Page 30 of The Copper Heir
“Well, congratulations. You had me.”
“Dammit, it’s not that way with us and you know it.” His fists clenched at his sides.
“Then tell me, how is it?” Her breath lodged in her throat as she waited for his answer. He felt something for her, she wanted to believe that, but she also believed that whatever his feelings were, they wouldn’t change anything. When Ship finally decided to hand over their brother, they’d hand her over and she’d go back to her life in Whiskey Hollow. Or perhaps, after everything was done, Hunter would ask her to become his mistress—his whore—and that couldn’t happen. She couldn’t allow that to happen, because—what would become of her after he was finished with her?
She thought of her mother hunched over the washing board on the farm where everything seemed dusty and old no matter how clean and new it was. Everything there had been hard and dirty and colorless. Even her mother. After years of dealing with Ship’s broken promises she’d become a gray shell of herself, lifeless even before death. She didn’t want that fate for herself or the children.
He was just parting his lips to answer when Zane poked his head in the open doorway. “The boys are ready.” His dark gaze looked pointedly at her as he raised his eyebrows in question and glanced back at Hunter. Though he didn’t say the words, he was asking if she was coming peacefully or if Hunter needed his help.
Without taking his gaze from her face, Hunter spoke, his voice hard again. “We’ll be ready in five. Have the horses by the back door.”
Zane left, his footsteps receding down the hallway, and it felt like he took all of the air in the room with him. All of the fight left her, leaving her deflated. There was no use in fighting. Shehad to go with them because she had to be there for her sisters. She’d play hostage. If Hunter had his way, when the time came they’d hand her back to Ship without qualm and she’d go back to serving drinks in the saloon. Only this time it would be so much harder because she’d had a taste of happiness, a glimpse of freedom, and it had been cruelly snatched away from her. As she watched him gather his things, she kept telling herself that she should have known better. She was just a bastard born in a whorehouse; she didn’t deserve to have good things happen to her.
He walked over to her when he was ready to go, reaching for her hand, but stopping just short. She didn’t move the few inches needed to make contact, there was no point. She’d get through the next days or weeks by keeping herself away from him and doing her best to forget how good it felt to have him hold her while they slept. One day soon she’d be able to forget about him completely.
“I’m coming with you, but I won’t be bound again.” Wrapping her arms about her waist, she followed him when he turned wordlessly and walked from the room. She didn’t say a word until Glory approached them at the back door wearing a look of concern. Thanking the woman for her hospitality and apologizing for the trouble she had caused, she walked to the familiar black horse. When Hunter would have lifted her on, she shrugged him off and pulled herself up. After taking a moment to speak with the madam, their voices so low that she couldn’t make out what they said, he followed. Grabbing the reins, he clicked his tongue and they set off for his home. Closing her eyes momentarily, she prayed for the strength to stay away from him even though the heat of his body at her back felt so good.
Opening her eyes, she resolved to stay alert the entire trip, looking for landmarks to guide her back to town. Now that the shock had worn off, she realized that perhaps it was a goodthing he’d brought the children. It would save her from having to go back and get them. Because returning to the farm wasn’t an option. She would escape and take her sisters away from the madness.
Chapter Fourteen
Hunter tightened his arm around her waist, taking their last minutes on the horse to hold her slim body close as his home came into view. About a two-hour ride eastward out of Helena, the Jameson Ranch was set near the back of a valley with nothing but clear blue sky and the mountains behind it. Rolling hills sat at the edge of the wide valley before it so that the house could only be seen in glimpses from the road until the rider passed a natural break in the hills and then it appeared through the awning of cottonwood trees at the base of the hills. Two-storied and sprawling, with a wood and stone exterior, it was a product of its environment, natural and almost uncultured except for its sheer size. A wide veranda, along with its twin on the second level, circled the whole house and every bedroom had its own bathing chamber and sitting room, an excess that his mother had insisted upon. Not that she had stayed around long after it was built to actually enjoy the luxuries.
Hunter grimaced as memories of his mother threatened to spoil the joy he always felt upon first seeing his home after a longabsence. Glancing down at the woman in his arms, he couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t anything like her, she wasn’t frivolous or shallow at all. She stared straight ahead, taking in the view of his home, and he longed to ask her what she thought. To speak to her of how much he loved it. How he had rebuilt the stables with his own hands. How he had hand-selected every horse within it and saw a select few bred to produce some of the most sought-after racing stock in the country. He wanted to tell her that the Missouri flowed just a little over two miles behind the house and that he’d spent many long summer days swimming and fishing its banks. He wanted to take her there. He wanted her to be there long enough for the water to warm so they could swim together naked under the sun.
Jesus, Emmy. He wanted to keep her. One night with her had only whetted his appetite for more. But it was so much more than sex. The hours he’d spent talking to her just made him want to peel back more of her layers. The thought of giving her back to Campbell made him so angry he couldn’t see straight. He tightened his arm, his fingers pressing gently into her hip, trying to get closer to her, only to have her stiffen in his embrace. He clenched his jaw and looked down at her profile.
For the very first time in his life, he could imagine a future with a woman that didn’t only involve sex—and it was the wrong damn woman. Apart from her being a Campbell, there were two other very good reasons a future with her wouldn’t work out. The first was that she wasn’t his social equal. He almost laughed aloud at the thought, because he didn’t give a damn about that. Something told him she would. She wasn’t shallow and he couldn’t imagine her embracing some of the social functions and mingling with the debutantes of his world. She was every bit his equal, though. She served drinks to men like him for a living. Her stepfather was a man like him. Hell, her stepfather was a man like his own father. It wasn’t such a stretch to imaginehis father might have turned out like Campbell had fortune not shined on him. Campbell was just like him, only he wasn’t polished enough, lucky enough, or smart enough to turn his money into an empire.
The second reason, the important one, was that he was an outlaw. Despite how he felt for her, he couldn’t see that changing in the near future. His allegiance belonged to his brothers. Hunter would ride with them until Cas had restored his family home and found the man responsible for his grandfather’s murder. That wasn’t something he was willing to walk away from and Emmy wouldn’t want to leave one outlaw life for another. He was gone from home for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. There was always the chance he’d be seriously hurt or even killed. There was always the chance that some bastard would come looking for his woman, exactly the way he and his brothers had found Emmy. There were too many dangers to involve a woman in his life. That only left them a few stolen weeks. They’d have the next few weeks and he hoped he could convince her to share them with him before he had to let her go.
Despite how bone tired he was from chasing her down the past week and how long she’d kept him awake last night, he grew rigid just remembering how it had felt to be buried inside her, her body soft and responsive beneath him. He grimaced again as he remembered waking up and finding her gone. For some reason, he’d imagined waking her with kisses and, if she was able, taking her again in a long, slow rhythm that would more than make up for how rough he’d been with her the first time.
After he had made love to her that morning—made love? Christ, he was in deep, he’d never made love in his life—he had planned to ask her to come home with him so they had time to explore what was between them. It wasn’t as if he could have kept his identity from her at this stage. She knew his name and any person in Helena could point her in his direction, so therehad been no reason not to take her home. In fact, he couldn’t allow her to go free because she was one of the few who knew both of his identities.
Once he’d obtained her agreement to come home with him, he would’ve explained about her sisters. He felt sure that if he could have broken that news to her gently, tactfully, the conversation would have gone differently, and she wouldn’t be making herself uncomfortable by so needlessly holding herself away from him. Every time he pulled her back so that she could rest her weight against him, she moved away. Perhaps he should have let her ride in the runabout they kept in town and given her distance, but he’d wanted to touch her while he still could. Once they reached his home, he had no doubt that she’d hide away from him, determined to keep her distance. He couldn’t say that he blamed her after the way he’d treated her.
Maybe he’d been selfish thinking they could have more time together than those few stolen hours. She had every reason to hate him. Even though he understood that, he had an overwhelming need to make her his, to make her scream with pleasure, to hold on to her and never let her go. He’d never felt that before and it scared the hell out of him.
No. No matter what he wanted, he couldn’t think of anything long-standing with her.
On impulse, he transferred the reins to one hand and reached up to run a gloved thumb over the gentle curve of her cheekbone, swiping away a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her braid. She jerked away and he clenched his hand in a fist when it dropped back to the reins. Damn Campbell, and all the lowlifes who’d made the Reyes Brothers necessary.
Thoughts of the man had him looking into the distance to check for trouble. He wasn’t expecting any. Campbell had no idea he was Hunter Jameson of Helena, but even if he did, Hunter had no fear of him. Criminals and fortune hunters alikehad been making threats against the Jamesons for as long as Hunter could remember. The men at the ranch were all well trained to handle any threat. Though Cas and Zane had headed out this morning, two men from the ranch had been there to ride back with him and Emmy had they faced any trouble.
Walking the black up the circular driveway, he came to a stop before the wide brick steps that led up to the double front door. Dismounting, he reached up to grip her waist and help her down, noting how she kept her eyes carefully from him. He opened his mouth to welcome her to his home, but a black lacquered door opened and two squealing girls dressed in ruffles, came running out shouting her name. Pushing away from him, she ran up the steps and stooped down to throw her arms around them both, a smile like he’d never seen lighting her whole face and making him catch his breath.
Clenching the leather reins in his fist, a bitter hollow opening up in the pit of his stomach, he realized that he was jealous. He wanted to make her smile like that. He wanted her to look at him like that and be happy to see him. Shit, he was losing himself over her and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Perhaps it was better if she stayed away from him over the next few weeks. Even as he thought it, he knew it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow it to happen. They had days, weeks maybe, before they heard from Campbell. Just the thought of it made panic clench tight in his belly.
Willy stepped out behind them and raised her hand in greeting. “Welcome home, Mr. Jameson.”
Willy and her husband, Ed, had come from Boston to work for them as soon as the house had been built. She’d taken over the role of his mother in addition to running the house and over the years Ed had come to oversee everything outside the house. Smiling at the older woman, he took the steps two at a time until he stood under the overhang of the porch, pulling her intohis arms and breathing in the familiar scent of the peppermint candy she loved to eat. The scent always seemed to cling to her.
Her hair, which had been graying ever since he could remember, was pulled back in its customary bun and she wore one off her usual gray dresses with the white apron. As far he knew his father had never insisted she keep the uniform his mother had put in place, but the woman wore it anyway, whether it was from respect or habit he simply didn’t know. “It’s good to see you, Willy. I hope the girls weren’t any trouble. I know you weren’t expecting guests.” From the corner of his eye he noticed Emmy look up sharply at the word “guests”. Apparently, she disagreed with the term.
“Not at all. They were perfect angels.” She smiled at her charges and earned a soft look from Emmy as well for her kind words.
“This is their sister, Emmy Campbell.”
