Elizabeth Lowell - Only You

Did that cheating saloon girl leave any gold?

Slowly Eve’s hands became fists. Just as slowly they uncurled. She put her palms down on the table and pressed so that the trembling that came when she remembered Reno’s words wouldn’t show.

After several moments Eve took a deep breath and gathered up the cards. She squared them off carefully and began shuffling again. When cards slipped free, she ignored them. After several shuffles she flexed her hands, rounded up all the cards, and shuffled some more.

Eve knew she should be sleeping, for the ride to Canyon City would be long and tiring. Yet sleep eluded her. Whenever her eyes closed, she would hear rocks grinding and breaking over Reno in a long, brutal wave.

From the direction of the barn came the low rumble of male voices. Eve cocked her head, looked at the angle of the moon, and decided that Pig Iron was making his nightly rounds a bit early.

She flexed her fingers absently, picked up the cards that had escaped, and stared at them. The more she worked her hands, the more supple they became, but she had nothing like her normal dexterity.

A cool breeze came from the front of the cabin just as Eve was trying very hard to shuffle cards without losing one of them. Startled, she looked up.

Reno was standing in the open door, looking at Eve as he had in the Gold Dust Saloon, taking in the red dress, the steady golden eyes, and the mouth that trembled.

Drawn from the long trip, his face still cut and bruised, he was even more handsome than she had remembered; and his eyes were a hungry green fire.

When Reno walked toward Eve, cards shivered and overflowed from her hands in an untidy burst. Blindly she began gathering them up once more, but her hands were shaking too much. She balled them into fists and hid them in her lap.

Reno pulled out the other chair at the table and sat down. With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the table. Cards fluttered like autumn leaves to the floor. He unbuttoned his jacket and pulled a fresh pack of cards from his shirt pocket.

«Five-card draw,» he said huskily, «two-card limit, table stakes, five-dollar ante, my deal.»

The words were familiar to Eve. They were the exact words she had spoken to Reno a lifetime ago, when he had pulled out a chair, sat between two outlaws, and taken cards at her table in the Gold Dust Saloon.

Eve tried to push back from the table, but could not. Her arms refused to respond. She looked at the patterns of shadows rather than at Reno. She couldn’t bear looking at him and knowing what he saw when he looked at her.

Saloon girl. Card cheat. Something bought off a train.

«I don’t have any money on the table,» Eve said.

Her voice was thin, flat, a stranger’s.

«Neither do I,» Reno said. «Guess we’ll have to bet ourselves to stay in the game.»

Eve watched in disbelief as Reno dealt cards. When five cards lay before her, she reached for them automatically. Just as automatically she threw away the card that didn’t fit with the rest. One more card appeared in front of her. She picked it up and looked.

The queen of hearts looked back at her.

For a heartbeat Eve couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Slowly all the cards slid from her fingers one by one.

Reno reached out and turned over the cards that had fallen facedown in front of Eve. Within moments a ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of hearts gleamed in the lantern light.

«Beats anything I have, now or ever,» Reno said, throwing in his hand without looking at it. «I’m yours, sugar girl, for as long as you want me, any way you want me.»

He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out the emerald ring.

«But I’d rather be your husband than your fancy man,» Reno said in a low voice.

He held the ring out to Eve on his palm, silently asking that she take it. Tears gathered in Eve’s eyes. She put her hands in her lap to reduce the temptation to take the ring and the man.

«Why?» she whispered painfully. «You d-don’t trust me.»

«I didn’t trust myself,» Reno said tightly. «I’d been such a fool over Savannah Marie that I vowed never to give a woman that kind of hold over me again. Then I saw you.»

«I’m a card cheat and a saloon girl.»

Reno gestured to the pat hand he had dealt to Eve.

«I’m a card cheat and a gunfighter,» he said. «Sounds like a good match to me.»

When Eve’s hands remained in her lap and she said nothing, Reno closed his eyes on a wave of pain. Slowly he got up and sat on his heels beside her, putting one hand over her cold fingers.

She looked at the table rather than meet his eyes.

«Can’t you even look at me?» Reno whispered. «Did I kill every bit of what you felt for me?»

Eve took a deep, shaking breath. «I showed you stone ships and a dry rain…but I’ll never find a light that casts no shadow. Some things are just impossible.»

Reno stood with the stiff motions of an old man. Once his hand moved as though to touch Eve’s hair, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached toward the heart flush he had dealt her.

As the gold ring dropped soundlessly onto the cards, lantern light revealed the fine trembling of his fingers. Reno looked at his hand as though he had never seen it before. Then he looked at the girl whose loss would haunt him for the rest of his life.

«You should have left me in the mine,» he whispered.

Eve tried to speak, but tears closed her throat.

He turned away swiftly, heading toward the door, unable to bear anymore.

«No!» Eve cried.

Suddenly she was on her feet, running to him.

Reno caught Eve up in his arms and buried his face against her neck, holding her as though he expected her to be torn from him. When she felt the scalding caress of his tears against her skin, her breath stopped, then came out in a ragged sound that was his name.

«Don’t leave,» Eve said in a shaking voice. «Stay with me. I know you don’t believe in love, but I love you. I love you!»

Reno’s arms tightened even more. When he could speak, he lifted his head and searched Eve’s eyes.

«You showed me ships made of stone and a dry rain,» Reno whispered, kissing her gently, taking her tears, «and then you showed me the light that casts no shadow.»

Eve trembled and then went very still, looking at him with a silent question in her eyes.

«Love is the light that casts no shadow,» Reno said simply. «I love you, Eve.»

Before the last aspens were transformed into topaz sentinels burning against the autumn sky, Reno and Eve were wed. When they stood before their friends and vowed to share their lives with each other, Eve was wearing Reno’s gift to her: a gleaming rope of pearls, an ancient Spanish ring of emerald and pure gold, and a radiance that made Reno’s throat ache until he could barely speak.

They stayed with Caleb and Willow through the cold brilliance of winter, laughing and working together while they shared Ethan and sang Christmas carols in a harmony that tempted angels into envy.

When spring came, Reno and Eve rode west for a day, to the place where a shaggy green mesa and snowy mountains stood guard over a long, rich valley. On the banks of a rushing river, the two of them built a home that was shelter against winter, haven against summer heat, and scented with the lilac brushes that were Reno’s gift to Eve on the birth of their first child.

The children of Reno and Eve knew what it was to walk free upon a wild land. They felt the untamed sun of the stone maze and stared in wonder at signs hammered into rock by a culture and a people long dead. Two of the children became ranchers. Another learned to hunt mustangs with Wolfe Lonetree. A fourth lived among the Utes, writing down their language and legends before they, too, passed from the land.