Desperate Hearts

by Alexis Harrington

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to marry again. I can survive on my own.”

  Chloe gave her a kind, probing look, but she asked no questions. “I’m sure you can. But life can become almost meaningless when you’re alone in the world.” She laughed. “I never would have imagined myself married to Travis. When I met him, I believed he’d escaped from prison. He was bad-tempered, rude, dangerous—certainly not the kind of man I had pictured as my husband.”

  Kyla stirred a drizzle of cream into her cup, intrigued by this description. Travis McGuire seemed to be the ideal example of devoted husband and father-to-be. “What changed your mind? Did you find out that you were wrong about him? That he was none of those things you thought?”

  Chloe laughed again and her green eyes sparkled. “Oh, my, no—he was! But beneath all that I found his true soul. He didn’t make it easy for me, I must admit.”

  “You two seem very happy together,” Kyla said, feeling that pang of envy again and the sudden wish that her life had been different.

  “We’re good for each other, I think.” Chloe glanced at the table top and Kyla thought a faint frown crossed her brow. “I was having trouble of my own when Travis walked into my backyard to answer an advertisement I’d placed for a blacksmith. My father had died leaving a mortgage on our house, and even though I took in washing, I couldn’t earn enough to make the payment. If not for Travis, I would’ve lost the home place.” She placed a tender hand on the life growing under her heart. “And missed out on a lot more.”

  “Trusting anyone came hard for him, and he had drifted so long, I didn’t think he’d be able to settle down. Funny, that was what he’d craved all his life—a home, a place to belong to. That, and to be cared about. I think that’s what Jace probably wants, too.”

  Kyla snapped up straight in her chair. “Jace!”

  The older woman sat back and considered her with a strangely knowing look. Finally, she put a hand on Kyla’s wrist. “Love can heal a lot of wounds, the ones that show and the ones that don’t.”

  * * *

  “Did you have a good time?” Jace asked Kyla as they walked back toward the hotel an hour later. Overhead, the stars rolled past, the constellations moving and changing like the hands on a clock.

  “Oh, yes, I did! It was nice to spend time talking to another woman. I haven’t had a chance to do much of that. I’m so glad I got to meet your friends,” she answered. Alert to every noise and movement around them, he walked beside her with one hand jammed into his pants pocket, the other clamped around his rifle. Occasionally, his arm brushed hers, or her shoulder lightly bumped him. She almost wished she could tuck her hand in the crook of his arm. Instead she wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “They seem so happy together, like they really love each other. Just the way I used to imagine married couples.”

  “I guess,” he mumbled. Then abruptly shifting subjects, he said, “I want to get an early start in the morning. I figure it’s about three days to Blakely. Does that sound about right to you?”

  As they approached a noisy saloon, he put his hand on the small of her back to steer her across the street. It lingered there, a warm, tentative touch that made her draw a deep breath.

  She could not wholly account for the restless tension between them. He wouldn’t look at her, and when she glanced at his cleanly chiseled profile against the lighted windows they passed, he seemed preoccupied. Now and then, his scent would drift to her, blended with a hint of whiskey, and she thought about what Chloe McGuire had said.

  “Jace?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  Even to her own ears, the question cracked through the darkness with the jarring impact of a gunshot. His hand fell away and he turned his head sharply to look at her. “What does that have to do with going to Blakely?”

  She stared straight ahead. She was glad that he couldn’t see the heat that filled her face. “Nothing. I just wondered.”

  He kept walking. The place where his hand had rested on her waist felt cold now and she shivered a bit.

  “Well, have you? Been in love, I mean?”

  A gulf of silence opened between them before he finally spoke.

  “No.” In the darkness, he sounded suddenly like an old man.

  Jace heard a lifetime of regret in his answer, and it shook him to his bones. He’d never cared about that stuff before. He couldn’t very well tell her that he wasn’t capable of loving someone—that Lyle had beaten it out of him.

  Until now, he hadn’t cared.

  Until he met this woman, he had been comfortable with his solitude and the dead spot in himself that took the place of feelings. Lately, though, that solitude had begun to seem like loneliness with a different name. And the dead spot, it wasn’t exactly dead after all. It was really just empty.

  He heard the rustle of her skirts as she walked next to him. “I think maybe love could save your soul.”

  An alarm bell went off in Jace’s head, and he gave her a sour look. Where the hell had that remark come from? Did the change of dress change her personality, too? “Save my soul—for what? Look, I’ve heard a trainload of salvation speeches over the years. I don’t have any interest in being ‘saved’.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about saving your soul for God, although there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m talking about saving it for yourself.”

  He could think of no response to that. What would it be like, he wondered again, to come home at night to a warm kitchen, mellow with lamplight and the aroma of a hot meal? To find his wife, soft and smiling, there to welcome him? To burrow beneath warm quilts with her on snow-laden winter nights, her skin bare and smooth against his? He could only daydream about it, and that, he’d begun to realize, wasn’t a smart thing to do. That kind of daydreaming could tie a man up in knots and make him do something dumb.

  They reached the hotel and Jace couldn’t say that it made him happy. Despite the questions that she churned up in his mind, he had enjoyed walking next to Kyla, listening to the sound of her smoky voice and the whisper of her skirts.

  “Let me go first,” he said in a low voice, and his eyes touched on her red hair. “Better cover your head with your shawl, too.”

  She cringed and pulled up the shawl with a sudden, jerky movement. “Do you think—?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know, but it’s best to be safe.”

  Jace led them inside, but the main floor was empty except for a cadaverous-looking clerk who sat at a roll-top desk behind the counter. Dozing with his feet on the desk, he didn’t wake as they crossed the short lobby to the stairs, but snored on.

  They stepped lightly in the uncarpeted second-floor hall to reach Kyla’s room. Jace heard low voices behind a couple of doors, but the building was quiet for the most part.

  Taking the key from her, he turned it in the lock. “I want to have a look in there before you go inside.” He glanced around the empty room, then pulled a match from his pocket and flicked it with his thumbnail. Kyla took it from him and lit the lamp mounted on the wall.

  Now he stood in the hall again, looking at her in the open doorway. He felt awkward, not wanting to go to own room, but reluctant to stay. She gazed at him with those turquoise eyes and lowered her shawl to shoulders. Her slim, white throat came into view. What would it feel like to press a kiss there?

  “Are we leaving at daybreak?” she asked, as if she the tension, too, and tried to cover it with small talk.

  “A little later, maybe. We want to get there, but we can let the chill burn off the morning a bit. You should probably get another coat before we set out, anyway. The days aren’t going to turn warmer now.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have the money for a coat.”

  “I’ll get it. You can add it to the list of the other stuff want to pay for,” he said. “But I think this was money well spent.” Carefully, he touched the lacy edge of the wide flounce that trimmed her gown’s neckline.
He stood close enough to smell the faint, clean scent of her skin. He looked up at her again—gazing at her roused his desire. “You’re beautiful.” Voicing the thought came hard to him—he was unaccustomed to expressing such sentiments.

  “I am?” she asked in barely more than a whisper. Her eyes were riveted on his face and he felt her breath fan his hand.

  Yes, she was. The delicate planes of her face offered a dozen places he wanted to kiss. Her long lashes, dark and lush, framed her eyes and made them offer promises he knew she could not keep. He wanted to skim his hands along her breasts and feel their fullness against his palms. He longed to sleep with her tucked in his arms and his bed.

  But he could say none of those things. And those desires were only a daydream.

  “More beautiful than I can tell you.” He let fingertips rise from the flounce to graze her flushed cheek and run along the edge of her jaw. He knew it was folly, that suffocating frustration was sure to the result. But he just wanted to touch something soft in a life marked with coarseness. Dropping his gaze to her sensitive mouth, the mouth that never seemed to fit when she posed as a boy, he ached to caress it with his own lips.

  The feel of Jace’s hand on Kyla’s cheek raised goose bumps on her scalp and arms. The moment felt so close, so intimate. Her heart picked up its tempo, beating in a way that made her breath come a little faster.

  “Kyla.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Kyla, may I kiss you?” His voice was low, intense.

  “Please don’t ask,” she said, surprised that would seek permission.

  His hand dropped from her jaw and he backed up a pace. He drew his mouth into a tight line, and he looked as if she had slapped him.

  “You don’t need to ask,” she whispered again, hardly believing her own voice. Just a few days ago she’d promised herself that nothing like this would happen again. Now that promise evaporated like morning mist. She started to reach for his hand, but then thought better of it. “Just—just kiss me.”

  She heard his swift intake of air. Stepping closer again, he put his fingertips to her cheek

  At that moment, a door opened down the hall. Kyla flinched as though she’d been jabbed with a fork.

  “Goddamn it to hell,” Jace muttered at the intrusion. Quickly, he nudged her into the room and closed the door behind them. He leaned his rifle against the wall.

  Turning to her, he took her face between his hands lightly, with his thumbs resting under her chin, as if she were a bowl from which he might drink. He gazed at her like a man who was searching for his last hope. His eyes, which could be so cold, now seemed that they would melt her own frozen heart.

  When his mouth touched hers, she was unprepared the sweetness that coursed through her like drizzles of thick, warm honey. His lips moved over hers with a tender, aching hunger that excited rather than repelled her. She inhaled the smell of him—his shaving soap, a faint scent of whiskey, the essence that his alone. He surrounded her.

  Kyla’s heart pounded inside her chest, born of a feeling she’d never known. Not fear, not revulsion. It was much too thrilling for either of those.

  She was aware of all the sensations within and on her body: Jace’s hot touch, her heartbeat, her breath, her stockings silky on her legs, the smoothness of her chemise.

  He leaned against the wall behind him and his hands moved from her face to her hair as he deepened the kiss. Pulling her to him, he enfolded her in the strength of his embrace. She lost her balance and fell against his hard-muscled, lean body. He groaned deep in his throat—it was an anguished sound—and his arms around her tightened. Reaching to encircle his lean waist, her shawl fell from her shoulders. Through the fabric of his shirt he felt vital and warm.

  Jace broke the kiss and pressed his lips to her throat, just as he’d imagined doing earlier. Her pulse throbbed swiftly under his mouth. All the desire he felt for this woman, the yearning that had slumbered uneasily inside him, awakened now with a fiery need. She was beautiful, like a butterfly emerged from her chrysalis, and more tempting than any woman he’d ever known.

  He sought her lips again, this time teasing them with the tip of his tongue. She moaned softly, and arousal burned hotter and higher. Without thinking, he dropped his hands to her buttocks and pulled her to him, gently, rhythmically thrusting his hardness against her softness.

  Immediately, she stiffened and drew back, struggling to regain her feet. No, no, don’t pull away, he wanted to beg her. He didn’t want to let go of her, the only good thing left in a world gone so wrong.

  “Jace, don’t,” she demanded. She pushed hard at his chest, and he heard the alarm in her voice.

  The spell broken, he released her, his breath coming fast. He caught a glimpse of her fear. Somehow, the ribbon that held her hair back had come loose and hung over her shoulder. Her shawl lay in a puddle at her feet. Her mouth was red and slightly puffy. Had he done all that?

  He could have kicked himself. Was his memory so damned short that he’d forgotten what Hardesty had done to her? Or how easy it would be to lose the trust he’d won from her? He wasn’t even sure why that mattered, but he found that it did. Very much.

  “Kyla, wait—” He tried to put his hand on her arm, she backed up.

  “It’s time for you to be goin’,” she said. Kyle’s hard-edged speech contrasted wildly with the delicate, yellow-gowned woman who stood before him. She crossed her arms over her chest, withdrawing into herself, into Kyle.

  “Kyla—God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You prob’ly didn’t. But you go on now.” She stepped to the door and opened it.

  “In the morning—”

  “I’ll be ready to go.”

  Jace sighed and considered her set face. She didn’t look mad, exactly, but he couldn’t be sure what she was thinking. He was accustomed to being in control of most situations. Now he felt stupid and guilty as he picked up the Henry and backed into the hallway.

  “Well, I—aw, hell.” He turned on his heel and strode toward his room and didn’t look back. Behind him, the door closed and the key turned, distinct and unmistakable.

  Locking her in. Locking him out.

  It was the loneliest sound he’d ever heard.

  * * *

  Kyla lay in the darkness, the sheets cold against her where her drawers ended on her thighs. In fact, was acutely aware of all her senses. The feel of her chemise on her nipples, the loud tick of the walls in quiet night, the taste of a kiss—

  Yes, Jace had scared her. When he put his hands on her backside and pulled her to him, she felt the hard length of him against her abdomen. A confusion fears had collided in her mind—a fleeting, cruel image of that night in the barn, the strength she felt in Jace’s grip. But most of all, she was frightened by her own response, the sweet yearning that had grown inside her under his hands and his mouth.

  The stone in her heart, the one upon which she had carved her bitter vow to exist alone, was shaken to its very foundation. So was her opinion of Jace Rankin.

  He was hard and tough and merciless . . . wasn’t he? At a place called the Bluebird Saloon, he had failed as a man in some way that he wouldn’t talk about. In way that had even surprised Hank.

  But there was more to Jace than any of that. And layer by layer he was revealing another side to her, one that she would never have guessed lurked beneath that flinty veneer he showed to the world. She laid her palm over the locket, where it rested on her chest. A gold heart, the metal warmed with her body heat.

  She thought of what Chloe McGuire had said about him, that perhaps what he really wanted was a home and place to belong. Might he be the man who would accept her strengths and her failings, and build the kind of life at the ranch she had once envisioned?

  No, he was not. Where in the world did she get such an idea about the bounty hunter? Rolling to her side she wadded up her pillow with annoyance. She would make it on her own—Tom Hardesty was the only obstacle in her way, and she’d hired Jace to help her wi
th that. Why did she keep forgetting it?

  Kyla wasn’t certain she wanted to know. But as she gazed at a square of moonlight on the wall from under heavy lids, she made no more promises to herself about Jace.

  She didn’t think she would keep them.

  * * *

  Jace knew it was all different now. It had been one thing to take care of Kyla while she was sick, to wash her hair, to sneak half a kiss in a kitchen. At that, he’d thought those were all torture. But, they were nothing compared to tonight. Until tonight, he’d only guessed how she might look dressed as a female.

  Now he’d seen it. Felt it. And she was more womanly than he had imagined, more poignantly innocent that he had dreamed.

  He lay naked in the cold bed and tried to sleep, one arm thrown over his eyes. But his mind tormented him with the memory of her softness. He envisioned her tender mouth, he pictured running his hands over the bare curve and plane of her, suckling at her soft breast, reaching for the heat between her thighs, where completion and fulfillment waited. And afterward, sleeping in her arms—

  His arousal was swift and heavy, pulling him to the mattress. He felt edgy and restless, and drawn as tight as a fiddle string. Oh, hell, sleep would be hours away now.

  Aggravated, he dragged himself up to his elbow and reached for his shirt where it hung on the bedpost under his gun belt. He rummaged through the pockets he found a cheroot and a match.

  The room flared briefly with light when he struck the match on the iron bedpost. Pulling deeply on the cheroot, he cursed himself again. How was he going get her out of his head? Even tomorrow, when she dressed like Kyle for their trip to Blakely, he wouldn’t see her as the tough-talking female who masqueraded as a farm boy. For him, those, boys’ clothes would no longer screen her beauty.

  He flopped over on his back and sighed. No, maybe they wouldn’t, but Jace knew he had to conquer the images drifting through his mind. He had nothing to offer her, and he wouldn’t fit into her life.

  After Blakely, he and Kyla Springer Bailey would part company. And not a moment too soon.