Wild Forever (The Gilbert Girls, #3)

by Cahill, Cat

  No, Miss May was his responsibility. Luckily, she was on foot. She couldn’t have gotten too far, provided she’d left at a decent hour. His own sleep would have to wait.

  The late morning sun cast a weak light as he saddled one of the hotel’s horses. His own horse needed rest, so a borrowed one would have to do. Past the creek, he headed in the same general direction as where he’d found her walking the first evening he was in Crest Stone. And prayed she usually traversed the same path.

  He pushed the horse as quickly as was safe, given the rocky terrain. After a while, they reached the same open area where he’d first found Penny. There was nothing there now but grass that had lost its color, stones, and a few tiny snowflakes drifting aimlessly down from the sky. It was colder now than it had been an hour ago.

  That was not a good sign.

  He scanned the area, and his eyes landed on the broken branch of a pine tree directly across from him. He nudged the horse forward. When he slid off the animal to examine the area, he found recent footprints, one of which indicated someone slipped in the mud right next to the tree with the broken branch.

  It had to be her. The prints were too small to be a man’s.

  He climbed back onto the horse, hope blooming in his heart. Penny was safe. She had to be. If Hagan had gotten her too . . . He couldn’t think past the blinding red rage that filled his head at that idea.

  Penny had to be up ahead somewhere. He needed to keep all his senses alert. And he needed to stop thinking of her as Penny. She was Miss May to him, and he’d better well remember that.

  Still . . . He smiled as he considered how well her name suited her. She was bright and bold, and she lit up a room like a coin reflecting firelight.

  The thoughts warmed him as the temperature grew even colder and the snow fell a little faster. It was beginning to accumulate within the clumps of dead vegetation that dotted the ground. He clucked to the horse to move more quickly. He needed to find her and get them both back to the hotel before they found themselves caught in a storm.

  Out of the corner of his eye, through the trees, he caught a glimpse of something moving. He stopped, eyes on the exact spot. There! It moved again. He squinted. The colors were muted, but it was clearly not an animal. It had to be her. Or one of Hagan’s men.

  Ben quietly dismounted and knotted the reins around a nearby tree. Cautiously, with his revolver drawn, he made his way through the trees toward the movement. A few feet away, it became clear the figure was a woman.

  “Penny?” he said, her given name out of his mouth before he realized what he’d said.

  She shrieked and turned, grabbing on to the nearest tree trunk. “Sheriff! You startled me.” She dropped her hand from the trunk and closed the space between them as he holstered his gun. “How did you find me?”

  “You left footprints,” he said. Now that he’d found her—safe—the same anger he’d felt upon learning she was missing returned in full force. “I told you not to leave the hotel under any circumstances. Are you testing Hagan’s threat? Do you want him to make good on it? What in the devil are you doing out here?”

  “Please, there’s no need for cursing.”

  He huffed out air through his teeth. “I apologize. But you didn’t answer my questions.”

  “Of course I don’t wish to run into that horrible man, but, Sheriff, I remembered something. And you weren’t in your room early this morning for me to tell you. I couldn’t just sit still when I might know where your sister is. I came to see for myself.”

  He tried in vain not to think of this wild slip of a woman knocking on the door to his room before daylight. She had to know that wasn’t appropriate. She was a Gilbert Girl, after all. “What did you remember that caused you to disobey the one rule I set down and risk your life out here?” He crossed his arms and waited for her answer.

  She pulled the coat tighter around herself. The snow grew even thicker, and it blanketed the wool of her coat. “‘That shack.’ That’s what she said. I didn’t hear her clearly when it happened, and I only just remembered it this morning.”

  “And that means?” he prompted.

  She told him about the old trapper’s cabin in the woods she’d found a while back. “Don’t you see? It has to be the place.”

  Ben shook snow off his arms but kept his eyes on hers. “Impossible. My men and I have searched this entire area, and we found no cabin.”

  Her lips turned up in the corners, a dare to challenge her. “Of course. It’s not meant to be found.”

  “I don’t understand. We should head back before we freeze to death out here.”

  “It’s straight ahead, right in front of you.” She gestured behind her. “Go on. Take a look.”

  Ben squinted into the trees ahead. They grew thicker there, almost as if there was a mountain stream nearby. “I don’t see anything.”

  She sighed and stepped ahead of him. “Follow me.”

  And not two minutes later, they’d pushed through several stands of aspen and woven past a few large boulders to find a cabin hidden under a high ledge of rock.

  A cabin with hoofprints in the dirt before it, and a saddle blanket draped over the crumbling front porch railing.

  Chapter Ten

  “How did you . . .” For the first time since she’d met him, Ben appeared lost for words.

  “I stumbled across it earlier this fall,” Penny said. She somehow managed to keep the smugness out of her voice—mostly.

  Even though she could barely contain her shivering, she was excited to finally reach the cabin. She stepped forward only to feel Ben’s hand clamp itself around her arm and pull her back behind a tree, right against him. Penny’s breath caught in her throat. Only once had she been this close to a man, and while that memory was unpleasant, this time it was anything but. In fact, she had to force herself to stay standing perfectly straight instead of sinking right into him and his warmth.

  That’s all it was, she told herself. He was warm, and she was so cold she could barely feel her fingers anymore. That was the only reason she didn’t mind when his hand didn’t leave her arm right away, or that his breath warmed her ear.

  “I’ll search for any sign of Hagan and his men. You”—and he turned her to face him—“stay right here. Don’t move. Swear it to me.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” she said, her tongue nearly tangling in her mouth as she spoke. His face was so close to her own. If she wanted to, she could lean forward and kiss his chin. Which she didn’t want to do, at all. It was ridiculous that such a thought had even entered her mind to begin with.

  He glared at her with those dark eyes. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Do you want to get killed?”

  “No, I’ll gladly stay here. But as I indicated earlier, I’m not fond of swearing at all, in any fashion.”

  He mumbled something incoherent under his breath. She wasn’t certain, but it was probably about her.

  In an instant, he was gone, creeping toward the cabin along the trees, and leaving her alone in the cold. She swiped the snow off her eyelashes and watched him.

  Little by little, he worked his way up to the porch. Then he disappeared around the rear of the cabin, only to emerge again on the far side. He peeked into what she supposed was a window on that side before coming around front and slowly pushing the door open. He went inside.

  Penny said a quick prayer for his safety. But it wasn’t even necessary, as less than ten seconds later, he’d returned to the door, his gun holstered again. “I suppose you want to look inside too,” he said in her general direction.

  She slipped out from the trees and hastened to the cabin. She didn’t know how he’d guessed she was so antsy to look for traces of his sister, but she wasn’t about to question it.

  He followed her inside the worn building. It was bare, save for a splintered table missing one leg. It was propped up with a chair turned upside down. The only sign of life was a tin cup that still held water. Dust motes floated in the liquid. Cle
arly, it had been some time since whoever filled it had drunk from it.

  Sheriff Young stood in front of the one window that let light into the single room. “Someone’s been sleeping here.” He pointed to a pile of blankets in the corner.

  “Could it have been Hagan?” Penny asked, almost afraid to hope.

  He shrugged. “Possibly.”

  Penny moved across the room to the blankets. Bending down, she picked up one that was no more than a piece of brown muslin. It smelled of horse and campfire. She shook it out and began to fold it.

  Sheriff Young crossed his arms. “Are you cleaning house?”

  Penny said nothing until the cloth was folded into a neat square. “I’m searching.”

  “For what?” The way he looked at her, with his eyebrows raised and an infuriating smirk on his face, made her reach down and grab hold of the next blanket.

  She shook it out, and something pinged against the rough floor. Penny shoved the blanket under her arm and bent down. The fallen item glinted, bright blue in the dusty light. An earring.

  She held it out to the sheriff. “This, perhaps?”

  In three strides, he was in front of her, plucking the piece of jewelry from her hand. “Adelaide,” he whispered. He wrapped his hand around it and held it as if it were Adelaide herself. He looked around the cabin again. “She was here.”

  Penny shivered, thinking of the girl stuck in this dirty place with someone like Royal Hagan.

  “Here.” The sheriff had taken off his coat and was draping it over her shoulders.

  “Sheriff, I can’t take this.” Penny tried to shrug out of the coat. “You need it.”

  “I can’t return you to the hotel frozen.” He pushed the coat back up onto her shoulders, then paused. “And call me Ben, please.”

  She turned her head and caught his eyes as she pushed her arms into his large coat. “I can’t,” she said. Her voice felt caught in her throat. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Considering we’re on a mountain in this cabin together, I believe we crossed the line from propriety a long time ago,” he said, his eyes still on her.

  Penny thought his voice sounded deeper than usual, but she had to be imagining it. “All right, then. You may call me Penny,” she said before sense could take hold of her again. She buttoned the coat and nodded at his closed hand. “Do you think we should wait to see if they return?”

  He shoved the earring into a pocket. “They won’t be back. They left nothing of worth here. Hagan likely suspected Adelaide told you where they’d been keeping her. They’ve left for somewhere else.”

  “Where?” Penny asked.

  “Wish I knew.” He picked up the blankets and began to wrap them around himself. “We need to leave before this weather gets worse.”

  When he opened the door, the wind pushed it wide, sending snow and air that felt like ice right into their faces. Penny struggled to breathe until she pulled his coat over her face. “Are you certain we should go out in this?”

  “Not at all,” he shouted over the wind. “But if we stay here, we may not be able to get back down for days. I don’t know how long this storm will last.”

  Penny drew in a deep breath, warm from behind the coat. It wasn’t far to ride. She had to trust him. He wouldn’t risk their lives.

  Ben reached out a hand, and she grasped it. His touch was reassuring and firm as he led her out of the cabin and back across toward where they’d left the horse.

  Penny could barely see, blinking constantly against the snow stinging her eyes. When they reached the horse, the poor thing was stomping its legs and snuffling in an attempt to get warm. Before Penny knew what was happening, Ben had placed both hands around her waist and was lifting her into the saddle. Her startled gasp was lost in the wind whistling around them. The moment his hands left her waist, she wished for them back. His touch had made her feel safe, like nothing could ever hurt her.

  I cannot think of him like that, she told herself as he loosened the reins tied around a tree. It was his job to keep her alive. She was resolute in this decision until he climbed into the saddle behind her, his strong arms looped around her to hold the reins.

  This was no different from the first time he’d put her on his horse. He was doing what he was supposed to do. She kept her back stick straight as they rode. No matter what, she couldn’t let him think she found him the least bit attractive. She wouldn’t be put in that position again. It had already ruined her once.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ben could not keep his mind in one place. Never mind that the wind was numbing his face more with every second. Never mind he could barely see through the flying snow to be certain they were headed down the mountain instead of up. Never mind that he’d found his sister’s birthstone earring lying abandoned in that old cabin. All he could think about was the woman in front of him trying in vain to keep herself from relaxing against his chest. The one who’d gasped when he’d placed his hands around her two-coat-covered waist to lift her onto the horse. The one who didn’t complain about riding astride. The one he’d thoughtlessly asked to call him by his first name, as if rules didn’t apply when they were alone in that cabin.

  He shouldn’t have done that. It felt silly to be so formal when he’d likely be keeping her safe for however long it took them to find Adelaide, but he knew—knew—that wall of propriety, as flimsy as it was, was all that stood between them.

  No. That wasn’t all. For heaven’s sake, he was thinking as if he had no self-control. So long as he kept himself focused on Adelaide and the search, he wouldn’t have time to think about Penny and the way her back kept inching closer to him the farther they rode down the mountain. Or the way her lips curved up in victory whenever she said something particularly stinging to him. Or that lonesome, hollow look her eyes got when she thought no one was looking.

  Something had to have caused her to appear that sad. What could it have been? The death of a loved one? A suitor who’d jilted her? Family she missed from home? He didn’t even know where her home was. Her voice had the distinct drawl of someone from the South, but that could be anywhere from Virginia to Texas. She didn’t have the airs of a girl raised in wealth, so he suspected she came from a family that didn’t have much in the way of means. And she was a hard worker. She never shirked her duties, even when she was busy spilling beverages in his lap.

  He estimated they were halfway down the mountain when she gave in and tentatively eased her back against his chest. “It’s all right. Rest,” he said in her ear.

  She jumped a little. It was no wonder, since they hadn’t spoken for the entire ride. It was effort enough just to breathe in this storm. But she relaxed again, quickly turning to say, “Don’t believe this means any more than it does.”

  He chuckled at her indignation. Her head, covered in a hood, fit just so under his chin. He found himself sighing in contentment before he even realized what he was doing.

  Adelaide. That’s who needed to occupy his mind right now. Finding her and bringing Hagan and his men to justice. If they knew he was searching these parts, and they believed Adelaide had told Penny about the cabin, they wouldn’t return. In fact, they’d probably gone somewhere deeper in the mountains. Perhaps a ways south of here. That was more likely than anywhere else. North got them too close to Cañon City. East was the valley. And west would be impassable because of the snow. Unless . . .

  Unless they were counting on the snow. If they’d hidden themselves away before the storm—and they likely had—their tracks would be covered. No. Going farther into the mountains was too much of a gamble. There was always the chance of a blizzard that would snow them in for months, and that would muddle Hagan’s plan. Besides, having left the old cabin in such a hurry, they likely didn’t have provisions for a winter in the mountains. They’d need to come out to hunt, and that would leave tracks.

  They had to have gone south.

  “I imagine they’ve gone south,” Penny said out of the blue.

  �
��Pardon?” It was as if she’d read his thoughts.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” She sat up a bit as the snow slowed some. “They wouldn’t go into the valley or get too close to Cañon City again, not after Adelaide ran from them. And I doubt they planned this well enough to winter in the higher elevations. South is their only option.”

  Ben laughed. It was uncanny that she’d been thinking over the same question and had come to the same conclusion.

  “Excuse me, but that’s the only logical explanation. Do you have a better one?” She twisted all the way around in the saddle. Her nose was bright red from the cold, but her eyes were fire. She was like a dragon from those old tales of knights and ladies, breathing flames in an instant.

  “Calm down, dragon. I laughed only because I’d just had the exact same thoughts.”

  “Oh. You agree, then. Good.” She started to turn around, but paused. Her eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?”

  “Dragon.” He offered no explanation, instead enjoying the range of emotions that played across her face. Irritation, anger, confusion, and finally, something he hoped was amusement.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because you have the incredible ability to go from sweetness to fire in under a second.”

  Her forehead scrunched up under the hood. “Is that a compliment?”

  He smiled but said nothing. Mostly because he’d just realized he’d never bestowed a nickname on anyone before, much less a woman. But it suited her, and he liked the way it threw her off guard.

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to think of something for you, now,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice.

  “I’ll eagerly await your decision,” he said as they broke through the trees and crossed the creek behind the hotel. He let her off at the rear of the hotel where no one would see them together. She ran inside, late for her lunch shift, as he led the horse to the stable.