Trail of Kisses (20 page)

He was just starting to come up with ideas of
how he could bring her even more flowers—maybe weave a daisy chain
garland for her hair, if that wasn’t too ridiculous—when he caught
sight of Lynne leaping out of the back of her wagon. She was pale
and her eyes were wide. His warm, peaceful thoughts
evaporated.

“
What happened?” he asked rushing
toward her. The old, familiar feeling of urgency, the call to
action, washed over him and he reached for his gun.

Lynne marched toward him. She held a piece of
paper. What he had initially mistaken for fear in her eyes was, in
fact, the glow of fury. His heart lurched in his chest. Lynne was
madder than a hornet again. For some crazy reason he liked it. But
it didn’t make him feel an inch better.

She waited until she was close to him before
holding up the paper, half crushed in her hand. “Look what I
found,” she growled.

She offered the paper to him and he took it
and opened it. Inside was a threat, a warning, and a picture of
what he assumed was her family, all with their paper throats slit.
It was too much like the photograph they’d found of her father. It
was too much.

“
Where did you find this?” he
growled, marching back to the wagon as though whoever was
threatening her would be there waiting and watching. The only
person there, though, was Ben, yoking up the oxen and getting ready
to go.

“
It was in my hope chest,” Lynne
said. “
Deep
in my hope chest, underneath a pile of linens. I
found it when I was looking for a gift for Emma. Someone was in my
hope chest. Again.”

Cade itched to draw his gun and demand that
the entire wagon train be searched. But for what? Anyone with a
knife? Every man on the trail and half of the women and children
had knives. Not all of them had access to Lynne’s wagon,
though.

“
Someone must have gotten into
your hope chest right after the tornado,” he said. He strode from
the front of the wagon where Ben worked to the back, but there was
nothing he could do.

“
I haven’t touched my stationary
for weeks,” Lynne confessed. “Someone could have tampered with it
before the tornado. It could have been there all this
time.”

Cade nodded, grinding his teeth. How was he
supposed to protect Lynne against a killer that he couldn’t
see?

“
They threatened my
family.”

He dragged himself out of his thoughts long
enough to stare at her. It hit him again. Lynne wasn’t afraid, not
this time, not even a little bit. She was irate.

“
My
family
, Cade. No one
threatens my family,” she went on. “I want you to give me one of
your guns.”

Cade bounced from grim anger to sharp surprise
in a flash. His brow rose as he stared at her, not sure he’d heard
her right. “You want me to give you a gun?”

“
Yes. If someone out here in our
wagon train thinks they can threaten the people I love, then
they’ve got another thing coming. I want you to give me a
gun.”

Still, Cade gaped. “Do you know how to use a
gun?”

“
No,” she answered, undeterred.
“You can teach me.”

The absurdity of the situation mingled with
the frustration of knowing that, in spite of his presence and his
efforts, someone was still trying to hurt Lynne, gave the entire
situation an unreal feeling.

“
I’m not giving you a gun,” he
said.

“
Yes, you are.”

“
No, I’m not. Not if you don’t
know how to use it.”

She let out an exasperated breath. “I won’t
stand for this anymore. I’m through with playing cat and mouse with
this would-be killer. I am not a mouse, and neither is my
family.”

“
Your family is hundreds of miles
away in St. Louis,” he told her. “There’s nothing you can do for
them out here. They’ve got their own protection.”

“
I may not be able to protect them
the way you’ve been set to protect me,” she argued, “But I can show
whoever is out here threatening me that I won’t let him and his
friends or brothers or whatever they are get away with what they’re
trying to do.”

“
Lynne,” he tried to reason with
her.

She had no patience for whatever argument he
would have formed. Instead, she lunged at him, reaching for the
revolver at his waist.

“
What are you doing?” He held her
at arm’s length.

She continued to swipe at his gun belt, even
as he twisted his hip away from her.

“
Give me a gun, Cade. Just one
gun. I know you have several. I want to be able to protect
myself.”

“
Hurt yourself is more like,” he
said, continuing to dodge.

She continued to snatch for a few more seconds
before switching tactics and grabbing at the Cooper he had
concealed under his vest. Her hands brushed his chest, searching
and grabbing. His brow rose further at the stab of raw pleasure
that coursed through him, settling in his groin. Under any other
circumstances, he would give just about anything to have Lynne
attempting to rip his clothes off. It made him more clumsy than he
needed to be, clumsy enough that she was able to thrust a hand into
his vest and pull out the Cooper.

“
Ha!” she exclaimed in triumph.
“Now, how do you use it?”

“
You don’t,” he said, lunging at
her to get the gun back.

She held it above her head, but he was several
inches taller than her to begin with, and the movement did nothing
to deter him. He swiped at the revolver, but she moved it behind
her back, low and tucked into her skirts.

“
You can’t have it,” she said,
panting. “I need it. I need something to protect
myself.”

“
I’m here to protect you, not some
gun,” he said, breathing heavily himself.

He stepped into her and reached behind her
back, but she inched away, bumping against the side of the wagon.
That didn’t stop him. He continued to dart one hand, then the other
behind her, reaching for the gun with effort that brought them
closer and closer together. She twisted and wriggled to get away
from him, but couldn’t. Her efforts only wedged her further against
the wagon until she couldn’t move at all. He had her pinned with
his chest and hips, his hands caught between the boards of the
wagon and her backside.

“
Give me the gun,” he panted
against the side of her head.

“
No,” she replied, stubborn as
ever.

There was only one way he could think of to
disarm her. He gave up reaching for the gun and cupped her backside
instead, lifting her up into him. When her head was tilted up in a
gasp, he closed his mouth over hers, kissing her with a ferocity
that brooked no argument.

Something that could have been a protest or a
moan of pleasure caught in her throat. He teased his tongue against
the inside of her lip. His groin jumped when she touched her tongue
to his, slipping it into his mouth to taste and explore. Flashes of
the night they’d spent in each other’s arms hit him, the way she’d
hummed and urged him on and begged him to join with her in no
uncertain terms, of how sweet and tight it had felt to be inside of
her. He wanted her again that way. He hadn’t stopped wanting her
since that night.

A click behind Lynne’s back made the hair on
the back of his neck stand up and his blood run cold. He jerked
back, hips still pressed against her, and glared at her.

“
Did you just fire that gun?” he
demanded.

“
I….” Lynne’s mouth hung open. “I
think my finger slipped on the trigger.”

The sweat that had broken out on his back as
he’d kissed her turned cold. “You fired a gun while you were
holding it in your skirts?”

“
I….” She blinked and shook away
from him, pulling the small revolver out from behind her. “It isn’t
loaded.”

“
Of course it’s not loaded,” he
shouted at her. “Do you think I would carry a loaded gun tucked
into my vest where it could go off and drill a hole in my
gut?”

Understanding flashed to Lynne’s face only to
be replaced by deep shame, and then anger. “Why carry a concealed
gun at all if you’re not going to keep it loaded?”

He leaned closer to her. “I know it’s not
loaded and now you know, but anyone else looking at me is just
going to see a man with too many guns and a mission.”

Emotions continued to flash across her pink
face—incredulity, then cunning.

“
Then let me carry it, unloaded,”
she said. Her dark eyes shone with victory.

It
was
a victory too. He knew it as
soon as she did. He could argue all he wanted against her carrying
a loaded weapon, but if she carried an empty gun around, whoever
was out to hurt her would think she was armed.

He breathed out a sigh. “All right, you can
carry the Cooper.
Unloaded
.”

Her smile grew tenfold. “I knew you’d see it
my way.” She held the gun up to study it. It looked a little too
good in her delicate hands.

“
How did you know that?” he
growled, straightening his shirt and vest that had been pulled
askew in their struggle.

Lynne shrugged. “The one thing I’ve learned
about being brave and independent is that women like me nearly
always get our way.”

Grumpy as he was over losing, a part of Cade
thrummed with joy and life.

“
Is that so?” He pretended to be
grim when what he really wanted to do was sing. That or kiss her
silly.

“
Yes,” Lynne said. “And as soon as
we stop for any significant amount of time, you’re going to teach
me to shoot it.”

“
Am I?” His heart leapt in his
chest, sending fire straight to his groin.

“
You are.”

Tornados and threats and hardships be damned.
The Lynne he had ungentlemanly dreams about, the Lynne he loved,
was back.

Chapter Eleven

Cade wasn’t exactly sure if it was possible to
go to hell for someone else’s sins, but if it was, Lynne had him
halfway there. He let her keep the Cooper with her, even loaned her
a belt with a holster so that whoever was out to harm her could see
she meant business. The problem was that everyone else in the wagon
train could see the gun she carried as well. It didn’t take much to
conclude that people didn’t like it. There was enough strangeness
and disruption in the wagon train already.

By the time Sunday rolled around and Pete had
them stop for the entire day, the stares Lynne was getting were
pointed. When they gathered for one of Reverend Joseph’s short,
awkward sermons, the last seats to fill up in the rows of benches
that had been set up like church pews were the ones beside them.
Even then, only Callie and John sat close. The rest kept their
distance.

“
You do realize people are forming
opinions of you?” Cade told Lynne as they walked across a field of
parched grass where people were gathering buffalo chips for their
fires.

“
What do I care about people’s
opinions?” Lynne countered.

“
What?” Cade sputtered. “Not that
long ago you were crawling all over me to keep my distance because
these same people might think less of you for sleeping under the
wagon with me.”

She eyed him askance, her cheeks flushed.
“Well, there’s a great deal of difference between a woman being
judged for a lapse in morality than for carrying a sidearm to
protect herself.”

Cade rubbed a hand over his face, stuck
between wanting to laugh at her crazy reasoning and wanting to
shake some sense into her.

“
I think you just make up your own
rules of propriety to fit whatever you want to do,” he
said.

She shrugged and he had the impression she
would have tossed her curls at the notion if her hair hadn’t been
braided and looped around her head like a crown. “Maybe I
do.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lynne, but you
don’t make the rules, society does. Right now, you’re walking a
fine line.”

“
Am I?”

She stopped and faced him. They had wandered
to the far edge of the group of people hunting for buffalo chips. A
sly smile lit Lynne’s face. Cade’s heart wasn’t sure whether to
sink or to dance in his chest. She was up to something.

“
Well, seeing as my reputation is
thoroughly ruined already, why don’t you teach me how to shoot this
gun now?”

Cade sighed. He had a bad feeling he was being
set up again, like she’d set him up before and like her Uncle
George had back at the beginning. He knew he’d let George Tremaine
down, but the punishment was far worse than his crime.

“
I can’t teach you to shoot now.”
He scrambled for an excuse. “Your gun’s not loaded.”

She smiled and produced a small box from the
pocket of the apron she wore. It was just his luck that she’d found
and brought the box of bullets that went with the
Cooper.

He crossed his arms and rested his weight on
one hip. “Now who’s going through other people’s things without
their permission?”