Kid Calhoun (31 page)

When she had a good hand, Anabeth held her cigarette between two fingers while she bet. When she had nothing, she kept the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and squinted through the smoke. In an embarrassingly short time, all the matchsticks were sitting in front of him.

“I don’t understand it,” Anabeth muttered. “It was as though you could see what I held in my hand.” Her eyes narrowed and she turned to look behind her for a shiny surface that might have reflected her cards back to Jake. But there was nothing. “How the hell did you do it?”

“Superior play,” he said with a rakish grin.

Anabeth gave a very unladylike snort. “All right. I give up. How did I give myself away?”

“Depending on the cards you held, I could count on your cigarette being held in your hand, or the corner of your mouth.”

Anabeth disgustedly stubbed out her cigarette in a tray on the table. “Damn! I’ll have to give up smoking when I’m playing, I suppose.”

“You ought to give it up altogether. Along with poker. And swearing. And drinking, too, for that matter. How can one woman have so many vices?”

“You have all the same vices,” Anabeth retorted. “I’ll give them up when you give them up!”

“It’s different for me.”

“How?”

“I’m a man.”

“So what?”

“The rules for women are different than the rules for men.”

“Then I’ll just follow the men’s rules.”

Jake laughed. “That won’t work.”

“Why not? So far I’ve been doing just fine.”

Jake raked all ten fingers through his hair, leaving it standing on end. “So far you’ve been living your life as a man. What happens when you want to live it as a woman?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“You tell me,” Jake retorted, his patience at an end. If she couldn’t see her proper role in life, he wasn’t going to be the one to point it out to her.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, during which Anabeth shuffled and reshuffled the cards, she said, “I only know what I was taught by my father and my uncle. I don’t know how to act like a woman acts, Jake. I’m more comfortable the way I am.

“Not that I haven’t thought about becoming a lady,” Anabeth said. “I felt like a real woman for the first time when I tried on the dress you bought for me. It made me feel … like the person I might have been if I hadn’t grown up in Treasure Valley.

“But I enjoy riding astride. And smoking. And a glass of whiskey now and then. And I especially enjoy a good game of poker. Do I really have to give all those things up to be considered a woman? Isn’t it enough to be just what I am?”

Jake swallowed hard. The appeal in Anabeth’s voice was difficult to deny. “Sure, Kid. What you are is fine.”

What you are is enough woman to drive me crazy
.

“Thanks, Jake. I needed to hear that.” She set the cards aside and said, “What time do you want to start hunting gold in the morning?”

“What?” Hunting gold was the last thing on Jake’s mind.

“I don’t cheat at cards, and I don’t welsh on a bet. I’ll be up whenever you want to go gold-hunting tomorrow.”

“Early,” Jake said. He wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway, thinking about her, so they might as well get an early start.

“All right. I’ll meet you out front in the morning. Good night, Jake.”

Jake realized he had been dismissed. As a lady might dismiss a gentleman from her parlor. Only he was being sent outside to sleep under the stars. He rose and stretched, but his eyes never left Anabeth:

He watched her remove their whiskey glasses from the table and set them on the sideboard. Then she put the cards away in a box and put them in a drawer of the sideboard.

She turned suddenly and realized Jake was still in the room. “Jake? Is there something you want before you go to bed?”

She shouldn’t have asked, Jake thought. Because he knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. “You,” he said.

Anabeth laughed nervously. “I don’t understand.”

“I want you.”

Jake took a step forward and Anabeth retreated. “Just a minute,” she said, holding a hand palm outward, as though that could stop his advance. “You told me to stay out of your way. Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes.”

“I just want to be sure I’ve got this right. Are you saying you care for me?”

Jake was startled by the words she had chosen to attach to feelings he preferred to keep regarding as purely physical. “No, I don’t think I’m saying that.”

“So, what you want from me is what you can get
from a woman like Sierra Starr, is that it?” Anabeth clarified.

Jake could see the trap and walked into it anyway. “I suppose so, yes.”

“I’m not interested. Good night, Jake.” Anabeth turned and walked away from him to her bedroom door. She stopped and with the door against her cheek said, “I think maybe it’s better if we stick with your rules from now on—except when we’re hunting for Sam’s gold. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Jake came to relish the time they spent together over the days that followed. They searched the house, and he found the collection of wooden animals that Booth had carved for Anabeth, including a burro she said was her favorite. They searched the cave behind the house, and he found a collections of pretty stones that Anabeth had hidden there as a child. They searched the stream bed and the whole area around the pond, and Jake found Anabeth’s breechclout.

Anabeth grabbed for it and said, “That’s mine!”

“It looks Indian to me.”

“It’s an Apache breechclout. Wolf gave it to me.”

Jake’s brows rose nearly to his hairline when he saw how little there was to the garment. “What’s it doing here by the pond?”

“I wear it when I go swimming.”

“When you’re alone?”

“Sometimes Wolf is here.”

“Where’s the shirt that goes with this?” he demanded.

“Hidden in the house.”

Jake thought about it a moment and came to a conclusion that put a scowl on his face. “You wore this”—he shook the breechclout at her—“and only this—when you went swimming with that Apache buck?”

Anabeth nodded.

“He’s seen you half-naked?” Jake was having trouble
accepting that degree of intimacy between Anabeth and any other man—much less the Apache.

Anabeth put her hands on her hips and tapped her toe as though she were dealing with a not particularly bright child. “The first time I met Wolf I was six and swimming half-naked in this pond. What was there to hide later?”

“You sure are damned modest around me,” Jake roared.

“I don’t know you the way I know Wolf!”

“And whose fault is that?” Jake demanded.

“Yours,” Anabeth retorted. “You asked me to leave you alone. And I have.”

“Maybe I’ll just change my mind.”

“You do that!” Anabeth shouted.

Jake threw the breechclout down and marched off in high dudgeon. But he couldn’t forget what Anabeth had said. Maybe it was time to admit—at least to himself—that he cared for her. Because, dammit, he did.

Shortly after their argument over the breechclout, Anabeth caught him swimming naked in the pond.

“I see you like swimming without even a breechclout!” she shouted as she scampered away with every stitch of his clothing, including his boots.

Chagrined to be caught with his pants down, so to speak, Jake stalked, stark naked, back to the other end of the valley to confront Anabeth and demand their return.

He had the satisfaction of seeing her flush to the roots of her hair before she flung his clothes in his face.

But by then his body had already shown her, in no uncertain terms, how much he desired her.

Two days later, she put a snake in his bedroll. He nearly had heart failure when his toe made contact with the reptile. He had already scrambled out of his blankets by the time he realized it was only a grass
snake, and not something poisonous. When he looked up, he found Anabeth standing in the doorway of the house laughing like a hyena.

“You think it’s funny now, Kid. But just wait. Your day is coming.”

“Good night, Jake. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

She was sound asleep the next morning when he lifted the covers and laid that selfsame snake on her belly. He leaned back against the stone wall, crossed his arms and waited for the fun to start.

It took about twenty seconds.

Anabeth’s eyes flew open and she let out a shriek that would have done an Apache proud. The snake came flying out of bed first, and Anabeth soon followed.

Only, this time she was the one who was naked.

“Don’t play games, Kid,” Jake warned as his eyes drank their fill. “Because I always play to win.”

His warning was wasted. A week later he took a bite of beans only to have his mouth catch fire.

Hot peppers!

“Water!” he gasped.

She held her hands wide and shrugged. “I’ve run plumb out,” she said with a grin.

“Then maybe we better go get some,” he replied in an ominous voice.

Jake yanked Anabeth from her chair and dragged her all the way to the pond. He didn’t even hesitate, just picked her up and tossed her in.

“How does it feel to cool off?” he shouted down at her.

Anabeth came up spluttering and howling, but he was the one who suffered. Her wet shirt clung to her like a second skin, revealing rounded breasts and nipples turned to stiff peaks by the icy water.

He whirled and left her to climb out on her own, not trusting his self control.

Jake stopped sleeping near the house, unable to bear being so close and yet unable—unwilling—to risk touching her. There was no question he was walking the edge of restraint. The moment finally came when she pushed him over.

Jake was tossing restlessly in his bedroll. He had been worrying lately about Claire. Where was she? How was she? Why hadn’t Wolf returned to the valley as Anabeth had promised he would?

But whenever he thought of leaving Anabeth here alone to go after Claire, he knew that even if he found the way out of the valley now he wouldn’t leave. The Kid wasn’t safe here. It was only a matter of time before the outlaws discovered a way into the valley. But he felt torn between needing to go and needing to stay.

Finally, he left his bedroll and headed for the pond at the far end of the valley.

He and the Kid had criss-crossed the valley together for the better part of a month now in search of Sam’s gold. All to no avail. This was one of the last days of Indian summer, and Jake knew they were running out of time. If the outlaws didn’t find them soon, winter would. He didn’t plan to spend the winter alone in this godforsaken valley with a woman who turned his insides out every time he looked at her.

The moon was up and he could see as though it were daylight. He stripped quickly when he reached the pond and slipped quietly into the water. Which was when he realized he wasn’t alone.

“Kid? Is that you?”

Jake’s senses came alive when there was no answer. He had grown lax over the past weeks of isolation in the valley. He had brought no weapon with
him to the pond. A quick search of the surface of the pond revealed nothing. His glance skipped to the area surrounding the pond, but he found nothing threatening there, either.

The hairs on the back of Jake’s neck prickled, giving him a second’s warning before a tempest erupted behind him. Water sprayed everywhere as two hands clamped onto his shoulders, forcing him underwater.

Jake’s reaction was instant and instinctive. He whirled underwater and reached for whoever had attacked him. His huge hands grasped the neck of—

Jake kicked hard to reach the surface, bringing his assailant with him. He broke the water in a lunge that carried both him and his prisoner high in the air.

“Damn you, Kid!” he roared.

Before Anabeth could say anything they plunged back into the water. Jake grabbed Anabeth around the chest and swam to the edge of the pond. He hauled himself out onto the rock and dragged her out after him.

Anabeth coughed and gagged and coughed again trying to get rid of the water she had swallowed. She gasped air to fill starving lungs.

“You little idiot! You demented brat! What the hell did you think you were doing?”

Anabeth put a hand to her bruised neck. “Playing,” she grated out.

“
Playing?
I nearly killed you!” he ranted. “I could have broken your neck!”

She managed a grin. “Pretty funny, huh?”

“Like a funeral,” he snarled.

Anabeth didn’t try to get out from under Jake. She simply lay where she was. Her eyes never left his face, so she saw the moment when he realized that naked flesh met naked flesh in all the places where their bodies touched.

He sucked in his stomach, but that only caused his
chest to press against her breasts. The hair on his chest brushed against her nipples causing them to peak. Anabeth heard Jake’s husky groan as his body reacted to the changes in hers.

Jake’s hands were braced on either side of Anabeth. Her lips were parted, her breath coming short and fast. Jake’s body tautened as her tongue reached out to catch a drop of water on her lower lip. As though drawn by some unseen force, he leaned down and claimed her lips with his, sipping at her mouth, tasting her.

He loved the feel of her, the sweet, sweet taste of her. Too much. Jake recognized the danger. And sought to save himself. He started to lift himself away from her, but she clutched at his arms, holding him where he was.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Make the ache go away, Jake.
Here.”
She touched her breasts. The tips had hardened into tight pink buds.

“And here.”
Her fingertips skated across her belly, flat and taut.

“And here.”
Her fingertips slipped down to the nest of coal black curls between her legs.

Her blue eyes were dark with a passionate need that Jake was helpless to deny.

“You want my hand here, Kid?” Jake claimed her breast and tugged rhythmically on the swollen crest.

Anabeth twisted beneath him as the pleasure streaked from breast to belly. She shivered uncontrollably as his hands slid down to search out her hipbones.

“And you want me here?”

Anabeth took a shuddering breath as a rush of pleasure shimmered through her.