Compromised Hearts (16 page)

Recalling all the gazes that had been fixed upon her and how nervous they had made her, Emily made no attempt to deny that. “But, Cloud, what about Thornton? Surely
it is not good for him …”

Reaching down to remove her hands from the boy’s eyes, he said quietly, “Thornton is too young to know he’s seeing anything he shouldn’t and he’ll be tucked up and sleeping before the—er, business here really gets started. Liza’s always got a couple of rooms left empty we can use.”

“That’s right, miss,” Liza chimed in. “I’ll show you and the boy to one now, if you’d like.” She winked at Cloud. “I reckon Cloud and James will be a while making their choices.”

“As you said, Liza, I brought my own.” He ignored Emily’s groan. “Em and me’ll share a room. James and Thornton’ll take another.”

“You and her? But, I—I mean, she’s a lady.”

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Little,” Emily said, after glaring briefly at Cloud, who never failed to reveal his total lack of discretion, “this lady had the misfortune to stumble upon a rogue.”

Liza chuckled. “He’s that, all right. The girls’ll be sore disappointed.”

“That seems to be the lot of half of the females in the Colorado Territory,” Emily muttered and decided that Cloud was ill-mannered to grin like that.

Liza laughed heartily over Emily’s remark, but James still looked worried.

“Um, Cloud? If you’ll excuse us a moment,
ladies. Cloud, I’d like to have a word with you,” James said quietly. “Well?”

“It might be better said private-like.”

“Spit it out, James.”

A light color touched James’s cheekbones but he doggedly proceeded. “Look, Cloud, I have been traveling with you a long time.”

“Since Justine.”

Grinning at Emily, James continued, “It’s been real nice, but while you’ve had Era to hold—Sorry, Em. Anyways, I’ve been with the boy. I’m real fond of Thornton, but now we’re here I think tonight I’d like a—well …”

“Of course you would,” Liza said when James faltered. “Little Thornton can bed with me.” She smiled when Emily could not fully repress a frown of concern. “I just run the business. I ain’t got any interest in the rest. Now, let me show you to the rooms I got. You can have a bath if you want, then we can have supper.”

“Who’d you lose, Liza?” Cloud asked as, after collecting the bags, they followed the woman upstairs.

“Lucy and Tiffany.”

“Tiffany? Don’t think I know that one.”

“What a surprise,” Emily murmured.

Liza chuckled and answered, “She wasn’t here long. Got left behind by a gambling man so she came here to work, then took off with another gambling man. Fool girl. Now, Lucy
up and wed one of the miners.”

Emily only half listened to the conversation. She did not really wish to hear how well acquainted Cloud was with all of Liza’s “workers.” Her air of disinterest vanished, however, when she and Cloud were shown to a room, promised a bath and left alone.

Wide-eyed with shock, she stared at the room. The bed was large and canopied, its covers red and gold. There were mirrors everywhere. After spotting several rather lewd paintings she turned to stare at Cloud, who watched her warily.

“Em, it really is the best place to stay tonight. Safest and cleanest, I swear it.”

“But it is so—so vulgar.”

“Yeh, to you, I reckon it is. I never really noticed.”

Busying herself with removine her hat, Emily sighed. “I am not sure I wish to spend a night in a place filled with women you have—er, known well. Meeting them one at a time was tedious enough.”

Hiding a smile, Cloud moved to stand behind her. Putting his arms around her, he kissed the nape of her neck. Such remarks gave him the hint that Emily’s feelings ran deeper than desire alone. That, he knew, could only benefit him. He discovered that he was ridiculously pleased by each such hint.

“Em, whatever I did here in the past was bought and paid for. Hardly something
worth bothering about. A business transaction.”

That was faintly comforting. By the time they joined Liza, James, and Thornton for supper, she was not sure it was true, however, at least not on the part of the women. Each one they met as they made their way to the kitchen had boldly invited Cloud to her bed, made a reference or two to past encounters, and made it clear that the value of his coin was not what prompted their interest. Thoroughly disgusted and achingly jealous, Emily gave Liza all her attention and found the woman interesting as well as humorous. She was sorry to be parted from her when they were surreptitiously returned to their room as the customers began to arrive.

Although it troubled her deeply when Cloud left her alone to go and play cards with Liza, she hid it. If he were intending to answer some of the invitations hurled his way, there was little she could do about it. As she crawled into bed, she wished she could accept that instead of having doubts and fears gnaw at her, keeping her awake. She put the pillow over her head to block out the increasing noise and wished she could as easily block out the images jealousy put in her mind.

“It’s getting late, son,” Liza said as she idly shuffled the cards. “One more hand. I still have the vain hope

I’ll do more than break even with you, Liza.”

She laughed and dealt the cards. “She’s a cute little thing, your Em. Real polite too. That’s good breeding, that is.”

He nodded. “She’s got that all right.” He frowned slightly. “It seems a little rowdier here than it used to be.”

“That’s desperation you hear. They know this town is dying, that they’ll have to move on. Men can get a little wild when they know all their dreams’re worth squat. Haven’t had any real trouble, though. Your Em’ll be safe.”

Even as Liza spoke, a scream pierced through all the other sounds in the house. Cursing viciously, Cloud bolted toward the stairs. Liza hurried after him but was hard put just to keep him in view.

Using curses she had learned from Cloud, Emily fought to get out from beneath the big, hairy, and very drunk man who had sprawled on top of her, waking her out of a sound sleep. He kept calling her Tiffany, but he was too drunk to heed her denials. In the increasingly vain hope that someone would hear her and come to help her, she screamed and screamed again. She was just about to do so a third time when the door to the room was slammed open and, an instant later, her attacker was ripped off of her. Emily saw Cloud fling the larger man to the floor, then saw a panting Liza appear in the doorway.

To Emily’s extreme embarrassment, a half-dozen people quickly appeared behind Liza to peer in at her. Emily yanked the sheet up to her neck.

“Easy now, Cloud,” Liza said. “That’s Jake and he’s harmless enough. He’s drunk, too. Thinks your lady’s Tiffany, I’ll wager.”

“Yes, he did keep calling me that.”

After a searching look over Emily, which revealed her frightened but apparently unhurt, Cloud looked at Liza. “How the hell’d he get in here? The door was locked.”

“Reckon Tiffany gave him a key. Girl never did follow rules. Joe, Leroy, get this fool friend of yours outta here and try to make him understand Tiffany ain’t here no more.” Even as the two men hurried to pick up a dazed Jake, Liza fished through his pockets and got the key. “Damnation. Hope that fool girl didn’t hand out any others. You all right, miss?”

“Just frightened, Mrs. Little. I was asleep and suddenly he was there.”

“That’d startle a body all right. Reckon that ends our card game, Cloud. See you at breakfast.”

“Yeh, thanks, Liza.” As soon as he had shut the door after everyone and locked it, Cloud looked at Emily. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I thought you said this place was safe.” She hopped out of bed, hurried over to the washbowl and proceeded to scrub her mouth
clean, needing to be rid of the whiskey-soured taste of her inept attacker. “I swear I have not been safe since I left Boston. I have been leered at, propositioned, compromised, kidnapped, held at knife point and attacked by a drunken sot wailing for a Tiffany.”

She glared at Cloud as she stomped back to the bed and got in with a decided flounce. “Now I find myself sleeping in a room where every place I look I find myself staring back at me. It would serve this territory right if I wrote a letter to all the papers back east enumerating every travail I have endured.”

He could not fully suppress the laughter in his voice as he exclaimed, “Hell, Em, if you did that, no woman’d travel west of the Mississippi.” He started to undress.

“Exactly. Not many men would either, for their wives would sit down in St. Louis or Independence and refuse to take another step.”

Shaking his head and laughing softly, he shed the last of his clothes and slid into bed beside her. “You’re in a real snit, aren’t you?”

Although still tense with anger, she did not resist when he tugged her into his arms. “I was sleeping peacefully and was rudely awakened by a huge, hairy man stinking of whiskey and a great deal more. It was not a pleasant experience.”

“Poor Em. I’m sorry. It is safe here. Trust
me. You would’ve been perfectly safe if that girl, Tiffany, had stuck to the rules. Liza doesn’t allow room keys handed out. If nothing else, it would allow for some private—er, interaction, which is like stealing from her. It’s also dangerous. It means someone can get in and out of a room with one of her girls without her knowing who, when or where. She’d lose control over the situation and that could lead to some real trouble.”

He slowly stroked and nuzzled away her anger and the touch of fear that lingered. Once he was certain that she was fully responding, he made slow, gentle love to her. Ruthlessly ignoring her protests and changing them to cries of delight, he left no part of her untouched or untasted. She turned to fire in his arms and he revealed it.

Emily peeked at the man sprawled in her arms, blushed, and looked away. She could not believe the things she had allowed him to do nor the way she had responded to his intimate kisses. Although she could not believe Cloud was given to any strange perversions, she could not fully believe that the intimacies they had just shared were quite right.

Glancing up at Emily, Cloud smiled faintly over the color staining her cheeks. He was not surprised to find her fretting over her abandonment in his arms once the glow of
passion had faded. Her innocence and modesty insured her embarrassment. He simply hoped he could think of all the right words to soothe her, for tasting Emily from her now furrowed brow to her delicate little toes, with a lot of lingering in between, was something he decided he had a positive craving for. Pleasuring Emily in such a way was a pleasure for him and not simply a rarely used and calculated move to ready her for him to seek his own gratification.

“Em, you think too much.” He nuzzled her neck. “Sometimes it’s best just to feel, just to enjoy.”

She sighed and wished it could be so easy. “I do not know if I can. Some things seem so scandalous they cannot possibly be right.”

“Trust me, Em. I’m not given to any strange twists of taste.”

“Well, I couldn’t really believe that you were.”

“I’m not. If it’s something that pleasures us both, I figure it’s okay. You’re a prude, Em,” he goaded.

“Quite probably, although I hardly think that my finding it shocking to roll about in total abandonment with a man who is not my lawful husband is prudish. That should shock anyone with a sense of modesty or morality.”

Rolling onto his back, he dragged her on top of him and winked at her. “Total abandonment, hmmm? I like the sound of
that.”

“Yes, you would.” A sound much like an Indian’s war whoop echoed through the hall and Emily gasped. “Cloud? Did you hear that?” Her first start of fear faded rapidly when she realized that Cloud was laughing. “Stop laughing and tell me what it was.” When he just laughed harder, she suddenly realized what had caused the sound and blushed even as it echoed through the hall again. “Oh.”

“Old James sure must be enjoying himself.”

At first Emily was embarrassed, but then curiosity proved stronger. “That was James? No, it can’t be. He is such a gentleman.”

“Oh, it’s James all right. Honey, you put a man in a bed with a willing woman and his fine manners slip away fast.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, seeing as the only man I have been in a bed with doesn’t have any fine manners to let slip,” she drawled, then ruined the effects of her coolly delivered insult by giggling over his mock look of outrage.

For a little while they playfully wrestled, and Cloud discovered that Emily was ticklish nearly everywhere and Emily discovered that Cloud had only one ticklish spot—the bottom of his feet—but that it was a very ticklish spot indeed. When they finally stopped their nonsense, Cloud was sprawled on top of her and they were both breathing
heavily. A moment later Emily realized that it was not only Cloud’s laughter that had been stirred by their tussling. “Again?”

“Got some objections, do you?”

Since his skillful stroking was already making her purr softly, Emily decided that that was a very foolish question.

Unsuccessfully smothering a yawn, Cloud adjusted an equally sleepy Emily more comfortably in his arms. “Your journey will be over soon, darlin'. A week left at the most.”

Emily felt as if someone had just punched her in the heart. She had realized that they were getting close to the San Luis Valley, but she had not realized that they were quite that close. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that she had not thought about it, had indeed done her best not to think about it. She felt panicked about how little time there was left. It seemed far too short a time to make any further headway into Cloud’s heart. She could not help but feel that she had lost the battle for his love.

“Only a week?” She hoped he would attribute the soft huskiness of her voice to weariness and not guess that she was very close to bursting into tears.

“Or less. The last leg of our journey could go smoothly, but I never bet on it. Soon you’ll
see that brother of yours.”

“That will be nice.” And you will drop me at his doorstep like a lump of hot coals, she thought despairingly.

D
awn was just streaking the sky when Cloud nudged Emily awake. He felt a sense of rising excitement. Wolfe’s ranch was not quite a day’s ride away. Not only would he see his brother for the first time in almost a year, but he would be back on his own land. He realized that it was the first time since he had bought the plot of land that he was eager to see it, to get planning on what to do with it. Glancing at the delicate woman who was sitting up and rubbing her eyes, he had the feeling she had something to do with his change of attitude. She had started him planning, was part of his thoughts on the future.