An Outlaw's Christmas Read online

  He had to chuckle. “No,” he said. “I was referring to the nature of my work, that’s all.”

  “What kind of ‘work’ involves getting shot?”

  Sawyer said nothing.

  “Are you an outlaw, Mr. McKettrick?” Piper persisted.

  “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t?”

  She made a muffled sound, like a scream of anger, held captive in her throat. It made him smile again. “I think you owe me an answer,” she said, after a few moments.

  “You do, do you?” he teased.

  “Are you an outlaw?”

  He thought it over. He’d killed a man once, though he’d been defending Henry Vandenburg, his former employer, at the time. Vandenburg’s attacker, one of those wild-eyed anarchist types, had shoved his way through a crowd, in a busy railway station, and thrust the business end of a gun barrel into the boss’s ample belly. Sawyer had stepped in, there was a struggle, and the pistol went off. The would-be killer bled out on the floor before the municipal police arrived in their paddy wagons.

  “No,” he answered, feigning offense at the question. “Would Clay have asked me to serve as town marshal if I were?”

  “Possibly,” she replied, after some thought. “You’re his cousin, and the two of you grew up together. It might be that he’s just giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you are still the person he knew as a boy.”

  “Could be,” Sawyer said, amused. She hadn’t been this talkative before, and he wondered if that meant anything. Then he decided she felt safer speaking her mind because they were under cover of darkness, and she couldn’t see him, or he her.

  In a way, it reminded him of the old days on the Triple M, when he and Clay used to spend the night at their grandparents’ house sometimes. The room they’d shared had two beds in it, and the dark of a country night had been like a curtain between them, making it possible to tell each other things they’d have choked on in the daylight.

  “That,” Piper said, “is a most unsatisfactory answer.”

  “Clay trusts me because I’ve never given him any reason not to,” Sawyer said, relenting. Now that he wasn’t in Vandenburg’s employ any longer, he figured he didn’t have to be so secretive, but he still wasn’t inclined to spill his whole history. “I’m not an outlaw,” he added.

  “Then what are you? Only outlaws carry guns.”

  “Clay carries one. Is he an outlaw?”

  “Well, no,” Piper admitted. “But he’s the marshal.”

  There was a silence.

  He waited.

  “Are you a lawman?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” Sawyer replied. He wondered if she’d warmed up yet, and if she was still scared—in need of a little manly protection. Being nobody’s fool, he didn’t ask. “How did you become acquainted with a lady of the evening?” he inquired instead, recalling that morning’s visit from Bess Turner.

  Piper sounded impatient. “You heard what she said—her daughter, Ginny-Sue, is one of my pupils. And if you’re ‘not exactly’ a lawman, what are you?”

  “I was paid to protect a man and his family,” Sawyer said. “And that’s all you need to know.” He barely paused before giving her a dose of her own medicine by barging right into her private business. “Generally, respectable women don’t befriend people like Ginny-Sue’s mother, no matter what the circumstances.”

  Her tone was huffy. “Maybe I’m not a respectable woman. Did you ever think of that?”

  Sawyer laughed. “Oh, you’re respectable, all right. You wouldn’t be so worried about my seeing you in a nightgown, not to mention our sharing a bedroom, if you weren’t.”

  Piper was quiet for so long that Sawyer began to think she’d fallen asleep. Finally, though, she spoke again, and there was a note of gentle sorrow in her voice. “Bess loves her child, just like anybody else, and besides, however misguided she might be, she’s a human being. I see no earthly reason to shun her.”

  Something thickened in Sawyer’s throat, which was odd. He wasn’t usually sentimental, especially not over prostitutes like Bess Turner, but something about Piper’s offhand compassion touched him in a deep place, and caused a shift in the way he thought of her.

  The realization caused him considerable consternation.

  “Sawyer?”

  He smiled at Piper’s use of his first name. That was more like it. “What?”

  “I’m—afraid.”

  “Don’t be. I won’t hurt you.”

  “It’s not you I’m scared of. It’s the man who shot you.”

  “In that case,” he said, only half joking, “maybe you’d better crawl in with me.”

  “I couldn’t do that!”

  “Where’s the harm in it? Your reputation is probably ruined anyhow.”

  There was a snap of irritation in her reply. “Be that as it may, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I am not the sort of woman who gets into bed with a man she isn’t married to.” She swallowed so hard that he heard it. “I’m—unbesmirched.”

  Unbesmirched.

  In other words, a virgin. No real surprise there.

  “I won’t lay a hand on you, Miss St. James,” he assured her. That much was certainly true. He might want to do plenty, once Piper was lying beside him in that narrow bed, but he’d never tried to persuade an unwilling woman to share her favors before and he wasn’t going to start now.

  To his amazement, he heard her get out of the other bed, hurry over, and slip in beside him. The mattress was more suited to one than two; they collided, and Piper almost sprang out of bed again when she realized he wasn’t wearing anything but the bandages and the sling on his left arm.

  He knew this by the gasp she gave.

  “It’s all right, Piper,” he said.

  She gave a comical little wail. “You might have told me you were—well—indisposed!”

  “You didn’t ask,” he pointed out.

  “This is horrible,” she lamented. But she was still there, under the covers. With him.

  “Hardly,” he said. “We’re just two people keeping each other warm on a cold winter’s night, that’s all.”

  “Maybe that’s all it is to you,” Piper retorted. “I had hopes of getting married someday, and having a home and a family, before you came along and spoiled everything.”

  He smiled in the darkness. “If that’s so, then I’m sorry,” he told her.

  “You don’t sound sorry,” Piper accused.

  He yawned expansively. “Would you be convinced if I rounded up a preacher and the two of us got hitched?”

  She gasped again.

  He laughed, but the idea of taking a wife—this wife—was already starting to grow on him. He’d have preferred to court Piper St. James properly before he put a ring on her finger and took her home to the Triple M and the rest of the McKettrick family, but she had a point. Whether it was fair or not, she was probably compromised, all right, simply because they’d been alone together for a couple of days and nights. Some folks were just hypocritical enough to assume she’d thrown caution to the winds and succumbed to rampant lust at the first opportunity.

  It was downright ridiculous, Sawyer knew, to assume a conscientious schoolmarm would turn into a raving wanton overnight, since she’d given shelter to a wounded stranger of the opposite sex, and never mind the kindness and courage she’d shown by dragging him inside and looking after him as best she knew how. After this, Piper would be no better than Bess Turner, as far as a lot of the locals were concerned.

  Piper hadn’t answered his question and now, judging by the moisture he felt against the upper part of his right arm, she was in tears.

  “Hey,” he said hoarsely, “don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it,” she sobbed. Since he recko
ned she wasn’t the kind who cried easily, this was even worse. “Isn’t it enough that you ruined my life? Do you have to add insult to injury by mocking me, too?”

  Sawyer was honestly confused. “Mocking you?” he rasped. God, he hated it when women cried, especially when it was his fault. Like now. “When did I do that?”

  “When you m-made that r-remark about getting—hitched!”

  “Piper,” he said, surprising himself as he much as he had her, “I was serious. I’ll marry you, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  She struggled to a sitting position, and moonlight turned her tears silvery on her cheeks. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders and down her back, nearly reaching her waist. “But we don’t love each other!” she cried, in obvious despair.

  Gently, he drew Piper back down beside him, holding her with his good arm. She rested her head on his bare shoulder, sniffling. “That’s true,” he said carefully, “but we certainly wouldn’t be the first couple who ever got married for practical reasons. Clay and Dara Rose tied the knot so she and the girls would have a place to live, and that arrangement worked out.”

  Instead of comforting her, Sawyer’s words made her cry harder.

  He was confounded, figuring he’d made a good case for holy matrimony.

  He patted the back of her head ineffectually, afraid to say anything more in case he got it wrong. Again.

  “That’s different!” Piper wailed out, after some shuddering and sniffling.

  “What’s different?” Sawyer asked carefully.

  “Clay and Dara Rose are different!”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were in love with each other from the very first,” Piper sobbed. “It just took them a while to notice!”

  Against his better judgment, Sawyer laughed. He couldn’t help it. “People get married for all sorts of reasons,” he reiterated, when he’d caught his breath. “Love isn’t always one of them.”

  “Well, it should be!”

  “Lots of things ‘should be,’ but they aren’t.” It was the wrong thing to say, but Sawyer didn’t realize that until after he’d said it, when she slammed the side of one small fist into his belly. The blow didn’t hurt, but it sure startled him, and it knocked the wind out of him for a moment, too.

  Piper might be small, but she packed a punch. Raised by and around strong women, Sawyer considered that a good thing.

  “I don’t even know what kind of man you are,” she lamented, though she seemed to be regaining some control of her runaway emotions. “You could be a scoundrel, or worse.”

  He smiled. “What’s worse?” he teased. A strand of her hair tickled his mouth, and he decided he liked the feeling.

  “Murder,” she said. “Highway robbery. Bigamy.”

  “Bigamy?”

  “Dara Rose thought she was married to Edrina and Harriet’s father,” Piper blurted out, on one long breath, “and it turned out he already had a wife and children, that stinker!”

  Sawyer remembered Clay telling him the story, the year before. He hadn’t thought about it since, though. “I’m not married,” he said quietly. “Never have been.”

  She sat up again, looking down at him. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  Was she considering saying yes?

  “You don’t,” he said solemnly. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  She ruminated on that for a while, still sitting up. “You didn’t—you couldn’t have—meant what you said? About us getting married?”

  “I meant it, all right,” Sawyer replied. He actually liked the idea, and that was a bit unsettling.

  “If we go through with this, it would be a marriage in name only.”

  Up until now, Sawyer couldn’t have imagined himself agreeing to such terms, but he did. “All right,” he said. “But I reserve the right to try to change your mind.”

  Piper mulled that over. He reckoned she was going to come to her senses and pull out of the deal. “Not until after we’re married,” she negotiated.

  “Fair enough,” Sawyer said, and something inside him soared, as proud and free as a lone eagle against a wide blue sky. “Can I at least kiss you?”

  More consideration on her part followed.

  He sat up, careful to keep the quilts in place, just above his waist.

  They stared at each other for a while, in the light of a waning moon filtering through a weather-grimed window.

  Then she closed her eyes, puckered up, and waited.

  Sawyer bit the inside of his lower lip, so he wouldn’t laugh. Then he placed his hand on the back of her head, very gently, and pressed her face toward his. He kissed her, worked her lips with his own until Piper sighed and opened to him.

  He used his tongue. Carefully.

  She moaned and slipped her arms around his neck.

  He deepened the kiss slowly, because she was so obviously an innocent.

  Piper whimpered, but she didn’t try to pull away.

  It was Sawyer who did that. “Piper,” he said, his voice ragged from the strain of giving up what the rest of his body was demanding, “no more. I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

  “I’d better go back to the other bed,” she said shyly.

  “That might be a good idea,” Sawyer replied. He was hard as tamarack by then, and he didn’t want Piper to know it.

  She left him, got back into the bed Clay had brought in from the ranch. The small distance between them seemed like miles to Sawyer, who fell back onto his pillows with a heavy sigh.

  “Sawyer?” Piper said.

  He probably sounded abrupt when he replied. “What?”

  “I’ve never—” She fell silent, embarrassed again.

  “I know,” he said more gently.

  And after that, by some miracle, they both went to sleep.

  * * *

  PIPER’S EYES FLEW open when she realized it was morning, and she’d not only let Sawyer kiss her in the night, but she’d kissed him back. She sat up in her borrowed bed, pulling the covers up to her chin, and looked in his direction, but he wasn’t there.

  She scrambled out from under the blankets, landed both feet on the icy floor, and made a dash for her bureau, where she rummaged for bloomers and a camisole. Clutching them in one hand, she grabbed her woolen dress, the one she’d planned on saving for really cold days, and stuck her head out the bedroom door.

  Sawyer wasn’t in the schoolroom—he must have gone outside, to the privy.

  Piper dressed in seconds, fumbling, hopping about, nearly tripping over her hem in the process, and then did what she could with her hair, winding it into a single plait and twisting it around the back of her head, where she secured it with hairpins.

  The schoolroom was warm—Sawyer must have built up the fire—and the delicious aroma of fresh coffee filled the air. She went to the window, looked out. The snow was nearly gone, but she barely took note of that because she spotted Sawyer, dressed and talking amiably with Doc Howard, who didn’t get down off his mule. The poor animal was muddy to its knees.

  Piper saw Doc smile and nod his head, and she ducked back from the window quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen her.

  What was Sawyer saying out there?

  Her cheeks flamed so hot that she pressed her palms to her face, trying to cool them down. Surely Sawyer wasn’t asking Doc Howard to fetch a preacher, so he and the schoolmarm could “get hitched,” she thought frantically. Yes, they’d talked about marriage, and it had seemed like a viable idea at the time, but in the bright light of day it was—well, it was insane, that’s what it was. It was out of the question.

  She remembered the kiss, felt the heat and pressure on her mouth as surely as if Sawyer’s mouth was on hers right then.

  Her heart pounded, and b
olts of fiery lightning shot through her, weakening her knees, melting parts of her that were too personal even to think about.

  She was wanton, she concluded, horrified. She’d not only gotten into bed with Sawyer McKettrick the night before, she’d let him kiss her. Let him? She’d as good as thrown herself at the man, and then she’d carried on. In fact, if Sawyer hadn’t sent her back to her own bed, she might have been swept away.

  Things, she decided, could not possibly get worse.

  Except that they did, and almost immediately.

  Sawyer opened the door, came inside, spotted her sitting on one of her students’ desks with her hands pressed to her burning face.

  He smiled. “There are some kids coming down the road,” he informed her. “Your students, I presume.”

  Piper cried out, bolted to her feet. “No!”

  “Yes,” Sawyer said. “Doc will be back at three-thirty, with a license and a preacher.” With that, he headed for the bedroom, pausing to pour himself a mug full of coffee along the way. From the inside doorway, he looked back at her over his right shoulder. “Better step lively, Teacher,” he said. “School’s about to be in session.”

  He was barely out of sight when Ginny-Sue Turner burst in, cheeks pink, eyes eager. “I know the whole second chapter of Luke!” she blurted joyfully. “By heart!”

  Piper’s smile might have been a little shaky, but Ginny-Sue was too young, and too excited, to notice. “That’s wonderful,” she said, resting a hand on the child’s shoulder.

  “And Christmas is going to happen, after all!” Ginny-Sue enthused, glowing as she got out of her coat and mittens and warm woolen hat. “Mama said it would, because you told her so.”

  Piper’s throat tightened, and she managed a little nod. She had no power to keep another snowstorm away, of course, but this child clearly believed she did.

  It was a weighty responsibility.

  Madeline Howard arrived next, small and blonde and very pretty, like her mother, followed by half a dozen other children.

  “May I ring the bell, Miss St. James?” Madeline asked, beaming.

  Piper assented, and the other students arrived by twos and threes. Even Edrina and Harriet made it into town for class—Clay had driven them in a wagon drawn by those same two plow horses he’d hitched to the sledge the day before, and he waved and smiled from the seat, reins in hand.