A Restless Wind (19 page)

     A sudden wind moved through the leaves around them, stirring her unbound curls.

      Jesse nodded slowly.  “I have been impulsive myself.”  He looked at her and added,  “With you.”

     He knew their conversation was taking a dangerous path.  But as he looked down into her face so exquisitely defined by moonlight and shadow, as he stared at the full, sensuous mouth that he had once tasted, he realized now that one taste hadn’t been nearly enough.

     “It was-  “  There was a slight catch in her voice.  “A long time ago.”

     “Not so long ago that I don’t remember.”

     It was a damned foolish thing to say.  But he couldn’t seem to help himself.

     Hetty’s hand closed around the wooden fence rail before her as she recalled the moment of passion they had shared.  Passion?  Oh, yes.  It had definitely been passionate.  There was no other word to describe what they had shared.  Could anyone blame
her
for remembering?

     She was searching for something to say when his hand lifted to rest on the rail beside hers.  Close.  So close that at that moment, whatever it was that she might have said flew right out of her head, got lost somewhere among the stars.

     “Not time enough to forget,”  he said and there was a husky quality in his voice now.  He reached to touch one long curl that fell over her shoulder.  “I’m still remembering.”

     His hand went still.  He shook his head, trying to summon up some semblance of reason.  But reason, it seemed, was as far away as the stars.

     He released the tendril of hair and trailed his fingers lightly down her cheek.  As he gently lifted her chin, she looked up into eyes that reflected the moonlight and the stars and the depths of the sky.

     He leaned closer.  “But in case you do
n’t . . .  ”   His voice was soft, drawing her irresistibly.

     Hetty’s lips parted in breathless anticipation.  Instinctively.  She could not have moved if her life depended upon it.  She waited. 

     As the other one had, the kiss began gently.  But the kiss quickly deepened. Hetty was barely aware of Jesse’s hand fitting itself to the curve of her waist.  Or her own hands finding their way to his chest.  But those things happened.  And then, as she had done once before, she slid her arms around his neck.  Jesse drew back from the kiss, almost as if he were struggling for a moment.  But as she leaned against his hard-muscled body, his mouth raked across hers, briefly, before it claimed her eager lips once again.

     This kiss was far more devastating than the other had been.  It went on and on and seemed to sear a path
straight down to her soul.  Hetty returned the kiss, never wanting it to end.

     But it did end.  Suddenly.  Abruptly.  Hetty stood dazed as Jesse stepped away from her.

     She slowly opened her eyes.  Her heart was still pounding wildly.  Just beyond the haze that enveloped her senses, she heard her uncle’s voice.

     “Hetty, there you are.”

     She didn’t reply, didn’t trust her voice at that moment.  She didn’t know if it was Jesse or the whiskey that made her knees feel so weak that she wasn’t sure she could stand on her own let alone speak words and have them make any kind of logical sense.

     Jesse spoke for them both.  Apparently he wasn’t as affected as she was.  He was able to converse easily with her uncle on subjects that Hetty would later find impossible to recall.  But there was a moment, during a pause in the conversation, when their eyes met and she saw, for a moment in the moonlight, the raw, barely-concealed hunger still simmering in Jesse’s eyes.  For her.

  The man people called Brent Marsten lifted his glass to his lips and drained the amber-colored liquid in one swallow.  His arm shot out and he captured the bottle on the desk.  He poured another generous portion of whiskey.

     His jacket was off.  His tie was undone.  He leaned deliberately back in the big leather chair, frowning as he nursed his thoughts along with the whiskey in his hand.

     For a long time now he had been sitting before the big bay window watching the wide main street of Eminence.  He had seen the buggy that had taken Hetty and the other women back to the Circle I.

     The curtains of his office were open but there were no lights lit.  Only the moonlight cast its reflection on the glass in his hand.  There was a tension in him that the whiskey had not been able to release.  His scowl deepened and he turned his head as the door opened. 

     Amiline stepped into the room.  Her hair was down.  The dark mass of it was hanging in disorderly curls over her shoulders.  Her eyes skitted over him for a moment before she shifted her gaze to look beyond the window.

     “Come,”  he ordered.  “Sit.”

     Amiline seated herself in a chair beside the desk and waited.  Brent grabbed the bottle beside him, poured whiskey into another glass and slid it across the desk.  Amiline picked the glass up and, with a practiced
motion, tilted her head back and drained the liquid before she set the glass back down again.

     He refilled both their glasses, then settled back in his chair.  Swirling the whiskey in his glass, he frowned again, preoccupied with his thoughts.

     Amiline glanced warily back at him.  Drinking never improved Brent’s mood.  He was never more dangerous than when he was full of whiskey.  She tossed her hair back with a display of nonchalance, feeling anything but that emotion.  She was nervous and it was all due to the man sitting so silently beside her in the dark room.

     There was no need here for the mask of sleek smoothness behind which Brent concealed his true self.  She had not failed to notice the hard, bitter line of his lips and the savage glow in his eyes earlier.  She knew the inner man.  She knew his secrets.  She had recognized the fire of jealousy burning in his eyes when he had watched Hetty dancing with Jesse McLaren.  She had seen Brent with Hetty later.  He had barely been able to keep his anger under control.  She knew the emotions that drove the man.  She knew what he was capable of.

     She had once found Brent’s aggressive personality magnetic.  His boldness had appealed to her.  But she did not admire him now.  She knew him too well.  She knew him more than she wanted to know him.

     Behind the suave, self-possessed exterior that he showed the world, he was a man obsessed with power,
a man driven to having his way in all things.  Once he made up his mind that he wanted something, nothing could change it.  He allowed nothing to stand in his way.  He never gave up.  He never gave in.  The further something was from his grasp, the more he sought to attain it.

     Vengeance often motivated him.  And a deeply-rooted selfishness.  In all things Brent’s own wishes were considered first.  In business dealings, as well as personal affairs, he was ruthless and driven.  He answered to no man.  He recognized no law.  Except the law of his own desires.

     And tonight?  His black mood was no doubt brought on by the fact that he had realized that Hetty Parrish was not going to be the easy conquest he had anticipated.  Amiline was not looking at him now, but she knew when he fixed his gaze upon her.

     “What do you know about Pierce Champlin from the Circle I?”  he asked abruptly.

     Her head came up.  She shot him a quick glance and then quickly masked the alarm she felt.  “Only what I told you before.  That he has worked for the Circle I for a very long time.”

     She watched covertly as he lit a cigar.  Even with the heat of the whiskey flowing through her veins, she was frightened.  She never feared him more than when he was slow and deliberate this way.

     His question had startled her, but what worried her more was what he had not asked.  She had also expected him to take her to task for drinking so much tonight.  She had a certain role to play and drinking was not part of the script.  But watching the happy couple celebrating tonight had settled a coldness deep inside her.  She couldn’t help it.  She felt cheated in life.  She always had.

     She knew that Brent wanted something from her.  She also knew that whatever Brent wanted, she wouldn’t be able to refuse him.  She had given up that choice a long time ago.

     He leaned back in his chair once again.  Cigar smoke rose up before him.  He stared at the glowing tip of his cigar for a moment.  After a silence, he said,  “There’s something I want you to do.  I want you to take a trip to the Circle I and talk to Hetty Parrish.”

Chapter 18

     Hetty shifted her gaze to look out the parlor window.  She stared at the rain streaming down the glass and listened to a low rumble of thunder that growled like the warning of a caged beast.

     Thunder had awakened her that morning, followed by the soft patter of rain on the roof.  It was a dark, dreary day, not the kind of weather to go making calls.  Amiline’s visit had been an unexpected one.

     Aunt Fidelia was taking a nap upstairs and Lieta, suffering with a headache, was also lying down.  Hetty had spent the last two hours entertaining Amiline by herself.

     There was a hard edge to Amiline today.  She had seemed different at the wedding.  Now, however, she was the same Amiline she had always been.  Prim and proper, not a hair out of place.  And her biting tongue left no one unscathed.

     Amiline had already discussed the wedding at length, and now she was continuing the conversation she had begun a few minutes ago.

     “That had been some kiss.”  There was an underlying sarcasm in Amiline’s voice.  “A woman doesn’t let a man kiss her like that until after the ceremony.  When they are alone.”

     Amiline brushed an imaginary piece of lint from her skirt and glanced covertly at Hetty before she went on.  “And apparently Jesse McLaren is back to his old ways.”

     “And what ways would that be?”  Hetty asked.

     “Oh, spending his time in the saloons.  Drinking.  Gambling.  Fighting.”   Amiline shrugged.  “Who knows what else.  He was in a fight in the Purple Cage just the other night.  Guns were drawn and only Brent’s intervention prevented bloodshed.”

     Hetty had risen from her chair.  She now stood frowning out at the rain beyond the window.  Her hand lifted to draw aside one of the curtains. 

     “The fight was over a woman, as I heard it,”  Amiline informed her.

     The curtain fell back into place as Hetty turned back to her guest.

     “Brent says that the man has always
been a wolf with women.  And-  ”  Amiline paused for effect.  “As if those vices don’t keep him busy enough, it’s being whispered about that he rides with Thrall.  That maybe he
is
Thrall.  You have to admit that it is a bit of a coincidence that Jesse McLaren disappeared two years ago, at about the same time the trouble began here with outlaws.  Not only that, but Rafe Landry swears that Jesse McLaren was behind the mask of one of the men that robbed him a few nights ago.”

     Rafe Landry, Hetty thought with vexation.  Who could put faith in anything Rafe Landry had to say.

     Amiline patted her hair and then as if she had just recalled something else, said,  “They say he has a woman staying in that cabin with him.  A saloon girl.”

     There was a silence while the full significance of Amiline’s words sank in.  The rain drummed a little harder on the roof.

     Amiline lifted her dainty porcelain cup to her lips, sipped at her tea and said,  “He is certainly good-looking enough.  To attract women, I mean.  But that’s just the kind you have to watch out for.  I have heard that he has a string of them behind him that you couldn’t count.”

     Amiline tugged absently at her undersleeves.  “It’s a game with some men.  They enjoy the excitement of the hunt.  And then when the
y have gotten what they want-  ”  Amiline shrugged.  “Well, then they move onto the next challenge.  I’d have to agree with Brent.  As far as Jesse McLaren’s reputation goes, I’d say he earned every bit of it.”

     Hetty didn’t comment.  She had nothing, in fact, to say about Jesse at all.  Not then and not later when Brent himself came to escort his sister home safely.

     He had repeated the stories about Jesse as if to make certain Hetty understood just what a reprehensible cad the man really was.  He had given detail after detail till she’d wanted to slap that self-satisfied, barely-concealed, gloating smile off Brent’s face.

     When her guests were finally gone, Hetty spent some time mindlessly cleaning up the parlor.  She kept thinking over all that Brent and Amiline had told her.  Nearly a week had passed since their kiss after the wedding reception and Jesse had not come around.  Not even once.  After what had happened between them, she could not understand his absence.  She thought that he-  She let out a frustrated breath.  She didn’t know what she thought.