I faltered over my boots. “What in fiery Sam Hill, you arrogant sonofabitch, you’re”—I touched my stomach, woozy, myself thoroughly soused—“telling folks we’recourting.”
His gaze flicked up. “You hear that?”
I knocked my shoulder against the wall beside the feed bucket, raised my brows. Stot brushed Shark’s ankle, irritatingly calm. “From whom?”
“Who all are you telling?” I flicked my eyes to an open window. A northeaster whipped by, howling and wrathy, rattling the walls. “You tell about—”
“No. Not that.”
I felt as if I’d been tossed from a racehorse, and not just because of the brandy sours, but because I had no idea what to do with this man. When I was wild, I chose it. But with him, I completely lost sight of direction, everything a’whirl, untethered to reason or topography.
Stot straightened his white paper collar and proceeded to brush Shark’s other ankle. The air smelt of melting ice and weapon oil and perhaps fresh butter, drifting on over from his home. “Folks ask, you know,” he said. “We’re together often. Ain’t no matter, is it?”
“Sakes alive, it absolutely does matter. You had no right.”
“Then what’s going on here?”
“Nothing now.”
He paused. Stood, clicked the brush down on the ledge. Then he stepped forward, his broad shoulders just above mine. I swallowed. It was quiet in the barn, the scuffling feet of his animals and the wind now muted beyond the hickory boards. He fingered the ends of my hair, his voice gravelly, the texture grating my spine. “Nothing, huh?”
He ran a palm up my side, and a moan tumbled from my mouth. His eyes flashed as he slid his hand behind my back, pressing me closer.
I stepped away, slipped out beyond all the doors. Outside, I crossed my arms over my chest, swallowed a gulp of winter air, and blinked at the starlight pressing through the night. Stot stood behind me, his chest brushing my back. “You know there’s something between us.”
But there couldn’t be. I couldn’t be with him for a season, then let him go. We stood awhile, watching Cricket nip at the grass. Stot had put up fences, stained them a gorgeous mahogany. In the moonlight, they were blue tinged and otherworldly. I liked the way he did things. He stepped down the slight hill and stood before me. Air currents skidded through the fibers of my blouse and chilled my bones. His eyes were dark, shadows all over his face.
“We don’t have to be some unbound mayhem.” He straightened the brim of his Stetson—I even adored the way he moved his biceps, settled his hat on top of his black hair, the controlled way he held his body, everything purposeful, reverential. I didn’t know you could relish every nuance of someone, and it ached to like him so much. “We can just see what it’s like to be together, as such,” he said.
His posture was relaxed, his face rugged with stubble. We hadn’t kissed since the snowstorm, and it felt like a conversation forever unresolved. Ididn’t know how to keep living with this fire between us. Didn’t know how to forget those moments in the dark, hadn’t known intimacy could be like that. I brushed my fingers across his jaw, pressed my thumb into the cleft in his chin, as if claiming him. I’d already fallen, but he couldn’t be mine.
He slid his arms around my waist, settling me closer. “Who you hear from anyway, that we’re courting?”
I wiggled away, leaned against the hickory planks of the barn, exhaled. “Frank Canton.” A beat. “The Wild Bunch.”
“What?” His fist flexed above the walnut handle of his pistol. “Sakes alive, why did you speak with them?”
“Told them ’bout the murders.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
“Well, damn.” He grimaced and straightened the knot of his black cravat.
“What else was I to do? Vigilantes were rising against the Browns, outlaws coming for you,” I said. “Told them at the saloon tonight. Loudly.”
“Damnation, I requested you take me along.”
“I didn’t need you.”
“Fine.” Stot looked off, as if memorizing the horizon. He removed his hat, crown pointed at the loamy dirt.
The distant line of trees was a smudge of dark, like iron oxide pressed across parchment. I told him of the confrontation, of how I’d go on into town tomorrow, sign an official statement. His fingers wrought his gun belt, his black brows tugged together. “But they didn’t shoot you, and the marshal didn’t arrest you? And no one will go after the Browns?”
“I suppose.”
“Of course you pulled off such an unhinged plan.” He shook his head. “Not many would protect someone else over themselves.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on, you can tell me the rest over supper.”
