Her Bodyguard Read online

  “Please, call me Mari,” she said, gratefully accepting the change of clothes. “It’s the name I ordinarily go by. Virgil is the only one who uses the other.”

  The dress fit snug in the bust, loose in the waist, and showed an impolite amount of ankle, but Mari was pleased to have it. She joined Penny in the kitchen and assisted with supper preparations. Soon the two women chatted away like old friends. She learned that the couple had two sons, one who lived and worked in Dallas and the other who helped his father on the farm, but lived with his wife and young daughter in a house on another section of land they owned a short distance away. “They’d intended to come for supper tonight, but the baby came down sick. My son rode over this afternoon and brought me my gift. Can I show you?”

  It was a photograph of her son’s family, and the two women spent some time oohing and aahing over the Hills’ granddaughter. Mari did her best to shift the conversation away from children when Penny asked a question or two about her pregnancy. While she did have some experience at shading the truth—that McBride Menace influence, she was afraid—she didn’t feel right about misleading people as nice as Dennis and Penny Hill.

  Luke, however, seemed to revel in it. The cad.

  Over supper, he spun a yarn about the reason for their trip that had nothing to do with the truth. It did, however, manage to charm their hosts completely. Who wouldn’t be impressed by a man who spoke so passionately about his desire to preserve Texas history by recovering historical documents and establishing a museum to exhibit artifacts from the days of the Republic? Obviously, Luke had as much a talent for acting as did his brother.

  He revealed yet another facet of his talents after Dennis presented his wife with her gift when supper was over. Penny’s delight in the hogs was infectious and Mari found herself wishing she had a gift of her own to give. Apparently, Luke felt the same way. Reaching for Mari’s hand, he gave it a warning squeeze and said, “It’s a poor guest who attends a birthday party without a gift. Since we can’t exactly run down to the general store to purchase you tea towels, would you accept a bit of entertainment from my wife and me as our birthday contribution?”

  While Mari looked at Luke in shock, the farmer piped up. “You wantin’ to sing? I have tender ears. Can’t abide poor singin’.”

  “No. No singing.” Luke stood, pulled Mari to her feet, then continued in a theatrical tone. “Mr. and Mrs. Hill, allow me to present Beaudine the Magnificent and his lovely assistant, Ethel!”

  He made a flourish, then tugged a handkerchief and a coin from his pocket. For the next ten minutes, he performed one parlor trick after another with only those two items. He made the coin disappear and reappear in various places of the room and on his “assistant’s” body. He tied the kerchief in knots, made the knots disappear, made the kerchief disappear…and reappear from the dip in Mari’s neckline.

  Mari’s contribution to the act became one of reacting to his tricks. Every time she slapped his hand away for brushing her body inappropriately, each time she reacted with shock or surprise to his antics, the Hills’ amusement increased. Soon Mari found herself playing to her audience, and when Luke ended the act by pulling a yellow rosebud from her bodice, then bending her back over his arm for a boisterous kiss, she participated enthusiastically.

  She was still floating on a performer’s high spirits a short time later when she found herself alone in a room with Luke. Alone in a bedroom. Their bedroom. The one with the bed. Only one bed.

  Oh, my.

  Luke unbuckled his gun belt and draped it over the back of the one other piece of furniture in the room, a wooden ladder-back chair. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and began to pull off his boots. “That was fun,” he observed. “I haven’t performed my magic act in ages.”

  Mari stood stiff as a fence post in the middle of the room.

  One boot fell to the wooden floor with a thud. Mari startled, then nervously cleared her throat “Do…um…did you…um…where did you learn those tricks?”

  The second boot fell to the floor. “My stepfather taught me when I was a boy. Helped me learn to be good with my hands.”

  Oh, my goodness.

  “They’re nice people, the Hills. Did you notice that painting above their mantel? The cowboys around the campfire? The artist is Charles M. Russell. Dennis said he bought it out of a Fort Worth bar. Russell is starting to earn a real name in the art world. My bet is that painting will be worth a pretty penny someday.”

  “You’re not going to steal it from him, are you?”

  He shot her a chastising look. “You can be a real shrew, Mari McBride.”

  “Only with you, Luke Garrett.”

  “You gonna stand there all night or are you coming to bed?” He started unbuttoning his shirt.

  Mari’s pulse jumped. “Hold on. Just hold on one minute. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m going to bed. I haven’t had any real sleep in three days.”

  “But you can’t…we can’t…”

  “We won’t.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t be silly about this, Mari. You must have known when you asked me to travel with you that we’d find ourselves in close proximity upon occasion.”

  “Yes, but there’s close, and then there’s close.”

  “Well, this isn’t close. I’m too tired for close. I hate to disappoint you, but all I intend to do tonight is go to sleep. In this bed. Now. You can either join me or sleep on the floor. Whatever trips your trigger.”

  Sleep on the floor? Me? “A gentleman would offer me the bed and sleep on the floor himself.”

  Luke sent her a droll look, then slipped off his shirt. When his hands went to the buttons on his denims, she whirled around. “You can’t take off your pants!”

  “Just watch me.”

  “Luke!”

  “I’m not putting these britches against Penny’s clean sheets. They’re filthy. One of the pigs gave me a gift when I was helping Dennis unload the wagon.”

  Mari wrinkled her nose. She’d thought she smelled something off a time or two this evening.

  She heard his pants hit the floor, then the rustle of bedclothes and the creak of bed ropes. Glass rattled, then the lamp went out.

  Standing in the darkness, Mari asked, “It didn’t get your drawers, too, did it?”

  “G’night, Mari.”

  She felt her way over to the chair—the hard, unpadded, wooden chair—and took a seat. She slipped off her shoes and tried to get comfortable.

  After a few long minutes, she scowled into the darkness. No. Comfort wasn’t going to be possible in this chair. Maybe she should try the floor.

  Mari grabbed a pillow and the quilt folded at the bottom of the bed and settled onto the floor in front of the fireplace. She shut her eyes and willed herself to relax. She was tired. That nap on the train hadn’t been enough to combat the energy-draining ups and downs of the past twenty or so hours. She should be able to drift right off to sleep, hard floor or no. Except her mind kept returning to that moment in the grass when she stared into the rattlesnake’s soulless black eyes.

  That made her think about things that slither and crawl on the ground.

  I’ll never get to sleep down here.

  She gave up and returned to the chair. Hugging the pillow to her chest, she closed her eyes and started counting sheep. Then Luke let out a snore, and the sheep transformed to complaints.

  This was all his fault. He’s the one who mistook a wagon accident for a train robbery. He’s the one who told the Hills that they were married. He’s the one who called her Ethel. Ethel!

  He’s the one who touched her, who teased her. Who kissed her. Luke Garrett was the one who heated her blood and made her afraid to seek the innocent comfort of a mattress just because she feared her own reaction to his wicked allure.

  Why in the world did she find him so attractive? Sure he was handsome and charming, but he was a criminal, for goodness’ sake. He stole from people. Maybe killed people, even. He’d proved
his talent with a gun this very day, hadn’t he? She had absolutely no business being attracted to him. None.

  So stop it. I’m a willful woman. I can be stubborn. I can turn off these feelings like a gaslight.

  I can get a good night’s sleep.

  She stood and approached the bed. She took two deep breaths, then crawled gingerly in beside Luke.

  LUKE DREAMED about lovemaking.

  He lay upon a blanket of green grass beside a river-bank, naked and hot, arousal pulsing through his veins like whiskey. The woman rose above him, straddled him, her full, pink-tipped breasts mere inches from his mouth. He ached with the need to take, to possess. He heard himself moan.

  The moan prodded him awake.

  Luke’s eyes opened, blinked into the darkness. Again, he heard a deep-throated, in-the-throes-of-good-sex groan. Except, it wasn’t coming from him.

  As sleep’s fog began to clear from his mind, Luke recognized that the sounds he was hearing emanated from their host’s bedroom. Luke’s lips stretched into a grin. Looked like the birthday gift-giving didn’t end with a pair of sows.

  Even as that thought drifted through his mind, another fact occurred. He wasn’t alone in bed. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken—and he never was about such things— Miss Mari’s hand rested mere inches from his pecker.

  His hard, raging, rarin’-to-go pecker.

  From across the narrow passageway came a muffled feminine scream. Beside him, Mari startled and came awake. “What…?”

  A man’s voice said, “Mmm…oh, oh, oh.”

  “Oh…” Mari murmured, her tone ripe with understanding.

  Ripe. Damn. Now there was a word he shouldn’t be thinking under current circumstances. Ripe. Primed. Ready.

  He was damned well ripe, primed and ready. Hell, wouldn’t take much at all to set him off. Maybe…

  He wondered if she’d taken off her clothes when she came to bed.

  “Oh…aah…aah…aah.”

  Beside him, Mari shifted restlessly. Luke turned his head and tried to see her in the darkness. The tension thickening the air told him that she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  “Well,” she said. “I think I’ll just…um…go back to sleep.”

  Luke let a moment pass before the ache in his groin prodded him to ask, “Are you still a virgin?”

  “Excuse me?” She sat straight up in bed. “Why in the world would you ask me such a question? What are you doing thinking about my virtue?”

  “It was just a thought,” he defended.

  “A thought? Like you thought the train was being robbed? I’ve had quite enough of your thoughts, thank you very much.”

  With a huff, she bounced back down, and though he couldn’t see her, he knew she’d rolled onto her side facing away from him. After a moment and another long moan from the other bedroom, Luke said, “It’s a natural reaction.”

  She sniffed.

  Then, because he was a man, he went on the offensive. “Don’t try to tell me you weren’t thinking about it, too.”

  “I most certainly was not.”

  “Liar.”

  “All I’m thinking about is trying to get some sleep. Now good night!”

  He was so tempted to reach out and caress her hip.

  “Oh…oh…oh…oh…oh!”

  “Aargh!” Mari put the pillow over her head.

  Luke tried to wrestle control of the images running through his mind. He concentrated on cold things—icebergs, North Pole snow. Iced tea. Ice cream.

  Strawberry ice cream.

  Resting in the hollow of her stomach just above her navel.

  Where he could lick it up.

  Oh, hell.

  Luke rolled onto his side facing away from her, hard and aching and cranky. He draped his arm above his head, covering his ear and succeeded to some extent in muffling the sounds of lovemaking coming from the other room. Still he waited, tense and anxious, as the sound built to a crescendo, then climaxed with a pair of intensely satisfied, full-bodied groans.

  Luke rolled onto his back, then pushed himself into a seated position. He drew a deep breath, then exhaled in a rush. Damn, he was glad that was over. Now maybe he could relax and get back to sleep. Tomorrow promised to be another challenging day.

  Beside him, Mari let out a soft giggle. Hearing the sound, Luke’s tension drained like beer from a newly tapped barrel. He turned his head toward the sound and grinned into the darkness. “Hey, Mari?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a cigarette on you?”

  She hit him in the face with her pillow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE TOWN OF TRICKLING Springs owed its prosperity to the railroad. Three times a day trains stopped for forty minutes, spilling restless passengers from cramped cars to mill about Main Street, stretching their legs and spending their money. Merchants, restaurateurs and even service establishments like barbershops and bathhouses made a fine penny from the travelers. As a result, Trickling Springs residents made a concerted effort to welcome strangers to their town with open arms.

  Personally, Mari would just as soon they stopped all that smiling. She wasn’t in a good mood, and she didn’t want to be nice to people.

  It hadn’t been the most pleasant of days.

  First, following a fitful night’s sleep, she’d awoken spooned against Luke Garrett, entirely too comfortable. Next, Mr. Hill and Luke had amused themselves by claiming to spot snakes and scorpions and various other wildlife on the way into town. Once in Trickling Springs, Mari had to badger Luke into checking church records for a listing of Kat’s marriage to Rory Kelly- Callahan. Each time they entered a church and spoke to the pastor about the marriage records, Luke got a strange look on his face. Mari wondered if his aversion was to places of worship, or the institution of marriage.

  “That’s every church in town, Mari,” Luke grumbled as they departed First Presbyterian. “I told you we wouldn’t find anything.”

  “We haven’t checked with City Hall yet. Maybe they had a civil service.”

  “This town isn’t big enough to have a City Hall!”

  “A judge, then. Or the mayor. Can a couple be married by a mayor in Texas?”

  “How would I know? Mari, be reasonable. The only places open when the nighttime train rolls through are restaurants and the whorehouse.”

  “Which shall we try first?”

  Luke scowled and rolled his eyes. “You can do what you want. I need to send a telegram.”

  “Luke…please?”

  He sighed heavily. “All right, fine. Telegraph office first, though. We’ll try the restaurants after that. I could use some lunch. I’m not taking you into the Trickling Springs Social Club.”

  “I’ve been to brothels before, Luke. I went to yours yesterday, if you recall.”

  “Do you honestly believe your little sister would agree to get married in one?”

  Mari wrinkled her nose but didn’t argue. Luke was right. Kat wouldn’t settle for a whorehouse wedding, not even under dire circumstances.

  At the telegraph office, Luke took pains to ensure the privacy of the message he sent. Mari was mildly curious about his manner, but she didn’t challenge him on it. She was anxious to question workers at the restaurants in hopes of finding someone who might remember seeing Kat McBride the night of the Texas Spring Palace fire.

  Unfortunately, the photograph she’d brought along to aid in her search was in her handbag—the one she’d stuck inside the satchel left behind on the train. Still, she had hopes that someone might recall seeing Kat. Mari knew her sister well enough to believe that she’d have been sparkling with excitement from the elopement. A sparkling Kat was a memorable Kat.

  Trickling Springs had three restaurants, but Mari and Luke quickly discovered that two of them opened only during train stops. The third served up bad sandwiches and no useful information. Mari left the building discouraged.

  “Come on, now.” Luke tucked a loose strand of her hair back behind her
ear. “Buck up. You knew it was a long shot.”

  She shrugged. “I know my sister is alive, but I’d hoped to get confirmation.”

  “Investigations rarely get results right out of the chute, Mari. Sometimes it takes months of dogged work to glean even the slightest piece of information.”

  Mari shot him a curious glance. “I didn’t realize train robbers made it a practice to conduct investigations.”

  He hesitated, annoyance flashing across his caramel-colored eyes, but Mari sensed the emotion was self-directed. What had put a burr under his saddle? Her reference to his criminal past? Was he ashamed of his criminal past? He’d never appeared to be before.

  “Those men on the train yesterday. Who were they to you, Luke?”

  He shook his head and tried to evade the question, but Mari wasn’t giving in this time. In a warning tone, she said, “Luke?”

  Finally, he shrugged and said, “Ghosts from my past, Mari. That’s all. And as far as investigating goes, you’d be surprised how train robbers spend their time. Right now, in fact, this train robber needs to stop back by the telegraph office.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Removing a handful of bills, he handed them to her saying, “Why don’t you go ahead to the general store and get what you need to hold you until we catch up with our bags? Pick up a change of clothes for me, too, please, if you would. The train is due in at two. I’ll meet you at the station by one-thirty.”

  Before she could form a protest or even ask his size, Luke turned and walked away, his long legs moving quickly. She frowned after him. That was a strange bit of behavior. It was almost as if he’d revealed something he shouldn’t have.

  Mari turned from his retreating form and considered the handful of cash in her hand. Noting the denominations, she blinked. “Goodness, I could buy an entire wardrobe with this much money.”

  She tucked it safely away in her pocket, then with one last glance toward Luke, who was disappearing into the telegraph office, Mari headed not for the general store, but for the sweet shop she’d noticed upon her arrival in town.

  A good businesswoman could always learn from the competition.