“Why do you ask?”
“Because if you don’t do as I say, you’re betting your life that I’m not a liar.”
She paled.
“Now are you going to cooperate?”
She nodded.
“Good.” He slipped the gun back into his jeans. Grabbing the saddle horn, he slid his foot into the vacant stirrup, heaved himself onto the horse’s back and settled in behind her. Holding her, he realized again how wrong he’d been to think of her as fragile. Her slim body was taut as tensile steel, yet she still managed to have curves in all the right places.
Bunching his fingers in the soft heather-plaid flannel at her waist, he snugged his body up against the back of the saddle. The denim of their jeans rasped together where their thighs touched.
He grimaced as she squirmed. Under other circumstances, he might enjoy holding her like this, but in his current condition, having her tight body rocking against him in the saddle was definitely going to be a pleasure-pain kind of thing.
Only a minute ago, Mariah would have sworn he didn’t have the strength to lift a kitten, much less heft his oversize body five feet off the ground so quickly. And a very solid body it was, too. He cocooned her, his broad chest covering her back, his hips and thighs cradling hers. As his arms snaked around her waist, his biceps brushed her breasts and she shivered.
The lunatic actually meant to kidnap her.
His warm breath rushed in her ear. “Ready?” he asked.
More than ready. Ready to be rid of him.
Leaning low on Jet’s neck, she picked up the reins close to the bit and punched the stallion in the sides with her heels. Jet lunged forward, reaching a full gallop within three strides. Instead of slowing him, Mariah urged him on. The rain poured down in earnest, pelting her, blinding her, and still she pushed her horse faster.
Behind her, the stranger’s breath hitched unevenly. Good. In the saddle, she had the upper hand. Let him be the one afraid now.
Steering Jet toward a fallen tree about three-and-a-half feet high, Mariah knew the very second the man holding her understood her intentions. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he let go of the grip he had on her shirt and wrapped his heavy forearms around her waist. When he squeezed, his embrace nearly cut her in two. His chin bruised her back where he ground it between her shoulder blades.
Then Jet surged over the old tree, arcing through the air like an electrical current between two conductors. Despite her fear, and the rain, and the man wrapped around her, Mariah smiled. She was flying.
Jet hit the ground hard. The man behind her listed to the left, but corrected himself with the natural balance of an athlete. Which, she realized belatedly, was a good thing. With the grip he had on her, if the jump had unseated him as she’d planned, he would have pulled her to the ground with him.
Her smile faltered as she reined Jet to a halt.
“Holy—” the stranger wheezed next to her ear.
Mariah risked a glance over her shoulder. His stark white features twisted with pain. Every movement Jet made seemed to exacerbate his agony. It wasn’t fear that had made his breath hitch, she realized. Something was really wrong with him. But he never loosened his grip on her.
She squirmed in the saddle, desperate to get away. He tightened his hold. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought harder, alternately pounding on his shoulders with her fists and trying to push him off the horse’s back. “Let me go. Let me go!”
He grabbed her wrists and held her punches at bay. “Stop it,” he commanded. “Stop.”
The calm in his dark eyes mocked her hysteria. The rain continued to pour down on them, matting her hair over her eyes and running down her cheeks like icy tears.
“Are you through?” he asked.
Her chest shuddered as she drew a fortifying breath, letting anger thaw the chill that fear had set in her bones. She wouldn’t plead; she had more pride than that.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then let me go.”
The stranger looked to the west, ignoring her demand. Mariah heard the sound of engines again, their shrill whine barely detectable over the whistling storm. For some reason, the sound made her shudder.
“It’s too late for that,” he said flatly.
Picking up the reins she’d forgotten in the struggle, he gave Jet his head and shouted, “Hyahh! Get up!” The man’s palm smacked Jet’s flank and the horse was off like the rocket he was named for.
Mariah went numb. She thought they would never stop running. All she could do was hold on and pray.
The violence of the storm passed in time, and the rain settled into cold drizzle. At last they pulled up when they came to a rocky slope. Thank goodness her tormentor had the sense to realize the loose footing would be tricky for the horse.
Jet snorted and blew, his girth heaving from the long run. White lather foamed on his neck despite the chill in the air.
“Can your horse handle this?” her captor asked.
“Not with both of us on his back.” She held her breath, waiting to see if he believed her lie.
He hesitated. She could almost feel him considering.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said after a moment, nudging Jet down the incline.
She loathed helping this stranger, but if Jet fell, the big horse wouldn’t be particular which one of them he fell on. “Go slow, and stay horizontal to the slope in the steepest spots. Sort of zigzag down.”
He grunted an acknowledgement, and Jet stepped forward slowly. Mariah hardly breathed as they slipped and slid down the hill. At the bottom, the stranger turned the stallion down a muddy trail and gathered up the reins.
Jet tossed his head in complaint.
“Please don’t run him anymore. The footing is bad and he’s had enough. You’ll hurt him.” She wouldn’t plead for herself, but for her horse....
The man hesitated again, then cocked his head.
What was he listening to? The wind in the aspens? The splatter of raindrops on boulders? Or the engines that had been so close before? They were gone now, or at least too far away to be heard over the storm.
She shivered while she waited. The rain had drenched her flannel shirt and raised gooseflesh on her arms. The setting sun took with it what little warmth had penetrated the afternoon cloud cover, leaving an evening chill more winter- than springlike. As if he sensed her discomfort, the stranger shifted her closer to his warmth.
She instantly stiffened. The heat of him was alluring, but his touch nudged her fear toward panic again.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again.
“Then let me go.”
“It’s cold, and you’re soaked. If I let you go, you’d be hypothermic in an hour.”
“I’d be home in an hour if I had Jet.”
The man behind her-sighed raggedly. “Then I’d be hypothermic.”
She felt the man squirm behind her and wondered what he was doing, but refused to look. A moment later his jacket settled gently over her shoulders. The coat smelled of wet leather and masculinity and she wanted to shrug it off, toss it to the ground and let Jet stomp on it. But the inside was dry and silky and still warm from him. She shivered again, this time more from the intimacy of sharing a stranger’s body heat than from the cold.
Reaching around her, he tucked the collar under her chin. She jerked away reflexively at the brush of his fingers under her jaw, but his touch was gentle, almost protective. Not threatening. More like a parent tucking the covers around a child at bedtime than a kidnapper securing his victim.
What did he want with her?
Mariah had underestimated how much the storm and the mud would slow their trek down the mountain. By the time they reached the ranch, dusk had come and gone at the Double M. A north wind whipped the lingering rain into a bone-chilling affair. Even Jet was miserable, his head swinging below his withers as he walked.
Despite knowing she’d brought a madman home, Mariah wel
comed the warm glow of the mercury lamp burning atop the barn door.
The man stopped Jet in the sheltering darkness of the woods that surrounded her ranch. The damp decay of last year’s deadfall hung in the boughs around them, weighing down the usually crisp mountain air.
“This is it?”
She nodded. The stranger’s head swiveled as he studied the little ranch nestled on the rim of Pine Valley and the expansive wildlands of the Dixie National Forest in the scenic southwest corner of Utah.
Mariah never tired of looking at her ranch. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had. The Double M was her peace, her connection with the past, her hope for the future. She nurtured the ranch like a mother would her child.
Moonlight gleamed off the fresh white paint of the two-story farmhouse with its stone foundation. Hanging pots of pansies hung along the edge of the front porch. She couldn’t see it in the dark, but she knew the shadows contained a porch swing just perfect for curling up with a glass of lemonade on summer evenings and watching the mares and their babies play in the front pasture. A path of stepping-stones marked the way from the house to a circular gravel drive. On the other side of the drive stood her traditionally painted red-and-white horse barn, flanked by a smaller replica she used for equipment and storage. The barns were old but solid. Over each door hung a lucky horseshoe, with the ends pointed up to keep the luck from running out. She hoped they worked. Tonight she needed all the luck she could get.
Holding Mariah around the waist with his right arm, the man dismounted, twirling her off with him, her backside balanced against his hip. He grunted when he hit the ground, and closed his eyes. Was it the lack of light, or had his skin turned an even more sallow shade than it had been before?
“Place looks deserted,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he barely had enough air for the words. “You live here alone?”
“Of course not. My ranch hands will be around somewhere.”
The stranger stared at her. The cold and the long ride had deepened the pain-etched lines beside his eyes. “You know you’re really not a very good liar.” With one arm still tight around her, preventing her escape, and the other pressed to his chest, he hobbled with her and Jet toward the back door of the barn. Maggie, Mariah’s brown-and-white spaniel, loped out to greet them, barking a greeting.
The stranger stiffened. “Call off your dog.”
“Call off...?” She didn’t have to finish telling him how ridiculous that command was, because Maggie reached his side, spun around him twice, thumping her tail against his legs, and nosed her muzzle under his hand to be petted.
“Some watchdog you are, Mags,” Mariah complained.
The twitch at the corner of the stranger’s mouth might have been an aborted smile. He smoothed his hand over the dog’s head once, then stumbled, pulling Mariah along with him, through the back door of the barn.
He watched silently as she unsaddled her horse and settled the stallion into his stall. That done, the inevitable couldn’t be delayed. She thrust her chin up. “What now?”
He hunched against the door frame as if he’d fall without its support. Was he sick, she wondered, or hurt somehow? Hurt, she’d say, judging by the raspiness of his breath and the way he held one arm close as if protecting his ribs.
“I need transportation.” Glancing at Jet, he added, “preferably something with wheels, not hooves.”
“Then you’ll just leave?” She hardly dared believe it. Surely he knew she’d be on the phone to the law before he made it out the drive.
“Then I’ll just leave.” He studied her, his black eyes giving away nothing of what he was thinking. Her doubt must have shown on her face. “I promise,” he added.
“All I have is an old pickup.”
“That’ll do.”
Bent over like he was, he didn’t look like he had the strength to get to her pickup and drive himself away. She hoped he would make it, though. She wanted him as far away from her as possible. Bessie, her old truck, seemed a small price to pay.
Plucking her extra set of keys from the cabinet at the front of the barn, she stepped out the door. He stumbled along on her heels.
Outside, she heard an engine and tires cutting a path up the muddy drive. The twin beams of a pair of headlights tunneled through the darkness.
Before she could call for help or run into the swathe of light, the stranger threw her into the drainage ditch that ran alongside the barn. In the next instant he landed on top of her, his hand clamped firmly over her mouth.
The car in the drive stopped. Two doors opened and closed. Mariah managed to turn her head enough to see the back end of the vehicle—a Washington County Sheriff’s Department Blazer. Hope surged through Mariah. Help had come.
Her hope died slowly as the stranger held her silent, immobile, while the men from the Blazer checked the house, then the barn. She struggled to breathe slowly, through her nose, as the icy water in the ditch sluiced around her body. “Come on, Rodney. There ain’t nobody here, and this rain’s a bitch. I’m freezing.” Mariah knew the voice. It belonged to Seth Hayes, a local deputy.
The man on top of her turned his head toward the voice. His weight crushed her. Mariah fought down new panic as he pressed her deeper into the mud.
“Her truck’s here.”
Manah recognized the second voice as Rodney Cain’s, another local boy turned deputy
“Aw, she’s probably out on one of her horses. Got caught out in the weather somewheres and found herself a dry place to hole up till it passes.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t gotta like it. But the boss said not to worry. He took care of everything.”
“Don’t you want to see for yourself?” Rodney asked.
“Not if it means standing out here freezin’ my valuables off all night.”
“I just want to get a look at her.”
The other deputy snorted. “Just a look?”
“Aw, don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to get your hands on Mariah Morgan’s sweet little...assets.”
“Quit thinking with what’s behind your zipper. From what I seen, the Ice Princess ain’t interested in nothing male—except maybe that stud horse of hers.”
“Maybe she just hasn’t met anyone man enough to satisfy her needs.” The cheeky swagger in the deputy’s voice turned Mariah’s stomach. After a moment, he giggled. “The Ice Princess, huh? Well, let’s go, then. I guess I’m already near enough to frostbit tonight.”
Their laughter faded into the night as they walked away. “Frostbit, get it? The Ice Princess...”
Mariah’s throat constricted. Forcefully, she drew her focus away from the deputies’ hurtful words. She knew there were a few people in town who talked about her, about how she lived up here all alone. Did they really think she lived this way by choice?
But what the deputies thought of her hardly mattered right now. Just as the reason for their paying a surprise visit to her ranch didn’t matter. She needed their help. They were armed.
The man on top of her shifted, pressing his body more intimately against hers. His hipbone ground into her thigh. Mariah squirmed, to no effect. She pushed on the wide, hard shoulders on top of her.
Two car doors thunked shut, and an engine came to life.
Mariah struggled madly beneath the stranger, her panic growing. The blackness within her welled up, pushing at her consciousness. The nightmares crept into her mind. She fought to hold them back.
He restrained her with a light, but firm, hand. “Stop it. I’m not going to hurt you.”
With those words, the seam between her dream world and reality rent wide. Old horrors escaped, rushing forth from the recesses of her mind where she’d locked them long ago. Hurtful memories stampeded through her, trampling everything real, everything current, in their paths.
The face of the man holding her transformed. It wasn’t the man who’d captured her in the woods any longer. It was an older man, sweat beading on his balding head a
nd stinking of cigars. His hand wasn’t covering her mouth, it was on her throat, choking her. His other hand...
Oh, she couldn’t breathe, and she wanted to scream.
He was touching her.
“Stop it,” the bald man said, a twisted smile curling on his lips. “Daddy’s not going to hurt you.”
She was so ashamed. So frightened.
She reached out for something to defend herself, but her hands found only mud. Terror flooded her mind, sweeping away all sense of herself. She flung her fists at the man on top of her, beating, kicking and gouging at anything she could reach.
A scream exploded in her chest, a long-winded wail that howled into the night with the last gusts of the passing storm.
And then it was quiet. Mariah came back to herself and realized her mouth was no longer covered.
The man lying on top of her wasn’t old, or bald. He had a full head of hair, thick and heavy like wet silk where her fingers had brushed it in the struggle. Pain, not age, furrowed his features.
Quickly she pushed on her captor’s shoulders. He rolled to his back, gasping for breath. Scrambling to her knees, she raised her arms to defend herself. After a long moment, she realized she wouldn’t have to fight.
Rain ran down the creases at the corners of his eyes and into the groove beneath his ear as he stared dazedly up at her. With each shallow breath he took, his chest shuddered.
Narrowed with pain, his eyes met hers for a moment, then trailed downward, over her body. A shiver racked her from her scalp to her toes.
She knew what he must see. Her hair, plastered crazily to her head, one thick strand stuck to her cheek, curling toward her trembling lips. Her heaving chest. The frenzied flare of her nostrils. The wild delirium in her eyes.
Who was the lunatic now?
His heavy eyes returned to hers. “I’m sorry,” he said through clenched teeth. Then his head fell back, his eyes closed.
After all he’d put her through, all she’d feared, he’d simply passed out in the mud.
As she considered her plight, a new wind howled across the Double M. Mariah recognized the signs—another band of storms was moving in. Pulling the borrowed jacket tighter across her chest, she turned to run.
Virgin without a Memory Page 2