouldn’t allow her to go. He cupped her chin in his hand and said, his voice low and mesmerizing, “You’re a wildcat underneath those librarian’s clothes, Emma Chalmers.” When her indigo eyes widened in surprise and the beginnings of offense, he smiled and continued. “And one of these days, I’m going to prove it’s true.”

  Having said that, he brought Emma’s face down to his and he kissed her, bold as you please. A sweet shiver went through her as he touched the sides of her mouth with his tongue, seeking something she’d never been asked to give.

  Feeling a flame ignite in the depths of her femininity, Emma made up her mind to pull back and instead opened her mouth for Steven. He immediately mastered her with his tongue, and Emma gave a helpless sigh as she sank against him.

  “Steven,” she protested when he somehow maneuvered her so that she was lying beside him on the guest room bed, her hair coming out of its braid and rising around her face in gossamer strands of coppery gold.

  “Sweet,” he said in a sleepy tone, just before he covered her mouth with his again.

  Emma felt much the way she had the summer she was fifteen, when she’d gotten into Chloe’s Christmas cordial and drunk herself silly. She didn’t seem to have any anchor in the real world, and her head swam. When Steven laid a gentle hand on her breast she whimpered and arched her head back on the pillow.

  “Does your banker touch you like this, Emma?”

  “Oh, God,” Emma whispered, too deliciously distraught to wonder how much Steven knew about Fulton.

  Steven bent his head and nipped at a hidden nipple with his teeth, and the pleasure made Emma plunge her heels into the mattress and try to raise herself for more.

  He was kissing her neck, nibbling at it, teasing her pulse point with his tongue even as he began unfastening the tiny pearl buttons that held her shirtwaist closed.

  “Mr. Fairfax!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured her quietly, and she believed him. “All I want to do is show you who you really are.” He punctuated each word with some amorous attention to her tingling neck, and when Emma felt herself bared—except for her thin camisole—he slid down her body until his face was even with her straining breasts.

  With the utmost tenderness, he uncovered one, giving an admiring sigh before he cupped the fullness in his hand and laid his tongue to the nipple.

  Emma gasped with pleasure as he sucked, her head moving from side to d h the pillow in sweet delirium. His words echoed in her fevered spirit. All I want to do is show you who you really are…

  Presently he bared the other breast and busied himself at its peak, and Emma could hardly keep herself from thrashing on the bed. When he lifted her skirt and laid his hand over the soft place where her bloomers were moist, however, she was startled and sat bolt upright, springing off the bed to stand on the other side of the room.

  The expression in Steven’s eyes showed both understanding and amusement, and he watched with undisguised interest as Emma hastily covered her still-pulsing bosom.

  “I know,” he sighed, with a crooked, teasing grin. “You’re not that kind of girl.”

  Emma knew her face was crimson with embarrassment and umbrage, and only then, when it was too late, did she think to do her buttoning with her back turned. “I most certainly am not!”

  “You liked it,” Steven said, settling back with a smug sigh. “And from now until the day I take you, you’re going to be wondering what else I might have made you feel.”

  “You are insufferably arrogant, Mr. Fairfax!”

  “But right, nonetheless,” he responded easily. And then he had the bald effrontery to yawn. “You’re all warm and wet, and certain parts of you are feeling downright disappointed, whether you’ll admit to the fact or not.”

  A lame protest died in her throat. Everything Steven said was true, and she couldn’t deny it because she knew he’d see through the lie.

  “Emma the librarian,” he said huskily. Then he chuckled as though he found her occupation extraordinarily humorous.

  Emma’s knees felt weak as noodles, and a soft whimper rose in her throat at the brazen truth of his words. She swallowed it. “You overestimate your appeal, Mr. Fairfax,” she said. And then she turned on one heel and left the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Only when she was seated on her favorite rock down by the lake did Emma’s flesh begin to cool and her breathing start to slow. She’d wanted to stay on that bed with Steven, to allow him even further liberties, and the fact terrified her. More than anything, except of course for finding her lost sisters, Emma wanted to be accepted as a decent and upright woman.

  She put her hands to her throbbing cheeks. Instead, she’d behaved like a wanton. She could still feel the warm wetness of his mouth on her nipples. Misery knifed through her, even as remembered pleasure made her bunch up the fabric of her skirt in both hands.

  Much later, when she’d regained her dignity, Emma returned to Steven’s room to confront him.

  “How dare you touch me like that?” she breathed.

  He had settled back on his pillows, looking comfortable as you please, and he marked his place in the book he’d been reading with an
index finger. “Wait until you see the other ways I mean to touch you,” he drawled.

  Emma’s face flamed bright as her hair. “You most certainly will not,” she said, bristling.

  Steven nodded toward the chair. “Sit down, Emma,” he said gently. “Please.”

  Emma sat after pulling the chair well out of his range.

  “Stop acting as though you’ve been besmirched or something,” he scolded good-naturedly. “You’re not the first girl who’s ever had her breasts kissed.”

  “Please,” Emma gasped, looking away.

  Steven laughed. “I’d like to meet this beau of yours,” he said, opening the book again. His eyes narrowed as he fastened his attention on the page. “I figure he’s probably something of a curiosity.”

  Incensed, Emma shot from her chair and barely kept herself from batting the book out of his hands. “Fulton is a gentleman,” she said, wondering why she felt compelled to defend the man so strenuously when she’d all but broken off with him just a short time before. “He is well-mannered and educated and he is not a ‘curiosity’!”

  The patient smiled politely and turned a page. “He’s never made you feel like a woman,” he said, with insultingly accurate perception. “You’re as luscious as a ripe peach, and the fool’s left you on the vine. To my way of thinking, that makes him an oddity, like the mummified Indian I saw once.” He turned another page, frowning thoughtfully. “Somebody ought to sell tickets.”

  Emma wanted to stomp over to that bed and slap Steven Fairfax squarely across the face, but he was a wounded man, after all. Besides, she didn’t dare come that close to him. Without another word, she whirled on one heel and fled, taking satisfaction in closing the door with a slam that made the paintings and photographs in the hallway rattle on their hooks.

  Downstairs, Emma fairly flung the teakettle onto the stove, and she was just standing there, full of helpless fury, when Chloe came in from the small parlor.

  She looked at Emma’s disheveled hair and wrinkled skirt in surprise, then asked, “Are you all right?”