The Bridegroom (27 page)

He grinned. “I had no idea I was such a handsome devil,” he said, setting the picture carefully back in the drawer before turning to look at her again—and seeing the tears in her eyes. He whispered her name, all merriment gone from his face.

“Did you look closely at that picture, Gideon?” she asked, wiping away her tears with the back of one hand. “Did you see the leaving in it?”

Very slowly, he opened his arms. “If you’ll have me, Lydia Yarbro, I’d just as soon stay,” he said gruffly.

And she flew to him, threw her arms around his neck.

He held her very close. “Lydia?” he murmured, close to her ear.

“Yes?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”

Lydia leaned back, looked up into Gideon’s face. “Did you just say—?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I said I love you.”

“You said,” Lydia corrected, “that you were
pretty sure
you loved me.”

Gideon chuckled. “So I did,” he agreed huskily.

She smiled. “I’m not sure I want to settle for ‘pretty sure,’ Gideon Yarbro.”

He began hauling up her skirts and petticoats. “
I’m
not sure you’re in any position to argue,” he teased. “And isn’t there something you’re supposed to say back, when a man tells you he loves you?”

Need rushed through her; she felt his thumbs hook deftly under the waistband of her new bloomers.

“Lydia?” he prompted, murmuring the name, tilting his head to nibble at her right earlobe.

“I’m—
pretty sure
—I love you—too,” Lydia gasped out.

“Fair enough,” Gideon allowed, easing her bloomers down just far enough to reach in and cup her most private place with one hand. With the heel of his palm, he stroked his way to bare skin, already moist with the want of him. “Fair enough.”

Somehow, without her knowing, he’d maneuvered her to the wall; she felt it at her back. Her breath came hard, making her breasts rise and fall, the nipples hard against the inside of her camisole. “Shouldn’t we—use the—bed?”

“Eventually,” Gideon said. “How does this damn dress open?”

All the while, he was making those slow, easy circles between her legs.

Lydia gasped again, as he began using his fingers. “It—
oh, dear God
—it buttons—up the back—”

He turned her away from him, still plying her, still plucking and teasing. With his free hand, he worked the buttons in question, with his mouth, he tasted her nape.

Lest she lose her balance, Lydia pressed her palms to the wall, tipped her head back, bit deep into her lower lip to keep from shaming herself by begging—
begging
—Gideon not to stop what he was doing to her.

But he did stop—at least long enough to remove the dress and petticoat and untie the ribbons at the front of her camisole, so that her breasts spilled free. The bloomers slid to her ankles—she kicked them away.

Gideon chuckled at that, turned her around. “Standing up,” he told her, his voice gravelly, “that’s how I was going to have you in the kitchen yesterday—and that’s how I’m going to have you right now.”

Lydia’s eyes widened—oh, but he was caressing her again,
still,
preparing her for taking, and that quelled all thought of propriety.

“But first—” he murmured.

She’d managed to keep her hips still until then, but now they were moving, surging against his hand. “
Gideon
—”

He knelt.

“Oh, no,” she whimpered, even as a thrill of desire flamed through her.

“Oh, yes,” he countered, and then he put his mouth where his fingers had been, and this time, there was no pillow to muffle her groans.

Lydia’s eyes rolled shut; she gave herself up to the wicked pleasure he wrought with every expert flick of his tongue, every motion of his lips. He nibbled, and then he was greedy, and Lydia pressed her bare back to the wall, and drove her fingers into Gideon’s hair, and held him to her.

She tried to be quiet. She tried so hard.

But he drove her relentlessly, and when he finally satisfied her, his hands cupped around her bottom, she shouted his name, and then shouted it again.

Again and again, even after she’d reached the pinnacle, her body bucked and flexed, until she finally sagged into Gideon’s arms.

He rose, lifting her with him, carried her to their bed.

Laid her down.

Dazed, she still saw the worry in his eyes. Knew he was remembering the night before, the blood. “Lydia—?”

She reached for him.

With a groan, he fell to her, still clothed, although his shirt was open to the waist. Had she done that? In her frantic passion, had she somehow opened his shirt, driven by the need to press her palms and fingers to his bare skin?

She didn’t know, didn’t care. “Now, Gideon,” she whispered.
“Now.”

She fumbled for the buttons at the front of his trousers; he moved her hand aside, opened them himself. And then, wonderfully hard, with one thrust of his hips, he was inside her.

She was vaguely sore, but this time, there was no pain.

Lydia crooned, loving the feel of him within her, even though she knew it would soon drive her mad.

“Does—it—hurt?” Gideon rasped, poised over her, his hands pressed deep into the mattress, holding himself still with a visible effort.

Lydia turned her head from side to side on the pillow and crooned again, and that one sound, evidently, was Gideon’s undoing. He took her in earnest then, and the bedsprings squeaked gloriously, and the headboard slammed against the wall, and when the friction became too much for both of them, their cries of release mingled in the night air, Gideon’s
a low, hoarse shout, Lydia’s a near howl, keening and primitive.

And when they caught their breath, they both laughed.

They were covered in plaster dust.

H
E ROSE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING
, while Lydia was still sleeping.

The temptation to burrow between her legs and suckle her awake, and directly into the throes of a violent climax, was overwhelming, but he’d save that for another morning. With luck, there would be hundreds of other mornings.

First, though, he had to go to Flagstaff. Meet with his contact from the head office of the mining company—and resign.

He’d be back before sunset; in the meantime, he had to trust Helga and her stove-poker and, indirectly, his brothers, to keep Lydia safe.

He had so many plans, but they all began with quitting his jobs—as an agent and as a miner. He didn’t know how he’d find another, but he’d saved a lot of his earnings over the years since he’d started working. He could take care of Lydia, her aunts, Helga
and
the little dog.

He dressed quickly in the darkness, took his .45 from the high wardrobe shelf where it had been since he and Lydia had come to this house, strapped it on.

Unlike the morning before, because he wanted to make sure Snippet hadn’t taken his last breath in the night, and spare Lydia the shock of discovering him if he had, he took the kitchen stairs.

Helga was up—did the woman ever sleep?—bustling around the kitchen. She had the coffee brewed—the aroma made Gideon’s mouth water—and the dog was still among the living.

Eyeing Gideon, Helga said, “You really should move that bed away from the wall.”

Gideon chuckled and nodded, crouched to greet Snippet.

“I’ll tell the aunts there was another thunderstorm,” Helga volunteered, pouring coffee for him and handing it to him as he stood straight again, “but sooner or later, they’re going to wonder why the grass isn’t wet.”

Gideon laughed at that, took a sip of the coffee. It was hot and strong and a damn sight better than Rowdy’s.

By then, Helga had spotted the gun on his left hip. Noted, by the look in her eyes, the easy way he wore it, like it was part of him.

She went a little pale. “Gideon—Mr. Yarbro—what—?”

“Call me Gideon,” he said.

Helga propped her hands on her ample hips. “All right,
Gideon,
” she replied. “Where are you going at this hour—even the mine is closed on a Sunday—wearing an I-mean-business shooting iron like that one?”

“There’s something I have to do,” he answered, already edging toward the back door. He still had to get a horse from Rowdy’s barn, saddle it and make the two-hour ride to Flagstaff, and even though he wasn’t supposed to meet his contact until noon, he wanted some time to scout around town a little. And he meant to stop in and see Ruby, his stepmother, at her saloon. Tell her he was married and everything.

That would please Ruby. In her own way, she’d been good to him while he was growing up. Never blamed him for letting four-year-old Rose, her only child, run in front of that wagon that day.

“Don’t you want breakfast?” Helga fretted, following him to the door.

Gideon shook his head, stepped off the porch.

“But—” Helga protested.

She went right on talking, but by then, he was too far away to hear.

T
HADDEUS
B
AILEY TOOK HIS WORK
seriously, and when he hadn’t gotten a single response to his telegrams of inquiry concerning Gideon Yarbro, he’d gone to the streets instead. That was where the most reliable information was to be found, anyhow.

He’d thrown the man’s name around a little, as bait, in this saloon and that one, and, as if by divine providence, not that Thaddeus believed in such things, he’d finally hooked himself a fish.

A small, thin man in a bowler hat had perked up his ears at the mention of Yarbro, and Thaddeus, ever watchful, had noticed. Bought the man a few shots of whiskey to loosen his tongue.

An easterner, by his speech and dress, and plainly feeling out of his element in the Wild West, the fellow had finally gotten drunk enough to admit that he was bound to Flagstaff on the morning train. Wasn’t it a coincidence that Thaddeus had mentioned the very man he’d been told to meet up with?

With a little more whiskey and, later, by slamming the little man up against a wall in an alley and putting a knife to his throat, Thaddeus had learned the rest.

Gideon Yarbro had been an agent with Wells Fargo and Company, fancy that, and he’d worked for Allan Pinkerton and a railroad company, too. Now, he was in the pay of a Chicago mining outfit—a big one, with deep pockets.

The little man—Thaddeus never learned his name—was really just a clerk. It was almost a pity to cut his throat, but since he’d surely go prattling to the law, claiming he’d been
assaulted, forced to hand over important paperwork to a tall man with greasy hair and a scar on the right side of his face, Thaddeus was left with no choice.

With something like regret, he used the knife.

Sidestepped the spurt of blood with a skill born of long experience.

He considered reporting his discovery to Jacob Fitch, since the man clearly didn’t trust him, then decided against that course of action. Better to wait until he’d completed the job and could collect that other twenty-five hundred dollars.

Soon as he had it, he’d be headed for San Francisco, where he meant to board the first boat for South America.

Maybe, he thought cheerfully, he’d even run into the Yarbro twins again. Ethan and Levi, their names were. Offer his condolences on the tragic death of their younger brother, Gideon.

R
UBY HAD AGED, BUT SHE WAS
still a beautiful woman, with copious red hair and a good figure. And though the saloon wasn’t open for business, today being a Sunday, Gideon could see that it continued to make a good profit. The sign out front, above the swinging doors, had gold-gilt letters, the bar was of gleaming mahogany, hand-carved in some distant and exotic country no doubt, and there were new paintings on the walls. Not of the languishing naked women one might have expected in such an establishment, though—these were tasteful scenes of Englishmen riding to the hunt.

Ruby had always had class.

“Married,” Ruby marveled quietly, smiling a little. Except for that hair, she could have passed for a respectable woman, instead of a former madam and present saloon owner, dressed as she was in a tailored blue skirt and jacket with white silk cording stitched onto it in curlicues.

Society in general might not have respected Ruby, but Gideon did.

“Married,” he confirmed. She’d had her cook rustle up a plate of bacon and eggs, along with a pot of coffee, when he’d arrived, and he’d been grateful, since the ride from Stone Creek had left him ravenous.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider bringing this bride of yours to meet me sometime?” Ruby asked, almost shyly. “If you ever get back to Flagstaff, I mean.”

“I’ll bring Lydia around,” Gideon said.

“Jack would get such a kick out of you being old enough to get married,” she went on, shaking her head a little, letting the loneliness show in her eyes for just a moment. She’d known Gideon’s father, Payton Yarbro, as Jack Payton; he’d used an alias, since he’d been wanted in practically every state in the Union until he’d died over near Stone Creek. Her husband’s past had been no secret to Ruby—they’d had a child together, Rose, and their grief at her death had driven them closer together, not further apart—but to her, the famous train robber had been and would always be “Jack.”