California Caress Page 6

  Drake casually returned to the chair, stretching his lean frame out and crossing his ankles beneath the bed. He polished off her unfinished drink, all the while eying her over the rim of the glass. “Depends. Who’d you have in mind?”

  Lie, Hope, lie.

  “A friend of mine,” she answered evasively. Her mind was running in circles as she tried to think of a polite way to describe the brassy redhead, a girl who would lie with any miner who said please in the form of a sack of gold dust. “You’d like her,” she rushed on when he sent her a skeptical glance. “She’s very well endow—er, cute.” Well, she could be, she reasoned, except for the abundance of color the girl caked on her face. “And she knows how to make a man happy.” Ah, now that much was definitely true. Any prospector seen leaving Jenny Clarke’s shanty sported a grin of satisfaction longer than the Ohio River. “Would that arrangement be suitable?”

  Please, dear God let him say yes. Why is he shaking his head no?

  “Why not?” she cried. She caught herself before she could stamp her foot in childish frustration, but the urge was still there.

  His eyes were narrowed, his gaze warm and insinuating. “I’ve already stated my price. Now it’s up to you to decide how much your brother’s life is worth to you.” His voice hardened. “Keep in mind, though, these fights can get messy.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she asked, shaking her head incredulously. Hugging her arms close to her chest, she sidestepped the chair and went to the window. It was too smeared with dirt to see much more than the inky black sky above. “I didn’t just get off a ship in San Francisco yesterday, Mr. Frazier. My family and I have been in the mines almost two years now. We’ve seen more than our fair share of fights over claims.” She suppressed a shiver. The memories—one in particular—still had the power to make her blood run cold. The clink of glass meeting glass was followed by the sound of gin splashing into his glass.

  “I saw a Swede fight a guy once,” she said when he held his peace. Her voice was soft, no stronger than the wind. “He was big, tall, blond. His poor opponents didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Opponents? There were more than one?”

  “Um-hmmm,” she murmured, lost to the memory. “There were two, the guy originally chosen to fight, and the one who stepped in for him when his friend fell. Both were carted away in a burlap sack. Or, more correctly, what was left of them. Neither lived to tell the tale.” Slowly, her voice grew stronger as she turned and fixed Frazier with a cold glare. “You see, Mr. Frazier, the winner cheated. He used a knife to win the round. Not that it made any difference to the two dead men.

  “To the miners’ way of thinking, the Swede won the fight fair and square,” she said, her voice filled with contempt. “Who knows? Maybe if the two men hadn’t been so new to the mines they would have known that cheating is a way of life to most prospectors. But they were new, they didn’t know. They fought a gentleman’s fight with a man who was as much a gentleman as a cast iron skillet is a teapot, and they lost their lives in the bargain.”

  Shaking her head in disgust, she turned back to the window. “I still don’t understand it. The Swede had size and strength on his side. He could have whipped his smaller opponents without even working up a sweat. He didn’t. He cut them down instead. And all I could do was stand there and watch.” She cleared her throat and wiped what looked suspiciously like a tear from her cheek. “The Swede passed by me, on his way to the saloon afterward. I heard a friend ask him why he’d bothered with the knife. ‘I was winnin’ the card game,’ he said.” She gave an emotionless chuckle. “He killed the two men quick so he could get back to a goddamn game of cards!” her fist hit the window casing, and the force of the blow surprised even Hope. “Sometimes, in the middle of the night when I can’t get to sleep, that voice still haunts me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” She turned to Frazier, who was watching her intently. Her dark brown face shimmered with desperation. “I can’t let that happen to my brother. Not if I can stop it.”

  He lowered the glass from his lips. “Your brother is a big boy. I think he can take care of himself.”

  “No.” she shook her head vigorously. “You don’t understand. Luke will fight fair. He might be a bit slow with things, but he’s a southerner born and bred. He’ll fight like a gentleman and expect his opponents to do the same. He won’t know what to do if the Swede pulls a knife, or tries some other dirty trick.”

  Drake eyed her long and hard, then turned his attention away. His voice, when it came, was hard and uncompromising. “Your devotion is admirable, but you’re asking a hell of a lot from me. My price still stands, sunshine. You want my cooperation, you pay the price—my price.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath as her heart plunged. Reluctantly, the words formed on her tongue, but she had to push them forcibly past her lip. “All right,” she said, her voice shaking almost as badly as her hands. “I’ll do it.”

  There, she had said it, she had agreed to the impossible. So why don’t I feel any better? she wondered as she inched her way to the door. Why did she feel like a mouse cornered in a trap of its own making? Deep down, she knew why, but she pushed the answer away, banishing it to a hidden corner of her mind as her hand rested on the doorknob.

  The feel of a hand on her cheek made her jump and spin around. She hadn’t heard Frazier leave the chair, hadn’t heard his silent tread as he crossed the floor. That he had done it so swiftly and stealthily was, of course, the reason for the sudden racing of her heart. Or so she told herself—repeatedly—as her lids flew open and her gaze was so captured by intense, searching sea-green eyes.

  Her throat constricted until she felt as though she would die of suffocation. Surely he wouldn’t demand payment now. Yet, as his lips slowly descended toward her own, she found that prepayment was exactly what Frazier expected.

  “No.” she cried, turning her face away to that his lips landed harmlessly on her cheek. Well, not quite harmlessly. Her flesh was sizzling beneath the tender caress of his mouth.

  “Don’t play games with me, sunshine,” a husky voice whispered in her ear as he buried his face in the sweet-smelling softness of her hair. The silky smooth tresses had the distinctively enticing aroma of blossoming lilac petals. A rare scent to be had in these parts to be sure, and one that Drake found he thoroughly enjoyed.

  “I’m not playing games,” she insisted, forcing her voice to sound calm, rational, everything that her insides were not. She pushed against his chest. Hadn’t she learned by now that struggling with Frazier was worse than useless? “I’m not foolish enough to pay you before you do your job. You’ll—” she hesitated, her mind racing as she was allowed space to pull slightly back, “you’ll get paid Saturday night, after the fight. That is, if you show up.”

  “Oh, I’ll show, alright,” he replied, his voice a warm rush of breath in her ear, “with the right incentive.”

  His hands cupped her cheeks, and this time Hope had no opportunity to turn away as his lips claimed her own. Like the man, his kiss was hard and probing, demandingly insistent. She thought about pulling away. His fingers banished that thought as they traveled a slow, hot path over her cheeks, tickling the sensitive hollow behind her ears before his palms moved to support the back of her head. He pulled her closer than he had any right to, but she was beyond trying to stop him.

  His lips tasted of gin, but then, so did hers. The taste was not all that unpleasant now. Indeed, just the opposite—it was wonderful, magnificent. Her knees felt suddenly weak, and it was against her will that she leaned against him, molding her body into the hard length of his.

  The hands she had raised to ward him off were captured between their bodies, and the sensation of his bare flesh beneath her fingers assaulted her at the same time his tongue ran a flickering trail along her upper lip. A faint sigh floated on the air. It took a few seconds for Hope to realize the husky whisper, echoing over the off-key piano music, had emanated from her own throat
.

  The only things holding her up at that precise moment were the strong hands resting on the gentle curve of her waist. As his mouth teased her full, lower lip, his hands slipped around her. One cupped the small of her back while the other strayed to a point just below her shoulder blades. Both pulled her closer to that hard, lean frame, and both made the skin beneath her clothes feel as though it was smoldering.

  She didn’t realize she had allowed her own hands to stray higher until she felt the soft silk of his hair beneath her fingertips. The baby-fine curls that played at that thick nape wrapped around her fingers as she pulled him closer.

  Pulled him closer? She hardly heard the strange, haunting echo of her mind. It was overridden by warm waves of eager anticipation, sensations that quickly flooded the rest of her body. It no longer mattered that she could never follow through on these feelings. What mattered was that she felt them, and they felt sinfully delicious!

  The probing of his tongue became more insistent as he tested the place where her lips met, forging a path that let him invade the soft, moist recess and explore at leisure the perfect, even line of her teeth. Her own tongue ran frantic circles against the opposite side of the barrier, but she dared not surrender to the urge to remove the impediment for fear she would lose what little control remained of her badly tattered defenses.

  I can’t lose control, she reminded herself briskly, trying in vain to stem the liquid fire coursing through her veins, Not with Drake Frazier, not with anybody. But damn him! Why did he have to so expertly arouse the forbidden desires she had, in all her innocence, thought she could live without?

  Drake took full advantage of her momentary lapse into thought. The second he felt her defenses slacken, he slipped his tongue into the honeyed sweetness of her mouth.

  Stop this exquisite torture? Why would I want to? Restraint was only a dwindling memory as all forms of protest left her mind.

  She returned his kiss with a timid intimacy that grew bolder with each passing second. At first her tongue coyly flicked against his, darting and retreating, only to search again. But with each retreat, he sought her out, teasingly probing her into an awareness that was sweeping away her self-control at an alarming rate. She was vividly aware of every male inch that pressed tantalizingly against her.

  The hands she’d wrapped around his neck now roved curiously over broad shoulders, glorying in the feel of muscles bunching tightly beneath her fingertips. His flesh seemed alive with the sinewy tendons beneath, tendons that seemed to be everywhere her inquisitive palms roamed. They were on his shoulders, his back, his upper arms. Even the thick cord of his neck was alive with movement as his mouth worked its sweet magic over hers. The curling golden hairs coating his chest tickled her palms and sent white-hot sparks of delight shooting up her arms, sparks that wrapped tightly around her heart and stole her breath. The taut line of his stomach was being thoroughly investigated just as his lips playfully encircled the timid exploration of her tongue, gently sucking it into his mouth.

  Her fingers quickly surrendered themselves to the pleasures to be had. One of Frazier’s hands, riding the curve of her back, pulled her closer. The other slid up her back and entwined itself in the cascade of shimmering chestnut satin. She ran her tongue along the line of his teeth, and her reward was a sweet guttural moan released from somewhere deep in that muscular chest. The moan was soon joined by a soft sigh of her own.

  There was another sound, too, one that Hope was becoming aware of in slow, languid degrees. It was the sound of knuckles rapping sharply on the door behind her. The noise, once it penetrated the foggy recess of her mind, served to jar her to her senses like no logic could have.

  “Hope!” a frantic voice demanded as the knocking turned into an insistent pounding. The sound of a board splintering beneath a meaty fist cut the air, making her drop her hands as though she had just found them attached to the leathery hide of a crocodile.

  Fraziere stiffened, his mouth leaving hers long enough to utter a string of muttered curses beneath a ragged breath. “Go away,” he growled at the intruder, but it was already too late. The girl had pulled away from him and was regarding him with a look that was half-passion, half-terror. Even a fool could have seen her fear went far beyond virginal innocence.

  “Hope, are you still in there?” The pounding grew more insistent, almost matching the frantic tempo of her heart as she took a weak step backward.

  “Yes,” she answered shakily. Her fingers were trembling badly as she raised them to her lips and sent the gunslinger a look filled with confusion, and a goodly portion of self-recrimination. “J-just a minute,” she stammered, dropping her hand to her side the second she realized what she was doing. “I’ll b-be right there.”

  “Hurry up,” her brother barked testily, annoyed at being left alone in the hall.

  She reached shakily behind her, wrapping her fingers around the doorknob as she sent Frazier a questioning glance. The feel of hard metal beneath her palm was oddly reassuring, as was the knowledge of Luke’s presence just beyond the thick panel.

  “You’ll be there on Saturday?” she asked, her voice a faint, husky whisper as she turned the knob.

  The man looked long and hard into the beseeching, velvet brown gaze, and for a split second she expected him to refuse. Instead he nodded, turning away as he combed his fingers through wheat-gold hair and went in search of his infernal gin.

  “I’ll be there,” he answered gruffly. He found the glass and drained it in one long gulp. He didn’t bother to turn toward her as he asked, “And Saturday night, you’ll be here?”

  Hope was glad his back was to her, glad he could not see the flinch of self-hatred shimmering in her eyes as she slowly opened the door and backed out of the room.

  Chapter 4

  Saturday dawned hot and bright. Rumors of the fight between Luke Bennett and Oren Larzdon had spread faster than a brushfire. By mid-morning the sun was beating unmercifully on the miners’ hat-covered heads as they left their diggin’s and gathered at the outskirts of camp. The only relief from the heat was the cool southern breeze filtering down from the high Sierra Mountains. The gusts twisted in fluctuating waves through the rocky valley of Thirsty Gulch. The American River gurgled on, oblivious to those who continued to work it, ignoring the commotion.

  Only two women were present among the fifty or so men. Both were new to the camp. They’d arrived by muleback mid-week, and their presence caused a flurry of commotion amidst the women-hungry men. In less than two days the petite blonde widow had found herself an intended. The other, a plump, sandy-haired woman with five older children, was standing beside the husband she had traveled from the Northeast to join.

  More than one covetous eye turned their way time and again. The women clung nervously to their men as they regarded the ragged faces around them with caution.

  Hope slowed her burro as she rounded the path nature had cut through the granite walls. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she squinted at the crowd. It was impossible to discern her men from the rest. They all looked alike: tattered clothes billowing clouds of dust with every movement, expectant faces so dark with dirt that the eyes and teeth looked stark white in comparison.

  She nudged the burro on. The smell of sweat-soaked bodies and horse dung stung her nostrils. The former, of course, was due to the scorching fierceness of the day. No man would smell pretty after he’d just crawled out of a coyote hole. The shafts, dug deep in the ground to get at gold that panning wouldn’t reach, baked openly beneath the sun. The latter odor, ripe and pungent as it rippled through the air, was caused by the horses attached to the whims—large, hourglass-shaped drums used to hoist the miners from the coyote holes in round, crude wooden buckets.

  In the distance, over the hum of conversation and the gentle whisper of the hot, dry wind and churning river, Hope could hear the grinding of the newly constructed stamp mill. Situated halfway between the town and the mines, the mill was in constant use. In the six days since their arriva
l, she had quickly grown used to hearing its annoying, crushing sound long into the night, as the newly dug gold was separated from the quartz.

  The building’s services were in such demand that another mill was under construction, this one wisely located closer to the diggin’s. It was only a skeletal shell right now, but by the time winter set in, it would be in full swing. The new mill would rob no business from the old, but it would make the chore of loading and toting the heavy rock much easier for the miners.

  “Hope!” A craggy, weathered voice called as she neared the outskirts of the gathering crowd. “Over here!”

  She looked up to see a scrawny old man standing to the left of the sparse circle of men. He was waving his hat in the air to grab her attention. A worn leather vest draped his bony shoulders, covering the faded gray shirt beneath. A pair of limp, faded green trousers that had seen better years hung from his waist. Wispy pieces of beard coated his pointed jaw. They were almost as scarce as the tufts of sun-whitened hair clinging to his well-seasoned scalp. His eyes, an indeterminate shade of hazel, were crooked. One bulged while the other narrowed into a permanent squint. That, in combination with a chin that jutted from his face at an unusual angle, as though he was always in the process of mid-chew, lent him a decidedly unfriendly appearance.

  At Hope’s smile and nod, Old Joe nudged the man beside him.

  Bart Bennett was four inches shorter than his son Luke, and not nearly as thick. Unlike his old friend, his worn clothes fit his lanky frame well. He mumbled something to Old Joe before parting from the group. Eying his daughter warily, he approached the burro. His gait still held a trace of the swagger of a man used to roaming the rolling hills of his Virginia plantation.

  “Thought I told you to stay put, missy,” he said in the same thick southern drawl that had spun many a late night story. Though he wasn’t large, Bart Bennett had the voice and carriage of a man twice his size.