Bounty Hunter

by Donna Kauffman

  Now the only one who wanted to do the killing was Sam.

  “I never should have followed him that night,” she whispered into the steamy room. It wasn’t the first time she’d uttered that sentiment. Unfortunately that didn’t change anything. How wrong she’d been to think Sam was perfect for her. So incredibly, horribly wrong.

  She thought back to that morning. To the secret thrill that had raced through her when Kane had touched her lips with his rough-tipped finger.

  No. She knew enough, had learned enough about herself over these past few months to realize how vulnerable she was. Because he seemed to care wasn’t a good enough reason to give in to the overwhelming urge to unburden herself and share her problems.

  Besides, if he was as decent as he seemed, he certainly didn’t need to have his honest work rewarded with being embroiled in her potentially dangerous situation.

  But you’ve already involved him, a little voice nagged.

  “Does that forlorn face mean you won’t have time for dinner?”

  She started badly, then had to laugh as she turned. It felt good. Seeing him in her doorway, even sweaty and tired, made her feel better. “I guess I’ll have to get used to jumping every time we begin a conversation.”

  His lips curved a bit, and her heart skipped several beats at the change the small smile made in his harsh features.

  “At least this time I didn’t cost you a day’s work. I’ll try to make more noise in the future.”

  Future. A word she’d always taken for granted. It held such potential—for everyone but her. Elizabeth caught his gaze on her and quickly turned back to stir the jam she was making. Eyes of the Hawk. A very appropriate name.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled. Then recalling his question, she said, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t fixed anything to eat. I’m using both burners to cook down some jam. It’ll probably be another hour.” She didn’t add that she had no idea what she was going to cook. Stew, salad, and rolls was her basic menu.

  “Actually, that works out fine. I thought I’d wash up in the spring behind the barn. Then maybe see if I could find a way to contribute to the dinner menu. You wouldn’t happen to have a fishing pole, would you?”

  “I doubt you’d catch anything in the spring.”

  He shook his head. “I noticed that stream about a half mile down the road as I rode in yesterday.”

  She smiled, touched at his attempt to ease her load. “Unfortunately, I don’t remember seeing any poles. At least not that I’ve found. Maybe in the shed?”

  “No. I’ve been all through that.”

  “Not surprising I guess. I can’t picture Grandma Fielding reeling one in.”

  “What about her granddaughter?”

  She looked up at him. “You mean, do I fish?”

  “Is that such a strange question?”

  “Not really, I guess. I did as a child, with Matt and my dad. But it’s been a long time.” She shrugged off the wistfulness that threatened every time she thought of her brother. “I don’t see what difference it makes, since we don’t have poles.”

  “Some obstacles are easier to overcome than others,” he answered quietly. “When you get done, why don’t you pack some of your rolls and jam and meet me by the creek? Take your truck so you don’t have to hike it. I’ll leave Sky Dancer tied where you can see her.”

  “I don’t mind the walk, but how are you—?”

  “Trust has to start somewhere, Annie,” he broke in. “You provided dinner last night. Tonight it’s on me. Deal?”

  Ann. She’d always hated her middle name. It was so plain. Annie was even worse. At least she used to think so.

  “If it will make you feel any better, we can discuss the repairs I want to make in here while we eat.”

  His crooked smile returned, melting away any remaining resistance she had left. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t eaten together before. “Yeah,” she said with a smile, “we have a deal.”

  He nodded and was gone.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Hawthorne,” he asked himself. He strode to the bunkhouse and gathered a change of clothes. At the door he cursed, turned, and grabbed the small leather kit from his saddlebag. He didn’t even try to rationalize why he was going to shave.

  He pulled himself onto the Appaloosa’s bare back and rode behind the house and down the rutted dirt road toward the weather-beaten Lazy F sign. He decided to forgo the spring. He could save time by bathing at the stream. Then maybe by the time she arrived, he’d have his act together. Tonight was a perfect opportunity to get some answers from her. He simply needed a plan.

  An immediate, very pleasurable idea sprang to mind, as well as to another part of his anatomy. But, as appealing and intensely satisfying as the result would likely be, he could not consider seduction. He laughed at himself. What an ego. She may look at him with those soft doe eyes of hers and make him think of long afternoons spent lazily exploring each other’s bodies. But if her married status was enough of an obstacle to prevent him from trying to seduce her, what made him think her vows didn’t hold the same importance to her?

  In all his struggling to come to grips with his response to her, he’d never once wondered about her response to him.

  Had she given any indication that she’d ignore her marriage vows even in lieu of some trouble—no matter how disturbing the reason—in her marriage to Sam? No. The woman he’d observed and spoken to in the last forty-eight hours was a woman of pride and integrity. He’d stake his fee on it.

  Kane tugged at the bandanna tied at his neck and pressed his heels against the mare’s flanks, easing her into a canter. The jarring motion as they covered the uneven ground did little to shake free the vague, unsettling notion that Annie didn’t feel like a married woman to him.

  “Kane?”

  He froze for an instant. Damn, he hadn’t even heard her approach. What was wrong with him? He tugged his jeans quickly over his hips. The zipper took a few seconds longer. That was what was wrong with him. And if the freezing creek water hadn’t cured it, nothing would.

  “Over here.” He shook the water from his hair, raking it back with one hand while grabbing for his shirt with the other.

  “This looks wonderful.”

  Kane brushed past the trees and entered the clearing. Annie was standing by the small fire he’d made and was admiring the grate he’d fashioned from a piece of old wire fencing. “No big deal,” he said honestly. “It’ll look a lot better when there’s a few fish cooking on it.”

  “Matthew would have loved to have had a friend like you as a child. He almost flunked Eagle Scouts …” She turned to face him as she spoke, but whatever she’d been about to say was apparently forgotten as she stared at him.

  He looked down at himself, wondering belatedly if his condition by the stream was still so apparent that he’d embarrassed her. But all he saw was his wet chest and damp jeans, the shirt still in his hands hanging in front of him. He glanced back up at her with a questioning look.

  “I, uh …” She laughed a bit nervously and turned back to the fire.

  “What?” He walked toward her as he spoke.

  She didn’t turn to face him. “I feel stupid, is what.” She took an audible breath and looked over at him, a self-deprecating smile curved her lips. “Don’t take this the wrong way, it’s just that you … you look …” Again, her voice drifted off and she turned back to the fire.

  Ignoring all the reasons he shouldn’t, he touched her shoulder, urging her to gaze at him. She did. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I stayed in the stream a bit longer than I thought.” He didn’t add that she would have been a helluva lot more embarrassed if he hadn’t. He lifted his hand and slipped on his shirt. He quickly fastened the buttons of the faded red cotton favorite, then held his arms out wide. “Is that better?”

  “Yes. I mean, you were fine … really … fine, before.” She looked away. “I don’t know why I’m acting like such an idiot.”

  Thinkin
g of his own feelings, he seconded the notion. Especially as he heard himself ask, “Would you prefer I leave it off?”

  Her head whipped around. “No! That is, listen, I’m starving. Why don’t we try and catch dinner?”

  He hid his smile at her too-quick response. Starving. So was he. And fish was the farthest thing from his mind. He’d wondered earlier about her reaction to him. Not that he’d staged this little scene to find out, but he couldn’t argue that the results had been … stimulating. He frowned. “Yeah, dinner. Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

  She walked across the clearing, strolled almost, then turned to face him once she was safely on the other side of the fire. “So, Eyes of the Hawk,” she asked with a bright smile, “how do we catch them? With our bare hands?”

  “We could.”

  She stared at him for a moment, apparently trying to determine if he was serious. She went on before he could elaborate.

  “Correction. You could. I didn’t excel in eye-hand coordination skills in school. And I have to admit I’m not too partial to standing in freezing water while I practice, either. How about you catch, I cook?”

  He couldn’t recall having the desire to smile so often in a long while. Elizabeth Ann—though he already found himself thinking of her as Annie—may be taken, but there was no law that said he couldn’t enjoy her company.

  “I said, we could. But I was planning on a more traditional approach.” He walked over to a tall larch closer to the water’s edge and lifted two slender branches that had been leaning against the trunk. He’d tied some fine string to the end of each one and fashioned hooks from two pieces of wire.

  He motioned her to follow him as he turned and headed up the bank a few yards. “I found a likely spot up here,” he called over his shoulder. “Biggest catch cooks, smallest cleans the fish.”

  He hoisted himself up on a rock and baited their hooks. She caught up to him a second later and after a brief hesitation, scooted onto the spot next to him. She smelled like preserves. He’d detected the sweet scent earlier, by the fire, but thought it was the jam in the basket she’d carried. His mouth watered, and he deliberately turned his head away.

  She plopped her line into the water. “You’d better hope I catch a monster, because I’ve never cooked a fish that can still stare at me.”

  Kane gave in to the urge to smile. They sat in silence for a while, each had had a few nibbles, but no luck so far. Kane’s stomach was growling, he was tired and frustrated with his indecision about what he was going to do with her. Just then she got another tug, and with a yank, a fish flopped on top of the water. She turned a triumphant smile on Kane, and suddenly he was having the time of his life.

  “Careful, or you’ll pull the hook right out of him,” he cautioned.

  Not listening to him, too caught up in her little drama, she alternately yanked and pulled the rod one way then the other. Finally, on a frustrated growl she whipped the pole back, and the fish literally flew out of the water.

  It landed directly in his lap.

  She gasped. “I’m sorry!”

  Kane jumped and would have scrambled to his feet had Annie not instinctively dived after the slippery trout.

  “Sit still so I can get a hold on him,” she instructed as she grappled with the elusive fish.

  Kane gritted his teeth as her hands grappled with him as well. “Annie, stop.”

  “If you’d just—”

  He caught her wrists in a tight grip. “I’ll get the fish. It’s not as if it’s going to do any damage.” He had pulled her against his chest, and she lay sprawled half in his lap. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at length. The fish slapped against his thigh with an audible thwack, and she blushed. “I told you my eye-hand coordination stunk.”

  Kane grabbed the fish, biting down hard on the urge to tell her that her hands had been doing just fine. And as for those soft brown eyes … And those lips … He began lowering his head to hers before he even realized his intention.

  “Kane?”

  “Mmm?” he whispered, more intrigued by the breathy quality of her voice as she said his name, then what her use of it implied. He inhaled her scent as her lips parted on a sigh. He lifted his hand to cup her head and was yanked back to reality when the fish he’d been holding in it slipped to the rock and began flopping.

  Annie tumbled from his lap as they both reached for the squirming fish.

  “I got it.” Kane grunted as he twisted back to a sitting position, tightening his grip on the fish and his still-rocketing hormones. “Nice catch,” he grumbled, then made himself turn to look at her. She had righted herself, but her hair was sticking out at odd angles, her cheeks were flushed, and her brown eyes had never been so bright. He smiled. “Even if your form is original.”

  Her blush deepened, but she managed to smile. “Hey, don’t knock it. At least I caught one.”

  If asked, he couldn’t have said what made him do it. The challenge in her eyes? Or maybe it was the need to immerse some part of his body in cold water again before he did something really stupid—such as kiss her sweet, wisecracking mouth until neither one of them cared about marriage vows and ugly pasts.

  When he realized that idea turned him on more than it bothered him, he swiftly bent to roll up his jeans’ legs, then waded into the stream. It took considerable control not to suck in his breath. Even in July, streams close to the Canadian border remained frigid. He motioned for her to be quiet by placing a finger across his lips.

  He turned away when she adopted a “Who me?” look then composed her face into the picture of serious contemplation. Enjoying her company was one thing, but he hoped he had enough brains left to realize that letting her know how much he did wasn’t going to help either one of them when he took her back to Boise.

  That thought managed to do what the cold water hadn’t, and he shut off his mind completely and concentrated on the task at hand.

  He plunged his hands into the frigid stream for the third time and finally captured his prey. “Good thing,” he muttered under his breath as he yanked the fish up and hooked his numbed fingers in the gills. His toes had lost all feeling about ten minutes earlier, and he didn’t think he had a fourth try in him.

  He waded ashore and tossed the fish in the bucket beside Annie.

  “Wow! How’d you do that? I’ve heard of people catching fish with their bare hands, but I’ve never actually seen it. Mrs. Wadlow would have loved you.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Wadlow?”

  “My first grade teacher. That woman made it her mission in life to get me to be able to play a simple game of jacks.”

  “Did she succeed?”

  “I’ll put it this way; thank goodness jack skills aren’t required learning for secretarial school.”

  Kane lifted the bucket and held out his hand. She stared at it for a moment before reaching for it.

  Her hand was a lot smaller than his, and he remembered how slim her wrists had been when he’d grabbed them. The fragility implied in that was directly at odds with the rough calluses that briefly scraped his palm before she let go. Why have you done this to yourself? he wanted to ask. He resisted the urge to curl his fingers into a fist, as if he could hold the feel of her there.

  They’d gone several steps when he asked, “Is that what you were before coming here?” At her blank look, he said, “A secretary, I mean.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, I was.”

  “You plan on going back to it?”

  They were close to the clearing before she answered. He wondered if she was really undecided or simply not certain whether to trust him.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I leave here.”

  Kane knew she spoke the truth. “I guess if you’re going to the trouble to expand your jams and preserves operation, you must be planning to stay here for a while.”

  She cast a quick glance at him as they crossed the clearing to the fire, which had burned
down to glowing embers. “At least until my brother comes back from overseas.”

  Kane tensed at the unexpected answer but quickly willed himself to relax. He knew from his research that Matthew Lawson was out of the country on some sort of job for the government, which Annie had corroborated the day before. He also knew she hadn’t left him a note of any kind. He’d found a small safe in the back bedroom, but it had been empty. He doubted it had been that way when Annie arrived. There had been no activity on her personal accounts at Sam’s bank, nor on any of her three credit cards. She hadn’t come this far north and lived for several months on jam money.

  “You said you didn’t see him often. When do you expect him? The holidays?” Kane kept the questions casual, hoping she’d take them as typical get-to-know-you interest.

  “Sooner, I hope,” she said, her tone undeniably fervent. “I really miss him.”

  Before he could frame the next question, she turned to him and asked, “How about you? You said you left Fort Hall as a teenager. Do you ever see your family?”

  He should have expected the question, but he hadn’t. Maybe because she seemed so sincere. It had been a very long time since anyone had expressed enough interest in him to ask about his personal life. That realization didn’t disturb him half as much as discovering he didn’t mind answering her.

  “No. I have no contact with my family.”

  “You never went back, did you?” Her voice was even, with no trace of pity or censure.

  “Once.”

  She waited for him to continue.

  “My grandmother died about ten years ago. I was in my early twenties then. I went back when I heard.”

  He squatted by the fire and concentrated on filleting the fish and arranging them on the makeshift grill.