Another wave of uncertainty rushed Amy as she returned Loretta’s embrace. Nothing had been worked out as yet. She could feel Swift’s gaze on her. She wondered what he was thinking, why he didn’t speak, why he was smiling that way.
“So you’re going to be married?” Indigo piped up with childish enthusiasm. “Oh, that’s grand! I think we should have a big party to celebrate. Maybe Brandon Marshall will come.” She fastened blue eyes on Loretta. “May I invite him, Ma?”
Pulling away from Amy, Loretta threw her daughter a flustered look. “Let’s get the party planned first, Indigo. Then we’ll discuss invitations.”
Swift held up a hand. “There’ll be no party.” His voice rang with determination. “Not for a while, anyway.”
“Whyever not?” Loretta asked.
Swift’s left eyebrow rose a fraction. “Because I don’t want anyone beyond these walls knowing until we decide we’re ready.”
Hunter broke in. “That isn’t our way, Swift. Betrothals are always announced publicly.”
“It’s my way.” Swift leaned back in his chair and curled one hand around his coffee mug. His gaze, dark and unreadable, caught Amy’s. “We have a lot of catching up to do. Getting married soon is out of the question.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a long engagement,” Loretta assured him. “What can it hurt if you make an official announcement?”
Swift turned his gaze on Amy again, his mouth tipping in another mysterious smile. “Amy’s job is very important to her. I’d like for her to be able to keep it.”
Amy blinked, trying to make sense of what he had said, but before she could assimilate it, Loretta cried, “Why would an announcement about your engagement jeopardize her job?”
Once again, Swift seemed to have eyes only for Amy. “I’m not exactly the most popular person in Wolf’s Landing. If tongues started wagging . . . well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what might happen. I don’t want to take that chance. Holding off on telling everyone will give people an opportunity to know me better. Maybe then it won’t matter if their schoolteacher marries an ex-gunslinger.”
“But tongues are bound to wag even worse if people don’t know you’re engaged,” Loretta argued.
“Not if we’re careful about being seen together too much. We’ve been fairly successful at that so far.”
Swift rocked back in his chair, his shoulders relaxed, one arm crooked over the chair back, a hand resting on his thigh. Amy could almost feel the warmth of those strong fingers splayed beneath her breasts, the strength of his arm around her.
“If you’re going to be married, Aunt Amy won’t need a job,” Chase inserted. “She’ll stay home and cook and take care of kids.”
“Who says?” Still balancing the chair on its back legs, Swift turned his head toward the boy. “Why does she have to give up everything to be married?”
“Yeah, Chase, how come?” Indigo demanded. “Women can do other things besides keep house and wash clothes.”
Chase rolled his eyes.
Laughing, Swift held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to start a war here. It’s just that the white way of doing things doesn’t sound fair to me. In fact, now that I can write my name, I’m going to sign a paper that says Amy’s house is her house, and that her money is hers, too.”
Amy’s heart soared. So touched it was all she could do not to cry, she clamped a hand to her bodice. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“You’re going to sign away rights to my house and wages?”
“That’s outlandish!” Loretta cried. “What wife would want a division of property?”
“A wife who needs to feel independent.” Swift slanted Hunter an amused glance. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Hunter shrugged. “It is a good way, the way of the People. We signed no paper, but a woman’s property was her own.”
“Then it’s settled. Right, Amy?” Swift watched his bride to be, waiting patiently for her to speak. When she simply stood there, staring at him, he said, “Well, do you agree or not?”
Amy tried to speak and couldn’t. Finally she simply nodded. Swift’s mouth tipped in a slow grin. For an endless moment, Amy forgot everyone else in the room. There was only Swift and the tenderness she saw in his dark eyes.
When the meal was concluded and the dishes had been washed, Swift invited Amy for an evening walk. She accepted without hesitation. Once they gained the trees behind the house where no one might see them, they slowed their pace to a lazy stroll.
When he took hold of her hand, Amy took a cleansing breath, exhaling on a sigh. “You haven’t changed. In so many ways, you haven’t changed.”
“How’s that?”
She smiled and met his gaze. “One minute you’re demanding promises, the next you’re changing your mind. I didn’t expect—” She broke off and arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t have to make any of those concessions during dinner. Yet you did. Why?”
The lines deepened along his brows and under his eyes. “I don’t think your people’s way is fair.”
Amy circled that. “Most men like having the laws in their favor. Their house, their money. They have control that way.”
“I’m not most men.” He made a loose fist and lightly touched his knuckles to her chin. “As long as I don’t beat you once a week to keep my arm in shape, you’ll never need that paper. Signing it’s a small thing to me, if it makes you happy.”
Matching her pace to his, she leaned her head against his arm, gazing at the trees ahead of them. Swift studied the top of her golden head. Taking yet another deep breath, she let it out slowly, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her.
“You used to do the same thing, demanding the most frightening things possible of me and then taking very little once I surrendered them to you.” She tipped her face up. “I still remember the first few times you dragged me off for a walk after Hunter rescued me from the comancheros. You took me to hell and gone out there along the river, as far away from the village as you could. You knew what I was thinking.”
“It wasn’t hard to guess,” he replied with a grin. “You needed to learn that you didn’t need the security of others to be safe with me. That was the only way to prove it to you.”
“You’re doing it again. Trying to prove something to me. You lead me to expect the very worst of you. And then you do none of the things I expect. You made me agree to make love alongside the road today. Yet you never intended to do any such thing, did you? Just when I think I know where I stand, you turn everything inside out.”
With a sigh, he drew up and pulled her into the circle of his arm.
He bent his head and brushed his lips across her cheek. A shiver of reaction raced down her spine, and her breath caught when his mouth brushed the corner of hers.
“It’s so simple, Amy. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is your trust. If I have that, I have everything. Don’t you see? The rest will just happen.”
With tears in her eyes she touched the scar on his cheek, then pressed her forehead against his chest. “It’s not easy for me.”
He smiled and hunched his shoulders around her, content to hold her close. “I know. But it’ll come if we give it time.”
When Swift lifted his head, he saw tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I love you, Swift,” she whispered raggedly. “I never stopped.”
“I know.”
Looking down at her, seeing the fragile trust in her eyes, Swift could scarcely believe his good fortune and felt a sudden rush of anxiety. For over half of his life, happiness of any kind had eluded him. He hadn’t dared allow himself to dream. Now he held the world in his arms. Amy. He loved her so much. What if something went wrong? What if he lost her again?
“Swift? What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Nothing. Everything’s right.”
Shoving the fears aside, he forced a smile and lowered his head, brushing his lips over hers. In the magic of the night, r
ecapturing their love from childhood was enough. He’d deal with the future one day at a time.
Chapter 16
EXACTLY ONE WEEK LATER, AT ABOUT THE same time of evening, Swift stood with a shoulder against Amy’s porch post, his lips still tingling from her innocent good-night kisses, his guts knotted with yearning for more. After seven days of handling her with kid gloves, his patience was about as fragile as a wet bowstring. Leaving her was the hardest thing he had ever done. His every instinct demanded he go back inside and sweep her into his arms. She’d give herself to him. He had no doubt of that. And it would be the sweetest joining in his life. All he had to do was go back to her. . . .
Swift closed his eyes, the painful ache low in his guts making his stomach churn. All Amy’s life, men had taken her with force. Tonight she had trusted him enough to let him hold her. She needed to go through this to see the contrast between being used and wanting to make love. Their union would be all the sweeter for it, and that was worth another night of frustration.
Clamping his hat on his head, he forced his feet down the steps, each stride a decision and a sacrifice. But in the end, he kept walking because he loved Amy far more than he desired physical release with her.
As had become his habit this week, Swift went to the saloon, hoping to find solace in a stiff whiskey and a friendly game of cards. Mainly in the whiskey. With his body screaming with longing for Amy every night, sleep took a long time coming, and he had to be at work early each morning in Hunter’s mine. A drink relaxed him.
Randall Hamstead sat alone at a corner table inside the saloon. Swift went to the bar and ordered a drink, smiling politely at May Belle, a brassy blonde, who sat on a nearby barstool. She gave him a once-over while he waited to be served. In the bright lantern light the lines in her face stood out, making her heavily powdered skin look like crinkled paper. Above her black bodice, her breasts swelled like overripe melons.
Swift couldn’t help but wonder how someone as attractive and kindhearted as she had wound up here, an aging whore, shining up to men she probably despised. Sometimes he wasn’t sure who the savages were, Comanches or whites.
Swift paid for his drink and slid his change down the bar to her. She regarded the money with one artfully drawn eyebrow raised high. Picking up his drink, he sauntered between the tables to join Randall Hamstead. Pulling out a chair across from him, he said, “Well, Randall, how did the dry goods business do you today? You got enough spare change to play some poker with those cards, or are you just planning on looking at them all night?”
Randall grinned. “Just waiting for a sucker to come along. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming in tonight.”
“Ah, so I’m the sucker you were waiting for, am I?” Swift tossed a dollar onto the scarred surface of the table. “Ante and deal, my friend. We’ll see which of us is the bigger fool.”
Several hands of five-card stud later, Swift turned up two of a kind, ace high. “Doesn’t beat a flush,” Hamstead said, fanning his cards across the table. “You lose, Lopez. Again.”
Swift grinned. “The way I figure, you haven’t won back everything you lost to me two nights ago.”
A group of miners at another table overheard Swift’s gibe and laughed. Randall threw them a warning glance. “I’m only two dollars shy.”
“Three.” Swift took a drag off his cigarette, making a sweep with one hand to gather the cards. “I’m learning how to count, remember? Save your pride some other way.”
From a nearby table, Abe Crenton brandished his empty whiskey bottle. “Pete!” he yelled. “Bring me another jug.”
Randall cast the intoxicated saloon owner a look of disgust. “At least he doesn’t like to play cards when he’s like that.”
“Is he good?”
Randall grinned and whispered, “He cheats. Don’t ever bet your life savings when he’s sitting in.”
Swift hoped Crenton wouldn’t go home drunk and make life hell for little Peter and his family. “Sevencard stud, four down and dirty,” he said, slapping the deck on the table. “Care to slit your own throat?”
Hamstead cut the cards. “Here comes my three bucks home to me. I can feel it in my bones.”
Swift dealt the first two cards face up and chuckled. “My lady beats the hell out of your ten. I’ll see your dollar and raise you one.”
Crenton leaned toward their table, so drunk he nearly lost his seat. “What’s that you say about your lady, Lopez?”
Swift lifted his gaze from the cards, his smile fading. “Pardon me?”
Crenton focused bleary blue eyes and flashed a nasty grin, his grizzled red beard so saturated with whiskey that he reeked from several feet away. “She as good in the sack as she looks?”
“Who?”
“Miss Amy—who in hell you think? You don’t really think anyone b’lieves that you’re doin’ book learnin’ o’er there at her house, do ya?”
Swift laid his cards on the table. He yearned to jump up and rearrange Crenton’s face for him. Only regard for Amy forestalled him. If he didn’t handle this right, he could do irreparable harm to her reputation. He forced himself to smile. “I wish I was having as much fun as everyone thinks I am. That woman’s got so much starch in her drawers, they could walk off without her.”
Crenton threw back his head and barked with laughter. Hamstead blushed and looked uncomfortable. “Miss Amy is a fine lady. You two shouldn’t speak of her disrespectfully.”
“I respect her,” Swift countered, swallowing the last swig of whiskey in his glass and whistling as the liquor burned its way to his belly. “It’s the only thing you can do with a lady like her. Not that I haven’t tried. She’s a beautiful woman.”
“Amen to that,” Crenton said, waving his empty whiskey glass. “So tell me, Lopez, if ya haven’t been compromisin’ her, why in hell’d you pay a hundred dollars for her dinner basket?”
Swift set down his glass and leaned back in his chair. “It was the only way I could think of to pay for my schooling. The committee wouldn’t accept payment or even a donation from a man with my reputation. And Miss Amy, she won’t accept money on the side. I figure the town ought to benefit in some way.”
It was a lame explanation, but the only one Swift could come up with on such short notice. Crenton, however, seemed to think it made sense. He nodded and belched. “I reckon I’d feel the same. It’s not as if you’re one of the children. And”—he belched again—“the good folk in Wolf’s Lan’ing prob’ly didn’t want ya in their goddam uppity school anyhow.”
Just then, the saloon doors banged open. Two men sauntered between the tables toward the bar. Because of their concha-banded hats slanted over their eyes, Swift couldn’t make out their featutes. His attention centered on their clothing, and wariness washed over him. Silver conchae decorated one man’s pants. The other wore a beaded, fringed leather vest. Both wore silver-studded gun belts. Their holsters rode low on their hips. They walked with cocky swaggers, shoulders high, arms slightly bent, carrying with them an air of tension, as if they disliked having their backs to strangers. Swift knew the feeling well.
“Two whiskeys,” the man with the concha-studded pants called to the barkeep. “And line us up with a full bottle.”
Swift slowly sat erect, uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t wearing his guns. He glanced at the other customers in the saloon. No one but him appeared to think the two newcomers seemed out of place.
“You gonna finish the deal or sit there?” Randall asked.
Forcing himself to relax, Swift picked up the cards and, drawing on long practice, continued the game, his attention centered on the men at the bar.
“Pete! You comin’ with that bottle?” Crenton yelled.
“On my way, boss.”
The bartender served the two strangers. As he hurried between the tables, bearing the second bottle for his boss, the stranger wearing the fringed vest turned and hooked a boot heel over the foot rail, one elbow braced on the bar, glass to his lips. He pa
nned the room, his blue-eyed gaze touching on Swift, then sliding past him without hesitation.
Pete plunked the bottle down on the table in front of Crenton. Turning back to the bar, he struck up a conversation with the newcomers. Swift cocked an ear, hoping to glean information, scarcely noticing when Abe Crenton grabbed his bottle and staggered drunkenly toward the door.
“What brings you fellows to our fair city?” Pete asked.
“Been over in Jacksonville,” said the man wearing the vest. “Heard there was strikes bein’ made over this way.”
Pete jerked a towel from off his shoulder to polish a glass. “Lot of gold in these hills, if a man’s patient enough to look for it.” He flashed a grin, making a swipe at the countertop. “You thinkin’ to placer mine, or what?”
The man seemed to mull over his answer. “Well, to be honest, we’re not certain sure. Never done much minin’ before. We thought we’d do some brain pickin’ before we did much of the same with dirt.”
“Hunter Wolf’s the fellow to see. He doesn’t mind helping newcomers out like most do. Of course, his claim doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to played out, so he can be generous.” Pete flashed a friendly smile. “There’s a nice hotel next door. Next door down’s the restaurant. No finer cook than Tess Bronson.”
“We’ll probably be steady customers, then.”
“Where you two from?”
“Around,” the other man replied.
“You gonna ante?” Hamstead asked, forcing Swift’s attention back to the game.
Swift tossed another dollar into the pot. “Sorry, Randall. Couldn’t help but notice those two fellows who just came in. They look like trouble to me.”
Randall glanced toward the bar. “Yeah? Well, we get all kinds drifting through. All you gotta do is holler ‘Strike!’ and gold seekers come from everywhere.”
“They don’t look like the type to be in these parts.”
“After you, nothing surprises me.” He smiled. “We’re not cut off from the world nowadays. The stage from Sacramento goes through Jacksonville en route to Portland every day.” Randall studied the cards Swift dealt. “I’ll be damned if my three of a kind doesn’t beat your pair of ladies, my man. I made my three dollars back and got five to boot.”