Storming Paradise

She squirmed like an eel. “Let me go,” she demanded into his shirtfront.

“No, ma’am. Not till you calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Like the eye of a hurricane,” he said through clenched teeth, then he lowered his head to whisper roughly, “There are about two dozen folks standing around us, taking great delight in watching just how calm you are, lady.”

Libby opened one eye just wide enough to glimpse a greasy smile centered in a bystander’s greasy beard.

“Atta, girl, honey,” the beard called. “You give that fella of yours what for.”

Dear God! What had she done? For a bleak moment Libby wasn’t even sure who she was. Certainly not the woman who never lost her temper, the one who used reason and good sense no matter how angry or vexed, the one who used well-chosen words to express herself rather than her fists. She’d gone from articulate lady to street brawler in the course of an evening. It had to be the champagne. Liquor was poison. She’d always known that.

But she hadn’t even felt its effects until Shadrach Jones had manhandled her. Which he was still doing now, she realized. She couldn’t move at all. It was like being bound to an enormous oak. Then the tree leaned back a fraction and scowled down at her.

“Go on. Kiss her,” somebody called out.

“Yeah. Kiss and make up, you two,” another voice urged.

The crowd took up the chant.

The tree cursed once more—rough as bark—and then a firm hand curved to Libby’s chin, lifted it, and a warm, wet mouth slanted over hers. She was vaguely aware of cheers and a sprinkling of applause at her back. Most of her senses, however, were magnetized by her first real kiss. By soft lips. By a tingling scrape of whiskers. By a faint taste of champagne and the slow, seductive touch of a tongue.

Shad was about to lift his head, thought better of it—or worse, didn’t think at all—and kept kissing her. Kept losing himself in the prim little mouth that had melted like sunstruck butter beneath his own. Kept telling himself the unexpected kiss was only to convince the crowd their “lovers’ quarrel” was over. It was just for show and he shouldn’t be feeling anything. Especially not the hammering in his chest and the hot surge of blood through every inch of him. She was a lady, for God’s sake. Ladies were poison. Sweet, warm, succulent poison. And nobody knew that better than Shadrach Jones.

He broke the kiss, literally ripped his mouth from hers, and stepped back so abruptly that Libby nearly fell. Then he was growling—at her, at the several curious spectators who remained on the sidewalk, at the world in general—as he gripped her elbow and propelled her through the hotel door and across the lobby.

At the foot of the staircase, he halted and drew himself up like that towering oak again. “Good night, Miss Kingsland. I’ll be seeing you about nine tomorrow.” Then he turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

Shad slammed through the side door of the livery stable. He wasn’t worried about waking Eb Talent; once the old salt strung up his hammock and settled in, not even the devil could wake him. He was snoring like a band saw now in a back stall. The big red-and-black coach was still parked in the center of the stable. Shad climbed in and closed the door.

He slumped back against a tufted leather cushion, then slammed a foot against the edge of the opposite seat, shifting his shoulders and rolling his neck to ease the knots of tension there. He’d stroll on down to the Steamboat, he told himself, as soon as he got his head back on straight. As soon as he had cursed himself sufficiently for losing that head a moment ago with Amos’s daughter.

What the hell had he been thinking, to kiss her like that? There had to have been a dozen other ways to settle her down and keep her from making a spectacle of herself. He could have said good-night right there on the sidewalk and walked away. He could have slung her over his shoulder and carried her inside. He probably should have just drawn his gun and shot her right then and there. The prospect of spending the next twenty years in jail didn’t strike him as half so bad as getting tangled up with a lady.

A lady! He slammed his other foot into the carriage seat and crossed his arms. Hadn’t he vowed never to get within spitting distance of one of those again? Once was enough. Hell, his once had been way too much.

No, thank you. Shad scowled into the darkness inside the big coach. It felt less like a coach than a cage now.

Well, he’d get the job done, he thought. He owed Amos that. “Here’re your daughters, Amos,” he’d say as he dropped them off at Paradise then continued on his way. Here’re your daughters, Amos. The fetching redhead and the other one. The lady. The prim, stiff-backed little priss. Sad little Libby. The one with the mouth the devil made for kissing.

He hadn’t had the dream in years, and now in the cramped interior of the coach it was rolling over him like a hot tidal wave, pulling him deeper into the bloodred dark, drowning him. Somewhere in his brain, Shad was aware that it was a dream. He kept telling himself to wake up, to get the hell away. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Just as twenty years before—when the dream was real—he hadn’t been able to get away. From her.

She was rubbing up against him now in the dreamy, dizzy dark, the way she always did when they were alone. She was whispering—words he didn’t want to hear—words that stirred him nevertheless. Her dainty hands moved over him like feathers at first, then like flames, making his fourteen-year-old body stiffen and his tongue stammer and his heart nearly explode with desire and dread.

“Yes,” she whispered. “There. That’s right.” He knew it wasn’t right, but what he knew and what he felt bore no relation to each other. The lady made sure of that.

Shad groaned now in his sleep as he had groaned years before, with a mixture of pleasure and anguish.

Wake, he warned himself. Before she laughs. Before the door downstairs clicks open and the footsteps come. Before…wake up!

He couldn’t. Then she was pushing him away. Those dainty hands were slapping at him now. “Get off me, you clumsy little half-breed.” Laughter twisted her lips.

Wake up before the door clicks open and the footsteps echo, deafening, down the hall. Please. Before her laughter turns to a sickening scream. Wake up, goddamn you!

He did. Cold with sweat, sick, shaking uncontrollably as he stared into a dark corner of the coach. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything all over again. Remembering.

He’d made two vows that terrible night twenty years ago. The first was to get so good at loving that no woman would ever laugh at him again. By God, he’d done that. He’d done that, even though there was always that moment afterward, that single icy heartbeat when he was glazed with sweat as salty as tears, when he was gripped with fear and his chilled blood shunted to his limbs, priming him to run.

He’d made two vows that terrible night. And Shadrach Jones renewed the second one now—never, ever to touch a lady again.

Chapter Four

At nine o’clock the next morning Libby followed Shula, Andy, and a swaying mountain of luggage down the hotel stairs. As she descended, she was making mental notes of all the things she would not do to Shadrach Jones, including hitting, kicking and scratching. Her list of commandments was not only longer than the Lord’s mere ten, it was more specific, and it concluded with an adamant “Thou shalt not kiss him.”

As angry as Libby had been all night long—tossing and turning on the scrap of mattress Shula hadn’t claimed—she hadn’t been able to forget that kiss. Lord, how she had tried, thinking of a hundred reasons why she detested her father’s foreman. He was crude. A rude and impudent man. A bully who insisted on his own way and used his inordinate strength to get it, whether it was snatching neckties or hauling a woman out of a restaurant. He was exactly like her father during those final, violent years before her mother had taken her away from Paradise.

Worse, the big cowboy seemed to ignite some explosive part of her nature that Libby never wanted to experience again. “Thou shalt not scream or bellow like a fishwife.” “Thou shalt not slap, slug or sink your teeth into another human being.”

“Thou shalt not, shalt not, shalt not kiss him.”

She followed the luggage through the hotel door, out to the street where a big red-and-black coach was waiting. And leaning against it, like a leering footman, was Shadrach Jones. Libby’s breath hitched in her throat.

“Lord Almighty!” a voice exclaimed. “If it isn’t Miss Libby, all growed up.”

She turned to watch a wiry older man clamber down from the front of the coach, relieved to see a familiar, safe face. Suddenly she was able to breathe again.

“Eb, is that you? Oh, it’s good to see you.” Libby extended her hand.

Her father’s longtime employee spat out of the side of his mouth, grinned, then grabbed her hand and shook it with gusto. “Miss Libby. My, my. Don’t it just beat all how you’ve growed up.”

“You look the same, Eb. The years have treated you well.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” the old man said. “It’s prob’ly all the salt water I swallowed those years at sea with your pa. I’m just pickled, is all. Tickled to see you, too, Miss Libby. Now where’s that cute little redheaded sister of yours?”

“Right over there.” Libby pointed to where Shula was instructing one of the hotel porters in the proper handling of expensive luggage. Haranguing the poor boy, actually. Libby was surprised Eb Talent hadn’t noticed her first with all those red curls gleaming in the morning sunshine and her lilac dress ruffling in the gulf breeze.

When he did notice her, though, he said almost wistfully, “Ain’t she something?”

She was something, all right, Libby thought, as the old man moved toward Shula like a moth to a flame. Before Eb reached her, though, a second moth appeared. Hoyt Backus brushed past Libby with a brisk “‘Morning, Miss Kingsland,” then swooped down on her sister, and shouted, “By golly, if you’re not the prettiest thing I’ve seen in Texas since the day your mama left.”

It was no surprise when Shula went from stern luggage monitor to simpering princess in the next instant. And no surprise when she paused from basking in Hoyt Backus’s warm attention just long enough to call, “Oh, Libby, honey, as long as you’re just standing around, you’ll keep an eye on these hatboxes for me, won’t you?”

Libby sighed and added one more commandment to her growing list. “Thou shalt not think unkind thoughts about thy sister.”

At the sight of Hoyt Backus, Shad straightened up and pushed back the hat that had been shading his eyes. The fox was sniffing around the chickens again, and the foreman of Paradise didn’t like it one bit. He was briefly tempted to insert himself between predator and prey, but then—seeing the redhead’s slick smile and her long red claws—Shad decided he wasn’t exactly sure which was which. Anyway, he was in no mood to tangle with another Kingsland sister right now, so he yanked down the brim of his hat and glared at Miss Libby.

She looked like a dove this morning in her prim, dull-colored clothes. Except for the damn hat. Even that, though, paled in comparison to her sister’s. Lord, what a pair. He’d be glad when this day was over.

He was glad last night was over, that was for sure. It had been one of the worst nights of his life, sitting in a corner of the cramped coach, wet with sweat and shivering like a newborn calf, unable to shake off the dream that had seemed so real, unable to wake from the nightmare that had driven him from home twenty years ago.

If he’d slept even a wink, Shad wasn’t sure. His eyes felt like he’d spent the whole night riding drag in a dust storm. He hadn’t spent it upstairs at the Steamboat. That he knew for certain. Not with Rosa, or Nona or—dammit—Carmela.

And it was all Miss Libby’s fault. Miss Libby, who looked this morning as if she’d spent a prim and dreamless night between starched sheets. With her damn hat on.

He dragged his gaze to the kid who was standing close beside her. At least she didn’t dress him in fancy little French suits and pointy-toed shoes. Just the opposite, in fact. The youngster had a slightly unkempt look about him, especially the tousled hair that fell across his forehead. He would have expected Miss Libby’s boy to look polished, from his slicked-down hair to his spit-shined brogans.

Shad sighed. He didn’t know why that surprised him. Nothing a lady did should ever surprise him. They were never what they seemed, those finespoken, delicate, devious creatures. They could be all thin lipped, cool and demure one minute, then the next they were hot as whores. He liked whores better. They were honest. A man knew where he stood, or lay as the case may be.

Or didn’t lie, as was the case with him. But not for long. Six or seven hours by coach to Paradise, provided he could hustle these ladies along. Here’re your daughters, Amos. Then five or six hours back to Corpus on a fast horse. Back to Rosa, Nona and—Shad sighed again—Carmela.

Libby tapped a foot on the sidewalk. Their luggage was loaded now—most of it strapped to the top of the coach—but Shula was still batting her eyes and playing flame to that burly behemoth, Hoyt Backus.

She had expected any second that Shadrach Jones would be wrenching Shula away from her father’s former partner as he had done with her the night before, but the man was still slouched against the coach, apparently unconcerned. Possibly asleep for all she could see of his eyes beneath the low brim of his hat. His mouth she saw quite plainly, and that had a lazy slant to it, which brought to mind his kiss. Which set off the butterflies in Libby’s stomach once again.

“Why are we all just standing around here when the coach is ready to go?” she said with more than a little irritation, directing her gaze toward her sister. “Shula? I said…”

The redhead waved her off, continuing her animated conversation with Backus.

“Shula!” Libby snapped.

“Oh, all right, Libby. For heaven’s sake. Did you check inside the lobby to see that all of our bags were put outside?”

“No, I didn’t,” Libby said. She didn’t intend to,

either. Let Shula do without one or two of the twenty outfits she had brought.

“I’ll go,” Andy offered.

Libby instinctively reached out to stop her but then drew back. It was the first time since they’d left Saint Louis that Andy had seemed willing to be more than a few feet away from her. Taking that for a healthy sign, Libby nodded her assent. “Come right back, though,” she cautioned the child. With any other nine-year-old she might have added a warning not to speak to strangers, but considering that Andy hardly spoke to friends, she didn’t think it necessary.

She had barely turned toward the street, intending to tell her sister to stop her infernal chattering and get into the coach, when Andy was suddenly back, clinging to her skirt.

“I saw him,” the little girl sobbed. “I saw my papa. Don’t let him take me, Miss Libby.”

Libby knelt down and took the child into her arms. “Hush, now, Andy. Shh. You’re getting all worked up over nothing, honey.”

“I saw him.”

Shula’s perfume swirled around them. “What in the world’s going on, Libby? What in heaven’s name are you doing down on that dirty sidewalk?”

“Andy says she saw her father.” Libby’s worried eyes flicked up to her sister. “Just now. In the lobby.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Shula said with a snort.

Glancing toward the hotel’s front door now, Libby frowned. It wasn’t possible, was it? As far as she knew, John Rowan didn’t have the wherewithall to buy a ticket to the Saint Louis levee on a horse-drawn tram much less one all the way to Texas.

“I’m sure it was just somebody who resembled your father,” she told the little girl as she brushed hair from her forehead. “Your eyes were probably just playing tricks on you.”

“Little wonder, with all that hair falling over them,” Shula said. “Well, it’s time to go to Paradise. Libby, if you’d get up off the sidewalk, we could be on our way.”

Libby closed her eyes, seething as her sister flounced off to bid farewell to Hoyt Backus. She struggled up.

“Ma’am.”

A hand gripped her arm and suddenly Libby was on her feet, standing in the shadow of Shadrach Jones. His dark eyes scanned her face then lowered to Andy.

“Everything all right with your boy now?” he asked.

Libby blinked. “With my…?” He meant Andy, of course. And if she even began to explain, Libby realized, they’d be standing here till the sun came up tomorrow. “Everything’s fine now, Mr. Jones. Shall we go?”

A moment later his hands were on her again. He was lifting her like a piece of baggage into the coach.

“Up you go, sonny.”

The cowboy lofted Andy like a feather, before the child could even squeak. He followed then, and the roomy coach seemed suddenly small. Libby’s breath was failing her again, so she fussed with her gloves and her skirt before settling back with a sigh.

Shula’s head poked in the door. “Well, this won’t do at all, Mr. Jones.”

“Ma’am?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to move. I can’t ride backward. It makes me deathly ill. Tell him, Libby.”

Libby didn’t say a word. She was listening to the blood boiling in Shadrach Jones’s veins. Or was it her own? There was a brief moment of hard-bitten silence then, after which they all got up and exchanged seats.

Halfway to Paradise, Shad found himself praying—something he hadn’t done since he’d lived under the roof of his adoptive father, the Reverend Jones. Dear Lord, deliver me. From redheads who couldn’t ride backwards, couldn’t tolerate heat or dust or apparently silence. From the mute little boy who was stabbing him with his eyes whenever he thought Shad wasn’t looking. From the prim and quiet Miss Libby directly across from him.

He would have ridden on top with Eb, but he thought he could catch a few much needed winks inside the coach. Every time he drifted off, though, he’d jerk awake to another complaint from Miss Shula, to the boy’s gaze slicing away, to his boot heels hooked in Miss Libby’s dove-colored skirt.

When Eb pulled the horses up at the twenty-mile relay station, Shad opened the door and shot outside. Lord, it felt good to stretch. To breathe air that wasn’t scented with a perfume that reminded him of sodden leaves. To get away from them. All of them. Her.

He couldn’t stop thinking of the way she’d felt in his arms, of the way her stunned little mouth melted under his. As if she’d never been kissed before. As if he’d been the first. Which made no sense at all, considering the kid.

Shad scraped off his hat and slapped it against his leg. The hell with her. The hell with them all. “You got that lunch basket stowed up there, Eb?” he called to the driver.

“Right here.” Eb tossed the heavy basket down. “Don’t look like I’ll be breaking any records today, does it, what with the Captain’s daughters lollygagging so?” The old man clambered down to stand beside Shad. “Been so long since I’ve been around women, I’d pretty near forgotten just how dawdling they can be.” The old man shrugged then sauntered toward the men who were unhitching the horses from the coach.

“That wouldn’t be a lunch basket, would it, Mr. Jones?” Her voice came from just behind him. A soft, musical tone in contrast to her sister’s strident dramatics. Shad turned slowly and lowered his gaze to Miss Libby’s upturned face.

About to give her one more “yes, ma’am,” he suddenly changed his mind. “Hungry?” he asked.

Her eyes widened in surprise, as if he had asked her for her measurements instead. “No,” she said. “Not really. But I imagine Andy is. The poor child’s hardly eaten a thing in the last two days.”

“Andy. I expect that’s short for Andrew.”

Again she blinked. Anybody’d think he was mouthing indecent proposals, the way she kept being taken aback. All he’d done was ask a friendly question.

Her prim little mouth quirked into an unexpected grin. “Actually, Mr. Jones, it’s short for…”

Libby’s next words were drowned out by Shula’s screams as she came running, her lilac skirt rucked up about her knees. She pushed Libby aside in order to yank open the door of the coach and, without ceremony or dignity, hauled herself inside.

“Snakes,” she screeched. “If there’s anything I hate worse than spiders, it’s snakes.”

“Where’s Andy?” Libby asked frantically.

Shula aimed her chin out the coach window toward a nearby mesquite bush. “Back there.” She shivered. “I told the child to run. Especially when I heard that horrible rattle.”

Libby gasped and pulled up her skirt, ready to run.

Shad grabbed a handful of bustle and dove-gray dress. “Stay here,” he growled, tacking on an oath for emphasis before he strode to where the boy was standing. Still as a statue. Staring.

The snake was about as big as they came—seven feet of coiled muscle with a death rattle at one end and just plain death at the other. Death for a boy who didn’t weigh much more than a fifty-pound sack of grain.

“Don’t move, kid.” Shad’s voice was low and calm, unlike his mind, which was scrambling over options. Ordinarily he would have drawn his gun and put a bullet right between the rattler’s eyes. But he couldn’t trust the kid to stay still a second longer. He looked about ready to bolt right now.

Shad’s eyes swept the ground. He needed a pitchfork or a sturdy limb, but there was nothing within reach. Nothing but one of his own limbs. Well, hell. It had to be him or the kid. If he was lucky, the fangs would catch him on the boot. If he wasn’t…

Libby rounded the corner of the mesquite bush. The stillness of the scene was chilling. Andy like a tiny statue. Jones like a massive oak. The gray diamond-patterned snake rattling ominously and poised to strike.

“Do something.” She wasn’t sure if she had screeched the words or merely felt them searing across her brain, but a second later there was a flash of denim, a sweep of arms lifting Andy up and out of harm’s way as the snake snapped from its coil, struck, then went slithering away.

Libby struggled to release the breath she’d been holding. Andy was safe. She was safe. The big cowboy had her planted on his hip, holding her against him with one big, bronze hand splayed across her chest. But by the time that pose fully registered on Libby, it was already too late. Andy had already begun screaming in Jones’s arms—kicking, hitting, scratching, fighting for her very life. No longer afraid of the snake, the little girl was terrified of her rescuer.

“She’s asleep now,” Libby whispered inside the dim interior of the coach. They had pulled the side curtains down in the hope of calming the hysterical little girl. Finally, over Libby’s strong objections, Shula had poured a liberal dose of laudanum down Andy’s throat.

“I told you that would do the trick,” Shula said with a little cluck of her tongue.

Libby edged away from the sleeping child now, inching back one of the canvas side curtains to peer outside. “Where do you suppose everybody went?”

“Probably in the shade,” Shula said, lifting her damp hair from her neck, “trying to stay cool in all this heat.” She flicked her gaze toward Andy, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Not to mention trying to get away from all the crying and fussing.”

“She was terrified, Shula. Andy thought—”

“I know what she thought,” Shula snapped, “but it doesn’t make any sense. First she’s making up stories about seeing her father in the hotel. Then she’s convinced he’s way out here in the middle of nowhere, attacking her.”

“She’s confused,” Libby said.

“Obviously.”

“You’re a heartless person, Shula Kingsland.”

“No, Libby. I’m a hot person. And I want to get on to our father’s ranch. Why don’t you go find our driver.” She closed her eyes. “I’d go myself but that snake might still be lurking out there.”