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  When he sat down on the swing, she scooted farther to her side. He offered her the drink in silence, and she took it in the same manner. The quiet grew around them, leaving plenty of room for the occasional car sound from the main street to make its way over to her house. The Davises called in their dog and turned out their lights. Nothing happened out on the prairie, nothing except the moon and the stars, and the black-velvet darkness of the night.

  They both drank, and he pushed the swing. Neither of them said a word. When the temperature became noticeably cooler, she offered him a corner of the afghan, then offered him more. He helped her reorganize the blanket and her position, and she accidentally knocked over his beer bottle.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Can you hold this?’

  He took her glass and held up her end of the blanket while she arranged the rest of it over his shoulders. She knelt on the swing to reach around him, leaning over him in all the ways guaranteed not to maintain distance and anger and hurt feelings.

  “Lift up a little, please.”

  He did, and she tucked the blanket behind him, between his body and the cold slats of the swing. Her hands touched his shoulders, her breasts brushed his arm, her breath was warm and Scotchy against the side of his face. He held himself in check for as long as he could, until the effort became ludicrous when compared to the comfort he knew would be theirs if he slipped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap.

  She slid into place as naturally as water flowing to lower ground, her body relaxing against his with ease and warmth. He held her for a long time, then finished off her drink in one long swallow and set the glass aside. She snuggled closer, and he was content.

  When she snuggled again, his contentment began to come apart in the nicest way. He inhaled deeply and stroked his hand down her thigh. Her murmured response encouraged him to do more. Her hand slipping between his legs made the desire a necessity. She couldn’t touch him without him needing to touch her.

  She teased him, and he unbuttoned her blouse. In moments he was back on solid ground, with Sarah in his arms and the world turning in an ever more benevolent universe.

  Eleven

  Wednesday nights could be big nights in Rock Creek. On Wednesday nights Guy Hill, owner of the Sagebrush Bar, was sometimes able to entice one of the better Cheyenne bands into town for a few sets and a cut of the take. On weekends Rock Creek had to make do with more local talent, or just less talent, but on a lucky Wednesday it wasn’t unheard of for the Sagebrush to have a four- or five-piece group—or at least part of one, because not everyone could be enticed to spend his or her Wednesday hauling across barren country, not even for free beer and cold cash.

  Colt and Sarah worked their way through the crowd of folks who had come out midweek to hear The Muleskinners, a band semi-famous throughout most of southern Wyoming and at a few select locations in northern Colorado. A few hellos were exchanged, a few nods, and a couple of offers were made to buy them both a beer.

  Colt kept heading her toward the dance floor. He dropped their coats on an empty table as they passed, and when their feet hit the parquet he turned her into his arms. He’d been out at the Calhoun ranch all day, and he’d missed her.

  Sarah was equally glad to get close to him, to feel his arms hold her and his body guide her in an easy, shuffling two-step. One of the beer offers had been from the girls’-night-out contingent, and she knew there hadn’t been a woman among them who hadn’t been stripping him down to past his skivvies with their eyes. He had the kind of body that did that to women, and the kind of face that made the effort all that much more worthwhile. Not overly handsome or anywhere near pretty, but appealing, with clean lines and uncompromising strength.

  She knew they were the talk of the town—some were worried about her sure-to-be-broken heart and some were much less kind. Once or twice she’d wondered what they’d all say if their pharmacist turned up in the family way. Mostly she didn’t think about that possibility. Somewhere in her heart, the decision to try had been made before she’d consciously done anything to bring about success. She’d prayed for his child once. It wasn’t so hard to ask a second time.

  The music changed to a love song about a man telling his sweet darlin’ that she’d never get over him, that even if she walked out on him, she’d never get away from him, because she’d be thinking about him all the time, carrying him with her in her thoughts.

  Sarah believed every word.

  Colt gathered her close and swayed with her to the music, loving the feel of her in his arms, of holding her hand, so small and delicate, in his. He rested his cheek against the top of her head. Her hair was pulled back in a lank ponytail, making a pale stream down the middle of her back. They had four more days together, four more nights. He didn’t think it was going to be enough.

  He had some leave built up that he should be able to take in a month or two. He could come back, but he wondered how he’d last that long, if the nights would get too lonely, the days too empty.

  Maybe it was time for him to start thinking about what Sarah might be wanting. It was impossible for them just to keep going on the way they had been. Reality was bound to intrude, and even if they held it at bay for a while longer, on Sunday it would be standing right on the doorstep as he told Sarah good-bye.

  The turn of his thoughts had an unwelcome effect on his perceptions. He slowed the movement of his feet and bent his head deeper into the curve of her neck and shoulder, holding her tighter. Sarah wasn’t the one who was hiding from reality. She knew he was leaving. He doubted if she’d forgotten it for a minute, but she’d lowered her guard and let him in to use up her life until he was done, until Sunday.

  He had to come back.

  The song ended with the band announcing a break. Colt led her back to the table, holding her hand and keeping her close. They’d already decided to stay for only a couple of dances and a beer. He hadn’t wanted to come at all, preferring not to make small talk with well-meaning people, preferring the privacy of her company to all others. But Sarah had insisted that they come up for air—her words exactly—and he’d smiled and pulled his boots back on. She’d had a point.

  A couple of women he’d noticed sizing him up earlier came over to talk, asking Sarah about some stuff she was special-ordering for them through the drugstore and obviously angling for an introduction. Colt knew their interest in him had more to do with him being a novelty than anything personally intriguing about him. Rock Creek was a small community. Anybody new was bound to stir up interest, especially among the ranks of the unfulfilled. He bowed out of the whole process by asking Sarah what she wanted to drink.

  He went up to the bar to get their beers and allowed himself to get roped into a conversation about the feedlot and the best ways to fatten up cattle for market; how if they got a sharp manager in there who bought from the ranchers at the right price and didn’t hold the animals too long, and if the prices held at the packing plants, why, anybody should be able to make a profit, right there in Rock Creek. The old-timers were sure of it. America loved beef, and that was that.

  “You ran a herd over there on your mom’s place, didn’t you, Colton?” asked a wizened old geezer with tobacco-stained teeth and squint lines like the canyon lands.

  “Yes, sir,” Cole replied, digging in his pocket to pay for the beer. “But that’s been ten years.”

  “Cows don’t change, son.” The old man nodded sagely, and men younger and older on their end of the bar made abstract sounds of agreement. The cows didn’t change, and neither did the land, except when people went around putting on improvements for the county to tax.

  The conversation took a wide turn through taxes while Colt waited for the bartender to return with his change. But the beef-cattle market was the subject of choice, and pretty soon the group was on it again, going out of their way to include him as a native son.

  “Do they feed you Navy boys plenty of beef?”

&
nbsp; “Yes, sir. I’ve had it three meals a day sometimes.”

  That got a round of approving laughter. The country was in good hands if they were feeding the fighting men beef. They managed to fit in the Japanese taxing beef imports and worked around to Pearl Harbor, which seemed to tie everything together—the beef industry, unreasonable taxes, and for Colt’s benefit, the Navy—before the bartender made it back.

  Colt dropped a tip on the bar and shoved the rest of the money back in his pocket, figuring he’d been gone long enough for Sarah to have finished her business. He glanced over his shoulder just to check and froze with an instant rush of adrenaline.

  He forced himself to breathe, to not react externally, to not overreact to the scene before him. It wasn’t against the law for Bull Brooks to talk to his daughter.

  Sarah had heard the same speech from her father a hundred times, maybe even a thousand, given her twenty-eight years and his variations on the theme of herself, her mother, and their combined sins. The relentless haranguing was as much a part of her father as his skin or his teeth. He was a natural-born complainer, whose skills had been honed by the injustices of life, most of which—he claimed—had been visited on him by women.

  In her relationship with her father, Sarah had gone through the stages of intimidation and anger, then irritation and weariness, and finally boredom and pity. She knew he hated that, and that it got him more riled up with her than was probably healthy for a man with his heart condition. She knew, too, that she should care more than she did. It bothered her sometimes, how little she cared for her own father. Other times, she thought it was probably a healthy attitude: not giving too much credence to a man who abused women.

  He had never hit her. He’d saved the physical punishment for her mom. But he’d been yelling at her for as long as she could remember.

  He was getting ready to do it again. She could tell by the whine creeping into his voice. Lord, how many times had she asked Guy not to let him get liquored up.

  “I told your mother times are tough,” he was saying, “and if you would just back me up on this, maybe she’d start to see it clear. It does neither you or me any good to have our money going out of Rock Creek. We’re the ones trying to keep the damn place alive.”

  Truly, this was his most logical argument, Sarah thought. She was tempted to agree with him that he shouldn’t have to pay child support, if only so he’d be gone before Colt got back with her drink.

  Her father continued, though. “Why a man should have to pay for kids a cheatin’ woman steals out from under him makes no damn sense to me. No damn sense a’tall.”

  His weakest argument to Sarah’s way of thinking, considering how long he and Amanda. Haines had carried on. She’d often wondered what Amanda had seen in her father, but it was beyond her imagination. Oh, she’d admit he wasn’t bad-looking for his age, and he made a better living than most in the county, and she knew some women liked their men rough around the edges. Still, it didn’t add up in her book.

  Amanda had certainly seemed to have Robert “Bull” Brooks more under her thumb than Sarah’s mom had ever managed, and maybe that had been his appeal—the taming of him. She’d never married him either, so maybe he hadn’t slapped her around.

  “And don’t you go trying to pull any fancy tricks on me,” Bull said. “I won’t put up with it. I won’t put up with it for a minute, not one damn minute.”

  Sarah knew what he was talking about. The previous year she’d devised a grand scheme, whereby she and her mom bypassed Bull in the rent and child support exchange. Sarah paid her mother the money she owed her father for rent on the drugstore, thereby saving her mother the hassle of trying to get child support out of her ex-husband. She’d thought it was a beautiful plan, too perfect to pass up. But Bull had threatened to evict her when he found out.

  “The next time you two try any funny business, I’m going into Cheyenne to personally shake the money back out of her. You’ve got no right to give her my rent.”

  “Jack will kill you, Bull,” Sarah said it as calmly as Jack, her stepfather, had. “You lay one hand on her, and he’ll kill you.”

  “That bleeding heart wouldn’t kill a chicken to put meat on his starving family’s table. He sure as hell isn’t going to be coming after me with more than a stack of words.”

  Jack was a lawyer who did pro bono work for victims of domestic violence. Under most circumstances, she would have agreed with her father. Jack was the antithesis of a violent man. But Jack also knew the statistics about who killed women, and abusive husbands and ex-husbands were at the top of the list.

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Bull. I think you’d better stay out of Cheyenne.”

  “Dammit, girl!” he exploded in a burst of frustrated, drunken fury, his hand banging down on the table. “Don’t you go telling me what—”

  One second her father was slamming the table, and the next he was stretched across it, with Colt pinning him down.

  Colt jerked him back up, but not before Sarah felt the deadly pall of animosity radiating off the two men. Her father had gone wild-eyed with fear; Colt’s face was expressionless, yet somehow lethal.

  “Let’s go, old man.” Colt jerked her father again, getting him straighter on his feet, and the two of them headed for the door just as The Muleskinners broke into a new song.

  Sarah wasn’t the only person who had seen the quick action, but the speed of it made it hard to comprehend. The problem wasn’t apparent, and between the dancers moving to the floor and Colt and her father moving toward the door, nothing looked terribly amiss—except to Sarah.

  She’d never seen her father afraid of anything or anybody in her whole life. He dished out fear; he didn’t take delivery. She could imagine what Colt must have seen from his end of the bar and why he’d reacted the way he had, but nothing explained the flash of terror she’d seen in her father’s eyes.

  Guy had kicked Bull out of the Sagebrush twice that year for getting mean and picking fights. To call him quarrelsome was putting it mildly. But Colt had handed him the perfect excuse for busting into somebody. Yet he’d just laid there on the table, too scared to spit.

  She got up from her chair, a half minute behind the two men, trying to pull her thoughts together and get around the people in the bar without bumping into anyone. Somehow Colt had managed not to cause a scene. She didn’t want to either, but she had a feeling she’d better get outside quickly.

  The night air was cool against her face, especially after the warmth of the crowded bar. She looked north, toward town, and saw nothing but darkness and taillights of a tractor-trailer heading up the highway. South was the Sagebrush parking lot. It took her a moment, but she finally spotted Colt’s white shirt, and next to him the smudgier blur of her father’s outline. She started forward, following them into the maze of cars and pickup trucks.

  Colt recognized Bull’s truck from in front of the cafe the other day, and also because of the loops of rawhide silhouetted in the back window. His hand instinctively tightened in the scruff of Bull’s shirt. He’d almost talked himself out of doing any physical damage to the older man, but the sight of the whip weighed the scales heavily once more toward mayhem.

  Bull hadn’t expected him, and Colt had used surprise to get Bull out of the bar in one piece. It wasn’t until they’d gotten to the parking lot that the older man had come out of shock and started to struggle.

  Even with his age and conditioning advantage, Colt had his hands full. Trying to keep his edge, he gave Bull a shove, sending him flying toward the side of his truck. Bull hit the panel with a thwack, but he only went partway down. When he came up, he had a knife in his hand.

  Unlike Bull, Colt didn’t allow himself to be surprised. His kick met the tender inside juncture of Bull’s wrist and hand before the man got his weapon even waist-high. Colt had started the fight, and he damn well planned on finishing it on top. The knife skittered away into the night, and Colt grabbed Bull and put his face to the pickup door before
he could find any more trouble.

  “You’re on thin ice, old man. Don’t push me,” he warned close to Bull’s ear.

  “I’ll have the law on you, you son of a bitch.” Bull hissed the words into the cold metal pressed up against his cheek.

  “Whole lot of good that’s going to do you if you’re dead.”

  Bull tried to jerk free, but Colt just held him tighter. It wasn’t easy. The man was nothing but wiry strength.

  “We have unfinished business.” Colt pressed him harder into the truck.

  “No we don’t. I finished with you, boy, and you got no more than you deserved.” Bull’s voice shook, just as his body was starting to do. Colt took both as signs of weakness and pressed harder.

  “I’m not talking about what you did to me. I’m talking about what you tried to do to Sarah.” He pulled Bull’s arm higher up in the middle of his back, until the man wheezed, and he relished Bull’s torment in a way he knew wasn’t good. “I’m talking about what you did to your wife, and what you did to my mom, hitting her in the face.” His next breath hurt, and suddenly he was surprised, not by Bull, but by himself. “Bruising her, treating her like—” His voice broke. God. It took every ounce of concentration he had to keep from snapping Bull’s neck. His skin was jumping and his hands ached with the need for action and release.

  He closed his eyes against the pain he felt, against new loss and raw emotion, and slowly lowered his brow to the back of Bull’s head. His fists lightened in the cloth of the man’s shirt. Bull smelled of fear; he was saturated with panic.

  Colt’s breathing accidentally fell into rhythm with the older man’s, and with a silent groan he slammed into Bull’s body again, hurting him and knocking him into his own ragged cadence.

  He’d shared too much with the man. He’d shared his mother, and he’d shared Sarah, and he’d somehow lost both to Bull Brooks. Now he had his enemy in his hands, straining for escape, and so help him, they were once again sharing pain and fear, just as they had the night Bull had marked him for life.