Runaway

by Heather Graham

  “Why?” he demanded.

  She shook her head. In the darkness his head cocked. He was studying her. She was certain that he could see her in the night far better than she could see him. He knew the darkness, he was accustomed to it and comfortable with it.

  She closed her eyes briefly. She was certain that she was safe at the moment too. He was very tall, very strong, and quick as a whip, she had seen that. She was certainly blocked from view by his height and the breadth of his shoulders.

  But now what? What when he walked away? Would she be seen, chased, caught?

  “Why are those men after you?” he demanded again.

  She shook her head wildly. She had to run and keep on running. McKenzie was pinning her here and the two men after her were coming closer and closer.

  “You tell me the truth about yourself, about what’s going on. I’ll help you.”

  “I’m not telling you anything—I can’t!” she said quickly. Oh, God, she was running out of choices! He hadn’t been going to force her into anything. She wasn’t worth three hundred dollars to him, he really hadn’t given a damn about the money. So what did she do now? Bargain with him to help her? Offer him what? Herself? He’d already had that opportunity!

  One thing was certain. She couldn’t tell him the truth.

  He leaned back. She could just see the searing light in his eyes, the hard planes of his face. He lifted his hands, palms upward, and shrugged. “Talk to me. Or else you’re on your own!” he warned her softly. “I can’t protect you when I don’t know what the damned danger is!”

  Beyond the haven of their slim alley, from along the dock, they could hear the approach of footsteps, the sound of shouts. The men were coming closer and closer.

  “Come on!” he urged her in a vehement whisper. “Why do they want you so badly?”

  “I can’t tell you!” she cried.

  He smiled, leaning against the wall behind him. “Think about it. Quickly,” he suggested. There was an edge to his tone. A warning. What he wanted, he would take.

  And if she failed to talk to him …

  Jesu! What was it? Jarrett wondered. She was a fighter, that much was certain. She was stubborn and determined. Beautiful and delicate … but hard as a rock in her way! She was still staring at him. It seemed—to her, at least—that hounds from hell were after her. But she wasn’t going to give in to him under any circumstances.

  “Talk to me!” he commanded.

  “Go to hell!” she whispered. There was such a desperate note to the words!

  To his amazement she shoved him aside, and started to rush past him. She was going to make a dive into the water!

  “Hold it!”

  He caught her arm, jerking her back and against him. The hood slipped from her head, and once again he found himself staring at her wealth of gold and wheat and flame hair. The hair that had so entangled him from the very beginning.

  Then there were her eyes, huge and near violet, staring into his now with a liquid gleam to them.

  “What are you, an idiot? Are you trying to drown yourself?”

  “I can swim.”

  “The river here is dark and all but pure mud. Your skirts would drag you down. You’ve the sense to know that.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “All right, fine. You’ve nothing to say. Half of the time I don’t have a hell of a lot to say either. So let’s leave it at that. You’re running. Hard. I don’t know from whom or from what, and I’m not even sure I give a damn. I’ll still help you.”

  One of her delicate wheat brows arched upward with wary suspicion. “The only way you can help me is to get me out of here quickly,” she told him quietly.

  “I can get you out of the city. Tonight, if you wish.”

  “With no explanations?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there will be a price,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I’ve nothing. Not a stitch of jewelry, not even my wages from the inn. I’ve nothing but the clothes I’m wearing.”

  “My dear girl!” he murmured dryly. “Trust me. It wouldn’t matter if you came stark naked. I don’t need your jewelry or your money.” Where did he go from here? She didn’t want to tell him anything—he was damned tired of making it so easy for her. “You’re the payment. You,” he said flatly. There. Let her think on that.

  Her color faded from her face, and he was growing ever more curious. She had told him that she waited tables at the inn, nothing more. So what was she running from? An affair turned bad? A cruel father?

  A cruel husband?

  She swallowed hard. She was still as white as a sheet. “I keep telling you I’m not a—” she began. Then she looked down. Whore. It was the unsaid word.

  “I’m already supposedly yours for the night,” she whispered miserably. “But I can’t stay here!” she said flatly. She stared up at him, chin steady, and turned into a businesswoman, pushing aside what emotions had caused her to pale so. “I need to get away, really away. Far from New Orleans, from everything—”

  “I can get you away,” he said dryly. “Very far away.”

  “To where?” she demanded desperately.

  “Florida.”

  “Jacksonville?”

  “Deeper. I’ve a plantation down in the middle of the territory.”

  “The territory has a middle?” she murmured. She was hardly complimentary with her complete lack of enthusiasm! It was painfully evident that she wasn’t thrilled about being rescued away to his beloved homeland.

  “Top, middle, and a bottom,” he informed her wryly. “And I own land down at the bottom of the territory too. I know you’ll love it.”

  “The Indians own your land,” she told him.

  “They own some, I own some. But what is mine is mine, and it’s where I’m going.”

  She shuddered, then clenched down hard on her jaw, like a woman determined that she might show dislike, but never fear. “But it’s all swamps down there! Swamps and Indians and alligators!”

  Hadn’t he already heard that once tonight?

  It was so different from the way his wife had felt about their private Eden.…

  This girl wasn’t his wife. He didn’t even know what he was doing with her, only that she had intrigued him. She had set his blood afire.

  But the lady was desperate.

  “It’s my home,” he told her firmly.

  “But—but … it is swamp and there are terrible problems with the Seminoles down there—”

  “And the Mikasukis,” he said pleasantly. She was very pale. “There is one damned good thing about a swamp, though,” he told her. “It’s hard to look for someone in the middle of one. That’s why the Seminoles came south. They’re runaways. That’s what most folks say the name means.”

  “What?” she murmured, confused.

  “Seminole. Some say it means runaway. Kind of fitting, don’t you think?” he asked her pointedly. “And if not runaway, renegade,” he added.

  He watched her jaw lock and her eyes flash with anger. Something hot streaked through him as he watched her. He felt alive, as he hadn’t now in ages. The longer he watched her, the more he wanted her. And the more he damned her. He wasn’t so certain that he wanted to feel this alive again.

  “You can’t just—get me to a swamp and desert me!” she whispered.

  “You’ve got somewhere else to go?”

  “No, but—”

  “Are you guilty of murder or a like crime?” he demanded.

  “I told you—”

  “You can’t talk to me—or won’t. But I’m not asking you what you were accused of doing. I’m asking what you were actually guilty of doing.”

  “No, no, I’m not guilty of murder!” she cried. Her violet eyes were wild. “I swear it!”

  “Then I’ll get you out of here. And I won’t desert you anywhere. How many of them are after you? Just the two?”

  “What?”

  “How many of them are there?”

  She
hesitated. “Just the two, I think.”

  “Can they call out the local law-enforcement people to help them?”

  She let her lashes fall. “I don’t know,” she murmured miserably.

  “Well, you’re not giving me a hell of a lot to work with!” he muttered. “It’s damned certain that if they’re willing to pay enough, Eastwood will be willing to sell. All right. We buy a little time. Since you won’t help me.”

  “I can’t—”

  “All right! I’ll try not to ask any more questions. But from this moment on you’re going to have to trust me.”

  She didn’t say anything. He looked out past the alley, studying the shadows with his obsidian stare. Then he took her hand and stepped from their shadowed haven within the alley. “We move, now!” he said, pulling her out, hurrying her along. “They’re past the docks for the moment,” he muttered.

  She was breathless, trying to keep up with him as they walked the tawdry streets of dockside New Orleans. She was dying to ask him questions. At the moment she didn’t dare.

  They passed the fish markets and vegetable stalls and veered just inland. From the seedier section of the city they moved into an area where the music of the taverns seemed to fade away, where the buildings wore fresh paint and carved shutters. They came into a block of elegant pastel-colored houses with beautiful wrought-iron gates and balconies. Here and there a trellis would crawl the wall, adding to the exotic beauty of the place.

  She was staring at one of the homes when the first man accosted them. She hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard a sound. But the man at her side had.

  He was attacked by a heavyset red-haired man brandishing a knife.

  She’d never seen their attacker before in her life.

  He started to swing his arm in an upward motion that would have slit McKenzie from his groin to his throat. But McKenzie had been ready before the redhead had begun, and he slammed the full force of his fist down on the man’s arm. Tara gasped as she heard bone crack. The knife clattered against a walk leading to an inn. The man swore, clutching his broken arm. McKenzie jerked him back by the collar.

  “What are you after?”

  “Just your gold!” he cried out. “That pocketful of gold!”

  “What has she done?” McKenzie demanded.

  The man’s eyes widened. “She? I was after the gold, man!”

  He shoved the man away, staring at Tara. “Do you know him?”

  She shook her head.

  He stared at the man again. “You’re just a common thief?”

  The man nodded, glum and frightened.

  “Get the hell away from here!” McKenzie said, shoving him away. The fellow began to nod strenuously. “I’m gone, I swear it. I never saw you, I don’t know—”

  “Go!”

  McKenzie clutched her arm again, hurrying her along. “In the midst of this we have to get hit upon by a common thief?” he said incredulously.

  “You asked him about me!” Tara cried. “You said that you wouldn’t ask—”

  “Here!” he said, suddenly stopping. They had come to another walk. It led to a handsome rooming house under a broad tree. The place was fronted by huge, beautifully crafted porches and balconies, the ironwork all done in pastels that shone lightly in the few streaks of moonlight that touched the ground.

  “Around the back!” he urged her. They came around the house. Stone steps led to the second floor. McKenzie quickly rattled a key in the lock, urging her into a shadowed room.

  Her heart began to pound ferociously. She backed into the darkened room and fell against a bed. She jumped back up, but he wasn’t watching her. He had silently come across the balcony himself and was looking into the night.

  “Someone’s coming!” he said very softly. He swiftly began to strip his frock coat from his shoulders, then his shirt from his torso. Tara’s jaw simply dropped.

  “Get your clothes off and get in bed,” he said in a low whisper.

  Her heart slammed as she watched what she could see of his silhouette. Oh, God, her lip was trembling! Her voice was a squeak of a protest. “But you said that—you promised that you wouldn’t force—”

  It was too dark to see his eyes. She knew that his glance fell upon her with aggravation. “I’m not even going to touch you!” He slid out of one boot, and then the other. She heard, rather than saw, him peeling his trousers from his thighs. He was naked, and she couldn’t see anything but his silhouette, and yet his silhouette was enough to create a tidal wave of shivers within her. Tremors that came hot, and then cold, and then hot again. He was as trim and lithe and tight-muscled as any panther ranging the night. He was as natural and assured as a beast in the wild. The moonlight fell upon the sleek bulge of his forearm and shoulder for just a moment. Oh, God!

  “I told you that you had to trust me!” he warned her angrily. “Now, get in there. Trust me!”

  He sounded so annoyed—and she was terrified. Courage! “Well, excuse me! It’s difficult to trust a naked stranger!” she snapped out.

  He paused, his head turning just slightly, his voice both taunting and amused. “The fellows out there are still dressed. Want to trust them instead?” Something outside caught his attention. “Get in there!” he commanded her.

  She tried to undo the back laces on her gown. Her fingers were shaking too hard. He strode swiftly across the room, and had them undone in seconds flat. He jerked free the ties on her corset and pulled her gown and petticoats swiftly over her head. He threw the lot of her clothing across the room.

  She was startlingly aware of the fire of his flesh brushing against hers. She nearly screamed out at the feel of it, simply because it was so intense. He was smooth, tight, hot as blue flame. And his hands were on her waist, lifting her while their flesh brushed, and she was suddenly flying through the air, landing on the bed.

  “Under the covers!” he commanded, and even as she did so, she let out a soft gasp of a protest because he was joining her there, sweeping his arms around her.

  “What—” she began.

  His hand clamped over her mouth. “Shush!” he warned her. He waited, tense as living steel. In all of her life she didn’t think that she had felt anything as acutely as she felt the wired strength of his body at that moment. He waited a heartbeat, waited for the banging to come on the door again. “Now!” he whispered very softly, and right on cue the door burst open.

  Chapter 3

  Two men stood there, framed by the moonlight.

  McKenzie leapt up in a fury in the shadowed room, throwing the covers over her, wrenching a bath sheet from the foot of the bed to wrap around his waist.

  “What are you doing?” McKenzie demanded incredulously.

  She recognized the men standing there. They weren’t the ones who had come to Eastwood’s for her—they were Eastwood’s servants. One was Rory, a husky farmer from Minnesota, and the other was Geoffrey, a one-eyed, slimmer man who was as swift with a knife as lightning. They both looked after things at Eastwood’s. If McKenzie hadn’t been so quick to take care of himself tonight, they would probably have entered into the fight.

  They had been sent to retrieve her! she thought, her heart pounding.

  “What the bloody hell do you want?” McKenzie demanded, his voice ringing with fury.

  Rory cleared his throat. “Sorry, McKenzie. But Eastwood needs the girl. Seems that someone willing to pay big is looking for her.”

  “She’s three hundred dollars to me. In gold,” McKenzie said flatly.

  “But she has to come back—”

  “She isn’t coming back tonight, and if anyone tries to take her, I’ll kill him! Is that understood?”

  His words were met with silence. He continued. “She’ll come back in the morning,” McKenzie said flatly. He lowered his voice. Tara could still hear him, but his words were very soft. “I mean, really, boys, I’m just getting to the good part and the two of you bust in here? Get the hell out! It’ll be another gold piece to the both of you, and Eastwo
od will have her back for the other two in the morning. He can make his money, you can make yours, and I can have the whole damned night that fool Eastwood owes for being stupid enough to borrow money from that gambling Frenchie.”

  There was some whispering that Tara couldn’t hear. She realized that the two men were trying to look over McKenzie’s shoulder, assuring themselves that she was in his bed, right where she was supposed to be.

  “What’s she like?” Geoffrey asked McKenzie suddenly. “I always itched to get my hands on her … she claimed she didn’t do business with any menfolk, hired help or not. God, I would have spent every cent I ever had—”

  He broke off because McKenzie was pushing him out the door. “She’s just a little taste of heaven!” McKenzie assured him. “Remember, there’s money in it for you both. Just so long as I’m not interrupted again tonight, eh?”

  “Right, McKenzie. You won’t be interrupted again,” Rory promised him. “Excuse us. We’re really sorry.”

  “Just go!”

  They did. McKenzie closed the door behind them and leaned against it. Tara could feel his ebony gaze on her. As if he could really see her in the darkness. He laughed suddenly, a bit wickedly. “You’re blushing!”

  “You can’t possibly see that!” Tara cried. What else had he seen? “And you didn’t have to say that!”

  “Say what?”

  “That I was a taste of heaven!”

  “I should have said that you were as exciting as a cold piece of driftwood?” he inquired politely. “They would have really wondered why I wanted you for the rest of the night!”

  “No!” She wanted to throw something at him, anything! “You shouldn’t have said anything at all!”

  “No matter what I said, he’d be licking his chops,” McKenzie said flatly.

  She was still upset. She’d never felt so horribly cheap in all her life.

  Cheap, no. She was supposedly worth three hundred dollars, she reminded herself miserably.

  “You didn’t have to say anything!” she repeated angrily.

  “You wanted me to slug them both unconscious?” he asked her in a soft taunt. “I might have managed it—even though those two are pretty good at brawn. But they don’t do so very well when it comes to brain! But it wouldn’t have done us a damned bit of good. Eastwood can send out a score of men. And even if I did feel like belting them all for your dubious honor, it wouldn’t do us a damned bit of good. What we need to do is buy time.”