A Wanted Man (9 page)

“You do when you’ve lost every shred of common sense.” He opened the door and shoved her through, closing it behind her before she had time to protest again.

Mrs. Bossidy was standing right inside, bent over as if she’d been peering through the window. “Are you spying on me?”

“I’d prefer to think of it as
protecting
you,” she said. “What did he say to you?”

“Let’s just say we’ve come to an agreement.”

E
veryone but Sam protested Laura’s plan to unhitch twenty miles west of Sidney, Nebraska. She’d been told of a small side yard there, an abandoned station for a town that had never taken firm root. It sprouted quickly during the years the railroad was being built, housing workers and supply stations, but the new town had no industry to support it once the nearby section of the track was finished. Most of the buildings had been ripped down when the crews moved on—lumber was too valuable to be left behind—but the side track remained, and the tumbled piles of fallen sod houses. Shallow, indented rectangles, long ago overgrown with grass, were all that was left of the other buildings that once stood there.

The weather turned the day after Laura tried to order Sam in out of the rain. The temperature shot up, the earth steaming like a wash kettle. It made sleeping out under the stars like Sam did appear to be the smart choice, although when Laura suggested it, Mrs. Bossidy
threatened to haul her back to Sea Haven unless she stayed safely and modestly inside.

Clearly the trip was already lean on entertainment options for the rest of the party. They were Easterners, after all, bred in the city and residing in a glamorous resort town. The wide-open spaces held their interest for about a day. So the last place they wanted to stop was this abandoned wayside in the middle of the plains. No comforts, no distractions, it promised few amusements except twiddling of their thumbs. But Laura considered it important to record this as well, the dead, fading impression of a town left in the wake when the railroad moved on.

As for Mr. Duncan…Sam, she reminded herself; even Mrs. Bossidy called him that now, though Laura couldn’t guess how he’d talked her into that. He alone made no complaints. In fact he seldom spoke to her at all, or anyone else as far as she could tell, but he watched over her with an intense patience that left her disconcerted and overly attuned to his presence.

She took one of the horses, riding out toward a tower of rock that speared out of the prairie a few hundred yards north of the town. With no interest in sitting around and watching her sketch, everyone but Sam had chosen to remain behind, taking advantage of the slight shade cast by the blue-striped awning they’d unrolled from the side of her car, one of her father’s special features. Mrs. Bossidy frowned over another snarl of wool that she claimed to be a sweater, the two men settling into yet another game of extremely low-stakes poker, which was the only kind Mrs. Bossidy allowed.

That left Sam to go with Laura. He rode a few feet ahead of her, controlling his horse with expert ease. She was surprised that the others allowed him to escort
her alone, but the warm day and slow, mind-numbing repetition of her work had apparently been enough to make them risk it, though Mrs. Bossidy and Hiram had both taken him aside, out of her earshot, and harangued him for a good ten minutes apiece. He’d listened attentively but made no comment.

She sneaked a glance at him now. He wore a thin cotton shirt, a pale silvery gray that was as close as she’d ever seen him wear to a color, his dark, wide-brimmed hat casting full shadow over his face. His eyes were never still; they swept the landscape with a quick, expressionless flick in her direction every minute or so before returning to their alert scan of the surrounding area. The intense watchfulness that never seemed to waver was his most prominent feature. Did he never get tired, never get bored?

“You didn’t have to accompany me today,” she told him.

“Yes I did.” He slowed his horse, dropping politely back into step beside her. He was ever circumspect, attentive to her wishes. An excellent employee. Her father would be pleased. Except it irritated her to the extreme—she did not want proper acquiescence from him. “There are always dangers, even in what appear to be the most benign circumstances.”

“I hadn’t planned to go beyond earshot.”

“Until you found out I was along to do all the heavy lifting, you mean?”

“Of course,” she admitted, smiling.

“So that’s why Bossidy’s not on our tail,” he said. “I wondered. Usually if I’m within ten feet of you, she’s within eight.”

Heat rose. He’d said it so easily, a comment as simple as noting the weather. But to her it held more, an ac
knowledgment that perhaps there was some danger in the two of them being alone, and not only in Mrs. Bossidy’s overly worried mind.

She
had
never been alone with him, not completely. Had never been fully alone with any man. And she couldn’t help the little shiver of anticipation and worry and excitement that the thought provoked.

Oh, nothing would happen. He was a circumspect employee who’d never hinted at the improper, never given her any reason to think that he wished their roles were not so properly conscribed. She should not lose herself in fantasies.

And yet…oh, he was a lovely man. If she’d known from the first that she would have to wait all these years to be alone with one, she would have picked one like him to be the first.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t go far,” he told her. “Things can happen quickly.” The horse pranced beneath him. A squeeze of his knees, a slight shift of his weight, and it settled immediately. “And you have been known to wander farther than you realize when your attention is captured by something that interests you.”

“I do not—” He pushed his hat back and bent a skeptical look her way. “All right, maybe I do. That does not mean
you
have to come with me. I am not solely your responsibility, you know. Mr. Hoxie and Mr. Peel would have taken their turns, if you had not made it abundantly clear that their presence would not keep you at home.” Her own horse was an old, plodding creature, but her skills were close to nonexistent, riding yet another activity her mother considered too dangerous for her. “You can trust them, you know. They’ve kept me safe for many years before you came along. I imagine they could manage a few more hours.”

“I’ve never abdicated my responsibilities to anyone, no matter how trustworthy.” He lifted his hat, revealing dark hair, dampened in a circle where the hat had pressed it to his head. He swiped his cotton-clad arm across his gleaming forehead. So he was human after all. She’d felt flushed moments after leaving the shade, moisture trickling between her shoulder blades. She was certain her face was red as a poppy—not her most becoming color—and her hair hung limp. He, on the other hand, hadn’t seemed at all bothered by the heat before.

But then he didn’t seem bothered by anything, ever, that she’d been able to tell. Was there nothing inside him, then? Or did he simply hide it that well? She persisted in believing it was the latter, though she was well aware that might be sheer fancy. Unfortunately, it only made it all the more tempting to prod and poke beneath that handsome surface in search of what he held inside.

“Trying to get rid of me, are you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, turning her gaze away from his perceptive one. Though she’d sometimes…not lied, exactly, but shaded the truth, to her parents, her tutors, with some success, she suspected he could see right through her.

And she
was
trying to get rid of him. Having him silently, constantly, watching her work was too unsettling. Too distracting. “I was merely trying to give you a break in your duties. Surely even my father does not expect you to work the clock around.”

“I don’t know about that.” He plopped the hat back on his head, for which she was immediately sorry. It shadowed his face too well and made it all the harder to discern his thoughts and moods. “I’m sure he did not get where he was by working short and easy days.
He strikes me as the sort who demands the same from his employees.”

She burst into laughter. “You pegged him so quickly, did you?”

“It wasn’t hard.” He shrugged. “I know his type well enough.” He slowed the horse as they approached the rock tower. “Where do you want to set up?”

“This is fine.”

An hour passed. Maybe two, while Sam sat with his back against a lone, stunted cottonwood that clung to the bank of a nearly dry creek, and Laura sat beneath a sheltering umbrella, perched on the little three-legged stool he’d lugged out there for her, ripping through page after page of sketches.

At least I make a good pack animal,
he thought wryly. Laura was such a bit of thing she never could have carried all those supplies—an easel, a canvas, paints and pencils and chalks, the umbrella and stool and blanket and a gingham-lined picnic basket—by herself.

Because he certainly hadn’t accomplished much else since he’d joined up with her party. Mostly, he’d sat on his ass and watched her.

Oh, there wasn’t much else he could do. He couldn’t hurry her on to the Silver Spur without arousing suspicion. But it disturbed him how…content he was with the situation. There should have been at least some impatience simmering beneath his calculatedly watchful facade.

He was not accustomed to doing nothing. He generally assessed a situation, acted quickly, and moved on. Waiting was not his style, though he could do it when circumstances warranted.

But being there with her held an undeniable appeal.
A breeze sighed in from the west, rippling the long, yellow-green grass, brushing his face. The sun beamed benignly, a shade too warm, just enough to remind you it was there. He tipped his head back. Above him green leaves shimmied, a summer dance.

He could never get enough of this, the simple, sweeping pleasure of sitting in the open air and admiring a lovely day. He’d spent so many days confined, space and light denied him, wondering if he’d ever have another opportunity, that freedom still felt new.

And then, of course, there was Laura. And therein lay a more complex problem.

He did not seem to tire of watching her. That was odd enough in itself. A particular woman rarely held his attention for long, and it generally required a bit more effort on her part than her mere existence. And it was not as if Laura possessed the kind of beauty that blared its presence from across the room, snagging your attention and holding it.

Laura’s was a gentler attractiveness, quieter, composed of the constant flare of interest in her eyes, the kindness in her expression, the concentration with which she approached her work. And perhaps that is why it did not burn itself out so quickly: When you had to search for that beauty, await the fleeting, tantalizing glimpses of it, it never became stale but retained its freshness and fascination.

She sat right at the edge of the blanket, at the border where the umbrella’s shadow ended, so that her pad on its easel received full sunlight while she remained in the shade. And even as he watched, she scooted her stool forward until the sunlight blazed on her hair, and she had to squint against its power.

“Damn.” He sprang to his feet. She did not look up
until his shadow fell across her—either she was so lost in her concentration she did not note his approach, or she had been aware from the first and looked up a beat too late in an attempt to hide it. “You’re out in the sun again.”

“Are you going to scold me now, too?” She lifted her face full into the brightness of it. “I like it.”

There was more color in her face than when they’d first met, a brush of pink along her cheekbones, a very faint sprinkle of brown-sugar freckles across her nose. Unable to resist, he brushed his finger across the delicate ridge. Her eyes widened. It was wildly improper, an employee touching the daughter of one of America’s richest men. And that bare touch with her was a hundred times more exciting than far more intimate caresses with another. “You’re showing some color already. You’re so pale, you’ll burn to a crisp in no time.”

Her skin tones were prized in the East. The whiter, the more delicate, the better; the mark of a woman whose life did not require exposure to the sun, who had no need to work in the fields or the gardens. But she’d been beyond that, pallor instead of merely fashionably pale. She looked healthier like this, with a bit of color to make her eyes sparkle. “And I would not,” he went on, “want to face Mrs. Bossidy if I bring you back marked by the sun.”

She sighed in surrender. A sound he’d dreamed of, too often, drawing from her another way. It hit him like a roundhouse punch, driving the air from his lungs and restraint from his brain, and he took a step back in case he’d be tempted to touch her again. Because next time, he knew, he could not confine himself to her nose.

She left her stool, fluffed her skirts—frothy yellow things, frilly as a daffodil—and settled gracefully
down upon the blanket in the shelter of the wide-striped umbrella.

“I’m taking a break,” she said. “Join me.”

Ladies did not ask their servants to join them. He might not know much about wealthy society women, but he knew that. Laura—Miss Hamilton, he reminded himself; it would be so much better if he could think of her in formal terms—did, however; she treated Mrs. Bossidy and Hiram and Erastus more like family than staff. But they
were
servants, all of them, even though he played at the role rather than assumed it in truth.

“But you never take a break,” he said. For a lady of leisure, she worked steadily, putting in more hours in a typical day than a mill employee. Wielding a pencil and a paintbrush was not the same as swinging a hammer or a scythe, of course, but she was far more diligent than he would have guessed. She was not a dilettante.

“I do today,” Laura told him. She saw no further point in attempting to work that afternoon. She could not concentrate when she knew he was only a few feet away, watching her with those predatory eyes. She could never quite decide if she were prey in truth or merely a curiosity. “Sit.”

He hesitated. Odd, because Sam never hesitated.

“Oh, come on.” She patted the blanket.

“I’d rather not.”

“You’re not a good employee, ignoring my requests.”

“Never claimed to be. I am, however, an excellent bodyguard.”

“I’ll sketch you,” she said.
Let it go
, she told herself. The man, for whatever reason, didn’t want to join her on the blanket. But it was becoming all too clear to her that she would not be able to give her work her full attention until her curiosity was appeased. Surely it was
primarily his air of mystery that kept her interested. Once that layer was stripped away he’d be exposed as just a man, like so many others, and she could stop thinking about him all the time. “I’m quite famous, you know. People beg for this opportunity. Are you really going to refuse me?”