Desperate Hearts

by Alexis Harrington

  The couple of times that Jace had warned her against that danger, there was nothing she could do except shrug it off. But now, in the shop’s window, she saw her reflection. It was as if she were seeing herself for the first time, and her feeling of safety and courage faltered. Her shoulders were hunched and she had jammed her hands into her pants pockets, something Kyle would do. Her battered hat was pulled down tight on her head and she was wearing her binding again, made from strips of sheets she’d found in the house in Misfortune. The short hair, the straight shape and boy’s clothes—was this really what she had become? This?

  Looking beyond her own image, her eyes rose to a dress displayed in the shop window. There was nothing remarkable about it, but she stared at it longingly, as though it were the loveliest creation she’d ever seen. Made of forest green cotton, the full skirt was gathered to a point at the waist, and the three-quarter length sleeves were trimmed with two rows of long ruffles. The square neckline was cut for afternoon or evening wear and trimmed with smaller ruffles that matched the sleeves. A pair of high-button black kid boots stood next to it, along with a bag and a parasol. Kyla didn’t even realize that she’d pressed her gloved hands flat to the plate glass until a customer appeared on the other side of the window with the shopkeeper. The woman pointed at the dress and he took it out of the display.

  “Oh,” she moaned in a whisper, unaccountably disappointed. For just an instant, she put her hand to her hair. Her throat worked and her vision blurred with tears. She turned toward the wall, worried that someone would see Kyle’s red eyes. Damn it, what was wrong with her? Getting shot, losing her home, seeing Hank die, those were things to cry over, not this.

  Inside the shop, Jace had just asked about McGuire’s blacksmith shop when he saw Kyla through the glass.

  She gazed up at the dress and followed it with her eyes as it was taken out of the window. Her forlorn expression twisted his heart, and he wanted to look away. She made him think of a young girl watching a beautiful doll, one that she knew she could never have.

  Jace shook his head. Jesus, but he was getting soppy and sentimental—the old man must be turning over in his grave. The idea gave him grim satisfaction. When he walked outside, he found Kyla brushing Juniper’s mane with firm, determined strokes. She pulled the brush through the horsehair and smoothed her hand over it again and again, until it looked as silky as a woman’s long hair. Maybe as silky as her own had been . . .

  Pushing aside the notion, he bounded down the steps and untied his horse. “All right, let’s go. We’ll get rooms at the hotel, then I’ll go talk to Travis.”

  She nodded shortly and put the brush back in her saddlebag. Then with one wistful backward glance at the shop window, she untied Juniper and hoisted herself onto his back.

  “I didn’t care about that old dress, anyway,” she muttered.

  * * *

  Blacksmith And Livery

  T. McGuire, Prop.

  Jace paused in the street and considered the tall letters on the wall before him. The building was new, the paint bright. Around the foundation there was still a bit of sawdust left from its construction. Taking a deep breath, he walked toward the doorway where he lingered for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Inside, the timbers were pale and clean, and a scent of new wood was strong enough to drift above the acrid smell of hot iron. Metal striking metal echoed off the walls.

  The place didn’t seem ominous. Jace didn’t get that knot in his stomach that most blacksmith shops gave him. Instead, he had a sense of a man’s accomplishment and hard work, a feeling of permanence.

  A man wearing jeans and a long leather apron stood at the forge pumping the bellows while a chunk of iron he held in the coals turned white-hot. His back was turned to Jace but his tall leanness and stance were familiar.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” he called over his shoulder.

  Jace smiled. Travis McGuire would have made a tracker or a good bounty hunter. He had managed to elude Jace for months while he searched for him last year. He didn’t know any other man who was as aware of the moment and his surroundings as Travis was. It seemed as if he had eyes in the back of head. Only Many Braids and Jace himself surpassed him in his skills. His single weakness, as Jace Remembered, was his temper.

  “How did you know I was standing here?” he asked.

  “I heard your . . .” Travis let the sentence hang. His head came up slowly, and he turned to face him. He held the tongs like a weapon, with the red, glowing crescent of metal still clutched in its jaws. He looked stunned, wary, before his expression smoothed out behind a blank mask and gray eyes that lightened to almost silver.

  “I heard your spurs. I didn’t expect to see you again, Jace. What are you doing here?”

  Jace took a couple of steps forward, mindful of the tongs. He could understand the man’s mistrust, but he hadn’t expected it. “I went to Misfortune to find you. Albert DeGroot said you moved up here.”

  Travis nodded slightly. “So you found me. What do want?”

  “To talk to you about Celia.”

  With two tense strides, Travis moved closer. "We said whatever was left to say about her a year ago. She’s been dead a long time, and I put it behind me. I didn’t kill her and I don’t know who did.”

  “But I do know. He was a saddle bum named Sawyer Clark.”

  Travis blinked and lowered the tongs as though they were suddenly too heavy. He swallowed hard but his voice had a strangled sound. “You’re positive? Really positive?”

  Jace nodded. “Yeah. He admitted it to me, and to bunch of witnesses.”

  “Where is he?” His tone was dark and bitter. Jace thought that he looked ready to throw off the leather apron and strap on his gun to go after Clark.

  “He’s dead.”

  The color drained out of Travis’s face. “You’re sure?” he repeated. “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes.” Jace recounted the events leading up to afternoon in the Magnolia Saloon—Clark’s arrogant bragging and the brief gunfire that erupted. “I saw his body stretched out at the undertaker’s.”

  Breathing a heavy sigh, Travis sank down on an upended nail keg by the door and sat hunched with his elbows on his knees. “God, after all those years in prison . . . all the nightmares . . . it’s finally over,” he said, his gaze fixed on the new planking between his boots. “I’m finally free.” He was silent a long moment, then he looked up at Jace again. Pulling off his heavy gloves, he put out his hand. “Thanks, Jace, for letting me know.”

  They shook hands. “It took me a year to find him, but I did it.” He gave him a rueful smile. “You didn’t know what to think when you saw me, did you? I figured that coming here was the least I could do after, well, you know, everything. I’m sorry about it all. Lyle was a mean bastard.”

  “Yeah. He was,” Travis agreed. “I don’t know if he really gave a damn about anything or anyone except Celia. But you and I, we go back a long way.”

  He glanced at the floor again. “You were the closest friend I ever had. I loved you like a brother.”

  Jace shifted from one foot to the other. Marriage and time must have mellowed Travis McGuire, he thought. Certainly he looked more content, as if he had found his place in the world after a lifetime drifting. But even more striking was his openness. “I never should have let the old man convince me that you murdered Celia. We were friends a lot longer than we were enemies.”

  Travis shrugged. “But it’s over. Even you will have put this behind you and go on with your life. What do you think you’ll do now?”

  Jace turned over a crate and sat down across from Travis while he pondered the question. It was one that had crept into his thoughts every night since he shot Clark. What would he do now?

  “I’m headed to Blakely with a woman I met in Silver City. She needs help with some trouble over there.” And after that—what? a voice in his head asked.

  “A woman, huh?” Travis lifted his brows and a smile crossed his fea
tures.

  Jace shook his head. “Don’t go getting any notions. Kyla isn’t your typical female.” That was an understatement. “She’s a little rough around the edges.”

  Travis rested his head against an upright behind him. “I don’t recall that you ever let any woman get too close, typical or not. What kind of trouble is she in?”

  “It’s a complicated story, but there are some men looking for her and it’s best that they don’t find her.” Knowing he could trust Travis to keep it quiet, briefly he explained Kyla’s predicament. He left out the details of her true grudge against Hardesty; he figured that was her business, and it was told to him in confidence. “We’ll be heading for Blakely at first light, but I told her I had to stop here first.” Jace lifted his hat and resettled it with a slight sigh. “We’ve had a hell of a trip so far.”

  Travis crossed his ankle over his knee. “So you’re the one being chased this time? It’s a lousy feeling, isn’t it?”

  Jace’s head came up sharply at the comment, but the man’s face registered no malice. “Yeah, well, it isn’t just my own back I have to watch. But Kyla is pretty tough—brave, too. Kind of like your wife would be if she wore pants and a Colt rig.”

  Travis chuckled. “You ought to come by for dinner tonight. Chloe would be happy to see you.”

  Jace’s laugh was flat. “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet.” Nobody was ever glad to see a bounty hunter.

  “Sure she would be. After all, you took the bullet that was meant for me that day in Misfortune.”

  “I imagine she probably thought I got what I deserved for tracking you down,” he muttered.

  “No, come on to dinner, and bring this wildcat Kyla. It sounds like she might enjoy the company of another woman for a change.”

  Jace mulled it over. For Kyla . . . “All right, we’ll be there.”

  * * *

  Kyla lay across the white iron bed in her hotel room, wandering in and out of sleep. Her healing arm still produced a dull ache and she had pushed a pillow beneath it. Through the open window the muted sounds of wagons, braying mules, and general traffic drifted up from the street.

  After a quick wash in the tub at the end of the hall, she was forced to put on her jeans and shirt again, since those were the only clothes she had. The simple luxury of being able to soak in a warm tub seemed so long past, she wondered if she’d ever know it again. As it was, her bath had been hurried and furtive, but least she was clean.

  As she dozed, the street noise faded and the sweeping grasslands of the ranch drifted past the inside of her closed eyelids. From the porch she saw a March sky at sunset, with huge dark clouds erupting on a delicately blue horizon, shot with bright arrows of the last daylight. Rain was coming. She smelled it. And she could see the vapor of her own breath—it would be a cold night. But inside the house it was cozy, with a good blaze in the fireplace. Inside the house he waited for her—a man with a tender touch that kindled a fire in her, too, when he held her. A man, lean and muscled, who smelled like leather and horses, with eyes the same color as the pale blue sky. In the house . . . she had only to go to him. In his arms she found strength and desire, and her troubles melted away under the flame that pulsed through her body. In his arms . . . in their bed . . .

  Kyla came awake with a jolt, making the bedsprings squeak. She shot up to her elbow, her heart thumping in her chest. No, not Jace Rankin, she thought feverishly. She didn’t want to dream about him, or any man. How could she?

  Why did he, of all people, invade her sleep and give her such strong feelings of both sanctuary and yearning?

  She didn’t know. But she admitted to herself that lately, whenever she wasn’t thinking about the ranch, or her revenge, or the past, Jace materialized in her mind. And last night, when he’d told her about his stepfather, he seemed more human to her, less invincible, and therefore infinitely more dangerous to her—

  A sudden soft rap on the door jerked her out of her thoughts. She froze, then grabbed for her revolver which hung in its holster on the bedpost.

  Creeping to the door, she stood with her shoulder pressed to the wall next to it, her gun at chest level. “Who is it?” she demanded in Kyle’s surliest voice.

  “Kyle, it’s me.”

  Rolling her eyes with an exasperated, relieved sigh, she reached down and unlocked the door. “Why are you prowling around out there in the hall?” she asked irritably and pulled open the door. Fright put an edge on her voice.

  Jace looked at the gun she still clutched. “I wasn’t prowling—I came straight up here.” He closed the door behind him. He carried a large package wrapped with brown paper and tied with twine.

  Kyla holstered the gun and moved closer to the window. He seemed to fill the little room with his presence. How odd that she should be unnerved by that, when they’d already spent so much time alone together, both on the road and in Misfortune. She lowered her eyes, as if he might see the evidence of her dream written there. “D-did you talk to McGuire?”

  He tossed the package on the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. He would have to sit there, she thought. Taking off his hat, he raked his fingers through his hair. It really was such beautiful hair, long and thick, Kyla thought, distracted by the urge to touch it. She wished he’d cover it again. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned against the window frame.

  “Yeah, I found him. He was glad to know what happened in Silver City. Even though he was released from prison almost two years ago, I guess he didn’t really feel like a free man until today.” A pensive expression crossed his face.

  “Did you tell him about me?”

  He nodded. “A little. I told him where we’re going next. We can leave tomorrow morning and head to Blakely. Tonight, though, we’ve been invited to dinner with Travis and Chloe. I told him we’d wait until nightfall just in case any of Hardesty’s people are around.”

  “Dinner! Oh no, I wouldn’t be comf—I mean I don’t—” Self-consciously, she glanced down at her shirt and jeans and touched her damp hair. She thought again of the green dress in the store window and her chest grew tight. “No, they’re your friends, you should go.”

  His gaze swept over her, making her even more uncomfortable. Rising from the mattress, he put hand on the package. “This might make you change your mind.”

  Kyla surveyed the parcel warily. “What is it?”

  He smiled. She wished he wouldn’t smile like that, as if he knew what she was thinking. “Come and open it. Unless you’re chicken.”

  Instinctively, she rose to the taunt. “I’m not chicken! I’m not afraid of you, Jace Rankin, or anyone else.”

  “Prove it, then, and see what’s in here," he said. He was teasing her, she knew, but something else lurked in the blue depths of his eyes.

  She edged one step closer and craned her neck with brows raised, as if the package held a bundle of snakes.

  “Tell you what,” he continued and plucked his hat from the mattress, “I’ll go get washed up, and you open this. I’ll be back here in an hour or so to take you to dinner.”

  “But—”

  He sighed, and when he spoke the teasing was gone from his softly uttered words. “It’ll be all right, Kyla. I didn’t buy this to make you feel bad.” His expression was solemn, unguarded. Then he opened the door and walked out.

  Kyla left the window and went to close the door behind him. Leaning against the smooth wood panel, she heard his footsteps move down the hall and finally fade away.

  She pressed her fist to her mouth. Oh, she didn’t want him to look at her like that! It wasn’t just desire saw there, it was a glimpse of his soul and a man who was perhaps even lonelier than she was. She didn’t want to think about any of that—the promise of seeing Tom Hardesty finally pay had brought her back from the edge of death. That was the only thing wanted to focus on.

  She looked at the brown-paper package. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d opened a gift—this wasn’t a gift, she was sure, but it seemed like one. What
had prompted him? She edged closer to bed.

  With a tentative hand she reached out and pulled the loose end of the slip knot tied in the string. Her hesitation fell away with it and she hurried to open paper.

  Kyla felt her jaw drop, and the breath left her lungs. Tucked within the wrapping she found a dress, a beautiful butter yellow dress, much lovelier than the one she’d seen in the dry-goods window. Almost reverently, she lifted it by its shoulders to look at its full length. The big leg-o’-mutton sleeves tapered to a slim fit from elbow to wrist. Its wide, ruffled yoke was trimmed with narrow lace and the bottom edge of the bodice was gathered at the waist where it had been stitched to the skirt with a V-shaped waistband.

  Just holding the dress against herself made her feel lighter. It had been so long since she’d had anything really nice like this. Rushing to the small mirror over the washstand, she tried to see how it might look on her. She stood on tiptoe and ducked down, getting only a partial view.

  But in the reflection she caught a glimpse of the bed behind her, and saw that there was more in package. Laying the dress out on the mattress, she plowed through layers of tissue and found shoes and stockings, a beautiful underskirt trimmed with an embroidered ruffle, a white cambric chemise with a pair of matching drawers, even a lacy shawl and a velvet ribbon for her hair. A whole ensemble, and an expensive one. Her face felt as hot as a flatiron at idea of a man buying underwear for her. In fact, the dress alone was a highly improper gift. She might have lived most of her life as a tomboy, but Kyla knew that much about what was acceptable between a man and a woman.

  And as much as she wanted to, the idea of wearing a dress, of stepping out from behind Kyle and revealing her femininity, made her feel very vulnerable. Being herself, a female, had rarely been safe for her.

  She knew she couldn’t accept any of this.

  Disappointment mingled with anger and she flopped on the bed and scowled at the lovely garments around her. Jace didn’t seem like a man who could divine the secrets a woman held close. But that’s what he had done, she thought as she fingered the embroidered edge of the underskirt. In her heart she yearned to be Kyla again, as much as she craved revenge on Tom Hardesty. Jace was giving her chance to do just that, to be feminine.