Arizona Gold (17 page)

Though Kitty had never really liked her job, she had never thought of it ending before she was ready. But the idea of marriage was terrifying. Besides, she pointed out to Opal, Sam had never given any inclination he wanted to marry her. “For all I know he’s already got a wife and a family somewhere. We’re just friends. We ride and shoot and laugh and play and have a good time. That’s all. I’ve no reason to think he’s in love with me. And besides,” she added, “I don’t know that I love him.”

“Oh, you’d learn to. A good-looking man like him wouldn’t be hard to love at all.”

“If only it had worked out for us to find the gold,” Kitty said, more to herself than Opal. “Then neither of us would have had to worry about the future.”

“The only gold you’ll ever see is a wedding band,” Opal said with finality. “And that’s what you better set your sights on if you know what’s good for you.”

Feeling as she did about Sam, Kitty was not opposed to the idea, but the reality remained that he had never given any hint he might be interested in her beyond friendship.

And the truth she dared not admit to Opal was that she was beginning to wish he would.

Ryder could tell something was on Kitty’s mind. Usually she was perky, talkative, interested in everything around them, asking the names of flowers, plants, birds, animals, anything he could tell her. Today, however, she was strangely quiet, brooding, as though waging some kind of inner war with herself.

Well, he could understand if she was, because he was having one of his own. Nights he lay awake telling himself he had to hurry and cozy her up and do what he had set out to do, but one day blended into the next and he had not made a move. And, bad as he hated to admit it, he knew it was because deep down he did not want their time together to end. He enjoyed being with her, delighted in every moment they spent together.

Slowly, it began to dawn on him that maybe he should not be so sure of himself, because maybe he did not appeal to her. She could be trying to think of an easy way to end their friendship. Or she might even have a fiancé back East who was on his way West.

They were riding alongside the river, and when they reached a bend, shaded by an overhang of mesquite growing in the rocks above, he signaled for them to rein in their horses.

He dismounted without asking if she wanted to, but she followed, then drifted over to the river to kneel and scoop water up in her hands and drink alongside the horses.

He waited a moment, then followed to gently grasp her shoulders and pull her to her feet to ask, “Is there something on your mind we need to talk about?”

“Well, I…” She stammered, caught off guard. “No, there’s nothing.”

He kept his hold on her, afraid if he let her go she would leap back on her horse, ending the quiet moment between them. “I believe there is, and that it has something to do with another man, and you just don’t want to tell me.”

She gave a nervous little laugh. “What makes you think that?”

“A girl as pretty as you is bound to have a beau somewhere, Kitty.” His smile, meant to be warm and assuring, was thin, strained. The arrival of a fiancé would destroy his plan—unless he acted fast.

Kitty swayed ever so slightly, tremors rocking through her like a buggy on a bumpy road to have him stand so close and to feel his hands, so warm and possessive, on her bare shoulders. “No,” she managed to push the word from her constricting throat. “No, I don’t have a beau. I…I never have had,” she suddenly admitted, then, in an embarrassed rush, confided, “Oh, Sam, you don’t know how it was for me back in Virginia. I talk about it like I loved it, and certain parts of my life I did love and always will, like the horses, and the cool, green grasses and mountains, but the rest of it was miserable. People hated me and my family, and—” She faltered as the humiliating memories washed over her.

“Tell me about it,” he urged. “Sometimes it helps to talk it out.”

It seemed so natural for her to rest her head against his chest as he held her, and soon the entire story of her wretched past spilled forth.

“So I came here even though my uncle had been killed,” she finished, “because I had no place else to go…nobody to turn to.”

Though shaken by her nearness, Ryder reminded himself she had not yet confided about the map, and he could not let on he knew too much. Gently, hesitantly, he said, “It must have been the last straw to be taken by Apaches. I’m so sorry, Kitty.”

“It was terrifying at first, but not as bad as it would’ve been if they’d found out I was not only a woman but the one they were looking for.”

Ryder pretended to be dumbfounded. “I don’t understand.”

“They were looking for me—Kitty Parrish—when they attacked the stagecoach. I was going by the name Kit, to go along with pretending to be a boy. But they didn’t ask my name. Not then, anyway. They were just looking for a woman. And they would have left me behind except that I had shot one of them, and to keep him from killing me, their leader said he was going to make me his slave.”

Ryder stepped away from her, fearing she would feel how his heart was racing. “Why would they be looking for you?”

“At first I thought it was Opal’s doing, that she had arranged for me to be taken so she could have all my uncle’s gold for herself.”

“What gold?”

“I didn’t tell you that part, how Opal sent me half a map to my uncle’s gold strike.”

“Why only half?”

“That’s where the Indian attack comes in,” she explained. “After I finally reached Tombstone and met Opal and realized she hadn’t had anything to do with the Apaches looking for me, we were able to get to the bottom of things.

“You see,” she rushed on to confide, “my uncle had a partner who had a son by an Apache woman. We figured out that’s the one who took me for his slave, that Whitebear is actually Dan McCloud’s son. He had sneaked into Opal’s shanty on the edge of town a few weeks earlier to try and get my uncle’s half of the map from her. That’s when she told him she had sent it to me. We figure he went back later and found where she had hidden my telegram saying when I would arrive, and that’s how he knew what stage I’d be on.”

“But she lives over the saloon now.”

“Yes. We were afraid once Whitebear discovered I had escaped that he might also hear Kitty Parrish had arrived in Tombstone and figure out what happened and come looking for me. We’re safe at the saloon.”

Ryder gave a low whistle. “That’s an incredible story, Kitty. So what do you plan to do about finding the gold?”

“There’s nothing I can do. Without Whitebear’s half of the map, I could never find it.”

“That’s a shame. You both lose. But what if he had approached you in a different way, say to ask that you work together to locate the strike and then share it? Would you have agreed?”

“Probably,” she said without hesitation.

Ryder cursed himself. But how was he to have known she would go along with such a proposal? She claimed to have had a miserable life, but he was used to getting kicked in the teeth himself.

“Maybe,” he dared to say, “it’s not too late. What if this Apache—Whitebear, you called him—came around again, this time in a civilized way, and asked if you’d work with him to find the gold? What then?”

She thought a few seconds, lips pursed, then said, “I don’t think I could trust him. I’d have to say no. Besides”—she gave a little shiver—“I don’t want to think of him getting close enough to me to ask.”

“I suppose not,” he murmured, mind spinning as he tried to analyze the situation.

She gave a little sigh and leaned to take up the reins of her horse. “It’s a shame. Just think—somewhere, maybe even right around here—there’s a rich gold strike that might never be found. Someone might find it sooner or later, true, but it’s comforting to think it probably won’t be the monsters who murdered my uncle and his partner. Opal said my uncle told her it was a tricky map, and without both parts put together, no one would be able to figure it out.”

Ryder’s father had told him the same thing. And since he’d not seen his half, he could only take his father’s word for it, even though he knew the area well.

“Kitty,” he said suddenly, grabbing her arm and pulling her close once more. “I’d like to see your part of it. I know this country. Maybe I could figure it out.”

“But it’d be a waste of time, I’m sure.”

“I’d still like to try it.” She would not know he had the whole map until it was all over. Then he would offer her half, which was fair.

Thinking like that eased his conscience. He had never felt really good about seducing her to get all the map and then keeping all the gold for himself. She was entitled to her uncle’s part. He hadn’t felt that way when he was angry and humiliated over her having fooled him, but a change of heart was inevitable, he supposed, being drawn to her as he was.

Kitty was staring up at him, her teeth biting into her lower lip as though she were trying to decide if she could trust him.

“You can,” he answered, reading her mind. “You can trust me, Kitty. I swear it. And I really do want to help you.”

But Kitty had learned, among other things, since coming West, to be leery of everything and everyone. “But why do you want to? I would pay you, of course, but to go to so much trouble, maybe even risk your life, for a nominal reward doesn’t seem right.”

His hand reached for hers. “Maybe I just want to help you, Kitty. You’ve been through so much in your life.”

“But—”

He silenced her with his lips, arms going tight about her, and he instantly felt himself grow hard as her breasts crushed into his chest. His tongue touched the corner of her mouth, coaxing her to open for him, then fiercely claimed possession.

Kitty moaned and swayed, would have stumbled had his arm not been tight about her waist. Heat unfurled in her belly, and she closed her eyes to let the delicious waves ripple up and down her body.

His tongue still exploring the sweetness of her mouth, he began to gently knead her breasts.

Suddenly frightened by the wild churning within, Kitty came out of the heated trance to tear her mouth from his and raggedly whisper, “We…we mustn’t. Please—” She pushed at his chest, trying to free herself of his embrace.

“I’m sorry,” Ryder said in a rush, releasing her and stepping back.

“There…there’s no need to be,” Kitty murmured thinly. “It…it was my fault. I shouldn’t have let it go so far…”

Snatching up the horse’s reins once more, she mounted and, still teeming with the desire he had ignited, said, “We have to be getting back. We’ve been away longer than usual, and I have to get ready for the first performance.”

He also swung up in the saddle. “Don’t you think we ought to finish the conversation I so rudely interrupted?” he asked with a reckless smile.

Kitty also smiled, pleased to have him so deftly take them from the tension. “Do you really want to help me look for the gold?”

“Not
help
you,” he said carefully. “I wouldn’t want you involved. It’s too dangerous. Whoever killed those two men might still be looking.”

Kitty’s face went tight. “I’m afraid I’d have to insist on coming along.”

“I couldn’t allow that,” he said, eyes growing darker to think of having her exposed to potential danger. It was, truly, a distinct possibility that the murderer—or murderers, as the case might be—would be lurking around waiting for her to appear. Him, too. They could be followed, and he could not chance it.

“Then I’m afraid it’s out of the question.”

“And I’m afraid I feel insulted, because it’s obvious you don’t trust me.”

“And it’s obvious you don’t trust my ability to look out for myself. I wouldn’t be in the way, and you know it, just like you know if we run into trouble I can handle a gun. So I have to wonder what your real reason is for not wanting me along.

“Well?” she persisted when he offered no explanation. “What am I to think when you won’t say anything?”

What could he say—that he would welcome the intimacy during the search…welcome the glory of emptying his passion into her sweetness every chance he got until she found out who he really was? Because once the gold was located, he would have to identify himself in order to demand his rightful share, and she would surely hate him forevermore.

But why not enjoy her in the meantime
? a little voice within nagged.
What is the harm
?

The harm, he was pained to admit, would come because he feared he was falling in love. And even if she should love him in return, it could never work out between them. They came from two different worlds, and he would not risk things turning out like they had between his parents. It was best to end it now before they got more deeply involved. Once he located the gold, he would deposit her share in a bank and send her a note telling her where it was. Then Sam Bodine would drop out of sight never to be seen again, and they could both get on with their lives.

Finally, he said, “You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then forget it,” she snapped, digging her heels into the horse’s flanks to send him into a gallop.

Ryder pulled his horse alongside, keeping pace. “You’re being stubborn, Kitty, I told you—I know the country around here. I’m certain I can find it.”

Over the sound of hooves clicking on the rocks, she cried, “If I don’t go, you don’t get the map.”

“What you’re saying is that you think I’m going to swindle you. I’m not an outlaw, Kitty. And when I give my word, I keep it.”

“I have no reason to believe you. I hardly know you.”

“We were pretty close back there for a little while,” he said with a roguish smile. “A little while longer, and we might have got to know each other real good.”

“That…that has nothing to do with it. And if you won’t agree to take me with you, we’ll just forget the whole idea.”

“Hell, woman,” he exploded, “you’re going to throw away a chance at a fortune because you won’t trust me.”

She looked at him then, a quick dart of fury. “No. You’re throwing away a chance at a nice reward because you’re like most men—you can’t accept a woman being able to think for herself and make her own decisions.”

“That’s crazy. You’re just afraid I’ll find the gold and keep it all for myself.”