Daddy by Surprise (7 page)

She loved the subject matter, and the author’s writing was intriguing, if not gifted.

But the sun and wind and fretting over Jack’s condition quickly caught up with her. Her eyelids fluttered closed and her breathing evened out. Just a quick nap, then she’d watch
Letterman,
she told herself.

T
HE PEN FELT
heavy and awkward in her hand. She couldn’t explain why. As a teacher, she’d done her sums in ink ever since leaving school. Miss Marshall, her teacher, had proclaimed Katherine the smartest student and had awarded her a good-conduct ribbon, as well as a brand-new pen-and-ink set she’d gotten from back East.

The pen remained one of Katherine’s most prized possessions. Perhaps because, from that point on, she’d felt as if her life had controlled her and not the other way around. Her parents had convinced her to move with them to the frontier where teachers were in short supply.

But so were doctors. And when the influenza came, it took them both. And her younger siblings.

Thank the good Lord above that she had a job, or else her life could have been much, much worse. She’d managed to save enough money from the tiny stipends she earned to keep the land her father had claimed—until the railroad came.

Of course, they’d paid her pennies on the dollar for the claim her father had given his life to procure. And her strident voice—a lone, strident voice, it seemed—against the bullying tactics of the railroad had cost her her teaching position. The board of citizens voted to find someone less confrontational. But they gave her a good recommendation to assuage their lily-livered consciences.

And so she’d answered an advertisement for a teacher in the Dakota Territory town of Deadwood. Room and board provided.

“And did it ever once occur to me to ask if the room included walls that kept out the snow in the winter and grasshoppers in the summer?” she murmured under her breath.

She’d sat down beside the small hearth of her dilapidated home to compose a list of complaints. Money abounded in this mud hole they called a town. She’d seen the gold for herself, spilling from a cloth bag gripped in the stiff fingers of a corpse that very morning. The man’s body hadn’t been discovered by the vermin some called men, or he surely would have been naked, as well.

She’d done her civic and humane duty and gone to the sheriff—a brooding hulk of a man who terrified her just a hair less than his gun-toting friend. The man they called Mad Jack. Not to be confused with Jack McCall, the infamous idiot who killed the town’s most talked-about resident, Wild Bill Hickok.

Sheriff Seth Bullock and Mad Jack—she had no idea if the man had a surname or not—disposed of the body, but not before sharing a smoke and nudging it with the toes of their filthy boots. She’d gone home in disgust, planning to begin the search for a new position in another town. Even Kansas City would be better than here. Possibly Denver.

She had nothing holding her here—even though she’d grown to care for her students. But how could she possibly expect to make a difference in a place where life was so cheap and decency so far from anyone’s mind?

She began to write. As was often the case when she was composing, she became so absorbed in the process that she lost her connection with the world around her. She didn’t realize the door behind her had come open until she felt a cold shiver trace down her back. She twirled and saw him standing in her doorway.

Her heart climbed into her throat, making speech impossible. She gripped the pen as if to use it as a weapon. A study in futility. The man was known to have survived numerous gunshots and knifings. Death by pen? The thought made a nervous giggle bubble up and slip past her lips.

He cocked his head slightly in a way that most women probably would have found attractive. In fact, Katherine did find him attractive. In a self-destructive way that she was too smart to let sway her.

“I knocked,” he said, his deep, smoke-roughened voice filling the tiny space.

“I didn’t answer, but still you entered.”

“I told Seth I’d check on you.”

“Does that make you a dutiful friend or a curious interloper?”

“I lope pretty well. Or rather my horse does.” He closed the door and took a step closer.

Close enough for her to see the hint of humor in his eyes, which she noticed were the color of smoke. What an odd thing to notice when she was about to be violated.

At least she assumed her time had come. Men who dealt with death so cavalierly surely would have no qualms about committing rape.

But his attempt at humor confused her.

“What is it you want, Mr….?”

“Jack will do.” He looked around. “Small place. Cold, too. You should have better. Maybe if you had a husband. A family.”

“I had a family. They died. If I had a husband, he’d have probably caught gold fever by now and be up some gulch with a pan and a rocker.”

His gaze returned to her and he studied her as intently as he had her accommodations. She employed all her resources to keep from squirming like a bug being tormented by a bully. No, she thought, that was the wrong analogy. His gaze wasn’t harsh or dissecting. It took her apart but not cruelly.

“Rocks—even the kind with gold in them—aren’t something that holds my attention. Learned that a long time ago. If I’m gonna gamble my time away, I prefer to do it with cards. The odds seem a little more even.”

“Why?”

“There are a lot more rocks than there are cards in a deck.”

She couldn’t help but smile. But she wished she hadn’t when he seemed to take her expression as an invitation to move closer. He was only a step away from where she was sitting. The room, which served as bath and kitchen, as well as sleeping area, was totally inappropriate for entertaining. Especially for a single woman and a man who was not a family member.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said as teacherly as possible.

“I know. But I find I’m powerless to make myself leave. Until today I hadn’t realized how beautiful you are. And strong-minded. You didn’t approve of how Seth and I handled the situation with that body, did you?”

“I did not. You treated the deceased with less respect than most people would have given a dead dog. Your attitude has made me reconsider my place here. If the town’s elected officials—”

“Nobody elected me to nothin’,” he said, his voice rising. “We saw to the body as best we could. Did we wring our hands and mutter a prayer for his soul? No. Because, frankly, that body is the fifteenth I’ve helped Seth deal with since I got here. Old. Young. Sick. Gunshot. Murdered. Hung. Run down by a wagon. Every death—friend or stranger—adds another layer between you and fear. It’s the only way to keep the blackness at bay.”

Strangely, she understood. She’d cried when her mother passed. After giving birth five times, Mama’s body had been the most worn down and susceptible to the fever. But as the others succumbed, Katherine had slipped a sort of fine kid glove over her heart. Layer by layer until she didn’t feel any pain. Or anything at all.

She couldn’t say how it happened, but wordlessly, she rose and went into his arms. Strong, sinewy arms barely cloaked by the coarse material of his coat. He smelled of snow and smoke. He smelled like a man. It had been so long since she’d inhaled those scents up close. They carried with them powerful memories. Her father washing up after a day of working the earth. Her brother sneaking in after courting his beloved Isabeth. Her mother handing her the baby to dry off after he tumbled in the creek behind their home.

She’d missed the touch of these strange male creatures. Her father’s hand of support on her shoulder. Her brothers’ hugs. Men had courted her, at times. She’d held hands with one or two and danced her share of reels. She’d even kissed Jeremiah Conroy before he headed west to seek his fortune. But she’d never felt drawn like this—a horse to the proverbial water. And she knew, deep down, that she would drink as much as she could take in.

“You are soft in all the right places,” Mad Jack told her, his hands taking liberties no man had taken before.

“And you are not. But I sense a softness in your heart that I expect very few people see.”

His low chuckle made a shiver course through her body, opening wells of feeling she’d never known existed. Her mind, thankfully, had stopped thinking about all the bad things that could—and probably would—come of this encounter. Propriety and honor were words that lived outside this moment, outside this room.

What mattered now was the roughness of his beard against her palms as she framed his face with her hands. He’d shaved that morning. She could tell. But the outline of stubble told her he was the kind of man who could grow a beard in a week, if he were so inclined.

“How is it that you don’t favor a beard in winter?” she asked, bringing her cheek to his. She rubbed back and forth, enjoying the sharp but soft bristles.

“I do when I’m away from camp, but barberin’ seems right when you’re seeking the company of a lady.” He reached behind her, his fingers skimming lightly over the pins that held her tightly twisted bun. “May I?”

She nodded. The only answer possible and one that seemed silly, given how many rules she’d already broken. But the moment his fingers scraped upward, loosening the heavy mane from its braid, her fate was sealed. The pleasure was instant and overwhelming. She put her lips to his. Primly. Puckered. The way she’d learned that one other time.

His answering touch was so different, so powerful and invasive, her heart stopped as his tongue parted her lips and entered her mouth. Was this normal? But the question barely had time to cross her mind before she answered back, her tongue seeking, tasting, exploring.

She was so preoccupied with the sensations she was experiencing in this new and strange arena, she didn’t notice at first that he’d managed to remove her outer jacket and was working on undoing the buttons of her shirtwaist. “Oh,” she said with a small gasp. “Of course.”

He looked at her with a dangerously handsome slant to his mouth. Did he expect her to push him away? That would be the smart choice, but it was not her intention.

“My mother explained that when a man and woman have physical relations, men often prefer the woman to disrobe.”

He threw back his head and let out a roar of laughter that both pleased and mortified her. She felt the heat that had been in other places flood her cheeks. She turned away, but he caught her shoulders and made her face him. “You are the most honest, forthright woman I have ever met, Miss Katherine. You don’t belong with a man like me, and I’ve spent every day since you arrived in this godforsaken place trying to stay away from you. But we’re here now, and I want you to know that you can trust me.

“I might not have much in the way of land or goods, but I have my honor. My reputation. I don’t cheat at cards. I don’t shoot men in the back. And I don’t lie to women.”

“You didn’t laugh because I’m naive and unworldly?”

“No, ma’am. I laughed because you are real and good—two things I never expected to
find
in this godless land, much less touch.”

She finished unbuttoning her shirtwaist and went on to remove her skirt and the extra layers of petticoat she’d added for warmth. Her small stove was almost out of coal, but the instant his hands touched her, the heat within her body more than made up for the room’s chilly temperature.

He shed his clothes just as fast and pulled back the quilts on her bed. The mattress was lumpy but the sheets fresh from her Sunday washing. He climbed in first and pulled her down so her body was stretched out atop him. She felt exposed and awkward. Her buttocks bare for the world to see—if the world had been looking. But then his large, rough hands covered her nakedness, squeezing her flesh in a way that sent liquid desire to a very specific crux between her legs. She wriggled in response.

“Not too much movement too fast, my pretty kitten. I haven’t been with a woman in a long time. We don’t want this to be over before we start.”

“I don’t know what to expect exactly or what’s expected from me,” she admitted, sharing a confession she’d never said aloud before, even though there had been so many times she’d doubted her abilities, her intelligence, her right to call herself a teacher.

“That’s how we learn, my dear, and I would be honored to be your teacher.”

So, she became the student. He slowly explored her body and taught her to trace the same map across the hollows and valleys, plains and hills of muscle and bone of his. He touched her in the most intimate way possible and showed her how to experience pleasure she’d never expected.

“Oh!” she cried when he touched the pulsing, engorged spot in the mound of her feminine seat. That was what Mother had called it, but Mother hadn’t said anything about the intoxicating—almost painful—release that came from a steady manipulation of the tiny button. “No more. I don’t think I can stand to go there again. Beautiful though it was.”

He smiled and gave her a look that nearly stopped her heart. “Honey Kat, that was the outer door. Beyond lies another world you’ll want to visit time and again.”

She didn’t believe him. If that were true, her female friends would have talked about it. Her mother would have said something. Unless she’d never visited such a place. Maybe you only reached that world with someone like Mad Jack. A rogue. A scalawag. A—

Whatever other name she’d been about to call him was lost the moment he flipped her on her back and pressed himself against her. His male part was touching her female part at almost the exact placement of her lovely little button. She tested the fit by wiggling her hips.

The corners of Jack’s mouth curled upward. “Now you can wiggle all you want, love.”

“Except you’re heavy.”

He raised up slightly, but that lessened the pressure on her new favorite place. She reached behind him and put her hands on his buttocks. The muscular mass flexed and he shifted forward slightly. “Good,” she said, closing her eyes.

She focused on the feelings, not the mechanics, and the voice in her mind that seemed to know what came next told her to open her legs. She did, even though that meant Jack’s manhood fell between them. But opening wider solved the problem. He pumped his thighs slightly and the obstacle in question found an opening made for it.

“This might hurt for a minute.”

He sounded so apologetic she started to say, “It’s okay.” But before the words could form on her lips, he gave a quick, solid push and was inside her. There might have been pain, but she was too startled to think about it. The sensation of a foreign body sharing space with hers was too unnatural, too frightening.