Lady Lavender

Money, that’s what. Ownership of the land. Sykes and the Oregon Central owned this land. The whole mess made his head ache.

“Well?” she demanded. Her eyes took on the most intriguing color he’d ever seen, kind of like green tree moss after a punishing rain. But they weren’t soft like moss; they were hard as agate.

“All I know is that the railroad is coming through here. You have to get out of the way.”

She gave him a long, steely look. “I will not move,” she announced through tight lips. “Not until I harvest my lavender.”

Good Lord, her precious lavender. This woman was the most single-minded female he’d ever encountered. His mother had been stubborn, but Jeanne…Jeanne was unmovable as a brick wall.

He reached out to touch her arm. “Jeanne, listen.” Under his fingers the smooth gingham warmed with her body heat. A jolt of yearning skip-hopped into his vitals.

She was a singular woman, all right. She was the starchiest female he’d ever encountered, all prickles and “but this’s” and “but that’s.” Trying to reason with her reminded him of negotiating with an implacable Sioux chief. The Indians hadn’t wanted to move, either, and the news that most of them had died of starvation on the winter trail to the reservation made him sick to his stomach. He couldn’t stand to watch anything like that happen to Jeanne and her daughter.

But how was he going to convince her? What if he just hauled her into his arms and let her cry it out?

Because she wouldn’t cry, that’s what. Women with prickles didn’t weep. Women with prickles poked back.

“Could we sit down and talk for a minute?”

She nodded, but he noticed her chin stayed tucked close to her chest. “Oui. I will make coffee.” She called Manette in from the chicken house and opened the cabin door.

Grabbing off his hat, Wash crossed the entrance and followed her into the tiny kitchen. It smelled good, like fresh-baked bread. Four round loaves sat cooling on the wooden table.

It was quiet except for the whisper of trees in the soft wind. Good. Peace and quiet. Now he could make her see some sense.

“Jeanne…”

She kept her hands busy grinding the coffee mill and did not look up. “You like your coffee black, do you not?”

“I— Sure.” Wash turned his hat around and around in his fingers until the brim was sweat-damp. “Black is fine.”

“Bon. I, too, like it black. And strong.” She tipped the ground coffee into a waiting pot of cold water. Her hands shook so violently some of the coffee missed the pot and sifted over the counter.

Wash wiped one hand over the smooth wood, swept the spilled grounds into his hand, then looked around the tidy kitchen for some place to dump them. Finally, in desperation, he dropped them into the crown of his hat.

He stepped toward her. “Jeanne, we have to talk about—”

She moved to one side and with jerky motions began cracking eggs into an iron skillet. “In France I took my morning café with milk. Maman brought it to me in bed, and we would talk.”

The thought of her in bed made his mouth go dry. “We’re not in France,” he growled. “We’re here, in your kitchen.”

“I was only twelve,” she said quickly, running a fork through the eggs. “Maman, she was good to me. We had long talks about Papa and my little brother.”

He moved toward her. “Jeanne, you’re not twelve now.”

She turned her back to him.

Dammit. He tramped out of the front door onto the porch, paced to the steps and back three times, then wheeled and strode back into the warm kitchen. He still cradled his Stetson with the coffee grains in the crown.

Jeanne was wrapping her apron around the handle of an iron skillet of scrambled eggs, which she then yanked off the stovetop. She headed straight for him. “Très chaud. Very hot.”

“I like things hot.” He spoke without thinking, then swallowed hard. He knew she’d heard him, because she clanked the skillet down hard onto the kitchen table.

“I learn from Maman how to cook. Our hens laid many—”

That was all he could take. “Would you just stand still for one damn minute and listen?” he shot. “One thing your mama didn’t teach you was how to have a conversation!”

Jeanne sent him a look that would broil steak, and for a moment he thought he’d gotten past her defenses. But in the next second he saw he was mistaken.

“Maman,” she said in a determined tone, “had a special way with une omelette. She tip the pan just so…” Jeanne demonstrated, then pivoted away from the table and bent over the wooden sink, her back to him.

Dammit, he was trying to tell her something and she just plain wasn’t going to listen. He stepped up behind her, close enough to smell her hair. “Stop talking about your maman.”

Her head came up but her hands in the wooden sink fell idle. She’d heard him, all right. She just didn’t want to admit it.

“Jeanne…”

She began to scrub hard at a china plate, then another, and another. Then a cup…

To hell with it. Wash groaned, spun on his heel and stomped out the cabin door. Halfway across the porch he jammed his hat down on his head. It felt funny, kind of crumbly…

Hell, he’d forgotten about the coffee grounds in his hat.

Behind him he heard a ripple of her laughter. She stood in the doorway, one hand clapped over her mouth, her eyes shining with amusement.

With a curse he wheeled toward her. She backed up until she couldn’t go any farther without scorching her skirt on the stove. He snatched off his Stetson, sailed it off into the dark and reached for her. He knew his actions were rough, but he’d had all he could take.

She shot him a look of surprise, her lips opening to protest, and without thinking he bent to find her mouth.

At the first touch of her lips, he knew he’d made a big, big mistake. Oh, God, she was sweet, and so soft. The pleasure of kissing her sent a skin-shriveling shudder up his backbone. Her lips were like 180-proof double-distilled brandy, and he drank until he was aching with want.

He kept kissing her until a strangled sound came out of his throat. He shouldn’t be doing this, but he couldn’t stop. She was the bone stuck in his craw, all right. The thing he couldn’t swallow or cough up.

He felt like he’d died and gone to hell.

Chapter Seven

Mon Dieu! What does this man think he is doing?

Alors, he was kissing her, that’s what he was doing!

She lifted her hand to swat him across his tanned face, but as her arm rose, his lips moved suddenly deeper, more intensely on hers, and her resolve poofed away like so much dust. No man’s kiss had ever been like this, not even Henri’s on the night Manette was conceived.

She tipped her face to one side and still he did not stop moving his lips over hers. Surely God meant for a man and a woman to enjoy each other, but like this? With such abandon, such dark joy bubbling up inside her? About that, she did not know.

Her breasts were crushed against his chest and all at once she wanted to slip outside her skin and melt into his hot, hard body. Never in all her life had she had such a thought.

His demanding mouth asked and answered, and asked again, while her most private parts swelled and ached. She should push him away, should… Ah, what she should do was of no importance.

He lifted his head and held her close, his chin resting against her temple. She closed her eyes, then snapped her lids open. “Would you perhaps want…?”

“Hell, yes,” he said, his voice hoarse. His ragged breath ruffled the hair close to her ear.

“…une omelette?” she breathed.

Wash had no memory of his ride back to town. Rooney was at the saloon, as usual; he glanced up from the bar with a questioning look. “Hell, Wash, you look like you’ve been poleaxed.”

Yeah. Something had smacked him over the head, all right. He felt happy like he’d never felt before. He sent Rooney what he knew was a sloppy smile but it was the best he could do with his brain still reeling from that kiss. He hunched his shoulders over the bar and tried to keep her name from hammering through his brain. Jeanne. Jeanne.

Rooney peered at him. “Got somethin’ stuck in your throat?”

“Nah,” he managed to croak. How was it Rooney always seemed to know what he was thinking?

“Mebbe heard some o’ the talk around town about that French lady?”

Wash’s head jerked up. “What talk?”

“Just…talk. You know, some of the townfolk are in a hurry to get the railroad through. Got money riding on it, you might say. Farmers want to ship their apples to the city. Ranchers are lookin’ for markets they don’t have to trail-up for. Even Miz Forester, the dressmaker, wants to bring customers from Gillette Springs. It’s a two-day ride from Gillette Springs to Smoke River, but when the railroad—”

“What’re you trying to tell me, Rooney?”

The older man gulped a swallow of the whiskey at his elbow. “Just that folks are in a sweat. Some of them are gettin’ pretty het up.”

“Yeah? Who?”

Rooney’s black eyes slid away from his gaze. “There’s some kinda meetin’ at Whitey’s barbershop. Mostly men—cowpokes and ranchers. Some shopkeepers. And that Spanish guy on your survey crew showed up.”

“Montez.”

“That’s the one. Mean-lookin’ son of a gun.”

“I told Montez to pick up his pay and get out of town.”

Rooney nodded. “He did pick up his pay.”

Wash let out a breath of relief.

“But he didn’t leave town.”

His spine went rigid. “Where is he now?”

Rooney shrugged. “Dunno.”

“The man’s up to no good, I can smell it.”

Rooney’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.

The bartender slid a shot glass of whiskey in front of Wash and he downed it in one swallow. “That damned snake laid his hands on Miz Nicolet.”

Rooney smoothed his beard with his little finger. “Did he, now? What’s that to you?”

Wash dropped his head onto his clenched fists. He didn’t know the answer to that one. He only knew that when he’d seen Montez manhandling Jeanne on her front porch something had come over him. Something hot and possessive.

Something he didn’t want to think about.

“I’m going over to the boardinghouse,” he muttered. “Change my shirt before supper. You coming?”

Rooney cast an appraising glance over the two empty poker tables in the center of the barroom. “Wouldn’t wanna play a hand of five-card stud, wouldja?”

“Nope. Rather eat Mrs. Rose’s fried chicken and gravy.”

His stomach clenched at the memory of Jeanne offering him an omelet. He’d wanted to stay. Forget the omelet—you wanted to kiss her again.

Rooney was staying at the same boardinghouse, in the room just across the hall from Wash. Mrs. Rose had taken quite a shine to his half-Comanche friend. She always saved the biggest drumstick or the juiciest pork chop or the last dish of peach ice cream for Rooney, who accepted the gestures as if he’d spent his whole life being waited on. Wash knew different. His companion had lived a hardscrabble life. It surprised him how quickly his rough-and-ready friend had adjusted to being fawned over by pretty widows who ran boardinghouses.

Wash dragged himself off the bar stool and headed for the saloon entrance. He sure wished his mother hadn’t sold the ranch. One of the things that had kept him going the two years he’d spent in that prison hellhole in Richmond was thinking about the ranch near Smoke River. He’d dreamed about running fifty head of cattle and maybe some horses on the rolling seven hundred-acre Halliday Double H spread. There was something special about a place you called Home. Something worth fighting for.

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