Rides a Hero sb-2

by Heather Graham

"Don't. Please, don't…not yet," she whispered.

  While the twilight darkened, he held her, staring at the trees and watching the silhouette of the leaves against the sky until it was too dark to see them.

  Then suddenly, in silence, she pushed away from him. She rose, and her hair fell over her eyes, obscuring them. She walked quickly to the water, and did not pause at the edge, but hurried to where it was deep, and ducked beneath it. Malachi watched her pensively, thinking that the action wasn't much different than the one she had taken that morning when she washed her hands and face as if to wash away the scent and memory of Justin.

  He rose and followed her into the water. "Shannon!" She ignored him, and he caught her arm, turning her around. She jerked away from him.

  "Shannon, what are you doing now?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then why won't you talk to me?"

  "I don't want to talk."

  "Shannon, what just happened—"

  "Shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened!" she repeated fiercely. She sat in the water, pursing her lips, scrubbing her thighs and behaving now as chastely as a nun. She sank even lower into the water until the surface rippled against her breasts, and for some reason, the sight irritated him more than her perverse denial.

  "Shannon—"

  "Malachi, damn you! Could you at least have the decency to leave me alone now?"

  "Could I have the decency?" He caught her elbow, pulling her to her feet. He was furious and she was distant. And yet, something was irrevocably and forever changed between them. It seemed natural now to hold her this way, to have her against him sleek and bare and intimate. She couldn't make love the way that she had and pretend that the moments hadn't existed.

  "Decency?" he asked sarcastically. "Oh, I see. It was all my fault—"

  "I didn't say that."

  "It's what you mean."

  "Well, you're just one hell of a Southern gentleman! You know something? That's what Kristin always called you. You were the perfect Southern knight, the hero, the magnificent cavalier! Riding to a lady in distress! Well, she's wrong; you're no gentleman. You may have seen me bathing, but you might have turned your back."

  "Oh? And you, I suppose, were the perfect lady? Naked as a jay and strutting like a dance-hall girl out there—"

  "You could have turned around. I thought that you were a gentleman!"

  "Don't ever think, Shannon. Every time you do, someone gets into trouble. And don't you ever deny me, or—"

  "Malachi, it was your fault."

  "My fault. Right I didn't exactly drag you screaming from the water."

  She lowered her head.

  He caught her chin, lifting it. "You just wanted to indulge in a little fantasy. You never made it into bed with the Yank when he was alive, so now you're willing to take on a Rebel captain just to see what it might have been like—"

  She struck out at him like lightning, slapping his cheek with a stinging blow, then ducked, afraid that he would extract retribution. Every time she had touched Malachi in anger before, he had repaid her in some way.

  But that night, he did not. He touched his cheek, then spun around. "You're right, Shannon. It never should have happened."

  He sloshed through the water to the shore and, ignoring her completely, dressed at his leisure. He heard her, though. He would always hear her, he realized. Hear her, and imagine her. Her eyes like the sky. Her grace and energy, her supple beauty. He would hear her, and imagine her, clothed and… unclothed.

  He heard her coining to the shore, and imagined her slipping into her thin cotton pantalets and beautiful corset with the pink roses sewn into the lace. He sneaked a glance, and saw she had plunged into her jeans, and now sat on her bedroll pulling on her boots.

  He dug into his saddlebags and found a clean checked cotton shirt. He tossed it to her.

  "Thank you. I don't—"

  "Put it on. If you ride around in that corset thing, every man jack we run into will fall under the illusion that you're ready and willing, too."

  She slid the sleeves of the shirt over her arms and began to work on the buttons. Her head was high. "I wasn't going to refuse the shirt, Captain Slater. I was going to suggest that you should wear something similar. That Confederate coat of yours is pretty distinctive."

  Malachi didn't reply. He turned around to pack up his bedroll, setting his greatcoat and jacket in with his blanket. His trousers were gray, but his shirt was plain blue cotton.

  He couldn't quite part with his hat yet, so he set it atop his head, and stared at Shannon, waiting. When she had buttoned her shirt, she dug into her bag for a comb. She started trying to untangle the long strands of her hair.

  Malachi saddled the horses, and she was still struggling. He walked over to her impatiently, snatching the comb from her fingers. "Get down on your knees," he told her gruffly.

  "I won't—"

  "It's the only way that I can handle this mane!"

  She complied in silence. He quickly found the tangles, and eased them out. When he was done, he thrust the comb back to her. "May we go now, Miss McCahy?"

  She nodded, lowering her head. They mounted and started out.

  Malachi rode ahead of her, silent as death, wrapped up with his own demons. He felt as if they had been on the road for hours when she finally tried to catch up with him, calling to him softly.

  "Malachi?"

  "What?"

  "I—I want to explain."

  "Explain what?"

  "What I said. I didn't mean to deny—"

  "That's good. Because I won't let you deny the truth."

  "That's not what I meant I want to explain—"

  She was still behind him. He couldn't see her face, and he was glad. It was easier to be cynical and cool that way. "Shannon," he said, with a grate to his voice, "you don't have to explain anything."

  "But you don't understand—"

  "Yes, I know. I never do."

  "Malachi, before the war, I was always a lady—"

  "Shannon, before, during and after the war, you always were a hellion."

  "Malachi, damn you! I just meant that…I never would have done…what I did. I shouldn't have…"

  He hesitated, listening to her fumbling for words. He could sense tears in her voice again, and though he ached for her, he was bitter, too. He didn't like playing substitute for a ghost. He might have forced her to admit that she had desired him, but the thought of her Yankee fiance enraged him.

  The ghost had never had what he had had, he reminded himself. He cooled slightly. "The war has changed lots of people," he said softly to her. "And you are a lady, brat. Still, I'm sorry."

  "I don't want you to be sorry, Malachi. I just—it shouldn't have happened. Not now. Not between us."

  "A Yank and a Reb. It would never do," he said bitterly.

  She cantered up beside him, veering into his horse so that he was forced to look at her. She was soft and feminine now, her beautiful features and golden hair just brushed and kissed by the pale dusky moonlight.

  "Malachi, please, I didn't mean that."

  "I hope you meant something," he told her earnestly. "Shannon, you changed yourself tonight. Forever. You cast away something that some men deem very precious. You can't just pretend this didn't happen."

  Even in the dim light he saw her flush. She lowered her face. "I know that. But that's not at all what I meant. What I meant is that…" She hesitated.

  "Shannon, I did not drag you down, I did not force you into my arms. I seduced, maybe, but not without your ready cooperation."

  He thought she might hit him. She didn't move. Only the breeze stirred her hair. They had both stopped, he realized.

  She looked up at him, smiling painfully. Tears glazed her eyes. "I did want you, Malachi. I shouldn't have. I knew it was you, and I wanted you…and I shouldn't have. Because I did love Robert, with all of my heart. And it hasn't even been a year. I…" She shook her head. "I…I'm the one who is sorry."

  S
he moved ahead of him. He suddenly felt exhausted, tired and torn to shreds.

  He had never imagined, never, through hellfire, war and his meager taste of peace, that Shannon McCahy could come to brew this tempest in him. Anger, yes, she had always elicited his anger…

  But maybe, just maybe, she had always aroused this fever in his loins, too. And maybe he was just beginning to see it now.

  She was searing swiftly into his heart, too.

  Maybe they could be friends. Maybe every war deserved a truce now and then.

  "Shannon."

  She reined in and looked to him.

  "Let's camp here and get some sleep. We'll move more westerly tomorrow night, away from the water, so let's take advantage of it now."

  He thought she raised her eyebrows, and he remembered clearly just what advantages the water had given them. "To drink and bathe," he told her dryly.

  She nodded and dismounted, removing her saddle. He would have helped her, but she had grown up on a ranch and knew what she was doing, so he decided to leave her alone. They both needed some privacy right now.

  He unsaddled his horse, set her to graze, and hesitated. At last he decided it was safe, and he moved close to the water to build a small fire. Shannon watched him as the flames caught. He looked at her. "I need some small rocks. I've got a pan; we'll have coffee." And brandy, he added to himself. Lots of it.

  He was the one who needed to keep away from her. This was going to be hard, damned hard now. He couldn't look at her, have her near, and not imagine her in his arms again. Maybe if she hadn't known how to move and arch and undulate and please a man, all by instinct…

  She came back with the rocks, and he arranged them around his fire and set the pan so that the water would boil without putting out the flame. He stared at the water while she undid the bedrolls, setting them up for the remainder of the night.

  The coffee was soon done; Shannon laid out bread and cheese and smoked meat. They barely spoke to one another as they ate, and when they were done, silence fell around them again.

  "Why don't you go to bed," he told her.

  She nodded. "Yes. I guess that I will." She rose and started for their bedrolls, then paused, looking at him.

  She seemed angelic then. Soft and slim and wistfully and painfully feminine. She smiled at him awkwardly. "Malachi?"

  "What?"

  "Does it matter to you?"

  "Does what matter to me?"

  "A—er—a woman's…"

  "Virginity?" He offered.

  She flushed, and shook her head. "Never mind—"

  "Shannon—"

  "Never mind. Forget it. Sometimes I forget consequences and…"

  He took a long sip of coffee, watching her over the rim of his cup. "Have you forgotten them this time?"

  "What?" she murmured. It was her turn to be confused.

  He stood and walked over to her. Malachi was irritated by the touch of malicious mischief in his own heart. He would set her to thinking and worrying for days, he thought.

  But then he had spent these last hours in a type of hell, and he would surely spend all their moments together in torment from this day forth.

  "Consequences. Procreation. Infants. Sweet little people growing inside a woman's body…"

  Her eyes widened. She hadn't thought about it at all, he saw, and he was right—now she would worry for days.

  He kissed her on the forehead. "Good night."

  She was still standing there when he walked back to the fire.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "What do you think?" Shannon murmured. It was late the next afternoon, and they had spent the day riding westward, avoiding the major roads, and had slipped quietly through the countryside.

  "I think it's Kansas," Malachi replied flatly, turning toward her.

  They sat on their horses looking down a cliff to a small, dusty town. On the distant rolling plains they could see farmhouses and ranches. Before them they could see a livery and a barbershop and a saloon. A sign stretching across the top of a long building advertised Mr. Haywood's Dry Goods and Mercantile, and next to it was a smaller sign, advertising Mrs. Haywood's Haywood Inn, Rooms to Let by the Day, Month, Year.

  "Haywood, Kansas," Shannon murmured. She could still feel Malachi looking at her, and she couldn't bring herself to look his way. She'd had trouble looking at him ever since…

  She couldn't believe what she had done. She hadn't had a single drop of liquor inside her. She hadn't been dragged, forced or coerced. She had done it all of her own free will, and if it were possible to live a thousand years, she would never be able to forget it. Or Malachi…

  She could not look at him anymore and not remember everything. When his eyes touched her now she started to tremble deep inside. When she watched his hands resting on the reins, she remembered them against her body. The low male tenor of his voice moved against her now as if it touched her every time, as if it stroked the length of her back, just brushing over her flesh. And too often, way too often, she would grow hot and shivery all at once, and at the very core of her, and she would be ashamed to remember the feeling of unbelievable ecstasy that had burst upon her at the end.

  She had never denied him his appeal, even in her moments of most vehement hatred. Even as the war had waged on and on, even as he dismissed her again and again as a child. And now she knew even more about him that she could not deny. That he was wonderfully muscled and sleek and bronze. His back was riddled with scars, and she knew that they were the result of cavalry battles, that he had been nicked time and again, and that he fought on, because a man just didn't walk away from a war, or from his duty as he saw it

  She knew that his chest was tufted with short red and gold hair, and that the hair narrowed enticingly at his hips, and that it flared out again to frame a demanding…masculinity.

  He was an attractive man.

  But she should have never been attracted, and each time she thought of her own behavior, it hurt. She knew that he thought that she had wanted to see him as a substitute for Robert. But he hadn't allowed it, and by then…she hadn't cared. She could make excuses. Maybe she had been striking out against the loss. Maybe she had just felt the need to be held.

  No, the need to be loved.

  But there really was no excuse. They hadn't even been friends. Passionate enemies, at best. What he must really be thinking of her, deep down inside, she couldn't even imagine…

  And then she suddenly knew what her greatest fear was— that it had been a swift, casual fling for him, when for her it was a nightmare that changed her entire life and left her wondering if she had any morality whatsoever. And of all men to humiliate her so, it just had to be Malachi…

  She had to be mature about it. She had to learn to forget it, and she had to learn to…quit worrying. Malachi had brought up a consequence that hadn't even passed through her mind. She'd never been that innocent, not on the ranch. She always knew what men and women did to create sons and daughters. It was just that she couldn't afford to think about it. She had to put it behind her now as well. Kristin was out there, somewhere. And Shannon did need Malachi's help. She didn't know the first thing about Kansas, or the awful man, Fitz. She needed Malachi.

  "We need to go down," he said slowly, reluctantly. "We need to buy some food, if there's any to be had. And I'd give a hell of a lot to see a newspaper and try to find out what's been going on in the world."

  "I'll go—" Shannon began.

  "Don't be a fool," he told her impatiently. "I can't let you go down alone."

  "I would be perfectly safe, and you wouldn't be."

  "No one is safe anywhere around here. It wasn't safe before the war, and it surely isn't safe now."

  "But I'm a Yank, remember?"

  "Yeah, but they may not see it like that. To some, anyone from Missouri is a bushwhacker. Anyone at all."

  "So what do you suggest?"

  He gazed at her, lifting a brow. "Why, we pretend like hell, Miss McCahy, what else. We go in to
gether—man and wife. Our place has been burned out. We're looking to keep on moving westward. Don't mess up, you hear?"

  She eyed his hat pointedly. "You're riding in with a lantern of truth atop your head, captain," she said sweetly.

  He swept the hat from his head and looked at it for a long moment, then dismounted and walked toward some bushes. He set the hat carefully in the midst of them.

  "Is this a funeral?" Shannon asked sarcastically. "Maybe we should run down and bring the preacher out to mutter a few last words."

  His face was savage when his eyes lit on hers. She swallowed, wishing that she hadn't spoken. He didn't reply. He walked around and mounted the bay again and reached out for her horse's reins, holding the horse there before him. "Follow my lead, Shannon. I don't mind dyin' for Kristin, and I don't even mind dying for you—when it can't be helped. I will be bloody damned, though, if I'll die just because you can't keep a civil tongue in your body."

  His words fell into silence. Shannon stared at him without a word for what seemed like an endless time. She had only been teasing him. She hadn't realized how her words might wound, and she didn't know how to explain that or apologize.

  "What about your saddle?" she asked him coldly. "Are there any Confederate markings on it, or on any of the other trappings on your horse?"

  "My saddle came off a dead Ohioan's plow horse," he said. "And the bridle is from your ranch. No markings at all."

  "Shall we go then?" she said tautly.

  He released her horse's reins and they started down the slope. "We're going to buy some supplies and get some information," he told her. "You keep careful."

  "Me?" she inquired sweetly. "You should be grateful to have me along, Malachi Slater. They aren't going to take your Confederate currency here. I've got Yankee dollars."

  He turned to stare at her. "You keep your Yankee dollars, Shannon."

  "Oh?"

  "I've got gold, Miss McCahy. Last I heard, they're still taking that stuff everywhere. Come on now, I want you close."

  He continued down the slope. Their horses broke into smooth canters as they crossed the empty plain and entered the town by the single road that cut through the line of buildings. Malachi reined in, nodding to Shannon to do the same. They dismounted in front of the mercantile and tethered their horses on the wood rail that ran the length of the place, then started up the two dusty steps to the open doorway.