Jacey's Reckless Heart

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  From her left, Zant said, “Don’t call me boy again … unless you aim to find out, Rafferty.”

  When Blue popped up from lying on his bedroll, Jacey turned to see him gesturing at her. “Why don’t you come over here, Miss Lawless?”

  No one had to tell her twice to get out of the line of fire. Jacey shifted her weight to get up, but a warm, strong hand on her shoulder stopped her. She looked up to see that Zant was now on his feet and standing next to her. The man moved quicker than greased lightning, and he was staring thunderbolts at Blue.

  “There’s no trouble. She stays put,” Zant told his blond friend. He then turned a mean, hard look on Jacey. “You understand?”

  Much to her own surprise, Jacey nodded and stayed put.

  “You, too, Blue.”

  Blue sat down.

  Zant took his hand from her shoulder, stepped away from her, and turned again to Rafferty. “What about me is stickin’ in your craw, Rafferty?”

  Rafferty slowly stood up, distributing his weight evenly on his legs, his right hand hanging loosely beside his holster. Jacey looked from his heavy, craggy face to Zant’s chiseled, dangerous one. With the campfire between them and casting shifting shadows over them, the two men looked like they’d just risen up from Hell. Hearing her own heartbeat in her ears, Jacey swallowed hard and kept very still.

  “You’re in the way of me doin’ my job, boy.”

  Zant shifted his stance. “I told you not to call me boy.”

  “I heard you … I just don’t take orders from you. An’ you’re makin’ a big mistake right now, if you think bein’ the old man’s grandson will stay my hand against you. So, why don’t you do yourself a favor and just sit down all nice-like right now?”

  “Zant, why don’t you do what—”

  “Shut up, Blue. This isn’t your fight.” Zant spat his words out—all without looking away from Rafferty. “We’ve got a big problem, Rafferty. The way I see it, your orders this time just don’t sit well with me. They’ve got something to do with me. I want to know what that something is. And I want to know from you. And I want to know right now.”

  When Rafferty curled his mouth up in a threatening leer that some would’ve called a grin and turned his head to stare at her, before cutting his gaze back to Zant, Jacey knew a moment of gut-wrenching fear. The man’s almost colorless eyes made him seem not quite human. “Ask the Lawless bitch what she’s doing in Tucson. She’s your answer.”

  Jacey’s heart tripped over its next beat. But Zant never looked away from Rafferty. “I’m asking you, Rafferty. What’s Don Rafael up to?”

  Still leering and not even blinking, Rafferty leveled his words at Zant. “Prison didn’t teach you nothin’, did it, boy? You’re still a smart-mouthed, cocky little bastard, just like your worthless father.”

  Into the charged silence following Rafferty’s insults, a tired-sounding “Oh, hell” came from Jacey’s right. She jerked when Blue’s hand closed around her arm. On all fours and frowning, he tugged at her arm and silently nodded for her to scoot back with him out of the way. Jacey quickly crabbed over to Blue’s bedroll.

  “I never could understand why the old man took you in,” Rafferty was going on. “All that whore daughter of his ever gave him was grief. And a bastard for a grandson—”

  The words hardly hit the air before Zant cleared leather. The first bullet took Rafferty in the chest, and stood him up straight and wide-eyed. “See you in Hell, you son of a bitch,” Zant intoned, and then fired again. This time the bullet smacked into the big man’s forehead, making a neat little circle there. Rafferty’s hand was still on his gun in its holster as he spun around and fell to the ground with a dead thump.

  Zant lowered his gun hand to his side and turned to face Jacey and Blue. “He had that coming.”

  Her mouth agape—never in her life had she ever seen such a quick draw—and feeling no sorrow, far from it, at Rafferty’s death, Jacey stared at Zant and remained as silent as the stars overhead.

  But Blue, most likely used to this display, seconded Zant’s observation. “He surely did, Zant. Should have done it myself years ago, compadre.”

  Having said his piece, Blue got up and walked over to Rafferty, leaving Jacey to face Zant alone. From her seated position, she met his black-eyed stare. When he didn’t say anything, she allowed her gaze to slip from his black hat, to the somber, shadowed face under it, down that bull neck of his, over his massive chest, down to the holster at his hip, and then back up to his face.

  “You’re the fastest I’ve ever seen,” she heard herself say. He shifted his weight on his denim-covered, muscular legs and continued to stare down at her. “I made myself this way, knowing there was an old score I had to settle one day. But until then, I’ve had to be fast to stay alive.”

  Jacey nodded, not wanting to think about who that old score was with. “That’s the way it is for some men. Got to make his point with a gun in his hand.”

  Zant slipped his gaze to the Colt holstered at her hip. “And some women, too.”

  Jacey stilled. “And some women.”

  “I don’t like taking a life. But”—he looked across the campfire to where Blue was dragging Rafferty by his boot heels into the desert darkness beyond the campfire’s light, then resettled his gaze on Jacey—“sometimes, some people just ask for it.”

  Jacey swallowed, not knowing which was dryer, her mouth or her eyes. She blinked rapidly and ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “I’d have done the same thing in your place, Zant.”

  When his expression faltered and he cocked his head back, Jacey frowned. What had caused that? Then she heard her own words. She’d called him Zant. When had she even begun to think of him as Zant and stopped throwing Chapelo at him like it was an insult?

  “Get up.” His voice was no more than a growl.

  Afraid she couldn’t, not with her legs feeling like pudding, Jacey tensed her stomach muscles and rose in stages to her feet. Facing the legendary gunslinger only moments after he’d killed someone took all of Jacey’s mettle. Because Papa’d told her that, just like a snake, a man who’s just killed is at his most dangerous and unpredictable. “You aim to shoot me, Chapelo?”

  His eyebrows rose a fraction, either at her words or at the Chapelo that came more naturally out of her mouth. “If I thought it would solve anything, I would. But it won’t.”

  Jacey blinked and let out a deep breath. He’d just spared her life. He knew it, and she knew it. She was fast with a gun, yes. She’d shot at targets, like he said, and yes, she’d even wounded him, but there was no way on God’s green earth she could take this man with a gun. Even Papa wasn’t that fast. Papa. Even Papa wouldn’t have stood a chance against the Kid’s son. Jacey sniffed and kept her expression as sober as his. “With Rafferty dead, am I free to go on back to Tucson?”

  “Yeah, you’re free. Alberto and Rosie will be safe now. But you won’t be. Don Rafael will send someone else after you. I’ll try to stop him, but I don’t know if I can. So, come sunup, I want you to hightail it on back to Tucson, get what belongs to you there, and then get yourself home to protection. I’ll stall Don Rafael as long as I can to give you a chance to—”

  Jacey held up a staying hand. Despite everything she’d just seen, she dared puff up like a toad at this man. “Now, just hold on right there, Chapelo. I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got business in Tucson.”

  Zant exploded into action, covering the ground between them in long, angry strides. Jacey had time only to tense before he grabbed her arms and hauled her up to his chest. “I said get the hell out of Tucson and get back home, gal. If I run into you again, if I have to keep looking at that Lawless face of yours, I’ll have to kill you. Or worse. You take my meaning?”

  Jacey couldn’t imagine anything worse than being killed, but she wasn’t about to ask what it was. “I take it. Now you take your hands off me. And don’t call me gal.”

  He didn’t take his hands off her. And he did call her g
al. “Listen up, little gal, and listen good. You’re toying with things here that I’m not sure you understand. Now, I don’t know why your daddy sent you this far from home—”

  “Nobody sent me anywhere. I go where I want. And Tucson is where I want to be.” Jacey narrowed her eyes and fairly spat out her next words. “Don’t you ever talk about my father, Chapelo. Ever. Not unless you want to end up like your friend over there. Because I’ll back-shoot you if I have to. Believe me, it won’t make a bit of difference to me.”

  Either something about her expression or something in her words, or both, stilled Chapelo. The moment seemed to hang on the edge of time. He eyed her askance. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jacey wanted nothing more than to throw in his face exactly what she was doing here. But for the second time tonight, some new and cautious understanding in her, perhaps some new maturity, stopped her reckless tongue. When she spoke, she heard herself do so in a calm, cool voice, and wondered at its source. “My business is just that, Chapelo—my business. If and when it becomes yours, I’ll look you up. You can count on that.”

  * * *

  During the hard weeks of her trek to Tucson, Jacey’d gotten used to waking up to some mighty strange sights. But none compared to what greeted her when she opened her eyes the next morning. This time it wasn’t the saguaros or the yuccas, or even the little cactus wren whose chirping had invaded her sleep. No, it was Zant Chapelo. The man was lying on his side in his own bedroll, but right next to her and facing her. His eyes remained closed in sleep. Deep, even breathing marked the rise and fall of his chambray-covered chest.

  After her initial start of surprise, Jacey lay still, supporting her cheek with her bent arm, and stared at him. When in the night had he gotten up to put himself between her and the now-dead campfire? And why had he? Was it to hog all the fire’s warmth for himself? Somehow, she didn’t think so. For one thing, she didn’t think the creosote-bush-dotted desert would dare chill him.

  Jacey grinned at her own estimation of Zant Chapelo. To her, he could do anything. No, that wasn’t it. To her, he was capable of anything. Yes, that suited him more. He was capable of anything. Using this rare opportunity to openly scrutinize the man, Jacey started with that black hair of his. Thick, wavy, somewhat longish and unruly. Somewhat like her own. Her grin at this comparison of the two of them froze when some quirk or sensation brought a grimace to Zant’s sleeping face.

  Jacey didn’t exhale until she was sure he slept on. His broad forehead smoothed out, relieving the worry lines and resettling his black-winged eyebrows low over his deep-set eyes. Now Jacey frowned. The man had the longest eyelashes of anyone she’d ever seen. Their tips brushed against the high cut of his cheekbones and forced her attention to his straight but still slightly swollen nose and down to that square chin of his. She clutched at her bedroll to keep from reaching out to touch the raspy growth of beard that shadowed his jaw.

  Then, another grin cut across her features when Zant’s wide, firm mouth began to move, as if he were talking in his sleep. No words formed, no sound came out. Just movement. Something moved inside Jacey, too. Once again, her grin fled as she paid attention to her own body. Something low and deep, she realized, something gripped her, tightening her core and quickening her awareness of this man … as a man. And she didn’t like it.

  That was twice in three days she’d experienced womanly feelings for him. They were a first for her. Jacey narrowed her eyes in critical scrutiny of Zant Chapelo. Why him? What was it about him that, doggone it, appealed so to her? In a state of irritated agitation, Jacey shifted about under her blanket. In only a little while, the rising sun’s fierce heat would render its cover unnecessary. But for now, Jacey stayed under its weight, as if the wool that covered her could protect her from Zant’s nearness.

  He was near enough to touch. Jacey swallowed against the sudden impulse that dried her mouth. She was going to touch him. Slowly, ever so slowly, she eased her hand out from under her blanket and slipped it across the thin line of sandy earth that separated her bedroll from his. When she touched his blanket, she bit at her lower lip and willed away the tremble in her fingers. Still, the twitchings persisted.

  Unaccustomed to her body not responding to her will, Jacey stayed her hand, fisting it where it lay, only a breath away from the black and crisply curling hairs at his throat that peeked over the edge of his white combination suit. Not even a low grunt followed by a sigh from a little ways away, obviously Blue, could make her retreat now.

  Inhaling deeply through flared nostrils, Jacey inched her hand forward. And came into contact with the foreign feel of a man. Instantly fascinated as much by the steady pulse at the base of his throat as she was by the curling hairs that danced under her feather-light touch, Jacey grinned with her discovery and moved her fingers to feel his skin. With a tentative touch, she explored the muscled expanse of his throat and found it to be warm and smooth where beard didn’t cover it. His skin, brown and taut and yet silky, like leather tanned to a buttery softness, allowed her fingers to slip easily over it.

  Jacey’s wondering gaze flickered upward from his throat to his eyes. Now open and frankly staring at her. Startled, she froze, leaving her fingers still taking his pulse. Jacey wished she could be as sure of her own heartbeat. When mortification dropped over her like a cloudburst, she jerked her hand back. But not quite fast enough. Just like his lightning-flash quick draw, the man’s hand covered hers before she got it back over the sandy line that separated them.

  “Enjoying yourself, Miss Lawless?”

  “No.” Jacey prayed for a sudden third arm and hand to sprout up on her, so she’d have two free ones to dig herself a hole in the ground. Right now seemed as good and painful a time as any to die.

  He leaned toward her and whispered, “I think you’re lying.”

  Jacey’s chin came up a notch, even as gooseflesh bumped her skin. First Rosie, and now Chapelo. Appeared to her that folks in Tucson had a fearsome bent toward calling other folks liars. “Don’t flatter yourself. There was a … a bug on you.”

  His mouth twitched. “A bug?”

  “Yeah. A bug.”

  His answer, a chuckling snort, brought the heat to Jacey’s cheeks. But that warmth was nothing as to what slipped over her skin when he sent her a raw look that said he saw past her bravado, a look that said he’d peered into her soul. Completely unnerved, Jacey could only watch as he raised her hand to his mouth, cupped open her palm, and kissed it with a whole lot of slick daring.

  Simple reflexes reacting to the foreign sensation jerked Jacey’s hand. Zant’s grip tightened. Trapped, caught in his web, she submitted. With a sinking feeling, knowing just how forbidden this one man was to her, she admitted to herself that she didn’t want to pull away. Her mouth slacked open as she tried to pretend that her breasts didn’t ache or that the vee in her thighs wasn’t throbbing. A shallow, bated breath escaped her in a whisper. “What … what are you doing?”

  Zant angled his heavy-lidded, black-eyed gaze up to her face. His strong, handsome features suddenly seemed all masculine angles and planes. “You tell me, Jacey. What am I doing?”

  Jacey flicked her gaze down to her hand in his. “You’re kissing me.”

  “Uh-uh.” He let go of her and, with his hand now cupping the back of her head, he pulled her to him. “Now I’m kissing you.”

  Jacey opened her mouth to.… It didn’t matter, because his head slanted down and his mouth took hers. His lips settled over hers as if they’d been formed to fit there perfectly. Jacey stiffened. Zant entreated, holding her more firmly to him. His tongue insisted, warmly and wetly, on entrance into her mouth. Sucking in much needed air through her nostrils, Jacey realized her eyes were closed, her hand was on his chest, and she was opening her mouth, giving him the access he wanted.

  Still, when his tongue plunged into her mouth and stroked in and out, dueling with her tongue, Jacey’s eyes flew open. Zant filled her vision. His eyes were closed. Jacey
’s fluttered closed and her hand fisted, knotting up a wad of his shirt in her grip. Sensations, new and hot and breathtaking, invaded her body. Parts of her that she’d never suspected could, came to life, and seemingly did so of their own volition.

  After an eternity, Zant broke their wet kiss to trail nipping kisses over her jaw, down her neck. Lost in the flood of tingling nerve endings and belly-tightening tuggings, Jacey belatedly became aware that Zant’s hand was on her breast. Through her blouse and chemise, he cupped it, softly kneaded it, flicked his thumb over the peak—

  He’d done this before. Three days ago. Out in the street. Jacey stiffened and then shoved him away, shooting straight up to a sitting position. Staring at him as if she’d never seen him before, she scooted backward until she felt herself to be out of his range. She swiped her wrist over her wet lips and spat out, “Damn you, Chapelo.”

  Was that raspy, husky voice hers? Confusion, outrage, guilt, and awakened desire brought her dangerously close to reaching for her gun. She felt but couldn’t control the twitching and trembling that claimed her face. “How dare you—?”

  “Me?” Zant pulled himself up on his elbow and appeared completely unrepentant. “Put it any way you like to make yourself feel better, but we both know you started it.” His black eyes slanted wolfishly at the corners, just as his mouth did. His voice became a damning hiss. “You asked for it. You got it. And you liked it.”

  Stung, guilty as charged, and sweaty with embarrassment, Jacey gasped and jumped to her feet. A movement on the other side of the smoldering campfire dragged her attention there. Her gaze locked with Blue’s. Still in his bedroll, he immediately closed his eyes … and remained very still. Weak with mortification, knowing he’d seen and heard everything, Jacey looked down on Zant. And gave full vent to her anger. “I did no such thing. I didn’t like anything about it. Just don’t you ever lay a hand on me again, Chapelo. Because it’ll be your last act on this earth, I promise you.”