Mary McBride – Storming Paradise (страница 10)
“Yes,” she whispered. “There. That’s right.” He knew it wasn’t right, but what he knew and what he felt bore no relation to each other. The lady made sure of that.
Shad groaned now in his sleep as he had groaned years before, with a mixture of pleasure and anguish.
He couldn’t. Then she was pushing him away. Those dainty hands were slapping at him now. “Get off me, you clumsy little half-breed.” Laughter twisted her lips.
Wake up before the door clicks open and the footsteps echo, deafening, down the hall. Please. Before her laughter turns to a sickening scream. Wake up, goddamn you!
He did. Cold with sweat, sick, shaking uncontrollably as he stared into a dark corner of the coach. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything all over again. Remembering.
He’d made two vows that terrible night twenty years ago. The first was to get so good at loving that no woman would ever laugh at him again. By God, he’d done that. He’d done that, even though there was always that moment afterward, that single icy heartbeat when he was glazed with sweat as salty as tears, when he was gripped with fear and his chilled blood shunted to his limbs, priming him to run.
He’d made two vows that terrible night. And Shadrach Jones renewed the second one now—never, ever to touch a lady again.
At nine o’clock the next morning Libby followed Shula, Andy, and a swaying mountain of luggage down the hotel stairs. As she descended, she was making mental notes of all the things she would not do to Shadrach Jones, including hitting, kicking and scratching. Her list of commandments was not only longer than the Lord’s mere ten, it was more specific, and it concluded with an adamant “Thou shalt not kiss him.”
As angry as Libby had been all night long—tossing and turning on the scrap of mattress Shula hadn’t claimed—she hadn’t been able to forget that kiss. Lord, how she had tried, thinking of a hundred reasons why she detested her father’s foreman. He was crude. A rude and impudent man. A bully who insisted on his own way and used his inordinate strength to get it, whether it was snatching neckties or hauling a woman out of a restaurant. He was exactly like her father during those final, violent years before her mother had taken her away from Paradise.
Worse, the big cowboy seemed to ignite some explosive part of her nature that Libby never wanted to experience again. “Thou shalt not scream or bellow like a fishwife.” “Thou shalt not slap, slug or sink your teeth into another human being.”
“Thou shalt not, shalt not, shalt not kiss him.”
She followed the luggage through the hotel door, out to the street where a big red-and-black coach was waiting. And leaning against it, like a leering footman, was Shadrach Jones. Libby’s breath hitched in her throat.
“Lord Almighty!” a voice exclaimed. “If it isn’t Miss Libby, all growed up.”
She turned to watch a wiry older man clamber down from the front of the coach, relieved to see a familiar, safe face. Suddenly she was able to breathe again.
“Eb, is that you? Oh, it’s good to see you.” Libby extended her hand.
Her father’s longtime employee spat out of the side of his mouth, grinned, then grabbed her hand and shook it with gusto. “Miss Libby. My, my. Don’t it just beat all how you’ve growed up.”
“You look the same, Eb. The years have treated you well.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” the old man said. “It’s prob’ly all the salt water I swallowed those years at sea with your pa. I’m just pickled, is all. Tickled to see you, too, Miss Libby. Now where’s that cute little redheaded sister of yours?”
“Right over there.” Libby pointed to where Shula was instructing one of the hotel porters in the proper handling of expensive luggage. Haranguing the poor boy, actually. Libby was surprised Eb Talent hadn’t noticed her first with all those red curls gleaming in the morning sunshine and her lilac dress ruffling in the gulf breeze.
When he did notice her, though, he said almost wistfully, “Ain’t she something?”
She was something, all right, Libby thought, as the old man moved toward Shula like a moth to a flame. Before Eb reached her, though, a second moth appeared. Hoyt Backus brushed past Libby with a brisk “‘Morning, Miss Kingsland,” then swooped down on her sister, and shouted, “By golly, if you’re not the prettiest thing I’ve seen in Texas since the day your mama left.”
It was no surprise when Shula went from stern luggage monitor to simpering princess in the next instant. And no surprise when she paused from basking in Hoyt Backus’s warm attention just long enough to call, “Oh, Libby, honey, as long as you’re just standing around, you’ll keep an eye on these hatboxes for me, won’t you?”
Libby sighed and added one more commandment to her growing list. “Thou shalt not think unkind thoughts about thy sister.”
At the sight of Hoyt Backus, Shad straightened up and pushed back the hat that had been shading his eyes. The fox was sniffing around the chickens again, and the foreman of Paradise didn’t like it one bit. He was briefly tempted to insert himself between predator and prey, but then—seeing the redhead’s slick smile and her long red claws—Shad decided he wasn’t exactly sure which was which. Anyway, he was in no mood to tangle with another Kingsland sister right now, so he yanked down the brim of his hat and glared at Miss Libby.
She looked like a dove this morning in her prim, dull-colored clothes. Except for the damn hat. Even that, though, paled in comparison to her sister’s. Lord, what a pair. He’d be glad when this day was over.
He was glad last night was over, that was for sure. It had been one of the worst nights of his life, sitting in a corner of the cramped coach, wet with sweat and shivering like a newborn calf, unable to shake off the dream that had seemed so real, unable to wake from the nightmare that had driven him from home twenty years ago.
If he’d slept even a wink, Shad wasn’t sure. His eyes felt like he’d spent the whole night riding drag in a dust storm. He hadn’t spent it upstairs at the Steamboat. That he knew for certain. Not with Rosa, or Nona or—dammit—Carmela.
And it was all Miss Libby’s fault. Miss Libby, who looked this morning as if she’d spent a prim and dreamless night between starched sheets. With her damn hat on.
He dragged his gaze to the kid who was standing close beside her. At least she didn’t dress him in fancy little French suits and pointy-toed shoes. Just the opposite, in fact. The youngster had a slightly unkempt look about him, especially the tousled hair that fell across his forehead. He would have expected Miss Libby’s boy to look polished, from his slicked-down hair to his spit-shined brogans.
Shad sighed. He didn’t know why that surprised him. Nothing a lady did should ever surprise him. They were never what they seemed, those finespoken, delicate, devious creatures. They could be all thin lipped, cool and demure one minute, then the next they were hot as whores. He liked whores better. They were honest. A man knew where he stood, or lay as the case may be.
Or didn’t lie, as was the case with him. But not for long. Six or seven hours by coach to Paradise, provided he could hustle these ladies along. Here’re your daughters, Amos. Then five or six hours back to Corpus on a fast horse. Back to Rosa, Nona and—Shad sighed again—Carmela.
Libby tapped a foot on the sidewalk. Their luggage was loaded now—most of it strapped to the top of the coach—but Shula was still batting her eyes and playing flame to that burly behemoth, Hoyt Backus.
She had expected any second that Shadrach Jones would be wrenching Shula away from her father’s former partner as he had done with her the night before, but the man was still slouched against the coach, apparently unconcerned. Possibly asleep for all she could see of his eyes beneath the low brim of his hat. His mouth she saw quite plainly, and that had a lazy slant to it, which brought to mind his kiss. Which set off the butterflies in Libby’s stomach once again.
“Why are we all just standing around here when the coach is ready to go?” she said with more than a little irritation, directing her gaze toward her sister. “Shula? I said…”
The redhead waved her off, continuing her animated conversation with Backus.
“Shula!” Libby snapped.
“Oh, all right, Libby. For heaven’s sake. Did you check inside the lobby to see that all of our bags were put outside?”
“No, I didn’t,” Libby said. She didn’t intend to,
either. Let Shula do without one or two of the twenty outfits she had brought.
“I’ll go,” Andy offered.
Libby instinctively reached out to stop her but then drew back. It was the first time since they’d left Saint Louis that Andy had seemed willing to be more than a few feet away from her. Taking that for a healthy sign, Libby nodded her assent. “Come right back, though,” she cautioned the child. With any other nine-year-old she might have added a warning not to speak to strangers, but considering that Andy hardly spoke to friends, she didn’t think it necessary.