“Yes.” Connor exhaled a tired sigh. He blinked his eyes open and found his wife hovering over him.
“Kiss me,” he ordered.
“Kiss you?” Susanna drawled, her brows arching.
He nodded. “That first time, I took you in anger, and then I tried to keep from getting too close to you. I want to go back and cover the steps we missed. Kiss me. I’m too weak to raise my head and kiss you.”
“I married a lunatic,” Susanna muttered, but she wriggled down along the bed. Taking care not to put pressure on his chest, she leaned over him and gently brushed her lips against his.
The white cotton nightgown covered her up to the neck, but in the golden light of the oil lamp Connor could see the fabric flutter as her breathing grew swift. He tilted his head back to increase the pressure of his mouth on hers. Susanna made a soft sound of pleasure and pulled away.
“Again,” he said. “This time, kiss me like your life depends on it. Kiss me like you’ll never get enough of me.”
She lowered her mouth to his once more. Her dark hair cascaded down, forming a curtain that shielded them from the world. Her lips pressed against his, slanting over them again and again. When Connor opened his mouth, her tongue darted inside.
He growled, a rough sound low in his throat.
Susanna raised her head. “What is it?”
Connor tried to laugh, but the motion stabbed like a knife in his chest. “Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.” His tone was rueful. “I want to do more than I’m capable of.”
“Oh?” Color flooded to her cheeks. “Could I…?”
“No,” he said. “I’m afraid I truly am too weak.” He gestured with his head, a small jerk that almost depleted his strength. “I need you to climb out of bed and get back in on my right side. That way, we can sleep together without you jolting my wound.”
Susanna scrambled up and circled the bed. She waited while Connor used the last of his energy to scoot along the mattress to the other side. Then she climbed back into bed and settled beside him beneath the covers.
Connor closed his eyes and gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Sleep now.”
He heard a whispered voice. “I’m not sleepy. Can I kiss you again?”
He couldn’t stop the chuckle that turned into a groan of agony. “Sleep,” he said. “Or you’ll be the death of me and have to explain to Dr Jameson why I died in your bed.” He fumbled around until he found her hand, and he curled his fingers around hers. Then he drifted off to a peaceful sleep, his wife by his side.
****
Susanna lay awake all night, nestling against Connor’s warmth, preparing for the sacrifice she knew she must make. She waited in the darkness, clinging to the illusion of serenity and peace while she listened to his even breathing and felt the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath her palm.
When the first glimmer of dawn shone through the uncovered window, Connor stirred beside her. Susanna wriggled up to lean against the headboard and watched him slowly come awake. The instant his eyes opened, she blurted out her thoughts.
“You have to go away. If you leave Circle Star, we’ll both be safe. If Hartman can’t find you, he can’t kill you. He won’t be able to pressure me to marry him because I’m not a widow. He can’t kill me because you would inherit the ranch. He can’t force me to sell, because legally I can’t without your consent. If you go away, it will solve everything.”
A hard, closed expression settled on Connor’s face, banishing the vulnerability of sleep. Something flickered in his eyes, a stubborn flash of masculine pride and protectiveness, and it made Susanna fear he was hiding something from her.
“I’ll deal with Hartman,” he said gruffly. He turned toward her on the bed, flinching at the pain. “After I’ve killed his hired gun, I’ll kill Hartman.”
“You can’t.” Susanna tugged at the front of her nightgown, her hands needing something to clasp. “I’ve spent all night thinking about it. Hartman is a coward. He’ll never face you in a fair fight. I don’t think he even carries a gun. He prefers to hide behind a team of armed men. If you kill him, you’ll hang for murder. The sheriff will see to it.”
“I’ll find a way,” Connor said. He ran the flat of his hand along the bandage that covered his chest, and then he lay still, satisfied that leaving his sickbed hadn’t caused his wound to start bleeding again.
The words tore out of Susanna. “You have to leave. Please…”
Connor’s brows gathered into an angry frown. “No.”
“Yes.” She reached out to trace the thin car on the side of his face with one fingertip. “It’s the only way, Connor. Can’t you see?”
Connor captured her wrist. “I’ve already told you, you can no longer twist me around your little finger. The answer is no. You can wear your voice hoarse asking, but I will not leave you.” A grim smile drifted across his mouth. “First you haul me here by force, and now you want to send me away. Typical female dithering.”
She didn’t let his words distract her. “Hartman will try to kill you again.”
“That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.” Connor spoke in a low voice, not meeting her eyes. “I left Circle Star once because I couldn’t bear the thought of having failed your father’s trust by touching you before you were old enough. By putting that clause in his will, he appointed me your protector. If I left Circle Star now, I would be failing him.”
Susanna sighed, a long, forlorn sound as she accepted Connor was right. Her father had directed their lives. He had wanted her to either return to Philadelphia, or seek Connor’s protection. She had chosen to marry Connor and remain on the ranch, and now she would have accept the consequences of her choice—even if it meant putting Connor’s life in danger.
“What can we do?” she asked miserably.
“We can get on with life,” Connor replied. “Once I’m up on my feet, I’ll get back to work. I expect that Hartman’s hired killer will try to goad me into a gunfight next time I’m in Cedar City. I’ll be ready. I’ll do what I have to do.”
****
Susanna pushed the library door open to find Connor sprawled in the chair behind the desk, staring morosely into an empty whiskey tumbler. Skirts swishing, she rushed up to him. “You’re a convalescent and shouldn’t be drinking.” She reached out to snatch away the bottle that stood on the desk in front of him.
Connor laid a hand over her arm. “Leave it.”
“What is it?” Susanna searched his shuttered expression. She’d assumed their marriage would turn into an instant success now that they had admitted to their feelings, but she’d been wrong. As soon as Connor had gained enough strength to leave his sickbed, he’d withdrawn from her again, retreating into sullen silences.
They had not had another discussion about him leaving Circle Star, or what to do about the danger that threatened them. The men continued to guard the house. The tense mood had spread over the entire ranch. Thanksgiving had passed with barely a celebration, and the cowboys had stopped visiting the saloons in Cedar City.
Instinct told Susanna that Connor was planning something, and it troubled her that he didn’t confide in her.
“What’s on your mind?” she pressed.
Instead of replying, he reached for the bottle by his elbow.
“Why do you need to drink?” she pleaded. “The doctor says it’s bad for you.”
“To forget.” He uncapped the bottle and filled the glass. “And to remember.”
“Forget what?” she asked. “Remember what?”
Connor absently rubbed a fingertip over the thin white scar on his left cheek. “Forget what I’ve done and remember what I have to do.”
“You said…” Susanna paused to draw a breath. She longed to learn something about the years that had made him into such a hard and bitter man. “You said that you killed the man who gave you the scar?”
Connor raised his head, met her eyes. “Yes,” he said.”And worse, I killed a woman.” He picked up the glass and downed the
shot of whiskey in a single gulp.
Susanna stared at him, her chest tight. “How…?”
“How does an honorable man kill a woman?” Connor shrugged, leaning back in the big leather chair. “Perhaps I’m not the man you think I am.”
She moved closer to him. “If you killed a woman, I’m sure you did it because you had no choice.”
Connor rolled the empty glass between his fingers. “That’s the devil of it. I did have a choice. There’s always a choice, in every situation.”
“Tell me.” Kneeling down by his chair, Susanna looked up at him and tried to read his closed expression. “Please, tell me about it.”
“Pretty little Susanna,” he said softly. “You have no idea of how harsh life can be when hunger lurks at each mealtime, and when every man wants to take advantage of you.”
“Tell me.” She reached up to stroke his scarred cheek. “I want to understand.”
Connor locked his eyes on the far wall and spoke quietly. “I once took a woman to share my cabin in the mining camps in Alaska. She’d been living with a big Russian by the name of Boris. He gave her a beating for the slightest reason, and sometimes without any reason at all. One day she decided that enough was enough, and she ran out on him, begging for someone to help.”
“And you helped her?” Susanna bit back another question—what the woman had meant to him, if she’d been his companion, shared his bed.
Connor glanced down at her and nodded in reply to her unvoiced question. His lips twisted into a grim smile. “I took her in,” he said, as though those simple words explained everything.
He paused. When he spoke again, he studied the empty glass in his hand as if his memories were contained within. “One day, about a week later, I came home to find her gone. I thought she had returned to the Russian, but my cabin lay in disarray. The signs of a struggle worried me, so I decided to walk over and check that she had gone of her own free will.”
“Did you find her?”
Connor’s face hardened. “I found her. She was standing naked outside his cabin, tied to a stake, her feet immersed in a pail of water. It was in the middle of the winter, with the temperature forty below.”
“No!” Susanna shook her head side to side, as if to deny the words.
Connor gave a single nod. “Yes. I rushed to free her, but Boris appeared out of the cabin, wielding a hunting knife. He caught me in the face. He might have killed me, but he slipped over on a clear lick of ice that had formed where the woman had splashed water while trying to kick her feet out of the pail.”
“Did you kill him?”
“He fell onto his own knife. With a little help from me.”
Susanna swallowed, afraid to ask. “And the woman?”
“I carried her to my cabin. The water in the pail had frozen solid around her feet. She was a thin little thing. The block of ice attached to her feet weighed more than she did.”
“Was…was she all right?”
Connor shook his head. “I crammed the stove full of firewood until the metal glowed red. Then I hacked the ice from her feet with an axe, and melted what was left, but it was too late. It didn’t take long before gangrene started eating her frostbitten flesh.”
“Did her legs have to be amputated?”
“At midwinter in an Alaskan mining camp?” Connor turned to face her, regret etched on his face. “There were no doctors. She was in terrible pain, and even if she could have been saved, her life would have been unbearable without someone to care for her.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave her whiskey for the pain and held her in my arms until she fell asleep. Then I put my gun against her temple and put a bullet through her brain.”
Susanna cried out in anguish, and instantly wished she hadn’t. “You did it to save her suffering,” she said, her eyes intent on Connor as she finally began to understand what kind of a life he had led, what kind of memories caused his dark moods.
“I killed her,” Connor said flatly. “I killed her three times. First I killed her by making Boris angry when I allowed her to move into my cabin. Then I killed her by not finding her a doctor. Then I killed her by putting a bullet in her brain.”
“But you said there were no doctors.”
Connor considered a long moment before he spoke. “It’s not until I found you again that I realized what I had done. Had it been you, I would have moved heaven and earth to get you to a doctor. I didn’t do the same for her. I killed her, because I didn’t love her.” The corners of his mouth twisted into a bitter smirk. “How is that for an act of honor?”
Susanna surged to her feet and wrapped her arms around him. “You did the best you could.”
“But my best wasn’t good enough.”
She clung to him in silence, and hated herself for the satisfaction it gave her to know that Connor hadn’t loved this unknown woman, even if it had meant that he didn’t struggle as hard to keep her alive as he perhaps could have done.
****
Connor gave Brutus a command to keep still and looked down from the saddle at Gomez. “We’re going back to the western boundary, to repair the broken fence.”
“But Boss…that’s where you were shot…” The young wrangler quickly stepped aside as Brutus swung his head and bared his teeth. “That damn horse,” Gomez muttered. “I’m sure it understands human speech.”
If Connor hadn’t been so tense, he might have smiled. He glanced back at the house where Susanna still lay sleeping. Regret filled him. In the past two weeks, while he’d been convalescing, he’d pushed her away. He’d had to do it. It left him free to concentrate on his plan to secure their future. And he wanted a distance between them, a distance that might ease her grief if his plan didn’t work and he failed to return.
Only a pale glow on the eastern horizon eased the darkness. Connor listened to the jingle of spurs and the creak of leather as he watched the other three men get ready, moving like shadows in the faint predawn light. Pete Jackson mounted on Santiago. Garrett had picked a paint cutting horse, and Ramirez rode the small brown mustang he favored.
Connor had discussed the danger with the men, and had suggested that Ramirez who had a wife might prefer to let someone else take his place. The Mexican had grinned, baring strong white teeth beneath his thick moustache, so confident in his masculinity that he took any implication that he might be a coward as a joke.
When everyone had mounted, Gomez moved to the water trough and cranked the pump to fill the container the four horses had depleted. Connor gestured for him to stop. Silence fell over the gravel yard as the clanking of the iron handle and the gurgle of water inside the metal pipe ceased.
“My wife might come looking for me,” Connor said. “Tell her where I’ve gone.”
Gomez frowned, his dark brows crinkling. “What if she wants to follow?”
“Then you give her Clown.”
The young man spluttered, something between a laugh and a gasp of outrage. “The oldest nag in the stable? Miss Susanna will spit in my face.”
This time, Connor smiled. “Tell my wife Pete Jackson has taken Santiago to the blacksmith, and all other horses are spoken for. And if you have Clown ready and saddled, in her haste she might forget about spitting in your face.”
Looking unconvinced, Gomez muttered a curse in Spanish.
Alarm rippled over Connor at the thought that the young wrangler might let Susanna bully him. “Remember,” he said sharply. “If my wife comes looking for me, we’ve gone to where the west fence meets the river, and if she wants a horse, you’ll give her Clown.” He paused to emphasize his words. “If you do anything else, it’s me spitting in your face that you’ll need to worry about.”
Connor waited long enough to see Gomez nod. Then he raised his arm in signal and kicked Brutus into motion. The other three men streamed out of the yard behind him.
After a mile, they halted. Connor and Pete vaulted from their horses and swapped their coats and hats. Pete’s wool coat
strained across Connor’s shoulders, and his leather coat hung loose on Pete, but from a distance it wouldn’t matter.
They swapped horses too, with Connor mounting on Santiago and Pete on Brutus. Then they rode off again, veering toward the south to make a detour that allowed them to approach the river without their passage being observed from Hartman’s land. When they arrived at the section of broken fence, Connor separated from the others and hid with Santiago behind a steep gulley on the riverbank.
In a few hours, he would find out if he knew his wife as well as he thought he did. And, if he was wrong, if his plan didn’t work, he and his men might end up dead.
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Chapter Fifteen
“Clown?” Susanna gaped at Gomez. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Miss Susanna, it’s the only horse I have ready. Half the horses are with the men at the east corrals, and Pete Jackson has taken Santiago to the blacksmith. I can have Clown saddled for you in five minutes. In two minutes.”
Susanna suppressed her surge of anger. Gomez was a nice young man, a little shy, but now he seemed almost frightened. Perhaps she could be demanding at times, but she’d never realized she had the capacity to intimidate the ranch hands.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll take Clown.”
Leaving Gomez to get the horse ready, Susanna hurried back into the house. The sun was already high in the sky. She’d slept too long. She seemed unusually tired these days. It must be the emotional strain from Connor’s injury. After that one night when he’d almost collapsed coming out to her bed, he hadn’t slept with her again, claiming that the doctor said the heat from her body might make the wound go putrid once more.
And now he’d gone off on a horse.
To the place where he’d been shot.
Honestly, did that man not have a brain in his head?
Susanna stormed up to her room, her boots stomping so hard on the stairs the timbers creaked with the impact. She wrapped the gun belt around her waist, yanking the clasp tight. Then she checked the big Remington revolver in the holster to make sure it was loaded, pulled on a coat and thumped a hat on her head, not even taking the time to tie her hair on a braid.
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