Sahara Splendor

by Charlotte Hubbard

  If Madigan hadn’t grabbed her shoulders, Sahara would’ve lunged at the retreating reprobate’s back. Only the lowest of vermin would voice such an insult so loudly that the men tending the coach had looked their way! And to make matters worse, little Mitch had returned from his run around the corral just in time to hear the accusation, too.

  “Mama, what’s ‘fornicating’?” he chirped in his childlike soprano.

  Sahara watched Roxanne Pruitt’s face lose the color her own was taking on. She stroked the straw-blond curls from her son’s sweaty forehead and cleared her throat. “It means that Miss Sahara and Mr. Madigan care very much for each other, just like Mama and Papa,” she rasped.

  “Oh.” Mitch flashed them a grin and then trotted over to the base of the towering, name-covered rocks. “Lookit! There’s a B, and a K, and a M—like in Mitchell!” he exclaimed as he pointed them out. “Mama, I can read!”

  The tension ebbed from her body, and Sahara felt herself chuckling. Thank goodness for little-boy curiosity, which flitted from topic to topic like a bee! She felt the warmth of Madigan’s hands on her shoulders and smiled gratefully at Roxanne. “Thank you,” she mumbled. “I—I didn’t mean to put you in such a spot.”

  “Never you mind,” the woman replied with a wave of her slender hand. Her eyes blazed with interest as she glanced from Sahara to the man standing behind her, but she kept her questions to herself. “I doubt Jenkins knows what the word means, either,” she said with a subdued laugh. “Such a prickly old pig! He’s been baiting me with politics and religion ever since we left home, and because I haven’t argued with him, he’s dumped all his frustrations on you. If we’re lucky, he’ll busy himself with his scribblings and leave us alone now.”

  Indeed, the journalist pretended none of them had joined him in the coach as they started down the road again. Phineas hunched over his pad, peering intently at it while his pen scratched rapidly across the page. Sahara suspected he was recording this latest incident, and she wished she and Madigan hadn’t provided such juicy grist for his story. But she refused to apologize for—or justify—her relationship with Dan to such a priggish, opinionated boor!

  Madigan was lounging next to him on the leather seat, his legs stretched out and his hat lowered as though he were napping. Those brown eyes, however, were staring sideways to catch every word of the reporter’s essay! It was all she could do not to laugh, and when they struck a bump, Phineas swore as ink splattered his page.

  “Perhaps it’s best,” Dan said in a low drawl. “Two things will happen if that episode sees print, Mr. Jenkins. First, I’ll drag your sorry ass to the nearest judge and extract payment for the damaging, libelous fiction you’re presenting as fact.”

  After a long pause, when only the horses’ hoofbeats and the creaking of the thoroughbraces broke the silence, the man beside him raised a grizzled eyebrow. “And?”

  Madigan coughed to cover a laugh. “And anyone who reads the piece will know its author’s never seen a woman’s flesh, much less pressed it. Shall I set you straight on a few points of anatomy?”

  With a murderous look, the reporter slapped his notebook shut. They heard no more from Mr. Jenkins, and a weary monotony settled over Sahara as the carriage swayed and rocked. Through the windows, she saw gray clouds gathering on the horizon, and the afternoon’s warmth was growing heavy with humidity. Beside her, Mitch was dutifully writing each letter of the alphabet on his slate as his mother dictated in her low, soothing voice.

  Madigan’s hat covered half his face now, and she felt herself drifting…so long since she’d had a night’s sleep…so hard to keep herself from pitching sideways and then jerking self-consciously…had to stay awake—be alert—when she met the men at the next station…

  The patter of rain awoke her. A drop or two splashed on her face, and Sahara realized she’d curled up against the edge of the leather seat. The breeze smelled wet and earthy, and as she was thinking that poor Fergus and Bean must be getting drenched, she heard them talking.

  “Looks to be abandoned…do ye see any sign of Hendricks or the stock?”

  “Nope. Best keep moving…might find them down the road…more secure location.”

  Worry gnawed at her. She was aware that Mitchell was sleeping fitfully against his mother, whose fatigue-shadowed eyes were as droopy as her own. Jenkins’s chin rested on his chest, and he woke himself with a disgruntled snore. The carriage intensified the odor of his sweaty, dust-caked clothing, and when Bean dropped the outside leather curtains to protect them from the downpour, Sahara groaned inwardly. Had they been plodding through the rain forever, or was she too tired to keep accurate track of time?

  “We’ll have to stop at this next one,” she overheard her driver. “Pickin’ up mud, we are, and the horses’re exhausted.”

  “Best to wait for Charlie and Underwood anyway. Safety in numbers.”

  “Aye, and we’re short on strong arms to push the coach if the mud sucks the wheels down.”

  Push the coach? Sahara exchanged a groggy, frightened glance with Roxanne and prayed they’d make the next station before any of the hinted-at disasters struck.

  They did, and the rain clouds cleared away to reveal a soft, star-speckled sky. The two keepers accepted their pay graciously and confirmed that the animals from the previous station had been transferred here while that keeper and his wife sought a doctor for their sick child.

  “I’d keep movin’ if Fs you,” one burly man commented to Bean, “because the redskins love it after a shower. It means their rain dance worked, and there’ll be good grass for their ponies.”

  No one cared to argue with his logic, so after the team was replaced, they started toward the stagecoach again. The freight wagons were just lumbering into the station, and McGee felt they’d soon catch up if he kept his horses at a prudent speed for the road conditions. “All aboard now,” he called out, waving at Oswald and Underwood.

  Sahara was ready to follow Jenkins’s broad butt through the door when a hand closed on her shoulder. “Let’s take the roof,” Dan whispered.

  His intentions sparkled in his dark eyes, and her mouth fell open. “But Bean and Fergus will—”

  “They sit too low down to see anything.”

  “—and we’ll be right over top of—”

  “Who says we’re going to move around and make noise?” he teased. “Unless they climb up out of the windows, Roxanne and our reporter friend will have to assume we’re sitting on a bench behaving ourselves. Neither of them would dream we’d try anything on a moving coach. Right?”

  She had no chance to protest, because Madigan was boosting her up over the luggage railing. Sahara gripped the center bench as they jerked into motion, and then she sat down hurriedly to wave at the station keepers. Their smiles were evident by the light from their lanterns.

  “You are shameless!” she hissed. “It’s your fault everyone knows we’re—”

  “Is it? Do they hear my groans and panting?” he teased. He slid over beside her and slipped an arm around her waist, hungry for the taste of her. But she wriggled free.

  “What if we fall off?” she demanded hoarsely. “What if we’re attacked, and the Indians—”

  “Trust me.”

  “Of all the—” Sahara wanted to glare at him, but his idea was taking hold all over her body despite her mind’s objections to the dangers and improprieties involved. “Last time you said that, I ended up married to Horatio Spade!”

  “And I was right there on his balcony, poised to shoot him, wasn’t 1?” he said urgently. She was giving in. Her eyes were wide, glimmering pools, and she was gripping his upper arms with hands that shook slightly—and not from fear, because Sahara Spade didn’t know the meaning of that word.

  “You wouldn’t have! Not with Jennifer and the wedding guests—”

  “I would’ve killed him and been hung for it before I let that old goat have you, Sahara,” he insisted. “Surely by now you realize how much I love you.”

>   His deep, tender words melted some of the starch out of her argument. “But that was before—we barely knew each other.”

  “I knew I’d be a fool to let another man have you,” he stated. He stroked her warm cheek and then lowered his face toward hers. “Surely by now you can see I’ve learned from my past mistakes…can see how much you’ve taught me about myself, Sahara. Besides, who else would ask you to make love on a stagecoach?”

  The gentle rocking of the carriage nudged them together and apart…together and apart…until she couldn’t deny the outrageous appeal of his proposition. They wouldn’t have to move much if they let the sway of the coach do the work.

  “It’s written all over your face, honey,” Dan breathed. “You’re dying to try it.”

  Perhaps those words were truer than they knew, but she couldn’t deny her accelerating pulse and the promise of the cool, indigo night. When she tipped her head back to kiss him, Madigan’s lips were already claiming hers, and he was easing her off the bench onto the flatness of the roof.

  Chapter 18

  Madigan’s heart was slamming against his chest as he watched Sahara wriggle out of her pants. His own clothes defied his fumbling fingers—damn fly buttons and boots were such a nuisance when he was in a hurry! He left his shirt on and gestured for Sahara to do the same, just in case they were interrupted.

  But his woman would have none of that. Her eyes glimmered a challenge as she bared her shoulders and breasts, and when her hands swept through the hair on his chest Dan lost all desire to contradict her. They couldn’t whisper or groan or shift around, knowing Jenkins and Roxanne were probably holding their breath to hear every telltale noise. He kissed Sahara deeply, already half-insane from this enforced silence and the danger that they’d be discovered, and then he turned her onto her side to face the bench in front of him.

  The coach hit a rut, and she grabbed the upright board that supported the bench. Dan was reaching around her to take hold of the slat, too, and as his warm body curved around hers so perfectly, she again marveled at how they fit together, how they yearned for the same release. His knees brought hers up toward her chest, and she could feel him growing rigid against her backside.

  Were the horses speeding up, or was it her pulse pounding at such a deafening rate? Madigan was kissing the back of her neck, stroking her stomach and breasts with his uppermost hand as the muscled arm beneath her cushioned her head. The balmy breeze smelled like rain and Dan’s virile, cedarlike essence, and when he found the portal he’d been probing for, Sahara braced herself for the boundless ecstasy she knew they’d find.

  He let the swaying coach do the work for him, gritting his teeth against the urge to thrust deeply inside her. She felt so snug and warm, Dan could hardly stand it. He buried his face in her thick, sweet-smelling hair to keep from groaning the guttural phrases that were galloping through his mind. Here was a woman bold enough to indulge his wildest fantasies, and he would show her exactly how much her adventurous loving meant to him! He would bring her to that mind-shattering crest again and again, until—

  Her low, shrill whine made his eyes fly open. This was no time to howl like a coyote! “Sahara, hush!”

  “I thought that was your she rasped. The tremors were deepening inside her, like an earthquake about to break forth, yet she held her breath to listen.

  The coach was traveling faster, and while the vibrations in the wooden roof served their purposes perfectly, she had to wonder why, if they were waiting for the freight wagons to catch up, Fergus was cracking his whip.

  Dan was aware of the exchange between Luther and McGee, and the rumbling stagecoach didn’t drown out the urgency of words he couldn’t hear completely. He was so damn close to exploding—the woman in his arms was doing her damndest not to writhe with her own need for release—but something was dangerously wrong. “Honey, we’d better—”

  Ki-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!

  Sahara heard the first arrow’s solid thank as it hit the coach, and she struggled away from Madigan’s viselike embrace. “Indians! Oh Lord!” she gasped.

  “Lie still,” he ordered hoarsely. “We’re safer staying flat than if we move.”

  “And we’re buck naked!” She fought the urgent passion that clouded her mind, grappling for the clothes strewn about them. “Tom and Charlie are too far back to be any protection, so we’ll have to help Bean and McGee defend the passengers.”

  An arrow sliced the air above them, and a third one struck the bench they were facing. They could hear the approaching ponies and their whooping riders clearly now, so they wasted no more time arguing. Dressing while lying flat was an awkward ordeal, but the imminent danger they were in kept them scrambling until they were buttoned up.

  “I’m going to crawl back and get the pistols from my saddlebags,” Madigan said. “Since the redskins’re behind us, the trunks you and Roxanne brought will shield me.”

  Sahara’s reply was partly drowned out by the deafening retort of Luther Bean’s shotgun. “—going with you, so I can—”

  “You’re staying put! I’m not patching up wounds you get by being bullheaded!”

  “Bullheaded?” she challenged. “Who tried to talk you out of coming up here, Madigan? I swear to God your privates must’ve crept up into your brain!”

  She had a point, but this was no time to remind Sahara that she caused that affliction every time she smiled at him. With a disgruntled sigh, Dan slithered over the top of the bench that was between them and the two large steamer trunks at the rear railing. As he’d feared, the approaching warriors saw him move and sent another round of arrows whizzing toward the coach.

  Sahara waited for them to fly by and then quickly slipped back beside Madigan. He’d opened his bags and

  was removing two Colt .44’s, his glance at her wary. “You know how to use one of these?”

  “Damn right I do,” she grunted. “I’ll take this side. Sounds like they’ve practically caught up to us.”

  “Wait until they’re close enough to plug between the eyes,” he ordered. “I’m short on bullets.”

  Once again Bean’s shotgun rang out, inspiring a fresh volley of war whoops and arrows. The coach was now racing down the road, and their only defense was to outrun their attackers. Poorly nourished painted ponies were no match for her sturdy Morgans, even when they were hauling a coach, so she prayed Fergus could gallop the horses long enough to escape a massacre.

  When she peered around the side of Roxanne’s steamer trunk, Sahara saw the band of savages in the moonlight. There looked to be six or seven, riding hellbent while reloading their bows. One in a fringed shirt and a war bonnet was aiming a pistol at them, and she screamed when his bullet lodged in the trunk she was using for cover. She desperately wanted to fire back, but Dan was right: at this distance and speed, it would be a waste of good ammunition.

  As the buckskinned brave broke from the pack and sped toward them however, Madigan squinted, aimed, and fired. The Indian let out a satisfying holler, and his pistol flew from his grip as he grabbed his shoulder. Dan shot again, this time to disable his mount, and a shrieking whinny rang through the night. The spotted horse reared and collapsed, tossing its wounded rider into the dirt as the other Indians rode past him.

  When Luther Bean shot again, Sahara realized the expressman had climbed onto the roof and was crouched so closely behind her that she could feel the heat from his huge, powerful body. “Don’t move,” he growled; and lo and behold his next shot scattered the savages, and they circled around to retreat! All but the fallen brave were now racing away, until they were only fading thunder in the moonlight.

  On an impulse, Sahara turned to holler at her driver. “Go back! Let’s get the one Dan shot and be sure the others don’t attack Charlie and Tom!”

  “They’ll be fine without your assistance,” Bean muttered. “What the hell’re you two doing up here? It’s McGee’s and my job to protect you, and you were obviously engaged in—if you’d gotten killed, we’d be in a hellu
va tight position, Mrs. Spade.”

  His sarcasm hit her wrong. “What I was engaged in is none of your business, Mr. Bean, so—”

  “Fine. You can explain to the others why you’re wearing Madigan’s shirt.”

  Sahara felt her face go hot as the burly, buckskinned guard climbed toward the front of the moving coach to resume his seat. In her haste to dress, she’d hurried into the first shirt she found and had been too preoccupied with getting shot to realize it was looser through the chest and shoulders than her own was.

  Madigan, who was bare-chested, chuckled as he tossed her the correct garment. “If you hurry, you can change before we get back to where—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Her fingers flew over her buttons while she glared at him. “If you hadn’t insisted we come up here—”

  “If you hadn’t insisted our shirts come off,” he teased, “Mr. Bean would be none the wiser.”

  “Just forget it!” she snapped. “You’ll not touch me again, Madigan. I’ve got handcuffs that’ll keep you in your place if you try it!”

  Her breasts bobbed as she wrestled his sleeves off and then jammed her arms into the other shirt. He deserved this lecture, he supposed, but it was damn hard to pay attention as he watched the moonlight play upon her porcelain skin. Dan hadn’t realized how much paler she was where her clothes covered her, and the knowledge that only he had seen the contrasts of her golden flesh pleased him.

  She’d be over her embarrassment by the next time he wanted her… Perhaps he should suggest she wear a camisole to control the firm, rounded softness her shirts didn’t disguise, but Sahara wouldn’t take such advice very graciously right now. They were drawing up near the downed pony, and as Fergus slowed the stagecoach, Luther Bean kept his gun aimed at the fallen brave.

  “Please! N-no shoot ‘em!” the redskin pleaded, raising his good arm. The other sleeve of his fringed shirt was dark with blood, and as he sat beside his lifeless pony he looked downright pathetic.