IRONHEART

by Rachel Lee

  Sara stayed as she was a moment, watching him climb into the cab of his pickup, noting again the catlike grace of his movements. Something about him was familiar. Or at least she felt as if something about him ought to be familiar.

  Shaking her head a little, she climbed into her Blazer and switched on the ignition.

  Gideon Ironheart. That sure was some name.

  * * *

  Towing the truck slowed her down considerably, and it was more than twenty minutes before she saw the next roadhouse she wanted to check out. Signaling early to give Gideon Ironheart plenty of warning, she turned slowly and easily into the rutted parking lot.

  Neon flashed in four front windows, and a lighted arrow on a signpost pointed the way to the front door. There were more than a dozen of these places scattered around the county, all doing a booming business on Friday and Saturday nights when cowpokes came in from the range with their week's pay in their pockets.

  Gideon climbed out of his truck and walked up to her as she locked the Blazer.

  "Are the sandwiches here any good?" he asked.

  "Good enough, I guess. Let me walk in first, and you stay behind me."

  He shifted his weight to one foot, canting his hips to the side in a timeless posture of male arrogance. Barely able to swallow being rescued by her, he was in no mood to accept her protection, regardless of her badge and her gun. Besides, he didn't like the idea of her going into this place alone. "Lady, I've never yet hidden behind someone's skirts."

  Sara drew herself up to her full five foot eight, a good eight inches shorter than he was, and glared up at him. "Look, Mister Ironheart, we do it my way or you wait out here while I get your damn dinner. I'm in no mood to deal with another brawl tonight. What'll it be?"

  He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her stonily. It was his very lack of expression that communicated his anger. "Is this Wyoming hospitality?"

  That nearly did it. She'd been dealing with fools and idiots all day long, and now she wasn't even on duty. "This isn't a matter of hospitality, Ironheart. It's a matter of reality. You want hospitality, come out to my ranch. My grandfather will stuff you full of good home-cooking and I'll pour the damn coffee. These roadhouses are a different matter. They're loaded with redneck cowboys who've already had too damn much whiskey for their own good. If I go in first, nobody will pay any attention to you, and that's the way I want it, because I want to get home to my bed sometime tonight. Got it?"

  His arms remained folded, and he continued to stare expressionlessly down at her. His stare was unnerving, Sara thought uneasily. Shadowed by the brim of his hat, his eyes were like two dark, glistening pools, drawing her deeper and deeper. They held her, mesmerized her, gave her the uneasy feeling that they were absorbing her and learning all her secrets. And gave her the even wilder feeling that if she just fell into those pools, a dark warmth would swallow her and shelter her.

  "Who," he asked slowly, "made you ashamed of being a woman?"

  It was a question to which Gideon Ironheart genuinely wanted an answer, but he knew he wasn't going to get it. Not yet. Without a word, Sara Yates pivoted on her heel and stalked toward the door of the bar. Gideon followed two steps behind, realizing what she apparently didn't: that her uniform might be scant protection in a place like this. When some men got drunk enough, they respected nothing at all. He would walk behind her if she insisted, but he'd be damned before he'd let her walk into this place alone. Happy's had been different, because the troublemakers were already gone when she went inside. Here, they were still inside and drinking.

  The music from the jukebox was loud, the laughter louder. A haze of cigarette and cigar smoke filled the large room, and the bartender didn't look half as friendly as the one at the other place. Keeping close to Sara, Gideon escorted her to the bar.

  The bartender nodded to her, glanced at Gideon, then dismissed him as a redskin. "Whaddya want, Sara?"

  "My friend here wants some sandwiches to go. Have you seen Joey tonight?"

  Kurt shook his head. "You told me the kid's on probation. He's underage besides. He comes in here, I throw him out. I don't want no grief with Tate." With visible reluctance, he looked at Gideon. "Yeah?"

  Gideon ordered a couple of turkey sandwiches while Sara turned and scanned the crowded room. People were glancing surreptitiously their way, but apparently nobody was in a mood for trouble with the law tonight—except for two beefy guys in the corner who looked as if they couldn't quite make up their minds.

  The bartender dumped a couple of plastic-wrapped sandwiches on the counter and threw Gideon's change down beside it.

  "Walk out in front of me," Sara told Gideon as he turned toward the door.

  "Damn it," he growled, keeping his voice low, "I—"

  "My back is less of a provocation than yours," she said flatly. "All right?"

  Over the top of her Stetson, he saw the two men who evidently had her worried. They were beginning to shove their chairs back from the table. There was no time for argument. Turning, he headed toward the door, dragging Sara right after him.

  "I'm getting a really great impression of Conard County, Wyoming," he growled as he pulled her through the door after him and started tugging her across the parking lot. "I saw less trouble in dives in Chicago, Atlanta and Boston, I can tell you. What is it with these guys?"

  Sara tried to yank her arm free of his grip. "Damn it, Ironheart—"

  "Oh, just be quiet, woman. Those two cretins in there have got plans for both of us. I suggest you get behind the wheel and drive."

  "How come you didn't have the sense to clear out of Happy's before the trouble started?" Sara demanded as she unlocked the door of her Blazer. "You're sure in enough of a hurry now."

  His face was completely shadowed beneath the brim of his black hat. Not even the neon light penetrated the darkness there. "Because," he said succinctly, "at Happy's I didn't have a woman to look after."

  Sara gasped, but before she could voice her outrage, Gideon pulled the Blazer's door open and lifted her onto the seat. "Drive, Deputy," he said. "I'll be right behind you."

  And, damn it, he actually smiled. She caught the gleam of his teeth even in the shadows.

  He got behind the wheel of his truck just as the two men emerged from the bar. Sara didn't hesitate any longer but turned over her engine and pulled out of the lot. She would deal with Gideon Ironheart later.

  Fifteen minutes later, they reached the last of the road-houses Sara wanted to check out. After this, Joey was on his own. There were limits to what even a loving sister could or would do.

  Before she climbed out, Gideon was there, opening her door and looking straight in at her. "Who were those two guys back there?" he asked without preamble. "Local troublemakers?"

  Sara shrugged. "I never saw them before. We do occasionally get strangers through here," she said dryly, wondering why she was no longer furious with him. She ought to read him the riot act for treating her like a helpless, defenseless female when she was neither. "I don't like the way you dragged me out of there, Ironheart."

  "Sorry, ma'am." He didn't look sorry, though, and his eyes never wavered from her face. "Who's Joey?"

  Sara sighed and averted her face, staring out through the dusty windshield at the Watering Hole. "My brother."

  "He's disappeared?"

  "Not exactly. He's around somewhere, probably doing something he shouldn't."

  "That bartender said something about probation."

  "Yeah. Grand theft auto. He's supposed to come straight home from his job, and when he doesn't, he's violating his probation." Why was she telling him all this, anyway? It was none of his damn business, and he was a complete stranger besides. Catching herself, she turned and began to slide out of the truck. Gideon stepped back to give her room.

  "You wait out here," she told him flatly. "I'll only be a minute."

  He didn't bother to argue. He just walked right behind her every step of the way. Sara felt him there, like a
severe irritation. She could have handcuffed him to something, she supposed, but that wouldn't be legal. She couldn't, after all, prevent anyone from going anywhere they damn well pleased, as long as no law was being violated.

  Damn, she hoped he was on his way out of the county by tomorrow evening. In her entire life, she couldn't remember one person ever having irritated her so severely. Or so easily. Or so continually.

  Suddenly she spun about and faced him, her jaw thrust out and her hands on her hips. "What is it with you, Ironheart? This is my business, and I'll handle it. By myself."

  He didn't answer immediately. He stood looking down at her, hips again canted in that incredibly virile, incredibly cocky way, a tall, powerful, mysterious-looking man. After a moment, he tilted his head a little to one side, almost thoughtfully. "My grandfather was a medicine man. I didn't listen to him much as a kid, not nearly as much as I should have, I reckon. But a couple of things stuck with me. He told me a man answers only to himself, but he always answers. I don't want to have to answer to myself if you go in there alone and something happens."

  There really wasn't a thing she could say to that. Whatever else he might be, Ironheart was evidently an honorable man, and an honorable man couldn't be deterred. Nor should he be. Sara felt the last of her irritation drizzle away. Without a word, she turned and let him follow.

  The Watering Hole was usually a quieter place than the last one they had checked, and Sara didn't really expect any trouble. The bartender was a man she had gone to high school with, and he greeted her with a ready grin.

  "No Joey," he said as soon as he saw her. "You know I'd send him home, Sara."

  "I know, Bill, but you're not always here. Thanks, though."

  The night was growing chillier, and Sara shivered a little when she stepped back outside.

  "What now?" Gideon asked.

  "I'll take you on into town."

  "I meant, what do you do now about Joey?"

  "Not much I can do except run him in when I find him."

  The thought made her sick to her stomach. "He agreed to the terms of probation, and I agreed to make sure he kept them. There's no alternative. Not anymore."

  "Turning him in might get his attention."

  "That's what my grandfather says."

  Gideon held the door of the Blazer while Sara climbed in. "That's what my grandfather said about me, too."

  As she reached for the seat belt, Sara paused and looked at him. "What happened?"

  "He got my attention."

  * * *

  Two hours later, Sara sat at the kitchen table at home, her booted feet up on the chair beside her while she sipped a mug of chocolate milk and ate the dinner her grandfather had kept warming in the oven for her. She'd traded her uniform for soft old jeans and a faded sweatshirt, and had unpinned her long black hair, giving her scalp some relief.

  The Yates ranch, known as the Double Y, occupied two thousand acres in westernmost Conard County, butting right up against the mountains. Sara could get on a horse on a summer afternoon and ride up into pine forests and watch mountain brooks tumble down rocky hillsides. It was some of the prettiest land in the county, and some of the toughest to ranch. Since her father's death, the Double Y had grown little but sagebrush and grass, and Sara had taken her job with the sheriff's department in order to hang on to it. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.

  But then she would think of the pine woods and the sound of rushing water, the way the fresh, clean air smelled, and she knew she could never let it go. Whatever it took, she would keep the Double Y.

  The screen door behind her slapped shut, and she looked over her shoulder to see her grandfather come into the kitchen. "No Joey?" he said.

  Sara shook her head. "How's Columbine?"

  "She'll foal before dawn." Moving slowly, the old man rounded the table and sat across from her. In his seventies, Zeke Jackson still stood straight and proud, but his arthritis slowed him up a little. His face was lined and weathered from the elements and years, but his hair was still as dark as a raven's wing.

  Sara had inherited his hair and a touch of his high Shoshone cheekbones, but apart from that she looked like her father's daughter: brown-eyed and ordinary. "Can I make you some coffee, Grandfather?"

  The old man shook his head. "You worked hard today. You rest. I can look after myself. You'll have to turn the boy in, Sarey. A few weeks in the county jail might wake him up."

  "But what if it makes him worse?" That was the fear that plagued her. The Conard County jail didn't house hardened criminals, as a rule, but just the fact of incarceration might be enough to harden his attitude rather than cure it.

  Zeke shook his head slowly. "You've done all you can. We both have. Sooner or later, even a boy has to answer for what he does."

  The words were so close to what Gideon Ironheart had said earlier that Sara found herself telling her grandfather about him. Zeke laughed when she told him that Gideon had said that his grandfather got his attention, but then he grew serious.

  "There's nothing more you can do, Sara-child. Not a thing. You've given that boy all the loving and caring of a mother, and you've set a fine example in all you've done. You can plant a seed in the best soil, and it can still grow crooked."

  Later, Sara stood at the open window of her upstairs bedroom and listened to the quiet whinnies from the barn where Columbine was in foal. Zeke and his old friend, a Sioux named Chester Elk Horn, would handle Columbine. She could sleep. She should sleep. But Joey was gone, out there somewhere getting into trouble, probably, and she couldn't help worrying.

  And then she thought of Gideon Ironheart and wondered if he was just passing through. And hoped that he might stay a little while. He had been a splash of brilliant color in days that, for Sara, had grown increasingly colorless. Life had passed her by in some respects, but that didn't mean she was content.

  Yes, it would be nice—in an interesting way—if he stayed for a while. There would be light and color and life wherever he went. He was that kind of man.

  * * *

  The motel room smelled like a motel room. Sickly sweet air freshener battled the odors of sweat, urine, tobacco and other things Gideon didn't want to think about. The rug looked clean enough, though, and the sheets smelled like laundry soap, so he ignored the rest of it as best he could.

  The motel was located beside the state highway that ran just outside Conard City, and the otherwise quiet night was occasionally disturbed by the whine of a trailer truck as it passed at high speed. The last drunken cowboy had staggered into his room shortly after two, and since then only one truck had passed.

  He was alone with the night and himself, and both were empty. Too empty.

  With his hands clasped behind his head, he lay on the bed and stared up at the patterns of light on the ceiling—white from the porch light just outside the door, and green from the sign out front, softly diffused by the white curtains. The guy next door suddenly coughed, a smoker's hack, wheezy and sustained.

  He'd stayed in a lot of cheap motels over the years and lived in a lot of furnished rooms, but he didn't want to think about that now. He didn't want to think about the past, and he didn't want to think about what he was intending to do tomorrow, so he focused instead on Sara Yates and the events of this evening. She was an easy out, a ready excuse not to think about important things. Not to think about all the things that had suddenly come to matter too much.

  Something about her appealed to him. Maybe it was that tough exterior, that determined hardness of speech and manner that didn't fit her at all. She had all the words right and the postures down perfectly, but he didn't buy it. Someone or something had driven Sara Yates into hiding, and it was easier to wonder about her problems than it was to think about his own.

  And suddenly, in the dark with no one and nothing to distract him, he thought about that brief couple of seconds when he had seized her by the waist and lifted her into her Blazer. Well, not exactly by her waist. Her gun belt had caused
him to wrap his hands around her midriff. Just beneath her breasts. His thumbs remembered that all too brief sensation of warmth, weight and softness, and his palms remembered the fragile delicacy of her ribs. She might try to look like a guy, but her feel was all woman.

  And all of a sudden, in the dark with nothing to distract him, his body responded to remembered sensations. A hungry ache zinged straight to his groin, reminding him he was a man—a man who'd been avoiding women for too damn long. Hell. Anyway, he knew better. He'd sworn off Anglo women half a lifetime ago, and Sara Yates looked about as Anglo as they came. Irish showed in her slightly long upper lip and rose-tinted milky skin. The kind of skin that made a man think of cool misty mornings and gentle rain. Of long, lazy, sleepy dawns full of loving. The kind of loving he'd never found.

  Hell, couldn't he find a likelier woman to get the hots for? But in the dark, with nothing to distract him except memories he wasn't ready to face, it didn't matter a damn.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  The sun was barely skimming the eastern horizon when Gideon left the motel and walked into town. Sleep had eluded him most of the night, and this morning he felt wired. It was the same feeling he got when he was working seventy stories up and something went wrong, the same rush of adrenaline, the same heightened senses, the same edginess of a close call. Until six months ago, he had been addicted to the feeling. These days he never wanted to feel it again.

  But he was feeling it now, and it kept him walking at a brisk pace toward his goal, the Conard County Sheriff's Office. Downtown across from the courthouse, Sara had said last night. In a storefront.

  He walked on the shoulder of the business detour from the state highway and into the outskirts of town. There he saw the usual businesses—gas stations, hardware stores, body shops, a veterinarian, and cattle pens and a railroad siding where market-bound steers were probably loaded.

  Closer in, residential areas spread away from the business loop, older homes, mostly, with lawns and carefully nurtured trees. A nice little town, he thought. A town to grow old in, but not the best place to be young. Joey Yates probably needed a lot more excitement than Conard County provided.