Painted by the Sun

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Shea wanted to grab up her shawl and run over to the cabin to see what she could learn, but first she needed to get Rufus inside. She was still down on her knees trying to coax the wily calico close when Owen came puffing up the steps.

  "What's all this?" he asked her.

  "Ty and his father seem to have left town. He asked me to take care of his cat," Shea explained. "Ty calls him Rufus."

  As if drawn by the sound of his name, Rufus tiptoed around the far side of the box and blinked at Owen. Owen blinked back, then extended his hand.

  "He isn't very friendly," Shea warned him.

  Just to make a fool of her, Rufus nuzzled up against Owen's fingers and began to purr.

  "Such a nice kitty," Owen crooned and scratched behind the cat's ears. "Nice Rufus."

  Rufus immediately rolled over and exposed his tummy, inviting more extensive scratching.

  "Must just be me he doesn't like," Shea murmured, pushing to her feet. She carted the box inside and set it in one corner of the studio, wondering what she was supposed to feed this troublesome creature.

  Owen scooped up Rufus and followed her in. "We finish painting today?" he asked her.

  They'd been working on the studio since the day after Christmas. They'd swept up the glass, repaired the furniture, and repainted the walls. Once the new camera and supplies arrived, Shea could begin to reschedule her portrait sittings and see if she could pick up where she'd left off. But the incident had shaken her confidence.

  She could see that the vandalism had disturbed Cam, too. He'd become more protective since that night, more attentive. More apprehensive somehow. She could sense a brittleness in him that was strangely incompatible with the man she'd come to know. It was almost as if he was waiting...

  But waiting for what?

  Shea gave a snort of impatience and dispatched Owen down the block to see if he could find something Rufus might like for breakfast.

  Cam was still on her mind when he burst through the door a few minutes later. "Are they here?" he demanded. "Have you seen them?"

  "Seen who?" she asked. Cam was rumpled and unshaven. She heard a ragged edge of panic in his voice. Alarm spiraled through her.

  "Rand and Ty."

  "Rand?" she echoed, her throat pinching tight.

  "This was the only other place I could think of to look for them," he told her, trying to catch his breath.

  "I found Ty's cat outside my door this morning. I think he and his father have left Denver. Did Rand go with them?" she asked incredulously.

  Cam pulled a crumpled paper from the pocket of his coat. "I found this when I went to wake Rand this morning."

  The note was written in Rand's careful copperplate script.

  Dear Pa and Aunt Lily,

  Ty's father went off yesterday. Ty says he thinks he knows where he is, so we are headed out to find him.

  We should be back in a couple of days. Please don't worry.

  Love,

  Randall Cameron Gallimore

  P.S. I took Jasper and some food with me.

  Shea looked up at Cam, at the taut, pinched lines between his brows, and the narrow set of his mouth. New shadows haunted the blue of his eyes. She reached for him, catching his hand, feeling his warmth and sinewy strength beneath her fingertips.

  "Surely they'll be all right."

  Cam shook off her hold and paced from one end of the studio to the other. "Do you have any idea where they went?"

  "Well, there's a mining camp up in the mountains—"

  "Where is it?" he demanded. "How far?"

  "A full day's ride when the weather's good."

  "When the weather's good," he echoed, the lines in his face settling deeper. "But it's going to snow..."

  Hot threads of apprehension darted through her. It might very well be snowing up in the mountains already.

  "Oh, Cam! They're such little boys to be up there all alone." Her little boys—Rand, her precious son, and Ty, the child she'd been mothering in Rand's stead.

  Cam clasped her hand in his, giving back the assurance she'd given him. "They'll be all right. Now can you tell me how to find that camp so I can go and bring them home?"

  She shook her head. "I'm going with you."

  "Oh, Shea," he protested. "I don't think—"

  "The turnoff to the camp could be hard to spot, especially if it's snowing," she argued, thinking how easy it would be for the boys to get lost up there. Besides, she wasn't going to sit in Denver when her son was missing.

  "It's damned rough country," he warned her.

  "I know what kind of country it is."

  "The temperature's dropping, and if it's started to snow—"

  "Then, don't we need to dress warmly and get on our way?"

  Something about her pragmatism won him over. "I'll be back in half an hour with supplies and horses." He paused halfway to the door and glanced back at her. "You're a damn stubborn woman, Shea Waterston."

  Coming from him, the words sounded like a compliment.

  * * *

  They'd trekked a good long way up into the mountains before it started to snow. At first Cam tried to convince himself that what he saw ahead was fog creeping down from the high country, but soon enough the whorls of white resolved themselves into tight, dry flakes. As the snow thickened around them, Cam glanced back and saw that Shea was staying close on his heels in spite of the pace he'd set for them.

  She was bundled up against the cold in a heavy woolen skirt, a sheepskin jacket she'd borrowed from Owen, and two pairs of gloves. A long knitted scarf tied down her hat.

  Had Rand thought to dress as warmly? Cam wondered. Had he brought matches, food, and blankets in case he and Ty got stranded? Did Ty know the way to this camp well enough that they wouldn't get lost? Speaking those worries aloud would have made them far too real, yet they wore at him with every step.

  "They'll be all right," Shea said, nudging her horse up close beside his on the narrow trail, speaking the reassurance as if she'd read his mind. "Ty's as resourceful as they come, and Rand won't let him take any foolish chances."

  Still, beneath the broad brim of her hat, Cam could see Shea's face was every bit as set and grim as his own.

  They pressed ahead. Here along the edge of the ice-skimmed stream they were sheltered from the wind, but ahead, where the trail wound higher, all Cam could see was roiling clouds of white. The snow fell faster the further they went. It blew in their faces and piled up in the folds of their clothes.

  They lost the light as the clouds settled low and the velvety pines closed in around them. The trail turned slick and treacherous underfoot. The horses labored, chuffing with the altitude and the effort it took to keep plowing ahead. Only when Shea's horse stumbled in a belly-deep drift did Cam ask about stopping for the night.

  "I'm afraid I'll miss the turnoff to the mining camp if it gets too dark," she admitted, shivering.

  The world around them had gone silent, opaque. The swirling snow had a milk blue shimmer that obscured everything but this one dim notch between the trees.

  "There's an old trapper's cabin not far ahead," Cam conceded. "We'll stop there and wait for daylight."

  With every step they took Cam prayed he'd find the boys holed up in that battered shack, but when they reached it, the snow blown against the door lay undisturbed. Fighting down desolation, Cam sent Shea into the cabin while he saw to the horses.

  By the time he brought in their saddles, Shea had a fire going. She'd unfurled their bedrolls across the floor and had melted snow enough to make tea. He hunkered down on the bedding closest to the flames to warm himself. With the heat of the fire and the flickering orange glow dancing over the walls, the shack might have seemed snug, almost cozy if he hadn't been so worried about the boys.

  "Surely they've found someplace to shelter for the night," she said hopefully, though he could sense the tautness in her, too.

  "If the boys left Denver at dawn," Shea went on, offering him a steaming mug of tea, "they ma
y have made it to the mining camp before the weather got bad."

  Cam gave a low, noncommittal grunt and unbuckled his gun belt before he accepted the tea.

  Shea sipped from her own cup, then set it aside. "Do you mind if I have a look at your pistol?" Shea asked him.

  Cam ignored the sharp twist of uneasiness in his gut. "Of course not."

  She slid the pistol from his holster, handling the weapon carefully, but without a woman's squeamishness. She settled her palm around the mother-of-pearl grip and, taking care to turn the barrel away, she examined the inlay and the chasing.

  "Where have I seen this gun before?" she asked him.

  Apprehension jolted along Cam's nerves. "It was hanging in my room while you were recovering."

  "You've taken to wearing it more often lately," she observed.

  Cam nodded, nursing his tea. "For the same reason I've been having Rand ride back and forth to town with me. Because there are more miscreants in Colorado this year than last."

  She frowned running her fingers along the gun's delicate silver traceries. "I don't think that's why I remember it."

  The broken photographic plate flashed before Cam's eyes. She'd seen a gun just like this one when she'd taken that photograph of Wes Seaver. He just prayed she wouldn't remember.

  "The pistol is one of a pair my men gave me after the Rapidan," he volunteered, hoping to divert her.

  She glanced at him. "Why?"

  He swallowed down more of his tea. It tasted gritty and sulfurous as cannon smoke. "Well, I'd made major, for one thing, and I'd managed to keep more than half my troopers alive through three years of battle."

  It didn't sound like much, but considering what those years had been like, it was little short of a miracle.

  "What happened to this gun's mate?" she asked instead.

  "I lost it," he said shortly.

  "How?"

  Trust Shea to ask. He hesitated trying to decide how much of the truth to tell her. More rather than less, he thought.

  "Toward the closing days of the war I was assigned to a roughshod detachment of soldiers and was fool enough to take that fancy rig with me. Right off one of the officers offered to buy the guns. When I wouldn't sell, he tried to win them at poker. That didn't work, so he had his orderly try to steal them. Finally he took my horse from the picket line and deliberately mistreated him." Cam shrugged. "I couldn't tolerate that, so I picked a fight."

  "And you lost?"

  Cam stared down into his tea. "Yeah."

  It hadn't been a fair fight. Riding with outlaws, he shouldn't have expected it to be. Still, losing to Seaver had rankled him. He'd been sprawled on his face breathing dust when Seaver propped a foot in the small of his back and pulled the pistol from the holster at Cam's hip.

  "I'm leaving the other of these fine guns for you," Seaver had drawled. "So that every time you draw it, you'll remember I'm the better man."

  "And the officer kept the gun?" Shea asked him.

  Her question jarred Cam, chased the memory away. "He took it as his due."

  Shea admired the Colt a moment longer, polished the fingerprints from the barrel with the hem of her skirt, and slid the pistol into its holster.

  The wash of relief came so strong Cam felt almost drunk on it. If she didn't remember now where she'd seen this gun's mate, she'd never connect him to Wes Seaver.

  Shea went to rummaging through the saddlebags, pulling out bread and cheese and apples for their dinner. Cam's stomach rumbled as she set the food before him, and he couldn't help worrying about what Rand and Ty were having for supper.

  "And you're sure this mining camp is where Morran would go?" he asked her.

  Shea looked up from slicing the bread. "Didn't the barkeep over where he and Ty were living tell you some of Morran's cronies came and got him?"

  "Which for miners is odd," Cam reflected. "Winter isn't a miner's most productive time. So why would Morran hightail it back to this camp? And what would prevent him from taking Ty?"

  "Could they have made some kind of a strike?"

  "That's possible," he allowed, but knew it wasn't likely. "I just wish the boys hadn't been as brash and reckless."

  Shea's mouth tipped up at the corner, and she slid him a sidelong glance. "I'll warrant you were every bit as brash and reckless when you were younger."

  "Oh, I don't know," he said with another shrug. "Has Lily been telling tales on me?"

  "She did say you won medals in the war. That sounds brash and reckless to me."

  The mention of the war caught him like it always did, quick and hard. Drenching him in memories.

  "It's war that makes men brash and reckless," he said with more than a modicum of bitterness. "It makes them do things against their beliefs, against their conscience. War forces men to deny their humanity, and when what they've done has turned them into beasts, the government gives them medals for doing it."

  Shea might have seen how it was with him the night of the opening and understood some of it. But not all—and he wasn't about to enlighten her.

  He took a slice of bread and a piece of cheese and shifted back onto his elbows, putting some distance between them. "So tell me about growing up in Ireland," he suggested. "I'll wager you weren't the most staid and docile of children, either."

  She laughed as if she were pleased that he'd given her leave to speak of happier things. As they ate, she told him about her life in the cottage by the sea. She spoke of her da and mam, of her brothers and sisters, of boating and fishing and riding over miles of rolling countryside at her father's heels.

  She was so lovely sitting there in the firelight, her eyes alive with memories, the lilt in her voice deepening, her words flowing with a special kind of music. The glow of the fire set the copper lights to shimmering in her coppery curls and deepened the ruddy flush the wind had scoured into her cheeks.

  It seemed all at once like a very long time since he'd touched her softness or tasted her warmth. He yearned for that tonight, for comfort and surcease. He longed for the vitality of her flesh beneath his hands and the sweetness of her mouth. He wanted to lie down with her, wrap her in his arms, and forget how cold and weary and worried he was about the boys.

  But he couldn't bring himself to compromise Shea any more than he had already compromised her by bringing her here. He couldn't take advantage of either her womanliness or her warm heart. Still, he needed some harmless bit of contact.

  From where he was propped up beside her, listening to her tales of her home, he could reach the thick, brushy bloom of curls at the bottom of her tightly wrapped braid. He raised his hand to stroke those gingery strands, to rub the silky corkscrew tendrils between his fingertips. Her hair was as soft and vital as Shea was herself. And as mesmerizingly lovely.

  At his touch, she paused, an unfinished sentence still poised on her lips. She closed her eyes, and for a score of heartbeats went utterly still. When she turned to him, he could see the same lonely desperation in her face, the same yearning for tenderness and succor he was feeling.

  His chest filled with warmth, filled with wonder.

  "Shea," he whispered, wanting to offer her what she needed. "Oh, Shea."

  Tightening his hold on her braid, he drew her toward him.

  Shea hesitated; her eyes darkened and her mouth bowed. For an instant he thought she might pull away, but then she sighed and came to him.

  He kissed her gently at first, his lips barely grazing hers. Her mouth was succulent and even softer than he remembered—plush, pillowy pink and fresh with the taste of apples. His lips settled over hers, lingering and then withdrawing, sipping and pressing.

  Her mouth moved sinuously beneath his, caressing, retreating and giving back. She grazed his upper lip with the tip of her tongue, rasping along the bristly edge of his mustache, then returned to slick his lower lip.

  As they kissed, he pulled the ribbon from her braid and began to untwine her soft, thick hair. He spread the loosened strands against her shoulders and
back in a mass of tumbled coppery-gold curls. He filled his palms with that softness as he eased her down across their bedrolls.

  Lying beside her length to length, he was reminded how small she was, how delicate, how deliciously feminine. He pulled her close and raised his hand to cup her cheek. He tipped her mouth to his and lavished those full, sweet lips with the swipe of his tongue.

  This was what they needed, Cam decided hazily. Closeness and comfort, the balm of touching, the companionship of these few shared intimacies. They needed shelter from the cold and from the fear that had dogged them every mile they rode today. Surely no harm could come of giving and receiving something so simple, something so basic.

  They kissed for a very long time, slow, lazy, languorous kisses. Kisses that rode the rhythm of their breathing. Kisses that shuttered the world and their worries away. Kisses that teased and probed and promised.

  Her hands slid over him as they kissed, going around his ribs and up his back. Cam drew her closer, telling himself comfort and succor were all he meant to give—and all he wanted for himself.

  He should have known better.

  Tangled there before the fire, their kisses ripened. Deepened. Darkened. They skimmed the ragged edge of passion.

  As innocent as Cam had meant those kisses to be, they kindled a thick, rich heat between them. Cam's senses sang with his awareness of Shea's earthy lavender scent, with the oddly provocative way she moved beneath him, with the soft, appreciative sighs she gave as he raised his mouth from hers.

  How much he longed to ease her out of her clothes and lie with her skin to skin, to tangle his legs with hers, and skim his hands the length of her back. He wanted to savor that closeness, savor that heat. He wanted to make love with her.

  The admission sobered him, and before he could act, Cam rolled away from her. He sat up at the edge of the blanket, dizzy and disoriented.

  "I need to—to go check on the horses," he managed to mumble.

  But as he reached for his holster and his pistol, Shea caught his hand. "The horses will be fine," she assured him, her thumb caressing the curve of his wrist where the blood ran hot and close to the surface. "I want you to stay with me."