by Jill Gregory
Fire Mesa.
The name suited it well. The rocks, the buttes, were all the marvelous colors of fire, ruby and amber and gold. The land itself seemed to catch the light, to glow with spectacular beauty so powerful and overwhelming, it was almost dizzying to behold.
“This,” Cole added, watching the wonder on Juliana’s face as she studied the horizon from each glorious direction, “is the southernmost tip of Fire Mesa. There’s a whole lot more.”
“How did you ever find this place?” she whispered. “I feel ... as if we are all alone in the entire world.”
“We are. This particular spot is known to only a handful of human beings. No one can see this gorge from the trails over the mountains. There’s a secret route in, and another one, even more hidden, out on the other side, closer to Flagstaff. Fire Mesa has countless canyons like this one. The horses live here.”
“Horses?”
“You’re looking at wild horse country. Mustangs. Hundreds of ‘em. Maybe thousands ...” His voice trailed off. “This is some of the most beautiful, bloodstained country in the world. I loved it here when I was a boy—and then for years I hated it. I haven’t been back to this spot for twenty years. But it’s still the same.” He tore his gaze from the vista of rocks and spruce, and let his glance rest on her for a moment.
“You’re safe here.” He was matter-of-fact. “McCray’s men would have to search for months to find this particular cabin.”
She wanted to ask him the connection between him and this place; there could be no doubt that there was some deep, significant connection. In his lean face she detected the pride of ownership, a pride that had nothing to do with vanity or boasting, but was instead something keen and fine and inborn that stemmed from his heart and soul. Yet, lurking in his eyes, behind the obvious appreciation for the unspeakable beauty of this paradise, was pain. What had happened here? What was it about Fire Mesa that brought that haggard look to a face so young and handsome?
“Thank you for bringing me here. It’s lovely ... and if you say it’s safe, I believe you. But ... you say you were here as a boy. Did your family live here? Why did you leave?”
Sunset glowed like a candle flame about them. Incandescent lavender light shimmered on the mountains, the dying sun drenched the treetops with gold. A deer darted across the river far below, and in the cottonwoods that stood like sentinels behind the cabin, Juliana heard the song of birds. But she saw nothing except Cole Rawdon’s face, the scar vivid in the fleeting light, as he answered her, his voice oddly drained of emotion.
“My family lived here. My grandfather owned Fire Mesa—thirty thousand acres of Arizona treasure, he called it—he passed it on to my father. They caught wild horses, broke them, sold them ... it was a good, free life, a fine life for a boy growing up. My sister, Caitlin, could ride like the wind. She sensed where the horses would run. It was in her blood, I reckon. She and I would sit at Grandfather’s knee at night when the coyotes would howl in the darkness and lightning raced across the sky, and he would tell us legends about the king of the mustangs.”
Juliana remembered the wood carving she’d found in his pack the night he’d first tracked her down. The horse’s head, every detail carved in wood, magnificent in every line and angle. That carving had captured a sense of strength, pride, and wildness in the animal, and could only have been lovingly wrought.
“But my grandfather died when I was six, and my father took over Fire Mesa. He used to ride to town nights—he loved saloons even more than horses. And he loved to play faro—and poker—a lot more than he should. One night, my father hit a losing streak. But he couldn’t stop, he kept thinking his luck would change. It didn’t. He lost everything, all his money, his pocket watch, ring—and he was ashamed to come home. So ... he put up the deed for Fire Mesa as collateral and gambled some more—and lost.”
His eyes became flat, cold. Juliana shivered as she stared up at him. Night was creeping in, bringing a rich amethyst darkness to the beauty all around them. But Cole saw none of it; he was seeing the past, a time of pain, of loss and sorrow ...
“But that wasn’t enough for him. He was frantic to get Fire Mesa back. So he rode three hours to the next town —and started gambling some more. Again, he put up the deed for Fire Mesa—though he had already turned it over to Joseph Wells. Again, he lost.” Cole’s mouth twisted. “But this time, he couldn’t pay up. There was no deed to give over. There was nothing left. He’d already forfeited Fire Mesa.”
As he paused, sucking in a deep, painful breath, Juliana felt the stirrings of fear inside her. Bleak, chill air touched her shoulders, her neck. Cole’s face was ashen in the gloom of falling night.
“What happened?” she whispered, sensing all the while that it was something she did not want to know. But she had to know. Maybe it would help her to understand him. Maybe it would help her to fathom some of the dark, secret side of this most self-reliant, solitary man.
“What happened was that the next morning a rancher from the next county named Barnabas Slocum rode up to our front door, along with some of his hands, and demanded the deed my father had promised him. Fire Mesa was a prime piece of land, pretty well known in these parts. Slocum had had his eye on the place for years.
“My father had come home drunk just after dawn and was sleeping it off when Slocum arrived. My mother answered the door. My mother was a pretty woman.”
His voice broke, but only for a second. He went on, in a tone so low and deadly it sent shivers down Juliana’s spine. “My mother didn’t know anything about what had happened that night. Until Slocum started shouting for the deed. Then my father told her, and he told Slocum that he couldn’t pay his debt—that another man already owned the deed to Fire Mesa. Slocum got angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen any human being. You don’t want to know what happened after that.”
She didn’t. Heaven help her, she didn’t. But she had to know. Something haunted and agonized in his eyes told her that whatever it was, it had been horrible, more horrible than she could imagine. And he had been how old at the time? Seven? Eight?
“What did Slocum do?”
At the hushed, fearful tone in her whisper, Cole looked at her, studying the small, bruised face illuminated by the night’s first stars. He hesitated, then spoke again, all in a rush.
“He killed my parents and sister. Raped my mother and Caitlin first. Forced my father to watch. Then he and his men killed them, each of them, one by one. I was the last, held down the entire time, a stupid, fighting, screaming kid, useless ... but I saw, I heard. When they had choked the life out of Caitlin and left her naked in the dust beside the well, Slocum had his men beat me to within an inch of my life. They left me for dead at the bottom of a ravine half a mile from the house. First, they dragged me there behind Slocum’s horse.”
“No. Oh, no, no, no.” She wept. Her hands covered her face while tears soaked through her fingers, and her shoulders shook with the savagery and horror of it. What he had described was unspeakable. She couldn’t imagine such brutality—and a picture of him as a child enduring what he had just so dispassionately described burned in her mind and her heart. Something broke inside her. She reached blindly for him then, not thinking at all, merely needing to touch him with gentle hands, as if to soothe away every hurt, even those that could never be soothed, and before she knew it she was swept into a hard embrace.
“It’s all right.” His mouth was against her hair. “No need for you to cry—it was twenty years ago. Twenty long years,” he said, wondering at her response, stroking her hair, her soft, elegant nape as she wept in his arms.
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I ... want to hear the rest. What ... happened after that?”
“Juliana ...”
“You started the story—please, you must finish it for me,” she urged in a low, desperate tone.
He took a deep breath. “Slocum made it look like the Apache had done the killing. He and his men must have paid witnesses t
o place them somewhere else that morning. No one believed me. A kid of eight, broken, battered, half loco with rage and grief. A judge passing through town sent me east, to an orphanage in Iowa. I lived there for the next eight years of my life. And that’s the end of the story.”
An orphanage. At least she had had Aunt Katharine and Uncle Edward. And the hope of being with Wade and Tommy again. He had had nothing. No one.
“And Slocum?” She hesitated. “You never saw him again?”
“What do you think?”
Her heart began to hammer at the lethal look in his eyes. “You found him?”
“I found him.” Cole’s lips tightened as he stared out at the falling darkness, scented with sage. “Eight years I had to wait, but I found him. I made sure he’d never rape or kill anyone ever again.”
“So you killed him.”
He didn’t deny it.
She shook her head, dazed. She couldn’t blame him, but ... it frightened her. Yes, he had witnessed and suffered from terrible violence as a young child. And yes, he had confronted violence later, choosing a profession that required it. He had come away from his ordeal toughened in a way she could never understand. How different they were. What had happened to her own parents had given her a dread of blood and brutality that made her abhor any act of savagery. He dealt with such acts every day. She could not condemn him, but for just a moment she was afraid of him. Afraid of the darkness that might lurk in his soul, of the need to strike out at every enemy, every opponent, with a killing lust. But then she looked at him again, looked deep into that strong, toughened face, and knew in her heart that his soul was not tainted. His eyes might grow cold and hard, but there had never been a glint of cruelty in them. He derived no pleasure from killing. His actions might be deadly at times, brutal, it seemed to her, but this was a brutal land filled with brutal men. He survived. He walked tall. He knew his own power and used it not to bully the vulnerable, as Lucius Dane and Knife Jackson did, but to cut down the savage men who would attack anyone of lesser strength.
Cole Rawdon gripped her arms suddenly, his eyes glinting like blue sparks in the moonstruck darkness. “Yes, I killed Slocum, Juliana. I’ve killed many men, so many I don’t even know the number. Do you despise me for that? I don’t blame you. You’re a woman, you’re from the East, what do you know of life out West? From what you’ve seen so far, I would think you might understand. But, no. I can see by your face you don’t. You’re scared of me. Maybe you should be. Maybe I am no better than an animal.”
“No!” Juliana clutched his arm as he started to turn away. “I do understand ... in a way. I hate guns and I hate killing ... but I see the need. You ... are not an animal. You are not like Knife Jackson or Cash Hogan or those others. Don’t you think I can see that, Cole? Don’t you think I know what kind of man you are?”
Furious tears sparkled suddenly on her lashes. “You think I’m a complete fool, don’t you? That I can’t understand anything about you or this wild country or the men who inhabit it.”
For a moment he just stared at her, seeing her trembling lips, her lashes moist with tears, her eyes brilliant in the pearly gleam of the moon. And then he started to laugh, a husky, desperate laugh. “Oh, God. I think that you, Juliana, are the damnedest woman I ever met—and if you don’t stop looking at me like that, I can’t answer for the consequences.”
“Consequences?”
The wind caught her hair, sending it dancing like a golden halo about her head. Cole captured it in his fingers, crushed the fine, velvet-soft curls in his hand.
“I warned you,” he managed to say in a deep, breathless tone as she continued to gaze at him with the most hypnotizing luminosity in those beautiful shining eyes. “Back off, Juliana, before it’s too late or—”
For answer she stepped closer and threw her arms around his neck.
“Or what?”
Her voice was a purely feminine invitation. Soft, playful, the voice of an irresistible minx. Cole felt his control slipping dangerously.
Juliana smiled, feeling as though she was on the verge of a sweetly perilous adventure. The most delicious pleasure surged through her at the surprise in his face, followed immediately by a darkening of those keen, vivid blue eyes. There was no mistaking the passion in his voice when next he spoke.
“I do believe you’re calling my bluff, Miss Montgomery ...”
“Never threaten—or promise—a woman something you’re not prepared to follow through, Mr. Rawdon,” she began in a softly lecturing tone, but her words were cut off by powerful arms imprisoning her with a suddenness that snatched her breath away, and in the same instant, his mouth clamped down on hers with a sublime impact that left her shaking.
He kissed her hard. It was a fierce, powerful kiss. He didn’t need her, damn it, he didn’t need anyone, but he sure as hell felt like he did. A savage desire pounded through him as her honeyed mouth kissed him back with startling abandon. It wasn’t fair, Cole thought desperately, what she’d been doing to him since the first moment they met, dogging his thoughts, distracting him, making him want her. He’d make her want him just as badly, even if it was just for tonight. She’d asked for it, she’d practically dared him. What kind of a wild woman was she, this fragile easterner who burned like a candle flame in his arms, kissing him bold as any saloon girl, her mouth open, her body squirming against his. Tenderness and wonder warred within him. Pressing his mouth over her lips, his hands moving up and down her body, rough and heedless and demanding, he drank in the scent and heat and feel of her. His mind reeled, he knew only driving need and a deeper emotion, something tangled and confused, but strong as whiskey, and he swept her off her feet, into his arms, and carried her into the cabin with single-minded purpose.
18
Cole carried her to the feather bed, set her down, and leaned over her, his hands sliding inside that damned shirt....
Juliana lost herself in his eyes, in his arms. Passion rained over her like a summer storm, growing more insistent, pounding, pounding, until she was drenched in the downpour, and the wetness was everywhere, even between her thighs. She opened her body to him like a flower and begged him to taste the pollen. Legs flung about his legs, thighs pressed together, both of them naked now, she scraped her hands over the muscular power of him, caressing that broad powerful back, touching him everywhere, gasping at the strength and size and beauty of him. She felt driven by wonder and a rapturous curiosity that made her forget girlish modesty. Tenderness radiated from him, in the way he held her, touched her, even when his mouth and hands seemed rough and hungry. She was not afraid. She was caught up in a tide of eagerness that bore her along a turbulent, sizzling river, uncontrollable, unstoppable, plummeting deeper and deeper into the raging waters. Her nipples were hard and taut beneath his probing fingers, she strained to meet him, every part of him, her breath coming in long, heated gasps, and when he entered her, she gave a scream at the sudden flash of pain, then felt herself soothed by a kiss as tender as a feather against her lips.
“Juliana. You’re so beautiful, oh, angel, so damned beautiful ...”
He was the beautiful one, but she had no breath to tell him so. He was moving inside her now, thrusting, and the sensations that drove through her melted her tongue and made her want to burst. She was going to burst, to burst into flame, yes, any moment now—and the shudders of delight that gripped her carried her to a plateau higher than any mountain she’d ever seen, hotter than any sun that ever shone. Floating, floating on a cloud of fire, so vibrantly alive, she rocked and tossed with him in the cabin bed until the peak of bliss left her soaring, shuddering, and then she was floating downward, feeling as still and whole and perfect as a dove who has completed a graceful, perfect flight.
She lay naked in his arms, dazed and dreamy, her temples damp, her skin glowing. In the golden warmth of the kerosene lamp, she saw the black curling hair of his chest, felt the bulge of muscles beneath her cheek. How could a man be so fierce and strong, and at the same time s
o loving and gentle, he melted your heart? She didn’t know, she only knew that she was happy. For the first time in so many years, she was happy.
Cole lay with eyes closed, breathing in the scent of her. She was incredible. Beautiful, spirited, and so amazingly gentle. She had given of herself with such abandon it stunned him, and she felt so exquisitely right in his arms it terrified him. He never wanted to let her go, and yet he feared that if he moved or spoke, she would vanish like a puff of smoke, and he would never see her or hold her again.
“My Aunt Katharine is a very stupid woman,” she whispered suddenly, drawing him from his reverie.
“What made you think of her?”
His bewildered expression elicited a giggle.
She pressed a teasing kiss into his neck, feeling strangely comfortable, at peace, as if she’d known him all her life. “The night before I ran away from Twin Oaks, Aunt Katharine told me that I would have to perform my wifely duties after I wed John Breen, and she described to me—in a very unappealing way, and with a great deal of embarrassment—what I had to look forward to, or rather, not look forward to, when we began our honeymoon.”
“Did she now?”
“Yes, and she did not make any part of it sound the least bit enjoyable.”