by Lisa Plumley
But it had been a long time.
“I don’t need to know your name to know a man like you could never be an outlaw,” she went on, her voice low. “You just saved my life! How—”
“My name’s Kincaid,” Mason told her.
Her hands stilled. “What?”
“Mason Kincaid.” He turned, encircling her waist in his arms, and lifted her high against him. He wanted to crush her to him, to keep her with him, to prove to Amy he could keep her safe.
To prove it to himself.
“My real name is Mason Kincaid.”
Her smile was a benediction. The warmth of it went straight to his soul. He needed nothing else to know, once and for all, that he had to send her away.
He eased Amy down his body and set her on a barrel beside him. “I escaped from the lawman who came to arrest me a little more than a week ago and I’ve been on the run ever since.”
“But—”
“Let me finish.” Damn, but his chest ached with something he couldn’t name. Mason made himself say the words that she needed to hear, but it had never been harder to push them past his lips. Stiffly, he went on: “He came for me because I was accused two days before that of murdering my wife.”
God, but the words still choked him. Mason moved away from her, leaving Amelia on the barrel alone.
Leaving him alone again, too.
“I knew he was coming for me, and I left before he got there,” Mason said. He looked down at her. “I am an outlaw—whatever you believe.”
Amy touched his arm. “But they’re wrong. They have to be! I don’t believe you could do such a thing. You’ve saved me again and again, and I—”
“Because I don’t want another damned murder charge hanging on my head!” Mason shouted. She flinched, driven backward by the sudden intensity of his anger. He tried to gentle his voice, and failed. “I’ve got nothing else to lose—except what’s waiting for me in Tucson. Don’t stand in my way.”
Clenching her fists, Amy stepped closer to him. She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Every time I escaped from you,” she said, her voice shuddering with emotion, “you came after me.”
“I already told you, I—”
“No. This time, you let me finish.” She caught hold of his hand and squeezed hard. “And every time, I kept thinking you’d recaptured me.”
Mason wrenched his hand away, scowling. He couldn’t shake loose her grip on his heart as easily. Curly Top had picked a hell of a time to turn determined on him.
“You should have gotten the hell away from me while you still could,” he said.
As though he’d never spoken, never moved, Amy followed him.
“And every time I was wrong,” she said. Holding the quilt up with one hand, she slipped her other hand from beneath it and tunneled under his blanket instead. He felt her hand smooth warmth across his chest. It came to rest directly over his heart.
“Don’t you see?” she asked, looking up at him with tears shimmering in her eyes. “All those times, you weren’t capturing me.”
How had his attempts to scare her away from him backfired so quickly, so completely? He didn’t want this, didn’t want anyone else depending on him. Mason tried to sound mean, tried to sound like it cost him nothing to say, “I wasn’t?”
“No.”
A tear spilled onto her cheek. He had to fight the urge to caress it away.
“You were rescuing me,” she said.
“Amy—”
“And I’m going to rescue you in return.”
Chapter Twelve
Falling in love with Mason had been a fluke. By the time Amelia had woken up, bruised and half-exhausted from a night spent sleeping amidst a wagon bed of supplies, she’d felt fairly certain she was starting to get over it already. She had to be. Otherwise, she didn’t know how she was going to deal with a man who pulled her to him with one hand and pushed her away with the other. At the same time.
By all indications, he wanted nothing whatsoever to do with her this morning. Mason had wakened her before sunrise, rumbling something in that mean outlaw’s voice of his about not lolling around like sitting ducks. Then he’d taken himself off to the swollen stream with a bucket of clean water and a straightedge razor to shave with, leaving her alone to fend for herself.
Amelia didn’t understand him—or herself, for that matter. Mason Kincaid was the wrong kind of man for her to care about. He was wholly unsuitable. Yet he’d held her as though he couldn’t get enough of her care, kissed her in a way that still made her lips tingle when she remembered it.
How could that be? How was it possible that she, who’d had no trouble resisting improper advances from the few young men who’d approached her in the past, found herself longing for yet another kiss from Mason—even at this very moment?
She brushed her fingertips across her lips, remembering. Looking toward the nearby ridge where Mason sat, she spotted his lithe, powerful body silhouetted by the rising sun, his arm propped with deceptive casualness on his bent knee as he scanned the countryside for signs they’d been pursued from Maricopa Wells. Shafts of orange and gold sunlight burnished his body and hid his expression at the same time. She’d never known anyone more enigmatic. Mason protected her at every turn, even while seeming aggrieved by her very presence.
He was a puzzle, Amelia decided. A puzzle she didn’t even have all the pieces to. She meant to figure him out, though. Soon. In the meantime, she intended to get to Tucson safely, to retrieve her J.G. O’Malley & Sons satchels, and to deliver those book orders.
And sometime along the way, she intended for Mason to kiss her again. Exactly the way he had before. Maybe then she could satisfy her curiosity once and for all, and be done with mooning over an outlaw.
Sighing, Amelia crouched beside the campfire he’d made for her outside their stolen wagon and checked the breakfast she was cooking inside their stolen cast-iron spider. The cornmeal flapjacks sizzled beside thick strips of bacon, sending the aromas of toasted corn and smoked meat wafting upward. Thank heaven the rain had stopped late last night, giving the ground time to dry out somewhat. The warmth of their small fire was bliss.
Standing, stretching, Amelia tried to work the kinks out of her back before heading toward the covered wagon. Last night she’d been grateful for its shelter, however illegally gained. This morning, her conscience poked at her constantly, trying to make itself heard.
Stealing that wagon was probably a hanging offense. Things hadn’t been bad enough, Amelia thought wryly as she rummaged inside the wagon bed. She and Mason had felt compelled to commit a mortal sin on top of it.
Telling herself they’d find a way to set it right somehow, Amelia pulled out the coffee beans and grinder she’d found. She carried them back to the fire, turned out the first batch of flapjacks onto a tin plate, then poured more batter into the spider. Maybe she’d eat the first batch herself, and not even wait for Mason to return, she thought rebelliously. What was the point in propriety when a lady found herself stuck in the middle of the desert?
Mason’s shadow fell over her just as Amelia poured the green coffee beans into a fresh skillet to roast them. Shaking them back and forth in the pan, she nodded toward the plate of flapjacks without looking at him.
“You can have the first batch,” she said, feeling unreasonably like smoothing her wrinkled dress and primping to gain his favor. She tamped down the urge. Had she no pride left? “The coffee will be done in a little while.”
The campfire flames licked higher, burning her hand. Yelling, Amelia let go of the skillet. It fell sideways into the fire, scattering coffee beans in every direction.
“Blast!” she cried, standing and kicking at the wayward skillet in frustration. Now Mason probably thought she was as useless at cooking as she’d proved to be at everything else in this godforsaken Territory. “Goldanged stupid skillet.”
She kicked it again, and only succeeded in stubbing her toe on the hard cast iron. Tears prickled behind her
eyes, making her even madder.
“Let me make the coffee, before you catch yourself on fire,” Mason said.
She refused to look at him. As a man who didn’t even want to be around her, Mason didn’t deserve the satisfaction of an acknowledgment. Still she felt him grinning at her, and the knowledge irked her beyond reason.
This was like the worst girlhood crush on a boy she’d ever suffered—only magnified a hundred times, because there was no escaping Mason. At least for now, they were stuck together. Not that it mattered. They’d probably be hunted down by a posse and hung as thieves before she convinced him to satisfy her curiosity about the kiss.
“I know how to make coffee,” Mason persisted.
“No. I can do it,” Amelia gritted out, wadding her skirt around the skillet handle to pull it from the fire. This time, she was successful. Dropping it onto the ground to cool, she turned to Mason with her hands on her hips.
“You might as well eat. There’s nothing wrong with the flapjacks or bacon.”
He raised his eyebrows.
Was he trying to provoke her apurpose?
She’d ignore him, Amelia vowed. Humming, scooping her hand into the container of coffee beans again, she pulled out a handful and poured them carefully into the skillet. She held it over the fire—further away this time—and shook it with a triumphant look toward Mason.
“I happen to be a very good cook,” she announced. Her expression, she felt sure, fairly dared him to disagree.
“I’m sure you are,” he agreed, sounding utterly unconvinced. She might have announced she was a circus performer and earned as much credibility. He pierced the sizzling bacon with his fork, examining each slice as he transferred it to his plate.
By the time he’d scrutinized the fifth piece, Amelia couldn’t contain herself any longer.
“Exactly what do you expect to find?” she asked.
Propping his plate on his knee, Mason looked up at her. “It looks browner than I expected,” he said, shrugging. “I thought maybe you’d fried up some jerky.”
“Even I know better than that.” She flipped two cornmeal flapjacks onto a plate for herself, then added one of the few remaining strips of bacon. She glanced at him again. “It’s just crispy. I like crispy bacon.”
“It’s burned.”
“It’s good.” To prove her point, Amelia picked up a piece and bit into it. The bacon crunched in her mouth, salty and crispy and exactly the way she liked it. Still munching, she pierced a second piece and added it to her plate, too.
“Burned.” Mason peered suspiciously at his bacon, frowning as though she’d cooked some specially for her and he’d gotten only the dregs.
Seeing him in full daylight, Amelia was taken aback at his appearance. Although he looked somewhat more respectable now that he was clean-shaven, Mason seemed…weary. Dark circles cast shadows beneath his eyes, and without their usual brown beard-stubble, his cheeks looked a bit sunken. Suddenly, crispy bacon or not, she wanted him to eat his fill.
“I’ll cook some more bacon if you want,” she offered, setting her plate down to pour more batter onto the blistering cast iron surface of the spider. That done, Amelia maneuvered the cooled, roasted coffee beans into the top of the grinder and replaced the lid.
Cranking the handle, she added, “You look as though you could use the fortification.”
Mason choked on a bite of meat. Reaching around him, Amelia slapped his back helpfully.
“Quit that!” he muttered once he’d quit coughing. He cast her a dark look, then turned his attention toward his flapjacks.
Fine. Whatever got him to eat, Amelia reasoned. She poured the coffee grounds into the pot, filled it with water, and hung it over the fire. Slapping her palms together, she surveyed her campsite with satisfaction. She’d turned it quite homey, between the warmth of the fire and the good smells of flapjacks, bacon—and soon, coffee perking.
She picked up her plate and settled herself on a rock opposite Mason. With not a few surreptitious glances in his direction—did he like the food or not?—she cut a bite of flapjack with the edge of her fork and ate it.
Before long, Mason’s plate was nearly empty. He took more from the spider, poured himself some coffee into a tin cup, and ate more. Finally, he paused for breath. He pointed his fork toward the overturned crate Amelia had set up beside the campfire to hold the bowl of flapjack batter and the uncooked bacon strips.
“What I can’t figure out,” he said, “is what the creosote branches are for. Did you season the flapjacks with them?”
“They’re a centerpiece.” Hurt, Amelia glanced at the tin cup filled with bush branches she’d set on one edge of the crate. “Don’t you think the flowers are pretty?”
They were the best she’d been able to find—the narrow-leafed branches of some desert bush, with tiny yellow blossoms on them. The wet ones did carry a somewhat pungent aroma, but it wasn’t as though she could just run down to the greengrocer’s for flowers. What did he expect?
Mason grunted, but as he lowered his head to concentrate on his meal again, Amelia plainly spotted the smile on his face.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded. “You don’t like flowers?”
“I—”
“But I don’t suppose you would,” she went on before he could finish. Waving her arm, she ended up slamming her plate onto the rock beside her, feeling piqued. “You don’t like anything. You don’t like the flowers—” she raised her index finger “or the bacon.” Another finger went up. “You haven’t said a word about the flapjacks, so I suppose they don’t meet your standards either.”
Her middle finger joined the first two, enumerating his many dislikes. Mason started to say something else, but Amelia cut him off. “And you obviously don’t like me, either, so—”
Suddenly, Mason’s hand clapped over her mouth. Muffled, she stared up at him in shock. At some point during her speech, he’d leaned right over her without her even noticing it. Now his chest loomed directly in her line of vision, giving her an excellent—if unwanted—view of his tawny skin and muscular torso through the opened vee of his wrinkly shirt.
She couldn’t help but notice what a fine-looking man Mason Kincaid was, outlaw or not. Memories of how he’d looked taking off his wet shirt in the wagon last night edged into her mind.
“If you’d let a man get a word in edgewise,” he said, “you might like what you’d hear.”
Amelia nodded, unable to manage more with his hand over her mouth. He took it away, scowling.
“In case you didn’t notice,” Mason pointed out as he returned to the rock he’d been using for a seat, “I just ate a good half-dozen of your flapjacks, and all the rest of your damned burned bacon. If that doesn’t pass for liking the food, I don’t know what does.”
“Oh.” It was a compliment, Amelia realized. He liked her cooking. But what about the rest? If she asked, would Mason reveal how he felt about her, too?
“You’re right,” she said, trying to appear conciliatory. “I guess that does prove you like the food.”
He nodded and said nothing more.
The man understood instinctively how to vex her.
She held back a sigh. “You like the food and…?”
“And what?”
He had to be vexing her apurpose. Perhaps it was the male version of being coy in the hopes of promoting a flirtation. Amelia hadn’t much experience in that arena.
Deciding she might as well play along, she prompted, “And you also like…?”
He brightened and gave her a wide, openhearted grin. Encouraged, Amelia waited for him to speak. Any moment now, Mason would say something kind and romantic and heroic, like the men in her dime novels.
“I like the creosote branches, too,” he admitted. “In spite of the smell. Puts a nice lady’s touch on things.”
She stared at him. Mason’s grin, if anything, only got wider.
“Quit fishing, Curly Top. I already said I liked the food—I’m not the ki
nd of man to go on about it all morning.” He stood, pushing himself upright with his hands on his thighs. “Besides, we’ve got work to be done.”
“What kind of work? Did somebody follow us?”
Panic sent Amelia to her feet, too. Craning her neck, she tried to see beyond Mason and around the hill, back toward Maricopa Wells. Was that only a cloud she saw low in the sky? Or was it dust kicked up from the hooves of a mounted posse’s horses as they pursued the outlaws?
“Nobody’s following us. My guess is, the wagon’s owner is blind-drunk passed-out someplace at the station, and hasn’t realized his rig is missing yet.”
“But there are a woman’s things in the wagon,” Amelia protested. “What about her?”
“Maybe they’re both holed-up someplace.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, Mason—really. I just can’t imagine a lady imbibing so heavily that she—”
“I didn’t mean they were holed-up drinking,” he said, heading for the wagon. He climbed inside the back, emerging head-first a moment later to untie the thick drawstring cinching the canvas together.
“Well, what did you…,” Amelia started to ask, following him. A peculiar reddening of Mason’s cheeks made the words stick in her throat. Why, he was blushing!
“Ahh,” she murmured, feeling her own cheeks heat. He meant the wagon owners had holed-up someplace to be intimate.
The notion reminded her of the night she and Mason had just spent together, sleeping only a few feet apart from each other. Wearing not a stitch aside from quilts. Shivering, she tried to concentrate on what Mason was doing rather than the intriguing images in her head, and failed.
He ducked his head and went on loosening the drawstring. “I see you take my meaning, then,” he said.
“I, ahhh…” An idea struck her. “No, I don’t,” she lied. After all, any subject that could cause an outlaw to blush was one capable of piquing her interest.
“And I’ve been curious about this very thing lately,” Amelia said, digging the toe of her shoe into the soil rather than raise her eyes to Mason. He spread the canvas opening wider apart, for all appearances barely listening to her.