the longest claws this side of the Mississippi."
"Lieutenant, you're" -- "I'm not a Yank, or a carpetbagger, Tess, and so
help m ~"
"You're about to crush my shoulder blades, Lieutenant," she said as
regally as she could manage.
"Oh." He released her.
"Do excuse me."
"I try, Lieutenant. Daily. Hourly." She started for the door.
"Tess?"
She didn't turn.
"I could have made you beg, you know?"
She spun around. He was laughing. She raced forward in a sudden surge of
energy and butted him in the stomach.
Taken off guard, he fell into the singed hay. She didn't stay to hear
anything else he might have to say.
She raced from the carriage house and back to the house, not pausing
until she was inside. She leaned against the door, gasping for breath.
The dining table was clean. Jane came from the kitchen and paused when
she saw Tess.
"They've all gone to bed, Tess. Hank just went to the bunkhouse. Mr. Red
Feather suggested that the hands take a few hours apiece on a kind of a
guard duty. Roddy called in that big guard dog of his and he's going to
have the dog on the porch, once he sees the lieutenant and tells the dog
that the lieutenant is a friend. I was going to go to bed. It's been a
big day for me, Miss. Stuart. A real big day."
Her eyes rolled and Tess laughed. Impulsively she gave Jane a big hug.
It was a mistake. Jane looked as if she was going to start crying all
over again.
"I'm just so happy that you're alive!" she said.
"Thanks. And I'm happy to be home. Come on, let's go They walked up the
stairs together. Jane hugged Tess quickly and fiercely again and headed
toward her own room. Wearily Tess pushed open the door to her bedroom
and walked in.
Lighting the lamp at her bedside, she shed her clothing and dressed in a
soft blue flannel nightgown. She sat in front of her dressing table and
picked up the silver-embossed brush that had belonged to her mother. It
was good to be home.
She pulled all the pins out of her hair--and then all the little pieces
of hay that had stuck into it--and began to brush it. It fell down her
shoulders, long and free. She brushed it mechanically for several
minutes, staring at her reflection and not seeing a thing.
Jane had been fight. It had been a big day.
But yon Heusen had been beaten back. Between Jamie and Jon, he had been
beaten back. She never had told Jamie that she was grateful. Truly
grateful.
He never seemed to give her a chance to say thank you. He was on her
side, but it seemed that she was always fighting him. At first, she had
been fighting him to make him believe her. Now she was certain he
believed her.
He had met yon Heusen. He couldn't have any doubt that yon Heusen had
been responsible for the attack on the wagon train.
And now. Maybe she wasn't fighting him. Maybe she was fighting herself.
First it had been that darned Eliza. Tess had managed to walk away from
Eliza with her dignity intact, but she had heard Jamie speaking to the
woman.
No one can make me marry anyone.
No one can make me marry anyone. So he wasn't the marrying kind.
She was. She wanted a man, a good man. She hadn't had much time to think
about it, what with the war and then everything that had happened since.
But when she thought for a moment, she knew. She didn't want to be a
spinster.
The paper was important to her, and she wasn't just copublisher and a
reporter anymore, she was the only publisher.
She had to keep it alive. But she wanted more, too. She wanted a
husband, one she really loved, and one who loved her. And she wanted
children, and she wanted to give them a world that wasn't forever
tainted with the memories of conflict and death.
And she wanted Jamie Slater. She wasn't at all sure how the two things
intertwined-- they didn't intertwine at all, she admitted. She sighed.
She had to get by the present for the moment. She had to survive yon
Heusen.
She shivered suddenly, violently, remembering the way von Heusen had
threatened her. She would be getting out of town, he had told her. If
not by stagecoach, then by some other means.
What could he do to her? She wasn't alone. She had help now.
But to pay for it she was about to turn over half her property--half of
Uncle Joe's legacy to her--to Jamie Slater. If he chose, he could be her
neighbor all her life. She could watch him, and torture herself day
after day, wondefing who he rode away to see, wondering what it was like
when he took a woman into his arms.
She groaned and pushed away from the table. She couldn't solve a thing
tonight. She needed some sleep. She needed some sleep very badly.
She doused the light and crawled beneath the covers. It felt so good to
be in her own bed again. The sheets were cool and clean and
fresh-smelling, and her mattress was soft and firm, and it seemed to
caress her deliciously. A faint glow from the stars and the moon entered
the room gently. It kept everything in dark shadows, and yet she could
see the familiar shapes of her dressing table and her drawers and her
little mahogany secretary desk.
The breeze wafted her curtains. She closed her eyes. Perhaps she dozed
for a moment. Not much time could have passed, and yet she suddenly
became aware that nome thing was different. Her door had been thrust
open.
She wasn't alone.
Jamie was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his body a
silhouette in the soft hazy moonbeams. There was nothing soft or gentle
about his stance, however. She could feel the anger that radiated from
him.
"All right, Tess, where's my room?"
His room?
"Oh!" she murmured.
"Your room ... well, I didn't think you were going to stay here."
Long strides brought him quickly across the room. She scrambled to a
sitting position as he towered over her.
"I
just spent two days riding with you to get here. I spent two nights
sleeping on the hard ground beneath the wagon."
"The hay in the barn is very soft."
"The hay in the barn is very soft," he repeated, staring at her. He
leaned closer.
"The hay in the barn is very soft? Is that what you said?" She felt his
closeness in the shadows even as she inhaled his clean, fascinating,
masculine scent.
His eyes seemed silver in the darkness, satanic. She was rid- died with
trembling, so keenly aware of him that it was astonishing.
"You don't have a room for me?" he demanded. "All right, I am sorry.
But you were gone, and we were all exhausted. And you did have a bath
somewhere. I just believed that you meant to sleep where you had
bathed."
He was still for a moment--dead still. Then he smiled. "Miss. Stuart,
move over."
"What?"
"Move over. If there's no room for me, then I'll sleep here."
"Of all the nerve!"
"Hush! We share this bed, or we sleep in the hay together," he warned
her.
He meant it! she thought, still incredulous. She started to rise, trying
to escape from the bed. He caught her arm and pulled her gently back.
"Where are you going?" he whispered.
"Where else! You're bigger than I am--I can't throw you out! I'm going
to the barn!"
"Wait."
"For what?" she demanded.
For what? Every pulse within her was alive and crying out. She felt him
with the length of her body, with her heart, with her soul, with her
womb.
He did not hold her against him. He caressed her. He was warm, and his
smile and the white flash of his teeth in the night were compelling and