“Well, sir, I suppose whatever you need me to do. If it comes to a fight, I’m a quick and accurate shot. Sumner’s brought plenty of gunmen. I may be young, but I’m as good as any ten of his men combined.”
Jed didn’t doubt his word. There wasn’t a note of bragging in his tone. Damn if he wasn’t already starting to like this kid. “Juniper, I’ll take you up on that offer. I could use you to keep watch near the entrance of the canyon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call me Jed.”
Juniper’s lips twitched, hinting at a smile. “You can call me June.”
“Is that what your friends call you?”
“It’s what Miss Rachell calls me,” Juniper replied, his face stone serious.
Jed glanced up at Rachell’s gentle smile and had to remind himself he had no call to be jealous of this kid.
They spent a half hour discussing Sumner and the best spot for Juniper to keep a lookout. By the time Juniper left the cabin he’d eaten three bowls of Rachell’s stew and flashed her so many damn smiles Jed’s blood pressure was giving him serious trouble.
Rachell closed the door and looked back at Jed who still sat at the table. “I’d never guess you to be the jealous sort,” she said with a smile.
“I suppose you didn’t notice Juniper’s smitten with you either?” Jed said in a flat tone.
“What?” Rachell shrieked, completely aghast. “He’s a boy.”
“A boy who looks at you with a mighty case of wonder lust. Who could blame him with the way you were running your fingers through his hair.”
He had his nerve! “You’re imagining things. I trimmed his hair. I can’t believe you are this jealous of a young boy.”
“Why the hell shouldn’t I be? That boy is closer to your age than I am.”
She started to refute his statement, but realized she didn’t know Jed’s exact age. She’d always assumed him to be early thirties, not that his age had concerned her in the least.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” he clipped in a cold tone.
“No. Your age has no bearing on how I feel about you.”
“I’ll be forty next month.”
She tried not to show her surprise, truly she did. His mumbled curse and fierce scowl indicated she had failed. Lord help her, she would never have guessed him to be nearly forty. Thirty-five, maybe, but…what did it matter? She was in love with him. This was just another excuse to cover his own uncertainties. “Don’t you dare act like our age difference is my problem, because it’s not!”
“That difference is sixteen years, Rachell! I should never have touched you.”
“I wouldn’t care if you were about to turn fifty! This isn’t about me not knowing how I feel. You’re the one running from your feelings, the one who can’t get past my age. But passion is ageless, Jed. If what happened between us hadn’t affected you as deeply as it has me, you wouldn’t be running from me.”
“You’re damn right!”
Rachell stepped toward him, ignoring his fierce expression as she nudged between his legs. Jed groaned, pain darkening his eyes as she looped her arms around his neck. She rested her forehead against his and he closed his eyes. She stroked her fingers through the streaks of gray in the black hair at his temples, and felt Jed tremble. The response still amazed her. “Why won’t you let us have what we both want?”
“Because we’re all wrong for each other,” he said softly. His arms closed around her. “You’re a beautiful young woman with your whole life ahead of you.”
“I’m twenty-three, yet I’d not lived a day until I met you.”
“No.” His hands dropped away from her. He stood breaking away from her embrace. “I won’t do this again.”
“Again?” The single word explained the shadows in Jed’s eyes. Memories of his first wife. “That’s it,” she said, pain and frustration gripping her heart. “You don’t want to risk being near me because you still love Malika.”
“No! I can’t risk getting close to you because it nearly killed me to watch you burn in my arms and not sheath myself inside your sleek, virginal body. Part of me keeps telling me you’re my wife, when I know full well you’re not! My mind and body have been at war since the moment I met you!”
“Then stop fighting me!”
“Rachell—”
“I hate the distance between us!” she cried without pausing for breath. “I can’t stand it. I want you to talk to me, smile at me, touch me!”
“I can’t!”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Because I can’t touch you without wanting you—”
“But I want you!”
“—and I can’t take you without binding us in a marriage we’ll both regret,” he continued in a tone of steady control.
“I say you can.”
“I say I can’t.”
He stood before her, as impenetrable as a mountainside, clearly not about to expose any part of himself to her.
“Does my being a virgin really change our situation so much?”
“Yes. It changes everything.”
“So, if I’d been the whore you thought I was, you’d have no problem—”
“Damn it, Rachell! We fought about this the other night.” He turned toward the door. “I don’t want to have this argument again!”
“That’s too damned bad,” she shouted, hurrying to block his path. She pressed her back against the rough wood of the door, daring him to move her aside. She knew as easily as he could, he wouldn’t. “Last night I did all the fighting while you just sat there! I’m right, aren’t I? If I had slept with one, five, or twenty other men, you would make love to me without question. Why does it make such a difference?”
Jed took a step back, leaving two feet between them, but to Rachell it felt like two miles.
“Because your innocence has you convinced you love me,” he said in a low tone. “If you’d experienced the touch of another man, you’d know—”
“I can’t bear the touch of anyone else.”
“How do you know? I’m the only man who’s ever touched you!”
“How can you hold that against me?”
“I’m not punishing you for being a virgin, Rachell. Damn it, if I didn’t respect the hell out of you I’d take you without regard, but I can’t do that. When you meet the man—”
“There is no other man! I only want you.”
Jed’s eyes flinched. “Sweetheart, you say that now, but—”
“But, nothing! I know you don’t want to hear it, but I love you!”
Jed’s expression twisted with pain as he turned away. He stopped in the center of the room and looked back at her. “Those feelings are temporary. You’ve been stuck with me for weeks. You’ve had no choice but to depend on me for your survival and safety. Gratitude isn’t love. Given time, you’ll see that.”
“And the emotions you have for me, is that gratitude? I know you at least care about me.”
“Hell yes, I care about you! Have you thought about what’s going to happen when we reach California? Am I supposed to take your virginity then hand you over to Buck and Elizabeth and pretend nothing has happened? It would be wrong, Rachell. I have no intention of keeping a wife. I’m not a marrying sort of man, honey,” he said in a strained tone, his voice sounding apologetic. “Once you get to California, you’ll see that. You would realize you’d wasted your virtue on me.”
“No!” She marched toward him. Jed’s hands fisted at his sides as she stopped just inches away. “You’re wrong. I am grateful for all you’ve done for me, but what I feel for you is so much more than that. I’ve been surrounded by men my whole life and never felt the sensations you cause deep inside me. My feelings for you won’t fade.”
“Passion isn’t love, Rachell. I know that better than most. The pleasure you felt—”
“I’m not talking about physical pleasure!” she shouted, thumping his chest with h
er hands, infuriated by his refusal to believe her. “I’m talking about the feeling I get from just being near you, hearing your voice, seeing you smile! I’m not asking for your love in return or the promise of marriage.”
“That’s just it! You should be asking those things of the man who beds you. You deserve nothing less.”
“I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t pay to wish for what I can’t have.”
“Honey, you can have all those things. There are plenty of men—”
“Why won’t you listen? You’ve told me from the beginning you don’t want a wife and I believe you. That doesn’t stop me from burning inside for you.”
“Rachell…”
She wondered if he was shaking with anger or with the same hunger she felt whenever she looked at him. He wanted her with the same intensity, she could see it in his eyes.
“Bedding you wouldn’t be fair to either of us. You didn’t choose me. You hardly know me.”
“I think I know you pretty well.”
“Did you know I’ve already been in a forced marriage?”
Rachell’s breath caught.
“I didn’t choose my first bride, and she surely didn’t choose me. She sure as hell didn’t love me. I can’t do it again.”
“Jed—”
He backed up as she moved toward him. “Don’t you see? I’d be no better than Sumner, taking advantage of you in a moment of weakness. Eventually, you’d hate me for it.”
The fear in his eyes tore at Rachell’s heart. No wonder he wouldn’t touch her. He perceived his distance as another way of protecting her, from himself. But she knew her feelings wouldn’t change—she’d never hate him.
“What if I get to California,” she said, “and I’m surrounded by all these alleged suitors, and I still only want you? Would you feel differently then?”
“I don’t know,” Jed said in a tone of pure pain. He crossed his arms as he sat heavily against the table.
“Would you still want me?”
“Hell yes, I’d want you!” His explosive reply rattled the small cabin as he rushed past her and stormed outside.
Chapter Nineteen
It was dusk when Jed walked into Sumner’s camp. Even after four hours of riding, he was still so worked up over his conversation with Rachell, he didn’t even try to sneak in. Hell, a fight would help burn off the pent-up tension that had been building inside him for the past few weeks.
The camp was larger than he’d expected. The meadow was scattered with at least twenty single to midsize tents. A huge white structure rose up at the end of the clearing. The broad tent was large enough to hold another forty men or so.
He picked his way around the other canvas shelters, passing clusters of men, none of them giving him any notice. That’s what happens when you hire a bunch of drifters, he thought. Drunken drifters to boot, he noticed, breathing in the heavy scent of whisky.
On the west end of the meadow he spotted a campfire surrounded by familiar faces.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said as he approached the circle of Utes.
“Brother,” Running Bear greeted him in his native tongue. “Sit. Share our meal.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jed said as he sat, accepting the plate that was handed to him. “I’ve been eating light the last few days.” Jed greeted the other five Ute warriors sitting around the fire. After a few bites of rabbit meat, he looked back at Running Bear. “You left right after we did, didn’t you?”
Running Bear grinned. “You fast to offer help. No good with asking.”
“How’d you find Sumner?”
“Same as I find any game,” Running Bear said with a shrug. “I go to biggest watering hole.”
Jed laughed, glancing again at the circus tent occupied by Sumner. “I hope he doesn’t have another fifty men stashed inside that canvas palace.”
“No. Palace for White Hair alone.”
Jed sighed with relief. “I saw the tracks of two horses near our cabin this morning, but I had company and didn’t get a chance to check them out. Were they your men?”
“Buck say he ride near your cabin.”
“You’ve seen Buck?”
“Yes. And Ben Darby.”
He’d spotted tracks near the canyon, and had thought it was them, but appreciated the confirmation. Buck and his nephew Ben were as the closest family Jed had, aside from Running Bear. He’d trust them to get Rachell safely out of the canyon.
“I have six men camped further in the canyon with Ben Darby. They watch for White Hair’s scouts.”
“Sumner must pay good,” Jed said as he glanced around at all the men willing to shoot a stranger for cash. “Just what is he telling folks he’s doing out here?”
“He say you kill his son and steal his woman. He pay fifty dollar for my braves to track my brother and fight.” Running Bear shrugged his wide shoulders. “We take money. We track. We fight, with, not against, my brother.”
“What makes you so sure he’s not telling the truth?”
Running Bear laughed, shaking his head. “Imp belongs to you. She loves you.”
Jed groaned involuntarily.
“You do not want your wife to love you?”
“Damn it, Running Bear, you know she’s not my wife.”
“She shares your blanket?”
“She slept in my bedroll, and that’s all she did. Slept!”
“Your heart is in great pain for you to lie to me.”
“It’s no lie,” Jed mumbled, shifting uneasily. “We’ve tumbled on the blankets a bit, but we’ve not coupled. She doesn’t love me. She’s just…she’s—”
“She shed many tears over loss of your blood and have look of angry warrior when women talk to you in my camp. You have good wife. You share your blanket with many women who do not love you. Why not Imp?”
“Hell.” Jed pulled off his hat, slapping it against his thigh. “I came here to talk about Sumner,” he growled in a low tone. “Not Rachell.”
“You love her,” Running Bear said.
“I do not,” Jed insisted, wishing he felt the certainty behind his voice. “I hardly know her.”
“You should mate. Your people need more honorable men. She bear you strong children. Imp will bring your spirit peace.”
“What are my chances of talking Sumner into calling off this bird chase of his.”
Running Bear shrugged. “You kill his son and take his woman.”
“She was never his woman,” Jed amended.
“White Hair have much pride. You tell me once, too much pride will kill a man. This will be so. You will fight for Imp.”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Jed said, pushing his empty plate aside as he shot to his feet.
“You cannot run from the Great Spirit, my brother,” Running Bear called after him. “My vision is complete.”
Jed made his way through the camp of men. He glanced at the sleeping guard slumped in the chair outside Sumner’s tent, wondering how Sumner had made it this far. Inside, the spacious tent was lit up like a chapel. Tall candelabras lined the back and one side of the white canvas enclosure. Candlelight glistened on a glass decanter of bourbon sitting on the edge of a small wooden secretary near the rear of the tent. Sprays of white light glinted off a gold object in the hands of the silver-haired man sitting behind the polished desk.
Distinguished enough, Jed thought, for a man of wealth. He wore a fancy tailored gray suit, the striped vest made of satin. A thin gray mustache curved around to a narrow pointed beard. Reclined in a padded chair covered in red velvet, he held a small glass of bourbon in one hand, an open gold pocket watch in the other. His gaze was fixed on the watch.
Sumner looked up as Jed continued toward him. He snapped the watch closed, dropping it into his vest pocket as he leaned forward.
“Why are you in my quarters?” he demanded. “I’ve not called for anyone.”
“If you’re Maxwell Sumner, I believe you’re the one paying a call on me.”
/> His dark eyes widened with recognition. “Mr. Doulan.”
Jed acknowledged his name with a slight incline of his head and he slowly strode toward him.
“This is an unexpected surprise.” Sumner rose from his chair, causing Jed to pause, his hand homing in on the grip of his revolver. If Sumner noted the subtle pause, his pleasant expression didn’t show it. “Please, have a seat.” He motioned to the two wooden chairs before his small desk. “I believe you have my nightingale,” he said, easing back down into his cushioned chair. “I assume you’ve come here to negotiate her return.”
“You’d be mistaken,” Jed said as he sat before him. “I’ve a beautiful wife to be sure, but she sings for no one but me.”
Knowing that, in a sense, he’d spoken the truth, Jed smiled.
Sumner’s expression hardened, his jaw twitching with tension as he dipped his hand into his vest pocket. “We both know that’s a farce,” he said in a sour tone. “I only want back what’s mine. I’ll get her back, and we will be married.”
“She never agreed to marry you. She doesn’t want you.”
“Lies. Don’t think you’re the first man to fall for her charm.”
“What makes you think she didn’t fall for mine?” Jed replied.
“You forget, Mr. Doulan, she was mine first.”
That statement didn’t sit well with Jed. “I believe you overestimate the employer and employee relationship.”
“Don’t be fooled, Mr. Doulan. She may come off real coy and sweet, but—”
“Coy and sweet?” Jed cut in, watching the tension in Sumner rise. “Are we talkin’ about the same woman? My little lady has big green eyes, flaming hair and one hell of a hot temper.”
“I’m not playing games. Miss Nightingale will be returned to me. I wouldn’t be chasing her across the country without sufficient cause.”
“Just how would you define sufficient?” Jed inquired, truly curious as to the man’s reasoning.
“She’s stolen a valuable commodity that’s vital to my business.”
“Such as?”
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