by Cox, Deborah
Munoz opened the tequila bottle and poured a glassful, which he drank in two gulps. Tomorrow he would make the long ride back to San Antonio. He'd have to take El Alacran's little cousin. When would El Alacran accept the fact that Carlos Delgado didn't have what it took to be a comanchero? The niño nearly fainted at the sight of blood.
Well, he would worry about that tomorrow. Tonight he was determined to enjoy himself. And with that decision made, he grabbed the tequila bottle by the neck and sauntered out of the cantina, intent on finding some suitable outlet for his own frustration.
* * * * *
The first thing Anne felt the next morning when she woke up was pain. It started at the top of her head and spread down her body to her feet. Her muscles and bones ached every time she tried to move, but she managed to get to her feet.
She stood on legs that threatened to give way beneath her and gazed around, sighing in despair.
Even though the morning was still young, the sun on her face was uncomfortably hot, and she held a hand to her brow to shield it as she surveyed the horizon for any sign of him.
He’d saved her life yesterday, she’d be a fool not to admit it. But now what was she going to do? She’d lost nearly everything she owned.
The weight of her running bag hooked inside her skirt soothed her. Now that she had no reason to pretend to be a boy, she couldn’t bear to wear that scratchy shirt and suffocating coat. She thought about wearing the trousers with her softer shirtwaist. They afforded her so much more freedom of movement than a skirt, it had been a revelation.
But after losing almost everything she owned, she needed to keep what little she had left close to her, in her running bag. What little money she’d been able to gather after the accident, along with a few of her most prized possessions, were in that running bag. But other than that she was destitute. She certainly didn't have enough money to make it all the way to Concepción, Mexico—wherever that was.
She was alive, thanks to Rafe Montalvo. Why? If someone had to rescue her from her own foolishness, why did it have to be him?
And yet, in those desperate hours when death seemed certain, he was the one she'd hoped would find her. As crazy as it seemed, he was the only person in her life right now that she trusted. And she really didn’t trust him, not entirely. But there was no doubt he could protect her from anything that threatened her.
The only question was who would protect her from him?
He was following her. If she'd thought so before, she was certain of it now. He'd admitted it last night, hadn't he? Or had that been a dream?
Last night was not much more than a blur. She remembered waking to find herself propped up next to a fire. He must have found her where she'd passed out beside the road and given her water. He'd also removed her clothes while she was unconscious. A shudder ran through her body at the thought of being that vulnerable, that helpless. The very idea of him touching her clothing, touching her turned her breathing shallow and sent hot color to her cheeks.
He was dangerous and detestable and yet her gaze searched for him.
She took a ragged breath. What if he came back? How could she trust him? All she knew about him was that he killed people for a living, he was following her—and he had saved her life. If not for him, she'd be dead right now.
A chill ran up her spine. The only thing standing between her and death was a coldblooded killer, a coldblooded killer whose dark magnetism and lean, muscled body caused a stir in hers that she struggled to deny.
She groaned. There were other parts of last night she remembered as well. It hadn't been a dream. She'd admitted that she knew where the gold was, and he'd agreed to help her find it. Had she made an alliance with the devil himself?
Which would be worse, she wondered, to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with a man like Rafe Montalvo or to be stranded alone?
The answer was simple. She needed him. And she cursed the feeling of relief that washed over her in the next moment when she caught sight of him in the distance, riding toward her. Relief and something else that caused her heart to pound in her chest and set her body trembling.
The closer he came, the more her pulse increased until she had to look away, had to think of something else. She tried to brace herself for the moment when he would pull his horse to a stop and swing his long, muscled leg over the animal's back, the moment when he would stand before her again and look at her with those eyes that seemed to see all the way to her soul.
This is ridiculous.
She tried to curb her reaction, but the only thing she could do to counter it was look away, find something else to focus on rather than watching him draw near. She let the aroma of brewing coffee draw her to the fire, but she could hear his horse's hoof beats now, even though she refused to look up.
She found a clean tin cup on the ground near the fire. When she lifted the pot by its handle, a searing heat scorched her hand and she screamed and dropped it. Coffee went everywhere—down the front of her shirtwaist, on her hands and arms.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she grasped her hand, blowing on her reddened fingers.
"Are you all right?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rafe Montalvo pull his horse to a halt and leap from the saddle. He rushed toward her, and the pain and frustration inside her burned her soul as the coffeepot had burned her fingers.
"No, I am not all right!" She took a step back, her heart pounding with irrational anger and a mixture of emotions she tried to deny. She wanted to cry from the pain in her fingers and the confusion in her heart.
"Let me see." His soft voice reached out to her, making her shiver.
"No!" She whirled away. "Why can't you leave me alone? I don't want your help."
"If you don't do something about that burn, it'll blister."
Reason won over anger. Anne did not withdraw her hand when he reached for it.
"Are you always this grumpy in the morning?" he asked as he enfolded her hand in his large calloused ones.
"What do you expect? I've lost everything—my clothes, my money, everything I own! And I feel like I've been run over by a freight wagon!"
She couldn't tell if he was listening to her. He seemed intent on her hand, and then he released it and returned to his horse. He took something from a pouch he had tied around the saddle pommel. When he reached her, she could see it was some kind of plant and he was tearing it in pieces.
"What is that?" she asked suspiciously.
He didn't answer, just put the plant pieces in the spilled coffee cup, then poured a small amount of hot coffee into the cup and stirred and mashed it with a clean spoon.
She didn't want to give him back her hand, but he didn't ask. He simply took it.
"What is it?" she repeated.
"Hold still."
He pulled her hand closer to examine it, and she stopped struggling. Her skin was warm, her hand trembling so badly she knew he could hardly see the burn.
Except when he'd caught her when she'd almost fainted back in San Antonio, she had never been this close to him before, close enough to feel the heat of his breath on her wrist, close enough to hear the rich tone of his voice. Her breath turned shallow.
"Hold still," he commanded again.
"I... I can't." She hated the way her voice shook and hated him for the way he smiled at her, as if he knew better than she did why she couldn't still the tremors that assaulted her.
He dug his fingers into the cup and smoothed the paste he'd made on her wound. He repeated the process, and she surrendered to the feel of his calloused hands on hers.
"Your hands are cut pretty bad."
She wasn't listening. Her gaze was riveted on the white scars that encircled both his wrists like bands. They must have been there for quite some time, judging by their appearance, and she wondered, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, how he had gotten them. What could have caused such wounds? She wanted to ask but couldn't find her voice.
"What the hell ar
e you doing in Texas?" he asked.
His voice was hoarse in her ear, and soft, almost caressing. It was a quality she had never heard in a man's voice before, and she found herself explaining in spite of her resolve not to tell this stranger anything.
"My father died." She pulled her hand away because she couldn't stand the contact any longer. "I had an aunt in Ubiquitous. She died too, before she received my letter telling her I was coming."
Why had she told him that? She had all but admitted she was alone in the world, alone and defenseless—except for the gun hidden in the pocket of her skirt. But even that had done her precious little good since she'd arrived in Texas.
Rafe Montalvo didn't say anything, but his eyes seemed softer. In fact, his whole countenance seemed less formidable, or maybe she just saw what she wanted to see. Then he dug in the cup for more of the salve and touched it to her cheek.
Startled, she jerked her head back, and the softness in his features vanished. The cold, hard stranger returned in an instant. He handed her the cup.
"Gumweed. I got it for your sunburn. I've never made a poultice with coffee before, but it should work to soothe some of the pain and might keep your skin from peeling too bad."
With that, he turned away and started breaking camp. She watched with a twinge of regret as he took the coffeepot to the nearby pond and washed it out before rolling it and the tin dishes into his bedroll. He had surprised her, touching her like that, and she had pulled away instinctively. Had her actions somehow hurt or angered him? He was so closed up, it was impossible to read him.
When he finished retying his saddlebags, he turned to look at her. "You need to... take care of anything before we get started?"
Rafe stumbled over the words, and she found it unaccountably funny that a man who killed for a living and had done God only knew what else could be so flustered talking about bodily functions.
"Yes," she admitted.
He nodded toward a clump of bushes to her right. "Behind those bushes is a good place."
"I couldn't!" she said, mortified by the very thought.
"You'll have to," he said with a half-smile. "There's no outhouse here, no chamber pot. Unless you want me to hold—"
"No!" She gave him her best scowl. He was trying to embarrass her, and she'd be damned if she'd let him see that he had succeeded.
She turned and stepped behind the bushes indignantly. It was all Rafe could do not to laugh. Once she was out of sight, he let himself think about what she’d revealed. Father dead, aunt dead. She was alone, alone in a hostile, unforgiving place. He was her only chance for survival. He knew it even if she didn’t.
He packed his meager possessions into the saddlebag and tied it to the saddle.
What the hell was he going to do with her? He could make her tell him where the gold was hidden instead of taking her with him as she insisted. But he couldn’t just leave her in the middle of nowhere.
His horse snorted and stepped to the left as he swung up into the saddle.
First things first. He had no idea if his poultice would help the cuts on her hands. He had to get her to a doctor, which meant getting her to Hondo. Maybe he’d leave her there. He didn’t care about the gold. She could have all of it, but she’d never believe him if he offered a deal like that.
She stepped back into the camp and stopped about twenty feet from him, and he reached a hand toward her.
"Give me your good hand."
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared up at him, her jaw set in that stubborn expression he was already beginning to dread.
"Isn't there another way?" Fear showed clearly in her eyes and trembled through her voice.
"Not unless you want to walk."
She glanced around as if searching for some means of transportation. "The wagon?"
"What about it?" He tried to keep the anger from his voice. He could understand her reluctance to be close to him, but there simply was no choice.
"You could put the wheel back on. Then your horse could—"
"You've seen that wheel. The spokes are broken. Even if I could put it back on, my horse is no draft animal. And even if he were, the horses you started out with took off in the harnesses, remember? Now give me your hand. We're wasting time."
"I can't."
Anger and disgust mounted within him. Did she loathe him so much? Didn't she know he was trying to save her life? Or would she die rather than accept help from the likes of him?
"I'm not going to bite you." And I'll try not to contaminate you, he added to himself. "If you don't give me your hand, I'll climb down and pick you up and throw you over the back of this horse."
"Stomach down, like a corpse?" she challenged.
He smiled at her nerve. "Are you this disagreeable with everyone or have you saved it all for me? I'm trying to help you."
He waited, his hand outstretched. She glared up at him, her shoulders squared, her lips drawn in a taut line. He found himself in a stare-down with this prickly, plucky woman, a contest she was destined to lose.
As he predicted, she looked away first. What he didn't expect was the change in her expression when she looked up at him again. She bit her lower lip. She was struggling to keep her chin from trembling.
Anger coursed through him, anger and regret. She must think he was some kind of animal. And what else was she supposed to think? The first time she'd seen him, he'd ridden into town with a dead body. But, dammit, he'd saved her from those men in San Antonio, and he'd saved her life yesterday. That should count for something.
"I... the truth is I've never ridden a horse," she admitted. "They frighten me."
The tension drained from his body as he realized that the terror in her eyes was directed at his horse and not at him.
He grinned slightly at her confession, gazing down at her with new understanding. "All you have to do is give me your hand and put your left foot in the stirrup. I'll pull you up behind and you can hold on to me. We'll take it slow."
She seemed to be lost in indecision as she studied the massive chestnut.
"You can't walk the rest of the way to Hondo," he told her. "We're only a little better than halfway there."
A sigh escaped her, her shoulders slumped, and she stepped forward timidly.
"Left foot in the stirrup," he directed, holding the prancing gelding as still as he could. She lifted her foot toward the stirrup. "Trust me."
"The last man who said that to me killed my father," she said, as she placed her small hand in his.
He nearly lost his hold at that unexpected confidence. He didn't want to wonder at its meaning. He didn't want to know anything about her, not even her name.
As her foot touched the stirrup, he tightened his grip on her hand, pulling her up quickly. In an instant, he noticed her boots. They were badly worn boy's boots. Again he kept his questions to himself. The less he knew, the better.
He heard her gasp as her body hung suspended in the air for an instant before her right leg came down on the other side of the horse and she settled behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist as if holding on for dear life. Her body trembled against his. Her soft breasts pressed against his back, eliciting an immediate response from his body.
He straightened uncomfortably in the saddle, clearing his throat. "You don't have to hold on so tightly. We're going to take it slow and easy, remember?"
The death grip on his torso eased, and he was able to breathe again, even though her nearness still disturbed him. But her grip tightened once again as the gelding started forward. And once again her feminine curves burned into his flesh through his shirt and the familiar tightening in his groin sent a shudder through his body.
"I thought all southern ladies learned to ride before they learned to walk."
"I never had a reason to learn," she replied, loosening her grip once again as the horse settled into a sedate walk.
"Well, you do now." He clucked to his horse and it responded by quickening its pace. The woman
behind him gasped and tightened her grip, and he resigned himself to a thoroughly uncomfortable few hours of travel.
Chapter 6
A sheen of perspiration covered the girl’s face as Rafe steered his horse into Hondo. He held the sleeping woman in front of him, her head resting against his chest. At some point during the ride, he'd realized she was too tired to hold on, so he had stopped and rearranged them. She'd roused long enough to protest, then fallen back to sleep almost immediately.
Noise and activity assaulted him on all sides. He tried to see through it, to hear through it, to gauge any potential threat. It was how he survived. But this chaos and his own fatigue made it impossible and set him on edge.
He pulled back on the reins, stopping his horse just in time to avoid running over a boy who darted in front of him from between two freight wagons overburdened with cotton. The boy never even saw him as he wove his way across the congested street and disappeared into the crowd on the opposite sidewalk.
The girl in his arms moaned, drawing his attention. Her lips were parched by the relentless sun, even though he’d stopped repeatedly along the way, forcing her to drink water in small amounts and applying what was left of the salve he’d made that morning to her cracked skin. He had rehydrated her body. But she was weak and feverish, and he worried that she might not recover.
If she died, the secret of the gold would die with her, and so would his best chance of luring El Alacran out in the open, of controlling when and where he would be, of getting the upper hand.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, the lump that reminded him he cared more about her than he wanted to. It wasn’t just about the gold anymore. He cared what happened to this fragile spitfire of a woman whose name he didn't even know. He didn't want to wonder about her or worry about her or compare her to Christina, whose only mistake had been that she had married the wrong man.
Rafe’s horse sidestepped and snorted nervously at the sound of gunfire close by. The hackles on the back of Rafe’s neck stood on edge, and he realized how vulnerable he was. With the girl in his arms, he couldn’t even go for his gun.