Never Love a Lawman (28 page)

“But I wasn’t.”

Rachel bit the inside of her lip and said carefully, “Some people think you were. There’s no accounting for how a story changes with each telling.”

Wyatt was fairly sure he knew how the story changed, and he was itching to get his hands on her. “And what do you mean about my ‘lawyer way of making things complicated’? It was your idea to keep our marriage secret.”

“Well, yes, it was, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I couldn’t think of how to say it that wouldn’t make me seem foolish.”

Wyatt plowed through his hair with his fingers, his look almost a caricature of incredulity. “Make you seem foolish?” he repeated slowly. “Didn’t it tug on your conscience just a tad to put me in that position?”

Rachel had the grace to blush, but she was also quick to point out that no one would ever think he was a fool. “People think you walk on water.”

“Well, I damn well don’t.”

She blinked at the sharpness in his tone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be—”

He dismissed her apology with an abrupt, impatient gesture. “Don’t.” He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes narrow and remote and unexpressive; then he turned away and retraced his steps to the bedroom.

Watching him go, Rachel couldn’t fathom why she was suddenly fighting the urge to cry. She hardly knew what she’d said that had shuttered his expression. Until that moment, there had been an undercurrent of humor, of tolerance. He didn’t necessarily like everything she told him, but she could tell that he was calculating how to use it to favor him. His retribution would have been swift and fierce, but not frightening.

It was his retreat that frightened her, not his advance.

She pressed one hand to her temple and massaged lightly. Her vision blurred. The bold colors of the tartan fabric in front of her bled at the edges. She sat down, closed her eyes, and determinedly began to compose herself.

In bed, Wyatt lay with his head cradled in his palms and stared up at the ceiling. His posture was too rigid for relaxation or sleep. He had to consciously unlock his jaw to keep his cheek from twitching. There was still a tightness in his chest, and it had nothing at all to do with his injury.

He was weary of being cooped up like a damn chicken. The farthest he’d managed to stray in the last week was Sir Nigel’s suite on the floor above him, and he’d done that when Rachel had gone to the depot. It wasn’t that she was against him moving around, taking in several walks each day up and down the corridor, but that she wanted to hold the reins. He’d had just about as much of that as he could stand. He needed to get outside, fill his lungs with fresh air and his vision with a view that was mountains and sky, and she was barring the way.

The fact of it was, Rachel Bailey was a better jailer than his deputy.

Wyatt considered going back in the sitting room and telling her that. He’d make certain she understood it was no compliment. There were any number of things he wanted her to know, all of them guaranteed to relieve her of the notion that he was some sort of paragon.

“People think you walk on water.”

He grimaced as he turned over the phrase in his mind, grimaced more deeply as he considered how easy she made it for him to be annoyed with her. She certainly was a clear target, setting herself in his path no matter which one he chose. She knew his aim was true, yet she never wavered, never stood aside.

It finally occurred to him to wonder why she would do that. Self-preservation should have ensured that occasionally she would duck or dodge. Instead, she faced him down. It was true that she possessed an uncanny ability to deflect his shots, parting or otherwise, with a logic that defied his own sense of reason, but it was also true that he was able to wound her.

What made her stay when she knew she was vulnerable to that?

The clock in the sitting room struck the half hour. Eleven thirty. Wyatt realized he’d been lying awake for better than forty minutes and that Rachel hadn’t stirred in all that time. It was her habit to slip into his room when she thought he was sleeping, make use of the bathing room to prepare for that bed of nails she slept on, then slip out again, this time like a wraith in a white linen nightgown and red kid slippers.

Half an hour later, he was still awake and she was simply still. Wyatt favored his left side as he rolled out of bed. He didn’t bother with a robe this time, loosely tucking the tails of his shirt into his drawers instead. Conscious of frightening her with a sudden, silent appearance, he made no special effort to be quiet as he crossed the floor and even rattled the knob as he opened the door.

When he saw Rachel slumped in a chair at the table, her head bent so far forward that her chin rested on her chest and one of her arms dangled over the side, he realized he could have tossed firecrackers in the stove and she wouldn’t have moved. He didn’t see a bottle on the table, nor an empty glass, which meant that she was just bone weary.

Tuckered, they called it here. Plain tuckered out.

Wyatt bent beside her chair and carefully looped one of her arms around his shoulders. He straightened slowly, lifting her at the same time. He felt a twinge of pain in his chest at the site of his wound, but it disappeared quickly when he shifted his weight and got a better hold on her.

“It’s bed for you, Rachel,” he said quietly. “The bed you should have been in all along.” She murmured something that almost sounded agreeable, and Wyatt was encouraged. “Can you help me?”

“Mmm.”

“Good.” He knew she never really woke, but some memory for motion existed in her sleeping brain, and she matched his steps, though never took the lead.

Wyatt maneuvered her to the bed and set her on the edge. She immediately lay back and began to draw her legs up. “Oh, no,” he said, tugging on her ankles. “You’re not sleeping sideways, and you’re definitely not sleeping in these clothes.”

“Go away.” She brushed ineffectually in the direction of his hands as he began to remove her shoes. “Go. Away.”

Because her next breath was an abrupt little snuffle, Wyatt ignored her. He tossed her stockings beside her shoes, then regarded her gown with a critical eye. There were at least a dozen tiny cloth-covered buttons at the front of her close-fitting jacket. He could find no better place to start. She batted at his hands when they reached her waist, but there was no intent in the gesture. He imagined that if she was aware of him at all, she found him more of a nuisance than a threat.

He struggled with the jacket, finding it difficult to ease off her shoulders, and when he was done he felt a sense of satisfaction that was out of all proportion to his actual achievement. He made relatively short work of her skirt, shirt, underskirt, and bustle, and then he confronted her corset. It looked as hard as a carapace and covered her just as closely.

“You’ll thank me,” he said quietly. And he hoped it was true. He unfastened the tabs and closures, pulled it out from beneath her, and flung it away. It landed on the chair on top of her other clothes.

Now that she was finally down to her chemise and drawers and looked as if she might have prepared for bed herself, Wyatt lifted her legs back onto the bed, turned her gently so she was positioned lengthwise, and wrestled with the sheet and blankets until they covered her. He plucked the combs out of her hair and set those on the nightstand; then, as an afterthought, he returned to the sitting room and retrieved the quilt she’d brought from home. It gave him another opportunity to survey the couch, measure it against his height and requirements for comfort, and reinforce all the reasons he wouldn’t be sleeping on it.

It was only as he was covering Rachel with the quilt that he realized he’d surrendered his side of the bed to her. He considered pushing her out of the way to secure his place, primarily so there’d be no doubt that he didn’t walk on water, but then he felt another twinge, this one on account of conscience, not injury, and walked around the bed to the other side.

The sheets were cold. He yanked on part of Rachel’s quilt for added warmth and burrowed deeper under the covers. In moments, he was asleep.

“You drugged me.”

Groaning softly, Wyatt turned his face into his pillow. He put out an arm to stay the attack he felt certain was coming. Rachel had wakened with an accusation on her lips, just as if she’d been entertaining this argument all night.

“You drugged me,” she said again. “Because the only other explanation is that you lost your mind.”

“Pick that one.” He compressed the pillow near his mouth to make certain she could hear him. “Is it morning?”

“Just.”

“Go back to sleep, Rachel.”

She jabbed him on the shoulder with the heel of her palm.

“Ow!”

Her hand went to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I forgot. Are you all—” She lowered her hand and jabbed him again. “That’s your right shoulder. You’re lying on your left. And if I’d really hurt you, you would have grunted. That’s what you do.”

He grunted.

Rachel’s lips twitched. “Too late.”

In every way possible, Wyatt thought. He slipped one arm under his pillow and eased more fully onto his side. Opening his eyes, he was startled to see how close she was. She was also lying on her side, her position mirroring his. The quilt covered her up to her shoulders, but her heavy sable hair lay on top of it, not under it. Her eyelids were at half mast, and she stared at him through a fan of dark lashes. She did not have the vulnerability of sleep about her, but neither was she guarded and prickly.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Mmm.”

There was no longer any lamplight in the room, but a narrow band of the pink and mauve colors of daybreak slipped through the drapes and spilled across the floor. “You fell asleep in the chair.”

She had a vague recollection of sitting at the table after he left the room. It explained the stiffness she felt in her neck upon waking. “I don’t suppose you considered helping me to the couch.”

“Considered. I realized I’m just not that cruel.”

“Then you didn’t consider it for yourself.”

“Too short. Too narrow. Too hard.”

Rachel smiled. “It’s all of those things.”

“You shouldn’t have been sleeping there.”

She didn’t reply, merely continued to study him.

“It’s the couch that gave you away,” he told her. When she frowned, he went on. “The fact that you were so careful to put away the linens each morning before anyone arrived, it made me realize that you didn’t want anyone to know that we weren’t sharing this bed.”

“It could have been because I didn’t want someone to pick up after me.”

“No. In the beginning, when it made sense for you to sleep elsewhere because I was so fevered, you didn’t bother.”

“I slept in a chair, Wyatt. Your memory isn’t entirely reliable.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter where you slept then. It matters what you were trying to hide later. I’m right about that.” He gave her an opportunity to deny it, but she offered nothing. “Why didn’t you tell me that everyone knew we were married, Rachel? Why did I have to figure it out on my own?”

She stared at him. “You really don’t know?”

Wyatt said he didn’t, but as soon as the words were out, he wondered if he’d lied. “You wanted to avoid this.”

“This?”

“This.” Edging closer, he brushed her lips with his. “And this.” His fingertips ran along the length of her thigh, and his palm came to rest on her hip. “Is that right?”

“Yes.”

He had to strain to hear her. “But you didn’t leave when you woke.”

She shook her head. “I seem to be of two minds.”

“Which one wants to kiss me?”

“This one.” Then she leaned into him and gave him her mouth.

He kissed her with great care, testing them both with the gentleness of it, with the slow exploration. Her lips were pliant under his, sensitive to the slightest flicker of his tongue or change in the angle of his mouth. He tasted her at his leisure, drawing on her moist lower lip, running his tongue along the ridge of her teeth. He rubbed his lips against hers. She made a pass across his upper lip with the tip of her tongue that made him shudder.

“Wyatt?” She inched away to gauge his reaction.

He drew her right back. “Fine.” His voice was thick and a little gritty, like honey poured over sand. “I’m fine. More than fine.”

“Mmm.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, worked his lips open with her tongue. She fed on him, sucking on his lower lip, feasting on his mouth. Under the covers, she found his hand on her hip and lifted it to her waist. It settled there warmly but didn’t move. She determinedly deepened the kiss, acting first as the aggressor, then as an equal in their play.

He turned his head slightly, and his lips pressed against her cheek. He kissed her jaw, her neck, and sipped on the tender skin of her throat. She edged closer, blindly seeking the fit that she knew was possible. Her knees bumped his. She nudged him again, more insistent this time, but he frustrated her efforts.

“What do you want, Rachel?” His mouth was at the curve of her ear. He felt the tremor in her body, the catch in her breathing. His teeth caught her earlobe and tugged. “Hmm?”

“Closer,” she said on a thread of sound. “I want to be closer.”

Wyatt’s palm slid from her waist to the small of her back and jerked her hard against him. Her hips came flush to his, cupping his erection with the natural cradle of her thighs. There was room suddenly for one of her legs to move between his. Her breasts flattened against his chest. His hand moved from her back to the curve of her bottom. He pressed her closer, and her hips stirred, circled, and finally arched into him.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out. He caught the movement and turned his attention to her mouth again. The kiss was long and slow and deep. He fought back urgency in favor of savoring the sweetness in each of her languorous kisses. Her lips were wet; her mouth warm. All of her moved against him with languid, liquid ease.

He rolled onto his back and turned her so that she lay full against him. Her hair fell forward over her shoulders. Strands of it caught in the stubble of his beard and tickled his neck, and for no particular reason that he could name, this tangle of hair and inconvenient tickle struck him as oddly amusing.