by Nancy Bush
“Harrison?” Miracle asked, coming to his side. She smelled like the fir limbs she’d carried, sweet and fresh and clean. “Are you sick again?”
“No,” he bit out harshly.
“Maybe you should rest. Have the soup.”
“No. I’m fine.”
Puzzled, Miracle stared at his profile. He dropped his hand and stood silently for several moments, then glanced at her face, his expression unreadable. “Can I do something for you?” she asked.
His short bark of laughter caused her frown. “You can leave me alone.”
Miracle sat back down on the edge of the wagon, wondering at his mood. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Maybe you took off the poultice too soon. I could get you a bit of willow tea, or I have an elixir with laudanum. It’s a trifle bitter, but –”
She broke off in shock when he suddenly whipped around and stalked straight toward her, cupping her stubborn chin between his strong hands, gazing down at her through eyes filled with a simmering passion. “Have we lain together?” he rasped.
Miracle’s heart lurched. “How – how can you suggest such a thing?” she sputtered.
“Because it feels like it,” he said in a voice full of frustration. “God, I don’t know why. But it feels like it!”
He moved forward yet again, his feet spread apart, his thighs nearly between hers. She wanted to draw her knees together, but he was too close. She gazed at him in trepidation. She knew what he was thinking of; it was exactly what she’d been thinking of herself. He was remembering those moments when he’d pressed his body against hers, hot and eager and demanding. But he couldn’t quite decide whether it was fact or fantasy.
“Harrison, I –” she began, but then his hands dropped from her chin to her thighs. Hard fingers pinned her where she sat while a frown of immense proportions crossed his handsome features.
“I touched you,” he said, watching her.
“No,” Miracle said again.
“Yes, I did. We slept together.”
“We did not!” Her lips quivered at the lie, and she couldn’t sustain his gaze. His thumb and fingers were hard and lean against the pliant skin beneath her skirts. To her dismay, her thighs began to tremble. “Let go of me!”
“I can’t,” he said simply, gripped by a desire he didn’t understand and seemed powerless to resist. He kneaded his palms against her thighs in a way that brought waves of terrifyingly sweet pleasure to the most secret regions of Miracle’s body. Blast! She was in trouble now.
“Don’t,” she ordered, forcing her voice to be strong. God’s truth, it was difficult!
“We made love,” he insisted, his own voice set and sure.
“No, you were unconscious, and you – reached for me.”
“Like this?”
He slowly lifted the hem of her skirt, folding it backward, exposing her smooth limbs to his burning gaze, then, as the buckskin hemline was raised still further, her quaking thighs.
“Stop!”
He groaned and closed his eyes. “I must be crazy,” he clipped out, then bent to replace her skirts. But he leaned forward too far, and his hip accidentally brushed her inner thigh. His deep green gaze met hers. Miracle’s breath caught. With a groan of submission, he suddenly pulled her tight against him, until once again she felt the hard heat of his arousal against her most sensitive feminine part.
“Like this,” he murmured, remembering.
His mouth crushed hers beneath it. Miracle tried to argue with him. She really did. But when she opened her mouth, his tongue slipped inside and her cry of protest sounded like a mewl of submission.
Harrison had never forced himself on a woman; he was stunned that he seemed to be doing just that now. But the feel of her was too good, her scent light and seductive. He wanted to have her on the wagon bed, and by God, if she didn’t put up more of a fight, he soon would.
He gently pushed her backward until her shoulders lay against the hard boards of the wagon floor. Then his tongue stabbed into her mouth again, mimicking the physical desire to claim her in another, more basic way. He was running on pure emotion, and to hell with the consequences.
Miracle’s hands were tangled in his hair. Her body lay soft and pliant beneath his. She wanted him again. She wanted to feel him deep inside her. But Lord, she knew it was a mistake. A mistake she’d promised the Almighty she wouldn’t make again.
With desperate strength she fought the hot flood tide of desire, stiffening beneath his persuasive seduction. Immersed in his own passion, Harrison didn’t immediately notice the change. His blood pounded in his ears. His hand cupped her breast through the scratchy fibers of her shirtwaist. He moved against her.
She slapped him with a power that made his ears ring.
“Let me up, or so help me, I’ll stab you again!”
He drew back instantly to realize she held the hunting knife in one hand. Shock, and a deep sense of disbelief at his own actions, brought Harrison up short. He was astounded at himself.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized stiffly, aware how woefully inadequate the words were. His cheek stung. Pulling back, he stared down into her slumberous aquamarine eyes and saw passion still simmering there like glittering jewels. She had felt the same way! What was this, some wretched woman’s game to make him feel like an utter lustful heel? Well, he did. And he ached with frustration and desire.
“You can put that thing down. I won’t rape you.”
Bright spots of color flamed in her cheeks. Her black hair swirled around her head like a dark cloud. Struggling upward, she tossed her skirts down, trying to restore dignity.
“Something did happen,” he insisted, staring down at her. He half expected her to get all riled up and rip him open with that lethal tongue of hers, but she didn’t even meet his gaze. “It did.”
When she still didn’t answer, he stood silent, trying to assess his feelings, his untamed passion, and find some understanding in it. He was full of disgust at his actions.
“I won’t be a white man’s mistress,” she burst out passionately.
So that was it. She had wanted him. She just wasn’t willing to do anything about it. He was relieved that the desire had at least been two-sided. “I didn’t ask you to be,” he pointed out.
She regarded him with unexpected hauteur. “There are ways to ask, and ways to ask.”
For a moment, he almost laughed. He had to admire her guts. “My actions were – um – inexcusable. I just thought… I had this feeling, this dream that…” He gave up. “Well, never mind. There’s no excuse.”
He was going to bury himself for sure if he tried to explain, so he just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in self-disgust. “I’ll fix the wheel,” he added under his breath, bending to the task.
Miracle sank her shoulder against the wagon wall as soon as he turned away, closing her eyes in despair. She knew what he’d felt only too well – and why. Though she’d done the only thing she could to save herself further humiliation, she felt dirty and cheap for the way she’d deceived him. Oh, Lord, she thought, lifting her eyes to the heavens. If this is a test of my strength, please keep in mind that I’ve never been particularly strong. Since this was blatantly untrue, she hurriedly changed her plea to, All right, I’ve been strong, but I’ve never been quite so tempted before. Why does it have to be this man? Why now?
Harrison glanced her way, his green eyes watching her with an intensity that brought another quick wave of heat to her face. Straightening up, Miracle jumped down from the wagon bed. “I’ll go pack up the rest of the camp and check on the horses,” she said unsteadily.
His answer was a silent nod, his brows drawing together in harsh concentration. Miracle, afraid he just might remember their night together after all, gathered her skirts and set off to where Tillie and Gray were tethered.
¤ ¤ ¤
It was late afternoon when Miracle swung herself up to the driver’s seat of the wagon, glancing around the side to see Harrison’s signal
. She’d found Harrison one of Uncle Horace’s old shirts, and now she witnessed the fabric strain over his broad shoulders as he motioned with one hand.
“Move forward slowly,” he ordered.
She slapped the reins against Gray’s and Tillie’s broad backs, clicking her tongue to encourage them to move. Tillie switched her tail in absolute boredom. “Come on, you,” Miracle chided. “Get a move on.”
Gray shook his head and tried to reach for an overhanging limb, his lips nibbling at the fir needles. Muttering to herself, Miracle snapped the reins with renewed force, enough to make Tillie jump but not enough to set her in motion.
“Move forward!” Harrison called again.
“I’m trying!” Miracle ground her teeth, jumping down from the wagon. She grabbed Tillie’s bridle and yanked on it with all her strength. Reluctantly, the mare moved her sluggish feet, and Gray, cinched up next to her, was forced into a slow walk, too.
“Whoa!” Harrison called from the back. “Stop!”
Miracle let go of the bridle, and Gray and Tillie stopped as if they’d run into a wall. Inwardly cursing them, Miracle trudged through the dry grass to the back of the wagon, sending a spray of grasshoppers up beneath her feet.
Harrison shot her a wry glance. “Looks like it might hold,” he said in a tone that suggested it might just as easily not.
Miracle frowned at the temporarily mended wheel. In her peripheral vision she saw Harrison lean negligently against the faded gold, red, and blue carnival scrolls painted on the side of the wagon. “Uncle Horace’s Tinctures and Elixirs for Uncommonly Good Health” had faded some, but the smiling face of Uncle Horace was still visible right down to his gold-capped tooth.
“It might,” she agreed, testing the bowed out spokes with one hand. “And then it might not.”
“I guess we’ll have to try. You want to drive, or would you like me to?”
“I’ll drive,” she answered, hiking up her skirts and stepping back to the front of the wagon.
His mouth quirked, but he didn’t argue. Harrison was used to hardheaded females. His sister, Lexie, was as stubborn as they came.
The wagon seat creaked in protest as he levered himself up beside her. Miracle’s gaze was trained straight ahead, her mouth set. She flicked the reins against the horses’ swayed backs. “Giddyap,” she ordered crisply.
One of the nags stomped its hind foot and switched its tail. The other didn’t move. Harrison hid a smile. He’d been a horse doctor for nearly ten years and had learned more about horses’ temperaments than he could ever put into words. These two were worse than lazy. They’d lost interest years before in anything other than a bag of grain or tuft of hay.
Miracle’s blood boiled with humiliation. “Giddyap,” she yelled again, more fiercely. The reins slapped against the beasts’ tough hides.
Without a word Harrison grabbed the reins from her hands. As soon as the nags felt his stronger, tighter grip, their ears flicked back and forth anxiously.
“Get on!” he yelled, jerking the reins once hard and stomping his foot on the running board. Startled, the team jumped forward, and Harrison urged them on, clicking his tongue and snapping the reins harshly on their churning hindquarters. The noise he made spooked the nags into moving forward, dragging the listing wagon with them.
It was an indignity Miracle was forced to suffer for the sake of progress. They had to get moving if they wanted to reach Rock Springs before nightfall. She had no wish to be on this stretch of road after the sun went down.
Harrison turned the wagon toward the road and carefully guided the team across the uneven ground. The tinware tinkled and glasses shivered as the wagon jerked and bumped along. Several times Harrison shot a glance at Miracle, who merely stared straight ahead, her fingers clutched around the edge of the seat to keep her balance.
Near the main road, he commented dryly, “Nice pieces of horseflesh.”
Miracle gave a totally unfeminine snort.
Harrison grinned, then concentrated on keeping the peddler’s wagon upright as the horses pulled it up the shallow ditch and onto the road. He was amazed how far Miracle had managed to drive the wagon into cover. It had taken the better part of thirty minutes to get the horses, wagon, tinware, elixirs, and Miracle’s other worldly goods back on the dusty track of road that connected Malone to Rock Springs.
As soon as they were facing toward Rock Springs, Harrison glanced backward in the direction he knew the burned barn must be.
Miracle glanced back also. “Do you think anything’s left?” she asked, her thoughts mirroring his own.
Harrison was thinking of Jace Garrett. Had Garrett survived? The greed of the men who’d kidnapped Miracle should have ensured Garrett’s safety, but Harrison hadn’t forgotten that at least some of the barn’s patrons were murderers; that fire had been set deliberately, and it stretched his credulity too much to believe Miracle had been kidnapped by a different band of renegades from the ones who’d killed those other women. It was highly possible they’d killed Jace anyway, and though Harrison had no love for the man, he didn’t wish him dead.
“No point in looking now,” Harrison muttered, his expression darkening with the path of his thoughts. “When we get to Rock Springs we’ll get some answers.”
“Would you mind if I drove now?” Miracle asked, holding out her palm for the reins.
With a solemnity that convinced her he was laughing at her, Harrison handed over control. Miracle slapped the reins, and this time, for reasons of their own, the nags broke into a slow, steady plod.
Wisps of clouds had begun to settle near the ground, giving the late-afternoon shadows a soft, mystical blur. Remembering her last trek down this stretch of road lifted the hairs on Miracle’s arms, and she was suddenly very glad to have Harrison seated beside her. Even in the light of day she wasn’t convinced that one of the kidnappers wouldn’t be lying in wait.
As they neared Rock Springs, Harrison shifted in the seat. Shooting him a look from beneath her thick lashes, Miracle realized with a pang that his wound was bothering him. His hands were balanced against the shaking board seat so that his shoulders didn’t connect with the seat back.
Miracle’s heart twisted with remorse. Inwardly sighing, she wondered if she would ever stop feeling so guilty.
They crested a last small hill, then plodded another mile before the faint skyline of the town grew visible. Rock Springs lay quiet in the fading twilight, yellow light spilling from the windows of Garrett Mercantile, Garrett Livery & Feedstore, Garrett Tannery, and so on and so forth. Behind the false fronts of the northern buildings a rock cliff rose majestically to a purple sky. Spouting straight from the cliff was a tremendous rushing white waterfall. It spilled downward and seemed to fall right to the center of town.
“Fool’s Falls,” Harrison said, his gaze following the path of hers.
Miracle gazed at the town with rapt interest. This was where her father lived. She could feel it. Her hands tightened on the thick leather straps as she guided the wagon to the center of town, where the north-south road dead-ended into a pool at the base of Fool’s Falls.
Rock Springs was growing east and west and south, but the center of town lay on Main Street, where clapboard buildings and boardwalks marched in an ever-lengthening line, the farthest points at each end being the skeletons of half-formed buildings. There were no gaslights, nor was there electricity at such a rural, sleepy outpost as Rock Springs. Still, the town was alive with activity. Noise swelled from the chorus of voices within the saloon, the rush of the falls, and the beat of hammers.
Miracle lurched the wagon to a stop in front of Garrett Mercantile. She jumped to the ground, hitching the horses to the post. Harrison climbed down more slowly. Dusk had accumulated in his wheat colored hair and had marked a mask around his eyes. With thoughts of her own appearance uppermost in her mind, Miracle swiped at her cheeks self-consciously.
“You look fine,” he said, and though his words were merely polite, Miracle bl
ushed furiously.
“Where – um – do you live?” she asked.
“On a farm out of town. I live with Lexie and Tremaine, although I won’t for much longer, I suppose.”
Miracle was about to ask him why, but the words shriveled in her throat. Behind Harrison, strolling along the boardwalk, was a pot-bellied man in a tan shirt, a gleaming gold star on his breast pocket. The sheriff, she recognized, her pulse jumping with dread.
“Harrison,” she said in a strangled voice, reaching for him. He glanced down at her, his eyebrows shooting skyward at the way her fingers clenched into the rough fabric of his shirt. “You do understand that what I did, I did in self-defense, don’t you?”
“Miracle.” He drew her tense fingers into the warmth of his hands. Her chin lifted, and she waited anxiously, searching his face for the forgiveness she needed to see once more. His green gaze met hers, and she felt a closeness to him that drew her one step closer. “Stop worrying,” he assured her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“But about the sheriff,” she persisted, sweat traveling down her back as the lawman moved closer. “You won’t press charges with the sheriff, will you?”
“I –”
Behind her a male voice suddenly shrieked with excitement, and Miracle jumped in alarm.
“Mr. Harrison! Glory be to God! You’s alive!”
Miracle turned to see a young man near her own age with curly brown hair hurl himself at Harrison and throw his arms around him, hugging him with fevered relief. Three of the fingers on his right hand had been chopped back to the first and second knuckles.
Harrison took the exuberant greeting with an intake of breath. It took him a moment to drawl, “Well, of course I’m alive, Billy. You didn’t think I’d met my maker yet, did you?”
To Miracle’s surprise and Harrison’s astonishment, the young man swallowed hard, as if to keep from crying. “Yessir, ah did. And it’s made your mother turn quite poorly.”
Harrison’s left arm shot out. He gripped Billy by the collar, his green eyes intense. “What do you mean?”
“She’s got diphtheria,” he revealed in a pathetically sorrowful voice. “Doc Danner don’t think she’ll make it.”