Do Not Forsake Me(7)

Jake kept his arms around her and walked her backward out of the kitchen. “Why does it embarrass you? You’re my wife.”

Randy laughed lightly. “Because they are our daughter and son-in-law, and they probably think we’re too old for this.”

“Oh, I think they both know me better than that.” He kept urging her toward the bedroom. “I don’t even need to wash up first.”

“Oh? You do smell awfully good for a man who’s been on the trail for three weeks, Marshal Harkner. And I notice that this time you came back clean-shaven, except for what looks like a hint of a beard only a few hours old.” Randy planted her feet and grasped his arms. “Maybe you’d like to explain that.”

Jake grinned—the handsome smile that always made her want him. “Lloyd and I took turns watching the prisoners last night while we each took a bath at Dixie’s brothel in that shantytown west of the Donavan place.”

Randy stepped back and looked him over. “Is that so?”

“That’s so. The women there were more than happy to help out.”

Randy folded her arms. This was all part of their old game; Jake loved when she played the jealous wife, loved pretending to have to talk her down. “I’m sure they were. And of course you slept there.”

Jake unfolded her arms and pushed them behind her back. “Of course I did. We both caught a few hours’ sleep in real beds. It felt good. We kept the prisoners hog-tied in a barn and a Mexican who works there tended them for us.”

Randy held his gaze. “You slept there.”

Jake pressed her tight against him. “Sure did…all alone. Woman, you know better than to think I’d ever betray your trust.” He nuzzled her neck.

“What I know is that women look at you like you’re chocolate candy—even the decent ones in town. They wonder what it would be like to belong to Jake Harkner.”

Jake kept her arms behind her as he continued walking her backward to the bedroom doorway. “Then I guess they’ll just have to keep wondering, won’t they? Including the ones at that brothel. Hell, I’ve been around whores since I was six years old, Randy Harkner, and you know it. You also know there is only one woman for me, and you’re it.” He shut the bedroom door. “Then again, when I’m gone for so long, maybe it’s me who has to worry about you, working for that fancy widowed lawyer in town. The man is eight years younger than I am and not bad-looking.”

Randy hesitated, then pulled the combs from her hair as he unbuttoned the front of her dress. This wasn’t part of their usual game. “Peter Brown is no Jake Harkner.”

“Yeah? I’ve seen how he looks at you, and Lord knows he has a lot more to offer a woman like you than I ever had in my whole life.”

Randy sobered and grasped his shoulders. “Jake.” She watched his eyes. “I hope you’re joking.”

He lost his smile as he ran his hands through her hair and pulled it over her shoulders. “Maybe I’m not. He’s smart, educated, lonely, has money—”

“And he’s not you.” She finished unbuttoning her dress and pulled it off. “Nor would he want to have to answer to you, of all men. I only work for him when you’re gone, Jake, and that’s because I’d go crazy if I didn’t have something to keep me from thinking about what could be happening to you. If you think for one minute—”

He caught her words on his lips. He held her close with one arm as he used his other hand to pull one strap of her camisole over her shoulder, then pushed her playfully to the bed. “It’s the same here,” he said gruffly. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and Jake knelt down in front of her to unlace her camisole. “When I’m away from you, I never once stop thinking about the woman I love and want to come back to so bad I think I’ll die from the need of her.”

He opened her camisole and leaned closer, nuzzling her cleavage. Randy closed her eyes and grasped his hair as he moved his lips back to her throat, then to her mouth again, devouring her lips. The man had a way of erasing the years, always bringing her to the first time they’d made almost savage love in a wagon on their way to nowhere.

Then, reluctantly, he pulled away, beginning to undress and sliding back into their old game. “I stopped for that bath so I wouldn’t have to waste time with one when I got home to you,” he told her.

“That’s a fine excuse,” she teased. “And why didn’t you have one of them cut your hair?”

“I like letting you cut it.”

“Well, it’s past your shoulders.”