Desperate Hearts

by Alexis Harrington

  “But he was looking for me, not you,” she pointed pressing her hand to her chest. “It wouldn’t have mattered if they found me with you or by myself. Hardesty sent them.”

  “Do you think it should have taken five men and a plan to steal you? They were hunting for you, yes, but McIntyre had a bone to pick with me, probably because of the kind of work I do. He wanted to kill me. Even if Hardesty ordered him to do it, I knew from the first time I saw him that the idea had him drooling to get at me. Kyla, there’s a territory full of men out there bearing grudges like that, or kids who want to face off with me in the street to see if they can outdraw me. I’m just one man—I have to watch my back all the time and I’m the only one doing it. I can’t let anything distract me that could get me killed.” He paused and added in a lower voice, “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not rushing to meet it, either. And you might get caught in the crossfire.”

  “You could quit—do something else like—“

  “Like what? Ranching? Farming?” he asked, lacing the words with a sarcastic edge. He stood up impatiently and began pacing again. “I can’t quit. I don’t want to quit!” he lied.

  “You’re scared!” she charged, jumping to her feet.

  “The hell I am!" he said, taken aback. No one could accuse him of being a coward, and no one had since Lyle died. “I’m not scared of anything or anybody.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. It isn’t that you can’t care about anyone. You’re just afraid to. It would mean admitting that you need someone besides yourself. To you, facing men with loaded guns is safer.” They stood almost chest to chest, breath coming hard, the rising tension like sparks between them.

  Jace felt a flush creep up his neck and over his face. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Kyla,” he warned in a low voice. “You’d better leave it alone.”

  Unflinching, she lifted her chin, stubborn and challenging. “No. After last night and today, I think we should talk about it,” she dared him. “Tell me the truth.”

  “We’re not going to talk about it,” he stressed in a tone that had made mule skinners back down in saloon fights.

  But this tough female—damn, she only swallowed and kept her eyes fixed on his.

  Unable to withstand the piercing, soul-searching look she directed at him, he turned away and changed the subject. “We’re leaving tomorrow so you’d better get something to eat and turn in. You take my blankets.”

  “No, thank you.”

  He turned back to her and stabbed an index finger in her direction. “I still get the last word here, and you’re to do as you’re told. So take my blankets and don’t argue. We’ll get you a coat and a bedroll tomorrow.”

  “I’ll pay—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ll pay me back when we to Blakely." He gestured in the general direction of her breasts. “And you’d better start wrapping yourself up again. I don’t want to be out on the road and run risk of having someone discover that you’re actually a woman. It’s a lot less dangerous traveling with a boy named Kyle.”

  Her eyes glittered like hard, blue-green agates. “Yeah, well, Kyle is the one who took that bullet for you in Cord.” She dragged her sleeve across her nose. “So I guess it’s less dangerous only for you.”

  * * *

  Kyla lay awake in the musty, dark cabin, the dead of night surrounding her. On the other side of the small room she could hear Jace’s even, quiet breathing. Whether he slept she didn’t know, but it sounded like it. Obviously he was untroubled by the same turmoil churning inside of her. He’d settled down on the floor with his head propped against his saddle and his ankles crossed. Tonight the Henry lay beside him. He’d once told her that he thought more of that rifle than he did most humans, and she was beginning to believe him.

  A return of the hostile, unfriendly mood of their early days together made their dismal meal of biscuits and hot coffee silent and awkward. Jace withdrew into the solitary figure that he presented to the world, and she wore Kyle’s sullenness to hide her double pain. Not only did she suffer keenly from him shutting her out, he either didn’t realize or didn’t care how much it hurt to be consigned again to the prison of Kyle Springer.

  Barring her experiences with Hardesty, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so miserable and lonely. She wished she could roll over and weep into Jace’s blanket, but he would hear her. And when she thought of the night before, she felt even worse. The heat and passion that had blazed between them only twenty-four hours earlier now burned as anger.

  Better that she had kept her attention focused on her original goal of vengeance instead of straying into this matter of two hearts. But that goal was not as clear now as it had once been. Oh, she was still determined to prevail, to see Tom Hardesty pay. Only . . . She shifted on the sagging rope bedstead, seeking a comfortable position that continued to elude her. Only, after she’d nearly died in Misfortune, she’d doggedly believed that her craving for revenge had saved her. That the powerful presence dragging her back into her body during that odd dream with Many Braids had been determination to see justice done.

  Now she realized that it had been love, and she felt trapped by the emotion. She had no outlet for it, the man she wanted to give it to would not receive it or return it. The glimpse he’d permitted her of the true man behind his reputation had disappeared again. She let her fingers drift over her locket.

  Though she lay wrapped in his blankets just a couple of feet from him, Kyla missed Jace.

  * * *

  “Sorry, Mr. Hardesty, I still haven’t seen a wire for you.”

  Tom Hardesty swore audibly under his breath, a malignant vituperation. On his side of the counter Edner Pomeroy blanched, his expression one of cringing regret.

  “I know you’re expecting something important, so I’m ready and waiting for that message to come through. Just as soon as I see it, I’ll drop everything to bring it along personally.”

  Today, Tom found the man’s fawning to be irritating. “See that you do, Edner.” Without another word, he slammed out of the telegraph office and looked at the pale blue autumn sky. Brown leaves scudded over the dry street and gathered against the edges of the sidewalks, and the wind had a decided bite. That, and the business with McIntyre was enough to make him turn toward the Pine Cone Saloon. It was almost four o’clock—that was late enough for a little elbow-bending at the bar.

  Three days, three long, silent days, and no word from Hobie McIntyre or any of his men. Goddamn it, if he had let Kyla and Rankin slip away from him once more Tom would— Well, there wasn’t much Tom could do. He didn’t expect to see McIntyre again if he failed. But Luke Jory would have plenty to say about it. His kettle was already boiling over this situation, and he was not a patient man.

  As Tom passed the shops on his way to the Pine Cone, he made deliberate eye contact with a clerk here, a proprietor there. It was a useful tactic he’d learned from Jory to keep people around town aware of the Vigilance Union. Not much happened in Blakely that he and Jory didn’t know about.

  Tom’s own anger, which he rarely bothered to curb, was on the rise over gossip he’d heard—people seemed to know that Rankin was on his way. How they’d heard was a mystery to him since no telegrams came in or went out without his knowledge. It was as if the man’s reputation had a power of its own, carried on the wind and whispered in men’s minds.

  Although he’d never seen the bounty hunter, he’d begun dreaming of an eight-foot-tall, rifle-toting angel of death, mowing down rows of adversaries with a single shot that felled men like wheat in a hailstorm. He shook off the image. Jesus, this was no time to get jittery.

  But he’d rather face the phantom from his dreams than Luke Jory if he were to get wind of the rumor. Since his last message from McIntyre, Tom had visited the telegraph office more and more often every day, looking for word that the bounty hunter was dead and Kyla captured. But there was no such news.

  He paused in front of the saloon as he pictured Rankin’s imag
e again. Tom had to solve this problem. No goddamned bounty hunter was going to make him look like a horse’s rump.

  Or steal his woman.

  * * *

  Perversely, now that Jace had decided he must distance himself from Kyla, he wanted her more than ever. Their last night in the cabin he told himself that he didn’t sleep because the episode with McIntyre had him leery of intruders. But that didn’t explain why he was alert to every breath Kyla took, every restless movement she made during the night. Or why he wished to God that he could lie down with her again, if only to hold her in his arms and taste her kiss. He had pushed her away and now he had to live with the decision.

  Riding ahead most of the time, Jace felt her eyes burning into his back. She remained watchful but she stopped speaking, for the most part. When she did talk it was with a farm boy’s bad grammar, and she had taken up Kyle’s personal habits again. His memory of a soft, yellow-gowned, beribboned woman was a sore contrast to this belching, hostile female. In fact, she seemed to go out of her way to be obnoxious. He had himself to blame, he knew—he’d told her to resume the disguise, secretly hoping that it would distract him from the beauty that he knew lay underneath. Originally he’d been amused by Kyle Springer. Now the boy was downright irritating.

  In Dayville, they stopped at a general store to get Kyla another coat and a bedroll. Since Jace felt pretty certain that no one was following them, he took advantage of the freedom to buy them a decent meal in a chop house. Amid the busy clatter of dishes and silver, no one had seemed to recognize him so they placed their order with the stout woman waiting tables. Jace asked for a beer as well, but when Kyla tried to follow suit he sent the woman on her way.

  When she returned a few minutes later with their supper, Jace watched with brows lifted as Kyla wolfed her food with a fork she held like a shovel. At least she’d tucked her blue-checkered napkin into her shirt collar. “Hungry?” he inquired dryly.

  She gave him a sullen look, then put both elbows on the table and mopped up the gravy on her plate with a piece of biscuit that she shoved into her mouth.

  He scowled back, unable to stop himself. By God, if she had been a boy, he’d turn her over his knee and give her a smart paddling to teach her some respect. She’d been a snotty pain in the ass ever since the scene in the cabin last evening.

  “We’re about two days outside of Blakely,” he went on, doing his best to ignore her conduct. He took a long drink of beer, then added, “I think it’s time to let Hardesty know we’re coming.”

  She looked up. “Let him know—what for? We ought to sneak up and surprise him.”

  “Oh, he’ll be surprised. But a little mental advantage”—he tapped his temple—“won’t hurt, either. I have something in mind for him.”

  She shrugged, and poking another biscuit half into her mouth, chewed noisily.

  Short of a spanking he couldn’t deliver to a woman, he reached over and lightly tugged her ear in reprimand “You mind your manners, Kyle, or you’ll be eating in the livery stable with the horses.”

  Kyla sat back in her chair and glanced at her lap, as embarrassed as if he’d slapped her hands, and her face grew hot with shame. She knew she’d behaved terribly, but she was so angry and hurt that she couldn’t make herself be civil.

  She looked at the meal she pretended to enjoy, and wished she could, but it sat in her stomach like a rock. It was her own fault for gobbling it up like a hog. At least that was part of the reason.

  “I know how to handle Hardesty,” he continued quietly. “I’m going to make him sweat a little before I call him out. So we’ll need a place to hide for a couple days after we get to Blakely. Is there anyone you trust who can put us up?”

  She nodded. “Jim Porter would probably do it. He’s one of the Midnighters and his ranch is near town.”

  Jace threw a couple of silver dollars on the table and pushed back his chair. “All right, then. I’ve got one stop to make at the post office, then we’ll ride for Blakely.

  Ride for Blakely, Kyla thought as she followed him out to the street. And he was one day closer to riding out of her life.

  * * *

  After two days of traveling, Jace and Kyla reached the Painted Hills and embarked on the final leg of their trip into Blakely. The landscape began to look familiar to her, and she stopped to consider how long she’d been away from here and everything that had happened since she left.

  She had been shot, she’d nearly lost her life, she had been kidnapped, Juniper had been lost twice before coming back to her. And her heart—that she feared was gone for good, lost to the man riding ahead of her

  That night, their last on the road before they reached town, they sat around the campfire she had built. Although their hostility had cooled, Kyla still had not achieved the sense of dull resignation she hoped for, and she stared at the fire, alone in her reflections. Even Jace, who usually gave no indication of his thoughts, was uncommonly quiet and pensive. A rim of sunset lit the darkening blue sky with brilliant fire, and on the opposite side of the sky an autumn moon, heavy and golden, began its ascent on the eastern horizon. It was a beautiful night, full stars and longing.

  When Jace broke the silence, his question amazed her. “Do you have much regret for things past? I mean, do you wish you could go back and live some things over again?” He didn’t meet her eyes, but twiddled with a stick at the edge of the fire.

  “Well, sure,” she replied a bit warily. Oh, please God, she thought—she couldn’t bear to hear that regretted making love with her, or that he was sorry he’d agreed to help her. She didn’t think she deserved that punishment. “I can think of a few things I’d do differently, if I had the chance.”

  He nodded and remained silent for a moment. Firelight leaped across his handsome features and deepened his eyes to cobalt. Then in a low voice he admitted, “Sometimes I wish I had learned to be a rancher instead of a bounty hunter.” He looked up at her, a rueful, unguarded smile on his face.

  Kyla swallowed hard but she couldn’t dispel the lump compressing her voice. “It’s not—” She cleared her throat and tried again. “It’s not too late, you know. Hank gave up bounty hunting and settled down.”

  “Well, Hank had someplace to go, something to do. This is the only job I’ve ever had, that and being a deputy sheriff. I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  “You were a deputy?”

  He tossed the stick into the flames. “Yeah, in Salem. just for a few months, and I wasn’t much more than a kid. Then I saw a wanted poster on the sheriff’s desk for a man who’d robbed a bank in Hood River. Five hundred dollars, dead or alive. It was more than I could earn in two years, and I thought if I captured him it would really show Lyle and the rest that I was tougher than they thought. I brought in the robber, alive—there’s no trick in bringing in a dead one. After that, there was another robber, and after that a murderer. One year rolled into the next, and I liked the respect I got.”

  “Going into ranching now might be too big a change,” she agreed. “But you could be a sheriff or a marshal. You have a lot of experience now to draw on.”

  His eyes gleamed briefly as if he were considering the idea, then he shook his head. “Sometimes there’s no going back. I worked so hard to make people fear me, no one would want me in their town. I trapped myself in my own reputation, and there’s no escape from it. I’m an outsider now.” A huff of humorless laughter left him, and he looked at her. “Anyway, I’m glad to have Kyla to talk with again, instead of snot-nosed brat Kyle.”

  On another night, she might have taken issue with his remark and reminded him that it was he who resurrected her disguise. But in the years to come, she did not want to add this last night to her own list regrets. She felt like crying for them, for the lack of love that had pushed Jace into the life he had now, and for all that could never be between them.

  “When this is over, Kyle will disappear forever. Maybe I’ll wear pants to rope and ride, because I don’t want to give that
up. But I’ll do it as a female.”

  Up in the hills a coyote howled at the moon, lonesome and far away.

  He considered her with an amused, assessing gaze and the corners of his eyes crinkled with his light smile. “That day I found out that you weren’t a boy—Jesus, I was mad.”

  “I remember. You acted as though I’d stolen your horse,” she retorted, glad for the easing of the tension between them. They had been through a lot together; she would rather that some goodwill remain between them if there could be nothing more. Nothing more. Her heart contracted in her chest.

  “But then I wondered how I could have been so blind,” he added, and the tone of his voice huskier, more intimate.

  Kyle’s breath caught and her pulse raced on. His blue gaze drifted across her flattened breasts and hips, and brushed over her lap before it rose again to her face. Reaching over, he took her hand in his warm grip and examined it in the low light, opening her fingers to reveal her palm. The stars seemed to stop twinkling as if waiting to see what he would do next.

  “I remember thinking that even though you fooled me into believing you as Kyle, there were so many things about you that could only belong to a girl.” He flattened out her fingers with his own. “The smooth hands, your mouth, tender and soft, the way you smelled, like sage on an August morning."

  His words were like simple, beautiful poetry, not empty flattery. But if possible, they were even more dangerous for their frankness. Kyla closed her eyes, wishing he would hold her hand forever, and yet afraid to let him touch her for another second.

  Then as if he felt the danger, too, he released her. “You’re one hell of a woman, Kyla. When you told me you’d been married to Hank, I couldn’t picture a tough-hided loner like him settling down with you. I know what he saw that drew him. And I’m betting that the kindness of his heart had nothing to do it.” He sounded like a man who had seen the fate of his own future and was powerless to change it. “If I were a different man—” He sighed and let the sentence hang unfinished.