She slowed her horse more and gave Cole a long, searching look.
“Wouldn’t you think they’d have sense enough to know that that was no way to persuade me?”
In the morning rays of the sun, her finely boned face looked as fragile as a porcelain doll’s, her tiny wrists incredibly delicate where they showed at the edges of her leather gloves. Those men had been talking sense to her.
“The sensible thing for you to have done would’ve been to marry one of them and drive your cattle to his place instead of halfway across the West,” he said softly.
She let go of her reins to set her fists on her hips.
“Don’t tell me you’re agreeing with them! Where’s that encouragement you’ve been handing out trying to build my confidence since your life is in my hands?”
He grinned.
“I was just giving you a hard time, Aurora. They’re a couple of selfish, overbearing bastards who would’ve broken your heart without a qualm.”
She grinned back.
“That’s better.”
“I can tell ‘em right now there’s not a doubt you’re gonna get this herd to Texas,” he said. “What I’m not too sure about is the piano.”
He’d meant that to be funny, and she started to smile, but both their thoughts immediately went to the evening before and the kiss. He could see his own memory reflected in her eyes.
It took all the strength God gave him to hold himself back and not reach for her.
“You were talkin’ sense last night, Miss Aurora,” he said. “I had damn well better not ever kiss you again.”
She couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop hearing the nuances in his voice, even though he didn’t say another word. Hurt was in it, way down deep, and anger, and impatience and the iron hardness that edged everything he said and did.
Danger lurked in it, too.
Because it sounded as if he would kiss her again, when she least expected it, and that he wouldn’t stop there.
God help her, then she’d be lost.
“I didn’t intend to be mean to you last night,” she blurted, “I’m just not used to … it, that’s all.”
His eyes took on a glint of mischief.
“I thought we just established that you’re accustomed to kissing and carrying on with men scattered from the East Coast to the Rockies.”
She tried to smile.
“I’m not used to depending on somebody else is what I mean,” she said hastily.
“And you don’t want to depend on me for kisses.”
“No. Depending on you for my life is hard enough.”
Cole looked straight into her heart and right on through it to her soul.
“I hear you talkin’,” he said. “I’m an old lone wolf, myself.”
He wheeled his horse and rode on ahead.
Aurora heaved a great sigh and flopped over onto her back, pushed the covers down to her waist so she could feel the cool night air on her body as well as breathe it in. She filled her lungs with it and slowly expelled it, willing it to calm her while she listened to the night.
Everything was quiet, so quiet she could hear the occasional popping of the fire that Cookie kept burning all the time for the hot coffee which was the one constant besides biscuits and beans in the cowboys’ diet. An occasional low bawl came from the cattle, but they had bedded down fairly easily after their long day on the trail, and they lay basically quiet. Monte was singing to them—among her cowboys he had the only voice so pleasant it could soothe people as well as restless cattle—and for a short while she concentrated on the sound of his song. It almost put her to sleep.
But she couldn’t let go of her thoughts of the day; she felt so wrought up she could sit up and scream.
Gritting her teeth in frustration, she scooted down closer to the end of the wagon and propped her shoulders against the stacked boxes, stuffing her pillow into the space at the small of her back. She was tired—exhausted, actually—by the three days they’d been on the trail. Why couldn’t she slip off into oblivion?
Maybe she was too tired to sleep.
Or maybe she kept thinking about Cole.
All yesterday afternoon and all of today he’d ridden somewhere near her, but it had been almost as if he weren’t there. He had become the lone wolf he’d called himself—in fact, watching him ride a little bit ahead of her, she thought of stories she’d heard about the Plains Indians who sometimes pulled a wolf pelt up over their heads to wear into battle or to disguise themselves to creep up on an enemy.
He had pulled his aloneness, his oneness, up over his head and left her to hers.
Wasn’t that what she’d wanted? What she’d told him to do?
Now that was what was driving her crazy.
She missed him terribly. They were already connected in some strange fashion—she’d been too late in sending him away.
No, it had been too late from the very beginning. Hadn’t she felt connected to him the minute she found herself in the middle of the dusty street, wrapped in his arms?
Now, every fiber of her body was urging her to move, to just see him. She crept to the end of the wagon, reached for the canvas flap, and pulled it aside enough to peek out.
He was there, just where he had said he would be, with his bedroll laid out on the ground across the end of her wagon. Anyone coming to get her would have to go through or over him, he was so close to the tailboard.
He slept on his side with his back to her, cocooned in the covers pulled up over his shoulders. The wash of moonlight drew all the color out of the fabric and made it look white, but even the moon was powerless against the black of his thick, tumbled hair. There it could only add silver, like tracings of frost, to the pure blackness.
She couldn’t stop looking at him, couldn’t quit measuring the breadth of his shoulders with her eyes, and the lithe length of him, couldn’t help remembering, with all of her body and soul, their kiss.
If she were snuggled into that bedroll with him, then she could sleep. She’d be wrapped in his arms, her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder … No, she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she would never sleep then. The hard muscles of his chest would be pressed against her breasts … oh, Lord, that very first touch of his had sent such a trembling thrill right through her even though she’d been shocked out of her mind when he’d snatched her from her gig, even though she’d been filled with fear that she’d be shot any minute.
Then his kiss, his unforgettable kiss …
Her whole body began to melt at the memory, and she pressed her knuckles to her mouth to keep from making a sound.
And then she thought maybe she had already done so without realizing, because suddenly Cole had gone perfectly still, the soft rise and fall of his shoulder had stopped. She didn’t see him move, but he was lying on his back when she took the next breath, his head turned toward her.
She couldn’t let him see her! Her hand dropped, the flap fell into place.
But she couldn’t bear to stay there, all alone.
She reached behind her for her bedroll and started dragging it behind her as she moved out onto the tailgate without letting herself stop to think. Outside. Out there with Cole. She would sleep outside tonight because she’d smother if she stayed cramped up in that wagon.
Chapter 7
The moon was bright enough to let her see her way, but the light from the fire didn’t reach her wagon. That was good—she didn’t want the men to see her as they came and went on their guards and think she was being immodest to sleep out, one woman in a camp full of men. Cookie’s breakfast call would wake her before dawn.
Quickly she spread out her bed again, lay down, and pulled the covers over her. She dared a glance toward Cole. He hadn’t moved.
Her heart beat faster. There he was, only a short stone’s throw away, his long body a vague shape beneath his blanket.
Again she felt that overwhelming urge to touch him, to stroke his moon-silvered hair,
just to feel his skin beneath her fingertips. And, oh, dear God, his mouth on hers.
She turned her face to the sky and tried not to remember, tried not to think about him at all. Sleep had to come, had to take her away. Tomorrow she’d be too tired to sit in the saddle, much less make a quick decision if she had to, unless she could get some sleep. She would not look at him again. She would not.
There were only a few stars in sight among the shifting clouds that would drift across the moon any minute. She watched them, willing them to blot out the light so she could sleep. If the whole night, and not just the shadow she lay in, was completely dark, she could sleep. Surely she could.
The fresh, slightly damp air rolling down from the mountains caressed her cheeks, and she drew in great, deep breaths of it and snuggled deeper into her bed. Deliberately, she turned her head away from Cole. Her tight muscles began to relax a little.
“Aurora.”
The whisper was no more than a breath in her ear; she might have imagined it except that it came less than a heartbeat before a hand covered her mouth.
Instinct brought a scream to her throat, made her struggle in vain to sit up. She didn’t panic, though, because the hand was Cole’s. Instinct told her that, too.
“If I let you go, can you be quiet? You know these cowboys of yours will string us up if we start a stampede.”
After an instant to absorb that, she nodded.
He took his hand from her mouth, but he kept the other one cupped around her shoulder. His fingers imprinted her skin and filled her blood with warmth. She didn’t even need covers anymore.
Oh, yes, she did! He was lying beside her, his whole length right next to hers.
It sent such a sensual shock through her that it made her furious. She wanted to yell at him, but she managed to attack in a hoarse whisper.
“What are you doing sneaking up on me like this? You scared me so, I could kill you.”
“Not yet,” he whispered back, his breath tickling her ear, his hand poised to cover her mouth again. “First let me see who’s skulking around out there in the dark.”
She froze in place, then tried again to sit up, but he held her down effortlessly.
“Somebody’s out there?”
A desperate desire to simply turn into the haven of his arms and hide her face came over her.
“Don’t sit up,” he said, with almost no sound at all. “Even after I leave you. Keep down.”
No. Don’t leave me. I’m going with you.
She wanted to scream the words at him, but even then she knew he had to go alone. He could move like a shadow. Even this close, she hadn’t had a glimmer that he was even out of his bedroll, much less right upon her.
“I was fixing to go see who and how many when you came crashing and banging out of the wagon.”
“I wasn’t that noisy!”
“Like a dozen drunk bandidos crashing through the brasada.”
In that minute she blessed him in her heart for trying to lighten her fear. What if Virgil and even more of his cronies had followed them? What if Gates had hired someone smarter and faster than Virgil?
“Be careful,” she whispered.
He gave his short nod of agreement and let his hand fall from her shoulder. He started to move away, then stopped.
“Keep flat on the ground,” he said into her ear again. “And stay here so I’ll know where you are.”
Those words made no more noise than sighings on the night breeze, and his going made even less. One moment he was there, his hot flesh touching hers, the next he was gone, and so was her breath.
She lay, every muscle in her body stiff, her blood chill, listening to try to follow his progress. She heard nothing.
Cole was fast, she thought. When he’d kicked Virgil in the teeth nobody had seen it coming. And he was just as fast or faster with the gun he wore—that word was on everybody’s lips who’d seen him shoot, that was what had made her hire him.
And he was so quiet that she hadn’t heard him get out of his bedroll, although he’d been so close she could’ve touched him.
He had the advantage, too, because he knew the enemy was out there and whoever it was didn’t know he knew. She strained her ears even harder to try to hear something.
After what seemed an age came a faint sound, then another. She couldn’t identify either.
“I tell you, I’m trying not to wake the whole camp, that’s all!”
The mellow, well-modulated male voice floated quietly on the night air. It wasn’t Gates’s, was her first thought. The next was that she knew it but at that instant couldn’t quite place it.
“Then shut up,” Cole growled. “And quit dragging your feet.”
Aurora sat up as he hauled his prey into the light of the fire—a tall, thin man who was stubbornly pulling back against Cole’s irresistible strength, digging in his heels hard enough to raise a dust.
“Now,” Cole said, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the whole camp, “sit right there in the light with your hands in front of you and tell me who you are and where you came from. If your story suits me you can ride out all in one piece.”
“Too late for that! You’ve already broken both my wrists!”
“Just be glad I didn’t break your arms.”
Aurora’s thoughts fell back into place, her fear vanished.
“Don’t hurt him, Cole!”
She threw back the covers and scrambled to her feet.
“Let him go,” she cried and ran toward the circle of firelight.
“Cole McCord,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Terrence Peck.”
Cole stared at her, then at his captive, until finally he regained sense enough to open his hand and turn the idiot loose. Then he had to reach out and catch the clumsy scalawag because he stumbled backward and nearly fell.
Aurora caught him on the other side.
“Terrence!”
The surprise and joy in her voice ran through Cole like a sharp blade and rooted him to the spot as if a thrown lance had nailed him there. Aurora was leading the fool visitor to the log beside the fire.
Good God, she was wearing her nightgown, of all things, and that was all, because when she was between him and the fire he could see through the cloth. Then, mercifully, she passed by the light.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing skulking around a camp in the dark?” Cole said, advancing on the two of them as they sank down to sit much too close together.
Even though he’d put all his menace into the tone of the question, the man barely glanced up at him, he had such eyes for Aurora.
“I didn’t want to wake Aurora up suddenly,” he said, grinning at her like an absolute fool. “I know what a bear that makes her.”
That bit of news fueled Cole’s anger like a dash of kerosene on a fire.
Then she added more.
“Oh, Cole, did you have to be so rough?” she said, reaching for the skinny fellow’s hands. “Terry, are your wrists really broken?”
“Rough?” Cole roared, forgetting the tired crew completely. “He can thank whatever God he worships that I didn’t shoot him through the heart.”
He set one foot on the log on the other side of Aurora and glared down at them.
“I’m afraid I may have exaggerated a bit,” Terry said, smiling at her.
“At least that’s one honest remark out of your mouth,” Cole said. “Were you aiming to creep into Aurora’s wagon or what?”
“I was aiming to sleep out near the camp and come in in the morning,” Terrence snapped back, still without taking his gaze off Aurora. “If you hadn’t attacked me and made such a scene!”
He glared up at Cole then, and Cole thought he might get up and hit him.
“Come on,” Cole said viciously, not even bothering to step back and put both feet on the ground. “I’d love nothing better.”
“What are you saying?” Aurora cried.
Then she started talking to him as if he was the one who was lo
co.
“Cole, get hold of yourself. It’s all right. It wasn’t Gates or any other enemy out there. Terrence is an old friend come for a visit. Remember I told you about him?”
“I know who the man is,” he said, biting off every word. “I’m only trying to impress on him that he’s damn lucky to be alive after skulking around through the dark like a murdering horse thief.”
“My horses!” Terrence said. “I must see to them.”
He got up, and so did Aurora. Cole stepped back and turned to see Cookie and a couple of other men sitting up in their soogans, staring at the little group by the fire. Damn! They’d heard Aurora’s remarks that had made him out to be crazy.
“Everything all right, Missy?” Cookie called, when he could see perfectly well that it was. “You all make enough noise to wake the dead. For a minute there I thought we was havin’ a Comanche attack.”
“Cole’s only doing his job, Cookie,” Terrence called back. “I foolishly thought I was far enough away to spend the rest of the night, but he heard me.”
Shocked, Cole stared at the skinny man.
“McCord’s got ears like a deer,” Frank put in. “He heard me muttering to Monte in the middle of the remuda yesterday.”
“Well, he heard me, too,” Terrence said, and started toward his horses, “and I must’ve been half a mile away.”
The sleepy men lay down again.
Terrence turned back and lifted his hand to Cole.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, McCord,” he said. “Thanks for protecting Aurora.”
And then, smooth as you please, he was leaving the firelight to see to his animals.
Stunned, Cole looked down at Aurora, who was standing beside him.
“What was that?”
“Terrence didn’t want you to be embarrassed about waking the camp,” she said. “He’s a thoughtful fellow, which is more than I can say for some people!”
The Renegades: Cole Page 10