He leveled a steady gaze at her. “Did you decide on being a doctor because you’re afraid of something?”
“Afraid of what? I’m not afraid of study and hard work and long hours.”
“I don’t mean long hours and hard work. Maybe you’ve never done this—made love with a man—because you were afraid of something.”
She thought for a long minute. “I’m not afraid of men, if that’s what you mean. I’m not even afraid of you, though I was a bit at first.”
“Maybe it’s not me, exactly. Maybe it’s about what happens when a man and a woman get that close. About letting yourself go. Losing control.”
“I did, didn’t I?” she said, her voice soft.
He gave her a satisfied grin. “Might even be you’re scared you’ll like it.” He laid his forefinger under her chin, tipped her face up and kissed her. “Or that you’ll like me.”
“I do like it.” She stretched her arms over her head and sighed. “And I do like you.”
His grin widened. “Good. We’ll spend the day up here and travel tonight. That suit you?”
Sage couldn’t help her smile. “Yes. Oh, Cord, I thought you’d never ask!”
“Don’t need to. You’ve answered for me.” He touched her breast, moved his hand down to her thigh, and she turned toward him.
This time it was like silk, Sage thought. Slow and smooth, his body filling hers as if they had been made to fit together. When he moved inside her, whispering her name with each thrust, she lost command of her senses, and her physical responses welled up from a hitherto untapped place inside her.
She let herself follow her instincts, let herself moan and cry out. He seemed to like it. His breathing caught, then grew more ragged as she grew bolder, touching him, stroking his skin with her heated fingertips.
What a glorious thing it was, being with him. She’d never thought of ecstasy before, never considered it missing from her existence. Now she knew how much she had lacked.
Her only regret was the fingernail marks she left on his back.
Later, sated and drowsy in the afternoon heat, Sage found herself remembering Cord’s words. Was she afraid of something? Had she buried herself in studies and her professional duties not so much to sustain life in others but to escape it herself?
She watched Cord’s chest rise and fall as he lay beside her. She dreaded tomorrow. Dreaded getting back to town, saying goodbye to him. She would watch him ride away, out of her life, and then face emptiness.
She liked him. Wanted him. She even…
Oh, God, that was exactly what she must not ask.
She glanced at Cord to find him gazing at her, an odd light in his gray-green eyes. “Maybe I’m the one who’s scared, Sage.”
Her heart skittered to a halt, then slammed against her rib cage. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never been…it’s never been like this with a woman before. Kinda makes me—”
He broke off midsentence, listening. Sage heard it, too—a barely audible rustle of shrubbery, then the snap of a twig. Cord brought his mouth to her ear. “Stay down,” he intoned. “Whatever happens, don’t make a sound.”
Another movement was audible below, closer this time. Cord rose and moved to the far side of the shelter. Reaching above his head, he lifted an oilcloth-wrapped object from a notch cut into two crossed branches. A rifle, she realized as he silently unwrapped it. He let the protective cover drop to the platform floor.
Sage lifted her head. Suarez? she mouthed.
Cord nodded, then pointed the weapon down at the cave entrance and motioned for her to lie still. Another sound reached them from below.
Cord raised the rifle and took aim. He couldn’t see anything yet, just the occasional quiver of a salal branch, but something was there, all right. Something that moved on stealthy feet.
Something about the size of a man.
He waited. Cicadas whined in his ear. His palms grew sweaty, his trigger finger slick against the warm metal.
Make a move, he commanded. Show yourself. He peered down through the thick branches, straining his eyes. The breeze twitched a frond of fiddlehead fern back and forth; Cord couldn’t take his gaze off it. Then another sound, a soft thump, followed by the sigh of leaves, came from near the cave mouth.
He lowered the gun, blinked the sweat out of his eyes, then sighted along the barrel once more and held his aim steady. He’d fire the instant he had a clear shot, not before.
How the hell had Suarez trailed them? Possibly wounded, to boot. Cord hadn’t thought the Mexican was that good a tracker, especially not trailing a horse down the middle of a creek. But desperate men could surprise you. They had before; sooner or later, one would again.
Maybe this one.
He pulled his cheek away from the gun stock and lifted his head. Even if the outlaw had figured out the rock-laden mare was a decoy, even if he had picked up their trail, no one could follow tracks made in a streambed.
So it wasn’t Suarez in the brush below. Couldn’t be. Cord didn’t know how he knew this, but all at once he was dead certain. Might be human, but it wasn’t Suarez.
When he re-aimed the rifle, he saw finally what it was.
A seven-point buck stepped into the clearing, and Cord swore under his breath.
The click of lowering the hammer sent the animal bounding off into the woods. For the first time in some minutes, Cord felt his heartbeat return to normal.
Damn, that was close. If he’d shot before he saw his target clearly, he’d have announced their location to the whole mountainside. As it was, the episode signaled a warning. He and Sage couldn’t linger any longer.
He rewrapped the gun in its oilcloth sheath and lifted it back to its hiding place. “Suarez is nowhere around.”
Sage rose on one elbow. “How do you know?”
“He would have spooked that deer. Come on, let’s get moving.”
Cord unhooked their clothes from the pine branch above his head and they dressed in silence. When they’d climbed down the tree, Cord reloaded the saddlebag and their bedrolls on the mare picketed inside the cave. After lashing her medical satchel behind the saddle, he mounted and stretched his left arm down for Sage.
He pulled her up into his lap, and for a moment he couldn’t move. She was so warm and alive. So…unexpected. She slid her right leg over the animal’s neck and settled back against him. Cord took up the reins.
“Another ten hours and you’ll be home in Russell’s Landing. Providing we don’t meet any trouble.” He kept his tone matterof-fact.
Sage nodded but didn’t answer.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Y-yes. I must return to my medical practice.”
“Thought so,” he said. “That’s what happens when you’ve got a calling—there’s always something pulling at you.”
She twisted to look at him. “What about you, Cord? You have a calling, as well.”
He didn’t respond for a long time. “Yeah, guess I do at that. But I always like to take the long way home. And with you sitting so close I can smell your hair, the longer the better.”
“I must get back to Russell’s Landing.”
“I know.”
“I might have a patient who needs me. Or a baby to deliver. Or—” At least I hope I will. Essie O’Donnell’s child was near term, and there was Friedrich Stryker’s stiff knee and…
“Yeah. Just wanted to hold the thought in my mind for a while. As I said before, I don’t much like towns.”
Cord kicked the mare into a steady walk and splashed into the creek. From here the water flowed down the mountain to Pudding Flat, where wild grass and buckwheat filled a green meadow. A mile or so beyond it, they’d pick up the main trail back to civilization.
Civilization. He detested the word. It stood for everything—family, community obligations—that hog-tied a man tighter than any noose. He needed to come and go as he pleased. Alone.
That was the one thing Zack Bee
ler had taught him that Cord never forgot: Don’t get attached to anything you can’t ride away from.
He didn’t want to think about Sage in that vein. When the time came, he knew what he had to do.
But he sure wished they could take the long way back.
Chapter Eighteen
They reached the edge of Pudding Flat just as the sun was beginning to swell over the treetops. Riding all night, resting the mare every few hours and eating handfuls of ripe blackberries while the animal slurped water from the creek, had left them bone-weary.
The morning air smelled sweet and clean, tinged with sage and wild onion. As they dropped into the heart of the meadow, where the grass was knee-deep, Cord couldn’t help wondering exactly where Antonio Suarez was.
A warm, gentle breeze came up, licking his face and ruffling Sage’s hair against his neck.
She tipped her head back. Then she deliberately unbuttoned her shirt and spread the fabric wide, letting the soft swirl of air caress her bare chest. Such a simple thing, the wash of air and sunshine across one’s skin. It brought such pleasure, such a delicious sense of well-being.
“Feel good?” he murmured in her ear.
“Yes. Truly wonderful. And it smells so—so…”
“Rich?”
“Yes, exactly. It’s like the earth under our feet is alive and breathing, just as we are.”
“I like hearing you say that. It’s a way I’ve often felt, but never managed to wrap words around. You’re a damn unusual woman, Sage.”
She nestled her head against his neck. “You are a good teacher.”
“You learn fast,” he murmured into her ear. He reached around her, splayed his right hand over her breast.
She arched under his fingers, thrusting her nipple against his palm. “I like learning,” she said. “I always have. Now more than ever.”
He brushed his mouth over the tip of her ear. “When we reach town, it’ll be over.”
She made no response. Instead, she lifted the reins out of his grasp and brought his hand to her other breast. “We’re not there yet.”
“It’s daylight. Won’t be long.”
“Slow the horse,” she ordered in a low voice. “Cord, what if…”
His fingertips brushed her swelling nipples. “If? If what?”
She drew in a long, slow breath. “If you had another hiding place, say at the far side of the meadow, just where it meets the trees? A spot where no one could find us.”
“Grass is nice and deep,” he said after a moment.
“No one but a crow flying over our heads could see us.”
She raised her arm, curving it over her head until the backs of her fingers touched his cheek. He pressed his lips into her open hand, then lazily drew his tongue across the fleshy part of her palm.
Sage moaned with pleasure. Cord buried his face against her neck, then curled his tongue into the shell of her ear.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Without a word, he kicked the mare into a canter.
He took her with skill, letting their hunger for each other’s touch drive them to uncharted levels of pleasure. When it was over they lay in one another’s arms, unwilling to break the spell, until the sky over their heads lightened to peach and then to a cloudless blue. The air was so still they could hear the mare cropping grass on the other side of the meadow where Cord had tied her. Anyone happening onto the flat would spot the horse first.
Again, Cord thought about Suarez. Hell, maybe he’d hightailed it back to Colorado. Or all the way to Mexico.
But Cord didn’t think so. A crawly feeling at the back of his scalp told him they’d meet up pretty soon. But damn, he hoped it wouldn’t be today.
He rolled toward Sage, splayed his hand against her lower back and pulled her close.
The last mile into town was the hardest. Not because the trail was indistinct or the mare was tired; the trail was all too clear, which only added to the problem.
Cord found himself noticing little things about Sage to store in his memory—the way she held her head, the way her shoulders began to tense as they approached Russell’s Landing. The way her hair and the back of her neck smelled, sweet and clean like warm green grass and crushed mint. Her skin tasted of oranges, a flavor he knew he would never get out of his mind.
He tightened his arm around her. “Your name suits you,” he said. “Like a mix of sharp scent and sweet oil.”
She laughed. “I always thought my name meant I was wise. Or would be, eventually.”
“I think you are. You’re a lot wiser now than you were eight days ago, when I was sitting on your front porch wondering how any creature as good-looking as you could possibly be a doctor.”
Sage sighed. “That seems a long time ago, Cord. So much has happened, I feel…changed.”
“Yeah. I feel different, too.”
“Wiser?” she quipped with a smile.
“Nope. More scared.”
She jerked upright. “Why, Cordell Lawson, what a liar you are! I’ve watched you day and night for more than a week and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that frightens you.”
“You’re wrong, Sage,” he stated. Then he chuckled. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought.”
She sat up even straighter. “Of course I am. I am even smarter than you thought!”
“Yeah, guess you’re right about that.” He bent his head to kiss her temple, then pulled her back against his chest. “You’ve seen me unguarded, seen into the core of who I am. No woman I’ve ever known has gotten that close.”
“And that scares you,” she observed.
His voice changed. “Not the ‘getting close’ part as much as the hole I’m going to feel inside when I ride away.”
She said nothing. They clopped past the schoolhouse at the edge of town, where a circle of pinafore-clad girls held hands and chanted a singsong rhyme. “Mary loves Bobby, but Bobby loves Effie! Effie loves…”
Cord laughed. “It’s not easy, even at that age, is it?”
The mare plodded by the barbershop and the Willamette Hotel before she answered. “Bobby and Mary are only seven years old.”
“It starts young, I guess.”
“It has to start sometime,” she said quietly. “Except for me. For me, it didn’t come until now.”
When it’s too late.
To change the subject she pointed out the rundown building next to the jail. “Look, there’s the old sheriff’s office.”
Cord examined the structure with narrowed eyes.
“Jail looks empty.”
“The sheriff’s office is, too,” she acknowledged. “The last man to occupy it, James Giblin, was killed by his deputy.”
“Nice peaceful town,” Cord muttered.
“Mostly it is. Sheriff Giblin caught the deputy stealing supplies from the Indian agent in Oakport.”
Cord shrugged. “Bobby and Mary on one hand, the sheriff on the other. Love and death. Seems that’s all you can count on in life.”
Sage was silent. They approached the livery yard at the far edge of town, and suddenly Sage heard her own voice speaking.
“I’ve learned on this trip that all you can really count on is death. The other thing, love, comes when one least expects it. Or doesn’t come at all. It is not a certainty, as death is.”
“Don’t think about it,” Cord cautioned.
“Why?”
“You learn some things the hard way. And most often by then it’s too late.”
The liveryman looked up at the sound of the mare’s footsteps. “Miss Sage! Vas vonderin’ ven you’d return.”
“Arvo.” She gave the tall Norwegian a smile, and the man’s large blue eyes shifted to Cord.
He spoke from behind her. “I owe you for the mare.” He reached for his shirt pocket.
“Oh my, no,” Arvo said. “Ginger came in yesterday. I unloaded all them rocks from the saddlebag, and now she is in her stall. You haf some trouble along the way, looks like.”
/> Sage winced. “You didn’t—”
“No, Miss Sage. I didn’t say vun tiny vord to your mama. I know better den dat. I tell your papa, though.”
Sage swallowed. “And what did Papa say?”
“He say iss okay. Your uncle, the marshal, he knows Mr. Lawson.” Arvo tipped his head, sizing up the man mounted behind her.
“Is that true, Cord?” she said in an undertone. “You know my uncle?”
“I’ve turned a few Mexican bandits over to Major Montgomery.”
Arvo turned his gaze away from Cord to her. “You look different, Miss Sage. Thinner, maybe.”
“Hard traveling and sparse rations, Arvo.” Surreptitiously she snugged her bottom into Cord’s crotch. “Next time I travel into the wilderness I will be sure to take more time for nourishment along the trail.”
Cord made a soft groaning noise in her ear.
“And,” the liveryman continued, studying her face, “you look…softer. Dat’s it, softer.”
To that remark, Sage had no response. Even when she felt Cord’s quiet chuckle rumble against her back, she could think of nothing to say.
After an awkward silence Cord came to her rescue. “She’s tired out, Mr. Ollesen. I’d best take her on home.” He tipped his hat.
Arvo raised his hand and grinned. “She needs a buggy for to make her calls, I t’ink.”
“A buggy’s a good idea,” Cord said when they rode out of the livery yard. “Be a lot more comfortable than a horse.”
“I can’t afford a buggy, Cord. At least not yet. I’d have to set dozens of broken bones and deliver half again that many babies to afford a buggy. A horse is fine for now.”
Cord tightened his arm around her. “I’d like you to have a buggy.”
They turned down Maple Falls Road in time to see a plump woman in a purple hat swish through a whitewashed front gate.
“Why, Sage! Been out on a picnic, have you?” The woman beamed approvingly.
“Good evening, Mrs. Benbow,” Sage responded.
“Oh, yes, it is a good evening. I hope you enjoyed yourself?”
Sage choked down a laugh. “Why, yes, in a way. It was quite…educational.” But Mrs. Benbow had scurried up onto her porch and through her front door before Sage could finish her lie.
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