Authors: Lydia
His only reply was a maddening shrug. “What does it matter whether it’s true or not, as long as we can get Dooley to believe it?”
“And if we don’t find any claims at all?”
Donovan’s eyes softened for an instant. His hand reached across the desk to give her shoulder a slow caress that sent a thrill coursing through her body. “Then, my dearest Sarah, we’ll just have to work with whatever we
can
find,” he murmured mysteriously.
She studied him, fighting her way through clouds of perplexity. “Back there in the saloon, when I winked at Dooley, it was Cherokee’s response you were watching.”
“You’re a very observant lady.” A hint of a smile twitched the left corner of his mouth, and Sarah realized, for the first time, what a dangerous game Donovan was playing. Enemy against enemy. Cherokee against Dooley. And neither man would hesitate to kill him. The sudden awareness of it left her breathless with fear.
“Try the next drawer,” she said in a voice that could be heard clearly through the closed door. “If we can just lay our hands on those papers, you and I and the corporal could be very wealthy partners indeed.”
The look he flashed her blended gratitude and warning. She could not afford to overplay her part, Sarah reminded herself. Cherokee was no fool. He would recognize an obvious deception. For now, she would be better off to follow Donovan’s lead and take her cues from him.
Sarah bent over the contents of the top drawer with a new sense of purpose. They worked together now, she and Donovan, the intimacy of danger shimmering like fox fire between them. Any accidental touch, any meeting of their eyes set off bursts of love inside her. Her awareness of Donovan, and of the bond they shared, was as exquisite as pain.
If the next few hours were all fate held for them, she would accept each moment as a gift. She would savor every breath and heartbeat. She would fill her senses with the
sight of his face and the sound of his voice. She would hold the scent of him, the feel and taste of him in her memory for as long as time would allow.
His eyes met hers over a sheaf of papers. “I love you, Donovan,” she whispered.
“And I love you.” His fingers reached out to stroke her cheek. “Don’t be afraid, sweetheart. Someday, we’ll be telling our grandchildren about this night.” His palm cupped her chin, tilting her face toward him. “And if I have anything to say about it, we’ll be telling them together.”
Sarah dropped her gaze, unable to accept the freshet of joy that swelled her heart. She had spent her life paying for real or imagined sins. Punishment she accepted as her due. But happiness? Happiness that glowed inside her like a dancing rainbow? No, that was something that happened to people who deserved it. Not to her. Never to her.
“No promises, remember?” she murmured. “That was what we said—”
“It was what you said.” His thumb grazed her jaw as his hand slipped achingly along the curve of her throat to rest on her bare shoulder. Sarah could feel her flesh trembling against the warmth of his work-roughened palm.
“I’ve never believed in looking too far ahead,” she whispered.
“But I’m not made that way.” His voice rasped with emotion. “I’ve never had the patience to bide my time and wait for things to come about.”
“Donovan—”
“No, I have to say it. I want you for my wife, Sarah. I want to spend the rest of my days loving you and caring for you and building our future together. Whatever else this hellish night brings, I’m not turning that dream loose.”
Sarah stared at the papers in her lap, biting back tears. This couldn’t really be happening, she told herself. Not to wicked Sarah Jane Parker. This was only a new kind of heavenly punishment—to dangle everything she’d ever
wanted right in front of her nose, then jerk it away the instant she reached out.
“Please,” she whispered, her hands clenching so tightly that she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. “It’s too much, Donovan. First we’ve got to find those papers, if they exist. And we’ve got to get the children out—”
“Sarah, what are you afraid of?” His fingers massaged her shoulder with gentle insistence. He would demand an answer, she knew, before he let her go.
Her hand reached up to rest on his, drawing strength from the power of tendons and sinews, from the warmth of his skin. “I’m afraid of wanting you too much,” she whispered. “I’m afraid that if I start thinking about our future, it will all be taken away, that I’ll lose you.”
“Why?” he asked softly. “What does wanting have to do with losing? There’s no connection.”
“Not in your mind.” She glanced up at him with a bitter smile. “But you have to understand that I’ve never been truly happy, not in the way I could be with you. Over the years, I’ve come to accept the fact that I don’t deserve happiness, that I’ll never have it. To reach for it now…” A shudder passed through Sarah’s body. “Don’t you see? It would only be tempting fate.”
He captured her hand and raised it to his lips. Sarah felt the rough stubble of his unshaven whiskers as he brushed his mouth to her palm. “Blast it, Sarah—”
“Please,” she pleaded, pulling her hand away as if she was fearful of hurting him. “Let’s just look for the papers now. Maybe later, when, if, we get through this—”
“All right. We’ll do it your way.” He turned back toward the desk with a bleak resolve that left Sarah empty and aching. She stared down at her clenched hands, groping for sensible reasons. What else could she have done? she asked herself. With so many lives at stake, how could she think of her own happiness?
As she bent to shuffling through the jumble of papers, Sarah felt a jabbing sense of regret. Donovan Cole was a
proud man, too proud to open his heart on a whim. What if she had wounded him too deeply?
What if she had already lost him?
After fifteen minutes of sifting through the entire desk, even dumping out the drawers and inspecting the inner framework, they had found no claim papers.
“But we’ve found no cash, either,” Sarah noted. “There’s got to be someplace we haven’t looked—a safe, a box under the floor, even a hollow wall—where Smitty would have kept his valuables.” She rose from her chair to move restlessly about the office, tapping on the plaster, tilting the picture frames, rumpling the rugs. Nothing.
“What about storage?” Donovan had shoved the desk aside, revealing plain, rough floorboards, securely nailed. “There was no liquor in the cool room where I stashed the bodies. Where else would—”
“Liquor—the wine cellar!” Sarah froze as the memory slammed home. Greta had mentioned how Smitty had locked up the three women the night of the tar and feathers. The wine cellar—that could be the key to everything!
Donovan blinked his disbelief. He stamped the floor lightly with his boot. The sound was dull and solid, with no hollowness to it. “There’s no cellar under here. Where could it be?”
“I’m not sure. But the girls would know. I’ll need to go back out there and ask one of them.”
“We’ll both go.” Donovan’s hand caught the small of her back and steered her toward the door. “I don’t like leaving those three galoots alone too long, anyway. You find out about the cellar. I’ll visit with our friend Dooley for a few minutes.”
They came out from behind the bar to a scene much like the one they had left, except that Spade and Cherokee had traded watch on the children. Spade sat alone at one table wolfing down a bowl of beans and some bread from the kitchen, interspersing bites with gulps of whiskey. Dooley dozed at another table, his hat over his eyes. One hand lay
on his saddlebags, the other on his rifle. Donovan hesitated, then slipped into the chair across from him.
Zoe sat with MacIntyre, supporting the wounded man’s head and shoulders in her lap. She shivered in her thin silk wrapper, while he lay bundled in a quilt that someone had brought. She had not left his side, Sarah realized as she walked quietly over and laid a hand on the dark woman’s shoulder.
“How is he, Zoe?” she asked softly.
“Hard to say.” Zoe’s amber eyes swam with weariness. “Sometimes I almost think he can hear when I talk to him. He stirs and moans like he’s comin’ around. Once he even opened his eyes. But he—he didn’t act like he knew me.” She forced a weary smile. “It’s gonna take time, I guess.”
“I could get Faye or Greta to sit with him if you like. That way, you could get some rest.”
Zoe shook her head. “No. I’ll stay. It’s all I’ve got to do.” Her honey-molasses voice lowered to a whisper. “But I wish I was somewhere away from Mr. Spade. I don’t like that ugly little man. Don’t like the way he talks, or the way he looks at me.”
“Dooley told him to leave you alone.”
“Dooley can’t watch him all the time.”
Sarah glanced back at Spade, then spoke cautiously. “Zoe, I need to get into Smitty’s wine cellar. Where’s the entrance?”
Zoe stared at the floor. “Closet off the kitchen. Trapdoor’s hid under some crates. Take a lamp.”
“What’s down there?”
“Not much. Bottles. Shelves.”
“No safe? Nothing that might have money or papers in it?”
“Not that I ever saw.” Zoe’s words trailed off as she smoothed MacIntyre’s thinning hair back from his face. Her strong, dark hands were gentle, her expression sad and tender.
She loves him,
Sarah realized, jolted by the sudden awareness.
All this time he’s been her customer, and she loves him!
“I’m sorry for what he done to you, Miss Sarah,” Zoe murmured. “It was a bad thing, I know. But he’s not really a bad man. It’s just that he’s got so much hurtin’ inside him. Sometimes it makes him do hurtful things.”
Zoe looked up into Sarah’s eyes, her full mahogany lips parted, as if she was waiting for something. Gazing into her anguished face, Sarah felt the events of that awful night welling up inside her again—the screams, the clutching hands, the tar pot scorching on the flames…
Let it go, Sarah Parker
, a voice whispered inside her.
The past is behind you. Set it free
….
No—against all reason she clung to the memory, to the pain and the anger. She had been brutally wronged. She deserved recompense. She deserved justice.
Let it go….
She gazed down into Zoe’s eyes, into amber-flecked depths that swirled with tears. Little by little she willed her stubborn mind to release the thing that had happened. Little by little, she felt the heaviness lifting from her spirit as the memory rose on tar black wings. The lamplight formed iridescent circles as her vision blurred. A single drop of moisture trickled down her cheek.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, one hand tightening on Zoe’s shoulder through the threadbare silk. “Tell him—if and when you can. Tell him it’s all right.”
Sarah turned away swiftly, fearful of breaking under the strain of her own emotion. A glance around the saloon told her that little had changed. Spade was still bent over his beans and bread. Dooley was still slumped in his chair, asleep. Broken glass was strewn around the bar, and there was a hideous red-brown stain on the floor where the panic-stricken deputy had died.
The situation was as dismal as ever, Sarah realized. But the simple act of forgiving MacIntyre had changed something
inside her. The black weight of hopelessness was gone. For the first time she felt ready to think about something beyond this night—and ready to fight for it.
Donovan had risen from his place at Dooley’s table. Sarah gave him a subtle nod, then strode toward the kitchen. She heard his footsteps behind her, felt the electric tension of his presence as they moved through the door. Her senses tingled.
Strange as it seemed, she had never felt more alive.
T
he trapdoor yawned into darkness. Sarah hovered anxiously at Donovan’s side as he thrust the lantern into the murk. “What do you see?” she whispered.
“Not much. Shelves and bottles—isn’t that what Zoe told you to expect?”
“Can we go down? Maybe there’s more.”
“The ladder’s right here.” He was already moving downward, balancing the lantern with one hand as his feet groped for the rungs. Seconds later, she heard his boots scrape bottom, followed by a metallic clink as he hung the lamp on a nail. “Watch your step,” he cautioned as Sarah struggled with her skirts and high-heeled slippers. “Here-”
She gasped as his strong hands caught her waist from behind, lifted her off her feet and swung her to the floor. Time stood still as his grip lingered, the pressure of his fingertips all but searing Sarah through her corset. For the space of a heartbeat, she dared to hope that his arms might slip around her, that he might gather her close in the flickering darkness, then lean down to let his lips graze the curve of her bare shoulder while his hands curled upward to toy with her breasts until she ached with sweet, hot urges.
But no, she knew what to expect. Out of her own senseless fear, she had pushed aside his proposal and wounded his pride. Donovan’s behavior, she realized gloomily, would
be as proper as a deacon’s. They would spend what might be their last time alone together in polite posturings, avoiding so much as an intimate meeting of their eyes.
How could she have been such a fool? How could she have believed she was unworthy of love, that it would be snatched away if she had the effrontery to reach out for it? Everyone, even a man like MacIntyre, was entitled to love. Even wicked, worldly Sarah Jane Parker had the right to claim love when she found it. She knew that now.
What if she had learned her lesson too late?
Sarah’s heart fluttered and sank as Donovan backed away from her to survey the cellar. It was no more than a half-dozen paces across, its earthen walls braced with mining timbers and lined with crude shelves. The shelves held crated bottles of Smitty’s rotgut whiskey and a few odd jugs of muscatel. That, and dust.
“But there’s got to be something morel” Her fingers flew urgently over every surface she could reach, groping for some hidden flaw that might indicate a cache. “Where would Smitty have kept his important papers—and his money?”
Donovan responded with a shrug and an impatient sigh. “Judging from the condition of his desk, Smitty could’ve used his important papers for wiping his boots. As for money, anyone who knew where it was could have grabbed it after he was shot. One of the girls, maybe.”
She turned on him, snapping under her own strain. “No, not Faye or Greta or Zoe! None of them had the chance! And even if they did, I can’t believe any of them would do a thing like that!”
“Then you’re as starry-eyed as my sister, and just as damned mule stubborn!” he retorted coldly.
“I take any comparison with Varina as a compliment!” Sarah flared. “Even from the likes of you!”
Suddenly they were glowering at each other, nose to nose almost, like two bristling wolves. The silence quivered with
unvoiced fury as they stood dramatically frozen, each waiting for the other to make the next move.
Donovan’s eyes shot jasper sparks as the long night of tension, frustration and fear tore at his patience. He would explode, Sarah thought. They would both explode, and they would tear each other to pieces.
She waited, braced for the onslaught of his rage. To her astonishment, it did not come. He was holding it in with an effort so agonizing that, as the seconds ticked by, it became more and more ludicrous.
It was Sarah who finally broke. She felt the release bubbling from deep inside her, rising like springwater to emerge as a half-suppressed giggle.
Donovan’s mouth twitched once, twice, and then, as the blessed wave of laughter swept over them both, he caught her in his arms and crushed her against him. Clasped together, their bodies shook until the
tears
came.
“I’m—sorry,” Sarah gasped when she was finally able to speak. “You looked so…funny—”
His kisses, swift, hungry, desperate little nibbles, fell like warm rain on her wet face. “Sarah…blast it, love, is this what our life together’s going to be—you and me, always at loggerheads?”
She clung to him, reassured by the strong, steady beat of his heart against hers. “It may be that we’ll argue,” she whispered, knowing full well the promise his question, and her answer, implied. “Oh, but think what wonderful times we’ll have making up!”
“I love you, Sarah,” he whispered, his lips tousling her boyish curls. “Whatever happens upstairs, in that hellish place, promise me you won’t forget it.”
“I promise.” Sarah’s voice was raw with the pain of her tight throat. As she strained against him, burning the memory of his size, strength and perfect form into her own flesh, she felt the shaft of his desire rise hard and urgent against her belly.
His face warmed with the awareness of what he could not hide. “We…ought to be getting back,” he murmured.
“Just a little longer.” She pressed closer, savoring the exquisite torture. Above them, in the saloon, a nightmare of fear and danger awaited their return. But here, in this moment, was heaven. “Hold me, Donovan,” she whispered. “Don’t let me go.”
His arms tightened around her. For the space of a long breath they stood perfectly still, their desire a pulsing flame that welded her body to his in the darkness. Sarah closed her eyes in contentment, knowing she was his, that he was hers for as long as they lived.
For as long as they lived.
With a sigh of reluctance, he released her. “There’s nothing here, love,” he muttered huskily. “We may as well get back upstairs.”
Sarah nodded sadly, knowing he was right. There were other places to search—the storerooms, the kitchen and Smitty’s own quarters. And there were desperate acts to be accomplished before first light. She turned away from him, then suddenly froze.
“Donovan, look at the floor!”
He caught the lantern off the nail and lowered it to where she was pointing. “I don’t see—”
“There! Those curved scrape-lines at the base of that shelf! They’ve almost been wiped out by footprints, but if you look closely—”
Donovan crouched closer to run his fingertips over the hard-packed earth. A long, low whistle slid past his lips as he realized what Sarah had found. “I’ll be damned!” he muttered. “A movable shelf!”
Setting the lantern on the floor, he stood up, hefted the supporting corner of the shelf and pulled it outward. It yielded to his strength, grinding from a pivot point at its far end to an opening about two feet wide. Behind it lay a round hole that widened into what looked like a low, dark, down-sloping tunnel.
“Stay behind me,” Donovan ordered as he stooped into the entrance, thrusting the lantern into the darkness. Sarah crept along after him. She had expected the tunnel to be shrouded in cobwebs, but the passageway was surprisingly clear. Smitty—for she could think of no one else who might have built and used it—must have come down here fairly often.
Ahead of her, Donovan uttered a grunt of disbelief. Seconds later, he straightened and stepped full height into a whitewashed room.
“What on earth—?” Sarah blinked as the lamplight danced off the glaring walls. The well-finished chamber was half as large as any of the bedrooms upstairs. Boxes of canned food were stacked along one wall, along with jugs of water and a necessity. A brass bed, covered with a faded patchwork quilt, filled one corner. Next to it stood a battered leather-bound trunk.
“I’d say our friend Smitty had some enemies,” Donovan muttered, gazing around the room. “That, or he was on the run from the law and needed a place where he could disappear in a hurry. Look, there’s even an air shaft!” He pointed to a hole in the ceiling where a nickel-size opening wafted a thin draft of fresh air. “The old boy could have lasted for weeks down here.”
Sarah reached up to test the air trickle with a moistened fingertip. “This air is too cool to be coming from inside the saloon,” she mused. “I’d say the shaft comes up somewhere out back, maybe under the spruces where nobody would notice it.”
“And where there’d be some protection from the snow.” Donovan scowled pensively at the ceiling. “The cellar would be right below the kitchen. But this room isn’t under the saloon at all. I wonder if it’s possible—”
“The children!” Sarah clutched his arm. “If we could just get them down here, they could hide until Dooley left, or until someone could dig them out.”
“Maybe.” Donovan’s shoulders sagged in frustration. “But getting them down here, away from Dooley and his watchdogs, that would be the problem, love. Once you got that far, you’d be doing better to put them right outside.”
Sarah sank dejectedly onto the bed, knowing he was right. She had hoped this secret room might hold the key to their deliverance. But there
was
no key, she realized at last. There was no magic solution waiting to be discovered, no miracle that would snatch them all to safety in the nick of time. She and Donovan could depend on nothing but their own resources. Nothing but their trust in each other. And if worse came to worst, even that might not be enough.
The battered old trunk sat like a nightstand beside the bed. On its curved top lay an unlit candle, a small paring knife, some matches, a box of cheroots and an empty glass. Donovan used the knife to pry up the unlocked hasp while Sarah cleared the other objects onto the floor. The hinges creaked as the dusty lid swung upward. A faded pair of trousers and a dusty white shirt lay folded on top. Underneath them…
Sarah stared. Donovan swore under his breath.
The chest was filled to the brim with money—bills and coins, tossed in haphazardly with no attempt to count or order them. Hundreds, even thousands of dollars, Sarah estimated. Smitty’s hoardings over the years of his miserly life.
“Damnation!” Donovan muttered.
Sarah squeezed his shoulder, sharing his ironic disappointment. Money would be of little use in bargaining for the children. The outlaws could simply take the cash by force, and the little ones, as well.
“Maybe there’s something nearer the bottom.” Sarah began scooping out the cash and piling it on the floor, but the contents were the all same. Defeated, she slumped back onto her heels. “I don’t understand it,” she muttered. “There’s got to be something here we can use!”
But Donovan had lost interest in the chest. He was fumbling with the bedclothes, lifting each corner of the mattress.
“Smitty had everything he needed down here,” he re plied in answer to Sarah’s puzzled glance. “Food, water, light, money—what’s missing? What haven’t we found?”
He answered his own question by pulling a small, sinister-looking pocket revolver from under one of the pillows. A quick spin of the cylinder proved it to be loaded.
Sarah felt her knees go watery at the sight of the weapon in his hand. More people would die before sunup, she realized with a sickening certainty. Fate, luck and skill would determine who perished and who survived, but even the thought of the children, or the women, or Donovan-“Are you all right?” He reached down to cup her chin with his free hand. His eyes searched her face, their depths dark with concern and love.
“Forgive me,” she murmured, gazing up at him. “Seeing that gun in your hand, and thinking about what could happen…I’m frightened, that’s all. I love you so much, and I’m so afraid—”
“Come here, Sarah.” He laid the pistol on a corner of the chest and drew her up off her knees, into his arms. She burrowed her face against his shirt, filling her senses with his warmth, his strength and the rich, masculine woodsmoke aroma of his clothes.
“I’m afraid, too, love,” he whispered, his throat moving against her hair. “What we’ve found is too good to lose.” His arms tightened fiercely around her. “But I promise you, somehow, some way—”
“You can’t promise, Donovan. You can’t know what will happen. None of us can.”
Sarah raised her face for his kiss. His lips closed on hers with a tenderness that stirred aching whorls of need inside her. She slid her arms around his neck, her breasts straining against his beating heart. She clung to the moment,
knowing it was not enough…knowing what they both wanted.
His mouth was wild honey on hers, his kiss as poignant as autumn moonlight. Sarah closed her eyes, savoring the sweet-salt taste of his tongue, the delicate roughness of its probing tip. A luminous throb rose from the dark center of her body. She nestled closer to him, feeling it surge until it shook her like the waves of a turbulent sea.
Donovan.
She had loved him from the moment of their first meeting, Sarah realized. She had loved him through the perilous days of Richmond and through their long years of separation. She had loved him that night at Varina’s cabin when he’d stripped her mask away, and later, when his kiss had shattered her pretense once and for all.
She remembered those times now with a bittersweetness that clutched at her heart. If she had known it was all she might have of him, that their love would be not so much a destination as a journey…
But enough of regrets. If tonight was all that remained to them, Sarah resolved, she would live every moment to its fullest.
His arousal swelled hot and hard against her pelvis as his kiss probed deeper. She trembled in his arms as the pressure ignited a pulse of tiny flamebursts inside her. Dampness slicked her thighs as her body moistened to welcome his thrust. But as he hesitated, Sarah knew that even now he would not force her beyond her wishes. He was waiting in agony for a word, a signal of her own desire.
She pulled a little away from him, her lips swollen, her chest jerking with emotion. His eyes burned into hers in a moment of naked understanding. Never again could there be anything but the purest truth between them.
“We don’t have much time.” His voice was raw with urgency.
Her finger touched his cheek to linger for a heartbeat at the corner of his strong, sensual mouth. “Make love to me, Donovan,” she whispered. “Here. Now.”