A Restless Wind (20 page)

     Was Amiline right?  Had she been merely a challenge to him?  Had that night meant nothing to him while the searing heat of his kisses had been like a brand upon her very soul?

     She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cold window glass.  The rain had let up for the moment but another storm was drawing its dark veil over the distant hills. 

     The things Amiline had told her played over and over in her mind until she realized that she could never have any peace until she knew if the things that Amiline had said were true.  Uppermost in her thoughts was the burning need to know if there was a woman staying at the cabin with Jesse. 

     Yielding finally to that need to know, she went out through the rain puddles and the mud to the barn.  Impulse was driving her, she knew, as she saddled her horse.  Foolish impulse because only a woman without a shred of sense would go out in weather like this to
see a man who might or might not have a saloon girl living with him.

     She didn’t know what she would say to Jesse when she did see him.  She still didn’t know as she halted her horse at the bottom of the steps leading up to the front porch of the cabin.

     The sky had darkened considerably during her ride.  The air had grown steadily more oppressive.  A thick fog was rising from the ground around her and the woods surrounding the cabin were still dripping with moisture from the last storm.  Thunder growled, a low and ominous sound that threatened another downpour as she dismounted.

     She climbed the short flight of wooden stairs to the porch.  When she was halfway up the steps, the door opened.  Jesse stood in the doorway.

     At the moment he looked every bit the outlaw.  He was unshaven.  His black hair was damp as if he’d been out in the rain.  His shirt was dry, however.  He must have just changed into it because it was untucked and he was fastening the buttons up the front.

     He continued to watch her as he worked at the buttons.  Hetty stepped up onto the porch.  Without a word, Jesse stepped aside.  Drawing her skirt away from his muddy boots, she passed by him and stepped into the cabin.

     Jesse didn’t know what had brought Hetty here, but he suspected that this wasn’t just a friendly visit from a neighbor.  She seemed tense and on edge.  There was more under the surface that he couldn’t identify.  The thought that something had happened at the Circle I suddenly occurred to him.  “Why are you here, Hetty?”

     She walked to the center of the room and stood for a few long moments with her back to him.  He saw the rise and fall of her shoulders as she drew a deep breath before she turned to look at him.

     He saw the look in her eyes and knew why she had come.  She had heard things about him.  As he had known she would.  He had not, however, expected her to come over in person to confront him.

     Thunder cracked loudly enough to shake the foundation of the cabin.  He waited for the rolling peal to die away.  “This isn’t the best weather for a ride,”  he said, still watching her face. 

     What he said was true enough.  He had just gotten back from his own ride.  He had just changed into a dry shirt when he saw her through the window.

     Deep down, Hetty understood that she was driven by a desire to prove that Brent and Amiline were wrong about Jesse.  She wanted desperately to hear Jesse deny the things she’d heard.

     “I-  ”  She hesitated, having trouble finding the right words.  “I have heard things.”

     “About me.”

     “Yes.”

     “And you came to find out if they are true.”

     She nodded slowly.

     Jesse knew that the best thing was for her to believe the worst about him.  Just admit to the lies and it was done.  She would have nothing more to do with him.  Easiest thing in the world.  Only he wasn’t finding it so easy.

     “What have you heard?”  he asked quietly.

     “That you took part in the robbery at Sumner’s Bridge.  And,”  she paused.  “That you were the coward who shot an unarmed man in the back for the sake of a few dollars.”

     He saw a great deal in her eyes at that moment.  And it almost weakened him.  She was waiting for him to deny the things she was saying.  She wanted to believe in him.  And he wanted that, too.  He was surprised at how much he wanted it.

     He wanted in the worst way to tell her that she could, in fact, believe in him.  But the truth was that riding down here had put her at risk.  Dancing with her, kissing her hadn’t been smart moves on his part.  He had let things go too far.  He had also learned certain things last night and knew that Hetty herself was in danger.  Just coming here had put her at risk.  More than she knew.

     He knew very well what she wanted from him.  But he couldn’t give it to her.  The further she stayed away from him, the safer she would be.  He didn’t want her riding down here again.  And that meant making her not
want
to come back.

     “I want to know if the thing
s I have heard are gossip or-  ”

     “Or cold, hard facts?”

     “Gossip and cold, hard facts are not the same thing,”  she said cautiously.

     A muscle tensed in his jaw.  “The harsh reality, Hetty, is that sometimes they are.”

     She stared at him for long, silent moments before she said,  “You don’t care if-  people think the worst of you?”

     “People believe what they want to believe.”  His voice couldn’t be much colder.  Or harder.

     “And is it a cold, hard fact, too, that you have a woman staying here with you?”

     He had been tucking the tails of his shirt in.  He lifted his face.

     Watching him closely, Hetty had detected something new in his face.  For a brief moment, before he veiled it, there was a flicker of startled surprise in his eyes.

     “And where did you heart that?”  he wanted to know.  He was frowning now.

     “Does it matter?”  Hetty shot back, half interpreting what she had seen in his eyes as guilt.

     Hetty’s question had, in fact, alarmed Jesse.  He wondered who had gone to her with the information.  They were both distracted for a moment by another loud, angry peal of thunder.

     In an instant, Hetty was drawn back to another day, another storm like this.  It seemed hard to believe that she had stood before this same man waiting out a storm.  Where was the man who had discussed poetry with her and looked at the stars and shared pie with her?  Where was the man who had gone out of his way to help a family in need?  Something was changing between them and she was already struggling with the loss.

     “I d
on’t want to think that . . .  ”  she began.

     “That what, Hetty?”  His words were so cold and emotionless that she was taken aback.

     “That I have misjudged you,”  she finished.  “I realize-  The other night, I-  ”  She bowed her head for a moment, unable to find words.

     “Kissed the wrong man?”

     Her head came up.

     Jesse winced inwardly at the pain that had momentarily found expression on her face.  He wanted to kiss away all that he saw there, to replace it with the truth.  But overriding that was the need to keep her safe.  He needed to play this out to the bitter end.

     “What do you really want, Hetty?”

     “Want?”

     “Just because we kissed, should I be expecting you to show up here whenever you take a mind to?”

     She paled visibly.  His own emotional struggle had made his words even harsher than he meant them to
be.  He wanted to take them back.  Of course, he couldn’t do that.

     “You won’t have to worry about that,”  he heard.  “I have no intention of coming back here again.  Ever.”

     Hetty’s gaze went beyond him.  The room looked different by daylight.  There was the fireplace that she remembered.  The small bed was still against the wall.  The bed where they . . .

     Don’t think about that, she ordered herself.  Look at the blankets.  The pillow.  On the bedstead rail was a pair of worn chaps.  A gunbelt was hanging beside them.  Jesse’s black hat was lying atop the small table beside the bed.  She noted all those things while she fought to get her composure back.

     Jesse was remembering, too.  How he’d held her down on that bed.  And how it had taken every ounce of his strength to keep from kissing her.

     He should have let her go then and there.  It would have made things much simpler.  But raw emotion was surging through him like a stampede over which he had no control.

     When she tried to open the door, he slammed it shut again and kept his hand against it.  She spun around, trapped with her back to the door and Jesse’s body blocking her in front.

    Jesse had surprised himself just as much as he had surprised her.  He wasn’t so foolish as to try and keep her there, was he?  On the contrary.  It seemed he was.  Maybe having nothing to lose made him so reckless.

     As he looked down into her face, her expression changed.  She stood rigid.  Her emotion, at the moment, seemed to border on outrage.  And so much more.

     “It seems you haven’t gotten over your habit of riding out in thunderstorms.”

     There was something new in the gaze she leveled at him.  “No, it seems I have not.  In spite of repeated warnings about them.  And about men who pretend to be something that they are not.”

     He tried to make himself let her go.  He really did.  But something else was driving him, too.

     “So, in spite of the storm you decided to put visiting an outlaw on your agenda for today?”

     “Apparently I have.”  Her voice was low and quavering with emotion now as she looked up at him.  She was trying to ignore the closeness of his body.  But awareness strummed along every nerve.  Guilt warred with the awareness.  She didn’t know how she could still react to him this way in spite of everything she had heard about him.

     “I assume-  ”  he began.

     “You assume too much,”  she interrupted him suddenly, desperately trying to regain her shattered equilibrium.  “I admit that I have allowed you to take far too many liberties, and that my behavior has, in fact, been improper.  On more than one occasion.”

     Improper, he was thinking.  And provocative as hell.  Even now there was a kind of breathless tension in her that he could feel.  That he was responding to.  And it was making him want to kiss her in the worst way.

     Giving in fully to the role he was playing, and knowing that she already believed the worst about him pushed him miles beyond reckless.

     “In your quest to find out, honey, if the rumors you heard are lies or cold, hard facts, what bothers you the most?  That you let an outlaw kiss you?  Or that you kissed him back?”

     He heard her sharply drawn breath.

     “It was the whiskey that night that made me forget myself,”  she said, just a little wildly, knowing he was right.  She would be lying to herself if she refused to admit that she had kissed him back.  Willingly.  Eagerly.  Wantonly.

     “Maybe.”  His gaze lowered to her lips.  “But not that day in the barn.  Not that first time.”

     “
You
kissed
me
,”  she nearly panted the accusation.

     “I’ll admit, sweetheart, that I’m in the habit of forgetting myself when I’m with you.”

     “Yes,”  she flung out bitterly.  “And every other woman that comes along.”

     “You’re not like any other woman, Hetty.”

     And Jesse was not like any other man.  Those mist-colored eyes held her captive, left her momentarily speechless.  With an effort she tore her gaze away from his.

     But his hand came up to seize her chin.  He tilted her face upward.  She gasped and circled her fingers around his wrist, trying to loosen the grip he now had on her face.  Her other hand went to the hand that had gone around her waist.

     “And now that you have heard all those things about me, you don’t feel the same about kissing me?”

     She shook her head silently, desperately wanting it to be true.

     The realization that there was nothing left to lose drove Jesse.  “I was half drunk, too,”  he went on.  “But not so drunk that I don’t remember how it was between us.”

     He pulled her hard against him.  “Or how I couldn’t get enough of kissing you.”

     He couldn’t stop himself.  There wasn’t a force in Heaven or on earth that could have stopped him.  He kissed her.

     It was a hard kiss.  A hungry, desperate kiss.  And most likely, Jesse realized with the rational part of his brain, it was the last time he would ever kiss her.

     There was a breathless edge to his voice as he drew back.  “I wanted you then.  I want you now.  So show me how you don’t like being kissed by an outlaw.”

     “I don’t . . .  ”
  Hetty fully intended to protest, and to stop him, but her voice died away in a whisper, and her eyes slid shut as his mouth moved down the side of her neck.  His breathing was unsteady, too, as he drew back again.