She looked at Clay as if he could provide the answer.
Clay tried to imagine how exactly Jeff Atkinson had been killed, but he came up blank. Jeff’s neck had been broken. More than likely it had happened here, because he couldn’t see the man willingly following his murderer to a more convenient location, couldn’t imagine the killer taking the chance that Jeff could get away unscathed. He imagined the killer had done whatever was necessary to break his horse’s leg once they got near the rimrock to make the “accident” seem all the more believable.
“I would guess the murderer—maybe Galvan himself—didn’t want anyone investigating this area too closely,” Clay suggested. “If there is uranium here, then everything falls into place. I think we keep looking.”
“That makes two of us,” Siobhan said, her expression determined.
Clay turned his gaze to the rock around him. He didn’t want to see the love for her late husband etched in Siobhan’s expression, so he avoided looking at her. Helping her find Jeff’s murderer was taking an emotional toll on Clay. On the one hand, he was opening up to her. On the other, he was forced to face again the choice she’d made to marry another man, one she had obviously loved.
Immersed in those thoughts despite himself, he whipped through a pile of broken-up sandstone. He didn’t know how long they were out there, but the sun set and dusk was settling over the area when he found it—a rock with a yellowish underbelly.
This was it, he thought, the ore nearly burning his hand.
Proof!
Clay was about to show it to Siobhan when a blast from behind made him jump. Rock next to him split into shards and splattered him.
“What the hell?” he yelled, grabbing on to his rifle as another bullet just missed him.
“Clay?” Siobhan turned to see what was going on.
Acting on instinct, Clay rushed Siobhan and grabbed her tight to him as he pulled her to safety behind a jagged sandstone wall. Damn! He’d only wanted to protect her, and here he’d led her straight into danger.
The bullets kept coming.
And Siobhan clung to him as if she never would let go.
As much as he wanted to indulge himself in that thought, Clay shoved her to the ground and ordered, “Keep your head down!”
Thankful he’d been cautious enough to bring a weapon, Clay hefted the rifle in his hands and edged away from her.
“Clay, what are you doing?” she whispered.
“Trying to save our butts.”
“Don’t…you’ll be killed!”
They’d both be killed if he didn’t do something to prevent it. “I’ll be fine.”
“Then so will I!”
One look at Siobhan and he knew she was determined to come with him. She was already on her knees. “Stay put, Siobhan! I mean it!”
He moved sideways behind the rocks, every few seconds bobbing his head up to see if he could get a look at the shooter. Despite the fact they were using the survey Galvan had bought, he doubted the politician was up to doing his own dirty work. Vargas, then? Though the man worked for Buck Hale, he’d had something going on with Galvan the other night in town.
The rifle burned Clay’s hands, made him itch to use it, but the weapon was useless if he couldn’t get a clear target.
Finally he was far enough from Siobhan that he chanced taking a good look.
In the distance, a man dressed in black, lever-action rifle in hand, ran toward the stand of cottonwoods where they’d left their horses. A brimmed hat covered his head and shaded his face. It didn’t look like Paco Vargas to Clay—the ex-con was far more muscle-bound than this guy.
Clay took aim and undoubtedly could have hit the man, but under the circumstances, he couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. He’d never shot anyone before. He certainly had never killed anyone.
Coming close once had been enough for him.
Clay aimed at a spot between the attacker and the cottonwoods and let off a couple of shots, hoping to get him away from the horses. The man just ran faster and took shelter behind the tree. Next thing Clay knew, the horses were taking off, running wild, the attacker mounted and flat on Chief’s back.
Clay let his gaze follow the direction the gelding was heading and spotted a black truck parked nearby.
The same truck Siobhan had seen the night she’d been locked in the tack room?
There were a lot of black trucks in the area, but this one was old and looked familiar, Clay thought, checking out the design of the brake lights. It reminded him of the one Buck Hale used to drive…
The attacker slowed Chief and, without stopping, dismounted near the truck, rifle still in hand. The horse ran off. Clay took a couple of more shots, but the man whipped himself out of target range into the driver’s seat, started the engine and drove off. Clay aimed for the tires, thinking if he could put the man on foot, he would be able to track him and overpower him with surprise, but the truck had already gotten too far away and was moving too fast. He had to admit defeat.
Siobhan! Wanting to make sure she was all right, he turned to check on her. She was standing there right behind him, her face a mask of fury as she stared out after the fast-disappearing truck.
Despite his orders, she’d followed him.
She’d put herself in more danger!
“What were you thinking, Siobhan? You made yourself a target by coming out into the open like that! Can’t you ever listen to anyone?”
“I’m not a child, Clay. You can’t give me orders.”
“Apparently not, even if it’s to save your life!”
“It’s your life I was worried about!” she countered.
“Don’t give me that curse nonsense again!”
“It wasn’t the prophecy…the connection we had is gone…but someone was shooting at you, Clay!” Her voice trembled with the knowledge. “You could have been killed. I—I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”
Clay couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to hear the sorrow in her tone. Couldn’t stand to see her features crumple. Couldn’t stand to feel her defeat. They didn’t need a connection for him to know how utterly hopeless she was feeling right now.
He slid his hands over her shoulders and grasped her upper arms, resisting the urge to shake some sense into her. She wasn’t a child to be chastised. She was a woman. A woman he knew he still wanted.
Unable to help himself, Clay pulled Siobhan to him and fixed his mouth to her trembling one. Seeming shocked, she tried to pull away, but he held her fast, nudged her lips open, kissed her with all the passion of a man who’d never stopped loving her.
Siobhan softened in his arms. Then, as if the years melted away into nothing, she was kissing him again with every bit as much passion as if she hadn’t driven him away.
Shocked, Clay realized that even though she’d married another man, Siobhan had never stopped wanting him.
The question was, did she still love him?
FOR ONE SWEET MOMENT, Siobhan allowed herself to be lost in the kiss. She gave herself up to pure sensation, to Clay possessing her as only he could. She’d dreamed of this so many times…times she’d regretted because of the man she’d married.
Coming to her senses, she pushed Clay away. Her pulse was pounding and she was having trouble breathing. She couldn’t look him in the eye.
“What are we doing?” she gasped. “We have to get out of here!”
She thought Clay might try to convince her otherwise. Thought he might try to kiss her again. Instead, he stepped back, leaving her with a sense of loss she couldn’t deny.
He said, “Getting out of here will be a trick with the horses gone.”
In a state of near panic caused more by her own feelings than someone taking a couple of shots at them, she looked around wildly. Both Garnet and Chief were nowhere to be seen. Undoubtedly they were on their way home, wanting to get there in time for supper.
In the meantime, she was here with Clay.
Alone.
; This couldn’t be. There had to be a way out of this. It was already getting dark and her mind was playing tricks on her, taunting her with what could happen between two people who’d once wanted each other more than anything in the world for much of their adult lives.
But that was then, and this was now.
“You have your cell phone on you, right?” she asked.
“Maybe a cell is something you should have since you keep needing to use mine,” he murmured, pulling it from his T-shirt pocket and handing it over to her.
“I’ll put it on my wish list.”
Siobhan breathed a sigh of relief. She’d make a call and someone would come to get them and then she wouldn’t have to make a decision she might later regret.
Or so she thought until she tried to scare up a signal.
“Nothing.” She could hardly look at Clay. “We can’t just stay here. What if the attacker comes back with reinforcements?” Not that she believed it, but she was trying to pretend her panic didn’t come from a personal basis. “We have to get away from this area.”
Clay was looking at her thoughtfully. “I suppose we can walk a ways and try again.”
So they walked. She checked the cell once more when they got to the stand of cottonwood trees where they’d left the horses. No signal there, either. And it was getting dark.
“Looks like we’re walking home,” she said.
“In the dark? On this terrain? It’ll take us several hours to get back on foot.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We find a place to camp for the night and start out again in the morning.”
Fearing to be alone with Clay all night, Siobhan said, “I think we should keep going. We’ll get a signal eventually.”
ONLY THEY NEVER DID. Over the next hour, as an inky darkness descended, they followed the dry creek bed, and she tried several times to no avail. There wasn’t even a moon to guide them, and she knew they would soon have to veer off from the creek across miles of pastureland. Then they could easily get lost.
Defeated, she finally said, “I guess we’d better find a place to make camp.”
Not only was it dark, the temperature was also dropping fast as it always did in the mountains after sundown. It was still spring and could get pretty cold at night.
They took refuge in the shelter of a cottonwood, which at least protected them from the wind. Clay had a pack of matches in his jeans, so they gathered dried branches and made a pile big enough to provide a fire all night. Luckily, tufts of grass softened the earth, making a decent bed.
Things could be worse, though how Siobhan wasn’t exactly sure. Spending the night next to a man who assaulted her senses and made her heart ache without even trying was going to be torture.
Okay, it could be worse if they were still connected…
Trying to get her mind off the past, off the what-ifs, off the man whose arms she wished she could have holding her right now, Siobhan asked, “Did you recognize the person shooting at us?”
Busy building the fire, Clay said, “Afraid not. He was too far away. The only thing I’m certain of is that it wasn’t Vargas.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The attacker wasn’t buff enough. Vargas is a gym rat. His muscle mass is apparent even when he wears long sleeves as the attacker did.”
“Then it had to be Galvan himself,” she mused. “He must have seen us leave his property last night and decided to stop us before we ruined his plans.”
The thought made her shiver. She wrapped her arms around herself as though that would warm her inside.
“Even though we know Galvan is interested in expanding uranium mining and has an interest in the Double JA, he might have nothing to do with what happened,” Clay said. Pulling out the matches, he lit the dried wood. Flames shot up, making a bright spot in the dark. “That should help keep you warm.” He threw a few more branches on top of the pile then went on. “I thought I recognized the truck. Buck used to drive one just like it.”
Buck had been one of their initial suspects along with Early Farnum, more so after he’d hired Vargas, Siobhan thought. She’d crossed off Early as a suspect, but never Buck, who’d probably held a grudge against her for the past decade. He’d hated her ever since Clay had come to town and she’d stood by him against “her own kind,” as Buck had reminded her all too often.
She held her chilled hands close to the fire and took comfort in its warmth. “Buck makes more sense than Galvan doing the shooting himself, I suppose. But still, Galvan is the one who had the survey. Do you think they could be working together?”
“You tell me. Has Buck changed enough that he would take orders from anyone?”
“I’m not suggesting he was working for Galvan. But they could be partners in crime. That would explain a lot. Galvan doing the research and taking care of the legalities, Buck doing the dirty work.”
Despite the fire, she shivered again and this time Clay reached out and wrapped an arm around her. For a moment, she resisted.
“Don’t fight it, Siobhan. It’s going to get colder. Body heat will help keep us warm.”
When he didn’t release her, she tried to relax into Clay’s warmth. Part of her admitted that this was what she wanted, the way it should always have been. There were so many times when she’d been content just feeling his arm around her. She’d missed that closeness…
Clay sank into a thoughtful silence.
There was a time when Siobhan had known what he was thinking, when with almost no effort at all, she could link her thoughts to his. Back then, they’d been one in every way that counted except the physical.
Siobhan couldn’t help herself…she closed her eyes and concentrated.
She could sense Clay, but that was it. She couldn’t break into his thoughts, couldn’t hear him at will. No matter how hard she tried, she hit a mental wall.
That was good, she told herself, because it would keep him safe from the prophecy. Even so, she mourned the loss of that special closeness they’d once had.
The thing was…it didn’t keep her from loving him…didn’t keep her from wanting him.
And what would having him hurt?
Now that the connection was severed, Clay was safe no matter what they might do, right?
Snuggled into his side, she could feel his heart rate speed up. His hands tightened on her possessively. A delicious sensation spread like wildfire from where they made physical contact to her very core. Heat radiated from her belly and whispered to all her secret places. Her breath grew short and her center released wet heat that made her throb and squirm and want to get closer, to let him in where she hadn’t let him before.
The way things were going—now someone was trying to kill them—this could be their only chance.
He shifted slightly so one breast pressed into his side. The nipple hardened, extended, begged for attention. As if he heard, he found it through her shirt, flicked and tugged the sensitive nub and made her gasp for more. His hand shifted, smoothed the valley between both her breasts, slid down to the front of her jeans and disappeared inside. Finding the elastic of her panties, he ducked his fingers below the material, smoothed the skin of her belly and cupped her.
Breathing hard, she spread her thighs and opened herself to him. His fingers found her, teased her, tortured her. She was wet and slick and needy. With a groan, she pushed herself over him and undid the front of her jeans. He was equally quick to free himself.
He was staring at her. Though the night was black-dark, she could sense it every bit as much as his hands divesting her of her jeans, readying her for the thing she’d kept from him to protect him. She almost stopped…but his fingers were working magic on her, making her lose her reason. Her jeans were halfway down her thighs when he pulled her up over him, and all she could think about was taking him as far inside her as he would go. He pushed his tip into her entry, and she gasped as shock waves shook her. Crying out, she forced herself down so she took all of him with her
slick, wet heat.
He began moving in her then, and she joined the rhythm that set every inch of her on fire. Faster…harder…deeper. Nothing was enough.
I love you, Siobhan. I’ve always loved you.
“I never stopped loving you, Clay,” she whispered as he took her straight to the stars with him.
At least if they didn’t survive whoever had tried to kill them, they would always have this.
Only when she drifted back down to earth and collapsed against his chest did she realize that Clay hadn’t spoken the words of love aloud.
Only then did she realize that he’d been lying to her—that, too, without words. He’d simply been hiding the truth from her.
The connection between them was as strong as ever.
Dear Lord, the prophecy…
…I call on my faerie blood and my powers as a witch to give yers only sorrow in love, for should they act on their feelings, they will put their loved ones in mortal danger…
Surrounded by the man she had never stopped loving, Siobhan realized what she’d just done.
Clay was a dead man.
Chapter Fifteen
Sleep was impossible for Siobhan. She drifted off a few times, but her subconscious kept tapping into the prophecy and she saw Clay killed in various ways, each more gruesome than the last.
She stopped trying to sleep.
Lying there in the dark, listening to Clay’s even breathing, feeling his arm tighten around her even in slumber, she let her mind whirl, tried to seek a way out, but all she did was spin in frustrating circles that kept leading her back to the same conclusion: there was no way to avoid the prophecy. She’d known that the day Mom had told her how her father had died. The only solution was to push Clay away…and now she feared it was too late.
She feared she really had written his death warrant.
Brazen Page 13