Welcome To Wyoming

She sipped another smooth mouthful of red wine as he leaned back in his chair and stared at her so intensely that she thought he would shatter his wine goblet.

* * *

She was in on it, thought Simon with rising anger. Sure as thunder came before lightning, Natasha O’Sullivan was devoted to helping Ledbetter’s criminal jewelry business. How much more obvious could she be?

He tried not to moan. He tried not to flinch as he sat watching her. He tried not to move a muscle in his face to indicate in any manner that he was affected by her request to join him. She knew about jewelry repair and was quite willing to indulge her would-be husband by jumping in with 100 percent enthusiasm.

How could a man from Harvard accomplish so much and yet now be so dead?

Why did Simon feel such disappointment in her?

She had many positive attributes. Why did she wish to become a criminal herself?

Greed?

All right, he’d play along. After all, she might know the whereabouts of the missing three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cash and jewels and lead him directly to it. In fact, if she was guilty, that would let him off the hook for how he should treat her. He’d met criminal women before, and they were just as vicious and deadly as men. Didn’t he owe it to Eli and Clay to put her behind bars? Some of her cohorts had shot them in cold blood! They’d made Simon go mad at the scene, trying to stifle the flow of blood from Clay’s neck where a gunshot had severed the artery. And poor Eli with a bullet straight through the heart.

If this woman was involved in any manner, she deserved what was coming.

Simon could only pray that she wasn’t too bright and wouldn’t pick up on the fact that he wasn’t really her beloved partner in crime, Ledbetter.

But maybe he was jumping the gun. Maybe he was assuming too much, assuming that she knew what she was getting involved with, that it was a criminal enterprise with Ledbetter.

Slow down, he told himself. Let’s not pull the trigger yet. Give her the benefit of the doubt.

How much, thought Simon as his pensive gaze swept over the caring eyes and the pursed feminine lips, did she know about Ledbetter’s business? The lawmen were still looking, but as far as they could gather so far, they hadn’t been able to uncover any stores that Ledbetter had actually opened in any town. Yet he’d claimed he had several. The man knew a lot about jewelry, but maybe only because he’d been a thief.

But surely the man hadn’t written too much in his letters for fear of incriminating himself. Or maybe he had. Maybe the braggart couldn’t help himself. All he had to do, once he’d trusted her and revealed his hand, was tell her to burn his letters.

“Well?” she prodded. “What do you say? Shall we run this business together, Jarrod?”

In all the years he’d been chasing criminals, he’d arrested only two women. He’d never injured one before, for neither had resisted arrest. Laws were laws and whoever broke them would come to justice.

“Before I answer that,” he said, bringing the French Burgundy to his lips once more, “I need to ask if you’ve kept any of our correspondence.”

She frowned at the question and lowered her voice. The grapes on her bonnet flashed in the candle’s flicker of light. “I did as you asked. However, I don’t see why I needed to burn them all,” she whispered, “even though I do understand your need for privacy and security, seeing how many jewelry shops you intend to open. And how you’ve been robbed yourself just recently.”

He quirked an eyebrow. So he’d been right. Ledbetter had asked her to get rid of all his letters. “Thank you kindly for understanding.”

“I admit, I thought it odd at first. But the more you explained, the clearer it became.”

Clearer? His side was getting murkier. They were speaking in riddles. How much did she know? Was she a criminal or simply in over her head?

Hellfire. He couldn’t send her home on the next train or stagecoach yet. He had to find out how much she knew and whether she could lead him to the jackpot. It was what his superiors at the detective agency would expect him to do. To follow through on every lead, and certainly not to feel sympathetic toward a possible criminal only because she was a head-turning female.

He pushed away his plate and tried to act civil and calm, as Ledbetter would do in this situation. All in a day’s work for that bastard. “Would you care for anything sweet? I saw raspberry pie on the menu.”

She leaned her pretty frame back against the chair rails, smiled down at her empty dinner plate and sighed in contentment. “I don’t think I can fit another morsel. Thank you for the wonderful meal and the wonderful company.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, Natasha.”

She kept flushing at the mention of her name. It did feel rather intimate to him, too, sitting here across from a seemingly lovely lady who soon expected to be his bride.

If these were normal circumstances, if he was allowed to be himself as Simon Garr and she was his mail-order bride, he’d be as nervous as a trapped cougar. He’d seen what sort of marriage his parents had had: his father walking out, his mother drinking herself to death. No way on this earth he ever wanted that.

She lifted the white napkin from her lap and folded it across the table. She looked rather nervous, pursing her lips as though straining to find the right words. “What—what did you have in mind for the wedding ceremony? How soon would you like to do this?” The smooth muscles in her throat moved up and down with her delicate question.

Everything about her was a trap. Her smooth voice, the soulful brown eyes, the scattered freckles on her face that made her seem so innocent.

He silently cursed. There’d be no damn wedding.

He was saved from answering by their waiter.

“May I offer you some coffee?” the man asked as he gathered plates. “Perhaps some pastries, miss?”

She shook her head and nervously brushed her sleeves. Pastry was the last thing on her mind, he guessed, for she had a marriage to pursue.

“Please send the bill to the front desk,” said Simon, pushing his long legs back from the table. “I’ll settle up when I pay for Miss O’Sullivan’s room.”

“My room?” Those cinnamon-and-brown-sugar eyes flashed at him again as if to add, Not our room? We won’t be married tonight?

“I thought you might like to settle in. Find your way around town, rest up a few days before we plunge into this.”

She might be beautiful and tempting, but he was not Jarrod Ledbetter. Fortunately, she was not his mail-order bride and it was not truly him who needed to make decisions about an upcoming wedding.

He wanted no part of wives and obligations and possible children who’d grow attached to him and...and detective agents who’d deliver the news, as they had to Clay’s widow and Eli’s mother, that their loved ones had been killed in gunfire in the line of duty. God almighty, Clay even had a young boy, Tucker, who’d been left behind. Simon knew all too well how it felt to be deserted by a father.

He reminded himself again.

Natasha O’Sullivan was poison.

Chapter Three

He wasn’t that taken with her. The hurtful thought rippled through Natasha’s mind at dinner and became even more apparent as Jarrod walked her to her room.

Her high-heeled boots padded along the carpet runner behind him as her disappointment grew.

At dinner, there had been moments when he’d looked across the table and she had sensed that he was drawn to her. He’d waited for her to answer some of his questions as though there was nothing more important to him in the world. But at the end of their meal, she had noticed a slight hesitation, an almost-imperceptible coolness that seemed to blanch his heart. It was almost as though he’d been testing her in some way, and she had failed his qualifications.

Why? What could it be about her that he disapproved of?

She couldn’t help it, but she was also ruffled by the fact that he took charge without much discussion with her—he’d told the front-desk clerk that he’d like one room with a pretty view for an unspecified period. Why not discuss the waiting period with her? Why did he think she wished to rest up before “plunging” into this? The bellboy had left to deliver her trunk to the room, while she and Jarrod remained to fill out the guest register.

She stepped beside him and decided to voice her opinion. “Jarrod, it’s not that I wish to rush into a wedding, but it’s not precisely rushing into it when we’ve been thinking and anticipating it for three months, now is it?”

“Huh?” He rubbed his bristly neck. “It’s just that I wish to give you time to settle in.”

“Perhaps it’s a silly notion, but I fantasized that upon meeting you, you might lift me in your arms and tell me how you couldn’t wait to be with me. That you had a minister waiting this minute.”

“Ah. I see.” He gulped. Why was this conversation making him nervous? “This way,” he said, motioning with his hand and making a sharp left.

She followed in the narrow corridor. Why was he so controlled with his feelings when all she wanted was to be encircled by his arms and held for a little while?

She hadn’t been held for a very long time.

But perhaps she should be happy that he wasn’t rushing her into marriage. That he wished them both to take their time. Perhaps she should learn to temper her loneliness and her desire to connect with another person. It would come in due course. Impatience on her part wouldn’t help.

Her folks had never talked to her about boys. They’d had a loving relationship with each other, and with her, but the pain of losing them made her wary of getting close to a boy and possibly losing him, too. The last man who’d kissed her had been a young man who’d come from an upstanding family her grandfather had known. Granddad had rarely introduced her to potential suitors, had never rushed her nor tried to force her to marry young.

Wait for the right one, he’d often say. Be guarded like your grandmother, dear Elizabeth, was until we knew each other well.

Natasha had liked her last suitor well enough, but there’d been no mad rush to see him, no quivering in the pit of her stomach when they kissed. It had been more brotherly—playing checkers and strolling along the river together. Before him, she’d known several boys while growing up, but none she’d dreamed of with wild intensity. She had wondered if there’d ever come a time when she would meet a man who would turn her heart and soul upside down. She’d wondered it on the entire train journey here. She wondered it now as she watched Jarrod’s thigh muscles flex beneath his wool trousers, as she watched his shoulder blades move beneath the shadows of his jacket.

“I think we’re close,” he said, turning his cheek slightly as he looked at the numbers on the hotel doors to match the one on the key.

They passed the bellboy. “Folks, it’s straight ahead and to the right.” He pointed that way.

Jarrod tipped him some coins, and they continued down the hall.

What had Jarrod thought when he’d first read her advertisement in the paper?

Looking for a man of solid worth. I am a hardworking young woman of good moral standing and excellent health. I adore children. I also have skills in jewelry repair, can handle a revolver and a horse, and would dearly love the adventure of living west of the Mississippi. Please write to Miss Natasha O’Sullivan...

Now that she’d left Chicago, however, she felt an ache in her heart she couldn’t suppress. Her friends were left behind, and she hadn’t realized how much she had relied on them. They were trusted souls who gave her straight answers.

She thought she would find all of that and more with Jarrod. His letters had been cordial and, although a bit detached, had filled her with an intense desire to join him in his travels on the railway, tending to his jewelry shops across the West and scattered over the Rockies, and creating an empire of prosperity.

Yet why was there such a chasm between them?

Granddad would never approve of her becoming a mail-order bride.

Perhaps that was why she’d done it. That thought burned inside her. But there were extenuating circumstances, she reasoned, trying to push away her shameful feelings that she wasn’t quite good enough for her grandfather’s standards.

She’d always tried to be such a good girl, abiding by his rules, listening to all of her elders with politeness, being ever so demure. It was her time now, wasn’t it? Time to do as she pleased with whom she pleased. Time to follow her heart and any desire to fulfill her life with her own dreams, no matter how silly or outlandish they might appear to any onlooker.

She had that right.

“Ah, here we are. Room 208.” Jarrod inserted the key into the door at the end of the corridor.

He turned the knob, swung the door open and stepped aside for her to enter.

“Is that it, then, Jarrod? No more talk of wedding plans?” Why was he elusive?

“Only until tomorrow. It’s been a long day for both of us.”

“Long day?” she snapped. “That’s how you think of this? Of me?”

“Of course not, darlin’.” He swooped in to brush his lips against her cheek.

The light kiss was unexpected. A sexual current rippled between them, hot and fierce, as she wavered past his looming body, inches close to his chest and his firm, square jaw.

His skin, bristling with unshaven shadows, held the scent of fresh outdoor air mingled with leather. She inhaled sharp and quick, and his gaze snapped down to hers. A moment of fire burned between them. Who were they to each other? Soon-to-be husband and wife?

The thought that they would soon share a bed made her tremulous. Heat shot through her chest, flushing her skin and heating her limbs.

She was so inexperienced yet so lonely that she couldn’t wait to share her nights with Jarrod.

Her nostrils flared with the heady scent of his masculine presence, and she stepped past him, desperate to breathe neutral-scented air. It was almost as though she couldn’t think straight when he came too close.

And she had to think straight to surmise her next step. What would be the proper requirements to set her mind at ease that he was indeed the man she should spend the rest of her days with?

“Jarrod, I don’t wish to be one of those couples who pretend for appearances that we are happily wed, when beneath the surface we might live in separate homes in separate towns in separate beds.”

“You have given this a lot of thought.”

She frowned. “Haven’t you?”

He seemed to be getting exasperated. He tugged at the collar of his shirt as if it were too tight. “Yes, it’s all I’ve been thinking about. For days.”

“Only days?”

“Weeks. Three months.” He groaned. “What do you want me to say?”

She opened her mouth in disbelief. “How can you be so...so detached?”

Still looming at the doorway, he held up his palm in a sign of forgiveness. He seemed sincere as his voice softened. “I’m sorry. Let me rephrase this. Since the moment you stepped off that train, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off your beauty. Since the moment you kicked that trunk halfway down the platform, I thought there’s no other woman in the world for me.”

“You truly mean that?”

“And every word I said in my letters.”

At his bright expression, she felt buoyed. Then somewhat embarrassed. “You saw me kick the trunk?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh.” So much for appearing ladylike.

She stepped into the large room, her skirts and petticoats swirling about her ankles. It was a fine room. Large and airy, decorated in clean white linens with fresh-cut flowers on the nightstand and a lantern lit on the wall above the bed.

Her trunk had been placed at the foot by the closet door, and the bed had been turned down. The pillows had been fluffed and patted and looked inviting after her long, tiresome journey. Comfortable feathers awaited her.

She tossed her satchel onto the bed, lifted her arms to unfasten the pin holding down her bonnet, removed it from her head and turned to face Jarrod.

Staring at her from several paces away, he pressed a bulging shoulder against the door opening, one massive cowboy boot crossed over the other. He studied her as she patted down the unruly hairs that followed her bonnet, and mistakenly knocked out a pin from her hair.

One side of her curls fell to her shoulder, so she quickly unfastened the pin on the other side till it tumbled down, too. The weight of her hair fell onto her collar and spine.

He was watching it all, as if he’d never seen a woman fix her hair before.

The lapels of his suit jacket opened. She got a glimpse of the shoulder holster crossing his chest and swallowed hard at how intimidating he looked. The men in Chicago rarely displayed their weapons. She wasn’t naive enough to think the men in the East didn’t carry any, but this vision of Jarrod made her realize how rough and crude and lacking in the law the West was. She’d observed it on the train ride here. Every man had the right and duty to defend himself, and most carried guns.

She placed her bonnet and hairpins on a stand.

His posture stiffened, as if watching her made him uncomfortable in some way, as if being here in her room made him uncertain how to proceed. But, Lord, he hadn’t even crossed the threshold of the door. How tense would it make him if he moved closer?

“I trust you’ll be comfortable tonight, Natasha. I’ll swing by in the early morning.”

Startled that he was leaving, she asked, “Where will you be tonight?”

“Right next door.”

Her eyes widened. “Next door? In this hotel?”

“I thought it would be more convenient if we could spend more time together. No sense going back to the cabins with McKern and Fowler. I’m here to spend time with you.”

Her pulse hammered in her throat. So he did care.

Her lashes lifted as she walked closer, experimenting with this new relationship, this new man. What did he want to know about her?

And what did she wish to know about him?

The answer was quite simple, really.

She wanted to know what he truly thought of her as a potential bride, beyond their cordial first greeting and the predictable words of How was your trip? and How do you do? There was one quick way to find out, and he seemed to be too shy, or too much of a gentleman, to make the first move.

Her lady friends of a certain kind back at the boardinghouse had often told her that some men, especially upstanding gentlemen, often needed a nudge to know when a woman wanted to be touched. And where she wanted to be touched.

Natasha stepped close, craned her neck to stare up at him and tangled her slender fingers into his. An invisible current shot through her at the contact. She tugged in a breath of air. He froze.

Kiss me on the lips, she thought. Show me what you truly feel and kiss me properly.

* * *

Her touch was unexpected.

Simon’s initial response was to pull back. He wasn’t here for this; he was here to get into her mind and motivations, and not be affected by her damn presence.

She pressed her soft lips together as she stood assessing him, their fingers entwined. The warm light from the lantern danced across the bridge of her nose and lit the soft details of her cheek. Her dark chestnut hair, slightly ruffled from the hairpins she’d removed, swirled about her creamy throat.

Why did she have to be so luscious?

She slid her hand into the nook of his firm waist, her light touch caressing his skin, sending a jolt riveting through his gut. She stood so close he could breathe in the scent of her fresh skin and the lemony rinse she’d used on her hair. His pulse drummed hard beneath her touch, and when their eyes met, hers were clear and sharp and inquisitive. No woman, no innocent woman, had ever offered herself to him in such a tender manner.

She was poison, he reminded himself.

And yet he needed this, needed her. He needed tenderness and warmth and gentle understanding. Lord knew he’d had none of this on the road for the past ten years, only hard work, distance and no attachment to any upstanding woman he might have met in his line of duty. There had been saloon girls and hard-core drinkers who could guzzle a bottle of whiskey as fast as any man, but no one with any lick of sensitivity or class.

He swallowed hard at what he could not have.

A night with her would be filled with a hell of a lot more consequences than with a pretty barmaid. This woman would demand things from him he wasn’t willing or capable of giving. Just as his father hadn’t been able to give to the woman he’d married, and to the son they’d had.

Maybe that made Simon selfish. So what.

He was protecting her by not giving in, by not succumbing to her charms. He was also protecting the soreness in his heart that would surely rise if he ever became involved with a decent woman.

Huh, he thought, realizing for the first time in his life that he’d never been with a decent woman.

He’d slept with painted ladies, barmaids and drinkers. No one like Natasha O’Sullivan.

His jaw muscles tightened.

He should have broken free of her grasp then, for when she slid her other hand along the other side of his waist, his sexuality awakened, and the lonely boy who’d grown into a lonely man could not resist her.

With a firm grip, he anchored his hands at the sides of her face and lowered his lips to hers. It began as a graze, a soft, teasing pleasure, warm and delicious. His mouth slid across hers, tasting and pleasuring in the feel of her femininity, marveling at how lightly she could kiss, and yet how firmly his body responded. It was instant arousal. He had an immediate need to take it further.

Expertly, he moved her, stepping into the room just enough so that he could kick the door closed with his big cowboy boot and press her against the slab. Her hands slid up over his ribs, making him burn with a palpable need. He cupped the back of her neck, twirling the silky strands of her hair beneath his fingertips, gasping at the sound of her soft moan and then boldly shifting his palm to cup her breast.

He could feel the rib cage of her corset, the shallow waist, the whalebone strips that tilted her breasts upward. The cup of her breast was large and firm beneath his hand, a wondrous mound of beauty. The bud of her firm nipple arched beneath the fabric into his palm.

And suddenly their kiss became so much more. It was as if they’d been standing in a calm, sunny field, and suddenly a tornado had swept in and blasted around them. The wind caught, the weather shifted, and he and his emotions were whipped into a furious storm. The pressure of their mouths mounted, their lips pressed firmer and deeper and their tongues brushed. He wanted her.

Their bodies pressed closer, his hand dropped from her rib cage to her waist and down lower as he gripped her buttock and imagined what it might be like to throw her onto the bed and truly do everything he fantasized.

Break it up...I must break it...

With a shudder, he tore himself away.

Cool air rushed into the space between them. He gazed down at her shocked expression. Perhaps it had been too much for her, too, the unexpected jolt of passion and desire that seized them.

She slid the back of her palm against her red and swollen lips. She stared at him in amazement. Or was it shock?

He couldn’t apologize! He was supposed to be her beloved groom, so how could he say he was sorry for his display of obvious desire?

“Are you all right?” he managed to gasp.

“Yes,” she murmured, her brown eyes as round as chestnuts, her nostrils flaring as she caught her breath. Her fingers trembled as she lowered her hand to her waist.

“Welcome to Wyoming,” he whispered.

“What a welcoming,” she said softly.

“You’ve had a long journey. I’ll leave you to rest. I’ll be back in the morning and we can have breakfast.”