Beauty and the Bounty Hunter (3 page)

Alexi cast a glance toward the window. “We should go.”

“I’d love to. Unfortunately, you knocked my bounty out cold, so I’ll have to wait until—”

“Leave him,” Alexi snapped, and headed for the door.

“No.”

Pausing with his hand on the latch, he murmured, “What was that?”

He no doubt expected her to shiver and shake at the menace in his voice. Everyone else did.

“I’m not leaving him behind so that he can waltz out of here and do again to someone else whatever it was he did that got me sent after him in the first place.”

Alexi peered over his shoulder. “You don’t know?”

“I don’t care.”

He turned away from the door. “Come with me now,
Kätzchen.
”

One of Alexi’s most appealing—or was it annoying—traits was his use of foreign endearments when addressing a woman. Cat had concluded that he did this so he didn’t have to concern himself with learning all of their many names.

“I’m not leaving without him.” Cat scowled at the still-motionless Clyde, then eyed Alexi’s black gloves with suspicion. She’d thought he wore them to cloak his distinctive showman’s hands, but considering Clyde’s lack of consciousness, maybe the gloves concealed his henchman’s favorite pair of brass knuckles.

Alexi wasn’t much for hitting. His hands were as precious a commodity as his face, his body, and his brain. Which was why he rarely used them for anything other than—

“Fine,” Alexi snapped. “We will bring him with us to St. Louis.” He bent and reached for Clyde.

“No,” Cat said.

Alexi straightened. “Why the hell not?”

She stifled her smile. When he was annoyed, Alexi lost all hint of refinement.

“I need to deliver him to Rock River, Kansas, for the bounty.”

“Fuck the bounty!” Alexi exploded, and her hint of a smile faded.

“Why are you here?” she repeated.

He glanced again toward the window. “We need to go.”

Though the curtains hung limp, a chill wind blew over her. “What have you done?”

“Me?” He set his black-gloved hand against the creamy shirt covering his chest, eyes widening in a poor attempt at innocence.

“Dammit,” she muttered. He’d sold her out. But to whom?
She
wasn’t wanted.

Cat didn’t waste her breath with any more questions. Alexi wouldn’t tell her a thing without persuasion, and the way he was behaving—obsessed with the window, insistent on getting gone—she didn’t have the time.

Though she hated to do it, she’d have to leave Clyde behind and capture him again later. She’d need a different disguise, but like Alexi, she had plenty at her disposal. Clyde wouldn’t see her coming until she was already there.

As she went past, Alexi snatched her elbow. She tried to shake him off. “Let me go. We need to—”

“Too late,” he whispered, then pulled her against him, curling his elbow about her throat and placing her own blade to her chest.

The door burst open; three armed men crowded in. At the sight of Cat and Alexi, the shortest and fattest narrowed his already small eyes to slits. “We’re lookin’ for Cat O’Banyon. She—”

“She?” Alexi drawled. “You think a bounty hunter of such acclaim is a woman?” His laughter mocked, and their weapons, which had lowered slightly, lifted again.

“That’s what we heard,” the short one said, sullen sneer marring thin lips.

“Think, gentlemen, if you’re capable of it,” Alexi continued. The two silent men frowned, whether with the effort of trying to follow his suggestion or recognition of the insult, it was hard to say. “Of the three people you’ve found in this room, who is the best bet for a legendary bounty hunter?”

The first man considered the unconscious Clyde, then the captive Cat, before finally settling on Alexi. Slowly he smiled.

Ah, hell,
Cat thought. Then things moved very fast.

Alexi’s wrist twitched. The front of her dress split, and Cat’s breasts spilled free. In the half-light her skin gleamed like pearls beneath clear water.

Then the hand at her breasts, the arm around her throat, the body at her back was gone, but not before he whispered, “Play the part,
mi gatito.
You
are
Sissy.”

The thud of a boot was followed by the whoosh of what sounded like wind. The yellowed lace curtains fluttered past her cheek.

Cat’s gaze stayed on the three men. Theirs were fixed unwaveringly on her breasts. They hadn’t even noticed yet that Alexi was gone.

Cat let them stare to the count of ten. Then she gathered the tattered remnants of her gown and shouted: “There he goes! Cat O’Banyon.” She pointed at the window, hand shaking, lips trembling. “He broke in here. He hit that man. Said he’d take him in dead or alive.”

The spell of her breasts broken, the three hunters blinked. Still, there was an instant when she thought they might decide to forgo chasing “Cat” for a taste of her publicly displayed charms.

She’d shoot them first.
She
chose who and when and why. Unfortunately, she no longer had a gun.

At last the leader snarled, “Come on,” and they clattered down the stairs, then slammed out the front door. Whoever had paid them to find, capture, or perhaps kill Cat O’Banyon must have paid them very well.

But why?

Alexi released the windowsill and landed lightly on the roof of the porch just below. A few steps to the edge,
then he dropped to the ground and blended into the crowd. With Cat’s exquisite breasts to divert the bounty hunters’ attention and the route he’d planned before he’d even walked inside, escape was easy.

They would follow. He wanted them to. Then, while he led a merry chase across the prairie, Cat would take her blasted bounty and get gone.

Sometimes it was all Alexi could do not to strangle her. She took so many chances; she courted death every day. He’d hoped some time on her own would make her less impulsive, but he’d been wrong.

Memories flickered—desire and fury. He’d made her come, but he’d never made her his, and it burned.

Alexi rubbed a hand over his face, wincing at the scritch of stubble against his gloves. Too much thought, too much emotion got people killed. He’d learned that the hard way.

When he reached the end of the street, Alexi glanced back. The three men were already following, though slowly, checking each building, every alleyway. They weren’t as stupid as he’d thought, and this worried him. Oh, they wouldn’t catch him. Alexi gave a slight snort at the idea. But that they’d nearly caught her…

That was a problem.

He slipped into the stable and retrieved his horse. The animal was still saddled, as ordered; he hadn’t planned to be here long.

Alexi had hoped to convince Cat to join him in St. Louis. He should have known better. If she’d wanted to be with him, she would never have left him in the first place.

Another thing that burned.

But he’d dropped enough hints while he was with her to ensure that when she finished with Clyde, she would come after him and discover all that he knew.

Despite the circumstances, Alexi looked forward to it.

Cat stared out the window long after Alexi and his pursuers had disappeared into the crowd on the street. Even at this time of night, heat seemed to rise along with the dust, giving the clapboard houses and stores, the moon-shrouded horizon a dreamy quality.

Nearby cattle milled in pens ready to be loaded onto the trains that chugged east, their lowing mournful, as if they knew what awaited them at the other end, their scent so thick it seemed to float just below the clouds like a coming whirlwind.

Someone in the crowd began to hoot and holler, pointing at Cat, who had been leaning out the window, her breasts spilling free from her gown. She jerked inside, narrowly missing a smart rap of her head against the casement.

Clyde muttered something unintelligible, and Cat considered knocking him out again. However, it would be easier to get him to Rock River if he could move on his own. Certainly she could enforce the dead provision of Clyde’s “dead or alive” bounty, and she would if he gave her one good reason. But Cat had discovered she couldn’t kill someone just to make things easier for herself. If the law wanted Clyde dead, they had plenty of ropes.

Cat slid the torn dress from her shoulders. She needed to change clothes and find another weapon. Clyde wouldn’t come along peaceful-like if she didn’t have a gun.

As the material hit the floor, it thumped. Frowning, Cat knelt and patted the garnet satin. In one pocket she found her derringer; the other held her knife.

“How does he
do
that?” she murmured. The man’s hands were quicker than his tongue.

Her cheeks heated at the images conjured by that single stray thought. Considering what she’d done today to capture Clyde and what she’d done on any number of occasions to capture others just like him, Cat was more shocked that she could blush at all than at the idea of what she’d been blushing about.

She dressed in dark wool trousers and cracked leather boots, shrugging a long-sleeved homespun shirt over breasts she’d quickly bound. Atop that she added a jacket she’d padded at the shoulders to add manly breadth, then tucked her hair under a slouch hat very much like the one that had shaded Alexi’s face. They were common enough, having been worn by both the North and the South during the war.

After waking Clyde with a few shakes and slaps as well as the remains of a stray glass of whiskey tossed into his face, they left by the back stairs. The only person who saw them was the maid. Cat tossed her a coin and a sharp “Keep your own counsel, gal,” using the gruff male voice she’d perfected long ago.

Took them a week of hard riding to reach Rock River, but they got there. The first few hours Cat traveled with a rifle in her lap, expecting the bounty hunters to discover Alexi’s ruse, as well as her own, and track them down. But by the next morning, she settled in. No one had ever figured out any of Alexi’s ruses. She doubted that would change with those three, as they’d appeared to possess a single working brain between them.

The trip would have been forgettable if not for the sting of a nick Alexi had left just below her left breast. An accident, perhaps? Or a reflection of his annoyance that her stubborn insistence on following through with her plan had ruined his?

Whatever it had been.

The cut wasn’t serious, would probably have healed
in a day if the cloth Cat used to bind her breasts hadn’t rubbed against it, breaking the scrape open over and over, staining her shirt red. She looked to have been wounded, which was not a good thing when traveling with a man like Clyde. If a lawman came upon them, Cat would be hard-pressed to explain who she was before he shot them both.

Cat timed her approach into town for nightfall. Just because people liked to spread the legend of Cat O’Banyon didn’t mean the sheriff wanted to be caught employing her. Even if he was her brother-in-law.

Rock River, which wasn’t far from Wichita, lay south of Abilene. The town had hopes of becoming part of the Chisholm Trail, and many thought it soon would be. Ben had been hired as the sheriff and moved here, about thirty miles away from his first lawman’s job, a few months before Billy’s death.

As always, Ben Chase answered the knock fully dressed, gun belt around his waist. Cat had stopped wondering long ago if he slept in his clothes. She didn’t care either way.

“Cathleen.” The Southern lilt to his voice caused a trickle of nostalgia, one of the reasons Cat had trained the same accent out of her own speech. Every time she heard a Georgia twang, she remembered.

Though she hadn’t been by in a month, had gotten the information for this particular bounty from one of Ben’s associates in another Kansas town, Ben wasn’t happy to see her. He still hadn’t gotten over Billy’s death. Who had?

Ben’s gaze flicked to Clyde. He didn’t ask, didn’t need to. If Clyde was still breathing, he wasn’t the man she’d been searching for. That didn’t mean someone didn’t want him.

“Come for the bounty?”

Cat didn’t answer. She certainly hadn’t come for the company.

Ben indicated she should precede him down the steps that led from the living quarters above to his office and the jail below. She retrieved Clyde, whom she’d left hog-tied at the front door.

Ben quickly confined the prisoner, found the record of the bounty, paid it, then headed for the door. Once outside, he paused. “You coming up?”

The faint light of the crescent moon revealed, if Cat had perhaps forgotten, that Ben was everything Billy was not. Light hair instead of dark, blue eyes instead of brown, short instead of tall, alive instead of dead.

“I’ll come up.” She didn’t have much choice. Everything she owned was there, and she needed to change.

She’d just removed her coat when Ben’s gasp split the tense silence. Cat whirled, palm slapping the butt of her gun. But no one lurked in the shadows. Unless you counted Ben.

He pointed, and Cat glanced down. Her shirt was a bloody rag.

Cat crossed to the pitcher and basin on the washstand, poured some water. Ben moved to the window and stared out. As there was only one room above the jail, this was all the privacy Cat could expect. Quickly she unbuttoned the shirt, unwrapped the bindings, and set to work washing away the blood. The water was cold and felt heavenly across her sweaty skin.

“Why do you do this?” Ben murmured.

“Because you won’t.”

That was unfair. No one else knew the voice. No one
could
do this but her. Still, she’d had enough of Ben’s judgment. Sometimes, especially when she was hot and tired and bloody, Cat just had to wound him too.

“I’m a lawman,” he said, “not a vigilante.”

“He was your brother.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

She could only hope.

“He wouldn’t want that.”

Cat wasn’t so sure. She was no longer the girl Billy had married. That girl had died when he did. Would he even recognize her now?

Cat straightened, tossing the bloody cloth into the equally bloody water. “You have no idea what he’d want.”

Ben spun; his gaze went to her bare breasts. Cat didn’t bother to cover herself. Any modesty she’d once had died when she began to use her body as…What? Leverage? Distraction? Currency? Sometimes all three.