A Wanted Man (13 page)

Hiram and Erastus lumbered up to them.

“Whew. Glad to be off that thing,” Hiram said. “All
that rockin’ to and fro is unsettlin’ to a man’s stomach.”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Bossidy said. “Can’t have your appetite leaving you, can we? With so little flesh to spare you’d waste away in no time.”

“Where’s Mr. Duncan?” Laura asked before she thought better of it.

“In the car.”

“In the
car?
” That was very unlike him. He was inside seldom enough if they were under way, and even then only when driven indoors by unfriendly weather. Inside on a lovely day when they were in a station was unheard of.

“Yeah, he said he was a little under the weather,” Hiram informed her. “Seems like he was, too. He was kinda pale, and sweating like a sailor in the boiler room.”

“Oh.” Poor thing. Of course the man fell ill occasionally. He was human, after all, though he seemed so vital and healthy and perfect that she couldn’t picture him succumbing to mere illness. “I’ll go look in on him.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” said Mr. Peel. “Just a touch of the ague, maybe.”

“No, no, I’m sure you’re anxious to begin work, Laura,” Mrs. Bossidy said quickly. “And you’re useless in a sickroom in any case. Too many bad memories. I, on the other hand, am quite good at it.”

“It’s so good to know where your skills lie,” Hiram interjected.

“As long as one has skills in the first place,” she tossed off serenely as she headed for the second car.

“But—” Too late. Mrs. Bossidy was already halfway there, and Laura really couldn’t protest without being obvious. And even if she followed, Mrs. Bossidy would
be hovering the entire time. She wouldn’t have an instant alone with Sam.

Besides, Mrs. Bossidy really
was
much better in a sickroom than Laura.

He’d fallen asleep. That surprised him. When he’d first entered the car, he’d been dizzy, his heart panic-knocking like it belonged to a fresh recruit in a dugout with shells flying his way.

He could go inside when he had to, he’d reminded himself. Was even—mostly—okay in big, airy places with lots of windows like churches and train stations. But small places, dark places…they gave him trouble. But he
could
do it if he had to, he’d told himself a million times.

He just preferred…not to.

But it had seemed eminently sensible to sequester himself in the car when they rolled into Silver Creek. There promised to be too much hubbub surrounding their arrival, too many interested, eager people mulling about, though most of them were there to get a look at Laura. Not that they weren’t used to millionaires, given they had one of their own. But she was different, an
Eastern
one, famous in her own right.

He could leave the train car as soon as it got dark, he promised himself. Prowl and poke around, see what there was to see. Not that he expected much. He’d had no luck there the first time and wasn’t likely to have any more now. Any trace of Griff was long gone if it had ever been there in the first place.

No, his only hope was to slip right on to the Silver Spur without anybody noticing. Who would ever look for him as part of Laura Hamilton’s entourage? They thought they’d chased him off once and for all. He’d
been gone for weeks. And he really didn’t think they’d actually
looked
at him all that closely. He hadn’t spent much time with any one person in particular, though there were one or two he’d questioned that he’d have to avoid.

But the plan was workable, he judged. Soon as they got to the Silver Spur, this mysterious illness was going to come roaring back and confine him to his room. There’d be guards at night, no doubt, but there was an awful lot of ground to cover, and he’d be careful, a lot more careful than he’d been the last time. And the moon was waning; he’d checked last night. Two more nights, maybe three, and you wouldn’t be able to see your six-shooter when held in your own hand.

But he’d dropped off while those thoughts whirled around in his head, right after Mrs. Bossidy’s strangely solicitous visit. Probably because he
hadn’t
dropped off the night before, when the thoughts spinning around in his head had been of that poor captured Chinaman.

He could have been a thief or a murderer, just as he’d explained to Laura.

It just wasn’t likely. He had well-honed instincts for such things, and he felt in his bones there was something very wrong on the Silver Spur.

But it wasn’t his business. He’d learned long ago to ignore his conscience in the name of survival. He’d had little choice. But you could tamp down a conscience, discount it, be certain it was eradicated, only to find it stirring at inconvenient moments.

Discovering what had happened to Griff remained his primary goal. He owed his friend that much. Owed him more than that when it came right down to it. If in the process he found out what happened to that man,
that would be a nice bonus. He promised himself that he’d help if the opportunity arose—if the man
needed
any assistance.

It wasn’t all that late, he judged. Coming up on midnight, maybe? The other two men were likely still out. Certainly Hiram was gone; if you couldn’t hear the man, he wasn’t in the car. They liked to tip a few at the local saloon whenever they rolled into a new town.

It was a pleasant evening. The window was wide open—it helped keep his heart steady to have it open, letting in fresh air—and a breeze fluttered through, soft and sweet-smelling.

He couldn’t lie in bed on such a night and not think of her. Was that such a terrible thing?

Nothing more would happen between them. Only a few more days at the most, and they would never see each other again. In the meantime she was well chaperoned, particularly lately.

And neither of them was likely to
allow
any further…exploration. He knew what place he held in her life. He was an experiment, a part of her adventure, a memory of her excursion into the real world. She would go home and find a man who fit neatly into her life and that her family would welcome. Someone who carried a far sight less baggage than he did.

Someone who was willing to love her the way she deserved.

But it wasn’t so wrong to fantasize, was it? To dream about what it would be like if she were a different kind of woman, one who could do more than a little kissing and keep a physical relationship in its proper, safe place?

Or, even, what there might be between them were he a different kind of man.

The breeze brushed his face, bringing with it a sweeter smell. Something must be blooming—

“You’re awake,” Laura said.

H
is breath seized in his chest. He sprang up, the light bedclothes falling to his waist before he realized he was bare-chested. Naked? he thought frantically. No, he had his pants on. Thank heavens—or hell—or small favors.

“What are you doing here?” He should have heard her coming and had a chance to prepare himself. He’d spent a lifetime on high alert, listening for a telltale footstep, a whisper of sound that betrayed someone’s stealthy approach. And she’d slipped right beside his bed without him hearing a thing.

Perhaps because she’d already been there in his mind, ever-present, ever-tempting.

She hovered beside the bed, her fingers twisting uncertainly together. Not in a nightgown, the frilly confection he’d imagined she would sleep in. No, fully dressed, in the wide dark skirt she’d worn that day, a shirt that ended in a flutter of lace beneath her chin, pure and ghostly white in the dim moonlight. She’d left
the short little jacket behind.
One less layer
, he thought dimly, through the haze of rising desire that blurred his thoughts.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She hovered beside the bed, just out of reach, a dream he could not reach for.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated harshly.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, backing away. “I didn’t mean to—they said you were sick. I know Mrs. Bossidy looked in on you, but I just wanted to make sure—” The man wasn’t wearing a shirt, Laura realized. She tried not to stare—oh, it was so terribly wrong of her to take such advantage of the situation! But how could she not? She’d seen statues. Paintings. But not living, vibrant flesh. Dimension, motion…it added so much fascination to the form. And there wasn’t an artist in the world who wouldn’t have begged for the opportunity to paint that body, all sinew and broad muscle and long bones.

“Oh yeah. Sick.” He flopped back on the bed, his arms wide. Surely that’d be safer, Sam thought. Unthreatening.

“Do you have a fever? I—” She laid her hand on his forehead. “I—”

He caught her wrist.

“Laura.”

Her pulse beat against his thumb. Quicker, harder, as every nerve she owned vibrated from the bright sensation of that one point of contact.

“Leave.” His thumb moved, slow circles against the vulnerable flesh at the inside of her wrist. “For God’s sake, Laura, leave.
Now.
”

“I just wanted to—”

“
Now
.” He should release her. Sam knew it, dimly, in the small part of him that retained a fraying shred of sanity.

Laura didn’t move. How could she move? Life thrummed through her veins, fizzy, bubbling, wonderful
life.
This was what she’d survived for. This was what she’d waited for, all those gray, confined days and nights.

Slowly, she lowered herself to the edge of the bed. Still they touched nowhere but where his fingers encircled her wrist, but she knew her hip was no more than two inches from his thigh. Was he bare there, too, beneath the linens? The idea reeled in her rapidly fogging mind.

It was so terribly wicked, the sort of thing she’d never thought she would do. She was in the bed of a naked man, a wild and terrible and mysterious man.

“
Are
you ill?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he growled. “Terribly so. Contagious, too.
Extremely
.”

“No you’re not.” She lifted her free hand and wrapped it around
his
wrist,
his
hand.

“Laura, you have no idea what you’re risking here.”

“Is it such a risk?” she asked. “Such an awful thing? I liked kissing you. You liked kissing me. Why would it be so terrible to do it again?”

“Do you think I can do that?” Every muscle in his body was so tight it hurt, a sweet, burning pain that he was afraid he would forevermore associate with her. “That we can just…play for a while, then I could let you go?” he asked savagely. “Because I can’t.
Won’t
. If you don’t leave now, you may not leave at all.”

There. He’d finally gotten through to her, Sam thought: a quick intake of breath, her eyes wide, glinting with fear. The woman wasn’t stupid. Surely she knew enough to run, fast and hard, back to her safe, guarded life.

He loosened his grip in slow, incremental fractions,
regretting it every second, because he knew it would be the last time he ever touched her, and touching her suddenly seemed like the best thing in the world, the one thing that would make living worthwhile.

Possibilities hovered in the air between them, all the things that might have been and would never be. Regret wrenched him. He understood it was for the best. For both of them. But oh, he longed for it to be different. That his whole life would have been different, so this could be something other than what it simply had to be.

She let go of his wrist, and the skin was warm where she’d touched him. He could remember it exactly, the soft smoothness of her flesh, the narrow, delicate length of her fingers.

And then she reached out and placed her hand squarely on his bare chest.

Their eyes met. Time caught, held, ripe with choices and possibilities. Shadows flickered across his throat, his chest. Bedazzled, she drifted her fingers across his skin. His collarbone angled down, straight and strong. Dark hair, wiry beneath her touch, thickened toward the center of his chest.
I could spend a lifetime here
, she thought,
and never lose the fascination of touching him
.

Then he yanked, tumbling her on top of him. They lay there like that, breathing hard, gazes locked. There was a sheen of moisture on his forehead, a hard, harsh line to his mouth as though he hurt, deeply and irrevocably.

“Last chance,” he said.

Was there really a choice? If she had one, it was buried low and deep beneath the need that crackled inside her, raced along nerve endings. He was hard beneath her, completely unyielding, and she lifted and fell with each breath he took, a rhythm that thrummed inside her belly, her heart, found its way lower.

“No chance at all,” she murmured, lowering her mouth toward his.

Almost there. A breath away. One more fraction of an inch until…

He rolled her off the bed, shoving her away, setting her on her feet, where she wavered, disoriented and disappointed.

“What—”

“Hush.” He plopped back into the bed, yanking the pile of covers up to his neck, and slammed his eyes shut.

The door banged open. Bodies jostled through—one, two, three.

Peel and Hoxie stood on either end of the bed, arms outstretched, their guns carefully aimed, faces determined—they would not take Sam’s skills too lightly this time. They were three feet from the bed, far enough that he could not simply reach out and snatch their weapons, and the two of them were separated by enough space that he could not attack them both at once. Hoxie’s hand shook.

“Easy there, Erastus,” Sam said. “Those things tend to go off when you jiggle ’em around like that.”

Hoxie swallowed hard, narrowing his eyes. “Shut up.”

Sam lifted his brows in surprise. “So what do I owe the pleasure?”

Mrs. Bossidy hovered in the doorway, peering into the darkened room.

“Laura! What are you doing here?”

“I—” She shot a guilty glance at Sam, uncertain whether she was more unhappy about being caught or being interrupted.
Darn, darn, darn
. “You were all gone so long,” she said slowly, letting the implication that they’d been remiss in their duties hover in the air.
“I thought, if Mr. Duncan truly were as ill as Mr. Hoxie implied, we shouldn’t be leaving him alone.”

“Move away from the bed,” she ordered.

“Excuse me, I—”

“
Move away
,” she said, with enough heat that Laura obeyed automatically. The tiny chamber was hopelessly crowded with four people in it. Laura bumped up against the far wall and stayed there, confused, curious.

“Afraid I’m gonna grab her and use her as a shield?” Sam asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t need a shield.”

Laura finally recovered enough to speak. “
What
are you all doing?”

“Laura.” Mrs. Bossidy took her hand. “Laura, my dear, he’s not who you believe him to be.”

“Look.” He started to sit up. The covers fell away again, exposing enough impressive musculature to make Mrs. Bossidy’s eyes go wide.

“Don’t move,” Hiram ordered.

Laura couldn’t look away.
Now
there
is a painting,
she thought, a gorgeous bare-chested man in a mussed bed, hair tousled, eyes sleepy, so blatantly sexual that men would drag their women from museums rather than let them view it.

She tried to read his expression. Over the days, she’d learned to discern what little hints he gave: a slight tension in the corners of his mouth, a darkening of his eyes, a fractional deepening of the furrow between his brows. But nothing betrayed his emotions at that moment, his expression wiped completely clean. He was still beautiful—nothing could mute that. But the vitality that set him apart was absent, the intensity in his eyes shuttered, as if he’d distanced himself from her,
stealing back whatever fragment of himself he’d shared with her.

“Sam?” she asked, taking a half step toward him.

“No.” Mrs. Bossidy’s voice cracked through the room. “Laura, your father didn’t hire him.”

“What?” It
whooshed
out of her, hope and shock and disbelief, leaving her limp and confused.

“We cabled your father when we stopped in Bear River City. He didn’t hire anyone.”

Her gaze slid around the room, touching them each in turn—Hiram, so furious he looked as if his head might pop off; Mr. Hoxie, wounded and uncertain; Mrs. Bossidy, protective as a mother bear. And Sam, as remote from her as though he’d been painted by an artist with no feel for the medium, distant and detached.

“
Sam.
”

She didn’t know what she wanted him to say. That Mrs. Bossidy lied? That Sam had?

“It was…closed,” she said numbly. “The stationmaster said the telegraph office was closed.”

“They opened it for me,” Mrs. Bossidy said.

Say something
. But what could he say that would make any difference? Her father hadn’t hired him. He’d lied to her all along.

“What did you want from me?” she asked him.

Stupid question. She knew perfectly well what he wanted from her.

Money
. Of course it was money. What else could it be?

She remembered the kisses, sweet as summer, as intoxicating as the first time she’d been allowed out of the sickroom and she’d stepped out on the terrace and the ocean overwhelmed her, the waves crashing, the briny air flooding her senses.

Oh, he’d reeled her in so easily. No mere loan or
large investment for him. He would have had her in love with him within weeks. She’d been halfway there already. And for the man who married Baron Hamilton’s daughter…“You wouldn’t have gotten any. Any of my father’s money, I mean. He would have made sure of it.”

“It’s not what you—”

“I told you to shut up!” Hoxie shouted.

Sam shook his head slightly. His mouth lifted in a painful impersonation of a smile.

And then he dived for the open window.
Through
the open window, headfirst, fast as a falcon plummeting after its prey.

“Hey!” Caught by surprise, the men reacted a beat late.

Laura was faster. She knew what he was capable of.

But by the time she reached the window, he was gone.

“Not much out here, is there?” Mrs. Bossidy said.

The train from Silver Creek to Ogden had dropped them off at the tiny station three miles from town—they called it a station, but it was in truth little more than a large storage shed—where another line of tracks speared off toward the Silver Spur mines.

“We should have stayed in Silver Creek longer,” she went on. “Now we have to sit here for three days.”

Laura glanced up from her sketch pad. They’d had supper an hour earlier; a simple one, as it always was when they weren’t in a town or hitched to a train, something about which Hiram complained incessantly until Mrs. Bossidy shushed him. He was of the opinion that they should have brought their own chef on the trip, at
which point Mrs. Bossidy opined that they traveled with one too many people for her taste as it was.

They’d set up a table and chairs outside and ate in the lowering sun. Low mountains rimmed the narrow valley that the rail bed spiked through. Beyond the shed—simple, tin-roofed, the lumber gray with age—there was simply nothing else, not even a few trees. Scrubby brush struggled for life, giving way to tufts of prickly grass. Now and then a hawk wheeled overhead. Once a lone rabbit flashed by in a panic. Deep blue evening settled over the land. No lights flickered in the distance. If there was another person within miles, there was no sign of them.

“I like it out here,” Laura said. The quiet, empty spaces matched her mood better than the smug bustle of Silver Creek. And she, who’d been so pleased with every new acquaintance, had finally met her fill. If one more cheerful, friendly, helpful person interrupted the work she was struggling enough with as it was…well, at least she wouldn’t be interrupted in the asylum.

Her work was going terribly. Not going at all, in fact, despite her best effort. The blank page, glowing yellow from the lamplight, accused her.

She couldn’t work up the necessary passion for her subject. Oh, the land was magnificent. She realized it intellectually, understood that it would make a wonderful subject for a panorama. But she was tired of painting mountains and trees, rivers and towns.

But that wasn’t the only problem, and she knew it.

It was because he was gone.

A day without him. One endless day, and already the trip had lost its luster.