Wanted

by Potter, Patricia;

  Even Lori had not had her usual devastating effect, though Nick hadn’t missed those fleeting glances the Ranger threw her. Nor had he missed Lori’s reluctant interest in the man. He had never seen that glow in her eyes before—the glow she tried, but never quite managed, to hide when she looked at Davis.

  And then there was that damned kiss. Nick had hoped, perhaps wistfully, that it had simply been one of Lori’s tricks, albeit an unwise one, and the Ranger had taken only what had been offered. But now he wondered.

  Which was why he wanted her on that stage in the morning. As far as he knew, the Ranger was the first man she hadn’t been able to wind around her pretty little finger. That was surely her fascination with him. Lori needed a strong man to match her own stubborn nature, but the Ranger was a joyless, soulless man who would drain her dry.

  He rubbed his wrists again. They were sore, as were his ankles where the leg irons had been clamped at night. The hot springs had helped, but he’d been hampered by his clothes and the handcuffs the Ranger had kept on his one wrist. This was the first time in ten days he wore no iron, and it felt damn good.

  The Ranger was still leaning against the windowsill, staring out. He looked like the predator he was, wary and alert, and ready to spring. Nick wondered fleetingly what had made him that way, this man with his face.

  Even sometimes with his thoughts and feelings. He remembered again feeling that strange, sudden agony when the Ranger had burned his own wound closed. If the idea hadn’t been totally impossible, he would have believed that there was some blood tie. Perhaps a common ancestor, sometime back in history. But even that was unlikely. Nick’s birth was registered in Denver, the son of Jonathon and Fleur Braden. The Ranger was Texan, through and through.

  No, there was no connection, only an unholy coincidence.

  Time was running out. Nick leaned over and took up the soap and towels the porters had brought, and started washing. Because of Lori’s playfulness at the pool, he hadn’t had time to wash thoroughly, and he did so now. Christ, it felt good after the way they’d been traveling. He began scrubbing his left foot, and the birthmark became visible again through the dust and dirt that had accumulated—the half heart Lori used to tease him about. “Only half a heart,” she used to say. “Where’s the other half?”

  “You stole it a long time ago,” he used to retort in a gentle ritual. And she had, with her whimsy and curiosity and passionate loyalty. A loyalty he now feared could destroy her.

  A knock on the door interrupted his train of thought The Ranger walked swiftly across the room and unlocked it. A rolling table loaded with food appeared first, then two waiters, and finally the porter to whom the Ranger had given shopping instructions. The latter carried several packages.

  Nick felt oddly vulnerable in the bathtub, but the smells made his nose twitch. He hadn’t realized how damned hungry he was. He started to rise, a towel in his hand, but the Ranger scowled at him, and Nick sank back into the cooling water, realizing once more how much a prisoner he remained. One more order from Morgan Davis, and he would explode, goddammit.

  He watched as the Ranger tipped the men, and they withdrew, leaving the food and packages. Davis nodded to him. “You can get out now.”

  Nick did so, sullenly, and pulled on the trousers. The Ranger had ripped opened the packages and threw him a fresh shirt, which Nick put on without comment. Davis opened another and pulled out a blue cotton dress. He threw it to Nick. “Give it to your sister.”

  Nick stood at the nearly closed connecting door. “Lori?”

  She opened it, dressed again in the divided skirt and blouse she’d worn into town. She looked at the dress in Nick’s hands, then at the Ranger. “I don’t want it,” she said.

  “You’ll need it for the stage tomorrow,” the Ranger said matter-of-factly.

  Her chin set stubbornly. The Ranger ignored it, and Nick felt the tension radiating between the two of them as their wills clashed. In the air hung a near-palpable sensuality, a raw, connecting power that held Morgan and his sister tightly in its grasp. Even the Ranger’s usually guarded eyes had depths Nick hadn’t seen before, and Lori’s body was rigid—but Nick saw her hand trembling.

  Nick moved, dropping the dress, and the Ranger spun around, his hand going to his gun. His attention had been fixed on Lori—a rare mistake. A muscle moved in the Ranger’s face as he realized how vulnerable he had been. For a brief moment he seemed puzzled as to why Nick had not taken advantage of the opportunity, but then his gaze returned to Lori, and he gave a brief nod.

  The stakes had just gone up, and they both understood that. The Ranger had betrayed his interest in Lori, and Lori—well, Lori was not exactly oblivious to the Ranger. Nick didn’t like it one damn bit. But he still wasn’t going to risk his sister’s life or freedom, and now perhaps something even more fragile—her heart. Yet Nick inwardly vowed retribution. Something as important as his life had just been violated.

  Nick felt a muscle in his own jaw flex, his hands knot at his side. The Ranger’s gaze went to them, and Nick expected him to order the handcuffs back on. He stood stiffly, waiting. He knew, in fact, that he needed the restraint, or he would attack the Ranger now, whether Lori watched or not. If his sister’s spirit was to be broken, he did not want to be a part of it. And he sensed now he would be. Whether he or the Ranger was killed, Lori would be destroyed. He swallowed hard and forced his hands to relax. The Ranger’s eyes remained on him, reading his thoughts with that inscrutable gaze.

  “Miss Lori,” Morgan eventually drawled, only a hint of tension edging his voice, “would you do the honor of cutting the meat for yourself and your brother? I think I trust you a mite more.”

  Lori moved to the table and picked up a knife, carefully cutting the meat under the Ranger’s level gaze. She looked up only once, and again Nick felt the jagged electricity between the two, like the conflicting winds that stirred the most violent of storms.

  Thank God she would be gone tomorrow. But he feared that the inevitable showdown between him and Morgan Davis would always haunt her, would take something away from the joy that had always been a part of her.

  She was quite obviously discovering what it meant to be a woman. Nick had always known that this time would come. But not with a man like Morgan Davis.

  And Nick’s hatred for him spun into a hot, burning, consuming thing.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lori twisted in the fine feather bed. Her right wrist was handcuffed to one of the bedposts, held in place by a ridge in the carving. She suspected the proprietor would be horrified that his furniture was being used in such a fashion.

  She had never been in so fine a bed. She wished that was the reason she couldn’t sleep, but it wasn’t Morgan Davis was. Her brother was. The very real prospect of her departure from both was.

  And her betrayal was.

  All were reasons for her inability to sleep. The steak, at least what she could eat of it, had settled miserably in the pit of her stomach. Why did she feel so terrible about doing something that might save Nick? She squirmed again, trying to rid herself of guilt.

  In the room where she had taken her bath, Lori had found pen, ink, and paper in a desk and had scribbled a telegram to her father while she made splashing noises. Lori had hidden the telegram, together with a note, in her clothes, and when she’d had the opportunity, she tucked them under one of the empty dishes for the porter, along with the last coin she had. She could only hope that the porter who fetched it would do as she asked. She had given him her most heart-affecting smile, a tear hovering artfully in the corner of her eye.

  She had composed the note carefully. She hadn’t wanted to put off the man she hoped would send the telegram for her. Traveling through mountains, heading for Pueblo. Meet us there. Will try to move slowly. Lori. Together with the earlier telegram sent from Laramie, Jonathon would know what to do.

  And Lori knew that meant ambush. Jonathon and Andy and Daniel Webster would be no match for Morgan Davis. They
would have to lie in wait for him, just as she had done. She doubted whether Andy and Jonathon would be as scrupulous as she about where their bullets might go.

  She shouldn’t care.

  But she did. Dreadfully.

  All of Morgan’s instincts were firing cannon balls. He lived by those instincts. He always heeded them. And now they wouldn’t let him rest, though he needed it.

  He worried, too, that it might not be instinct at all, but just Lori Braden. She always managed to send off another kind of rumbling, the kind located in his lower regions.

  Yet he haunted the window. He’d given Braden the bed, he told himself, because he needed to keep watch, because it was easier to handcuff Braden to the poster than to hog-tie him so completely he couldn’t be a threat. But truth be told, he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with what he was doing. He was even beginning to question his own motives. Was he transporting Nick Braden because he was wanted, or because the similarity of their faces had made Morgan’s life awkward?

  Braden was sleeping as peacefully as the innocent. If he had a guilty conscience, it sure as hell didn’t show. But Braden’s hatred did show. It had all the way through dinner. What Morgan didn’t understand was why it bothered him. God knew he didn’t expect prisoners to like him, particularly when they were charged with murder. But the enmity went so much deeper than the usual hostility and defiance. It went gut-deep.

  And Morgan knew it had hardened tonight Braden didn’t want Morgan touching his sister. And Morgan had touched her. He and Lori had touched each other—hell, seared each other—with glances alone. He still felt the heat, like a furnace in his loins.

  He looked back down to the street—one more time, he decided, before retiring to the chair for several hours of sleep.

  And then he saw them. Three men riding into town. One man wasn’t wearing a hat, and his hair was white in the moonlight. Three of them now. Where had they picked up a third? He followed their progress to the Nugget down the street. They dismounted and went inside. Morgan waited. One of the men soon came out and led the three horses toward a livery stable.

  They were bedding down for the night. Their questions would come in the morning. Morgan didn’t want to be there in the morning.

  He thought about their entrance into town. He had shaved this morning; his prisoner had not, which meant the resemblance was not as striking as it might otherwise be. He had left no indications that a prisoner was being held at the hotel, fearing the reluctance of a good hotel to harbor a wanted murderer. He hoped Stark wouldn’t inquire about his presence at the Hotel de Paris, never considering Morgan would bring Braden to such a place.

  How did Whitey Stark know they would head to Georgetown? Had they been followed? Or had Stark already checked out Denver, recruiting other bounty hunters to stake out other towns along possible routes? With the reward so high, he could easily have found more hands. Morgan only knew he didn’t want Stark on his tail. He didn’t want another ambush. He didn’t doubt Stark’s aim, nor his ruthlessness. Morgan knew they had to get lost in the mountains soon, before Stark realized they had stopped there.

  Morgan lit the oil lamp and shook Braden. He woke immediately, his eyes holding none of the drowsiness of deep sleep. Morgan wondered if he had been sleeping at all.

  “Bounty hunters,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  Braden sat up abruptly. “What about Lori? The stage?”

  “We can’t chance that now.” Morgan’s jaw set. “You don’t want Whitey Stark any place around her, and if he thought he could use her to get to you or …” His mouth clamped tightly together.

  “Hell, you already have me,” Braden said.

  “That won’t make any difference to Stark. He’ll try to kill us both.”

  “That’s supposed to bother me? I’m a dead man, anyway. I wouldn’t mind taking you along to hell with me.”

  “You don’t want a chance to do it yourself?” Morgan taunted, antipathy gleaming in his usually hooded eyes.

  Braden smiled. “You have a point, Ranger.”

  “I don’t want trouble with you. No disturbance.”

  “I’ve been the soul of cooperation, Davis,” Braden said.

  “Because of Lori.”

  “Because of Lori,” Braden confirmed, though he didn’t have to. Morgan’s remark hadn’t been a question.

  “Remember that,” Morgan warned him.

  “I don’t want her with us.”

  “You think I do?”

  “Yes, dammit,” Braden retorted angrily. “Convenient, isn’t it, Morgan? You know she would do almost anything to help me. You didn’t mind taking advantage of that fact at the cabin.” He hesitated, then added very deliberately, “You sure you saw bounty hunters?”

  Morgan barely kept himself from going after his throat. “If it wasn’t for her,” he said, “I’d turn you over to them now.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, Ranger. You wouldn’t admit defeat that way. You’d rather take your trophy in yourself.”

  These were almost the same words Lori had used, and Morgan didn’t feel one whit better when they came from Braden’s mouth. Christ, they were good at goading him. Morgan decided it was stupid to continue in this vein. They were wasting valuable time. He went to the connecting door, which was partially open, and with the light from his own room, he looked down at Lori Braden.

  She was sleeping. Her hair was spread out over the pillow, and her face was relaxed. Her arm looked awkward handcuffed to the bedpost, and he felt that peculiar mixture of guilt and something stronger, something that stirred a part of him never disturbed before. He didn’t want to think it was his heart.

  He had sometimes wondered whether he even had one. He’d never really had anyone to love, unless he counted various Rangers who had tossed around the role of piecemeal fathering. But they kept dying on him, and he’d steeled himself against caring too much, against counting on anyone.

  The war had made him even more of a loner. Too many of his friends had been killed. You couldn’t hurt if you didn’t care. He’d tried desperately not to care; he’d tried so hard that he thought he’d succeeded until the day he’d learned Callum had been killed. Rough and demanding Callum, who had never once touched him with affection, but who had been his one constant. For the first time that he could remember, he’d cried. He’d gone into the prairie like a wounded animal and cried like a baby. He had never done it again. He’d never allowed himself to care again.

  And now he did. But he cared for a woman who’d tried to kill him, and who would probably do it again—who would always hate him for doing what he had to do.

  God help him, he cared. The sudden understanding was so strong, it nearly gutted him. He’d denied it until now, had convinced himself it was only lust. But his heart had never stilled before just by looking at a face. He’d never felt so damn weak in the knees, so awkward when he was around her. He’d tried to cover it with abruptness, with indifference, by banishing her. He couldn’t do that now. Not without putting all three of them, including her, in more danger than she’d ever considered.

  He knew Whitey. Unfortunately, he’d never been able to prove anything against the man, not in Texas, but Whitey Stark always left bodies behind him. And not always just those who were wanted.

  His fist tightened around the doorknob. More days with her. And nothing was going to improve. If anything, the hostility between him and her brother had festered into a powerfully malignant thing.

  He started to walk in, to wake her, and then decided to let her sleep while he went down to pay the bill and offer a small bribe to the night clerk to forget he ever saw them. Thank God he hadn’t stabled the horses in the public livery. The decision to stay there had been the right one, he realized, even though he admitted now to himself that his motive had been as much to give Lori some comfort before shipping her off to Denver as to throw off any pursuit.

  Morgan hadn’t taken off his gunbelt. His hand went to it now, almost automatically, reassuring hims
elf it was there. He gave Braden a fast, warning glance. His prisoner was sitting up, his feet on the floor, his eyes alert and watchful.

  Morgan slipped from the room. It must be around two, he thought. The saloon down the street had just closed.

  The clerk looked up, obviously surprised.

  “Bob Dale,” Morgan identified himself. “We’ll be leaving early in the morning,” he said. “I’d like to settle now.”

  The clerk nodded, gave a sum, and Morgan paid it without comment; then he added several bills. “My wife … well, we just got married, and her pa isn’t too happy about it. I’d appreciate it if you just forget about us.”

  The clerk’s eyes widened. “Of course, sir.”

  “He sent some men after her. No telling what he might say. He’s tried every trick known to mankind,” Morgan added confidentially. “You see he wanted … Elizabeth to marry his business partner. An old man … and …”

  The clerk nodded with understanding.

  Morgan smiled his gratitude. “Do you have a back door?” He already knew they did. He always checked such matters. He also knew it was locked.

  The clerk nodded. “It’s locked, though.”

  “Can you unlock it?”

  The clerk hesitated. Morgan added another bill to the pile. At the rate he was going, he would be broke before long.

  The clerk grinned. “I’ll unlock it now. Good luck to you and your missus.”

  Morgan gave him a rare smile.

  Lori woke reluctantly. It had taken her a very long time to fall asleep. Now she didn’t want to leave that state of oblivion.

  “Lori.” The voice was insistent. “Lori.”

  The voice was deep, like Nick’s, but the intonation was different. Harsher. She moved. Something had changed. And then she knew what. Her right wrist was free.