After a search of the house turned up no women’s clothes, Jace gave her one of his shirts to wear because the tails were long, reaching to her knees. Like his bandanna, it smelled of him—leather and soap and horses. But it was still a pretty skimpy garment and felt trapped by her lack of suitable attire. She wasn’t ready to put on her own clothes, but couldn’t very well get out of bed if all she had to wear was a man’s shirt.
Trust or no, Kyle never lost sight of the fact that Jace was a man and, she observed, a full-blooded one. And as she improved, she became more and more of it, in a way that she had not been before.
That fact was made very clear to her one morning she woke and rolled over to see Jace shaving at a mirror in the little room that adjoined hers. She knew he slept there, just steps away from her own bed, but had been too weak and tired to give it much thought.
Fascinated, she studied him through the open doorway. He wore no shirt and his bare back was to her. A strange breathless flutter rippled through her when she looked at the planes and shadows of his shoulder blades. The muscles in his right arm and shoulder flexed ever so slightly as he plied the razor. The light scraping sound made goose bumps rise on her scalp and arms. When he tipped his head back to shave under his chin, his dark hair, wet from washing, dripped water down the column of spine into the waist of his jeans. Her gaze drifted lower, down narrow hips to his legs and back again.
Jace cleared his throat, bringing her out of reverie. Hastily she averted her eyes and sat up on edge of the bed away from his door. Her face warm, but this time not from fever.
No man had made her blush before. Although she had not fully submerged into Kyle’s persona until recently, Kyla had hidden behind a tomboy’s demeanor and clothes for most of her young womanhood. It wasn’t that she hadn’t liked being a girl, but Hardesty had robbed her of the freedom to be one. And in trying to fend him off, she had kept all men away from her.
Hank had been different. He’d taken her as she was, hurts and all, and made her his wife despite her straightforward opinions and need for independence. He knew that their marriage would be in name only. And she had not loved him the way a woman was supposed to love her husband. He had told her he would wait until she was ready, until the time was right. The time never came. But now the man in the other room intrigued her, despite her entrenched fears.
Without thinking, she put her hand to her hair. She had managed to take enough sponge baths to stay fresh, but her hair was another story. Days of being confined to bed had turned it into an itchy, snarled mat. She tried to comb it out with her fingers, but it was useless.
“I think we can fix that.”
She jumped at the sound of Jace’s voice and spun to face him. He stood in the doorway, still without a shirt, and she didn’t know where to look. His jeans hung low and snug on his hips. Her immediate impression was of a man slender but powerfully built. Of a flat belly and muscled flanks that led up to a wide chest. Of old eyes in a young face. Then her gaze darted to his left shoulder where a shiny pink scar marred an otherwise rugged torso. It appeared to be recently healed.
“Fix what?” Her words sounded impossibly high and skittish to her own ears.
“Your hair—” Jace began, then followed her gaze and glanced down at the old injury. “Oh, yeah,” he said, sounding a bit self-conscious. “That’s a souvenir from my last visit to this town. I got into a scuffle over a lady’s honor.”
“You were shot?”
He shrugged and leaned against the doorjamb. "It was a little more complicated than dealing with a bunch of rowdy miners who just wanted to contribute is a young boy’s corruption." He smiled ruefully. “You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by the time I got to the Magnolia Saloon.”
“Does it still hurt?” she asked quietly, wondering not only how long her pain would last, but his too.
“Sometimes. Especially when the weather changes.” He looked at her evenly. “You’ll have a scar, Kyla, there’s no getting around it. But your arm will heal.”
She turned her head. “Oh, I know. I don’t care how it looks. No one will ever see it, anyway.”
A moment of uncomfortable silence fell between them.
“About your hair,” he said finally.
“I’d love to wash it, but it would be pretty awkward with—“
“I’ll do it.”
She stared at him, astonished. Her first impulse was to refuse. It seemed too close, too personal, a touch that reached beyond the scope of bandaging her arm. She knew that her illness had forced him to the intimate task of undressing her, and she cringed at the thought, but that had been an emergency.
She wavered, though. There was a piece of soap in her gear, and a comb. The prospect of clean hair was too tempting to refuse. And a few moments later she found herself standing over the kitchen sink wearing a sling, his shirt, and her longjohns, while his strong hands massaged lather into her hair. They bumped hips and thighs, and his left arm crossed between her shoulders. Tense at first, she began to relax as her dislike of being touched retreated for the moment. In fact, the experience was both soothing and stirring. A little sigh of contentment escaped with her breath.
What an incredible turn this had taken: Jace Rankin, dangerous bounty hunter, a man with a killer’s reputation, was washing her hair.
Jace’s thoughts were running along the same path. Of all the jobs he’d done in his life, being a nursemaid was a new one for him. Never mind that it felt kind of nice, his hands in her sudsy hair, or that the back of her neck was remarkably smooth and pale, a place that begged a kiss—
“Ouch!” Kyla’s smoky-voiced protest bounced up from the bottom of the sink. “Don’t scrub so hard.”
“Sorry,” he muttered, easing up on her scalp. He kept telling himself that under ordinary circumstances this woman, tough and delicate, was not one he would look at twice. That it would be the biggest mistake he could make to entertain the ideas that had been stealing through his mind. Hell, she was Hank’s widow and Hank’s body was barely cold.
But the battle he had waged against her death had changed his viewpoint. People left their lives behind every hour of every day, and he’d been present to see a few of them go. Yet he’d never had the feeling he had that night when he realized that she was so close to death. Helpless. Angry. Even cheated somehow.
“Actually, you’re pretty good at this,” she commented, bringing his attention back to his task.
“Great, maybe I should give up bounty hunting and go to work in a barbershop.”
Her shoulders jumped when she giggled briefly. He’d made her laugh, he marveled. It was as though he’d discovered a small, rare treasure. He had never heard her laugh. He tried again.
“Oh, so you think I couldn’t do it? Can’t you picture me stropping my hunting knife to scrape the scruff off some leather-hided old bullwhacker? Hell, they’d stand in line for a block just to be shaved by a famous bounty hunter.”
“They probably would. And I could tell them I was your first customer,” she teased, laughing again, and he joined her. That felt kind of nice, too.
He rinsed her hair with clear water that had been warmed in the teakettle. Then he rubbed her head with a thin towel he’d found in the chest upstairs. “Sit over here by the stove.” He pulled a chair close to the heat and handed her the comb.
Settling in the chair, she started working out the tangles, which were considerable in her thick hair. “This feels so much better.”
He surveyed the jagged edges that began to emerge as she forced the comb through. Gesturing at the water-darkened mahogany mass, he said, “You know, I’ll bet I could straighten that up. I found a funny-looking pair of scissors around here the other day.”
A look of grave doubt crossed her small features, and her hand stilled. “Oh, I don’t know—”
“Yeah, sure, I can do it. Well, I couldn’t make it any worse than it is now.”
She dropped her gaze to her lap, then after a pause looked up again wi
th a defiant expression. “I wasn’t tryin’ to be pretty, y’know, so you can just forget about that. I’m supposed to be Kyle Springer.”
Jace was beginning to realize that anytime she felt threatened, or criticized, or hurt, she retreated behind Kyle for protection.
“Kyle Springer can have an even haircut, can’t he?” he asked more kindly.
She nodded slightly. “Yes, I guess so . . .”
“All right, then.” He retrieved the scissors from the parlor and stood behind her to inspect the damage she’d done. “Have you ever seen scissors like this?” He held them out for her to see. “What could a person cut with these little short blades? They’re like a toy.”
She reached for them with a tentative hand. “No,” she said finally, her voice growing softer. “They aren’t a toy. They’re embroidery scissors. They’re used to cut thread so the blades don’t need to be long. My mother had a pair like this.” She gripped them briefly before handing them back.
“Well, they’re hair-cutting scissors now. What did you use to do this the first time? An ax?”
“No, a razor. I was in a hurry the night I did it. In a hurry to get away from Hardesty. I was afraid he’d kill me after I slashed his face.”
Jace came around to stand in front of her while he trimmed the sides of her hair.
She sat just low enough in the chair that he was forced to lean forward and look into her face as he worked. He was suddenly very aware of her, the turquoise eyes, the smell of her washed hair, the light scent of sage that clung to her even now. And with her hair combed back he realized that her face was more than pretty. He glanced down at her mouth, full and close, and knew he wouldn’t have to lean in much closer to touch it with his own . . .
She looked up at him. “I’m hoping I’ll get to grow it back someday. You won’t cut it too short, will you?”
The plaintive question went straight to his heart. “No, we’re just going to trim it up.” He wanted to know what had happened to this woman, why she’d given up the person she really was. Keeping his eyes on his work and his face screwed up with the effort of this unfamiliar task, he said casually, “I think you’ve practiced being Kyle for a long time.”
She sighed slightly. “Sort of.”
“Because of Tom Hardesty?” He combed the wet hair that just brushed her collarbone and trimmed a tendril that hung by itself.
Snip.
“Partly”
Snip.
“Pestered you a lot, did he?”
“I thought that dressing like a tomboy would keep him away.”
“You’re pretty convincing. It must have worked.”
Snip snip.
Reaching out, she stopped his hand holding the scissors and stared straight ahead into his shirtfront. She took two deep breaths, then spoke with a flat, hard voice.
“It didn’t. He raped me in the barn last fall.”
CHAPTER SIX
“What the hell do you mean you lost her?” Tom Hardesty was working up to a fine white-hot rage. “You were in the same goddamned room with her, and Rankin too!”
Hobie McIntyre faced him on the back porch at the Springer ranch house. His red, shifting eyes betrayed uneasiness. “But like I said, I didn’t know it was her straight off. Not until just afore the shootin’ started.” He held up his right hand to prove his point. It was wrapped in a dirty bandanna.
“You said you could find her, and that’s what I’m paying you to do.”
“But she was wearin’ a disguise—she looked like a draggle-tailed plowboy, not the way you talked about her. And she had on a hat.” That last, apparently, was meant to explain everything.
“I showed you her picture before you left, McIntyre. And I told you she might be wearin’ men’s clothes. What more did you need?”
“Mebbe you mentioned them boys’ duds, but you got all hot and bothered talkin’ about what a fine-lookin’ woman she is. So round and soft and pleasin’, inside and out, I b’lieve you said. And with a long red mane and smooth skin. I figgered her to look like her pitcher ‘cept with pants, so that’s what I was lookin’ for. I wasn’t lookin’ for no short-haired hellcat who spits and curses and can fire a gun. Shee-it, I didn’t see nothin’ about her that was worth gettin’ hard for, much less cut up with a knife”—he gestured at the scar on Tom’s face—“or shot in the hand.” He took off his battered hat and beat it against his thigh to shake out the dust. "Why, I bet she can even piss standin’ up."
Tom grabbed McIntyre by the front of his shirt and slammed him against an upright. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, and I’m not paying for it. If she and Rankin are in the eastern section, why did you come back here? Why aren’t you looking for them?”
“Their trail just dried up after that,” he protested. “Me and Lem, we searched for days. I thought they’d be easy to find, with her hurt and all, but Rankin’s too slippery.”
Tom released him. “Hurt—what happened to her?”
“I dunno, exactly,” McIntyre hedged. “There was a lot of shots fired. She shot at me, I fired a couple of times, Rankin was shootin’.”
“Is she dead? Is that why you aren’t looking for her?” he demanded.
McIntyre shook his head. “No, no! She just got winged somehow.”
So, now she would have a scar, too, Tom thought with satisfaction. He wished he could have been the one to inflict it. “You get out there and you find them again. If you don’t, you’d better not come back here or I’ll shoot you myself. I might just do that anyway if you’re still here in five minutes. I want her here and I want Rankin dead. Do whatever it takes, use as many men as you need. Now get out of here before I change my mind about using you for target practice.” He gave McIntyre a push off the porch to get him started, then spun on his heel and thundered back into the kitchen.
At the stove, Mayella jumped and stared at him with wide eyes. She looked like she must have heard all the shouting outside. Well, good, he thought. He didn’t want anyone, not anyone to think that Tom Hardesty was a man to be trifled with. Not for one damned minute.
“Y-your supper is almost ready, Mr. Hardesty,” she said, a spoon in her hand.
He didn’t want to eat. He wanted to smash his fist through something. That proud bitch was still out there because Hobie McIntyre had just walked away from her! It was really Kyla’s fault, though. If she hadn’t run off, if she’d done as she was told—
The fury raging in him needed a release, the kind that he’d found with Kyla squirming under him that night in the barn. She’d fought like a wildcat, but in the end he’d overpowered her, humbled her. He wished she was here now, by God. He would have her on her knees and teach her a lesson in respect she wouldn’t forget.
She wasn’t here, though, damn it. She was off running around the countryside with that bastard Jace Rankin.
He glanced at the girl at the stove.
But Mayella was here . . . soft, timid Mayella.
He smiled and took two steps toward her. “I’m not hungry for supper, Mayella. I’m hankering for a taste of something else.”
She backed up, shaking her head, alert as a doe. “N-now, Mr. Hardesty, this stew is all there is.” She knew what he wanted. He could see it in her wide eyes, hear it in her quavering voice. Her fear both annoyed him and aroused him. He shot out a hand and grabbed her by the back of the neck. She shrieked and pulled against his grip, stiff with terror, her hands in two fists pressed side by side to the base of her throat.
“Come on now, Mayella,” he crooned, smiling again. He could feel sweat popping out on his scalp and down his back. “You’re supposed to help out when you’re here. There’s no woman around to do the little things a man needs.”
Her eyes were huge and her whole body shook. “I—I’m only here to cook and c-clean. Th-that’s all. My pa is coming—“
“Abel won’t be here for another half hour. And tonight we’re going to do something besides cook and clean.” Suddenly, he pulled her to him and pressed a h
ard kiss on her mouth, muffling her protest. He could feel her lips mashed against her teeth, and he ran his tongue over them trying to loosen her up. Groping for her small, firm breast, he pinched her nipple.
She broke free then, screaming, and ran toward the door. But he was too fast for her. Grabbing the back of her dress he jerked her back. The light fabric gave way and tore open to reveal her plain white camisole and a hint of bare skin. The sight of it was like kerosene on Tom’s open fire.
Gripping her arm, he yanked her out of the way and kicked the door shut. “Don’t you make me mad, Mayella, honey,” he warned, grinning and breathing hard. “And you don’t need to bother with yelling—there’s no one to hear you for miles around.”
“P-please, Mr. Hardesty, let me go,” she begged in a whisper choked with sobs. “I want to go h-home.”
“You’ll go home,” he said, reaching for his belt buckle, when you’re finished.”
* * *
“Hardesty had been gone for three years, and I hoped gone for good. I even let my hair grow long, and sometimes I wore dresses, especially after Pa died . . . But then Hardesty came back to Blakely. As soon as he realized Pa wasn’t around, he started riding out to the ranch and trying to run things, acting like it was his right.”
Kyla kept her eyes on the worn tabletop and spoke into the cup of coffee that Jace had put in front of her. He sat on the other side of the table; she could feel his gaze resting on the top of her wet, bowed head. A slash of sunlight cut a path between them.
“I was sitting up that night in the barn with a mare that was ready to foal. When he walked in, I had a sense of—doom, I guess. There was no one around. Hank and the others were in the bunkhouse on the far side of the yard. His eyes had a wild look. Even though he pretended to be nice at first, I knew better. A skunk can’t change its stripes.”
Kyla paused. Talking about this was like reliving it. But not talking about it was almost worse. Only Hank knew what had happened that night, and he was dead now. Maybe if Jace understood how cruel and depraved Hardesty was, he would be willing to kill him instead of taking him to jail.
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