Gold Dust (43 page)

“Katy!” Jonah whispered against her breast. “Say it.”

“Say it?”

“Say it. Say you love me.”

Katy groaned her frustration, but he wouldn’t give her what she wanted until she gave him what he wanted.

“Say it!” he demanded.

“Okay. I love you.”

“You haven’t convinced me.”

It was easier the second time. “I love you!” she said with feeling “I’ve loved you for days, for weeks, for ages and ages,
and I’ll love you till I croak. There!” she concluded with a wicked grin. “Good enough?”

“Good enough.” His eyes reflected her grin, and his face softened. “I love you, too, Katy O’Connell. And I will until you
drive me to an early grave.”

Her fingers still held him as he slid inside her, and the feel of his rock-hard erection slipping through her hand and penetrating
her warm flesh sent her shooting upward into ecstasy so powerful her body convulsed in immediate climax. Jonah stilled. She
felt him fight for his own control, and looked guiltily up at him.

“I wasn’t supposed to do that, huh?”

Between gritted teeth, he laughed. “You can do that anytime you want, my love.”

He moved within her, and desire began to build again. She purred with pleasure as the rhythm of his thrusts quickened, wrapping
her legs around his hips and arching upward to take him deeper inside her. She felt whole at last. Complete. Each powerful
thrust seemed to reach her heart as well as her womb. His kiss breathed soul into her, his hands plied her breasts, her buttocks,
her belly and seemed to rip away every barrier she had ever put between them. And finally, the light touch of his finger on
the tiny nub at the crux of her desire sent her into a spasm of completion just as he buried himself to the hilt and pumped
his own hot offering into her body.

A few moments later, Katy smiled as she drifted between weariness and joy. “San Francisco sounds good for a honeymoon.”

Jonah nuzzled her neck. “Anywhere you want, Katydid. But wherever it is, I guarantee you’re not going to see the outside of
our hotel room.”

Katy and Jonah were halfway to Skookum Gulch the next morning, anxious to secure the cabin and diggings for the winter, when
the
Yukon Princess
tied up at the landing in Dawson. On deck, Gabriel O’Connell stood next to the widow Von Stratton and watched as the boat
was secured and men on the shore waved and shouted a rowdy welcome. The widow’s mastiff barked in answer to all the noise.

“This is Dawson?”the widoftrasked, one brow raised skeptically.

“It appears so,” Gabe said.

“What a disappointment! How dreary and gray. My goodness, they don’t even have boardwalks! In the summer the place must be
a sea of mud.”

“I expect so.”

A pack of dogs had gathered on the landing and were baying at the widow’s mastiff. The mastiff answered with a deafening roar.

“Guntar! Quiet!”

“Those dogs look half-wild,” Gabe commented. “You might want to leave Guntar on the boat while you explore. You are going
back with the steamer, aren’t you?”

“Oh, most certainly, Gabriel. The captain has made it very clear that this will be the last boat out for some time. Will I
have your company on the return journey?”

“If I can find my stray daughter,” he replied. “She’s about as wild as those dogs out there.”

The widow dimpled. “Like father, like daughter?”

“No, ma’am. I’m as tame as they come.”

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Always you are too modest. Someday I will get you to show me that wild
side I see burning beneath your so proper manners.
In Europe we are much more accepting of a little playfulness between a man and woman.”

“Well, ma’am,” Gabe said with a grin. “My wife studied in Paris, but I don’t believe much of that European attitude rubbed
off on her.”

The widow sent him a sparkling smile. “Very well, my friend. Find your little Katy and hurry back, or you might be spending
the winter with hibernating bears and prospectors instead of that lovely wife of yours.”

From his vantage point on the deck of the steamer, Gabe looked out at the dreary little town. Every building and tent boasted
a smoking stovepipe, and the smoke rose to join with low, gray clouds that threatened snow. This was certainly not where he
wanted to spend the winter, but he wouldn’t go back without seeing Katy and settling a score with a certain newspaper reporter.

He hoped he found them soon, because after this hell of a trip, he could use an excuse to blow off some steam.

Katy picked up a holey wool sock and tossed it onto the pile to be burned. A hat that was dirty and battered beyond saving
followed the sock. The amount of trash she had produced during her short time at the claim was amazing. Of course, Andy and
Jonah had helped. She pulled a torn shirt of Andy’s from beneath the girl’s cot, considered whether or not the garment could
be mended, then threw it onto the pile with the rest of the trash. Andy seemed content to let Camilla dress her in skirts
and pinafores. She wouldn’t need a threadbare flannel shirt in Dawson, and by the time she came out to the claim next summer,
she would have outgrown the shirt, anyway.

Andy had been overjoyed to learn that Katy and Jonah were closing down the claim for the winter.

“Promise I can help next summer,” she’d begged when they stopped by Camilla’s cabin to break the news.

“You’d better help,” Katy had said. “You’ve got to earn your part of the gold.”

“School will be out,” Camilla had told Andy, “and you can live at the claim all summer if Katy and Jonah don’t object.”

Camilla also had been happy at the news of their plans. She’d given Katy a big hug and Jonah a fond kiss on the cheek. “I
knew you two would find the way.”

“You sure you don’t want to come with us back to the States for the winter?” Jonah had asked.

“And let my competitors steal all my business? No indeed. Andy and I will be waiting for you next spring, and you can tell
us about your wedding and how you spent your winter.”

Jonah had grinned. “Next time we’ll take the steamship up from the mouth of the Yukon. One hike over Chilkoot is enough for
a whole lifetime.”

“Sissy,” Katy had teased. “Why would you think that?”

Katy paused in her cleaning to look out the cabin window at Jonah, who was dismantling the rocker. God knew he was anything
but a sissy. She recalled the first time she had seen him in Myrna’s saloon in Willow Bend, playing poker with the Hackett
brothers, looking like he was sitting in some fancy Eastern men’s club instead of in a two-bit bar in a dusty cow town. Who
could have guessed those fancy clothes had hidden such a man—all that grit, determination, laughter, and strength?

Katy still found it incredible that he loved her. She’d always known how to earn a man’s respect, but she’d never thought
to earn a man’s love. Even now she could scarcely believe it. She expected any moment to awaken from an impossible dream.
Yet it wasn’t a dream; it was real. Jonah did love her. Katy O’Connell had found a wonderful man who accepted her just the
way she was. Who would have believed such a thing could happen?

Katy took the flour, salt, sugar, salertus, rice, and beans from the shelf and packed them into a box for Camilla and Andy.
She rolled all the blankets and bundled them into a sturdy tarp that would protect them from mice. Then she turned to the
pile of Jonah’s papers on the table, stacking them neatly and wrapping a string around them so they could be safely packed
in Jonah’s backpack.

A scrawled title on top of a page caught her eye. Patrick Burke. Unable to resist, Katy sat down at the table and began to
read. Jonah’s handwriting was a scrawl; lines were crossed
out, others added. Obviously this was a draft of something that he had recopied and sent to his newspaper to print. There
was a note above the title to change Patrick’s name.

Jonah could have changed the name to Chinese and Katy would have recognized the subject—the jovial, hard-drinking Irishman
with an itch for wandering and adventure, never giving a thought to the hardships his adventures forced on others, always
ready with a story, a smile, a tune on his fiddle. A man who had never outgrown childhood. Patrick sprang to life from Jonah’s
words.

Farther down in the pile Katy found notes on brutal Jack Decker and his pathetic horses, Camilla, Andy—even a couple of pages
on Maude. She smiled at Jonah’s sanitized description of the whores and laughed when she read what Andy had done to get Maude
off Jonah’s back. How had Jonah pried that information from the little scamp? Katy wondered. Did Jonah know that Katy had
been the one who sent Andy to scuttle Maude’s ambitions?

She was about to restack the papers when a title near the bottom leapt off the paper and grabbed her. Katy O’Connell. Two
exclamation points followed her name. The paper was crinkled and stained from being wet and then dried, and some of the writing
was smeared.

The page beckoned. It was a chance to look inside Jonah’s mind on a subject that struck to Katy’s very heart—the subject of
herself. She felt wicked for reading it, but she read it anyway, her face flushed and a smile of anticipation on her lips.

As she read, the color faded from her face along with the smile.

Jonah whistled as he fought with the rocker. The stubborn thing was not coming apart easily, but nothing could ruin his mood
today. Not the cold, the lowering clouds, the icy gusts of wind that cut through
his
parka, nor the sharp cobbles biting
into his backside as he sat and struggled with the last of the rocker supports.

Observing the work with a supervisory air, Hunter cocked his head at Jonah’s whistling.

“Like that, do you?” Jonah asked, pausing in his effort to remove a nail that joined two sections of the strut. “Friend wolf,
that’s the sound of a happy man,” Jonah confided. “Not only has your stubborn little friend Katy realized at long last that
I’m the man for her, but we’re getting out of this deep freeze before true winter sets in. For that I am truly grateful.”

Hunter swiped his jaws with his tongue.

“Although,” Jonah continued jauntily, “on second thought, spending the winter confined to a cozy little log cabin with Katy
wouldn’t be too bad, now that I think on it. Though this shack would need a lot of work before it could be called cozy.”

The sections of the last support parted. “Ah! Finally!” He threw the support on a tarp with the rest of the disassembled rocker
that was ready to be dragged to the cabin. There it would be stored for the winter along with the shovels, picks, hatchets,
axes, and other tools that needed to be sheltered from the harsh winter. Next summer, he promised himself, he would build
a good, tight toolshed for this stuff, and chink the cabin as well, so if they did decide to spend a winter here, they wouldn’t
spend it freezing.

“Bet you’ll be glad to get out of here,” he said to Hunter. “Those old wolf bones of yours aren’t as springy as they were
a few years ago, eh? I suppose if that lady we heard tell about can take some fancy pooch on the steamer, the captain shouldn’t
object to an honest-to-goodness, true-blue wolf.”

Hunter looked toward the cabin and whined.

“I agree. She’s taking her time. How long does it take to throw clothes in a bag and supplies in a box?”

Jonah stamped his feet to get the blood flowing and headed toward the cabin. It was some sort of miracle, he thought, that
he’d been with Katy since late July, and still his heart lifted in anticipation of seeing her, even though he’d spent the
night
before making love to her, the entire morning hiking through the mountains with her, making plans, pausing for long, leisurely
kisses. If it hadn’t been so damned cold, kisses were not all they would have paused for. They were going to be like this
forever, he hoped. Katy had a passion that matched her temper and was just as easily sparked. She would make life both precarious
and precious.

“The rocker’s down,” he announced as he walked through the door. “You and Andy put that thing together to last, I’ll tell
you! I thought it was never going to—” A wooden spoon came flying through the air at him. It was followed by a barrage of
socks, a boot, a graniteware coffeepot, and a set of matching cups. “What the—ouch! Katy! What the hell are you—?”

“You low-down, snake-tailed, forked-tongued, son of a horned toad!”

“Whoa! Settle down! All I said was that the rocker was—”

“No!” She slammed her hand down upon the table, scattering a pile of papers. Three pages of what he recognized as his handwriting
were separate from the pile. She picked them up as if they were fresh from the latrine.
“This
is what you said.”

Recognizing what she held, Jonah winced. He should have burned those particular pages long ago.

“Scruffy little scalawag,” she read in an ominous voice. “Rought-cut as a piece of coal.”

“Katy, that was when I—”

“More at home in a saloon than a sewing bee,” she continued relentlessly. “Could put on a Wild West show rivaling Buffalo
Bill Cody’s. The gent who tries to tame this filly will need a firm bit and steady seat, or she’ll buck him over the moon
and laugh as he plummets back to earth.” She crumpled the page in her fist and turned to the second.