Twin of Fire

  “Then tell me how you got into trouble and why I didn’t hear about it. I’m sure that in Chandler it would have made front-page news: Saint Leander Does Something Less Than Perfect.”

  Lee grinned broader. “You didn’t hear of it because my father somehow managed to keep it quiet and, also, because it happened in Colorado Springs. What I did was get myself shot twice.”

  “Shot?” she gasped. “But I didn’t see any scars.”

  Lee grunted. “You’ve yet to look at me. I get near you and you pounce on me.”

  “I do no such—.” Blair stopped because what he said was true. “How did you get shot?” she asked meekly.

  “I went with Dad to Colorado Springs when I was about fourteen. He had to talk to a witness for a client of his, and he was to meet the man at a hotel not far north of the bank. We’d just eaten dinner and were leaving the hotel when suddenly guns started firing and somebody yelled that the bank’d been robbed. I looked down the street and saw half a dozen men with bandannas over their faces riding toward us.

  “I guess I didn’t think, I just acted. There was a buckboard in the alley, hitched with four horses and loaded with feedbags. I jumped into the seat, yelled at the horses and drove the wagon into the street and blocked the outlaws’ exit.”

  “And they shot you.”

  “I couldn’t very well jump off the wagon. The horses would have run ahead and left the street clear.”

  “So you just sat there and held the horses,” Blair said with some awe.

  “I stayed there until the sheriff caught up with the bank robbers.”

  “And then what?”

  He smiled. “And then my dad pulled me off the wagon and carried me to a doctor who gouged one bullet out—the other one went through my arm. He also let me get drunk, and I swear the hangover was worse than the holes in me.”

  “But, thanks to you, the robbers were caught.”

  “And spent years in jail. They’re out now. You even met one of them.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “The night we went to the reception. Remember when we went to the house on River Street? The suicide case? Remember the man outside? I don’t think you liked him very much.”

  “The gambler,” she said, thinking of the way the man’d looked at her.

  “Among other things. LeGault spent ten years in prison after that robbery in Colorado Springs.”

  “Because of you,” she said. “He must hate you, since you’re the one who caught him.”

  “Probably,” Lee said, without much interest. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “But then, I believe you used to hate me, too.”

  “Not exactly hate…,” she began, then smiled. “Where did you go on our wedding night?”

  “Want to see my bullet scars?”

  She started to say something about his refusal to answer her, but she compressed her mouth into a tight little line and said no more.

  He put his fingertip under her chin. “Honeymoons aren’t the place for anger, or for sulky looks. How about if I tell you about the time I delivered triplets?”

  She didn’t say a word to him.

  “One of them was breech.”

  Still nothing.

  “And they were a month early, and they were each born an hour apart, and to keep them alive we had to…”

  “To what?” she asked after several minutes of silence.

  “Oh, nothing. It wasn’t very interesting. It was only written about in three journals. Or was it four?” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why was it written about?”

  “Because our method of saving them was…But you probably wouldn’t be interested.” With a yawn, he lay back against the log.

  Blair leaped on him, her hands clenched into fists. “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” she shouted at him while Lee, laughing, began to roll across the grass with her. He stopped when she was on the bottom.

  “I’ll tell you, but you have to tell me a secret about yourself.”

  “I don’t have any secrets,” she said, glaring at him, reminded of his refusal to tell her where he’d gone.

  “Oh, yes, you do. Who put the snakes in my lunch pail and the grasshoppers in my pencil box?”

  She blinked a couple of times. “I’m not sure, but I think it might have been the same person who put the taffy in your shoes, who sewed the sleeves of your jacket closed, who put hot peppers in your sandwiches, who—.”

  “At my mother’s garden party!” he said. “I sat there and ate those sandwiches and thought everyone else’s were hot, too, and that I was just a coward because they were about to kill me. How did you manage it?”

  “I paid Jimmy Summers a penny to release his muddy dog when I dropped my spoon. The dog ran into the garden, and you, always the rescuer, ran to get rid of the dog. Everybody watched you, so I had plenty of time to doctor the sandwiches on your plate. I thought I’d burst to keep from laughing. You sat there sweating, but you ate every bite.”

  He loomed over her, shaking his head. “And the dried cow pie in my favorite fishing hat?”

  She nodded.

  “And the pictures of Miss Ellison on my slate?”

  She nodded.

  “Did anyone besides me ever catch you?”

  “Your father did once. Houston said you were going fishing, so I sneaked over to your house, dumped out the worms you’d just dug and put a garter snake in the can. Unfortunately, your father caught me.”

  “I would imagine he had a few words to say. He hated any pranks of Nina’s.”

  “He said that I was never going to be a lady.”

  “And he was right,” Lee said solemnly, beginning to rub about on her. “You aren’t a lady at all. You’re a flesh and blood woman.” He grinned. “Lots of flesh in all the right places.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you planning to take my virtue, sir? Oh, please, sir, it’s the only thing I have left.”

  “You don’t deserve even that for what you’ve done, young lady,” he said, leering, lowering his voice. “You’ve been tried and found guilty, and you are to be punished.”

  “Oh?” she said, arching a brow. “Taffy in my shoes?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of your becoming my love slave for the rest of our lives.”

  “Isn’t that a little severe for a bit of taffy?”

  “It’s for the hot peppers and the—.” His eyes widened. “Did you put the sneezing powder on my crackers? And the soot on my father’s binoculars the day I took them to school?”

  She nodded, beginning to feel a little guilty about the sheer volume of pranks she’d played on him.

  He was looking at her with some awe. “I knew you did some of them but I’d always thought John Lechner did most of them. You know, I saw him four years ago in New York and I remembered all the things I thought he’d done to me, and I’m afraid I was barely civil to him.”

  “You didn’t retaliate?”

  “About a hundred times. I spent years with bruises from fights with John.” He grinned. “And to think: he was innocent. As for the ones I knew you did, what could I do? You were six years younger than me and, besides, just thinking of the whipping my father gave me after that one time I did punch you was enough to make me think twice about striking a girl.”

  “So now I have to pay for some childhood foolishness,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “Life is hard.”

  “That’s not all that’s hard,” he said with a one-sided smirk.

  “It’s a good thing I’m a doctor and impossible to shock.”

  “It wasn’t your doctoring that attracted me.”

  “Oh? And what did attract you to me?”

  “Your persistence in trying to get my attention. I withstood it long enough but can stand no more.”

  “If you insist,” she said tiredly.

  “I love obedient women,” he murmured as he ran his hand under her shirt and began to caress her rib cage, moving his hand up to touch her breasts. br />
  Blair was astonished that she could want him again after only a few hours, but when her fingertips touched his warm skin, it was as if it were the first time. She hadn’t thought of the pranks she’d played on him in years. At the time, she’d thought she did them because she hated him, that she was getting even with him for taking Houston away. But now, she wondered if all she’d wanted was his attention.

  When he lifted his head and started to unbutton her shirt, she took his face in her hands. “I don’t understand what you mean to me,” she whispered.

  Lee gave her a soft, gentle smile. “Not yet? Well, stay by me and it’ll come to you. One thing about you, Blair, you sure can put up one hell of a fight. Do you think you’ll come to fight for me as strongly as you’ve fought against me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, confused. She was so torn about this man. He’d been her enemy for most of her life. She’d fought him every way she could. And in spite of what Lee had said, she’d effectively managed to sabotage her sister’s wedding. Why? Why had she fallen into bed with a man she swore she hated?

  Lee took her hands in his and kissed the palms. “While you’re trying to find the answers to life, we’re wasting time.” He finished unbuttoning her shirt.

  They made love slowly, almost delicately, Lee watching her face to see her reactions. He kissed each of her fingertips, lingering over them, and the sensation of feeling the warm, moist interior of his mouth went through all of her. He kissed her breasts, ran his hands all over her skin.

  And when he came to her, it was gentle, sweet, prolonged.

  Later, he held her very close, tucking her legs between his, wrapping himself around her, trying to enclose her body within his.

  Blair lay within the circle of his arms, listening to clicking grasshoppers, the high-pitched whistle of a hummingbird, and the wind. The smell and taste and feel of Lee seemed to fill her. How much she wanted this moment never to end.

  “When we get home, you’ll have to hire somebody to take care of my socks,” he said softly.

  “Your what?” she asked vaguely, holding onto him as if her life depended on it.

  “My socks and my shirts—and I like my boots kept polished. And you’ll need somebody to clean the place, make the bed and feed us.”

  Blair was silent for a moment before she began to understand what he was saying. Since she was a girl, all she’d cared about—or learned anything about—was medicine. She had absolutely no idea how to run a house.

  She gave a big sigh. “Think anyone’d like to marry us?”

  She could feel Lee chuckle. “We can ask. I met a lady criminal who—.” He stopped when Blair put her teeth to his skin and threatened to bite.

  “Lee,” she said, as she moved back to look at him. “I really, truly don’t know anything about running a house. My mother tried to teach me but—.”

  “You climbed trees.”

  “Or escaped to somewhere. Aunt Flo tried, but Uncle Henry kept saying that there was time, and then he’d take me into the surgery to help him. I guess there wasn’t time. Next year, I was planning to enroll in a course in housewifery so I’d be prepared when I married Alan.”

  “A course, huh? One where they teach you how to get the toilet clean and how to scrub the floors?”

  “Think it would have been that bad?”

  “Probably worse.”

  She put her head back into his shoulder. “I told you not to marry me. Now you see why no one else wanted to. Houston’s so much better at this than I am. You should have kept her.”

  “Probably,” he said solemnly. “I’d certainly never have to worry about her borrowing my scalpel.”

  “I never borrow yours,” she said indignantly. “I have my own.”

  “Yes, but Houston does know how to run a house. I imagine her husband’s socks will always be clean and in order.”

  Blair pushed away from him. “If that’s what you want, you can just go to her—or to any other woman for that matter. If you think I’m going to dedicate my life to your underwear, you’re mistaken.” She sat up and angrily began to pull on her trousers.

  “Not even one sock?” he asked in a pleading way.

  Blair glanced at him and saw that he was laughing at her. “You!” she laughed and fell back into his arms, where he hugged her fiercely. “You didn’t tell me about the triplets.”

  “What triplets?”

  “The ones you delivered and that were written about in four journals.”

  He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I’ve never delivered triplets in my life.”

  “But you said…Oh, you!” she gasped, laughing.

  He ran his hand up her trousered legs and over her bare back. “How about walking down to the river? We can eat there.”

  “And talk about the clinic,” she said, as she stood and put on her shirt. “When do you think the equipment will arrive? And you never did tell me exactly what you ordered. Lee, if you don’t want to work there all the time, I thought I might write a friend of mine, Dr. Louise Bleeker. She’s quite good and Chandler is growing by leaps and bounds, so I’m sure we could use another doctor.”

  “Actually, I was thinking of hiring Mrs. Krebbs to help in the clinic.”

  Blair paused in buttoning her shirt. “Mrs. Krebbs! Do you know what she’s like? One day, a little boy came to the hospital with a chicken bone caught in his throat and dear Mrs. Krebbs suggested I wait for a real doctor to arrive.”

  “And she’s still alive today?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  She squinted up at him. “Are you teasing me again?”

  “I never tease women who look like you do.” He looked down at her gaping shirt that was unbuttoned to just above her navel. “Come on,” he said before she could answer. “If we’re going to talk business, let’s at least walk while we do it.”

  Chapter 26

  Leander and Blair, holding hands, ran up the hill to the cabin. They stopped now and then to kiss, and Lee began to tug on Blair’s clothes and she on his until, when they reached the rise just before the cabin, they were both unbuttoned to the waist.

  But the fun stopped when they looked up the hill toward the cabin, for there on the front porch stood Reed Westfield.

  Lee’s face instantly turned somber, as he put himself between Blair and the cabin and began to button her shirt. “Listen to me,” he said gently. “I think I’ll have to go away again. I don’t imagine my father’d come here unless it were an emergency.”

  “Emergency? I can—.” Something in his eyes made her stop and her jaw harden. “Is it that kind of emergency? One where I’m to be excluded, where I can’t be trusted? The emergency that is for men only?”

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “Blair, you have to trust me. I would tell you if I could, but for your own good—.”

  “For my own good, I should remain ignorant. I understand completely.”

  “You don’t understand anything!” Lee said, his fingers gripping her tightly. “You’re just going to have to trust me. If I could tell you, I would.”

  She jerked away from him. “I understand perfectly. You are just like Mr. Gates. You have rigid ideas of what a woman can and cannot do, and I can’t be trusted enough to be told what you’re doing when you so mysteriously disappear. Tell me, what do you plan to allow me to do now that we’re married? That is, besides manage your household and gleefully share your bed? May I continue practicing medicine, or am I too incompetent to do that, too?”

  Lee rolled his eyes skyward, as if looking for help. “All right, have it your way. You seem to think I’m a monster, so I’ll be one. My father is here for an important reason, and I have to leave you now. I can’t tell you where I’m going or I would. What I’d like you to do now is to return to Chandler with my father, and I will be home as soon as possible.”

  Blair didn’t say another word as she walked past him, up the hill and toward the cabin. It was difficult for her to even look at Reed. He’d never liked her since s
he was a child and he’d caught her playing a prank on his precious son. When Lee’d said he wanted to marry Blair, Reed had participated in that dreadful interrogation Gates had subjected her to. And later, Reed had pointblank, directly, lied to her, making up that story about Lee and a Frenchwoman.

  So now, as she walked past him and into the cabin, she could be neither warm or even especially cordial. She greeted him coolly and went inside.

  Even when she was alone, she wouldn’t allow herself to unbend. What had she expected except to be treated this way? Lee said he loved her, but what man wouldn’t love a woman who was as enthusiastic a bed partner as she was? And Lee’s sense of honor would make him feel obligated to marry her, since she’d been a virgin that first night.

  Blair went upstairs to remove the men’s clothing she was wearing and put her medical uniform back on. The window was open and through it she could hear voices. When she looked outside, she could see Lee and his father at some distance from the cabin and, from the look of their gestures, they were angry with each other.

  Lee was squatting in the grass, chewing on a stem, while Reed was using every inch of his heavy body to lean over his son in an intimidating way. To Blair, it looked as if Reed were threatening Lee.

  In spite of herself, she leaned closer to the window. Some words floated to her, words that Reed was punctuating with a finger pointed at Lee. “…danger…” “…risk your life…” “…Pinkerton…”

  She drew back. “Pinkerton?” she whispered, as she fastened the last buttons on her uniform. What did Lee have to do with the Pinkerton Detective Agency?

  For a moment, she sat on the bed. She hadn’t had much time to think about where Lee’d gone on their wedding night. Reed had lied to her and she’d believed him. She was willing to believe that Lee loved someone else; she was willing to believe that he was running into a den of outlaws to save the leader from blood poisoning. But what if Lee were involved in something else, something…She hesitated to even think about what he could be involved in. Maybe he was helping the Pinkertons. But the way Reed was warning his son, Blair didn’t think so.

  Leander was involved in something illegal. She knew it, felt it. And that’s why he couldn’t tell her what he was doing. He wanted her to remain innocent.