PRESUMPTIONS
“Slade Morgan, you’re the most stubborn, opinionated, egotistical man I’ve ever met. What makes you think you know me so well?” Pamela demanded.
Her eyes flashed a message of anger, but Slade saw something else in their depths.
“Because a wolf can always recognize its own kind, Pamela. And believe it or not, you’re a wolf.”
“Don’t you dare, Slade Morgan! Don’t you dare presume we’re alike!”
“I presume more than that,” he said, pulling her toward him. “I presume you want me as much as I want you.”
“If I wasn’t so furious, I’d laugh in your face,” Pamela snarled.
“Deny you’re trembling because you’re in my arms…”
“I’m trembling with anger.”
“Or that your heart is beating wildly…”
“With rage.”
“Or that your lips hunger for mine.”
Before Pamela could reply, Slade’s mouth came down on hers, claiming her lips in a deep, searing kiss.
Other books by Leigh Greenwood:
THE RELUCTANT BRIDE
THE INDEPENDENT BRIDE
SEDUCTIVE WAGER
SWEET TEMPTATION
WICKED WYOMING NIGHTS
WYOMING WILDFIRE
THE CAPTAIN’S CARESS
ARIZONA EMBRACE
Scarlet Sunset,
Silver Nights
Leigh Greenwood
Copyright © 1992, 2011 Leigh Greenwood
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Arizona—1888
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
About the Author
Arizona—1888
The young man pulled up under the shade of the huge pine. He could feel his skin begin to loosen as the heat gradually left his clothes, but he could sense his nerves growing taut. I’ve got to look natural he thought as he stretched his limbs to ease the tension. I don’t want the old man to suspect anything’s up.
But it was impossible to relax completely. The tiny sounds of limbs creaking as they bent and twisted in the breeze or the rustle of dried leaves as birds looked for grubs to feed their young, sounds he wouldn’t have noticed any other time, gnawed at his nerves. Sometime during the next half hour he would put into action a plan which had been taking shape in his head for several years. This wasn’t a thing to be done lightly, and once more he questioned his decision.
But by the time the rider came into view, he felt no indecision. There was no going back now.
As he rode down the bank, he smiled and waved to attract the older man’s attention, just like he’d ridden up with some last-minute message. He’s pulling up, the old fool! Doesn’t he know it’s dangerous to stop on a deserted trail, even for someone you know?
The young man waited until he was quite close. He couldn’t afford a mistake now. They had barely exchanged greetings when he drew his gun and shot him, once in the heart and again in the head. He didn’t feel anything. Not even when the old man died looking at him in shocked surprise. More fool he was for trusting him.
He slid from the saddle and stood staring at the body. It was a nice feeling, looking down on the old bastard. But he had to move him quickly. He lifted the unresisting weight over his shoulder. The horse snorted at the smell of fresh blood and danced in a circle. He cursed. He had to get the corpse away soon. He managed to wrestle the carcass across the saddle. God, who would have thought old skin-and-bones would weigh so much!
He led the horse into a dry wash that opened out of a brush-covered ravine. The cool breeze issuing from beneath the tangle of brush and trees was invigorating, but he didn’t even notice. He was relieved to be out of the sun, away from any prying eyes. Twenty yards up the wash he shot the horse and caved the sandy bank in over man and beast.
The rich, moist smell of earth filled the tunnel, but he had grown up in the city. He didn’t notice it. He only noticed the bodies were completely covered.
He didn’t want them found. Ever.
He rode off in the direction from which the man had come.
Chapter 1
Pamela White saw him emerge from the heat waves rising from the desert floor, and the closer he came, the madder she got. She didn’t need any down-at-the-heels cowpuncher showing up on her doorstep asking for handouts, not with all the trouble she had just now. What’s more, he was on foot. No cowboy worth his salt walked when he could ride. Didn’t he know anything about Arizona? Being on foot was dangerous as well as stupid.
With an impatient twitch of her shoulders, she spun on her heel and headed toward the sprawling, Spanish-style ranch house. Let him come, she thought. She wouldn’t turn him away, but she refused to play hostess to him. Let Belva do it. No, she would call Gaddy. He was the only human being she knew who could possibly be as useless as a pedestrian cowboy.
But she no sooner reached a low porch shaded by two thirty-foot oaks than something compelled her to turn back. Shielding her eyes against the harsh glare of the afternoon sun, she could make out the saddlebags thrown negligently over his shoulder. So he did have a horse. But where had he left it and why?
The muscles in her abdomen tightened. He was wearing guns! God, she hated guns—and the kind of men who depended on them. Guns never solved anything! She didn’t want him on her ranch.
Yet on he came, each step making the silhouette of his tall body, broad shoulders, slim hips, and long legs increasingly plain. His dust-caked plaid shirt, clinging to his perspiration-wet body, did nothing to hide the bulge of his muscles. A warm flush rippled through her body. What was wrong with her? How could looking at this cowboy cause her to feel so strange?
Don’t let yourself be fooled by a few bones and muscles. The most dangerous men are usually the most attractive.
Pamela’s mother had drummed that lesson into her head, but her father had taught her to face every challenge squarely, to judge each man on his merits. So Pamela didn’t lower her gaze or turn away—not until the man came close enough for her to make out his face under the brim of his hat.
“He has a beard!” she muttered in disgust, and her unreasoning resentment against him increased tenfold. She hated beards, especially nasty blond beards such as this one.
A man who hid behind a lot of hair hid more than his face.
With a hiss of annoyance she headed toward an intricately carved door fashioned from thick planks of polished oak, but even as she turned the gleaming brass knob and prepared to step into the reviving coolness of the interior, something about that man made her stop. In spite of a tattered appearance that rendered him almost indistinguishable from a dozen other cowboys riding the grub line, it seemed unlikely anybody would forget this man.
Again she turned to watch him.
The closer he got, the more intrigued she became. The barely perceptible sway of his hips, the swing of his muscled arms hanging loosely at his sides, his long easy stride, the slight rise and fall of his silhouetted hat as he approached nearly hypnotized her. Men didn’t impress her easily—she’d been surrounded by them for most of her life—
but she had never seen one walk off the desert so calmly, as though he were stepping in off the street. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned by the fact he could have died out there.
Suddenly she knew what bothered her. He didn’t limp. Any man who walked more than fifteen minutes in those toe-pinching boots would have terrible blisters. From the looks of his clothes, he must have crawled. But he moved toward her with a relaxed, easy, swinging stride. He couldn’t have been afoot for more than a quarter of a mile. But where had he come from?
With sudden decision, Pamela sat down on the porch to wait. She had too many unanswered questions about this stranger to leave him to anyone else.
But instead of coming directly toward her, he crossed the hard-packed dirt yard and headed right for the rough-hewed water trough. He stripped off his shirt and plunged his head and shoulders into the sun-heated water. When he stood up again, showering droplets about him like a desert Neptune, he looked more unkempt than ever. But Pamela hardly noticed that.
A wave of warmth enveloped her body and she felt a strange tingling sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced before. What was wrong with her? She gave herself a mental shake and deliberately tried to think about how much she hated beards, but the thought wouldn’t stay. The sight of his half-naked body, glistening in the sun, filled her mind until it left no room for anything else.
She ought to go inside. She was hot and uncomfortable. Besides, intuition warned her against meeting anyone when her mind and body were in such turmoil. She certainly had no business coming face to face with the cause of her uneasiness, particularly when she doubted she could control either her words or her response to him.
But he had seen her, and she couldn’t leave without being rude. Whatever else she might be, Pamela White was never intentionally rude.
Slade Morgan was used to danger, but he felt a prickle of uneasiness skitter down his spine. From the moment he reached the dry streambed issuing from the mouth of the canyon and read the handcarved sign welcoming him to the Bar Double-B Ranch, his instincts had warned him he’d be safer in the desert. This cool, green valley was a place most likely coveted by many men and the more dangerous because of it. When he saw the woman sit down to wait for him, he knew he should turn back.
But he couldn’t. He had no horse and only one more day’s provisions.
Slade avoided rattlesnakes, grizzly bears, and trigger-happy drunks because he liked his skin without holes in it. He avoided women for much the same reason. The mere sight of a beautiful woman had been known to make him turn tail and run. Such a woman had destroyed his father; a second had destroyed his own youthful dream of happiness; a third had put a price on his head. Now it looked like a fourth would decide whether he reached California.
Slade twisted his ankle on a loose stone, and a shaft of pain shot up his leg. His boots felt like they were filled with boiling water. He had walked the better part of sixty miles, most of it at night to avoid the killing heat of the desert. He didn’t have to take off his boots to know what his feet looked like. He could tell by the dampness in his socks, a dampness caused by blood, his blood. Slade consciously forced his body to relax even more. He’d crawl on his belly before he would let anyone see him limp, especially this woman.
Slade’s walk became a virtual swagger.
The faded sign had informed him that Josh White owned the Bar Double-B. The enormous, white-washed ranch house sprawling in the shade of at least a dozen trees said he was a rich man. The poised, aloof manner of the woman on the porch said she must be his wife. Mighty tender meat for a man salty enough to have wrestled this land from the Indians and held it against rustlers and land grabbers. But then this woman didn’t look the type to lose her head over some penniless cowboy. If she set her sights on any man, it would be the boss.
Oh well, he wouldn’t stay here for more than one night. He had money in his pocket for the horse he needed. His saddle was still out in the desert, if he decided it was worth the trouble to retrieve it. It might be easier to buy a new one. He had money for that, too.
The almost unbearable pain in his feet pierced the barrier his mind had erected against it, and Slade felt his face tighten into a momentary grimace of pain. His dousing at the trough had made him feel better, but it had done nothing to ease the agony in his feet. He wanted to sit in the shade of those trees. He’d never seen such trees in Arizona. In a few years their spreading limbs would completely cover the house. White must have planted them. Watered them, too, to judge from their size. But he resisted the temptation to show any weakness before this woman, and when he came to a stop a half-dozen yards from the porch, he knew his face showed no trace of suffering.
“What can I do for you?” the woman asked without moving out of the shadows.
Nice voice, Slade thought. Slightly clipped with a hint of an eastern accent, but low, throaty, and with just enough of a whisper to the consonants to make it sound damned sexy. Old Josh never had a chance.
“Speak up,” she said, not so sexy this time. “The desert can’t have withered your vocal cords regardless of what it may have done to the rest of you.”
Compassionate and sensitive, too, Slade thought cynically. Obviously the kind who would take infinite patience to make a man comfortable and content as long as he was useful to her. He wondered if old Josh was still useful.
He appraised her. She possessed a body that caused his tired blood to throb with excitement, but Slade doubted she could be melted by anything less than an inferno. Everything about her bristled with challenge: the tension in her stance, her squared shoulders thrown back as though already mocking any attempt he might make to breech her defenses, the firm line of her jaw, her unwavering gaze, her complete lack of movement. She might as well have been carved from a piece of the black, volcanic stone which littered the desert.
Yet all this stood in direct contrast to a voice that beckoned him onward and a body which almost begged him to lose himself in its softness.
Slade refused to be tempted, even for a moment. He knew all about women who used their voices and bodies to lure a man to his destruction. He had already had two narrow escapes. He doubted his luck would stretch to a third.
“If you can’t bother to speak, you can turn around and head back to where you came from,” she informed him. She still hadn’t stepped out of the shadows. “I don’t have time to waste on drifters who come looking for handouts but haven’t the courtesy to speak when they’re spoken to.”
At least this iceberg put her cards squarely on the table. She clearly didn’t take to wandering cowpokes. She would probably remain a mite snappish until she had seen his backside fade into the distance. He wanted to move on, too, but it wouldn’t do to let her know she bothered him. She might think that she, and not the sun, was responsible for the rivulets of sweat running between his shoulder blades and down the small of his back. No, letting them know what effect they had on you usually turned out to be the worst possible way to deal with females.
It wouldn’t do to get too friendly either. As long as she kept thinking he was an illiterate drifter, she’d keep her distance. He wanted to get out of here with his hide in one piece, and he didn’t relish the thought of having her husband’s shotgun providing him with an incentive to move faster.
Slade moved a few steps closer and raised his gaze to the shadowed porch.
“Good afternoon to you, too, ma’am. If you’re done trying to make me skedaddle out of here with my tail betwixt my legs, I’d appreciate you telling me where I could find Mr. White. I got to be moving on, but I need to speak with him first.” He paused and stared hard into the shadow, shifting his weight on his hips, tilting his pelvis forward just enough to make it impossible for Pamela to ignore. “Besides, it won’t do for you to be standing here talking to the likes of me. A lady’s got to watch out for her reputation, especially when any rag-tag stranger can just drift on in here.”
Pamela gasped. “Are you talking about me?” He was insolent as wel
l as a saddle bum.
“Yes’ um. Womenfolk do love to gossip. If I stand here too long, it could turn into a touchy situation.” He shifted his weight to the other hip to make her even more aware of him. “I’m sure your husband does his best to look after you, but he can’t be expected to hang about all the time just for the pleasure of running his eyes over your curves.” Slade’s grey eyes became more intense. “I sure could understand it if he did though. Mighty tempting you are, ma’am. A man could be excused for doing all sorts of things if he owned a wife like you.”
Pamela’s brain was too overwhelmed by his physical presence, as well as his incredible nerve, to do more than utter a few strangled protests. “Husband!… Curves!… Owned me!” They went unheeded by this leering vagabond.
“I sure have enjoyed our little chat, ma’am, but I’m not a man of leisure. Do you think you could work yourself up to telling me where I could find your husband?”
“There are a lot of things I could work myself up to.” Pamela burst out, her anger at last able to punch through her astonishment, “but none of them have anything to do with the whereabouts of my husband.”
Slade was suddenly tired of his game. He was nearly dead from thirst and about to pass out from exhaustion. Not that either of those compared to the pain in his feet. And this “lady” seemed determined to keep him standing in the sun. It was a hot day, too. Spring had come late this year, but when it finally arrived, it turned into summer almost overnight. He could feel the welcoming pull of the bunkhouse, a structure nearly as large as the ranch house though shaded by fewer trees, and just as blindingly white. He fought down a desire to charge forward and choke the information out of her. Calling on the last of his reserves, he squared his sagging shoulders.
“I don’t know why not, ma’am. I promise I won’t hurt him none.”
“Hurt him …! You …!” Once again she was virtually speechless.
Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights Page 1