Chapter 11
She must have fallen asleep, because the room wasn’t nearly so dark when Clarence crawled from beneath the blanket, jumped to the floor, and had a good shake.
“Dogs are a pain in the ass,” Owen mumbled. He rose and shrugged on his jacket, then stomped into his boots to take the dog outside.
This was probably why Mrs. Pincher had decided to give him up, Temperance thought drowsily. Putting a dog out on a summer morning wasn’t too much trouble, but now that it was growing cold and dark, Mrs. Pincher had grumbled about it.
Temperance took the opportunity to rise and use the chamber pot, then tried to glance out the window, but it was coated with frost. She hurried back into bed, hoping to fall back to sleep, but her ears were pricked for the sound of Owen’s boots on the stairs, accompanied by the click of Clarence’s nails. She rolled so she faced the door, wanting to be sure it was them when it opened.
“No, your feet are wet,” Owen said when they entered. He caught the dog’s scruff before he could reach the bed. “Sleep on that,” he ordered.
Temperance lifted her head to see Owen drop a tattered horse blanket onto the floor. The dog flopped onto it with a huff.
“It’s so cold out there, the dog was pissing icicles.” Owen kicked out of his boots and draped his cold jacket over the blankets before he crawled into bed facing her. “Warm me up.”
She didn’t have much choice. The way the narrow mattress dipped made it impossible to hold herself away from him. He curled his arm under the pillow, offering his bicep for her cheek. His other arm and leg scooped her half under him while he shuddered with chill.
Her nose was stuffed into the hollow of his throat, where he smelled like winter air and something more intrinsically him. Her lips were almost pressed to the skin revealed at the open collar of his shirt. His woolen vest was icy against her arms where they were squashed between their chests. She shyly slid her arm around his waist to invite him into the warmth trapped by her clothes and blanket.
A rumbled noise of gratitude resounded in his chest. He straightened his legs and pulled her closer.
“Better.” He ran his hand up and down her back a couple of times while he stretched before her, ironing her to his front, stoking the warmth between them.
It felt really nice. Not just warm on the outside, but within her too. Something similar had happened with Dewey—soft, elusive feelings welled up from deep within her, unfurling heat and delight through her limbs. Except with Owen, the sensations were much stronger. Disconcertingly strong.
Rather than snuggling into him and relaxing, a nascent tension rose within her, but it wasn’t repulsion. It was the opposite, making her want to move against him. Feel more.
Her whole body was becoming extra sensitive. She was intensely aware of the press of her breasts to the hardness of Owen’s chest and the weight of his thighs against her skirts, trapping her in place, making the urge to wriggle and express her restlessness all the more acute.
“Your bonnet is tickling my lips.” He tried to smooth the ruffle down.
She drew back enough to pull the ribbon free under her neck and brush it back off her hair.
Now she was staring at his mouth in the half light. His lashes were a line of tangled gold shielding his irises. If he kissed her, would that bronze stubble scrape her chin or feel nice? She absently brought her fingertips up to pet the nap of it, mesmerized by the shape of his mouth and the angle of his brows and the glitter of sky blue as he opened his eyes to stare at her through the narrowed slits.
Men always seemed such brutes, but right now, Owen’s angular body felt as though it had all the right dips and pliant hollows to allow hers to fit against him. The hand rubbing her back slowed. He wasn’t being the least bit forceful. More like encouraging. His lips looked smooth and held a distinctly pinkish tinge along with that playful tilt at the corners.
A swirl of yearning in her belly had her dampening lips that stung with anticipation.
His breath drew in, seeming to pull her toward him.
Slow and natural, she let herself lean closer to him, the way a pair of leaves might settle into the same current in a stream and carry along together. His lips were warm when she touched them with her own. His mouth parted and the sensation that shot through her was a swoop down an unexpected waterfall.
His taste was fresh, as though he’d had a drink of water while he’d been outside. He took command of their kiss in a way that made her feel both emptied and filled up. She had the cautionary thought that he would take everything from her, but there was also a sense that he would give her the world in return.
It was heady and exciting. She let her hand reach into the fine strands of his hair. Her lips parted further, letting him plunder her mouth, rough, yet so, so tender.
She moaned and he drew in a big breath that swelled his chest against hers. His hand stopped moving on her back to press her even closer against him.
His whiskers were soft against her chin, his tongue questing in a lazy tease that sent webs of lightning sizzling through her middle, increasing her desire to move against him. She arched, filled with a sense of power while wanting him to press his weight over her.
Another one of those pleased rumbles resounded in his chest and he rolled a fraction more heavily onto her. His mouth opened across hers with more demand, consuming her and sending a flood of heat sweeping through her, so sharp it stung.
She was both excited and alarmed by the strength of her reaction. By her sudden thought that she wanted to be naked and feel his mouth on her breasts and his hands all over her skin. She had liked being intimate with Dewey. It had made her feel cherished and special. He had told her that allowing him those liberties was an expression of her love for him, and that’s exactly how it had felt, as though she opened her heart by opening her legs.
She hadn’t been special, though. He had been tallying stolen maidenheads the way Mr. Fritz tallied drinks on his slate.
With a gasp for breath, she pressed her head into the mattress and pushed her hand against Owen’s shoulder.
He pulled his hand from beneath her back and braced it on the mattress, so he still loomed over her, but wasn’t squashing her. There was a flush of color in his cheeks and his eyelids sat heavily over his lusty blue gaze. He rolled his lips together as though savoring the taste of her.
“We’re not doing this. I won’t.” She braced herself for the petulance that Dewey had shown the first few times she’d held him off.
Owen stayed very still, perhaps taking in that she wasn’t outraged or confused. She knew exactly what she was refusing, which made her feel as ruined as Adelaide had said she was.
She dropped her gaze to his Adam’s apple. Shame burned behind her breastbone.
“We’re only kissing to warm up. It doesn’t mean anything.” He fell onto his back.
His dismissal stung. She hadn’t engaged in so many kisses that they ceased to mean anything to her. In fact, she had learned that kisses led to things that were very significant. Life changing, in fact.
This kiss had been the most powerful of her life. To hear him brush it off was a good reminder that he was as inconstant and insincere as Dewey.
She tried shifting further away, but she was in a tangle of skirts and blankets, his big body on both.
“I would like to rise, please.”
“What is this, the army? The rooster isn’t even up yet.” He worked to lift his legs off her clothes without dislodging the blankets. “And yes, I heard the cock joke, but I’m too much of a gentleman to go after it.”
“Clearly,” she snorted. She managed to put an inch of space between them, but he was still firmly in her way. She would have to clamber over him if she wanted out.
As she lifted her head, she heard the distinctive clatter and clomp on the street below.
“That’s the milk wagon.” Which meant the town would be stirring, coming outside with their cups and bottles.
“You want to run out there and greet the day, have at it.” He brought the edge of the blanket up under his chin. “I hate being cold.”
She should’ve risen, but she didn’t want to leave the warmth of the blankets, either.
“I saw a lot of soldiers in Fort Kearney who were missing fingers from frostbite. I imagine it’s very cold in the army, sleeping outside.”
“You have to be cold on the inside, too.” Owen’s eyes were closed, but his brows gathered pensively. His expression became that forbidding one she’d seen when she had accused him of protecting a philanderer. “Virgil and I got out as soon as we could, did some trapping. I didn’t mind that work, but living rough is a cold, wet existence. Virgil wanted to work the steamboats, so we did that for a while, ’til I talked him into going to California.”
“Did you really not find gold there?” She curled her arm beneath her head, curious despite her wariness.
“God, no,” he scoffed. “None for ourselves, anyway. That’s why I laugh every time I meet these Darrys and Harrys who come along with that sparkle of ignorant hope in their eyes, as if they’ll find gold lying on the ground. Mining is work. If you want to get paid with any kind of regularity, work for a company. Of course, the more men that show up to work, the lower the wages. I would have stayed in California, though, even after we couldn’t afford to. It was warmer and drier than most places, but Virgil wanted to get back to his wife and children. I talked him into coming through here on the way. He was so mad when he found that nugget.” His mouth tilted in an amused grin.
“Why?” she asked, baffled.
“Because it meant we had to stay and claim it.” He opened his eyes. “And it’s so much damned work. Now we’re stuck here, gritting our teeth through these infernal winters. Does the cold not bother you?”
“Sometimes, but I’ve lived around the great lakes all my life. There’s no getting away from heavy snow and harsh winters. I’ve rarely been stuck outside for more than the odd day, though. Only if we happened to be on expedition, and that’s summer work. Oh, except, one time, when I was five, we were living with some of my father’s fellow professors from King’s College in Canada. The snow drift on one side of the house came all the way up to the window of my bedroom. I got it in my head that I could walk over to the neighbor’s roof. I climbed out and of course dropped straight down.”
“Is this a true story?” His gaze fixated on her, as though he was arrested by her tale.
“It is.” She nodded. “I don’t remember everything that happened, only that cold powder was in my nose and mouth. I couldn’t scream or move and snow came in on top of me, so it went dark, but gray, not black. Thankfully, it was right before breakfast. My father came to wake me and saw what had happened. He ran down to the parlor and had to break a window. Then he dug all the snow onto the floor until he found my foot. He and Mr. Henry pulled me inside. They thought I was dead, but they set me in front of the fire and gave me a sip of brandy. I started to cough and cry, then I was fine.”
“Jesus Christ.” Owen blinked. “That’s a helluva story. Where was your mother?”
“She died when I was three. Childbirth. I don’t know much about her except that she was Métis. My father tried to find her family while we were in Montreal, but they were all gone from there by then.”
He made a noise of sympathy. “It’s just you and your father, then?”
“No. He remarried when I was eight. I have four half-siblings. Thirteen, ten, and the twins are five. They’re in Chicago.” Papa was on his way to them, she recollected with a pang.
This journey was supposed to provide for all of them as well as prove to Adelaide that Temperance still had a place in their family—as if she ever really had. Now she was alone and had nothing and was in bed with a man. Mr. Fritz’s dismissal last night crashed back over her, destroying the last of her warm, reminiscent mood.
She rolled onto her back and released a small sob of suffering, throwing her arm over her eyes. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to help me open a saloon.”
“What?” She was so startled, she dropped her arm away and sat up.
“I want y— Oof!” His breath rushed out as the dog jumped onto the bed, landing on his stomach. “Goddammit, Clarence.”
Apparently, it was time to get up.
“Leave your things here,”Owen insisted. “We’ll have porridge downstairs, then we have an appointment.”
Temperance eyed him with suspicion, but she left the rolled blanket containing her worldly possessions in the room and accompanied him to where the corral owner made a cauldron of lumpy oatmeal every day, offering a bowl for two-bits. There was no coffee to go with it, no molasses or even a dribble of milk to thin it down. The best Owen could say was that it plugged the hole, but when he didn’t have time to walk to the flapjack tent, it served its purpose.
A handful of men were sitting on the tailgates of wagons and overturned buckets, shooting the shit while they ate. They all stood when Temperance appeared.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said with a polite nod.
“Ma’am,” they murmured, casting speculative glances at her while she accepted a bowl from the owner.
The men’s interest fed an irritation in Owen that was a new color on him. He was mostly a man who ducked responsibility—which invariably followed when you brought a woman into your life. That’s why he didn’t have one.
One kiss didn’t oblige them to each other, but that’s not when this annoyance with other men had started. No, it had begun to spark from nearly the minute he’d met her. It had been properly kindled the night at Dudley’s, when he’d inserted himself between her and a drunk intent on walking her home. Last night, it had grown to a proper flame. He hadn’t confronted Sureshot for Virgil’s sake. That settling of a small grudge was a silver lining that had come about after he’d felt compelled to protect her from a drunken man’s wrath.
Owen had always done what he could to keep a woman from being mistreated, but this was different. It wasn’t because he’d kissed her, either, although that was definitely becoming a piece of the puzzle. When Fritz had turned her out, Owen had only wanted to be sure Temperance wasn’t freezing to death and haunting him after, but as much as the frigid walk to the corral had turned his cock inside out, that affliction hadn’t lasted. He’d lain awake for ages, hard as a rock with the feel of her against his back, dying to roll over and at least cradle her in his arms.
He’d distracted himself by thinking of all the things he wanted from her that weren’t of a physical nature, then they’d kissed this morning, and he was back to wondering how her nipple would feel against his palm.
Damn, that had been one helluva kiss. He’d felt it with his whole body and would have stayed all day in that bed with her, if she’d been obliged. He wished he was there now, doing all manner of wicked things with her.
He gave his eyebrow a scratch, recognizing there was wanting a woman and there was wanting a particular woman. He was in danger of growing particular because he liked her. She was funny and paid her debts and wasn’t stuck-up about talking to rough-looking miners and other travelers. She was listening politely to a man who had some unsightly sores on his face who was droning on about his collection of animal teeth.
One of the men who regularly brought in supplies from Leavenworth sidled up to Owen and waggled his brows. “You had company last night, huh?”
Owen had never wanted to elbow a man in the face so hard in his life.
“Mind your manners, Nestor, or I won’t let you drink in my saloon.”
“You got a saloon? Where?” Nestor’s shock was loud enough to make everyone stop talking and look his way.
“You’ll hear soon enough. Temperance will be serving for me, so you’ll want to be nice to her. Otherwise, you won’t be served at all.” He would stand by that. “Shall we go?”
“I—” She blinked. “You are the most irksome man. Do you know that?”
“I’ve been told so many times. Never so politely, if you want the truth.”
She shook her head, then scraped a last bite from her bowl before setting it on the ground for Clarence to polish.
“I haven’t agreed to work for you,” she reminded him once they were out on the street, arms crossed against the wind, Clarence trotting beside their hurried step.
“That’s all you’ve wanted since you arrived,” he threw back at her. “Just yesterday, you traced all your troubles to the fact that I haven’t hired you. Now I will.”
“Trust me, all of my troubles can be traced to my father’s reluctance to explain womanhood to me. He married Adelaide, so she would do it, and nothing has been going well for me since.”
“This is the mother of your four siblings? I’ll go out on a limb and suggest he was more interested in her understanding of womanhood than yours.”
“But why her? Why then? We had a perfectly idyllic life, just the two of us. Then, only a few months after our housekeeper left— Oh.”
“Oh,” he said with speculation, finding it cute that she had never leapt to any conclusions about that arrangement. “Why did the housekeeper leave?”
“To be with her husband. He came home from the navy.” She wrinkled her brow. “That was obtuse of me, wasn’t it?”
“You were a child. But now I’m thinking this returning sailor is the source of your troubles. My conscience is clear.”
“Oh, good. I was worried about that,” she said with a pithy cast of her gaze upward.
He touched her elbow to take her across the street toward the building he wanted.
The closer Owen got, the more certain he became. The location was excellent, the exterior a well-crafted weatherboard. It was only a plain, one-story rectangle with a half-built fence as tall as he was, but it had a boardwalk out front and a recessed door that would be suitable for batwings when the weather was fine. All it needed was a handsome false-front and it would be perfect.
Elmer was hunched out of the wind on the stoop, looking owlish.
“I thought you might have changed your mind,” Elmer groused, but brightened with a smile for Temperance. He tipped his hat. “Did we meet last night?”
Temperance was standing in the street, reading the words painted on the plate glass window. She sent Owen an appalled look. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’m dead serious,” he assured her before turning his attention back to Elmer. “This is Miss Goodrich.” Owen curled his lip as he noted the speculative way Elmer looked her up and down. “She’s acquainted with your parents.”
“Goodrich? Right. The railway company.” His gaze on her altered slightly, trying to figure her out. “My father mentioned it. But your father’s not here yet? Is that right?”
“Soon,” Temperance said, absently. She was also studying Elmer. She had figured things out with the Greenlys yesterday, and now she was putting the rest together. “When he arrives, I would be happy to introduce you,” she said smoothly. “And please excuse my not speaking to you last night. I was in a hurry to say goodbye to my friend Mavis. You might remember her from the Bijou. She’s leaving soon with her beautiful son, Freddie.”
Temperance held Elmer’s gaze in a ruthless, unblinking stare.
Elmer looked as though he had accidentally squeezed a turd into his drawers and was afraid to breathe, lest it cause the nugget to drop out his pant leg.
Owen knew right then and there that he could fall in love with Miss Temperance Rose Goodrich if he wasn’t careful.
Problem was, he’d never been a careful man.