CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Some would,” Guthrie agreed, and after that, the subject was closed. They rode on, climbing higher and higher into the mountains, where patches of ragged, dirty snow lay on the ground and the wind was still frigidly cold.

  Caroline shivered when they stopped for the night, in a rocky, godforsaken place where the only visible shelter was a cave in the side of the mountain. Heaven only knew what might be in there, just waking up from its winter slumber.

  Guthrie got off his gelding, handed the reins to Caroline, and pulled the rifle from its scabbard beneath the saddle. He cocked the weapon, then strode purposefully toward the cave.

  Standing in her stirrups, Caroline called after him, “Isn’t there another way station where we could stay?”

  Guthrie tossed her a look of wry impatience over one shoulder, then proceeded into the cave. Moments later, he came out again. “It’s clear,” he said, leaning the rifle against the trunk of a birch tree near the mouth of the cavern. “Gather some firewood.”

  Caroline got down from her horse. “Suppose that’s the den of some vicious animal?” She walked toward Guthrie, who had removed his jacket and was rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Just imagine what will happen if it comes home from hunting to find us trespassing.”

  Guthrie grinned and shook his head. “Don’t worry, Wildcat. There’s nothing living in there except for some spiders and a few rats.”

  “You’re deliberately making this harder for me,” Caroline accused coldly, already scanning the ground for pieces of wood suitable for a fire.

  He shrugged and spread his hands. “I told you the trail was no place for a lady, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Caroline turned away from him and went on with her work, wondering why she felt so angry. She wanted to pick a fight with Guthrie, a loud and rousing one.

  When she came back to the camp with the first armload of twigs and broken branches, he had finished taking the saddles and bridles off the horses and staked them out to graze. He was sitting on his heels like an Indian, his back to a birch tree, and the muscles in his right forearm corded as he whittled a pointed end onto a stick.

  Caroline dumped the firewood practically in his lap and stood looking down at him with her hands on her hips. “Here,” she said, her tone one of pure challenge.

  He set the stick and the knife aside and stood. But instead of anger, his eyes showed a strange, gentle compassion. “It’s all right, Caroline,” he said. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  That was when she realized she’d mistaken anger for fear. She began to cry softly, and Guthrie took her into his arms and held her.

  Presently, she recovered herself and sniffled, “It’s just that I’ve read such horrid things. And Miss Phoebe’s own fiance was shot dead by a Shoshone brave …”

  Guthrie cupped a hand under her chin. “I’ll protect you, Wildcat,” he said. And then he bent his head and kissed her gently, lightly, on the lips. It was just enough contact to make her yearn for more, and she put her arms around his neck.

  He gave a low groan and then set her away from him. “More firewood,” he ordered, averting his eyes.

  Caroline was hurt, but she was also proud. She lifted her chin and went off to seek more fallen branches and pieces of deadwood. When she returned, the camp was set up and a nice fire was burning, but there was no sign of either Guthrie or the horses.

  At first, Caroline’s old fear of being abandoned came up, but then she realized he’d probably found a water hole somewhere nearby and taken the mare and gelding to drink there. Flinching at the sound of a shot, she dropped the firewood and went back to the woods for another load.

  Why gathering the wood was always her job she didn’t know. She brought back three more armfuls before Guthrie returned to the camp, leading the horses and carrying the carcass of a small animal. Fortunately, he’d already cleaned and skinned it.

  Caroline was still injured because Guthrie had rebuffed her earlier, so she didn’t speak. Still, Guthrie’s eyes were warm with understanding and humor as they touched her, making promises for the night to come. He got out the small frying pan he carried in his saddlebags, along with the little coffeepot and a flat tin of grounds, and started supper.

  Caroline paced, trying to hold in the question, but in the end it escaped. “Don’t you want me, Guthrie?”

  He filled the coffeepot from his canteen, added grounds, and set it in the fire to brew before looking up at her. “Always,” he answered gruffly, deftly cutting up the meat and laying the pieces in the pan. “You might be in a delicate condition, Wildcat. And if you are, you need good food and shelter and rest. What kind of man would I be if I spent the last hours of daylight making love to you, then let you go hungry?”

  Caroline swallowed. The Maitland sisters had always been very generous with her, but she’d never really experienced caring from a man. Not even Seaton Flynn, she realized now. “You must think I’m dreadfully forward.”

  He laughed and rose from his haunches, leaving the meat to cook over the low flames of the fire. “It’s a quality I admire in a woman,” he replied, rubbing his hands down his thighs.

  Caroline felt unaccountably shy, considering all she’d done with this man. And she had a poignant sense of urgency, as though her association with Guthrie was destined to end soon. The incident with the hunting party had brought home to her how easily the two of them could be separated. Perhaps next time it would be forever.

  “Hold me,” she said, trembling, and Guthrie took her into his arms. She laid her cheek against his chest and heard his heart beating strong and steady beneath her ear. I love you, Guthrie Hayes, she thought, as a sweet sadness filled her.

  It was the same feeling she’d had just before she’d been forced to leave Emma and Lily behind on the orphan train.

  Chapter

  Guthrie gave Caroline a thorough, leisurely kiss that left her with wobbly knees and a heart that was pounding away at double its normal speed. When he pulled back, his hand lingered under her chin, the calloused thumb moving over her lower lip.

  “Well make love later, Wildcat,” he told her. “After supper. Once we start, I don’t want to have to stop for anything short of total exhaustion.”

  Anticipation made Caroline’s flesh tingle. Her nipples stood out against the fabric of her shirt, and she was warm and moist, ready for him. He dropped his hand to her breast and caressed it gently, then turned, with a heavy sigh, and walked away.

  Caroline was so excited through dinner that she barely tasted her food. “There’s water nearby?” she asked, once the leftovers had been tossed to Tob, who had waited patiently with only the occasional whimper.

  “About fifty yards beyond those trees,” Guthrie answered, with a nod in that direction. His eyes smoldered as he looked at her.

  Nervous as a bride, Caroline tore her gaze from his, stood, and got her soap from the bottom of her valise. Then she made her way through the birch, cedar, and fir trees, hearing the murmured poetry of the creek long before she actually reached it.

  The water was unbelievably cold—Caroline was certain the slightest drop in temperature would freeze it solid—but she stripped and washed herself thoroughly, nonetheless. When she went back to camp, she was shivering and her skin glowed pink all over from the chill.

  “You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch pneumonia,” Guthrie scolded, but he didn’t sound angry. His eyes were smiling and his mouth was set at that lopsided angle that always twisted a tiny muscle buried somewhere deep in Caroline’s heart. He wrapped a blanket around her, took her hand, and led her inside the cave.

  There, he’d made a bed of sorts by piling fresh clover and grass on the dirt and covering that with a blanket. Since the fire was near, some of the heat drifted toward them, but Caroline knew it wasn’t the blaze that was warming her as Guthrie slowly took away every stitch of her clothing.

  When she was naked, he laid her down and covered her with a new blanket, probably bought in Laramie, then began
taking off his own clothes. Caroline couldn’t help noticing that the rifle was within easy reach, and when he unbuckled his gunbelt, he put the .45 close at hand, too.

  The firelight flickered over his naked skin, giving him a savage magnificence; he stretched out beside her, and the fragrance of bruised grass and clover blended with his scent, a distinctly masculine mingling of musk, fresh air, and sweat.

  With one hand, he unplaited Caroline’s hair, then combed it with splayed fingers, and in all this time his eyes never left hers.

  The night seemed enchanted somehow, and Caroline’s voice came out husky because her throat had tightened with emotion. “We’ll be in Cheyenne tomorrow?” she managed, and she was humiliated to realize tears had gathered on her lower lashes. She wanted to find Mr. Flynn and clear herself with the law, but at the same time, she hated the thought of sharing Guthrie with the world again.

  He touched her lips with his own. “The day after, if we don’t meet up with any trouble.” He kissed both her eyelids, and his mouth came away wet with her tears. His voice dropped lower, until it was hardly more than a husky rumble. “If those Indians hadn’t come along when they did, I would have made you a bed of wildflowers and taken you then and there.”

  Caroline caught his lower lip lightly between her teeth and pulled at it. “Ummm. You have a poetic soul, Guthrie Hayes, though nobody would ever have guessed it to look at you.”

  He chuckled. “Was that a compliment or an insult?”

  “You decide.” With a saucy smile, she put her arms around his neck, only to have him reach up and catch her hands together at the wrist, then press them down high over her head. The motion made her breasts totally vulnerable, their tips jutting toward Guthrie, and he bent to sample her with a groan of pleasure.

  Caroline’s back arched, and a soft whimper escaped her. Guthrie’s hand moved from beneath her breast to her thigh, gently urging her to part her legs.

  Trembling, she obeyed, gasping with pleasure when he took her boldly into his hand. Then, suddenly, he thrust his fingers inside her, while the heel of his palm moved against her in a rhythmic taming that made her breathing quick and harsh and set her hips to rising and falling.

  She sobbed out his name, too desperate to wait, too deeply in need of the most intimate contact. He must have felt the same urgency because he mounted her immediately and plunged deep inside her.

  Caroline cried out in triumph as she raised her hips high to receive him, her hands roaming wildly up and down his back. Their loving was rapid and fierce, ending with the cataclysmic collision of two universes, and the deafening silence drowned out their cries of release.

  Long minutes after they’d fallen to their bed in exhaustion, their arms and legs still entwined, Guthrie raised his face from Caroline’s neck and gasped, “Much more of that, Wildcat, and I’m bound to die a young man.”

  She kissed his damp, hairy chest. “Young but happy,” she teased.

  He laughed and called her a name that would have been an insult under any other circumstances, and then he fell to her mouth and the whole lovely battle began all over again. It was well toward morning before they ran out of strength and passion and let sleep overtake them.

  Tob awakened Caroline by licking her face. She pushed him away grumpily and sat up, holding the blanket pressed to her bosom. Guthrie was no longer in bed, but she could hear him whistling somewhere nearby.

  Remorse filled Caroline as she recalled the night before, and the motions of her hands were angry as she snatched her clothes from the floor of the cave and dressed herself underneath the blanket. “You’d think I’d learn,” she muttered to herself, as she scrambled out from under the covers and got to her feet.

  Guthrie was cooking something by the fire, and he looked up and grinned when he saw Caroline approaching. “Don’t say anything,” he warned good-naturedly, pouring coffee into a mug and holding it out to her. “Just drink this and keep your thoughts to yourself until you can be civil.”

  Caroline took the mug from his hand and lifted it to her mouth, wondering how it was that she could be so swept up in Guthrie’s lovemaking when it was going on and regret the contact so heartily in the bright light of day. She took a noisy sip and glared down at this man who was at once her champion and her nemesis.

  He turned pieces of what looked like fish with an improvised spatula onto two metal plates and handed one to Caroline. She accepted it, then turned and stomped away to sit on a fallen birch log.

  Guthrie remained where he was, eating his own portion in silence. When he was finished, he washed the plate and fork with canteen water and shoved them back into his saddle-bags.

  Caroline, who was feeling a bit queasy, picked at her fish, pushing it around and around on her plate. She was relieved when Guthrie finally came and took it from her, giving the leftovers to Tob, cleaning the utensils, putting them away.

  He saddled the horses while Caroline finished her coffee and shook out the blankets.

  Later that morning, they spotted the same Shoshone hunting party they’d met up with before. Mercifully, the Indians kept their distance, but there were chills spinning up and down Caroline’s spine long after the red men had disappeared from view.

  As Caroline and Guthrie climbed higher into the mountains, the air grew colder and more difficult to breathe. When they reached the pass Guthrie had been seeking, Caroline didn’t know whether to be exultant or disconsolate.

  They would be in Cheyenne soon and, good Lord willing, they’d manage to capture Mr. Flynn and turn him over to the authorities. After that, there would be no reason for Guthrie to remain with Caroline—unless, of course, she could honestly tell him she was carrying his baby.

  She sighed as her mare patiently plodded along behind Tob and Guthrie’s gelding on the rocky path. White-capped peaks rose on each side, lined with trees, and in some places there was still snow on the ground.

  They stopped around noon for jerky—Caroline didn’t even taste that anymore—and something special Guthrie had saved as a surprise, a chunk of Callie’s savory wheat bread wrapped in cloth.

  Caroline eagerly snatched her share from Guthrie’s hand, and he grinned at her.

  “As soon as we get to Cheyenne,” he said, “I’ll buy you a real dinner.”

  Since Caroline’s nausea had passed and she was over her attack of chagrin, she smiled at him. “I think I should do the buying, since we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.”

  Guthrie’s grin faded to a frown. “Caroline,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “I’m the man, and you’re the woman. That means I pay.”

  Caroline was enjoying Callie’s bread, which was only a little dry, and she was not particularly inclined toward an argument. “That’s silly,” she said, amused. “If you hadn’t met me, you wouldn’t even be here. You’d be back in Bolton, working your mine. Why should you have to pay for things when this trip wasn’t your idea in the first place?”

  He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck in an exasperated motion. “I’ve already told you. I’m the man. I do the paying, and I give the orders and make the decisions.”

  Suddenly, the conversation wasn’t funny anymore. “Now just one minute,” Caroline interrupted, finishing her bread and dusting her hands together to get rid of the crumbs. “We’re not married, Mr. Hayes, and even if we were, I certainly wouldn’t allow you to dictate every little detail!”

  Guthrie was face-to-face with Caroline now, his nose within a half inch of hers. His index finger tapped her chest. “If you’re expecting my child, you will be my wife.”

  “You’re saying I won’t have a choice?” Caroline retorted, and the toes of her shoes and Guthrie’s boots were touching.

  He thought for a moment. “That’s right,” he said resolutely.

  Caroline narrowed her eyes and leaned toward him. He was looming over her, but she wasn’t about to retreat. “Well, if that’s the kind of husband you’re going to be, I wouldn’t marry you for anything!”


  “The hell you won’t!” Guthrie yelled. “If you think you’re going to raise my child by yourself, you’re crazy. Making a baby is just about the most important thing a man can do, and by God, I won’t let you bring this kid up to be a prissy schoolmaster!”

  “What’s wrong with being a schoolmaster?!” Caroline shouted back, but her argument lacked a certain spirit because of something Guthrie had said. Making a baby is just about the most important thing a man can do. She’d never encountered or even read about a man who thought that way.

  Now, Guthrie’s finger was tapping his own chest, instead of Caroline’s. “My son will help me run the mining company.”

  Caroline arched an eyebrow. “Suppose ‘your son’ is a girl? Suppose there’s no baby at all?”

  Guthrie was quiet for a moment, and he looked as stunned as if she’d slapped him or stomped on his toe. But then, typically, he recovered. “I wouldn’t want any daughter of mine teaching school, either. And if there’s no baby, Wildcat, we won’t have a problem, because we won’t be getting married.”

  It was Caroline’s turn to feel shocked, though she couldn’t think why his statement had surprised her. He’d made it clear enough that the only reason he would be even remotely interested in marrying Caroline was to give his child a proper name. “Oh,” she said quietly, and she stepped back.

  Guthrie had won that round, and she hoped he found the victory sweet. When she turned to walk away, meaning to get back on her mare and press on toward Cheyenne, however, he reached out and grabbed hold of her arm.

  His grasp was firm, but not painful. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice to you that way.”

  Once again, Caroline was taken aback. What an enigma this man was, giving her dictatorial orders one moment, the next apologizing for shouting. And she still couldn’t get over his belief that fathering a child was one of the most important things a man could do.

  She almost told him, in her confusion, that it wasn’t the hollering that had injured her, but in the end she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She couldn’t let him know how much it hurt that he wouldn’t consider marrying her unless he was forced to by some moral code. “Let me go,” she said and, yet again, Guthrie surprised her. His compliance was immediate.