"To follow us, sí, to know exactly where we are, no. Now, he is kneeling to study the ground. It is a shame you do not weigh more."
Her mouth dropped open at his audacity. "I beg your pardon?"
"Not so loud."
"You prefer rotund women?"
"I like all women, but a heavier woman would cause the horse to leave deeper tracks, and it would not be so difficult for them to decide which ones to follow."
"Then you think they're looking for me?"
"No. I think they are lazy fools and the clearer markings would appeal to them."
"If they are near enough for you to see, then you could leave—"
"No!"
"Why not?" she asked, exasperated.
"I do not know these men. Me, I know."
"I'm sure my father sent them."
"How can you be sure?"
She loathed admitting the truth because it made her seem like a little girl who needed to be tucked into bed each night. "Because he always looked in on me at the boardinghouse after he closed the saloon. He tried to do it on the sly because I always hated it when he was overprotective after I lost my sight, but he's not the quietest of men." Although she had to admit that he was the most loving because she knew climbing stairs was agony for him, and yet he opened the door to her room every night, peered inside … and now he would endure the torment of having a lost child. "Anyway, he would have known before the bank opened that I was gone. So it stands to reason that the first men to follow us would be men my father hired."
"Do you know a man who wears a feather in his hat?" he asked.
"They're close enough that you can see a feather?"
"It is a fancy feather that sticks up, waving in the wind. More of a plume, I guess."
"I suppose my father might know a man who wears a hat like that, but he's not in the habit of discussing men's clothing with me." And she was going to lose her chance for freedom if she wasn't careful. "Yes, yes, as a matter of fact, I remember him mentioning that a dear friend of his had won a garish hat in a poker game."
She held her breath, waiting for his acquiescence. Her entire body ached, and she was so incredibly fatigued. As a rule, she was not a complainer, but right now she would sell her soul for a hot bath, a warm meal, and a soft bed.
"You're bluffing," he said quietly.
"What if I am? I'm damned tired of being protected. First my father and now you! I'm not a child."
"That fact is extremely obvious, señorita."
Surely she had not heard appreciation reflected in his voice. She'd always attributed her lack of gentlemen callers on her stubbornness. They wanted to coddle her, and she wanted to be an equal, a daunting expectation in the world of darkness she now inhabited. Even moving into the boardinghouse had not provided her with the independence she craved. The owner, Mrs. Gurney, cooked all the meals and cleaned the rooms. Angela felt as though she'd only braved a tiny step when she longed to take a flying leap.
"They might be Shelby's men," he murmured. "There was one waiting outside the bank."
"Did you kill him for aggravating you?"
"I only knocked him out. When he came to, he would have gone for the others. It is unlikely Shelby would only send one."
"I wouldn't be surprised if he sent a hundred. After all, you killed his son."
"You are remarkably informed."
"I'm blind, not ignorant."
She heard his knees pop as he stood. "They've picked up our trail. Let's go."
She held her ground as he walked away.
"If you cause me to lose any more time I am going to bind your hands and stuff a gag into your mouth," he threatened.
"Now who's bluffing?" she muttered, rising to her feet, not willing to test his words. It was bad enough to be shackled by the darkness. She hated having her hands bound. If only she had a stronger power of persuasion. "Were you able to identify anything else about them?"
"No."
The horse snorted and slapped his hoof at the ground.
"How far behind us are they?" she asked as she stopped beside him. He had such a palpable presence that it unsettled her. She was drawn to him like metal to a magnet, always knew when he was near, didn't have to reach out to know that she stood within his shadow.
He hoisted her onto the saddle. "About three hours."
"How can you see them if they're that far away?"
"Because my sight is as the crow flies, and they must travel a serpentine path." He mounted behind her, and her rebellious body eased into the familiar contours of his.
"Still, to be visible, they had to start out before the bank opened," she argued.
"I thought we'd already established that."
Beneath her, the horse began to walk.
"I'm just trying to reinforce my theory that they won't harm me."
"You think you could survive three hours by yourself, waiting for them?"
"Yes," she blurted, without hesitation, hope swelling within her that freedom was at hand.
"Too bad I am not ready to give you up."
* * *
Lee studied the tiny lights glittering in the black sky. The light of the quarter moon guided his way as much as the stars. He gauged his location in comparison to his destination. If it were not for the woman, he would not be worried. He had always known he was living on borrowed time, had always known that sooner or later, he would have to pay the price for his actions that long ago night.
Although he often felt that he'd been paying the price for five years. Hoping to avoid capture, he kept himself isolated. No woman warmed his bed. No woman smiled when she caught sight of him.
He never had the delicate scent of a woman wafting around him as he did now. Her fragrance reminded him of his mother's flower garden in late spring. Did he keep this woman nestled within his arms for her protection or his salvation?
Her silence was almost as torturous as her nearness. "Three hours," he said quietly.
She stiffened and turned slightly. "What?"
"It has been three hours since we left the ridge. It seems like a long time to wait alone."
She slumped against him. "They would have found me by now."
"If you were still alive. If no snake or wildcat had crossed your path. You prefer a wild animal to me, though, eh?"
"Definitely."
He smiled in the darkness. She had such spunk, this small woman he held tightly, more tightly than he needed to, not nearly as tightly as he wanted to. After so many hours of travel, she still carried her unique faint fragrance.
His bristly chin continually caught on her tangled hair. Her lovely dress of soft material that he did not know the name for was smeared with dirt, sweat, and his blood, and probably ruined beyond repair. Her eyes were red and swollen from lack of sleep. The corners of her mouth remained turned down. How he would like to see her smile, hear her laughter, have her whisper his name in a moment of passion.
The intensity with which he longed to make her his was ludicrous. His mind knew it, but his body always listened to his heart, and his heart had never felt this incredible yearning to possess a woman.
She had every reason to complain, to protest. Yet she remained stoic and brave. She had not shed a single tear, when most women would have succumbed to a fit of hysterics.
He did not think it was her blindness that made her different. There were moments, many moments, when he forgot that she could not see him. Her eyes had a way of resting on him until he felt that perhaps she could see him. Not the outer shell, but the inner core. The part of him that was terrified of the hangman's noose, of kicking in the wind, as his father and brother had done, of fighting desperately to draw in air that would not come—
"What's wrong?" she asked, breaking into his thoughts.
"Nothing."
"You grew tense."
He wanted to turn her around, wind her arms around his neck, and bury his face within the silky curve of her throat. "Bad memories."
"Were you think
ing of the man you murdered?"
"No." He removed his hand from her waist and bunched his fingers around her hair. Even with the tangles, it was incredibly soft. It had been too long since there had been any softness in his life. She grew so still that he was not even certain that she breathed.
"What are you doing?" she whispered in a voice that carried an undercurrent of fear.
In the beginning, he had wanted her to be wary of him so he could manipulate her. Now, he desperately longed for her trust. He fisted his hand more tightly around her red strands. They reminded him of molten flames. He wondered if they could burn away his doubts, his disappointments.
"You have such beautiful hair. Why is no man waiting for you in Fortune?"
"That's none of your business."
"You tell me that you are none of my business—"
"Because I'm not, and keeping me will not change anything. You're just going to make the situation worse for yourself," she snapped.
Ah, her anger excited him. She had so much passion quivering along her body. He wanted to bury himself in her and forget his past, his future. For just a short time, he wanted to feel normal, to recapture the dreams he'd once possessed of having a woman who loved him, children who adored him, and years before him that consisted of nothing more than days of laborious work and nights of hard loving.
"There is nothing worse than knowing that a hangman's noose awaits you, señorita. You have nothing with which to threaten me, nothing that will make me release you—until I decide it is time."
"You know so little. The worst thing in the world is losing someone you love."
Within her hair, his fingers spasmed as he recognized the resounding emotion in her voice. Love, deep and binding. "You lost someone you loved?" he asked cautiously.
"Not loved. Love. I still love him. I'll always love him."
The reason no man waited for her. Her heart was closed. Unexpected envy, hot and blinding, toward the man she loved seared his soul while disappointment reeled through him. He unclenched his fingers and took his hand away from her hair.
He was a fool. What had he been thinking? Where she was concerned, he seemed to have misplaced his common sense. Even if her heart belonged to no one, he could still never possess her. He had nothing to offer any woman except the pain of a heart shattered while she was still young because the path he now trod guaranteed him a short life.
"Tell me of this man."
"He's none of your business."
Neither was she, but that knowledge didn't stop his yearning to know everything about her. "Please. I am bored, we have many miles to travel, and I like the gentleness of your voice."
She shook her head slightly and he thought she would say nothing, but then she spoke with a fondness riddled with sadness. "He wasn't a man. He was a boy."
A boy. Unwarranted relief coursed through him. "Did you lose him long ago?"
"Yes, but it seems like yesterday. Since I was older, I'd watch him whenever we visited his family. I have sisters, but he was special."
"What happened?"
She released a deep, shuddering sigh. "We were playing hide and seek. He went to hide and I counted to a hundred. I heard horses. Then his cry. Just one cry. Renegades took him. I saw them … and then I hid, afraid they'd see me and take me, too."
"It is good that you hid."
She sat up straighter. "You don't you understand. I did nothing to stop them, nothing to save him. Three days later Uncle Kit found the remains of his bloodied clothes."
He furrowed his brow. "Kit Montgomery?"
She nodded. "His son. I lost his son."
The deep anguish in her voice cut into his heart like the rusty blade of a knife. "You did not lose him."
"Yes, I did," she insisted. "I was supposed to watch him."
"You were a child—"
"I was nine. Old enough to take care of him. Three years later, when I became ill and lost my sight, I thought…" Her voice trailed off as though the thoughts were too unbearable to say aloud.
"Thought what?" he prodded.
"That God was punishing me for losing him."
He tightened his hold on her. "No one was punishing you."
"But if I'd been watching him more closely—"
"It was a horrible thing, but you were not responsible."
She scoffed. "How could you possibly understand? You don't know the meaning of responsibility. I don't even know why I told you so much. Maybe because I'm extremely tired."
He cradled her face and pressed it into the nook of his shoulder. "Then sleep, señorita."
"Now, you know why Kit Montgomery will be relentless in his pursuit," she mumbled. "He completely understands the pain my parents now face."
In all his readings on Montgomery, he'd never read of a lost son, although the man revealed nothing of his family. No doubt the Ranger was cautious and understood that he might endanger those he loved if he gave away too much information.
Long minutes passed before Lee felt Angela grow limp against him and drift into an indulgence he no longer had the luxury of experiencing. He could not remember the last time he had slept soundly … if he ever had.
His dreams had been riddled with demons long before the night Shelby had attacked his family. Although the nightmares had worsened since the assault, they had always shadowed his dreams. He'd never been able to determine what had provoked them. He only knew that he dreaded their arrival because he was powerless against the images they evoked … and always after they'd passed and he had awoken, to his shame, he'd discovered his face damp with tears.
* * *
"Damn it!" Raven spat.
Angela sat up straighter in the saddle. He'd brought the horse to a halt at what she felt certain was the summit of a rise. In the past few days, he seemed to be stopping more frequently, glancing over his shoulder, growing increasingly tense with each mile they covered. "What is it?" she asked.
"One has broken away from the pack, and he has a very fast horse."
"His horse only has the burden of one rider," she pointed out unnecessarily. "Yours has two. You can't possibly stay ahead. Leave me—"
"No!"
"How close is he?"
"An hour, perhaps less," he bit out.
"Then leave me. For God's sake, leave me. I'll be all right for that short bit of time."
"I don't know this man who follows us."
"Neither do I." She fought back the tears of anger and frustration. She would not cry. God help her, she would not cry. "But I don't want to be here! I don't want to be near you. I want to go home. I'll take my chances with the other man."
He dismounted. She expected his hands to come around her waist. Instead she heard his boots thundering over the ground and his spurs jangling as he paced, his anger evident with every stride.
Carefully, she swung her leg over the horse and worked her way to the ground. Never had she despised the darkness more because she could not judge his mood. Intense, angry, she knew. But was his anger directed at her or himself? She didn't know how to play the hand. How to win what she so dearly wanted.
"Please," she pleaded softly. "Please leave me here."
The pacing came to an abrupt halt, the silence almost deafening.
"If I give you one of my guns, will you shoot at this man the way you shot at me?" he asked quietly, no emotion reflected in his voice.
Hope spiraled through her that freedom was imminent. "Yes, if he threatens me in any way, I won't hesitate to squeeze the trigger."
She heard the haunting hiss as his gun cleared the leather holster. When he took her hand, she realized that she was trembling. He folded her fingers around the handle of his gun.
"Aren't you afraid I'll shoot you again?" she joked pitifully, so afraid she'd lose this opportunity if he realized how terrified she was to be left alone.
"I prefer a bullet to a hangman's noose."
"I won't shoot you."
"I know. Once was enough. Keep the gun hidden within
the folds of your skirt until you know you can trust him. If you think you can't, raise the gun quickly … this high." He lifted her hand. "And shoot. You'll hit him in the chest. He is not a tall man."
She nodded, her mouth suddenly as dry as the air in west Texas where Kit Montgomery lived. Raven slowly released her hand. She dropped the gun to her side, hiding it within the material of her skirt.
"If he tries to harm you, I will be too far away to hear your scream." Regret laced his voice.
Until this moment, she hadn't fully realized that it truly was concern for her welfare that had prevented him from leaving her behind earlier. She knew only the outer man and very little of the inner one. She was intimately familiar with his chest, his stomach, the inside of his thighs, and the arm that held her as she slept. She didn't know what to make of this outlaw whose reputation seemed so inconsistent with his behavior. "He won't hurt me. I'm sure of it."
"Then remember me, querida."
His mouth captured hers. Snaking one arm around her waist, he drew her up against his firm body while he plowed his other hand through the tangled mess of her hair, angling her head to better accommodate his desires. And she had no doubt that he desired her or that she should be afraid, afraid of all the incredible sensations and misgivings he stirred to life within her.
Never had she been kissed with such rapacious hunger. Never had a man's mouth possessed hers as though he owned it. Never had a man poured so much molten passion into a kiss that she thought she might melt at his feet. He plunged his tongue deeply, exploring intimately as though it was his undeniable right to do so.
Her mouth betraying her, she returned his kiss with a fervor that frightened her. She could blame it on the intimate moments when she'd slept within his arms or the long hours of riding when their bodies were pressed so close as to be almost one. But her yearning for his kiss went beyond the physical, to a heart as lonely as hers, to a soul as battered and bruised.
Abruptly, he drew away. She staggered backward, breathless and trembling. She heard his footsteps as he stomped to the horse, the creaking of the saddle as he mounted, the horse's hooves pounding the earth as he rode off…
The silent echo of her heart calling him back…
THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY Page 6