Page 62 of Love’s Silver Bullet

His grin, if possible, grew even wider. “From October till March of next year,” he said with a wink. “So, you know what that means, don’t you?”

Yes. Her breathing accelerated. I’ll have a suitor at Vassar. She gulped. And not just any suitor. Her eyelids wavered closed as she thought of Clay’s kisses. One whose kisses can buckle my knees.

And before she could even open her eyes, he did just that, scooping her up with a low chuckle as he swung her around and around. “Isn’t that a dream come true?” Setting her back down, he kissed her long and deep, purling waves of that womanly feeling all the way through her, tingling both fingers and toes.

A dream come true? She emitted a tiny moan as Clay nibbled her ear. Maybe.

Even if it wasn’t the one she’d really wanted.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A faraway scream pierced the air, and Jake’s head shot up, fear breaking out in a cold sweat on the back of his neck. “Josie,” he whispered, the sound of his voice drowned out by the shrieks and laughter of his friends as they swung on a wild grape vine into the river.

“Noooooo!”

Jake’s blood ran cold at the sound of his ma’s echoing scream. Scrambling up the bank, he took off like a shot, chest heaving while he ran for his life.

“Josie!” he screamed, stumbling as he clawed his way back.

“Jake, I love you. Don’t leave me, please!”

But he did.

“God, no!” His voice was a broken rasp when he found her tiny body, lying inert on the floor in a sea of broken glass. Once shiny black curls twisted about her, splayed and dusted with dirt against a delicate face so pale and still. Heaves wracking his chest, he swallowed her up in his arms and sobbed, the sound as battered and broken as she.

“I love you, Jakie,” she whispered, and he wept against her neck. “Do you love me?”

The question grieved him, and jerking away, he stared at her with tears streaming his face, stunned that he held a towheaded four-year-old in his arms instead of his little sister. Her little-girl smile melted his heart as she held up a bruised finger. “Will you kiss it?” she whispered, and he did, vowing he’d do everything in his power to make sure she was always safe.

“I love you, Jakie.” She planted a stubby, little hand to his cheek and blinked, blue eyes wide with trust. “Do you love me?”

“I do, Half-Pint, now and forever.” Cradling her tiny face in his hands, he closed his eyes to kiss her cheek, then sucked in a harsh breath when she turned, revealing a grownup Sheridan whose lips now aligned with his own. “Jake, I need you. Do you need me?”

“God help me, I do …” Lowering his mouth to hers, he consumed her like a man dying of starvation, desperate for the taste of the one girl he craved …

“Jake, I need you …”

He groaned, slapping away the hand that rattled his shoulder.

“Jake! I need you—wake up!”

He jolted awake, finger on the trigger of his Colt as he shot straight up in his cot.

A curse sizzled the air. “Blast it all, Sullivan, put the dog-gone gun away!”

Blaze’s face came into view, as blurry and foggy as Jake’s mind at the moment. Breathing hard, he slumped back on the cot with eyes closed, Colt limp in his hand. “Confound it all, Donovan,” he groused, voice groggy with sleep, “what the devil are you doing waking me up in the dead of night?”

More curses defiled the air. “Keep it down over there. We’re tryin’ to sleep.”

Blaze’s voice was hot and low in Jake’s ear. “We need you, Jake, now—in the barn. It’s an emergency, about Sheridan!”

Jake’s eyelids flipped up faster than the rolled shade on Burdzy’s Emporium door at daybreak. “What about Sheridan?” he whispered, voice hoarse as he bolted up in the cot, his thin cover all but puddling onto the floor.

But Blaze was already out the door, sending shivers down Jake’s body that he couldn’t blame on the bare state he preferred to sleep in during the hot summer months. Jumping up from the cot, he dressed in seconds flat, heart pumping as much as his legs as he sprinted toward the barn.

“What’s wrong?” he rasped while he skidded to a stop in front of Midnight’s stall, where Blaze and Dash stood with grim faces. Chest heaving, he gulped in large quantities of air as he grasped the wooden railing with a stitch in his side.

Eyes deadly sober, Dash stepped forward with hands plunged deep in his pockets. “Clyde overheard Clay Morgan talking to someone tonight at the Ponderosa,” he said in a somber tone too foreign for the brother with the perennial smile, “claiming he hit the jackpot with the mayor’s pretty daughter.”