Holt's Gamble

by Barbara Ankrum

  She remembered it all. Unbidden came the memory of holding him through that long night when he'd been so ill. Entwined in his arms, the struggle she'd faced with him had been so simple: life or death, survival or defeat. There was no middle ground in that battle just as there seemed to be nothing but this yawning distance between them now.

  Now she had to deal with him as a man. A complex, living, breathing man. A man she'd never be able to trust.

  She heard his weary sigh as he sank down onto the pallet and she turned around. He'd pulled on a dry pair of denim pants. A blanket hung loosely around his shoulders and he leaned wearily against a crate. The hair on his chest, still damp from the rain, glistened like jet in the lamp glow.

  Kierin swallowed back the lump that formed in her throat as she knelt beside him. Gently, she pushed aside the blanket that covered his injured shoulder. His wound had healed well, despite the punishment he'd given it. Only a slight discoloration surrounded the jagged reddish scar now. But the newly mended muscles in his shoulder jumped with fatigue.

  "It's late," he said. "Why aren't you in bed, asleep?"

  Kierin's eyes met his. "I was asleep."

  His gaze raked slowly down the length of her rumpled gown. "You're still dressed."

  It was no use denying the obvious. "I fell asleep waiting for you to get back," she admitted.

  He frowned at her with something akin to disbelief.

  She sat back on her heels and shook her head. "You were gone longer than anyone expected. Do you really find it so hard to imagine that I'd be worried about you, alone out there in this...?" She gestured at the clatter of the pounding rain outside.

  Hell yes, he wanted to say, but couldn't. "There was no need for you to worry," he told her evenly. "I asked Jacob to tell you where I was going. Didn't he?"

  "He told me. But I wish you had."

  Holt ran a hand tiredly across the stubble on his cheeks. "To be honest, I didn't think it would matter to you one way or the other."

  Kierin sighed. "Do you really believe that?"

  His eyes darkened. "I don't know," he answered slowly. "Are you trying to tell me otherwise?"

  "I—" Kierin looked down at her hands, unable to meet his gaze. "Well... yes."

  Holt's lips parted in surprise as he watched her. I'll be damned, he thought, straightening slightly. "I'm... glad to hear that."

  As her eyes met his again, his gaze traced a path down her face to her full lower lip. A warning tremor of desire tore through him like a low rumble of thunder.

  Kierin's gaze skittered away from him and then back as she screwed up her courage. "I don't want us to go on the way we have the past few days," she told him without preamble. "We have a long trip ahead of us. I've been stubborn and willful and—"

  "No—" he interrupted. "The truth is that I behaved badly the other day and whatever's gone on between us is more my fault than yours." He reached out and touched her fingertips.

  A hot electric shock traveled up her arm at his touch but she allowed it. It was as much of an apology as she guessed she'd ever get from him and more than she'd expected. As she searched for something to say in return, the rain beat a tattoo on the canvas roof, insulating them and giving her the sense that they were completely alone. "Mr. Holt—"

  "Clay. You called me Clay before."

  "I did?"

  He nodded slowly. "When I came in." His steely blue eyes searched hers. "I can't remember you calling me that before."

  "Oh. I..." His gaze seemed to caress her face and she nearly forgot to breathe.

  "I liked it."

  She swallowed, eyes wide. His closeness made her feel light-headed and off balance.

  He reached up with one hand and brushed her cheek gently with the backs of his fingers. "Look, I know I've given you reason to be afraid of me, Kierin, but I don't want that between us."

  Afraid? A moment ago she might have attributed the churning sensation within her to fear. Now she hesitated, mesmerized by his eyes, held motionless by his voice. He reminded her of a hunting animal and she, the stalked prey. His gaze moved from her eyes down to her mouth and back up again. God help her, he was giving her a way out. Waiting for her to tell him no. But she didn't. She couldn't.

  His fingers curled into the fine, coppery hair at the nape of her neck and he drew her to him. His mouth covered hers gently.

  Tasting. Sipping.

  His lips slanted across hers, first one way, then the other. With maddening deliberateness, his tongue traced the inside edge of her lower lip.

  Open to me Kierin, his mouth invited. Let me taste all of you.

  His kiss awakened a yearning deeper than any she'd known and stronger than her will to fight against it. Lips parted, she leaned into him. He cupped her face with his other hand and pulled her closer still, plundering her trembling mouth.

  His kiss tasted of rain. His lips, still cool with the night's chill, warmed as they took possession of hers. She wanted this—needed it as much as the thirsty grasses of the prairie did the storm raging outside. She'd even dreamed of it in the nights since he kissed her by the river. Instinctively, she flattened her hands against him and felt the taut muscles of his abdomen quiver and his heart thud in the same erratic rhythm as her own. His hand slid to the small of her back, and he pulled her across his chest, drawing her fully against him.

  His hips tilted up reflexively against hers and she felt the undeniable evidence of his passion, hard and warm between them. Rational thought returned to her with a jolt.

  "Oh, God—stop," she moaned, tearing herself abruptly from his arms. He made a noise deep in his throat and released her without argument as if he'd half expected her to leap away from him that way.

  Kierin pressed the back of her hand to her lips. "Oh, God," she whispered again, knowing that kiss had been as much her fault as his. What must he think of her now? Maybe she was like the others at Talbot's. Maybe that's what she'd become.

  He raked a hand through his damp hair. It's better this way, he thought. He knew from the look on her face that their kiss had affected her as much as it had him. He took a deep steadying breath and leaned against the crate—head tilted back, eyes slammed shut. What had flared between them just now crossed dangerously beyond the realm of simple lust and into a place he wasn't ready to explore again. He had no intention of allowing himself to fall in love with another woman only to risk losing her. And something told him there would be no going back for him with a woman like Kierin—no matter who or what she'd been before.

  Kierin scooted away from him to the other side of the narrow wagon, taking small comfort in that space. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but the steady thrum of rain was gentler now.

  "Tell me something," she asked in a voice that betrayed her fear, "Why did you take me in that game? Was it for this?" She was afraid of his answer but she had to know.

  "No."

  "Then why?"

  "I don't know." He paused, as if mulling over his own confusion, and rubbed a hand across the dark stubble on his cheeks again. "I sure as hell didn't intend to drag you into any of this."

  She looked at him incredulously. "Just what did you intend?"

  Holt returned her look. "As you might recall, Talbot didn't leave us a lot of time to make any plans." Frustrated, he plucked out a long piece of straw that had worked its way out of the mattress beneath him. "If things had been different... I probably would have put you on the first stage out of there. St. Louis, maybe."

  "But what about my contract? What about the money you risked?"

  "What about it? I won. Your contract never entered into it," he told her matter-of-factly, clamping the straw between his teeth. "I never meant to hold you to those papers, Kierin, and if you'd let me get a word in edgewise that night by the river, I would have told you that."

  Her stunning sense of freedom was tempered only by an inexplicable pang of disappointment. "And once you'd unchained me, what then?" she asked. "Just send me off without a thought as to where
I would go, or how I would get by?"

  A single line of consternation bisected his dark eyebrows. "Well, it sounds pretty damn awful when you put it that way, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Hell. I don't know what I thought. I guess I didn't. Sometimes I just follow my gut feelings, and that night they were telling me not to let that bastard Talbot treat you that way. But to be honest, Princess, I don't think you would've gone anywhere with me without a fight. You tell me. What should I have done?" he asked, bracing his elbows on his knees and flinging the straw negligently in the air. "Left you there to be picked over like some old ham bone by Talbot and that simpleton Thrumball?"

  "No." She squeezed her eyes shut at the thought "No. I'm grateful you stayed, that you got me out of the Independence," she admitted impetuously. Her eyes glittered in the lamp glow. "I hated John Talbot and I was afraid of him. I don't even know why he bid me in that game. Just out of pure meanness, I suppose. I don't think he had any intention of losing the hand to you. He rarely lost at poker because he cheated."

  "I know."

  Kierin's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You do? I mean, you did? But how did you—? A-Are you saying you cheated to win that hand?"

  He grinned noncommittally. "I never said that."

  She let out a short laugh and shook her head. "No, you didn't."

  They both leaned back, appraising each other silently—she, with her arms folded protectively against her chest; he, with his wrists draped indolently across the tops of his bent knees.

  The rain had stopped. The only sound was the occasional rhythmic plink-plink of raindrops as they slid from the oiled canvas into the open rain barrel outside.

  Holt toyed with a question of his own, dismissed it, and called it back again. "While we're on the subject of whys," he said at last, "suppose you tell me why, when you could easily have left me back there to die, you didn't."

  She lowered her eyes and stared at her hands. "I should have an answer for that, but I don't," she admitted. "I just couldn't leave you there."

  "Well, I'm glad as hell you didn't. I guess I haven't really thanked you for pulling me through it, have I?"

  A tentative smile teased the corner of her lips. "Is that a thank-you?"

  "I guess it is," he said with a laugh.

  "You're welcome, then. It was really Jacob though. He's a wonder with herbal remedies. I didn't do much."

  "That's not the way he tells it."

  She wondered just how much Jacob had told him and how much he himself remembered of that first night. "About that night... there's something I need to ask you."

  "Ask away."

  She hesitated. "Who's Amanda?"

  Holt paled and rocked back as if he'd been struck. "What?"

  "Is she your wife?"

  A combination of pain and anger flitted across his sculpted features. "How the hell—? Did Jacob—"

  "No," she assured him. "Jacob didn't say anything. You called her name when you were out of your mind with fever. You thought... I was her." Kierin watched his eyes shutter like curtains drawn across a painful scene. She half wished now she hadn't asked him. But she had to know.

  "Mandy was my wife. She died three years ago."

  Relief and sorrow warred inside her. "I'm sorry, Clay. You must have loved her very much."

  His long silence spoke more eloquently than words. "It was a long time ago," he said finally. He eased away from the crate and stretched himself out on his side of the pallet. "We'd better get some sleep. Morning'll be here soon enough."

  Helplessly, she watched him close off from her again. It didn't matter now. She had her answer. He was still in love with a ghost.

  "What about your shoulder?" she asked.

  "Never mind," he told her. "It'll be fine tomorrow. I just need to get some sleep."

  She nodded and slowly reached up to turn down the wick on the kerosene lantern.

  Clay closed his eyes, fighting the emotions doing battle within him. He'd thought it was a dream that night, holding Mandy in his arms, but it was Kierin who'd wrapped her warmth around him, soothed the fear and cold from him; encouraged him to fight, to live. He should have known. He flung an arm silently over his eyes. Let it be. She's not for you, Clay.

  Still he found himself listening to the sounds of Kierin undressing in the darkness. He heard the small metallic clicks of hooks and eyes releasing, the sound of cotton skirts rustling, like wind hissing through a crowded stand of aspen. He imagined what he'd see if he turned to look when the last of her garments was shed, before she pulled the white cotton gown over her head.

  She slid in beside him and curled with her back to him.

  "Clay?"

  "Hm-m?"

  "Did you mean what you said about the papers?"

  "Yeah." In the darkness, he turned to look at her.

  "Then... when we get West," she told him, "I'll be heading for California."

  His chest tightened with an old familiar feeling. "California?"

  "I have a brother out there and I mean to find him."

  Clay pressed his head back into the ticking of the pillow. It's better this way. "If that's what you want."

  "It is." The silence stretched between them, thick with unsaid words. "Clay?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Thank you."

  "Yeah, sure. Go to sleep now." He closed his eyes again and swallowed back the inexplicable lump of disappointment that formed in his throat. It's better this way, he repeated to himself. And he tried to believe it was true.

  Chapter 9

  The wagons pushed on, following the course of the Blue Earth River north across rolling plains of emerald green grass. The sporadic rain brought with it a new profusion of spring wildflowers. White pasque-flower, tiny bird-foot violets and golden black-eyed Susan rode the crests of waving grass. The riotous colors served to break the sheer monotony of the endless rolling prairie.

  Kierin and the other women and children would stray far afield in search of the most beautiful flower. Often as not, it turned into a game of hide and seek for the children, who constantly disappeared in the waist-high grass near the trail.

  Still, it was a rare night in Kierin's camp that didn't find a bucket or container straining with armloads of fresh-picked wildflowers from the long day's walk.

  Daily, they saw evidence of those who had come this way before. Hardly a mile went by now when they didn't pass a broken-down piece of a wagon or a treasured heirloom. Hand-carved wardrobes, grass-choked cast-iron stoves, orange with rust, even fine cherry-wood dining tables littered the edges of the trail. To carry such luxuries, many had discovered, was to put an unnecessary added strain on teams already taxed by this, the easiest part of their long journey.

  More disturbing than these were the graves that lined the rutted trail. Hundreds and hundreds of graves, some with crosses of wood and some distinguished only by river stones, lined the pathway like gruesome trail markers.

  Most, Kierin simply passed by. It was harder to ignore the smaller graves of the children without thinking of Matthew. Even though she'd never gotten the letter her father had promised to send when they reached California, she never doubted they'd arrived. There were a hundred reasons, she told herself, why she'd never received word—the first, and most likely, being that Asa McKendry rarely concerned himself with the banalities of correspondence, except when there was a profit to be made.

  It was possible, too, that the letter might have been sent, but had gotten lost or ruined on the trip back to Independence. That was the excuse she preferred to believe. Nevertheless, she found herself studying the small graves as she passed them, each one reassuring her that Matthew was still alive and well.

  That was how Clay found her one afternoon as he rode up behind her on his Appaloosa.

  "That's a cheery way to pass the time," he remarked, pulling Taeva up short beside her.

  Kierin straightened abruptly, surprised by the sound of his voice. A flush crept up to her cheeks and she prepared for their usu
al crossing of swords. But when she turned to him, his easy smile forced the contentious words back in her throat.

  Clay cast a shadow over her, blocking the sun. He was nearly silhouetted against the late afternoon glare. He held the reins loosely in one hand and leaned a forearm against the saddle horn.

  He doffed his sweat-soaked hat and swiped at his glistening forehead with the back of his sleeve. "Looking for someone you know?"

  "Not really," she answered truthfully, looking back down at the small grave at her feet. "It's just that someone planted a wild rosebush by this little girl's grave."

  Her fingers brushed the petals of the pink blossom. "I was thinking how dear she must have been to her parents."

  Clay settled his hat back on his head. "It's easy to get caught up with the tragedy of the trail, Kierin. There are a thousand graves like it ahead of us and almost as many behind," he said. "It's best if you try not to think about it."

  He couldn't have known how close he'd come to the truth. With an effort, Kierin pushed back her fears about Matthew and forced a smile. "Where have you been all afternoon?"

  He smiled and untied a pair of prairie hens from around his saddle horn. "Looking for dinner." He nudged Taeva forward, and tossed the game into the front of their wagon. Then, he came back and extended his hand down to her.

  "Come on."

  "What—up there?" Her disbelieving gaze traveled back and forth between his appealing grin and the powerful callused palm of his hand.

  "I want to show you something and it's a hell of a walk. Come on," he encouraged, beckoning her with the waggle of fingertips.

  She hesitated, eyeing him suspiciously. "Where are you taking me?"

  "What, and spoil the surprise?" he asked in a wounded voice. "Never."

  Her smile reflected the mischief in his eyes. "All right," she told him dubiously, slipping her hand into his and stepping up onto his flexed foot. "But this had better be good."

  Clay lifted her smoothly onto the saddle in front of him and settled her sideways across his lap. "Have I ever steered you wrong?"