So much for strengths.
At her shoulder where she sat sideways across the Swede’s saddle, she felt him shift and turn to look at his partner. “You think maybe Juarez is too close to the border?”
“What do you mean? Too close for what?”
“For us to sell her.”
“You mean she might get away, end up in El Paso and tell somebody?”
She felt the Swede shrug.
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Later, Jessie thought. When she wouldn’t be able to listen, to know what they planned for her at the end of this trip. But it didn’t matter. She knew what they planned for her tonight.
She would wait and watch and listen, and when her chance came, as it must, it must, she would take it, and damn the consequences. She would not docilely submit to them. Not ever.
Hour after hour they rode, deeper into Mexico, farther from any help Jessie might have enlisted. The sun broiled, the dust choked, and Jessie tried to fight her terror.
Late in the day they climbed up a dry creek bed into the lee of two hills, then slowed. A trickle barely worthy of the name “stream” meandered across the small clearing, but disappeared into the ground before it even dampened the gully that cut between the two hills. Two willows and a scrappy cottonwood bordered what, during the rainy season that would come in a few weeks, would be a pool but was now barely a puddle.
At the edge of the clearing, a rock overhang created a small, low shelter big enough for one or two people. The hills themselves were dotted in sage brush, cholla, and gravel.
“Looks like a good place to stop for the night,” the partner said.
“So early?” the Swede asked. Jessie didn’t have to see his face to hear the leering grin in his voice. “There must be another hour or so of sunlight left, ya?”
The partner’s response was a deep laugh.
Jessie fought to keep her breathing even, but her heart raced faster than a locomotive. They were stopping. For the night. Whatever the consequences, this was her only chance. Once they set up camp, it would be too late. They would probably tie her up again as soon as they dragged her from the horse. If she had any chance at all to escape, it was now.
She let herself sag against the Swede’s sweaty chest. Would the terrible pounding of her heart give her away? If only she could still this awful trembling.
“What’s the matter, pretty girl? You’re tired, ya? Ready to stop for the night? Well, don’t you worry none, little lady. We will take care of you.” He chuckled. “And you will take care of us, ya?”
Jessie’s stomach threatened to heave.
The partner swung down off his horse.
The Swede did the same, keeping a hand on Jessie’s shoulder to steady her. He seemed to move in slow motion, taking an agonizingly long time to dismount.
A sense of unreality settled over Jessie. She had never seen a sky so blue, a sun so bright. The call of a bird somewhere in the cottonwood sounded sweeter than any music to her ears.
When the Swede finally stood beside the horse, he reached for her. His voice sounded slow and distorted, as though from the depths of a long, long tunnel. “You come down, now, that’s a good girl.”
There was no time to think, to plan, to consider the best way to get free. There was only time to act. Jessie blinked and shook her head to clear her mind. With all the force she could muster, she swung one leg out and caught the Swede under the chin with her bare heel. The action nearly sent her tumbling to the ground.
The Swede grunted, stumbled backward, then bellowed. His curses echoed along the crease between the hills.
His partner spun toward them. “What the hell?”
Jessie slid backward on the saddle, threw a leg over until she sat astride, and grabbed the saddle horn. Her feet came nowhere near the stirrups, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She grabbed the reins her captor had left wrapped around the saddle horn and freed them, then wrapped them around her hand as she spun the horse and kicked it as hard as she could.
Tired though it was, the animal leapt forward. Jessie kicked again, shouting and urging the mustang down the faint trail they had just climbed.
Behind her she heard shouts. A shot whizzed past her head. She crouched low to the horse’s neck, her heart hammering, her throat dry, her body slicked with sweat. Terror and exhilaration filled her. They were shooting at her. She could die any minute.
But she was free!
As the sound of hoofbeats gained on her, the sweet taste of freedom turned bitter. Terror filled her soul. She wasn’t going to make it. If the horse didn’t stumble and break a leg on this mad flight down the rocky hill, the man behind her would catch her or shoot her, or she would lose her grip on the saddle horn and, with no stirrups, would fly off into the thorny bushes lining the trail and break her neck.
Any way she looked at it, she wasn’t going to make it. But she didn’t care. She was free, and they would not take her back alive.
Just when she thought she would reach level ground, another shot rang out. Her horse screamed and stumbled. It went down, sending Jessie flying through the air.
She landed hard. The fall knocked the wind from her lungs. Stunned, fighting for even a small taste of air, Jessie tried to get up. She fell back. God, how she hurt! Everywhere! But nowhere more than in her soul. A half dozen yards away, the horse lay wheezing, one foreleg bent in an awkward, unnatural angle.
Without the horse, Jessie didn’t have a prayer of getting away. Yet something inside her refused to give up. Clawing at the ground, choking on the churning dust, she pushed herself to her knees.
The Swede’s partner barrelled toward her on horseback, his face grim, his gun drawn. He leveled the revolver and took aim.
Jessie froze, trapped by the menace in his eyes, the deadly threat in the bore of his gun staring directly back at her.
Another shot ripped the silence. Jessie flinched.
The partner cried out. Blood blossomed across his chest.
Dazed, realizing she wasn’t hit, Jessie watched as the dark haired kidnapper fell from his horse.
What? How? Who?
Another horse—behind her. Jessie whirled. Blake! It couldn’t be. She’d seen him murdered!
“Jessie!”
Oh, God, oh, God, it was him! He was dirty and bloody and looked exhausted, but oh, so incredibly real. And he’d come for her! “Blake, thank God!”
He swung down from his horse and holstered his gun. In seconds he was at her side, lifting her from the ground, holding her tight against his solid chest. His voice shook. “I thought I would be too late. When I woke up and they told me you’d been taken, I…Lord, I’ve never been so scared for another person in my life. Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Did they…”
Jessie clung to him and ignored the pain in every inch of her body. Being rescued from the gaping jaws of death had a certain numbing effect on minor things like bruises and rope burns and sunburn. “No. I’m okay. Now.” She shook violently with relief.
And through it all, one shining thought burst forth. He’d called her Jessie! Somehow, that meant as much to her as his incredible rescue. With her arms around his chest, she held on tighter. “I thought you were dead. I thought I was dead. I would have been if you hadn’t come.”
“Shh, shh.” Blake smoothed her loose hair back from her face. “You’re all right now. It’s over.”
“No,” she cried. “There’s another one. The Swede. He’s—”
Loose rock shifted and tumbled down the hill. Blake swore and shoved Jessie behind him.
Ten yards away, the big, brawny outlaw showed himself from behind a boulder. He got off a quick shot that scattered the dirt at Blake’s feet.
Jessie would never have believed a man could move as fast as Blake did then. In less time than she could blink, in less time than the Swede could duck back behind the rock, Blake whipped his revolver from its holster and fired.
The shot went wide, nicking the Swede in the
upper arm as he dove back behind the rock.
Without looking, Blake reached backward with his left hand and grabbed Jessie. He tugged her with him behind a large chunk of broken boulder, big enough for the two of them to crouch behind.
Blake peered beyond the hiding place toward the cover shielding the Swede and waited for the outlaw to show himself. Footsteps skidded on loose rock. Blake cursed. The boulders were so big, the Swede could move just about anyplace uphill and Blake wouldn’t be able to see him.
Blake glanced briefly at Jessie to make sure she was all right, and swore again. Her once pristine night dress was torn and soiled, her bare feet dirty and bloody, her fair skin burned by the sun. That such a delicate beauty should be treated so harshly built the rage in him to alarming proportions. Just then he didn’t care that she was a half-breed’s woman. No woman, not even a whore, deserved what she’d been put through.
The urge to go after the remaining kidnapper was strong, as strong as the urge to grab Jessie in his arms and kiss her. Both ideas were dangerously foolish. Instinctively he knew that kissing Jessica Colton would prove to be the most distracting experience of his life, and at a time when he could least afford to be distracted. Yet to leave her defenseless while he went after her abductor could put her in even greater danger if the Swede decided to circle back.
Damn, but he hated feeling helpless!
Another sound reached his ears, one that set him to swearing aloud. Hoofbeats. The son of a bitch had made it to the horse his partner had been riding and was getting away.
“Stay here,” he told Jessie. With revolver in hand, Blake eased from behind the broken boulder. His horse sniffed through a dying bush; a blue jay pecked at the remains of a lizard in the gravel; and out on the flat plain below, the sound of galloping hoofbeats faded into the distance.
“Is he gone?”
Blake turned at the sound of Jessie’s voice in time to see her knees buckle. With the gun still in his hand, he caught her to his chest before she fell. He wrapped both arms around her and held her tight, feeling shudders race through her. “He’s gone, honey, he’s gone. It’s over now.”
With the words, Blake let relief sweep through him. She was safe. Jessie was in his arms and safe, and he had the desperate urge to keep her there forever.
He cupped her face in his palm and raised her head until she looked at him. “Did you hear me? It’s over, Jessie.”
Her big gray eyes, usually so light and silvery, were dark now, like the underside of a thunderhead. She stared up at him with lips that trembled, and he wanted to still them with his, wanted to reassure her and himself that she was safe. Brushing his lips against hers seemed like the most natural thing in the world. So he did it. Once, twice. Then her lips parted, and he closed his mouth over hers, letting his tongue slide inside.
Fire burst in his belly, hot and sweet, like the taste of her. He kissed her deeper, pulled her closer, and felt his blood rush and pound through his veins.
Her hands rose and clutched his arms. For a moment he feared she would struggle and push him away, and he knew he should let her go. Her lips were hesitant against his, as if she were unsure of what to do. Or as if she were still in shock. After what she’d been through…Then, too, he was a stranger; she’d known him less than a day. He should let her go. Yet the thought of tearing his lips from hers left him feeling bleak and empty.
Then she was kissing him back, robbing him of breath, stealing whatever good sense he had left that told him to stop. She moved against him and the fire in his belly slid lower. An ache, hard and urgent, settled in his loins. God, but she felt good in his arms, like she’d been shaped from the finest silk specifically to fit against him, soft where he was hard, woman where he was man. The thin night dress was all that separated his hands from her tender flesh. The knowledge drew a groan from deep in his chest. Control was slipping away fast. He had to stop, or take her right there on the ground.
He pulled his mouth from hers and struggled to catch his breath. Never had a woman made him feel so much, even in the throes of completion. What was it about Jessica Colton that turned him inside out and made him want to beg for more?
In her flushed face and startled eyes he saw the same stunned wonder he felt.
“Why did you do that?”
Her breathless voice sent a hot shiver racing down his spine. The truth tumbled from his lips. “Because I’ve been wanting to kiss you since I first saw you at the station in Bowie, and when I woke up this morning and found out you’d been kidnapped, I thought I’d lost my chance.”
His words sent a sharp thrill of pleasure through Jessie, making her forget the kidnapping, the pain, the endless hours of relentless heat and terror. But when she straightened away from him and put her weight on her bruised, cut, and sunburned feet, the reminder of all she’d been through came sharp and swift. A half-moan, half-cry escaped her lips before she could stop it.
Then she cried out again, this time in surprise, as Blake swung her up in his arms. “You’re hurt,” he claimed.
Jessie stared at him in awe. The strain in his voice, the pain in his eyes, was not for himself, but for her. He was upset because she was hurt. The feeling was humbling. “Only a little,” she told him softly. Her gaze strayed to the edge of the bandage barely visible beneath his hat. “So are you. How’s your head? You should be resting, not rescuing silly women who get themselves kidnapped off trains.”
With a small twitch of his lips, he said, “Honey, I haven’t seen one thing about you yet that could possibly be called silly. I happen to think very highly of ladies who save my life.”
“Almost get you killed, you mean.”
He shook his head, all hint of a smile gone. “That gun was aimed right smack between my eyes until you hit him.”
She shook her head, denying that she might have actually helped him.
“I mean it, Jessie. I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you.”
Jessie swallowed a sudden knot in her throat. “I could say the same, you know. I didn’t stand a chance of getting away.”
Blake closed his eyes against the shudder that shook him. She’d known she probably wouldn’t make it, yet she had tried anyway. He’d never known a woman like Jessica Colton.
Even in Bowie, she’d known she couldn’t keep the half-breed off that train, but she’d tried, then, too. And now, she had to know she wasn’t going to be able to get the breed out of prison, yet that, Blake knew, was the sole purpose of her trip. What inner strength must she have to fight against impossible odds time after time? How much she must love that half-breed bastard.
The thought turned his blood cold and hurt him in a place he’d never hurt before.
He wanted to ask a thousand questions, demand a thousand answers, but not now. She was in pain. It seemed, by the whiteness around her mouth, that even his light embrace was hurting her, yet he couldn’t put her down because her feet were in too bad a shape. As much as he wanted to get her back to civilization so she could be properly cared for, the bruised look around her eyes told him she was too exhausted to start back for the border today. For that matter, so was he.
“Come on.” He lifted her to his saddle. “Let’s find a place to camp for the night.”
“Up there looked good.” She pointed up the hill she had just raced down. “There’s water.”
As scarce as water was in this area, Blake would be a fool to quibble with her. Yet he was surprised she would want to camp in a place from which she’d just escaped. He couldn’t keep from asking, “You don’t mind going back there?”
“No. It’s a good camp.”
More questions. How did a woman like her, a true lady if he’d ever met one, so soft and fragile looking, know what was and wasn’t a good place to camp? Had the half-breed taught her such things?
What else has the bastard taught her?
Blake bit back a curse and swung up behind her into the saddle. Very carefully, he put his arms around her and held her gently against his
chest.
For the second time in less than an hour, Jessie found herself being carried up the rocky hill on horseback. This time, leaning against Blake, with his arms around her to hold her steady, was infinitely better than before.
But even that heart-stopping kiss they’d shared moments ago was starting to fade with the return of pain in every part of her body. When Blake reached the clearing beside the small stream and his hands clamped around her bruised and sunburned waist and lifted her from the saddle, she couldn’t stifle a groan.
He slowly lowered her until her feet touched the ground. “I thought you said they didn’t hurt you.” His harsh voice contrasted sharply with his gentle touch.
Suddenly realizing that she stood before him in nothing more than her thin night rail, Jessie cringed. “I…it’s just bruises.”
He smoothed several strands of hair from her face. His touch lingered; his eyes widened. He pressed a palm to her cheek. “You’re burning up.”
She grimaced. “Sunburn.”
He studied her a long moment. “That’s all, bruises and sunburn? What about these?” He gently lifted both her arms to expose her blood encrusted wrists.
Jessie read the concern in his dark eyes and wondered at the depth of it, when yesterday he’d seemed to hold her in such contempt. Had last night’s brief laughter changed his attitude toward her that much? She shook her head, both at herself, and in answer to his concern. “In a day or two I’ll be as good as new, thanks to you.”
He didn’t look as though he believed her. He started to say something, then evidently thought better of it. After another long, searching look, he released her and spread out his bedroll in the shade of the overhang.
“I’m going to go take care of that downed horse and our friend back there before the sun goes down. I’ll rustle us up something to eat as soon as I get back. Will you stay out of the sun and rest while I’m gone?”
Rest? Jessie doubted she had the energy to do anything else. She nodded.
Blake went to his horse and pulled an extra revolver out of the saddle bag. “Do you know how to use this?”
Jessie nodded and held out her hand. That she didn’t so much as hesitate, and that she quickly and competently checked the loading, brought another rush of questions to Blake’s lips, questions he forced himself to swallow. There would, God willing, be time enough later. For now, he wanted to make sure the Swede wasn’t doubling back to spring a nasty surprise on them.
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