“Flynn must be a hundred miles away by now,” Guthrie fretted.
Caroline faced him, having gotten her feelings under some control. “I don’t think so,” she said, keeping her distance from the bed because she knew Guthrie was going to go up like a geyser. “He was here last night, and if it hadn’t been for Penny, he’d have taken me with him.”
Guthrie swore roundly and tried to get out of bed, but he’d expended all his strength earlier, when he’d gone outside. He sank disgustedly back against the pillow, his eyes closed.
“We’ll catch Mr. Flynn,” Caroline assured him. And she really believed it. Guthrie was still alive, and that was proof that miracles could happen. She even had hopes of finding her sisters one day soon.
“Hell,” Guthrie spat.
“Stop swearing. It doesn’t help.”
“Damn it all to perdition, woman, my shoulder is on fire, I feel as weak as an old lady, and that son of a bitch is out there somewhere, planning his next ambush! Don’t tell me not to swear!”
Caroline set her coffee mug down with a thump, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him. “I doubt if he’s laughing. Penny shot him in the leg, and that’s bound to slow him down.”
Just then, William came in, followed by Doc Elkins. “Looks like your doctoring worked,” he observed, grinning at Guthrie.
The physician approached his recalcitrant patient. “Let’s have a look at that wound of yours, son. Lie back.”
Grudgingly, Guthrie did as he was told. “How soon can I get out of here?” he demanded.
Caroline was standing at the end of the bed, and she made it plain she didn’t like his attitude. “A thank you would seem to be in order, Mr. Hayes, since the doctor here single-handedly saved your life.”
Guthrie returned Caroline’s sour look, then favored the doctor with one of his endearingly crooked grins. “I hate admitting it, Doc,” he whispered, “but she’s right. Thanks.”
The doctor laughed, setting aside the soiled bandages and reaching for his bag. “Best way you can thank me is by getting well,” he said, taking out a bottle of some sort of antiseptic. “You’ll be up and around by tomorrow, I reckon, but you’ll have to take things real easy for a while.”
Guthrie flinched and set his teeth as the medicine touched his raw wound.
Doc Elkins rebandaged Guthrie’s shoulder, then made up a sling from an old pillowcase Penny gave him. “There,” he said, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “Now you’re as good as new.”
With that, the doctor said good-bye to Caroline and the Everetts and left for Sweet Home, a little town that lay just at the foot of the mountain. William said the place was about ten miles away.
William dragged a chair up beside the bed, turning it backwards and straddling it, his arms resting across the back. Soon, he and Guthrie were deep in a discussion of the war between the states, which Miss Ethel always referred to as “the Late Unpleasantness.”
Caroline felt a pang of guilt at the thought of her gentle guardians. They were probably desperately worried about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to face them until everything was settled and she was cleared of any unlawful behavior. If they ever found out she’d not only been arrested but actually spent time in jail, the shame would kill them.
After washing and brushing and braiding her hair, Caroline went outside. She found Penny pulling weeds in her vegetable garden, with Tob watching in fascination through the chicken wire.
With a smile, Caroline opened the little gate, went inside, and began helping her friend with the task.
“You’ve got blood all over you,” Penny said matter-of-factly, and Caroline looked down at her clothes and was horrified that she hadn’t even noticed.
“I have some things you can wear while we wash your clothes,” Penny went on kindly, rising and dusting her hands off in a sideways clapping motion. “We’ll make a fire in the yard and heat up the wash kettle. And I’ll shoo William outside, so you can have a bath by the stove.”
Caroline was moved. “Thank you. That would be wonderful.”
Penny smiled and put her arm around Caroline’s waist as they went back to the house. “You have folks somewhere, Caroline?” she asked.
“I have guardians—Miss Phoebe and Miss Ethel Maitland,” Caroline answered. “They looked after me from the time I was eight years old.” She swallowed. “And somewhere, I have two sisters.”
“Somewhere?” Penny asked, frowning.
Caroline nodded, reminding herself that she had a lot to be grateful for, and that would be true even if she never saw Lily and Emma again. “It’s a long story,” she said, and while she and Penny heated the water for laundry and a bath, she told it.
Chapter
We’re going,” Guthrie said stubbornly. He was sitting upright in bed, with pillows behind his back, and there was a very stubborn set to his jaw.
“We’re staying,” Caroline countered, just as firmly. She’d laundered her clothes and Guthrie’s, washed her hair, and taken a bath, and now she was sitting by the fire, brushing her hair dry. She felt as though she’d been resurrected.
Guthrie’s nostrils flared. “Fine, damn it,” he bit out. “You stay, and I’ll go. It’s better that way anyhow!”
Caroline continued to groom her dark tresses. “You’re not going anywhere,” she replied blithely. “You couldn’t stay in the saddle for five minutes, and if you didn’t have the temperament of a mule with a toothache, you’d admit it.”
He swore and gazed despondently out the window. “All the time we thought we were tracking Flynn,” he said, after a long time, “he knew we were there. He was watching. Waiting.”
Heat pulsed in Caroline’s cheeks. Watching? Dear heaven, she hoped not. “I know it’s a blow to your pride,” she said, trying to smooth things over. “Since you regard yourself as an expert of sorts—”
“Damn it,” Guthrie broke in, “I am an expert!”
Caroline sighed. “Anyway, Mr. Flynn was shot. I’m sure he didn’t get far.”
“Give me my pants.”
She reminded herself that she loved this man, that she was grateful he hadn’t died. “Mr. Hayes, please address me politely. Simple courtesy makes all the difference, you know.”
He glowered at her. “All right, then, please get me my damn pants!”
Caroline smiled. “I can’t. I did laundry today, if you’ll remember, and your things are hanging on the clothesline with mine.”
Guthrie’s neck turned a dull red. “You did that on purpose,” he accused.
“Washed your clothes? Yes, Mr. Hayes, I did that on purpose.”
“How do you expect me to go outside and pi—relieve myself?”
She remembered her time in jail, when she’d had to use a chamber pot and no one, including Guthrie, had seemed to be in any rush to obtain her release. With another smile, she went to his bedside and pulled the lidded pot from underneath. “Here,” she said cheerfully.
Guthrie made no effort at all to speak politely. “I’m not going to piss in this!”
“Your choices seem rather limited,” Caroline replied, and then she went outside, clad in one of Penny’s dresses, to see if her own garments were beginning to dry.
Penny and William had taken their wagon and driven up the hillside, carrying hay for their livestock. Shading her eyes with one hand, Caroline watched their distant figures and felt a moment or two of pure envy. Whatever their problems and personal disappointments, the Everetts had each other, until death chose to part them.
Caroline lowered her hand and proceeded to the clothesline. She loved Guthrie, there was no question of that in her mind. The silly infatuation she’d felt for Seaton Flynn was a sad joke by comparison.
And she couldn’t afford to forget that Guthrie hadn’t called her name when he was suffering, or even Adabelle’s. He’d wanted Annie, the delicate bride he’d lost so long ago in Kansas.
The clothes on the line were still damp, so Caroline turned from them, her
eyes on William and Penny again. As she watched, William took Penny into his arms and kissed her.
Embarrassed, Caroline averted her eyes and went to the well for the first of several buckets of water she meant to draw. If Guthrie was going to have clean clothes, he might as well have a bath, too. And a shave.
He was lying back against his pillows when Caroline returned to the cabin and poured the first bucket of water into the big kettle to heat.
“I’m going to remember this, Caroline,” he warned.
Caroline couldn’t help smiling in amusement, despite her dark thoughts about the feelings Guthrie still had for his lost wife. “I should think so,” she answered brightly. “A person doesn’t get shot every day.”
“That isn’t what I mean and you know it!”
She brought the washtub inside before answering. “We’re even, Mr. Hayes. It isn’t very pleasant, being forced to stay somewhere where you don’t want to be—is it?”
He let out a long, raspy sigh. “If you’re talking about the fact that I took you back to jail after you escaped, you’ve made your point. I thought that cell was the safest place you could be, under the circumstances.”
Caroline went to him and bent to kiss his forehead. “And this is the best place for you right now, Guthrie. Your injury was serious—you could have been killed.”
With his good hand, he caught hold of her wrist and pulled her down to sit beside him on the mattress. His finger touched the peak of one of her breasts, causing it to bud beneath the gingham of her borrowed dress. “I need you, Caroline,” he said, in a husky voice.
Caroline blushed. “We can’t. William and Penny might come back from feeding the cattle at any time.”
Guthrie favored her with a sideways grin, now shamelessly caressing her breast. “We’ve been in their way for a while. They’re probably rolling around in the tall grass, doing the same thing we’d be doing if we were up there.”
She shifted slightly, but couldn’t quite bring herself to slap his hand away. “Nonsense.”
“Go and look,” Guthrie challenged.
To spite him, she rose on wobbly legs and went to the door. Stepping outside, she could see the wagon in the same place on the hillside, but there was no sign of William and Penny. And the grass did look pretty high.
“I can’t see them,” she said, frowning, as she stepped through the doorway again.
Guthrie patted the mattress. “Come here, Caroline.”
She couldn’t stop herself from going to him; it was as though he’d lassoed her and was drawing her in, hand over hand. Once again, she sat down on the bed beside him.
“Open your dress,” he commanded lazily. “I want a breast.”
A shudder of need went through Caroline; her fingers fumbled and failed as she tried to obey. Finally, Guthrie undid the line of buttons at the front of her dress and laid the fabric aside. Underneath, her breasts pushed at the thin muslin of the camisole she’d borrowed from Penny, their nipples dark and taut.
Guthrie untied the worn little ribbons that held the garment together in front and sighed contentedly as he admired her bare, shapely bosom. Then, very gently, he put one hand to her back and pressed her forward, capturing a throbbing nipple lightly between his teeth.
Caroline groaned involuntarily and tilted her head back, her eyes closed as the beginnings of ecstasy washed over her in shallow waves.
While Guthrie suckled the one breast, he caressed the other, and when he turned to it, Caroline laid her hand to his nape and pressed him closer. In the meantime, he was raising her skirt, finding his way inside her drawers, cupping her feminine mound in his hand to let her know she was about to be conquered.
She whimpered. “Guthrie, the Everetts …”
But he didn’t stop. He parted her with his fingers, making his touch that much more intimate, all the while sucking hungrily on her nipple.
Caroline began to writhe as a consuming heat grew within her, degree by degree. He pushed her drawers down until she could kick them off, then set her astraddle of him. By that time, she was beyond all protests; she needed Guthrie too desperately to think about propriety.
She arched her back when Guthrie boldly entered her, his hand still beneath her skirts, splayed over her bare bottom, skillfully setting the pace.
Caroline rode him faster and faster as the friction grew sweeter and keener, and Guthrie lay still beneath her, letting her be the aggressor. She watched in a daze of increasing pleasure as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back in final surrender, and the knowledge that she’d just taken Guthrie, in the way he usually took her, drove Caroline straight over the edge.
Guthrie teased her nipples with his fingers while she convulsed on top of him, a long, low, primitive cry of ecstasy pouring from her lips. But she had no time to languish in satisfaction because she heard William and Penny’s voices outside the cabin.
Hastily, she dismounted, straightened her bodice and skirts, and covered Guthrie. She didn’t get a chance to pick up the drawers she’d shed earlier, so she kicked them underneath the bed.
There was a fetching flush in Penny’s cheeks when she entered the cabin, and William was whistling. Guthrie grinned and pinched Caroline’s bottom subtly, as if to say, “I told you so.”
Caroline went back to heating Guthrie’s bath water, while William hung a quilt from nails on the cabin’s cross beam to afford him some privacy. He and Penny were at the opposite end of the little house, talking in low voices, when Caroline helped Guthrie into the tub.
He sighed contentedly while she washed his hair—it needed cutting—and then his back.
“Try not to get your bandages too wet,” she said, when those tasks were done, handing him the soap. He was kneeling in the small tub, his body glistening with cleanliness, when Caroline heard the cabin door open and close.
William and Penny had gone to the barn to attend to their nightly chores.
Caroline’s eyes drifted down the broad expanse of Outline’s chest, following the inverted V of light brown hair. His manhood stood proudly under her abashed perusal, and when she met his gaze again, he was watching her with a sort of solemn tenderness.
He gasped when she closed her fingers around him, and when she leaned forward and clasped the backs of his thighs, she felt them cord against her palms. She touched him with the tip of her tongue, and he drew in a sharp breath and murmured her name.
He was so beautiful, like one of the gods portrayed in Miss Phoebe’s books about ancient Greece, and, for this brief time at least, he wasn’t Annie’s man, or Adabelle’s—he was hers. She meant to enjoy him.
In the next minutes, Caroline exalted Guthrie, and humbled him until he pleaded with her. To her surprise, his response alone brought her to a deep climax. After soothing him with light kisses and soft words, Caroline took a towel and dried Guthrie.
He went back to bed willingly and slept as soundly as Rip Van Winkle. Caroline had to wake him up to give him some of the delicious chicken and dumplings Penny had made for supper. He ate distractedly and then fell asleep again.
Caroline lay beside him in the darkness later that night, her hand resting beneath the covers on his hard belly. He slid downward, opened her nightgown, and found a breast, promptly taking the nipple into his mouth. He suckled briefly, then fell asleep, waking up later to suckle again. All through the night, he repeated the process, and each time Caroline welcomed him.
When she awakened in the first gray light of dawn, he positioned her on top of him again and entered her in one smooth thrust. Being quiet with Guthrie inside her, and lying damnably still, was almost impossible for Caroline. She bit her lip as he clasped her hip with his one free hand and raised her along the length of him, then pressed her down again, very slowly.
Satisfaction came unexpectedly, savage in its force. Caroline’s eyes rolled back in her head and inward cries of release rocked her. Guthrie grinned up at her when she’d finished, but then his eyes took on a glazed expression and he breathed an
exclamation as he hurled his hips upward.
Caroline caressed his face and chest as he spasmed beneath her, then bent to kiss him. He returned the kiss, and when she offered him his favorite breakfast, he took it hungrily. She stroked his hair as he drank of her, her body feeling loose and heavy with satisfaction.
As soon as William had gone off to the barn, and Penny to the chicken coop to gather the eggs, Guthrie threw back the covers and sat up. He was fully dressed almost before Caroline had managed to button up the bodice of her nightgown.
“Guthrie Hayes …”
“We’re leaving today, Wildcat. Or, I should say, I’m leaving. If you want to come with me, you’re more than welcome.”
Caroline reached for her trousers and shirt. She didn’t say anything because she didn’t trust herself not to nag and plead with Guthrie to rest for at least one more day.
After hurriedly washing herself with water Penny had graciously heated for her and poured into a plain crockery pitcher, she dressed and brushed and braided her hair. Guthrie was outside, scanning the countryside with eyes narrowed against the bright sunshine, when she joined him.
“Why are you in such a hurry to go, Guthrie? Don’t you like it here?”
He smiled and rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. Caroline had never gotten around to shaving him. “I like sleeping in a real bed with you, and I especially like the way you bathed me last night,” he answered. “I could do without the bullet hole in my shoulder, though.”
Caroline adjusted his sling. “If you’re really determined, then I’ll go with you, of course. But I still think you should rest for at least another day.”
Guthrie was looking toward Cheyenne again, and Caroline felt a tug in her heart. “It’s time to move on,” he said distractedly. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my days chasing Flynn all over the territory.”
The tug became a twist of pain. Guthrie was probably yearning for the peaceful life he’d had before he’d encountered Caroline, and who could blame him?
CAROLINE AND THE RAIDER Page 26