Yet his recovery meant that if she intended to take Meggie back to the fort, they had to leave—tomorrow or the next day, before Hunter was strong enough to follow them. Her time with the two most precious people in her world was running out.
"Cass?" Her name echoed hollowly around her, and she could hear the concern in Hunter's voice. "Cass?"
Damn him for sensing her mood, for seeing more than she wanted him to see. She dashed the moisture from her eyes and went outside. Only then did she notice the soap and fresh shirt piled up at his feet.
"Is there someplace I can bathe?" he asked. "I smell like fever."
She glanced at the trail to the creek and back at him. "It's a bit of a walk."
Hunter managed to limp as far as the little stream, and though Cass was tempted to stay and watch him bathe, she and Meggie went back to gather up blankets and food. Cass had relived gathering herbs that day at Caspar Mountain scores of times, and she yearned to store away a few more memories.
Once they'd eaten the sparse meal of pemmican and jerky, Cass lured Meggie into her lap where the child fell asleep almost instantly. Hunter stretched out on his back beside her, good leg bent and arms crooked behind his head. She could tell by the high, fresh color in his face that the outing had done him good. Still, she reached across to brush back a strand of that black, black hair and surreptitiously check for fever.
He smiled at her, a slow, contented smile that sank straight into her heart. She hastily looked away, afraid he would see the longing in her eyes.
"Have you ever thought," he began, almost as if he'd read her mind, "about keeping Meggie?"
Cass's head came up. She stared at him. "Of course I've thought about keeping her. But I have nowhere to go, no way to provide for her."
"What if I could take you somewhere safe?"
"Somewhere safe," she repeated. "And just where is that?"
"To Montana, to my land up in the mountains."
"Montana," Cass whispered, the word soft, melodious and seductive. Hunter had told her about Montana, about the cabin he meant to build, about the life he planned to make for himself.
"We could be happy there," he told her. "We could grow the things we need, cut a little timber, raise a few horses. We could take care of Meggie as if she were our own little girl."
The temptation that had been whispering in Cassie's ears became a shout. If she let Hunter do this, she could keep the little girl.
"You'd do all of that for another man's child?"
His deep blue gaze bore into her. "I would do it for you."
The words kindled a hot, sweet tenderness for this man who understood what she needed and was willing to sacrifice himself to make her happy. Cass had never dreamed she would find anyone willing to risk so much to make her whole.
"You could marry me," Hunter went on, his voice so low and persuasive that gooseflesh shimmied down her arms. "Meggie can be the child we can never have together, and I'd do my best to be her father."
Cass lost herself in the heat and conviction in his eyes. This man had fought for her and cared for her and watched over her. He had made love to her with a passion and a sweetness that thrilled her and left her mindless with pleasure. He was worthy of her trust, worthy of her love.
"There's a spot in a stand of pine at the top of the ridge," he told her, his face alight, "where we can build the cabin. You can see for miles from there, ridges of mountains running off to the west, forests bristling on every hand, the river shimmering in the valley miles below. And the sunsets you can see from there fairly set the sky ablaze. If we leave here by the middle of next week I can get our house built before the first of the blizzards come."
Hunter was sharing his dreams with her, trusting her with his hopes and his ambitions. Plans he might never have shared with anyone. It sounded so wonderful.
"But what about Drew?" she had to ask.
Hunter's eyes shone a little less brightly. "Not even Drew knows what became of Meggie back at the Indian village. She could still be a captive. She could be dead. She could have run off on her own."
"He'll keep on looking."
His wide mouth narrowed. She saw the condemnation in his face. "He never looked for you and Julia."
Which was why Drew would search for Meggie until the day he died.
"Cass," Hunter said, and she could hear the urgency in his tone, "you love that girl. You want to be her mother more than anything. I want to give you that. I want the three of us to be a family."
A family. Ever since she'd lost her parents and her sisters, she had been searching for a family, a place to belong.
"But Drew is Meggie's father," Cassie whispered. She could still see Drew's face, the way he'd looked back in the Indian camp. She could still hear the words he'd shouted to her over the din of battle.
"You're her mother," Hunter insisted softly. "The woman who birthed her could not love her more than you. Please, Cass, let me make a life for you and Meggie in Montana. Let me give you something that will make all of us happy."
When she didn't immediately answer, Hunter fell silent. He was giving her the chance to decide their future—hers and Meggie's—and his own. She held the power for joy or contentment or heartbreak in her hands, and she didn't know how to make the choice.
As she stared intently at the rushing stream, the exertions of the day caught up with Hunter. He drifted into an easy sleep. Cass watched over both him and Meggie. She stroked the child's pale hair, brushed the sweet, pink bow of her babyish mouth, felt the warmth and the trust of that small, warm body curled against her.
She stared down at Hunter, filling her eyes with his fierce beauty. She let her gaze trace over that wide, determined jaw, the blatantly sensual turn of his lips, the fringe of thick, black lashes. She had never known a man like this, a man of such gallantry and strength, of such tenderness and honesty. She wanted to marry him and live with him in peace far up on his mountaintop.
But how could she betray the man she'd seen in Drew during the battle at the Cheyenne village? She had looked up from where she knelt by Runs Like a Doe's body and seen an officer loom out of the smoke and dust. She'd seen the blur of his dark blue uniform, his horse wheeling and prancing beneath him, his saber glinting in the half-light. And then she realized it was Meggie's father.
Panic had sent her jolting to her feet. She'd swept Meggie behind her and gripped her gun, ready to protect herself and her child. But Drew hadn't tried to shoot her or ride her down. He hadn't made any move to take Meggie.
Instead, across the yards of smoky clearing, their eyes had held. She had steeled herself for the hatred in his, for the rage, for the zealot's fire. Instead those silver-gray eyes were filled with disillusionment. They were wide with horror at the carnage he'd unleashed on Standing Pine's village. They were dark with shame that in the midst of the fight he had lost control of his men.
In that moment Drew had known that the tenets that governed his life were wrong. Cass had sensed his confusion and his grief and instinctively reached out for him.
As if in answer he'd swung his sword arm in an arc above his head. His face contorted as he shouted and desperately gestured to the west. Over the rattle of rifle fire, the thud of hooves and moans of pain, Cass could just barely make out Drew's words.
"Run!" he'd shouted at her. "Run! Save Meggie! Save yourself!"
Then he had wheeled his mount and galloped back the way he'd come.
In that single act, Cass had seen there was hope for Drew. Meggie was that hope, Drew's last chance to redeem himself. How could Cassie deny salvation to the man she'd loved since childhood? How could she deny Drew his daughter?
Cass closed her eyes and let the hot, hopeless tears seep down her cheeks.
* * *
After she'd served their evening meal and put Meggie to bed, Cass made her way to where Hunter sat propped up on his bed of furs and blankets.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better. A little tired. How are you?"
> "Fine," she lied. I feel as if my heart is breaking.
He frowned as if he'd caught a glimpse of the sadness in her eyes. "You aren't considering taking Meggie back to her father because you think you don't deserve her?" he asked softly. "You don't feel guilty about us being together because you're still Drew Reynolds's wife?"
Cass looked deep into his eyes, knowing it was so much simpler than that. "What Drew and I thought we had was over long ago," she told him. "I made him take me for his wife when he didn't really want me. In the end, he threw me away. What happened after that was only between the two of us."
Hunter drew her down onto the blankets and into his arms. She nuzzled into the solid strength of his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Cass breathed the scent of him, the warmth and wood smoke. She would never smell wood smoke again without thinking of him, without feeling the longing for him way down deep.
But she needed more than the scent of him tonight, more than mere companionship. She craved the brush of his hands against her skin, hungered for the dulcet seep of his passion. She wanted pleasure and joy and moments to cherish.
She raised her head and sought sweet solace in his mouth. He kissed her back, his lips brushing over the contours of hers, molding and clinging. That kiss swept into the next, warming, consoling, seeking, filling the aching need in her.
Cass slid her hand along the thick, corded column of his throat and felt the beat of his vitality beneath her palm. Curling his arm around her as the intensity of their kisses grew, Hunter eased both of them down onto the pallet of blankets. They lay length to length, their lips fused in slow, elegant kisses. His tongue sought hers, the taste and the textures and the tenderness merging between them.
"Oh, Cass," he murmured into her mouth. "I need you so."
The tight, hot pain of a silent sob rose inside her. She fought it down and turned her head so he could not read the emotions in her eyes. "I need you, too," she whispered back.
He tugged at the hem of the doeskin gown, and as the buttery soft leather fell away, he skimmed his big, callused hand along her shoulder. The roughness rasped against her, pointing up the delicious divergence between a man and woman, the difference between him and her. He curved his palm around her breast and she gasped with the pleasure spilling through her. He brushed her nipple with the pad of his thumb and took her mouth again.
As they kissed, she spread the panels of his shirt and slipped the ties that held his breechclout in place. She reveled in the expanse of his warm, taut flesh against her. He groaned as her hand swept down along his side and over the jut of his hip as she drew him against her.
They touched, his eyes holding hers as if he needed to watch the pleasure grow in her. He brushed his hand down her belly and pressed it between her legs. She stirred beneath him as he circled against her mound. The delight came thick and heavy and honey-sweet.
"You seem more womanly every time I make love to you," he whispered. "More lush and lovely."
He eased his fingers inside her with slow, languorous strokes that made her arch against him. She whispered his name. He swallowed the sound in a lingering kiss.
She stroked him, too, needing to see the same fierce wanting in those blue-black eyes, needing to merge their bodies and their souls. And when she saw that he was as consumed by desire as she, as lost to sweet sensation, Cass rolled above him and took him into herself.
Being one with him brought a kind of completion, a soul-deep satisfaction. It was the ultimate joining of two lost people who had found in each other the missing part of themselves.
"All I want, Cass," he whispered as his hands moved over her, sensual and worshipful, tender and enticing, "is to make you happy. All I want is to make our life together wonderful."
"Oh, Hunter," she murmured, the need to weep burning at the back of her throat. "That's all I want, too."
Cass watched his eyes as the two of them began to move together. She saw the heat of his desire and the strength of his joy, the love she had never in this life expected to find. She gave herself up to it, to him, to the splendor of this joining.
Knowing the decision she must make made the brush of their bodies and their mouths more poignant, edged with exquisite pain, filled with exquisite tenderness. As the chorus of delight swelled between them, she saw his pleasure flare like a hot blue flame. She consigned herself to the conflagration, rising with him like a shower of sparks from the heart of a white-hot blaze, drifting with him like wisps of smoke spiraling upward to be lost in the nebulous darkness of the sky.
Cass was clinging tight to Hunter when she came to herself again. She didn't want it to be over. Not the loving, not her time with Hunter and Meggie, not this small, brief swatch of happiness in a world of war and death and loneliness. But it was. And there was no help for what came next.
After a time, Cass dragged one of the blankets around her and went to the fire to boil up a special herbal tea.
"What's this?" Hunter asked when she brought him a cup of the brew.
"A tonic I prepared for you. Something to help you regain your strength more quickly."
"Do you think I need it?"
Cass nodded, unsmiling and adamant.
He took a sip and grimaced at the taste. "What's in it?"
"Vervain, some mountain mint, a bit of juniper..."
He swallowed it down, hissed between his teeth, and handed back the cup. "That's wretched stuff."
"I'm sorry," Cass said, and didn't dare look at him.
"Well, as long as it serves its purpose. Now come to bed."
Cass lay down beside him, nestled into the crook of his shoulder and waited. In didn't take long for Hunter's body to go lax or for his breathing to deepen. It was done now. She had prepared and made him drink the tea that would ensure he would sleep like the dead until well past midday.
"I'm sorry, Hunter," she whispered again. "I'm sorry I can't take what you've offered me. I'm sorry I've had to betray your trust. I'm sorry I haven't been able to tell you how much I love you. But I do."
Cass reached across to stroke his hair, to trace the rise of those chiseled cheekbones and the sensual curves of his mouth. "I love you. You are the only man who knows who and what I am and cares for me still. I love you, Hunter. I will love you forever."
With tears in her eyes, Cass curled into Hunter's warmth, into his strength, into the shelter only he had ever afforded her. And knew it was for the very last time.
Chapter 23
"Aren't we going to wake Hunter and say good-bye?" Meggie whispered as Cass gathered up their few belongings. They were both washed and dressed and ready to leave the cave.
Cass shook her head. "Hunter has been sick. He needs to sleep." With the herbal tea she'd given him after they'd made love, he wouldn't stir until at least midday. Far too late for him to catch up to them, even if he wanted to.
"But won't Hunter wonder where we went?" Meggie persisted.
"He'll know where we went," Cass assured her, and fought down the urge to look back at him one last time.
"Where are we going?" Meggie demanded as she trailed Cass out to where their horse was saddled and waiting.
"Back to the fort. Back to your father," Cassie answered, lifting Meggie into the saddle. She gathered up her tattered calico skirts and swung up behind her.
Meggie craned around to stare at her. "Will we have to tell Papa we're sorry we ran away?"
"I expect we will." Cassie's heart thumped a little harder at the thought of facing Drew.
"Won't Papa be angry?"
Cass straightened in the saddle and turned her mount down the slope. "I think he'll be so happy to have you back, nothing else will matter."
Meggie was silent for a moment. "I don't want to go back to the fort. I don't like it there. I want to go to Montana with Hunter and you."
Cass still yearned to accept what Hunter had offered her—a place where the wind whispered through the pines and the sky was at the doorstep, a place where the three of them could make a li
fe together and truly become a family. The strength of her regret squeezed her throat, all but choking off her answer.
"I'm not going to Montana."
"Are you going to stay with Papa and me?"
Cass could hear the excitement in Meggie's voice and didn't know what to say to her. She couldn't tell her the truth. They had a two-day ride ahead of them, and Cass needed Meggie's cooperation. She hated to lie, the child had been lied to far too often in her young life. Instead she tightened her arms and drew Meggie back against her chest.
"We'll talk to your father about it once we reach Fort Carr," Cass promised.
And with that, Meggie seemed satisfied.
They reached the base of the hill where the trail wound along the edge of the prairie, and Cass couldn't keep from turning and looking back. She'd stood over Hunter in the dawn, staring at the inky darkness of his tumbled hair—at the fierce, almost elegant features, at the length and breadth of his body beneath the blanket—trying to commit every feature, every facet of this man to memory.
Later he would awaken and find them gone. Cass knew it was better like this. She'd run out of choices, out of hope, and out of strength. Once she'd given Meggie up to Drew, there wouldn't be much left of her to offer to anyone. This was the way it had to be.
With a sigh of resignation that came all the way from her toes, Cass turned their horse southward toward Fort Carr.
* * *
Hunter wished he could remember what he'd done to deserve feeling so battered and queasy this morning. He kept trying to wake up and kept on drifting. He wondered if he was sick again, but he didn't feel all hot and close and restless like before, and Cass would be here nursing him if he was.
Cass. His memories seemed to snag on Cass, of pulling her down beside him the night before, of making sweet, languorous love to her.
He stirred a little and opened his eyes. Light ricocheted around inside his head. He blinked the world into focus by dint of will. He was in the cave, in his bed.
"Cass," he called out softly, his voice thick and thready with disuse. "Cass, are you here?"
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